Should you believe in climate change?

[Lamplighter]

I almost put this into a thread for it's lyrical writing, but it is really
a technical piece about climate change and mankind's effect on the planet.

The long quote below struck my emotional strings.

NY Times
8/17/13

Gorgeous Glimpses of Calamity
<snip>
There’s a dispassionate quality to the view from on high.
On Aug. 2, 2005, the circuitous trajectory of Messenger, a NASA spacecraft,
brought it boomeranging back toward Earth on its way to explore Mercury.
Its steady stream of data offered a rare chance to watch our world grow larger in space,
as a visitor from another star system might first see it.

Initially, Earth was simply a pearl of milky white and ultramarine blue,
with the white — clouds, ice and snow — being other forms of life-giving water.
Eventually, hues of tawny gold appeared; more than a third of the visible land area, it seemed, was desert.
Only later, when the planet filled half the picture plane, did a hint of emerald emerge between the clouds.
A verdant, compelling green. The color of photosynthesis.

After this first direct evidence of life on Earth, and with the spacecraft
still a quarter of the distance to the Moon, another hue emerged.
Above the lush equatorial belt of South America, lower in altitude and distinct from the clouds,
it was a nebulous, smoky, profoundly unsettling gray-blue.

Could this be from fires, perhaps willfully set?
Could this first hint of intelligent life on Earth signify a species evidently busy creating still more desert?
<snip>
And this was the view from some 65,000 miles away.
Far closer in, NASA maintains a small fleet of Earth-observing satellites.
Unfortunately, their visual record makes it even clearer that something is going badly wrong in the garden.

Across the world, tremendous wildfires can be seen raging during the searing summers of the new millennium.
As the oceans warm, vast equatorial hurricanes have smashed North America.
In Canada, the Northwest Passage has twice become clear of ice during the last decade.

And the smog is no longer localized.
A gunmetal exhalation of coal and fuel smoke blankets China almost daily,
extending out across the sea toward the Korean Peninsula,
Japan and beyond.
We are tracking glaciers retreating, and immense polar icebergs calving into rising waters.
Gargantuan sandstorms extend out from expanding deserts, sometimes traversing the breadth of the Atlantic.
<snip>

There are several still images from space and a few videos in the article.
Here is just one of the embedded videos:
June 2013: Dense clouds of smoke from fires set on the Indonesian island of Sumatra choked neighboring Singapore.

[Lamplighter]

This 6' 1" Governor seems to think he can keep his head above water by censuring Florida's vocabulary.

Ravaged by climate change, Florida reportedly bans term ‘climate change’
Washington Post - errence McCoy - 3/9/15

...the state of Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who has punted on the issue.
“Well, I’m not a scientist,” he told the Miami Herald’s Marc Caputo last year
when asked if he was becoming less skeptical of man-made climate change.

According to a Sunday report from the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting,
Scott’s aversion to discussions of man-made climate change has been brought to bear
on a department charged with protecting a state that already exhibits many of the changes
scientists predict will overtake other coastal regions.

Officials with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP),
reported writer Tristram Korten, have been restricted from using the term
“climate change” or “global warming” in official correspondence.

The investigative reporting outfit called it an “unwritten policy,” which was
“distributed verbally statewide” and has “affected” how one of the largest departments
in the state, armed with a $1.4 billion budget and 3,200 employees, does business.

“The irony is clearly apparent,” Korten told The Washington Post on Sunday night.
“Florida is a peninsula with 1,200 miles of coastline, and when it comes to climate change,
we’re the canary in the coalmine.
And we’re relying on the state government to protect us and to plan for these changes.”

[regular.joe]

What utter bull shite. Is there such a thing a perpetual motion?....Well, I'm not a scientist, so I don't think I can really answer such a question.....Oh, my fucking God I hate politicians. Problem is that the American people who elect these clowns are so fickle that he has to lie to keep his job and get re-elected. So, basically we are all just lying to ourselves to make money. At least the majority of the minority who vote.

[busterb]

Yes I believe in change. Last week was below freezing for a few days. Now about 70 and rain. Next week who knows?

[Griff]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

What utter bull shite. Is there such a thing a perpetual motion?....Well, I'm not a scientist, so I don't think I can really answer such a question.....Oh, my fucking God I hate politicians. Problem is that the American people who elect these clowns are so fickle that he has to lie to keep his job and get re-elected. So, basically we are all just lying to ourselves to make money. At least the majority of the minority who vote.

True words.

[tw]

Originally Posted by busterb

Yes I believe in change. Last week was below freezing for a few days. Now about 70 and rain. Next week who knows?

Can the people of NY sell you a hurricane called Sandy? Consider it a fire sale.

[be-bop]

Originally Posted by busterb

Yes I believe in change. Last week was below freezing for a few days. Now about 70 and rain. Next week who knows?

You have just described Scottish normal weather, we can get the 4 seasons in an hour here

[elSicomoro]

I love how some folks will point to one thing and be like, "This sure doesn't seem like global warming to me!" with some asinine self-righteous chuckle.

As someone that is a big fan of science (and also has a Master of Science degree), the amount of anti-science craziness that goes on these days scares the crap out of me.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by elSicomoro

... the amount of anti-science craziness that goes on these days scares the crap out of me.

That's OK. It's those craziness genes that keep the gene pool strong.

[Undertoad]

Climate science literacy unrelated to public acceptance of human-caused global warming

Deep public divisions over climate change are unrelated to differences in how well ordinary citizens understand scientific evidence on global warming. Indeed, members of the public who score the highest on a climate-science literacy test are the most politically polarized on whether human activity is causing global temperatures to rise.

The headline is backed up by a scientific study, operated by a top university, and published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

So now, if you believe that the people who do not believe as you do are uneducated in science, uninformed, stupid, or just plain crazy, you are... a science denier.

[Happy Monkey]

Well, it argues against "uneducated in science", "uninformed", and "stupid", at least.

But knowing all the science and still denying what the scientists overwhelmingly say? Is that better or worse than simply being uninformed?

[Undertoad]

What do the scientists overwhelmingly say?

ETA that's three part question

What do they say?

Who are the scientists?

What is overwhelmingly?

That's all wrong. Let me figure out the right question.

[Lamplighter]

Does "climate change" = "climate warming" ?

Is the overall global climate: warming, cooling, or staying the same ?

Are the activities of mankind: contributing, causing, or having no effect ?

It's all in how you ask "the" question.

[Undertoad]

Roughly speaking, I believe in AGW.

I hate hate hate unscientific statements about AGW. Hate.

I hear them mostly from those who believe in it.

After an hour of trying, and three deleted novellas, I can't formulate the question. I guess I don't really want to. Enjoy yourselves.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Roughly speaking, I believe in AGW.

I hate hate hate unscientific statements about AGW. Hate.

It's rather unfair to be pissy about people making mistakes, considering there's a lot of misinformation about how to calculate and when you must use Actual gold Weight.

I hear them mostly from those who believe in it.
After an hour of trying, and three deleted novellas, I can't formulate the question. I guess I don't really want to. Enjoy yourselves.

Oh wait, do you mean Anthropogenic Global Warming?
If you're going to rise to the four hate per sentence level of passion on this, that must mean you're pretty good at detecting unscientific statements. Do your judge them on whether or not the speaker understands the basic thread of what they are trying to express in lay language?

Or do you use the monocled Professor approach, that they better be able to express, in proper scientific jargon, the exact results which have been reviewed and approved by the International Brotherhood of Unstained Executive Lab Coats?

There's nothing I like better than a good self-righteous dressing down of people who are wrong, but I find the world has gotten so complicated it's awfully hard for me to determine whether they're wrong or not. How did the black and white world get polluted with all these shades of grey?

The scientists have produced a shitload of knowledge in my lifetime, as well as stuff like a zillion chemical compounds I'd rather not think about. They'd make a "breakthrough", popular science would completely distort what it is and how it will affect the whole human race. These came so fast and proved to be only semi reliable, so if it didn't affect work, I'll just wait for the flying cars.
But it nagged me, half the time it's new knowledge, but the other half they'd say, "up until now scientists thought", or "this disproves what science have believed". Yesterday this was solid scientific fact, plan space shots, plan my health care, get four hate per sentence irate on it... today, fugetaboutit.

Whoopee! We're all gonna die.