My big takeaway from this podcast and the following comments is the need to be responsive to the changes coming our way. More than that to be looking for "a hole in the line" to run through. Between the entrenched mindset of the established governments and their economies and the deep devotion of most of the world's population to having what they offer, the juggernaut of climate and fuel supply changes ahead of us will put those who plan to survive into a nomadic (mentally and likely physically) mode of life. Time to tribe up and get your Dunbar number unit in action.
That is one of the big problems with climate science, it is extremely complex no expert can understand it all let alone the public. Re Adam Taggart's post see below for just one counter.
Great Barrier Reef: 5% bleached, not 93% says new report “discrepancy phenomenal”
http://joannenova.com.au/2016/08/great-barrier-reef-bleaching-5-bleached-not-93-says-new-report-discrepancy-phenomenal/Jo Nova lives in Australia and would be a perfect guest for your show as she is very well spoken. Also her Husband is a Climate Scientist.
The One Nation party in Australia (which has seats in Federal parliament) asserts that the GBR is not being bleached, and that climate change is a hoax or least that its effects are being greatly and even wilfully exaggerated. The party recently invited people to tour the Reef with them and see for themselves that it's alive and well. Yeah, but the area they invited people to visit is 1,000 km south of the damaged areas.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/11/25/reef-fine-hanson-says-after-turning-1000km-bleaching
I lack the time and resources to make a rigorous assessment of the claims regarding climate change, but on the basis of what I do have time to read and analyse, I conclude that climate change is a real and growing problem.
I am gloomily confident that the business-as-usual paradigm will prevail until it's far too late to extricate oursevles from it.
Here's the overall strategy I distilled from John H's posts:
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There is always another point of view. (Message: my opinion on scientific matters is just as valid as yours, regardless of your expertise; alternatively, my expert is just as good as whoever you bring up - regardless who pays their salary).
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I try and listen to both views with an open mind. (Message: if you don't listen to what I say, its because you are closed-minded).
3a) This is not really a good forum to argue this complex issue. (Gosh. I lost that one…or…)
3b) Yes I could easily come up with several papers, articles, and scientist would would refute most of this video and in convincing manor. (Message: lost that one too; pivot to…)
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It is clear to me the scientific process has been corrupted in climate science and it is now more of a political issue than scientific. (Message: I put scientists on the same level as politicians, whom we know are all lying scumbags)
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I used to believe in the theory of climate change but changed that point of view say 5 or 10 years ago. (Message: I have credibility because I used to believe in the witchcraft, but now I know the truth, and I can lead you to the promised land if you just listen to me.)
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I am very concerned we are looking at spend many trillions of dollars on a issue that is really only a minor problem and even if catastrophic climate change is real, these efforts will not work. (Message: its either a minor issue, or its soooooo huge we might as well give up; please ignore the cognitive dissonance)
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It seems there is a very narrow tolerable point of view and deviation is not allowed. (Message: equating scientific consensus with thought control).
If John H isn't a paid troll, he should be - why give away for free something that's worth good money if offered to the right customer.
These are all talking points I've heard before, and they've been relayed in just a few posts, and wrapped in a package that's psychologically comfortable. The whole "I used to believe" was just perfectly done.
Whoever sculpted this troll-strategy, hats off to them. Some serious psych went into the approach.
I wouldn't call myself a serious climate change person, but the one thing I really don't like is when some company or organization pays people to come and try to change my opinion under false pretenses. It makes me think there is probably a lot of truth to the whole thing. Like Big Tobacco and addiction. Anyone remember this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_ZDQKq2F08
We must be an important site after all.
We are a species with a lot of potential, but I will again start to hope for a relatively "small" catastrophic event to wake the folk up. Until then, all bets are off. People voted against the latest economic catastrophe, HRC and the neoliberal global agenda, not for climate change denial obviously. At some point enough of us will realize that working with the biosphere and other members of our species is the best recipe for "economic" success. Perhaps humanity will grow past our "terrible twos" and stop throwing tantrums. Behave like adults!? heck, a generally well behaved adolescent would be good enough.
As I sit here in central Maryland enjoying a near 70 degree late-November day - more the norm now than the exception, these kinds of bizarre-weather days - I am struck by how much the environment couldn't care less whether we "believe" in these changes or not. It's not a religion, it's scientific fact, and it is coming to smack us and our fragile civilizations in the head. Our ability to willfully deny the obvious is both amusing and insane.
The planet? Oh, it'll be fine. It has survived far, far, far worse than we humans can dole out - even our paltry nuclear technology, which the planet would absorb within a time scale we can't even fathom - but we humans will likely not survive if we continue to mess up the very systems that sustain us.
With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man?
Is it possible to have an economy based on burning fossil fuels that doesn’t harm the environment? By definition the environment we are wanting to maintain is the one we currently have. Burning millions of years of sequestered carbon over 200 years has changed the soup we live in. Any effort now to slow that burn rate feels useless, so it’s easier to deny the change. What stage of grief is that?
Humanity’s greatest tool is fire. That is the paradigm that has informed thousands of years of civilization. It may not be possible to have a civilization without fire, but some form is possible on much less.
Until humans learn to work from a primary paradigm of reverence and respect for this planet we will continue headlong into a hell of our own making.
You have my sympathy, good luck.
https://youtu.be/XPgGjUSEWss
Anthony Watts Blogger
wattsupwiththat.com
Willard Anthony Watts is an American blogger who runs Watts Up With That?, a popular climate change denial blog that opposes the scientific consensus on climate change.More at Wikipedia
Born:1958 (age 57–58)
Nationality:American
Alma mater:Purdue University (no degree earned)
Occupation:Blogger, business owner, broadcast meteorologist
Years active:1978-present
Employer:KPAY-AM
Known for:Viewpoints on climate change
Catastrophic global warming is a failed theory. It's in it final death throes and revival is futile at this point. For many geologists, it never had legs to begin with. Too many complex confounding factors that derail the simple linear problem as presented. The only thing that would have given it credibility is if steeply rising CO2 levels could be shown to be associated with steeply rising temperatures, both recent and historical. This has never happened. There's way too many black swans and the lack of significant warming over the last nearly 20 years is the cincher. The politicization of this has been a shocking example of how science can be bent to satisfy special interest groups. The classic clue has been the lack of data presentation throughout the debate. Co2 related global warming cannot be treated as a story to be told around the dinner table. It's data, and thus should be presented on graphs. There are reams of graphs available for all aspects of this issue. They DO NOT support the theory. Never have. There's a plethora of environmental issues that deserve our attention if we wish to maintain a habitable planet. This issue has been a total waste of time and energy and has served to keep us fully diverted away from the real issues.
Perhaps your problem is your sense that the atmospheric catastrophic global warming is a linear problem. We never believed it was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAJkLh76QnM
Google "multistable strange attractor". Look at images, or the video above.
That doesn't mean the theory is bunk. Google Lorentz strange attractor; and although you will see youtube videos showing chaotic behavior, it is still bounded chaotic… but those bounds may still allow for catastrophic global warming. Catastrophic for us, that is.
The idea the homo sapiens are not part ecological structures of planet earth is one of the many divisions that needs to be healed. That we "discovered" fire does not make us the natural enemies of the biosphere. Fire is a natural part of forest ecosystems, has been for millions of years. We are as a species not in place where we can take reasoned and considered action to avert problems before they become serious. We are barely able to avoid self annihilation, let alone problem solve planetary problems collectively. That we think so is the worst bubble of all. Reality is a great teacher, unfortunately, in the present moment, only when it bloodies our nose and knocks us on the ground. So that is just what it will do.
That we will need to suffer this is something we need to have great collective compassion for. Only when we have nearly destroyed each other and the world around us will things once again become precious to us. The opposite of love is not hate, but fear which breeds all manner division, violence and destruction. It is the lowest center of consciousness. Fear is rising, and violence and conflict will rise with it. Being against something is not enough, that is a failure of our collective imagination. It is an easy path that is well traveled that eventually leads nowhere. In visioning a view of the future, much more agreement, cooperation and compassion can be developed. It is our best hope.
No, not a paid troll
But I do pay money though, forcibly extracted from me by government to pay for green schemes that never seem to work out.
If climate change turns out to a real and dangerous then not acting now could be disastrous. If climate change is a hoax as our soon to president says then action proposed will keep billions in poverty and certainly lead to the death of millions. There is potential for enormous harm either direction.
The whole process is politicized. In normal a scientific process the different views would be fighting it out in the literature and at conferences. For what ever reason that is not happening.
I guess when I heard the interview with Dr. Cochrane it struck to respond mostly because I heard a scientist connecting causation and correlation. Wild fires for example:it was very correctly pointed out there may have been other factors like forestry practices that caused the high burned acres but again there is more to it, see below. Yet many of us seem to willing to use recent wildfires, local oyster problems, and flooding in local areas as of proof of climate change. I use the words "climate change" in context because of course the climate has always changed. When I listen to skeptics they bring sea levels graphs and compare the different ways to measure. They look at sea level going back thousands of years. They look at wildfires going back hundreds of years. They look at oyster health world wide. They point out our ocean ph data is poor and not only do we not really no what the ph of the ocean is supposed to be we really don't know what the ocean ph currently is. There is no average global ph. I would pay a good chunk of money to see Dr Cochrane and Dr Moore debate this issue ( or any other climate issue)
Certainly not on this sight and I really appreciate the people here but when it comes to climate change it so often seems that no matter what the question the answer is always the same "That was climate change that caused that".
Re "climate change is corrupted science" let me give the most obvious example. MAH 98 came out just before Third Assessment Report in 2000. It showed a temp graph for the last 1000 years or so shaped like a hockey stick. It contradicted many hundreds of scientific papers and even the first two IPCC assessment reports. It was one study against hundreds. What did they do, blew the graph up to 10 feet and stick on the wall behind them at news conferences. How many billions of dollars were spent on the basis of that graph? Many many and yes many climate scientists had to know there was something fishy: yet did any speak up??. It took 2 none government none climate scientists to expose the severe flaws in the paper. Read the damming climate gate e mails to see how Steve McIntyre had to doggedly persist to bring out the truth. I don't see a hockey stick graph in the last assessment report. If fact there is a minor mention of the Medieval Warm Period only and that it was really only a European event. Read the climate gate e mails to see them talking about eliminating the MWP. Read the climate gate e mails to see corruption of the scientific process.
When ever I hear "consensus" my ear perk up. My experience has been consensus requires an opposing side. Almost always that side by necessity is very well reasoned and should be at least listened to. Not dismissed and called deniers.
This (and much much more) is why we have a climate change denier is about the enter the white house.
article below copied from Tony Heller's sight
At first, I thought you were writing about Guy McPherson's human extinction theory. Forgive me if you are because I think that is a very unlikely scenario too.
Some questions for you hcg:
Where is the data in your argument?
Why the emotional words like "in it's final death throes", "shocking example of how science can be bent to satisfy special interest groups"?
I attachment to a certain perspective in your post, not data. I see the same data free tricks used by paid shills and trolls. I'm not saying you are one, but perhaps you're echoing one.
Here's a chart (source):
"the lack of significant warming over the last nearly 20 years" sort of worked until 2013 or maybe 2014, but 2015 and 2016 have put it to rest. Take a close look at the chart and tell me how picking the last really strong El Nino year in 1998 as a starting point is anything other than subterfuge to support a false claim that somehow warming has stopped. Note how there is no pause in the 132 month (11 year) running mean because it removes the short term noise added by El Nino and other similar events.
If 2016 turns out to be another short term peak, will there be people saying in 2025 " there hasn't been any warming in almost 10 years"? Note that 2016 represents a more significant spike over recent history than 1998 did.
The primary virtue of chaos theory is that it lets us know that predictions are generally futile. But it is also helpful to know that there are probably two attractors for climate; one corresponding to ice ages and the other to interglacials. It is also known that axial tilt, precession and orbital eccentricity are capable of triggering transitions between these climate states in ~ 110,000 year quasiperiodic succession. But there are other transitions, such as the Dansgaard-Oeschger events for which the drivers are unknown. With global temperatures fluctuating 5 - 7 C in a few decades, it is very clear that the present warm climate is not a stable feature of the earth.
More recent satellite data shows that temperatures are now beginning to drop sharply and may even turn into La Nina conditions - but that remains to be seen. In the meantime, cherry picked El Nino spikes are not any cause for alarm.
Sad to see thread after thread about climate change get derailed by a few deniers.
Whether they are paid trolls or a Fox/Limbaugh disciples, why bother responding to the cherry picked, distorted, or outright bogus "info" they offered? They continue to believe what they want to believe, and at this point are unlikely to be converted.
Given the overwhelming preponderance of evidence, combined with the amount of time lost debating and our complete inability to afford the ravages of climate change, responding to deniers instead of focusing on what to do plays right into their hand of stalling any action until it's too late. Or until they've lived out their lives, leaving younger generations to deal with it.
Know Chris and Adam are all about civil, open discussions, but we cannot afford to engage the small and diminishing number of deniers in the face of mounting evidence and diminishing time any longer.
Sorry, But you can't just write off people that have a different opinion than you and hope that they all just die off. You cannot force legislation and life changes to people unless they agree to them in mass. That has not been done in this case. If you believe in it, keep working and keep presenting convincing material to convince your fellow citizens that your position is in fact correct.
I'm wondering if someone with knowledge of satellite measurements could give some info on the relationship between satellite vs. surface measurements. I notice that Stan's graph shows about 2/3 the trend of mine since about 1980 and that the spikes up and down are larger.
What satellite provided the data? What effective level in the atmosphere are they observing?
I'm familiar with geostationary satellite temperature retrievals and I know that they are not very accurate measuring lower tropospheric temperatures. They are somewhat better at measuring the skin temperature of the earth or ocean surface.
I also know that we live at the surface, that much of the temperature change has been due to steepening lapse rates and weakening of nocturnal and seasonal low-level temperature inversions, so that the temperature change has been largest at the surface. Furthermore, the impacts are being measured and projected based on surface temperatures, not lower atmospheric temperatures.
Could someone with more knowledge of satellite measurements please elaborate on their value in tracking changing climate?
My primary point regarding the role of fire is not that it is foreign to our planet, but that our use of it is a distortion of the natural flow on this planet. We are in a sense decompressing time when we burn fossil fuels. It is one thing if a large volcano erupts. It is another if it continually belches into the atmosphere for 200 years.
We have the expectation that this planet's systems will totally buffer the effects of our 200 years of 'volcanic' activity with coal, oil and gas. It does buffer, but with a net change in the environment-maybe to the point where large mammalian life will lose its survival niche.
I totally agree with your take on fear and love being opposites. To have a new vision of the future will involve jettisoning our fear and distrust of this world and its environment. We have even come to fear that our own bodies can't adapt and provide for us. My last dog hated to live indoors. I was always amazed at how his winter coat protected him in subfreezing temperatures.
Our civilization actually fears nature and spends huge amounts of excess energy trying to create a new indoor world that isolates us from the elements. We also spend huge amounts of time and energy defending our piles of metal, rocks and sticks that we call cities from the forces of nature. The true treasures of culture, which include languages, music, ideas and intergenerational wisdom are much more easily defended; in fact they are usually strengthened in the face of natural environmental pressures.
The UAH chart data come, as I understand it, from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and measures temperatures in the lower troposphere. It is Ted Cruz's (and other climate contrarians) favorite data set as the tropospheric measurements do not strongly correlate with surface temperatures (where we live) and no other data set supports his political agenda.
https://www.inverse.com/article/12349-ted-cruz-gets-his-comeuppance-for-cherry-picked-climate-change-data
Carl Mears, a senior scientist at RSS which is responsible for the data, responded here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BnkI5vqr_0
Dr. Mears states that the surface data are more accurate than the RSS data. Yet the climate contrarians cling to the satellite data despite their shortcomings.
I think this is discussed at some length in the climate change thread, but I don't know where.