"The Right Climate Stuff" .... A realistic view of global environmental issues from Tom Moser

[dnewton3]

Look, feelings on the shifting climate and who/what owns responsibility for that aside, this is the exact type of thread that would get deleted. Not locked, but deleted.

Before this gets much further, I think we give it the old mafia treatment and take care of the problem. Just, make it look like an accident. I don't need the fuzz on my tail.

Therein lays the problem. People don't want to have rational conversations.

All I did was post a video link to a reasonably rational presentation that has credible facts, put together by a team of people with great accredidation in their respective fields. I never said it was the absolute truth without opposing points which could be made. I put it up so we could have a sensible talk about things. Some folks would have us believe that Mankind is 100% responsible for the warming. But using the very science that people point to, the long term view shows us that the Earth has many periods of warming, and that warming rate is FAST. Long before man ever came onto the scene.

I am open to what others have to say in a counter-point. I'm not immune to hearing other points of view.

This thread wasn't started as "political" (despite someone else trying to make it so).

Let's talk about FACTS. Not hysterical blathering.

What I believe is that the Earth is going to warm up, really fast, and we have no ability to stop it from doing so.
EVs are not going to stop this from happening.
Wind and Solar are not going to mitigate the warming trend.

Even if we accept that man did cause the warming, it's not like the Earth hasn't experienced this before. Whatever brought Mankind to this Earth (I take no position for the sake of this conversation), we're a blip on the Earth's radar. If we accelerate the warming, so what?
CLEARLY, it's going to get hotter regardless of what we do.

Rather than spin our wheels in futility, why not spend our efforts coming up with long-term plans on how to live in the heat, rather than fruitlessly trying to beat it???????? Whether man or nature makes it hot, it's gonna get hot. And there's plenty of "proof" on both side to say Mankind may or man not have caused it. Unfortunately, we are focusing on the wrong thing. What causes it isn't really the fundemental problem to solve. What we need to do is develop methods of dealing with the change. We may or may not be accelerating the warming, but the warming trend is upon us, and we simply cannot stop it. Mitigation is a fools dream; we're much better off accepting the warming trend as unavoidable, and then working towards adapting to the trend.

 

[ArrestMeRedZ]

The difference is the rate of warming.
NASA: "There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause."

I am a data driven person. I am not sure the Mr. Moser presented relevant data.

Look at these two statements. "There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause."
The first sentence is stated as a fact, and indicates unequivocal evidence supports that fact. The second statement, also stated as fact, is unsupported by any facts listed, and as such must be interpreted as opinion. The connection of the two statements together (one fact, the other opinion attempting to associate with the factual statement) is pure propaganda.

Don't get me started on models and climate scientists. Models will give you whatever you want depending on the inputs. Garbage in, garbage out. Climate scientists who would be living on the street if they didn't articulate the party line can't be considered unbiased parties.

Am I saying human caused global warming isn't present? Nope, just as I'm not sure it is. I'd just like to see real science being used to prove it. Not political science.

 

[JeffKeryk]

Look at these two statements. "There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause."
The first sentence is stated as a fact, and indicates unequivocal evidence supports that fact. The second statement, also stated as fact, is unsupported by any facts listed, and as such must be interpreted as opinion. The connection of the two statements together (one fact, the other opinion attempting to associate with the factual statement) is pure propaganda.

Don't get me started on models and climate scientists. Models will give you whatever you want depending on the inputs. Garbage in, garbage out. Climate scientists who would be living on the street if they didn't articulate the party line can't be considered unbiased parties.

Am I saying human caused global warming isn't present? Nope, just as I'm not sure it is. I'd just like to see real science being used to prove it. Not political science.

@ArrestMeRedZ Please review the NASA Evidence link I posted.

 

[dnewton3]

I would say that due to computer technology and scientific advancements, we can discern the difference. Others obviously are skeptical of that, which is not unreasonable either.

Said the "scientists" in the 1970s, predicting the impending ice age of the 2000's ....

What I would agree to is that for every ying there is a yang. For every proof there is a counter proof.

I'm not saying any one single point is true of false. I'm just saying that the video I posted does a reasonble job of countering the "it must be Mankind's fault" mentality. There is credible reason to doubt mankind's the real "cause" of warming. I would agree that we are accelerating the warming, but it's a thing that's about the skyrocket with our without us, and no amount of our caterwauling is going to stop it.

It's not that Moser and his team are infallable. Not any more than the scientists who told us is was going to be really cold by now. Or when Gore told us that the NY and FL coasts would be unrecoganizably under water by now. Or when doctors in the 1950s told us that smoking was good for us.

Science is only as good as the next fact being discovered.

 

[JeffKeryk]

Said the "scientists" in the 1970s, predicting the impending ice age of the 2000's ....

What I would agree to is that for every ying there is a yang. For every proof there is a counter proof.

I'm not saying any one single point is true of false. I'm just saying that the video I posted does a reasonble job of countering the "it must be Mankind's fault" mentality. There is credible reason to doubt mankind's the real "cause" of warming. I would agree that we are accelerating the warming, but it's a thing that's about the skyrocket with our without us, and no amount of our caterwauling is going to stop it.

It's not that Moser and his team are infallable. Not any more than the scientists who told us is was going to be really cold by now. Or when Gore told us that the NY and FL coasts would be unrecoganizably under water by now. Or when doctors in the 1950s told us that smoking was good for us.

Science is only as good as the next fact being discovered.

There will always be uncertainty in understanding a system as complex as the world’s climate.

 

[dnewton3]

There will always be uncertainty in understanding a system as complex as the world’s climate.

I completely agree with you on this.

I also say that it's a fools errand.

Again, IT'S GONNA GET HOT, no matter what we humans do.

We can waste time trying to stop the warming (which we can never do).
Or we can spend time trying to devise systems for adapting to it, on a world-wide scale:
- we need agricultural crops and animals that are heat/droubt tolerant (some areas will become very arrid and very hot)
- we need agricultural crops and animals that are monsoon tolerant (some areas will be deluged with rain)
- we need housing and mass-production systems that are heat tolerant
- we need fresh water supplies that are developed/available locally (desalinization?) because rather than using up rivers which may continually dry up, we may end up having to clean and pump water inland on a mass scale
- we need flood control systems that are robust
- we need to get cities which are at/below current sea level re-deployed elsewhere

This train of global warming is rolling into the station and no amount of people screaming while standing on the tracks are going to stop it. Rather, we should ignore the "who caused what" topic and focus on the "how do we live with the change" topic.
That's all I'm saying.

 

[JeffKeryk]

Scientific consensus - Facts Climate Change

The question for me would be, is that bad?
We know that the earth was much, much warmer in the past, so even if we did accelerate the inevitable warming cycle, what is the harm in that? Isn't warmer weather and more CO2 in the air more desirable for plant life? More plant life equals richer ecosystems.

The harm is, parts of the earth may become unihabitable. And worse.

 

[dnewton3]

@ArrestMeRedZ Please review the NASA Evidence link I posted.

To be fair in counter point, Moser does cover the fact that just ONE volcanic erruption in 1991 put out more CO2 than all of Mankind has ever done in inhabiting this planet.

But, again, I can find evidence otherwise also; that which supports your theory.

So again, I come to the conclusion we focus on the wrong thing.
It does not matter what causes the warming.
The question is how do we learn to live comfortably with the warming.

 

[JeffKeryk]

I completely agree with you on this.

I also say that it's a fools errand.

Again, IT'S GONNA GET HOT, no matter what we humans do.

We can waste time trying to stop the warming (which we can never do).
Or we can spend time trying to devise systems for adapting to it, on a world-wide scale:
- we need agricultural crops and animals that are heat/droubt tolerant (some areas will become very arrid and very hot)
- we need agricultural crops and animals that are monsoon tolerant (some areas will be deluged with rain)
- we need housing and mass-production systems that are heat tolerant
- we need fresh water supplies that are developed/available locally (desalinization?) because rather than using up rivers which may continually dry up, we may end up having to clean and pump water inland on a mass scale
- we need flood control systems that are robust
- we need to get cities which are at/below current sea level re-deployed elsewhere

This train of global warming is rolling into the station and no amount of people screaming while standing on the tracks are going to stop it. Rather, we should ignore the "who caused what" topic and focus on the "how do we live with the change" topic.
That's all I'm saying.

Work on solutions? Beautiful.
Ignore causes of acceleration? No.

How do you work on a problem without identifying it?
I posted several links to scientific evidence of climate change acceleration caused by human activity. Ignoring the catalyst, as defined by the vast majority of scientists, is not following the science or the data.

 

[pbm]

The Heartland Institute is the political polar opposite of a group like Greenpeace of Sierra Club.

Did you see Greenpeace's and The Sierra Club's statements on all of the whales and other marine life being killed by the building of offshore wind turbines?.....neither have I.

 

[dnewton3]

Work on solutions? Beautiful.
Ignore causes of acceleration? No.

How do you work on a problem without identifying it?
I posted several links to scientific evidence of climate change acceleration caused by human activity. Ignoring the catalyst, as defined by the vast majority of scientists, is not following the science or the data.

I would agree and disagree.
And again, I can show all manner of data which contradicts your data.
I think we need to move past the "cause" and focus on the "adapting", because mitigation isn't going to ever happen.

If the current effort in understanding warming was for the sake of improving our odds of tolerating the heat in the long term, I'd probably agree. If the current efforts were all about addressing the topics I mentioned, I'd find commonality with you.

But the current efforts are trying to stop the acceleration, as if EVs and Solar/Wind and biofuels would or could stop the changes. That's all a fools errand. The current efforts are ONLY focused on blame, and not advancement. Current efforts are not trying to understand warming for the means to improving life by living in more heat. Not once have I heard anyone say "If we only understand the rate at which mankind CO2 causes warming, we can then make a better crop of corn ..."

We should be spending money on the list of things I put above. Will driving EVs stop or significantly slow the warming? No. Will driving the EV make for better crops that can tolerate the heat? No. Will driving the EV make animals more resistant to higher temps? No. Will driving an EV make more water locally available? No. Could we ever grow enough corn and beans to power our ICEs at our current rate of consumption? No.

So I find little comfort in the current mentality because it's trying to stop the inevitable, rather than accepting that we cannot stop the change, and need to adapt to it. The current mentality is about blame and not advancement.
If you can show that the causation is relevant to the cure, then I'd agree.
But there's no data I can see that shows that.

And again, I don't completley agree that mankind is the main cause of warming. I agree we contribute. That contribution may or may not be a majority factor. I just do see it as relevant to the efforts needed to learning to live with the change.

 

[PimTac]

A few decades from now people will look back and laugh at our futile efforts to combat climate change. It will change no matter what we do.

During my lifetime the scientists predicted that we would get irradiated, freeze in the coming Ice Age, go through the Y2K computer catastrophe and now global warming/climate change or whatever they call it this week.

 

[dnewton3]

An example of my disdain for the search for the cause would be this ...

Imagine we're driving a car frightfully fast towards a sharp curve. If we can't slow down, we'll crash horribly.
If the brakes fail, do we care why? Low fluid? Worn pads? Broken line? Do we need to understand the cause retroactively?
Nope - I care more about the airbags and the crumple zones built into the structure of the car.
Yes - I'd like to avoid the accident, but if it's not avoidable, I want technology which can help me survive the crash.
Trying to mitigate the crash is admirable, but it does nothing for helping us survive the crash itself.

The impending warming is unavoidable; there's nothing we can do to stop it. Whether it's man-made or Nature, it doesn't matter. So trying to stop it means zilch. The cause of the warming is moot. It would only matter if mitigation were possible. It's not. The earth is going to get way warmer very soon, no matter how badly we try to stop it.

If man causes the temps to rise 5 degF in 100 years, that's a big problem.
If nature causes the temps to rise 5 degF in 100 years, that still a big problem. The same problem.
Either way, we've got to figure out how to live in a warming climate.
If we discover a way to reduce our man-made warming by 1 degF, that still means it's gonna be 4 degF hotter. Still a BIG problem, and we wasted all our time/money on the wrong part of the equation.

Learning how much we contribute to warming isn't nearly as important as learning how to live with the warming.

 

[IndyIan]

To be fair in counter point, Moser does cover the fact that just ONE volcanic erruption in 1991 put out more CO2 than all of Mankind has ever done in inhabiting this planet.

But, again, I can find evidence otherwise also; that which supports your theory.

So again, I come to the conclusion we focus on the wrong thing.
It does not matter what causes the warming.
The question is how do we learn to live comfortably with the warming.

Which emits more carbon dioxide: volcanoes or human activities?

Human activities emit 60 or more times the amount of carbon dioxide released by volcanoes each year.

www.climate.gov

Volcanic gases can be harmful to health, vegetation and infrastructure | U.S. Geological Survey

www.usgs.gov

These say that Mr. Moser's "fact" is high by a few orders of magnitude on the Pinatubo CO2 emission estimate... I don't think they really looked at their sources all that well?
I'm no climate scientist either but I think if you look at all the major factors that are measurable (climate gases, solar energy, and global temperature data) that climate models use to explain the measured climate records of the past, these models have a pretty good chance of predicting the future global temperatures.
Correlation doesn't mean causation, but if we let CO2 continue rising at this rate, even you must admit we are running the high CO2 part of the experiment with our planet. If we really don't trust the climate scientists, and wanted to be thorough, we should probably start running the lowering CO2 part of the experiment to see if CO2 levels really do effect global average temperatures...

 

[JeffKeryk]

I would agree and disagree.
And again, I can show all manner of data which contradicts your data.
I think we need to move past the "cause" and focus on the "adapting", because mitigation isn't going to ever happen.

If the current effort in understanding warming was for the sake of improving our odds of tolerating the heat in the long term, I'd probably agree. If the current efforts were all about addressing the topics I mentioned, I'd find commonality with you.

But the current efforts are trying to stop the acceleration, as if EVs and Solar/Wind and biofuels would or could stop the changes. That's all a fools errand. The current efforts are ONLY focused on blame, and not advancement. Current efforts are not trying to understand warming for the means to improving life by living in more heat. Not once have I heard anyone say "If we only understand the rate at which mankind CO2 causes warming, we can then make a better crop of corn ..."

We should be spending money on the list of things I put above. Will driving EVs stop or significantly slow the warming? No. Will driving the EV make for better crops that can tolerate the heat? No. Will driving the EV make animals more resistant to higher temps? No. Will driving an EV make more water locally available? No. Could we ever grow enough corn and beans to power our ICEs at our current rate of consumption? No.

So I find little comfort in the current mentality because it's trying to stop the inevitable, rather than accepting that we cannot stop the change, and need to adapt to it.

We are in alignment on many points. We are not in alignment on solution. Why ignore causation? As you point out, the earth (the universe) seems to experience cycles; it is forever changing. But what we are seeing is not following the observed cycle times. There is a reason for it.

Respectfully, I feel your arguement is ignoring the preponderance of climate change science.
Science is telling us the climate change is making the earth unihabitable.

 

[dnewton3]

IMO, the Earth is likely to become uninhabital for us if we don't learn to adapt. I'm not even convinced we humans will be around even 10,000 years from now; I think there are too many factors against us. But I digress ...

We agree on many points, and disagree on some as well. I'm not so much ignoring "science" as questioning it; history teaches us many things, and one of them is that "science" can be wrong, often. Even "modern" science is getting things wrong, from only a decade ago ...

These are science’s Top 10 erroneous results

A weird form of life, a weird form of water and faster-than-light neutrinos are among the science findings that have not survived closer scrutiny.

www.sciencenews.org

If You Say 'Science Is Right,' You're Wrong

It can’t supply absolute truths about the world, but it brings us steadily closer

www.scientificamerican.com

20 of the Greatest Blunders in Science in the Last 20 Years

What were they thinking?

www.discovermagazine.com

Why So Much Science is Wrong, False, Puffed, or Misleading

"The book, while scary and disheartening, is truth-seeking and ultimately optimistic. Ritchie doesn’t come to bury science; he comes to fix it. 'The ideals of the scientific process aren’t the problem,' he writes on the last page, 'the problem is the betrayal of those ideals by the way we do...

www.aier.org

These Scientific Theories Were Accepted Once, But Were Later Proven Wrong

What are some theories in physics that were accepted but later proven to be wrong? This question was originally answered on Quora by Inna Vishik.

www.forbes.com

And the list goes on and on ...

I will say, I appreciate your polite and succinct presentation of points. I welcome being challenged when it's coming from thoughtful and rational converstaion and not hype and panic. You present yourself well, and I thank you for keeping this thread alive with good content and conduct. THAT is paramount to solving issues, no matter the topic. That goes for anyone who participates in this thread without going off the rails. For the others who are trying to derail it, well, go play elsewhere ...

 

[JeffKeryk]

Science is man's endless search for truth in nature.
There are over 2 trillion galaxies in the universe each with billions of stars. Here's a few thousand galaxies from Webb.
We earthlings are important. Why? Because while we may find some evidence of really simple life, say under one of Mars' dried up lakes, we are the only ones who codify our thoughts, our history, our curiousity.

 

[4WD]

Judith Curry - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[KrisZ]

Climate activist Greta Thunberg receives theological honorary doctorate​

https://cne.news/article/2784-clima...nberg-receives-theological-honorary-doctorate

 

[doitmyself]

- we need agricultural crops and animals that are heat/drought tolerant (some areas will become very arrid and very hot)

One of the exciting parts of my 46 year career. We are already dabbling in assisted migration of tree species. It's a drop in the ocean compared to what has taken millennia to occur on its own.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/ccrc/topics/assisted-migration