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One Planet Only Forever at 05:27 AM on 31 January 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast are we going?
Evan and nigelj,
All I am saying is that the current reality is the result of the unethical lack of action by the wealthy and powerful, especially through the past 30 years.
1ft of sea level increase per 100 years needs to be declared to be the future disaster that it is. That is the way to strengthen the argument that more harm done is even less acceptable. It also leads to the understanding that current day humanity needs to be aggressively implementing CO2 removal technology (and making sure that it is harmless) even if that is not popular or profitable (and doing that while sustainably improving the lives of the least fortunate).
An Ethical Perspective requires developed perceptions of wealth and prosperity (and superiority) today to be understood to be the destructive unsustainable reality that they are.
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michael sweet at 01:54 AM on 31 January 2022Why people believe misinformation and resist correction
David-acct:
I note that you have linked no sources to support your wild claims. It is typical for people who believe misinformation that they do not link to credible sources to support their claims.
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Eclectic at 23:57 PM on 30 January 2022Why people believe misinformation and resist correction
David-acct @11 :-
Once again, I must respectfully beg to disagree ~ for I think you are being too idealistic, and you are basing your ideas on the older & simpler world of the pre-internet. It is good-hearted of you, but you are not being sufficiently cynical about human nature.
The last 20 years of "internet" have revealed the result of this novel & unplanned experiment in social interactions. And the resulting data are very ugly ~ and so it is time for you to revise your opinions and modify your ideals pragmatically.
The case of Philippe Chantreau & the CDC advice is very much a special case: a case of a short-term situation, where imperfect decisions (imperfect in hindsight) are taken in the heat of battle.
In the long-term . . . for example climate science . . . there is time for the science to become more "settled". And we have the benefit of decades of hindsight & progress of knowledge. The science-deniers & conspiracy-theorists have had a grand "field day" for the whole two years of the pandemic, and they have done immense harm in the short run. And they are still continuing to do great harm to future generations, by opposing action against AGW.
David, I gather you find any type of restriction to be somewhat distasteful. That's understandable, to a degree. But now it has become necessary to actively choose the lesser of two evils. I am sure you know the old saying :- "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Here endeth the lecture for the first month. And best wishes for the rest of 2022, David.
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David-acct at 22:03 PM on 30 January 2022Why people believe misinformation and resist correction
I concur that the covid discussion is off topic from climate science, though my point remains the same.
A tremendous amount of information is treated as misinformation because it doesnt fit the censors bias. As a result, far more good information is and will be censored and/or treated is misinformation.
Phillippe comment "the CDC statement is justified because ..." is based on trying to get the preferred result even though the CDC statement is now known to be inaccurate. That is a good example of treating factually accurate statements as misinformation
In summary, censoring misinformation in the long term will be far more damaging to the advancement of science. Think back in history with prior censoring of information, it has never been pretty.
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nigelj at 07:41 AM on 30 January 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast are we going?
OPOF said: "I would say it is unethical to state that "Sea level rise of 1ft/100 years is doable".
I disagree. Look at it this way. If burning fossil fuels and so global warming was only going to cause at worst 1 foot of sea level rise per century, and for example mild effects on our weather I wouldn't be too worried. We could adapt easily enough. Therefore its hard to see an ethical issue of any substance. And apply some reductio ad absurdum and consider if it was only one inch of sea level rise per century. Would anyone seriously argue this is unsustainable or unethical?
The big issue to me is this. The advantages of using fossil fuels would arguably outweigh that small 1 foot level of sea level rise per century. The one argument against all this is loss of land area building up over time. It would probably depend on just how extensive that was, but everything humans do affects the environment, so we have to make these unpleasant trade offs.
The point I'm making is there is likely to be a level of anthropogenic sea level rise per century and also in total over time that is essentially insignificant. And a level that is seriously problematic.
Of course thats all somewhat academic in the sense we are likely to cause much more than 1 foot per century of sea level rise per century, and for several centuries, and this is unsustainably fast and certainly unethical to try to justify it.
Normally I do tend to mainly agree with OPOFs views.
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Philippe Chantreau at 04:13 AM on 30 January 2022Why people believe misinformation and resist correction
Supporting documentation:
- About non seroconverting populations: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33235985/
- About other aspects discussed, this brief is from October 2021:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/vaccine-induced-immunity.html
According to available data, vaccine is the rational choice, without a doubt.
Moderator Response:[BL]. This Covid discussion is starting to get a bit off the topic of the blog post, which is disinformation and why people believe in it. Although Covid is an example of a situation where misinformation is common, can all participants please try to keep the discussion focused on the general characteristics of and response to misinformation, rather than debating Covid 19? The focus of this web site is the battle against climate disinformation.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:58 AM on 30 January 2022Why people believe misinformation and resist correction
There is a lot to consider when comparing the protection from COVID-19 that is provided by vaccination vs. contracting the disease unvaccinated.
In addition to what has already been mentioned:
- A different type of protection is developed by recombinant vaccine, mRNA vaccine, or contracting the illness.
- The level of protection developed from contracting the disease is related to the severity of the disease. Getting a mild case of COVID-19 does not necessarily provide robust protection from reinfection.
It would appear that the best case of protection is provided by getting mixed vaccinated (recombinant plus mRNA) then contracting COVID-19. But that is impractical to scientifically rigorously investigate.
What is quite certain is that vaccination is incredibly helpful.
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Philippe Chantreau at 02:09 AM on 30 January 2022Why people believe misinformation and resist correction
About Covid, it should be pointed that infection does not always result in seroconversion (i.e. development of antibodies and improved immunity). The natural vs vaccine immunity discussions pertain to people who do seronconvert. The more contagious Omicron makes it more likely that non seroconverted people will be re-infected.
The CDC statement about natural vs vaccine acquired immunity is justified because relying on the infection to develop immunity entails the risk to experience the severe form of the disease, leading to hospitalization, intensive care and/or death. I believe that it has also been shown that vaccination led to higher seroconversion rates than infections.
Although some risk factors have clearly been identified (obesity by far the most consistently associated with severe disease), a significant number of people without clear risk factors develop severe disease. However, natural immunity alone has been shown to be superior to vaccine acquired immunity alone. The highest level of protection is natural+vaccine, which is why even people who have had the disease should vaccinate (twice the protection).
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michael sweet at 00:28 AM on 30 January 2022Why people believe misinformation and resist correction
Reading my previous comment it is unclear.
The people in the intensive care units in the USA today are overwhelmingly people who are unvaccinated. They first contacted Delta covid or another variety. Now they are in the ICU with omicron. If natural immunity was as good as vaccination there would be as many vaccinated people in the ICU as unvaccinated people who contracted delta covid.
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michael sweet at 23:46 PM on 29 January 2022Why people believe misinformation and resist correction
David-ACCT
We see immediately the problem with letting people decide themselves what is accurate scientific information. Your statement "another example is the better natural immunity acquired from infection vs from the vaccine" is completely false.
According to the CDC website today "FACT: Getting a COVID-19 vaccination is a safer and more dependable way to build immunity to COVID-19 than getting sick with COVID-19." source At the hospital where my brother works in California yesterday there were 12 people with covid in the intensive care unit. None had been vaccinated. Most of them would have had delta covid. The New York Times says about 70% of the population in California is double vaccinated. If natural immunty was as good as vaccination we would expect over 70% of the ICU to be vaccinated individuals.
It was reported recently in The Guardian that "Fauci said unvaccinated people were 10 times more likely to test positive for Covid-19, 17 times more likely to be hospitalised and 20 times more likely to die." The overwhelming majority of the unfaccinated have contracted covid. Obviously your statement that natural immunity is better than vaccination is completely false. Please link to credible sources to support your wild claim.
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Evan at 23:10 PM on 29 January 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast are we going?
OPOF@3 The World (as embodied by the IPCC and the COPs) has declared that the ideal is holding the line at 1.5C. At that level, we will certainly have 1 ft/100 years for a long time. If not more. If not much much more.
Meltwater Pulse 1A saw sea level rise of 1 ft/10 years when CO2 rose at 1 ppm/100 years and had only risen 10's of ppm. Even if we hold to 400 ppm (1.5C), that represents 120 ppm CO2 added much much faster than during Melwater Pulse 1A. Do we really think that we can limit sea-level rise to any better than 1 ft/100 years?
I care about the plight of others and I share your sentiment. It is well stated. But we are in a situation now where the developed countries need to adapt quickly enough and stay strong enough to help those who will be affected by climate change. At 1 ft/100 years we can probably do that, although there is still the question if we have the will to do that. At 1 ft/10 years it is questionable if developed countries will even have the resouces to help themselves, much less anyone else.
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nigelj at 06:59 AM on 29 January 2022Why people believe misinformation and resist correction
Just for clarity I very much doubt invermectin would do any good. There are most likely other explanations why areas that have used invermectin have had shorter covid waves.
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nigelj at 06:51 AM on 29 January 2022Why people believe misinformation and resist correction
I basically agree with Eclectics views on misinformation and how to deal with it. I believe there are good ways of responding to misinformation that don't suppress potentially good information. For example a website open to public comments might publish suspicious looking information by just annexing a note to it saying "the information may not be reliable, and that the official data, (or published research, or whatever) says xyz". Comments promoting invermectin could be handled that way.
But I do think that blatant trolling nonsense (eg covid vaccines kill millions of people ) should just be deleted or not published. Lives are at stake, and a small number of fools spamming websites with such information can do a lot of damage.
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One Planet Only Forever at 05:41 AM on 29 January 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast are we going?
Evan @3,
I would say it is unethical to state that "Sea level rise of 1ft/100 years is doable".
It is unethical to suggest that a portion of the current population should be allowed to benefit from a harmful activity that, from their perspective, appears to be an acceptable imposition of harm on others and all of the future of humanity. There are already island nations that have had centuries of sustainable living be ruined by the small sea level rise that has already occurred. And many other low lying areas are already harmfully impacted. And the sea level rise is only a part of the total climate change impact problem.
A potentially justified version of that thinking is:
The least fortunate can 'exclusively' be helped to live better, at least decent, lives by a short-term transition involving understandably unsustainable and harmful activity.
The fuller understanding of that version is that the people who are not less fortunate should be helping the least fortunate and ensuring that no lasting negative consequences are produced. That would involve the current day wealthy, all of them - not just the ones who care, doing whatever is required to neutralize the negative impacts of the short-term actions taken to help the least fortunate live decent lives. That would mean 'not accepting' a level of harm done to future generations, because excusing harm done is an ethically slippery slope to 'no future for humanity'.
That is also an ideal. But the understanding needs to be that anything short of that ideal is 'understandably unacceptable, not excusable'. And everybody needs to appreciate that reality and the constant need to investigate and correct what has developed to limit, and correct for, harm done.
The challenge of today is the reality that a lot of what has developed is harmfully over-developed, especially in the supposedly superior nations on this planet. Undoing all that harmful over-development, and repairing the damage done, is required for humanity to have a sustainable improving future.
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Climate's changed before
How valid is the claim, in refuting man-made climate change, that the Earth's climate has changed before?
Your honor, I can’t be convicted of murder.
You see, people have been dying since before I was born.
So death is a natural thing, not caused by me. And probably nothing to worry about.Plus, you can’t prove that I killed that guy.
Sure, I stabbed him, but all you can prove is that this caused localized cell death at the micro scale, not that it caused him to die.
People survive stabbings all the time, in fact, stabbing a scalpel in people is often healthy, doctors do it all the time!
I only stabbed 0.4% of his body, so it can’t be an issue, my stab is barely 3% of his body cavities.And the models are so unreliable.
Doctors can’t even predict with 100% accuracy if someone will survive a surgery or not, how can they claim to suddenly know that this particular stab was bad?
Science has been wrong before!
So you see, I can’t be convicted of murder.Now stop trying to push this radical anti-stabbing agenda.
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Eclectic at 23:51 PM on 28 January 2022Why people believe misinformation and resist correction
@2 : "The point is that attempting suppress missinformation [sic] is going to wind up suppressing good information. The normal free exchange of ideas is going to have far better results in the long term." [unquote]
Umm, not so sure about that, David-acct. It is a fine Utopian idea, but does it actually reflect reality? (Mind, I am not trying to argue the opposite!)
Until about 20 years ago, I would have agreed with your proposition. But new evidence has shown itself. Nowadays, on the multiple platforms of the public internet, the river (flood?) of informational flow has become highly toxic.
Is this toxicity (a blend of nastiness and intellectual insanity) merely an expression of the vices of basic human nature ~ or do the modern open-slather communications simply fan the flames, turning the usual small grass fires into a wildfire of vast extent? (If we are lucky, this nastiness could all turn out to be cyclic in human history ~ a swing of the social pendulum. But the cynic would say no. )
Perhaps this issue could be better assessed by a panel of historians, who would look at the advent of general literacy . . . yellow journalism . . . partisan propaganda . . . fascism/communism . . . atrocities, pogroms and genocides . . . etcetera. The whole picture, over centuries.
IMO : the best social result is achieved not by extremes of "freedom" or extremes of "suppression" ~ but by a middle course, where there is a degree of filtering or damping of the system. This, perhaps rather easy to achieve say half a century ago, provided you had a foundation of probity in journalism of mainstream media. But now, in a time of increased partisanship & tribal hatreds and unfiltered public access?
David, my argument derives from examining the functioning of living organisms, where complete "freedom" is incompatible with long term survival at the cellular level. We must look at the evolved biological mechanism ~ and not allow our thinking to be distracted by word-labels and ideological rhetorical slogans.
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David-acct at 14:03 PM on 28 January 2022Why people believe misinformation and resist correction
The problem of misinformation is a problem on both sides to the political spectrum. We are really better off long term with the free exchange of Ideas.
Misinformation with Covid was brought up in this article which is a prime example of supressing good information in the name of stopping misinformation. Take Ivermectin for example, virtually no study shows that Ivermectin is an effective treatment for covid (which i concur) but at the same time several regions of the world with heavy invermectin usage for other illnesses have had much shorter waves and those waves have had much lower population levels. Medical research should be spent trying to discover the cause of the much smaller waves.
Another example is the better natural immunity acquired from infection vs from the vaccine. That difference was well known and well documented in the medical literature since August 2021, yet the CDC kept insisting that the vax was better until last week when the CDC finally acknowledged what was known 6 months earlier.
The point is that attempting suppress missinformation is going to wind up suppressing good information. The normal free exchange of ideas is going to have far better results in the long term.
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One Planet Only Forever at 05:44 AM on 28 January 2022Why people believe misinformation and resist correction
This is interesting, but not really new. The problem has been able to be understood for centuries. And in the past 50 years it has become increasingly hard to deny or excuse, yet the denial and excusing persists. The problem is understandably the developed results of competition for status without effective governing of the competition to rapidly identify and effectively terminate harmful developments.
As a Professional Engineer I understand, and have embraced, the responsibility to constantly seek increased awareness and improved understanding in order to effectively avoid the production of harmful results and to correct any already built items that become understood to be harmful or an unacceptable risk of being harmful. And I increasingly appreciate that my developed biased perspective or 'worldview' is 'not the Norm' in many developed societies. The 'Norm perspective' that gets developed in socioeconomic political competitions for perceptions of status is challenged by suggestions that what has become popular or profitable is unacceptable and needs to change (and some higher status people do not deserve to be higher status). The Norm does not seek to understand the harmfulness of what is developed if there is a developed liking for, or hope to benefit from, what has developed.
The UNEP 2022: Emergency mode for the environment published January 6, 2022, identifies the “... enduring crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste.” That is far more than climate change. And it is all tragically becoming a bigger problem at a rate than cannot wait for more rigorous science in the hope for policy action to be developed based on 'more rigorous' science. As was correctly portrayed in Don't Look Up is it easy to continue demanding 'more certainty' before the need for corrective action is taken seriously (and even then it may not be correctly acted upon).
Back in 1988, Edward S. Herman (with Noam Chomsky), presented the Propaganda Model in the book Manufacturing Consent, with an update in 2002 (and a Movie of the same name made in 1992). And Alan MacLeod's Propaganda in the Information Age, published in 2019 was a further update confirming the general validity of the Propaganda Model in the new social media age.
A summary of the problem would be:
Rapidly growing tragic results are developed by human competition for status, particularly harmful being the socioeconomic-political competitions based on 'Freedom, Popularity, and Profit'.
or
The 'Freedom to believe and do whatever is desired without being governed or limited by the requirement to Do No Harm' has rapidly developed massive harmful 'popular and profitable' results.
Unfortunately, more rigorous science investigation is unlikely to correct that problem in time.
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Evan at 21:37 PM on 27 January 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast are we going?
Wol@2 Actually, it is both the total (as you correctly point out) and the rate that matter.
I agree that rate is not important in the sense that emission rates are important in a city (high rates are associated with smog alert days). But rate is important in that it determines how rapidly the natural world must adapt. Sea level rise of 1ft/100 years is doable: 1ft/10 years is a challenge.
Please take a look at SkS Analogy 10: Bathtubs and Budgets, where we discuss the aspect of emissions that you point out. Analogies usually only deal with a single aspect of what is a large, complex problem, so it is normal that we will not deal with all aspects in a single analogy.
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Wol at 11:56 AM on 27 January 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast are we going?
I think it's a terrible analogy!
Many if not most semi-deniers seem to think that by slowing down the rate of emissions everything is hunky-dory. They have no conception of the fact that it's the TOTAL amount, not the RATE of emissions that matters, given the glacial rate of sequestration of CO2.
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swampfoxh at 08:24 AM on 27 January 2022UN report: The world’s farms stretched to ‘a breaking point’
NigelJ,
Thank you for your quick return comments. It's of novel coincidence that the research results I am citing are the product of a 4 year work authored in Australia. It is a revision of a World Bank study conducted a little more that 13 years ago which generated a considerable amount of controversy following a number of studies on Animal Ag topics from IPCC, from (Gerber et al., 2013a)...from FAO, 2009...(Steinfeld et al., 2006a)...(Pitesky et al., 2009) and numerous others.
Perhaps Red Baron will see this exchange and recognize my email address.
"See" you around.
Swampy
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nigelj at 14:35 PM on 26 January 2022UN report: The world’s farms stretched to ‘a breaking point’
Swampfox @3 &4
"I didn't say the science of Regen is faulty."
Hmmm. You said "Just the requirement to move cows from place to place on a rotational schedule requires another ranchhand for about every 50-100 head, plus miles of fence maintenance, water drops, etc. I find the "science" faulty and little more than another USDA attempt to salvage industrial animal agriculture"
I thought by this you meant regenerative agriculture, but perhaps you just mean rotational grazing? I think you lacked a little bit of clarity and its still not clear how you feel the science is faulty.
Regarding your statement " I said, almost nobody will do it (regenerative agriculture)." Fair point. I live in New Zealand and Regenerative farming is also a small minority of farmers. However we are starting to see some growing interest over the last five years and more farmers getting on board. However personally I doubt it will really scale up without some sort of government incentives. I know some countries pay farmers to use regenerative farming to conserve soil carbon. Australia I think.
And I do see the same objections to to regenerative agriculture that you list.
Its the same sort of issue with organic farming. Its still a minority of farmers in New Zealand, and it costs more to farm that way. But at least with organic farming theres a customer base prepared to pay the higher prices and certification schemes helps identify genuine organic food. In New Zealand we have no such certification scheme for regenerative agriculture. But again I doubt organic farming would take over without some sort of government incentives or rules.
Personally I think our civilisation will have to change from industrial farming to some form of regenerative / organic farming sooner or later, but I don't subscribe to doctrinaire versions of these things, and I don't oppose every single facet of industrial agriculture. We may have to combine systems. We may keep some limited level of industrial fertilisers to maintain adequate yields and get enough farmers interested. Just my opinion of course. However the impact of industrial pesticides on insect populations is very concerning. We must find a solution to this and fast.
Thank's for the offer to visit and review your work, but I regretfully wont take it up simply because I live in New Zealand on the other side of the world, and I probably don't have nearly enough farming and biological expertise to review your study. But I wish you all the best with your research. You should probably get in touch with Red Baron (Scott Strough) who posts comments on this website.
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Bob Loblaw at 10:52 AM on 26 January 2022UN report: The world’s farms stretched to ‘a breaking point’
Hal Kantrud @ 3:
You seem to be making a habit of posting comments related to the carbon cycle, from a position of not really knowing what the science is saying.
On the subject of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), the most recent IPCC report has a few useful quotes.
From the Technical Summary (page TS-65 in the draft version from last August):
The largest co-benefits are obtained with methods that seek to restore natural ecosystems or improve soil carbon sequestration (medium confidence).
and from the full report (page I-114)
CDR can be achieved through a number of measures (Chapter 5, Section 5.6, and E SRCCL). These include additional afforestation, reforestation, soil carbon management, biochar, direct air capture and carbon capture and storage (DACCS), and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
I found that from doing a simple search for "soil carbon". Why you think this subject is being avoided is a mystery to me.
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swampfoxh at 09:58 AM on 26 January 2022UN report: The world’s farms stretched to ‘a breaking point’
Nigelj
Since you are a frequent contributor to SkepSci, we should visit. I live in Virginia. If you are within 2-300 miles of Lexington, VA. I will bring a new study on Animal Ag and let you review bits of it, in confidence of course. It is in peer review and is expected to be published in early summer. You can reach me at: swampfoxh@hotmail.com
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swampfoxh at 09:36 AM on 26 January 2022UN report: The world’s farms stretched to ‘a breaking point’
Nigel
I didn't say the science of Regen is faulty,
I said, almost nobody will do it. Bovines have to be managed, a la the Joel Salatin (Polyface) Model. Joel uses "free" intern help on his farm to accomplish most of what an animal farmer has to do to maintain this system. His cattle farmer neighbors always point out that substantial extra labor will be required and none of them are willing to forgo chemicals and manufactured fertilizers. Plant farmers won't do it either. The entire Midwest soil situation shows that the only utility of soil is to hold the plant erect, the non-man-made soil attributes are seriously depleted...all across the great plains. The Oglalla Acquifer is being mined well beyond its recharge rate, forcing circular irrigation wells to have to go deeper to mine what's left of this water resource. Unless we command plant and animal farmers to make painful changes, which we won't do, the current situation across the globe will not change. I'm not a vegetarian. I work for Joel Salatin. Elimination of Industrial Animal Agriculture will buy us a lot of time while we wrestle with the fossil fuels problems, and while we tackle the FF problem, we have an adequate alternate food supply...from plants.
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Doug Bostrom at 08:15 AM on 26 January 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast are we going?
Perhaps it's "rah-rah" from the team but I really like this analogy.
Not least because it neatly addresses the "climate's always changed" confusion.
I stop and start my car every time I drive. The velocity of my car constantly changes when it's in normal use. Running into a brick wall is a change of velocity. Even while the ultimate kinetic result of a brick wall is identical to using brakes, running into a brick wall results in destruction.
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Hal Kantrud at 06:48 AM on 26 January 2022UN report: The world’s farms stretched to ‘a breaking point’
Why are losses of soil carbon usually avoided in reports centered on climate change, especially global warming? To survive, we mined the element from soils with highest carbon content while thickening the "greenhouse" gas blanket, a prime indicator of global warming. We "sequestered" the great bulk of the mine waste in basins, rivers, and the oceans. We are highly dependent on remaining soil carbon as the element is concentrated in carbohydrates, proteins, and fatty acids. Only a few ecosystems, mostly grasslands, store carbon deep underground; deposition rates are excruciatingly slow. I have heard estimates of 800 years per the thickness of a dime for the uppermost humic layer, and that was for tallgrass prairie, already underlain by very fertile soil Retrieving carbon and replacing it upper layers of the soil proile where it can be used by shallow-rooted crop and forage plants would be a daughting task, but likely a much better invstment than planting trees and injecting carbon dioxide thousands of feet underground.
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nigelj at 06:23 AM on 26 January 2022UN report: The world’s farms stretched to ‘a breaking point’
Swampfox @1. On what basis do you find the science of regenerative farming faulty?
And what is your alternative to regenerative farming and industrial agriculture? Im scratching my head because I dont know of one. Or are you promoting vegetarianism?
I really do wish people would spell out exactly what they are saying / promoting and stop talking in riddles. It just aggrivates me and I have no respect for it.
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swampfoxh at 22:33 PM on 25 January 2022UN report: The world’s farms stretched to ‘a breaking point’
Frankly, nothing about this is encouraging. Even the FAO estimate that agriculture produces 31% of global emissions, up from 14.5% nearly two decades ago, offers no bright spot in the picture. In our local community, trying to interest cattle farmers in Regenerative Ag has failed. Regen is good theory but nearly nobody wants to do it. Just the requirement to move cows from place to place on a rotational schedule requires another ranchhand for about every 50-100 head, plus miles of fence maintenance, water drops, etc. I find the "science" faulty and little more than another USDA attempt to salvage industrial animal agriculture from necessary extinction. Eight billion humans, shoulder to shoulder, will wrap around the planet at the Equator about a hundred times...another 2 billion by 2050 feels like a mass extinction already thoroughly underway.
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MA Rodger at 20:52 PM on 25 January 2022How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
ClayHansen99,
While [roblems with your equations can presumably be sorted, there appears to be some fundmental problems with a thesis that argues the increase in atmospheric CO2 results from nuclear tests releasing CO2 from the oceans.
The generally accepted view (as set out by, for instance, the Global Carbon Project who enumerate rising atmospheric CO2 since 1780) is that there is today something like 11Gt(C) of CO2 is annually released by humankind into the atmosphere and any proposal of an alternative source for the atmospheric increase in CO2 will have to identify what happens to that annual 11Gt(C) of CO2 release by humankind.
And if an appropriate CO2 sink is identified allowing the true source to be argued as the oceans, the generally accepted view is that there are already CO2 sinks in operation as only half the humankind release remains in the atmosphere. One of those sinks is the oceans. So if the true source is to be argued as the oceans, the thesis would have to be backed by evidence showing a loss of CO2 from the oceans, this overturning the evidence currently generally accepted showing the oceans to be a major sink of atmospheric CO2 not a source.
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Bob Loblaw at 11:16 AM on 25 January 2022How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
Clay Hansen:
I was able to open the link in your first comment. It does not make your argument stronger.
A few key errors:
- Equations 2 and 3 are incorrect. You have assumed that energy in = energy out (solar vs earth's emissions to space).
- It takes time for the earth-atmosphere system to respond to an imbalance between energy in and energy out.
- The speed at which it responds depends on the heat capacity.
- For the atmpsphere only - ignoring land or water - the e-folding time is on the order of 200 days.
- If you include the ocean mixed layer (60 to 70m depth), we are talking a decade or two for it to respond to an energy imbalance.
- The deeper ocean takes even longer.
- It is impossible to model temperatures on an annual basis without inclduing these heat capacity issues and non-equilibrium conditions.
- Equation 4 is incorrect. You have assumed that the energy in can be calculated from the difference between the σT4 terms for solar (6000K) and terrestrial (assuming about 255K or 288K, you don't specify) along with a "shape factor".
- No such constant "shape factor" can be used for both sources (solar, terrestrial).
- σT4 for solar temperature gives a flux at the surface of the sun. The earth is not located that close to the sun. You need to account for the difference in area between a sphere with the radius of the sun, and a sphere with a radius of the earth's distance from the sun.
- The solar radiation received from the sun also needs to be reduced by a factor of 1/4 to account for the area of the earth as a sphere vs the area of the earth as a disk.
- The solar radiation absorbed by the earth also need to account for global albedo.
- You may claim that your shape factor accounts for this - but the "shape factor" for solar radiation (which is simple geometry) is vastly different from any "shape factor" for earth's emissions to space, and you only have one "shape factor".
- Since the solar "shape factor" is purely geometric, it will not vary over time as you assume in equation 5b.
Given these fundamental errors in the first equations of your model, the rest is nonsense. I did not bother to try to follow the rest of your mathematics, as the initial assumptions are fundamentally wrong.
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:26 AM on 25 January 2022The phenomenon of ‘Don’t Look Up’ (Part 2)
It is incorrect to restrict Don’t Look Up to being an attempt to raise awareness about climate change.
I watched the movie in late December. And I watched it again recently. It is not just a satirical story trying to expose the many aspects of the harmful resistance by leadership to taking action that would limit the rate and ultimate magnitude of climate change harm caused by human activities.
I will start with the item that triggered my interest in responding – a comment about the End
Having watched the movie again, and trying to avoid spoiling the movie for anyone who is yet to see it, the scene described as “And the one scene praised even in negative reviews of the movie, the reconstituted family that gathers for a final prayerful meal at the end, may ultimately promote a sort of religious resignation or fatalism in the face of climate change.”, is not what it is claimed to be at all. That presentation is a gross distortion. See for yourself. The gathering is more than a reconstituted nuclear family. And the religious aspect is a minor part of the gathering interactions. It is sort of along the lines of ‘an atheist faced with the ultimate end may briefly dabble in spiritual possibilities’. And the spiritual bit is presented in a religiously neutral way, but mono-theistic so not truly representing the spectrum of spirituality, by a young outsider of the family who is welcomed at the gathering. And the gathering only happens when it is virtually certain that they can do nothing more to avert or lessen the harm done by the coming tragedy.
The Movie is about more than the challenges of climate change
Don’t Look Up exposes the developed socioeconomic-political system challenges to raising awareness and improving understanding of the harmful aspects of popular and profitable developments. Those challenges are not exclusive to climate change. The UNEP 2022: Emergency mode for the environment published January 6, 2022 as a Climate Actions Story identifies the “... enduring crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste.” That is far more than climate change. And the story links to 10 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. And the other Sustainable Developments Goals, which are social rather than environmental, face similar resistance to learning that what has been developed is harmful and unsustainable.
Court Jester style ridicule of high status more powerful people, not just the ‘rich’, can help everyone, including lower status people, identify the harmful actions among the higher status, particularly exposing who is being harmfully misleading in pursuit of personal benefit. But, as the movie exposes, many people can be tempted to Identify with cult-like incorrect beliefs and biases. And, like cult members, they will resist learning, and even fight against learning, that their bias and beliefs are incorrect until it is glaringly obvious to them through the potently restrictive biased filter of their developed Identity. (At this point I will add that everyone has developed personal biases and beliefs. My current developed bias is towards increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful and the application of that learning to help others by developing sustainable improvements – The Ethical Engineer).
Note that the movie was not made to make money or garner ‘popularity points’. And the criticism that it may ‘turn-off’ some people who are not yet convinced about climate science is a bit of misleading marketing. When it comes to matters like Sustainable Development the fence sitters need to learn and choose a side. Their choices are:
- Learn what is harmful to the future of humanity and try to Help reduce, idealing ending, the Harm Done so the future of humanity is sustainable and improving or,
- Continue to be the harmful distracted learning resistant people they have been by resisting that learning and potentially becoming more harmful by choosing to fight to defend and excuse harmful unjustified aspects of the developed Status Quo.
Science is helpful when it is biased to increase awareness and improve understanding of what is harmful and apply what is learned to help develop sustainable improvements. That requires constant investigation for evidence of harm being done to the robust diverse ecosystem that humans undeniably are only a part of and cannot survive ‘apart from’.
More considerations
Criticisms of the film also expose the harmful ridiculous (deserving ridicule) developed ways of thinking that have regrettably been able to dominate development. They can be seen to be misleading marketing efforts by people who have a bias for the Status Quo. That bias opposes corrections of development required by the global leadership level learning that was developed and presented at the Stockholm Conference of 1972, and has continued to be developed and publicly shared since then.
The Stockholm Conference was a significant global leadership admission of the diversity of global Human Development problems that had occurred. It exposed that the problems would get worse and new problems would develop unless significant systemic changes were made to the developed predominant beliefs and biases.
A harmful response to that raising of awareness of the need for systemic changes that would alter developed perceptions of superiority and progress blossomed in the 1980s. The Reagan-Thatcher right wing power plays for popularity and profit can be understood to be concerted efforts by harmful wealthy powerful interests who would lose status if the harmful unsustainable beliefs and actions they benefited from were limited and corrected to achieve sustainable improvements for global humanity. The scope of the Stockholm Conference went beyond the harmful injustices of colonialism that people were still attempting to raise awareness and improved understanding of (A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn was written in 1980 was part of that centuries long effort that continues today). Raising awareness and improved understanding of what was harmful and unsustainable threatened many powerful wealthy interests. And it continues to threaten them because they have not yet lost their undeserved perceptions of status and related harmful biases and beliefs.
.......
With the above frame of reference, worldview, established I will make the controversial point that, contrary to a gross generalization that science is unbiased, “science can be biased”. All individuals have biases and perceptions of reality that they develop based on their experiences and learning. And scientists are people.The claim that science is unbiased is understandably restricted to the constantly improving awareness and understanding based on the evidence found so far regarding what was investigated so far. Science can be understood to be biased against investigating more complex matters, especially having a bias against anything that cannot be confirmed by repeatable experiments. Experimental learning is important. But it is limited to parts of more complex reality that can be isolated for ‘repeatable’ experimentation. And that Achilles heel of science is a weakness that has been exploited to raise doubts and discredit scientists ... they change their minds, never say something is absolutely certain, and seem to be unable to extend their rigorous science to more complex realities. That leads to the obvious opening to play games of misleading influence claiming that the current understanding on any issue can be wrong and subject to change, no matter how ‘distinguished’ a scientist may appear to be (the competition for status relative to Others governs everybody – doesn’t it).
And I will build on that point to ridicule criticisms that simplistically claim that the film is biased and, as a result, may turn-off people who have ‘to date’ resisted learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. ‘Learning resistant’ is a more accurate description of the ‘moderates' who are not yet biased to believe that many aspects of developed human activity are harmfully degrading the future of humanity. On important matters the 'moderates’ or ‘undecided’ can be understood to be willing to compromise better understanding because of a desire for respecting less sensible, more harmful, opinions (Loving the Freedom to believe and do whatever one wants is a powerfully harmful bias and belief system).
Science is biased to be the pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding. It can be opposed to a bias to maintain and defend the developed status quo. But science is not biased to focus on the investigation of harmful or potentially harmful things. Science can be biased away form that by the status quo it operates in.
And the ‘status’ part of ‘status quo’ gets pursued by people who allow themselves to be co-opted into a status quo competition for perceptions of status (including competitions pursuing popularity and profit). And the pursuit of status is also not biased to be governed or limited to developing lasting improvements for humanity. The harmful reality of the results of people being freer to believe and do as they please are undeniable. Yet some people still fight to maintain the status quo belief in Individual (or Regional, or National, or Cult) Sovereignty to believe and do as they please. Even scientists can feel they should be sovereign to investigate whatever they would choose to investigate. That sovereignty of science investigation can be helpful or harmful, just like competition for popularity or profit can be helpful or harmful.
So the obvious key is for everyone to be biased to want to learn what is harmful and learn how they can be more helpful to Others. Science (and economics and politics) governed (and limited) by that bias is what is required.
The lack of interest and paltry funding for increased awareness and understanding of what is harmful and the related lack of having everyone governed and limited by learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others can be understood to be the expected result of pursuits of status in poorly governed and ineffectively restricted competition for status (popularity and profit).
Science can also be understood to potentially be harmfully biased against investigations and explanations of the complex interconnected nature of reality that cannot be experimented on to rigorously confirm theories being investigated. The hierarchy of the importance of pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding can be understood to be (one of many references supporting this is Sean Carroll’s The Big Picture):
- Physics - the ways things happen down to the sub-atomic levels
- Chemistry - the interactions of physical items that are larger than the sub-atomic
- Biology – the more complex interactions of organic matter
- Psychology – the way that brains work in biological organisms to respond to their experience in their environment
- Sociology – the ways that independent organisms of similar type (societies) interact.
- Ecology – the ways that organisms of different types interact.
The most important and most complex, and least able to be investigated by experiment, is clearly the Ecology and its potential to develop sustainable constantly improving success for the organisms involved. And the lowest level of importance to the future of humanity, while still having significant importance, is Physics.
Note that that ranking also means that protecting the environment from harm should also significantly govern economic and political actions. And it also means that protecting the society of global humanity, now and into the distant future, from harm also needs to significantly govern economic and political actions. The resulting understanding is that individual interests, including that tempting individual freedom of belief and action, also need to be governed to limit harm done. Restricting freedom and changing the status quo are not 'harmful by default'.
That understanding explains why it can be so hard to change the mind of a person who has developed their biases and beliefs immersed in poorly governed socioeconomic-political competition for perceptions of superiority. Anyone who has powerfully developed their identity in that way is like a conscript in a cult. And extreme measures can be required to free minds from harmful cults.
Note that being a member of a cult can also be helpful if the cult is helpfully governed to limit harm done. But it would be preferable for people to learn to be less harmful and more helpful rather than be that way because of the leadership of a cult they have become a captured member of.
And science is also biased to the belief in the supremacy of humans, and the related harmful potential belief in the superiority of a sub-set of humanity that developed perceptions of their superiority through unjust pursuits of perceptions of superiority relative to others.
Competition for perceptions of superiority can be fierce among scientists. And there are many examples of scientists being harmfully biased regarding their choice of what to investigate by the biases they developed based on their experience in the system they learned in. That will be harder to change without significant systemic changes that effectively restrict the Freedom of development of harmful competitive biases for pursuit of status.
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ClayHansen99 at 07:20 AM on 25 January 2022How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
Thank you and I apologize. My lengthy text was in reply to someone asking for a summary of our article. The link isn't working. Of course, the article includes the math and citations. It was ignorant of me to post those data without showing reference to our original piece. Thank you very much for your advice!!!
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ClayHansen99 at 03:17 AM on 25 January 2022How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
Please see my posts at https://aplausibletruthaboutclimatechange.com/
Basically, the article describes the earth based on a thermodymanic balance. Using equations from Newton and Stephan/Boltzmann, we can determine, with confidence, how an impulse of quantum energy affects our climate. With it, we can model a solar flare, an above ground nuclear test and a below ground nuclear test. In each case, the energy of the earth increased and must therefore be dissipated to return to our previous state of equilibrium. Above ground, the amount of energy we receive is only a fraction of the total amount possible. In engineering terms, we call it the Shape Factor. A shape factor on 1 is 100% and 0.5 is 50%, etc. Above ground, the shape factor of a nuclear bomb is only maybe 20%. In addition, the rock will reflect most of that 20% back. However, underground, 100% of the energy is absorbed.
Based on 89 megatons of TNT worth of nuclear detonations underground only, our temperature rise should be 2.95K by 2118, using standard thermodynamic equations.
I do try to take a stab at how the energy got through the rock in my hypothesis. I also show reliable correlations to recent nuclear testing and direct changes in CO2 global average delta.
Our team has what I believe to be the perfect solution. These data are also available on my website.
Change the Paradigm, Save the world
Moderator Response:[DB] Please read the opening post and all the comments in this thread in their entirety before commenting further. As noted in an earlier response, looking at those peak years of testing, the forcing from those 20 years of peak tests of the nuclear weapons on the Earth came to about one eight-millionth of a Watt per square meter (8 x 10-6 W m-2) of power.
For comparison, the 1.8 Watts per square meter (1.8 W m-2) of CO2 radiative forcing as of 2011 generates approximately twenty nine billion, trillion Joules of energy (29 x 1021 J) over the Earth's surface in a single year, or more than ten thousand times as much energy in a year than the entire combined nuclear weapons program of the world had generated in those 20 years.
http://railsback.org/FQS/FQSNuclearWeaponsTesting01.jpg
You are welcome to disagree with that, but in order to be taken seriously, you'll need to cite credible relevant sources and show your maths in your analysis.Sloganeering snipped.
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michael sweet at 01:39 AM on 25 January 2022How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
Clay Hansen:
Thank you for bringing data to Skeptical Science. When I click on your link nothing opens.
I note that in the counter in the upper right corner that the atmosphere has absorbed more than 3 billion Hiroshima bombs worth of energy. I cannot imagine that the underground nuclear tests released a comparable amount of energy. In addition, all of the energy was released decades ago while the climate continues to warm. Perhaps you could summarize your findings here so that we do not have to access your entire original document.
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ClayHansen99 at 23:09 PM on 24 January 2022How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
I'm a professional chemical engineer with a bakground in nuclear weapons and an eidetic memory. I have compiled a huge amount of data that proves that underground nuclear testing is the root cause of climate change. In addtion, we have developed the thermodynamic equations, following the laws of Newton and Boltzman, that show us where we are headed and about how long it will take. Please read the attached technical article that explains the reasoning. In addition, there are links to my original hypothesis and the video I put out.
Change the paradigm, save the world
Clay W Hansen PE
What really causes Global Warming and How it can be attenuated
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Eclectic at 08:26 AM on 24 January 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #3
Jonas, a couple of points :-
(A) Slow down. You are on a multi-decade marathon run, not a 100m sprint.
(B) Life is like a jigsaw puzzle, made up of many pieces. Some large, some small. Some more important, some trivial. Each piece has its own place in the overall picture. It is the picture itself which has meaning - even where a piece or two is damaged or missing.
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Jonas at 06:54 AM on 24 January 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #3
@Baerbel: this time: 10 items read. I would like to read all, but I have to prioritize: I need more sleep. The non-read and read articles will feed into my overall picture and tickle down into my small networks via liks to here and elsewhere (reduced by pandemic; before): ca. 700 people from a small local support forum for a local official city garden project and ca 40 people from an unspecified social network group and my private network. I hope this small spreading footprint justifies the whole reading I do. Sometimes I feel it's worth it, and sometimes I despair (most of the time, to be honest: the small remaining part keeps me going: despair would not make me behave differently (posting from 11.9C in my one room app (luxury!) ..), but I would reduce reading and spreading: hope dies last? I am a Zombie .. I remember being shocked when this SkS hiroshima bombs widget showed the "even" number of 2.040.000.000. Current number: 3.090.020.000 .. I fear we are already completely lost, but I don't want to make this a self fullfilling prophecy ..).
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Wol at 12:46 PM on 22 January 2022‘Don’t Look Up’ – See the movie. Ignore the comet. (Part 1)
I managed to sit through about a third of this movie. It tries to be satire but is more like poor farce, and fails big time in either role.
I understand the objective, but a film this crude in its approach does little for a cause.
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Eclectic at 12:34 PM on 21 January 2022Sea level rise is exaggerated
Thank you BaerbelW ~ and the same Peter Hadfield has brought out a new video on sea level rise, as of a day ago. This, number 58 in his YouTube climate series. Title is :- "Are prominent environmentalists buying beachside property?"
The one you mentioned (number 57) was excellent in debunking the usual strawman myths & faked/false "scientific predictions".
The new video also humorously looks at sea level and the ongoing Denialist cries about the hypocrisy of very prominent rich Lefties who are continually buying expensive beach properties which would surely be doomed to inundation in the immediate future.
Potholer54 provides a handy bunch of rebuttals. Amusing, too.
Over 20,000 views already.
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plincoln24 at 21:29 PM on 20 January 2022‘Don’t Look Up’ – See the movie. Ignore the comet. (Part 1)
To nigelj: As I understand it, one of the motivations in making the movie was in fact to promote action on climate change in an indirect way.
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nigelj at 06:55 AM on 20 January 2022‘Don’t Look Up’ – See the movie. Ignore the comet. (Part 1)
I watched the trailer for the Dont Look Up movie and it seemed quite good satire overall and hit the political and pshychological targets accurately, but the humour seemed a bit strained at times. Reviews have been a bit negative overall.
Our brains are indeed hardwired to respond most strongly to immediate threats rather than long term slow moving train wrecks like climate change. Good commentary here. From our point of view the problem is how do we motivate more action on the climate problem given most peoples minds are not aroused much by the problem?
The movie does of course invert reality. I would say most people would respond strongly to a reasonably immediate threat from a comet, although theres probably some actual truth in the movie because a few people would probably still deny the problem, or see a perverted advantage to themselves out of it.
"It’s just not clear to this reviewer how Don’t Look Up, which vividly portrays Americans not solving a comparatively simple problem, will help Americans solve the truly wicked problem of climate change. "
Remember its just a movie. Its entertainment, satire and a bit of social and political commentary and nothing more. Its not a documentary or a mitigation plan or intended to motivate action or change the world. Although who knows, it might embarass a few people into taking climate change more seriously.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:25 AM on 20 January 2022‘Don’t Look Up’ – See the movie. Ignore the comet. (Part 1)
The connections of Don't Look Up to the tragedy regarding climate change because of the quirks of the human psyche are more terrifying than what is presented.
Rwanda is just one of many lessons from human history of a collaborative society with a diversity of people that was rapidly perverted into being destructive by political game players who wanted to benefit from unjustly dominating Others. Their success was achieved by making misleading claims promoting alternate (irrational) beliefs that are obviously nonsense to anyone whose self-interest does not tempt them to embrace and immerse themselves in stories claiming the need to fight against "All Others who are not part of Their cult of believers".
Anti-climate science storytelling is part of bigger harmful political cults that are built on a diversity of lies created by harmful political opportunists. And those harmful misleading political cult leaders have repeatedly succeeded in causing massive harm because many people are easily tempted to believe nonsense messages that trigger their emotions to overpower their ability to be reasonable. And once a mind is captured by cult identity it can be hard to free that mind from the harmful irrational alternate reality it has been perverted into believing.
Back to Rwanda, one sub-set of the diverse population who had been meeting and greeting each other and working together were startlingly rapidly convinced to viciously slaughter their own neighbours (Note that Unionization of workers has been shown to reduce animosity between people with diverse backgrounds).
Partisan democratic politics that has been allowed to be contaminated by "successful storytelling of lies" (misleading marketing) is already clearly causing massive harmful climate change impacts by delaying and diminishing leadership efforts to limit the harm done. The scarier part is that that successful misleading politics is not that far away from what happened in Rwanda and many other places that rapidly devolved into more destructive behaviour.
Hopefully, the efforts to raise awareness of what is harmful and improve the understanding of how to limit the harm done to the future of humanity, not just the harm of rapid significant climate change, will help to counteract the powerful pressures of divisive destructive pursuits of superiority relative to others that are so harmfully dominant in the world.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:03 PM on 18 January 2022There is no consensus
In response to Star-affinity @#900:
Comprehensive responses to the question about the magnitude of consensus regarding human induced global warming and resulting climate changes have been provided by others.
My initial supplement is: Rather than debating the magnitude of consensus for the theory that “significant anthropogenic climate change is occurring” ask for an evaluation of the level of consensus for the theory that “No anthropogenic climate change impacts are occurring”.
Increased atmospheric CO2 is unquestionably due to human activity. And increased CO2, along with other human impacts, unquestionably produce global warming and significant, hard to precisely identify, but unquestionably harmful climate changes from the conditions that human civilization developed in through the past several thousand years.
However, there is more to consider. It is important to be aligned on the context/objectives for a 'debate'. Without objective alignment the result can be a waste of time.
My primary objective is to try to help develop a sustainable improving future for humanity. Increased awareness and improved understanding of what is going on is essential to sustainable improvement of the future of humanity. And increased awareness of what is harmful and learning how to limit harm done is key, with climate change impacts of human activity being a significant sub-set of concern.
Science questions things with the objective of increasing awareness and improving the understanding of what is really going on in a way that develops “improved common sense”. It is important for that “common sense” to help improve the future of humanity.
Note that not all science or application of science is helpful. Misleading marketing is a good example of harmful scientific investigation and application. It can develop cult-like groups of believers with nonsense as “their common sense”.
Every individual’s perception of what is going on is their reality. All understandings of what is going on are individual beliefs. And everyone has biases regarding what they learn. Everyone develops their understanding based on their experiences in the socioeconomic-political environment they grow up in. In many cases people develop a fondness for, or addiction to, harmful unsustainable developments (systems and beliefs) and resist correction of harm done that they benefit from or hope to benefit from.
Getting alignment on the objective of “reducing harm done to the future of humanity and developing lasting improvements for humanity” is essential. Without that alignment the discussion can be a competition with the different sides having different sets of rules about how the game is played or judged/refereed. That can be a waste of time.
Debating details about the level of consensus of understanding that human activity is causing harmful rapid climate change impacts is one of those waste of time games. Establishing that there is significant consensus is important. However, questioning a well developed understanding of the level of consensus is a game being played to delay and distract from the important discussions of how to identify and most effectively limit the harmful impacts of the many developed unsustainable activities that cause climate change impacts.
One of the most harmful activities is misleading marketing. Always keep in mind that popularity and profitability have no reason to be aligned with limiting harm done. They are measures that are indifferent to harm done . Being more popular or profitable does not mean something is less harmful. In fact, getting away with being more harmful or misleading can be a competitive advantage in games of popularity and profit. And being more popular and profitable can make harmful beliefs and actions harder to correct (the persistence of climate science denial is one of many cases proving that point).
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swampfoxh at 13:15 PM on 18 January 2022The 1.5 degrees goal: Beware of unintended consequences
I think it has been shown that industrial animal agriculture, which is about a 33% contributor to CO2e emissions, still carries the burden of deleterious ecological effects outside of the subject of GGEs, and, of course, the emissions footprint of nearly 8 billion humans added to the biomass is a major issue. Trying to add up all CO2e emissions while passing up the Industrial Animal Ag piece seems to leave a rather large deficiency in the math. Moreover, the body count of Humans and domestic animals, together, requires action, but COP26 avoided conversations that implicated both. The Animal Ag piece probably upsets environmental health because of its contribution to the list of nine serious adverse effects, starting with deforestation, desertification, fresh water use and land use changes made for the benefit of Animal Ag...the other 5 topics being no less important to curtail.
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scaddenp at 08:48 AM on 17 January 2022Big numbers – dollars and institutions – behind divestments from fossil fuels
Hal, in terms of being better informed, Newton isnt connected with conservation of energy - first steps in that direction would be Leibnitz, but in a very limited context. von Mayer and, independently, Joule would first to really state it in a modern form in 1840s. Attempts at attribution to Newton require very creative interpretations of his work, using concepts that Newton never knew.
Renewable energy can be thought of as conversion of energy to useful forms (generally electricity) from renewable sources.
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Eclectic at 08:03 AM on 17 January 2022There is no consensus
Thank you, Bob, for showing the ingenious Project Steve.
The vonStorch survey [referred to, above] may not have many Steves, but it is a good survey - in the sense that it has a suitable first filter. It contacts many thousands of appropriately qualified scientists.
Unfortunately, the low 7% return rate is the first weakness. It would have been better (but at much greater expense) for expert interviewers to personally meet with a truly random selection of perhaps 200 of the scientists . . . and gently hound them for their views, allowing no-one to drop out or excuse himself!
At 7% return , there is the reasonable fear that the respondents include a relatively high proportion of "extremists" (from either end of the spectrum). For example, in one of the questions, 2.5% of respondents replied that they were "not at all" convinced that AGW existed. And this 2.5% is an amazingly high percentage, in view of the accumulated overwhelming evidence that the 2.5 percenters are flat wrong.
In such extreme cases, one suspects that a big slice of the 2.5 percenters have bizarre/extremist political views & a lot of cognitive dissonance. But 'twas ever thus ~ for almost any field of science. (Personal anecdote - I know quite well a PhD-level scientific researcher who is a member of his local Flat-Earth Society.)
And the vonStorch survey questions were very unsuited to elicit actual consensus-relevant opinions.
Overall, John Cook's 2013 survey of the true scientific literature was the optimum approach to the "consensus" issue. It was reasonably neutral in selection; it didn't suffer from drop-outs (drop-outs by the busy, or by the disgruntled) . . . and it looked at the actual science , not the sometimes-flaky opinions of us imperfect human beings.
And on top of it, the Cook 2013 survey doubled-down by asking the scientists personally to confirm (or not) what they viewed their scientific papers as saying. Brilliant !
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Bob Loblaw at 02:47 AM on 17 January 2022There is no consensus
Regarding the utility of surveys such as the Oregon Petition mentioned by Eclectic, I always think of Project Steve, which the National Center for Science Education uses to track opinions on the scientific validity of evolution theory. (Wikipedia also has a page on the project.)
The question basically comes down to whether the selection of individuals responding to the survey is reasonable or not.
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Eclectic at 23:50 PM on 16 January 2022There is no consensus
BaerbelW @ #902 : We can look even further, regarding the Forbes 2016 article mentioned by Star-affinity @ #900 .
The article's author, Mr Earl Ritchie, has grossly misrepresented the vonStorch 2013 survey ~ the survey simply does not support Ritchie's thrust of argument. Ritchie is severely misleading the Forbes readers - readers who are probably good at business but probably rather unthinking (and ill-informed) on science. And Ritchie is also misleading them about the Cook 2013 survey of scientific papers.
The vonStorch 2013 survey [now 8 years old] had its interesting points. And I think the brief "Mertonian" discussion on pages 68 & 69 was a pleasant change of pace. And at the end of the survey report, Bray & vonStorch published a long list of comments criticizing the deficiencies of the survey (participants' critiques ~ especiallly about the ambiguities of the survey questions).
Additionally, please note that the survey had a 7% return rate. (Vastly different from the Cook 2013 survey, which had a different structure.)
And, the survey was about opinions ~ and much of it was about opinions on technical aspects/adequacies of climate models & future projections.
Most of the questions were rather vague and fuzzy and "word based" instead of scientific concept based. So, somewhat difficult for the participants to express themselves about the overall climate science situation ~ in analogy: they were invited to give opinion about a leaf or two, but not to discuss the background forest.
(There were a few exceptions in the questions: one where 2.5% of respondents opined that they were not at all convinced about AGW. And another question, where 89% of respondents said they were now more convinced [versus in 2007] that greenhouse gasses had produced modern global warming.)
All this compares very poorly with the excellent methodology used in the Cook 2013 assessment of scientific consensus.
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BaerbelW at 21:30 PM on 16 January 2022There is no consensus
Star-affinity @#900:
Several other studies have looked at the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change since that Forbes article was published. Here is a blog post from last year written by John Cook about a study he was involved with, replicating Doran & Zimmermann (2009) with a larger sample:
The scientific consensus on climate change gets even stronger
The interesting thing with the Forbes' article is, that it has to cherry pick a particular study to make its point of a lower than 90% consensus. And expecting 100% agreement of climate scientists before accepting the evidence is a case of impossible expectations, one of the main science denial techniques covered in the FLICC framework.
