Public Opinion on Man-Made Climate Change Has Shifted

[Endus]

How do we know that anthropogenic climate change is exclusively exacerbating problems?

Because we keep asking "what if X is contributing to this", and then we get data on X, and it turns out it isn't.

One of the easiest-to-access renditions of this IMO can be found here;
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2...ing-the-world/

That'll run you through graphs of various factors, and then combine those factors on the same plots, for comparison, to show that there's basically one factor that emerges as correlating to the change. Anthropogenic emissions. Natural factors are, if anything, contributing to a cooling trend, if we removed the anthropogenic contributions.

If the Earth arbitrarily warmed by 1 degree Celsius through the natural rise and fall of climate change, would that automatically make droughts/heatwaves/hurricanes/floods worse or more frequent?

Yes. It's a consequence of the additional energy in the system and how that heat affects myriad natural cycles. It doesn't matter what the origin of that warming is, if you're simply concerned with the effects.

The reason the origin matters is because we're making it worse, and we could take steps to mitigate that.

It would seem that there would be consequences both positive and negative. Yet all we seem to hear is that the Earth warming will cause every catastrophic climate shift to do so in a worse direction.

Largely because, with the rapidity of change that's occurring, nearly every direction is a "bad direction". Human civilization rests upon a fairly fragile balance. Tipping that balance in any direction is bad.

Droughts are bad for obvious reasons, but increased rainfall in previously-arid locations can wreak havoc on plant life that's adapted to a more-arid terrain, and can easily lead to huge amounts of erosion which can have major consequences downstream. Warmer temperatures may mean that permafrost is no longer permanently frosted, which will allow for plant life to eventually move northwards into those new soils, but in the short term, they mean that northern settlements that rest on that permafrost are sinking into the ground, the roads that lead to them are turning into impassable mud, and so forth.

Climate change is causing instability, and that instability is what poses the threat. Not which particular direction conditions may go in any particular region.

[Skroe]

What costs are you guys even on about? Rising tides? Droughts? Is calamity imminent in our lifetimes?

Let me throw you a scenario.

Changing weather patterns leads to famine and drought in impoverished third world country X. X's government collapses and in the ensuing political instability, warlordism rises and terrorist groups carve out territory. In order to address a reglional security thread, X's Neighbor Y stages a military intervention into X in the name of restoring order. But because they are suffering from famine and drout too, they start to take what resources X does have, forcing X to stop fighting warlords and terrorists, and instead utilize them was ways to force out Y. Concerned about this, other neighbor Z becomes involved on the side of X, but because Z is suffering too, they target resource rich areas of Y for their own needs.

This scenario is one that the Pentagon has painted in congressional testimony over the last decade. Why? Because to the Pentagon, the instability caused by climate change is not a debate anymore. It's a probably source of military conflict for them i n the future. Why? Take a look at this map.



This is the Arc of instability, a region that due to historic, economic, religious and political factors represents what the Pentagon believes will be it's most consistent ongoing trouble in the 21st century. By that I mean, aside from dealing with crises with Russia or Crises with China or crises in North Korea, things happening in the Arc of Instability will present a second commitment. Right now, the US military building a large number of bases across to, to prepare for this.

The Arc of instability, perhaps coincidentally, or perhaps not, is also located in the regions of the world most sensitive to the worst effects of Climate change. If the world does heat up according to projections, bands around the Earth's equator could become uninhabitable to human life during the Summer months, which will force immense migrations and regional instability, similar to what is happening in Iraq and Syria today.

A "calamity" could be something as banal as a drought in a third world country in Africa. The US will get involved and it will directly effect us.

[Garnier Fructis]

What costs are you guys even on about? Rising tides? Droughts? Is calamity imminent in our lifetimes?

Unless you expect to die in the next couple decades, which I personally do not, then it will be in our lifetimes. Rising sea level, which increases chances of storm surges and hence damage to infrastructure. One storm now can cost billions in damage and hundreds to thousands of lives, and now imagine those getting worse. Heat waves will kill more people than they do now. Weather intensity overall will change depending on the region.

Diminishing snow packs means less water, which is self evidently costly to the economy since so much shit requires water. We'll need to build more desalination plants, which not only cost more (it's costly even without regulative barriers), but are susceptible to sea level rise as well.

Ocean acidification screws with entire ecosystems, which the fishing industry and fishing states depend on.

A whole cascade of effects increase the likelihood for disease spread and outbreaks.

And there's a lot more.

[mage21]

Because we keep asking "what if X is contributing to this", and then we get data on X, and it turns out it isn't.

One of the easiest-to-access renditions of this IMO can be found here;
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2...ing-the-world/

That'll run you through graphs of various factors, and then combine those factors on the same plots, for comparison, to show that there's basically one factor that emerges as correlating to the change. Anthropogenic emissions. Natural factors are, if anything, contributing to a cooling trend, if we removed the anthropogenic contributions.

Yes, but this doesn't show that climate change is exclusively a damaging effect. It makes no effort at all to claim one way or the other.

Largely because, with the rapidity of change that's occurring, nearly every direction is a "bad direction". Human civilization rests upon a fairly fragile balance. Tipping that balance in any direction is bad.

Droughts are bad for obvious reasons, but increased rainfall in previously-arid locations can wreak havoc on plant life that's adapted to a more-arid terrain, and can easily lead to huge amounts of erosion which can have major consequences downstream. Warmer temperatures may mean that permafrost is no longer permanently frosted, which will allow for plant life to eventually move northwards into those new soils, but in the short term, they mean that northern settlements that rest on that permafrost are sinking into the ground, the roads that lead to them are turning into impassable mud, and so forth.

Climate change is causing instability, and that instability is what poses the threat. Not which particular direction conditions may go in any particular region.

This sounds like pure conjecture. That civilization rests on a delicate balance. That anthropogenic climate change will be entirely destructive. There seems to be a push (though you yourself are not making this argument) to make climate change a catastrophic issue, leading to the declarations that damaged the cause about ice ages in the next 30 years, California submerged, etc., when even climate scientists disagree about the extent or impact of climate change. Given that climate scientists are not in full agreement about the extent or degree of impact of anthropogenic climate change, I don't think it's fair to say that every consequence will be bad and that our civilization hangs in a threatened, delicate balance.

[schwarzkopf]

One would wonder if it took this long for consensus on gravity to come around - what would happen.

[Garnier Fructis]

One would wonder if it took this long for consensus on gravity to come around - what would happen.

Nothing, except maybe some people taking flying lessons off buildings.

[Skroe]

Yes, but this doesn't show that climate change is exclusively a damaging effect. It makes no effort at all to claim one way or the other.





This sounds like pure conjecture. That civilization rests on a delicate balance. That anthropogenic climate change will be entirely destructive. There seems to be a push (though you yourself are not making this argument) to make climate change a catastrophic issue, leading to the declarations that damaged the cause about ice ages in the next 30 years, California submerged, etc., when even climate scientists disagree about the extent or impact of climate change. Given that climate scientists are not in full agreement about the extent or degree of impact of anthropogenic climate change, I don't think it's fair to say that every consequence will be bad and that our civilization hangs in a threatened, delicate balance.

Don't be so sure. Oh don't get me wrong, the United States, Japan and Western Europe will probably be fine no matter what. But that's not the issue. See that arc of instability aove? Stability in some of those countries hangs by a thread. And things like population flows, as we're seeing today (for other reasons) will directly effect Western Civilization.

The United States could drop a trillion dollars in a year, if it had to, on an emergency climate-mitigation solution. Could Egypt? Could Lebanon? Could India? Could Pakistan? What happens when deteriorating conditions along the arc of instability causes two nuclear powers ,like India and Pakistan, to come to blows? They've already fought something like six wars in sixty years.

[Deleted]

Climate change denying will exist for as long as there are bribed republicans and scientists taking money from the fossile fuel industry.

[May90]

How do we know that anthropogenic climate change is exclusively exacerbating problems? If the Earth arbitrarily warmed by 1 degree Celsius through the natural rise and fall of climate change, would that automatically make droughts/heatwaves/hurricanes/floods worse or more frequent? It would seem that there would be consequences both positive and negative. Yet all we seem to hear is that the Earth warming will cause every catastrophic climate shift to do so in a worse direction.

The general reasoning is that quick change in any direction is harmful, as it destabilizes the system and it cannot adjust to the changes by natural mechanisms, hence the further you go, the worse the consequences are. The medieval cooling was going at the rate of about 1 Celsius / 100 years for a few years, as far as I remember, and it caused tremendous climatic consequences, which, for one, made sailing extremely dangerous, caused crops to die out, wiped out or severely decreased some of the essential species humans relied on hunting for survival... And that was merely a natural pendulum swinging. If one is to accelerate these processes by a factor of, say, 10, in a few decades many regions on the planet may become uninhabitable, with extreme temperature gradients, volatile weather, possible induced mutated viruses and so on.

In general, there is nothing wrong with either cooling or warming going steadily; the climate adapts, plants adapt, animals adapt. Fast cooling or warming, however, will have very unpleasant consequences, up to the clock being rolled back hundreds millions years, with the surviving species reduced to a very basic form.

[Laerrus]

We'll see if the majority gets their heads out of the sand before it's too late.

Unfortunately, it may already be too late.

Does this mean humanity will go extinct, probably not, but we are going to end up losing a lot of the diversity in flora and fauna that makes our world so very interesting.

http://www.motherjones.com/environme...forests-oceans

We will adapt and survive, but not without much hardship. Speaking of which, we are long overdue for another pandemic of the 1918 flu proportions.

https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/

- - - Updated - - -

Do you seriously believe that if we cut carbon emissions (a natural element and a vital building block for life btw) the planet will somehow magically stop warming? If we all go back to the stone age does the earth stop heating up?

That is not how it works. We will need to sequester the excessive CO2 pollution in the atmosphere, whether it is back into the ground to be stored or made useful for industrial or agriculture applications. Do this until we can achieve a balance between the amount of CO2 exchanged and have it returned to concentrations of pre-industrial levels, and we solve part of the problem of our newest mass extinction.

No, better to blame industrialised countries so we can funnel money to third world countries in compensation for evilly warming the planet. That's the only reason the left has latched onto this farce.

You are not thinking outside of the box and confined to your 2 dimensional train of thought, much like most people I am afraid. Government won't and can't fix the problem. The only thing they can do is enforce laws.

This problem will be solved by clever entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers.

Create a way to harvest atmospheric CO2 efficiently, affordably and easily capable of being scaled up on a massive level.

Make an attractive and profitable business model and get investors onboard.

Work on making hydrocarbon combustion engines more efficient and making alternative means of transportation more affordable.

Ensure that fossil fuel power plants are being compliant on allowable emission standards.

This is just scratching the surface, but it will require cooperation among many different people to solve.

You GOP'ers have to be the only Conservatives in the world who don't believe in conserving and protecting what you have, as well as ensuring that your children have a safe and clean world to grow up. This is so fucking odd to me, considering you call yourselves, Conservative.

[Torto]

That is not how it works. We will need to sequester the excessive CO2 pollution in the atmosphere, whether it is back into the ground to be stored or made useful for industrial or agriculture applications. Do this until we can achieve a balance between the amount of CO2 exchanged and have it returned to concentrations of pre-industrial levels, and we solve part of the problem of our newest mass extinction.

Or until the next volcano erupts, the next solar flare, the next minor change in the earths orbital ellipses, blah blah blah.....the earths CO2 levels have risen and fallen for centuries, as has it's temperature.

You are not thinking outside of the box and confined to your 2 dimensional train of thought, much like most people I am afraid. Government won't and can't fix the problem. The only thing they can do is enforce laws.

This problem will be solved by clever entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers.

Create a way to harvest atmospheric CO2 efficiently, affordably and easily capable of being scaled up on a massive level.

Make an attractive and profitable business model and get investors onboard.

Work on making hydrocarbon combustion engines more efficient and making alternative means of transportation more affordable.

Ensure that fossil fuel power plants are being compliant on allowable emission standards.

This is just scratching the surface, but it will require cooperation among many different people to solve.

You GOP'ers have to be the only Conservatives in the world who don't believe in conserving and protecting what you have, as well as ensuring that your children have a safe and clean world to grow up. This is so fucking odd to me, considering you call yourselves, Conservative.

This is the thing, you see a problem to be solved but I don't. The planet is warming, it has done it before and will do it again regardless of what humans do to try to stop it. If people want to make plans for when the temperature is going to reach it's worst then great. But how about we first actually get a consensus on:

- how much the world will actually heat up
- when it will heat up
- what the effects will be
- how long will it be hot for

And I'm not talking about some UN talkfest where everyone competes to see who can make the most outrageous claim to get the biggest grant. Ever since climate change became trendy and people saw a chance to make a buck, the forecasts changed every time the wind blew. Pauses in global warming are either ignored, brushed over or goal posts are moved. And in the meantime jobs in the traditional energy sector are shed for no discernible reason.

[Skroe]

Or until the next volcano erupts, the next solar flare, the next minor change in the earths orbital ellipses, blah blah blah.....the earths CO2 levels have risen and fallen for centuries, as has it's temperature.



This is the thing, you see a problem to be solved but I don't. The planet is warming, it has done it before and will do it again regardless of what humans do to try to stop it. If people want to make plans for when the temperature is going to reach it's worst then great. But how about we first actually get a consensus on:

- how much the world will actually heat up
- when it will heat up
- what the effects will be
- how long will it be hot for

And I'm not talking about some UN talkfest where everyone competes to see who can make the most outrageous claim to get the biggest grant. Ever since climate change became trendy and people saw a chance to make a buck, the forecasts changed every time the wind blew. Pauses in global warming are either ignored, brushed over or goal posts are moved. And in the meantime jobs in the traditional energy sector are shed for no discernible reason.

(1) Jobs in the traditional energy sector are being shed due to being uneconomical. The slayer of coal wasn't renewables. The slayer of goals was superior LNG technology and superior LNG economics.

(2) Pauses in climate change are not being ignored. Rather, the science is unfinished. One key concern is that the pause is due to to an unknown carbon sink in the ocean or the arctic, but once that sink is filled up, it will resume.

(3) Climate change is a global problem and demands a global solution. I SHARE your concerns that developing countries use Climate change as a shake down to encourage the transfer of wealth from developed to developing countries, and that the developed world has not been assertive enough in standing against that shake down. But that's a political problem, not a scientific one. Furthermore the developed countries have a very serious problem on their hand: if 2 billion people are expected to join the global middle class over the next 40 years and they end up consuming as much energy and producing as much carbon as a Western middle class citizen, the effects of Climate Change will be catastrophic.

In other words, developing countries have significant leverage in negotiations.

The US with it's deal with India last year, presented one day forward. India needs more energy, and we're going to give it to them: by building Nuclear power planets like there is no tomorrow.

(4) You call the UN talk fest. Read your history. That talk fest replaced a system of Secret Treaties (which were a thing, and is now actually illegal) and adhoc coalitions that came at the expense of other countries. The UN system, as frustrating as it is, assures, most of all to Americans, that we'll have a seat at the table. Without the UN, this is what will happen: countries that disagree on America's course of action will meet without us and decide things that decide our fate without our ability to veto it or control the conversation. Within the UN system, we can mold the conversation and pursue our agenda.

Anti-UN people always make the same dumb assertion: that the absence of the UN from an issue, or the absence of a UN entirely, will somehow protect American interests by shutting down conversations unfavorable to us. The exact opposite will be true. Those conversations will still happen... we'll just have no right to be in the room and still be subject to the outcome.


(5) The integrated global economy basically forces global solutions. For example, as part of it's efforts to fight climate change, China has moved rapidly to deploy Solar power. This has made them the world's largest producer of solar panels. But this has also destabilized the global market for solar panels because they've been dumping around the world, potentially putting the West in a position of being dependent upon China for solar panel production should we pursue it to a similar magnitude.

A global approach has mitigated that, and continued to do so..

[Muzjhath]

Or until the next volcano erupts, the next solar flare, the next minor change in the earths orbital ellipses, blah blah blah.....the earths CO2 levels have risen and fallen for centuries, as has it's temperature.

Except that those are either all accounted for, take thousands to millions of years, or would be catastrophic in scope in their own right to affect it in ways to case a catastrophic heating event. The "medieval cooling period" wasn't even a global thing, it was a local thing. Globally temperature stayed static when you look through historical records and check ice-cores.
Volcano eruptions on the magnitude to do long term effects would be that, eruptions. Or it'd be one of the very few super volcanoes on earth and those would have far more immediate hazards.
The earths greenhouse gas levels have indeed fluctuated since they started being a thing. Yet not at the acceleration that burning them do. We burning lots of stuff is pretty much loads of man made volcanoes just sitting there slowly puffing smoke.

1 - how much the world will actually heat up
2 - when it will heat up
3 - what the effects will be
4 - how long will it be hot for

1 - We don't and can't know exactly because of the fact that there are just too many factors. We can do predictions based on conjecture when looking at all the data we can find combined with physics. But only predictions.
2 - It's heating up right now, all the "pauses" in warming and such you mentioned are goal posts created by selective data picking and dishonest representation of data. The thing is without human input of burning agents that do heat up the atmosphere the temperature on earth would be going down, not up. The earth has been heating before yes. But this time it's all on what we've done the past 200 years.
3 - This again, we can't know. We can speculate based on physics and chemistry. Look at different aspects. But we do know more extreme temperatures creates more extreme weather. So hurricanes will get worse which will bring with it worse effects. Like more extreme storm surges (which was mentioned). Which will cause more damage to infrastructure. Higher water will also cause more beach erosion. Then let's not forget that a lot of us humans live along the coast.
4 - Unless we can somehow get methods going to help capture, it'll be up to the earth to correct it. Which will be on a scale of at least millennia.

[Endus]

Or until the next volcano erupts, the next solar flare, the next minor change in the earths orbital ellipses, blah blah blah.....the earths CO2 levels have risen and fallen for centuries, as has it's temperature.

Not at anywhere close to the rate that it's occurring due to anthropogenic forcing. Not outside of extinction-level events like the Earth being hit by a massive asteroid.

This is the thing, you see a problem to be solved but I don't. The planet is warming, it has done it before and will do it again regardless of what humans do to try to stop it. If people want to make plans for when the temperature is going to reach it's worst then great. But how about we first actually get a consensus on:

- how much the world will actually heat up
- when it will heat up
- what the effects will be
- how long will it be hot for

Yeah, we have all that. See the IPCC AR5 report I linked above. The information you want does exist, and there is consensus, but you're insisting on willful ignorance for some damned reason rather than bothering to educate yourself on the subject.

There's a certain level of uncertainty to those projections, because scientists are not literally psychic oracles, but that's true of literally ANY field of practical science.

And I'm not talking about some UN talkfest where everyone competes to see who can make the most outrageous claim to get the biggest grant.

If you're referring to the IPCC, the IPCC is a volunteer organization. No scientist is paid or earns any kind of grant whatsoever for their participation. The only people getting any kind of financial benefit out of the IPCC are its own admin staff who run the office, not the scientists writing the reports.

Pauses in global warming are either ignored, brushed over or goal posts are moved

Because there was no pause. It's a claim based on deliberately fraudulent manipulation of data, to mislead gullible people who'll believe the oil industry's anti-intellectual propaganda.

You may as well be saying that cigarettes are totally healthy, and you know this, because Marlboro said so.

- - - Updated - - -

(2) Pauses in climate change are not being ignored. Rather, the science is unfinished. One key concern is that the pause is due to to an unknown carbon sink in the ocean or the arctic, but once that sink is filled up, it will resume.

Even then, it's overly narrow. There was a slowdown (not a pause) in atmospheric warming, but it's already ended. Even then, that slowdown was within projected warming trends, so it wasn't a contradiction of those projections. And warming in the oceans has continued apace without any such slowdown. So claiming there was a "pause" in warming just isn't true, unless you deliberately exclude a bunch of data that contradicts that claim.

Remember, the last three years have each, in turn, been the warmest years on record. That brief slowdown was a hiccup, and we're already past it.

[Shadowferal]

Hmf...the temp where I am is supposed to be in the upper 30s - low 40s, and we're supposed to have on average a half foot of snow by now. But the temp today; low 70s...fuck. Worse, we're considered to be in a mild drought.

[Vizardlorde]

Let's hope the laws of physics never become a political football or we might wind up fighting gravity deniers.

we already have those who shoot upwards to celebrate 4th of july...

[Mad_Murdock]

Hmf...the temp where I am is supposed to be in the upper 30s - low 40s, and we're supposed to have on average a half foot of snow by now. But the temp today; low 70s...fuck. Worse, we're considered to be in a mild drought.

That's why I'm a huge fan of climate change. A week in the 70s has been great!

[smokii]

i recently had a discussion with a relative regarding climate change, as they said they didn't believe in it.

so i asked - man made climate change, or climate change in general? he said eh didn't believe in either. claiming that whilst the north pole was melting, the south pole was having record level ice caps. which made up for the difference and more. climate change was bollocks, in his opinion.

it took me all of 5 minutes to prove otherwise.

a very simple google search "is climate change true" led me to a video describing exactly how fast the north pole had been melting and to what extent, as well as how much the south pole had grown and to what extent. the southern growth constituted something like 15% of the northern loss. also, seasons. generally, when you have the most ice melt in the north (due to summer temperatures in the northern hemisphere) you have the most ice growth in the south (due to winter temperatures in the southern hemisphere).

so yea... even if he doesn't believe in man made climate change, the climate is still changing and he now believes that at least.

tbh, i'd rather spend 50 years globally fighting climate change and find out in the end it was a phase of the sun, than to spend 50 years not worrying about it or denying it and then having a mass extinction we caused for ourselves.

[Deleted]

I am old enough to remember the "acid rain" claim from the 1980's.

People claimed they had holes in their coats because of it.

[Theodarzna]

There're some papers on which countries should bear the blunt of the regulations for climate change, in order to be morally good or something. On those papers it states that rich countries (the ones that made most of the problem) should pay for it more than poor/developing countries

I think it is also a discussion within countries.