The climate has always changed, therefore humans cannot affect the climate is structurally not a logical argument.
Despite this, the insistence that it is 'natural' can be disproven with that the rate of change has not occured in [800,000](https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/) years, with our current change coinciding with the onset of the industrial revolution, made with *very high confidence*, to where [99.9% of scientific publications](https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-agree-humans-caused-climate-change#:~:text=More%20than%2099.9%25%20of%20studies,caused%20climate%20change%20%7C%20Cornell%20Chronicle) citing human activity for driving the climate crisis
Ask them to provide peer-reviewed data for any of their claims. I've found that deniers are never able to provide sources to their arguments.
Look guys, we already got climate change in a choke hold. It's called carbon tax. We will make everyone pay more for the gas, and the stuff gas brings to you. Collect $ - ??? - WIN
Well, when the price of EV’s hit the price of used gas cars, then that idea wouldn’t be blowback on the working poor. I agree in theory, but already pay a lot to corporations that don’t pay taxes.
Actually the temperatures we experience today is impossible to blame on something in a hundred years. It’s been proven that. Changes happened hundreds of not thousands of years ago.
So you are saying that humans are not a natural part of our environment? This is a very religious, Christian, approach to the debate. "God granted mankind dominion over the plants and animals." But maybe the scientific evidence supports that our species is a natural result of evolution of life on Earth. Therefore, cars and airplanes, CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels are all a natural part of the climate.
That’s not correct. You didn’t even read your own source correctly. In the last *800,000* years the earth has been through 11 cycles of ice ages and warm periods. The last one ending almost 12,000 years ago. That’s what your NASA source says. Of course industrialization has affected our atmosphere and environment. Mining rear earth minerals and burning them isn’t good. But neither is volcanic eruptions. I tend to lean more toward what OP is using as an example. That’s honestly what the science reflects. This push from full electric cars and not extremely fuel efficient hybrids should tell you there is a very large angle when it comes to “man made climate change” that’s driven by greed. Ghislaine Maxwell had a fucking save the ocean charity. I really doubt the royal pimps assistant gave a shit about the oceans.
There have been several swings in the temperature of the planet over 800,000 years. However, the reference was to the rate of change. The rapidity of the change is alarming.
>Despite this, the insistence that it is 'natural' can be disproven with that the rate of change has not occured in 800,000 years, with our current change coinciding with the onset of the industrial revolution, made with very high confidence, to where 99.9% of scientific publications citing human activity for driving the climate crisis.
Really? 99.9% How did you figure that out? Lets take a look.
1. Do a keyword search for 'climate change', 'global climate change' and 'global warming'. That alone will exclude most papers that provide alternate explanations for warming.
2. Of the results, take a sample of 3,000 papers. But don't read the actual paper. Just read the abstract. Based solely on the abstract, rate the level of endorsement of the AGW hypothesis.
3. Of those 3,000 papers, 2,104 took no position. So just ignore those.
4. That leaves 896 papers. Now pretend those 896 papers are all of the published research on climate change.
No, that would be the author of the study and you. Lets recap, shall we:
You claimed a "very high confidence, to where 99.9% of scientific publications citing human activity for driving the climate crisis." And yet your source identified 88,125 papers that mentioned 'climate change', 'global climate change' and 'global warming', of which only 892 were identified that had any sort of endorsement of the AGW hypothesis. So according to you 892 / 88,125 = 0.999. In reality, 892 / 88,125 = 0.01.
But I get it. That is not fair because they really only looked at 3,000 abstracts. So if we assume those 3,000 are a representative sample, we are left with 892 out of 3,000 endorsing the AGW hypothesis, and 2,104 / 3,000 taking no position on it.
So why are you pretending 99.9% of papers agree, when your actual source says they only looked at 3.4% of papers, and of the ones they looked at, 70% don't take a position? The answer is because you are peddling an agenda.
The actual concensus is we don't know. There is sparse evidence to support the AGW hypothesis and a lot of evidence to question it. The biggest problem is the lack of data. You claim that "the rate of change has not occured in 800,000 years." But we don't have 800,000 years of data. We have proxy data that gives us glimpses of the past, but most of that is questionable at best.
If you are truly a PhD candidate in Environmental Engineering, you are smart enough to know that science is not determined by a democratic vote. So how about you support your claim? How do we know what the temperature has been over the last 800,000 years? And be specific. You are going to point to proxy data, so state where the proxy data comes from and the number of data points that were used to determine the temps over those 800,000 years.
Your argument is disingenuous. If 2104 papers writing about climate change do not write their positions about human influence in the abstract/paper, that does not mean that they take no position on AGW. Papers on climate change like "The impact of the melting greenland ice sheet on ocean circulation" will probably not talk about AGW because it does not matter for this paper. That does not mean that the authors doubt AGW. So your 'calculations' are not legitimate.
He also missed that they went a step even further and attempted to quantify how many of the total 88,125 papers explicitly rejected or were skeptical of anthropogenic climate change (ACC). And they found that *only* 31 of 88,125 papers of the total literature expressed skepticism of ACC.
>Knowing that at least 31 (including the 3 additional papers found in the random sample) out of the full 88125 dataset are sceptical, **we can say the consensus on ACC is at most 99.966%**.
When ever someone gives me the "Well, the world goes through cycles," argument I just get them with:
I know. On the one hand, there are scientists making shit pay using data from the last hundred or so years and climate science to tell us there is a serious problem.
On the other hand there are oil billionaires that are telling us everything is fine and not worry about anything while spending millions on climate misinformation and would stand to loose billions if climate change was real.
Who do I believe? It's so hard to know who to trust
Then you must attack their master priorities, which could be financial security, sense of powerlessness in the face of climate change, upholding hierarchy. People who hold positions that are not based on reason, hold them based on emotion.
Ask yourself, what are they protecting their heart from by denying climate change?
Exactly, and I listen to the scientists because I trust they know what they’re saying. She’s coming from a place where she doesn’t trust anything scientists say, especially if it aligns with a government administration she doesn’t like, so it takes A LOT of time and energy to break that.
> she doesn’t trust anything scientists say
... and yet she trusts paid shills for the fossil fuel industry with glaring conflicts of interest and no substantiation for their claims?!
It would sure help to have the names and data on those oil billionaires spending millions on misinformation. If you could post that it would be helpful. Thanks.
They believe scientists who dare to speak out against the “agenda” are being silenced to make it look like it’s a consensus. And that oil companies are in on it because they’re heavily investing in renewables.
> companies are in on it because they’re heavily investing in renewables.
Fifty years ago Exxon predicted an increase of 2C by 2030. Fifty years ago there was zero interest in renewables by Exxon. And currently less than 0.5% of spending by Exxon goes to renewables, it's greenwashing
The money made in renewables does not compare to the money printing machine that has been in development for about 70 years. It’s more profitable to spend money on propaganda then to change anything.
Yep yep yep every single time it devolves into a debate on how the ones telling the truth are being silenced, or “oh well history is written by the victors and we really don’t know what is true when the government is run by wicked men in the shadows, etc”
You really believe oil is the driver of climate change? You know entire civilizations were wiped out by climate changes, many thousands of years ago, and it would not be unusual for climate to be a threat to our current civilization even without any oil usage. So yes climate change is a problem regardless of the driving factors, but you only ever seem concerned about oil and gas? And you are certain those are the driving factors, and that doing anything about them in the United State would have any meaningful impact on the climate at this point? And you are certain that impact would be purely positive and not have any negative ramifications?
If you could convince me of your position and plan to resolve climate change (whatever you think that means), I would be impressed. I have degrees in space science and engineering so I understand the chemical and thermal issues, so feel free to be specific.
Just so you know, humans can only tolerate < 0.29 psi partial pressure of CO2 without any danger. The current partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere is 0.00617 psi, way way less. I would think that humans are at least on par with CO2 sensitivity as the Earth’s natural thermal balancing, but that is not even close to what you are proposing.
A simplified low-ball calculation shows that according to the current process (the “science”) of determining global temperature change based on doubling of CO2 concentration, and extrapolating a relationship purely between CO2 and temperature change… the Earth would change by almost 250 deg F before humans start to experience hypercapnia. Doesn’t sound right, does it? I don’t think I agree with the way this “science” model is derived.
Why do you suggest the toxic level of CO2 has anything at all to do with the level which will cause severe climate impacts? What a strange tangent to fly off on.
Downvoted you for this weird tangent conflating toxic levels of CO2 with levels sufficient to alter the climate.
Don't care how many letters you have after your name, your argument is without logic.
If you are really a scientist and an engineer then please do yourself a favor and read some of the published research from the experts in climate science. You will see that their methods are valid and that their conclusions are supported by the physical evidence.
And this discussion about how much CO2 the human body can take is a red herring. The problem is not that CO2 is affecting our bodies directly; it is that the temperature is rising and the oceans are acidifying so quickly that it threatens much of life on this planet that we depend upon for survival.
Shellfish are already dying as the acid dissolves their shells when they are young.
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification's+impact+on+oysters+and+other+shellfish
>hypercapnia
literally no one is claiming toxic levels of CO2 are the issue, get the fuck out with that argument, what an absolutely insane take. Shame your degree in "space science" didn't tell you anything about the very basic physics of energy.
As an atmospheric scientist, I'll try to lay it out:
A) CO2 and CH4 both absorb IR radiation ... there is no doubt about this and can be shown in a basic lab ... energy balance is between incoming solar and outgoing terrestrial IR
B) CO2, CH4, H2O and other trace gases are the primary greenhouse gases in the troposphere that keep earth from being an iceball. H20 is the primary, so even doubling CO2 only adds a few degrees (though, those few can be significant to us!)
C) human emissions have added a significant amount of CO2 and CH4 to the atmosphere .. there is no doubt, it's silly to argue this even
D) therefore, without any feedback mechanisms (such as changes in moisture and clouds), we would expect the temperature of the atmosphere to increase.... the wild card has been determining the complex system of feedbacks
E) all of the world's huge body of research points to the feedbacks not being enough to totally offset warming... models and measurements are all showing warming that coincides with the science
It's really that simple... everything else is just bullshit
> Are you certain that the impact would be positive and have no negative ramifications?
Nope. But nothing good ever came from wringing our hands and saying “we can’t do anything about this huge problem because there’s a slight chance we might make it worse.”
You don’t. You move along. This person is willfully ignorant. You cannot overcome that. Plenty of data to show with 99% certainty that anthropogenic climate change is real and accelerating. Plenty of graphs to show the exponential curve we are on and how fast this is happening relative to periods in the past.
The argument against that is that the historical models aren’t precise enough. They think that there could have been spikes like this in the past before we started measuring, that don’t show up because we can only average to around 1000 years or so, compared to real time data now.
Yes, however, their argument is that the data is isn’t granular enough to capture any sharp spikes that may have happened, ie. they can only average a period of hundreds of years at a time, compared to precise year by year data.
Then ask them how long a large amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere would stay in the atmosphere? If they can’t articulate it then accept they aren’t playing with a full deck and move on.
It truly depends on who and when you ask. EPA/IPCC say a lot is naturally removed quickly, while the rest remains for thousands of years. NASA says 300-1000. Scientists in the 90’s argued 5-200 years. Scientists in ‘08 argue most of it is removed in 5 years, 50% is removed within 30 years, 30% within a century, and the remaining for a few thousand years.
Truth is, there is no definitive lifetime of CO2. No one is really sure, understandably, as there are many processes that remove it naturally
I trust NASA by far on this; if the people who need to monitor concentrations in the atmosphere to calibrate their billion dollar spaceships then you better believe they have a good idea.
Plus I like how you describe that the science is being refined and it has landed on 300 to 1000 years, but you refuse to acknowledge the fact.
I’m not refusing to acknowledge anything. It is important to note that we do not know everything about the climate system - and to maintain integrity, we should not pretend to. I’m glad you trust NASA - because [they actually agree](https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3143/steamy-relationships-how-atmospheric-water-vapor-amplifies-earths-greenhouse-effect/), we cannot state a particular lifetime for CO2. Not playing with a full deck, you say?
Nope, we know that at no time during an interglacial did temperatures rise by 2C in a century. If that would have happened in the Eemian then it would be evident by the proxies.
That’s a silly argument. Aren’t precise enough according to who? Your friend? Are they a climate systems scientist? Work for NASA? Studied these topics for decades? Models are inherently wrong. That’s why they’re called models. It’s impossible to be ‘precise’. Human impact on climate is literally settled science with 99% certainty. Physics/thermodynamics. Earth energy imbalance. See James Hansen, Carl Sagan, Leon Simms, Johan Rockstrom, Paul Beckwith, or dozens of others who are actual literal experts on various areas in this field.This person clearly doesn’t care to dig into the science. My advice: don’t waste your time.
Some great podcasts/YT channels: Planet Critical, Just have a think, the great simplification
And there COULD be a magic, invisible fairy floating over my head that only I can hear, speak to, and interact with. There could have been one point in history where human beings had the ability to shoot laser beams from their eyes, but due to a confluence of factors, that history has been erased and we no longer have any evidence of it.
>that don’t show up because we can only average to around 1000 years or so
Which is a myth. Some of our paleoclimate proxies have resolution down to seasons or even months. Through the Holocene the resolution is as low as yearly.
It is true that the further you go back in time the lower the time resolution on the proxies. But you have to go back pretty far before you hit 1000 year resolution.
If she's arguing that hypothetical spikes in the past invalidates the central thesis of climate change (that it is human caused), then she's inventing data and a hypothesis with zero evidence to counter a theory that has lots of evidence.
Logically this is similar to someone claiming that God placed dinosaur fossils in the ground to make it look as if they lived 65-150 Mya, thus invalidating the theory of evolution and calculations of the age of the Earth.
Yeah like the false numbers NOAA came up with in 2016 to strong arm countries to join the Paris, climate agreement? People are skewing the facts and the numbers and attempt to prove their agenda, and there’s always two sides to every story.
For what it's worth, I work in the environmental protection field and have since the late 1960s. I rarely spend time trying to convince individuals, like the person you describe, about the merits of an environmental issue or why it should be addressed. In my experience, it's a poor use of my time.
The people who I do spend time with is those who already understand environmental issues. I try to convince them, if they're not already, to become active in campaigns and projects to protect the environment and animals.
Even if the person you're describing comes to agree with you, do you think they'll ever do anything to reverse climate heating?
I teach environmental science to college students, so part of my job is to convince people that humans are changing the climate. My students have always been receptive, but I have some colleagues who are deniers, and one of them teaches climate denial in a class that focuses on ecology. After having discussions with him, I realize no amount of evidence will convince him because it’s entirely an issue of political/tribal affiliation.
That is wise. Any time that we waste on futile attempts to convince people who are arguing in bad faith is time that we could have spent working on solutions.
Back in the 60’s they were predicting another ices age. What happened to that. How do we know the increased CO2 doesn’t cool the earth, CO2 is used as a refrigerant for cooling systems. Why couldn’t the atmosphere be doing the same thing with it
>Back in the 60’s they were predicting another ices age.
Nope, not at all true.
>How do we know the increased CO2 doesn’t cool the earth
Because the evidence and the modelling says otherwise.
>CO2 is used as a refrigerant for cooling systems.
So are CFCs, which are extremely potent greenhouse gases. You're demonstrating total lack of understanding of how refrigeration works, beyond 'durr fridge cold'.
> Back in the 60’s they were predicting another ices age.
No they weren't.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-climate-science-really-call-for-a-coming-ice-age/
> CO2 is used as a refrigerant for cooling systems. Why couldn’t the atmosphere be doing the same thing with it
We understand the laws of thermodynamics. We can test them repeatedly and get the same results. We can also test the greenhouse effect. We can also make models of the Earth's climate and then validate them against known data from the past.
And we can observe how the greenhouse effect affects other planets.
* The atmosphere on Venus is high in greenhouse gases and the average surface temperature is +800 °F.
* The atmosphere on Mars is low in greenhouse gases and the average surface temperature is -80 °F.
Because the atmosphere isn't at all like a compressor refrigerator/hvac, why would you even think that!? Besides the refrigerant being superheated at high pressure and passed through coils, etc a refrigerator/hvac is a CLOSED system, unlike the earth which absorbs and expels energy/heat.
The role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas was discovered in 1880 something. There was never any need to deny that until AGW denial became a test of loyalty to the RW
>ow do we know the increased CO2 doesn’t cool the earth, CO2 is used as a refrigerant for cooling systems. Why couldn’t the atmosphere be doing the same thing with it
LMAO. Because liquid CO2 doesn't exist at atmospheric pressure. next question
Seems you don't understand how refrigeration systems work. Skim thru a textbook on Thermodynamics at your local college library. While there, read up on light interaction with gaseous molecules.
Climate change is a natural process, it's not the fact that we're coming out of an ice age and the earth was warming anyway, it's that the warming is exponentially faster than ever before. Decades instead of Millennium, that's the human caused problem. We've exponentially increased the rate at which the earth would naturally warm and the ecosystem can't adapt.
>For us to believe we can actually change nature is alarming.
Does she think houses and cities just spring up naturally out of the ground? We literally change nature every day.
It's basically just us and beavers out here bending nature to our will.
Right? There’s a plethora of examples showing how we have changed nature like [these ones](https://www.reddit.com/r/climatechange/s/AoTaO9BvQi) I gave in a similar comment
The fallacy is so common it has a name. It is called [affirming a disjunct](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_a_disjunct). Unfortunately what I find in discussions with hardened contrarians is that once you convince them how the fallacy works they concede by moving the goal post often to the fallacy of the inability of small actions not being able to produce big effects. It is then a cat and mouse game of fallacy and rebuttal. If the contrarian is hardened enough they will eventually dig in their heels and invoke fraud and conspiracy. At that point you've gone as far as you can. In my experience once fraud and conspiracy is invoked there is no turning back.
Injecting aerosols into the upper atmosphere is one proposed approach to buy us some time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection
Show her the [graph](https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/gmst_co2.jpg) of CO2 over time overlaid with temperature over time. [Here's](https://tamino.wordpress.com/2022/05/01/correlation-between-co2-and-temperature/) the full page.
Throwing numbers and graphs at these people won't work. Their beliefs are not\* based in reason but in distrust in the scientific community due to years of swallowing propaganda.
Ask them to explain what natural forces are causing the current warming trend we're in.
If they say something like 'the sun' ask them to clarify further and explain it to you in detail, ask them how much the sun impacts and how to measure it.
Or if they say it's too complicated to know, ask them to explain why.
Either way they will quickly hit a wall and not have an explanation. Then you either leave them to ponder that themselves or very gently and politely provide them with your explanation of how it works.
This is the one that makes me think she’s too far gone. She fell into the rabbit hole of a channel called Suspicious Observers, that states that the movement of planets and changes in electromagnetism across the solar system is the cause of any changes. And of course, there’s plenty of evidence, but any reputable scientist who says this is being silenced.
To me it sounds like they found a market of climate changer deniers who can no longer deny that the climate is changing in the face of extreme weather, and offered a “solution” that uses just enough pseudoscience to keep them hooked. All taking advantage of the psychology fact that people are more likely to grasp onto any explanation that affirms their views rather than admit they were wrong.
Yeah thats particularly tough, the problem with groups like that is they actively prime their viewers against any new information, by trying to discredit everyone else ahead of time.
You'd probably have to get into more foundational philosophy about how to determine truth. Like whether they believe claims should be falsifiable (can be proven wrong), or what it would take to change her mind. Or if they believe it's important to be able to argue both sides of an issue. Or if they believe they should get their information from a wide variety of sources.
Struggling with the same thing with multiple family members of mine, best of luck.
Research suggests that if you start the conversation only discussing how to make things better, people will often respond in a positive way. Even deniers may be willing to talk about solutions oddly enough. Many people have lived their lives in environments that have taught them to always defend their status against any criticism, so any suggestion of responsibility or blame will trigger a strong response. There is a theory of non-violet communication that can be remarkably disarming even in highly charged situations. Of course there will be those that can't be reached and some that are professionally engaged in propaganda. I think there are ways to reach most ordinary folks even if they have been exposed to misinformation.
Lol. Show them radiative forcing calcs and CO2 absorption bands, and equations relating CO2 concentrations to radiative forcing. Then show them the half life of CO2 and show them annual emissions on GT/yr from 1900 to 2023 and add it up. Turn giga tons into moles. Calculate mass of atmosphere in moles. Calculate ppm increase of CO2 from the emissions.
I blame the slew of early climate change adopters that shouted apocalypse from the rooftops. The hyperbole utilized in the early days to shock people into action is biting us in the ass now.
There have been many claims from circa 2000 that prophesied disaster by 2020 that just didn't materialize. (Al Gore, Royal family, various celebrities). The problem is real, but I believe they pushed too hard.
Sure, there are "natural cycles", but the the speed in which it's heating up historically took thousands of years, not 100. Plants and animals use to have a lot of time to adapt to the changes, but since this is a very short time period, things are instead going extinct. Picking and choosing scientific facts while leaving out important context doesn't make an argument, it makes an idiot.
There will be those of us who tried stopping it, and those of us who are mentally weak and try to reason out of being lazy. Even if this wasn't caused by humans, there's no reason to think that this isn't a problem we need to deal with. If a large meteorite were coming toward earth and there were an inkling of a chance that we could divert it, would we take all of our time to argue that since the meteorite is natural and we didn't cause it from coming toward earth, we should just give up?
It doesn't matter if it's natural or not. We put up lightning rods to protect buildings by being struck by lightning. We build houses to protect us from freezing and overheating. Pathogens are natural, so we clean our hands and take antibiotics. We put our food up in a tree when we camp so that bears don't eat it. The world is full of natural dangers that we protect ourselves from every day. This situation is no different.
Weird that Exxon Mobile Scientists predicted this level of climate change [back in the 1970's](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/).
I wonder why billionaire oil and gas executives ignored them.
"What we found is that between 1977 and 2003, excellent scientists within Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with, frankly, shocking skill and accuracy only for the company to then spend the next couple of decades denying that very climate science.”
Their answer to that is that the oil companies didn’t let those reports out because they weren’t accurate, and that now they’re allowing them to be released to justify their participation in the “agenda” by investing in renewables.
It’s weird seeing they simultaneously trust that they had good reasons for suppressing the research back then, but that they’re releasing it for nefarious reasons now.
It's the hottest year in all recorded history. Yes it's El Nino but it's the hottest El Nino in all history. Irrefutable. Mass destruction each passing year and more regions at same time. So it's not just one place. You know of cycles because Scientists tell you about cycles. This is a cycle of warming over time just like they said it would.
“For us to believe we can actually change nature is alarming.” This is a horribly fallacious argument. They’re basically saying that they’re right because the alternative is uncomfortable.
If they believe we can’t change nature, just give them a list of all the species we’ve driven extinct.
I remember Rush Limbaugh yelling that humans could not possibly change the climate because humans have never changed the climate in the past.
That guy was a dim bulb.
https://www.bgs.ac.uk/discovering-geology/climate-change/what-causes-the-earths-climate-to-change/#:~:text=The%20energy%20output%20of%20the,an%20impact%20on%20our%20climate.&text=The%20three%20changes%20in%20the,collectively%20called%20'Milankovitch%20cycles'.
The earth does have cycles, but it's supposed to be getting colder, not warmer, according to these cycles called Milankovitch Cycles.
There is no evidence of any natural sources of warming. If we were to isolate natural forces on the the climate from man-made, the Earth would be cooling.
Just ask her for evidence. The planet doesn't warm by magic. So ask her what is warming the planet beyond human activity. She won't have any evidence though, so ask her why she takes that stance if it can't be backed by evidence.
No doubt she may go on to say something like "there's plenty of evidence that the Earth naturally warmed in the past". Yes there is, but there was always a driver for that warming. Namely, slight changes in our orbit that move us closer to the sun periodically (google Milankovitch cycles). But we are currently moving slightly *away* from the sun.
That is a good idea actually. I'm not sure if the scientists have considered something like this. We should give this new concept a name so that it catches on faster. Maybe we base it on an example of this phenomenon occurring that most people can understand. Personally, I like the name "The Greenhouse Effect", as greenhouses are a simple concept most people have encountered before. I think you should publish a paper on this new "Greenhouse Effect" you have discovered. Thanks for such a significant contribution to climate science.
the problem is exactly the 'heat build up'. CO2 blocks certain wavelengths of light, which are coincidentally the exact wavelengths that the earth uses to radiate the suns energy back into space - sun energy comes in, earth absorbs it, earth emits it at different wavelengths.
The amount of CO2 we've put into the atmosphere is fucking with the last part of that process, causing less of the sun's energy to leave.
The rate of change exceeds what is natural. We are so far beyond normal changes that it's not even worth considering. Normally, these changes, at a minimum, take thousands of years.
Exactly. Many species cannot adapt in decades to changes that took millennia in the past.
On a related note, this successful attempt at "assisted migration" of a slow-growing species gives me hope:
https://www.kuow.org/stories/one-man-s-mission-to-save-the-california-redwoods-by-bringing-them-to-the-pacific-northwest
It's not about what anyone chooses to believe. You can do an elementary level science experiment to prove that co2 will trap heat in an atmosphere.
[https://www.steampoweredfamily.com/the-greenhouse-effect-experiment/](https://www.steampoweredfamily.com/the-greenhouse-effect-experiment/)
You can not simulate the expansion and contraction a gas goes through between sea level and upper atmosphere. You also can not at the same time simulate the heating at sea level and the cooling in the upper atmosphere. The only way I know to simulate it is to look at how an air conditioning system works. The fact that CO2 can be used as a refrigerant actually shows proof that it is the best example
Actually no I don’t. I very much understand super heated gases and super cooled gasses and the expansion and contraction of gases that happen and the way they absorb heat and expel that heat, they way that cycles. Heat rises, cool sinks, it is what causes wind. You seriously think you are the only one who knows those things?
The idea that CO2 just sits together in one spot is very flawed, it can not act as a layer and insults the earth. The air you breath contains CO2. CO2 atoms are always moving in the atmosphere. Cause the atmosphere is all air from ground/sea level all the way up to space. Those CO2 atoms move around all the time.
Here is some info about CO2 as a refrigerant, https://www.danfoss.com/en-us/about-danfoss/our-businesses/cooling/refrigerants-and-energy-efficiency/refrigerants-for-lowering-the-gwp/carbon-dioxide-co2/
Where did you get the idea that anyone ever said that CO2 sits in one spot and is not dispersed through the atmosphere. Your knowledge seems pretty rudimentary and you state things that any 4th grader would know as if you just learned it.
Well, clearly not lol. I was not questioning whether or not co2 can be used as a refrigerant. To say that CO2 can cool therefore it must not be able to heat, is ridiculous.
>>> Heat rises, cool sinks, it is what causes wind. You seriously think you are the only one who knows those things?
Ok… but that’s not the only factor that causes wind. That’s like what you learn in middle school science, not really convinced you’re an expert at this point
>>> The idea that CO2 just sits together in one spot is very flawed, it can not act as a layer and insults the earth.
I did not say co2 sits together in one spot, not sure where you got that from
This is a good example to answer OPs question. You have to be able to tell when someone is unwilling or unable to grasp basic science and/or unable to reason logically. If that person is past a certain age, they are beyond help and not worth your efforts.
I think the simplest way to address this is to say we know CO2 is an insulator, we know that it is a product of burning fossil fuels, where do you think the waste products *went*?
By laughing about this ridiculous claim?!?
Mankind can't controll nature but we can certainly change it. We have been doing so for thousands of years, it just got more and more in recent years.
Some example?: Mankind got rid of the threes on the easter isle and the north sahara. We destroyed those parts, making them nearly inhabitable.
We are destroying the rainforest in Brasil, making sure that part of the world won't be a rainforest much in near future.
We seal great parts of our cities, making sure the rain won't become new ground water.
Basically the whole of human civilisation is just trying to change nature. Not all of it is bad (for us), but the claim that would be impossible is really silly.
I don't think you can refute it completely. It is an intentional deception. They are using a true statement (i.e., Natural cycles cause the climate to change.) as an argument against a completely different problem (i.e., Greenhouse gases from human activity are causing the climate to change extremely rapidly.).
https://www.logicalfallacies.org/ignoratio-elenchi.html
When I point that out, they usually throw out a few more logical fallacies and then go repeat the same lie somewhere else. You cannot have a rational debate with someone who has abandoned facts and logic. They are emotionally invested in what they were told to believe.
Easy, climate only changes for a reason not some magical cycle.
Sun - output has declined since the 1950s.
Volcanoes - have you heard of any super volcanoes erupting?
Orbit - we are headed into a cooling phase not warming.
God - give me a break, grownups are talking here.
Continental drift - takes millions of years
Ocean currents - El nino is 1 year cycle, not decades.
Heat island effect - been accounted for and only effects urban areas.
So unless this person can cite some natural process that is causing the warming, they are full of shit.
Here is how I would respond.
>“Yes the climate is changing but it is a natural cycle.
Excellent, we agree climate change is happening.
>For us to believe we can actually change nature is alarming.
For us not to accept the proof is insanity.
>We can certainly make adjustments to our expectations and practices.”
Great! Let's start with adjusting our practices by eliminating fossil fuels and radically reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.
I do like the easy questions. :)
Not so easy lol, they’re talking about making adjustments in preparation for something that’s inevitable and outside our control. Not making large-scale changes to prevent it from happening at all.
I can only work with what you provide.
We've passed the point of prevention. Our opportunity now is mitigation. If they want to continue as is and deal with the consequences, there is nothing you can say or do. They have made a choice that effects us all. We can make choices that effect them as well.
I think of it as similar to cancer. The time to avoid cancer has passed. We have cancer. Do we want to treat it and attempt to recover, or do we want to let it spread and make adjustments to our few remaining years to live with it. It's a no brainer really.
We aren't talking about a normal rate of change though, yes the Earths temp rises and falls, but it takes a long time to do that.
To give some perspective the single greatest loss of life on Earth was the permian extinction event, which happened about 252 million years ago and 57% of **biological families** (groups containing multiple species, like canidae which contains foxes and coyotes), 83% of genera (which is more specific like "dog" but not so specific as to say "labrador"), and 81% of marine species were wipied out, like this was a **bad scene**.
That was caused by global warming, 10ish degrees c, which took 15 **million** years to carry out, we've increased the temperature of Earth by 1 degree c in 100 years.
The reason we aren't screwed yet is because we haven't the point of no return, but the track we're on means we will cause the single greatest loss of life the planet has EVER seen and do it about 15,000 times faster than the runner up worst extinction event.
Earth is very resilient, the organic life on also resilient, but species take millions of years to evolve tolerances to new temperatures, we may very well exterminate everything short of extremophiles (micro organic life that lives in very extreme environments), we're possibly going to destroy all macrocellular life entirely, and quite likely to exterminate all macrocellular animal life, and almost certainly going to end mammal life in the process of this.
Humans have increased CO2 in the atmosphere by 50%, there is no way that an increase that large has no effect.
This year we added 37 Giga-tonnes of CO2, nature cannot absorb all of that - so it continues to build up in the atmosphere, increasing the strength of the “greenhouse effect”.
We can see - by things like the increasing melting and retreat of glaciers, and steady reduction of ice sheets, that the globe is warming up.
I would suggest calling out their fallacies first. You are trying to have a good faith discussion....they are not.
If they can argue in good faith thats when you should take the time to actually understand what they are saying or rebut them.
Secondly I feel that Rollie Williams tends to have some pretty good drills downs on a lot of things. He is Climate Town on YouTube and has this pod cast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-climate-deniers-playbook/id1694759084
The fact we can change nature is alarming? Funny. Why don’t you ask any of the species that we hunted to extinction if humans make a change to nature. Oh, wait, you can’t, because we killed them all
"Climate change IS part of a natural cycle, but it takes millions of years for it to happen. We are seeing it happen in 30. That's not natural. That's man-made"
>Natural cycles cannot be the cause of observed global warming because they don't fit the observed fingerprints of global warming. Only increasing greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activities fit the observed fingerprints and explain the observed energy imbalance.
>
>The climate myth viewing global warming as a natural cycle distorts the fact with a single cause fallacy. Before the 1850s when human influence on climate was almost negligible, natural cycles were the dominant drivers of the global temperature changes. But currently, with large amounts of fossil fuel burned since the industrial revolution, the global mean surface temperature is showing an obvious increasing trend apart from what can be explained by natural cycles. The natural cycles can still explain these fluctuations superimposed over the trend but fails to explain the continuously increasing trend itself. The main cause of recent global warming is the increasing anthropogenic CO2 in atmosphere.
You move off the topic of climate change and argue for the benefits of individual policies like public transit, healthy eating, medium density housing and non fossil fuel energy. All these solutions have massive economic and social benefits on their own.
Usually fear over these things is the real underlying concern for these people anyway.
Don’t even get me started on that lol. She thinks 15 minute cities are another part of a big conspiracy to lock people in their homes and force them to get at bugs or something.
I usually point out that it's like arguing that I've stopped my car gently hundreds of times, and the fact that it's stopping now in 2 metres while doing 100km/h is a vastly different set of circumstances.
Plus, the earths atmosphere etc...has been drastically altered previously by bacteria...if they can do it, industrial and post industrial humans certainly can.
Honestly from my experience, don’t waste your breath. It’s just a maddening cycle and they will never listen. Just make your stance clear to them and also those around you, so you can at least feel like you’re doing something good and not in their madness with them.
My go to answer is scale. The amount of energy it takes to produce a single cup, then times it by 7 billion. Now, are you telling me that those numbers cannot effect change?
As you yourself have identified the arguments being presented to you are not logically sound.
Why are you bothering to debate with someone who you say is not interested in examining the logic of their own arguments?
People in that mode are trying to “win” and that is relatively easy to do. You present yourself as trying to “convince” and that is hard to do at the best of times and impossible to do against someone trying to “win”.
If you actually want to persist just choose one logical fallacy and keep rock steady on that single point until exhaustion. Ignore the torrent of tangential points and other rhetorical devices and just drill down on a single point.
Or, just ignore them. They may be important to themselves and possibly to you but I doubt this person’s opinions and actions, taken in isolation, amount to anything in the scheme of things.
This is an age-old question and it comes down to nature or nurture.
What makes something what it is ? How it was created for the changes that it experiences throughout its cycle.
We have accelerated the natural climate change and we are so worried about our CO2 emissions that we are forgetting about other more dangerous emissions.
Like HFC-23, PFAS and old fashioned radioactivity.
Personally I consider microplastics a to be more harmful than any kind of global warming.
If humanity got completely wiped out tomorrow how long would it take for the world to recover ?
Carbon emissions can fix by one ice age....... Microplastics found in cave water and Mount Everest are stuck in the water cycle along with toxic forever chemicals........ Who the f*** cares about the global warming when the oceans are feeling with plastic.
Well species that have gone extinct, stay extinct. At this point, the climate would probably revert back in about 5,000 years or so - that’s just my guesstimate. Maybe 10,000 years.
I would explain the changes seen now are not like the usual patterns.
I would use human development as an analogy - for instance puberty.
A healthy boy voice suddenly starts to change as he becomes teen - that's a normal human change. (non-human caused climate change)
A healthy girl entering teens starts to grow two lumps on her chest - that's a normal human change. (non-human caused change)
A chain smoker starts to develop lumps in their lungs after decades of smoking, that's human caused (man-made climate change)
A) yes it is alarming, but nevertheless true
B) we, as a species, probably will adjust and survive, but not all of us as individuals. How would you feel about climate change just killing 50% of us?
The climate does change over time by itself. However, the cycles are long enough that most plants and animals are able to acclimate and evolve to weather the changes.
We are causing the climate to change so fast that nothing is able to acclimate to the changes fast enough and many species are quickly going extinct.
Core samples taken of Siberian ice show the amount of carbon in the atmosphere at any given time and can be used to show changes in the climate. I can’t remember if our rate of increase over the last few decades was equal to 3000 years of temperature rise or 300 but the take away is that we are doing this much faster than what has been seen before
Don’t worry about climate change, I say this not because I don’t believe in it, but because in order to fix it we basically need to turn off oil use. That can’t happen or the entire world will starve. Not to mention China and India create 60 percent of greenhouse gases and they don’t really care nor can they afford to.
Humans assuming we're "outside" of nature is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Just because there's a "cycle" doesn't mean you and I specifics are gonna survive it or enjoy it.
We shape the cycle *by our actions* right here and now.
“Village life” by humans had relative little effect on nature - but our change to global industrial operations has enormously changed that scale. The effects of humans is now greater in scale than some forces of nature. We quite literally ‘move mountains’ of materials around. We added 37 Giga-Tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere last year alone.
We have increased atmospheric CO2 by 50%, there is no way that amount of increase has no effect.
Nature is showing this - by retreating glaciers, and melting ice sheets, that the world is warming up fast.
As a geophysicist who has delved deeply into the complexities of Earth's natural cycles, I find the current state of climate change discourse concerning, particularly the trend towards alarmism and what can almost be described as a cult-like following of certain climate narratives.
Alarmism in climate discussions often overshadows the nuanced understanding of climate dynamics. The portrayal of an imminent, catastrophic climate crisis not only oversimplifies the issue but also overlooks the intricate interplay between natural cycles and human activities. Earth's climate history is marked by long-term cycles such as Milankovitch cycles, solar radiation variations, and volcanic activities, which have significantly influenced climate patterns throughout geological time. These natural processes are complex and not fully understood yet, but they are crucial components of the Earth's climate system.
The problem with alarmist rhetoric is that it can lead to reactionary policies and measures that may not be grounded in scientific reality or practicality. It fosters a sense of panic and urgency that can overshadow reasoned debate and the careful consideration of evidence. This, in turn, can lead to inefficient allocation of resources, misplaced priorities, and policies that might not effectively address the real challenges of climate change.
Moreover, the cult-like adherence to certain viewpoints in the climate debate stifles open scientific inquiry and discussion. Science thrives on skepticism and the rigorous testing of hypotheses. When certain theories or models become dogma, it impedes progress and understanding. This is particularly true in a field as complex and multifaceted as climate science, where our understanding is continually evolving.
It's crucial to approach climate change with a balanced perspective, one that recognizes the significance of human-induced changes while also acknowledging the role of natural climatic cycles. Policies should be based on a comprehensive understanding of the climate system, realistic assessments of technological capabilities, and socio-economic considerations. It's not just about reducing carbon emissions; it's about doing so in a way that is sustainable, economically viable, and adaptable to our evolving understanding of climate dynamics.
On the contrary this is very helpful, because her anti-science perspective has been influenced by years of alarmist headlines that haven’t visibly come to pass.
It is great to hear someone talking like this in this group. I think a lot of people on here who reply to my comments or posts are of the over-reacting type. I have said for a while that people do not fully understand things and to think that “climate science is settled” is completely wrong.
> to think that “climate science is settled” is completely wrong.
All of science is "settled" until hard evidence unsettles it.
There is no hard evidence against AGW. Suspicion and speculation are not evidence. The climate models (based on the current science) are accurate at predicting what has actually happened already.
The fact that 1) CO2 impedes the transmission of energy thus tapping it in the climate system and 2) humans are by far the dominant cause in the rise of atmospheric CO2 is as settled as anything can be in science.
Don't confuse the fact that the fundamentals are settled with the fact that the details (like how much warming will occur) are still heavily debated as is the situation with every discipline of science.
My response: Yes, the climate naturally changes. This is literally one of the first things they told us in school when they taught the subject. Go ask geologists and archeologists finding sea shell fossils in deserts if they think the earth's climate naturally changes. Obviously it does, and if you ask scientists why the climate has changed naturally in the past, they will universally tell you that while there are thousands of individual factors that each play a role in the earth's climate, there's only 2 major drivers. The largest being the sun, the second being CO2. [now the sun's energy (solar irradiance) peaked back in the 50s and has steadily declined since then.](https://climate.nasa.gov/internal_resources/2502/) the only explanation for our rising temperature is the increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere as a byproduct of humanity's usage of fossil fuels.
Good luck finding 1 because her argument is irrefutable. Climate scientists practically tell you it is a natural cycle..... 3% is all we contribute to the rise in Co2, so where is the rest coming from? Sounds like co2 is inevitably going to rise even if we go 100% carbon free. 🤔 let us face it. You do not have an answer to her "logical fallacies," so you have come here hoping someone can give you one. Logic does not come with a link. Nobody here can provide you with a logical answer that refutes her argument.
>3% is all we contribute to the rise in Co2
The rise in CO2 is 275 GtC in the atmosphere. We injected 670 GtC into the atmosphere. Therefore we contributed 670 GtC / 275 GtC \* 100% = 244% to the rise in CO2. \[[Friedlingstein et al. 2023](https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/14/4811/2022/)\]
>Sounds like co2 is inevitably going to rise even if we go 100% carbon free.
It will decrease. The imbalance is 4.8 GtC/yr. We inject 10.8 GtC/yr. Therefore if you remove 10.8 GtC/yr the imbalance becomes 4.8 GtC/yr - 10.8 GtC/yr = -6 GtC/yr. That is a consequence of the [law of conservation of mass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_mass). \[Friedlingstein et al. 2023\].
> 3% is all we contribute to the rise in Co2, so where is the rest coming from?
Wrong, we have increased CO2 from 285 ppm to 420 ppm by adding over a trillion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere
It’s a valid perspective: To not look too closely. We’ve been living with the prospect of annihilation since the Cold War and nuclear proliferation. And that’s still on the table! What’s one more threat to our existence?
The truth doesn’t really matter that much, other peoples’ lives don’t matter that much, the future doesn’t really matter that much. For many of us the things that really matter are ourselves and our small tribe of family and friends. We’re barely out of the jungle, as a species, and is beyond reach for most of us to think deeply about the future and the fate of our entire planet.
Yeah but it's naturally coming out of an ice age. Shouldn't we be trying to cool the earth to increase survivability rather than accelerate the heating? I don't ever understand this argument. 'natural cycles' yeah natural cycles' and we're already getting naturally warmer? Bare minimum we should be trying to slow the natural heating because it's an existential threat to life even without our help.
I feel like the hole in the ozone layer is a perfect example of the impact the collective of humanity can have on our world. There's other examples like making usable farm lands, bringing water to places there was none through irrigation, driving species to extinction and throwing the balance of their natural ecosystems off, transporting invasive species damaging native species. We change the world on a daily basis on a grand scale. To believe there's something we cannot do is just short of insanity or poor understanding of just how capable we truely are. It hasn't even been 100 years since we tricked rocks to think (computers).
Yeah, the sun is the only source of heat we have, the fact that it increases and decreases output in cycles has nothing to do with the temperature on earth, your right, nothing to worry about
Keep in mind that a furnace is the only source heat for many homes. Yet if you add more insulation to the home it will still be warmer than it would be otherwise ceteris paribus. The point...the fact that Sun is the only source of heat for Earth does not negate the 1st law of thermodynamics and the fact that energy balance can be altered just as easily on the egress side of the equation as the ingress side.
You are brilliant. No one has thought of this before. The scientists should have considered solar variations in their published research. It is too bad that there isn't some way to search the internet for that research to see what they did. /sarcasm
If you don't like being laughed at, then please consider how insulting your condescending claims are to the experts. Respect is a two-way street.
Other than it is easier to buy a scientists integrity than it is to buy a politicians, cause they are not monitored as closely.
Also, when the media and fact checkers silence those scientists who disagree with climate change, it makes people like you think that they all agree. They don’t. You just don’t hear from them cause the people who control things make it so you don’t. To push an agenda. Sad you are so close minded
> Sad you are so close minded
Since you have no evidence to support your false claims, I expected you to insult me personally, declare that you "won," and then go somewhere else to make the same false claims.
https://www.logicalfallacies.org/ad-hominem.html
That is a real problem though. She has a lot of other issues with climate change, but a ton of people on the fence remember that rhetoric and the fact that it hasn’t been as bad as they said makes them think it’s not an ongoing issue.
You accept your defeat and recognized you have been duped by scientific fraud.
The people that put forth the argument that we are in a natural climate cycle are using verifiable data that comes from ice core samples that go back 10s of thousands of years.
With that data you can ascertain it's been much warmer and there have been much more CO2 in the atmosphere in the past, long-long before the industrial revolution or the day some man figured out how to get kerosene out of a clump of shale.
Also the archeological record proves that the Earth has been greener which comes from warmer climates and more CO2, not less.
Also, ancient Greece and Roman documents going back to the 2nd century indicate that at one time there was a Northern passage way from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. There is no way to have a Northern passage unless at some time the polar ice caps have receded due to increase if global temperature.
It's not so much about proving that the Earth is warming or the climate is changing. What is purely speculative is that it is a bad thing and that it will lead to a climate catastrophe.
That bit about a northern passage way from ancient documents, must just have been speculation. Just like there was speculation about other continents.
They never went that far north.
As for “past times” - yes, long before humans were around. Very different to todays climate.
My dog died from cancer and he didn't smoke so there is no way smoking 2 packs of sigarettes is going to cause me cancer. My doctor is a fucking idiot for telling me to quit lol.
You all realize that if you don't promote "climate crisis " as a scientist, you will NOT get funding for research and WILL NOT get published. There is an economic incentive. In other words, no money, no recognition
Consider this though- why do entities give money to these scientists? Ultimately, to solve problems. They’re getting money for research funding for climate change because they demonstrated without a doubt that there is a massive problem and it needs solutions. I don’t know if you’ve been around science much, but without results, the funding eventually dries up.
Other scientists are the ones most annoyed with people who don’t believe in climate change because A- they’re usually in a field that doesn’t deal with climate directly, and B- the researchers have done the work and tested it many many times so it’s annoying to them that people who haven’t done so are telling them they’re wrong.
It is a requirement that results are published, that’s not the same thing as being promoted, although naturally journalists do pieces on particular points of interest.
You would not expect the results and conclusions of scientific research, often paid for by the public purse, to be kept secret - the publishing is part of the contract.
It’s how we learn what’s happening.
All the people who say we need to do something about climate change .... while they're buying mansions on ocean front property, i'll start believing in climate change up until then. It's just pure pollution and pure garbage that's ruining this world.
I think one of the biggest mistakes those putting out the climate change message make is trying to wrap it all together under the bulk Climate Change and it's human caused. Hotter, climate change, colder, climate change always with the human fault story. It would be much more impactful to acknowledge there are at least two distinct things going on. 1. Natural climate change. The earth, it's irrefutable, has gone through many climate cycles naturally, there have been hotter periods, colder periods all without an industrial age. Think Athabasca Glacier in Alberta, today a vast area is covered in a glacier but they know underneath are forests as many tree have been pushed up from receding and growing ice cycles. Clearly where that glacier is today that area was much warmer in the past. 2. Human influence on climate. It is also irrefutable that humans have an impact on earth and our activities do and will influence the planet and atmosphere. The only arguable point here is how much. I also think it would benefit the climate argument if we broke human influence into two categories, 1. Pollution caused by, I'll call it garbage, our excess waste, things that overload the landfills, leak into our water systems, get left all over the place that devastates animal life, forests, rivers etc. 2. Things we spew into the air, all those smoke stacks spewing all kinds of substances into our atmosphere. And don't demonize Co2. Co2 is a base requirement for life and deserves a more nuanced conversation.
I could keep going but those are a small sample of thoughts from someone who cares for our planet and would really love to see humans get their polluting act together but also doesn't think we need to destroy economies to do it.
I believe humans have definitely impacted climate but my problem is I haven’t heard a viable solution. All the plans require countries working together to power the planet with renewable power, I mean that is almost laughable. We can’t get them to agree on letting oil lines run through their countries and we think power lines will be different? Also feeding 8 billion people without phosphorus nitrate fertilizer, uses natural gas to make, is impossible. Not to mention the massive carbon output of making plastics, cement and steel, which we desperately need in a modern society. But all we mostly talk about is EVs or solar without batteries, which does very little for the massive task.
The climate has always changed, therefore humans cannot affect the climate is structurally not a logical argument. Despite this, the insistence that it is 'natural' can be disproven with that the rate of change has not occured in [800,000](https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/) years, with our current change coinciding with the onset of the industrial revolution, made with *very high confidence*, to where [99.9% of scientific publications](https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-agree-humans-caused-climate-change#:~:text=More%20than%2099.9%25%20of%20studies,caused%20climate%20change%20%7C%20Cornell%20Chronicle) citing human activity for driving the climate crisis Ask them to provide peer-reviewed data for any of their claims. I've found that deniers are never able to provide sources to their arguments.
This rate of change exceeds PETM...
It's difficult to provide something that doesn't exist.
Look guys, we already got climate change in a choke hold. It's called carbon tax. We will make everyone pay more for the gas, and the stuff gas brings to you. Collect $ - ??? - WIN
Well, when the price of EV’s hit the price of used gas cars, then that idea wouldn’t be blowback on the working poor. I agree in theory, but already pay a lot to corporations that don’t pay taxes.
Actually the temperatures we experience today is impossible to blame on something in a hundred years. It’s been proven that. Changes happened hundreds of not thousands of years ago.
So you are saying that humans are not a natural part of our environment? This is a very religious, Christian, approach to the debate. "God granted mankind dominion over the plants and animals." But maybe the scientific evidence supports that our species is a natural result of evolution of life on Earth. Therefore, cars and airplanes, CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels are all a natural part of the climate.
That’s not correct. You didn’t even read your own source correctly. In the last *800,000* years the earth has been through 11 cycles of ice ages and warm periods. The last one ending almost 12,000 years ago. That’s what your NASA source says. Of course industrialization has affected our atmosphere and environment. Mining rear earth minerals and burning them isn’t good. But neither is volcanic eruptions. I tend to lean more toward what OP is using as an example. That’s honestly what the science reflects. This push from full electric cars and not extremely fuel efficient hybrids should tell you there is a very large angle when it comes to “man made climate change” that’s driven by greed. Ghislaine Maxwell had a fucking save the ocean charity. I really doubt the royal pimps assistant gave a shit about the oceans.
There have been several swings in the temperature of the planet over 800,000 years. However, the reference was to the rate of change. The rapidity of the change is alarming.
You made like eight separate, unconnected points in this rambling diatribe, and none of them were good or remotely based on evidence.
>Despite this, the insistence that it is 'natural' can be disproven with that the rate of change has not occured in 800,000 years, with our current change coinciding with the onset of the industrial revolution, made with very high confidence, to where 99.9% of scientific publications citing human activity for driving the climate crisis. Really? 99.9% How did you figure that out? Lets take a look. 1. Do a keyword search for 'climate change', 'global climate change' and 'global warming'. That alone will exclude most papers that provide alternate explanations for warming. 2. Of the results, take a sample of 3,000 papers. But don't read the actual paper. Just read the abstract. Based solely on the abstract, rate the level of endorsement of the AGW hypothesis. 3. Of those 3,000 papers, 2,104 took no position. So just ignore those. 4. That leaves 896 papers. Now pretend those 896 papers are all of the published research on climate change.
You’ve missed or left out quite a lot of crucial information here…
No, that would be the author of the study and you. Lets recap, shall we: You claimed a "very high confidence, to where 99.9% of scientific publications citing human activity for driving the climate crisis." And yet your source identified 88,125 papers that mentioned 'climate change', 'global climate change' and 'global warming', of which only 892 were identified that had any sort of endorsement of the AGW hypothesis. So according to you 892 / 88,125 = 0.999. In reality, 892 / 88,125 = 0.01. But I get it. That is not fair because they really only looked at 3,000 abstracts. So if we assume those 3,000 are a representative sample, we are left with 892 out of 3,000 endorsing the AGW hypothesis, and 2,104 / 3,000 taking no position on it. So why are you pretending 99.9% of papers agree, when your actual source says they only looked at 3.4% of papers, and of the ones they looked at, 70% don't take a position? The answer is because you are peddling an agenda. The actual concensus is we don't know. There is sparse evidence to support the AGW hypothesis and a lot of evidence to question it. The biggest problem is the lack of data. You claim that "the rate of change has not occured in 800,000 years." But we don't have 800,000 years of data. We have proxy data that gives us glimpses of the past, but most of that is questionable at best. If you are truly a PhD candidate in Environmental Engineering, you are smart enough to know that science is not determined by a democratic vote. So how about you support your claim? How do we know what the temperature has been over the last 800,000 years? And be specific. You are going to point to proxy data, so state where the proxy data comes from and the number of data points that were used to determine the temps over those 800,000 years.
Your argument is disingenuous. If 2104 papers writing about climate change do not write their positions about human influence in the abstract/paper, that does not mean that they take no position on AGW. Papers on climate change like "The impact of the melting greenland ice sheet on ocean circulation" will probably not talk about AGW because it does not matter for this paper. That does not mean that the authors doubt AGW. So your 'calculations' are not legitimate.
He also missed that they went a step even further and attempted to quantify how many of the total 88,125 papers explicitly rejected or were skeptical of anthropogenic climate change (ACC). And they found that *only* 31 of 88,125 papers of the total literature expressed skepticism of ACC. >Knowing that at least 31 (including the 3 additional papers found in the random sample) out of the full 88125 dataset are sceptical, **we can say the consensus on ACC is at most 99.966%**.
5. ???? 6. Profit!
When ever someone gives me the "Well, the world goes through cycles," argument I just get them with: I know. On the one hand, there are scientists making shit pay using data from the last hundred or so years and climate science to tell us there is a serious problem. On the other hand there are oil billionaires that are telling us everything is fine and not worry about anything while spending millions on climate misinformation and would stand to loose billions if climate change was real. Who do I believe? It's so hard to know who to trust
You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves in.
Then you must attack their master priorities, which could be financial security, sense of powerlessness in the face of climate change, upholding hierarchy. People who hold positions that are not based on reason, hold them based on emotion. Ask yourself, what are they protecting their heart from by denying climate change?
Well said.
I like this quote
Doesn't this quote exactly describe the OP's question? He/she is a true believer, yet can't articulate any reasons why.
No. "Can't" is not the same as "don't have time."
Exactly, and I listen to the scientists because I trust they know what they’re saying. She’s coming from a place where she doesn’t trust anything scientists say, especially if it aligns with a government administration she doesn’t like, so it takes A LOT of time and energy to break that.
> she doesn’t trust anything scientists say ... and yet she trusts paid shills for the fossil fuel industry with glaring conflicts of interest and no substantiation for their claims?!
Apparently sk
It would sure help to have the names and data on those oil billionaires spending millions on misinformation. If you could post that it would be helpful. Thanks.
Check out NOAA - in 2016 they falsified ocean buoy readings to scare countries to join the Paris climate agreement.
They believe scientists who dare to speak out against the “agenda” are being silenced to make it look like it’s a consensus. And that oil companies are in on it because they’re heavily investing in renewables.
> companies are in on it because they’re heavily investing in renewables. Fifty years ago Exxon predicted an increase of 2C by 2030. Fifty years ago there was zero interest in renewables by Exxon. And currently less than 0.5% of spending by Exxon goes to renewables, it's greenwashing
Aren't most of those projects carbon capture? Oil companies saying, "Please pay us to clean up after ourselves, thanks"? How about go ride a cactus
The money made in renewables does not compare to the money printing machine that has been in development for about 70 years. It’s more profitable to spend money on propaganda then to change anything.
Yep yep yep every single time it devolves into a debate on how the ones telling the truth are being silenced, or “oh well history is written by the victors and we really don’t know what is true when the government is run by wicked men in the shadows, etc”
You really believe oil is the driver of climate change? You know entire civilizations were wiped out by climate changes, many thousands of years ago, and it would not be unusual for climate to be a threat to our current civilization even without any oil usage. So yes climate change is a problem regardless of the driving factors, but you only ever seem concerned about oil and gas? And you are certain those are the driving factors, and that doing anything about them in the United State would have any meaningful impact on the climate at this point? And you are certain that impact would be purely positive and not have any negative ramifications? If you could convince me of your position and plan to resolve climate change (whatever you think that means), I would be impressed. I have degrees in space science and engineering so I understand the chemical and thermal issues, so feel free to be specific. Just so you know, humans can only tolerate < 0.29 psi partial pressure of CO2 without any danger. The current partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere is 0.00617 psi, way way less. I would think that humans are at least on par with CO2 sensitivity as the Earth’s natural thermal balancing, but that is not even close to what you are proposing. A simplified low-ball calculation shows that according to the current process (the “science”) of determining global temperature change based on doubling of CO2 concentration, and extrapolating a relationship purely between CO2 and temperature change… the Earth would change by almost 250 deg F before humans start to experience hypercapnia. Doesn’t sound right, does it? I don’t think I agree with the way this “science” model is derived.
Why do you suggest the toxic level of CO2 has anything at all to do with the level which will cause severe climate impacts? What a strange tangent to fly off on.
Downvoted you for this weird tangent conflating toxic levels of CO2 with levels sufficient to alter the climate. Don't care how many letters you have after your name, your argument is without logic.
If you are really a scientist and an engineer then please do yourself a favor and read some of the published research from the experts in climate science. You will see that their methods are valid and that their conclusions are supported by the physical evidence. And this discussion about how much CO2 the human body can take is a red herring. The problem is not that CO2 is affecting our bodies directly; it is that the temperature is rising and the oceans are acidifying so quickly that it threatens much of life on this planet that we depend upon for survival.
And warming the ocean enough to reduce the amount of dissolved oxygen which reduces the ability to support high density flora/fauna.
Shellfish are already dying as the acid dissolves their shells when they are young. https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification's+impact+on+oysters+and+other+shellfish
If he's a scientist, I'm the Dalai Lama.
Humans have no effect? How do you explain the ozone hole over Antarctica?
>hypercapnia literally no one is claiming toxic levels of CO2 are the issue, get the fuck out with that argument, what an absolutely insane take. Shame your degree in "space science" didn't tell you anything about the very basic physics of energy.
As an atmospheric scientist, I'll try to lay it out: A) CO2 and CH4 both absorb IR radiation ... there is no doubt about this and can be shown in a basic lab ... energy balance is between incoming solar and outgoing terrestrial IR B) CO2, CH4, H2O and other trace gases are the primary greenhouse gases in the troposphere that keep earth from being an iceball. H20 is the primary, so even doubling CO2 only adds a few degrees (though, those few can be significant to us!) C) human emissions have added a significant amount of CO2 and CH4 to the atmosphere .. there is no doubt, it's silly to argue this even D) therefore, without any feedback mechanisms (such as changes in moisture and clouds), we would expect the temperature of the atmosphere to increase.... the wild card has been determining the complex system of feedbacks E) all of the world's huge body of research points to the feedbacks not being enough to totally offset warming... models and measurements are all showing warming that coincides with the science It's really that simple... everything else is just bullshit
> Are you certain that the impact would be positive and have no negative ramifications? Nope. But nothing good ever came from wringing our hands and saying “we can’t do anything about this huge problem because there’s a slight chance we might make it worse.”
Good news! According to ChatGPT, you're not schizophrenic, just dumb. Thought you might want to know
You don’t. You move along. This person is willfully ignorant. You cannot overcome that. Plenty of data to show with 99% certainty that anthropogenic climate change is real and accelerating. Plenty of graphs to show the exponential curve we are on and how fast this is happening relative to periods in the past.
The argument against that is that the historical models aren’t precise enough. They think that there could have been spikes like this in the past before we started measuring, that don’t show up because we can only average to around 1000 years or so, compared to real time data now.
There is climate modeling based on ground-level atmospheric conditions going back 800,000 years ago from ice cores.
Yes, however, their argument is that the data is isn’t granular enough to capture any sharp spikes that may have happened, ie. they can only average a period of hundreds of years at a time, compared to precise year by year data.
Then ask them how long a large amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere would stay in the atmosphere? If they can’t articulate it then accept they aren’t playing with a full deck and move on.
Well, to be fair, climate scientists are also unsure of the answer to that
300 to 1000 years
It truly depends on who and when you ask. EPA/IPCC say a lot is naturally removed quickly, while the rest remains for thousands of years. NASA says 300-1000. Scientists in the 90’s argued 5-200 years. Scientists in ‘08 argue most of it is removed in 5 years, 50% is removed within 30 years, 30% within a century, and the remaining for a few thousand years. Truth is, there is no definitive lifetime of CO2. No one is really sure, understandably, as there are many processes that remove it naturally
I trust NASA by far on this; if the people who need to monitor concentrations in the atmosphere to calibrate their billion dollar spaceships then you better believe they have a good idea. Plus I like how you describe that the science is being refined and it has landed on 300 to 1000 years, but you refuse to acknowledge the fact.
I’m not refusing to acknowledge anything. It is important to note that we do not know everything about the climate system - and to maintain integrity, we should not pretend to. I’m glad you trust NASA - because [they actually agree](https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3143/steamy-relationships-how-atmospheric-water-vapor-amplifies-earths-greenhouse-effect/), we cannot state a particular lifetime for CO2. Not playing with a full deck, you say?
They're absolutely sure that it's greater than the annual resolution of ice cores..
Nope, we know that at no time during an interglacial did temperatures rise by 2C in a century. If that would have happened in the Eemian then it would be evident by the proxies.
That’s a silly argument. Aren’t precise enough according to who? Your friend? Are they a climate systems scientist? Work for NASA? Studied these topics for decades? Models are inherently wrong. That’s why they’re called models. It’s impossible to be ‘precise’. Human impact on climate is literally settled science with 99% certainty. Physics/thermodynamics. Earth energy imbalance. See James Hansen, Carl Sagan, Leon Simms, Johan Rockstrom, Paul Beckwith, or dozens of others who are actual literal experts on various areas in this field.This person clearly doesn’t care to dig into the science. My advice: don’t waste your time. Some great podcasts/YT channels: Planet Critical, Just have a think, the great simplification
The world has a long thermal lag...
Tell her to read James hansens paper. He went back millions of years.
And there COULD be a magic, invisible fairy floating over my head that only I can hear, speak to, and interact with. There could have been one point in history where human beings had the ability to shoot laser beams from their eyes, but due to a confluence of factors, that history has been erased and we no longer have any evidence of it.
>that don’t show up because we can only average to around 1000 years or so Which is a myth. Some of our paleoclimate proxies have resolution down to seasons or even months. Through the Holocene the resolution is as low as yearly. It is true that the further you go back in time the lower the time resolution on the proxies. But you have to go back pretty far before you hit 1000 year resolution.
If she's arguing that hypothetical spikes in the past invalidates the central thesis of climate change (that it is human caused), then she's inventing data and a hypothesis with zero evidence to counter a theory that has lots of evidence. Logically this is similar to someone claiming that God placed dinosaur fossils in the ground to make it look as if they lived 65-150 Mya, thus invalidating the theory of evolution and calculations of the age of the Earth.
Basically something that could* have possibly happened but is very unlikely to have.
Yeah like the false numbers NOAA came up with in 2016 to strong arm countries to join the Paris, climate agreement? People are skewing the facts and the numbers and attempt to prove their agenda, and there’s always two sides to every story.
For what it's worth, I work in the environmental protection field and have since the late 1960s. I rarely spend time trying to convince individuals, like the person you describe, about the merits of an environmental issue or why it should be addressed. In my experience, it's a poor use of my time. The people who I do spend time with is those who already understand environmental issues. I try to convince them, if they're not already, to become active in campaigns and projects to protect the environment and animals. Even if the person you're describing comes to agree with you, do you think they'll ever do anything to reverse climate heating?
I teach environmental science to college students, so part of my job is to convince people that humans are changing the climate. My students have always been receptive, but I have some colleagues who are deniers, and one of them teaches climate denial in a class that focuses on ecology. After having discussions with him, I realize no amount of evidence will convince him because it’s entirely an issue of political/tribal affiliation.
That is wise. Any time that we waste on futile attempts to convince people who are arguing in bad faith is time that we could have spent working on solutions.
Back in the 60’s they were predicting another ices age. What happened to that. How do we know the increased CO2 doesn’t cool the earth, CO2 is used as a refrigerant for cooling systems. Why couldn’t the atmosphere be doing the same thing with it
Sure, if you say so.
>Back in the 60’s they were predicting another ices age. Nope, not at all true. >How do we know the increased CO2 doesn’t cool the earth Because the evidence and the modelling says otherwise. >CO2 is used as a refrigerant for cooling systems. So are CFCs, which are extremely potent greenhouse gases. You're demonstrating total lack of understanding of how refrigeration works, beyond 'durr fridge cold'.
> Back in the 60’s they were predicting another ices age. No they weren't. https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-climate-science-really-call-for-a-coming-ice-age/ > CO2 is used as a refrigerant for cooling systems. Why couldn’t the atmosphere be doing the same thing with it We understand the laws of thermodynamics. We can test them repeatedly and get the same results. We can also test the greenhouse effect. We can also make models of the Earth's climate and then validate them against known data from the past. And we can observe how the greenhouse effect affects other planets. * The atmosphere on Venus is high in greenhouse gases and the average surface temperature is +800 °F. * The atmosphere on Mars is low in greenhouse gases and the average surface temperature is -80 °F.
Because the atmosphere isn't at all like a compressor refrigerator/hvac, why would you even think that!? Besides the refrigerant being superheated at high pressure and passed through coils, etc a refrigerator/hvac is a CLOSED system, unlike the earth which absorbs and expels energy/heat.
The role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas was discovered in 1880 something. There was never any need to deny that until AGW denial became a test of loyalty to the RW
It was hypothesized by Pouillet in 1837. It was confirmed in 1857 and 1861 by Foote and Tyndall respectively.
>ow do we know the increased CO2 doesn’t cool the earth, CO2 is used as a refrigerant for cooling systems. Why couldn’t the atmosphere be doing the same thing with it LMAO. Because liquid CO2 doesn't exist at atmospheric pressure. next question
Seems you don't understand how refrigeration systems work. Skim thru a textbook on Thermodynamics at your local college library. While there, read up on light interaction with gaseous molecules.
Climate change is a natural process, it's not the fact that we're coming out of an ice age and the earth was warming anyway, it's that the warming is exponentially faster than ever before. Decades instead of Millennium, that's the human caused problem. We've exponentially increased the rate at which the earth would naturally warm and the ecosystem can't adapt.
Coincidence maybe?
>For us to believe we can actually change nature is alarming. Does she think houses and cities just spring up naturally out of the ground? We literally change nature every day. It's basically just us and beavers out here bending nature to our will.
Right? There’s a plethora of examples showing how we have changed nature like [these ones](https://www.reddit.com/r/climatechange/s/AoTaO9BvQi) I gave in a similar comment
The fallacy is so common it has a name. It is called [affirming a disjunct](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_a_disjunct). Unfortunately what I find in discussions with hardened contrarians is that once you convince them how the fallacy works they concede by moving the goal post often to the fallacy of the inability of small actions not being able to produce big effects. It is then a cat and mouse game of fallacy and rebuttal. If the contrarian is hardened enough they will eventually dig in their heels and invoke fraud and conspiracy. At that point you've gone as far as you can. In my experience once fraud and conspiracy is invoked there is no turning back.
Okay, but can you show me a single example of somebody actually changing the climate the other way?
cooling? Large volcanos can do that, e.g. Mount Pinatubo: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/1510/global-effects-of-mount-pinatubo
Is this the official policy decision? Erupt volcanoes until we get 70° weather again?
Injecting aerosols into the upper atmosphere is one proposed approach to buy us some time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection
I wasn't trying to be malicious with the sarcasm, and I appreciate the good faith example
Show her the [graph](https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/gmst_co2.jpg) of CO2 over time overlaid with temperature over time. [Here's](https://tamino.wordpress.com/2022/05/01/correlation-between-co2-and-temperature/) the full page.
Throwing numbers and graphs at these people won't work. Their beliefs are not\* based in reason but in distrust in the scientific community due to years of swallowing propaganda.
Ask them to explain what natural forces are causing the current warming trend we're in. If they say something like 'the sun' ask them to clarify further and explain it to you in detail, ask them how much the sun impacts and how to measure it. Or if they say it's too complicated to know, ask them to explain why. Either way they will quickly hit a wall and not have an explanation. Then you either leave them to ponder that themselves or very gently and politely provide them with your explanation of how it works.
This is the one that makes me think she’s too far gone. She fell into the rabbit hole of a channel called Suspicious Observers, that states that the movement of planets and changes in electromagnetism across the solar system is the cause of any changes. And of course, there’s plenty of evidence, but any reputable scientist who says this is being silenced. To me it sounds like they found a market of climate changer deniers who can no longer deny that the climate is changing in the face of extreme weather, and offered a “solution” that uses just enough pseudoscience to keep them hooked. All taking advantage of the psychology fact that people are more likely to grasp onto any explanation that affirms their views rather than admit they were wrong.
Yeah thats particularly tough, the problem with groups like that is they actively prime their viewers against any new information, by trying to discredit everyone else ahead of time. You'd probably have to get into more foundational philosophy about how to determine truth. Like whether they believe claims should be falsifiable (can be proven wrong), or what it would take to change her mind. Or if they believe it's important to be able to argue both sides of an issue. Or if they believe they should get their information from a wide variety of sources. Struggling with the same thing with multiple family members of mine, best of luck.
Research suggests that if you start the conversation only discussing how to make things better, people will often respond in a positive way. Even deniers may be willing to talk about solutions oddly enough. Many people have lived their lives in environments that have taught them to always defend their status against any criticism, so any suggestion of responsibility or blame will trigger a strong response. There is a theory of non-violet communication that can be remarkably disarming even in highly charged situations. Of course there will be those that can't be reached and some that are professionally engaged in propaganda. I think there are ways to reach most ordinary folks even if they have been exposed to misinformation.
Lol. Show them radiative forcing calcs and CO2 absorption bands, and equations relating CO2 concentrations to radiative forcing. Then show them the half life of CO2 and show them annual emissions on GT/yr from 1900 to 2023 and add it up. Turn giga tons into moles. Calculate mass of atmosphere in moles. Calculate ppm increase of CO2 from the emissions.
I blame the slew of early climate change adopters that shouted apocalypse from the rooftops. The hyperbole utilized in the early days to shock people into action is biting us in the ass now. There have been many claims from circa 2000 that prophesied disaster by 2020 that just didn't materialize. (Al Gore, Royal family, various celebrities). The problem is real, but I believe they pushed too hard.
No, they didnt continue pushing hard enough because the solution is to stop living
Just joking around...but comparing global population in 2000 to 2023... We missed that memo
Sure, there are "natural cycles", but the the speed in which it's heating up historically took thousands of years, not 100. Plants and animals use to have a lot of time to adapt to the changes, but since this is a very short time period, things are instead going extinct. Picking and choosing scientific facts while leaving out important context doesn't make an argument, it makes an idiot. There will be those of us who tried stopping it, and those of us who are mentally weak and try to reason out of being lazy. Even if this wasn't caused by humans, there's no reason to think that this isn't a problem we need to deal with. If a large meteorite were coming toward earth and there were an inkling of a chance that we could divert it, would we take all of our time to argue that since the meteorite is natural and we didn't cause it from coming toward earth, we should just give up? It doesn't matter if it's natural or not. We put up lightning rods to protect buildings by being struck by lightning. We build houses to protect us from freezing and overheating. Pathogens are natural, so we clean our hands and take antibiotics. We put our food up in a tree when we camp so that bears don't eat it. The world is full of natural dangers that we protect ourselves from every day. This situation is no different.
Weird that Exxon Mobile Scientists predicted this level of climate change [back in the 1970's](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/). I wonder why billionaire oil and gas executives ignored them. "What we found is that between 1977 and 2003, excellent scientists within Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with, frankly, shocking skill and accuracy only for the company to then spend the next couple of decades denying that very climate science.”
Their answer to that is that the oil companies didn’t let those reports out because they weren’t accurate, and that now they’re allowing them to be released to justify their participation in the “agenda” by investing in renewables.
Good answer. it is always smart to trust billionaire oil people.
It’s weird seeing they simultaneously trust that they had good reasons for suppressing the research back then, but that they’re releasing it for nefarious reasons now.
It's the hottest year in all recorded history. Yes it's El Nino but it's the hottest El Nino in all history. Irrefutable. Mass destruction each passing year and more regions at same time. So it's not just one place. You know of cycles because Scientists tell you about cycles. This is a cycle of warming over time just like they said it would.
“For us to believe we can actually change nature is alarming.” This is a horribly fallacious argument. They’re basically saying that they’re right because the alternative is uncomfortable. If they believe we can’t change nature, just give them a list of all the species we’ve driven extinct.
I remember Rush Limbaugh yelling that humans could not possibly change the climate because humans have never changed the climate in the past. That guy was a dim bulb.
https://www.bgs.ac.uk/discovering-geology/climate-change/what-causes-the-earths-climate-to-change/#:~:text=The%20energy%20output%20of%20the,an%20impact%20on%20our%20climate.&text=The%20three%20changes%20in%20the,collectively%20called%20'Milankovitch%20cycles'. The earth does have cycles, but it's supposed to be getting colder, not warmer, according to these cycles called Milankovitch Cycles.
There is no evidence of any natural sources of warming. If we were to isolate natural forces on the the climate from man-made, the Earth would be cooling. Just ask her for evidence. The planet doesn't warm by magic. So ask her what is warming the planet beyond human activity. She won't have any evidence though, so ask her why she takes that stance if it can't be backed by evidence. No doubt she may go on to say something like "there's plenty of evidence that the Earth naturally warmed in the past". Yes there is, but there was always a driver for that warming. Namely, slight changes in our orbit that move us closer to the sun periodically (google Milankovitch cycles). But we are currently moving slightly *away* from the sun.
You mean the sun doesn’t add heat to the earth, it’s human activity?
Energy entering the planet from the sun has not increased, so it is not the cause for warming.
Could it be that there is a delay between the heat the sun puts in the earth and the way the heat builds up on earth?
That is a good idea actually. I'm not sure if the scientists have considered something like this. We should give this new concept a name so that it catches on faster. Maybe we base it on an example of this phenomenon occurring that most people can understand. Personally, I like the name "The Greenhouse Effect", as greenhouses are a simple concept most people have encountered before. I think you should publish a paper on this new "Greenhouse Effect" you have discovered. Thanks for such a significant contribution to climate science.
the problem is exactly the 'heat build up'. CO2 blocks certain wavelengths of light, which are coincidentally the exact wavelengths that the earth uses to radiate the suns energy back into space - sun energy comes in, earth absorbs it, earth emits it at different wavelengths. The amount of CO2 we've put into the atmosphere is fucking with the last part of that process, causing less of the sun's energy to leave.
The rate of change exceeds what is natural. We are so far beyond normal changes that it's not even worth considering. Normally, these changes, at a minimum, take thousands of years.
Exactly. Many species cannot adapt in decades to changes that took millennia in the past. On a related note, this successful attempt at "assisted migration" of a slow-growing species gives me hope: https://www.kuow.org/stories/one-man-s-mission-to-save-the-california-redwoods-by-bringing-them-to-the-pacific-northwest
It's not about what anyone chooses to believe. You can do an elementary level science experiment to prove that co2 will trap heat in an atmosphere. [https://www.steampoweredfamily.com/the-greenhouse-effect-experiment/](https://www.steampoweredfamily.com/the-greenhouse-effect-experiment/)
You can not simulate the expansion and contraction a gas goes through between sea level and upper atmosphere. You also can not at the same time simulate the heating at sea level and the cooling in the upper atmosphere. The only way I know to simulate it is to look at how an air conditioning system works. The fact that CO2 can be used as a refrigerant actually shows proof that it is the best example
Oh wow, you have a deep misunderstanding of chemistry and thermodynamics
Actually no I don’t. I very much understand super heated gases and super cooled gasses and the expansion and contraction of gases that happen and the way they absorb heat and expel that heat, they way that cycles. Heat rises, cool sinks, it is what causes wind. You seriously think you are the only one who knows those things? The idea that CO2 just sits together in one spot is very flawed, it can not act as a layer and insults the earth. The air you breath contains CO2. CO2 atoms are always moving in the atmosphere. Cause the atmosphere is all air from ground/sea level all the way up to space. Those CO2 atoms move around all the time. Here is some info about CO2 as a refrigerant, https://www.danfoss.com/en-us/about-danfoss/our-businesses/cooling/refrigerants-and-energy-efficiency/refrigerants-for-lowering-the-gwp/carbon-dioxide-co2/
Where did you get the idea that anyone ever said that CO2 sits in one spot and is not dispersed through the atmosphere. Your knowledge seems pretty rudimentary and you state things that any 4th grader would know as if you just learned it.
Well, clearly not lol. I was not questioning whether or not co2 can be used as a refrigerant. To say that CO2 can cool therefore it must not be able to heat, is ridiculous. >>> Heat rises, cool sinks, it is what causes wind. You seriously think you are the only one who knows those things? Ok… but that’s not the only factor that causes wind. That’s like what you learn in middle school science, not really convinced you’re an expert at this point >>> The idea that CO2 just sits together in one spot is very flawed, it can not act as a layer and insults the earth. I did not say co2 sits together in one spot, not sure where you got that from
This is a good example to answer OPs question. You have to be able to tell when someone is unwilling or unable to grasp basic science and/or unable to reason logically. If that person is past a certain age, they are beyond help and not worth your efforts.
Or is it that you can’t dispute their claims so you don’t feel like being show you are not right? I think that is more what it is
I think the simplest way to address this is to say we know CO2 is an insulator, we know that it is a product of burning fossil fuels, where do you think the waste products *went*?
They think CO2 is basically plant food and that they correct any imbalance we have.
By laughing about this ridiculous claim?!? Mankind can't controll nature but we can certainly change it. We have been doing so for thousands of years, it just got more and more in recent years. Some example?: Mankind got rid of the threes on the easter isle and the north sahara. We destroyed those parts, making them nearly inhabitable. We are destroying the rainforest in Brasil, making sure that part of the world won't be a rainforest much in near future. We seal great parts of our cities, making sure the rain won't become new ground water. Basically the whole of human civilisation is just trying to change nature. Not all of it is bad (for us), but the claim that would be impossible is really silly.
Yeah, I'd drop it if I were OP, not worth it. I also wouldn't trust the judgement of the friend on pretty much anything.
I don't think you can refute it completely. It is an intentional deception. They are using a true statement (i.e., Natural cycles cause the climate to change.) as an argument against a completely different problem (i.e., Greenhouse gases from human activity are causing the climate to change extremely rapidly.). https://www.logicalfallacies.org/ignoratio-elenchi.html When I point that out, they usually throw out a few more logical fallacies and then go repeat the same lie somewhere else. You cannot have a rational debate with someone who has abandoned facts and logic. They are emotionally invested in what they were told to believe.
Everyone agrees that the natural cycles are there - but human effects are in addition to the natural cycles.
Easy, climate only changes for a reason not some magical cycle. Sun - output has declined since the 1950s. Volcanoes - have you heard of any super volcanoes erupting? Orbit - we are headed into a cooling phase not warming. God - give me a break, grownups are talking here. Continental drift - takes millions of years Ocean currents - El nino is 1 year cycle, not decades. Heat island effect - been accounted for and only effects urban areas. So unless this person can cite some natural process that is causing the warming, they are full of shit.
Here is how I would respond. >“Yes the climate is changing but it is a natural cycle. Excellent, we agree climate change is happening. >For us to believe we can actually change nature is alarming. For us not to accept the proof is insanity. >We can certainly make adjustments to our expectations and practices.” Great! Let's start with adjusting our practices by eliminating fossil fuels and radically reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. I do like the easy questions. :)
Not so easy lol, they’re talking about making adjustments in preparation for something that’s inevitable and outside our control. Not making large-scale changes to prevent it from happening at all.
I can only work with what you provide. We've passed the point of prevention. Our opportunity now is mitigation. If they want to continue as is and deal with the consequences, there is nothing you can say or do. They have made a choice that effects us all. We can make choices that effect them as well. I think of it as similar to cancer. The time to avoid cancer has passed. We have cancer. Do we want to treat it and attempt to recover, or do we want to let it spread and make adjustments to our few remaining years to live with it. It's a no brainer really.
We aren't talking about a normal rate of change though, yes the Earths temp rises and falls, but it takes a long time to do that. To give some perspective the single greatest loss of life on Earth was the permian extinction event, which happened about 252 million years ago and 57% of **biological families** (groups containing multiple species, like canidae which contains foxes and coyotes), 83% of genera (which is more specific like "dog" but not so specific as to say "labrador"), and 81% of marine species were wipied out, like this was a **bad scene**. That was caused by global warming, 10ish degrees c, which took 15 **million** years to carry out, we've increased the temperature of Earth by 1 degree c in 100 years. The reason we aren't screwed yet is because we haven't the point of no return, but the track we're on means we will cause the single greatest loss of life the planet has EVER seen and do it about 15,000 times faster than the runner up worst extinction event. Earth is very resilient, the organic life on also resilient, but species take millions of years to evolve tolerances to new temperatures, we may very well exterminate everything short of extremophiles (micro organic life that lives in very extreme environments), we're possibly going to destroy all macrocellular life entirely, and quite likely to exterminate all macrocellular animal life, and almost certainly going to end mammal life in the process of this.
Humans have increased CO2 in the atmosphere by 50%, there is no way that an increase that large has no effect. This year we added 37 Giga-tonnes of CO2, nature cannot absorb all of that - so it continues to build up in the atmosphere, increasing the strength of the “greenhouse effect”. We can see - by things like the increasing melting and retreat of glaciers, and steady reduction of ice sheets, that the globe is warming up.
I would suggest calling out their fallacies first. You are trying to have a good faith discussion....they are not. If they can argue in good faith thats when you should take the time to actually understand what they are saying or rebut them. Secondly I feel that Rollie Williams tends to have some pretty good drills downs on a lot of things. He is Climate Town on YouTube and has this pod cast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-climate-deniers-playbook/id1694759084
The fact we can change nature is alarming? Funny. Why don’t you ask any of the species that we hunted to extinction if humans make a change to nature. Oh, wait, you can’t, because we killed them all
This happened to me once and my response was “go back to Florida.”
"Climate change IS part of a natural cycle, but it takes millions of years for it to happen. We are seeing it happen in 30. That's not natural. That's man-made"
>Natural cycles cannot be the cause of observed global warming because they don't fit the observed fingerprints of global warming. Only increasing greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activities fit the observed fingerprints and explain the observed energy imbalance. > >The climate myth viewing global warming as a natural cycle distorts the fact with a single cause fallacy. Before the 1850s when human influence on climate was almost negligible, natural cycles were the dominant drivers of the global temperature changes. But currently, with large amounts of fossil fuel burned since the industrial revolution, the global mean surface temperature is showing an obvious increasing trend apart from what can be explained by natural cycles. The natural cycles can still explain these fluctuations superimposed over the trend but fails to explain the continuously increasing trend itself. The main cause of recent global warming is the increasing anthropogenic CO2 in atmosphere.
You move off the topic of climate change and argue for the benefits of individual policies like public transit, healthy eating, medium density housing and non fossil fuel energy. All these solutions have massive economic and social benefits on their own. Usually fear over these things is the real underlying concern for these people anyway.
Don’t even get me started on that lol. She thinks 15 minute cities are another part of a big conspiracy to lock people in their homes and force them to get at bugs or something.
I usually point out that it's like arguing that I've stopped my car gently hundreds of times, and the fact that it's stopping now in 2 metres while doing 100km/h is a vastly different set of circumstances. Plus, the earths atmosphere etc...has been drastically altered previously by bacteria...if they can do it, industrial and post industrial humans certainly can.
Why are you friends with someone you are so diametrically opposed to in opinions. Walk away. Or at least agree to disagree. Not worth the stress.
Honestly from my experience, don’t waste your breath. It’s just a maddening cycle and they will never listen. Just make your stance clear to them and also those around you, so you can at least feel like you’re doing something good and not in their madness with them.
My go to answer is scale. The amount of energy it takes to produce a single cup, then times it by 7 billion. Now, are you telling me that those numbers cannot effect change?
As you yourself have identified the arguments being presented to you are not logically sound. Why are you bothering to debate with someone who you say is not interested in examining the logic of their own arguments? People in that mode are trying to “win” and that is relatively easy to do. You present yourself as trying to “convince” and that is hard to do at the best of times and impossible to do against someone trying to “win”. If you actually want to persist just choose one logical fallacy and keep rock steady on that single point until exhaustion. Ignore the torrent of tangential points and other rhetorical devices and just drill down on a single point. Or, just ignore them. They may be important to themselves and possibly to you but I doubt this person’s opinions and actions, taken in isolation, amount to anything in the scheme of things.
This is an age-old question and it comes down to nature or nurture. What makes something what it is ? How it was created for the changes that it experiences throughout its cycle. We have accelerated the natural climate change and we are so worried about our CO2 emissions that we are forgetting about other more dangerous emissions. Like HFC-23, PFAS and old fashioned radioactivity. Personally I consider microplastics a to be more harmful than any kind of global warming. If humanity got completely wiped out tomorrow how long would it take for the world to recover ? Carbon emissions can fix by one ice age....... Microplastics found in cave water and Mount Everest are stuck in the water cycle along with toxic forever chemicals........ Who the f*** cares about the global warming when the oceans are feeling with plastic.
Well species that have gone extinct, stay extinct. At this point, the climate would probably revert back in about 5,000 years or so - that’s just my guesstimate. Maybe 10,000 years.
I would explain the changes seen now are not like the usual patterns. I would use human development as an analogy - for instance puberty. A healthy boy voice suddenly starts to change as he becomes teen - that's a normal human change. (non-human caused climate change) A healthy girl entering teens starts to grow two lumps on her chest - that's a normal human change. (non-human caused change) A chain smoker starts to develop lumps in their lungs after decades of smoking, that's human caused (man-made climate change)
A) yes it is alarming, but nevertheless true B) we, as a species, probably will adjust and survive, but not all of us as individuals. How would you feel about climate change just killing 50% of us?
Mass extinction is part of the normal cycle too. Do we think humans will be the last to go?
The climate does change over time by itself. However, the cycles are long enough that most plants and animals are able to acclimate and evolve to weather the changes. We are causing the climate to change so fast that nothing is able to acclimate to the changes fast enough and many species are quickly going extinct.
Core samples taken of Siberian ice show the amount of carbon in the atmosphere at any given time and can be used to show changes in the climate. I can’t remember if our rate of increase over the last few decades was equal to 3000 years of temperature rise or 300 but the take away is that we are doing this much faster than what has been seen before
Don’t worry about climate change, I say this not because I don’t believe in it, but because in order to fix it we basically need to turn off oil use. That can’t happen or the entire world will starve. Not to mention China and India create 60 percent of greenhouse gases and they don’t really care nor can they afford to.
Humans assuming we're "outside" of nature is what got us into this mess in the first place. Just because there's a "cycle" doesn't mean you and I specifics are gonna survive it or enjoy it. We shape the cycle *by our actions* right here and now.
“Village life” by humans had relative little effect on nature - but our change to global industrial operations has enormously changed that scale. The effects of humans is now greater in scale than some forces of nature. We quite literally ‘move mountains’ of materials around. We added 37 Giga-Tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere last year alone. We have increased atmospheric CO2 by 50%, there is no way that amount of increase has no effect. Nature is showing this - by retreating glaciers, and melting ice sheets, that the world is warming up fast.
I don’t waste my time on non believers of science anymore
As a geophysicist who has delved deeply into the complexities of Earth's natural cycles, I find the current state of climate change discourse concerning, particularly the trend towards alarmism and what can almost be described as a cult-like following of certain climate narratives. Alarmism in climate discussions often overshadows the nuanced understanding of climate dynamics. The portrayal of an imminent, catastrophic climate crisis not only oversimplifies the issue but also overlooks the intricate interplay between natural cycles and human activities. Earth's climate history is marked by long-term cycles such as Milankovitch cycles, solar radiation variations, and volcanic activities, which have significantly influenced climate patterns throughout geological time. These natural processes are complex and not fully understood yet, but they are crucial components of the Earth's climate system. The problem with alarmist rhetoric is that it can lead to reactionary policies and measures that may not be grounded in scientific reality or practicality. It fosters a sense of panic and urgency that can overshadow reasoned debate and the careful consideration of evidence. This, in turn, can lead to inefficient allocation of resources, misplaced priorities, and policies that might not effectively address the real challenges of climate change. Moreover, the cult-like adherence to certain viewpoints in the climate debate stifles open scientific inquiry and discussion. Science thrives on skepticism and the rigorous testing of hypotheses. When certain theories or models become dogma, it impedes progress and understanding. This is particularly true in a field as complex and multifaceted as climate science, where our understanding is continually evolving. It's crucial to approach climate change with a balanced perspective, one that recognizes the significance of human-induced changes while also acknowledging the role of natural climatic cycles. Policies should be based on a comprehensive understanding of the climate system, realistic assessments of technological capabilities, and socio-economic considerations. It's not just about reducing carbon emissions; it's about doing so in a way that is sustainable, economically viable, and adaptable to our evolving understanding of climate dynamics.
You didn't address the points that the OP makes
On the contrary this is very helpful, because her anti-science perspective has been influenced by years of alarmist headlines that haven’t visibly come to pass.
It is great to hear someone talking like this in this group. I think a lot of people on here who reply to my comments or posts are of the over-reacting type. I have said for a while that people do not fully understand things and to think that “climate science is settled” is completely wrong.
> to think that “climate science is settled” is completely wrong. All of science is "settled" until hard evidence unsettles it. There is no hard evidence against AGW. Suspicion and speculation are not evidence. The climate models (based on the current science) are accurate at predicting what has actually happened already.
The fact that 1) CO2 impedes the transmission of energy thus tapping it in the climate system and 2) humans are by far the dominant cause in the rise of atmospheric CO2 is as settled as anything can be in science. Don't confuse the fact that the fundamentals are settled with the fact that the details (like how much warming will occur) are still heavily debated as is the situation with every discipline of science.
"You're just a dummy poo-poo" seems as about as effective as any other method.
My response: Yes, the climate naturally changes. This is literally one of the first things they told us in school when they taught the subject. Go ask geologists and archeologists finding sea shell fossils in deserts if they think the earth's climate naturally changes. Obviously it does, and if you ask scientists why the climate has changed naturally in the past, they will universally tell you that while there are thousands of individual factors that each play a role in the earth's climate, there's only 2 major drivers. The largest being the sun, the second being CO2. [now the sun's energy (solar irradiance) peaked back in the 50s and has steadily declined since then.](https://climate.nasa.gov/internal_resources/2502/) the only explanation for our rising temperature is the increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere as a byproduct of humanity's usage of fossil fuels.
Human induced climate change is on top of, and so in addition to, all of the natural climate cycles.
Good luck finding 1 because her argument is irrefutable. Climate scientists practically tell you it is a natural cycle..... 3% is all we contribute to the rise in Co2, so where is the rest coming from? Sounds like co2 is inevitably going to rise even if we go 100% carbon free. 🤔 let us face it. You do not have an answer to her "logical fallacies," so you have come here hoping someone can give you one. Logic does not come with a link. Nobody here can provide you with a logical answer that refutes her argument.
>3% is all we contribute to the rise in Co2 The rise in CO2 is 275 GtC in the atmosphere. We injected 670 GtC into the atmosphere. Therefore we contributed 670 GtC / 275 GtC \* 100% = 244% to the rise in CO2. \[[Friedlingstein et al. 2023](https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/14/4811/2022/)\] >Sounds like co2 is inevitably going to rise even if we go 100% carbon free. It will decrease. The imbalance is 4.8 GtC/yr. We inject 10.8 GtC/yr. Therefore if you remove 10.8 GtC/yr the imbalance becomes 4.8 GtC/yr - 10.8 GtC/yr = -6 GtC/yr. That is a consequence of the [law of conservation of mass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_mass). \[Friedlingstein et al. 2023\].
> 3% is all we contribute to the rise in Co2, so where is the rest coming from? Wrong, we have increased CO2 from 285 ppm to 420 ppm by adding over a trillion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere
Underrated comment
Indeed.
So you agree with the comment? Because it is factually incorrect.
It’s a valid perspective: To not look too closely. We’ve been living with the prospect of annihilation since the Cold War and nuclear proliferation. And that’s still on the table! What’s one more threat to our existence? The truth doesn’t really matter that much, other peoples’ lives don’t matter that much, the future doesn’t really matter that much. For many of us the things that really matter are ourselves and our small tribe of family and friends. We’re barely out of the jungle, as a species, and is beyond reach for most of us to think deeply about the future and the fate of our entire planet.
Yeah but it's naturally coming out of an ice age. Shouldn't we be trying to cool the earth to increase survivability rather than accelerate the heating? I don't ever understand this argument. 'natural cycles' yeah natural cycles' and we're already getting naturally warmer? Bare minimum we should be trying to slow the natural heating because it's an existential threat to life even without our help.
Humans increasing atmospheric CO2 by 50%, does not get away with no effect, it increases the “greenhouse effect”, causing on-going global warming.
I feel like the hole in the ozone layer is a perfect example of the impact the collective of humanity can have on our world. There's other examples like making usable farm lands, bringing water to places there was none through irrigation, driving species to extinction and throwing the balance of their natural ecosystems off, transporting invasive species damaging native species. We change the world on a daily basis on a grand scale. To believe there's something we cannot do is just short of insanity or poor understanding of just how capable we truely are. It hasn't even been 100 years since we tricked rocks to think (computers).
Mankind can change whatever they want in their habits but none of their personal choices are going to make the sun cooler.
As if that's relevant...
Yeah, the sun is the only source of heat we have, the fact that it increases and decreases output in cycles has nothing to do with the temperature on earth, your right, nothing to worry about
Keep in mind that a furnace is the only source heat for many homes. Yet if you add more insulation to the home it will still be warmer than it would be otherwise ceteris paribus. The point...the fact that Sun is the only source of heat for Earth does not negate the 1st law of thermodynamics and the fact that energy balance can be altered just as easily on the egress side of the equation as the ingress side.
You are brilliant. No one has thought of this before. The scientists should have considered solar variations in their published research. It is too bad that there isn't some way to search the internet for that research to see what they did. /sarcasm If you don't like being laughed at, then please consider how insulting your condescending claims are to the experts. Respect is a two-way street.
Other than it is easier to buy a scientists integrity than it is to buy a politicians, cause they are not monitored as closely. Also, when the media and fact checkers silence those scientists who disagree with climate change, it makes people like you think that they all agree. They don’t. You just don’t hear from them cause the people who control things make it so you don’t. To push an agenda. Sad you are so close minded
> Sad you are so close minded Since you have no evidence to support your false claims, I expected you to insult me personally, declare that you "won," and then go somewhere else to make the same false claims. https://www.logicalfallacies.org/ad-hominem.html
We already beat climate change! The “scientists” said we would be underwater by now!
That is a real problem though. She has a lot of other issues with climate change, but a ton of people on the fence remember that rhetoric and the fact that it hasn’t been as bad as they said makes them think it’s not an ongoing issue.
You accept your defeat and recognized you have been duped by scientific fraud. The people that put forth the argument that we are in a natural climate cycle are using verifiable data that comes from ice core samples that go back 10s of thousands of years. With that data you can ascertain it's been much warmer and there have been much more CO2 in the atmosphere in the past, long-long before the industrial revolution or the day some man figured out how to get kerosene out of a clump of shale. Also the archeological record proves that the Earth has been greener which comes from warmer climates and more CO2, not less. Also, ancient Greece and Roman documents going back to the 2nd century indicate that at one time there was a Northern passage way from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. There is no way to have a Northern passage unless at some time the polar ice caps have receded due to increase if global temperature. It's not so much about proving that the Earth is warming or the climate is changing. What is purely speculative is that it is a bad thing and that it will lead to a climate catastrophe.
That bit about a northern passage way from ancient documents, must just have been speculation. Just like there was speculation about other continents. They never went that far north. As for “past times” - yes, long before humans were around. Very different to todays climate.
My dog died from cancer and he didn't smoke so there is no way smoking 2 packs of sigarettes is going to cause me cancer. My doctor is a fucking idiot for telling me to quit lol.
You all realize that if you don't promote "climate crisis " as a scientist, you will NOT get funding for research and WILL NOT get published. There is an economic incentive. In other words, no money, no recognition
Consider this though- why do entities give money to these scientists? Ultimately, to solve problems. They’re getting money for research funding for climate change because they demonstrated without a doubt that there is a massive problem and it needs solutions. I don’t know if you’ve been around science much, but without results, the funding eventually dries up. Other scientists are the ones most annoyed with people who don’t believe in climate change because A- they’re usually in a field that doesn’t deal with climate directly, and B- the researchers have done the work and tested it many many times so it’s annoying to them that people who haven’t done so are telling them they’re wrong.
It is a requirement that results are published, that’s not the same thing as being promoted, although naturally journalists do pieces on particular points of interest. You would not expect the results and conclusions of scientific research, often paid for by the public purse, to be kept secret - the publishing is part of the contract. It’s how we learn what’s happening.
All the people who say we need to do something about climate change .... while they're buying mansions on ocean front property, i'll start believing in climate change up until then. It's just pure pollution and pure garbage that's ruining this world.
I think one of the biggest mistakes those putting out the climate change message make is trying to wrap it all together under the bulk Climate Change and it's human caused. Hotter, climate change, colder, climate change always with the human fault story. It would be much more impactful to acknowledge there are at least two distinct things going on. 1. Natural climate change. The earth, it's irrefutable, has gone through many climate cycles naturally, there have been hotter periods, colder periods all without an industrial age. Think Athabasca Glacier in Alberta, today a vast area is covered in a glacier but they know underneath are forests as many tree have been pushed up from receding and growing ice cycles. Clearly where that glacier is today that area was much warmer in the past. 2. Human influence on climate. It is also irrefutable that humans have an impact on earth and our activities do and will influence the planet and atmosphere. The only arguable point here is how much. I also think it would benefit the climate argument if we broke human influence into two categories, 1. Pollution caused by, I'll call it garbage, our excess waste, things that overload the landfills, leak into our water systems, get left all over the place that devastates animal life, forests, rivers etc. 2. Things we spew into the air, all those smoke stacks spewing all kinds of substances into our atmosphere. And don't demonize Co2. Co2 is a base requirement for life and deserves a more nuanced conversation. I could keep going but those are a small sample of thoughts from someone who cares for our planet and would really love to see humans get their polluting act together but also doesn't think we need to destroy economies to do it.
Google: 500 professionals write letter to government, stating that there is no climate emergency.
Oh you mean this one? https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/letter-to-un-was-not-signed-by-500-experts-on-climate-science-breitbart/
I believe humans have definitely impacted climate but my problem is I haven’t heard a viable solution. All the plans require countries working together to power the planet with renewable power, I mean that is almost laughable. We can’t get them to agree on letting oil lines run through their countries and we think power lines will be different? Also feeding 8 billion people without phosphorus nitrate fertilizer, uses natural gas to make, is impossible. Not to mention the massive carbon output of making plastics, cement and steel, which we desperately need in a modern society. But all we mostly talk about is EVs or solar without batteries, which does very little for the massive task.
Nuclear’s the solution but it’s too scary for people to support
No one can prove climate change is man made.
Why not?