Anthropogenic Global Warming 101

happy jack wrote:

Scorpion wrote:

What?  A one-billionth of a degree increase?  What the hell are you talking about?

Look, if you guys choose to obsess over something you have absolutely no control over, something that may or may not shake out the way you think it will, far be it from me to interfere. But I refuse to waste my time and to relinquish all rational thought by sitting around worrying about something that may never occur, considering that the bulk of those who fret over this can't even seem to make up their minds as to what, if anything, is going to actually happen. So, if it makes you feel batter about yourselves, and if you really think that you are saving the planet by making posts about this topic, and by vilifying those who do not fall in lockstep with you (because, let's face it - that's all you're really doing), then, by all means, have at it. But quite frankly, when I choose to sit around worrying about how I might die (which is kind of like never), I think that, rather than focusing on whether or not I'm going to be boiled alive in the Arctic Ocean, I would more likely focus on whether or not I'm going to get T-boned by an 18-wheeler, which in my mind is the more likely scenario.

You don’t know me.  You have no idea how I might be involved in the fight against Climate Change.  But one thing that I can assure you of is that I don’t “sit around worrying.”  

This is a discussion board.  None of us feel that posting here is going to change anything... that’s not the point.  For me, it’s about the give and take of debate.  I learn a lot by engaging with others who might know more than I do about a subject,  or debating policies with others who just disagree with me.

We disagree with the idea of ignoring science, and are simply asking you to explain your position, Jack...  it’s nothing personal.

happy jack wrote:

I love it when conservatives try to do science.

happy jack wrote:

Scorpion wrote:

  You don’t know me.  You have no idea how I might be involved in the fight against Climate Change.

OK, best of luck with that, and looking forward to the day you can make this post:

"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

Yeah.  Me too.

I just have to say that this is my all time favorite justification for the deaths of Americans in my entire history of political discussions, coming from a surprisingly ambivalent "pro-life" individual. It's cold, calculated, possibly pathological, and every bit as hypocritical as I've come to expect from anti-abortionists, but never laid out so clearly. It's one I will be citing and discussing online and in papers for years.

Absolutely magical.

happy jack wrote:

Scorpion wrote:

happy jack wrote:

Scorpion wrote:

  You don’t know me.  You have no idea how I might be involved in the fight against Climate Change.

OK, best of luck with that, and looking forward to the day you can make this post:

"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

Yeah.  Me too.

To quote John Lennon in Revolution, "We'd all love to see the plan …."

it’s called the Paris Climate Accord...

In addition, every iteration of the IPCC has been released in phases.  Each and every one of them involved an entire section specifically focused on mitigation (i.e. how to minimize both fiscal and physical loss moving forward).

That's why happy's response to global warming from nearly two decades ago was "it's happening and horrible; there's nothing we can do to stop it."  There's certainly no history whatsoever in any iteration of this forum where he suggested that that scientists might be wrong in their assessments; he never argued their assessments might be overblown or a deliberate hoax.  It was always and ever a consistent "it's too horrible and pronounced to stop, so fuck my kids.  And the Paris Accord." that he's been able to show to his children.  I mean, we were nearly allies on the topic for years before it got too apocalyptic for him.

Happy is, as always, totally not full of shit.  It's why his retirement is composed heavily into coal mining instead of energy storage or renewables and real estate in Florida.  'Cause, "whatevs.  Can't stop it."

Because he's a super honest guy.  The bastion of integrity and truth, trying to do right by his kids.

Provided they're not gay or transgender.  Or raped by their corresponding gender in their corresponding bathroom.
I mean, let's not go overboard...  

Because science, dontcha know?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/16/boys-can-have-periods-schoolchildren-taught-latest-victory-transgender/

Telegraph  News
Boys can have periods too, children to be taught in latest victory for transgender campaigners

School children will be taught that "all genders" can have periods in new sex education lessons, in a victory for transgender rights campaigners.

I posted this in this thread in order to demonstrate that I'm the one who ignores science.

How to Make Climate Change Doubters Pay a Political Price

Quote :

In purely economic terms, health consequences dwarf the other effects of climate change in sheer cost to the United States, estimated at $141 billion due to heat-related deaths alone by 2100, vastly outpacing infrastructure damage to coastal cities from sea-level rise (estimated at $118 billion).

The upshot for policymakers is simple, especially for those who refuse to acknowledge the existence of climate change: anything short of a well-funded and multifaceted approach to the climate crisis will have consequences that can now be easily measured in attributable deaths and rising health care costs.

Climate change doubters should no longer feel comfortable equivocating on the pros and cons of mitigation, where carbon neutrality, emissions cuts, and green energy are easily politicized policy platforms. Now more than ever, solutions to the climate crisis should focus on the devastating effects of rising air pollution, warmer temperatures, droughts, and water insecurity on human health. Doing otherwise would have an outsized effect on citizens with chronic diseases, who tend to vote in significant numbers, particularly in developed nations. Before long, this demographic group will be voting with these issues in mind, a cautionary warning to any elected doubter.

If Republicans don't care about them dying, maybe they'll care about how their surviving family members will vote.

Maybe.

Happy was in an episode of South Park:

Heretic wrote:

Happy was in an episode of South Park:

That's fucking awesome!

Even though you are, obviously.

This idea came up a few years ago... It was a good idea then, and it's a good idea now... I'd be curious to hear any downside to the idea...


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-im-slightly-less-pessimistic-about-global-warming/2019/01/20/4c2b3122-1b52-11e9-88fe-f9f77a3bcb6c_story.html?utm_term=.d9ba856208be

Quote :

Last week, a large group of economists, including 27 Nobel Prize winners, 15 former chairs of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and two former treasury secretaries — Democrats and Republicans — issued a manifesto endorsing what’s been called a “carbon dividend” plan. This would be a good start.

Here’s how it would work. The government would tax CO2 emissions. The idea is to prompt Americans to use less fossil fuels and to prod businesses to focus on renewables and energy efficiency. That’s a standard carbon tax. What defines the “carbon dividend” plan is that all the money collected would be rebated to households.

Under one proposal, the government would slap a $43 tax on each ton of CO2. That would equal about 38 cents on a gallon of gasoline, says economist Marc Hafstead of Resources for the Future, who studied the plan. It would raise about $180 billion in the tax’s first year, he says. If the “dividend” — the tax rebate — were distributed evenly, that would be about $1,400 per household.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/43880/ocasio-cortez-people-maybe-shouldnt-reproduce-due-ryan-saavedra

Ocasio-Cortez: People Maybe Shouldn’t Reproduce Due To Climate Change

"Is it okay to still have children?"


"Our planet is going to hit disaster if we don't turn this ship around and so it's basically like, there's a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult," Ocasio-Cortez said while chopping up food in her kitchen during an Instagram live video. "And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question, you know, 'Is it okay to still have children?'"

………

"This idea that 'I've been working on this for x-amount of years,' um, it's like not good enough," Ocasio-Cortez said. "Like, we need a universal sense of urgency, and people are like trying to introduce watered-down proposals that are frankly going to kill us. A lack of urgency is going to kill us."
 
…….

It seems as if, you know, like, Heretic should, like, consider this woman to be, like, someone who is, like, you know, after, like, his own heart.

The $1 Trillion Storm: How a Single Hurricane Could Rupture the World Economy

Quote :

The conventional wisdom is that a scenario like this is so unlikely to occur that it’s almost not worth discussing. The odds of a worst-case hurricane making landfall in Florida in any given year is low, insurance companies have sophisticated strategies for mitigating risk, and the financial system by and large is insulated from physically destructive events. (Even 9/11, for instance, caused a stock market downturn that only lasted a month.)

Yet in recent weeks VICE spoke with financial, political and scientific experts—including a former special assistant to President Barack Obama, the dean of science of a major Canadian university, and a UK organization on the global vanguard of disaster modeling—who believe that conventional wisdom has its limits. Without wanting to be seen as alarmists by overstating dangers, these experts think it’s crucial that we question and challenge common assumptions around financial risk.

They point out that a warmer climate is making hurricanes more severe and destructive. Above-average temperatures are increasing the rainfall of tropical cyclones between 5 to 10 percent, while rising seas add to the intensity of flooding.

At the same time, there are structural aspects of the insurance industry that are more opaque and perhaps riskier than the public thinks, creating the potential for localized financial damage from a massive hurricane to quickly spread internationally, a process similar to what happened during the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008.

Though even the worst physical disasters have had little impact historically on global markets, there is reason to believe that above a certain financial (and even psychological) threshold, natural catastrophes can weaken economies and ultimately lead to damaging recessions. Given all that, the experts VICE spoke with think it’s reasonable to wonder whether society is massively underestimating the economic dangers posed by rising global temperatures.

This has disturbing implications for all cities on the front lines of extreme weather, and Southeast Florida in particular. It could mean, under a specific set of conditions, that Miami is a ticking financial time bomb waiting any day now to be detonated by climate change.

. . .

Hamid thinks “the probability is very low” of this ever happening. But he added that the scenario almost became real in 2017. “When I saw the track of [Hurricane] Irma that was being predicted, two to three days out, it looked similar to the track of our worst-case scenario.” Irma killed dozens of people as it ripped through the Caribbean, but mellowed as it approached Florida. “Fortunately the hurricane weakened and moved west to the less populated areas,” Hamid said. Over 60 percent of homes in Florida lost power and ten people died. Still, he added, “We dodged a bullet.”

The next time we may not be so lucky.

Floods expose national security concerns over climate change

Quote :

The Missouri River floodwater surging on to the air base housing the United States military's Strategic Command overwhelmed round-the-clock sandbagging by airmen and others. They had to scramble to save sensitive equipment, munitions, and dozens of aircraft.

Days into the flooding, muddy water was still lapping at almost 80 flooded buildings at Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base, some inundated by up to 7 feet of water. Piles of waterlogged corn cobs, husks, and stalks lay heaped everywhere that the water had receded, swept onto the base from surrounding fields.

"In the end, obviously, the waters were just too much. It took over everything we put up," Col. David Norton, who is in charge of facilities at the base, told an Associated Press reporter on a tour of the damage. "The speed at which it came in was shocking."

. . .

The military has warned in a series of reports under past administrations that climate change is a security threat on many fronts. That includes "through direct impacts on U.S. military infrastructure and by affecting factors, including food and water availability, that can exacerbate conflict outside U.S. borders," the federal government's grim climate report said last year.

But Mr. Trump has belittled his own government's warnings. During a January cold spell, he tweeted his wish for "a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming!" In response to security warnings on climate change, the Trump administration has allowed a physicist who rejects scientific consensus on manmade climate change to start organizing a White House panel to make its own determination.

Responding to an AP inquiry, the White House's National Security Council did not directly address whether the administration sees climate change as a national security threat, but said it takes the issue of climate change seriously.

But the Trump White House's national security strategy mentions climate only in the context of "countering an anti-growth energy agenda" for fossil fuels.

Oh well... There's absolutely nothing we can do, including prepare.

High CO2 levels will wreck plants’ nutritional value, so don’t plan on surviving on vegetables

Quote :

Ebi directly refuted an idea that’s been floating around for a while about the effect of CO2 on food production and global hunger. Technically, plants need CO2 to survive: They bring it in, break it down, and rely on carbon to grow. Some researchers have claimed that more CO2 means that more plants will be able to grow, and higher CO2 levels will then help solve food insecurity.

That, according to Ebi, is a hugely, dangerously wrong. Not only will climate change and global warming make agricultural productivity and much more unstable, but when plants take in an excess of CO2, their chemical makeup changes in a way that that’s harmful to the humans and animals that depend on them for nutrition: higher concentrations of CO2, increases the synthesis of carbohydrates like sugars and starches, and decrease the concentrations of proteins and nutrients like zinc, iron, and B-vitamins. “This is very important for how we think about food security going forward,” Ebi says.

A lack of iron can lead to outcomes like anemia and stunted development; low levels of zinc contributes to loss of appetite and additional developmental difficulties. B vitamins are crucial for converting our food into energy, and the way our bodies function overall. “It’s not just us,” Ebi says. Animals like cows that rely on grains and plants for their diet produce meat and milk that contain fewer nutrients and vitamins, and people who eat meat take in fewer of those crucial resources.