Questions for Conserative/libertarians after Harvey.

It's not irrelevant. It may not be as relevant as the 1st two you list but to say it's not relevant is completely false.

 

Again this is what is meant by climate change. There is more moisture in the atmosphere and thus rain events are a lot more severe. Now there right will say this is just natural fluctuations that's science doesn't understand. And science will say it's because of mankind.

Either way the climate has changed and that is having an effect on the amount of rain that storms produce.

 

It's irrelevant in that it's not a factor that can be changed. There is no thermostat for the globe that can be set by man, the climate has been in a constant state of change since long before our species existed and will almost certainly still be in a constant state of change long after we're gone

 

I don't know of any scientific articles, mathematical model, or my baseline understanding of thermodynamics where it is sucggested that the rate of change in our climate is constant. That would be absurd.

What scentific knowledge that you possess makes you believe in this claim of yours?

 

Why can't Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines be called in from the beginning to help with evacuation and rescue? The climate change has nothing to do with this flooding, the stupid people with the power are the major reason for the people dead in Harvey. Too bad, those poor people living in the bad area were just not getting enough helps. The rich people likely have less problem because they are living in the better area.

 

Constant state of change <> constant rate of change

 

How about we spent more on infrastructure and less on social services. Conservatives and libertarians have no problem with the government spending money on the things the people cannot do for themselves(I wish they were more efficient with that money)... like flood prevention levees, a strong military etc.

Not really into building infrastructure in Afghanistan either.

 

You mean a second order derivative?

Ya, so where in a climate science mathmatical model is a second order derivative 0? What scientific research has suggests what Bobby has stated?

I'm not a climate scientist but I know at the very least that climate models are mostly a system of differential equations.

 

We know greenhouse gases like CO2 will cause the planet to warm. That's basic science knowledge we've had for 100+ years. We also know that man-made processes have increased those gases, and we know there are amplifying effects as well that will cause further warming. All of this is well-understood science. Given that, insistence that we have no effect on climate change is really puzzling. I'm not aware of a better explanation for the changes we've been observing than AGW ("climate has always been changing" is not an explanation).

That said, I recognize its difficult to say how much AGW has to do with the severity of Harvey. I think we can only talk about it in probabilistic terms -- there was a X% chance it would have been this damaging absent AGW, and a Y% chance it would be this damaging with AGW.

 

As science models improve, we will have a pretty idea about how much man made gases are contributing to climate change.

 

It certainly is an explanation given that the earth has warmed itself and cooled itself many times in the past that had nothing at all to do with humans. It stands to reason that it would continue to do so after humans were on the planet.

Now saying that doesn't mean that humans can't contribute in some way, in fact most people acknowledge that to be fact.....but most reasonable humans also realize that if the earth is in a natural warming trend, there's really nothing that can be done to stop it any more than there would be a way of stopping a cooling trend. That's why I say "the Earth doesn't have a thermostat that can be set". You could ban all fossil fuel use on the entire planet and we'd still have "climate change", just as the Earth always has....it would just be a climate change that wouldn't be blamed on the small amount we'd contribute to it.

 

Except that we know to a large extent why it has warmed itself and cooled itself in the past. We know the possible causes of that warming and cooling right now. The only ones that are present in a significant way are the ones that are created by man. There is not really any doubt about it by scientists and NASA and people that know what the hell they are talking based on the available evidence.

 

That's not actually true, for the most part the warming is explained by natural phenomena, but not all of it. Some of the warming is caused by humans, and I don't dispute that, the only thing I dispute is that we wouldn't have warming without the amount humans add to it.

Also, it's not something that is going to stop. Countries are going to develop in order to provide better lives for their people and they are going to do so using existing technology that is cheap because that's what they can afford.

These are the reasons I say that even if AGW played a tiny role in tropical storm Harvey, it's irrelevant. There is no making the Earth cooler, so it's just something you adapt and deal with.

 

People like Bobby think they know more than people who study climate their entire lives. What bobbythemoran fails to tell you is that past climate changes on earth happened over the course of millions of years, not decades.

Past climate change was driven by plate tectonics as it impacted air and sea currents. So he's comparing a constant stage of change over the course of millions of years to that of 100 years. Even if you were to look at ice ages...they are related to wobbles in the earth's rotation, volcanism...

We are experiencing one of the great extinction events in history. THere is a warming of the planet that is measureable. There is far more water and overall energy in the atmosphere. Climate change didn't cause Harvey. But it did make it worse.

 

ERIC BERGEREric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to wonky NASA policy. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

This is probably the worst US flood storm ever, and I’ll never be the same

ERIC BERGER - 8/30/2017, 7:00 AM

Much of this is due to the storm's peculiar movement—it's rare to see such a large system stall out so close to the coast. It's rarer still to have this happen over such a heavily populated area. (Some parts of Texas could have gotten this much rain, and it would only have affected tens of people). But the effects of climate change, specifically the moderately warmer-than-normal Gulf of Mexico, almost certainly exacerbated the effects of the storm.

Texas is run by Republicans, many of whom have disavowed climate change. About six or seven years ago, when Governor Greg Abbott was the Texas Attorney General joining a climate change lawsuit against the federal government, I was still science reporter at the Chronicle, and we spoke for about an hour on the telephone. What was most striking to me is that here was a lawyer, with practically no science background, arguing against the scientific claims of scientists. How did he know more about atmospheric science than they did?

 

How are you determining that our contribution to the warming we're experiencing over the last 100 years or so is a small amount?

There is a difference between a natural and gradual warming trend, and an unnatural spike in warming that we've seen. If we're greatly accelerating the warming trend that we otherwise would have been experiencing over a span of many hundreds of years, that's far more destructive to our civilization since it gives us less time to adapt our technology and our way of life to deal with the change.

 

People talk about how addressing climate change will have negative economic impact. What they ignore is the economic devastation of doing nothing.

What is it that makes all many conservatives feel that all this climate science and effort around global warming is just an attempt by liberals and scientists to push an anti fossil fuel agenda?

So they ever stop to think what if all these scientists are right and this is a big big problem?

 

You don't need scientific research to state what is obvious, that the climate is changing and always has been. Bobby only stated the obvious nothing more.

 

smoking may cause cancer, but not all the time.

Until that happens, don't **** with my rights even if it causes a painful prolonged death.

 

I am not sure why there is such a distrust of science in this country, is it because of the evolution debate? You would think we are living in Taliban controlled states with some of the things said about science and scientists.