btw, a large amount of the Sulfur emitted comes from the super big cargo ships and tankers. Why? Because they dump the sour cuts of petroleum into their fuel b/c it's not regulated as strongly as land based emissions.

As people have talked about reducing the sulfur content for those ships, it's actually seriously entertained (by like high level people in China) that cleaning up our act will worsen global climate change.

My position is that no one really understand the ramifications of geo-engineering yet. We affect the climate in so many ways today, not just through Carbon emissions. Ultimately if we decide to fix global warming (which we will have to), we will be irrevocably taking on the responsibility of managing climate. We have more tools than what people think. Even white roofs can have a stunning effect. I actually look forward to the day we can cool an entire city through energy storage and local climate manipulation tools, instead of the dumb method of using heat pumps that make the streets even hotter.

7/16/2011 7:38:23 PM

Quote :

"Guys, do you remember what agent smith said to Morpheus in Matrix I? Something along the lines of us resembling a virus and the fact that we are the only species that consumes resources without any equilibrium with the environment is devastating. There is A TON of truth in that. Although at the core I think that it is industrialization that is the true virus, but we are completely out of equilibrium with our environment, and it is only a matter of time before we get our comeuppance."

Facts not in evidence. As we are the only species that doesn't go through a regular cycle of die-offs, it seems we are the only species on this planet that is in equilibrium with our environment.

The best evidence we can have is that wherever we go the local environment stabilizes thanks to our conscious influence to improve the environment, primarily through water management. Our dams and artificial lakes regulate the flow of rivers and reduce droughts. Our efforts even cause the deserts to bloom, allowing stable environments to spring up where nature never intended them.

Clearly you mean to suggest while I may be right and we are quite stabilizing in the medium term, we will exhaust the oil supply and cause a systemic collapse. I don't find such assertions credible, as technological civilization requires nothing more than energy, which the world we occupy contains in abundance.

[Edited on July 17, 2011 at 11:18 AM. Reason : .,.]

7/17/2011 11:13:00 AM

Quote :

"As we are the only species that doesn't go through a regular cycle of die-offs, it seems we are the only species on this planet that is in equilibrium with our environment. "

roflmao excuse me?

7/17/2011 12:44:28 PM

You're excused?

7/17/2011 11:20:29 PM

^^ Don't mind him, his egocentricity knows no bounds. It boggles the mind to fathom how someone could either be so myopic or simply obtuse to spout something as ridiculous as "humans are in equilibrium with their environment". There aren't rolly eyes big enough....

More aptly, he should have said that humans are the only animals arrogant enough to think that they no longer depend on their environment nor the other creatures which inhabit it.

7/17/2011 11:41:06 PM

"Depend on" in what sense? Our environment does us no favors, it does tend to kill us at every turn. It seems your personification knows no bounds. The environment and the animals inhabiting it are mere clockwork. To suggest we depend upon them is akin to suggesting we depend upon tractors. While it is true we would be in quite a pickle if space aliens took away the natural environment, or if they took away all our tractors, but as that is not going to happen the statement is meaningless.

But I have deduced your reasoning. You assume the natural environment is on the verge of collapse and therefore anyone suggesting mankind will be fine in the future must be suggesting humans are independent of the natural environment. As this last statement is absurd, then the speaker must be absurd. On the contrary, if a meteor struck the planet and wiped out the natural environment, we humans would suffer greatly. My belief on the matter was that, absent a meteor, Earth's biosphere as a whole is doing just fine and is more than robust enough to keep on ticking as it is for centuries to come.

[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 12:31 AM. Reason : .,.]

7/18/2011 12:29:51 AM

7/18/2011 12:36:03 AM

It will continue on. Everyone is missing the point. This is CLIMATE CHANGE. Not the end of the environment, nature or mankind. Its simply climates moving, expanding and contracting. Sure this will cause the extinction of millions of species but the biosphere will move on and never be completely threatened. The problem is, it will be impossible for some organisms to follow the climate they are used to and even some humans will have trouble.

7/18/2011 12:45:43 AM

Quote :

"My belief on the matter was that, absent a meteor, Earth's biosphere as a whole is doing just fine and is more than robust enough to keep on ticking as it is for centuries to come."

I will go ahead and take issue with the "is doing just fine", but the correctness of the rest of this claim is less certain.

In the coming centuries we can have massive species collapse. It is, in fact, very likely that will happen. From a historical, evolutionary, perspective, the last few 100 years shows up. I mean on a scale of the 4-5 billion years the Earth has existed, in terms of life on Earth, our very generation has seen a historic loss of diversity.

That is certainly chilling. But does it threaten us? Can we just replace the old ecological balance with industry? The environmentalist in me wishes that I could simply answer "no" to the question. Reality is that we don't know. We don't know how much of life on Earth we can loose and still maintain the ability to sustain ourselves.

Now, from an ethical standpoint, preserving the diversity of life on Earth is about the most meaningful action possible. If we allow the majority of species on Earth to go extinct and go about our business, always fixing a problem with more technology, then the adjectives I'm likely to assign to the human race will include "evil" and "cancerous".

The vanquishing of all life we know of is the supreme form of evil by any rational approach to defining the word. The consequences of industrial human living today isn't that, but is obviously a harrowing form of recklessness.

7/18/2011 12:59:30 AM

Quote :

"It will continue on. Everyone is missing the point. This is CLIMATE CHANGE. Not the end of the environment, nature or mankind. Its simply climates moving, expanding and contracting. Sure this will cause the extinction of millions of species but the biosphere will move on and never be completely threatened."

The use of the word "completely" is a weasel word. I'm sure the extrmeophiles will continue to convert Sulfur into hydrogen sulfide regardless of the fate of other species.

What about the majority of megafauna that humans already killed, in an existence much more humble than today? Does that matter? Did the biosphere go on non-threatened?

What about the coal reefs? If ocean acidification continues as per most models, we might just loose them, entirely.

What are trying to accomplish? What kind of world is acceptable for you? It just doesn't make any sense to me - you're talking about extinction of millions of species but the point that matters is that we're causing a biological shift that's only equaled by a handful of events in Earth's entire history. What is acceptable about that? At what point do we stop? When will you take the risks seriously? I can't tell.

7/18/2011 1:09:07 AM

Stop? We've already stopped. Pretty much all the damage we are going to do, we've already done. While we have caused quite a few extinctions directly, the vast majority of them were due to invasive species which tend to fill in ecological niches just as often as they create them. As such, if the massive die-off you are referring to has not already occurred then I don't see how it is going to occur later. Land management is only going to get better as we move into the future. Barring a war of course.

7/18/2011 1:36:54 AM

Today:
7 billion people
about an even mix of rich/developing/poor.
Even out of the "rich", we're still talking like $30-40k gdp/capita.

The future:
9 billion people at peak, and likely more
imminently we're looking at 1/3 developing, 2/3 rich, but who knows? If the poor don't improve standard of living, the birth rate will still expand the population rapidly.
The level of living that constitutes rich will probably change, and probably for the worst for the environment.

We're not over the hump. It's good that we have some protected wild areas, but don't overestimate those. There's still a huge amount for us to pave over. We'll also see things like entering the age of jellyfish in the ocean. The impact of acidification change is no laughing matter.

7/18/2011 7:03:46 AM

Do you accept the position that the richer a society is the better treated its natural environment will be?

7/18/2011 9:41:34 AM

I wasn't saying it is acceptable I was just disginguishing the difference between climate change and "the world is not going to end" deniers. Nobody is saying the world is going to end because of climate change.

I think we should do the type of things portrayed in that cartoon for several reasons.

They fix our:

energy problem
healthcare problem
economy problem

as well as the climate change problem.

7/18/2011 9:53:18 AM

Quote :

"Do you accept the position that the richer a society is the better treated its natural environment will be?"

The environmental movement is uncompleted work in places like the United States and Japan. Europe, by all means, will only see better stewardship from here on out. I fully believe that. But legislatively, the united states is teetering on disaster as republicans literally talk about disbanding the EPA and have already suspended the clean water act for pet industrial activities.

China will make the reversal at some point, but we're talking about peak energy use 2-3x what we have today, which is already on comparable levels to the United States.

In general of course I agree with your statement, but environmental impact and wealth are only negatively correlated after a certain value of wealth. This is a very high value. And most people on the Earth today are poor. Combine all of that, and you result in the conclusion that human impact might start decreasing sometime after 2100 which is around the time that the population growth tapers off anyway, which is tied to the fact that people get richer, of course.

7/18/2011 10:05:04 AM

lol at this thread

[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 10:17 AM. Reason : fewer people believe that humans are to "blame" for the last 150 years of warming now every day]

7/18/2011 10:15:08 AM

Haha it would appear there's no subject Lonesnark won't shove his ignorance into

7/18/2011 10:17:14 AM

Quote :

"The problem is, it will be impossible for some organisms to follow the climate they are used to and even some humans will have trouble."

"Some"?

You don't think there might be some issues as the zones of arable land shift hundreds of miles? Rising sea levels on our coastal cities? Our entire civilization was kind of built for a pretty specific climate configuration...

[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 10:19 AM. Reason : .]

7/18/2011 10:17:57 AM

the sea level rise is nothing other than normal

7/18/2011 10:20:53 AM

Yes, when ice melts in polar areas and adds to the sum volume of the oceans, it is completely normal for the level of that body of water to rise.



[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 10:34 AM. Reason : .]

7/18/2011 10:33:36 AM

Quote :

"Do you accept the position that the richer a society is the better treated its natural environment will be? "

true in some cases, but not all. As an example both Bolivia and Ecuador have written legal rights into their constitutions for "Mother Earth." I wouldn't describe either of those countries as rich, but they are full of native peoples that recognize the value and wealth provided by healthy ecosystems.

[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 10:39 AM. Reason : Pachamama = mother earth. how they describe the natural environment]

7/18/2011 10:38:16 AM

Quote :

"Do you accept the position that the richer a society is the better treated its natural environment will be?"

In the back yards of the richest members, yes. On the whole, the opposite. Generally, you get rich by exploiting the hell out of your environment, so basically pollution = getting richer. One might not think so looking at the US as compared to, say, China. But the US and China, economically speaking, are a single system, and we as a society simply off-load our environmental damage to China then consume the goods they produce. The only reason China opens a new coal plant every day is because we consume the goods that that energy goes into producing.

[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 10:46 AM. Reason : .]

7/18/2011 10:45:51 AM

Quote :

"Our entire civilization was kind of built for a pretty specific climate configuration..."

Now this is quite wrong. Our civilization is in constant flux as our cities are demolished and rebuilt over time because industries and patterns of activity rise and fall. Our civilization is perfectly configured for the current climate configuration, but only because each generation bulldozes the civilization that came before and rebuilds it to better match our current circumstances. If our circumstances change, we will rebuild again.

Quote :

"The only reason China opens a new coal plant every day is because we consume the goods that that energy goes into producing."

China is specializing in manufacturing, an activity that is not inherently polluting: all it needs is electricity. The U.S. produces more electricity today than we ever have before at a fraction of the pollution of 30 years ago. As statistics show, U.S. manufacturing output is higher than it has ever been, so we are in fact polluting our fair share.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/

7/18/2011 11:10:24 AM

Quote :

"In the back yards of the richest members, yes. "

lol, well put.

7/18/2011 11:10:59 AM

Quote :

"Our civilization is perfectly configured for the current climate configuration, but only because each generation bulldozes the civilization that came before and rebuilds it to better match our current circumstances. If our circumstances change, we will rebuild again. "

Are you kidding? I'm talking about entire zones becoming unsuitable for habitation, not just renovation of a city block that's grown dusty. We're still living in the same cities and farming mostly the same land that we were 200 years ago. Climate change during that period has been almost entirely negligible compared to what's happening now.

Quote :

"China is specializing in manufacturing, an activity that is not inherently polluting: all it needs is electricity. The U.S. produces more electricity today than we ever have before at a fraction of the pollution of 30 years ago. "

We have environmental laws. One of the many reasons China is so much cheaper to produce goods in is because of lax environmental regulation, and it just so happens that he nastiest, dirtiest fuels are also the cheapest ones with which to produce energy.

[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 11:41 AM. Reason : .]

7/18/2011 11:40:10 AM

Record setting high temperatures, killer tornadoes killing lots of people, the worst drought the US has ever had, and the most powerful hurricane to ever hit the US. Definitely signs of man made global warming!





Too bad I just described the 1930s

Quote :

"Yes, when ice melts in polar areas and adds to the sum volume of the oceans, it is completely normal for the level of that body of water to rise."

It's also perfectly natural for the sea level to have risen over the last 150 years, as it should after the Little Ice Age, Oddly enough, it's barely rising at all these days...



[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 11:57 AM. Reason : pic]

7/18/2011 11:52:57 AM

Quote :

""China is specializing in manufacturing, an activity that is not inherently polluting: all it needs is electricity. The U.S. produces more electricity today than we ever have before at a fraction of the pollution of 30 years ago. " We have environmental laws. One of the many reasons China is so much cheaper to produce goods in is because of lax environmental regulation, and it just so happens that he nastiest, dirtiest fuels are also the cheapest ones with which to produce energy."

Well this is kind of complicated. The important thing to note is that the US 30 years ago used less efficient power plants than what China does now. They didn't have the fine detail design that we use today for turbine blades, for instance.

That's an efficiency gain you can't get twice. If you go to a supercritical steam cycle, then maybe you're pushing 40% efficiency, if technology advances to as-of-yet unseen levels, maybe we can hope for 50% someday in the future. But this is a 5/4 factor gain and no matter what you do, you won't ever see a 2x factor. Now, you can virtually eliminate NOX, Sulfur, all kinds of things, but not CO2, and not the necessity of mining itself.

And like I was arguing before, China uses coal for electricity because that's the option. No really. There was no industrialization anywhere close to that scale that got off the starting block with nuclear, wind, or whatever (hydro is location limited so not really relevant). They'll phase it out. Someday. Just as they will petroleum, but they're trying to compete so they'll use all the guns available to them.

For transportation and electricity, no one really argues with what needs to be done. We need to invest to decarbonize. You can't seriously argue with that. Even people who think the Earth was created 6,000 years ago and that the climate won't change due to 700ppm CO2 in the atmosphere agree that this needs to be done.

7/18/2011 11:58:50 AM

Quote :

"...even some humans will have trouble."

Seems like it gets hotter and hotter with each passing summer.

7/18/2011 12:17:53 PM

Quote :

"We need to invest to decarbonize. You can't seriously argue with that."

I argue with that. I'm not convinced a warmer world would be a worse world. But I admit there is a real chance for me to be wrong, so in the eventuality I am wrong we have remedies available in the form of stratospheric sulfur injection to cool the planet. As such, there is a 100% chance of everything working out just fine.

As such, while we should do all costless carbon reductions, such as a carbon tax coupled with elimination of the payroll tax. But carbon rationing schemes or invading china to enforce them are ridiculous.

Quote :

"Are you kidding? I'm talking about entire zones becoming unsuitable for habitation"

Human beings have managed to make every zone on the planet somewhat habitable. As such, I must ask what the heck you are talking about.

[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 12:24 PM. Reason : .,.]

7/18/2011 12:22:47 PM

Quote :

"I argue with that. I'm not convinced a warmer world would be a worse world. But I admit there is a real chance for me to be wrong, so in the eventuality I am wrong we have remedies available in the form of stratospheric sulfur injection to cool the planet. As such, there is a 100% chance of everything working out just fine. As such, while we should do all costless carbon reductions, such as a carbon tax coupled with elimination of the payroll tax. But carbon rationing schemes or invading china to enforce them are ridiculous."

Apparently even people who disagree with the need to decarbonize agree with the need to decarbonize.

Even the chicken littles of climate change disciples advocate for policy along the vein of cost neutral actions. For the record though, if one believes there is no environmental or depletion problem with use of hydrocarbons not already priced in by market forces, then any scheme of "tax here, pay here" would have a 2nd order market inefficiency effect. But since the global economy is a closed system, I guess the only alternative to "tax here, pay here" would be to tax and use the revenue for environmental mitigation, since it was levied as a tax for harming the environment. Of course, no one advocates such a thing (that I know of).

7/18/2011 12:34:21 PM

We should probably divert our attention to more serious environmental matters, like toxic material pollution and helping to keep freshwater systems pollution free. After we've solved those then there will be plenty of time to chase around invisible boogey men.

7/18/2011 1:01:02 PM

Quote :

" Human beings have managed to make every zone on the planet somewhat habitable. As such, I must ask what the heck you are talking about. "

Keyword "somewhat". The fact that bedouins still manage to live as hunter-gatherers in desert biomes doesn't comfort me much.

7/18/2011 1:24:31 PM

Humm that graph of a 2 year span is very interesting, but








[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 1:29 PM. Reason : /]

7/18/2011 1:27:56 PM

^but why would it stop now. I mean...all that CO2, it should be a run away spiral by now! And your temp chart makes me laugh. It starts at the end of the Little Ice Age and ends in 2000, right around when temps stopped rising.

There's a reason fewer people believe global warming is anything to worry about. It's called common sense. Hell even Obama doesn't care otherwise he would have actually done something.

[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 1:35 PM. Reason : this thread's dumb as it will just become Part II of the other Climate change thread]

[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 1:35 PM. Reason : nevermind that temp change is proof of nothing]

7/18/2011 1:34:38 PM

Quote :

" It starts at the end of the Little Ice Age "

http://www.skepticalscience.com/coming-out-of-little-ice-age.htm

You don't even have your dates right, the little ice age ended in the early 19th century, not the late.

Quote :

"...ends in 2000, right around when temps stopped rising."

Temperatures are still rising, 2000-2010 was the hottest decade on record.

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100728_stateoftheclimate.html


[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 1:46 PM. Reason : .]

7/18/2011 1:35:58 PM

Quote :

"stratospheric sulfur injection to cool the planet"

And what's your solution to acid rain?

7/18/2011 1:38:32 PM

This is what drives me nuts about AGW skeptics. As soon as they hear a semi-plausible argument they go out and parrot it 1,000 times on every message board they can find, never devoting the 5 minutes it takes to google it and find it's total bullshit. Go on TKE, tell me it's the Sun now, and that Mars is experiencing warming.


[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 1:45 PM. Reason : .]

7/18/2011 1:44:26 PM

Wikipedia has a version with the 2010 data point.



I guess we can forgive them for not having the 2011 point yet.

7/18/2011 2:14:22 PM

^^I was taking liberties with the dates somewhat, excuse me. 1850 instead of 1880

^nah, it's really not. why don't you just show me proof that CO2 is causing warming. You can't. But we could both make correlations all day long...that also wouldn't be true.


Here's another graph, focusing on the more recent warming:



Not much to really worry about.


Of course, what we should really worry about are the pirates:



[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 2:18 PM. Reason : pirates!]

7/18/2011 2:16:02 PM

^ Your graph gives monthly temperatures. It also screwed the text wrapping. wtg.

Maybe if you presented data in the same format, as in yearly averaged and then 5 yr trailing average, then someone could compare what you present to the other data. But at this point, this text is beyond the right side of the screen and no one is reading b/c of your stupid graph.

7/18/2011 2:21:12 PM

Quote :

"^nah, it's really not. why don't you just show me proof that CO2 is causing warming. You can't. But we could both make correlations all day long...that also wouldn't be true."

This is why you look at conditional independence rather than sheer correlations. If all we had in science were the ability to compute and look at correlations, we'd be in seriously sad shape. However, computational techniques exist for determining possible causal connections.

7/18/2011 2:21:16 PM

TKE, even if you take El Nino out that graph still shows a warming trend overall, I don't know what you think it's proving.

Quote :

"^nah, it's really not. why don't you just show me proof that CO2 is causing warming. You can't. But we could both make correlations all day long...that also wouldn't be true. "

It's just simple science, we know the precise mechanisms by which CO2 causes warming due to its molecular qualities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-pollutant.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-temperature-correlation.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect.htm


You're doing what all denialists do, of course. Throw out a bunch of shitty half-completed thoughts, watch them be rebutted, then move on to some new half-completed thoughts without any discussion. Assuming that, any person trying to prove a point opens with his strongest material, I'm curious to know if your position on AGW will change at all as you resort to progressively weaker arguments.

[Edited on July 18, 2011 at 3:43 PM. Reason : .]

7/18/2011 3:41:51 PM

Quote :

"And what's your solution to acid rain?"

Acid rain is caused by sulfur in the lower atmosphere. Sulfur injected into the stratosphere remains there for a significantly longer time before falling as acid rain compared to dumping it out a smoke stack. As such, if China installs scrubbers and then we pump a tiny fraction (say 1/10th of 1%) of China's previous emissions into the stratosphere, it would significantly cool the planet while dramatically reducing acid rain.

7/18/2011 3:42:15 PM

Wow I don't think I can conceive of a more reckless plan than "Pump massive quantities of sulfur into the upper atmosphere at a constant rate for the rest of time or until magical future-technology saves us."

7/18/2011 3:44:28 PM

^^ Sounds like a terrible excuse to continue polluting. Instead addressing the cause, you merely mask it by artificially seeding the upper atmosphere with a material that will eventually fall as acid rain. Nice job. So what will the solution be down the road? More eventual acid rain to offset the increase in greenhouse gas emissions? But please, regale us with stories of how you think pollution is actually a good thing....

7/18/2011 4:54:05 PM

Quote :

"Once the currents shut down"

hahahaha. something that's been proven to be absolute bullshit. and you claim people who doubt AGW are "anti-science," lol.

Quote :

"What improvement suggested in the cartoon would send us to the dark ages?"

You fucking dolt, it's not the "improvement" that is the problem. It's the way to get said improvement that is, namely cutting off all of our electricity.

Quote :

"I mean on a scale of the 4-5 billion years the Earth has existed, in terms of life on Earth, our very generation has seen a historic loss of diversity."

Again, another statement without factual basis. You AGWers need to actually argue from fact.

Quote :

"I think we should do the type of things portrayed in that cartoon for several reasons. "

I'd also like there to be unicorns and machines that turn feces into delicious cookies. Those things are admirable goals. They way to get there is a horrible thing, though. You can't just HOPE and DREAM them into being, no matter how much Obama tells you otherwise.

Quote :

"They fix our: energy problem healthcare problem economy problem"

hahahahaha. This is so fucking hilarious that I don't know where to begin... Energy problem? By cutting off all our electricity? That fixes the energy problem? Healthcare? WHERE THE FUCK DOES THAT COME IN? All of our health problems are caused by a trace gas in the atmosphere? REALLY? And economy? Ask Spain how well their attempts to mandate green energy did. really. Do some research, Earl.

Quote :

"Yes, when ice melts in polar areas and adds to the sum volume of the oceans, it is completely normal for the level of that body of water to rise."

Yep. Too bad there has been no change from historic levels of sea-level rise. Which tends to suggest that polar ice is NOT melting at any appreciable rate of change from before.

Quote :

"Climate change during that period has been almost entirely negligible compared to what's happening now."

How d you figure, when the current "climate change" is also negligible? I mean, I know 9*0 initially looks smaller than 9000000000000*0, but...

Quote :

"We need to invest to decarbonize. You can't seriously argue with that."

Certainly true. The only problem is whether we actually need to decarbonize. DOH!

Quote :

"Humm that graph of a 2 year span is very interesting, but"

Sea-level rise graph... shows a constant rise from pre-industrial time... hmmm... same with the second graph. Aaaaaaaaand the third graph only works because the numbers have been hopelessly fudged by Mann and his buddies, as has already been proven numerous times. Do you have ANY evidence that shit is bad? Of course not.

Quote :

"Temperatures are still rising, 2000-2010 was the hottest decade on record."

1) They aren't still rising, you twit. You might wanna do a little research.
2) Hottest on record is dishonest, because we have larger cities, thus driving up recorded temperatures, and we also have "scientists" faking the numbers to make them look worse so they can keep getting research dollars.

Quote :

"It's just simple science, we know the precise mechanisms by which CO2 causes warming due to its molecular qualities. "

Knowing the mechanism is quite different than quantifying its effects. Which we still can't do. We have the IPCC faking a number to worst fucking case, and when we use that number, we get massively different results from what has actually happened. But only in the political arena will science as bad as that get passed of as legit.

Quote :

"You're doing what all denialists do, of course. Throw out a bunch of shitty half-completed thoughts"

Actually, that's exactly what the AGWers did. Mann's hockey-stick was fucking proof of that. So much so, that he had to hide the fact that his numbers didn't predict what actually fucking happened, so he just "chopped it off" and used actual numbers. That's a hallmark of good science, right?

7/18/2011 5:09:52 PM

Quote :

"But please, regale us with stories of how you think pollution is actually a good thing...."

Well, when the alternative is world war followed by the dark ages, pollution is actually a good thing.

7/18/2011 5:42:04 PM

I like how it's one extreme or the other....

7/18/2011 5:51:54 PM

It is. If the rule is we must restrict carbon enough to eliminate the possibility of needing to seed the stratosphere with sulfur, then we must impoverish ourselves and the planet to at least a 19th century living standard.

It is I offering the compromise position. Stop taxing labor and tax carbon to replace it, then in the event the planet warms too much to put up with we plan to pollute the stratosphere. Nice middle ground that doesn't kill anyone.

7/18/2011 7:14:38 PM

That doesn't kill anyone? Are you aware of how devastating acid rain already is? And yet you want to exacerbate that under the guise of "compromise"? As far as carbon goes, I am rather agnostic but your "solution" borders on calamity.

7/18/2011 7:54:51 PM