You can watch the important new climate change film, "Time to Choose"

From Oscar-winning filmmaker Charles Ferguson.

and what are these “superior alternatives”
exactly?

same as always… respect, recycle, stay humble & fit… healthy mind in a healthy body, fatso :stuck_out_tongue:

The whole thing regarding climate change warnings has resorted to “if nothing is done now, then we’re all going to die”.

Keep in mind that these are some of the same people who have been warning of impending catastrophe for decades with none of those predictions panning out.

They’re no better than the doomsayers nowadays. Doesn’t mean they’re wrong though.

No one is saying the climate isn’t changing, the disagreement is how much of it is natural and how much of it is man-made.

Don’t forget that there are a massive number of variables on both sides. The climate science scene seems to be a mess right now with people on both sides of the debate resorting to ad-hominims, namecalling, public shaming, and shaky theories.

In my view, it’s possible that everyone making a prediction for massive warming or cooling right now could wind up wrong.

I can not believe you can be so simple. “pan out”, who says it has not panned out? That’s what you say. I get so angry when I hear people who do not take this seriously.
This is not the nice clean world it was and it did not take it long to get this way. In the big picture it is happening fast. If the changes continue we will be in big trouble. Id like to just smack you.
We need all the clean water we can get but nooo we are still screwing it up. It is smokey and the air does not smell fresh.
People say " Oh the melting ice is just normal for every million years or so" Well it was a one freaking big coincidence it is happening when they said.
Ace put your head back in the ground.
What is your motivation? What do you care? If Im wrong Im just a dumb ass. If you are wrong we are screwed. I think we are screwed. I have a motivation. You have none. You just want to fuss about people who want to play it safe, save the world. who cares about that? smack yourself.
“none of those predictions panning out” lots of bad things have happened. They do not have TV in Kansas?

In the 1960’s, scientists warned of a potentially apocalyptic scenario where the human population would spiral out of control, population growth in reality is actually slowing down.

In the 1970’s, scientists warned of an impending ice age due to human activity, that never happened.

In the 1980’s, scientists warned of catastrophic warming that should’ve occurred by now, but the raw data shows that it never happened (depending on whether you believe the major adjustments to even very recent data, if even recent measurements have to be adjusted by such an amount why trust it at all).

In the early 2000’s, a prediction was made that snow would pretty much become a thing of the past in the UK and perhaps many other areas (which should’ve occurred by now), nothing of the sort is being proven as true.

Several years later, scientists warned of catastrophic events that would kill billions of people by 2012, nothing of the sort has occurred and agricultural areas failed to literally burn up as predicted (which was supposed to have triggered that massive human die-off).

Also, regarding melting ice, the same scientists have stated that the arctic should have had no summer ice since a few years back, it hasn’t even come close yet, but the convenient thing is that they can make anything and everything that’s happening in terms of weather and trends fit their narrative so they can say they were right the whole time.

Not true. The scientific community is pretty clear on the mechanisms involved at least to the point where we can figure out the culprit. Warming via increase in CO2 output not only makes testable predictions that global temperatures will rise but what pattern that warming will take via a process called fingerprinting. We have pretty good idea of what causes historical climate change patterns ( periodic changes in the earths orbit, changes in the suns output) and we are able to measure where we are with these inputs.
We also have several fairly accurate if indirect ways of measuring what amount of the increase in CO2 comes from burning fossil fuels vs natural sources.

This is a talking point in the public debate not the scientific debate (at least not really since the late 1980’s). Where there is legitimate scientific disagreement however is how sensitive the climate system is to an increase in CO2 with estimates between 1.4 and about 10 degrees centigrade in temperature per doubling of CO2 with most of the estimates coming in around 3 degrees.

Again this is a feature of the public debate not the scientific one. There are environmental groups who will take the worst case and run with it using shitty methodology and contrarians who will to you that burning fossil fuels are good for us. It just so happens that consensus among experts (with a handful of exceptions that get trotted out, particularly by the right wing media) falls much closer to what the environmentalists are saying.
[edit] shorter more concise talk by the same author[/edit]

I consider this a pretty good primer on the topic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXaruC4vJCU

On the flip side, there are many other scientists who disagree who are either…

-Censored
-Kicked out of the community
or
-Bullied into silence

The people who get this treatment are not dumb either and actually do their own exhaustive, peer-reviewed research, and this is something that is plaguing the world of science in general (the various scientific organizations along with the universities only accepting a single point of view and not allowing any contrarian studies).

It’s ironic to be honest, many people online who oppose even the most basic censorship (seeing is as a black & white issue) are absolutely okay with it if it’s within this area. The fact is, there is so much crap surrounding some of these fields that it can be hard to find the information that is actually sound and accurate. I just think there is definitely something wrong with a view that prominently bandies about a derogatory label for those who disagree (a label that even the scientists endorse).

yes but only since the end of 1990’s, we are still looking towards a population peak of between 9 and 11 billion. This will still present considerable challenges in the coming century. Catastrophic maybe not, (If you care about megafauna in Africa and Asia then you might think so) but still a significant problem that will bite us in the ass if we don’t collectively plan for.

see the video I linked on my last post.

Not true, As I understand it the predictions then are pretty close to what they are now (an increase of 0.1 degrees centigrade per decade). Which is pretty close to what is observed, the 90’s more than predicted the 00’s less and currently everything is track. That adds up to .25 degrees since 1990 which isn’t that bad, 2 degrees is considered the level where it won’t be so bad. 4 degrees is around the point where things could get catastrophic. On top of that we have to be careful of tipping points.

I don’t even know where to start with that one, Do you have a source? You seem to be confusing scientists with some sort of 2012 new age doomsday cult.

The artic ice volume has been dropping dramatically and fairly consistently in recent decades and isn’t really showing any signs of recovery. It might not be ice free yet, but to say that because there is not no ice that there aren’t signs of a serious problem is just pants on head retarded.

This just isn’t how science works. Publishing peer reviewed research in the relevant field is what makes us concider you an expert in that field. There are a handful of contrarians in this catagory, Linzden and Spencer for example.
There are orders of magnitude more experts publishing peer reviewed research that indicates that anthropogenic global warming is a significant problem.
The Journals that publish peer reviewed research are looking for material with an impact factor which means that if you have something that bucks the status quo that is sufficiently well researched then it will be published. (A paper proposing an alternative hypothesis that explains more of the current observations is going to be way more interesting to the readership of a scientific journal than the 1000th paper confirming that AGW is likely going to be a significant problem).

It’s ironic to be honest, many people online who oppose even the most basic censorship (seeing is as a black & white issue) are absolutely okay with it if it’s within this area. The fact is, there is so much crap surrounding some of these fields that it can be hard to find the information that is actually sound and accurate. I just think there is definitely something wrong with a view that prominently bandies about a derogatory label for those who disagree (a label that even the scientists endorse).

Which documents do you think are Sensored? Censored scientific papers that would make peer review would be a rather serious matter.

The sea ice volume is actually a bit higher than it was a few years ago (bottomed out in 2010-2012, but right now there appears to be no ongoing death spiral)

I know that 5 years don’t make a trend, but the short-term pace is dramatically different from the 5 year period before.

Also, for a good level-headed source without all of the character bashing and mudslinging that’s all over the popular climate blogs on both sides (just hard science), check this site.
http://www.co2science.org/

In it they talk about how a combination of warmer temperatures and higher CO2 levels can actually be good for the planet and good for human civilization. It also has studies on why the problem is not near as bad as it’s made out to be.

Yes surely you are aware that regardless of what the last 5 years is doing that long term trend line is very much in line with the prediction that the Artic sea ice is in serious trouble. The best you can say about the data is that the decline might not be accelerating.

Thankyou I am on the lookout for contrarian sites that aren’t completely toxic.
My counter offer is http://www.realclimate.org mainly because all the articles are written by practising climate scientists and is probably the best place to get the opinions of mainstream climate scientists from the horses mouth.

Remember what I said about there being legitimate discussion on the sensitivity change in temperature per a given increase in CO2. There are a large number of factors (called forcings) that need to be considered. If you concentrate on the negative forcings and ignore the positive forcings you can construct a picture of the future that is quite positive like the one you mention. As you are describing plants do in fact benefit from additional CO2 and temperature but these are small parts of a much bigger picture.
You could also maximise all the positive feedbacks and you would end up with an end of civilisation senario. These are both low probability outcomes. It is vastly more likely that current trends will result in a serious loss of quality of life for most (but not everybody) on this planet - such that the cost not acting will be much smaller than the cost of acting now to try to mitigate some of the impact.

Not only forcings, another major factor to consider is land-use change (for instance, the rate of warming is likely to have been much greater in a rapidly growing urban area than the surrounding countryside, areas deforested for farming tends to be warmer than virgin ground ect…). It is thought that a major contributor to the shrinking snowpack on Africa’s mount Kilimanjaro was not climate change, but the widespread deforestation in that area.

Then you have to factor in land-subsidence and/or slow-motion elevation changes when talking about rising sea levels. For instance the US east coast slowly tipping into the ocean as a counter response to slowly rising elevations in Canada (which exaggerates any effect that sea level rise is having). Various coastal regions elsewhere have also seen elevation loss due to the pumping of groundwater and the draining of marshes (it wasn’t rising sea levels that led to the New Orleans city officials needing pumps to keep the city dry).

Then we have to consider whether the forces causing notable climate variability on other planets is doing the same thing here on Earth (the martian icecaps shrinking ect…).

Woah we’ve got a tough guy over here! Throwing around threats like “smacking”! You’d best be careful or somebody might wallop you for that one!

But really climate change is a thing.

The scientific community agrees on a discernible influence. The left here in the states agrees on “cause” and WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!. This has the opposite effect of creating awareness and you can bet that the left understands that. It’s starting to get to the climatologists and some are speaking out.

Human influence on the climate is being measured. The predictions on the other hand are not. They’re being sold like product with slippery factiods. Sequential calculations and predictions of the future with them is just unscientific. Climate hysteria is a political thing.

Dude that is a forcing. They are all forcings. In this case you are talking about the urban heat island effect and deforestation. The Urban heat Island effect is has a measurable but small effect, deforestation however accounts for IIRC around 40% of human emissions of CO2, and limiting this is considered an important part of mitigating the effects of global warming.

With the current small elevations in sea level change yes but all predictions are that long term these will be swamped by water from melting land ice. Looking at the historical records we can get a pretty reliable 5-7 meters of sea rise for about 1 degree of temperature increase. What we are much less certain about is how long it will take for that change to take place beyond that it will be less than 1000 years (the current resolution we can track these changes in the historical record). We don’t know enough about the dynamics of ice melt on this scale to accurately predict at this point but we are reasonably certain that there will be a point past which events might take centuries to play out but will not be easily reversible even if we do get temperatures down (called a tipping point). We probably won’t know that we have passed a tipping point until it’s too late.

As for other planets in the solar system, It’s unlikely that events on mars are closely related to those here on earth. Though it is worth exploring. There are two reasons I am familiar with. The first is that we have been watching the energy output of the sun with satellites for a few decades now and those don’t show an increase in output.
The second and probably more compelling reason is as I explained before, we don’t just have warming but a very specific pattern of warming, that pattern observed doesn’t match up with increased radiation from an external source any where near as much as it does infra-red heat being trapped in by gasses. Stratospheric cooling is the primary indicator of this but not the only.

Thank you for your reason.

Obviously politics of identity is making this a lot harder than it needs to be both in my country and the USA. Yes there are people on the Left who are kind of on the right side of this debate almost by accident and don’t really understand the issues

This simply isn’t true. Its seems that nobody here is actually familiar with the predictions that were made by the scientific community and for some reason is substituting weird straw man versions of what the predictions are.
Hands up if you have actually read any part of any of the IPPC reports or listened to a climate scientist other than Linzden or Spencer talk about this.

The current observations are very much in line with the running predictions. These predictions are backed by data and probabilistic in nature so you need to think in terms of bell curves. All we can say at this point is that the worst case senario hasn’t played out. This is good but it doesn’t mean that we aren’t in serious trouble.

Sorry Blonder but don’t know what you are talking about. What on earth do you think is happening when we use physics to calculate the position of the a planetary body at a point in the future. What did you think happens when we make scientific observations in medical science.

Obviously the climate system is much more like the later of those two systems and as such we have to be probabilistic about our answers. In medical science we can’t tell you for certain whether the cancer you have will kill you but we can know what your odds of survival statistically are. It’s not so much that climate scientists are giving exact numbers on any of this but all current calculations that serious outcomes are likely, catastrophic outcomes are possible.

Now of course there are people using all this information for political ends but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a serious issue that we should be doing about.