The issue with climate change is not how big the temperature change is. It's *how fast it happens*. Most previous swings in the Earth's climate occurred on close to geological timescales, with ecosystems having plenty of time to adapt. Our current rate of acceleration out of the pre-industrial comfort zone is what is going to cause probl…
The issue with climate change is not how big the temperature change is. It's *how fast it happens*. Most previous swings in the Earth's climate occurred on close to geological timescales, with ecosystems having plenty of time to adapt. Our current rate of acceleration out of the pre-industrial comfort zone is what is going to cause problems, not just for humans but living ecosystems across the planet in general.
I enjoy Rogan's podcast but it should not be your sole source of information on serious topics like this, which should be beyond politics. (For that matter, neither should internet comments like mine!)
In the 1970s the hysteria was about cooling, not warming. Then a bit of warming was detected for a while and then that stopped happening and the narrative changed from "global warming" to "climate change." That change in narrative and the fact the innumerable predictions of disaster like those of James Hansen never happened within the time frame specified should have been a wake-up call to the public that this was all hocus pocus but sadly it was not. Climate hysteria is all about money and power for the elite. If we don't wake up from this nightmare soon we will all be cold and hungry. Tragic.
“By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people,” and when in 1974 he wrote “America’s economic joyride is coming to an end: there will be no more cheap, abundant energy, no more cheap abundant food.”
Hard to take these doomsday folks seriously when they keep missing the mark...by a lot!
The fact that this ridiculous charlatan, who has been completely wrong on every single one of his public pronouncements that I am aware of, is nevertheless treated as an acclaimed, award-winning "scholar" and enjoying a tenured sinecure at Stanford, no less, tells one everything one needs to know about the current state of government "science".
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. ... The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
Not only was Paul Ehrlich ridiculously wrong, but he is now celebrated by the new “catastrophists”. I guess the IPCC realized that no wrong prediction will ever discredit its authors, so they brazenly declared 2030 as the “end of the world”.
What amazes me is that we now know younger dryas happened, and around 12,000 years ago sea levels rose 400 feet. We don’t know the exact length, but that took from decades to 1,000 years at most. In the last 125 years we’ve seen sea levels rise about 8inches (total) or 0.063inches per year. Compared to the recent past we are in great shape!!
But yet, they keep working at it. Are they suicidal? If there is no more abundant food or energy, it won't be because industry can't do it, it will be because they have been prevented from doing so.
One of the benefits of getting older is we remember things like this. A lot of these people protesting will look back on these times and wonder, “How could I be so gullible?”
Gullible because they are stupid. I’m not old, I’m a millennial. I also realized in my very early 20’s most of the activists driven narratives were complete bs. It took me a decade to shed all the indoctrination, but the cure was easy. Actual knowledge. Learning about sun cycles, the little ice age, younger dryas where 12,000 years ago the seas suddenly rose 400ft. The fact is sea levels have risen about 0.063 inches per year since recordings began around 1900. That is in line with some of the calmest changes in the Earth’s climate in history. Storms are not increasing. The sea levels are not rising. Polar Bear numbers are doing great. So is the Great Barrier Reef - currently seeing one of its largest expansions in the 36 years it’s been recorded. What’s not doing great? The polluted waterways near left wing help holes (poverty is terrible for the environment), and once jungles in the Congo now toxic wastelands compliments of cobalt mining. The whole reason the “climate warriors” want mining off shore is to keep poor brown people around the world enslaved and the wastelands from producing batteries, turbines, and solar panels in someone else’s backyard.
Some will but many will move in to the next “impending” disaster without blinking. Look Ehrlich and Mckibben. They’re still at it despite their record of being 100% wrong.
This is always a great compendium of the various environmentalist hysteria contrivances -- all of it 100% wrong 100% of the time. And yet the fools still fall for it.
I've seen this blog, glad to see that someone is keeping track of all of the false predictions. If you're interested I recently published a piece on this topic in the American Spectator.
Mr. Dublin, what make of you Exxon/Mobil's own private research team who forecast in the late 1960s (quite accurately), after exhaustively examining the oil company's internal documents, that the burning of the company's fossil fuels would eventually contribute to a warming planet by 0.2C every decade?
It's even been suggested by scholars, researchers and journalists who uncovered the oil giant's research that "ExxonMobil's predictions were often more accurate than even world-leading Nasa scientists."
"The research, published in the academic journal Science, also suggests that ExxonMobil had reasonable estimates for how emissions would need to be reduced in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change in a world warmed by 2C or more."
"Their scientists also correctly rejected the theory that an ice age was coming at a time when other researchers were still debating the prospect."
In addition, the boys and girls at the Pentagon have drawn up elaborate, detailed, war-gaming plans that would allow the nations's armed forces to effectively and strategically respond to the planetary havoc a warming planet might cause. What make of you this?
The link that you gave me is from the BBC. Notice that it is all innuendo, no specific sources are cited but James Hansen of NASA is mentioned in passing as an authority yet every last one of his predictions have been false, every last one, go check them out for yourself and prove me wrong if you can. I know all about the lawsuit against ExxonMobile. This is about climate activists trying to hit up an oil company for money. It’s law fare and propaganda. If you want to read a good analysis of what is going on there go to the blog called The Manhattan Contrarian and there you will also find links to a number of good sites that discuss all of the issues relating to climate. The best recent summary of the science is Professor Steve Koonin’s book Unsettled: what Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, and why it Matters. Do not rely on know nothing ideological journalists such as those at the BBC.
Oh, ya---one last bit of housekeeping: Steve "Kook"ing. Kooning is a world-class kook (we already know this) as well as an unsteady disseminator of bad, dissembling faux-science. Verdict: production is so preposterous, can't even be considered a true propagandist.
By the way, Max, there was no mention of an ExxonMobil lawsuit in my initial post to you. A entirely separate issue from the one under discussion, though unquestionably both are inextricably linked if the subject is Big Oil Perfidy. Lawfare and propaganda indeed.
We were discussing the fact that Big Oil's own scientists and executives were well aware, dating back to the late 1960's, that the burning of their hydrocarbon products by their fellow man was throwing dangerous levels of CO2 into the atmosphere and thus contributing to the warming of the planet to dangerous levels (0.2C every decade).
And I'm happy to report to you that there is an abundance of innuendo-free material readily and freely accessible on the internet and elsewhere, that accurately and thoroughly examines this, not only through innuendo-free documents, but actual primary documents from the hands of the Boys and Girls of Big Oil themselves! Eureka! Primary documents compiled by Big Oil's own scientists and executives that show Big Oil's own scientists and executives knew that they were contributing to global warming and were throwing dangerous levels of CO2 into the atmosphere because their own research demonstrated it!
And I must apologize for sending you that tawdry BBC link. I confess that is was both gauche and boorish of me. But speaking of propaganda and oil, your boy Francis Menton down there in the West Village is certainly busy burning his own midnight oil, Manhattan contrary-wise at any rate. Francis allows that while the Village is still a hip and cool place to hang one's hat these days, it from time to time causes him to suffer "from a stifling political and ideological orthodoxy," which I imagine is his way of saying that it's somewhat disruptive to the efficient functioning of his own propaganda mill. Francis should get that condition checked out straightaway by a Political Scientist, one specializing in Diseases of Orthodoxy.
And just who is underwriting your sinecure over there at the spectator, as you compile your choice propaganda bits, I like to imagine, from a lawn chair in R. Emmett Jr.'s backyard? Scaife? Bradley? Koch? I bet it's that bastard Charlie Koch! You know, Max, the word on the street is that Charlie's grown soft and sentimental in his dotage. Balderdash! Nonsense I say! Charlie's still a guy that could and most assuredly would be willing to bite the head off of an endangered species of rattlesnake---dead or alive---for five bucks and a beer. The three of them strike me as the type to deploy a fellow septuagenarian for such a project. It's how they roll.
To make amends for the BBC gaffe, below you'll find both an excerpt and a link that provide an exciting scientific account of Big Oil Perfidy, featuring innuendo-free primary documents from the hands of the Big Oil boys and girls themselves. Enjoy.
"...In 2015, investigative journalists discovered internal company memos indicating that Exxon oil company has known since the late 1970s that its fossil fuel products could lead to global warming with “dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.” Additional documents then emerged showing that the US oil and gas industry’s largest trade association had likewise known since at least the 1950s, as had the coal industry since at least the 1960s, and electric utilities, Total oil company, and GM and Ford motor companies since at least the 1970s."
"Scholars and journalists have analyzed the texts contained in these documents, providing qualitative accounts of fossil fuel interests’ knowledge of climate science and its implications. In 2017, for instance, we demonstrated that Exxon’s internal documents, as well as peer-reviewed studies published by Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists, overwhelmingly acknowledged that climate change is real and human-caused. By contrast, the majority of Mobil and ExxonMobil Corp’s public communications promoted doubt on the matter."
LOL! There was no 'global cooling' hysteria. Global warming is real as our use of fossil fuels released greenhouse gases that trap heat. It's physics dimwit.
Yes, but Will Happer and others make the argument that increased CO2 levels have diminishing contribution toward heating. He draws the analogy of painting a barn red. After 2 coats, the barn can only get so much "redder." This is why the earth wasn't 300C degrees when CO2 levels on Earth were more than 15 times what they are now.
Will et al are stupid fucks, they haven't a clue about what they're talking about. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and it will increase temperatures as they did in prehistoric times, higher concentrations led to higher temperatures. Look at Venus. We have the hydrologic cycle to aid in constraining maximums, but they will increase far more than we evolved with and that means everything.
The difference between then and now is that life had evolved in higher CO2 concentrations and the resultant higher temperatures. Now, humans have already decimated wildlife populations and destroyed their environment, which hadn't been the case in previous climate change extinction events. Humans have made matters far worse as wildlife and plants have no where to go due to human encroachment and destruction of the ecosystems that did exist.
Understand this. When enough species go functionally extinct, the ecosystem collapses and so too civilization. We're done and that could happen very soon as wildlife populations are under extreme pressure already.
Back to what we were in the 1970s or so. However, what we have added will remain in the atmosphere for about 1,000 years, so we're stuck with climate change exacerbating all the other problems humans caused. This will not end well.
I just don’t get you malthusian types. There are a lot of issues with the statistics in the LPI to the point where their data is almost meaningless. What’s that saying? “Statistics lie and liars use statistics”? See here
LOL! Of course you wouldn't understand nor accept the fact that we are driving an extinction event because you haven't experienced one. It's a very human problem, like those that live on the slopes of an active volcano that has wiped out populations before.
The significant decline in wildlife populations is an extinction event.
No, it is due to the fact that humans are more optimistic than reality supports, because if people haven't suffered an event, they minimize it. This is seen with every crisis. They ignore the signs during development, then demand action after it happens and then ignore danger signs as another crisis develops. It's how we think.
Not weird. Sorry, but there was no scientific concern over any cooling, as the investigation into the research shows. The press isn't competent, as shown by their inability to correctly relate mRNA vaccine information.
Steven Koonin, a Rogan guest and Obama's lead scientist on climate change, says the climate emergency is just a lot of hysteria. The impact of man made climate change has so far been negligible. He also thinks there is a high probability future impacts will be small and manageable. Certainly not enough to justify $150 trillion expenditure on windmills, solar panels and electric cars.
A lot of climate hysteria I think is meant to sell the public on shifting away from a fossil fuel driven economy, which TPTB want done for other political reasons.
Respectfully disagree that Team Biden is trying to "sell" we plebs anything. They are signing executive orders and issuing "rules" just as fast as they can.
People like our cabinet post Energy Secretary are going to make money on the new transportation system. John Kerry's head is going to get even bigger with pride* --- while jetting to the coronation, because he says he is saving the planet. We aren't being invited or asked. We are being told, not sold.
*At the BBC broadcast of the coronation this morning, (yes, I watched) Kerry was there and was sporting several medals of some kind on his coat. Those must be Climate Medals. Didn't he throw his US of A 'Nam medals away or "in protest?" How much carbon was produced producing Kerry's coronation participation medals? Hilarious.
Steven Koonin was not "Obama's lead scientist on climate change". He was Undersecretary for Science and Energy at the Department of Energy and had an annual budget of about $200 million for climate-related research, which is a significant amount, but not the largest (NOAA and NASA each were larger). And the lead scientist would have been in OSTP at the White House.
Koonin does have a lot of high-level first-hand knowledge of climate science. He organized and ran the 2013 seminar for the American Physical Society, which had six of the leading climate scientists in the US speak and discuss the major aspects of climate science. https://www.aps.org/policy/statements/upload/climate-seminar-transcript.pdf
The slides used by each speaker are included in the transcript.
That is a pure opinion piece. The writer says: "In an apparent quest for fairness when he led a committee of the American Physical Society (one of my professional organizations) to assess its statement on climate change, he recruited three scientists to represent the 97% consensus, and three contrarians, presumably to speak for the other 3%."
That is pure nonsense. There is no "97% consensus".
And the three "contrarians" were three of the top climate scientists in the country, with at least as significant accomplishments as the other three. John Christy developed and is in charge of the official NASA satellite atmospheric temperature database at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. Judith Curry was head of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. Richard Lindzen was professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT.
There are many more statements in the essay that attack reputable scientists and ignore the fact that climate science is in fact unsettled, as Prof. Koonin's book title says.
There are no models that predict even just future temperatures. Every one of them overestimates the temperature change from 1990 to 2020 (the current standard) by more than 1 degree C. (many by much more). Knowledge of past climate is very limited, as satellite measurements don't start until just before 1980, and surface temperature measurements are very unreliable and VERY limited in how much of the earth's surface is covered. And we don't know many of the factors that determine climate very well, such as solar cycles or the role of aerosols.
That is a far-left anti-science web site. You can tell they are anti-science when they call people they disagree with "deniers" or "denialists". The first paragraph alone has the word 3 times. Thanks for pointing out the stupidity at these sites that attack highly reputable scientists.
Recent “research” is clearly directed to eliminate obvious evidence for natural, fast climate variations such as the medieval optimum and the Little Ice Age. There’s a recent paper that claims the medieval optimum is just a local phenomenon in England, not seen in the rest of the world. Of course, we know it was present in Greenland, hence the settlements that later disappeared through starvation, when the climate cooled. The point is that you can have “scientific”, “peer-reviewed” papers published in “reputable journals” that are simply hit pieces on demand. As a scientist I’ve seen this countless times in the last 30 years, in topics that were nowhere near climate change in terms of political involvement and consequent pressure on scientists. Today, any of the few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy get immediately flagged as “controversial” (at least) while doomsday drivel of the most obvious kind never has any problem.
That's bull shit. Peer review is exactly how scientific research is validated and protected from falsity- by ensuring that methodologies are consistent with accepted principles of research.
Lancet editor-in-chief Richard Horton: “The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability—not the validity—of a new finding…We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.”
I don't think many scientists would say that peer review is an absolute guarantee of accuracy. It is just what it is, and of course no human-created system, operating within other imperfect systems (including capitalism) is perfect. But what would you suggest as a better system? Or do you think that science is bettered and more likely to produce better information if everyone is simply left to their own opinions and definitions of "science"?
Peer review assumes unbiased opinions from highly qualified individuals who don’t have any vested interest. It was always rather idealistic; it has been severely compromised in the last decades when scientists have been under intense pressure to “publish faster than they think” to get funding, and since the woke zombie explosion it has become a joke, a tool to restrict scientific expression to whatever is acceptable to the establishment, from social sciences to climate studies to Covid directions.
While I have, as I said, no doubts that the products of science, especially when commercially relevant and funded by those with vested interests, are occasionally to frequently biased, it is to my mind a vast oversimplification to apply that critique uniformly to all research and researchers. In fact, such oversimplification is exactly the problem I observe among most of those contesting the majority scientific opinion about climate change. In fact, in even your short comment here there is an abundance of logical error. And your remark about 'woke zombie explosion' is irrelevant to this discussion- even if I agree that there has been one.
Ah, so there’s no less than “abundance” of “logical error” in my comment but you couldn’t be bothered to provide any example of that. You really want to prove my point about the condescendence and arrogance of the true believers. As to the recent “woke zombie explosion”, you just haven’t noticed anything since 2020, such as moral panic, clamor for conformity and government-imposed restrictions, the MSM forming a cartel that at the request of the government imposes news black-outs on whatever topic is inconvenient but turns out to be true, etc. Do you think that generates an atmosphere where honest, unbiased scientific research is encouraged and rewarded? Generally speaking, why are you wasting your time and talents on Substack, when the NYT or the WaPo comments section are a perfect match for you?
I assure you, I've been awake since about 1968 - when I first encountered the war machine, American exceptionalism and imperialism.
Yet I wouldn't call normal, best practice public health provisions, "moral panic"; and what you call a clamor for conformity was a demand that people not sneeze and cough on vulnerable others. The only "moral panic" I saw was from idiots who thought that mask mandates in crowded public places was somehow a denial of their rights, and a signal of "mass control". I suppose, though, that the claim that the pandemic itself was "faux" - just a ruse to demonstrate said control- could also be considered a case of moral panic. It was at least a hyperventilating hysteria.
You might care to read what public health professionals, and the available research, show about how to prevent outbreaks from becoming pandemics. That the U.S. was so negligent in the beginning in that regard was the primary reason why the U.S. experienced some of the highest mortality rates, and why a pandemic did occur. Just a hint: they do recommend isolation of cases, strong encouragement for extra diligence in personal hygeine, etc. Quarantining is SOP; though in the U.S. those were not enforced.
I would agree that the MSM is effectively a cartel, one that works closely with their Parties of choice, and with the Administration. (Glenn Greenwald has a spot on critique of this relationship, as illustrated during the WH Correspondent's Dinner.) And especially when it comes to foreign policy (projection of economic, political and military imperialism), there is a silencing of dissent. This has long been the case but it is greatly being amplified.
That said, it says little about the state of scientific research. To impugn all scientists as somehow compromised and dishonest is again, the worst kind of sweeping generalization.
Furthermore, does it not undermine your own arguments about the 'science' of those to whom you prefer to get your opinions?
Lastly, why are you wasting your time on Substack when you could be writing for Q-Anon, or better, some fantasy-hero anime?
Spoken like the “life-long (well, practically) dissident, activist for peace and environment , community organizer, group & campaign initiator/leader; seeker of justice” you claim to be.
"As a scientist..." You certainly don't marshal demonstrable facts or put forth coherent arguments like a scientist.
"...As a scientist I’ve seen this countless times in the last 30 years, in topics that were nowhere near climate change in terms of political involvement and consequent pressure on scientists. Today, any of the few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy get immediately flagged as “controversial” (at least) while doomsday drivel of the most obvious kind never has any problem"
That’s a weird one! You want to know exactly in what my PhD is (Geology), my list of publications, workplaces and everything else? What exactly are the non-demonstrable facts and in-coherent arguments that have caused your ire? Are you part of the climate catastrophist religion or you just have a lot of bile against anybody who didn’t share your opinions on unrelated topics in the past?
"Today, any of the few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy get immediately flagged as “controversial” (at least) while doomsday drivel of the most obvious kind never has any problem"
That's a difficult one to either prove or refute, wouldn't you say? Perhaps the "few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy" are rejected due to bad science and unsubstantiated claims. And "doomsday drivel?"
All models have been so far off as to be meaningless. Can anyone explain how models in 2000 predicting glaciers in the northern hemisphere would be gone by 2020, when they were observed to have barely changed in reality by 2020, gives us any information supporting climate change hysteria? Can anyone point to a single climate model that both predicts doom and gloom but was somewhat accurate over a 10-year time frame?
The observed rate of sea level rise since recordings in 1900 has been 0.063 inches. Less than 8 inches in 125 years, and no evidence of consistent acceleration. Compared to 12,000 years ago when sea levels rose 400ft in less than 1000 years. Our temperature changes have taken place leas rapidly than going into and out of the little ice age only a few hundred years ago.
The Great Barrier Reef is thriving, as are polar bear numbers. What’s not thriving is the natural areas of the Congo which have been turned into a toxic wasteland chasing mathematically unachievable energy sources that are toxic as hell and so inefficient all they will power is the movement towards expanding poverty (which is terrible for the environment). The assertion that “profound limitations” is meaningless is itself nothing but a distraction from the discussions.
Our models don’t work. All evidence we have is that the Earth’s climate is fairly calm right now compared to what we think we know about the recent and distant past. If humans are having an impact on the climate, we haven’t the tools to have a clue what it is. The climate warriors are lazy communist nihilists. It’s why so many are also CRT loving racists and overt promoters of child genitalia mutilation, drug addiction, and general destruction of functioning society.
No climate models predicted that glaciers would be "gone" by 2020. The models did, however, predict that they would be disappearing at a rather alarming clip in there next 20 years and beyond. Fo you I provided the link below that contains a pretty picture that you might find helpful in understanding the problem.
And then there's this new-fangled search enginey thing called "google." Type in "disappearing European glaciers" and you'll be able to look at a whole lot more of the pretty pictures of melting glaciers that demonstrate the phenomenon "melting glaciers." There are even words accompanying the pictures that provide helpful explanations of what is causing the glaciers to melt.
But you do receive two gold stars for the last two sentences in your post:
"...The climate warriors are lazy communist nihilists. It’s why so many are also CRT loving racists and overt promoters of child genitalia mutilation, drug addiction, and general destruction of functioning society..."
Yes, ma'am. CRT loving racists, promoters of child genitalia mutilation, drug addiction, and lastly but certainly not leastly...busying hastening the destruction of functional society. These people well may be climate warriors and commie nihilists, but lazy? They sound more like go-getters and self-starters to me. Irritating busybodies, perhaps, but lazy?
My point: "profound limitations" is about as vague and opaque as it gets. And what doesn't have profound limitations? Earth is little else than a collection of "profound limitations."
It won’t let me respond below. There was literally a sign out up at glacier national park, circa 2004ish, warning visitors that the glacier would be totally gone by 2020. In 2020, the glacier having not receded, the park decided to take the sign down when it became a meme.
Yes, we were told that models indicated some glaciers would totally disappear by, well, now. There has long been movement in glacier coverage, and as far as the ice caps go, arctic ice caps melting don’t really pose a threat to ocean levels. Antarctic ice caps do, but the promises of gloom from those has also been hyped.
The earth’s climate and surface is always changing. We think we can reconstruct the past to observe what has happened, but we have shown zero ability to really predict the future - even a couple years. The only models which have any usefulness tend to depend on solar cycles and orbit wobbles and nothing to do with humans. The saddest thing is all this faux climate alarm is serving to justify knowingly polluting the environment. Almost 25% of the Congo is contaminated with toxic waste. Destroying the rubber tree forests apparently wasn’t enough. Now wokies want to ensure it’s a toxic wasteland so they can feel good about their electric car. Sad.
The problem for the believers is that their beliefs are based on cherry-picked and falsified data, which were cherry-picked and falsified for political reasons.
Oh, and the other problem is that the predictions by the climate doomsayers never seem to come true.
Our disastrous k-12 education system has been complicit in propagangandizing our children. They are scared shitless by the lies they’ve been told. They know nothing except the world is gonna boil over
I was in school in the 70's during the oil shock and what was called the "energy crisis". We were inundated with "Peak Oil" propaganda and promises that the earth would run out of oil by the time we graduated high school. I'm looking to retire in a few years, meanwhile still waiting for that oil to dry up.
The only impediments to the flow of oil are purely political. In the 1970's it was the Arab Oil Embargo targeting the U.S. for its support of Israel during the 6 day war. Today it's Biden administration policies blocking production -- while selling off our SPR stockpile to China. Remember folks, carbon only matters when its produced by the West. Those belching oil and coal fired plants in China and India are excluded from the conversation.
The White House Correspondence Dinner should be renamed The Muppet Show. That’s basically what they are, a bunch of muppets. Probably an insult to the muppets though.
Regardless, there has been no truly significant increase in temperatures in over 100 years according to NOAA. And the “Climate” is not a monolith, you cannot discuss it without referring to multiple climates around the world, where temperatures rise and fall all the time geographically. It’s asinine to discuss climate change as a whole. The hysterical elite know this, but they do it anyway at the same time as flying around the world in private jets and buying beachfront property.
Here’s some stats to cheer up everyone, you can easily check the veracity of them:
1) Great Barrier Reef at record levels since records began
2) Polar bear numbers five-times higher than in the 1950s
3) Antarctic sea ice increasing by 1% per decade since 1979
4) Since 1982, new tree cover has offset deforestation by the size of Texas and Alaska combined
And here’s a short list of things we’ll have to live without if we get rid of fossil fuels as the deluded barmy greens want us to do:
Forget smartphones/tablets, broadband/internet, wi-fi & the thousands of miles of fibre optic/copper cable, satellites, TVs, microwave ovens, dishwashers, washing machines, tumble dryers, hair dryers, showers, plumbing, bathroom fittings, glass screens, fridges, freezers, cookers, pots, pans, china, glassware, vacuum cleaners, sporting goods like lycra, plastic cycle helmets, light weight bicycles made of kevlar, plastic composites, aluminium & rubber tyres, canoes, windsurfers, climbing equipment, rucksacks, glasses/sunglasses, medical equipment, syringes, PPE, bandages, plasters, bricks, cement, RSJs, roof tiles, double glazing, satellite dishes, aerials, rubber car tyres (even for EVs!) , laminate car windscreens, paints, mains wiring, farming equipment, tractors, harvesters, milling, processing etc, etc, etc, etc.
Hahahaha, resorting to name calling other posters doesn’t bolster your case.
As I said, things must be discussed rationally and reasonably because there is a plethora of misleading dueling information out there. Here’s some to refute yours:
Thanks, but I'll take the science behind my links, which you clearly have not read or comprehended. And most of the links you have provided are either laughable propaganda organs or obvious unscientific blogs---some of them a little "clickbaitey."
At any rate, many of your links either refute many of your claims or provide inconclusive evidence one way or another to support you claims. Perhaps it's a reading comprehension thing.
So Nature magazine and NASA are “laughable” in your book. This conversation is going nowhere because the bedrock of a decent conversation is missing, that is reason and logic, plus a level of regard for the opinion of others.
There is a stereotype of so called environmentalists who willfully ignore any facts but their own. Your are not helping to debunk that stereotype.
This conversation is over for me. Goodbye, and all the best.
That's a gratuitous assumption, that I'm an environmentalist. Anti-propaganda, willful or otherwise. You don't have to trust the science, but at least engage the science. See ya!
Sorry Tim C, peak climate change hysteria is over with. Humanity has serious environmental challenges ahead, but "climate change" ain't one of them..its been revealed as a scam to further enrich and empower the rich and powerful.
And by the way: this topic is never "beyond politics." So-called "scientists" these days are are as politicized as anyone, the response to COVID taught us that.
Except what you claim about slow swings simply isn’t true. Sea levels rose 400ft at the end of younger dryas. The maximum time span for this rapid warming is 1,000 years, but if May have been as short as a few decades. We haven’t seen sea levels rise a single foot in 125 years, so compared to our ancestors we’re in good shape with a relatively calm climate.
A total of 0.34% of the US population died from c19, remove the over 65 crowd and 0.085% of the population died from c19. Sorry but I’m not that worried.
“people like yourself willingly ignoring a impending catastrophe until it was too late. Events such as every financial crisis that ever happened, WWII, this extinction event, etc.”
Those are not “catastrophes as on the scale of mass extinction.
I’ll say again, people like you have claimed for all of mankind that the world was about to end for various reasons. The one thing they and you have in common is that all were 100% wrong.
“I have no kids. As for living sustainably, everyone is stuck in the reality that selfish people like yourself created through your selfish decisions. I have proposed a number of solutions that would end the use of fossil fuels forever and yet you ignore them.”
Actually you’ve proposed none. You must have me confused with someone else. As for the rest you are in control of yourself. You most certainly could live sustainably if you really wanted to. But for some reason you don’t and choose to blame others.
You missed one thing in your attempt to define Hunan nature several post ago. All species live their lives, only one though contemplates their death...humans. You should spend more time living and less worrying about dying. Take some advice from Jack London and live.
“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
Last comment to you. If you think you are rational and those who disagree with you are not you should read “The Laws of Human Nature” by Robert Greene. You might learn a thing or two.
Also look up the “Morale case for fossil fuels” and expand your depth of knowledge.
Unlike other species we are able to adapt in ways they were not, in large part thanks to carbon energy. Despite the claims of climate catastrophist like yourself we have somehow managed to support ever increasing populations while using less land to do so for example. Perhaps you should take your own advice and do some reading.
No, we're not capable of adapting to totally dysfunctional ecosystems. If the economy couldn't handle the pandemic, which was mild, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, then it will collapse when a few foundation species enter functional extinction. It's over.
The Permian Era extinction event took 60,000 +/- 48,000 years and we are collapsing wildlife populations at a far, far faster rate. It's over if we don't stop now.
LOL! You're an idiot, but I'll tell you how it's done as it's far above any one person, dolt.
1. The federal government funds the development of an industrial scale integral fast reactor that proved itself safe and capable back in 1986. The federal government then funds the building of these reactors to replace all fossil fuel fire power plants t be owned and operated by the states with the rate payers paying back the federal government.
2. The federal government licenses the design to other countries to ensure that they replace their fossil fuel fired power plants.
3. The availability of plentiful and inexhaustible electricity can now be used to generate hydrogen from water on-site to enable the hydrogen era, thus replacing all fossil fuels used in transportation and the need for batteries.
4. End the holocaust that is the animal-based meat industry, nonhuman animals are not ours to do with as we please, and re-engineer agriculture to be environmentally friendly.
5. Develop policies to get people to stop having kids to drive the population to well below 2 billion ASAP while we replace our extractive economy with a sustainable one based on closing the loops from waste to manufacture.
There, that would fix the biggest problems that people like you support.
So, you think that those numbers are vastly incorrect. OK, Einstein. The lesson is that a natural, climate driven extinction event took quite a while, in our terms, but a blink of an eye in geological terms, to wipe out 95% of life on earth and we're accomplishing that in a little over a 1,000 years. Yes, we are collapsing populations at a far faster rate.
“The Permian Era extinction event took 60,000 +/- 48,000 years”
-No self respecting scientist would publish numbers that have an 80% error range.
- easy research shows that the Permian extinction occurred over the course of 15 million years (not 60,000 +\- 48,000) but some now claim that the extinction interval was much more rapid, lasting only about 200,000 years, with the bulk of the species loss occurring over a 20,000-year span near the end of the period which is much more rapid than anything you believe we are seeing now.
So yes, your numbers are vastly incorrect.
We are not in an extinction. If we are then nothing to worry about as an extinction event is a network effect and once started it cannot be stopped. So any claims about an Anthropocene extinction is just an attempt to scare you, something you seem to prone to.
So seriously, what is with you doomsday cultist? Why are you always looking for something to victimize you?
Man is an animal tethered to earth, and like all earth-bound animals passing through this realm, will eventually go extinct.
The chief difference between Homo sapiens and the other species that have passed through and subsequently vanished from this early realm, is that man will provide for its own species' final extinction, quickly, quietly and above all else, efficiently.
We are driving this extinction event, wildlife populations are in decline due to human activity, from overpopulation, our extractive economy, our use of fossil fuels, etc.
Math isn’t your strong point is it? I clearly stated “...lasting only about 200,000 years, with the bulk of the species loss occurring over a 20,000-year span...” which would encompass your 60k+/-
I would also point out that your article was from 2014 and more recent numbers (2021) are 100k for marine life and 1,000,000 for land animals
Either way then point they is lost on you is that an extinction takes 10s of thousands of years and unlike the life forms involved in previous ones we have the ability to change as needed. We are not in dire times and you need to find a new religion other than climate catastrophism
The declines at the end of the Permian Era were very fast and the declines that we're causing are even faster. All it will take is for enough foundation species to enter functional extinction for an ecosystem to collapse, such as krill that has declined over 70-80%, from a number of factors. When that happens, it's over and that could take a very short period of time, such as a few years because of the pressure that we place that didn't exist in the Permian Era.
Global warming is but one more stressor on wildlife caused by humans.
The Industrial Revolution, which is far from over, is the culprit, since it requires continuous massive energy transformations to power it. So far, fossil fuels are the only ones that have sufficient energy density and availability to do it. Any “alternative” will have the same issue; it might not be CO2, but some other manifestation of increased entropy, which ALWAYS accompanies any energy transformation. Guess we should’ve taken that into account before starting the Industrial Revolution. Activists tend to be ignorant people seeking an emotional outlet (but not always).
The answer is in nuclear power, such as developing a commercial scale integral fast reactor, the EBR II, that would provide enough baseload to also enable the hydrogen era that would end all need of fossil fuels.
This is the correct response. 40 years ago. Or rather, we may have sealed the deal (a bad one for us) 40 years ago by demonizing and abandoning nuclear. We'll find out.
We can see the result, abandoning nuclear was a very bad idea, we just refuse to acknowledge it. The integral fast reactor, the last phase of the EBR II, proved itself inherently safe and capable in 1986, yet funding was cut in 1994. Why? My guess is the stupidity of the public and the lobbying efforts of the fossil fuel industry that took advantage of the fear of nuclear. We could have had essentially free power for at least 10,000 years with that technology that would have been replace with fusion, if that becomes feasible.
You’ll get comments about storage, safety, etc. What no one wants to acknowledge is the act of transforming energy (like nuclear to electricity; or solar to electricity; or fossil fuel to kinetic energy)) always increases entropy, and it’s manifested in many ways. It’s the unavoidable cost of modernization, and billions of people not quite there would like to participate, too.
I don’t know how stupid they are. Ignorant and misinformed, yes. But look at the standard “information” they’re fed all their life. That’s one of the nice things about this Substack: it’s exposing one tiny fraction of the misinformation routinely spread, not just in “news”, but in the education system and elsewhere.
"That’s one of the nice things about this Substack: "
I find most posters to be rather ill informed. They see that this is alternative and well, that makes them think that anything goes, and it usually does.
Sure entropy is supposed to increase, but we can control the harm we do, such as going to the IFR and drive our population to a sustainable level that would result in a sustainable world in which everyone, including all nonhuman animals, would have more than enough resources to live comfortably.
Who is to determine what’s “sustainable”? There are 8 billion people-who is to determine who is to live and die?
I mention entropy, because it is at least a theoretically measurable quantity. I would agree there is a bit of a quandary, because the Industrial Revolution started before we knew anything about entropy. Without an objective way to judge what’s best (e.g. thermodynamics), we’re stuck with an elite deciding subjectively what’s best for the rest of us, usually in their favor.
Sustainable is not depleting resources and enabling functional ecosystems, among other things. No one has to die, all we need to do is develop policies that get people to stop having kids, to drive the population to well below 2 billion ASAP while we close the loops from waste back to manufacture.
We can control entropy, we just need to make the effort.
What you say makes total theoretical sense, but consider who you have to convince! Let's take an arbitrary number, say 100 years. It would take an average population decrease of 1.4% per year (not resorting to genocide, just people not having kids) to get there (8 billion to 2 billion). For a lot of us (including myself), a lot of our life meaning is around having a family--you would have to convince us otherwise that saving the planet took precedence.
Alexander Herzen, one of my favorites, relates this conversation with Louis Blanqui, one of the early "save society" leaders in the 19th century:
"Human life is a great social duty." [Louis Blanqui}
"Why?" I asked suddenly.
"How do you mean, 'why?' -but surely the whole purpose and mission of man is the well-being of society?"
"But it will never be attained if everyone makes sacrifices and nobody enjoys himself."
"You are playing with words."
"The muddle-headedness of a barbarian," I replied, laughing.
Of course, it's not society to be saved nowadays, but the planet, but the idea is the same. I think you would have great difficulty convincing enough people of your strategy without violent coercion, as happened with Blanqui's fellow-travellers (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc.).
If governments were to develop policies and culture to make childlessness positive, improve the status of women, provide adequate health care to reduce infant mortality, etc, while at the same time closing the loop from waste to manufacture, ending the animal-based meat industry, improving the urban environment, etc, it could happen.
We just need enough people to recognize that what we have isn't working. For example, people need to accept that the earth supports our excessive population only because so many do with so little and ecosystems are a bit more resilient. For example, 5% of the world's population, the US, uses ~25% of the earth's production. Therefore, for all people to live at our consumption level, we'd need to increase earth's production 5X or reduce our consumption to 1/5th, both are impossible. So, accept reality and decide to make the required changes to avoid total collapse. That's were we are.
And what's the plan for storage and maintenance of all the radioactive waste generated by an aggressive move to more nuclear power, which, btw, is totally dependent on massive subsidies to work?
Our "how will we pay for it" Congress hands out billions in subsidies to every big industry—Big Ag, Big Food, Big Pharma, etc., etc. It just handed Big Auto an nice paycheck "to facilitate the rapid transition to EVs", never mind the infrastructure to support such a transition is nonexistent but will require additional power generation, which means more power plants using more fossil fuels—well, need I go on? Never mind that all of Big Auto is already capable of moving to hybrids, which is the more sensible transition on the way to all-electric. I could go on.
The integral fast reactor is a breeder. It would use reprocessed existing nuclear waste as its feedstock and then make its own. As time goes by, the amount of long lived nuclides declines into nonradioactive materials and short lived nuclides. The use of such a breeder would essentially create over 10,000 years of fuel, without requiring the extensive mining required now nor the long term storage currently required.
Yet by your own description we would still need to store radioactive waste for X number of centuries, unless the reactor is designed such that the waste it produces is immediately recyclable in itself, with whatever preparation is necessary. And there's still the matter of such plants not being feasible in a for-profit economy without massive public subsidies. Expansion of nuclear power would require nationalization of the power grid.
What's no feasible is business as usual (BAU), emitting greenhouse gases from fossil fuels. The cost of BAU is an extinction event.
The federal government has already funded the development of the IFR, the EBR II. It could fund its development to commercial scale, subsidize their construction to replace all FF power plants with the states owning them and their rate payers, electrical consumers, paying the feds back. This would provide enough baseload power to allow the hydrogen era that would replace oil. Hydrogen would be produced on-site with minimal distribution systems and would provide fuel for every mode of transportation either through fuel cell or combustion.
Done. We pay one way or another. This would end all problems that result from fossil fuels. No more economic crisis due to oil embargoes or price spikes. No more supply and demand problems. No more GHG emissions increasing global warming. No more mining for energy resources. Done.
And if wishes were horses then beggars could ride.
Thanks, though, for providing a lovely example of what I mean when I say the con game to make people obsessed over fossil fuels to the exclusion of all the other issues that will remain even if every megawatt is produced by renewables.
The lengths to which the consumerism infected are willing to go rather than accept that the surest way to slow down the headlong journey to climate catastrophe is simply to STOP BUYING SO MUCH STUFF never ceases to amaze me.
Don't be so stupid, start doing some REAL research, not following what is obviously your ignorant ideology as you have absolutely nothing to back up anything that you say. The IFR proved itself cable and inherently safe:
H2 has the greatest specific energy of any element, compound or mixture at ~142 MJ/kg:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density. Anyone who refutes that is no scientist, much less worth paying any attention to. At your low intelligence level, everything must amaze you. There is something very wrong with many f not most of the posters on this site, mostly conspiracists without any real interest in reality.
you should include Roger Pielke Jr. in your investigations as well, as he provides some very data driven analysis. what’s most nuts about the environmental movement is how ass-backwards it is in its objectives. we have a zero-carbon consistent energy source available in nuclear today which they reject. of course, they favor the fantasy of intermittent renewable energy, where battery tech (even when available to the degree necessary) will damage the environment even worse just in the mining requirements and the energy needs of that mining equipment. that equipment needs the sort of energy that renewables will not soon provide not to mention that renewables themselves provide their environmental calamities (minerals for solar cells, turbines crapping out or being noisy messing w/animal kingdom, etc). it’s utterly maddening to see the shortsightedness of these people who believe themselves to be doing good w/no real plan for substitutes to what they’re trying to shut down. heck, Germany is now mining the dirtiest coal after shutting down their very efficient nuclear plants...progress 🤣. i’m also afraid that they’ve reached cult or religious status in their thinking and can no longer imagine that their renewable god(s) doesn’t exist w/o having their own identity collapse ☹️
Rather than reply to all of these people individually, and because I value my time, I'll just expand a little bit further:
* I do not subscribe to hysterical "end-of-the-world" Chicken Littleism. That said, a look at the Earth's record will show that "minor changes" of a couple degrees in either direction result in profound, long-term changes. These will not all be negative. Previously arid or unproductive areas of the planet, for instance, may actually benefit from warmer and wetter climates. It is hard to argue that anybody is going to benefit from rising sea levels, however, and the instability introduced into weather systems as the planet adapts is unlikely to be positive either.
* Zeroing in on any single scientist's opinion is unhelpful, whether they are in sync with the consensus or not. There are three things that the majority agree upon, and I have not been convinced by dissenting opinions that these are not true:
(1) Human activity is pouring massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate.
(2) CO2 levels in the atmosphere have measurable, quantifiable, provable impacts on the average temperature of the Earth.
(3) Small changes in the Earth's temperature can have profound, large-scale impacts.
At this point, I am tired of people arguing about any of the above. The best evidence we have gathered to this point says all of this is true, and this evidence has been cumulative over the last several decades.
* There are vested interests in shifting economies to "greener" forms of energy, and not all of them are pure at heart. This is obvious because this is how humans operate. People are always trying to make a dollar off big projects like this. That said, it is foolish to ignore that vested interests currently exist and have been manipulating what should be rational discussion about this issue. Namely, rent-seeking coal, oil and gas companies and their associated parasitic lobbyists, and politicians who would like to turn it into a "culture war" issue that they can cynically try to get votes from.
* My own personal opinion is that I would prefer to have a house that can generate its own electricity from the Sun, store excess power in a battery, and recharge a vehicle that I'll never have to take to a petrol station again. Less pollution from combustion engines is a bonus to the financial gains here, in addition to smashing odious regimes (i.e. the Saudis) that hold us all hostage to their manipulation of fossil fuel markets.
I also think that the baseline load for the grid should be nuclear energy, but at least here in Australia, that ship sailed a long time ago with weak-willed politicians who preferred to just kick the can down the road rather than deal with the problem at the time.
Again, I encourage people to look at the weight of the evidence and the agreed-upon facts, rather than one preferred expert, no matter where your opinion on the matter is. (Joe Rogan will be the first guy to tell you not to listen to Joe Rogan on complicated subjects! Part of what makes him such a refreshing listen, IMO.)
Peace out everyone. Nice to see Matt's writing getting appreciated by such a diverse crowd.
“Again, I encourage people to look at the weight of the evidence and the agreed-upon facts, rather than one preferred expert, no matter where your opinion on the matter is. “
I would encourage you to do the same. Several good ones here in Substack to include Schellenberger, Epstein and Pielke to name a few
“Zeroing in on any single scientist's opinion is unhelpful, whether they are in sync with the consensus or not. “
When those scientists have undue influence on our politicians and policies and are consistently wrong it makes sense to zero in on them.
Agree the grid should be nuclear but it is hard to take the environmentalist seriously when they claim doom and gloom but refuse to include nuclear as a solution.
Regarding 'CL', you should consider that previous climate change events resulted in extinction events, this is no different except that humans have been the cause of extinctions and wildlife population declines faster than in those previous events. If we don't reverse direction now, it's over and that's not hysteria, it's a fact proven by the fossil record.
Can you elaborate? Where is this information? Also what is your starting point for this claim of a meaningful increase in the rate of change? There is nothing concrete here. I am curious to learn more.
If you really want to know read Steven Koonin's book, "Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters" He was Obama's lead climate scientist. Of course he was attacked by the climate "science" crowd for his views but everything he says is backed up by the IPCC's own data.
As I posted previously, there is no significant global warming taking place over the last 100 years according to NOAA. We cannot possibly discuss “Climate” as a whole, it’s asinine, the world is made up of varying climates that rise and fall geographically. It’s a complex issue that the hysterical elitists don’t want to discuss in any rational meaningful way because then we’d be enlightened. And if they were truly worried we’d have nuclear energy.
Plus they never answer how we’ll make things. Here’s the shortlist of things we’ll have to live without if we get rid of fossil fuels as the muppet greens want us to do:
Forget smartphones/tablets, broadband/internet, wi-fi & the thousands of miles of fibre optic/copper cable, satellites, TVs, microwave ovens, dishwashers, washing machines, tumble dryers, hair dryers, showers, plumbing, bathroom fittings, glass screens, fridges, freezers, cookers, pots, pans, china, glassware, vacuum cleaners, sporting goods like lycra, plastic cycle helmets, light weight bicycles made of kevlar, plastic composites, aluminium & rubber tyres, canoes, windsurfers, climbing equipment, rucksacks, glasses/sunglasses, medical equipment, syringes, PPE, bandages, plasters, bricks, cement, RSJs, roof tiles, double glazing, satellite dishes, aerials, rubber car tyres (even for EVs!) , laminate car windscreens, paints, mains wiring, farming equipment, tractors, harvesters, milling, processing etc, etc, etc, etc.
And here’s some good news to cheer you up, go ahead and check the veracity:
1) Great Barrier Reef at record levels since records began
2) Polar bear numbers five-times higher than in the 1950s
3) Antarctic sea ice increasing by 1% per decade since 1979
4) Since 1982, new tree cover has offset deforestation by the size of Texas and Alaska combined
The issue with climate change is not how big the temperature change is. It's *how fast it happens*. Most previous swings in the Earth's climate occurred on close to geological timescales, with ecosystems having plenty of time to adapt. Our current rate of acceleration out of the pre-industrial comfort zone is what is going to cause problems, not just for humans but living ecosystems across the planet in general.
I enjoy Rogan's podcast but it should not be your sole source of information on serious topics like this, which should be beyond politics. (For that matter, neither should internet comments like mine!)
In the 1970s the hysteria was about cooling, not warming. Then a bit of warming was detected for a while and then that stopped happening and the narrative changed from "global warming" to "climate change." That change in narrative and the fact the innumerable predictions of disaster like those of James Hansen never happened within the time frame specified should have been a wake-up call to the public that this was all hocus pocus but sadly it was not. Climate hysteria is all about money and power for the elite. If we don't wake up from this nightmare soon we will all be cold and hungry. Tragic.
Ah yes. I remember when Paul Ehrlich said
“By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people,” and when in 1974 he wrote “America’s economic joyride is coming to an end: there will be no more cheap, abundant energy, no more cheap abundant food.”
Hard to take these doomsday folks seriously when they keep missing the mark...by a lot!
The fact that this ridiculous charlatan, who has been completely wrong on every single one of his public pronouncements that I am aware of, is nevertheless treated as an acclaimed, award-winning "scholar" and enjoying a tenured sinecure at Stanford, no less, tells one everything one needs to know about the current state of government "science".
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. ... The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
~ Paul Ehrlich, Mademoiselle, April 1970
The very archetype of useful idiot.
And what does that say about those who follow him, not to mention those whose breadth of climate "science" comes from reading a feminist magazine?
Not only was Paul Ehrlich ridiculously wrong, but he is now celebrated by the new “catastrophists”. I guess the IPCC realized that no wrong prediction will ever discredit its authors, so they brazenly declared 2030 as the “end of the world”.
What amazes me is that we now know younger dryas happened, and around 12,000 years ago sea levels rose 400 feet. We don’t know the exact length, but that took from decades to 1,000 years at most. In the last 125 years we’ve seen sea levels rise about 8inches (total) or 0.063inches per year. Compared to the recent past we are in great shape!!
But yet, they keep working at it. Are they suicidal? If there is no more abundant food or energy, it won't be because industry can't do it, it will be because they have been prevented from doing so.
They’re suicidal for you and me not them
One of the benefits of getting older is we remember things like this. A lot of these people protesting will look back on these times and wonder, “How could I be so gullible?”
Gullible because they are stupid. I’m not old, I’m a millennial. I also realized in my very early 20’s most of the activists driven narratives were complete bs. It took me a decade to shed all the indoctrination, but the cure was easy. Actual knowledge. Learning about sun cycles, the little ice age, younger dryas where 12,000 years ago the seas suddenly rose 400ft. The fact is sea levels have risen about 0.063 inches per year since recordings began around 1900. That is in line with some of the calmest changes in the Earth’s climate in history. Storms are not increasing. The sea levels are not rising. Polar Bear numbers are doing great. So is the Great Barrier Reef - currently seeing one of its largest expansions in the 36 years it’s been recorded. What’s not doing great? The polluted waterways near left wing help holes (poverty is terrible for the environment), and once jungles in the Congo now toxic wastelands compliments of cobalt mining. The whole reason the “climate warriors” want mining off shore is to keep poor brown people around the world enslaved and the wastelands from producing batteries, turbines, and solar panels in someone else’s backyard.
Some will but many will move in to the next “impending” disaster without blinking. Look Ehrlich and Mckibben. They’re still at it despite their record of being 100% wrong.
The climate is wrong, not the forecasters. ;-)
Are you kidding? None of them will "wonder" that. The word "wonder doesn't exist in their universe.
GenZ= Narcissist. It's all about me, and I don't have to know anything. Certainly don't have to respect anything that existed before --- me.
This is always a great compendium of the various environmentalist hysteria contrivances -- all of it 100% wrong 100% of the time. And yet the fools still fall for it.
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/
I've seen this blog, glad to see that someone is keeping track of all of the false predictions. If you're interested I recently published a piece on this topic in the American Spectator.
Sure. Link?
https://spectator.org/goodbye-science-hello-night/ Here you go.
Mr. Dublin, what make of you Exxon/Mobil's own private research team who forecast in the late 1960s (quite accurately), after exhaustively examining the oil company's internal documents, that the burning of the company's fossil fuels would eventually contribute to a warming planet by 0.2C every decade?
It's even been suggested by scholars, researchers and journalists who uncovered the oil giant's research that "ExxonMobil's predictions were often more accurate than even world-leading Nasa scientists."
"The research, published in the academic journal Science, also suggests that ExxonMobil had reasonable estimates for how emissions would need to be reduced in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change in a world warmed by 2C or more."
"Their scientists also correctly rejected the theory that an ice age was coming at a time when other researchers were still debating the prospect."
In addition, the boys and girls at the Pentagon have drawn up elaborate, detailed, war-gaming plans that would allow the nations's armed forces to effectively and strategically respond to the planetary havoc a warming planet might cause. What make of you this?
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64241994#
The link that you gave me is from the BBC. Notice that it is all innuendo, no specific sources are cited but James Hansen of NASA is mentioned in passing as an authority yet every last one of his predictions have been false, every last one, go check them out for yourself and prove me wrong if you can. I know all about the lawsuit against ExxonMobile. This is about climate activists trying to hit up an oil company for money. It’s law fare and propaganda. If you want to read a good analysis of what is going on there go to the blog called The Manhattan Contrarian and there you will also find links to a number of good sites that discuss all of the issues relating to climate. The best recent summary of the science is Professor Steve Koonin’s book Unsettled: what Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, and why it Matters. Do not rely on know nothing ideological journalists such as those at the BBC.
Oh, ya---one last bit of housekeeping: Steve "Kook"ing. Kooning is a world-class kook (we already know this) as well as an unsteady disseminator of bad, dissembling faux-science. Verdict: production is so preposterous, can't even be considered a true propagandist.
By the way, Max, there was no mention of an ExxonMobil lawsuit in my initial post to you. A entirely separate issue from the one under discussion, though unquestionably both are inextricably linked if the subject is Big Oil Perfidy. Lawfare and propaganda indeed.
We were discussing the fact that Big Oil's own scientists and executives were well aware, dating back to the late 1960's, that the burning of their hydrocarbon products by their fellow man was throwing dangerous levels of CO2 into the atmosphere and thus contributing to the warming of the planet to dangerous levels (0.2C every decade).
And I'm happy to report to you that there is an abundance of innuendo-free material readily and freely accessible on the internet and elsewhere, that accurately and thoroughly examines this, not only through innuendo-free documents, but actual primary documents from the hands of the Boys and Girls of Big Oil themselves! Eureka! Primary documents compiled by Big Oil's own scientists and executives that show Big Oil's own scientists and executives knew that they were contributing to global warming and were throwing dangerous levels of CO2 into the atmosphere because their own research demonstrated it!
And I must apologize for sending you that tawdry BBC link. I confess that is was both gauche and boorish of me. But speaking of propaganda and oil, your boy Francis Menton down there in the West Village is certainly busy burning his own midnight oil, Manhattan contrary-wise at any rate. Francis allows that while the Village is still a hip and cool place to hang one's hat these days, it from time to time causes him to suffer "from a stifling political and ideological orthodoxy," which I imagine is his way of saying that it's somewhat disruptive to the efficient functioning of his own propaganda mill. Francis should get that condition checked out straightaway by a Political Scientist, one specializing in Diseases of Orthodoxy.
And just who is underwriting your sinecure over there at the spectator, as you compile your choice propaganda bits, I like to imagine, from a lawn chair in R. Emmett Jr.'s backyard? Scaife? Bradley? Koch? I bet it's that bastard Charlie Koch! You know, Max, the word on the street is that Charlie's grown soft and sentimental in his dotage. Balderdash! Nonsense I say! Charlie's still a guy that could and most assuredly would be willing to bite the head off of an endangered species of rattlesnake---dead or alive---for five bucks and a beer. The three of them strike me as the type to deploy a fellow septuagenarian for such a project. It's how they roll.
To make amends for the BBC gaffe, below you'll find both an excerpt and a link that provide an exciting scientific account of Big Oil Perfidy, featuring innuendo-free primary documents from the hands of the Big Oil boys and girls themselves. Enjoy.
Huzzah!
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063
"...In 2015, investigative journalists discovered internal company memos indicating that Exxon oil company has known since the late 1970s that its fossil fuel products could lead to global warming with “dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.” Additional documents then emerged showing that the US oil and gas industry’s largest trade association had likewise known since at least the 1950s, as had the coal industry since at least the 1960s, and electric utilities, Total oil company, and GM and Ford motor companies since at least the 1970s."
"Scholars and journalists have analyzed the texts contained in these documents, providing qualitative accounts of fossil fuel interests’ knowledge of climate science and its implications. In 2017, for instance, we demonstrated that Exxon’s internal documents, as well as peer-reviewed studies published by Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists, overwhelmingly acknowledged that climate change is real and human-caused. By contrast, the majority of Mobil and ExxonMobil Corp’s public communications promoted doubt on the matter."
Funny. Please forward my regards to R. Emmett Jr. 50 years strong and still churnin' it out...
LOL! There was no 'global cooling' hysteria. Global warming is real as our use of fossil fuels released greenhouse gases that trap heat. It's physics dimwit.
Your ignorance and your ad hominem tell us all that we need to know about you.
LOL! Whah, whah, little baby.
Yes, but Will Happer and others make the argument that increased CO2 levels have diminishing contribution toward heating. He draws the analogy of painting a barn red. After 2 coats, the barn can only get so much "redder." This is why the earth wasn't 300C degrees when CO2 levels on Earth were more than 15 times what they are now.
Will et al are stupid fucks, they haven't a clue about what they're talking about. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and it will increase temperatures as they did in prehistoric times, higher concentrations led to higher temperatures. Look at Venus. We have the hydrologic cycle to aid in constraining maximums, but they will increase far more than we evolved with and that means everything.
The difference between then and now is that life had evolved in higher CO2 concentrations and the resultant higher temperatures. Now, humans have already decimated wildlife populations and destroyed their environment, which hadn't been the case in previous climate change extinction events. Humans have made matters far worse as wildlife and plants have no where to go due to human encroachment and destruction of the ecosystems that did exist.
Understand this. When enough species go functionally extinct, the ecosystem collapses and so too civilization. We're done and that could happen very soon as wildlife populations are under extreme pressure already.
So what level of co2 would make you happy?
Back to what we were in the 1970s or so. However, what we have added will remain in the atmosphere for about 1,000 years, so we're stuck with climate change exacerbating all the other problems humans caused. This will not end well.
Aka you don’t really know.
I do know, take a climatology class.
Speak for yourself
LOL! Go take a fucking climatology class so that you'll understand what you're blabbing about.
Um, not sure if you were around in the 70s but ehrich and mckibben were telling us the next I’ve age was imminent.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/on-this-date-51-years-ago-climate-scientists-predicted-a-new-ice-age-was-coming
When that failed they turned to global warming and starvation. Then it became climate change. What will it be next?
LOL! We're causing an extinction event and the effects are seen in all previous extinction events.
The Anthropocene extinction myth is junk science.
LOL! Nope, it's fact:
https://www.worldwildlife.org/press-releases/69-average-decline-in-wildlife-populations-since-1970-says-new-wwf-report
We're the cause of this extinction event.
I just don’t get you malthusian types. There are a lot of issues with the statistics in the LPI to the point where their data is almost meaningless. What’s that saying? “Statistics lie and liars use statistics”? See here
https://ourworldindata.org/living-planet-index-decline
As far as your extinction bs
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/the-ends-of-the-world/529545/
LOL! Of course you wouldn't understand nor accept the fact that we are driving an extinction event because you haven't experienced one. It's a very human problem, like those that live on the slopes of an active volcano that has wiped out populations before.
The significant decline in wildlife populations is an extinction event.
“Of course you wouldn't understand nor accept the fact that we are driving an extinction event because you haven't experienced one. “
Then by definition that also means you nor anyone alive understands one. That was a rather uneducated comment.
No, it is due to the fact that humans are more optimistic than reality supports, because if people haven't suffered an event, they minimize it. This is seen with every crisis. They ignore the signs during development, then demand action after it happens and then ignore danger signs as another crisis develops. It's how we think.
You claimed no one ever said there was global cooling. You were wrong.
Global cooling was debated by many scientists in the 70s but global cooling was eventually disproven.
Concur. Mr. Bliss was claiming that there never was a debate about global cooling
LOL! https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/89/9/2008bams2370_1.xml
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=j2gfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=5dQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1789,2556510
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=QIQiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4akFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1453,2230019
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=qvcNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_3sDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5498,3270345
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ASRHAAAAIBAJ&sjid=u_MMAAAAIBAJ&pg=1081,1308250
Weird
Not weird. Sorry, but there was no scientific concern over any cooling, as the investigation into the research shows. The press isn't competent, as shown by their inability to correctly relate mRNA vaccine information.
No, you're wrong: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/89/9/2008bams2370_1.xml
Don’t feed the moron
I was bored.
Ya, I knows how that can be
No, you're stupid.
Idiot troll
Substack requires a mute button for morons.
Yeah, you need to be muted:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/89/9/2008bams2370_1.xml
http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/ny-times-1975-05-21.pdf
https://www.amazon.com/Cooling-Has-Next-Already-Begun/dp/013172312X?tag=namespacebran417-20
https://books.google.com/books?id=eThRAAAAMAAJ
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=TP1jAAAAIBAJ&sjid=LvkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6686,3866860
Sorry, there was no consensus for cooling, obviously what interest there may have been went no where because of warming.
You never claimed consensus. You clearly stated “There was no 'global cooling' hysteria.”
Why is it you keep moving the goal post?
Jeff Biss has made an art form out of moving goal posts.
LOL! Give it up. There was no cooling hysteria nor consensus.
Steven Koonin, a Rogan guest and Obama's lead scientist on climate change, says the climate emergency is just a lot of hysteria. The impact of man made climate change has so far been negligible. He also thinks there is a high probability future impacts will be small and manageable. Certainly not enough to justify $150 trillion expenditure on windmills, solar panels and electric cars.
A lot of climate hysteria I think is meant to sell the public on shifting away from a fossil fuel driven economy, which TPTB want done for other political reasons.
I'll join in: Koonin is a crank and propagandist.
Respectfully disagree that Team Biden is trying to "sell" we plebs anything. They are signing executive orders and issuing "rules" just as fast as they can.
People like our cabinet post Energy Secretary are going to make money on the new transportation system. John Kerry's head is going to get even bigger with pride* --- while jetting to the coronation, because he says he is saving the planet. We aren't being invited or asked. We are being told, not sold.
*At the BBC broadcast of the coronation this morning, (yes, I watched) Kerry was there and was sporting several medals of some kind on his coat. Those must be Climate Medals. Didn't he throw his US of A 'Nam medals away or "in protest?" How much carbon was produced producing Kerry's coronation participation medals? Hilarious.
Steven Koonin was not "Obama's lead scientist on climate change". He was Undersecretary for Science and Energy at the Department of Energy and had an annual budget of about $200 million for climate-related research, which is a significant amount, but not the largest (NOAA and NASA each were larger). And the lead scientist would have been in OSTP at the White House.
Koonin does have a lot of high-level first-hand knowledge of climate science. He organized and ran the 2013 seminar for the American Physical Society, which had six of the leading climate scientists in the US speak and discuss the major aspects of climate science. https://www.aps.org/policy/statements/upload/climate-seminar-transcript.pdf
The slides used by each speaker are included in the transcript.
Koonin supervised preparation of the US government's by-annual climate assessment. That makes him as much a climate scientist as anyone.
What sort of hat did you pluck that $150 trillion figure out of?
That is a pure opinion piece. The writer says: "In an apparent quest for fairness when he led a committee of the American Physical Society (one of my professional organizations) to assess its statement on climate change, he recruited three scientists to represent the 97% consensus, and three contrarians, presumably to speak for the other 3%."
That is pure nonsense. There is no "97% consensus".
And the three "contrarians" were three of the top climate scientists in the country, with at least as significant accomplishments as the other three. John Christy developed and is in charge of the official NASA satellite atmospheric temperature database at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. Judith Curry was head of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. Richard Lindzen was professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT.
There are many more statements in the essay that attack reputable scientists and ignore the fact that climate science is in fact unsettled, as Prof. Koonin's book title says.
There are no models that predict even just future temperatures. Every one of them overestimates the temperature change from 1990 to 2020 (the current standard) by more than 1 degree C. (many by much more). Knowledge of past climate is very limited, as satellite measurements don't start until just before 1980, and surface temperature measurements are very unreliable and VERY limited in how much of the earth's surface is covered. And we don't know many of the factors that determine climate very well, such as solar cycles or the role of aerosols.
That is a far-left anti-science web site. You can tell they are anti-science when they call people they disagree with "deniers" or "denialists". The first paragraph alone has the word 3 times. Thanks for pointing out the stupidity at these sites that attack highly reputable scientists.
Of course he is a climate scientist
He is a renowned physicist and climate science is ALL physics.
If you bothered to read his stuff you’d know GE doesn’t question the science just the false alarmism.
So many clowns in this circus.
"Rate of change" arguments are based on proxy data---tree rings, ice cores, isotopes, etc. which have profound limitations.
Recent “research” is clearly directed to eliminate obvious evidence for natural, fast climate variations such as the medieval optimum and the Little Ice Age. There’s a recent paper that claims the medieval optimum is just a local phenomenon in England, not seen in the rest of the world. Of course, we know it was present in Greenland, hence the settlements that later disappeared through starvation, when the climate cooled. The point is that you can have “scientific”, “peer-reviewed” papers published in “reputable journals” that are simply hit pieces on demand. As a scientist I’ve seen this countless times in the last 30 years, in topics that were nowhere near climate change in terms of political involvement and consequent pressure on scientists. Today, any of the few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy get immediately flagged as “controversial” (at least) while doomsday drivel of the most obvious kind never has any problem.
“Peer review” is just a way for establishment scientists to police and enforce orthodox narratives.
That's bull shit. Peer review is exactly how scientific research is validated and protected from falsity- by ensuring that methodologies are consistent with accepted principles of research.
Lancet editor-in-chief Richard Horton: “The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability—not the validity—of a new finding…We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.”
I don't think many scientists would say that peer review is an absolute guarantee of accuracy. It is just what it is, and of course no human-created system, operating within other imperfect systems (including capitalism) is perfect. But what would you suggest as a better system? Or do you think that science is bettered and more likely to produce better information if everyone is simply left to their own opinions and definitions of "science"?
Peer review assumes unbiased opinions from highly qualified individuals who don’t have any vested interest. It was always rather idealistic; it has been severely compromised in the last decades when scientists have been under intense pressure to “publish faster than they think” to get funding, and since the woke zombie explosion it has become a joke, a tool to restrict scientific expression to whatever is acceptable to the establishment, from social sciences to climate studies to Covid directions.
While I have, as I said, no doubts that the products of science, especially when commercially relevant and funded by those with vested interests, are occasionally to frequently biased, it is to my mind a vast oversimplification to apply that critique uniformly to all research and researchers. In fact, such oversimplification is exactly the problem I observe among most of those contesting the majority scientific opinion about climate change. In fact, in even your short comment here there is an abundance of logical error. And your remark about 'woke zombie explosion' is irrelevant to this discussion- even if I agree that there has been one.
Ah, so there’s no less than “abundance” of “logical error” in my comment but you couldn’t be bothered to provide any example of that. You really want to prove my point about the condescendence and arrogance of the true believers. As to the recent “woke zombie explosion”, you just haven’t noticed anything since 2020, such as moral panic, clamor for conformity and government-imposed restrictions, the MSM forming a cartel that at the request of the government imposes news black-outs on whatever topic is inconvenient but turns out to be true, etc. Do you think that generates an atmosphere where honest, unbiased scientific research is encouraged and rewarded? Generally speaking, why are you wasting your time and talents on Substack, when the NYT or the WaPo comments section are a perfect match for you?
I assure you, I've been awake since about 1968 - when I first encountered the war machine, American exceptionalism and imperialism.
Yet I wouldn't call normal, best practice public health provisions, "moral panic"; and what you call a clamor for conformity was a demand that people not sneeze and cough on vulnerable others. The only "moral panic" I saw was from idiots who thought that mask mandates in crowded public places was somehow a denial of their rights, and a signal of "mass control". I suppose, though, that the claim that the pandemic itself was "faux" - just a ruse to demonstrate said control- could also be considered a case of moral panic. It was at least a hyperventilating hysteria.
You might care to read what public health professionals, and the available research, show about how to prevent outbreaks from becoming pandemics. That the U.S. was so negligent in the beginning in that regard was the primary reason why the U.S. experienced some of the highest mortality rates, and why a pandemic did occur. Just a hint: they do recommend isolation of cases, strong encouragement for extra diligence in personal hygeine, etc. Quarantining is SOP; though in the U.S. those were not enforced.
I would agree that the MSM is effectively a cartel, one that works closely with their Parties of choice, and with the Administration. (Glenn Greenwald has a spot on critique of this relationship, as illustrated during the WH Correspondent's Dinner.) And especially when it comes to foreign policy (projection of economic, political and military imperialism), there is a silencing of dissent. This has long been the case but it is greatly being amplified.
That said, it says little about the state of scientific research. To impugn all scientists as somehow compromised and dishonest is again, the worst kind of sweeping generalization.
Furthermore, does it not undermine your own arguments about the 'science' of those to whom you prefer to get your opinions?
Lastly, why are you wasting your time on Substack when you could be writing for Q-Anon, or better, some fantasy-hero anime?
Spoken like the “life-long (well, practically) dissident, activist for peace and environment , community organizer, group & campaign initiator/leader; seeker of justice” you claim to be.
As if there is something wrong with such dissent and activism.
"As a scientist..." You certainly don't marshal demonstrable facts or put forth coherent arguments like a scientist.
"...As a scientist I’ve seen this countless times in the last 30 years, in topics that were nowhere near climate change in terms of political involvement and consequent pressure on scientists. Today, any of the few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy get immediately flagged as “controversial” (at least) while doomsday drivel of the most obvious kind never has any problem"
That’s a weird one! You want to know exactly in what my PhD is (Geology), my list of publications, workplaces and everything else? What exactly are the non-demonstrable facts and in-coherent arguments that have caused your ire? Are you part of the climate catastrophist religion or you just have a lot of bile against anybody who didn’t share your opinions on unrelated topics in the past?
"Today, any of the few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy get immediately flagged as “controversial” (at least) while doomsday drivel of the most obvious kind never has any problem"
That's a difficult one to either prove or refute, wouldn't you say? Perhaps the "few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy" are rejected due to bad science and unsubstantiated claims. And "doomsday drivel?"
That sentence of yours is meaningless.
All models have been so far off as to be meaningless. Can anyone explain how models in 2000 predicting glaciers in the northern hemisphere would be gone by 2020, when they were observed to have barely changed in reality by 2020, gives us any information supporting climate change hysteria? Can anyone point to a single climate model that both predicts doom and gloom but was somewhat accurate over a 10-year time frame?
The observed rate of sea level rise since recordings in 1900 has been 0.063 inches. Less than 8 inches in 125 years, and no evidence of consistent acceleration. Compared to 12,000 years ago when sea levels rose 400ft in less than 1000 years. Our temperature changes have taken place leas rapidly than going into and out of the little ice age only a few hundred years ago.
The Great Barrier Reef is thriving, as are polar bear numbers. What’s not thriving is the natural areas of the Congo which have been turned into a toxic wasteland chasing mathematically unachievable energy sources that are toxic as hell and so inefficient all they will power is the movement towards expanding poverty (which is terrible for the environment). The assertion that “profound limitations” is meaningless is itself nothing but a distraction from the discussions.
Our models don’t work. All evidence we have is that the Earth’s climate is fairly calm right now compared to what we think we know about the recent and distant past. If humans are having an impact on the climate, we haven’t the tools to have a clue what it is. The climate warriors are lazy communist nihilists. It’s why so many are also CRT loving racists and overt promoters of child genitalia mutilation, drug addiction, and general destruction of functioning society.
No climate models predicted that glaciers would be "gone" by 2020. The models did, however, predict that they would be disappearing at a rather alarming clip in there next 20 years and beyond. Fo you I provided the link below that contains a pretty picture that you might find helpful in understanding the problem.
And then there's this new-fangled search enginey thing called "google." Type in "disappearing European glaciers" and you'll be able to look at a whole lot more of the pretty pictures of melting glaciers that demonstrate the phenomenon "melting glaciers." There are even words accompanying the pictures that provide helpful explanations of what is causing the glaciers to melt.
But you do receive two gold stars for the last two sentences in your post:
"...The climate warriors are lazy communist nihilists. It’s why so many are also CRT loving racists and overt promoters of child genitalia mutilation, drug addiction, and general destruction of functioning society..."
Yes, ma'am. CRT loving racists, promoters of child genitalia mutilation, drug addiction, and lastly but certainly not leastly...busying hastening the destruction of functional society. These people well may be climate warriors and commie nihilists, but lazy? They sound more like go-getters and self-starters to me. Irritating busybodies, perhaps, but lazy?
https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/08/23/in-pictures-swiss-glaciers-have-shrunk-by-half-in-85-years-and-the-melt-is-speeding-up
Thanks.
My point: "profound limitations" is about as vague and opaque as it gets. And what doesn't have profound limitations? Earth is little else than a collection of "profound limitations."
Well not only do you understand my vague point then, you are expanding on it for me. Again, thanks.
Now I am concerned, since I read your sentence and thought it has meaning
It won’t let me respond below. There was literally a sign out up at glacier national park, circa 2004ish, warning visitors that the glacier would be totally gone by 2020. In 2020, the glacier having not receded, the park decided to take the sign down when it became a meme.
Yes, we were told that models indicated some glaciers would totally disappear by, well, now. There has long been movement in glacier coverage, and as far as the ice caps go, arctic ice caps melting don’t really pose a threat to ocean levels. Antarctic ice caps do, but the promises of gloom from those has also been hyped.
The earth’s climate and surface is always changing. We think we can reconstruct the past to observe what has happened, but we have shown zero ability to really predict the future - even a couple years. The only models which have any usefulness tend to depend on solar cycles and orbit wobbles and nothing to do with humans. The saddest thing is all this faux climate alarm is serving to justify knowingly polluting the environment. Almost 25% of the Congo is contaminated with toxic waste. Destroying the rubber tree forests apparently wasn’t enough. Now wokies want to ensure it’s a toxic wasteland so they can feel good about their electric car. Sad.
The problem for the believers is that their beliefs are based on cherry-picked and falsified data, which were cherry-picked and falsified for political reasons.
Oh, and the other problem is that the predictions by the climate doomsayers never seem to come true.
One other problem is that climate change has become a religion for the young and a very profitable one for their high priests such as Al Goer,
Our disastrous k-12 education system has been complicit in propagangandizing our children. They are scared shitless by the lies they’ve been told. They know nothing except the world is gonna boil over
I remember very clearly that one of my middle school yearbooks had a "Save the Earth" theme.
This was in the late '80s.
I was in school in the 70's during the oil shock and what was called the "energy crisis". We were inundated with "Peak Oil" propaganda and promises that the earth would run out of oil by the time we graduated high school. I'm looking to retire in a few years, meanwhile still waiting for that oil to dry up.
The only impediments to the flow of oil are purely political. In the 1970's it was the Arab Oil Embargo targeting the U.S. for its support of Israel during the 6 day war. Today it's Biden administration policies blocking production -- while selling off our SPR stockpile to China. Remember folks, carbon only matters when its produced by the West. Those belching oil and coal fired plants in China and India are excluded from the conversation.
If you believe the Biden administration is blocking oil production, you know nothing about oil production---here, there, anywhere.
The problem for the believers is that climate change is now a proxy for religion. “Believers” is exactly correct.
The White House Correspondence Dinner should be renamed The Muppet Show. That’s basically what they are, a bunch of muppets. Probably an insult to the muppets though.
Regardless, there has been no truly significant increase in temperatures in over 100 years according to NOAA. And the “Climate” is not a monolith, you cannot discuss it without referring to multiple climates around the world, where temperatures rise and fall all the time geographically. It’s asinine to discuss climate change as a whole. The hysterical elite know this, but they do it anyway at the same time as flying around the world in private jets and buying beachfront property.
Here’s some stats to cheer up everyone, you can easily check the veracity of them:
1) Great Barrier Reef at record levels since records began
2) Polar bear numbers five-times higher than in the 1950s
3) Antarctic sea ice increasing by 1% per decade since 1979
4) Since 1982, new tree cover has offset deforestation by the size of Texas and Alaska combined
And here’s a short list of things we’ll have to live without if we get rid of fossil fuels as the deluded barmy greens want us to do:
Forget smartphones/tablets, broadband/internet, wi-fi & the thousands of miles of fibre optic/copper cable, satellites, TVs, microwave ovens, dishwashers, washing machines, tumble dryers, hair dryers, showers, plumbing, bathroom fittings, glass screens, fridges, freezers, cookers, pots, pans, china, glassware, vacuum cleaners, sporting goods like lycra, plastic cycle helmets, light weight bicycles made of kevlar, plastic composites, aluminium & rubber tyres, canoes, windsurfers, climbing equipment, rucksacks, glasses/sunglasses, medical equipment, syringes, PPE, bandages, plasters, bricks, cement, RSJs, roof tiles, double glazing, satellite dishes, aerials, rubber car tyres (even for EVs!) , laminate car windscreens, paints, mains wiring, farming equipment, tractors, harvesters, milling, processing etc, etc, etc, etc.
Look, another amateur propagandist---and not a very careful one at that. Perhaps you should have limited yourself to commenting on DC traffic control.
https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/environment-verify/polar-bear-population-thriving-population-rising-claim-misleading-misrepresents-data/536-0eb6146f-fb8c-437a-a97c-59625228187a
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2023/02/antarctic-sea-ice-extent-sets-a-new-record-low/
https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/is-the-great-barrier-reef-making-a-comeback/
https://www.wri.org/insights/tracking-global-tree-cover-gain
https://www.globalforestwatch.org/
Hahahaha, resorting to name calling other posters doesn’t bolster your case.
As I said, things must be discussed rationally and reasonably because there is a plethora of misleading dueling information out there. Here’s some to refute yours:
Polar Bears:
https://polarbearscience.com/2021/10/27/fact-checkers-fail-to-refute-polar-bear-number-increases-despite-extensive-expert-rhetoric/
Even the New Scientist doesn’t exactly refute it:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11656-climate-myths-polar-bear-numbers-are-increasing/
Great Barrier Reef, Euronews, hardly right wing:
https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/08/04/australias-great-barrier-reef-shows-best-signs-of-coral-recovery-in-36-years
And even the hysterical Guardian have to acknowledge:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/06/great-barrier-reefs-record-coral-cover-is-good-news-but-climate-threat-remains
And another:
https://www.greenmatters.com/climate-action/great-barrier-reef-recovery
Arctic Ice increase, which is as I said a complex subject not to be discussed irrationally or hysterically:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/sea-ice-antarctic
And another:
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/understanding-climate-antarctic-sea-ice-extent
Tree cover:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9
From the left wing UK, The Independent:
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/tree-cover-increase-world-deforestation-farming-rainforests-forests-a8486096.html
Thanks, but I'll take the science behind my links, which you clearly have not read or comprehended. And most of the links you have provided are either laughable propaganda organs or obvious unscientific blogs---some of them a little "clickbaitey."
At any rate, many of your links either refute many of your claims or provide inconclusive evidence one way or another to support you claims. Perhaps it's a reading comprehension thing.
So Nature magazine and NASA are “laughable” in your book. This conversation is going nowhere because the bedrock of a decent conversation is missing, that is reason and logic, plus a level of regard for the opinion of others.
There is a stereotype of so called environmentalists who willfully ignore any facts but their own. Your are not helping to debunk that stereotype.
This conversation is over for me. Goodbye, and all the best.
That's a gratuitous assumption, that I'm an environmentalist. Anti-propaganda, willful or otherwise. You don't have to trust the science, but at least engage the science. See ya!
Sorry Tim C, peak climate change hysteria is over with. Humanity has serious environmental challenges ahead, but "climate change" ain't one of them..its been revealed as a scam to further enrich and empower the rich and powerful.
And by the way: this topic is never "beyond politics." So-called "scientists" these days are are as politicized as anyone, the response to COVID taught us that.
Then can we go home now?
Except what you claim about slow swings simply isn’t true. Sea levels rose 400ft at the end of younger dryas. The maximum time span for this rapid warming is 1,000 years, but if May have been as short as a few decades. We haven’t seen sea levels rise a single foot in 125 years, so compared to our ancestors we’re in good shape with a relatively calm climate.
Even if so there is no evidence it’s catastrophic nor that we or the planet can’t adapt.
75% of C19 deaths were in the 65 and older population, a group that according to the census makes up only 16.4% of the population.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/
A total of 0.34% of the US population died from c19, remove the over 65 crowd and 0.085% of the population died from c19. Sorry but I’m not that worried.
“people like yourself willingly ignoring a impending catastrophe until it was too late. Events such as every financial crisis that ever happened, WWII, this extinction event, etc.”
Those are not “catastrophes as on the scale of mass extinction.
I’ll say again, people like you have claimed for all of mankind that the world was about to end for various reasons. The one thing they and you have in common is that all were 100% wrong.
“I have no kids. As for living sustainably, everyone is stuck in the reality that selfish people like yourself created through your selfish decisions. I have proposed a number of solutions that would end the use of fossil fuels forever and yet you ignore them.”
Actually you’ve proposed none. You must have me confused with someone else. As for the rest you are in control of yourself. You most certainly could live sustainably if you really wanted to. But for some reason you don’t and choose to blame others.
You missed one thing in your attempt to define Hunan nature several post ago. All species live their lives, only one though contemplates their death...humans. You should spend more time living and less worrying about dying. Take some advice from Jack London and live.
“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
Last comment to you. If you think you are rational and those who disagree with you are not you should read “The Laws of Human Nature” by Robert Greene. You might learn a thing or two.
Also look up the “Morale case for fossil fuels” and expand your depth of knowledge.
Ta ta for now pooh bear
LOL! You're an idiot! The evidence are all previous climate driven extinction events. It's not that tough to do some reading.
Unlike other species we are able to adapt in ways they were not, in large part thanks to carbon energy. Despite the claims of climate catastrophist like yourself we have somehow managed to support ever increasing populations while using less land to do so for example. Perhaps you should take your own advice and do some reading.
No, we're not capable of adapting to totally dysfunctional ecosystems. If the economy couldn't handle the pandemic, which was mild, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, then it will collapse when a few foundation species enter functional extinction. It's over.
The Permian Era extinction event took 60,000 +/- 48,000 years and we are collapsing wildlife populations at a far, far faster rate. It's over if we don't stop now.
Sounds great. Stop now, give up all carbon-producing products including the internet. Why don't you go first and show us how it's to be done?
LOL! You're an idiot, but I'll tell you how it's done as it's far above any one person, dolt.
1. The federal government funds the development of an industrial scale integral fast reactor that proved itself safe and capable back in 1986. The federal government then funds the building of these reactors to replace all fossil fuel fire power plants t be owned and operated by the states with the rate payers paying back the federal government.
2. The federal government licenses the design to other countries to ensure that they replace their fossil fuel fired power plants.
3. The availability of plentiful and inexhaustible electricity can now be used to generate hydrogen from water on-site to enable the hydrogen era, thus replacing all fossil fuels used in transportation and the need for batteries.
4. End the holocaust that is the animal-based meat industry, nonhuman animals are not ours to do with as we please, and re-engineer agriculture to be environmentally friendly.
5. Develop policies to get people to stop having kids to drive the population to well below 2 billion ASAP while we replace our extractive economy with a sustainable one based on closing the loops from waste to manufacture.
There, that would fix the biggest problems that people like you support.
LOL, and you're an asshole. Now, can we dispense with the name calling?
LOL! and you're an asshole, that name fits you.
Lead by example and find a tall bridge.
I do lead by example. You need to change or jump yourself.
“The Permian Era extinction event took 60,000 +/- 48,000 “
a) I think your numbers are vastly incorrect
b) so what you’re saying is we have between 12,000 and 108,000 years. I’m pretty sure we’ll figure it out.
“we are collapsing wildlife populations at a far, far faster rate.” -No we are not.
“It's over if we don't stop now.”- now you sound like ehrlich who is 100% wrong all the time
So, you think that those numbers are vastly incorrect. OK, Einstein. The lesson is that a natural, climate driven extinction event took quite a while, in our terms, but a blink of an eye in geological terms, to wipe out 95% of life on earth and we're accomplishing that in a little over a 1,000 years. Yes, we are collapsing populations at a far faster rate.
Go help your mommy.
Your claim:
“The Permian Era extinction event took 60,000 +/- 48,000 years”
-No self respecting scientist would publish numbers that have an 80% error range.
- easy research shows that the Permian extinction occurred over the course of 15 million years (not 60,000 +\- 48,000) but some now claim that the extinction interval was much more rapid, lasting only about 200,000 years, with the bulk of the species loss occurring over a 20,000-year span near the end of the period which is much more rapid than anything you believe we are seeing now.
So yes, your numbers are vastly incorrect.
We are not in an extinction. If we are then nothing to worry about as an extinction event is a network effect and once started it cannot be stopped. So any claims about an Anthropocene extinction is just an attempt to scare you, something you seem to prone to.
So seriously, what is with you doomsday cultist? Why are you always looking for something to victimize you?
Man is an animal tethered to earth, and like all earth-bound animals passing through this realm, will eventually go extinct.
The chief difference between Homo sapiens and the other species that have passed through and subsequently vanished from this early realm, is that man will provide for its own species' final extinction, quickly, quietly and above all else, efficiently.
Your numbers are incorrect:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worst-mass-extinction-ever-took-only-60000-years/
We are driving this extinction event, wildlife populations are in decline due to human activity, from overpopulation, our extractive economy, our use of fossil fuels, etc.
Math isn’t your strong point is it? I clearly stated “...lasting only about 200,000 years, with the bulk of the species loss occurring over a 20,000-year span...” which would encompass your 60k+/-
I would also point out that your article was from 2014 and more recent numbers (2021) are 100k for marine life and 1,000,000 for land animals
https://phys.org/news/2021-04-earth-biggest-mass-extinction-ten.html
Either way then point they is lost on you is that an extinction takes 10s of thousands of years and unlike the life forms involved in previous ones we have the ability to change as needed. We are not in dire times and you need to find a new religion other than climate catastrophism
The declines at the end of the Permian Era were very fast and the declines that we're causing are even faster. All it will take is for enough foundation species to enter functional extinction for an ecosystem to collapse, such as krill that has declined over 70-80%, from a number of factors. When that happens, it's over and that could take a very short period of time, such as a few years because of the pressure that we place that didn't exist in the Permian Era.
Global warming is but one more stressor on wildlife caused by humans.
The Industrial Revolution, which is far from over, is the culprit, since it requires continuous massive energy transformations to power it. So far, fossil fuels are the only ones that have sufficient energy density and availability to do it. Any “alternative” will have the same issue; it might not be CO2, but some other manifestation of increased entropy, which ALWAYS accompanies any energy transformation. Guess we should’ve taken that into account before starting the Industrial Revolution. Activists tend to be ignorant people seeking an emotional outlet (but not always).
The answer is in nuclear power, such as developing a commercial scale integral fast reactor, the EBR II, that would provide enough baseload to also enable the hydrogen era that would end all need of fossil fuels.
Deniers tend to be stupid people, period.
This is the correct response. 40 years ago. Or rather, we may have sealed the deal (a bad one for us) 40 years ago by demonizing and abandoning nuclear. We'll find out.
We can see the result, abandoning nuclear was a very bad idea, we just refuse to acknowledge it. The integral fast reactor, the last phase of the EBR II, proved itself inherently safe and capable in 1986, yet funding was cut in 1994. Why? My guess is the stupidity of the public and the lobbying efforts of the fossil fuel industry that took advantage of the fear of nuclear. We could have had essentially free power for at least 10,000 years with that technology that would have been replace with fusion, if that becomes feasible.
You’ll get comments about storage, safety, etc. What no one wants to acknowledge is the act of transforming energy (like nuclear to electricity; or solar to electricity; or fossil fuel to kinetic energy)) always increases entropy, and it’s manifested in many ways. It’s the unavoidable cost of modernization, and billions of people not quite there would like to participate, too.
I don’t know how stupid they are. Ignorant and misinformed, yes. But look at the standard “information” they’re fed all their life. That’s one of the nice things about this Substack: it’s exposing one tiny fraction of the misinformation routinely spread, not just in “news”, but in the education system and elsewhere.
Yes. There's no entropy like entropy.
"That’s one of the nice things about this Substack: "
I find most posters to be rather ill informed. They see that this is alternative and well, that makes them think that anything goes, and it usually does.
Sure entropy is supposed to increase, but we can control the harm we do, such as going to the IFR and drive our population to a sustainable level that would result in a sustainable world in which everyone, including all nonhuman animals, would have more than enough resources to live comfortably.
Who is to determine what’s “sustainable”? There are 8 billion people-who is to determine who is to live and die?
I mention entropy, because it is at least a theoretically measurable quantity. I would agree there is a bit of a quandary, because the Industrial Revolution started before we knew anything about entropy. Without an objective way to judge what’s best (e.g. thermodynamics), we’re stuck with an elite deciding subjectively what’s best for the rest of us, usually in their favor.
Sustainable is not depleting resources and enabling functional ecosystems, among other things. No one has to die, all we need to do is develop policies that get people to stop having kids, to drive the population to well below 2 billion ASAP while we close the loops from waste back to manufacture.
We can control entropy, we just need to make the effort.
What you say makes total theoretical sense, but consider who you have to convince! Let's take an arbitrary number, say 100 years. It would take an average population decrease of 1.4% per year (not resorting to genocide, just people not having kids) to get there (8 billion to 2 billion). For a lot of us (including myself), a lot of our life meaning is around having a family--you would have to convince us otherwise that saving the planet took precedence.
Alexander Herzen, one of my favorites, relates this conversation with Louis Blanqui, one of the early "save society" leaders in the 19th century:
"Human life is a great social duty." [Louis Blanqui}
"Why?" I asked suddenly.
"How do you mean, 'why?' -but surely the whole purpose and mission of man is the well-being of society?"
"But it will never be attained if everyone makes sacrifices and nobody enjoys himself."
"You are playing with words."
"The muddle-headedness of a barbarian," I replied, laughing.
Of course, it's not society to be saved nowadays, but the planet, but the idea is the same. I think you would have great difficulty convincing enough people of your strategy without violent coercion, as happened with Blanqui's fellow-travellers (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc.).
"but consider who you have to convince!"
I have and I don't have much hope, but there is hope as seen here:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/economichistory/2021/12/07/when-fertility-in-latin-america-collapsed/
If governments were to develop policies and culture to make childlessness positive, improve the status of women, provide adequate health care to reduce infant mortality, etc, while at the same time closing the loop from waste to manufacture, ending the animal-based meat industry, improving the urban environment, etc, it could happen.
We just need enough people to recognize that what we have isn't working. For example, people need to accept that the earth supports our excessive population only because so many do with so little and ecosystems are a bit more resilient. For example, 5% of the world's population, the US, uses ~25% of the earth's production. Therefore, for all people to live at our consumption level, we'd need to increase earth's production 5X or reduce our consumption to 1/5th, both are impossible. So, accept reality and decide to make the required changes to avoid total collapse. That's were we are.
And what's the plan for storage and maintenance of all the radioactive waste generated by an aggressive move to more nuclear power, which, btw, is totally dependent on massive subsidies to work?
I invite you to research the subsidies that fossil fuels receive. It will blow your mind.
Our "how will we pay for it" Congress hands out billions in subsidies to every big industry—Big Ag, Big Food, Big Pharma, etc., etc. It just handed Big Auto an nice paycheck "to facilitate the rapid transition to EVs", never mind the infrastructure to support such a transition is nonexistent but will require additional power generation, which means more power plants using more fossil fuels—well, need I go on? Never mind that all of Big Auto is already capable of moving to hybrids, which is the more sensible transition on the way to all-electric. I could go on.
The integral fast reactor is a breeder. It would use reprocessed existing nuclear waste as its feedstock and then make its own. As time goes by, the amount of long lived nuclides declines into nonradioactive materials and short lived nuclides. The use of such a breeder would essentially create over 10,000 years of fuel, without requiring the extensive mining required now nor the long term storage currently required.
Yet by your own description we would still need to store radioactive waste for X number of centuries, unless the reactor is designed such that the waste it produces is immediately recyclable in itself, with whatever preparation is necessary. And there's still the matter of such plants not being feasible in a for-profit economy without massive public subsidies. Expansion of nuclear power would require nationalization of the power grid.
What's no feasible is business as usual (BAU), emitting greenhouse gases from fossil fuels. The cost of BAU is an extinction event.
The federal government has already funded the development of the IFR, the EBR II. It could fund its development to commercial scale, subsidize their construction to replace all FF power plants with the states owning them and their rate payers, electrical consumers, paying the feds back. This would provide enough baseload power to allow the hydrogen era that would replace oil. Hydrogen would be produced on-site with minimal distribution systems and would provide fuel for every mode of transportation either through fuel cell or combustion.
Done. We pay one way or another. This would end all problems that result from fossil fuels. No more economic crisis due to oil embargoes or price spikes. No more supply and demand problems. No more GHG emissions increasing global warming. No more mining for energy resources. Done.
And if wishes were horses then beggars could ride.
Thanks, though, for providing a lovely example of what I mean when I say the con game to make people obsessed over fossil fuels to the exclusion of all the other issues that will remain even if every megawatt is produced by renewables.
Hydrogen is yet another canard generated by the very fossil-fuel industries, and no climate scientist considers it useful except perhaps as a stop-gap. Read it here: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2186273-hydrogen-will-never-be-a-full-solution-to-our-green-energy-problems/
The lengths to which the consumerism infected are willing to go rather than accept that the surest way to slow down the headlong journey to climate catastrophe is simply to STOP BUYING SO MUCH STUFF never ceases to amaze me.
Don't be so stupid, start doing some REAL research, not following what is obviously your ignorant ideology as you have absolutely nothing to back up anything that you say. The IFR proved itself cable and inherently safe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIeE9NMP8Oc&t=3s&pp=ygUGZWJyIGlp
https://www.ne.anl.gov/About/reactors/frt.shtml
https://www.ne.anl.gov/About/reactors/EBR2-NN-2004-2-2.pdf
https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6542410
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002954938790152X
https://atomicinsights.com/sad-ending-story-of-ebr-ii-told-by-three-of-its-pioneers/
H2 has the greatest specific energy of any element, compound or mixture at ~142 MJ/kg:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density. Anyone who refutes that is no scientist, much less worth paying any attention to. At your low intelligence level, everything must amaze you. There is something very wrong with many f not most of the posters on this site, mostly conspiracists without any real interest in reality.
Didn't bother to follow the link to the source of the article, did you. I figured you wouldn't. Ideologues rarely do.
You're the ideologue. You have absolutely no evidence to back up anything that you post. Nothing.
you should include Roger Pielke Jr. in your investigations as well, as he provides some very data driven analysis. what’s most nuts about the environmental movement is how ass-backwards it is in its objectives. we have a zero-carbon consistent energy source available in nuclear today which they reject. of course, they favor the fantasy of intermittent renewable energy, where battery tech (even when available to the degree necessary) will damage the environment even worse just in the mining requirements and the energy needs of that mining equipment. that equipment needs the sort of energy that renewables will not soon provide not to mention that renewables themselves provide their environmental calamities (minerals for solar cells, turbines crapping out or being noisy messing w/animal kingdom, etc). it’s utterly maddening to see the shortsightedness of these people who believe themselves to be doing good w/no real plan for substitutes to what they’re trying to shut down. heck, Germany is now mining the dirtiest coal after shutting down their very efficient nuclear plants...progress 🤣. i’m also afraid that they’ve reached cult or religious status in their thinking and can no longer imagine that their renewable god(s) doesn’t exist w/o having their own identity collapse ☹️
Rather than reply to all of these people individually, and because I value my time, I'll just expand a little bit further:
* I do not subscribe to hysterical "end-of-the-world" Chicken Littleism. That said, a look at the Earth's record will show that "minor changes" of a couple degrees in either direction result in profound, long-term changes. These will not all be negative. Previously arid or unproductive areas of the planet, for instance, may actually benefit from warmer and wetter climates. It is hard to argue that anybody is going to benefit from rising sea levels, however, and the instability introduced into weather systems as the planet adapts is unlikely to be positive either.
* Zeroing in on any single scientist's opinion is unhelpful, whether they are in sync with the consensus or not. There are three things that the majority agree upon, and I have not been convinced by dissenting opinions that these are not true:
(1) Human activity is pouring massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate.
(2) CO2 levels in the atmosphere have measurable, quantifiable, provable impacts on the average temperature of the Earth.
(3) Small changes in the Earth's temperature can have profound, large-scale impacts.
At this point, I am tired of people arguing about any of the above. The best evidence we have gathered to this point says all of this is true, and this evidence has been cumulative over the last several decades.
* There are vested interests in shifting economies to "greener" forms of energy, and not all of them are pure at heart. This is obvious because this is how humans operate. People are always trying to make a dollar off big projects like this. That said, it is foolish to ignore that vested interests currently exist and have been manipulating what should be rational discussion about this issue. Namely, rent-seeking coal, oil and gas companies and their associated parasitic lobbyists, and politicians who would like to turn it into a "culture war" issue that they can cynically try to get votes from.
* My own personal opinion is that I would prefer to have a house that can generate its own electricity from the Sun, store excess power in a battery, and recharge a vehicle that I'll never have to take to a petrol station again. Less pollution from combustion engines is a bonus to the financial gains here, in addition to smashing odious regimes (i.e. the Saudis) that hold us all hostage to their manipulation of fossil fuel markets.
I also think that the baseline load for the grid should be nuclear energy, but at least here in Australia, that ship sailed a long time ago with weak-willed politicians who preferred to just kick the can down the road rather than deal with the problem at the time.
Again, I encourage people to look at the weight of the evidence and the agreed-upon facts, rather than one preferred expert, no matter where your opinion on the matter is. (Joe Rogan will be the first guy to tell you not to listen to Joe Rogan on complicated subjects! Part of what makes him such a refreshing listen, IMO.)
Peace out everyone. Nice to see Matt's writing getting appreciated by such a diverse crowd.
“Again, I encourage people to look at the weight of the evidence and the agreed-upon facts, rather than one preferred expert, no matter where your opinion on the matter is. “
I would encourage you to do the same. Several good ones here in Substack to include Schellenberger, Epstein and Pielke to name a few
“Zeroing in on any single scientist's opinion is unhelpful, whether they are in sync with the consensus or not. “
When those scientists have undue influence on our politicians and policies and are consistently wrong it makes sense to zero in on them.
Agree the grid should be nuclear but it is hard to take the environmentalist seriously when they claim doom and gloom but refuse to include nuclear as a solution.
Regarding 'CL', you should consider that previous climate change events resulted in extinction events, this is no different except that humans have been the cause of extinctions and wildlife population declines faster than in those previous events. If we don't reverse direction now, it's over and that's not hysteria, it's a fact proven by the fossil record.
the younger drias temp swings of over 8 degrees happened in just a few years. maybe as few as 3 or 5.
Can you elaborate? Where is this information? Also what is your starting point for this claim of a meaningful increase in the rate of change? There is nothing concrete here. I am curious to learn more.
If you really want to know read Steven Koonin's book, "Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters" He was Obama's lead climate scientist. Of course he was attacked by the climate "science" crowd for his views but everything he says is backed up by the IPCC's own data.
Read Steven Koonin, Unsettled, for an exposition of how it happens!
check out Randall Carlson podcast, Kosmographia
The idea that government could prevent that with enough money and power is laughable.
By the way it’s not Rogan’s opinion. He has supremely qualified scientists on who say we are being overly hysterical. Because we are.
As I posted previously, there is no significant global warming taking place over the last 100 years according to NOAA. We cannot possibly discuss “Climate” as a whole, it’s asinine, the world is made up of varying climates that rise and fall geographically. It’s a complex issue that the hysterical elitists don’t want to discuss in any rational meaningful way because then we’d be enlightened. And if they were truly worried we’d have nuclear energy.
Plus they never answer how we’ll make things. Here’s the shortlist of things we’ll have to live without if we get rid of fossil fuels as the muppet greens want us to do:
Forget smartphones/tablets, broadband/internet, wi-fi & the thousands of miles of fibre optic/copper cable, satellites, TVs, microwave ovens, dishwashers, washing machines, tumble dryers, hair dryers, showers, plumbing, bathroom fittings, glass screens, fridges, freezers, cookers, pots, pans, china, glassware, vacuum cleaners, sporting goods like lycra, plastic cycle helmets, light weight bicycles made of kevlar, plastic composites, aluminium & rubber tyres, canoes, windsurfers, climbing equipment, rucksacks, glasses/sunglasses, medical equipment, syringes, PPE, bandages, plasters, bricks, cement, RSJs, roof tiles, double glazing, satellite dishes, aerials, rubber car tyres (even for EVs!) , laminate car windscreens, paints, mains wiring, farming equipment, tractors, harvesters, milling, processing etc, etc, etc, etc.
And here’s some good news to cheer you up, go ahead and check the veracity:
1) Great Barrier Reef at record levels since records began
2) Polar bear numbers five-times higher than in the 1950s
3) Antarctic sea ice increasing by 1% per decade since 1979
4) Since 1982, new tree cover has offset deforestation by the size of Texas and Alaska combined
"...As I posted previously, there is no significant global warming taking place over the last 100 years according to NOAA."
This is demonstrably false and it would take 5-10 minutes of your time to understand why it is demonstrably false.
That depends on your levels of hysteria. If you find .8% - 1.1% too much then you’ll be screaming at the moon I’m sure.
The levels of my hysteria are completely untethered from the climate AND the weather.