After reading about our president and how he feels that climate change is the single most important thing I started to wonder how other people feel about climate change. Please feel free to share your thoughts.
Climate change poll
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Circus
Feeling the Heat
Climate change doesn't matter much if your dead either does it?
I actually voted "what is climate change". I mean this not because I have no idea what climate change is, but because I think that many things needs to be clarified on this debate. For one, I agree that yes climate change is happening. However, really the question is what is causing the climate change ? Is it man-made, or a natural progression of change which we know has existed for millenia ? Is there a natural tendency towards cooling right now, but our pollution is causing warming ? Or is there a natural tendency towards warming that is overpowering pollution that is actually causing cooling ? We really don't know what the cause/effect relationship is here !
Furthermore, I believe that the issue of climate change is being used to mask the real, more serious issue. What I mean is that climate change itself is just a symptom. If we go to the doctor with a severe headache, I'd hope they don't just give us a couple tylenol and send us home! There could, and likely is something more serious going on. Climate change is a potential symptom of a much greater issue of which there is no denial, and that is the pollution of our environment, land, sea and air. Climate change is just a small subset of issues in a subset of arenas (air mainly). So it does us a disservice to debate climate change. I'm concerned about things like skyrocketing rates of cancer, asthma, mental illnesses, depleted resources, specie extinction, etc. Known real-issues that can affect our day to day lives and in many cases have clearly defined human-activity driven causes. Climate change is a diversion, likely intentional.
Furthermore, I believe that the issue of climate change is being used to mask the real, more serious issue. What I mean is that climate change itself is just a symptom. If we go to the doctor with a severe headache, I'd hope they don't just give us a couple tylenol and send us home! There could, and likely is something more serious going on. Climate change is a potential symptom of a much greater issue of which there is no denial, and that is the pollution of our environment, land, sea and air. Climate change is just a small subset of issues in a subset of arenas (air mainly). So it does us a disservice to debate climate change. I'm concerned about things like skyrocketing rates of cancer, asthma, mental illnesses, depleted resources, specie extinction, etc. Known real-issues that can affect our day to day lives and in many cases have clearly defined human-activity driven causes. Climate change is a diversion, likely intentional.
Circus
Feeling the Heat
That's the problem with polls, too unidirectional. Both are important, at least for those vested in the status quo.
Where is the choice:
I can't wait for the climate to change in a month so I can start a fire and convert a high carbon fuel into a gas and water vapor!
I can't wait for the climate to change in a month so I can start a fire and convert a high carbon fuel into a gas and water vapor!
mass_burner
Minister of Fire
It really doesn't matter either way. Humans are very short-term acting.
It is real. It is important. And it is man-made.And the vast majority of scientists agree.
Also, as the Pentagon has said, climate change IS a matter of national security.
Also, as the Pentagon has said, climate change IS a matter of national security.
jebatty
Minister of Fire
So, since polls can be written toget whatever answer you want, let's start by asking what questions were asked and the order theory were asked. Then let's look at the raw data vs the final data. Call me skeptical on polls in general. Look what they are doing with Presidental polls. I haven't spoken to anybody who loves Trump or Hillary, yet they magically lead them all
Circus
Feeling the Heat
video: Merchants of Doubt . The climate change debate is the intentional deversion (fossil fuel delaying tactic). Escaping methane from rotting permafrost and hydrates is quickly removing, if not already removed, any choice.
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jharkin
Minister of Fire
But yet still, nearly half the people in this country - many of them highly educated and intelligent, have blindly accepted the brainwashing that its a hoax. Along with other ridiculous pseudoscience $%(*&$% like vaccinations causing autism.
Maybe we will all die form new polio outbreaks before CC gets us?
I don't hold high hopes we (as a society) will do anything about it before our homes start floating into the ocean. Or even then.
jharkin
Minister of Fire
Its been argued that its a "symptom" of overpopulation... That is the real problem is the unsustainability of infinite growth in population on a planet with finite natural resources is the true dilemma. Nobody is willing to touch that one, I think even China is starting to give up on the one child idea.
What do you mean by that ?
If you mean that, in the grand scale of earth we'll be gone in a "short" amount of time and leave little lasting impact, the earth will be fine, then yeah I agree. We won't destroy the planet, but we are altering it's ability to sustain certain life forms including ourselves.
The length of time that humans have been on the planet doesn't really matter, it's the rate of impact that is important. 95% of all mammals on earth are now domestic. Species extinction is at least 1000x times the background rate. Some estimate it as high as 10,000%. CO2 rate of increase is insane.
Overpopulation is the issue and will be THE issue for future generations.
"Human population cannot increase forever at an exponential rate; it will level off -- but the Earth cannot support indefinitely even its current population. The pain does not come gradually, but all at once, in these cases."
http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/econ/bartlett.htm
Overpopulation is the issue and will be THE issue for future generations.
"Human population cannot increase forever at an exponential rate; it will level off -- but the Earth cannot support indefinitely even its current population. The pain does not come gradually, but all at once, in these cases."
http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/econ/bartlett.htm
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Agree - overpopulation is a core issue and needs to be dealt with. CO2 is a huge issue also, whether it impacts climate change or not. High levels of CO2 have been proven to decrease mental functioning. We are well over 2 times the historical atmospheric CO2 level, and still rapidly increasing. We have no clue as to what the effect is of this lifelong moderate increase is, there's simply no way to study it since everything and everybody on earth is exposed to it and a baseline with which to compare is impossible.
JRHAWK9
Minister of Fire
Ashful
Minister of Fire
If we accept overpopulation is the driving force, and I suspect there's good argument to say it is, do we have data to show the primary offenders? Nationalities? Ethnicities? Religion? Population control can be a touchy subject.
JRHAWK9
Minister of Fire
Overpopulation is historically dealt with by epidemic. We're in for a big one. With a global economy typical stops aren't there.
Step 1: Figure out how someone makes a buck more fixing climate change than not fixing it.
Step 2: Get out of the way
We are almost done with step 1.
Step 2: Get out of the way
We are almost done with step 1.
Happens twice a year every year like clock work. That said , when the talking heads start figuring in all the natural causes of various green house gases, I might stop and listen. Course when I grew up we were supposed to freeze to death due to starvation because the planet was becoming too cold to support vegetation. Not to mention the on going threat of Nuclear winters ( cold war -finger on the button ect.) Therefore none of the options in the poll work for me.
mass_burner
Minister of Fire
I didn't mean that, but I agree. I meant that humans will not put any real effort/ money/sacrifice to solve any issue that's not obvious, personally threatening and seemingly easy to solve.
I've seen this old school "global cooling" red herring thrown about from time to time, and from what I've read, it really was not a seriously supported or pursued scientific theory even when it was in its heyday. Really wish it would stop being interjected into the conversation. It has no place other than to reinforce a head-buried-in-the-sand mentality.
I guess I am going to take offense at my own post...
I suppose fair is fair.My response is too pat. I think that **with current tech** we can get pretty far down the 'fixing AGW' path, at negative cost to the economy, especially if health and welfare are included in the costs. I think the international agreements that are coming together before Paris are evidence for this truth....these folks are not pledging to destroy their economies...they think they will make money at it and save on public health bills.
But it is also clear (as in numerous recent stories) that the current round of pledges is not enough to leave a world that resembles what we have now, let alone the one we grew up in.
Of course, the utopian in me would say that tech will improve and get cheaper on a learning curve, and we will slide down emissions more in the future than we currently anticipate (again, only after costs have fallen even further) and it will be ok.
But I have two concerns.
1) Tech IS hard to predict, along with the global economy. We could roll out RE at scale and clean up the FF system (e.g. with a lot of gas switching) and the RE costs could hit a firm floor, and health issues from FF could go to zero, and our incentives to go further to reduce AGW would then go to zero....that is, we would need to spend actual money to go further. I think this will not be our choice, but the next generation's. Will they do it? It will depend on how rich they are...so anybody's guess.
2) People get used to a degraded environment. Kids born after all the trees have been cut down don't miss the forest. They ignore the old timers going on about the bears in the woods...that are all gone now.
I think that 1 and 2 suggest an outcome where the global environment just does a slow slide downwards (rather than the predicted catastrophe), maybe with the occasional replenished wild space or fishery. In other words, something resembling what we have been doing to Mom Earth for the last 10 centuries, without really appreciating it.
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