Climate Change

[Alan V]

"The amount of ice being sloughed off the massive land-bound ice sheets that blanket Antarctica has ratcheted up significantly in the last four decades; the continent is now losing six times more ice than it was in the 1980s. With climate change likely to continue accelerating this melt, the implications for global sea level rise are considerable. These conclusions come from a new study that marshals improved data sets and was published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It found Antarctica as a whole went from losing about 40 gigatons of ice per year in the 1980s to 252 gigatons per year over the last decade. (One gigaton is a billion tons.)"

https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...06868607=1

[GenesisNemesis]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguar...-of-nature

 The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.

More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.

 

This time the large text is warranted.

[Alan V]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguar...-of-nature

The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.

More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.

From your article: "The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. Urbanisation and climate change are also significant factors."

[GenesisNemesis]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguar...-of-nature

The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.

More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.

From your article: "The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. Urbanisation and climate change are also significant factors."

Well, the same mentality driving insect extinction is also what's driving climate change, so it's strongly related.

[Deltabravo]

When I was a child in the sixties I visited the Columbia Icefields in Canada. Over the years it receded miles. Literally, miles.

It freaked me out but everyone said that we were at the end of an ice age and that all the glaciers were retreating. You could see huge rocks in the middle of the prairies deposited by glaciers a hundred miles from any mountains. We just accepted it as normal.

So, if we weren't freaking out, blaming this on mankind, and it would have had the same ultimate result as if it was caused by humans, what's the effing big deal about this issue? Please someone explain?

The problem is that since then I've seen the same doomsday arguments put out about the ozone layer disappearing, green house gases, global warming and now climate change. It is whatever you want to call it, depending on what is going on. "We're all going to die, Aggghhh!"

Does no one see that this might just possibly be a product of the same mindset that made people buy into the story of Noah and the flood? Is this a prerequisite of being accepted into polite society, that one must accept global warm/change/ing? Are we a species whose need to see itself as center to everything requires us to think that we are both to blame for climate change and that we can fix it? Or, at least, that we find this so acceptable that we readily interpret data from that perspective?

So, what is the accepted view of climate "change"? Is it that the climate is not necessarily on the increase...ehem...because it isn't? Is it that all this lousy, extreme, "changeable" weather is what we now have to deal with because of our sinful energy consumption? If it is the latter then is this not confusing weather with climate? What we are now being told is that we are all going to hell because there are a lot of hurricanes hitting the east coast of the USA and this is what we are causing. But, hey, guess what? That's only topical. Europe, Africa, Asia don't get hurricanes. The weather all through the Med, Northern Africa, the Middle East,where I live, and all through to India, China, up through Russia has all been pretty much as normal, and certainly inland even if there may have been some coastal "gales".

I was bemoaning how everyone is trying to "commoditize" everything to make a buck. I had this thought "at least you can breath for free". But then I realized that global warming/change commoditizes the air we breath because we are being convinced, successfully, that we must pay taxes and buy new types of cars and products which "save" the air from carbon...the building block of all living things...

[GenesisNemesis]

  Are we a species whose need to see itself as center to everything requires us to think that we are both to blame for climate change and that we can fix it? 

Oh please. If anything climate change reveals to us that we're not the center of everything, because of the threat it poses to us. We could be wiped out by climate change. In no way does that suggest "we're the center of everything". Yes, such a great privilege in being wiped out, indeed.

[Alan V]

Please someone explain?

You have asked quite a few different questions in your post, and it would take quite a while for me to answer them all thoroughly.

I therefore invite you, if you are really interested, to read my posts from #79 (page 4) to #170 (page 7) in this discussion.  Although I sometimes answered miscellaneous, interspersed questions, most of those posts are installments of a 42 page paper I wrote on climate change, summarizing the points from over 50 books I read on various aspects of the subject.  I spent 20 months researching and writing that paper.

People freaking out about climate change doesn't really help, as you have noted.  However, it is not a problem (or actually a series of problems) which we can afford to ignore either.  As I explain in my posts, we have to take action within the next 20 or 30 years, before natural positive feedback loops overwhelm our abilities to control it, if we want to minimize the potential negative impacts of climate change.

[PopeyesPappy]

I've seen the same doomsday arguments put out about the ozone layer disappearing

Out of all the shit I hear out of the climate change denier crowd this one confuses me the most. 

Back in the 70's we looked up into the sky and said, "Uh-oh. We are fucking up the ozone layer, and that is bad because it helps protect us from ultraviolet radiation." So we decided to do something about it. Pretty much the entire world got together and passed laws to limit the amount of CFC's and other ozone destroying chemicals we were pumping into the atmosphere. And guess what happened? It fucking worked! The ozone layer is recovering. It is going to be a while until it is back to where it was before we started fucking it up, but it is getting better. 

The ozone layer isn't the shining example of "anthropogenic climate change is bullshit" some seem to think it is. It is actually a good example of we could do something about it if we really wanted to.

[Deltabravo]

  Are we a species whose need to see itself as center to everything requires us to think that we are both to blame for climate change and that we can fix it? 

Oh please. If anything climate change reveals to us that we're not the center of everything, because of the threat it poses to us. We could be wiped out by climate change. In no way does that suggest "we're the center of everything". Yes, such a great privilege in being wiped out, indeed.

Oh please?

Climate change proponents say that man causes climate change and that we can save the planet by changing our behaviour.  Climate change "deniers" say that we don't cause it, that our input is insignificant and that it's caused by solar activity and cosmic winds.    Back when people just thought that we were at the end of an ice age, which is a provable fact, they didn't go around proposing that humans caused the end of the ice age or that we could save the world. Humans were just impotent creatures with little influence over the climate.  So, I'm not sure what the point is you are making. You seem to have got things round the wrong way.

[Deltabravo]

I've seen the same doomsday arguments put out about the ozone layer disappearing

Out of all the shit I hear out of the climate change denier crowd this one confuses me the most. 

Back in the 70's we looked up into the sky and said, "Uh-oh. We are fucking up the ozone layer, and that is bad because it helps protect us from ultraviolet radiation." So we decided to do something about it. Pretty much the entire world got together and passed laws to limit the amount of CFC's and other ozone destroying chemicals we were pumping into the atmosphere. And guess what happened? It fucking worked! The ozone layer is recovering. It is going to be a while until it is back to where it was before we started fucking it up, but it is getting better. 

The ozone layer isn't the shining example of "anthropogenic climate change is bullshit" some seem to think it is. It is actually a good example of we could do something about it if we really wanted to.

Oh, sure it is.

"As far as ozone depletion is concerned, the thinning of the ozone layer that occurred throughout the 1980s apparently stopped in the early 1990s, too soon to credit the Montreal Protocol. A 1998 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report said that, "since 1991, the linear [downward] trend observed during the 1980s has not continued, but rather total column ozone has been almost constant …" However, the same report noted that the stratospheric concentrations of the offending compounds were still increasing through 1998. This lends credence to the skeptical view, widely derided at the time of the Montreal Protocol, that natural variations better explain the fluctuations in the global ozone layer.
More importantly, the feared increase in ground level UVB radiation has also failed to materialize. Keep in mind that ozone depletion, in and of itself, doesn't really harm human health or the environment. It's the concern that an eroded ozone layer will allow more of the sun's damaging UVB rays to reach the earth that led to the Montreal Protocol. But WMO concedes that no statistically significant long-term trends have been detected, noting earlier this year that "outside the polar regions, ozone depletion has been relatively small, hence, in many places, increases in UV due to this depletion are difficult to separate from the increases caused by other factors, such as changes in cloud and aerosol." In short, the impact of ozone depletion on UVB over populated regions is so small that it's hard to detect.
Needless to say, if UVB hasn't gone up, then the fears of increased UVB-induced harm are unfounded. Indeed, the much-hyped acceleration in skin cancer rates hasn't been documented. U.S. National Cancer Institute statistics show that malignant melanoma incidence and mortality, which had been undergoing a long-term increase that predates ozone depletion, has actually been leveling off during the putative ozone crisis.
Further, no ecosystem or species was ever shown to be seriously harmed by ozone depletion. This is true even in Antarctica, where the largest seasonal ozone losses, the so-called Antarctic ozone hole, occur annually. Also forgotten is a long list of truly ridiculous claims, such as the one from Al Gore's 1992 book "Earth in the Balance"that, thanks to the Antarctic ozone hole, "hunters now report finding blind rabbits; fisherman catch blind salmon."
Overall, the Montreal Protocol isn't making these bad consequences go away -- they were never occurring in the first place.
The parallels with global warming are striking. Again we face a real but greatly overhyped environmental problem. In both cases, virtually everything the public has been told that sounds terrifying isn't true -- and what is true isn't particularly terrifying."  Ben Lieberman

So there!

[Deltabravo]

Please someone explain?

You have asked quite a few different questions in your post, and it would take quite a while for me to answer them all thoroughly.

I therefore invite you, if you are really interested, to read my posts from #79 (page 4) to #170 (page 7) in this discussion.  Although I sometimes answered miscellaneous, interspersed questions, most of those posts are installments of a 42 page paper I wrote on climate change, summarizing the points from over 50 books I read on various aspects of the subject.  I spent 20 months researching and writing that paper.

People freaking out about climate change doesn't really help, as you have noted.  However, it is not a problem (or actually a series of problems) which we can afford to ignore either.  As I explain in my posts, we have to take action within the next 20 or 30 years, before natural positive feedback loops overwhelm our abilities to control it, if we want to minimize the potential negative impacts of climate change.

I'm not saying we shouldn't use sustainable energy sources and preserve the environment.  But, that doesn't mean I have to buy into every theory which happens along without being critical of it.   My innate desire to think freely requires I question and particularly question ideas which show signs of a creed, dogma or "accepted truth".  Seems to me that GW and CC are now in the category of "belief" which we must accept or else face social stigma.  Which makes me want to examine them even more closely.

[Alan V]

I'm not saying we shouldn't use sustainable energy sources and preserve the environment.  But, that doesn't mean I have to buy into every theory which happens along without being critical of it.   My innate desire to think freely requires I question and particularly question ideas which show signs of a creed, dogma or "accepted truth".  Seems to me that GW and CC are now in the category of "belief" which we must accept or else face social stigma.  Which makes me want to examine them even more closely.

Fine, but I think you will find the evidence almost all supports human-caused climate change, and that most people are actually willing to trust the scientific consensus on this without going into all the details for themselves.  Being critical is great, but you also have to be willing to do your homework before you criticize the hard work of others, especially of thousands of scientists with decades of accumulated research.

You really should read what I have already posted.  It will only take you a couple hours at most, and then you will have caught up on what scientists are saying, in general.  For instance, I wrote this in post #84:

Natural climate change

In the last 2.7 million years or so, there have been dozens of glacial-interglacial cycles. So the natural pattern of climate change over that period has been one of long ice ages separated by shorter warm periods. It takes tens of thousands of years for the earth to cool down, but only a few thousand to warm again. We are presently living in such a warm period called the Holocene, which started after the last ice age ended around 12,000 years ago.

Scientists are convinced that these natural climate changes can be explained by small shifts in the earth’s orbit, the Milankovitch cycles, which increase or decrease the solar energy it receives. The earth’s axis, the precession of the equinoxes, wobbles on a 23,000 year cycle. The earth’s tilt shifts on a 41,000 year cycle. And the earth’s eccentricity, how elliptical its orbit is, oscillates on a 100,000 year cycle. The 100,000 year cycle has the greatest impact on global average temperatures. Presently, the first two cycles are out-of-phase by about 10,000 years and the orbital eccentricity is small, so the length of our interglacial period would normally be extended beyond the typical. The last time the earth was in this configuration 400,000 years ago, the interglacial was 50,000 years long.

These variations are amplified by the increase or decrease of CO₂ which follow them by several hundred years. Soils and oceans release or capture CO₂ and methane depending on their temperatures, so both rise and fall in close correlation with the ice age cycles, amplifying their climate extremes. These greenhouse gases account for nearly half the glacial-interglacial global temperature changes. This correlation goes back 650,000 years, through seven glacial cycles.

This is the natural climate change we could expect if no other factors came into play. Nevertheless, present climate change will likely delay the onset of the next ice age for over 130,000 years. CO₂ has varied between 180 and 290 ppm for hundreds of thousands of years. It was 280 ppm as late as 1750, before the industrial revolution. But at over 405 ppm today, it is about 45% higher, and likely the highest it has been for millions of years.

I also wrote this in post #95 in this discussion:

Other explanations?

There are only so many possible causes of climate change. The continental drift and massive volcanic eruptions of millions of years past are no longer possible explanations. Recent volcanic eruptions increase greenhouse gas emissions less than 1% of the total observed. Orbital variations work on much longer periods of time. Solar output has not increased significantly since 1979, when NASA began to monitor it using satellites. The usual small variations in solar output on an 11-year cycle is not a trend upwards. Only the greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere can explain present climate change, and they are responsible for almost all of it. Other hypotheses, like the tenuous relationship between clouds and cosmic rays, must still explain why greenhouse gases do not produce the warming expected. Greenhouse gases alone are a sufficient explanation.

The consensus

The consensus of experts reviewing hundreds of studies of accumulating evidence is that there is a 95% chance that most of observed climate change over the past 60 years can be attributed to human activities and especially to the burning of fossil fuels. Without humans, there would be negligible warming or a slight cooling from other causes over the 20th century. This consensus includes such scientific institutions as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics, the American Meteorological Society, NASA, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the scientific academies of all major industrial nations. Multiple surveys have found that between 97 and 99% of qualified scientists support the consensus. Among the 3% or less who do not, most exhibited methodological flaws or other mistakes in their work, and there was no consensus between them about other possible causes. They have virtually no significant peer-reviewed science to back them up. So there is no consistent alternative theory to human-caused climate change.

[Alan V]

When looking for scientific information about climate change, the ozone hole, or any of a number of other hot button issues, it's best to be critical of your sources. People with financial and political interests pay a few scientists to be contrarians, even while they oppose an overwhelming number of scientists and scientific organizations. So for instance:

"Ben Lieberman is a senior fellow who specializes in environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Lieberman has returned to CEI after serving seven years as a senior counsel on the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce. As a congressional staffer, he worked on a number of issues related to fuels and vehicles, including the Renewable Fuel Standard and Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. He also worked on energy infrastructure permitting reform, home appliance energy efficiency standards, and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. Previously in his career, Lieberman completed a decade-long stint at CEI as well as five years at the Heritage Foundation."

https://cei.org/contributor/ben-lieberman

I wrote this in posts #127 and 128:

Alarmists and denialists

Some alarmists overstate the disastrous effects of climate change because they don’t understand the part people can play to change what’s happening, or the long time intervals involved. Climate change is a huge but very slow-moving problem. Oceans will likely take centuries to rise. Feedback mechanisms like the melting of permafrost likewise will take time. The problem is that once these effects begin, they will be very difficult to stop. It is best to prevent them from happening at all, which means we need to take action immediately to stay below 2̊C of total warming. As climate scientist Jerry Mahlman said, “There is no need to exaggerate the problem of climate change; it is bad enough as it is.”

Denialists, on the other hand, often assume scientists have not already thought about and addressed all possible objections to their work. Effectively, they are accusing scientists of not doing their jobs, and often without even understanding the details themselves.

Denialists with vested interests often deny evidence, exploit lay people’s scientific ignorance, and deliberately misinform because they have self-justifying motivations to do so. They accuse others of doing what they actually are doing themselves: disregarding physics, cherry-picking information, and committing methodological errors. On May 31, 2011, the Supreme Court said this about willful blindness: “Persons who know enough to blind themselves to direct proof of critical facts in effect have actual knowledge of those facts.”

At most, only a handful of dissenting voices contradict the consensus of 2500 of the world’s top climate scientists. But non-peer reviewed opinions are not science and do not deserve equal time. It doesn’t make sense to believe dissenters who dismiss the scientific consensus if they are either habitual contrarians or in the pay of groups with vested economic or political interests.

Industry reactions

Those who deny climate change often employ talking points developed by the fossil fuel industries, who have a very big vested interest in opposing the widespread understanding of climate change. Some fossil fuel industries have used front organizations to pay denialists. For instance, between 1998 and 2014, Exxon Mobil gave over $31 million to 69 such organizations, and since 1997, Koch Industries has given $100 million to 84 such organizations. Exxon Mobil has since stopped this practice, and only a few fossil fuel industries fell in with the denialists. The Shell Oil Company actually supports a nationwide carbon tax.

Denialists can’t disprove the science, so they promote fear and doubt through funding disinformation to delay action. In certain cases, fossil fuel industries enlisted the same contrarians who were involved with promoting denial concerning tobacco, acid rain, and ozone depletion. Such “experts” were paid to write misleading articles, create one-sided conferences, and lead personal attacks on climate scientists. So people challenge climate science just like they challenged research into the harmful effects of tobacco, leaded gasoline, asbestos, chemical additives, DDT, CFCs, acid rain, and ozone depletion.

Political reactions

Denialism can be based on ideology as well as financial self-interest. Studies have shown that most climate change denial books are linked to conservative think tanks and most are published in the United States. But only a handful of countries in the world are politically divided on the subject of climate change.

[SYZ]

I'm not saying we shouldn't use sustainable energy sources and preserve the environment.  But, that doesn't mean I have to buy into every theory which happens along without being critical of it.   My innate desire to think freely requires I question and particularly question ideas which show signs of a creed, dogma or "accepted truth".  Seems to me that GW and CC are now in the category of "belief" which we must accept or else face social stigma.  Which makes me want to examine them even more closely.

In this case, the "accepted truth" is in fact empirical scientific evidence. End of story.

[Deltabravo]

It's not a scientific fact. Far from it. It's an hypothesis which has been constructed by a number of scientists from data they have collected and interpreted.

The whole idea of global warming by human activity defies the laws of science. The planet is a system which can only warm as a result of heat being added from an external source. That's the first law of thermodynamics, that in an isolated system, the energy remains constant. It can change form but cannot be increased. The planet and its atmosphere, without the sun would be an isolated system. It's only the sun which can increase or decrease the global temperature. So, global "warming" falls at the first hurdle.

Then, it falls again, because, as the deniers say, temperature change is cyclical. It goes up and down, stays the same, depending on solar activity. And...that is exactly what has happened over the past nearly twenty years as the planet has not, in fact, warmed.

Then you have climate "change", which is the intellectual cowards escape route. Change the argument and hope no one notices, then abuse anyone who disagrees with you.

The worst intellectual sin of warmists is that they refuse absolutely to explain why temperature was increasing from the time the ice age began it's decline. In the grand scheme of things, the twenty or so years in which human industry has been blamed for warming climate, is a mere blip as against the time frames of the ice ages. No one would be so idiotic as to say they were caused by humans, but, hey, all of a sudden, the sun has no part in this process...it's entirely human caused. We go from being insignificant up against the forces of nature to being the controllers of the planet's entire climate systems and we are so well tuned that we, as a collective, can decide to turn the switch off and return the planet to a temperature which "we know" must be the best for all of mankind. That's arrogance for you.

[GenesisNemesis]

The whole idea of global warming by human activity defies the laws of science. The planet is a system which can only warm as a result of heat being added from an external source.   

Uh... every scientist who understands global warming realizes that the greenhouse effect is caused because energy from the Sun gets trapped in the atmosphere. That's the whole idea behind the greenhouse effect. Lmao. This claim is just patently false. You're not doing yourself any favors here, just revealing the extent of your ignorance.

[Alan V]

It's not a scientific fact.  Far from it.  It's an hypothesis which has been constructed by a number of scientists from data they have collected and interpreted.

Far from being a critical thinker, you seem to have swallowed a series of "alternative facts" from people who have deliberately misinformed you for their own benefit.

The whole idea of global warming by human activity defies the laws of science. The planet is a system which can only warm as a result of heat being added from an external source.   That's the first law of thermodynamics, that in an isolated system, the energy remains constant.  It can change form but cannot be increased.  The planet and its atmosphere, without the sun would be an isolated system.  It's only the sun which can increase or decrease the global temperature.  So, global "warming" falls at the first hurdle.

Without natural greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the average temperature of the earth would be around 3 F, and it would be frozen from pole to pole.  Greenhouse gases work like a blanket preventing heat from the sun, reflected as infrared by the earth, from escaping into space.  So of course, any increase or decrease in such greenhouse gases changes the earth's average temperature.

Then, it falls again, because, as the deniers say, temperature change is cyclical.  It goes up and down, stays the same, depending on solar activity.  And...that is exactly what has happened over the past nearly twenty years as the planet has not, in fact, warmed.

Once you eliminate natural variations, the impacts of volcanic activity, and similar temporary factors, the average temperature of the earth can be seen to have steadily increased over the last thirty years.  Each decade has been warmer than the last.

Then you have climate "change", which is the intellectual cowards escape route.  Change the argument and hope no one notices, then abuse anyone who disagrees with you.

While I don't agree with the exchange of abuse, it's difficult to remain patient with people who are so misinformed about the science that they think it boils down to some sort of conspiracy theory.

The worst intellectual sin of warmists is that they refuse absolutely to explain why temperature was increasing from the time the ice age began it's decline.  In the grand scheme of things, the twenty or so years in which human industry has been blamed for warming climate, is a mere blip as against the time frames of the ice ages.   No one would be so idiotic as to say they were caused by humans, but, hey, all of a sudden, the sun has no part in this process...it's entirely human caused. We go from being insignificant up against the forces of nature to being the controllers of the planet's entire climate systems and we are so well tuned that we, as a collective, can decide to turn the switch off and return the planet to a temperature which "we know" must be the best for all of mankind.   That's arrogance for you.

On the contrary, I spent 20 months researching and writing a paper which summarizes the science in a series of installments in this discussion.  It explains the variations of the ice ages, all of your other confusions, and quite a bit more.

CO₂ has been accumulating in the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution over 200 years ago, but has increased considerably in the last 50 years with the increase of emissions worldwide.

If you are not willing to read what I have actually written and respond in kind, then I will be forced to conclude that you are yet another bad faith actor.

[Alan V]

"When your grandchildren plan a trip to Denver later this century, they’ll need to leave the winter hat at home and instead plan like they’re going to the Texas Panhandle. That’s according to a new study published on Tuesday in Nature Communications, which looked at the future climate of 540 cities in North America and drew comparisons with cities of today. The results show that cities’ climates will, at the end of the century, look more like cities 528 miles south do today if emissions continue rising in line with current trends. That will rearrange more than vacation plans as city residents will be forced to cope with more intense heat and the dangerous impacts that came with it. The study also shows that if we begin to cut emissions, cities’ climates will still change but the shift will be far less dramatic."

https://earther.gizmodo.com/by-the-end-o...iETJ8QvyuE

[SYZ]

The whole idea of global warming by human activity defies the laws of science.

Nope, it doesn't.  That humans are causing global warming is the position of the Academies of Science from
80 countries plus many scientific organizations that study climate science. More specifically, around 97% of
active climate researchers actively publishing climate papers endorse the consensus position. The greater the
climate expertise among those surveyed, the higher the consensus on human-caused global warming.

The planet is a system which can only warm as a result of heat being added from an external source.

No.  Absolutely wrong...

Then you have climate change, which is the intellectual cowards escape route.

LOL... I don't even know what this means?  97% of the world's environmental scientists are cowards?  Seriously?

—And could you please let us know what field(s) of science you're qualified in such that you can make these comments
about global warming?  You seem to be very certain that science has the global warming scenario wrong, despite the
combined intellectual input of thousands of scientists.  You need to put your money where your mouth is.

[Alan V]

"Overall, the Montreal Protocol isn't making these bad consequences go away -- they were never occurring in the first place.
The parallels with global warming are striking. Again we face a real but greatly overhyped environmental problem. In both cases, virtually everything the public has been told that sounds terrifying isn't true -- and what is true isn't particularly terrifying."  Ben Lieberman

The idea behind the Montreal Protocol was to keep projected future problems from happening at all.  Here is a NASA video to correct the inaccuracies of your quote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BUT16jf...ow6lXUqOXo

Similarly, the vast majority of the projected problems from climate change haven't happened yet, but paleoclimatology informs us of what we can anticipate if we do nothing: rising sea levels and mass extinctions of species. Other projections are made on the basis of complex computer models, and offer the best science available to inform decision-making.

[Alan V]

"Rising temperatures in the Himalayas, home to most of the world’s tallest mountains, will melt at least one-third of the region’s glaciers by the end of the century even if the world’s most ambitious climate change targets are met, according to a report released Monday. If those goals are not achieved, and global warming and greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rates, the Himalayas could lose two-thirds of its glaciers by 2100, according to the report, the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. Under those more dire circumstances, the Himalayas could heat up by 8 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 degrees Celsius) by century’s end, bringing radical disruptions to food and water supplies, and mass population displacement. Glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayan Region, which spans over 2,000 miles of Asia, provide water resources to around a quarter of the world’s population."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/world...rming.html

[Deltabravo]

"Overall, the Montreal Protocol isn't making these bad consequences go away -- they were never occurring in the first place.
The parallels with global warming are striking. Again we face a real but greatly overhyped environmental problem. In both cases, virtually everything the public has been told that sounds terrifying isn't true -- and what is true isn't particularly terrifying."  Ben Lieberman

The idea behind the Montreal Protocol was to keep projected future problems from happening at all.  Here is a NASA video to correct the inaccuracies of your quote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BUT16jf...ow6lXUqOXo

Similarly, the vast majority of the projected problems from climate change haven't happened yet, but paleoclimatology informs us of what we can anticipate if we do nothing: rising sea levels and mass extinctions of species.  Other projections are made on the basis of complex computer models, and offer the best science available to inform decision-making.

You reference paleoclimatology.   There's no doubt that climate changes markedly over time.  But, to say "if we do nothing" we can anticipate doom.  That is not science.  That's the prediction.  

In order for your argument to be taken seriously, one would have to be able to determine when it was that human activity took over as the main element in climate change.  Certainly in the 1960's and before, there was no talk of human activity causing the change that brought about the end of the ice age and the melting of glaciers which was ongoing and visible at that time.   So either human activity caused the ice age to end, and maybe begin, or, at some point, in the 1970's or so, human activity became more prominent as a causative factor than the sun.

Which is it?

Moving on, you say we are doomed unless we do something.  This, again, presupposes that the sun's activities will remain constant.  No one can predict that as far as I know, but your hypothesis must surely rest on the sun's activities being absolutely constant over time or change in solar input into the equation having zero effect, while human activity can be both quantified precisely over the entire planet and the results proven to be absolutely defniitive...and of more consequence than solar activity.  That is too big a leap for me, I'm afraid.

Where I find this whole discussion to be personally annoying is that I grew up in Alberta in the 50s and 60s and my family have photos of ice fields back then going back to the early 50s.   It was well known that glaciers were in retreat.  We'd go see them and you could see them retreat from one year to the next.  So, there we were, up in the frozen north, living in a climate which was like being locked in a supermarket meat freezer for 6 months of the year, being familiar with ice and glaciers and all that sort of stuff, actually taking an interest in the subject, skiing down the stuff and looking at it from the dining room window every day and nobody came up with any these theories that the retreat of glaciers was due to human activity.

There we were, having our nuts frozen off, being told that maybe the planet might warm up again so that it was uninhabitable, or maybe there would be another ice age.  Either scenario was equally horrifying, but no one seriously suggested that we as humans could do anything about it. We just accepted our fate and the fact that the rest of the world didn't much think about it,  because they didn't know about it.  They were out playing golf and football in January.

It's too coiniciental that all of a sudden, when the issue of climate warming became more noticeable with ski resorts complaining in the seventies and eighties of decreased snowfall, and third world countries wanting to slow down economic growth in the West, and the issue of seas rising might affect people in warmer climes, that, all of a sudden, the data is interpreted in such a way that man becomes more potent than the sun and we can preduct the future.  In addiction, those who wonder why this shift in thinking is taking place are broadsided with an almost hysterical level of abuse, being labelled as "deniers".

Sorry, I am all for doing whatever can be done to improve the atmosphere and environment, but it doesn't have to be done, for me, on the back of what is becoming almost a religion where "unbelievers" are villified.

[Alan V]

You reference paleoclimatology.   There's no doubt that climate changes markedly over time.  But, to say "if we do nothing" we can anticipate doom.  That is not science.  That's the prediction.  

In order for your argument to be taken seriously, one would have to be able to determine when it was that human activity took over as the main element in climate change.  Certainly in the 1960's and before, there was no talk of human activity causing the change that brought about the end of the ice age and the melting of glaciers which was ongoing and visible at that time.   So either human activity caused the ice age to end, and maybe begin, or, at some point, in the 1970's or so, human activity became more prominent as a causative factor than the sun.

Which is it?

I previously discussed the difference between predictions and projections.  Science projects a number of scenarios for future climate change, because one of the largest unknown variables is how humanity will react to the information.  Will we reduce the greenhouse gases we are emitting, or will we continue with business-as-usual?

As I also mention in what I have previously posted that the "signal" of global warming statistically emerged from the "noise" of natural variability in the late 1990s and early 2000s, though most scientists were quite convinced climate change was already happening before that point, on principle alone.

From post #84:

Natural climate change

In the last 2.7 million years or so, there have been dozens of glacial-interglacial cycles. So the natural pattern of climate change over that period has been one of long ice ages separated by shorter warm periods. It takes tens of thousands of years for the earth to cool down, but only a few thousand to warm again. We are presently living in such a warm period called the Holocene, which started after the last ice age ended around 12,000 years ago.

Scientists are convinced that these natural climate changes can be explained by small shifts in the earth’s orbit, the Milankovitch cycles, which increase or decrease the solar energy it receives. The earth’s axis, the precession of the equinoxes, wobbles on a 23,000 year cycle. The earth’s tilt shifts on a 41,000 year cycle. And the earth’s eccentricity, how elliptical its orbit is, oscillates on a 100,000 year cycle. The 100,000 year cycle has the greatest impact on global average temperatures. Presently, the first two cycles are out-of-phase by about 10,000 years and the orbital eccentricity is small, so the length of our interglacial period would normally be extended beyond the typical. The last time the earth was in this configuration 400,000 years ago, the interglacial was 50,000 years long.

These variations are amplified by the increase or decrease of CO₂ which follow them by several hundred years. Soils and oceans release or capture CO₂ and methane depending on their temperatures, so both rise and fall in close correlation with the ice age cycles, amplifying their climate extremes. These greenhouse gases account for nearly half the glacial-interglacial global temperature changes. This correlation goes back 650,000 years, through seven glacial cycles.

This is the natural climate change we could expect if no other factors came into play. Nevertheless, present climate change will likely delay the onset of the next ice age for over 130,000 years. CO₂ has varied between 180 and 290 ppm for hundreds of thousands of years. It was 280 ppm as late as 1750, before the industrial revolution. But at over 405 ppm today, it is about 45% higher, and likely the highest it has been for millions of years.

Moving on, you say we are doomed unless we do something.  This, again, presupposes that the sun's activities will remain constant.  No one can predict that as far as I know, but your hypothesis must surely rest on the sun's activities being absolutely constant over time or change in solar input into the equation having zero effect, while human activity can be both quantified precisely over the entire planet and the results proven to be absolutely defniitive...and of more consequence than solar activity.  That is too big a leap for me, I'm afraid.

Yes, and the Earth could be hit by a massive asteroid next month which would make our concern about our climate moot, so what's the point of worrying about it?  The point is that it is not likely an asteroid will hit us.

Sorry, I am all for doing whatever can be done to improve the atmosphere and environment, but it doesn't have to be done, for me, on the back of what is becoming almost a religion where "unbelievers" are villified.

Some poorly informed people are hysterical, certainly, and on both sides of this issue.  But perhaps so-called deniers are vilified because they refuse to do their homework on this hugely important issue, and hold the whole political process in the U.S. hostage in the meantime.

[GenesisNemesis]

Any time x person is ridiculed for something it must be because someone is being "religious" about something? That's some weird logic. Ridicule is not purely in the domain of religion, nor is it used purely just because "a person doesn't believe in something".

[no one]

The good thing is, one day humans will be gone. Just like a stubborn cold, it may take awhile to get over, but eventually, it's not even a memory.