LOL
A few of my brain cells just died of despair watching that.
How to argue with a global warming "skeptic"
morran01
#844
More stupid than placing a man on the moon within 10 years in the 70s with a computer equivalent to what we have today as pocket calculators?
I doubt it wouldnât be possible to make us zero carbon within 12 years if there was the will
Brianjones
#845
Politically impossible. The man on the moon mission didnât leave Americans without a job.
To do it millions would be put out of work in some areas.
Food costs could well rocket.
The US doesnât have good social welfare so it just wouldnât fly. Even now with historically low unemployment they have a conservative leader.
However itâs great to have a target. Some countries such as the UK have ambitious goals for a non carbon fuelled electrical grid and already made good progress.
A lot of the energy demand has been shifted to Asia though.
I remember reading that costs go up a lot at a certain percentage of renewables. Thatâs due to the need to change the grid, add back up power, trying to provide energy to places with little renewable resources, provided sustained power to industrial usersâŚ
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Vay
#846
I doubt youâll read this:
How the Polar Vortex is Connected to Human-Caused Climate Change
âŚbut in any case, this meme from last winter is the ultimate shutter-upper to science denialists on the topic of extreme winter weather:
shiadoa
#847
I doubt you will read this Vay 
Is it all wrong?
http://www.thegwpf.org/patrick-moore-should-we-celebrate-carbon-dioxide/
Mick
#848
@vay, and with due respect I think this sentence sums it up.
I issue a challenge to anyone to provide a compelling argument that counters my analysis of the historical record and the prediction of CO2 starvation based on the 150 million year trend
Actually much of what he says makes sense, I also understand the politicization of in this case GreenPeace, he is not the only scientist to leave, I canât remember the name but another left over genetically modified foods, which is an area GreenPeace might be very wrong on, I donât know, havenât looked into it too deeply but realize the potential benefits.
150 million year trend in a place where there were no SUVâs is very different to a 50 year trend. Urmmm about 0.000003% of the timescale.
Yes, more happened over that timescale, but we are talking about quick and rapid change here.
finley
#849
Correct - the grid and modern industry evolved together, such that theyâre now pretty well matched. The source and the load are working together in an economically-efficient manner.
Solar and wind is fundamentally different. Although itâs very predictable, its output doesnât match what weâve become accustomed to doing with electrical power. Yes, you can theoretically solve this with ginormous banks of batteries, hydro, and the like, but a much better method is to charge people according to instantaneous power availability (âdemand billingâ). Theyâve been mumbling about this for years, and I was involved with a company about 15 years ago trying to develop the infrastructure for this, but the power retailers are fundamentally not interested. It turns out that inefficiency makes the largest profits. I can recall one particular guy (a bigwig at a well-known UK energy company) basically shrugging and saying âwhy would we want to do what youâre suggesting? We can fuck the consumer over today and tomorrow with the system weâve got now, and thatâs good enough for usâ.
If the leaders of third-world countries had any brains, theyâd be building this sort of next-generation infrastructure (and industry) right now, and leaving the old economies in the dust: solar plus demand billing is inherently cheaper than fossil fuels, by a big margin, and it can only get cheaper still. But they donât, so they wonât.
Vay
#850
Ugh, if youâre going to challenge me to read something, could it be something other than a speaker at a GWPF event?
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is the United Kingdomâs most high-profile climate denier group. It opposes action to mitigate climate change.
Sourcewatch - the Global Warming Policy Foundation
Basically what we have here is yet another expert (in this case not even that) in a field other than climatology, spouting off. This guy may know his business and his astronomy, just like Scott Adams knows his software engineering (and cartoon drawing), Jordan Peterson knows his psychology and Freeman Dyson knows his physics. But what none of them seems to know is Feynmanâs olâ first principle of skepticism, which is (paraphrasing) not to let yourself fool yourself, yourself being the easiest person to fool. Experts in one field who try to practice genuine skepticism, give the benefit of the doubt to other experts in other fields. If they do otherwise, they get sent to the corner with big dunce hats on their heads for letting their egos get carried away.
Now in case Iâm going to be accused of some formal fallacy (while making an informal argument), please feel free to choose one point at a time from that massive Gish gallop and I will respond as best I can.
finley
#851
This is actually a manifestation of the Dunning and Kruger effect, whereby someone highly qualified in one field believes (wrongly) that his expertise translates into another. He has some pretty bizarre views in other areas:
I pointed out that chlorine is one of the elements in the Periodic Table, one of the building blocks of the Universe and the 11th most common element in the Earthâs crust. I argued the fact that chlorine is the most important element for public health and medicine. Adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health and the majority of our synthetic medicines are based on chlorine chemistry.
If chlorine werenât in the periodic table, thatâd make it kryptonite or unobtainium, and I donât think even Greenpeace think that. The fact that itâs naturally abundant (in stable compounds, note) doesnât mean itâs a good idea to drink it [naturalistic fallacy].
What rather shocked me about that speech is that he clearly doesnât know how science works. The anthropogenic hypothesis is the best fit for the observations. It may not be correct, but it remains a better fit than any competing hypothesis. We therefore accept it as good-enough until it is shown to be false.
Energy/development policy is a whole different issue in any case, only tenuously related to the truth (or otherwise) of the AGW hypothesis. Conflating the two is the biggest mistake the deniers are making.
shiadoa
#852
Finley , good points you raise and I accept the fallacies in some of the argument ;there is a belief that â skepticsâ do not wish to adapt in practical ways to contribute, individually at least, to affirmative action . Solar , recycling and reducing packaging , conservation ⌠so many things are common sense . I worry about the direction we take ⌠EV,s for instance certainly take out pollutants , but in terms of overall effect , seem to be stage 2 . That energy needs to be produced in a much cleaner way as the first priority . Maybe it will be one day . I guess I have seen so many â statisticsâ manipulated and weighted to suit agendas , it makes one doubt more . The people who predicted the world ending 30 years ago , 20 years ago , 10 years ago , didnât help the science much . At the end of the day itâs exactly the people with less scientific knowledge, that need to be convinced . Scepticism is not all bad . Sorry typed an a phone .
Mick
#853
Scepticism is fine, most people i think realize the need for the right to give up the ghost of anthopogenic global warming is not real. On the other side and I think itâs made even more clear by AOCâs recent GND, is that it is used to push a socialist agenda.
If I said I wanted to tackle the problem of Global warming by making everyone wear a party hat and eat bubble gum ice cream every Wednesday, people would rightly call my suggestion out as having nothing to do with tackling global warming.
AOCâs new GND, has universal healthcare as a bullet point on a long list of other lofty claims like âjobs for everyoneâ and benefits for everyone that canât or doesnât want to work. That has nothing to do with climate and everything to do with the structure of a society.
Maybe the problem is we are leaving it to the politicians to prioritize and decide what should or should not be done or what can be done most efficiently. Because their goals donât seem to be actually tackling Climate change itself. Theirs is shaping society in a fashion they deem most acceptable to themselves.
Brianjones
#855
RIP
BBC News - Climate change: Death of the âgrandfather of climate scienceâ
In 1975, he published a paper in the journal Science that had a profound effect on thinking about the connection between carbon dioxide and temperatures around the world.