# Where Did the Climate Change Debate Go Wrong?



## Assorted Nuts (Nov 23, 2016)

So one of the biggest sticking points for the right, particularly in America, is the insistence that climate change is a conspiracy made up by liberals to control the population and not a serious issue. So really, how did this happen? Shouldn't humanity be working together to stop a problem that could destroy us all?

Honestly, at least in part, I have to blame Al Gore. Having the face of global warming be a rather disliked politician from an extremely controversial presidential administration was a bad, bad move. It made the environment into even more of a political issue than it already was, not helped by Gore allegedly being a disgusting hypocrite.


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## JU 199 (Nov 23, 2016)

Its a really complicated issue that gets communicated poorly. If we really wanted to do something about it we'd have to alter the way we live. That's a big ask, especially when life can be consuming enough anyway. It doesn't help that it doesn't look like an immediate problem, so it gets sidelined. Ultimately it's easier to pretend it isn't a problem. I'm not saying its that way for everyone but its most of it.


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## Stereotypical Badger (Nov 23, 2016)

"Climate Change" is both a new-age religion that has replaced the role of Christianity for atheist lefties and a giant extortion racket to screw money out of western nations and funnel it into various international organisations. With a bit of luck Trump's administration will be the final nail in the coffin for this insidious fraud.  



PurpleDude said:


> Shouldn't humanity be working together to stop a problem that could destroy us all?



There's that word you always see whenever this subject comes up "could"... Super intelligent aliens _could_ invade the earth and enslave humanity, a giant asteroid _could _smash into the planet and kill us all, I _could_ win a million dollars in the lottery tonight. All perfectly true statements and all far more likely occurrences than humanity getting destroyed because our comfortable modern lifestyle "broke" the climate. 



Ass Manager 3000 said:


> It doesn't help that it doesn't look like an immediate problem



Just take that line of reasoning a little bit further: It's not a problem right now and... it never will be. It's a lie. You've been lied to.


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## JU 199 (Nov 23, 2016)

Stereotypical Badger said:


> All perfectly true statements and all far more likely occurrences than humanity getting destroyed because our comfortable modern lifestyle "broke" the climate.



Its a possibility. The earth is a delicate system, if we push the variables around without knowing the consequences we could get unexpected results. For example certain foods require specific climates to be grown optimally in. Even pushing the earth's temperature up a few degrees could dump enough ice water into the ocean alter the jet stream. Suddenly it's harder the grow food because the climate isn't predictable anymore.


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## Assorted Nuts (Nov 23, 2016)

Ass Manager 3000 said:


> Its a possibility. The earth is a delicate system, if we push the variables around without knowing the consequences we could get unexpected results. For example certain foods require specific climates to be grown optimally in. Even pushing the earth's temperature up a few degrees could dump enough ice water into the ocean alter the jet stream. Suddenly it's harder the grow food because the climate isn't predictable anymore.


Gotta agree. I really wouldn't be surprised if the apocalyptic predictions of climate change are exaggerated, but the ecosystem can very delicate I don't want to risk fucking it up.


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## Absolutego (Nov 23, 2016)

I think Climate Change is a really important issue that suffers from terrible PR representation. To put it short, the proponents of climate change legislation often focus on individual carbon footprint reduction, which fails to resonate with Americans for the same reason Jimmy Carter telling everyone to put on a sweater during the oil crisis did. I also think a lot of more educated or politically inclined people who consider Climate Change a conspiracy do so in part because the environmentalists who keep screaming alarm about Climate Change reject the most immediately viable means of getting us off oil - Nuclear power.

And speaking about alarm, the apocalyptic predictions in the very near future are only contributing to people getting turned off the issue. I recall New York was supposed to be underwater by now if we didn't do something in 2004.


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## JU 199 (Nov 23, 2016)

Yeah, the Apocalypse-level reeeeeeeeeing isn't helping.

I think the way is framed is wrong. Less emphasis on cute animals and saving the earth. The earth would be fine regardless, its about maintaining our place on it.


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## millais (Nov 23, 2016)

I think people get disenchanted with the effort to halt climate change when they see those pie graphs showing Chinese and Indian greenhouse gas emissions far outstripping those of the Western world. Because then it looks like even if the Western world cuts their emissions to zero, we're still fucked because the developing world won't reciprocate. Adopting that fatalistic mindset, it is easy to think that if we're fucked no matter what, there's no point in hamstringing our economies while the developing world gets to go balls to the walls with their unrestricted pace of growth.


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## Ti-99/4A (Nov 23, 2016)

millais said:


> I think people get disenchanted with the effort to halt climate change when they see those pie graphs showing Chinese and Indian greenhouse gas emissions far outstripping those of the Western world.


And they give those nations a free pass because they're still "developing". If that were the case, then why aren't environmentalists over there trying to get them developed using cleaner and more efficient energy sources?


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## Assorted Nuts (Nov 23, 2016)

sikotik said:


> And they give those nations a free pass because they're still "developing". If that were the case, then why aren't environmentalists over there trying to get them developed using cleaner and more efficient energy sources?


I think that has to do with the bizarre west-centric view the left had taken. It's the same as asking why feminists bitch about America while the Middle East is still a shithole.


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## King_Scrotus (Nov 23, 2016)

Ass Manager 3000 said:


> Its a possibility. The earth is a delicate system, if we push the variables around without knowing the consequences we could get unexpected results. For example certain foods require specific climates to be grown optimally in. Even pushing the earth's temperature up a few degrees could dump enough ice water into the ocean alter the jet stream. Suddenly it's harder the grow food because the climate isn't predictable anymore.


Personally, I see it all as a part of natural order, even if it arises from unnatural circumstances. Humans take over, become an alpha-species, and bend the earth to their will. Then that fucks up the earth, ruining the delicate growth system that maintains our overpopulation, forcing thousands upon thousands of deaths, and checking that population, pulling it back into smaller numbers. 

However, I don't believe that this will cause human extinction, as some think. Humans are too smart, I think we would be able to overcome such factors.


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## Marvin (Nov 23, 2016)

PurpleDude said:


> I think that has to do with the bizarre west-centric view the left had taken. It's the same as asking why feminists bitch about America while the Middle East is still a shithole.


Well to be fair, it's reasonable to have higher standards for where you live right now. For example, free speech is an important issue to me and if it's being violated, someone telling me "well, you oughta see how bad the chinese have it!" doesn't really placate me.

(In reference to feminists and the middle east, of course. Not global warming.)


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## HG 400 (Nov 23, 2016)

Climate change isn't real.


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## King_Scrotus (Nov 23, 2016)

Also, to amend my other post. I do admire the drive of people like Elon Musk, who does things like this just to further human society.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/22/tesla-runs-island-on-solar-power/

One of my biggest hopes is that his attempt to colonize mars succeeds, it's one of my biggest hopes for humans to grow past the need for one planet.


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## Joan Nyan (Nov 23, 2016)

When the "scientists" started "correcting" past temperature readings downward to create a fake warming trend.


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## ICametoLurk (Nov 23, 2016)

People still wanna use cars for some reason.



Ass Manager 3000 said:


> I think the way is framed is wrong. Less emphasis on cute animals and saving the earth. The earth would be fine regardless, its about maintaining our place on it.


I'm required to post this lol


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## Oh Long Johnson (Nov 25, 2016)

Now, I'm a lefty and always have been. I'm not a fucking stupid hippy, though, so when I read things about the warming trend stalling for a decade or how the entire solar system has been warming, yet see basically nothing aside from quiet press releases about these things and absolutely no recognition of these phenomena from the usual suspects, I start to get suspicious.

I can accept the warming trend that has become orthodoxy. I can accept co2 levels contribute and may be driving said warming, especially after the ozone issue and its resolution. My biggest issue is my familiarity with data modelling and the vast amount of guesswork and blatant errors that occur in all areas of data modelling. I have yet to meet the "scientist" who does not have 100% confidence in their model. Regardless of the lack of robust historical data, the modeler is invariably convinced of their project's predictive power. You see this confidence crushed endlessly, in retail, in insurance, in banking, in marketing and in fucking sports. There is a fine, fine line between a confident data modeler and a smug degenerate gambler who believes in his system.

So, I guess what I'm getting at here is that I have seen the warming trend's stalling get treated as something so inconvenient as to be treated as blasphemy and I haven't heard of anyone say boo about incorporating increased solar output of the past who the fuck knows timeframe into the holy models. And that worries me. It remains a fact that nearly every gifted math postgrad is snapped up by Wall St. and the hedge funds, leaving lesser minds to work out modelling the heat retention dynamics of a 6 kajillion ton ball of  rock, water and nig.gers. Are these lesser lights of the math/science world taking everything into account regardless of funding pressures or are these people idiots like the marketers and more likely to guide industry into initiating another period of glaciation?

I wasn't all that concerned with all of this until Thanksgiving and seeing my brother for the first time in years. His aptitude with math has always dwarfed my own and when the subject came up and I mentioned most of the stuff above, he told me I'm not nearly skeptical enough.


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## ZeCommissar (Nov 26, 2016)

Fuck that shit fam, lets just fuck up the Earth till we causes irreversible damage and millions of people die.

It's something interesting for the history books.


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## Mariposa Electrique (Nov 26, 2016)

PurpleDude said:


> So one of the biggest sticking points for the right, particularly in America, is the insistence that climate change is a conspiracy made up by liberals to control the population and not a serious issue. So really, how did this happen? Shouldn't humanity be working together to stop a problem that could destroy us all?
> 
> Honestly, at least in part, I have to blame Al Gore. Having the face of global warming be a rather disliked politician from an extremely controversial presidential administration was a bad, bad move. It made the environment into even more of a political issue than it already was, not helped by Gore allegedly being a disgusting hypocrite.





> Where Did the Climate Change Debate Go Wrong?


Al Gore


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## Unseemly and Feral (Nov 26, 2016)

The thing about climate change to me is that it just isn't a very sexy political issue. When we talk about things like healthcare or immigration or the economy, these things are all pretty tangible. You can realize when you're short on money and basic necessities, you can see and interact with any issue related to people. But climate change is just a bunch of data and charts saying what will happen at some future point. Even if it's 100% true, I don't think it has the same kind of mental impact as the problems of the here and now. In addition to that, those other issues have more tangible enemies. You can spend money, you can make friends with or fight people, and you can feel well off or poor. But climate change just isn't tangible enough.


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## Jewelsmakerguy (Nov 26, 2016)

I'm personally not a fan of the whole "THE EARTH'S GOING TO END ON THIS DATE!" bull that people usually associate with climate change. Sure, it's an important topic, but let's be realistic here- the only real changes to date have been higher temperatures. The ice caps have been melting for decades, if not centuries. And probably still would even without the changing temperatures because that's just how Earth is. And even then, temperatures haven't been all that higher either.

So unless I hear that thousands have died in some horrific climate-related disaster. I can't be too worried about something that's been happening for a long time at this point.


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## DuskEngine (Nov 26, 2016)

Oh Long Johnson said:


> when I read things about the warming trend stalling for a decade



The most plausible explanation I've heard for that is that the proliferation of vegetation caused by rising temperatures is helping to slow down CO2 emissions temporarily. I'm not a climatologist or anything though so idk how 'orthodox' that stance is considered.



Absolutego said:


> And speaking about alarm, the apocalyptic predictions in the very near future are only contributing to people getting turned off the issue. I recall New York was supposed to be underwater by now if we didn't do something in 2004.



That DNC staffer who yelled at Brazile about how climate change is going to kill him in 40 years is immensely cringey


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## ICametoLurk (Nov 26, 2016)

DuskEngine said:


> The most plausible explanation I've heard for that is that the proliferation of vegetation caused by rising temperatures is helping to slow down CO2 emissions temporarily. I'm not a climatologist or anything though so idk how 'orthodox' that stance is considered.



The Carboniferous period that we get all our Coal from (fossilized vegetation) had more CO2 as we have now (1500 PM) at the start of the period and at the end of the period it had similar amounts of CO2 that we have now.





Just my input about that theory.


Spoiler: powerlevel



When I was at a Republican Convention earlier this year someone nominated a plan to plant more trees using State funds instead of raising Carbon Taxes and used this as evidence supporting his plan that got submitted to the State Republican Party who then would mess with it and try to get it on the ballot.


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## Donald J Trump (Nov 26, 2016)

The climate change debate went wrong when it became a game of lobbying. Big oil and coal companies say it's a complete hoax and pay politicians to support them in favour of complete deregulation. Big sustainable energy companies say the earth will end in 50 years if nothing is done and pay politicians to support them in favour of billion dollar deals for solar panel farms while also imposing restrictions on importing cheap solar panels from China because it undercuts their profit. Unfortunately there is a lot of science that gets politicized by lobbying cash and the actual solutions for sustainable energy are lost in the debate because they are simply not ( yet ) profitable.

Another thing to point out is that the whole CO2 craze is a red herring creating a loophole for big corporations. CO2 is virtually harmless unless in extreme concentrations. The real bad stuff is C ( PM ), CO, CH4, NOx and SOx. Things like consumer vehicles with catalysts have become cleaner and cleaner emitting less of the latter, while industry still emits a lot of the real pollutants aside from CO2. With CO2 regulations they are not only pushing the issue away from real ground / water / air pollution but also supporting politicians to create loopholes to export pollution to poor countries because they want to meet their CO2 quotas. Great example of this is the hypocrite Obama saying he cares about the environment and at the same time making it easier for US corporations to place production plants in South-America where there are next to zero regulations. In the end the CO2 production is exported from the first world to the third world so they can celebrate their climate agreement.

There's two real long term solutions that are still being researched. The first is carbon catalysts which have already been proven to be able to turn CO2 into other products, the technology is simply too expensive to utilize on big scale. The second long term solution is nuclear fusion, which has long been researched and the first serious attempt at an efficient version is to be constructed - ITER. If that goes well our energy and environmental issues are a matter of time. Perhaps almost paradoxically it may be more environmentally friendly in the long run if the west focuses more on their economy ( that can support more researchers and technicians ) and less on environmental issues right now.

A lot of the environmental arguments seem to share the same anti-western sentiment. Often arguments are used such as "the average American has 20 times the carbon emission of a 3rd worlder" forgetting that the average American will produce much more in the form of knowledge, technology, resources and human advancement than 20 third worlders.


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## Chiang Kai-shek (Nov 27, 2016)

Absolutego said:


> And speaking about alarm, the apocalyptic predictions in the very near future are only contributing to people getting turned off the issue. I recall New York was supposed to be underwater by now if we didn't do something in 2004.


This, as a former climate skeptic (I was more autistic back then cut me some slack) this definitely hurts the issue. Hell even NASA themselves have said the antarctic ice sheets had made gains in ice last year. While this doesn't change the fact that other glaciers are losing ice, the antarctic gets a lot of coverage.


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## DuskEngine (Nov 27, 2016)

Absolutego said:


> nd speaking about alarm, the apocalyptic predictions in the very near future are only contributing to people getting turned off the issue.



The alarm would be better reserved for issues like soil and water depletion and the destruction of ocean ecosystems.


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## ICametoLurk (Nov 27, 2016)

DuskEngine said:


> The alarm would be better reserved for issues like soil and water depletion and the destruction of ocean ecosystems.


>Born too late to explore the Earth
>Born too soon to explore the Galaxy
>Born just in time to witness the Water Wars


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## Jan_Hus (Nov 27, 2016)

While I don't think we're doomed, let's be honest here, humans have bounced back from some pretty dire odds. (The Toba event comes to mind) I do think we should cut back on carbon emissions, so we can keep living here without having to geo-engineer some last minute solution.


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## JU 199 (Nov 27, 2016)

DuskEngine said:


> The alarm would be better reserved for issues like soil and water depletion and the destruction of ocean ecosystems.



I agree I've always found the silence about those issues quite serious. especially soil depletion.


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## DuckSucker (Nov 27, 2016)

Im not suite sure where it went "wrong" because I feel like people who dont believe in it are kind of like the same people who believe the Earth is flat or was created by God. I do wonder however if climate change is not a natural occurrence that just so happens to be occurring in parallel with man-made climate change, which is why it's become exponentially more and more of an issue in the past few years. 

The reality of it, I think, is that scientists agree it's gone beyond the point of no return--trying to convince nonbelievers at this point is a waste of time. You can't reduce emissions enough anymore, now I think people should focus on systems and methodologies to adapt what we can, in conjunction with planning for a future with clean energy and reduced emissions. 

It's a shame Trump won and doesnt believe in it, because I think in part, "rebuilding America" necessarily includes steps to deal with this. In an economy with robots you kind of have to have a human economy, people doing shit like music and art, building the middle class towns and cities not around capital and acquisition of wealth, but idyllic human experience. Rather than having one cool city, and hundreds of miles of sprawling, wasteful suburbs, and dead communities in between, have them all have a purpose; but Im kind of retarded. But I mean millennials love living "close-in", and if people could live and work on main street, they could all just be hipsters and ride bikes to their jobs, or walk to the store. If you cut work down to 4 10-hour days, you could probably deal with  carbon emissions another way, too. Shit like that.


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## Joan Nyan (Nov 27, 2016)

DuckSucker said:


> Im not suite sure where it went "wrong" because I feel like people who dont believe in it are kind of like the same people who believe the Earth is flat or was created by God.


What are you implying about these groups? Keep in mind that "people who believe the Earth was created by God" is every Jew, Christian, and Muslim in the world, or about 50% of the world's population.


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## ICametoLurk (Nov 27, 2016)

Jon-Kacho said:


> What are you implying about these groups? Keep in mind that "people who believe the Earth was created by God" is every Jew, Christian, and Muslim in the world, or about 50% of the world's population.


Clearly DuckSucker is more intelligent than 3.6 billion people.


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## Unseemly and Feral (Nov 27, 2016)

+1:autism: for DuckSucker.


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## ICametoLurk (Nov 27, 2016)

Unseemly and Feral said:


> +1:autism: for DuckSucker.


More like +1


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## DuckSucker (Nov 28, 2016)

Jon-Kacho said:


> What are you implying about these groups? Keep in mind that "people who believe the Earth was created by God" is every Jew, Christian, and Muslim in the world, or about 50% of the world's population.



I said that because I was trying to imply that you arent going to convince them they're wrong, which is fine, they're free to believe that. There are people who believe the Earth is flat, too. It's the whole thing about free will, nobody can tell you what to do or think, you make up your own mind. There are plenty of religious people who dont hang on every word of the Church and have their own views and interpretations of their religion. 

Im actually not a fedora tipping atheist. I dont care if people believe in religion, I just dont personally believe, and they arent going to change my mind any more than I would be able to change theirs, and it's kind of pointless to spend time trying. That's what I meant.

You can spend time trying to change someone's mind or you can find another way around. I read somewhere that people, especially in political arguments, are more likely to leave the argument adhering more strictly to their beliefs rather than having them changed. Although it did come from the internet and I could be paraphrasing it.


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## Male Idiot (Nov 28, 2016)

This is a complex issue.

For one, as said before, both sides of the argument are driven by politics and it is the third world countries that are the problem.

Also, the Earth had a lot of climate changes. Ice age, anybody? I'm not saying that things won't get hotter, but I'm saying that it tends to happen naturally and there is a good hope that by the time it gets serious, we will have the technology to deal with it.

There are way greater dangers to Humanity. Runaway plagues and asteroids will do far, far, far more damage. Supervolcanoes could do much worse too. Nuclear winter, check.

Are we setting up a monitoring system to blow asteroids out of the sky? Naaaah.

Mind, coastal towns will be in shit and better get building dams in the next 50 years, but it is not an instant end to the world. Plus New Jersey COULD use a good bath...


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## Lackadaisy (Nov 28, 2016)

To paraphrase George Carlin, the Earth is doing fine. It's us humans who are in trouble.


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## Philosophy Zombie (Nov 29, 2016)

ICametoLurk said:


> Clearly DuckSucker is more intelligent than 3.6 billion people.


Yeah that's kind of how the IQ bell curve works if you have at least average intelligence.


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## Pickle Inspector (Nov 29, 2016)

I think the money involved is the problem, carbon taxes seem like the modern equivalent of a sin tax and at the g20 negotiations it seems to revolve around poor countries demanding richer countries give them money.

And on a societal level the problems don't have any realistic solutions, in first world countries pensioners can't afford high energy bills yet are the ones who need heating in winter the most and everyone else doesn't want to give up their modern luxuries for some vague future risk where they'll probally be dead by the time anything significant happens anyway (Even Al Gore lives in a giant house and takes lots of international flights), in developing countries they aspire to have the things first world countries have like cars and more red meat in their diet and in third world counties they have large families partially because mortality rates are higher and they rely on their offspring to look after them when they get older.


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## Jubileus (Nov 29, 2016)

When it stopped being a "debate" and when all skepticism of it was derided as "denial", for one.

It doesn't help that the most prominent promoters of climate change "awareness" individually have the carbon footprints of small African nations and tend to have Malibu beach houses rather than bunkering up in Topeka and living on windfarms themselves.  What's that, you want to impact _their_ standard of living?  Oh no, no no, that's for the hoi polloi, but _they're _too _important_ to the world to have to need that.

We really should be limiting the amount of toxic shit we dump in the atmosphere because it's just fucking intelligent to do so since we kind of have to breathe it.  We should also be looking at urban development and planning in a world where the climate's going to change over time regardless of whether we like it or not.  Instead we get "the end is nigh, we must return to paleolithic culture to survive!" and "burn it all I don't give a fuck I won't be here anyway".  Sigh.

In other words, it's the same as a ton of other policy debates: the edges take up all the loudspeakers and the places of agreement and action are drowned out in the dogma.


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## ICametoLurk (Dec 1, 2016)

My Red Pilled Honorary Aryan Cartoons tell me that Global Warming is a lie


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## AnOminous (Dec 1, 2016)

Non-scientists got involved, so now you have a bunch of jackasses cherry picking shit they don't understand at each other to justify the opinion they arrived at for the sole reason that they either like or don't like Al Gore.


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## Cosmos (Dec 1, 2016)

Honestly, I don't understand how a lot of people seem to believe that habitat destruction, air/water pollution, overhunting, and other activities that harm the environment _aren't_ gonna result in something terrible. Like, okay, I understand that the concept of climate change has become a clusterfuck, but do you truly and honestly believe that we can keep polluting and harming our environment without any consequences?

And, like others have said, the problem is that climate change has become so politicized. Scientists usually aren't the ones talking about it, it's politicians, journalists, and other laypeople. Instead of climate change being about "Guys, let's all work together to stop this because Earth is the only planet we have!", it's become yet another political football for left-wingers and right-wingers to REEEEEEEE at each other over.



Lackadaisy said:


> To paraphrase George Carlin, the Earth is doing fine. It's us humans who are in trouble.



The Earth and life itself are unbelievably durable. 252 million years ago, something so devastating happened *over 95% of marine and 70% of terrestrial species went extinct*, and yet both the planet and the life on it bounced back better than ever. The same thing happened when that meteor crashed into Earth and killed off all the dinosaurs.

Life always goes on, it just leaves everything behind when it does. Of course I *really* hope that humanity survives (because I believe that we're pretty cool and have a lot to offer), but if we do happen to go, I just hope that we don't seriously fuck up the environment with nuclear weapons or anything beforehand.


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## Pikimon (Dec 2, 2016)

Male Idiot said:


> Also, the Earth had a lot of climate changes. Ice age, anybody? I'm not saying that things won't get hotter, but I'm saying that it tends to happen naturally and there is a good hope that by the time it gets serious, we will have the technology to deal with it.



Humanity has gone through climate changes yes, but those are in the scope of thousands of years where the changes have had _enormous_ ramifications on all of life. The changes we're talking about are in the scope of hundreds of years to decades, much too fast to basically rearrange all of humanity into a new way of life. 

For some perspective here is an easy to understand chronological graph of temperature over the course of human civilization.



Spoiler: Warning: HUEG


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## Oh Long Johnson (Dec 2, 2016)

Pikimon said:


> Humanity has gone through climate changes yes, but those are in the scope of thousands of years where the changes have had _enormous_ ramifications on all of life. The changes we're talking about are in the scope of hundreds of years to decades, much too fast to basically rearrange all of humanity into a new way of life.
> 
> For some perspective here is an easy to understand chronological graph of temperature over the course of human civilization.
> 
> ...



The comic is cute and all but it is missing about 100,000 years of history as well as rather seriously misrepresenting human migrations. I have no doubt this is done to intentionally skip the Toba eruption which would show the effects of rapid climate change on human and other animal populations but bump up against the sacred heresy of showing a rapid change not due to co2 or human involvement.

Thinking about volcanism and its effects and combining that with the current warming trend and the ozone solution, you'd figure there would be an aerosol we could pump into the atmosphere that doesn't destroy ozone and isn't a toxic pollutant - just something to reflect sunlight for a couple years before succumbing to entropy. As an added bonus, something like that might get hippies to use deodorant for once.


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## Pikimon (Dec 2, 2016)

Oh Long Johnson said:


> The comic is cute and all but it is missing about 100,000 years of history as well as rather seriously misrepresenting human migrations. I have no doubt this is done to intentionally skip the Toba eruption which would show the effects of rapid climate change on human and other animal populations but bump up against the sacred heresy of showing a rapid change not due to co2 or human involvement.



It was a comic to show how climate change has an effect on civilization in general, and to put into perspective the extent of the change in temperature.

And data about the Toba eruption is readily available.



> Roughly 74,000 years ago, a "super-eruption" took place in Indonesia, the largest know eruption in the past 100,000 years. The Toba eruption was enormous, throwing out roughly 1000 times as much rock as the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens (Fig. 1). Dust trapped in polar ice cores shows that ejected material spread around the globe, indicating that the eruption injected substantial material into the stratosphere, where it can strongly affect climate. How much and for how long the Toba eruption actually affected climate and life on the Earth's surface has been the subject of intense debate.
> 
> Recently, we used state-of-the-art climate models to examine this question. Our study included climate models developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Col., and by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City. These are the same models used for climate projections of the near future in studies of global warming. In this case, we simulated the response to an enormous volcanic eruption to test how various processes might affect the climate response. Depending on the assumed size of the eruption and the processes included in the models, the maximum global mean cooling was 8-17°C. This is an enormous change, roughly 10-20 times the size of the warming since pre-industrial times and about the same magnitude as the transition to an ice age. Among the most interesting findings was that in response to the reduced sunlight able to penetrate the think blanket of ash and particles in the atmosphere, broadleaf evergreen trees and tropical deciduous trees virtually disappeared for several years. *However, the Earth's climate returned to near-normal conditions within a decade in most simulations.
> 
> An ice sheet did not begin to form in any of the simulations as the climate change did not persist for a long enough period. Hence the results do not support the theory that the super-eruption might have triggered an ice-age. *However, a "volcanic winter" occurring suddenly and lasting a decade or two could still have devastating consequences on life at the surface, with abrupt massive decreases in food production and potential extinctions of some species. Indeed, there is some evidence for such extinctions and for the presence of a "genetic bottleneck" in human population coincident with the eruption. Our results thus suggest that the sudden and severe climate response to the Toba super-eruption may have wiped out a substantial portion of the world's human population at that time.



http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/shindell_12/

Particulate matter from volcanic ash and eruptions do eventually settle and dissipate, however its a lot harder to recapture CO2 and Methane that has been pumped back out by industrial processes, agriculture, ocean acidification and deforestation.


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## Oh Long Johnson (Dec 2, 2016)

Pikimon said:


> Particulate matter from volcanic ash and eruptions do eventually settle and dissipate, however its a lot harder to recapture CO2 and Methane that has been pumped back out by industrial processes, agriculture, ocean acidification and deforestation.


Absolutely true. I read somewhere the volcanic aerosols clear after two years and the air temperatures normalize shortly thereafter. I don't know what kind of long term effects you get with oceanic cooling from those two years of decreased solar radiation. I suppose you'd want to know about that kind of thing before releasing some custom aerosol into the atmosphere. Snowball Earth and all that.

I just wanted to point out that the comic was irritating, as it kind of represents that all the humans were hanging out in Africa until 22,000 years ago, which is wrong and dumb.


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## Xarpho (Dec 2, 2016)

Jubileus said:


> When it stopped being a "debate" and when all skepticism of it was derided as "denial", for one.



Yeah, that and the dubious science behind it (I think the premise is based on a measure of temperature of a bucket of water) that tends to ignore basic scientific things like controls and a margin of error. I also think the whole global warming thing started creating knee-jerk reactions that tend to oppose any laws on the environment as being anti-commerce. 

It really is a balancing act--we can't destroy economies in favor of some slight environmental benefit but we can't destroy the Earth in favor of the almighty dollar.


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## PT 404 (Dec 8, 2016)

People don't go outside anymore, so what climate?


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## DuskEngine (Dec 8, 2016)

ReanimatorEquis said:


> People don't go outside anymore, so what climate?



Sometimes it gets really humid in my basement and my *bitch mom *won't let me turn on the air conditioner because it's bad for some fucking trees or something idk


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## Pikimon (Dec 8, 2016)

DuskEngine said:


> Sometimes it gets really humid in my basement and my *bitch mom *won't let me turn on the air conditioner because it's bad for some fucking trees or something idk



inb4 rising sea levels flood basement


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## Mozzarella Dicks (Dec 9, 2016)

I believe pollution and habitat destruction are bad things and we should stop pollution where we can for the sake of improving quality of life.

I do not believe that the symptoms of the pollution manifest as "Climate Change", nor that changes in weather are an omen of impending armageddon. We only have one world and we shouldn't recklessly destroy or deplete it.

Besides which they only started calling it "Climate Change" once they got called on their bullshit of constantly referring to it as "Global Warming" for decades on end.


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## Joan Nyan (Dec 9, 2016)

Mozzarella Dicks said:


> Besides which they only started calling it "Climate Change" once they got called on their bullshit of constantly referring to it as "Global Warming" for decades on end.


And before they called it Global Warming they called it Global Cooling.


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## Rainbow Puppy (Dec 9, 2016)

here is some irl trolling if u have the attention span, maybe not in todays world of technology atrophied brains






if u do happen to have a technology atrophied brain then the short of it for u is

obscure british man goes to congress. guy looks like his eyes are about to pop out of his head but is intelligent. demonstrates climate change is retarded. congress gets ass mad and dog piles him with accusations of not being high up enough on the snooty elite totem poll to have an opinion. ignores his arguments. continues peddling their bs

Edit -

i did not use exceptional as my wording in my original writing of this post, it was forced upon me by this site


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## PT 404 (Dec 9, 2016)

DuskEngine said:


> Sometimes it gets really humid in my basement and my *bitch mom *won't let me turn on the air conditioner because it's bad for some fucking trees or something idk



That fucking bitch. Trees are useless and not worth the time.


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## Pikimon (Dec 13, 2016)

In the last 650k years, Earth has gone through 7 periods of glacial advance and retreat. The last was 7k years ago, marking the end of the Ice Age.

CO2 was demonstrated to trap heat in the mid 19th century. In the course of the last 650k years, Earth atmospheric CO2 levels has never been above 300ppm, and we know that through mineral deposits, fossils, and arctic ice leaving telltale predictable signs of how much CO2 must have been in the air at the time. Today, CO2 is over 400ppm. Not only have we kept fantastic records pre-industrial revolution, especially the Swedes for centuries, but arctic ice has acted as a more recent history of the last several dozen centuries. CO2 levels has been growing at unprecedented rates and achieving levels higher than we've ever known to occur that wasn't in the wake of planetary disaster and mass extinction. It follows that if CO2 traps heat, and there's more CO2 in the atmosphere than ever before, it's going to trap more heat than ever before.

Sea levels are rising. 17cm over the last century. The last decade alone has seen twice the rise of the previous century. So not only are the oceans rising, but the rate of rise is increasing _exponentially_.

The Earth's average temperature has increased since 1880, most of that has been in the last 35 years. 15 of the 16 hottest years have been since 2001. We're in a period of solar decline, where the output of the sun cycles every 11 or so years. Despite the sun putting out less energy, the average continues to rise and in 2015 the Earth's average was 1C hotter on average than in 1890. That doesn't sound like much, but if we go some 0.7C hotter, we'll match the age of the dinosaurs when the whole planet was a tropical jungle. That's not a good thing.

The ice caps are losing mass. While we've seen cycles of recession and growth, you have to consider ice is more than area, it's also thickness and density. Yes, we've seen big sheets of ice form, but A) they didn't stay, and B) how thick were they? Greenland has lost 60 cubic miles of ice and Antarctica has lost at least 30 cubic miles, both in the last decade. Greenland is not denying global warming, they're feverishly building ports to poise themselves as one of the most valuable ocean trading hubs in the world as the northern pass is opening, and it's projected you'll be able to sail across the north pole, a place you can currently stand, year-round.

Glacier ice is retreating all over the world, in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa.

The number of unprecedented intense weather events has been increasing since 1950 in the US. The number of record highs has been increasing, and record lows decreasing.

The ocean absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere. CO2 and water makes carbonic acid, - seltzer water! The oceans are 30% more acidic since the industrial revolution. 93% of The Great Barrier Reef has been bleeched and 22% and rising is dead as a consequence. The ocean currently absorbs 9.3 billion tons of CO2 a year and is currently absorbing an additional 2 billion tons annually. Not because the ocean is suddenly getting better at it, but because there's more saturation in the atmosphere.



Spoiler: Sources



IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Summary for Policymakers, p. 5

B.D. Santer et.al., “A search for human influences on the thermal structure of the atmosphere,” Nature vol 382, 4 July 1996, 39-46

Gabriele C. Hegerl, “Detecting Greenhouse-Gas-Induced Climate Change with an Optimal Fingerprint Method,” Journal of Climate, v. 9, October 1996, 2281-2306

V. Ramaswamy et.al., “Anthropogenic and Natural Influences in the Evolution of Lower Stratospheric Cooling,” Science 311 (24 February 2006), 1138-1141

B.D. Santer et.al., “Contributions of Anthropogenic and Natural Forcing to Recent Tropopause Height Changes,” Science vol. 301 (25 July 2003), 479-483.

In the 1860s, physicist John Tyndall recognized the Earth's natural greenhouse effect and suggested that slight changes in the atmospheric composition could bring about climatic variations. In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.

National Research Council (NRC), 2006. Surface Temperature Reconstructions For the Last 2,000 Years. National Academy Press, Washington, DC.

Church, J. A. and N.J. White (2006), A 20th century acceleration in global sea level rise, Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L01602, doi:10.1029/2005GL024826.

The global sea level estimate described in this work can be downloaded from the CSIRO website.

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/indicators/

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20160120/
T.C. Peterson et.al., "State of the Climate in 2008," Special Supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, v. 90, no. 8, August 2009, pp. S17-S18.

I. Allison et.al., The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science, UNSW Climate Change Research Center, Sydney, Australia, 2009, p. 11

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/ 01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm

Levitus, et al, "Global ocean heat content 1955–2008 in light of recently revealed instrumentation problems," Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L07608 (2009).

L. Polyak, et.al., “History of Sea Ice in the Arctic,” in Past Climate Variability and Change in the Arctic and at High Latitudes, U.S. Geological Survey, Climate Change Science Program Synthesis and Assessment Product 1.2, January 2009, chapter 7

R. Kwok and D. A. Rothrock, “Decline in Arctic sea ice thickness from submarine and ICESAT records: 1958-2008,” Geophysical Research Letters, v. 36, paper no. L15501, 2009

http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_ice.html

National Snow and Ice Data Center

World Glacier Monitoring Service

http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/cei.html

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification?

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification

C. L. Sabine et.al., “The Oceanic Sink for Anthropogenic CO2,” Science vol. 305 (16 July 2004), 367-371

Copenhagen Diagnosis, p. 36.

National Snow and Ice Data Center

C. Derksen and R. Brown, "Spring snow cover extent reductions in the 2008-2012 period exceeding climate model projections," GRL, 39:L19504

http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/snow_extent.html

Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, Data History Accessed August 29, 2011.


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## AnOminous (Dec 13, 2016)

Pikimon said:


> The ocean absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere. CO2 and water makes carbonic acid, - seltzer water! The oceans are 30% more acidic since the industrial revolution. 93% of The Great Barrier Reef has been bleeched and 22% and rising is dead as a consequence. The ocean currently absorbs 9.3 billion tons of CO2 a year and is currently absorbing an additional 2 billion tons annually. Not because the ocean is suddenly getting better at it, but because there's more saturation in the atmosphere.



If climate change is real, then how come Al Gore rides in airplanes?

Checkmate atheists.


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## Joan Nyan (Dec 20, 2016)

There should be a betting market for climate change.


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## Brandobaris (Dec 21, 2016)

I think the problem is Humanity and Capitalism.  We are a capitalist consumerist throwaway society, we feel guilty about harming the planet but not at the expense of insane utility bills and tax hikes that as usual would hit the poorest the hardest.  Governments could do more to encourage alternate energy and such, but Capitalism means corporations will attempt to suppress that since it challenges market share and profits.  So really its a go no-where situation really.  The world runs on money, not good will or the willingness to help the next generation.

But I did enjoy this video because it brought up interesting points.


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## Vitriol (Dec 21, 2016)

Try and keep discussion impersonal and civil, ive deleted  some bickering.


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## The Great Chandler (Dec 22, 2016)

We might as well die a species. I'll be waiting for that day.


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## Joan Nyan (Dec 29, 2016)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/climateers-cant-handle-the-truth-1482882375


> Congrats are due for the term “climate denialist,” which in 2016 migrated from Paul Krugman’s column to the news pages of the New York Times.
> 
> On Dec. 7, the term ascended to a place of ultimate honor when it figured in the headline, “Trump Picks Scott Pruitt, Climate Change Denialist, to Lead E.P.A.”
> 
> ...



http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesta...ptical-of-global-warming-crisis/#af8bdf4171b7

*Peer-Reviewed Survey Finds Majority Of Scientists Skeptical Of Global Warming Crisis*

_It is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus._

Don’t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed _Organization Studies_. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.

The survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized here and here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.

According to the newly published survey of geoscientists and engineers, merely 36 percent of respondents fit the “Comply with Kyoto” model. The scientists in this group “express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause.”

The authors of the survey report, however, note that the overwhelming majority of scientists fall within four other models, each of which is skeptical of alarmist global warming claims.

The survey finds that 24 percent of the scientist respondents fit the “Nature Is Overwhelming” model. "In their diagnostic framing, they believe that changes to the climate are natural, normal cycles of the Earth.” Moreover, “they strongly disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal lives.”

Another group of scientists fit the “Fatalists” model. These scientists, comprising 17 percent of the respondents, “diagnose climate change as both human- and naturally caused. ‘Fatalists’ consider climate change to be a smaller public risk with little impact on their personal life. They are skeptical that the scientific debate is settled regarding the IPCC modeling.” These scientists are likely to ask, “How can anyone take action if research is biased?”

The next largest group of scientists, comprising 10 percent of respondents, fit the “Economic Responsibility” model. These scientists “diagnose climate change as being natural or human caused. More than any other group, they underscore that the ‘real’ cause of climate change is unknown as nature is forever changing and uncontrollable. Similar to the ‘nature is overwhelming’ adherents, they disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal life. They are also less likely to believe that the scientific debate is settled and that the IPCC modeling is accurate. In their prognostic framing, they point to the harm the Kyoto Protocol and all regulation will do to the economy.”

The final group of scientists, comprising 5 percent of the respondents, fit the “Regulation Activists” model. These scientists “diagnose climate change as being both human- and naturally caused, posing a moderate public risk, with only slight impact on their personal life.” Moreover, “They are also skeptical with regard to the scientific debate being settled and are the most indecisive whether IPCC modeling is accurate.”

Taken together, these four skeptical groups numerically blow away the 36 percent of scientists who believe global warming is human caused and a serious concern.

One interesting aspect of this new survey is the unmistakably alarmist bent of the survey takers. They frequently use terms such as “denier” to describe scientists who are skeptical of an asserted global warming crisis, and they refer to skeptical scientists as “speaking against climate science” rather than “speaking against asserted climate projections.” Accordingly, alarmists will have a hard time arguing the survey is biased or somehow connected to the ‘vast right-wing climate denial machine.’

Another interesting aspect of this new survey is that it reports on the beliefs of scientists themselves rather than bureaucrats who often publish alarmist statements without polling their member scientists. We now have meteorologists, geoscientists and engineers all reporting that they are skeptics of an asserted global warming crisis, yet the bureaucrats of these organizations frequently suck up to the media and suck up to government grant providers by trying to tell us the opposite of what their scientist members actually believe.

People who look behind the self-serving statements by global warming alarmists about an alleged “consensus” have always known that no such alarmist consensus exists among scientists. Now that we have access to hard surveys of scientists themselves, it is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.


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## DuskEngine (Jan 3, 2017)

Jon-Kacho said:


> according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed _Organization Studies_





> To address this, we reconstruct the frames of one group of experts who have not received much attention in previous research and yet play a central role in understanding industry responses – professional experts in petroleum and related industries.





> First Published November 19, 2012



lol


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## JU 199 (Jan 3, 2017)

Jon-Kacho said:


> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesta...ptical-of-global-warming-crisis/#af8bdf4171b7
> 
> *Peer-Reviewed Survey Finds Majority Of Scientists Skeptical Of Global Warming Crisis*
> 
> ...



From a comment on the article



> Wow, you did not actually read the article did you? Here’s a paragraph that should have given you a hint about the sample the authors used:
> 
> To address this, we reconstruct the frames of one group of experts who have not received much attention in previous research and yet play a central role in understanding industry responses – professional experts in petroleum and related industries. Not only are we interested in the positions they take towards climate change and in the recommendations for policy development and organizational decision-making that they derive from their framings, but also in how they construct and attempt to safeguard their expert status against others. To gain an understanding of the competing expert claims and to link them to issues of professional resistance and defensive institutional work, we combine insights from various disciplines and approaches: framing, professions literature, and institutional theory.
> 
> ...


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## Arse Biscuit (Jan 3, 2017)

Jon-Kacho said:


> Don’t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed _Organization Studies_. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.



If it's occurring, it doesn't matter why it is occurring.  An intelligent species would be taking steps to deal with the consequences of it.  And I don't mean some stupid carbon tax...I mean developing drought-resistant crops with shorter growing cycles, building desalinization plants on the coastlines, and maybe coming up with a plan for low-lying coastal urban areas.

Let's assume just for one moment that it is man-made.  What are you going to do?  Shut all industry and transportion down and kill 11 out of every 12 people on the planet?  Not acceptable.

No, the solution here is using our fucking heads and adapting to a changing environment, if that is what we're living in.


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## Joan Nyan (Jan 3, 2017)

DuskEngine said:


> lol





Ass Manager 3000 said:


> From a comment on the article


Til Forbes is just as much of a rag as the rest of the media


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## Daughter of Cernunnos (Jan 3, 2017)

It went wrong when conservatards started to deny anthropogenic climate change because it threatened the profit motive, preventing meaningful action on this issue before we're all underwater. It interests me how popular climate change denialism is among US conservatives while the liberals tend to fall for alternative medicine. 

This blog does great work covering many forms of science denialism including regarding climate change:
https://debunkingdenialism.com/2011/12/27/an-open-letter-to-libertarian-climate-change-denialists/


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## DNJACK (Jan 3, 2017)

kinda the same reason liberal arts and feminism studies are associated with liberalism. Real scientists avoid the research area because of the stupid politics getting in the way.


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## WW 635 (Feb 12, 2017)

DNJACK said:


> Real scientists avoid the research area


You take that back!


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## OwO What's This? (Feb 12, 2017)

It's a fight against human nature. We're not really going to do shit about it until it gets a whole lot worse, and then we'll pull something out of our ass to fix it in a frenzied, desperate panic.

In the meantime, it's a great way to scam democrats out of money.


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## Johnny Bravo (Feb 12, 2017)

Climate change will happen because climate change has _always_ happened. We've been living in a warm interglacial period for the last 10,000 years or so and may not return to another cold glacial period for another thousand (though it could take much longer). I think the debate went wrong when the selling line became "stop global warming." Sure we can lower carbon emissions but carbon emissions didn't kill the mammoths or cause the glaciers to retreat, these events occurred when humans were still rubbing sticks to make fire. 

Being environmentally friendly is just a good idea. Don't shit where you eat. It doesn't need to be about saving the fucking planet. The best we can do in the event of global climate change is prepare to ride it out or get the fuck off of planet Earth.


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## Daughter of Cernunnos (Feb 12, 2017)

Climate change is definitely real and one of the most serious problems of our time. The reasons US conservatives seem to be climate change denialists could be...

1. Evangelical Christianity is popular in some places in the states compared to most places in the West. The kind of doomsday mentality does not tend towards a sustainability mindset.

2. Poor quality of education and lack of scientific literacy and critical thinking skills within the general population.

3. The US political system incentivizing polarizing and divisive debates on issues due to its 2 party nature. Environmental preservation has been painted as a liberal issue in American politics when it needn't inherent be so. 

4. Particular parts of conservatism as an ideology that make it prey to this particular brand of denialism. They don't like "big government" but we need governments to enforce better environmental policy. Of course conservatives are still for government functions that they deem necessary and if they had better scientific literacy they would understand why the enviroment needs to be preserved which includes good policy that is enforced properly but that comes back to point 2.


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## DNJACK (Feb 12, 2017)

CricketVonChirp said:


> You take that back!


you misunderunderstood me

no serious scientists studies climate change. It's too political.


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## WW 635 (Feb 12, 2017)

DNJACK said:


> you misunderunderstood me
> 
> no serious scientists studies climate change. It's too political.


You misunderstood me. I don't believe in "real science". Science is a trick of the devil.


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## DNJACK (Feb 12, 2017)

im not saying real scientists matters, fyi


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## Joan Nyan (Feb 12, 2017)

Daughter of Pomona said:


> 1. Evangelical Christianity is popular in some places in the states compared to most places in the West. The kind of doomsday mentality does not tend towards a sustainability mindset.


tfw it's Christians who have a "doomsday mentality" and not the people saying Florida will be under water in 4 years ago if we don't stop driving cars



Daughter of Pomona said:


> we need governments to enforce better environmental policy.


Why is that? If the problem is the burning of fossil fuels, people aren't going to stop burning them just because of taxes and regulations which just make the government richer and help the big corporations by shutting down smaller businesses who can't afford to comply. The only way to stop people from burning fossil fuels (short of outright banning them and plunging the entire country into poverty) is to find a cleaner form of energy that's still affordable. If what happened with Solyndra is any indication, the government isn't very good at picking winners in this field.


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