# Should we worry?



## KenOC

While the debate about global warming goes on, here's a stunning visualization of how temperatures are changing all over the world from 1880 to now, based on NASA data.

The first link is to the Marketwatch article describing the analysis. The second is to a larger-sized image of the visualization on Flickr. Just click on it and it will start.

So…should we worry?

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/i...sualization-on-rising-temperatures-2018-08-29


__
https://flic.kr/p/43350961005


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## DaveM

KenOC said:


> While the debate about global warming goes on, here's a stunning visualization of how temperatures are changing all over the world from 1880 to now, based on NASA data.
> 
> The first link is to the Marketwatch article describing the analysis. The second is to a larger-sized image of the visualization on Flickr. Just click on it and it will start.
> 
> So…should we worry?
> 
> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/i...sualization-on-rising-temperatures-2018-08-29
> 
> 
> __
> https://flic.kr/p/43350961005


There are some leaders of some countries, especially one, who should see that. Though, in the case of that one, he would probably say, "Wow, we're gaining. Look at all the red states!"


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## senza sordino

That's a very interesting graphic. Yes, we should worry. I worry about global warming all the time. Yesterday it was announced that British Columbia is now in the midst of its worst ever forest fire season. This was announced at this time last year too. In other words, as bad as it was last year, it's even worse this year. 

I worry about the future, perhaps not mine, as I'm 52. But my students will be elderly at the end of this century and what kind of a future will they have?


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## Larkenfield

In all honesty, it may already be too late to worry. I see little or no effort by humanity to curb its toxic pollutants that are obviously affecting the atmosphere. Do the pollutants in the atmosphere look normal to anyone? The pictures of the gas emissions in China are horrible. Humanity has been shortsighted. Did Henry Ford ever think for a moment what 1 billion cars on the planet emitting toxic fumes might do to our environment? People use it to kill themselves in a closed garage. If he had, other ways of powering a car might have been developed much sooner and more might have been done in the US on behalf of public transportation. Instead, in most US cities, public transportation is considered unfashionable except for the poor... Fortunately, there are other solar systems in other galaxies that might be inhabitable that one might reincarnate to and make a fresh start along with the dinosaurs. In the meantime, when the oceans go, the planet will probably go and humanity may have ruined something sublime. So, maybe it's a good idea to worry while we still have the chance on the likely effects of shortsighted human behavior on climate change, personal health & the future of our species.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-health/china-cuts-smog-but-health-damage-already-done-study-idUSKBN1HO0C4


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## hpowders

The earth's temperature is always changing. I wouldn't worry about it. As long as my CDs don't melt, I'm fine, but if the earth melts, my 13 performances of Wellington's Victory are the first things that get rescued.


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## Luchesi

senza sordino said:


> That's a very interesting graphic. Yes, we should worry. I worry about global warming all the time. Yesterday it was announced that British Columbia is now in the midst of its worst ever forest fire season. This was announced at this time last year too. In other words, as bad as it was last year, it's even worse this year.
> 
> I worry about the future, perhaps not mine, as I'm 52. But my students will be elderly at the end of this century and what kind of a future will they have?


The problem with graphics from sources like this is that the deniers will say, "Look how over-the-top this is!"

They use colors that are so misleading. For some reason they have no clue. They don't realize that this makes some people totally suspicious of all climatology. Deniers obviously don't want to believe it anyway. They want to be told that it's overblown.

And these greenie types play right into that! How old (experienced) do you have to be not to understand this?? It's the same thing with any socially-advanced ideas from self-appointed preachers.

Paradoxically, on the other side of the spectrum, when conservative politicos do it - it somehow works better. They KNOW their audience!


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## Strange Magic

When Paul Ehrlich (_The Population Bomb)_, and Garrett Hardin (_The Tragedy of the Commons_), among others, warned us about the dangers of the metastatic growth of human populations, nobody was even thinking about the associated threat of greenhouse gases building in the atmosphere and the consequent global warming. Unhappily we are into the positive growth geophysical/geochemical feedback loops that will further accelerate the warming. Meanwhile, global human population increases unchecked while technology adds new ways to introduce more carbon and novel pollutants into the environment. Even some supposedly "green" ways of generating electricity--converting existing coal-burning plants to instead burn biomass--merely aggravate the problem, as forests are chopped down and burned far faster than they regrow to recapture the carbon dioxide generated.

No, so far it's only been the scientists and a few far-seeing poets (Robinson Jeffers the most conspicuous) who have recognized the existential danger before our spherical, irreplaceable spaceship--the uncontrolled and relentless growth of human population. What is especially disturbing is the simple fact that, far from being an often-discussed topic in the 1960s, population growth as the driver of so many of the biosphere's ills is now never addressed, never acknowledged. And with anti-woman, pro-natalist populations growing throughout the developing and indeed some of the developed world, things will be getting worse.

The only path that can take us out of what Jeffers called "the dance of the dream-led masses down the dark mountain" is full female equality and women's complete and confidential control over their reproductive function.


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## Phil loves classical

Really not conclusive IMO.

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/global-warming-fake-news-from-the-start


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## Room2201974

Earth is presently an experiment into seeing if the mold growing in the petri dish will succumb to it's own wastes, or can it's intelligence outwit this fate. Currently fear, loathing, and greed are winning over intelligence.


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## Strange Magic

Phil loves classical said:


> Really not conclusive IMO.
> 
> https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/global-warming-fake-news-from-the-start


When it is conclusive enough for the deniers, it will be far, far too late. By the way, I was born in 1940. Here are the stats, then and now:

1940: world pop 2.3 billion; atmospheric CO2 concentration: 310 ppm. (pre-industrial was 280 ppm)
2018: world pop 7.6 billion; atmospheric CO2 concentration: 410 ppm.

Sea level rise, increased intensity of storms, growing ocean acidity, last decade showing highest average temperatures recorded, etc., etc. as anyone familiar with the news knows, and as 98% of climate scientists, meteorologists, geochemists are aware....

Clearly nothing to be concerned about.


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## DaveM

Phil loves classical said:


> Really not conclusive IMO.
> 
> https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/global-warming-fake-news-from-the-start


You actually believe that stuff? Nowhere, do these two authors address the role of CO2 as a true greenhouse gas or the fact that the parts-per-million is at record levels. It is proven scientifically that CO2 can act as a greenhouse gas.

As far as whether that means that the increased CO2 is causing climate change: the deniers like to say that climate change has taken place often through the history of the earth. However, Homo sapiens' existence on earth is but a blip on the radar screen given earth's age of 4+ billion years. It's a mighty big coincidence that this much climate change has occurred over the last few years.


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## KenOC

Time for a chuckle (?) A couple of years ago I read an interview with a supposedly well-known and respected earth scientist, then retired. He was asked what we should do about global warming and its relatives, ocean acidification and sea level rise. He just laughed and said “Nothing.” He thought we were already well past the point of no return and even then had no will to do anything at all.

So maybe it’s best to think of the advice given Queen Victoria, fearful at the prospect of sex on her upcoming wedding night: “Just close your eyes and think of England.”


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## Strange Magic

As to Phil's point, even if there was no such thing as anthropogenic global warming, the threats to the biosphere from the levered effects of metastatic population growth, the increased consumption of materials, and the spread of novel materials into the environment were enough to alarm scientists even earlier than the 1960s. Harrison Brown's 1954 book, _The Challenge of Man's Future_ coldly but precisely spelled out the dangers that a constantly increasing population, energy use, and materials consumption posed to our survival: the book drew high praise from Albert Einstein.

I would be curious to know Phil's views on population growth: are there "Limits to Growth", or, like cancer, can it go on "forever"?


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## Phil loves classical

Strange Magic said:


> As to Phil's point, even if there was no such thing as anthropogenic global warming, the threats to the biosphere from the levered effects of metastatic population growth, the increased consumption of materials, and the spread of novel materials into the environment were enough to alarm scientists even earlier than the 1960s. Harrison Brown's 1954 book, _The Challenge of Man's Future_ coldly but precisely spelled out the dangers that a constantly increasing population, energy use, and materials consumption posed to our survival: the book drew high praise from Albert Einstein.
> 
> I would be curious to know Phil's views on population growth: are there "Limits to Growth", or, like cancer, can it go on "forever"?


Population growth is a separate issue from Global Warming in my view. That 98% or 97% is not confirmed. I just don't think we have enough info to conclude it is caused by us. I'm more concerned about population growth and competition, and distribution of weath, etc. The effects are much more obvious.


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## Guest

Phil loves classical said:


> Really not conclusive IMO.
> 
> https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/global-warming-fake-news-from-the-start


So, on the basis of this one article, you're conclusion is that no conclusion can be drawn? How far have you read into the science? To what extent have you checked the reliability of the scientists (and the spokespeople)?

See what you make of this counter view:

http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstit...ure-to-tackle-fake-news-about-climate-change/



Phil loves classical said:


> I'm more concerned about population growth and competition, and distribution of weath, etc. The effects are much more obvious.


Certainly things to be concerned about. The problem we have is that we don't know which are the "obvious" signs of AGW and which are not. While dealing with the obvious poverty in developing countries suffering from the effects of heat and flood, we can hardly ignore the flood itself and what may be causing it.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-envi...nes-wildfires-heat-climate-change-cost-deaths

Fake news? Or clear evidence that this is happening here and now?


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## Strange Magic

"The gods first make blind whom they would destroy.". The core of AGW denial comes from the Right, who have politicized AGW for many of the same reasons that they politicized evolution--it offends their sense that God has everything under control and that if it isn't in the Bible, it isn't anywhere, anytime. Also, by requiring vigorous and conjoined action in order to be halted, AGW makes unfettered capitalism untenable. By the way, the Right's opposition to AGW and evolution is part of a larger package that also includes opposition to discussion of limiting population growth, and opposition to female equality. You rarely hear the Right moaning so much about "neutral" science like plate tectonics or The Big Bang (except maybe the Creationists), though the anti-science impulse is usually just under the surface.....


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## Phil loves classical

MacLeod said:


> So, on the basis of this one article, you're conclusion is that no conclusion can be drawn? How far have you read into the science? To what extent have you checked the reliability of the scientists (and the spokespeople)?
> 
> See what you make of this counter view:
> 
> http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstit...ure-to-tackle-fake-news-about-climate-change/
> 
> Certainly things to be concerned about. The problem we have is that we don't know which are the "obvious" signs of AGW and which are not. While dealing with the obvious poverty in developing countries suffering from the effects of heat and flood, we can hardly ignore the flood itself and what may be causing it.
> 
> https://www.vox.com/energy-and-envi...nes-wildfires-heat-climate-change-cost-deaths
> 
> Fake news? Or clear evidence that this is happening here and now?


I think we are depending on what those who do the research actually say. I am not doubting that the Earth is warming or that CO2 is rising, but that they are related. We came out of a micro ice age only recently as well.

Who is using climate change as a political motive, could be both sides. There is more conflicting evidence than we may be willing to acknowledge. The EPA head himself doesn't believe CO2 is the reason for the warming, the warming of which may be exaggerated. Fake or not, the raw data in those studies promoting AGW is not available for scrutiny.


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## Room2201974

Strange Magic said:


> "The gods first make blind whom they would destroy.". The core of AGW denial comes from the Right, who have politicized AGW for many of the same reasons that they politicized evolution--it offends their sense that God has everything under control and that if it isn't in the Bible, it isn't anywhere, anytime. Also, by requiring vigorous and conjoined action in order to be halted, AGW makes unfettered capitalism untenable. By the way, the Right's opposition to AGW and evolution is part of a larger package that also includes opposition to discussion of limiting population growth, and opposition to female equality. You rarely hear the Right moaning so much about "neutral" science like plate tectonics or The Big Bang (except maybe the Creationists), though the anti-science impulse is usually just under the surface.....


If I may riff off something MLK once said.........Sunday morning is the most political hour of the week in America.

All deniers who claim mankind can't affect the weather please sign up here for your free copy of Woody Guthrie's _Dust Bowl Ballads_.


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## Strange Magic

Phil loves classical said:


> The EPA head himself doesn't believe CO2 is the reason for the warming, the warming of which may be exaggerated. Fake or not, the raw data in those studies promoting AGW is not available for scrutiny.


Phil, please! The current head of the EPA, just like his disgraced predecessor Pruitt, was specifically hired because he is a reliable and effective denier of AGW. Regarding the "raw data"--which is available in the scientific literature by the carload--is it your contention, along with the Right, that there is a vast conspiracy among socialist climate scientists, meteorologists, geochemists, oceanographers--and let's not forget the Chinese--to promote AGW as a battering ram to impose socialism on a frightened world? Scientists are busy doing science, but when something dangerous shows up that may threaten life here on earth, they feel duty-bound to speak up. The government is--or maybe was--spending time and money locating and tracking all earth-crossing asteroids that may impact our planet at some future date. Is this also part of a huge socialist plot? The evidence for both earth-crossing asteroids and AGW is equally compelling, but the Right fixates on AGW as a hoax, a conspiracy, a scam. If they're right, but we still act to limit AGW, we end up with an energy-efficient, environmentally clean (socialist) world (maybe). If they're wrong, we end up with a dead world.


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## SixFootScowl

Strange Magic said:


> When it is conclusive enough for the deniers, it will be far, far too late. By the way, I was born in 1940. Here are the stats, then and now:
> 
> 1940: world pop 2.3 billion; atmospheric CO2 concentration: 310 ppm. (pre-industrial was 280 ppm)
> 2018: world pop 7.6 billion; atmospheric CO2 concentration: 410 ppm.


I suspect that the 2018 estimate is far more reliable than the 1940 estimate, and the pre-industrial estimate is going to have a very loose confidence band (what kind of measurement instruments did they have back then?). Climate change has been around for centuries. Sure human activity contributes, but whether it is to catastrophic proportions is hard to determine. Volcanoes have certainly been a large contributor, and if we have enought of them we could get some global cooling from ash in the atmosphere.


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## Room2201974

Fritz Kobus said:


> Volcanoes have certainly been a large contributor, and if we have enought of them we could get some global cooling from ash in the atmosphere.


Wow, and here I thought _Rooting For Eruptions_ was a movie starring Stephanie Clifford.


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## Phil loves classical

Strange Magic said:


> Phil, please! The current head of the EPA, just like his disgraced predecessor Pruitt, was specifically hired because he is a reliable and effective denier of AGW. Regarding the "raw data"--which is available in the scientific literature by the carload--is it your contention, along with the Right, that there is a vast conspiracy among socialist climate scientists, meteorologists, geochemists, oceanographers--and let's not forget the Chinese--to promote AGW as a battering ram to impose socialism on a frightened world? Scientists are busy doing science, but when something dangerous shows up that may threaten life here on earth, they feel duty-bound to speak up. The government is--or maybe was--spending time and money locating and tracking all earth-crossing asteroids that may impact our planet at some future date. Is this also part of a huge socialist plot? The evidence for both earth-crossing asteroids and AGW is equally compelling, but the Right fixates on AGW as a hoax, a conspiracy, a scam. If they're right, but we still act to limit AGW, we end up with an energy-efficient, environmentally clean (socialist) world (maybe). If they're wrong, we end up with a dead world.


Actually I am a huge nature lover. I want to limit deforestation, creation of heat islands (which I suspect is as much or more of a contributor to CO2 as emissions and local warming), etc. I just don't believe all the info or propaganda on AGW. I do believe in pollution, which is more immediate than a complex thing as global warming. Here is an interesting piece, it isn't as corny as the title would suggest

https://charleseisenstein.net/essays/why-i-am-afraid-of-global-cooling/


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## senza sordino

Phil loves classical said:


> I think we are depending on what those who do the research actually say. I am not doubting that the Earth is warming or that CO2 is rising, but that they are related. We came out of a micro ice age only recently as well.
> 
> Who is using climate change as a political motive, could be both sides. There is more conflicting evidence than we may be willing to acknowledge. The EPA head himself doesn't believe CO2 is the reason for the warming, the warming of which may be exaggerated. Fake or not, the raw data in those studies promoting AGW is not available for scrutiny.


I'm not sure what kind of evidence a denier want. 97% or 98% of scientists agree, are you waiting for the remainder to agree? The remaining are funded by big oil, aren't qualified, aren't very good scientists or whatever etc. You can't get 100% agreement on anything complex or scientific. I read a book a few years ago by a geologist who tried explaining the shifting continents and expanding Atlantic Ocean are due to an expanding Earth. He's alone in his theory.

Are temperature and CO2 related? Yes, but over time it's complicated. 









During the ice ages it was temperature that lead the rise in CO2 levels because of the Milankovitch Cycles. There's a positive feedback between the two, as the temperature rises there's more CO2 in the atmosphere, which in turn raises the temperature further. Over hundreds of thousands of years the amount of solar radiation changes in a cycle. The temperature and CO2 go up and down together. The amount of solar radiation change is not enough by itself to cause the 6 to 8 degrees Celsius change in the average temperature of the Earth. The addition of the greenhouse gas CO2 (and CH4) is the reason for the 6 to 8 degrees Celsius swing in temperature.

We are performing a giant worldwide experiment. During the ice ages temperature changes and CO2 levels were gradually changed due to the solar radiation forcing of the Milankovitch cycles. Now we're dumping huge quantities of CO2 levels into the atmosphere; the CO2 levels are rising first this time, the temperature rise hasn't yet caught up with the sudden rise in CO2.

Remember, 6 degrees cooler and we're plunged into an ice age, what happens when the temperature goes up 6 degrees?


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## Luchesi

Room2201974 said:


> If I may riff off something MLK once said.........Sunday morning is the most political hour of the week in America.
> 
> All deniers who claim mankind can't affect the weather please sign up here for your free copy of Woody Guthrie's _Dust Bowl Ballads_.


Healthcare, welfare, dangers in the environment, minimum wage, access to a good education, affordable housing.

I see these as what is fought about from the pews and from the conservative think tanks. What do most of them have in common? Each of them could be a matter of life and death for some people, but probably not for the rich conservatives (or at least that's how they see it with their shortsighted attitudes). "Let them eat cake!" <grin>


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## Luchesi

Phil loves classical said:


> Actually I am a huge nature lover. I want to limit deforestation, creation of heat islands (which I suspect is as much or more of a contributor to CO2 as emissions and local warming), etc. I just don't believe all the info or propaganda on AGW. I do believe in pollution, which is more immediate than a complex thing as global warming. Here is an interesting piece, it isn't as corny as the title would suggest
> 
> https://charleseisenstein.net/essays/why-i-am-afraid-of-global-cooling/


That's a good article, but I wonder why the deniers are saying there's cracks in the consensus view? and where in the global data do they find cooling? Do they just enjoy saying it? That's the impression I get. I work in a geophysical lab and nobody talks like that.

We debate about the future configuration of the planetary waves, but the data is the data.


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## SixFootScowl

senza sordino said:


>



What you have here is a fiction. Even if there were 800,000 years ago, who was there to measure it?


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## Strange Magic

Phil loves classical said:


> I just don't believe all the info or propaganda on AGW.


. 
You are of course perfectly free to believe or not believe as you will. However, ask yourself whether you are well-enough qualified to assess the rigor and legitimacy of your beliefs. As someone trained in Earth Science, I can follow the data-driven argument of the overwhelming majority of climate experts, meteorologists, geochemists, oceanographers who foresee a continuing march into catastrophe ahead. I am not qualified to assess some of the more arcane discussions of molecular biologists and biophysicists and so I defer to the majority view about such specific matters; to the consensus of experts. This is only prudent, in my view. But Americans, in particular, feel that expertise in a field means nothing and that everyone's personal "opinion" on matters of demonstrable fact can override the consensus of experts. Donald Trump and his devoted followers exemplify this posture, to the peril of us all.

Are you seriously concerned with global population growth? There are self-styled "experts", invariably on the Right, who say There Is No Problem and that populations can continue to grow, essentially without limit. These are usually Right-wing economists, whose knowledge of real-world science: physics, chemistry, biology, geology, is appallingly limited. Julian Simon is one of these Pollyannas--you might find comfort in his Panglossian enthusiasm for our future direction--you may be persuaded by him and his ilk that there really is Nothing To Worry About.


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## Strange Magic

Fritz Kobus said:


> What you have here is a fiction. Even if there were 800,000 years ago, who was there to measure it?


Fritz, nobody was there to measure it. But the record is preserved in the Antarctic ice cap and brought up as cores from deep drilling down through the layers. Of course if the world is only 6000 years old, then all bets are off .


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## philoctetes

As we keep spewing plastic and hydrocarbons, as we watch California burn to cinders, as we watch glaciers recede and permafrost vanish, as we invest in more and more server farms and bitcoin miners and other electrical heating technologies... we drive to our jobs, plug in our computers, connect to our servers, and ask people whose faces we've never seen, "Should we worry?"

Naw, lert's blame Donald Trump instead. We didn't do it, he did, right? What has worrying done for us so far?


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## senza sordino

This is why I worry: 1) we haven't yet seen all of our temperature rise for 400 ppm CO2, and we're still pumping CO2 into the atmosphere business as usual. 2) We're still debating this.

What I find really frustrating is that deniers don't really have their own story straight, or so it seems to me. Some say the there is no link between CO2 and temperature. How can a trace gas have such a big effect? Some say the temperature data is at best inconclusive. Some say that the IPCC is too politically motivated so it can't be scientifically accurate. Debating deniers is like playing whack a mole. Whereas the proponents come from all scientific fields and all reach the same conclusion independently. 

How do we know what the temperature and CO2 levels were like 800 000 years ago? Scientific evidence. How do we know about the layers of the Earth when no one has gone to the centre of the Earth? How do we know dinosaurs existed? How do we know what happens at the nuclear level, we can't see that with our eyes? How do we know about the Big Bang, we weren't there 13.7 billion years ago?


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## Strange Magic

philoctetes said:


> As we keep spewing plastic and hydrocarbons, as we watch California burn to cinders, as we watch glaciers recede and permafrost vanish, as we invest in more and more server farms and bitcoin miners and other electrical heating technologies... we drive to our jobs, plug in our computers, connect to our servers, and ask people whose faces we've never seen, "Should we worry?"
> 
> Naw, lert's blame Donald Trump instead. We didn't do it, he did, right? What has worrying done for us so far?


Though a Bear of Little Brain, I do detect the sarcasm in your remarks. But where is it aimed? Please elaborate .


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## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> Though a Bear of Little Brain, I do detect the sarcasm in your remarks. But where is it aimed? Please elaborate .


If we wish to see the author of our miseries, we can look in the mirror. As usual.


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## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> Fritz, nobody was there to measure it. But the record is preserved in the Antarctic ice cap and brought up as cores from deep drilling down through the layers. Of course if the world is only 6000 years old, then all bets are off .


When they reject one field of science, whatever the reason, they should reject all science. It's all connected and they should consider all the attempts to falsify the conclusions from the evidence.

As you know, science is a self-correcting method developed so that we don't fool ourselves and we arrive at the best, current explanations. We don't have the huge all-encompassing, complete theory so who knows what theories tomorrow might bring..

In the Fishlake National Forest there's a grove of quaking aspen that's well over 50,000 years old and estimated to be 80,000 years old.


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## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> If we wish to see the author of our miseries, we can look in the mirror. As usual.


I inferred more..... Thank you, kindly old mandrill!

Heeding Ehrlich's and ZPG's advice and plea, we stopped at one.


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## philoctetes

I NEVER leave anything for inference :devil:


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## Strange Magic

philoctetes said:


> I NEVER leave anything for inference :devil:


The human capacity (or that of a small bear) for inference is almost limitless :lol:.


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## Listenerris

Yes, we should worry. But one of the main points that is there is so much our helplessness, whish do not decided this problem.And also might to say the contrary that, a billion people have optimistic views in regards to future, and planned tommorow for example buing new car, and that way will be given new hole in earth...


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## Phil loves classical

On the 97-98% of scientists agreeing on AGW, it is a fudged number. This is an older video, but I still think is relevant, it also deals with the ice core analysis, and some other interesting stuff.


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## KenOC

I think some of what's driving disbelief in AGW is the dishonest "science" reporting we see every day in the press. For instance, story after story of how sea-level rise is threatening communities. A bit of reading reveals that what's usually going on is the normal process of seas eating away at the margins of continents, overpumping of groundwater* causing land to sink, river deltas being washed away because flood control projects prevent the normal annual cycle of silt deposition, and so forth.

People notice this and assume some sort of "conspiracy" is involved. But none of this contradicts evidence that global temperatures are, in fact, rising, or that the sea levels are rising as well (albeit by tiny increments so far), or that the oceans are becoming more acidic.

*This is the next "big news" you will be reading about. In some places on the globe, groundwater basins are already pumped dry or almost so. Hundreds of millions of people will soon no long be able to farm, and they will flee to the cities or to surrounding countries.

Note that groundwater is pumped from gravel or clay strata that collapse as the water is removed and will not recharge over any reasonable time. In my area, the ground level in places has fallen 40 feet or more. It will not recover in the likely lifetime of the human species. Gone is gone, the loss is permanent.​


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## DaveM

Phil loves classical said:


> On the 97-98% of scientists agreeing on AGW, it is a fudged number. This is an older video, but I still think is relevant, it also deals with the ice core analysis, and some other interesting stuff.


Well, an older video to the tune of 11 years and CO2 ppm continues to rise at alarming rates, global warming/climate change continues unabated, polar ice is melting and storms/hurricanes are worsening. This is Nero fiddling while Rome burns. The deniers are gambling that they're right with devastating consequences if they're wrong. On the other hand, if those warning of climate change and demanding action are wrong (unlikely), the planet will still be the better for the changes made.


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## Guest

Phil loves classical said:


> On the 97-98% of scientists agreeing on AGW, it is a fudged number.


What percentage agreement are you looking for? And who is to be included in that calculation - everyone who calls him/herself a scientist?

As soon as the media say "Scientists say that..." one should adopt a sceptical stance, not least because the media reports "science" very poorly. But that does not mean one should ignore the claims altogether. Being sceptical is not the same as denying until 100% "proof" is established. It means finding and exploring reliable sources (not doing your own research if you're just the woman on the Clapham omnibus) and seeing where there is a consensus; that is, a general agreement, not a complete unanimity.

In the internet age, however, all web pages are claimed to be equal. They are not. Here's an example: which site is reporting this story about the effect of meat on fertility more accurately?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/act...-bacon-and-sausages-making-you-infertile.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...VF-likely-fathers-eat-lot-processed-meat.html


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## KenOC

I fear that a lot of this wrangle amounts to: "Perhaps a different brand of deck chair will save the Titanic..."

Two things to consider: 1) We measure our economic well-being by grown in GDP. Which means (after adjustments) growth in consumption. We demand of our governments that we continue to eat the earth at ever-increasing rates. Woe be to the government that tries to resist this!

2) A basic way of determining human wealth is the amount of energy commanded by the populace, per capita. A good part of the earth is demanding catch-up, and won’t rest until they get it. No, they won’t be bought off (Al Gore’s solution), though the richer nations will try.


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## bravenewworld

What is so disappointing about this debate is the intransigence of the deniers. These people play with the collective future of humankind as if it is a political football... and what a sickening disgrace that is. They really ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Of course it goes without saying that most of the people who engage in such rank ostrichism are beyond the age of 50. Not into their laps are the bitter fruits of climate change to fall. Instead it is the youth of today and tomorrow who will bear the burden of the selfishness and consumerism of their forbears - and judgement will be passed upon those who were, quite simply, too lazy and self-obsessed to do their duty to the human enterprise. Perhaps those who deny the reality due to their own failure to critically think beyond the diktats of the right-wing should quit the field and keep quiet.

Should we worry? Admittedly, the battle to stop AGW is a battle that we lost long ago. It was lost as soon as the Industrial Revolution began - mankind will, always, when faced with a choice between short-term monetary gain and long-term peace and security, choose the former, especially when acting within the 'greed is good' framework of our neoliberal system.

Yet surely we should still worry- for ourselves, for our children, and most importantly, for the planet which reared us. We can all do _something_ to minimise the ravages of climate change. Sceptics, and those looking for an excuse to not contribute, will say that no individual action can solve such an existential problem. Indeed, we cannot individually make a demonstrable difference- but it nevertheless remains our duty, to our consciences and to our descendants, to do what we can. And we still have our votes. Ultimately such action springs from deep-rooted worry about AGW, which is why worry can be a good thing. And if nothing else convinces you to do your bit: go and pick up some rubbish. Take the train to work. It will make you feel a good person, a feeling which seems to be too rare in the modern world of material self-gratification.

If, or rather when, we lose the fight against this issue which seems simply too much of a challenge for the system, then at least we'll know that we were on the side of right. Small comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

The real threat of climate change, as I see it, is that it is occurring at the same time as so many other structural problems are coming to the fore. Exponential population growth. The extraordinarily rapid loss of topsoil- an enormous problem in the developing world (and in my native Australia)- threatening agricultural productivity. The collapse of fish stocks and coral reefs. Pollution, particularly plastic. The draining and salinification of aquifers. I am sceptical that the world will have an easy time feeding itself in 2100. This, combined with social problems: the rise of religious extremism to challenge the precepts of Enlightenment liberalism which have shaped our world; social fragmentation with the rise of 'social' media; consumerism; and most importantly, capitalism's insatiable demand for growth.

Should we be worried about climate change? Yes. Should we be worried about climate change in conjunction with all the other issues facing our planet? We should be quaking in our boots.


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## bravenewworld

*Alternatives*

One further thing we can do to help fight climate change and almost every other type of environmental destruction is to abstain from the consumerist rush of our era. What to do instead? I think everybody on this forum can agree: read books, listen to music, and appreciate the natural world. The pleasure given by a CD or book, relative to its environmental cost, is infinitely larger than a fashionable dress or a car.

Surely, this would be the ideal society, one in which Man lived in harmony with Nature. Will it ever happen? Alas, no. But one can dream.

I am always reminded of William Wordsworth's poem:

* The World Is Too Much With Us*
_By William Wordsworth_
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;-
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.


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## Room2201974

AGW isn't happening? Tell you what: Do your research, get it published and peer reviewed and collect your Noble Prize. I'm sure the Coke brothers will be happy to fund you!


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## Strange Magic

As a realist with scientific training, I contemplate the possibility that intelligent life, wherever evolved, must overcome several obstacles if it is to endure on a viable planet. Some propose that no intelligences anywhere in the universe manage this, and it may be--I think probably will be--our fate here. Life itself will continue on; Stephen Jay Gould noted that Earth is really the Planet of Bacteria, and nothing humankind can do could destroy this ubiquitous and mighty host. But here's the excellent Wikipedia article that discusses the various obstacles. Needless to say, the personal religious or ideological compulsions of many will not allow them to consider such arguments--they will be intolerable....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_catastrophic_risk


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## Triplets

KenOC said:


> While the debate about global warming goes on, here's a stunning visualization of how temperatures are changing all over the world from 1880 to now, based on NASA data.
> 
> The first link is to the Marketwatch article describing the analysis. The second is to a larger-sized image of the visualization on Flickr. Just click on it and it will start.
> 
> So…should we worry?
> 
> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/i...sualization-on-rising-temperatures-2018-08-29
> 
> 
> __
> https://flic.kr/p/43350961005


Absolutely we should worry. Let's stop by closing this site so that we reduce Computer useage and the electricity required to use it


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## SixFootScowl

deleted duplicate post


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## SixFootScowl

Some have referred to "AGW deniers." But that is a loaded statement because it assumes that AGW is true. To deny is to "state that one refuses to admit the truth or existence of" something. But if its existence has not been proved, then there is nothing to deny. At most, we would not be buying into the hypothesis of AGW. The historical data for the AGW charts is built on many assumptions like a house of cards. The only thing propping up the house of cards is a so-called scientific consensus (much like the so-called theory of evolution). But just because most people believe something does not make it true, and scientists are human, and so are subject to error and to believing what they want to believe.


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## Room2201974

I have the utmost faith in mankind to s(%&# things up royally. I live where "man" has created huge environmental disasters on a massive scale effecting millions of people over hundreds of square miles - the absolute collapse of two eco systems. So AGW? No problem!


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## Phil loves classical

DaveM said:


> Well, an older video to the tune of 11 years and CO2 ppm continues to rise at alarming rates, global warming/climate change continues unabated, polar ice is melting and storms/hurricanes are worsening. This is Nero fiddling while Rome burns. The deniers are gambling that they're right with devastating consequences if they're wrong. On the other hand, if those warning of climate change and demanding action are wrong (unlikely), the planet will still be the better for the changes made.


Not African countries as this documnetary is saying. They are being held back from developing when they have the resources to do it. If Global warming is wrong we are robbing them a chance to develop. These guys in the video are MIT profs and others. They are saying there are more skeptics than we are being led to believe. What about the correlation with sun activity and clouds? And the 800-1400 year lag of CO2 level behind temperature?


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## Strange Magic

I have no refutation for Phil and Fritz that they will accept. As I indicated, there are powerful religious and ideological constraints that prevent people from processing science-based concepts that would result in a massive re-examination of those deeply-held beliefs and values. Fritz makes no secret of his disavowal of evolution, so it's no wonder that AGW is anathema also. As the evidence grows and the disruptions of people's lives, globally, increases due to weather extremes--unprecedented flooding, droughts, decades of increasing average temperatures and local heat records being broken, enhanced storm numbers and strength, loss of coral reefs, etc.,--there will come a growing fear that there may be something to this AGW and population business after all. Small consolation, certainly. I'm reminded of that well-known gravestone in a Key West cemetary that says "I Told You I Was Sick".


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## senza sordino

There isn't any more I can say either. I will say that the movie The Great Global Warming Swindle is just that, a swindle. When I watched it 10 years ago, I was curious as to what they had to say. I started looking into the claims made in the movie and that's how I got to understand the science behind global warming even better. There are many inaccuracies in the movie, one of which I outlined in post #23, that temperature led CO2 in the past so CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas, or at the least it's not the cause. Read my post again if you want.

There are many scientists who are sceptical or deniers. Check their biographies here on https://www.desmogblog.com. You'll get a better picture of their motives.

On Tuesday I will meet a new group of students, young people. For their sake I need to be optimistic, because they're going to grow up in this ever warming, polluted and crowded world.


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## Phil loves classical

Strange Magic said:


> I have no refutation for Phil and Fritz that they will accept. As I indicated, there are powerful religious and ideological constraints that prevent people from processing science-based concepts that would result in a massive re-examination of those deeply-held beliefs and values. Fritz makes no secret of his disavowal of evolution, so it's no wonder that AGW is anathema also. As the evidence grows and the disruptions of people's lives, globally, increases due to weather extremes--unprecedented flooding, droughts, decades of increasing average temperatures and local heat records being broken, enhanced storm numbers and strength, loss of coral reefs, etc.,--there will come a growing fear that there may be something to this AGW and population business after all. Small consolation, certainly. I'm reminded of that well-known gravestone in a Key West cemetary that says "I Told You I Was Sick".


The skeptics are not only relgious based (even though the Pope was for it), but also science-based. The concern is that Global Warming is not actually science-based, but politically based. The 97% agreement is manufactured. The article that published the number withdrew it subsequently.


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## Strange Magic

Phil loves classical said:


> The skeptics are not only relgious based (even though the Pope was for it), but also science-based. The concern is that Global Warming is not actually science-based, but politically based. The 97% agreement is manufactured. The article that published the number withdrew it subsequently.


Dr. Tim Ball is exactly the same sort of person that Fritz likes to summon up to denounce evolution as a hoax. His Wikipedia entry makes fascinating reading..... Not exactly a well-respected authority on anything. Better luck next time!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Ball


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## DaveM

Phil loves classical said:


> The skeptics are not only relgious based (even though the Pope was for it), but also science-based. The concern is that Global Warming is not actually science-based, but politically based. The 97% agreement is manufactured. The article that published the number withdrew it subsequently.


Tim Ball is known by some as the biggest green-house gas related climate change denier in Canada. Unfortunately, his honesty has been questioned given that he claimed to have the first PhD in climatology in Canada when his PhD was in geography. He also exaggerated the number of years he was a full professor.

The above does not prove that his views are wrong, but on these issues I always factor in the overall credibility of the individual and am often amazed how sketchy the backgrounds are of those who question issues such as climate change, relative safety of vaccines and the theory of evolution.


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## KenOC

I think a lot of people choose to be skeptics because of the shrill and often stupid reporting on climate issues. In fact, that weakens public faith in science as well, by inference.

As an example, the big fires in Northern California have been mentioned. But anybody who lives here and has followed the story knows there are other factors involved.

First, we recently had a multi-year drought -- no unusual thing and insignificant compared with historical mega-droughts. But the forests suffered because the drought-starved trees became prey to a native bark boring beetle, which killed vast swaths of mature trees. Many of these millions of dead brown trees are still standing, waiting for a spark.

At the same time, past fire suppression efforts have promoted development of highly flammable undergrowth and prevented the natural thinning of the forests. In some places, the tree density is ten times what it was a century ago.

So you might say that the drought and the hot summer this year are due to global warming, or you could just as easily say that GW has nothing to do with it. But the latter wouldn’t make much of a story.


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## hpowders

I can gather 100 scientists pro and 100 scientists anti global warming. Both sides loaded with copious statistics supporting their respective positions.

The honest answer is the jury is still out regarding whether driving cars, flying planes and burning coal have a statistically proveable significance on increasing the earth’s temperature over time. 

As for myself, I would be more worried as to whether one day I will log on to TC and discover that I have been reduced to guest status.


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## joen_cph

One could also gather 100 people claiming to prove by both scientific methods and other proofs, that Man hasn´t been to the moon. It wouldn´t be difficult, in these intense media/internet times. 

To many a layman, their arguments would probably sound just as likely, as those of the 100 scientists (or, to illustrate something closer to real-life proportion in the climate question, 9000 scientists) who would say that Man has been to the moon.


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## Strange Magic

Ken, I admire your detachment and reserve on the issue of AGW. But you're right: when reporting a story about a centuries-long, slowly building danger such as AGW (and metastatic population growth) that threatens, in the not-tomorrow future, to yet overturn and overwhelm our civilization and biosphere, the press should be more "mature", more "careful", more "measured" in reporting the situation. Better yet, it should only be discussed behind tightly closed doors, only by scientists, so as not to disturb the general public's day. And if AGW was really a serious problem, somebody would be fixing it!


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## DaveM

It occurs to me that the average scientifically uneducated individual would be drawn to the view that climate change is not caused by man because that would not be as frightening and it could be business as usual.


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## KenOC

Here's what I lie awake worrying about: "If our universe lies within a false vacuum, a bubble of lower-energy vacuum could come to exist by chance or otherwise in our universe, and catalyze the conversion of our universe to a lower energy state in a volume expanding at nearly the speed of light, destroying all that we know without forewarning." Since a false vacuum is unstable, the likelihood of this happening can't be dismissed. The new universe would have different physical laws and our chemistry would be impossible.

I personally would find the change discomfiting. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum


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## senza sordino

Yes, the fire situation here in BC and California has been exasperated by our forest management and fire policies for the past 100 plus years as well as global warming. Yes, the media's reporting of anthropogenic global warming hasn't been great. 

I looked this up, the Pew research group has found that 97% of scientists believe in evolution. This I find very telling. As I said earlier, you'll never get 100% agreement from a community of scientists on any scientific theory. 

That I am still writing responses to this thread makes me worry.


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## Phil loves classical

Believing in Evolution and Global Warming are way different IMO. Evolution is logical and outside of devine intervention or alien colonization, there is no other explanation of how we got here. Global warming on the other hand has conflicting information, and a logical, scientific explanation as given in that video. Water vapour is by far the largest greenhouse gas by far, even the advocates had to explain away the lag of CO2 behind temperature as something with bubbles being displaced. It just isn't conclusive to me. Also, the projections by advocates haven't been met. Signs of warming on other planets due to increased sunspot activity (this one may be farfetched? Don't know). Sea levels are falling?! Global temps are not rising according to satellite data. I could go on.

http://www.ideacity.ca/video/global-warming-hoax-lord-christopher-monckton/

Here is just an irrelevant comment by Gore on Solar and Wind Energy. I've heard gross exaggerations / misleading info of the efficiency of solar and wind energy. From my own studies in my degree, wind and solar energy is known to be inefficient, which I hear Green Energy promoters denying. The return on investment in these types are just not there. At least promote nuclear energy in lieu of coal. There is more meat in that argument.

https://dailycaller.com/2017/11/29/...-acceleration-in-global-warming-for-23-years/


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## Strange Magic

Phil loves classical said:


> Believing in Evolution and Global Warming are way different IMO. Evolution is logical and outside of devine intervention or alien colonization, there is no other explanation of how we got here. Global warming on the other hand has conflicting information, and a logical, scientific explanation as given in that video. Water vapour is by far the largest greenhouse gas by far, even the advocates had to explain away the lag of CO2 behind temperature as something with bubbles being displaced. It just isn't conclusive to me. Also, the projections by advocates haven't been met. Signs of warming on other planets due to increased sunspot activity (this one may be farfetched? Don't know). Sea levels are falling?! Global temps are not rising according to satellite data. I could go on.
> 
> http://www.ideacity.ca/video/global-warming-hoax-lord-christopher-monckton/
> 
> Here is just an irrelevant comment by Gore on Solar and Wind Energy. I've heard gross exaggerations / misleading info of the efficiency of solar and wind energy. From my own studies in my degree, wind and solar energy is known to be inefficient, which I hear Green Energy promoters denying. The return on investment in these types are just not there. At least promote nuclear energy in lieu of coal. There is more meat in that argument.
> 
> https://dailycaller.com/2017/11/29/...-acceleration-in-global-warming-for-23-years/


Phil, where do you find these people? You have a wonderful gift for sniffing out the least qualified, most hopeless sources for rigorous scientific input on AGW and who knows what else? Only Fritz can match you when he trots out his "experts" on evolution. You have to pay more attention to the quality, qualifications, backgrounds of your sources. Check out Lord Christopher Monckton's Wikipedia entry. You are O for Two now. Try to do better .

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Monckton,_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Brenchley


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## Phil loves classical

Strange Magic said:


> Phil, where do you find these people? You have a wonderful gift for sniffing out the least qualified, most hopeless sources for rigorous scientific input on AGW and who knows what else? Only Fritz can match you when he trots out his "experts" on evolution. You have to pay more attention to the quality, qualifications, backgrounds of your sources. Check out Lord Christopher Monckton's Wikipedia entry. You are O for Two now. Try to do better .
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Monckton,_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Brenchley


Huh? How bout those other ones in that documentary. Whose yardstick are we using?

I am convinced myself that Al Gore and others are out to lunch on solar and wind energy, from my own studies. I need not convince others.


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## Strange Magic

Phil, let me retract my 0 for Two assessment of your quoted sources, and say you are One-Half for Three. I carefully read the essay by Charles Eisenstein. As I hope you recognized, Eisenstein ticks off a whole host of ecological disasters, many of global proportions, that have little or even nothing to do with AGW but have everything to do with all of the other misuses of modern production and technology, multiplied by metastatic population growth. His only real criticism is not actually with AGW but, again, with what he perceives as the press' seeming obsession with AGW as the source of all ecological Bad News--KenOC's thesis, I think, is the same. There may be something to that, but Eisenstein's cures--essentially reconstructing modern consumer/big business capitalism--are as far-reaching as those for curbing AGW. The press has an imperfect record in reporting just about anything, but it's the only way that the public can be informed about these matters, whether done well or poorly. Otherwise, we are to rely upon the wise judgement of those at the top of industry, finance, or Big Government, especially in huge one-party states like China to do the Right Thing? I think not.

Let me add that Eisenstein is not himself a climate scientist.


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## Luchesi

People are talking about technological fixes. Will that approach be as divisive? After all, some folks could make money..


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## Phil loves classical

Being in the industry and talking with others, many here in Ontario know the wind and solar farms are vanity projects and a waste of our tax dollars. But they just have to keep up the talk to justify.

After some back and forth on the issue they came up with this. I just don't think it is responsible enough that the government is spending so much money for so little, and so much inconclusiveness. How do you ignore the sun in climate change and try to rationalize the lag of CO2 behind temperature? I think the solution is hurting more than the problem, if there is anything we could actually do.

https://phys.org/news/2017-03-sun-impact-climate-quantified.html


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## Strange Magic

The Christy and McNider work on the rate of increase in atmosphere temperatures, is just that: they make certain adjustments to the data to eliminate the effect of volcanic eruptions to reduce the rate of temperature increase, but the temperature is increasing, just not as fast (in their view) as the raw data shows. And their work is confined to the atmosphere--much of the added solar input is transferred out of the atmosphere into warming the oceans. There is the concomitant increase in ocean acidity from CO2 input, and sea level rise from both the melting of ice caps and the expansion of water as it warms.

Scientists, like everyone else, have a bias toward seeing their own work as being of paramount importance. Christy and McNider's perfectly good science will be gathered, along with other studies, other data, into a larger, coherent overview of increasing exactitude showing how the input of CO2 and especially methane into the atmosphere traps solar input and leads to the continual rise in global temperature and in global heat events, droughts, storm events, coral death, etc.


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## Strange Magic

Phil loves classical said:


> Being in the industry and talking with others, many here in Ontario know the wind and solar farms are vanity projects and a waste of our tax dollars. But they just have to keep up the talk to justify.
> 
> After some back and forth on the issue they came up with this. I just don't think it is responsible enough that the government is spending so much money for so little, and so much inconclusiveness. How do you ignore the sun in climate change and try to rationalize the lag of CO2 behind temperature? I think the solution is hurting more than the problem, if there is anything we could actually do.
> 
> https://phys.org/news/2017-03-sun-impact-climate-quantified.html


From your article on the influence of solar maxima and minima:

"According to project head Werner Schmutz, who is also Director of PMOD, this reduction in temperature is significant, *even though it will do little to compensate for human-induced climate change. "We could win valuable time if solar activity declines and slows the pace of global warming a little. That might help us to deal with the consequences of climate change." But this will be no more than borrowed time, warns Schmutz, since the next minimum will inevitably be followed by a maximum.*"


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## Phil loves classical

Strange Magic said:


> From your article on the influence of solar maxima and minima:
> 
> "According to project head Werner Schmutz, who is also Director of PMOD, this reduction in temperature is significant, *even though it will do little to compensate for human-induced climate change. "We could win valuable time if solar activity declines and slows the pace of global warming a little. That might help us to deal with the consequences of climate change." But this will be no more than borrowed time, warns Schmutz, since the next minimum will inevitably be followed by a maximum.*"


There is a lot of uncertainty of how much is human generated and how much is natural. I wouldn't discount it is all natural, just as it is not all human. Here is egg on IPCC's face. As I said I would like to see less deforestation, etc. since global warming isn't the only concern if it is real. Are the measure really worth it when some energy utilities are losing money with renewable sources? As well as stopping developing countries to industrialize or become more self-sufficient? How much time would we buy by controlling emissions and at what cost (not just financially)?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-great-global-warming-collapse/article1365519/


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## KenOC

An amusing aside. When the United States signed the Paris Climate Accord in 2015, Pres. Obama flew to Europe not with one but _two _747s, the first full of his courtiers and the second for the press. And then they flew back, of course.

Somebody at the time estimated the carbon footprint for this jaunt and calculated the number of lifetimes of common citizens that would be involved in generating the same amount of carbon. Yes, amusing.


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## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> An amusing aside. When the United States signed the Paris Climate Accord in 2015, Pres. Obama flew to Europe not with one but _two _747s, the first full of his courtiers and the second for the press. And then they flew back, of course.
> 
> Somebody at the time estimated the carbon footprint for this jaunt and calculated the number of lifetimes of common citizens that would be involved in generating the same amount of carbon. Yes, amusing.


You think so? Should Obama have walked and swum to Paris? We have gargantuan issues that require equally gargantuan (and new) responses, and we get triviality, false equivalences, and misdirected irony instead. But maybe I'm looking at this all wrong; maybe it is all Fake News, a hoax, a dream....... Don't Worry! Be Happy!


----------



## senza sordino

Phil loves classical said:


> Believing in Evolution and Global Warming are way different IMO. Evolution is logical and outside of devine intervention or alien colonization, there is no other explanation of how we got here. Global warming on the other hand has conflicting information, and a logical, scientific explanation as given in that video. Water vapour is by far the largest greenhouse gas by far, even the advocates had to explain away the lag of CO2 behind temperature as something with bubbles being displaced. It just isn't conclusive to me. Also, the projections by advocates haven't been met. Signs of warming on other planets due to increased sunspot activity (this one may be farfetched? Don't know). Sea levels are falling?! Global temps are not rising according to satellite data. I could go on.
> 
> http://www.ideacity.ca/video/global-warming-hoax-lord-christopher-monckton/
> 
> Here is just an irrelevant comment by Gore on Solar and Wind Energy. I've heard gross exaggerations / misleading info of the efficiency of solar and wind energy. From my own studies in my degree, wind and solar energy is known to be inefficient, which I hear Green Energy promoters denying. The return on investment in these types are just not there. At least promote nuclear energy in lieu of coal. There is more meat in that argument.
> 
> https://dailycaller.com/2017/11/29/...-acceleration-in-global-warming-for-23-years/


Here's again what I call Whack a Mole Climate Change Denial. There are multiple ideas here, non sequiturs and conflicting statements.

Climate science doesn't deny that water vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas. A cloudy night will be warmer than a clear night. But the amount of water vapour changes hourly and regionally. It's responsible for our local weather changes. This doesn't change the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that CO2 is increasing and changing the climate (30 year average). As the temperature rises due to CO2 increasing the atmosphere can hold more water vapour, in fact water vapour amplifies the warming.

There are dozens of moons and planets in the solar system, some are warming some are cooling. If it's the sun, shouldn't all planets and moons be increasing? Right now solar irradiance is on a slight decrease, but it's due to increase again on its cycle. According to satellite data global temperatures aren't rising? Really? And doesn't this contradict the statement that other planets are warming?

I discussed the temperature and CO2 lag earlier.

Sea levels falling? I don't know where you read this, but there are some places in the world, mostly northern hemisphere where some rock is rising but his is due to isostatic adjustment, the crust is still rising after the ice sheets melted.

Projections haven't been met? Computer climate models are checked by starting the clock a hundred years ago, and running till the present, and double checking against actual data. The models work very well.

Wind and solar are inefficient? Perhaps they aren't but isn't this irrelevant to the actual science of climate change? This is what I would say is a non sequitur: climate change can't be right because wind and solar aren't efficient. Perhaps this isn't what you're trying to say, but it certainly sounds like that. When you add this statement to a string of climate change denial statements it just makes it sound even less convincing. Or perhaps it sounds like you have an agenda for a particular industry.


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## philoctetes

Control overpopulation and you fix a lot of these problems. Until then it's another race to outer space. 

Find another planet, populate it, the species survives. Stay here and it doesn't. My guess is that this has already been going on elsewhere in the universe, with species that descend from interplanetary migrants populating other planets. Did they come here? It really doesn't matter, cause we need to go elsewhere.

The universe is vast, and depleting its resources is impossible. We can't say that for our home planet.


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## Merl

hpowders said:


> The earth's temperature is always changing. I wouldn't worry about it. As long as my CDs don't melt, I'm fine, but if the earth melts, my 13 performances of Wellington's Victory are the first things that get rescued.


Theyre the first thing I would sacrifice along with all my 1812 overtures and Tchaikovsky's Dullfred symphony.


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## KenOC

The idea of relieving population pressure on the earth by moving people to another planet is attractive. But the numbers make it difficult.

A conservative estimate of the world’s population growth rate is 1.3% annually, so 95.6 million people are added each year. Just to stay in the same place, we would have to remove 262 thousand people every day. And even if we had the spaceships to do it, that’s a lot of carbon!

Also, of course, there’s likely to be a serious shortage of motel rooms at the other end…


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## Strange Magic

philoctetes said:


> Control overpopulation and you fix a lot of these problems. Until then it's another race to outer space.
> 
> Find another planet, populate it, the species survives. Stay here and it doesn't. My guess is that this has already been going on elsewhere in the universe, with species that descend from interplanetary migrants populating other planets. Did they come here? It really doesn't matter, cause we need to go elsewhere.
> 
> The universe is vast, and depleting its resources is impossible. We can't say that for our home planet.


My interest in the long-term survival of _Homo sapiens_ is marginal; I just don't want us to take down what's left of a perfectly fine Holocene fauna with us--after all, evolution may result in another species capable of giving advanced intelligence, art, etc. a second try with better results. Successful migration to and colonization of other planets is a nonstarter, though great fodder for stories and film. We're stuck with Spaceship Earth, and will either repair it, striving for population reduction to a sustainable level, zero growth, and a role as custodians of our unique terrarium within which we were conceived and evolved along with our companion species. Or we will screw the whole thing up.


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## hpowders

Merl said:


> Theyre the first thing I would sacrifice along with all my 1812 overtures and Tchaikovsky's Dullfred symphony.


I would sacrifice all my Beethoven and make sure all my Haydn, Mozart und Bach CDs are treated to be meltproof. I'm looking into whether Amazon Prime offers this service.

I believe we TC members should find a habitable planet and move there, since the great majority of earth-dwellers consider classical music listeners as being from another planet anyway.

Whoops! I almost forgot. My four performances of 4'33" would have to also be melt-proofed, as I'm into comparative listening.


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## Merl

hpowders said:


> I would sacrifice all my Beethoven and make sure all my Haydn, Mozart und Bach CDs are treated to be meltproof.


Yoi said that just to wind me up hpowders, you cheeky chappy. Just for that I'm gonna add another part to myBeethoven symphony cycles. :lol:


----------



## KenOC

The idea of saving humanity by moving some of them to a new planet was the basis for the 1951 movie _When Worlds Collide_. I remember seeing it when it came out and found it quite convincing (of course I was still in single digits). Big budget for the time and worth watching if you like the better sort of ancient SF flicks.


----------



## philoctetes

KenOC said:


> The idea of relieving population pressure on the earth by moving people to another planet is attractive. But the numbers make it difficult.
> 
> A conservative estimate of the world's population growth rate is 1.3% annually, so 95.6 million people are added each year. Just to stay in the same place, we would have to remove 262 thousand people every day. And even if we had the spaceships to do it, that's a lot of carbon!
> 
> Also, of course, there's likely to be a serious shortage of motel rooms at the other end…


There are many either / and/ ors and shades of gray to consider here. Something about eggs in a basket comes to mind. But that's for a more serious discussion than the one we're having here


----------



## Room2201974

Interstellar travel is thought by some to be science fiction. However, with the vast distances involved, the present snails pace of even the speediest of space probes, and the critical loss of bone mass during weightlessness, interstellar travel will remain at best a science fantasy for some time! Zefram Cochrane is a fictional character!

Earth is the only Petri dish we have!

What do I worry about? Water!!!! There are thousands of communities who are being affected by degraded water quality. People are dying because of this even as I type. It's a problem that's not going away anytime soon. In fact, it's getting worse.


----------



## hpowders

Merl said:


> Yoi said that just to wind me up hpowders, you cheeky chappy. Just for that I'm gonna add another part to myBeethoven symphony cycles. :lol:


I wrote that to get attention, otherwise my post would have been ignored! 

I actually would have also melt-proofed my impetuously-performed S. Richter/Charles Munch BSO performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto (listed incorrectly as #1) in C Major. But that's between you and me. I don't want to spoil my image as a Beethoven-hating SOB. :tiphat:

Meanwhile, I'm not worried about what might happen many years from now, especially when the data are not conclusive.


----------



## DaveM

Regarding reducing the population by sending people to the moon or Mars:

"Mr. President please come in and inspect one of our rockets. Yes, right in here where the cockpit is. Try out the seat, it's very comfortable."

Back in mission control: "Quick start the countdown." "But it's supposed to be in an hour." "No, that was an error. Start it right now!"


----------



## philoctetes

Before the incomprehension gets out of hand, I never suggested we send the whole population off in rocket ships. I agree that idea is absurd, but it wasn't my suggestion. It might be something Elon Musk wants to fleece you for, but not me.

In historical terms, designating "survival" of a community or population after a catastrophe often ignores the fact that not everybody actually survived. It's actually a pet peeve of mine, but in this case I use "survival" in that sense.

Space travel is science fiction, but so is this idea of a miracle consciousness shift where everybod suddenly does what they should and the earth somehow continues to sustain us all. Human species survival requires thinking ahead over the longest timelines ever considered.

While we sit on a forum and quibble over details, we're far from seeing how it all plays out. Very probable that like most grand human efforts it won't be pretty or thought out in advance and chance will play a role.


----------



## Strange Magic

philoctetes said:


> Space travel is science fiction, but so is this idea of a miracle consciousness shift where everybod suddenly does what they should and the earth somehow continues to sustain us all. Human species survival requires thinking ahead over the longest timelines ever considered.


All true. That's why I favor constant pressure for full female equality, combined with research for more dependable contraception measures that women can obtain and use in complete confidentiality/secrecy. This is only sure path toward, first, population stabilization, and then reduction, short of state compulsion. The postwar history of much of western Europe has been one of falling populations, rising living standards, decreasing income gaps between rich and poor, increasing education, less religious enthusiasm, and greater female equality and autonomy, especially in controlling their fertility. This in concert with whatever efforts to limit carbon emission, pollution, habitat destruction, etc.


----------



## KenOC

philoctetes said:


> Human species survival requires thinking ahead over the longest timelines ever considered.


I personally think it requires some effective thinking over very short timelines. The car is getting close to the cliff and the foot's still on the gas pedal so far as I can tell.


----------



## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> The idea of saving humanity by moving some of them to a new planet was the basis for the 1951 movie _When Worlds Collide_. I remember seeing it when it came out and found it quite convincing (of course I was still in single digits). Big budget for the time and worth watching if you like the better sort of ancient SF flicks.


This was a totally gripping film. Probably helped inspire the young Paul Kantner and Grace Slick. George Pal also gave us a marvelous _War of the Worlds_ during the 1950s, starring the young Gene Barry.


----------



## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> I personally think it requires some effective thinking over very short timelines. The car is getting close to the cliff and the foot's still on the gas pedal so far as I can tell.


I favor an "all of the above" approach, but the key is population reduction. The world appears to be headed toward, as a goal, an "American" consumerist lifestyle of material consumption and waste that is utterly unsustainable over today's world population of 7 plus billions, and inconceivable for postulated future populations of 11-15 billions (if the growth stops there, and why should it?).


----------



## KenOC

Room2201974 said:


> What do I worry about? Water!!!! There are thousands of communities who are being affected by degraded water quality. People are dying because of this even as I type. It's a problem that's not going away anytime soon. In fact, it's getting worse.


Not just water quality, but water availability. Recent news, especially from India, suggests that the groundwater problem will bite us sooner rather than later. Here's an assessment from 2010:

"Today, people are drawing so much water from below that they are adding enough of it to the oceans (mainly by evaporation, then precipitation) to account for about 25 percent of the annual sea level rise across the planet, the researchers find."

The rate of groundwater withdrawal has only increased since then. "If you let the population grow by extending the irrigated areas using groundwater that is not being recharged, then you will run into a wall at a certain point in time, and you will have hunger and social unrest to go with it," Bierkens warns. "That is something that you can see coming for miles."

A BBC story I read a while back quotes an old Indian lady as saying that you could dig down two feet and hit water when she was a little girl. Now, wells 900 feet deep are going dry, and the suicide rate of farmers has become alarmingly high.

From the American Geophysical Union: "Groundwater depletion rate accelerating worldwide"

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100923142503.htm


----------



## Phil loves classical

Yes, all my propaganda spewing is to promote nuclear energy, and to help develop 3rd world countries. And just a general distrust of the media.


----------



## Strange Magic

Phil loves classical said:


> Yes, all my propaganda spewing is to promote nuclear energy, and to help develop 3rd world countries. And just a general distrust of the media.


We're having fun with nuclear here in NJ. The Oyster Creek facility, one of the oldest in the country, is shutting down and will take 60 years to decommission. And no place to transport the radioactive spent fuel. The two other plants, the Salem Nukes owned by PSE&G, will be shut down by the utility unless they get a $300 million subsidy per year to maintain profitability.

https://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2018/03/pseg_twists_arms_to_get_its_shameless_nuke_subsidy.html

I still don't have a fix on your analysis of the part that metastatic global population growth plays in environmental degradation and in retarding the ability of third-world countries to develop--the Philippines being a prime example.

Meanwhile, continue to distrust the media, especially the bizarre YouTube videos you keep finding. Check the credentials and biographies of their creators.


----------



## KenOC

More on groundwater depletion: An hour-long video posted very recently by USA Today, with segments on some really scary situations worldwide. In the US, there are segments on California's central valley and on the mighty Ogalala aquifer underlying much of the corn and wheat farming heartland. The Ogalala aquifer is (or maybe was) the largest such groundwater source in the western hemisphere. Now it's mostly gone and will be completely gone in a couple of decades or so.


----------



## hpowders

In anticipation of the upcoming inevitible meltdown should I convert all my CDs to vinyl or all my vinyl to CDs?

Which has the higher melting point and if they are virtually equal, then what's the point?


----------



## geralmar

KenOC said:


> More on groundwater depletion: An hour-long video posted very recently by USA Today, with segments on some really scary situations worldwide. In the US, there are segments on California's central valley and on the mighty Ogalala aquifer underlying much of the corn and wheat farming heartland. The Ogalala aquifer is (or maybe was) the largest such groundwater source in the western hemisphere. Now it's mostly gone and will be completely gone in a couple of decades or so.


In the meantime, despite massive public opposition the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality recently granted Nestle's request to pump 576,000 gallons of water each day from the Great Lakes Basin for the company's bottled water division.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...n-despite-over-80k-public-comments-against-it

What the article does not address is whether or not Nestle pays for the water it takes.


----------



## KenOC

geralmar said:


> In the meantime, despite massive public opposition the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality recently granted Nestle's request to pump 576,000 gallons of water each day from the Great Lakes Basin for the company's bottled water division.
> 
> https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...n-despite-over-80k-public-comments-against-it
> 
> What the article does not address is whether or not Nestle pays for the water it takes.


Well, it seems that groundwater availability in that area isn't threatened...yet. And the Great Lakes themselves hold 21% of the world's entire supply of surface fresh water. And the _really _good news -- they're a long ways away from ever-thirsty California!  We use a trillion gallons a year just to grow almonds, and most of that for export.

​


----------



## isorhythm

Some kind of large-scale geoengineering is going to be tried. I'm not saying this is a good idea, but it's coming.


----------



## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> You think so? Should Obama have walked and swum to Paris? We have gargantuan issues that require equally gargantuan (and new) responses, and we get triviality, false equivalences, and misdirected irony instead. But maybe I'm looking at this all wrong; maybe it is all Fake News, a hoax, a dream....... Don't Worry! Be Happy!


If there's a billion simulated universes then we probably inhabit one.

Why wouldn't advanced intelligences build up simulated universes? Lots of them? To study 'intelligent' reactions to global warming? it would be like studying frogs as their water is slowly boiled. No love lost on the frogs..


----------



## Luchesi

Strange Magic said:


> I favor an "all of the above" approach, but the key is population reduction. The world appears to be headed toward, as a goal, an "American" consumerist lifestyle of material consumption and waste that is utterly unsustainable over today's world population of 7 plus billions, and inconceivable for postulated future populations of 11-15 billions (if the growth stops there, and why should it?).


This planet can only support 200 million Homo sapiens in their natural state. I read that a long time ago.


----------



## SixFootScowl

Luchesi said:


> This planet can only support 200 million Homo sapiens in their natural state. I read that a long time ago.


It is pretty clear to me that we will need to exist only as brains in jars, hooked up to life support, and especially hooked up to the internet. Then the planet will be able to support perhaps 200 billion brain jars! A small group will be needed to maintain the brain jar facilities.


----------



## Luchesi

Fritz Kobus said:


> It is pretty clear to me that we will need to exist only as brains in jars, hooked up to life support, and especially hooked up to the internet. Then the planet will be able to support perhaps 200 billion brain jars! A small group will be needed to maintain the brain jar facilities.


You're right, they say this is the reason why we don't see the evidence of large projects of advanced civilizations out there, and especially why none have sent emissaries to come here. This is an optimistic idea.

Other ideas include, they destroy themselves too quickly, or there's just far too few of them across the galactic clusters, surely none within our galaxy. Or they're effectively hiding -- and we should try to hide also.


----------



## KenOC

A possibly more realistic thought: Why would an alien civilization have the slightest interest in us? Things might be different if we tasted good.


----------



## Strange Magic

Luchesi said:


> This planet can only support 200 million Homo sapiens in their natural state. I read that a long time ago.


I recall similar numbers. Estimates of human hunter-gatherer populations over large areas is approximately one per square kilometer of suitable land. As Earth's land area is some 510 million square kilometers, but much of that figure is land covered with ice caps, jagged mountains, or sterile deserts, a figure of 200 million square kilometers of land suitable for supporting a hunter-gatherer population of 200 million seems about the right order of magnitude. Obviously the local density will vary widely depending upon the local capacity of any environment to supply animal and plant materials.


----------



## Room2201974

KenOC said:


> A possibly more realistic thought: Why would an alien civilization have the slightest interest in us? Things might be different if we tasted good.


You are too young to remember _To Serve Man_, episode 89, of the _The Twilight Zone_????


----------



## KenOC

Room2201974 said:


> You are too young to remember _To Serve Man_, episode 89, of the _The Twilight Zone_????


That story reminded me of Alferd Packer, who set out on a mountain trek in winter, 1874. He had five companions, but only he survived, seemingly well-fed and in good health. He was later convicted of murder and cannibalism in quite a famous case. Now, that may seem neither here nor there, but there's more. From Wiki:
----------------------------------------------
In 1977, the US Secretary of Agriculture, Bob Bergland, attempted to terminate a contract for the department's cafeteria food service but was prevented by the General Services Administration (GSA). To embarrass the GSA, Bergland and his employees convened a press conference on 10 August 1977 to unveil a plaque naming the executive cafeteria "The Alferd Packer Memorial Grill", announcing that Packer's life exemplified the spirit and fare of the cafeteria and would "serve all mankind".
----------------------------------------------
The GSA backed down and the plaque was removed. It now hangs in the cafeteria of the capital's Press Club, whose hamburger is still called the "Alferd Packer Burger".


----------



## SixFootScowl

As a kid I bought a poster of Alferd from a Colorado gift shop. It said, *"I can't believe I ate the whole thing!."* That, of course, was from a popular advertisement at the time, probably for Pepto Bismol or something like that.


----------



## KenOC

Oddly, when he was released after many years in prison, Alferd became a vegetarian and remained one until his death.

At his first trial, a local newspaper reported the judge as saying: "Stand up yah voracious man-eatin' sonofabitch and receive yir sintince. When yah came to Hinsdale County, there was siven Dimmycrats. But you, yah et five of 'em, goddam yah. I sintince yah t' be hanged by th' neck ontil yer dead, dead, dead, as a warnin' ag'in reducin' th' Dimmycratic populayshun of this county. Packer, you Republican cannibal, I would sintince ya ta hell but the statutes forbid it."

BTW the ad was for AlkaSeltzer.


----------



## Strange Magic

I like to alternate my Alferd Packer Burger with a big helping of Soylent Green.


----------



## joen_cph

Even the Russian Environmental Ministry, which one would perhaps think would be somewhat conservative in its views, is very worried, and says that it feels 95% certain, that human societies have contributed to recent climate changes.

An article from a couple of days ago:"_Russia's environmental ministry has published a report that paints an apocalyptic future for the country due to climate change, with consequences including epidemics, drought, mass flooding and hunger._"

https://themoscowtimes.com/news/rus...mental-apocalypse-fueled-climate-change-62804

This contrasts however with some of the benefits of climate change expected by IMF last year:

https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/russia-to-reap-benefits-from-climate-59145


----------



## haydnguy

I'm more worried about combining Artificial Intelligence with Quantum Computers. That's going to be here a lot sooner.


----------



## Strange Magic

"The melting of the polar ice cap, albeit a mounting catastrophe in global terms, is also seen by some as good news for Russia, whose ships are now able to navigate Arctic waters. This will also help open up exploration of the Arctic continental shelf, where substantial energy reserves still lie untapped."

This nugget from the report intrigued me. Though St. Petersburg may be under water, the Russians can use higher Arctic sea levels to extract more fossil fuels to burn, thus further aggravating the situation. Economists are trained to see the bright side....


----------



## Room2201974

Strange Magic said:


> "The melting of the polar ice cap, albeit a mounting catastrophe in global terms, is also seen by some as good news for Russia, whose ships are now able to navigate Arctic waters. This will also help open up exploration of the Arctic continental shelf, where substantial energy reserves still lie untapped."


A classic example of Newspeak!


----------



## KenOC

"How I learned to stop worrying and love climate change."


----------



## starthrower

I can't do anything about the weather. I'm more worried about my republic going down the toilet. My medicare and social security going up in smoke, our national parks turned into mining pits, our infrastructure crumbling and so on. Oh, and ignorant people breeding more Trump supporters.


----------



## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> "The melting of the polar ice cap, albeit a mounting catastrophe in global terms, is also seen by some as good news for Russia, whose ships are now able to navigate Arctic waters. This will also help open up exploration of the Arctic continental shelf, where substantial energy reserves still lie untapped."


Just to note: The melting of ice floating on water does not cause the water level to rise. You can check this yourself with a glass of water and an ice cube.

Similarly, the melting of the ice shelves in the Antarctic does not affect ocean levels. Of course any new ice flowing onto the surface of the water does have an effect.


----------



## joen_cph

Some stats on the land mass polar ice caps:

Antarctica, total melt-down = global 61 m water rise
Greenland, total melt-down = global 7 m water rise

Also points to that higher temperatures mean that the water mass in itself will expand

https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question473.htm


----------



## Larkenfield

The Earth's magnetic poles could also be ready to shift:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsweek.com/earth-magnetic-poles-signs-flip-exposing-humans-radiation-blackout-795179%3famp=1


----------



## KenOC

We can also perish rather swiftly in a gammy ray burst...


----------



## starthrower

KenOC said:


> We can also perish rather swiftly in a gammy ray burst...


And a lot of others things can happen in the next 5 million years. Jesus might come back and make it all better, but I'm not counting on it.


----------



## Pat Fairlea

senza sordino said:


> That's a very interesting graphic. Yes, we should worry. I worry about global warming all the time. Yesterday it was announced that British Columbia is now in the midst of its worst ever forest fire season. This was announced at this time last year too. In other words, as bad as it was last year, it's even worse this year.
> 
> I worry about the future, perhaps not mine, as I'm 52. But my students will be elderly at the end of this century and what kind of a future will they have?


I'm a bit late to this conversation, but Senza Sordino's mention of forest fires hit the button. Mrs Pat and I spent a chunk of August in Washington State, where the gradual hazing over of the sky and decline in air quality was only too obvious. Yes, fantastic sunsets, but my asthma didn't like it and even our local-resident friends reckoned it was a really bad year. Old Growth forests in the Olympics were bone-dry, too, which is just plain wrong. 
Now, I'm not so naive as to point to record Oregon and Vancouver Island fires and say "Behold! Global warming!!". But one of the predictions that climate scientists have been making for years is that long-established weather patterns will break down and extreme weather events will become more frequent. And that's happening. 
Am I worried? Not always. Sometimes I take the view that life on Earth will go on, whatever, as it has gone on for several gigayears and the real impact will be beyond my lifetime. Then I remember that I have kids. And I remember that the first major victims will be, for example, the people of Bangla Desh and low-lying Pacific nations, who have had a lousy deal all along and now pay the price for the industrialised world's self-indulgence.

And if anyone here is in the Carolinas or coastal Virginia, batten down or hit the road, and our thoughts are with you.


----------



## senza sordino

I'm not worried about the Earth, the Earth will survive, the Earth will continue to orbit the Sun, rotate on its axis and sustain some form of life for millions of years. I'm worried about us, as a species. I'm not even worried about myself, I'll live into old age. 

The forest fire situation here in BC has been really bad this year. Can we blame it on climate change? Yes, but we can also blame poor forest management over the past 100 years. We can blame people who insist on living in the wilderness. We can blame the pine beetle. We can blame arsonists. We can blame a lot of people, assigning a percentage of blame to each is impossible. I'll leave that to the insurance adjusters. 

In his book Storms of Our Grandchildren, James Hansen painted a rather horrifying picture. And his last chapter is probably extreme. He describes earth as a waste land with a runaway Greenhouse effect, like Venus. I don't know about that. And he doesn't either, this was speculation, perhaps to make a point. 

The climate does change, but it's been relatively stable since the end of the last ice age. There was a little ice age and a medieval warming period, but these are relatively small changes compared to what we will experience (and what we are experiencing). And for most of the last 10 000 years there were 1 billion people or less. Now we're trying to live in a changing climate with 7 to 8 billion people and growing. 

End point: Do I worry? Yes, I do worry. I have a new group of students right now, the youngest of whom were born in 2005. They'll live till the end of this century, what will their world look like? It won't be what James Hansen describes, but it won't look like the world I was born into.


----------



## starthrower

There's not much that can be done without the political will to take drastic action. And the pressure must be applied from the ground up. Here in the states roughly 43 percent of registered voters sat out the 2016 presidential election. That's almost 100 million people. This is a ridiculous situation in a free society. As a result we have an ignorant president who has surrounded himself with fellow climate deniers, corporate fat cats, and other slobbering sycophants who don't care about this issue.


----------



## KenOC

starthrower said:


> ...As a result we have an ignorant president who has surrounded himself with fellow climate deniers, corporate fat cats, and other slobbering sycophants who don't care about this issue.


I bet you'd enjoy an editorial today in the Washington Post: "Another hurricane is about to batter our coast. Trump is complicit." But his aim was pretty poor because the Carolinas are red states.


----------



## starthrower

There's no point in conversing with you if you refuse to be honest about the facts. As far as singling out states that has nothing to do with jokes about the weather, there's plenty of real world republican politics at work in their appalling tax act. The entire Summer issue of The American Prospect Magazine is dedicated to examining this criminal legislation. 1.9 trillion dollars of squandered resources.


----------



## KenOC

Did a check on CO2 emissions as a proxy for contribution to global warming. The elephant in that room is China, with 23.4% of all CO2 emissions, outweighing the US and India (nos. 2 and 3) combined. The US seems stable at just under 15% and has actually reduced its emissions somewhat in recent years.

But the new elephant is India. It has about the same population as China but emits less than a quarter of China's CO2. Not surprisingly, it is short on power to a crippling degree and intends to remedy this primarily by building new coal-powered generating plants. And after India there's Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, and other energy-short nations with big populations.

My impression is that no matter what it does, the US is unlikely to have much of an impact on global warming beyond its current contribution. But CO2 levels will get higher, probably a lot higher, due to the actions of other nations. This is playing out just as described in Al Gore's book _Earth in the Balance_. He didn't have a very good solution there, either.

Outside of population control, and in fact major population *reduction*, a solution is difficult to see.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/biggest-contributors-to-global-warming-in-the-world.html


----------



## starthrower

Makes sense. China has how many people now? 1.4-5 billion? But it might help if America showed some leadership. As far as population control is concerned, from what I've read things won't even begin to slow down in developing countries until mid century. I wish I could remember the name of the book I found at the library last year, but it was written by two scientists who study climate and population issues. They had all the statistics worked out and the harrowing scenarios to go along with them.


----------



## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> Just to note: The melting of ice floating on water does not cause the water level to rise. You can check this yourself with a glass of water and an ice cube.
> 
> Similarly, the melting of the ice shelves in the Antarctic does not affect ocean levels. Of course any new ice flowing onto the surface of the water does have an effect.


All true. But the melting of the north polar ice cap mentioned in the article would give the Russians greater access to Arctic fossil fuel reserves because of the removal of the hindrance to navigation, not because of sea level rise. However, the loss of the albedo offered by the north polar cap as it vanishes will increase the absorption of additional solar input. The Trump administration, I see, in its wisdom, has now relaxed restrictions on the release of the super greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere. That's what happens when you have a disturbed 14-year old POTUS (I thought one had to be at least 35 years old.)


----------



## starthrower

Larkenfield said:


> The Earth's magnetic poles could also be ready to shift:
> https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsweek.com/earth-magnetic-poles-signs-flip-exposing-humans-radiation-blackout-795179%3famp=1


I discovered Undark Magazine from a link in that Newsweek article. Very interesting site!
https://undark.org/


----------



## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> ...The Trump administration, I see, in its wisdom, has now relaxed restrictions on the release of the super greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere.


This raises a curious question. I've read that the volume of methane released into the atmosphere by termite flatulence (yes, you read that right) should have turned earth into a super-heated Venus long since. But it hasn't happened, and nobody seems to know why.


----------



## KenOC

starthrower said:


> Makes sense. China has how many people now? 1.4-5 billion? But it might help if America showed some leadership...


I have some difficulty with that scenario, for instance in Indonesia: Leader #2: "Look at this -- the US has reduced allowable CO2 emissions from its coal-fired plants by 10%." Leader #1: "That's wonderful. It inspires me to leave the Maluku Islands in the stone age."


----------



## Belowpar

starthrower said:


> Makes sense. China has how many people now? 1.4-5 billion? But it might help if America showed some leadership. As far as population control is concerned, from what I've read things won't even begin to slow down in developing countries until mid century. I wish I could remember the name of the book I found at the library last year, but it was written by two scientists who study climate and population issues. They had all the statistics worked out and the harrowing scenarios to go along with them.


Even in the les developed world birth rates are falling very fast. However due to medical science improving, the population will grow because people will live longer.
Probably not the book you were thinking of but its discussed here.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8...t=&hvlocphy=9045003&hvtargid=kwd-412463532913
So short of huge scale plague, war or euthanasia, significant population reduction is not going to happen and the coming 100 years
He acknowledges the Climate Warming looming crisis but takes a lot of the scaremongering out of this. It is book that shows us how much we rely on out of date information, the media's interest in giving us bad news and the progress we have made. Recommended.

That doesn't mean we can put off action a moment longer.


----------



## Strange Magic

Here's the Wikipedia entry on Hans Rosling who co-authored the book in question. I always find it useful to look into the backgrounds of authors of books and videos. Rosling's area of expertise was in epidemiology and also the visual presentation of statistical data but neither climatology nor population studies. When confronted by the possibility of catastrophic change, from causes we understand, it's best to act in the most vigorous possible way. If the situation turns out to be less dire, that's fine and we later then can breathe more easily, but only then and if. Rosling, while well meaning, is one of a population of not-well-informed "experts" who have cropped up to tell us that things are either really wonderful and getting better every day (Julian Simon) or are not really as bad as we think (Hans Rosling). With a handful of exceptions, economists like Simon notoriously ignorant of science and driven by ideology fall into the first category; others somewhat familiar with the fringes of climatology and population studies comprise the second group. Ben Wattenberg was one of these also.

Here's Wikipedia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling


----------



## Strange Magic

Tanzania's president calls for end to birth control......

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-45474408


----------



## starthrower

KenOC said:


> I have some difficulty with that scenario, for instance in Indonesia: Leader #2: "Look at this -- the US has reduced allowable CO2 emissions from its coal-fired plants by 10%." Leader #1: "That's wonderful. It inspires me to leave the Maluku Islands in the stone age."


My point is America should be much farther ahead utilizing renewable energy, not going into high gear with more fossil fuel consumption and exploration. There are other alternatives to the Stone age. And if the economy becomes dependent on new technologies the rest of the world will follow suit.


----------



## starthrower

Belowpar said:


> Even in the les developed world birth rates are falling very fast. However due to medical science improving, the population will grow because people will live longer.
> Probably not the book you were thinking of but its discussed here.


Yeah, that was one of the topics. And the fact that it will be several decades before families in these societies are having only two children. And of course at the rate of two in, two out the world will be maintaining a population of 10 billion or more.

Nothing was mentioned about the pros and cons of termite flatulence. Although there was great concern for other large concentrations of methane being released into the atmosphere.


----------



## KenOC

starthrower said:


> ...Although there was great concern for other large concentrations of methane being released into the atmosphere.


One of these is methane released by melting permafrost. Permafrost covers 24% of the land in the northern hemisphere and is a huge carbon bank because it is often quite deep and composed of dead but not yet decomposed vegetation. There is a fear that even with current CO2 goals, enough permafrost will melt to release huge quantities of methane, in which case all bets are off.

"Climate models say that if humans continue emitting at present-day rates, between 37 and 174 gigatons of carbon could be lost from permafrost by 2100, according to a study published in April in Nature. Most of the release would be in the form of CO2 and methane."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...ltdown-raises-risk-of-runaway-global-warming/

Another darn thing to worry about.


----------



## Larkenfield

Wishing everyone safe passage who is in the path of storm Florence!


----------



## Belowpar

Strange Magic said:


> Here's the Wikipedia entry on Hans Rosling who co-authored the book in question. I always find it useful to look into the backgrounds of authors of books and videos. Rosling's area of expertise was in epidemiology and also the visual presentation of statistical data but neither climatology nor population studies. When confronted by the possibility of catastrophic change, from causes we understand, it's best to act in the most vigorous possible way. If the situation turns out to be less dire, that's fine and we later then can breathe more easily, but only then and if. Rosling, while well meaning, is one of a population of not-well-informed "experts" who have cropped up to tell us that things are either really wonderful and getting better every day (Julian Simon) or are not really as bad as we think (Hans Rosling). With a handful of exceptions, economists like Simon notoriously ignorant of science and driven by ideology fall into the first category; others somewhat familiar with the fringes of climatology and population studies comprise the second group. Ben Wattenberg was one of these also.
> 
> Here's Wikipedia:
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling


Dear Sir. Whilst, I am pleased to have piqued your interest a little, I dare say Mr Rausling would have gently had fun pointing out just how you have failed to diss him

His interest to us is as a statistician. i.e. Facts and what they really tell us.

He also explains some of the false conclusions and specious arguments people use to justify their positions and why this leads to mistakes and inertia. E.G. YOU have linked his name to others and then attacked them and their credibility. That does nothing to counter the only argument I presented to you where he explains why population is unlikely to fall. (Something I think you would agree with).

To others who are curious I highly recommend his book to those who want to understand the current world a little better.

I'm outta here.


----------



## starthrower

UN Secretary General says we have less than two years to change course in order to avoid the onslaught of catastrophic climate upheaval.






The long version.


----------



## Strange Magic

Belowpar said:


> Dear Sir. Whilst, I am pleased to have piqued your interest a little, I dare say Mr Rausling would have gently had fun pointing out just how you have failed to diss him
> 
> His interest to us is as a statistician. i.e. Facts and what they really tell us.
> 
> He also explains some of the false conclusions and specious arguments people use to justify their positions and why this leads to mistakes and inertia. E.G. YOU have linked his name to others and then attacked them and their credibility. That does nothing to counter the only argument I presented to you where he explains why population is unlikely to fall. (Something I think you would agree with).
> 
> To others who are curious I highly recommend his book to those who want to understand the current world a little better.
> 
> I'm outta here.


Was it something I said?


----------



## haydnguy

When I was in high school was when Watergate was going on. I (along with many others) were glued to the television watching the Watergate hearings and such. If you look back now, however, you can see that Watergate did not have the lasting impact that some may have imagined.

While all that was going on, there were other things that would have far more influence on what was to come. One was the Oil Embargo in 1973 (I think). That should have raised alarm bells right there. In 1979, Jimmy Carter approved our military ships to protect oil tankers coming back from the Middle East. 

Had the U.S. really pressed for either electric cars or hybrids that got exceptional gas mileage, our recent history would have been written totally different. But mainly the oil companies, we didn't have the will to do it.

I don't believe in history repeating itself but there are parallels today with the Watergate era. Trump is the "main show" but there are other things that may end up having more impact in the long term. Will there continue to be election meddling? Prior to the atomic age that may have been considered enough to go to war over because the foundation of democracy (or the illusion of it) is threatened.
Also, Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing is going to make the world a much different place assuming some major event that keeps that from happening.

Mass data collection can be a danger. Facebook has 2 billion users. The U.S. has ~230 million people. They are a U.S. "BASED" company but are they an "American Company"? You make the call. What if the government really put pressure on Facebook and Facebook made a deal with China to bring Facebook's headquarters to China. Then, China knows an awful lot about the U.S. 

So, the bottom line is there are so many variables I don't think anyone really knows what will happen. Predicting the future is very difficult.


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## SixFootScowl

........................


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## DaveM

KenOC said:


> This raises a curious question. I've read that the volume of methane released into the atmosphere by termite flatulence (yes, you read that right) should have turned earth into a super-heated Venus long since. But it hasn't happened, and nobody seems to know why.


I know why. It's all those termite-hating companies tenting houses and blowing pesticides into them or injecting orange oil into all the crevices where these poor little farting things are hiding, killing them all off. Termites are persons too!

Please support PETA: People Encouraging Termite Assistance


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## KenOC

starthrower said:


> UN Secretary General says we have less than two years to change course in order to avoid the onslaught of catastrophic climate upheaval.


If he's right, we're in deep, deep trouble. I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, fat chance.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Here is a summary of my view on this. There are greater problems facing the world. While it has received good PR, everyone in the industry knows wind and solar power projects are vanity projects, the money would be better spent on helping the poor, or improving the quality of life in underdeveloped countries. There isn't enough (to me) evidence that emissions are actually the cause of global warming.


----------



## starthrower

KenOC said:


> If he's right, we're in deep, deep trouble. I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, fat chance.


We are in deep trouble on many levels. How can anybody doubt this? There are 405 ppm of carbon in the atmosphere, the oceans are full of plastic, the Great Barrier Reef is dead, polar ice is disappearing rapidly, a billion people are living on less than a dollar a day, and we're currently at 7.6 billion adding another billion every dozen years. Where could this possibly be heading in the positive, especially when there is little being done, or can be done about it?


----------



## DaveM

Phil loves classical said:


> Here is a summary of my view on this. There are greater problems facing the world. While it has received good PR, everyone in the industry knows wind and solar power projects are vanity projects, the money would be better spent on helping the poor, or improving the quality of life in underdeveloped countries. There isn't enough (to me) evidence that emissions are actually the cause of global warming.


Well that takes care of that little problem.


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## Phil loves classical

DaveM said:


> Well that takes care of that little problem.
> 
> View attachment 107898


I remember about 25 years ago, there were projections by scientists that we were going to run out of fossil fuels in 25 years. I suspect this global warming scare will be the same.


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## KenOC




----------



## Strange Magic

Phil loves classical said:


> I remember about 25 years ago, there were projections by scientists that we were going to run out of fossil fuels in 25 years. I suspect this global warming scare will be the same.


Nobody said we would run out of fossil fuels in 25 years. What was predicted was that petroleum production would peak in 25 or whatever years. And it will peak at some time; we just cannot accurately predict when, as new technologies for extracting petroleum, natural gas, etc. are developed. But the point (as you must know, deep inside) is that all fossil fuel production will peak at some time or other--for coal, we have centuries of coal. The question is--what happens when carbon that has taken literally hundreds of millions of years to accumulate deep below the surface of the earth, is brought up to the surface and burned within a few brief centuries, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Nothing very good, that's what. Whatever is not retained in the atmosphere to cause global greenhouse warming is absorbed in seawater, along with the excess heat, and acidifies the oceans. The evidence is irrefutable, and only a powerful antagonistic ideology attempts to refute it. Nature bats last, as environmentalists are fond of reminding us.


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## Strange Magic

Besides me (and Ken), who recognizes the three figures in the background of the Pogo cartoon?


----------



## starthrower

Strange Magic said:


> The evidence is irrefutable, and only a powerful antagonistic ideology attempts to refute it.


Its champion is Ken Ham. He built a Noah's Ark creation "science" museum in Kentucky. Have you watched the video of Bill Nye touring the facility? Its very entertaining and the dialogue is similar to Strange Magic trying to talk sense to Fritz Kobus. Poor Bill beat his head against the wall to no avail.


----------



## KenOC

The _Limits to Growth_ was a study commissioned by the Club of Rome and published in 1972. It got a lot of attention at the time as it seemed to show that we would soon prove Malthus right by exceeding food supply and would encounter other problems as well. Collapse was forecast by 2070. Some feel that subsequent developments have staved that scenario off, including the development of new crop strains with increased yields and new methods of mining lower-grade petroleum reserves.

However, this Guardian article from 2014 finds the original schedule still pretty much on track.

"Four decades after the book was published, _Limit to Growth_'s forecasts have been vindicated by new Australian research. Expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon."

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ight-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse


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## senza sordino

Earth Overshoot Day this year was August 1st. The resources we need to live for the rest of the year we borrow from next year's resources. But of course, we've been borrowing now for 45 years.


----------



## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> Besides me (and Ken), who recognizes the three figures in the background of the Pogo cartoon?


SM, I admit to no longer knowing who they are. I remember the McCarthy character, but not these. Can you please enlighten?


----------



## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> SM, I admit to no longer knowing who they are. I remember the McCarthy character, but not these. Can you please enlighten?


My pleasure. From left to right we have J. Edgar Hoover (revered/reviled first FBI Director), then John Mitchell (Nixon's Attorney General), and finally Spiro Agnew (Nixon's Vice President, and often called "Nixon's Nixon"). Such a cartoon, with new figures, would be perfectly _à propos_ today. The range of suitable characters is immense.


----------



## Strange Magic

The profound ideological resistance to the idea of AGW comes from two exceptionally powerful mindsets. The first is that of religious fundamentalists, who believe that God has everything under control and that AGW isn't mentioned in the Bible so it can't be happening (or, if it is happening, it's a Good Thing--God planned it). The second group are those on the Right who believe that talk of AGW is all a Communist/Socialist Plot to destroy Holy Unchecked Capitalism. Thousands of scientists are deemed thus unknowing or conscious puppets of the Hoaxmasters. Some of these hypercapitalist AGW critics, though, concede global warming may be happening; if so, it's also a Good Thing. The most powerful resistors to the concept of AGW are those who combine both the religious and the politico-economic mindsets; in other words, most of the American Right under their new spiritual leader.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Strange Magic said:


> Nobody said we would run out of fossil fuels in 25 years. What was predicted was that petroleum production would peak in 25 or whatever years. And it will peak at some time; we just cannot accurately predict when, as new technologies for extracting petroleum, natural gas, etc. are developed. But the point (as you must know, deep inside) is that all fossil fuel production will peak at some time or other--for coal, we have centuries of coal. The question is--what happens when carbon that has taken literally hundreds of millions of years to accumulate deep below the surface of the earth, is brought up to the surface and burned within a few brief centuries, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Nothing very good, that's what. Whatever is not retained in the atmosphere to cause global greenhouse warming is absorbed in seawater, along with the excess heat, and acidifies the oceans. The evidence is irrefutable, and only a powerful antagonistic ideology attempts to refute it. Nature bats last, as environmentalists are fond of reminding us.


you may have heard from a different source. But the one I heard said running out within 50 years (correction). Like I said there are lots of problems in the world. Global warming itself, man-made or natural, if it is real (I never said it wasn't possible) may not really be avoidable, with the current technology. We need to deal with consequences regardless, whichever problem we think is more critical. To me, climate change implementation is the less critical, and is a by-product of a different problem. We need to make lifestyle changes, curb population growth, etc.

Think of the phone industry. Do we really need to keep developing new , more advanced toys, when we should develop fuel cell technology that is a legitimate alternative power source way more efficient than wind and solar. Oh, but you like those toys, and would rather keep those polutant industry, and family culture destroying things, and just keep taxing and throwing tax dollars into vanity low efficient energy projects? It's throwing water out of a sinking boat than plugging up the hole


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## Strange Magic

Phil loves classical said:


> you may have heard from a different source. But the one I heard said running out within 50 years (correction).


Phil, I've mentioned this before but you need to do even a little checking of your sources before you wholly give yourself to them. Nobody ever, outside of an insane asylum, said we we running out of fossil fuels in 50 years. Please provide any sort of source for that assertion.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Strange Magic said:


> Phil, I've mentioned this before but you need to do even a little checking of your sources before you wholly give yourself to them. Nobody ever, outside of an insane asylum, said we we running out of fossil fuels in 50 years. Please provide any sort of source for that assertion.


Of course I can't find it now, since it is likely not to come true. I was in high school when I came across that. But why are we even arguing on details, when the crux of my argument is in the implementation. Do you know how much energy data centres require to run and cool? All the data centres for Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc. I'm sure would far, far outweigh any sort of renewable wind and solar energy we are putting back into the grid. Even TC here, you know how much energy to keep all those old threads, etc. available online? Apple is now a trillion $ industry, when all we need is a basic cell phone for emergencies, why is that? Along with competing phone making industries, how much energy is being used to develop and manufacture all these phones?

That is only one industry. We need to make lifestyle changes if we are really to make an impact in saving the environment. The governments have proven to be useless in my view. Maybe we want to believe wasting the money they do in these projects will avoid having us (who really have the power to make the difference) feel more comfortable?


----------



## SixFootScowl

Strange Magic said:


> The profound ideological resistance to the idea of AGW comes from two exceptionally powerful mindsets. The first is that of *religious fundamentalists, who believe that God has everything under control and that AGW isn't mentioned in the Bible so it can't be happening (or, if it is happening, it's a Good Thing--God planned it)*.


Not all conservative Christians believe this. For example, one of the larger creation groups clearly does not think that the Bible precludes AGW and takes a neutral position on whether or not AGW is happening to catastrophic future scenarios. They also note political dealings behind the scenes and data/model flaws. Full Article



> Creation Ministries International ... does not have an 'official' position on this issue [AGW], stating that this is a 'wisdom issue' on which Christians can reasonably disagree. Likewise, creation scientists have generally been quite cautious on this issue. Physicist Russell Humphreys has argued that recent warming has occurred, but that it is not a reason for panic and that higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels likely contributed to abundant vegetation in the pre-Flood world. Likewise, creation scientist (and former meteorologist for the National Weather Service) Michael Oard has stated that a small amount of warming has occurred, but that most of the warming is probably due to natural climate variations. And atmospheric scientist (and former researcher at the Institute for Creation Research) Larry Vardiman did his own independent analysis of three different data sets and concluded that global warming had probably been occurring for the past 30-50 years. Of course, the fact that warming has occurred does not necessarily mean that it will continue, nor does it necessarily imply that human activity is responsible, as Vardiman was quick to point out.


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## Strange Magic

The key figures in any discussion on fossil fuel consumption and resources are geologists. M. King Hubbert authored the first serious look in a 1949 article in the journal _Science_. Harrison Brown expanded upon Hubbert's work in his 1954 book, _The Challenge of Man's Future_. The more recent analyses specifically of petroleum were by the recently-deceased Kenneth Deffeyes. Deffeyes, whose mentor was Hubbert, worked for Shell Oil evaluating oil fields, then went on to 30 years as a distinguished geology professor at Princeton, writing several books on peak oil. He was the smartest man I ever met. You can easily find all three men on Wikipedia.

Regarding fuel cells: they require hydrogen, which either can come from releasing it from the hydrocarbon of fossil fuels--which just aggravates the problem--or splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis or some similar technology. One of the best uses to which solar and wind power can be put is to provide the electricity for the electrolysis of water and thus generate the hydrogen for the clean and efficient fuel cell. Stored hydrogen and oxygen can also then serve as the source of electrical power during periods of low wind or weak or absent (nighttime) sun. Another reason to maximize wind and solar technologies.


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## starthrower

Geology Makes You Time-Literate http://nautil.us/issue/64/the-unseen/geology-makes-you-time_literate


----------



## SixFootScowl

starthrower said:


> Its champion is Ken Ham. He built a Noah's Ark creation "science" museum in Kentucky. Have you watched the video of Bill Nye touring the facility? Its very entertaining and the dialogue is similar to Strange Magic trying to talk sense to Fritz Kobus. Poor Bill beat his head against the wall to no avail.


What we have is two groups holding two vastly different world views, neither of which can be proved through experimental science and therefore require faith to believe. So when the dominate group can't convince the other group of their world view scenarios they claim that the other group won't listen to [common] sense. While the Bible does not say anything about AGW, the evolutionist interpretations of data does appear to fuel their catastrophic AGW scenarios.


----------



## Strange Magic

Fritz Kobus said:


> Not all conservative Christians believe this. For example, one of the larger creation groups clearly does not think that the Bible precludes AGW and takes a neutral position on whether or not AGW is happening to catastrophic future scenarios. They also note political dealings behind the scenes and data/model flaws. Full Article


Always good to have the views of the creationists on these matters.


----------



## starthrower

Fritz Kobus said:


> What we have is two groups holding two vastly different world views, neither of which can be proved through experimental science and therefore require faith to believe. So when the dominate group can't convince the other group of their world view scenarios they claim that the other group won't listen to [common] sense. While the Bible does not say anything about AGW, the evolutionist interpretations of data does appear to fuel their catastrophic AGW scenarios.


The fact is Bible world view holders choose to reject overwhelming evidence for our very old planet. If one believes the planet is only 6 thousand years old then it must be possible for the earth's depleted resources to be regenerated in that short span of time when in fact it's taken hundreds of millions of years to generate these resources. And how do we account for the fact that atmospheric carbon levels have risen more in the past 70 years than in the previous 400,000 years? This coinciding with the fact that the planet's population has increased by several billion in the same short span. As the article I posted states, we need to become time-literate, which the bible doesn't help us to do.


----------



## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> Just to note: The melting of ice floating on water does not cause the water level to rise. You can check this yourself with a glass of water and an ice cube.
> 
> Similarly, the melting of the ice shelves in the Antarctic does not affect ocean levels. Of course any new ice flowing onto the surface of the water does have an effect.


Bergs that separate quickly move to warmer water in the major currents.


----------



## philoctetes

Christians are a favorite target because they'e like fish in a barrel, very convenient short-range targets. Americans too of course. I shoot myself in the mirror every day because I keep hearing I'm the problem, even though I have consciously minimized my impact on the planet most of my life.

But there are many vast populations of fools on this planet that don't care about Christianity, or science, but wanna use up those resources. These could be the allies you have left after you discount those who actually have a clue.

I am seeing more and more produce being sold in hardshell plastic packaging, despite my cries for people to stop buying food that way. I have never bought water in plastic bottles, but it's supposedly better for me if i do.

Lotta fools on this planet, not sure that religion has much to do with it.


----------



## KenOC

And yet another darn thing to worry about! From _Science Magazine_:

"As the globe warms, farmers will face more drought, flooding, and crop-frying heat. But that may be nothing compared with the bugs. A new study finds that higher temperatures will produce more voracious grasshoppers, caterpillars, and other crop-devouring pests, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the world's food supply…

"To see what kind of damage this increased insect appetite might have on the global food system, Deutsch and his team built a computer program that combined physiological data on hundreds of insect species with climate models. When the planet warmed by an average of 2°C, as models predict will happen by 2100, if not sooner, wheat crops shrunk by 46%, rice by 19%, and maize (or corn) by 31%. Temperate, productive regions like the United States's 'corn belt,' wheat fields in France, and rice paddies in China were especially hard hit, the team reports today in _Science_."

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/ravenous-insects-may-be-coming-our-crops-warming-world


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## Room2201974

Like bacteria fouling the agar in a petri dish - these are the days of our lives!


----------



## senza sordino

Here is one reason why I have little or no confidence that we can do anything about our future. 

Recycling is a minor part of being a good steward of the environment; if you recycle it has a very small effect on all of our problems. But we can't even seem to do this easy task very well. Every time I go downstairs to get rid of my recycling I have to sort some of the material others have put in the bins. I find paper, non recycling material, food and glass in the plastic recycling bin. I find all sorts of stuff in the paper bin, I find plastic bags in the organic waste bin, and I find material that can be recycled in the garbage. It's not difficult to rinse out the plastic containers, and sort the recycling.

Do people not care, not know, think someone at the recycling plant will recycle, or think it all gets magically crushed into something new?

It's not difficult to sort recycling, and we can't do this right. This is why I worry about our future. We can't do the easy stuff, we certainly can't do the more difficult stuff.


----------



## SixFootScowl

senza sordino said:


> Here is one reason why I have little or no confidence that we can do anything about our future.


If indeed the AGW is accelerating at the pace some suggest (there is a You Tube where a guy says the human race will be extinct in side of 10 years), there is really nothing we can do to stop it short of extreme drastic measures such as a government-planned total take down of the North American (and probably Europe too) power grid throwing all of society into total anarchy, disease, starvation, etc. as a means to return to pre-industrial atmospheric carbon levels.


----------



## Strange Magic

As I have posted elsewhere, in addition to dealing with the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels as the major contributor to AGW, humankind must strive for full female equality and making effective contraception secretly available and secretly usable to women, while also raising their level of education to understand its use and of course far beyond. The global population expansion--which is the other driver of not only AGW but also a host of other planetary and local malignancies--can only be halted by putting women entirely in charge of their own reproductive processes. Where female emancipation is most nearly attained is where populations locally drop. The goal should be an initial long-term reduction in global population by one order of magnitude, or to some 700 million to 800 million people. This level is certainly sustainable and would result in a world of plenty, shared with a diverse population of our fellow creatures with whom we ride this spaceship Earth. As John Lennon sang, _Imagine_!


----------



## starthrower

Obtaining full gender equality around the world is an incredibly tall order. Chauvinist attitudes learned and ingrained for centuries will be difficult to change. Western Democracies need to put more pressure on oppressive regimes to adopt progressive social values and freedom for all citizens. But there is a lot of business being done and we can't step on any big toes. For example the cast system in India is a dreadful social condition. And we never hear criticism of the terrible Saudi regime from any sitting American president or other leaders. So how these archaic customs and attitudes are going to change in the short term, I don't know?


----------



## KenOC

Just in passing: We will never "run out" of fossil fuels. However, we may and probably will reach the point where it takes more energy to access those fuels than the energy they will provide. And that will be the end of that.

Excepting coal, of course...


----------



## Phil loves classical

senza sordino said:


> Here is one reason why I have little or no confidence that we can do anything about our future.
> 
> Recycling is a minor part of being a good steward of the environment; if you recycle it has a very small effect on all of our problems. But we can't even seem to do this easy task very well. Every time I go downstairs to get rid of my recycling I have to sort some of the material others have put in the bins. I find paper, non recycling material, food and glass in the plastic recycling bin. I find all sorts of stuff in the paper bin, I find plastic bags in the organic waste bin, and I find material that can be recycled in the garbage. It's not difficult to rinse out the plastic containers, and sort the recycling.
> 
> Do people not care, not know, think someone at the recycling plant will recycle, or think it all gets magically crushed into something new?
> 
> It's not difficult to sort recycling, and we can't do this right. This is why I worry about our future. We can't do the easy stuff, we certainly can't do the more difficult stuff.


True dat. I feel so bad about future prospects, I've taken my own personal initiative by not having any kids of my own.


----------



## Phil loves classical

starthrower said:


> The fact is Bible world view holders choose to reject overwhelming evidence for our very old planet. If one believes the planet is only 6 thousand years old then it must be possible for the earth's depleted resources to be regenerated in that short span of time when in fact it's taken hundreds of millions of years to generate these resources. And how do we account for the fact that atmospheric carbon levels have risen more in the past 70 years than in the previous 400,000 years? This coinciding with the fact that the planet's population has increased by several billion in the same short span. As the article I posted states, we need to become time-literate, which the bible doesn't help us to do.


I was Christian myself, and know a lot of different views by Christians, regarding evolution, and other topics. I wouldn't pigeonhole a Christian based on his faith about his views on AGW, dinosaurs, etc.


----------



## Strange Magic

Phil loves classical said:


> I was Christian myself, and know a lot of different views by Christians, regarding evolution, and other topics. I wouldn't pigeonhole a Christian based on his faith about his views on AGW, dinosaurs, etc.


It's pretty clear that Starthrower was referring to that subset who are followers of creation "science". These are the core believers in the Young Earth enthusiasm.


----------



## starthrower

KenOC said:


> Just in passing: We will never "run out" of fossil fuels. However, we may and probably will reach the point where it takes more energy to access those fuels than the energy they will provide. And that will be the end of that.
> 
> Excepting coal, of course...


This is true! As in the recent controversy over the extraction of tar sands petroleum and the Keystone Pipeline.


----------



## SixFootScowl

starthrower said:


> The fact is Bible world view holders choose to reject overwhelming evidence for our very old planet. If one believes the planet is only 6 thousand years old then it must be possible for the earth's depleted resources to be regenerated in that short span of time when in fact it's taken hundreds of millions of years to generate these resources. And how do we account for the fact that atmospheric carbon levels have risen more in the past 70 years than in the previous 400,000 years? This coinciding with the fact that the planet's population has increased by several billion in the same short span. As the article I posted states, we need to become time-literate, which the bible doesn't help us to do.


I can see oil sheen on the water at my local swamp. It doesn't take a long time for plant matter to degrade into oil. The worldwide flood was capable of burying huge masses of vegetation to produce oil fields we now tap. The worldwide flood also left all sorts of geology that when interpreted under a uniformitarian world view will give long ages, but that does not make it correct. Actually, the geology fits a worldwide flood model quite well.

How long have atmospheric carbon level been measured and by what instruments? Changes in the measurement technology will affect the accuracy of measurement. To estimate levels before actual direct measurements were taken involves a lot more variables and produces much weaker estimates, some of which may have a margin of error so large as to render them meaningless.


----------



## KenOC

Fritz Kobus said:


> I can see oil sheen on the water at my local swamp.


Those 2-stroke swamp buggies will pollute things real fast. I sincerely doubt that sheen is from the ongoing conversion of plant matter to petroleum... 

"Oil and gas takes between tens of millions and hundreds of millions of years to form naturally. About 70 percent of current oil deposits derived from the Mesozoic period, which lasted from 65 million years to 150 million years ago."


----------



## SixFootScowl

KenOC said:


> Those 2-stroke swamp buggies will pollute things real fast. I sincerely doubt that sheen is from the ongoing conversion of plant matter to petroleum...
> 
> "Oil and gas takes between tens of millions and hundreds of millions of years to form naturally. About 70 percent of current oil deposits derived from the Mesozoic period, which lasted from 65 million years to 150 million years ago."


I have seen it in swamps that never have any motorized equipment in them.


----------



## KenOC

Fritz Kobus said:


> I have seen it in swamps that never have any motorized equipment in them.


Then I'd guess something automotive was thrown in at one point or another. But whatever. "The wish is father to the thought", no fighting that!


----------



## SixFootScowl

KenOC said:


> Those 2-stroke swamp buggies will pollute things real fast. I sincerely doubt that sheen is from the ongoing conversion of plant matter to petroleum...
> 
> "Oil and gas takes between tens of millions and hundreds of millions of years to form naturally. About 70 percent of current oil deposits derived from the Mesozoic period, which lasted from 65 million years to 150 million years ago."


I have seen it in swamps that never have any motorized equipment in them. No, it does not take millions of years to form. Read this.


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## KenOC

No, I'm not going to "creation.com". Been there, done that. No more "God did it" debates for me!

I trust you. The world was created about 6,000 years ago. All the animals were created as they are now, skin, scales, and all. Man likewise. Noah took dinosaurs on the ark. I mean, why not? I'm OK with all of that!

I won't even bring up the starlight paradox. No, I won't. I won't. I won't. …………………………….


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## DaveM

Regarding the world being created 6000 years ago: The oldest naturally mummified mummy is dated approximately 7020 BC ie. approximately 9000 years old. Houston, we have a problem.

Btw, some species didn’t survive Noah’s Ark. Surprisingly, some couple’s just didn’t like each other.


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## geralmar

DaveM said:


> Regarding the world being created 6000 years ago: The oldest naturally mummified mummy is dated approximately 7020 BC ie. approximately 9000 years old. Houston, we have a problem.
> 
> Btw, some species didn't survive Noah's Ark. Surprisingly, some couple's just didn't like each other.


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## KenOC

Did Noah gather up two of each type of mosquito? Earthorm? Bacteria? (Well, one of those might have done). Housefly?

Seems a lot of work.

There are an estimated 400,000 species of beetles, a fact that very much impressed Darwin. Noah must have been a very industrious chap to save them all!


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## DaveM

Wood boat. How about termites?


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## LezLee

DaveM said:


> Wood boat. How about termites?


....and beavers?


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## Strange Magic

IN a previous post, Fritz told us that the major creation "science" organization took a "neutral" view on AGW. Here is their idea of neutrality when scientists are to look at and evaluate evidence:

"Are there implicit unbiblical assumptions behind a particular conclusion? For instance, Vardiman has long noted a subtle connection between climate change alarmism and a denial of biblical history. Most secular scientists accept the Milankovitch (astronomical) hypothesis of Pleistocene ice ages, but they also realize that the changes in seasonal and latitudinal sunlight distribution resulting from variations in earth’s orbital and rotational motions are too small to, themselves, be the sole cause of an ice age. Hence, they believe that a small ‘push’ from other factors, such as the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, amount of sea ice, etc., can amplify these small changes, resulting in catastrophic climate change.28 They fail to recognize that the Ice Age was caused by a large ‘push’ from a never-to-be-repeated event, the Genesis Flood. Likewise, because of their ‘deep time’ interpretation of ice core data, uniformitarians believe that oxygen isotope ratios in deep ice cores are indicative of rapid climate fluctuations during a supposed previous warm period called an interglacial. Because uniformitarians believe that ‘the present is the key to the past’, and because they believe that we are now in another interglacial, they think that these dramatic climate changes could also occur today. However, they fail to recognize that the climate after the Flood was a unique, transitional, climate. Hence it is invalid to extrapolate such presumed past climate changes into the present."

Translation: If you look at physical evidence without a bible in your hand and/or without believing every word in it is true according to creation teachings--especially a 6000-year-old Earth and Noah's Flood--then you are not being an objective and well-informed scientist. 

Needless to say, with a predetermined outcome already in place, true science--especially geology--goes right out the window. But it's great to have all the answers in advance!


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## SixFootScowl

Not in response to Strange Magic's post #193 but to the several posts above that:

Well, if you want to frame things is such a manner as to ridicule there is not further discussion. Go on believing the logically impossible complexity of life came from random chance. From goo to you by way of the zoo. Make perfect sense eh? Only if you throw logic out the window.


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## Room2201974

The debate between science and religion is not a problem at my house of worship. I belong to the _The Church Of The Deity Who Can Mint His Own Legal Tender_.


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## philoctetes

No it's not clear so maybe the labels are just wrong. 

Amazon had a Christian fanatic who dismissed all criticism of Christians by saying "those aren't Christians". It was frustrating but he had a point. On the other hand he would fit your stereotype perfectly. 

Problem is that science and religion simply don't correlate very well. It's a hazardous area where language can never be too precise, but many people take the opposite route and make EVERYTHING impossible to discuss.

Let the strawman wars resume.


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## DaveM

Room2201974 said:


> The debate between science and religion is not a problem at my house of worship. I belong to the _The Church Of The Deity Who Can Mint His Own Legal Tender_.


You're counterfeiters?


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## starthrower

Fritz, what did "worldwide" mean to the ancients who wrote about massive floods? They had no knowledge of the American continents and many other regions of the world. And how did wildlife from those regions get onto the ark?

This idea of a worldwide flood as punishment for the sins of man? I'm not convinced of God as king and tyrant who exercises his wrath on humanity by means of violent weather. This is superstition. The earth is a living organism and humanity grew out of it. We were not planted here in some garden by a universal monarch.


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## DaveM

Going off script for a moment: I don't believe in some individual entity that created the universe, but I do believe that there is intelligence in the way nature develops. When you have nothing better to do, read up on the inner ear (the vestibule and cochlea) something that we take very much for granted, but which allows us to hear and keep our balance.









What I want to know is, given the time and preferential selection that occurred to create this astounding organ, whether in the development of life forms on other planets, would the structure for hearing and balance develop in much the same way?


----------



## mmsbls

This thread concerns Climate Change. Purely religious and political comments should not be posted on the main forum. All such discussion should be taken to the Group area. Please focus on the science of Climate Change.


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## SixFootScowl

starthrower said:


> Fritz, what did "worldwide" mean to the ancients who wrote about massive floods? They had no knowledge of the American continents and many other regions of the world. And how did wildlife from those regions get onto the ark?
> 
> This idea of a worldwide flood as punishment for the sins of man? I'm not convinced of God as king and tyrant who exercises his wrath on humanity by means of violent weather. This is superstition. The earth is a living organism and humanity grew out of it. We were not planted here in some garden by a universal monarch.


The direct meaning of the text is for a worldwide flood. Also it would be hard to cover the highest mountains in a localized flood, nor would there be reason to save animals on the arc. The Book says that the animals came to Noah, so he did not have go search them out. We only need a representative of a "kind" to reproduce and generate various species within that kind after the flood. Also, there may not have been a big of geographical differences between animals then, since it appears there may have only been one huge continent before the flood and perhaps a more uniform climate worldwide.

Your second paragraph I will not address since we would be talking to directly on religion which we have been warned not to.


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## KenOC

Having fun with some numbers. To cover the earth with water above the top of Everest would require about 600 million cubic miles of water, actually a very conservative estimate. For this much rain to fall in 40 days and 40 nights the rain would have to fall worldwide at a rate of about 200 inches per hour, one-hundred times the rate of the heaviest 24-hour rainfall ever recorded (in Alvin, Texas). Where all that rain would come from is, of course, a difficult question*, as is how the ark and its passengers could possibly survive the rate of rain involved over its time frame.

(Thread duty) Which is why I am unafraid of forecasts that global warming will cause more extreme weather. It’s not likely to be more extreme than that!

* and of course where it would run off to.


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## starthrower

Can you site any scientific data that would suggest the super continent existed just 4000 years ago? The break up is estimated at over 170 million years ago. And continental drift moves at about one millimeter per year.


----------



## SixFootScowl

KenOC said:


> Having fun with some numbers. To cover the earth with water above the top of Everest would require about 600 million cubic miles of water, actually a very conservative estimate. For this much rain to fall in 40 days and 40 nights the rain would have to fall worldwide at a rate of about 200 inches per hour, one-hundred times the rate of the heaviest 24-hour rainfall ever recorded (in Alvin, Texas). Where all that rain would come from is, of course, a difficult question, as is how the ark and its passengers could possibly survive the rate of rain involved over its time frame.
> 
> (Thread duty) Which is why I am unafraid of forecasts that global warming will cause more extreme weather. It's not likely to be more extreme than that!


Who said it was just rain? The Book says in Gen 7.11 that "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened." Also, figuring what water it takes on a post flood world is not the same as the pre-flood world. And, more may have been going on than just water infiltration. Breaking up of the fountains of the deep may have involved movements of crust that could help inundate land masses.



starthrower said:


> Can you site any scientific data that would suggest the super continent existed just 4000 years ago? The break up is estimated at over 170 million years ago. And continental drift moves at about one millimeter per year.


From the verse cited above, it appars there was a lot of geological activity involved, so who is to say that continental movements could not have occurred at a much faster rate? The current measured rate of drift is likely a remnant of the initial activity.

Here is a book that goes into great detail on all your questions.


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## KenOC

It's interesting that Chinese records show a serious flood at about the time of the Biblical flood. However it was a widespread inundation caused by heavy rain and the overflow of rivers. Nothing about overtopping the peaks, divine punishment, or anything supernatural. The then-emperor dealt with it through big public works, specifically the digging of canals to drain the land, construction of berms to contain the rivers, and so forth. He was evidently versed in civil engineering and the texts mention certain tools he used, the natures of which are now obscure.


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## SixFootScowl

KenOC said:


> It's interesting that Chinese records show a serious flood at about the time of the Biblical flood. However it was a widespread inundation caused by heavy rain and the overflow of rivers. Nothing about overtopping the peaks, divine punishment, or anything supernatural. The then-emperor dealt with it through big public works, specifically the digging of canals to drain the land, construction of berms to contain the rivers, and so forth. He was evidently versed in civil engineering and the texts mention certain tools he used, the natures of which are now obscure.


Most people-groups have some sort of flood legend, suggesting rememberance of a common worldwide flood.


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## Phil loves classical

Fritz Kobus said:


> Who said it was just rain? The Book says in Gen 7.11 that "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the* fountains of the great deep* broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened." Also, figuring what water it takes on a post flood world is not the same as the pre-flood world. And, more may have been going on than just water infiltration. Breaking up of the fountains of the deep may have involved movements of crust that could help inundate land masses.
> 
> From the verse cited above, it appars there was a lot of geological activity involved, so who is to say that continental movements could not have occurred at a much faster rate? The current measured rate of drift is likely a remnant of the initial activity.
> 
> Here is a book that goes into great detail on all your questions.


I've always wondered where are those fountains of the deep? And how a salamander can make tracks on sandstone within the layers of sedimentary rock in a catastrophic worldwide flood. We'ed have great times conversing back and forth, Fritz, over some drinks.


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## senza sordino

It's been speculated that the origin of the flood story is climate change. More than 10 000 years ago as the great glaciers from the last ice age melted, the sea level rose about one hundred meters. At that time there were nascent civilizations around the Black Sea, the Persian Gulf and other coastal areas around the globe. Many people were slowly displaced. These flood stories are folk tales handed down through generations, stories change and evolve over time. It's been speculated that these stories became the flood story we're so familiar with; and explains why so many generations have a flood story.


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## Strange Magic

Fritz and I have discussed creation "science" exhaustively in the Religion Group downstairs. He is as immoveable in his attachment to his notions as, well, just about the most immovable person you can imagine. No amount of evidence to the contrary will dissuade him--geology, biology, astronomy, physics, all useless, like snowballs against the walls of Thangorodrim. The actual age of the earth is not given anywhere in the Bible but it was laboriously calculated by Archbishop James Ussher, Primate of Ireland. Published in 1650, Ussher gave the date of Creation as October 23, 4004 BC. Upon this rather slender reed rests the whole of creation "science". All the rest is the result of frantic efforts to find whatever scraps and errors of mostly long-dead geologists and other scientists that might conceivably be tormented into support for a Really, Really, Really Young Earth. This is one of the reasons that there is so much visceral resistance to the idea of AGW in rural and red-state America (along with the other arch-heresy, evolution).


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## SixFootScowl

Strange Magic said:


> The actual age of the earth is not given anywhere in the Bible but it was laboriously calculated by Archbishop James Ussher, Primate of Ireland. Published in 1650, Ussher gave the date of Creation as October 23, 4004 BC. Upon this rather slender reed rests the whole of creation "science". All the rest is the result of frantic efforts to find whatever scraps and errors of mostly long-dead geologists and other scientists that might conceivably be tormented into support for a Really, Really, Really Young Earth.


The genealogies in the Bible can be used to get a pretty accurate idea of the age of the earth. I put the most confidence in Dr. Sarfati's calculation:









The actual age of the earth is more a curiosity I would think to most Christians. Rather the important thing is that it was created in short order and not evolved over immense time periods. No creation believer worth their salt would grasp at straws. There is plenty of good scientific research going on for decades and a lot of solid explanations through data interpretation in a Biblical world view model vs. the predominant interpretations in an evolutionary world view. If you really want to dig into some good research, check out the Creation Research Society Quarterly. It has been published since 1964. Their archives are open for viewing or downloading all quarterlies through 2015:
https://creationresearch.org/crsq-archive/

As for a Really, Really, Really Young Earth. 6000 years actually is a long, long time.


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## joen_cph

My understanding is that the current American Vice President is fully in accordance with these views. 
So they have a lot of legitimacy in the US, if less so anywhere else in the Western World.


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## senza sordino

joen_cph said:


> My understanding is that the current American Vice President is fully in accordance with these views.
> So they have a lot of legitimacy in the US, if less so anywhere else in the Western World.


And so while this thread has meandered into creationism and away from climate change, the thread title still holds true.

And this is why I worry.


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## Luchesi

In the Fishlake National Forest there's a grove of quaking aspen that's well over 50,000 years old and estimated to be 80,000 years old.
We can see M31 the Andromeda galaxy with the naked eye which is calculated to be about 2.4 million light years away. Distances to many other more distant galaxies have been calculated by different methods and it's been a specialized field of procedures which are finely tuned and the results are cross-checked.


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## DaveM

Fritz Kobus said:


> The genealogies in the Bible can be used to get a pretty accurate idea of the age of the earth. I put the most confidence in Dr. Sarfati's calculation:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The actual age of the earth is more a curiosity I would think to most Christians. Rather the important thing is that it was created in short order and not evolved over immense time periods. No creation believer worth their salt would grasp at straws. There is plenty of good scientific research going on for decades and a lot of solid explanations through data interpretation in a Biblical world view model vs. the predominant interpretations in an evolutionary world view. If you really want to dig into some good research, check out the Creation Research Society Quarterly. It has been published since 1964. Their archives are open for viewing or downloading all quarterlies through 2015:
> https://creationresearch.org/crsq-archive/
> 
> As for a Really, Really, Really Young Earth. 6000 years actually is a long, long time.


Unfortunately, for all these calculations which are not based on modern science, the Creationists seem to have forgotten about the planets, probably because there's nothing mentioned specifically about them in the Bible. There's actually a fair enough known about the age of our nearest planets which is fairly close to the scientifically determined age of the earth.

And then there is a little matter of the age of the moon. If one is to believe the 6000 year old age of the earth, then the moon is about 4 billion years older, an interesting situation given that the moon rotates around the earth.


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## DaveM

Speaking of the Great Flood, there's a great song about it:


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## KenOC

The Hawaiian Islands are a series of volcanoes formed as the mantle of the earth passes above a hot spot in the magma causing a roughly lineal series of eruptions over timne. The effect has been compared with a sewing machine needle poking repeatedly through moving fabric. The speed of the mantle’s movement over the hot spot is about 32 miles per million years.

The islands are older as you move from southeast to northwest, with the oldest, Kauai, being about five million years old. Even older volcanoes, with ages up to 28 million years, lie further northwest but are eroded and submerged. The newest island, the Big Island at the southeast end of the chain, is still being formed by ongoing eruptions. And an even younger volcano named Loi’hi, even further southeast, is as yet submerged but is growing.

The glacial deliberation and impressive physical effects of these sorts of activities strike me as astonishing and majestic. If you think about it, it really takes your breath away. To deny the ability of man to better understand the processes operating in the world around him seems to me to deny a good deal of the joy intellectual life has to offer.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Fritz Kobus said:


> The genealogies in the Bible can be used to get a pretty accurate idea of the age of the earth. I put the most confidence in Dr. Sarfati's calculation:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The actual age of the earth is more a curiosity I would think to most Christians. Rather the important thing is that it was created in short order and not evolved over immense time periods. No creation believer worth their salt would grasp at straws. There is plenty of good scientific research going on for decades and a lot of solid explanations through data interpretation in a Biblical world view model vs. the predominant interpretations in an evolutionary world view. If you really want to dig into some good research, check out the Creation Research Society Quarterly. It has been published since 1964. Their archives are open for viewing or downloading all quarterlies through 2015:
> https://creationresearch.org/crsq-archive/
> 
> As for a Really, Really, Really Young Earth. 6000 years actually is a long, long time.


What is damaging / enlightening is the amount of Christian pseudo-Science. The extent some would go about to prove Scripture, with shaky reasoning was what turned me away from Christianity, aside from theological contradictions.


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## Room2201974

Paging David Hume, paging David Hume. Pick up on line three.


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## Strange Magic

I'll not post further on creation "science" here, other than to reaffirm that it is a form of intellectual cheating on a grand scale--an argument I made downstairs in Groups. You will find that and much more under Good News About Evolution in the Religion Group.


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## starthrower

Fritz Kobus said:


> Most people-groups have some sort of flood legend, suggesting rememberance of a common worldwide flood.


Legend? Worldwide? Why doesn't this raise a flag of skepticism for you? And from what I've read about geological/flood research and science the biblical flood folks have it wrong. The strata couldn't have formed the way it did in just 4000 years.

That book you sited has been taken to task by geologists. And there's another book entitled The Rocks Don't Lie by David R. Montgomery, Professor of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington.
http://www.music-bazaar.com/album-i...66-big/Martinu-Symphonies-1-6-Jarvi-cover.jpg

Another enlightening article. 21 Reasons Why The Worldwide Flood Never Happened.
https://www.csicop.org/si/show/twenty-one_reasons_noahs_worldwide_flood_never_happened


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## JeffD

I am not aware of any credible research indicating catastrophic change, faster than our ability to cope with it. If the seas rise four inches over the next 100 years, nobody is going to drown.

And as Freeman Dyson has pointed out, a little warmer has benefits to mankind in terms of food production and livable space.

But, as always, you can worry if you want to.


----------



## starthrower

JeffD said:


> I am not aware of any credible research indicating catastrophic change, faster than our ability to cope with it. If the seas rise four inches over the next 100 years, nobody is going to drown.
> 
> And as Freeman Dyson has pointed out, a little warmer has benefits to mankind in terms of food production and livable space.
> 
> But, as always, you can worry if you want to.


At this level of ignorance, why would you be worried?


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## DaveM

JeffD said:


> I am not aware of any credible research indicating catastrophic change, faster than our ability to cope with it. If the seas rise four inches over the next 100 years, nobody is going to drown.


Because of the fact that the ocean is shaped more like a bowl, each vertical inch rise in sea level results in movement of the ocean 50-100 inches inland. So, a 4 inch rise would cause as much as 400 inches or about 11 feet inland. Because of the fact that this is an average, some areas would be affected in a major way more than others. No, no one would die, but shorelines would undergo major changes and during hurricanes, flooding would be far worse in some areas.


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## Strange Magic

JeffD said:


> I am not aware of any credible research indicating catastrophic change, faster than our ability to cope with it. If the seas rise four inches over the next 100 years, nobody is going to drown.
> 
> And as Freeman Dyson has pointed out, a little warmer has benefits to mankind in terms of food production and livable space.
> 
> But, as always, you can worry if you want to.


It's the fact that the degradation is relatively slow and non-catastrophic (other than weather/storm/drought effects) that constitutes the danger. People disregard the increasingly stern warnings of the scientific community and instead listen to the "don't worry; be happy" sirens of the Right, and the opportunities for corrective action slip away. Freeman Dyson's period of relevance and currency in science is long behind him after a most distinguished career, none of which involved climate science.


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## philoctetes

Finding the balance between alarmism and acceptance is difficult. Those who are called "deniers' actually don't bother me as much as the huge numbers of those who consider themselves enviros while running up their odometers on commutes and weekend trips, consuming food and water in disposable plastic, promoting eco-travel and wildlife exhibits under the premise that it's all good for everybody involved, etc... they're just as deluded as the deniers...

Magic is right, we're simply not good at correcting ourselves when the clues and consequences are so vague. When arguments over the data can't be settled, it's a sign that human nature (greed, short-term thinking, etc) is more powerful than the data. Humans are willing to cheat and lie to each other down to the last minute about their own demise.

Personally, I think the Paris agreement is a joke, it should be scrapped and renegotiated... but this is probably a minority view...


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## Strange Magic

^^^^Finding the balance between alarmism and acceptance is very difficult indeed. Even though Anthropomorphic Global Warming was not on anybody's radar screen at the time, when Garrett Hardin wrote his bombshell essay _The Tragedy of the Commons_ in 1968, Hardin managed to convey in powerful yet restrained prose just how dangerous humankind's future was, under the pressure of ever-growing human populations. He spoke of our path as being like the essence of Greek tragedy: the relentless workings of forces despite our ignorance of them. This is the 50th anniversary of the publication, in the journal Science, of one of the most cited papers since the Rev. Thomas Malthus' essay on population growth in 1798. It is as relevant today as when first published, but AGW has even increased the force of Hardin's argument.

http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/tragedy_of_the_commons.pdf


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## mmsbls

I've been following this thread, and I'm very interested in how people come to their views on Climate Change. I'd love to hear what sources you consider important/believable and what sources you read (roughly, not in great detail). Also whether you believe, disbelieve, or are not sure about human caused Climate Change (i.e. AGW) and whether you believe it's a problem. I'm not interested in a debate about this but am curious.

I believe in AGW and think it will be a significant problem without mitigation.

My sources are: 
IPCC Assessment Reports (mostly the fourth, AR4, and fifth, AR5) - not the systhesis but the 3 technical reports
Papers from climate science journals (generally linked from other places especially realclimate.org)

I try to ignore just about everything I see on TV, read in papers or online (except realclimate.org), or hear from others who are not experts in a field related to climate change. I try to treat information about the science of climate change in the same way I view information about particle physics.

Disclaimer: A reasonable description of my work is Greenhouse Gas reductions (also criteria pollutant reductions and fossil fuel use reductions) through advanced fuels and technologies in the transportation sector.


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## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> I believe in AGW and think it will be a significant problem without mitigation.


I'd be interested to hear what kinds and degrees of mitigation you believe could address the problem, and how likely you think they are to be implemented.


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## senza sordino

I read the following:
 Skeptical Science 


> Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation.
> Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to improve their understanding. Yet this isn't what happens with climate change denial. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that purports to refute global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?


and I read
 desmogblog 



> The DeSmogBlog Project began in January 2006 and quickly became the world's number one source for accurate, fact based information regarding global warming misinformation campaigns


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## Strange Magic

A reliable source is the National Academy of Sciences. With The Royal Society, the NAS produced an excellent overview publication:

http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/exec-office-other/climate-change-full.pdf

Having been concerned about future trends since I first read Harrison Brown's _The Challenge of Man's Future_ in the 1950s, and Paul Ehrlich's and Garrett Hardin's writings in the 1960s, and with my geology academic background, I feel up to speed on AGW and on the greater crisis within which it is imbedded, the population/technology/resource matrix. I keep up with AGW developments now through the Science sections of various national and international news outlets.


----------



## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> I'd be interested to hear what kinds and degrees of mitigation you believe could address the problem, and how likely you think they are to be implemented.


I will answer in some detail for transportation _in the US_ and also say something about another sector - energy production. In transportation, very generally there are 2 types of mitigation - behavioral change and new technology. Behavioral change (i.e. driving fewer miles) has not made much progress in the past 20 years or so. New technologies have made enormous progress.

On behavioral change: There is a hot topic in transportation called the 3 revolutions - electrification (already happening and a certainty), automation (driverless vehicles), and _sharing_. Basically electrification can vastly reduce emissions, automation likely would vastly change transportation but not necessarily reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs), and sharing of vehicles might be a critical component to mitigating climate change. Sharing would likely decrease travel costs significantly and would definitely decrease GHG emissions if the percentage of shared trips were significant.

Personally, I'm rather skeptical that shared trips will constitute a reasonable percentage of trips within 20-30 years or so. In the US people with cars do not seem interested in sharing. Possibly the younger generation may choose to forego car ownership (as they are delaying home ownership), and within 20 years sharing may become a high percentage of trips at least in cities. I've always been wary of depending on people to "do the right thing" (in this case reducing their energy consumption in traveling), but perhaps a new generation will prefer not to own cars. Another problem is that vehicle miles traveled (VMT) has been growing consistently mostly due to larger population (although people do drive more miles/year as well), so behavioral change would have to overcome the increase in VMT before reducing energy usage further. So I'm skeptical that behavioral change before 2040 or 2050 is likely to significantly mitigate AGW in the US and probably elsewhere as well.

Technology has progressed significantly. Battery electric and fuel cell vehicles (BEVs and FCVs) are both commercial and costs have decreased much further than expected. These technologies are considered zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) since there are no tailpipe emissions although a full accounting including fuel production does lead to emissions. Many researchers believe that the capital cost of these vehicles will be comparable or less than the cost of conventional vehicles in 20 years or so. Further, the fuel savings will be significant such that the cost to own and operate a ZEV will be less than that cost for conventional vehicles. The problem is how to reach that state. Currently ZEVs cost more and have other issues (BEVs have a lower range and longer refueling times, FCVs are even more expensive and the fueling infrastructure is almost non-existent, etc.).

Our models show an initial period (~15-25 or more years depending mostly on oil prices) of high expenditures where society must pay additional costs to reach a state where ZEVs will cost the same or less. After that period there would likely be enormous cost savings.

The generally talked about goal is a reduction of GHGs in 2050 of 80% from 1990 levels to keep the global average temperature rise to 2 degrees C above the pre-industrial average. In California our model shows we would have to reach 100% sales of ZEVs before 2050 to meet that goal. In addition the vast majority of electricity and hydrogen would have to be produced renewably (generally solar or wind but some other technologies are possible). In California the Air Resources Board (ARB) imposed a mandate on car sales starting in the 1990s and requiring 2% of new car sales to be ZEVs by 1998 and 10% ZEVs by 2003. ARB rolled back this requirement when it was clear that it was too optimistic. In 2018 we're at roughly 2% of new car sales (plug-in hybrids are slightly higher). And that's just California where the strictest emissions standards exist. Nationwide sales of both ZEVs and plug-in hybrids are roughly 1%.

Some people are optimistic that a combination of mandates and fee based incentives (carbon tax, feebates, or similar policies) can allow us to reach the 2050 goal. I am less optimistic.

Another technology is biofuels (renewable natural gas, renewable diesel, renewable ethanol). I can give you all the wonderful facts about biofuels, and I can also tell you all the huge problems with them. Overall, I think that biofuels could be helpful (especially in air travel and shipping), but I seriously worry about our ability to produce enough low carbon biofuels to create a large effect.

Finally, the energy sector (production of power) is by far the easiest sector to reach large GHG reductions. I fully expect the US to reach goals at least close to the 2050 targets. Unfortunately just reaching the energy sector goals leaves us well short of what is needed.

That may be a bit pessimistic. I've seen both huge progress and serious setbacks. There's little question in my mind that the world could meet the 2050 goals if that goal were as important as military protection, but even those who believe in AGW probably don't see the effects strongly enough now to take the kind of action necessary. If we could be transported to 2100 and see the business as usual result, maybe people would make the changes necessary.


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## KenOC

starthrower said:


> Fritz, what did "worldwide" mean to the ancients who wrote about massive floods? They had no knowledge of the American continents and many other regions of the world. And how did wildlife from those regions get onto the ark?
> 
> This idea of a worldwide flood as punishment for the sins of man? I'm not convinced of God as king and tyrant who exercises his wrath on humanity by means of violent weather. This is superstition. The earth is a living organism and humanity grew out of it. We were not planted here in some garden by a universal monarch.


It appears that the Biblical flood in Genesis is a pretty direct lift from the earlier Sumerian Epic of Ziusudra and the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, which include many of the specific incidents found in the Bible's accounts. There is no evidence of a worldwide flood.

In river-based agricultural societies, where life is pretty much the same year after year, century after century, the main outstanding memories are likely to be famines and floods. It's hardly surprising that the larger floods are long remembered, or that their impacts are magnified in the tales told around evening fires by mostly illiterate peoples. "How deep was the water, you ask? Well, see that hill over there?"


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## SixFootScowl

KenOC said:


> There is no evidence of a worldwide flood..


Results of a worldwide flood are evident all over the globe. Yet many see no evidence because they are convinced of long-age processes for which there is no evidence, but plenty of dating schemes to support it.

I was holding back from further discussion of this since the thread had pretty much settled back into the AGW topic, but since you opened it up,



Phil loves classical said:


> What is damaging / enlightening is the amount of Christian pseudo-Science. The extent some would go about to prove Scripture, with shaky reasoning was what turned me away from Christianity, aside from theological contradictions.


I don't need science to prove or disprove the Bible. It is self authenticating. Science is subject to change. The Bible is not.



KenOC said:


> To deny the ability of man to better understand the processes operating in the world around him seems to me to deny a good deal of the joy intellectual life has to offer.


There is no denial in creation science. We look to better understand the processes in the world around us and the details of how they came about.



starthrower said:


> Legend? Worldwide? Why doesn't this raise a flag of skepticism for you? And *from what I've read *about geological/flood research and science the biblical flood folks have it wrong. The strata couldn't have formed the way it did in just 4000 years.


See. We both are reading about historical processes or events, but we each have chosen books that support what we believe. But when there is a self-authenticating book that is utterly reliable in everything it says, then we have a solid basis for what we believe. Science is subject to change. The Book is not.

Probably true that the strata couldn't have formed the way it did in 4000 years because most of it formed from the flood and subsequent drainage of floodwaters followed by the ice age and its effects. That would be perhaps 500 years or so.


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## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> I will answer in some detail for transportation _in the US_ and also say something...


Many thanks for your detailed reply! I need to read it again and think about it some more.

But I'll note (as previously) that I don't think the US is the major story here. We're at just less than 15% contribution to carbon emissions, and there are a LOT of countries (starting with India) that want to greatly increase per capita energy production. Whether the US becomes, Trump-like, more profligate in its emissions or, Gore-like, more frugal may well make little difference.

Any ideas on that broader picture?


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## KenOC

"I don't need science to prove or disprove the Bible. It is self authenticating. Science is subject to change. The Bible is not."

Science is subject to change because everything in it -- everything -- is subject to disproof. Disproof in creation science is not an option. If plain observation conflicts with the old testament, then observation is wrong.

Science doesn't begin with the answer. It's a process of discovery. Creation science is an exercise in the denial of observation, a denial of man's ability to make discoveries. It explains nothing, it explains away everything that doesn't fit "the truth."


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## SixFootScowl

KenOC said:


> "I don't need science to prove or disprove the Bible. It is self authenticating. Science is subject to change. The Bible is not."
> 
> Science is subject to change because everything in it -- everything -- is subject to disproof. Disproof in creation science is not an option. If plain observation conflicts with the old testament, then observation is wrong.
> 
> Science doesn't begin with the answer. It's a process of discovery. Creation science is an exercise in the denial of observation, a denial of man's ability to make discoveries. It explains nothing, it explains away everything that doesn't fit "the truth."


Not so according to evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin:



> We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.


R. Lewontin, Billions and Billions of Demons, New York Review (9 January 1997): p. 31


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## Strange Magic

Fritz Kobus said:


> Not so according to evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin:
> 
> R. Lewontin, Billions and Billions of Demons, New York Review (9 January 1997): p. 31


This is the method of creation "science": to find the few outlying remarks that appear to either support a young earth or appear to question or contradict the methods/roots of real science. As Fritz not only knows but proudly repeats, creation "science" begins with an unassailable "fact" (not explicitly found anywhere in the Bible but variously calculated by a handful of error-ridden humans) that the earth is about 6,000 years old. Creationism then does no original, detailed fieldwork of its own, asking afresh "How old is the Earth and how best can we determine that?". No, instead it combs with infinite patience through all others' works to find the few outlying remarks or experts--mostly long dead or mostly not experts--that can be quoted as being either supportive of a young earth, or at odds with scientific practice. Real science asks questions, then tries to find answers. Fake science, "cheater" science, already asserts that it knows the answers in advance, then finds any scraps of others' work that can be twisted to support the predetermined outcome.


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## Strange Magic

The Wikipedia entry on Richard Lewontin is most interesting. I knew of him from reading E.O. Wilson's autobiography as a being a vigorous, difficult, volatile, brilliant scientist, often at odds with his peers at Harvard. Wikipedia notes that Lewontin is an evolutionist, a Marxist, and an atheist, not necessarily the sort that you or I would quote as endorsing creation "science" and I should like to be shown anywhere any indication that Richard Lewontin ever explicitly supported either creationism or a young earth.


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## Strange Magic

And--hold on Fritz--here is Lewontin's full essay, a review of Carl Sagan's pro-science book _The Demon-Haunted World_:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/01/09/billions-and-billions-of-demons/

Fritz won't read the piece--it's far too long--but it begins with Lewontin recounting his sharing the stage with Sagan while they debated against creation "scientists", so we can clear up quickly any doubt that Lewontin supports the young earth or any part of creationism. I think that what this tells us, and Fritz can confirm this, is that there is an effective clipping service within the creationist machinery that constantly checks and combs--sentence by sentence--for any scrap, tidbit, iota of text that could even remotely be then quoted to excuse creation "science", counting on the fact that nobody in the creationist community will actually read the full text or look into the credentials of the quoted person. So I ask Fritz where he found the Lewontin quote, and I ask him to read both the full text and Lewontin's full Wikipedia entry.


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## Pat Fairlea

I have this nagging suspicion that politicians in some Western countries find the Creationist paradigm useful as a distraction from the fact that global environments are becoming less stable, with consequences that are difficult to predict in detail, and the aforementioned politicians cannot do a darned thing about it. 

As a 'scientist' by former employment and inclination, I don't 'believe' in man-made global warming, any more than I 'believe' in the existence of the element astatine. 'Belief' is for those who have religious faith. We have a tried and tested model of how the Earth's atmosphere retains heat energy, from which we derive the prediction that the addition of carbon dioxide to that atmosphere will increase its capacity to retain heat energy. We test the prediction by showing rising carbon dioxide levels matching rising global temperatures. None of that requires belief or faith, just observation and logic of the simple "If A then B" variety. 

What happens next is another matter. Increased temperatures are unlikely to impact the Earth homogeneously, so weather systems in some regions will flip into new states before others. What were once extreme events will become occasional, then regular. Yes, it would make a lot of sense to stop pumping so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere: apart from the warming considerations, hydrocarbon sources are finite. But we're already over 400ppm, so mitigation of the consequences ought to be a priority. Trouble is, most politicians cannot see beyond the next election cycle, and because the consequences of warming are likely to be complex and stochastic, mitigation is difficult to plan. Instead, they take entrenched positions for or against the oil industry, nuclear energy, whatever, in the hope that they will be 'seen to be doing something'. 

Does all of this make me worry? Not really. The Earth came through very rapid, large amplitude temperature rises around 130,000 years ago and again around 11,700 years ago. A lot of things changed, sea levels fluctuated insanely, many species went extinct. But life on Earth adjusted and went on.


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## starthrower

Fritz Kobus said:


> See. We both are reading about historical processes or events, but we each have chosen books that support what we believe. But when there is a self-authenticating book that is utterly reliable in everything it says, then we have a solid basis for what we believe. Science is subject to change. The Book is not.


No, you have chosen books that support what you believe. I'm interested in evidence. I believe a certain way if it can be scientifically supported by evidence. I'm not looking for viewpoints to support faith based positions. I'm not putting the cart before the horse. Listening to your fundamentalist point of view would make one think that God handed the bible intact down to humanity from his heavenly hand. But that's not how it was done. And this rigid position of taking every word in the bible literally as historical fact is not in the tradition of the church and clergy throughout history in either the Jewish or Christian traditions.

Science is science and faith is faith. Relying on the bible to explain or authenticate how the universe was made, or why certain weather patterns or floods arise is not science. And the idea that the bible is perfect and can't be questioned is illogical, and is based on the belief that the universe is governed by an autocratic creator. If you choose to believe this you are free to do so. But it doesn't help us to understand the physical universe and how things really work.


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## SixFootScowl

Strange Magic said:


> This is the method of creation "science": to find the few outlying remarks that appear to either support a young earth or appear to question or contradict the methods/roots of real science. As Fritz not only knows but proudly repeats, creation "science" begins with an unassailable "fact" (not explicitly found anywhere in the Bible but variously calculated by a handful of error-ridden humans) that the earth is about 6,000 years old. Creationism then does no original, detailed fieldwork of its own, asking afresh "How old is the Earth and how best can we determine that?". No, instead it combs with infinite patience through all others' works to find the few outlying remarks or experts--mostly long dead or mostly not experts--that can be quoted as being either supportive of a young earth, or at odds with scientific practice. Real science asks questions, then tries to find answers. Fake science, "cheater" science, already asserts that it knows the answers in advance, then finds any scraps of others' work that can be twisted to support the predetermined outcome.


Not "the" method. Creation scientists do their own research and run their own experiments. They do also use existing data from others and call out false interpretations where they find them. The unassailable fact is creation and that at the creation everything was "very good." The Bible gives genealogies that leave no room for millions of years. The actual number of years is an estimate.

So creation scientists base their research and conclusions on how the data fit the creation model. Regardless of whether Lewontin said it or someone else, evolutionists do adhere to "material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations."

Creation science is not fake science. We don't make things up. We look at how the data fit the creation model and we look at how a worldwide flood would affect the earth and compare that to the existing geology. If creation science if fake, so is evolutionary science because neither can be proved by experimental science.



Strange Magic said:


> The Wikipedia entry on Richard Lewontin is most interesting. I knew of him from reading E.O. Wilson's autobiography as a being a vigorous, difficult, volatile, brilliant scientist, often at odds with his peers at Harvard. Wikipedia notes that Lewontin is an evolutionist, a Marxist, and an atheist, not necessarily the sort that you or I would quote as endorsing creation "science" and I should like to be shown anywhere any indication that Richard Lewontin ever explicitly supported either creationism or a young earth.


Lewontin is an evolutionist. I didn't say he endorses creation. I quoted him in the context of his stating the bias of evolutionary science. Could as well have quoted some other evolutionist.



Strange Magic said:


> And--hold on Fritz--here is Lewontin's full essay, a review of Carl Sagan's pro-science book _The Demon-Haunted World_:
> 
> https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/01/09/billions-and-billions-of-demons/
> 
> Fritz won't read the piece--it's far too long--but it begins with Lewontin recounting his sharing the stage with Sagan while they debated against creation "scientists", so we can clear up quickly any doubt that Lewontin supports the young earth or any part of creationism. I think that what this tells us, and Fritz can confirm this, is that there is an effective clipping service within the creationist machinery that constantly checks and combs--sentence by sentence--for any scrap, tidbit, iota of text that could even remotely be then quoted to excuse creation "science", counting on the fact that nobody in the creationist community will actually read the full text or look into the credentials of the quoted person. So I ask Fritz where he found the Lewontin quote, and I ask him to read both the full text and Lewontin's full Wikipedia entry.


Regardless of the context, Lewontin reveals the truth behind evolutionary science. The quote is from an article at creation.com. No, I am not going to read a lot of evolutionary science texts or articles. I was in the evolution camp for 27 of my 61 years. Had enough.


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## philoctetes

is it really just about chemical emissions? I think about the heat itself, whether by combustion, electrical resistance, or whatever means of energy generation and consumption we use. 

Computers are not very efficient, yet we have crazy schemes to use "crypto" for all our transactions, bitcoin, blockchain, ad nauseum...these are such BRILLIANT ideas that nobody cares about the thermal impact... not to mention a crypto banking cartel creating new economies out of nothing but algorithms having chariot races.

Eventually, more and more service are going to AI - same problem. And your dependency on them will be tied more to the grid than ever.

If and when quantum computing becomes thermally efficient, many of these problems will go away. Other breakthroughs may be possible as well. So I think it's a goal worth investing in, one that has a genuine target, like going to the moon. Unfortunately, the military may have other ideas.

Many of the policies I see advocated are about telling people how not to use inefficient technology so that we avert a disaster we can't see. That's asking a lot and has little chance of global compliance. OTOH, the creation of affordable efficient technology would have a more sweeping effect.

And I seem to be the only one that mentions plastic and the general problem of waste disposal. Huh.


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## philoctetes

I watched one of those episodes of the PK Dick series on Amazon which took place in an energy generation compound where they all ate fruit and rode bicycles all day, presumably to generate electricity for the elite above ground. 

Imagine how much those people would hate resistance in electrical circuits. They'd be chanting "mho" all day as they pedal.


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## Strange Magic

Philoctetes, be assured that the issues of plastics and waste disposal are absolutely not forgotten in any scientific worldview that sees AGW as only part of a larger matrix involving population, and technology (including the introduction of toxic and novel substances into the environment) working as the multiplier of the malign effects of unchecked population growth.


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## KenOC

Fritz Kobus said:


> Creation science is not fake science. We don't make things up.


"Creation science" is not science at all. Science validates hypotheses by observations. "Creation science" validates observations based on their agreement with Biblical "truth." Science considers all its hypotheses subject to disproof. "Creation science" has a central belief that is not subject to challenge.

In the US, the courts have ruled in some very strong opinions that "creation science" (usually masquerading in its guise as "intelligent design") cannot be taught in the science curricula of public schools for those reasons, among others. The best-known case was the "2005 _Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District _trial in which U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III found that intelligent design was not science, that it 'cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents,' and that the school district's promotion of it therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District


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## Strange Magic

Fritz, two suggestions--A) You owe it to your argument to actually read the materials that you pick up from the creationist grab-bag so that you can speak with some perceived authority. Lewontin's essay/review is very, very interesting and informative reading. B) You clearly missed recent discussion in the Religion Group about recent laboratory and field experiments that confirm evolution at work.



> Fritz: "Creation science is not fake science. We don't make things up. We look at how the data fit the creation model and we look at how a worldwide flood would affect the earth and compare that to the existing geology. If creation science is fake, so is evolutionary science because neither can be proved by experimental science."


We've had this discussion before, but here it is again: Creation "science" is derived initially from a predetermined, human-calculated assertion not found in the Bible but based entirely on patiently, diligently adding up hypothesized years of activities and events noted in a 2000-year-old book. Result: The earth is/must be about 6000 years old. What do we do with the libraries full of evidence that indicate that the earth is many orders of magnitude older than 6000 years. Answer: We just throw it all away, because of that very reason--it doesn't match what has been pre-decided as Truth. This is not how science works, and you know it. Creation "science" is Fake science, attempting to mask itself as the real thing. It is cheating.


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## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> It appears that the Biblical flood in Genesis is a pretty direct lift from the earlier Sumerian Epic of Ziusudra and the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, which include many of the specific incidents found in the Bible's accounts. There is no evidence of a worldwide flood.
> 
> In river-based agricultural societies, where life is pretty much the same year after year, century after century, the main outstanding memories are likely to be famines and floods. It's hardly surprising that the larger floods are long remembered, or that their impacts are magnified in the tales told around evening fires by mostly illiterate peoples. "How deep was the water, you ask? Well, see that hill over there?"


An interesting thing in history happened due to food shortages and population problems in the towns around Hamelin, Germany. In the last few decades of the 1200s the Pied Piper story about it circulated and was revised again and again before about 1300. The story was recorded and was kept at a church there in 1300. Later the church was destroyed.

Today we say you must pay the piper. This story (account) is much more recent than the Bible stories and within only a few decades this story had been twisted and exaggerated by the imaginations of the subsequent story-tellers.


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## Luchesi

Down through 15 centuries and more the church fathers had no other explanations than counting the generations in their writings and estimating and assuming that the world had been brought about and designed supernaturally by their deity. I really can't find fault with them and their 'logic', because they had nothing else as worked out and as detailed and sanctioned by the tradition they cherished.

I doubt that they would hang onto these written claims so literally today. These were otherwise educated people, many of them. Would they really think that this literalism is what God wanted for them?


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## KenOC

DaveM said:


> Going off script for a moment: I don't believe in some individual entity that created the universe, but I do believe that there is intelligence in the way nature develops. When you have nothing better to do, read up on the inner ear (the vestibule and cochlea) something that we take very much for granted, but which allows us to hear and keep our balance.
> 
> View attachment 107971
> 
> 
> What I want to know is, given the time and preferential selection that occurred to create this astounding organ, whether in the development of life forms on other planets, would the structure for hearing and balance develop in much the same way?


The reference here is to "irreducible complexity." Saith Wiki: "Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive small modifications to pre-existing functional systems through natural selection."

The modern definition of IC was developed by Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, who incorporated it into creation science textbooks (which were later converted to "Intelligent Design" textbooks through mass text editing, an amusing story in itself). These textbooks and Dr. Behe himself got involved in the _Kitzmiller _legal case, mentioned above, where the judge ruled: "Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity


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## Strange Magic

^^^^Richard Dawkins, the _bete noir_ of creationists and intelligent design enthusiasts, is a reliable source for the now-routine dismissals of claims of ''irreducible complexity". His book, _The Blind Watchmaker_, is a now-classic text on the subject.


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## KenOC

Creationists (aka "young earthers") believe the entire cosmos was created just over 6,000 years ago. That idea was discarded by geologists as early as the 17th century based on plainly visible evidence of natural processes that could only have taken place over millions of years.

The current estimate is 13.799 billion years with a potential error of only plus or minus 21 million years. It seems astonishing that the age has been measured in a good number of ways, with some quite independent of the others in methodology and the data used, yet with all yielding almost identical results.

The Wiki article _Age of the universe _has a fascinating account of how the age has been measured over the years.


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## SixFootScowl

You folks' opinions were predicted long ago in 2 Peter 3(3-7):


> Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.


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## Strange Magic

^^^^You gotta give the man a lot of credit; he sticks with his argument like a dog with a well-chewed and favored bone. In recognition, here are Simon & Garfunkel. Pay close attention to the lyrics......


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## Luchesi

Fritz Kobus said:


> You folks' opinions were predicted long ago in 2 Peter 3(3-7):


Whoever wrote those verses, we don't know who (or if it was more than one person and we don't know when) was probably thinking about a few decades into the unknown future. Like most centuries those were turbulent centuries with the future scary and foreboding to some groups ..as it is today. But to believe that it was written about our time 1900 years into the future is zany. I doubt they thought about a whole century into the future.


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## DaveM

KenOC said:


> The reference here is to "irreducible complexity." Saith Wiki: "Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive small modifications to pre-existing functional systems through natural selection."
> 
> The modern definition of IC was developed by Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, who incorporated it into creation science textbooks (which were later converted to "Intelligent Design" textbooks through mass text editing, an amusing story in itself). These textbooks and Dr. Behe himself got involved in the _Kitzmiller _legal case, mentioned above, where the judge ruled: "Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large."
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity


I think my post was misunderstood -likely my fault. I do not believe in intelligent design and I'm not inferring 'irreducible complexity'. In mammals that have developed over thousands of years we see similar body structures develop to perform similar functions. We know now (as I've mentioned previously) that genes interact with each other in a way not unlike neurons -almost as if they are rather smart or if not that, they can work more efficiently- that perhaps explains why such complex structures as the middle ear seemed to improve in design more quickly than might have been expected.

So what I'm brainstorming about here is whether life elsewhere would develop similar structures or are there a gazillion ways to create, for instance, a hearing and balance structure. Or maybe intelligent beings develop totally different senses. After all, my guess is that something like the wheel may be a standard construct of transportation across the universe.


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## KenOC

DaveM said:


> I think my post was misunderstood -likely my fault.


Sorry if I misunderstood! WRT your question, I'd imagine there are many ways to skin the cat (most probably illegal nowadays). I can well imagine that an organism in a different environment, with different needs for hearing frequencies or differentiation among tones, or a different speed of sound in their environment, might develop very different mechanisms for hearing. Or, if their environment is much like our own and their hearing needs similar, might develop something similar to ours. We can only speculate, of course!


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## Strange Magic

A very brief discussion of a recent book by Jonathan Losos on recent findings on evolution in the Religion Group:

https://www.talkclassical.com/groups/religious-discussion-group-d1589-good-news-about-evolution.html


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## Sun Junqing

I think...yes..we all can feel the increase in the frequency of extreme weather events


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