How to argue with a global warming "skeptic"

Well, like I said, after 40 years they should have bloody well come up with a few good ideas by now. In fact there were plenty of good ideas advanced 40 years ago, but nobody wanted to listen to them because they didn’t involve the World Bank making large loans.

Wind farms and the like are all well and good, but what about the rest of the planet where (contrary to left-wing opinion) a lot of pollution problems are festering? They can’t afford $1m a pop for wind turbines. The solution is not to give them $1m so they can buy a wind turbine (or a new Mercedes, as the case may be), but to get them doing other things that are cheap and will produce a large return on investment.

Wind power has been a tremendous success, the cost of wind power is actually lower than nuclear and often coal. And when you take into effect that it doesn’t emit noxious chemicals nor is there a danger of radioactivity or explosion it’s a massive win.

Solar seems to be on a similar track.

The big challenge now seems to be energy storage and distribution across existing grids.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t look at reducing energy demand, but renewable power production has been able to stand on its own two feet.

Solar, likewise. It’s about half- to one-third the price of fossil fuel, depending on application.

And therein lies the problem. The people who control oil supplies (especially in third-world countries) are making an eye-watering amount of money from selling it. The last thing they want is for the plebs to have access to wealth-producing technology that will kill that oil revenue stream.

No. That’s what the politicians think. All that does is increase the end-user cost. The big challenge is to get people building different economic systems around virtually-free solar and wind power, which has characteristics different from fossil-fuel power and demands different infrastructure and a different mindset.

Well I don’t know how we power our homes at night or in the times when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow if we can’t get cheaper storage or better distribution methods?

Anyway , look at this projection from Australia below.

The big problem as far as I can see for worldwide emissions is can renewables or a mix of renewables and nuclear or lower CO2 fuels make a dent in the REALLY big energy hog nations such as US, China and India?

Australia …Aiming for 75% renewables by 2040.

This is what I mean about a change of mindset. 200 years ago, people dealt with darkness by going to sleep, or making their own entertainment. Now we think it’s normal to stay awake until 1am watching Netflix, simply because we can.

In fact keeping the lights on is easy enough, if that’s what you want. However, you need to implement demand billing so that people who do want that pay for the cost of storage that they’ve incurred. Storage doubles or triples the cost of solar, depending on how you do it.

Experts have been proven wrong. I don’t assume ‘plebs’ don’t get it. I know ‘experts’ don’t know what size hammer to use to get it into thick skulls.

Supposedly lighting energy demand has dropped by a massive amount due to switches to LEDs. Now I’ve not looked into it but that’s what I heard has happened in some places.

Seems you may have a thick skull alright.:joy: Experts have commented on it but they are always wrong I guess.

You’re assuming I’m agin ya. I’m fer ya. Your approach is intimidating.

You’re being sarcastic. I thought you were channeling Rowland :sunglasses:

Coincidentally, I’m watching James May’s ‘Big Ideas - Power to the people’ right now.

Do I come across as intimidating? Mea culpa.

Anne Coulter-esque, yes.

Do you all believe in the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

Any supporter of the global warming hypothesis must read this.

20-pg PDF, but maybe 15 pages or less of reading.

Richard Lindzen held MIT chair of Atmospheric Physics for 30 years - that’s longer than some of your ages.
Author of 200 papers on meterology and climatology and member of US National Academy of Sciences.
So, he knows more about climatology than all of us combined as well as all the climate warming people added together.

If you do not accept what he explains so clearly in layperson’s terms, then… oh well… maybe “The Evidence” at the bottom of page 8 is too much for you to handle after years of reading emotional/political forecasts.

As he aptly puts it:
“…scientific illiterate people seem incapable of distinguishing global warming of climate from temperature extremes due to weather.”

“Thus we will continue to benefit from the one thing that can be clearly attributed to elevated carbon dioxide: namely, its effective role as a plant fertilizer, and reducer of the drought vulnerability of plants.”

(Side note: I support all forms of alternative energy, recycling, etc. that certainly help our world.)

Isn’t all this discussion a bit meaningless, though? From the point of the leadership of any nation, I would be interested mainly in the fact that (a) many countries are suffering from bad air (mostly this), bad water, etc., and (b) as a result of a, these countries with large populations must seek alternatives to coal, internal combustion engines, etc. Therefore, there is HUGE business potential here for any nation. If the government doesn’t back companies getting involved, they will be at significant disadvantage over countries based in other nations that do receive immense help from their governments.

Clear warming trend over decades and four hottest years in a row is called ‘extreme weather’?

Interesting.

Did you see the chart of the trend from 1980-1 2010, it is going down. Did you read it all of it?
Do you understand it?
He is a climatologist and meterologist. 30 years as Chair at MIT, that’s half your life or more. You cannot argue with him. Stop being emotional about the subject.

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You just said people can’t differentiate between extreme weather and climate change.

They can. Easily.

Four years in a row historical record temps (with this year being a 50% change or more of being another record breaker) and warming trend over many many decades and one that is accelerating as the ocean stops absorbing so much of the heat.

see, you’re emotional. come back after reading the whole article and debate his findings, not my comments

You haven’t attempted to debate his speech.

I’m stating FACTS.
Are you saying it’s not a fact that the last decade has seen many years of historically high record temps?

Are you saying it’s not a f@ct that CO2 levels are the highest they have been in millions of years ?

This guy lindzen even claims that CO2 is not a pollutant. He’s a crank.