US Defence Secretary James Mattis says climate change is already destabilising the world

As advanced nations confront reality, the scientific denialists are largely the same clowns that were so wee wee'd up about that "Birther" nonsense, and were in a tizzy over the Dub's non-existent wmd stockpiles. I think we can safely write them off.

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Conservatives aren't told what to do, say and think by their political party like the other guys.

 

Which reality? The one projected by incomplete computer models or the slew of papers predicting cooling due to the unprecedented solar minimum? Guess you have chosen hysteria over science.

 

The reality of the vast majority of scientists around the world!!
Is that you in the picture?

 

First, you have no idea what the 'vast majority of scientists around the world' think. Second your post is a simple logical fallacy.

 

You are speaking of logic to me?

Okay, I will try some logic with you.
SUPPOSE - the scientists are wrong. The earth isn't heating up. BUT- we don't know it is a hoax, and stop burning coal and use more wind and solar electric, and more nuclear power. - What would be the downside? Fewer black lung cases, less air pollution.
BUT - what if the scientists are right and you are wrong and we keep dumping CO2 in the air and we hit a "tipping point" where enough polar ice disappears that less solar radiation is reflected and more absorbed, and the earth starts to accelerate in heating up and we are all screwed?
As Clint Eastwood said, "Do you feel lucky...?"

 

Listen closely.

The earth is not flat. It is spheroidal.

It revolves around the sun. The empyrean does not revolve about it.

You cannot blithely poop into the heavens with impunity. Industrial wastes spewed into the atmosphere has consequences for the atmosphere.

If your ideological dogma renders science anathema to you, science does not care.

 

Actually we have a very good idea. As evidenced by the multiple studies finding that 97% of publishing climatologists accept the basic tenets of AGW and the fact that there are zero recognized groups of national or international scientists that maintain a dissenting opinion in regards to AGW.

 

First part nothing and in 50 years the energy scene may be completely different.

Second part is pure hysteria since CO2 levels have been as high as 8000 ppm with no runaway green house or tipping point. We are only talking about doubling CO2 to one tenth of that. Moncton and Trenberth both estimate a 1.8 and 1.9 rise in temperature based on doubling. The models are all over the place. Others estimate less than the previous and observed science is pointing to a lower rise in temperature. Basically if we did nothing it will never rise above the 2c limit imposed by the misguided Paris agreement.

 

He expresses concern. Nothing more and nothing less. There is nothing that the US can do to change the climate in any significant way. Any attempts to do so weakens our economic growth and the ability to adapt and defend US citizens and for no significant result.

 

Climate changes all the time. The MWP was warmer than it is today with no change in CO2.

Climate is subject to entropy ?? What ?? The entropy of the universe is always increasing - that process needs no driver.

 

The Military considers Climate Change to be one of the foremost threat multipliers in the world. And efforts to improve our personal response to climate change also make us more energy independent, more energy efficient, and healthier. All of which can be accomplished without weakening our economic growth.

Plus, as the world's most powerful country (for the time being), our decisions have a significant impact on the decisions by the rest of the world.

 

The MWP was not warmer than today.

 

tur

First, thank you for sharing the very interesting Nova info with me. I wasn’t aware of that discovery. Based on the information gleaned from the text of that broadcast, we can conclude, 1) the location of the bone find was indeed near the North Pole; 2) the climate of that location has indeed changed over time and averaged about 30* warmer then than now; 3) the dinosaurs in question would have had to be warm-blooded to survive in that environment. We also know that there have been several ice ages in history, and all of them from natural causes. Your argument that our current global warming trend could be from natural causes as well is a reasonable argument based on that history. However, our knowledge of past climate change is limited in its details. We don’t know how long nature took to change from warmer to colder or colder to warmer climates in those past ages. Most geologists and climatologists seem to feel nature changes gradually and centuries or millennia would be involved. The current case of global warming started around 1740, and has continued gradually since, up until around World War II, when the warming trend started climbing at an increasingly steep, rapid rate. The Past two decades have not only broken all records known, but have become alarming to those who study such things. I don’t dispute that natural causes might be involved here. But to ignore the amount of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere by our cars, factories, domesticated animals, and human civilizations in general—all ADDED to whatever natural increases already there, leaves no room for neutrality. The ice caps are melting. Mountain glaciers worldwide are melting. All that represents most of the world’s supply of fresh water. Millions of human populations in remote regions depend on glacial melt waters for their agriculture and livelihood. What happens to those people when that water is no longer available? Where does all that glacial meltwater go? It goes to the oceans, and fills them like a faucet fills a bath tub, causing rising sea levels. Why be concerned? Because a small rise of sea levels of only a few feet will drown most of the world’s largest coastal cities causing massive problems, including unwanted migrations. National boundaries will cease to function. Civilizations will be overrun by unwelcome migrants. Conflicts will abound. Whether Man is the sole cause of global warming or not is irrelevant. It is assured that Man is a major contributor to the problem, and for a brief window of time, has an opportunity to impact the problem in a positive way. My concern is that by ignoring it, or pretending it’s none of our doing, or refusing to even try to help, we doom our descendants to whatever outcome materializes, and those in the know are predicting that outcome will be anything but pleasant.

 

Increasing the price of fossil fuel energy will reduce economic growth. And that increase will regressively harm low income people.

The ROW does not care what the US and western Europe does to cripple their economies by taxing CO2 emissions. That would only weaken the economies of the US and western Europe and would have no significant effect on lowering future global temperatures.

 

The consensus of hundreds of scientific papers indicate that the MWP was ~ 1 deg C warmer than today. We are recovering now from the Little Ice Age which followed the MWP.

 

Hundreds of scientific papers? To the links!

 

How does increasing the price of fossil fuels lead to a weakening of the economy when other energy forms are cheaper?

China is now leading the planet in terms of climate change activity.

And the evidence, from the last two years, is that there is no reason that Global GDP needs to decrease while CO2 output decreases. In both years, that link was decoupled.

 

Because they are not cheaper. Look at the energy prices and economies in Germany and Spain.

China is laughing at the world.

GDP will and has declined with increasing energy prices. Anyone who understands economics understands this. Again Germany and Spain are the best examples. The US is also an example. The Obama economy grew at 1% corrected for inflation and population growth. Obama energy policies contributed to this slow growth which is regressive to low income people.

 

Read "Climate Change Reconsidered II - Physical Science"

 

How much has it actually warmed?

"Averaged over all land and ocean surfaces, temperatures warmed roughly 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit (0.85 degrees Celsius) from 1880 to 2012, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change"

That's steep and rapid? How do we know that it didn't happen at that rate 65 million years ago?

 

There is a lesson there. Don't post after night duty and three scotches. I meant to post inertia

 

I will if you read this http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/mindex.shtml

 

Yup!

You are right about the appellation (if you use polysyllabic words they don't know that you are insulting them). But it is more than a coincidence that it is the same group. These are people with a strong world view bias

 

Obviously there is no fundamental understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy is not a driver. And entropy is always increasing.

http://www.livescience.com/50941-second-law-thermodynamics.html