I ask whats going to happen when the building gets hotter quickly and get 10 different answers. Somebody tells me the building has been much hotter in the past, but this is the fastest its heated up before. I ask if it's actually even bad that the building is getting hotter quickly and everyone says "Of course it is! It's never heated up this fast before!"
I sit back and wonder why I should worry about this building heating up if it's been much hotter in the past, or if it's even a bad thing. I also wonder why none of the engineers suggested opening the windows instead of producing less heat. It happens that the building is currently at a historically low temperature, and raising it could make the building more comfortable for many inhabitants anyways
We know that increasing atmospheric levels of CO2 will result in higher temperatures (the mechanism is well understood, and the IPCC models have done a good job of predicting that over the past couple decades), we also know rising temperatures will result in rising sea levels (again, we have empirically observed this happening at rates consistent with our understanding of the mechanism). From there it's just math to figure out how much coastal land will be inundated over the coming century (which is just one of many implications of climate change).
You are suggesting various ways in which that might not happen, with no evidence supporting them, from the perspective of someone who doesn't have much of an understanding of climate science. Do you think it is more likely that you have outsmarted 97% of climate scientists, or that the experts are more likely to know what they're talking about than you are?
Without those links, your last paragraph is really a statement about your own approach to the problem, with a little condescension thrown in for his failure to follow the same pattern. It's counterproductive to your own goal of persuasion.
In any scientific endeavor (not just climate change), when a skeptic takes the time to engage, the response should be data, not appeal to authority.
Put differently, environmental scientists have a credibility gap in some segments of the populace, and it isn't possible to fix any credibility gap through peer pressure. You can only offer evidence, tailored where possible to the listener's level of interest and sophistication.
That's not my understanding. We had a warming "pause" from 2000 to 2010 (approximately). That was certainly not predicted.
Then scientists went back to look for an explanation of the "pause". Ocean temperature data was then incoporated, other data adjusted and the "pause" was no more.
I would characterize the climate modelling as constantly evolving. We don't have it nailed yet.
Even more importantly, the net effects (sea level rise, etc) were well within the predicted range.
I think it's unrealistic to believe we can get the whole planet to reduce CO2 emission, so we should stop spending so much effort on it and find other solutions.
I also doubt how much rising sea level will actually hurt humanity. Even in the worst case scenario were talking about an inch or two a year. This is slow enough to easily build a wall, dredge to raise up land, or move buildings away from rising waters. Besides, who puts buildings five feet above the water? The vast majority of buildings would just flood more often. It's not like buildings on the coast don't already get hit by cyclones.
Why?
The problem with fossil fuels - especially coal, isn't "just CO2", it's all the ash that is killing people.
The problems with oil extraction isn't just the CO2 at the end, it's all the crude and junk stuff going (bunker oil), and the political power of the oil lobby, and how dictatorships are financed by these resources.
Sure, these are the factors that make it hard to change, even "locally", within the US.
> cyclones
Yes, and just estimate the cost of a lot more cyclones. It turns out to be a lot more than switching to non-fossil stuff. And that's why a lot of people think that it's not rational to try to continue the consumption of fossil fuels (in a way that leads to CO2 emissions).
No, that wasn't my claim. If I have a claim, it's that, instead of simply moving away, people keep building up an active seismic fault that's likely to suffer a catastrophic earthquake in the near future. Even high taxes (some of which funded the policy piece you cited) and massively increased costs of construction (such as proposed in the policy piece you cited) aren't incentive enough to stop.
This aspect of human behavior is worth remembering when someone suggests similar "incentives" to address climate change. It's trying to incentivize the same mindset that would rather build cities out of springs and pendulums than move to stable land.
We should face the reality that humans will eventually deal with the negative side of climate change using (not so?) metaphorical springs, levers, stilts, and who-knows-what, and it will be okay.
I don't click Forbes links, but from the URL it looks like it's about a hoax bill that was proposed for PR purposes. Not interested.
If a storm cuts off gas, electricity, water, internet, and paved road access to these people, and the government says "What's the problem? People have been living without them for most of history!", these same people would cry bloody murder (as anybody else would).
Someone asked him about climate change, and his reply was (quoting from memory, so forgive me if I get the wording slightly off): "As I understand it, in 11 billion years, the sun will expand and swallow the earth, making the issue of climate change moot."
Well, that's great because it's both true and absolutely nonsensical. And it's a great way to do absolutely nothing, policy-wise, for any problem. "What about police violence?" "As I understand it, in 11 billion years..." "What's your position on the student loan debt crisis?" "As I understand it, in 11 billion years..."
You're right, and this is a common problem when you're in a leadership role. The information is imperfect. If this weren't true we wouldn't need leaders, we'd be omniscient. Often, reasonable people could disagree about the best course of action. The trick is to have vision, judgement, and a willingness to take risks and decisive action with good transparency.
> I sit back and wonder why I should worry about this...
You're in good company. Most of our leadership has been taking the same strategy.
> I ask whats going to happen when the building gets hotter quickly and get 10 different answers.
It shouldn't be surprising that there isn't one clear answer. Earth is a complex system, and it is changing in many ways right now.
> I ask if it's actually even bad that the building is getting hotter quickly and everyone says "Of course it is! It's never heated up this fast before!"
The pace of global warming is indeed a problem, as organisms cannot migrate or adapt fast enough. Forest ecosystems, for example, may not be able to migrate to cooler latitudes or elevations. [1]
> I also wonder why none of the engineers suggested opening the windows instead of producing less heat.
Not an option. Except for the sunlight streaming in, our planet is a closed system. A spaceship[2] may be a better analogy.
[1] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/09/130915-clima... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth
Actually, it is an option. Either we can take CO2 out of the atmosphere and put it back underground where it came from; or we could start doing climate engineering to increase the reflectivity of Earth (less sunlight in), using water vapor clouds at low altitude or aerosols at high altitude; or we could put up a big shade in space between us and the sun.
Are those expensive and difficult things? Definitely. But all of them are possible.
Maybe they aren't exact with their knowledge. Maybe even it'll be more out of control than even they are able to forecast.
What then?
While climate science is a constant exercise in refinement (as all science should be), it's not a bunch of wild-ass guesses.
I don't know of anyone who claims there is anything specifically meaningful about 400 vs 410pmm, it is simply a new record.
I like this analogy because it highlights the wrongheadedness of climate change denial. There is a key difference, however: to get the dangerous apartment building fixed involves a reasonable number of people and a reasonable amount of money, no matter how big or how unsound the building is.
Stopping -- let alone reversing -- climate change is orders of magnitude more difficult than that. It involves the coordination of billions of people in a task that goes against their short-term, individual interest. This is very hard to do [0].
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-liberta...
It is also extremely dangerous. Most folks engaging in the climate change debate are implicitly doing a cost-benefit analysis of action vs non-action (action implying governmental action). Non-action may involve rising temperatures and extreme weather. Or perhaps extreme whether has nothing to do with carbon emissions - consensus doesn't yet exist on that point. Or clean energy innovation like solar will become more cost effective and the problem will solve itself. Action on curbing emissions - e.g. carbon tax - could mitigate the problem. Or perhaps climate change inertia is too strong for anything less than complete ban of CO2 emissions to make any sort of dent. And instead something like a carbon tax could, for example, 1) slow down economies in developed nations, which means 2) lower purchasing power for people in those countries, leading to 3) fewer imports from developing countries, which further leads to 4) lower standard of living for folks in developing countries, including people starving to death.
So "climate change denial" is a strawman. Skepticism is not a monolith. These are complex issues.
AGW is multivariate. If temperature is rising, how much do we expect it to continue rising? If rising temperatures are due at least in part to CO2 emissions, then to what degree? How do we choose between the various complex climate models (indeed part of the reason we were so ill-prepared for Hurricane Katrina was that nobody considered the model that predicted the trajectory it ended up taking)? Are rising temperatures invariably bad? What if higher temperatures and CO2 increase forestation? Or maybe it increases biodiversity of harmful things, like diseases? Or maybe it decreases those things? Do CO2 emissions affect weather patterns? How so? Do we get more hurricanes? Do emissions affect water availability? How about acid rain? etc.
But let me try to answer them as best as I can.
> If temperature is rising, how much do we expect it to continue rising?
It will keep rising as long as we keep generating CO2.
> If rising temperatures are due at least in part to CO2 emissions, then to what degree?
Stop the "if", "at least", and "in part". Rising temperatures are due to man-made CO2, period. Other causes are rounding errors.
> How do we choose between the various complex climate models (indeed part of the reason we were so ill-prepared for Hurricane Katrina was that nobody considered the model that predicted the trajectory it ended up taking)?
You mean those that say the sea level would rise 50 cm, 1 m, and 2.5 m?
You don't have to know future trajectory of hurricanes in order to build a hotel in Miami. You just assume that a hurricane will hit it at some point in the future and plan for it.
> Are rising temperatures invariably bad?
Non sequitur. Of course it's not invariably bad. Some people made a fortune with the dot-com bubble, 2008 housing crisis, invasion on Iraq, you name it. The Earth has 7 billion people: basically no disaster will be invariably bad for all of them.
> What if higher temperatures and CO2 increase forestation?
...and?
> Or maybe it increases biodiversity of harmful things, like diseases?
Tropical diseases will most likely spread further, so yes.
> Or maybe it decreases those things?
I can't see how, but if that happens, well good. There must be at least a few positive effects of climate change. (E.g., the opening of the arctic shipping route.)
> Do CO2 emissions affect weather patterns?
Well sure.
> How so?
We're still figuring this out, I'm afraid.
> Do we get more hurricanes?
Probably.
> Do emissions affect water availability?
Yes. Google "receding glaciers".
> How about acid rain?
...how about acid rain what?
I'm surprised that you think "NK having or not having nuclear weapons" is a binary choice, after all. Does it have uranium or plutonium? How much? Is it reliable? Where can it be delivered? Would China back up NK or not? Is it invariably bad? What if it acts as a deterrent against regional war? Does it affect economy of North or South Korea? Does it affect the politics of South Korea? Will we get more military conflict or less? What about Japan?
Regulation is bad, taxation is theft, no government is good is all you're going to get from him.
If you can believe his words (doubtful), the current President of the US is one of these.
-- ISAAC ASIMOV
Why is it okay to be skeptical of what meteorologists are predicting, but not okay to be skeptical of what climate scientists are predicting?
It's one thing to be skeptical of sciences that have stood the test of time like civil engineering and quite another to be skeptical of climate science, whose models are being updated annually in response to the discovery of new variables.
Note: I am not saying we should be climate change deniers, only that we should not blindly accept apocalyptic predictions as the gospel truth of what is going to happen to the planet if we fail to mitigate CO2.
Because you can predict that a slot machine will be a net profit maker for a casino without being able to predict the result of the next pull of the lever.
Of course climate models are continually updated as technology and data improves (as are the models used in structural engineering). That is how science works. Historically, though, the mainstream (IPCC) models have actually performed quite well.
Precipitation forecasts are usually accurate several days out and temperature forecasts are good a week or two out, in my experience. If I want to know if it's going to rain on Saturday I check the weather on Thursday and it's usually right. When there's a big storm comin', a local meteorologist does rolling updates with the latest data and it usually gives a consistent but evolving picture that matches up with what actually happens.
Are people disappointed by this? What are you wanting out of your weathermen that you're not getting?
I know the weatherman used to be a joke, back before satellites and computers, but I swear the cliche only survives as part of climate change denialism.
The overwhelming consensus of experts is that its going to have an enormous impact. It's still worth studying when, how and where its effects will materialize first but that does not excuse inaction.
How soon? Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" predicted apocalyptic consequences in as few as 10 years. 10 years later and it turns out the documentary had tons of erroneous assumptions. Oops.
> That's akin to demanding that all engineers accurately predict which piece of the roof will collapse first, where the pieces will hit the floor, how many pieces it will break up into and on which date.
If your model has poor predictive power, it's not a complete model. Engineers can accurately predict lots of things using standard models - for example whether a building will be able to withstand shear wind forces. Climate science cannot predict anything except "it will be disastrous with apocalyptic proportions at some non-deterministic point in the future" How is that a useful prediction beyond generating hype?
In a couple of lifetimes, which is still too soon, as reversing the trend will likely take far more effort. For a graphic description of how far we're venturing out of what we're used to as a species, see https://xkcd.com/1732/
> If your model has poor predictive power, it's not a complete model - for example whether a building will be able to withstand shear wind forces.
To continue with the analogy, we know the building can't withstand shear wind forces. We just don't know exactly how and where the pieces will land.
In the meantime, other factors will contribute to our downfall much faster than climate change ever could such as increasing societal divisiveness over politics, decline in nuclear families as the basic societal unit, selfishness, and abandonment of religion.
What evidence are you basing that on?
A new problem is discovered (i.e. the earth can't sustain the current birth rate forever). The problem is hyped up[1] in an effort to find a solution (abortions -> Zero Population Growth[2]). Many in the science community buy into the hype, crunch numbers, and make dire predictions. Public policies in the 70s change in response to this evidence. ZP deniers are shamed for having large families and rejecting scientific consensus. Decades pass and the predictions don't happen. People start examining the evidence with more scrutiny and with observed data in hand retroactively debunk a lot of the assumptions made. The hype dies and everyone forgets it ever happened. So I'm sorry if I don't instantly drop everything to make the hype of the day my top priority, but a lot of hyped problems don't last more than a few decades. If climate change is still being seriously discussed in 2036 (30 years after "An Inconvenient Truth" was published) maybe I'll take it a little more seriously.
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v7/n 3/full/nclimate3224.html?WT.feed_name=subjects_climate-sciences
Climate models are actually better than meteorological models, but they predict things decades out.
The analogy is that weather is extremely complicated, so much so that meteorologists struggle to predict what will happen in the next 12 hours. If climate is an order of magnitude more complicated than weather, why should the predictions suddenly be much more accurate? My local meteorologists get the prediction right maybe 70% of the time. You're telling me the apocalyptic climate predictions approach 100% accuracy and that I have no room for skepticism?
For the same reason a doctor can't predict if an individual patient will have a heart attack, but a public health researcher can accurately predict the overall rate of heart attacks in a population.
Forecasting weather is trying to predict a single event. That is by definition harder than predicting a trend of averages.
(That's just an example for your example. I don't have an issue with structural engineers or anything.)
To me, the notion of getting the entire planet to reduce their CO2 production is laughable. People are still sold as slaves and dying of starvation in some parts of the world.
If global warming becomes a threat to humanity the only realistic solution is technological. It sounds like we already have the tech needed to cool the Earth as much as we want but we're still making a ton of noise about the impossible mission of controlling global carbon emissions.
I don't think anyone can deny that it's possible to cool the Earth by putting stuff in the upper atmosphere because we've already seen it happen during recorded history.
Respectfully, is this a mindset you apply to other aspects of your life?
Let's say you leased an apartment in a large building, and after an inspection, numerous structural engineers said the building was in danger of collapse. Would you say "I don't know much about engineering, but I'm skeptical it's that bad", or would you demand the building management take steps to correct the issues?