This is like saying you are skeptical of jets because when you were young planes used propellers or you are skeptical that some dinosaurs had feathers because when you were young all the pictures showed them with scales. Science progresses. It gathers more information and modifies its theories accordingly. Grow up and learn to think beyond what FOX news tells you to parrot.
Well, I got the opposite picture when I was young. In the early nineties, I watched Beyond 2000, an Australian series that among other things, ran segments on climate change. They said that unless action is taken immediately, Earth’s temperature will be above 50 °C by 2025, runaway greenhouse effect will start like on Venus and by 2050, Earth’s atmosphere will consist of sulfuric acid.
I remember it very vividly, since it scared the beejeezus out of the 11 year old me.
Since then, not only did we not take immediate action, China quadrupled its CO₂ emissions and global emissions rose almost 100%.
And yet we’ve not seen the effects that were predicted.
I think a lot of climate change skepticism is due to those alarmist attitudes that completely derailed all efforts.
The very basic point is not complicated: temperatures have risen by about 1 degree Celsius compared to the 1850-1900 average. They’re expected to increase around another 1 degree by late this century and possibly more, depending on how fast global emissions shift from growth to decrease. None of the scenarios are world-ending, despite how frequently various folks like to misleadingly throw around the word “existential,” but the cumulative impacts can be fairly significant, especially in the more serious scenarios.
Of course, diving into the details further, as the video tries to do, it gets a lot more complicated, especially as one tries to determine the ideal response, which lies somewhere in between the extremes of do nothing or go Chairman Mao on the world and force immediate, drastic change.
Having reviewed significant sections of the IPCC reports on the topic, I’m honestly semi-optimistic about ending the 21st century in a range of around 2-2.5 degree C total change. The IPCC’s latest round of reports still includes their most pessimistic scenarios, since they continue to want to assess a very wide range of scenarios, but frankly, at this point I don’t think it is economically credible to extract and emit as much carbon as the two worst case scenarios would require.
At the same time, we’re also already unable to meet the most optimistic scenario, and very unlikely to meet the 2nd most optimistic scenario, but it looks very plausible to beat their medium emissions scenario.
By the way, I’m not going to throw the whole video out with the bathwater, but be aware in case you missed it that among a couple other responses it advocates, “The only way to slow down this growth is…contraception.”
This is the alarmist attitude that I referred to. First thing: the global average is +1 °C than it would have been otherwise, right?
“Swathes of Australia will become uninhabitable”. Okay, but this means it is going to be much hotter. Not just one degree hotter, we’re talking at least +5-10 °C, if not more.
“Permafrost will melt”. Considering it’s much below zero, temperatures will have to rise several degrees for it to melt.
“Temperatures in Scandinavia support wineries”, “Mountains will lose their permanent glaciers”, “Vacationing in the tropics became unbearable with temperatures soaring above 40 °C”, “Summer temperatures in Africa are beating all-time records”, “Antarctica is several to dozens degrees warmer”, the list goes on.
All of this is apparently due to climate change.
“No more snow in winter”: We’re told that winters with temperatures ranging from -30 °C to -20 °C are gone, and the standard now is +5-+10 °C. And it all changed in the last thirty years!
Fair enough. But if the global average temperature is up by 1 degree, one interpretation is that everywhere warms up by 1 degree. But that’s not really the case. However, if some places warm up by more than one degree, other places have to be relatively cooler. The math works out if half the world is up by 2 degrees and the other half stays the same. It also works out if 10% of the world is up by 10 degrees and 90% of the world stayed the same… It even works out if 90% of the world is up by 10 degrees and 10% of the world is down by 90 degrees.
Thing is, you can’t have one but not the other. Averages don’t work that way. But I don’t find any studies demonstrating that anywhere is getting cooler. Apparently pretty much all of the world is up by at least several degrees.
So which is it? Is the average way underestimated or is it correct, but places where temperatures dropped are elusive and going unreported?
People are stupid, but they’re not idiots. Unless somebody explains where they’re getting the +1 degree average when simultaneously saying all regional temperatures are much more than +1, nobody is going to listen.
Well, I don’t know if it’s alarmist to say something like ““Swathes of Australia will become uninhabitable”. Okay, but this means it is going to be much hotter. Not just one degree hotter, we’re talking at least +5-10 °C, if not more.” Surely this is already true in places; it’s certainly true in places like Death Valley in California. I don’t think 5-10 degrees of heating is necessary. “Habitable” is a broad word. Certainly, you could live in Death Valley; you could scarcely put towns there. It wouldn’t have to be hot enough to kill you, just hot enough not to be able to afford the energy to cool down to a tolerable level.
I know, John. But the problem with this statement is that you can say Australia’s interior became “uninhabitable” not because of rising temperatures but because people don’t want to live there (are less inclined to endure the conditions) and with no economic incentive, there’s no good reason to even try to live there.
Implying that climate change caused places like those to become uninhabitable is disingenuous at best, but probably manipulative and outright lying to suit an agenda at worst.
Since you agree that one degree hotter is not something that can make a place uninhabitable if it was reasonable to live there earlier, surely there must be places that got (much) cooler over the last 200-300 years for the global average to work?
“Since you agree that one degree hotter is not something that can make a place uninhabitable if it was reasonable to live there earlier, surely there must be places that got (much) cooler over the last 200-300 years for the global average to work?”
Depends on where your one degree is. I was only objecting to saying that saying that the possibility of such things happening is “alarmist” – if, by that, you mean the person saying them is intending unnecessarily to alarm people. I think such things are quite possible and it’s worth talking about them – and thinking about what, if anything, can be done to mitigate possible problems.
Concerning this last, I would say that it is only possible in small ways, since, whilst everyone, no doubt, who thinks the climate may be changing in bad ways, thinks that “something should be done” – only not if he or she is the person who must do very much. Nimbyism is, surely, a fact about all of us, more or less.
I meant “alarmist” in the same sense that there are people who thrive on raising alarm over nonexistent or trivial matters, or at the very least the crisis du jour. Some do it to sell their snake oil, some do it for the political capital.
But they end up as the boy who cried wolf. People get desensitized to the message and will not react even if there is cause for alarm. And if there is cause for alarm, then—by all means—something must be done.
However, if all the messages people heard over the years are: “we are doomed, nothing can be done”, “we are doomed unless we immediately do ” on one side and “there is no climate change”, “there is climate change, but its a *good* thing” on the other, then what should we expect?
How should I, as a European, an EU citizen, react to the requirement that will, at great cost, cut EU-wide CO₂ emissions by 5-10% over the next 10 years, all the while China will happily increase emissions by 100%? Rising energy costs that was aimed at moving industry from less developed EU countries back to the core, actually resulted in industry moving factories to China and greenwashing, claiming the move actually reduced CO₂ emissions, when they increased 2-5-fold. In the name of living green, you *need* to replace your car every two years because *emissions* (not just CO₂), even if your city car consumes ~4 l/100 km and actually could pass new emissions standards, but there’s no legal way to recertify your car. Meanwhile, rich people are completely free to drive their SUVs that barely pass emissions testing while burning 40 l/100 km.
Renovating my house to fit within new energy efficiency requirements would cost several (annual) salaries, but I’m earning too much to qualify for government aid. Meanwhile, if you’re rich and running a company, you can renovate or build a new house with government money that your company applied for. Or you do some creative accounting and suddenly qualify for aid. Or if you’re feeling generous, you take out 5% out of your savings account and renovate or build. Then you regain that 5% from your tax returns. And people will praise your for being green while you cry for bleeding your heart.
What if I don’t fulfill the requirements? My house will be torn down.
As I said, people can be stupid, but they’re not idiots. People will oppose measures that are clearly too drastic, when they benefit, or at least affect less, people in wealth and power, especially when they claim they’re all for the little guy.
11 Responses
I’m skeptical of the climate change claim. When I was a youngster we were taught that the world was getting colder
This is like saying you are skeptical of jets because when you were young planes used propellers or you are skeptical that some dinosaurs had feathers because when you were young all the pictures showed them with scales. Science progresses. It gathers more information and modifies its theories accordingly. Grow up and learn to think beyond what FOX news tells you to parrot.
Well, I got the opposite picture when I was young. In the early nineties, I watched Beyond 2000, an Australian series that among other things, ran segments on climate change. They said that unless action is taken immediately, Earth’s temperature will be above 50 °C by 2025, runaway greenhouse effect will start like on Venus and by 2050, Earth’s atmosphere will consist of sulfuric acid.
I remember it very vividly, since it scared the beejeezus out of the 11 year old me.
Since then, not only did we not take immediate action, China quadrupled its CO₂ emissions and global emissions rose almost 100%.
And yet we’ve not seen the effects that were predicted.
I think a lot of climate change skepticism is due to those alarmist attitudes that completely derailed all efforts.
The very basic point is not complicated: temperatures have risen by about 1 degree Celsius compared to the 1850-1900 average. They’re expected to increase around another 1 degree by late this century and possibly more, depending on how fast global emissions shift from growth to decrease. None of the scenarios are world-ending, despite how frequently various folks like to misleadingly throw around the word “existential,” but the cumulative impacts can be fairly significant, especially in the more serious scenarios.
Of course, diving into the details further, as the video tries to do, it gets a lot more complicated, especially as one tries to determine the ideal response, which lies somewhere in between the extremes of do nothing or go Chairman Mao on the world and force immediate, drastic change.
Having reviewed significant sections of the IPCC reports on the topic, I’m honestly semi-optimistic about ending the 21st century in a range of around 2-2.5 degree C total change. The IPCC’s latest round of reports still includes their most pessimistic scenarios, since they continue to want to assess a very wide range of scenarios, but frankly, at this point I don’t think it is economically credible to extract and emit as much carbon as the two worst case scenarios would require.
At the same time, we’re also already unable to meet the most optimistic scenario, and very unlikely to meet the 2nd most optimistic scenario, but it looks very plausible to beat their medium emissions scenario.
By the way, I’m not going to throw the whole video out with the bathwater, but be aware in case you missed it that among a couple other responses it advocates, “The only way to slow down this growth is…contraception.”
This is the alarmist attitude that I referred to. First thing: the global average is +1 °C than it would have been otherwise, right?
“Swathes of Australia will become uninhabitable”. Okay, but this means it is going to be much hotter. Not just one degree hotter, we’re talking at least +5-10 °C, if not more.
“Permafrost will melt”. Considering it’s much below zero, temperatures will have to rise several degrees for it to melt.
“Temperatures in Scandinavia support wineries”, “Mountains will lose their permanent glaciers”, “Vacationing in the tropics became unbearable with temperatures soaring above 40 °C”, “Summer temperatures in Africa are beating all-time records”, “Antarctica is several to dozens degrees warmer”, the list goes on.
All of this is apparently due to climate change.
“No more snow in winter”: We’re told that winters with temperatures ranging from -30 °C to -20 °C are gone, and the standard now is +5-+10 °C. And it all changed in the last thirty years!
Fair enough. But if the global average temperature is up by 1 degree, one interpretation is that everywhere warms up by 1 degree. But that’s not really the case. However, if some places warm up by more than one degree, other places have to be relatively cooler. The math works out if half the world is up by 2 degrees and the other half stays the same. It also works out if 10% of the world is up by 10 degrees and 90% of the world stayed the same… It even works out if 90% of the world is up by 10 degrees and 10% of the world is down by 90 degrees.
Thing is, you can’t have one but not the other. Averages don’t work that way. But I don’t find any studies demonstrating that anywhere is getting cooler. Apparently pretty much all of the world is up by at least several degrees.
So which is it? Is the average way underestimated or is it correct, but places where temperatures dropped are elusive and going unreported?
People are stupid, but they’re not idiots. Unless somebody explains where they’re getting the +1 degree average when simultaneously saying all regional temperatures are much more than +1, nobody is going to listen.
I noted on the news yesterday that the southern Scandinavian countries are beginning to be significant wine producers. I recently read this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Living-Hot-Surviving-Thriving-Heating-ebook/dp/B0CX183P3R/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3UCAVRWBVO7CD&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.C0gQBFeQzEGXOSw1_O1G1IgF4RYor8xGYCqsS_me38V53QUVBknrUfXjTQghT5pRnO9GfUorrM6lnqLuKAbC6j1lBOFLDelNMh1p38TQwC8wFBjFwM2nJTjFp7_yW_ygvIbndnninHmk46TBDgN2uRmR9Q7HQZmTHsmjU8uOnw3_3iA3o6JOTRlsvjB2oeg3Z4Mi2zkVALZjijdGHJx6RO_ZHbt3JQCnfemenc_DSBE.5suSjO31uusqkUzqYjzaG7tdo9Ao4fIEDsru8zMWHvg&dib_tag=se&keywords=living+hot&qid=1734394479&sprefix=living+ho%2Caps%2C368&sr=8-1
He predicts things like that happening soon – and perhaps some places, like mid-Australia, may become uninhabitable.
Well, I don’t know if it’s alarmist to say something like ““Swathes of Australia will become uninhabitable”. Okay, but this means it is going to be much hotter. Not just one degree hotter, we’re talking at least +5-10 °C, if not more.” Surely this is already true in places; it’s certainly true in places like Death Valley in California. I don’t think 5-10 degrees of heating is necessary. “Habitable” is a broad word. Certainly, you could live in Death Valley; you could scarcely put towns there. It wouldn’t have to be hot enough to kill you, just hot enough not to be able to afford the energy to cool down to a tolerable level.
jj
I know, John. But the problem with this statement is that you can say Australia’s interior became “uninhabitable” not because of rising temperatures but because people don’t want to live there (are less inclined to endure the conditions) and with no economic incentive, there’s no good reason to even try to live there.
Implying that climate change caused places like those to become uninhabitable is disingenuous at best, but probably manipulative and outright lying to suit an agenda at worst.
Since you agree that one degree hotter is not something that can make a place uninhabitable if it was reasonable to live there earlier, surely there must be places that got (much) cooler over the last 200-300 years for the global average to work?
“Since you agree that one degree hotter is not something that can make a place uninhabitable if it was reasonable to live there earlier, surely there must be places that got (much) cooler over the last 200-300 years for the global average to work?”
Depends on where your one degree is. I was only objecting to saying that saying that the possibility of such things happening is “alarmist” – if, by that, you mean the person saying them is intending unnecessarily to alarm people. I think such things are quite possible and it’s worth talking about them – and thinking about what, if anything, can be done to mitigate possible problems.
Concerning this last, I would say that it is only possible in small ways, since, whilst everyone, no doubt, who thinks the climate may be changing in bad ways, thinks that “something should be done” – only not if he or she is the person who must do very much. Nimbyism is, surely, a fact about all of us, more or less.
I meant “alarmist” in the same sense that there are people who thrive on raising alarm over nonexistent or trivial matters, or at the very least the crisis du jour. Some do it to sell their snake oil, some do it for the political capital.
But they end up as the boy who cried wolf. People get desensitized to the message and will not react even if there is cause for alarm. And if there is cause for alarm, then—by all means—something must be done.
However, if all the messages people heard over the years are: “we are doomed, nothing can be done”, “we are doomed unless we immediately do ” on one side and “there is no climate change”, “there is climate change, but its a *good* thing” on the other, then what should we expect?
How should I, as a European, an EU citizen, react to the requirement that will, at great cost, cut EU-wide CO₂ emissions by 5-10% over the next 10 years, all the while China will happily increase emissions by 100%? Rising energy costs that was aimed at moving industry from less developed EU countries back to the core, actually resulted in industry moving factories to China and greenwashing, claiming the move actually reduced CO₂ emissions, when they increased 2-5-fold. In the name of living green, you *need* to replace your car every two years because *emissions* (not just CO₂), even if your city car consumes ~4 l/100 km and actually could pass new emissions standards, but there’s no legal way to recertify your car. Meanwhile, rich people are completely free to drive their SUVs that barely pass emissions testing while burning 40 l/100 km.
Renovating my house to fit within new energy efficiency requirements would cost several (annual) salaries, but I’m earning too much to qualify for government aid. Meanwhile, if you’re rich and running a company, you can renovate or build a new house with government money that your company applied for. Or you do some creative accounting and suddenly qualify for aid. Or if you’re feeling generous, you take out 5% out of your savings account and renovate or build. Then you regain that 5% from your tax returns. And people will praise your for being green while you cry for bleeding your heart.
What if I don’t fulfill the requirements? My house will be torn down.
As I said, people can be stupid, but they’re not idiots. People will oppose measures that are clearly too drastic, when they benefit, or at least affect less, people in wealth and power, especially when they claim they’re all for the little guy.
Well, we agree. I do what I can, try to do a little more, and don’t worry about what I can’t.