sycasey;842851455 said:

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No more so than RushinBear did by name-dropping Al Gore. Good for the goose, good for the gander, etc.

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Gore is a key player in this debate, because he is one of the lead influencers and policy drivers behind the scenes, going back to the Clinton administration. His arguments are egregiously biased and unscientific, and over the last couple of decades, his wildly alarmist forecasts have been laughably wrong.

He's build for himself a fortune of a quarter billion dollars by fronting for and investing in companies subsidized by policies he helped implement. I don't think he really believes in what he preaches, based on his personal lifestyle choices.

I've barely had time to keep up with this thread, there is a lot to address, and there's been no debate on technical grounds.

GB54;842851351 said:

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Why don't they admit it's existence for a start rather than forbidding mention of it or not engaging. Any agreement like Paris was DOA in Congress- there was no room for a position like yours. Their position is that it doesn't exist.

With regard to your concerns I agree with you. China certainly can no longer be considered a developing country- it's a global powerhouse. Ironically it is now reducing the number of coal plants in China while facilitating the building of them abroad.

A proper solution -not technically impossible- would be to tax products based on their carbon footprint. In this regard it is the height of hypocrisy for Apple to build their "environmentally sustainable" headquarters at the same time as producing iPhones with tons more pollution than it would here using the dirtiest grid in the world. Why should their greed drive global warming any more than China's?

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This is the fundamental issue here, the belief that man-made CO2 is the global climate control knob. Both basic theory and the observed evidence show that this is not the case.

[U]-the theory:[/U] the CO2 energy absoption spectrum is relatively narrow (much narrower than that of water vapor, which dwarfs CO2 as the main atmospheric greenhouse gas -see first chart below-)



Not only does water vapor have a much wider absorption spectrum than CO2, but it also dwarfs CO2 in atmospheric concentration levels. Furthermore, CO2 heat absorption gets rapidly saturated at low concentrations (chart blow). The increase in CO2 concentration results in a geometrically diminishing increase in temperature from sunlight:



As you can see from this chart, the effect of a marginal increase in CO2 concentration at the current levels has a very small effect on temperature. Even if CO2 levels went through the roof over this century, the incremental cumulative increase in temperature, represented by the tiny rectangles on right of the graph, amounts to a fraction of a degree.

More details about the logarithmic (non-linear) nature of CO2-driven heating effect here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/

[U]-the observations:[/U]

AGW is based on the theory that the planet has been heating up from excess CO2 in the atmosphere, yet the most objective and reliable measurements of atmospheric temperature (and least vulnerable to tampering by scientists with an agenda -LINK-), satellite measurements, show very little to no increase in global temperature in the last two decades. In this period, one third of all CO2 generated by humanity has been added to the atmosphere, yet there are no notable effect on atmospheric temperatures, this is what's known as the Climate Pause or Hiatus. Many (most?) establishment scientists no longer deny the existence of the Pause, but seek to explain it away:



Scientists like Curry who were formerly warmists have been swayed by the observations from the last two decades and are becoming skeptical about the notion that CO2 is the main climate control knob, given that we've added 50% more CO2 in the atmosphere since 1997 than what was produced in previous centuries combined, with very little temperature increase!

CO2, however, offers the perfect platform for taxation and a carbon trade market, which is slated to grow to near $10 trillon annual volume by the next decade. The financial incentive is tremendous, even for big oil, which stands to have a second revenue model similar to Enron's (in fact the carbon trade cap-and-trade market structure has been devised by Ken Lay and Enron and Goldman Sachs executives in the 1990s). This new huge revenue stream will compensate for the slow decline in oil use (it will remain small because even under the most favorable/generous subsidy structures, renewables have a low ceiling, they currently make up only 3.25% of the US energy portfolio).

https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-enron-wants-global-warming

This is the least well understood aspect of the debate, the fact that the financial incentives for restricting carbon emissions are (1) absolutely tremendous, comparable in size to the entire oil sector and (2) favor the most powerful and politically influential sector, Wall Street/global banking, in cooperation with big oil (that's why companies like BP fund global warming advocacy groups). The reason politicians like Gore, Clinton or Macron are so solidly behind the global warming agenda is not altruism or concern for the environment, no more so than Nikki Haley wanting to bomb Syria out of concern for the children of Syria.

OdontoBear66;842851414 said:

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So I find myself in #4, but not with the unflattering verbiage you use. The Paris Accord is/was just a very bad financial deal for the USA that was being made to assuage our guilt feelings about contributing to that GW that is going on. Yes something needs to be done, but not any deal, not a bad deal in relative terms to the countries I have mentioned.

And I agree most entirely with you final paragraph.

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Yes, sorry. Was trying to be more amusing than unflattering. Appreciate your willingness to continue to engage on this topic. It's just been a very depressing couple of weeks up here in Norway and Iceland. I had realized the effect of climate change in the arctic was like 8X what we have going on in the more temperate regions, but it's one thing to know it and another thing to see it. Really remarkable transformation up in this part of the world.

sycasey;842851270 said:

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The economic argument against action on climate change becomes weaker every day (and it's already pretty weak). It's become pretty obvious that the money will be in renewable energy in the future. Businesses are not stupid. They know that the most polluting energy sources (coal and oil) are finite and won't last forever. It's worth their while to invest in cleaner sources.

Add to that the benefits of reducing our dependence on resources from a violent and politically-fraught region of the world (the Middle East), and it seems like a no-brainer to embrace this change, regardless of whether predictions of global climate change are "alarmist" or not. I'm sure there are individual industries and regions that will be negatively impacted as well -- such is the case with all change -- but that is an argument for implementing policies and programs to help those people transition to the new reality, not for taking us backwards.

Given all of that, the current conservative/Republican denialist dogma is frankly baffling. Seems like the only reason to be against it is because the "liberal elites" support it. It's a purely stubborn cultural argument.

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1- we aren't running out of fossil fuels. They are a cheap, enormously abundant source of energy. We have several centuries worth of coal in the US alone, and peak oil has yet to materialize, meaning that estimated global reserves are still rising today. North America alone (US, Canada, Mexico) has at least a century's worth of oil reserves.

2-we're not in the middle east because we need their oil. We're there because since the early 70s, the Dollar is tied to the oil market (petrodollars instead of gold reserve currency). Gulf countries have subsidized the US$, their currencies have been pegged to the US$ for the last 4 decades. When Japan buys oil from Saudi, they have to buy US$ for this transaction, this props up our currency and our deficit-diriven lifestyle. Iran is not on board. Hence they are the bad guys we need to fear.

Beyond this, control of middle eastern oil has geostrategic goals, as a chokehold on the economies of much of the industrialized world and of our chief economic rivals (China, Japan, Germany/Europe, Inida,...) The US has domestic resources to achieve energy independence, most of our rivals don't.


It's not about conservatives not "embracing the change" or resisting the adoption of promising new green technologies, it's the fact that their growth is driven by subsidies which will come at an economic cost that is most heavily borne by the middle classes of industrialized nations like the US. Energy costs in Germany today are about 3 to 4 times higher than those in many parts of the US. Those sustainable energy sectors often are not economically sustainable. Some sectors are, and those will continue to grow.

Sebastabear;842851481 said:

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Yes, sorry. Was trying to be more amusing than unflattering. Appreciate your willingness to continue to engage on this topic. It's just been a very depressing couple of weeks up here in Norway and Iceland. I had realized the effect of climate change in the arctic was like 8X what we have going on in the more temperate regions, but it's one thing to know it and another thing to see it. Really remarkable transformation up in this part of the world.

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Have you been to Europe this winter Sebastabear?



Skopelos Greece



Budapest

Record level ice formations off eastern Canada, levels unseen in over a century. Record high sightings of polar bears. And of course back home in California, the picture this year is quite different from that of the permanent global warming drought narrative...

Scandinavia used to have significantly warmer weather than it does today, we know this because the treeline from centuries ago was much further north than the current one. Greenland was significanlty warmer and settled by Vikings during the medieval warm period. So glaciers receding in Norway is not a cause for alarm.

Bottom line, you shouldn't confuse weather with climate, and you should be weary of confirmation bias, by sticking to unbiased, unaltered historic statistical data to gauge the actual level of climate change.

In the continental US, where the weather has been well documented, the temperature levels today not nearly as hot as they were in the 1930s. The great majority of heat records from that era sill stand today:



The chart shows the max temp records across 50 states that still stand today, grouped by decade. The fact that so many records from the 1930s are still standing today despite the relatively modern phenomenon urban island heat effect brought about by urban sprawl means that it's not even close with today's temperatures.

the chart also shows the level of CO2 growth in the dotted curve, CO2 levels in the 1930s were minute compared to today's, yet the temperatures were much higher...

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/14/newly-found-weather-records-show-1930s-as-being-far-worse-than-the-present-for-extreme-weather/

Cal88;842851482 said:

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1- we aren't running out of fossil fuels. They are a cheap, enormously abundant source of energy. We have several centuries worth of coal in the US alone, and peak oil has yet to materialize, meaning that estimated global reserves are still rising today. North America alone (US, Canada, Mexico) has at least a century's worth of oil reserves.

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Fossil fuels are almost literally the only industry Russia has so it isn't surprising you are a big proponent of its indefinite continuation

Cal88;842851482 said:

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2-we're not in the middle east because we need their oil. We're there because since the early 70s, the Dollar is tied to the oil market (petrodollars instead of gold reserve currency).

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This entire paragraph is a complete economic mess so I'm going to address it bit by bit. We are in the middle east because we need their oil. We've been in the middle east, together with our Western European allies, since long before the 1970s. Our involvement is definitely about the oil.

Cal88;842851482 said:

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Gulf countries have subsidized the US$, their currencies have been pegged to the US$ for the last 4 decades.

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Gulf countries pegging their currency to the dollar does not create a subsidy. Countries do that because they want to stabilize their currency and economies. This is because America, at least pre-Trump, was the leader of the free world and other countries latch on to elements of our economy in order to boost their economies.

Cal88;842851482 said:

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When Japan buys oil from Saudi, they have to buy US$ for this transaction,

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This is incorrect. Japan already has US$ from exporting goods to the US so they are not buying US$. It is convenient for Japan to use a currency they already have to buy goods they need. This is true for other countries as well. Countries use the dollar because it benefits them, not because it benefits us.

Cal88;842851482 said:

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this props up our currency and our deficit-diriven lifestyle.

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Countries using our currency does prop up our currency. This makes our manufacturing sector less competitive because our goods our more expensive for export. Cal88 makes our deficit-driven lifestyle sound good because, well, anything to destabilize the US is good from his vantage point. Whether he is talking about our trade deficits or our fiscal deficits (the causes of which are related - tax policy) this is not a benefit for the US.

Cal88;842851482 said:

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It's not about conservatives not "embracing the change" or resisting the adoption of promising new green technologies, it's the fact that their growth is driven by subsidies which will come at an economic cost that is most heavily borne by the middle classes of industrialized nations like the US. Energy costs in Germany today are about 3 to 4 times higher than those in many parts of the US. Those sustainable energy sectors often are not economically sustainable. Some sectors are, and those will continue to grow.

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The subsidies are borne by the taxpayers who pay the government which subsidizes the businesses and, as our conservative friends are always quick to point out, the taxes are mostly paid by the wealthy. It is a falsehood to say the cost is borne by the middle class, when in fact, to the extent the cost is paid by wealthy taxpayers and the benefit (if there is an immediate economic benefit, which is debatable since the goal is more long-term change) goes to the middle class consumers. But this point about the middle class bearing the burden has to be made to continue the myth that climate change is all about an elitist attack on average Americans. There is no economic basis for it.

Uh oh, Call88. Now you've gone and done it.

Sebastabear;842851481 said:

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Yes, sorry. Was trying to be more amusing than unflattering. Appreciate your willingness to continue to engage on this topic. It's just been a very depressing couple of weeks up here in Norway and Iceland. I had realized the effect of climate change in the arctic was like 8X what we have going on in the more temperate regions, but it's one thing to know it and another thing to see it. Really remarkable transformation up in this part of the world.

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And I spent March in South America going from Buenos Aires to Lima...I saw first hand the glacier decrease in the Chilean fjords.. Am all in in theory but that does no way translate to poor financial governmental policy...

dajo9;842851486 said:

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Fossil fuels are almost literally the only industry Russia has so it isn't surprising you are a big proponent of its indefinite continuation



We are in the middle east because we need their oil. We've been in the middle east, together with our Western European allies, since long before the 1970s. Our involvement is definitely about the oil.

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Uh, of late we have the oil right here in river city. So why are we wasting our finest in the ME while we can access all the oil the USA needs, and it could even go down with decreased need to satisfy GW concerns? Of course, enviros won't allow same. Out of the ME, decreased loss of life, control how much is drilled and satisfying USA needs until other energy sources kick in. Duh.

Cal88;842851482 said:

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1- we aren't running out of fossil fuels. They are a cheap, enormously abundant source of energy. We have several centuries worth of coal in the US alone, and peak oil has yet to materialize, meaning that estimated global reserves are still rising today. North America alone (US, Canada, Mexico) has at least a century's worth of oil reserves.

2-we're not in the middle east because we need their oil. We're there because since the early 70s, the Dollar is tied to the oil market (petrodollars instead of gold reserve currency). Gulf countries have subsidized the US$, their currencies have been pegged to the US$ for the last 4 decades. When Japan buys oil from Saudi, they have to buy US$ for this transaction, this props up our currency and our deficit-diriven lifestyle. Iran is not on board. Hence they are the bad guys we need to fear.

Beyond this, control of middle eastern oil has geostrategic goals, as a chokehold on the economies of much of the industrialized world and of our chief economic rivals (China, Japan, Germany/Europe, Inida,...) The US has domestic resources to achieve energy independence, most of our rivals don't.


It's not about conservatives not "embracing the change" or resisting the adoption of promising new green technologies, it's the fact that their growth is driven by subsidies which will come at an economic cost that is most heavily borne by the middle classes of industrialized nations like the US. Energy costs in Germany today are about 3 to 4 times higher than those in many parts of the US. Those sustainable energy sectors often are not economically sustainable. Some sectors are, and those will continue to grow.

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For a survey of Middle East oil history up to 1975 read "The Seven Sisters: The great oil companies & the world they shaped" (1975) by Anthony Sampson. It might sharpen your perception as to who shapes US policy in the Middle East. This one and others current.

OdontoBear66;842851490 said:

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Uh, of late we have the oil right here in river city. So why are we wasting our finest in the ME while we can access all the oil the USA needs, and it could even go down with decreased need to satisfy GW concerns? Of course, enviros won't allow same. Out of the ME, decreased loss of life, control how much is drilled and satisfying USA needs until other energy sources kick in. Duh.

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Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. put our troops all over the Middle East. Go ask somebody that voted for them why we have soldiers there.

I'm all for US energy independence with a a fast transition to green energy that will allow us to leave the Middle East.

Cal88;842851485 said:

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Have you been to Europe this winter Sebastabear

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Actually yes I was there. And I saw snow. Just like the congressmen who saw snow in DC and proclaimed global warming a hoax. But this is the ultimate confusing weather with climate. I didn't say I went to Iceland and wore a t-shirt. I went to Iceland and saw ecological devastation. This is the climate.

But you can't pick out a storm or even a place and say "climate change." It's all about worldwide averages. And according to Scientific American and NASA and other left wing organizations, 2016 was the hottest year ever recorded, which broke the record set in 2015 which broke the record set in 2014, etc, etc. 16 of the 17 hottest years recorded ever were in this century, with the exception being 1998 (climate change deniers favorite year).

It's all about the trend and no one can mistake the trend unless they have an agenda.

Oh and the spikes in the 1930s were caused by... wait for it... manmade pollution. You might remember we burned some coal back then.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/scientists-trace-climate-heat-link-to-1930s-20115

Classic Cal88 to tell you not to confuse climate with weather after cherry picking the 1930s US heat wave.

dajo9;842851492 said:

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Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. put our troops all over the Middle East. Go ask somebody that voted for them why we have soldiers there.

I'm all for US energy independence with a a fast transition to green energy that will allow us to leave the Middle East.

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Agree. Fast transition will probably not be possible, but fast as possible is reasonable.

OdontoBear66;842851471 said:

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What don't you, and some others, not understand that GW exists, but even so, one does not sign on to "any" deal to make it go away? Make reasonable and fair restrictions on the USA and I am all in. I have said as much. Paris, no. You, sycasey, and dajo in post so often love to attack the messenger rather than discuss the message when in disagreement.

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Sorry Odonto but this isn't even close to a moderate position. You believe AGW is a problem and that it needs to be addressed. Yet you seem to support the US withdrawing from a voluntary pact by 192 countries to reduce their collective impact on the planet's climate. What do you hope to accomplish from a withdrawal from Paris? What is your ultimate end goal?

I think, by contrast, remaining in Paris is a moderate position. One extreme would be forcing (by hook or by crook) all other countries into a binding and enforceable treaty that would be far more restrictive and would be far more likely to have the desired impact in reducing AGW. It seems given your believe in the danger of AGW that you would actually support the outcome here which is a higher likelihood of minimizing the negative impacts to our civilization. Another extreme would be for Paris to fail entirely which would show that collective action is impossible and we must submit to the inevitability of climate change.

So I ask again, what do you think is the likeliest outcome from Trump's withdrawal? I think you should reconsider whether your positions are actually moderate when you claim to be fore moderation in all things. Merely splitting the baby is not necessarily moderation, it's arbitrary and divorced from substance.

Sebastabear;842851494 said:

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Actually yes I was there. And I saw snow. Just like the congressmen who saw snow in DC and proclaimed global warming a hoax. But this is the ultimate confusing weather with climate. I didn't say I went to Iceland and wore a t-shirt. I went to Iceland and saw ecological devastation. This is the climate.

But you can't pick out a storm or even a place and say "climate change." It's all about worldwide averages. And according to Scientific American and NASA and other left wing organizations, 2016 was the hottest year ever recorded, which broke the record set in 2015 which broke the record set in 2014, etc, etc. 16 of the 17 hottest years recorded ever were in this century, with the exception being 1998 (climate change deniers favorite year).

It's all about the trend and no one can mistake the trend unless they have an agenda.

Oh and the spikes in the 1930s were caused by... wait for it... manmade pollution. You might remember we burned some coal back then.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/scientists-trace-climate-heat-link-to-1930s-20115

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"Air pollution" was also the cause advanced to explain the global cooling from the 1960s-70s.









Back then, there was a scientific consensus that we were going to enter a new ice age, and that humanity should be mobilized to avoid man-made climate armageddon, with the usual assortment of global taxes and drastic global industrial curbs. Plus a change...


Prior to the 1990s, data showed that the 1930s-40s temperatures were about as high as today's. I would refer you to the chart for US temperature records I've posted above. Datasets like NASA's were "adjusted" by Hansen. Here's a good documentation of the evolution of NASA's history of tampering with its data:

https://realclimatescience.com/history-of-nasanoaa-temperature-corruption/

dajo9;842851492 said:

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Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. put our troops all over the Middle East. Go ask somebody that voted for them why we have soldiers there.

I'm all for US energy independence with a a fast transition to green energy that will allow us to leave the Middle East.

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With due respect, this goes back way before Bush-1 and Bush-2, and precedes the Dulles bros. It goes back to when our world maps showed the Middle East region as "Asia Minor".

Bush-1&2 are tools. Bush-1 is even more culpable because of his tasking while leading the CIA.

Unit2Sucks;842851502 said:

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Classic Cal88 to tell you not to confuse climate with weather after cherry picking the 1930s US heat wave.

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It's not a "heat wave", it's a decade plus long warm plateau, so climate, not weather.

There you go:



The climate was significantly hotter in the 1930s than it is today, that's a well-documented fact in north America.

dajo9;842851486 said:

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Fossil fuels are almost literally the only industry Russia has so it isn't surprising you are a big proponent of its indefinite continuation

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Lolz, right on cue. Don't ever change, dajo.

Cal88;842851515 said:

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It's not a "heat wave", it's a decade plus long warm plateau, so climate, not weather.

There you go:



The climate was significantly hotter in the 1930s than it is today, that's a well-documented fact in north America.

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Are you a climate scientist?

Cal88;842851522 said:

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Lolz, right on cue. Don't ever change, dajo.

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Silent again on me dismantling your economic arguments

Tell me, Comrade. Why should I believe any of your science arguments when you are so ready to spout such garbage economics?

dajo9;842851525 said:

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Silent again on me dismantling your economic arguments

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Your approach to the debate is exceedingly dogmatic and reflexively hostile, and your level of discourse is not that particularly impressive to start with (trying to stay polite here). It's that particular combination that makes you not worth that time investment on my part, at least not on a busy thread in a workday.

Cal88;842851529 said:

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Your approach to the debate is exceedingly dogmatic and reflexively hostile, and your level of discourse is not that particularly impressive to start with (trying to stay polite here). It's that particular combination that makes you not worth that time investment on my part, at least not on a busy thread in a workday.

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You aren't fooling anybody

dajo9;842851530 said:

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You aren't fooling anybody

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He has me fooled. Are you thinking he is using KGB tactics?

We need Nuclear power.

Caltech Professor and others weigh in on the temperature measurements which have been continually revised:


https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/ef-gast-data-research-report-062717.pdf


Proponents of the religion of climate change feel free to weigh in but you may want to read this first....I can already predict the first knee jerk response.

Meanwhile, there's good skiing in July (JULY!) in Tahoe and Greenland just set a northern hemisphere record for cold temps in July.

People act like there is no such thing as weather cycles and it's inevitable that the earth will get hotter and hotter. And of course, there were dire warnings of the coming ice age by the same weather pimps that now push their global warming er..."climate change" supposedly incontrovertible doctrine now. 97%! 97%! BS.

The world takes care of the environment far more than it used to, for the most part. It used to be a free for all of industrial pollution, with the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie catching fire a few decades ago. Not anymore.

The Paris Accords by their proponents' own admission would have best-case impact of lowering average temps by well less than one degree over many decades of time. And really, that's just a theoretical assessment and guesswork. Meanwhile, energy prices would significantly rise for consumers because corporations ALWAYS pass on higher costs mandated by the drastic emissions reductions required by the Paris Agreement.

It was a bad deal for us and never should've been signed. I do support U.S efforts to limit pollution by less costly and draconian means, however.

NVBear78;842851541 said:

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Caltech Professor and others weigh in on the temperature measurements which have been continually revised:


https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/ef-gast-data-research-report-062717.pdf

Proponents of the religion of climate change feel free to weigh in but you may want to read this first....I can already predict the first knee jerk response.

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NV78, thanks for the link with update on temp averages.

I got started about 20 years ago when I noticed that, among the sources, the highest temp was always recorded as the average. They had to be up to something, so I looked into it and, lo and behold,...

NVBear78;842851541 said:

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Caltech Professor and others weigh in on the temperature measurements which have been continually revised:


https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/ef-gast-data-research-report-062717.pdf


Proponents of the religion of climate change feel free to weigh in but you may want to read this first....I can already predict the first knee jerk response.

---

The main problem with data adjustments and revisions is that the process is not done in an open and transparent manner. In some instances we've only gotten an insight through FOIA, whistleblowers and leaked emails of how the official climate data adjustment sausage was made, and it wasn't pretty.

If you haven't seen this video I've posted earlier on another thread, this is Cal prof Muller (who's actually a warmist not a "denier", and the head of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature group) showing the deceptive approach to the "hockey stick"/Climategate deception carried over by top administrators at some of the leading weather institutes like Phil Jones, head of CRU, and Cal '89 grad Michael Mann, director of ESS.

This video illustrates a staggering disregard for scientific ethical standards in those circles, summarized in 5 minutes:

[video=youtube;8BQpciw8suk][/video]

sycasey;842851346 said:

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I mean, if I'm being totally honest, I'm 100% more concerned with the decisions being made by those who have their hands on the reins of power (Trump and Republicans in Congress) than I am with whether or not you (or BearGoggles) feel your personal views are validated by the current discussion. I don't really care if you feel validated.

However, I do think that part of the problem is that the party that ostensibly represents "conservative" values is nowhere near a nuanced argument like "We're adamantly against the carbon taxing of the USA and allowing coal usage and growth in China and India until roughly 2030, so here is what we should do for the environment instead." Their position is "deny, deny, deny" and offering no solutions. If they had their own proposals, there would be something to debate. Instead, the debate becomes: do you believe scientists or not?

Maybe if principled conservatives started voting and advocating against Republicans in larger numbers we'd see some change in that debate.

---

I'm not expecting you to validate my feelings. But if you can't see the nexus between what people like me believe or "feel" and who get elected to have their "hands on the reigns of power," then you're missing how the country works. Whether you like it or not, people advocating for a policy - particularly one that taxes carbon and/or impacts a huge portion of the populace/economy - have to actually convince the electorate that your proposed policy is sound. You con't make or win that type of argument by claiming to be omniscient ("settled science") or dismissing people who make legitimate points - like the failure of any climate model to accurately predicate climate.

Regarding the notion of Republicans like Odonto or me "advocating against Republicans," that might be an option if the opposing candidates were not climate change absolutist who want to punitively tax (or even ban) carbon fuels, regardless of cost. So if progressives like you would vote to put forth more mainstream candidates, "we'd see some change in the debate" (to use your words). It cuts both ways.

Unit2Sucks;842851509 said:

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Sorry Odonto but this isn't even close to a moderate position. You believe AGW is a problem and that it needs to be addressed. Yet you seem to support the US withdrawing from a voluntary pact by 192 countries to reduce their collective impact on the planet's climate. What do you hope to accomplish from a withdrawal from Paris? What is your ultimate end goal?

I think, by contrast, remaining in Paris is a moderate position. One extreme would be forcing (by hook or by crook) all other countries into a binding and enforceable treaty that would be far more restrictive and would be far more likely to have the desired impact in reducing AGW. It seems given your believe in the danger of AGW that you would actually support the outcome here which is a higher likelihood of minimizing the negative impacts to our civilization. Another extreme would be for Paris to fail entirely which would show that collective action is impossible and we must submit to the inevitability of climate change.

So I ask again, what do you think is the likeliest outcome from Trump's withdrawal? I think you should reconsider whether your positions are actually moderate when you claim to be fore moderation in all things. Merely splitting the baby is not necessarily moderation, it's arbitrary and divorced from substance.

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You are falling victim to defining your own beliefs as moderate. If the Paris accords were so "moderate," why didn't President Obama submit those policies to the Senate for ratification as a treaty? The reason was because the agreement was not popular and would not have been approved. Why is it that liberals are so unwilling to actually make a political/policy argument in a legislative body (in this case Congress)? If the Paris Accords are so obviously great, why not defend them on their merits?

To answer your question, there will be virtually no short term consequence resulting from Trump's withdrawal, other than political. In the long term, I suspect the US will likely meet most of the emissions targets, because domestic policy (particularly in states like California) was already heading in the green direction. But the US will not be asked to directly subsidize other polluting countries and the US will not be locked into international "moral" (arguably non-binding) commitments that put it at a disadvantage, all while implicitly (if not explicitly) permitting the biggest polluters - China and India - to increase their pollution levels.

bearlyamazing;842851542 said:

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Meanwhile, there's good skiing in July (JULY!) in Tahoe and Greenland just set a northern hemisphere record for cold temps in July.

People act like there is no such thing as weather cycles and it's inevitable that the earth will get hotter and hotter. And of course, there were dire warnings of the coming ice age by the same weather pimps that now push their global warming er..."climate change" supposedly incontrovertible doctrine now. 97%! 97%! BS.

The world takes care of the environment far more than it used to, for the most part. It used to be a free for all of industrial pollution, with the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie catching fire a few decades ago. Not anymore.

The Paris Accords by their proponents' own admission would have best-case impact of lowering average temps by well less than one degree over many decades of time. And really, that's just a theoretical assessment and guesswork. Meanwhile, energy prices would significantly rise for consumers because corporations ALWAYS pass on higher costs mandated by the drastic emissions reductions required by the Paris Agreement.

It was a bad deal for us and never should've been signed. I do support U.S efforts to limit pollution by less costly and draconian means, however.

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I'm old enough to remember when people mocked those pointing to weather as evidence of climate change. We had a drought then record rains - does that mean the climate reverted? Of course not.

And even if the current weather was in fact evidence of climate change, there are still the open questions of: (i) to what extent is the Climate change cause by humans; (ii) what can we do about it; and (iii) what are the real costs and benefits of the changed climate?

drizzlybears brother;842851524 said:

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Are you a climate scientist?

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The video I've posted above is a 5min rundown of the top top climate scientists (heads of the ESS and CRU) getting caught trying to deceive the public, explained by the top climate scientist (hierarchically speaking) at Cal.

Here's another short video showing the kind of deception the other top climate scientist (NASA/Goddard head James Hansen) was involved in to deceive Congress:

[video=youtube;wXCfxxXRRdY][/video]

Not nearly as egregious as drylabing data (which Hansen has done), but pretty funny and indicative of his approach to ethics.

bearlyamazing;842851542 said:

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Meanwhile, there's good skiing in July (JULY!) in Tahoe and Greenland just set a northern hemisphere record for cold temps in July.

People act like there is no such thing as weather cycles and it's inevitable that the earth will get hotter and hotter. And of course, there were dire warnings of the coming ice age by the same weather pimps that now push their global warming er..."climate change" supposedly incontrovertible doctrine now. 97%! 97%! BS.

The world takes care of the environment far more than it used to, for the most part. It used to be a free for all of industrial pollution, with the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie catching fire a few decades ago. Not anymore.

The Paris Accords by their proponents' own admission would have best-case impact of lowering average temps by well less than one degree over many decades of time. And really, that's just a theoretical assessment and guesswork. Meanwhile, energy prices would significantly rise for consumers because corporations ALWAYS pass on higher costs mandated by the drastic emissions reductions required by the Paris Agreement.

It was a bad deal for us and never should've been signed. I do support U.S efforts to limit pollution by less costly and draconian means, however.

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+1

I was talking to a builder the other day. He said the 2016 CalGreen Energy Code requires apartments to be wrapped so tight that the buildings are going to sweat. Replacing the existing apartment stock in California will take 50 years before it makes a difference. Meanwhile, people in the new apartments will be subjected to an increase in mold and mildew.

Just like in real life, deniers on BI keep producing content - any content - to obfuscate the universally-accepted truth of the matter. I'm amazed such people went to Cal, although my amazement ebbs as time goes by. In a way, I hope that such posters' livelihoods are closely tied to this stuff. Otherwise, they've simply been hoodwinked by a political party. Again, this is sobering stuff.

chazzed;842851558 said:

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Just like in real life, deniers on BI keep producing content - any content - to obfuscate the universally-accepted truth of the matter. I'm amazed such people went to Cal, although my amazement ebbs as time goes by. In a way, I hope that such posters' livelihoods are closely tied to this stuff. Otherwise, they've simply been hoodwinked by a political party. Again, this is sobering stuff.

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Very much so. And trying to refute every single chart, graph, and link they throw at you is only playing on the deniers' turf: acting like any of us are actually experts in this matter and can puzzle out the data ourselves. Not going to play that game. I understand that different experts and studies might disagree on some of the particulars. I am interested in what the general consensus is among those experts.

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

https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

Cal88;842851547 said:

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The main problem with data adjustments and revisions is that the process is not done in an open and transparent manner. In some instances we've only gotten an insight through FOIA, whistleblowers and leaked emails of how the official climate data adjustment sausage was made, and it wasn't pretty.

If you haven't seen this video I've posted earlier on another thread, this is Cal prof Muller (who's actually a warmist not a "denier", and the head of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature group) showing the deceptive approach to the "hockey stick"/Climategate deception carried over by top administrators at some of the leading weather institutes like Phil Jones, head of CRU, and Cal '89 grad Michael Mann, director of ESS.

This video illustrates a staggering disregard for scientific ethical standards in those circles, summarized in 5 minutes:

[video=youtube;8BQpciw8suk][/video]

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So I watched with interest to learn, not to solidify my arguments for or against anything. But what concerns me is that those on the left have paused to gather themselves and figure out how to respond to Richard Muller's video. I have read plenty of this before about the changing data points and reducing those in extremely cold areas. But usually these points of information are put out to solidify one's point. Not so here.

And thank God Muller is a believer in the science must be good, or be questioned. So now I await the other side presenting counter data and conclusions. I would hope not just character assassination of R. Muller which is the usual case (we might find out he is a Republican or voted for Trump or worse yet is a racist, misyoginist, homophobe). Tis' awful quiet in here.