Our Present Course Leads to Certain Catastrophe

YouTube video

So, this is what I mean by climate change being simple. There are many complicated and fascinating discussions to be had about what to do about it, or about what effect our actions might have on the climate, and when or which policies are best based on cost-benefit analysis. There is complexity, plenty of complexity for those of you who like complexity. But we now know, to a fair degree of certainty, that if we keep doing what we're now doing, we will face unthinkable catastrophe.

We have a decade to fix this: GO!

My carbon footprint has been small for years. I even compete with my neighborhood for most energy-efficient (my company sends me comparative data every couple months - I'm always in the top 10%, and was #1 of the closest 100 once). Which is more a product of me being low maintenance than being a hippy, but hey, I'll take bonus points where I can get them.

It's the rest of you that need to shape up.

uhuh

Well, sure, it is good if we all cut back and reduce our footprint, but the point of the video is a little more broad than that.

Even if we never produced another climate altering emission, within the next hundred years the emissions in the atmosphere today are going to push us over the brink that is being described as "unfit for global civilization". Individual cutbacks are sort of nice, but ultimately also sort of useless. We need an initiative akin to a global Manhattan Project to attempt to stabilize climate, or we die.

we can kiss our a$$es goodbye

I have complete confidence that we humans are far too stupid to know what is really going on. Based on this thinking, I doubt we are on the brink of destruction. However, if we are, I think we are way past the point of no return.

dawwwwww, you doubt it, but there is near unanimity among relevant scientists, who ever should we listen to? 🙄

"science is wrong, an if not, doesn't matter anyways"

at least you can take solace in knowing there probably won't be a human civilization around in a couple hundred years to laugh at that mindset.

Originally posted by inimalist
dawwwwww, you doubt it, but there is near unanimity among relevant scientists, who ever should we listen to? 🙄

"science is wrong, an if not, doesn't matter anyways"

at least you can take solace in knowing there probably won't be a human civilization around in a couple hundred years to laugh at that mindset.

In the 1970's all of the scientists were saying we were heading into an ice age.

Because I think we are only 10,000 years out of the caves does not mean that all science is wrong. Stop being an extremist.

If 100% of all scientists said the Earth was flat, would that make the Earth flat?

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
In the 1970's all of the scientists were saying we were heading into an ice age.

the press in the 1970s harped over an idea that never had a large amount of support in the scientific community, so your statement is plain wrong.

Further, this is like saying "geocentrism is wrong, therefore we can't know heliocentrism". The entire idea behind science is that ideas are replaced with better ones. That some people might have believed global cooling but now dont is, in fact, evidence for the current theories, as it shows they are built out of better understandings than we had 30 years ago.

Further still, we are incorrect about some things and the predictions of global warming have been wrong in some places. Generally, however, the problem is we assumed the environment was more resistant to our actions than it really is. So, when we are wrong in the modern context of climate change, it is that we didn't assume enough warming or we thought warming wouldn't be as bad as it was. Meaning, for as right as you are about our lack of understanding, it is causing us to be too conservative about warming, not that we are plain wrong about it.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Because I think we are only 10,000 years out of the caves does not mean that all science is wrong. Stop being an extremist.

no, but you show a severe lack of understanding of the process you are so quick to dismiss because we are only 10000 years out of caves.

I mean, how do you justify belief in humans exiting caves 10000 years ago yet not climate change? "I don't believe it so here is where science is limited"?

modern climate science is not more complex or controversial than paleo-anthropology ffs

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
If 100% of all scientists said the Earth was flat, would that make the Earth flat?

it would certainly suggest it is the best hypothesis, given that is what the available data would be saying.

"we can't ever know anything as absolute, therefore we know nothing and should never do anything to avoid what is almost certainly catastrophe"

Originally posted by inimalist
the [b]press in the 1970s harped over an idea that never had a large amount of support in the scientific community, so your statement is plain wrong. [/B]

I was alive then. The press had a lot of scientists talking about it. It reminds me of what is going on now with global warming. I think you are being a revisionist.

Originally posted by inimalist
Further, this is like saying "geocentrism is wrong, therefore we can't know heliocentrism". The entire idea behind science is that ideas are replaced with better ones. That some people might have believed global cooling but now dont is, in fact, evidence for the current theories, as it shows they are built out of better understandings than we had 30 years ago.

And 30 years from now, we might laugh at what we believe now.

Originally posted by inimalist
Further still, we are incorrect about some things and the predictions of global warming have been wrong in some places. Generally, however, the problem is we assumed the environment was more resistant to our actions than it really is. So, when we are wrong in the modern context of climate change, it is that we didn't assume enough warming or we thought warming wouldn't be as bad as it was. Meaning, for as right as you are about our lack of understanding, it is causing us to be too conservative about warming, not that we are plain wrong about it.

Climate always changes. Climate is a system that is chaotic. That means small effects have unpredictable outcomes. How can you know what the cause is? You can’t, or we can’t yet.

Originally posted by inimalist
no, but you show a severe lack of understanding of the process you are so quick to dismiss because we are only 10000 years out of caves.

I don’t quickly dismiss anything.

Originally posted by inimalist
I mean, how do you justify belief in humans exiting caves 10000 years ago yet not climate change? "I don't believe it so here is where science is limited"?

This doesn’t make any sense. I think we are still primitives.

Originally posted by inimalist
modern climate science is not more complex or controversial than paleo-anthropology ffs

We can’t even predict the weather within a limited system.

Originally posted by inimalist
it would certainly suggest it is the best hypothesis, given that is what the available data would be saying.

The Earth being flat was the best hypothesis in its day.

Originally posted by inimalist
"we can't ever know anything as absolute, therefore we know nothing and should never do anything to avoid what is almost certainly catastrophe"

Stop being an extremist. You would like for me to say something stupid like that, but I didn’t.

I don’t think we are heading for a catastrophe, but if Murphy is right, then we are already beyond the point of no return.

I don't deny climate change, nor the scale. My earlier response was somewhat sarcastic. I realize the scope, and just wanted to do some ironic finger-pointing. Basically, I'll vote for environmentally-minded politicians, promote it when I can, etc. But I'm not in a position to make a huge impact.

Originally posted by inimalist
Well, sure, it is good if we all cut back and reduce our footprint, but the point of the video is a little more broad than that.

Even if we never produced another climate altering emission, within the next hundred years the emissions in the atmosphere today are going to push us over the brink that is being described as "unfit for global civilization". Individual cutbacks are sort of nice, but ultimately also sort of useless. We need an initiative akin to a global Manhattan Project to attempt to stabilize climate, or we die.

Would be too much cooperation for something that everyone wants to pretend isn't happening.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison

The Earth being flat was the best hypothesis in its day.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
I was alive then.

congradulations

I suppose that means you are, without doubt, qualified to talk about what the scientific community believed about climate change, simply by having lived through a time period.

You know, like how I can talk authoritatively about the quark-gluon plasma because it was first isolated while I was alive. You know, because this makes sense and as a reasonable adult I shouldn't feel like an idiot to make an argument like this

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
The press had a lot of scientists talking about it. It reminds me of what is going on now with global warming.

me: global cooling was largely a media thing, that scientists didn't really believe, sensationalized in the way the media does

you: no way, I saw it in the media when I was a kid, they made a big deal about it

/facepalm

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
I think you are being a revisionist.

you actually agreed with my assessment though...

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
And 30 years from now, we might laugh at what we believe now.

ya, how stupid we would look, trying to prevent what, by all our best estimates, is an existential threat to human civilization.

Boy, our faces would be so red, I mean, what would we tell our grandkids?!

"gather 'round children, hear the tale of our stupidity! We tried to stop the end of the world, hahaha, egg on our face"

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Climate always changes. Climate is a system that is chaotic. That means small effects have unpredictable outcomes. How can you know what the cause is? You can’t, or we can’t yet.

so, like, let me just get how far down the rabbit hole you are, do you, like, believe in the greenhouse effect then? The fact that earth, like, has an atmosphere that traps heat near to it?

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
I don’t quickly dismiss anything.

dawwwww, ok, slowly dismiss

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
This doesn’t make any sense. I think we are still primitives.

you missed my point.

If you believe in the fossil history of human civilization, you have no ground to criticize modern climate science on.

we know far more about the climate than we do about what humans were doing 10 000 years ago. Yet, you brandish one fact around to try and prove the dismissal of the other.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
We can’t even predict the weather within a limited system.

if you don't know the difference between climate and weather, this is probably not a good conversation for you.

Though, to give you a comparison to show how inane this comment is, you might as well have said, "because we can't predict exactly how an organism will evolve, we can't know anything about evolution" or "because we can't predict exactly how a human will behave at any given moment, we can't know anything about human behaviour"

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
The Earth being flat was the best hypothesis in its day.

1) not really, Greeks had models of a round Earth and a generally accurate estimate for its size.

2) you mean in a day where things like plumbing, electricity and medicine were unknown, where there was no scientific method and powerful interests went out of their way to murder people who challenged their authority? wow, ya, hard to see how those people might have had trouble running well controlled experiments, your point is astounding, what a clever comparison, you rascal!

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Stop being an extremist. You would like for me to say something stupid like that, but I didn’t.

I don’t think we are heading for a catastrophe, but if Murphy is right, then we are already beyond the point of no return.

if your point isn't:

"I don't believe it and it doesn't matter anyways", you may want to take a second to clarify...

you may not believe it, but as we have already established, your personal beliefs about the climate are not relevant

The funny thing here is that you are actually trying to make a logical appeal to Shakya.

Take a step back and think about who you're talking too. Then go have a beer.

Originally posted by inimalist
congradulations

That is smart of you! I am appt to not believe anything you say now.

Originally posted by inimalist
I suppose that means you are, without doubt, qualified to talk about what the scientific community believed about climate change, simply by having lived through a time period.

It means you can’t change history like you were doing.

Originally posted by inimalist
You know, like how I can talk authoritatively about the quark-gluon plasma because it was first isolated while I was alive. You know, because this makes sense and as a reasonable adult I shouldn't feel like an idiot to make an argument like this

You should feel like an idiot. Your analogy is just stupid. We are not talking about scientific discoveries, we are talking about pop culture and how it tries to say that the more scientists believe something the more true it is. 100% of all scientists could be wrong. Science is not determined by the number of believers.

Originally posted by inimalist
you: no way, I saw it in the media when I was a kid, they made a big deal about it

/facepalm

Ha ha ha You can’t even make my point.

Originally posted by inimalist
you actually agreed with my assessment though...

When you are right I will agree, to think I would not is just stupid.

Originally posted by inimalist
ya, how stupid we would look, trying to prevent what, by all our best estimates, is an existential threat to human civilization.

Doing something out of fear without enough knowledge to know what is going is also stupid. Plus, I never said anything about what we should or should not do. I’m just challenging your dogmatic beliefs.

Originally posted by inimalist
Boy, our faces would be so red, I mean, what would we tell our grandkids?!

If all else fails use an emotional appeal; stupid.

Originally posted by inimalist
so, like, let me just get how far down the rabbit hole you are, do you, like, believe in the greenhouse effect then? The fact that earth, like, has an atmosphere that traps heat near to it?

We are in the middle of an inter-glassier period. The last one was a lot hotter then this one, so far. But that doesn’t give scientists funding from the government.

Originally posted by inimalist
[QUOTE=13912767]Originally posted by inimalist
if you don't know the difference between climate and weather, this is probably not a good conversation for you.

Climate production is more difficult then weather.

Originally posted by inimalist
Though, to give you a comparison to show how inane this comment is, you might as well have said, "because we can't predict exactly how an organism will evolve, we can't know anything about evolution" …

But do we go around and saying we know how evolution works because a majority of scientists believe we know enough? No! No one ever says that we need to get ride of this organ or that because it will one day stop human evolution.

Originally posted by inimalist
if your point isn't:

"I don't believe it and it doesn't matter anyways", you may want to take a second to clarify...

You don’t even know what my point is.

My point: Science is not bases on popular culture, and funding from the government. Man made global warming is pop culture trying to be science.

Originally posted by inimalist
you may not believe it, but as we have already established, your personal beliefs about the climate are not relevant

I don’t believe in the pop cultures attempt at science. What does that have to do with the climate? Don’t answer, because you will just be stupid and insulting. If you loose all the childishness, I will listen, but that is not you.

I like that your entire point can be debunked by this simple fact:

iirc 97% of all relevant scientists believe in anthrogenic climate change, and the number increases as you look at the more elite scientists in the field.

I don't know where you get any ideas of "pop culture" attempting to do science... especially given pop culture overwhelmingly is against global warming (to the point that the number of people who doubt it is steadily rising).

so, fail?

Is English your first language, Shakya?

Originally posted by inimalist
I like that your entire point can be debunked by this simple fact:

iirc 97% of all relevant scientists believe in anthrogenic climate change, and the number increases as you look at the more elite scientists in the field.

I don't know where you get any ideas of "pop culture" attempting to do science... especially given pop culture overwhelmingly is against global warming (to the point that the number of people who doubt it is steadily rising).

so, fail?

Thank you for illustrating my point. 😆 97% OMG it must be right. 97% of scientist all together will make it true - NOT.

Oh! and it is now "relevant scientists". 🤣 🤣 🤣

All of the irrelevant scientists can go to hell. 😂

This is nothing but a pop culture argument.

edit

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Thank you for illustrating my point. 😆 97% OMG it must be right. 97% of scientist all together will make it true - NOT.

sure, except it does make it the best we have to go on

for ****s sake man, you could say this about anything. "We don't know electronics enough to make TVs, that theory of electron movement down a wire is only believed by some consensus, doesn't make it true".

like, this is mind numbing

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Oh! and it is now "relevant scientists". 🤣 🤣 🤣

it has always been relevant scientists... I'm not overly concerned by entomologist think about the greenhouse effect.

this is how science works...

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
All of the irrelevant scientists can go to hell. 😂

you could have just written "You have no good reason to listen to me"....

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
This is nothing but a pop culture argument.

except it doesn't appeal to pop culture and actually flies in the face of what is believed by a huge number of people in the popular culture?

EDIT:

Mass media in the U.S. continue to suggest that scientific consensus estimates of global climate disruption, such as those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are “exaggerated” and overly pessimistic. By contrast, work on the Asymmetry of Scientific Challenge (ASC) suggests that such consensus assessments are likely to understate climate disruptions. This paper offers an initial test of the competing expectations, making use of the tendency for science to be self-correcting, over time. Rather than relying in any way on the IPCC process, the paper draws evidence about emerging science from four newspapers that have been found in past work to be biased against reporting IPCC findings, consistently reporting instead that scientific findings are “in dispute.” The analysis considers two time periods — one during the time when the papers were found to be overstating challenges to then-prevailing scientific consensus, and the other focusing on 2008, after the IPCC and former Vice-President Gore shared the Nobel Prize for their work on climate disruption, and before opinion polls showed the U.S. public to be growing more skeptical toward climate science once again. During both periods, new scientific findings were more than twenty times as likely to support the ASC perspective than the usual framing of the issue in the U.S. mass media. The findings indicate that supposed challenges to the scientific consensus on global warming need to be subjected to greater scrutiny, as well as showing that, if reporters wish to discuss “both sides” of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate “other side” is that, if anything, global climate disruption may prove to be significantly worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378010000300