Global warming

[Don]

There are two things that really annoy me about this. First is that people call it "Climate Change" over Global Warming. By definition the only way "Climate Change" can be wrong is if the climate doesn't change. Since everyone knows the climate is in constant flux the chance of it not changing is next to zero, so basically no matter what happens you can say it was "Climate Change". I know Climate Change really means (Significant) Climate Change but it seems like the whole thing just has so many way you can weasel out of anything that may actually happen.

The second issue is when people tell you some places are colder people say "Global Warming means it can get colder too!" (assuming they didn't rename the movement to Climate Change which covers colder too). Well Global Warming predicts more extreme weather, but overall things are supposed to get hotter or it wouldn't be GLOBAL WARMING in the first place. For example if you live in Siberia you'd probably expect better times ahead (which may suggest why Russia isn't too concerned over GW).

I heard a meteorlogist made a bet that the global temperature will be cooler 10 years from now and nobody (of any significance) took that effort. I see the same old 'long term versus short term' and excuses, as if they're already prepared to lose this if someone actually was willing to come out and make a stand. According to the data every year since around 2000 has been the hottest year ever, so it seems to me that if you really believe that data is not just a fluke but a trend then betting that the temperature 10 years from now is going to be hotter than today is a pretty sure thing. After all if you forecast +3 degrees in 100 years, it'd be pretty hard to imagine the temperature not go up somehow after 10 years. I realize that this in itself doesn't prove anything because no matter what happens both sides can say that year ws some kind of anomaly and blame it on El Nino or something, but to me if the science for global warming is indisputable than you shouldn't be afraid to say that the global temperature will be hotter 10 years from now. I think GW is exaggerated but if someone gives me 1 to 1 odds, I'd put money on global temperature being hotter 10 years from now because it does look like there's a trend, and yet nobody reputable seems to be willing to do the same.

[Julius Seeker]

Global Warming is certainly occurring; the greenhouse effect is a fact - and that leads to global warming as civilization increases greenhouse gasses. This has also been leading to the breakup of the polar ice caps and rising sea levels... Which I have whitnessed here, tides are coming up higher now than when I was younger.

[Flip]

The world changes and sometimes the animals on it effect that.

Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases, we would fuck up something else im sure. Why not just let the world change and adapt to it. Even before human times the Sahara was under water and now its not. We shouldnt think we can take a picture of the world as it was 1,000 years ago and keep it like that.

[Don]

Well saying 'change is bad' implies we're somehow at some kind of perfect equilibirum and any deviation from it is 'bad'. If you take a view like that and the temperature got lower is that bad too because it wasn't the same as what it was before? Who gets to decide the current temperature or even a range of it is 'perfect'? Guys living in Siberia would probably be thrilled with Global Warming. Given that climate is pretty much always changing, it's either got to get hotter or colder anyway, and I don't get how people can basically say 'hot = bad', so if it gets colder it's good? Or maybe if temperature stays still it's good? But you know the latter can't actually happen since climate is constantly changing.

The problem I have with GW is people tend to lump any generic problem into it. If there was no GW people living in third world countries will still be facing floods, shortage of food, widespread diseases, and a bunch of other stuff. It's probably not helping that we got GW but life in some places is going to be pretty miserable no matter what at least within our current technological limitations. I really hate how the guys always sound like if you can stop GW we'll return to Eden and everything will be great. That's just not how the world works. Life on Earth has been pretty miserable for most of civilization history.

[Kupek]

Weather is always changing. Climate is not, necessarily. That is, weather refers to instantaneous state, and climate refers to the aggregate trends in a particular area. I want to say that "climate change" is just a euphemism for "global warming," but then I realized it is a more accurate term. The average global temperature is rising, but what's most important about what that does to climate. That is, it's not so important that it's a bit hotter one day than it would be otherwise in some places, but that that effect gets compounded.

Flip, the point is that we are changing the world, and it's difficult to know what will actually happen. The world doesn't care too much, but those of us who have to live on it will care. The changes that happen could have a negative impact on our species.

[Shrinweck]

It seems like the weather is building up to more and more intensely catastrophic events and I don't think it's going to end in the world passing a little gas as much as shitting all over our lives.

[Don]

How can climate NOT change? You get something like El Nino and stuff gets warm for several years. That's not climate change? There was the Little Ice Age around medieval era. There's a clear warming trend if you measure climate coming out of the Ice Age. Of course you can say Climate Change really means (Significant) Climate Change but what is significant? We're setting a lot of new records for temperature but our record of accurate weather measurement only goes back a hundred years if that, and we know Earth has been a lot colder and warmer both ways so it'd really not be that surprising to find that climate may trend toward colder or hotter than the relatively short time we measured.

And of course Climate Change is an euphemism for GW, otherwise why don't people who champion Climate Change ever predict the earth get cooler except for the guys who predict the gulfstream stop or something drastic like that? The problem I have with the movement is that by defining your position as 'Change' it implies the only way you can be wrong is if things didn't change. If it was hotter this year than last year obviously you're correct. If it was colder this year than last year it's still a change. So the only way you'd be wrong is if nothing changed at all! And yet I don't see anyone reputable from the GW camp take the bet that it will be hotter 10 years from now compared to today. Looking at the model some people predict, it should be inconceiveable that it'd not be hotter 10 years from now compared to today if you're to believe every year we're setting record for hottest year ever. Sure I realize no matter what happens both sides have ways to weasel out, but it seems like assuming the temperature trends are at all believeable, you'd definitely take the bet that it'll be hotter 10 years from now compared to today.

And yet despite all these prediction about certain doom from increase in temperature 30-50 years from now, nobody is saying 'it will definitely be hotter 10 years from now' because that's, er, weather, but I'm pretty sure if you add 20 more years it'd be apocalyse.

The problem with doing anything about GW is that either you get:

1. Abandon all hope, atone for your sins, put the sum total of humanity's power against and it might not even work, but we still got to do it.

2. 25 easy ways to save the planet.

I'm pretty sure Thomas Friedman is a strong supporter of Global Warming (he's certainly huge on anti-oil), and I don't really agree with him but he has a point about the a Revolution isn't going to be easy or painless. There will be blood and people will probably die from it. Now climate is very complicated so even if you say we expect to lose $X for not doing anything about climate change and if we spend $Y we can mitigate this much disaster, and that may end up just being as reliable as asking a random guy on the Internet, but you got to start somewhere. Right now most of the solutions I see dealing with climate change hasn't even pretend they're more sophiscated than asking a random guy on the Internet. It's either hopelessly optimistic or put 100% of GDP to avert certain doom now.

[Don]

It seems like the weather is building up to more and more intensely catastrophic events and I don't think it's going to end in the world passing a little gas as much as shitting all over our lives.

What makes you say that? There are always mega earthquakes, hurricane, and whatever going on every year. I think events are getting increasingly catastrophic because you have more people living everywhere now so the damage is much greater. The air quality in Western world is better today than it was 20 years ago. Now life may suck outside the developing world, but they've always been pretty bad. Africa was suffering long before global warming became a movement. I'd say overpopulation is the biggest problem facing humanity as a whole and that really doesn't have anything to do with weather, though certainly having too many people means each time a natural disaster strikes you end up with record breaking number of deaths since you have a record breaking number of people around.

[Julius Seeker]

It's more than just global warming. Greenhouse gasses, and the other gasses that accompany them, are often toxic. Many of the processes that add to global warming, also cause great amounts of pollution in the soil and in the water.

Over-population is directly tied to all of this. You can start with Thomas Malthus over 200 years ago. What Malthus doesn't take into account is greenhouse gasses, and the effect it has on the polar ice caps where large amounts of water are locked in. Much of the fertile lands are those which are very low in sea level; with our current rising sea levels (approximately 1 cm every 2.5-3 years and accelerating), vast amounts of the land that the billions require for food are going to vanish. Malthus simply predicted that population growth would outstrip food production, and didn't consider that pollutants in the soils and waters would poison crops, nor that expanding desert regions, and rising sea levels would flood the lands - thus actually reducing food production. People believe too strongly in their right to have large families, that limiting children by imposing economic sanctions is a bad thing - even though it might be the only real way we can prevent disaster.... less population = less pollution. Right now, the peoples of certain countries breed far too much; and it is not so much our countries as it is those in India and Southern Asia where all of these starvation issues are occurring.

We have already seen Malthusian disasters in certain areas of the world, decades ago... Misery, starvation due to overpopulation.

What happens with a greater population and significantly less land to grow crops on? What happens to the natural world?

[Shrinweck]

Well at the very least at a certain point our government can stop paying people to not grow food.

[Don]

Malthus didn't predict the existence of fertilizers. Without it there would never be enough food to support a population of 6 billion, global warming or no global warming. I really don't see why people take his prediction which is basically common sense ("if people grow faster than we get food then we're doomed") when he failed to see the breakthrough in technology that allowed food to grow as fast (if not faster) than population growth. Why does the amount of arable land have to go down as a function of temperature? Sure at extreme temperatures you can't farm, but is the current temperature on earth optimal for growing food? Who figures that kind of stuff out? There's no doubt if you let it go too high it can't be good but there's no indication current temperature is some kind of paradise. Sure if the average temperature by 5 degrees anybody can tell you probably can't grow as much food but that's an extreme case. All this stuff is very hard to predict and it seems like people only pick the easy stuff like 'if temperature goes way up things will be bad', but no one really wants to tackle a question like 'what happens if temperature goes up by 0.1 degrees', probably because the answer might be 'absolutely nothing meaningful', or it might not be, but you probably won't get funds for predicting stuff like that.