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One Planet Only Forever at 06:59 AM on 2 October 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #39
Re: "How Do We Deal With the Polarization Around Climate Change? by Renee Cho, State of the Planet, Sep 23, 2022.
People like Peter Coleman (I also read his book "The Way Out"), appear to deliberately evade acknowledging the harmful realities of injustice and inequity developed and excused by the American Experiment's selfish competition for perceptions of superiority any way that can be gotten away with. They correctly identify that the GOP, with Gingrich as the poster boy, was the origin of the current political polarization. But then they fail to tag the leadership driving the GOP as the source of the problem. Polarization only requires one side to be denying the ‘evidence-based improving understanding of what is harmful, how to be more helpful and the requirement for significant changes of what has mistakenly become popular and profitable through marketplace failure, including political marketplace failure, to learn about, identify and limit harm done' (Note that Elon Musk claims that the marketplace will determine if Tesla's robot AI developments are ethical - a BBC article "Tesla boss Elon Musk presents humanoid robot Optimus" includes the following "Mr Musk contended that shareholders would determine if the publicly traded company was socially responsible.").
Political promotion of beliefs that are contrary to the best, and constantly improving, understanding based on all of the related evidence can undeniably create very challenging polarization, especially when the learning requires changes of perception regarding what is harmful and, as a result, changes perceptions of who deserves to be considered to be superior.
That evasion of understanding of the harmful selfishness developed in systems like the USA experiment in "the greatness of unfettered freedom" leads researchers to believe things like the following: "Research has found that people usually have one of two basic motives: preventive—those desirous of preventing harm; or promotive—those aimed at fostering tolerance or harmony."
Either of those two attitudes can be claimed to be a person's motivation when 'harmful selfishness and a related resistance to learning to be less harmful and more helpful' is more likely the motivation:
- Personal loss of status or loss of opportunity for higher status by externally forced corrections of beliefs and improved understanding and related restrictions on harmful actions can be considered to be "harming people who would lose if they cannot maintain harmfully incorrect beliefs and are less able to benefit from being more harmful". It can be considered to be even more harmful if the people who benefited from past harm done have to lose some status by being required to help those who were harmed.
- A person wanting to benefit from being harmful can believe they are right to demand compromises of understanding of what is harmful in order to "foster harmony and tolerance". That is like claiming that all beliefs are equally valid and therefore harmful beliefs have to be excused and accepted to show tolerance for, and have harmony with, people who oppose learning about a diversity of important evidence-based matters (learning to change a developed belief or lack of awareness and make amends for related harmful results on a diversity of evidence-based matters like the compendium of understanding regarding the Sustainable Development Goals.
There is little doubt that unjustified resistance to learning, excused by selfishness, is powerfully motivating the polarization on issues related to Climate Science.
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Philippe Chantreau at 03:46 AM on 28 September 2022Why Eco Products aren't Climate Friendly
slumgullioridge,
What you see is the result of several trends. One is the enormous increase in productivity brought by automation and other factos. It is such that pretty much any industry nowadays has the potential to quickly reach production overcapacity, the capability of making far more of its products that the public can absorb.
The public is subjected to the highest possible advertisement and marketing pressures to incite buying, even in the absence of any real need, but that too reaches a limit. Programmed obsolescence is the next solution. Decreasing the quality and durability guarantees that a level of need of the product is retained that allows to channel the ridiculously excessive production. It also has the advantage of increasing profit margins, since lower quality products are usually cheaper to make.
Some manufacturers find even better ways, by actively controlling performance, like Apple, who intentionally slowed down older versions of their I-Phones to incite consumers to buy the newer models. This is the latest iteration in that trend, made possible by the company retaining control of a product that the consumer never really "owns." John Deere creates a somewhat similar situation with their farm equipment, by introducing electronic hardware and software that the end user can never have full control over, depriving them of the option to repair the equipment themselves.
The goal of these manufacturers is to place everyone in the position of a leasee rather than owner, with essentially no control over the product, how long they are going to keep it, what changes can be made to it, what data it collects, compiles and shares with what entities, etc.
It is also far more interesting for the manufacturer to be in a position where they receive a subscription, of an amount fixed by them, on a regular basis and for a predictable period of time, than a one time lump sum with no clear idea of what more is to come from that consumer in the future. The subscription/lease model is also more favorable by reducing the options for second-hand markets of used goods, which ideally for them would be completely eradicated.
Calling them "manufacturers" has itself become a misnomer. They are financial-industrial conglomerates that outsource the real manufacturing work to third parties, who interestingly can make products at the same plant that will come out wearing a variety of appearances and brand names (this is especially true for appliances, but also applies to automobiles and innumerable other products).
The very meaning of a brand has been considerably diluted. It is mostly a construct of advertisement, an abstraction that advertisers attempt to have us establish a relationship with. Keep your old power tools and take good care of them, they will soon be true things of the past, not just as objects, but as concepts.
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Elinaofsolarinverter at 23:59 PM on 27 September 2022Renewable energy is too expensive
Very much Informative
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Bob Loblaw at 22:39 PM on 27 September 2022Temp record is unreliable
To follow up Eclectic's comment at 525, there are many environmental/geological records that indicate various features of past climates. Vegetation and animal populations are often linked to local climate, and fossil evidence of past vegetation and animal abundance gives indications of past climates.
Tree rings go back thousands of years in some cases, and fossil trees can generate longer tree ring records - earlier than the oldest living tree in the area.
Pollen deposited in lake sediments indicates vegetation at the time the sediment was deposited. In many areas, the lake sediments have annual layers due to summer/winter variations in hydrology, so the layers are easily dated. Thickness of layers gives indications of rainfall/stream flow variations that affect the amount of sediment.
Eclectic mentioned ice cores, which can give both temperature information and atmospheric gas concentrations (CO2) going back hundreds of thousands of years.
A search here on "proxy" yields a couple of useful posts:
https://skepticalscience.com/Peter-Brannens-Paleo-Proxy-Twitter-Thread.html
https://skepticalscience.com/Tai-Chi-Temperature-Reconstructions.html
Wikipedia has some discussion of the "Hockey Stick"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_graph_(global_temperature)
Unless your friend knows details of the "reliability" of these many methods of examining past climates, he/she is arguing from a position of lack of knowledge.
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Eclectic at 21:55 PM on 27 September 2022Temp record is unreliable
Wongfeihung1984 @524,
please ask your friend to study how earlier regional temperatures were demonstrated by changes in Oxygen18 / Oxygen16 ratios (as in ice-cores drilled at Greenland & Antarctica) or Magnesium/Calcium ratios in marine sediments (or Strontium/Calcium ratios, likewise). Those, plus many other proxy measures of temperature in the natural world. can be brought together to give a fair guide as to past conditions.
It would be interesting to know if your friend has greater expertise in scientific matters, and can give a better accuracy than the usual knowledgeable scholars who study the topic extensively. From your description, the word "skeptic" is not what your friend qualifies as.
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Evan at 20:50 PM on 27 September 2022Warming climate makes extreme hurricane rains more likely for Puerto Rico
This paper does a good job of summarizing the complex interdependencies in the physical world that make modeling and prediction so difficult. A 7% increase in atmospheric water content per 1C warming does not sound like that much, until you combine it with the increased updrafts that draw in moisture from further out, and the linkage of a warming world to slower-moving storm systems.
But even if we don't understand the physics, the evidence for hurricanes becoming stronger is compelling from what we're routinely seeing on the evening news.
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Wongfeihung1984 at 18:57 PM on 27 September 2022Temp record is unreliable
Hi, a skeptic friend of mine told me we can't know what were the tempratures on the last 10 000 years before the invention of thermometers - let alone in prehistoric times - therefore data published by scientists is unreliable....
What can I tell him? -
scvblwxq1 at 05:42 AM on 26 September 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #38
The climate that the Earths is in is a long-term ice age named the Quaternary Glaciation or fifth ice age. The climate of the Earth alternates between normal temperatures and ice ages. The cause is the orbit of the Earth changes from a near circle like the present, and it is warmer, but not warm enough to melt all of the natural ice, to a slight ellipse. It then receives much less sunlight and the glaciers grow and advance and that ususally lasts about 90,000 years. The warm, near circular, time periods last about 10,000 years. This is all because of the pull of the other planets, mainly Jupiter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation
Moderator Response:[PS] I am not quite sure what point you are trying to make, but note detailed write-up in this here https://skepticalscience.com/Milankovitch.html. Note that the Milankovich orbital cycles were only able to induce ice age when the CO2 level in atmosphere dropped by ~400ppm.
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slumgullionridge at 12:31 PM on 24 September 2022Why Eco Products aren't Climate Friendly
This is truly most perplexing. We have a cabin in the hills of WV, a family heirloom. It has a 1952 Kelvinator electric stove and oven, a 1948 Maytag wringer washer, a 1938 Coldspot refigerator that we replaced the Freon and gaskets about six years ago, a Rheem water heater built in 1971 and a 1952 DeWalt radial arm saw in the shed. They all work. I realize their styles are outdated, but their "looks" has little to do with their utility. It seems to me that industry could change the looks of an appliance, but retain a much longer reliability of the "guts" of the appliance that provide much more "in service" time and the opportunity to have it repaired when finally inoperative.
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nigelj at 07:19 AM on 24 September 2022Why Eco Products aren't Climate Friendly
Good advice, however while we try to keep our appliances as long as possible the industry is going in the opposite direction. The days where you could expect to own an appliance for 20 years and spare parts were kept in stock a long time, and made readily available to anyone, are long gone. It appears the latest home appliances are designed to only last about 10 years, and spare parts are only kept in stock a few years. My oven had some problems just last week, and I was talking to the repair technician about such issues. And sometimes now even simple repairs are more expensive than replacing the appliance. And forget repairing things yourself. The industry makes that as difficult as possible.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:44 AM on 24 September 2022The deadly connections between climate change and migration
Pursuing increased awareness and improved understanding leads to learning that the real problem is the reality that the highest harmful impacting over-consuming portion of the global population is not correcting their harmful unsustainable ways of living. The most harmful people are having the harmfulness of their actions in pursuit of personal interest 'effectively curtailed with the added requirement to make full amends for harm done that they benefited from'. In addition, many people incorrectly perceive those harmful over-consuming ways of living to be 'superior'. And many people strive to develop to become more harmful over-consuming people.
Also, the population problem is being more successfully addressed than the problem of how harmful and unsustainable the developed ways of living of the supposedly superior portion of the global population actually are. The recent study published in the Lancet "Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study" indicates that 'the rate of global population increase is declining'. And the peak value is expected to be lower (below 10 billion) if the Sustainable Development Goals are more rapidly achieved and improved on. In addition to achieving the SDGs resulting in a reduced peak global population, everyone pursuing more sustainable ways of living would reduce the per-capita harm done resulting in dramatically less harm being done to the future of humanity than failing to, or being slower to, achieve the SDGs.
Contrary to that success regarding global population, the 'rate of accumulating global warming climate change harm' has not yet peaked. And the rate of other harmful over-consumption has also not yet 'peaked'.
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slumgullionridge at 08:17 AM on 23 September 2022The deadly connections between climate change and migration
We must somehow face the problem of population. Statistics estimate another two billion humans by mid century. Every additional,human is another carbon footprint, another resource user, another potential liability on government and a contribution to more scarcity on a planet not getting any bigger or better.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:01 AM on 23 September 2022Why Eco Products aren't Climate Friendly
This presents a great understanding regarding Sustainable Development that is Nothing New.
The older video "The Story of Stuff" is a great 20 minute presentation that is just one example of this issue being well presented many years ago. It is presented in a way that children can understand (tragically, this type of learning is resisted or discouraged by many adults, even some supposed Adult Leaders).
You can find "The Story of Stuff" on YouTube. But I suggest you go to the website that has been developed after that video was produced: Homepage - Story of Stuff at https://www.storyofstuff.org/
"The Story of Stuff" video is linked at the bottom of that webpage. But many other helpful videos have been developed as can be seen on the Homepage.
People should indeed learn to be careful about, and limit, their purchases of Stuff to limit the harm done by their actions (everybody's actions add up to become the future). But everyone should also be limiting their personal use of artificial energy. Even 'renewable energy production and use' has negative consequences. So it is important for people and societies to collectively limit their artificial energy use to 'essential Needs', not 'Popular and Profitable perceived to be essential Wants'. That reduction of energy use will help more rapidly reduce fossil fuel energy use.
There are many regions where renewable energy generation is being built in parallel with increased energy use. This can mean the fossil fuel use continues longer than it has to. And in some cases fossil fuel use increases even as more renewable energy generation is developed.
In closing. The harm limiting thing to do is download the Story of Stuff video and show it to your friends. Each download, or streaming, or sharing of all the data in a video is an increase of 'less-than-essential use of artificial energy', especially if the data for the video is higher definition transmitted over 'faster data transfer systems'. 5G is not necessarily a 'sustainable improvement'.
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michael sweet at 00:15 AM on 23 September 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
This Skeptical Science article describes Jacobson's plan from 2015. The plan has greatly changed since then as renewable prices have declined so much. The basic outline is similar but the costs are much lower for renewables.
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michael sweet at 22:51 PM on 22 September 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
David-acct,
How does comparing the energy generated for a few days in a small location like Minnesota relate to a study covering the entire USA for several years? Jacobson compares a complete renewable system with required power. What currently exists is a small amount of renewable energy added to a fossil system. I note that hundreds of papers support Jacobson's analysis while your "due diligence" is simply ignoring the data. What data do you have to show Jacobson's thirty second analysis is faulty? The unsupported word of an anonymous internet poster cannot be compared to hundreds of peer reviewed papers. Because you do not understand a paper does not mean that the paper is incorrect.
You provide no data to support your wild claim that 4 hour batteries cannot support renewable supplies. I note that if you have two four hour batteries you have enough power for eight hours.
I note that in the most recent heatwaves both California and Texas were saved from blackouts by strong renewable energy production and batteries that contributed at the key times of highest energy use. The problem in Europe is that the gas system is failing (as was the case in the Texas freeze).
You obviously do not understand that renewables are much more efficient than fossil fuels. For example, ICE engines in cars are less than 20% efficient while electric motors are 90% efficient. Switching from ICE to electric reduces the needed energy by a factor of four or greater. Likewise heat pumps are more than three times more efficient than fossil furnaces. Nuclear and other thermal power plants send 60-70% of the energy as waste heat into the cooling water. Wind and solar have no waste heat. Add all the efficiences together and you need 40% less primary power.
Read the background to educate yourself. The people at Skeptical Science can help answer your questions once you have aquired some basic knowledge.
Hint: if you think you see an obvious logical error in a peer reviewed paper if means that you do not understand what you are reading.
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pattimer at 20:25 PM on 22 September 2022Why Eco Products aren't Climate Friendly
Great to hear that more people are realising that we really need to stop by stuff that we don't need and with Christmas coming up a very important message.
There are of course things that we do need and what we need to think about is values. At present we measure success in terms of indescriminate growth regardless of its usefulness or value. Our economic models need to change otherwise we will never solve the energy/ environment problems.
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David-acct at 10:33 AM on 22 September 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
M Sweet
interesting study in cost of renewables , though
In my world, due diligence is paramount. We compare our results against real world data.
The purpose of providing these links is so that the reader can perform some level of due diligence based on real world data provided from government sources.
I have attached the EIA.gov link for the electric generation by source for the United States.
I have attached the link to the German government website that provides similar data for Germany.
I have also attached the link for the electric generation from wind and solar for the state of Minnesota.
https://healthy-skeptic.com/2022/09/21/renewable-energy-and-false-advertising/
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/US48/US48
Jacobson's claim is that he tested his model every thirty (30) seconds without failure. Based on a due diligence review of the electricity production, the claim of success every thirty seconds is dubious.
So far, Jacobson and his team have run simulations for the all renewable, four-hour battery roadmaps for six individual states – Alaska, Hawaii, California, Texas, New York and Florida, and the contiguous 48 states taken together. (For the rest of the states, Jacobson has approximate simulations, which are available here.)
Jacobson's claim that 4 hour battery backups is not a reasonable assumption based on real world data. Please see the EIA link which shows 3-5 day periods without wind or solar. a 4 day battery storage is 20x short for the typical 4 day doldrums that occur most every month across the planet.
Also note the wind lost 90% of power across the entire North American continent during the Feb 2021 freeze for 4 full days,
Another statement by Jacobson - " Efficiency alone reduces projected 2050 electricity demand by 39.3% – even as every end use, including transportation, converts to electricity. "
Can anyone spot the logic error
In Summary - due diligence is paramount.
Moderator Response:[BL] Much of the previous discussion of Jabobsen's work has taken place on the "Is Nuclear Energy the Answer" post. If this conversation is to continue, I suggest moving it there, for continuity's sake.
Also, statements such as "Can anyone spot the logic error" are not constructive. If you see some sort of logic error and want people to respond, make your point.
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ubrew12 at 22:23 PM on 21 September 2022Lithium: Storing more clean power with less pollution
It's possible, at least for grid-scale batteries, to use Sodium instead of Lithium. That's obviously very abundant in ocean water.
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pattimer at 21:18 PM on 21 September 2022Lithium: Storing more clean power with less pollution
Just noticed that the article nigelj posted above partly addresses my question above. :-"Choi adds that the approach might also prove useful for recovering lithium from discarded batteries, giving the metal a second lease on life—and potentially supercharging the ascendancy of electric vehicles".
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pattimer at 21:13 PM on 21 September 2022Lithium: Storing more clean power with less pollution
This article gives us some reassurance. Just a question though. In estimating 40% of the world's future needs how much has recycling been taken into account? I have heard/read negative comments regarding the future recycling of lithium. Perhaps you already have an article on this?
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nigelj at 07:42 AM on 21 September 2022Lithium: Storing more clean power with less pollution
Another potential source of lithium: "Seawater could provide nearly unlimited amounts of critical battery material. New technique uses electrodes to extract lithium from seawater" Refer here.
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One Planet Only Forever at 05:51 AM on 20 September 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #37
MA Rogers,
Another way of describing the likes of Epstein is 'people with a developed bias for excusing what they personally benefit from because they can understand that what they like to believe and benefit from is harmful and unjust'.
And making up excuses like claiming that 'a warmer Arctic is better' is part of the absurd nonsense they seem to faithfully, loyally, and passionately believe.
And, tragically, many people are easily tempted to want to believe harmful nonsense and claim that learning about the need to change their mind to be less harmful and more helpful to other people and other life would cause Too Much Progressive thinking for their mind to deal with ... too much awakening and improved understanding threatens their developed mental state and related personal desires.
And, of course, the likes of Epstein evade the reality that any perceptions of benefit from fossil fuel use cannot be sustained when the fossil fuels become too difficult to continue to 'benefit from'. Humanity has millions of years of habitability to adapt to and improve ways of living as part of a robust diversity of life on this amazing planet. Fossil fuel use ruins that future no matter how optimistic the Destructive Utilitarians are that things will always only get better for humans.
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MA Rodger at 04:54 AM on 20 September 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #37
Epstein apparently prides himself on being "known for his willingness to debate anyone, anytime" having "publicly debated leading environmentalist organizations such Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and 350.org over the morality of fossil fuel use." This I find difficult to understand. Have none of these numerous debates managed to nail-down what Epstein is actually proposing? In the last decade fossil-fuel-use runs to something like 75Gt coal, 45Gt oil & 35 billion m^3 gas. Epstein is proposing we use more of this stuff. How much more? With eight decades to run until 2100, what level of FF-use is he suggesting through that period? And if he answers, it will then be plain what he means by a +5°C temp rise being "extreme speculation."
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:38 AM on 20 September 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #37
Epstein appears to be a Destructive Utilitarian. He seems to argue, like many others who prioritize 'pursuits of personal benefit' over 'learning not to harm other people or other life', that harm done in pursuit of personal benefit is justifiable ... because of the benefit.
A recent development by these Destructive Utilitarians (harmful selfish people) is claiming that increased awareness and understanding of developed harmful beliefs and actions (developed injustice) is 'being woke in a way that is Too Progressive'. They are likely to try to claim that any increased awareness and improved understanding of the need to change what has developed and make amends for the harms done is Too Progressive, and that promotion of that type of learning proves (in their harmfully made-up minds) the unacceptability of encouraging people to be more Woke (woke beyond the injustice of treatment of Blacks in the USA).
The following CBC item is just one example of the New Right anti-Progress attempts to denigrate the term Woke in harmful unjust ways.
So who's 'woke,' what does it mean and how is it being used in Canadian politics?
Increased awareness and understanding regarding the climate change harmfulness of fossil fuel use and the need to rapidly end the accumulation of harm from fossil fuel use is just another subset of what the New Right will try to denigrate as being Woke - Too Progressive.
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MA Rodger at 02:41 AM on 20 September 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #37
Eclectic @1,
The vocal denialist you raise here, Alex Epstein (Wikkithihg page), is a vacuous non-scientific motor-mouth. He has nothing to say yet still says an awful lot.
He brands himself a philosopher & energy expert and says his approach to AGW & its mitigation is "pro-human."
There is a Dessler/Epstein thing from Nov 2021 (MP Podcast #126) which is 80 mins long with Epstein being interviewed in the first half and Dessler in the second, so you would perhaps waste less of your life on it than the hour long March 2022 debate. And the Nov 2021 does include Dessler recommending some go-to climate site called 'ScepticalScience,'
In his Nov 2021 40 mins Epstein tries to set out his own crazy AGW debate with the impacts of AGW being considered as side-effects of FF-use which apparently are trivial relative to the benefits of FF-use.
For instance drought is no problem as FF can enable a water supply to be provided. And even within climate, we must balance positive against negative. So Arctic amplification is making a cold place less cold, which is good. And don't forget the fertilizing effect of CO2. His message is that we "should be using far far more FF."The Epstein interview does address AGW for a portion - 23:00 to 26:00
So we are far safer today from climate problems than ever (because, for instance, there are far less climate-related-disaster deaths). And we also ignore adaptation to AGW.
Three things would worry Epstein with AGW. (1) Runaway AGW but that's impossible. (2) Storms becoming 3 or 4 times more powerful but they are only 10% more powerful. (3) SLR at multi-feet per decade but it's only 3ft in a century.Later he says we've invested (in how we live today) AGW and that "could be inconvenient based on SLR and temp change and stuff " but it is really slow - +2°C (so a second 1°C rise from now) by the end of the century. This is not a problem. Concern over AGW is "a total denial of human mastery." (36:00).
...
There is also Epstein's "20 myths about fossil fuels, refuted" from August 2022. This is mostly about energy & power supply. The only climate stuff is #13, 16, 17 &18 for which he strangely has the same answer - AGW's impacts as "speculation" or in the case of a +5°C temp rise "extreme speculation."
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Eclectic at 19:39 PM on 19 September 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #37
Apropos not very much ~ I came across a reference to a momentously important "debate" between scientist Andrew Dessler [Atmospheric Sciences] and author Alex Epstein [contrarian] which was held in March 2022 . Published on YouTube . . . and showing 19,000 views in just over 6 months.
Knowing something of Epstein's propagandist track record, it seemed unlikely that Epstein would come up with anything worth giving consideration to. And indeed, Epstein's later written "rebuttal" to Dessler showed tiresome banality & word-shuffling of the usual denialist type.
(Please let me know if anyone here at SkS has seen that particular video and thought it worth viewing. I gather that Dessler occasionally gives face-to-face "debates" with such non-scientists, but I have never yet heard of any contrarians who have raised any valuable points.
There was also a Dessler debate against Steven Koonin [physicist & contrarian] who definitely qualifies for a [non-climate] scientist, but who likewise failed to make any valid points against Dessler, IMO. )
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Bob Loblaw at 10:03 AM on 17 September 2022How climate change spurs megadroughts
OPOF:
Yes, that NPR story is interesting, and jives with some of the other stories I've read recently on CNN. It's a classic "tragedy of the commons" scenario: nobody wants to be the one that goes without, and as long as everyone keeps trying to take as much as they can, everyone will lose in the end. Eventually, Mom and Dad need to decide who gets the window seat, and for how long.
If the taps run dry in the U.S. SW, it will be difficult to pretend it isn't happening. Agriculture is a huge water user, and the effects of dropping agricultural productivity will extend well beyond the U.S. SW. What happens in Vegas will not stay in Vegas.
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One Planet Only Forever at 06:34 AM on 17 September 2022How climate change spurs megadroughts
Bob Loblaw @14,
That CCN item provides an interesting presentation of the ways that the water of the Colorado Basin are managed.
The following NPR presentation from August 27, 2022 that explains that a major part of the problem is a lack of collaboration among the users of water in the Colorado Basin.
7 states and federal government lack direction on cutbacks from the Colorado River
It is like a regional version of the ways that different global groups of people who benefit from fossil fuel use fight, any way they can get away with, to maximize 'their benefit' in the face of the undeniable need to curtail global fossil fuel use to limit the harm done to the future of humanity.
In the case of the lack of agreement to reduce water use from the Colorado Basin the Federal Government will likely end up being the "Bad Meany" imposing harmful restrictions on the water users whose leadership wouldn't agree to cut back their use.
In the global fossil fuel case, external restrictions will also likely be required (like trade tariffs or other penalties for 'persistently harmful groups'). And some populist politicians in populations containing significant numbers of people who deserve to be penalized will rally their 'victims of persecution' to fight to obtain more personal benefit from harmful fossil fuel use.
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One Planet Only Forever at 05:57 AM on 17 September 2022Food supply and security concerns mount as impacts stress agriculture
The back-and-forth between Gordon and Bob has been an 'interesting' example of an attempt to provide helpful input that was not helpful or an attempt to discredit, or be dismissive of, the evidence-based message being delivered.
Gordon may have genuinely believed the initial input offered was a helpful improvement of the information being delivered. But when they learned that they were not improving the message delivery they fell into the common trap of persistent resistance to. Their initial input, and subsequent versions of input, clearly do not 'improve the delivery of the intended understanding'.
Perhaps the responses by Bob did not make it clear enough that the message being delivered is not meaningfully improved by any of Gordon's suggested 'improvements'.
That makes it more likely that Gordon was attempting to discredit the message, be dismissive of (or distract from) the intended evidence-based logic of the intended learning opportunity, for some unreasonable reason. That will only ever be an evidence-based proposition. Only Gordon can be sure of the answer. But, based on the current evidence, there is reasonable reason to be skeptical of whatever 'explanation' Gordon would provide on this matter.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:47 AM on 17 September 2022How climate change spurs megadroughts
A recent article over at CNN gives an interesting discussion of the issues of water management in the Colorado River basin. Talks mostly about Lake Powell and Flaming Gorge reservoirs, but Lake Mead gets a mention. It's a basin-wide management issue.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/16/us/colorado-river-water-lake-powell-flaming-gorge-climate/index.html
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Bob Loblaw at 22:49 PM on 15 September 2022Ag’s challenging future in a changing climate
Eric @ 1:
I am not fond of graphing software that thinks that vertical grid lines are not valuable - figure 3 does make it pretty hard to line up the peaks on the line with the year labels on the axis.
If you follow the link to the report (given in the caption), you can see the original figure in the middle of the page. It looks like the blog post has only used the "real" values, not the "nominal" ones. The original figure in the report graphs both values.
Immediately under the original figure in the original report, we see a table of values. The table only seems to contain the nominal values, but the peak value is definitely for the year 2011 (and in the original graph, both real and nominal lines peak in the same year).
As such, I think it is reasonable to think that the 2011 peak was caused by the preceding drought (2010), rather than anticipation of the following drought (2012). On the other hand, that 2011 peak is more drawn out (lasts longer) than the mid-1970s and the 2008 spikes, so I also think it is reasonable that this could be due to the 2012 drought you mention.
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Bob Loblaw at 22:32 PM on 15 September 2022Food supply and security concerns mount as impacts stress agriculture
Oh my! Call the Internet Police! Someone writng a blog post has pulled a fast one on us, taking part of a table and having the nerve to call it a "figure" in their blog post! And they only used half of that table! And they didn't quote the entire report, either! They just provided a link, expecting people to be able to follow it and read the original!
The nerve! How can we trust anything they say? This sort of alteration is completely unacceptable!
I notice that you seem to think that this "alteration" is unacceptable (calling a table a figure), but insist that the author of the blog post should have further altered the title from the original to suit your standards of "accuracy".
Oh, I'm sorry. Your proposed change is just an "amendment", not an "alteration". Well, that's OK, I guess.
I take it you actually have no substantive criticism of the rest of the post.
[Is there an html tag for sarcasm?]
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MA Rodger at 22:28 PM on 15 September 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
JoJo @2,
The absence of mention here at SkS of paulownia tomentosa (aka Empress Tree, named for a Russian princess who became queen of Holland) is probably because this wonder tree is seemingly not so wondrous. The oft-mentioned 10x CO2 uptake refers to a value of 103t(CO2)/acre/yr which is subject to a rather large dollop of hype. Thus "past studies planting the Empress Tree in Eurasia have ranged from 3-15 tons of CO2 per acre per year, which is not so remarkable versus other tree varieties."
One advantage paulownia tomentosa possesses is it being a C4 tree which are pretty rare. C4 photosynthesis is more efficient than C3 although it will be more effected by rising CO2 levels. And comparing the 10t(CO2)/acre/yr [=6.75t(C)/ha/yr] x 5MWh/t(C)** = 34MWh/ha/yr which is nothing special. Mind, biofuels and natural carbon uptakes is not a simple subject. (**The value for coal use in power stations.)
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David Hawk at 22:00 PM on 15 September 2022Ag’s challenging future in a changing climate
Agree with you Eric. Jeff has done a very good job that I will now distribute though parts of the agricultural industry via the governmental agencies involved in issues of: "soil and water conservation." My sister has been an important political member in this area of concern in Iowa for decades.
Your Parts 1 and 2 were very informative on many of the major issues that have surfaced as a problem in agriculture during 25 years, about aspects of major shortcomings in the path taken. Much diverse analysis of the causes of diverse effects has been done since 2010. Your notes weave together much of the cause-effect strands running throughout science and now seen in the climate change process. The limit is that this approach often misses the effects from effects where many are not in fact caused. The conclusion is that the overviews tend to be overly optimistic about the forthcoming situatoin. When Richard Garwin and I used to put on events for AAAS we kept making this point. Emphasizing causes comes to miss the effects of effects that are systemic in nature, not open to appreciation via analysis. The work I got to do with Hsue-Shen Tsien on systems sciences and complex problems came to the same conclusion.
I await your Part 3 that will more systemically integrate the pieces as is now under discusion in information systems science that frooze about 2010. Therein the 19th Century models of industrialization had been relied on to develop information technology. Mike Kelly's work at IBM, then DARPA and then at Georgia Tech move thinking from mass to single copy production and then my 2004 advice to Nokia to stay in open source programming and avoid the Microsoft model may now be instructive of a better response to climate change.
Agriculture is moving deeply into the unfortunate economcs behind Microsoft and Nokia relative to the long term costs of mass production and priviatized sourcing. You would do a good job of helping farmers avoid the road those two took.
The above is especially challenging relative to the rapidly spreading consequences of John Deer Inc. in its new design of their equipment for farming worldwide. Expanding their closed data mining, of farmer generated information, is now discouraging the wide participantion thought to be essential to creating the diversity of response constantly brought up on our Zoom calls by Stuart Kauffman. We are working with a group of farmers in many countries to keep the value of small and varied farmer pm the farm to create ideas of special value during climate change. He has long been into something special.
Conclusion: the standard cause-effect model used to create and spread the benefits of the industrial may not be the one to use when researching the consequences of that model. This is seen in the consistancy with which we see climate change changing and becoming more consequential than projected the prior year. Looking at those at the edges of the problem, not at the core, may be helpful to seeing things differently. Carl Sagan and I usedd to do such on this subject. This will be outlined in a forthcoming book: "Short-term Gain, Long-term Pain."
Thank you, and this site for continuance of the unusual and insightful doorways into difference.
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Eric (skeptic) at 20:28 PM on 15 September 2022Ag’s challenging future in a changing climate
Very well written article. I have only one minor correction. I think the arrow in fig 3 points to the impact of the US 2012 drought. Non irrigated corn yields dropped to 116 bushels per acre (back to 1993 levels). Prices spiked in July 2012 after poor yields were predicted as early as May. spendmatters.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Corn-1024x650.jpg
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Eclectic at 18:28 PM on 15 September 202297% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven
JoJo @72/73 :
.... yuss, us speling nazzis jest hates on gramma. Unfortunately the posting system here at SkS website does not allow you even a few minutes' grace to hop back into your post and correct any typos. So ~ check and double check your proof-reading before pressing enter.
Even so, for me a few typos get through at times. Almost always, the result is still understandble for readers (who may get a minor chuckle up their sleeves, perhaps).
Nevertheless, if you have made a seriously misleading typo of some sort ~ you can post an appeal to the Moderator to make the correction for you. (And this the Moderator is likely to comply with, if he/she has the spare time to do so.)
Otherwise, relax . . . you will find a vast amount of climate information at SkS , if you have time to delve into it. But the site is not intended to be the fons-et-origo of total encyclopedic knowledge of the subject ~ nor are you likely to find much detail on fission reactors or non-fissioning Paulownia trees (per your other thread comment).
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JoJo21832 at 14:27 PM on 15 September 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
I've done a search on here- for Paulownia... nothing comes up, why? All these brilliant minds, and nothing mentioned, regarding the Paulownia Tree? Look it up, in regards to CO2. The data speaks for it's self.
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JoJo21832 at 13:45 PM on 15 September 202297% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven
or spelling lol (gramma)
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JoJo21832 at 13:39 PM on 15 September 202297% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven
New here, thought I might join, to hear - what the brilliant scientific minds of the world think- regarding, well... everything.
Amazing, fascinating, educational, confusing, entertaining, overwhelming, and yes mind blowing, to say the least.
I truly didn't realize, that so much time is spent "arguing one's case."
Kind of a waste really, all these wonderfully brilliant minds, feverishly "making their point" - instead of building off each other's ideas, and simply working together. The compounding...could be simply astounding.Thanks for allowing me to share my lowly, psychology based, female mind, - (obviously not a fan of gramma)... or commas. please, commence with the sword fight, at hand, haha- just kidding! Remember, no crossing!
Oh come on, tell me that didn't make you laugh, just a little!
Seriously though, thank you for sharing your knowledge! Just trying to soak it up.
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Gordon21829 at 11:49 AM on 15 September 2022Food supply and security concerns mount as impacts stress agriculture
Bob,
Sorry, but Figure 1 does NOT appear in the WMO report. Like you said an altered version of Table 1 appears in the Blog as Figure 1. In order for Figure 1 to be correct (and convey the correct context from the WMO report) the heading needs to be amended to "Deadliest Weather Disasters Globally, 1970 -2019"
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Bob Loblaw at 10:18 AM on 15 September 2022Food supply and security concerns mount as impacts stress agriculture
I don't know what link you followed to what report, Gordon, but the link in the caption to figure 1 leads to a report that contains Table 1 (on page 18) that looks identical to what I see in figure 1. The only thing that is changed (slightly) is the title above the table. The orignal WMO report says " Top 10 disasters ranked according to reported (a) deaths and (b) economic losses (1970–2019)". The blog post only includes the top half of the WMO table (part a), so the title has been edited accordingly.
So the report is accurately cited, the source of the figure is accurately cited, and figure 1 is exactly what the blog post says it is in terms of origin and content. If you want to claim that the WMO report's own table caption is misleading, you should go to the WMO report, read it, and understand the context of the original table. As I stated in comment #2, the WMO report gives that context.
I also acknowledged that this could have been explained better in the blog post, but you're creating a tempest in a teapot. If you want to look at "inaccurate and misleading" statements, look no further than your claim that the WMO report does not use the image.
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Gordon21829 at 09:45 AM on 15 September 2022Food supply and security concerns mount as impacts stress agriculture
Bob:
Figure 1 references its data from: Deadliest disasters since 1970, from the international global disaster database, EM-DAT. According to the EM-DAT disasters are classified as THIS which includes earthquakes. The image credit link: WMO - links to a paper, which incidentally does not even use the image claimed, but is as you say a paper on climate related disasters. I therefore stand by my original claim that the table heading "Deadliest Disasters Globally, 1970 - 2019" is incorrect and misleading.
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One Planet Only Forever at 06:29 AM on 15 September 2022Welcome to Skeptical Science
Thomas Bevins @112,
It is not clear what you are specifically referring to when you say "Of course there are studies related to the most obvious, the sun and global warming. The Sun's effect on the oceans, the ocean's effect on the glaciers, and so on... There is a lot of talk that such normalization procedures have increased global warming although most of this site seems to be skeptical of this claim and does not agree."
This site specifically presents reasons to doubt "unjustified beliefs", which is different from having a "healthy skeptical curiosity that leads to constantly improving justified understanding".
Perhaps the most appropriate, but not the only, Sun related presentation is the Number 2 Most Used Climate Myth "Its the Sun" (Number 2 on the thermometer at the top left-hand side of the SkS pages).
And, indeed, SkS presents many other well presented reasons to doubt the robust diversity of myths (unjustified beliefs) that many people encounter and can be tempted, out of personal interest, to incorrectly believe "must be" valid claims.
As for the splitting open of the earth's crust, indeed, should something happen that opens a large gash in the Earth's crust the consequences for life on the plant could be significant. But that has not happened. The actions of humans are clearly understood to be the most harmful current impacts on life on this planet.
Some say a massive asteroid striking the planet could open such a gash. Even if a large asteroid strike did not open a gap in the crust, the results of such an impact could significantly harm life on this planet. But right now it certainly appears that the collective actions of callous self-interested humans is adding up to be as bad as a large asteroid hitting the planet ... don't worry about an asteroid ... try to learn how to help limit the harm done by callous self interested humans ... learn the difference between "unjustified beliefs" and "justified understanding".
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Bob Loblaw at 23:03 PM on 14 September 2022Food supply and security concerns mount as impacts stress agriculture
Gordon:
The figure includes a link in the caption that tells you where the information came from. In this case, it is from the WMO (as stated in the caption), and the link leads to a page that says in Big Bold Letters
WMO ATLAS OF MORTALITY
AND ECONOMIC LOSSES
FROM WEATHER, CLIMATE
AND WATER EXTREMES
(1970–2019)So, no, it would not include earthquake-related disasters.
It's always worth checking the references to see what they really say. This aspect (weather-related disasters) could have been more clearly stated in the post, but the link provides the needed background to understand the statement.
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Gordon21829 at 10:36 AM on 14 September 2022Food supply and security concerns mount as impacts stress agriculture
Shouldn't the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 rate at number 3 with 227,000 killed ? Or do we have a new definition of disaster ?
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michael sweet at 10:31 AM on 14 September 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36
A new study in Joule was described by many newspapers today. They estimate future costs of fossil fuels and renewable energy and estimate that it will save trillions of dollars to build out a completely renewable energy systlem and get rid of expensive, polluting fossil fuels.
They consider the costs of battery storage and electrolysers to make hydrogen. The only thing stopping the immediate building out of a renewable energy system is the political power of the fossil fuel industries. The faster we build out renewables the more money we will save!!
Vote climate in the next election!!!
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MA Rodger at 22:30 PM on 13 September 2022A critical review of Steven Koonin’s ‘Unsettled’
dvaytw @21,
This interchange has all gone a bit quiet. I've been reluctant to pitch in as I hold Koonin in very low regard given he has shown himself time and again to be a simple nepotistic nonsense-monger. But I did have a watch (not very attentively) of his 17 minute 'case against' in the video you mention and I don't see him presenting any worthy argument. It's all very 'chatty man' rather than well-founded analysis. It is but yet-more Koonin nonsense. (Note that Dessler & Koonin have recently debated before.)Specifically on your first "strongest point", that is the 'chatty-man' GDP argument, do ignore the IPCC aspect of it which is solely based on cherrypicking some wording from WG2's SPM that can easily be set out to sound logical but which is actually allowing any global disaster you wish to be ajudged as okay.
Even less narrowly, the use of global GDP projections will always provide a simple way of burying mountains of bad stuff. You can thus point out that global GDP has risen at 3% annually for decades and even if you accept the most worrying projections of the costs of ignoring AGW (and all these projections are all very poorly defined), it is too easy to say global GDP will be 10x bigger by 2100 so we can cope with losing a few percentage points of that. Even the worst projections I've read that talk of 50% loss of GDP would see us 5x better off.
Hurrah!! AGW solved!!!
However, it is just as easy to point to the ongoing increase in FF use wich is still tracking the old doom-laden RCP8.5 scenario and that is certainly nowhere humanity wants to find itself.
Note that both these uses of projections out to 2100 are overly simplistic and thus both verging on being utterly nonsensical if taken at face value.There are two serious criticisms of Koonin's chatty-man GDP argument.
Firstly, the argument is being made that it will all be fine-&-dandy because, given past decades, we can project these massive increases in the size of the economy. So, in the extreme, even if the damage and adaptation costs tot up to a hit equal to half the economy, we would still be far wealthier, 5x wealthier, and so have no reason for complaint. But that argument is mad, with its head too quickly stuck up the model and ignoring the outcomes in the real world in such circumstances. Koonin needs to make plain what climate he is advocating as an acceptable outcome before he starts sticking his head into his simplistic models to demonstrate the effects of such a future climate.
Secondly, and this has been touched on up-thread, the chatty-man GDP argument uses global averages which always allow unacceptably bad stuff to be buried.
Just for a kick-off, imagine say Madagascar with a GDP of $14billion or 0.014% of global GDP. If that entire nation simply melted and disappeared beneath the waves making 28 million souls homeless, it wouldn't even register as a blip on Koonin's global averages. And if such destruction isn't so bad, if one or two hapless countries have to take a hit to keep the world economy in Koonin's happy-place, how about the entire continent of Africa. Hey, it's only 3% of the world economy. I'm sure Africa's 1.3 billion inhabitants will understand the situation when Koonin explains it to them. Perhaps we should give them his address so they can go round and get it all properly explained to them. Mind, it's not all a bed of roses for Koonin because he wants so much to sell them billions of tons of expensive fossil fuels which can't happen if their economies disintegrate under future western-world-created AGW.Koonin is a lunatic. His 17 minutes could be disassembled and the nonsense it comprises exposed. But why bother? Koonin is a lunatic!!
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Bluepenguin at 13:57 PM on 13 September 2022Welcome to Skeptical Science
the whole prospect of climate change is scary. I mean it made it look scary if we don't do anything now people are saying that our planet is in danger and so are we. I do believe in climate change it is something that I have felt over the years. I am someone who likes to question and find the answer to things that I do not know. So I understand how there are skeptics out there when the evidence isn't solid. all I can do is form My opinions. I want our climate to get better but I need more knowledge on the subject before I can say anything.
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Shmaben at 13:49 PM on 13 September 2022Welcome to Skeptical Science
Its very helpful this article includes starting points for newbies studying global climate change. Its very easy to spread false information so having a reliable source and different methods to keep track is helpful. The only way we as a country will be able to solve this problem will be to stop denying that the problem isnt real.
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Despicable_Llama at 13:08 PM on 13 September 2022Welcome to Skeptical Science
Skepticism to my understanding is to doubt something. In the article, the author states that skepticism is a good thing in regards to global warming but I disagree. I believe that climate change and global warming does exist. I believe this without being skeptic because there is enough data out there to prove that humans, burning coal and fossil fuels releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, are that the roots of global warming. Why would one decide to be skeptic about this, when there is proof showing that nothing other than greenhouse gasses are the cause of the planet heating up. Looking into other subjects like "do ghosts exist", i can say that being skeptic about the data is fair, because no one truly understands the topic, but in this case, I believe that the author has the wrong idea and isnt very knowledgeable about global warming.
Moderator Response:[BL]
DL. (May I call you DL?)
Within the article, "skepticism" does not mean "doubt" in the sense of "this is probably wrong". It means reserving acceptance of an idea until sufficient evidence is provided. In a court, this is usually expressed as "proven beyond a reasonable doubt" (for U.S. criminal court) or "in the balance of probabilities" (U.S. civil court).
In science, it becomes a case of "where does most of the evidence lead?". Unlike a court of law, the scientific judgement always remains open to challenge (there is no "double jeopardy"). We slowly transition from speculation, to uncertain, to more confident, to almost certain - as more and more evidence accumulates. We remain "skeptical" in the sense that new evidence may be found that tells us we have something wrong - but with all the available evidence we can still be pretty certain (although not absolutely certain).
"Reasonable doubt" does not mean "no doubt at all". But "doubt' needs to be reasonable - and also needs to follow the evidence.
We agree that there is lots of evidence in support of our scientific conclusions that humans and fossil fuel combustion are heating the planet. Although many details remain to be figured out, the broad pattern is something we have high confidence in.
The main "skepticism" here is being skeptical of the claims that humans are not affecting the climate - these claims fail when compared to the evidence.
