More Americans and most Republicans now believe in climate change

Oh they absolutely do. There are a ton of deniers that completely reject the fact that the Earth has been warming for decades.

There absolutely is a comprehensive model that suggests man is the primary cause. You're burying your head in the sand on this issue.

Can you show me where Arrhenius 1896, Callendar 1938, Charney 1979, Hansen 1988, and the various IPCC predictions have been wrong year after year?

Nobody is suggesting that we are making perfect predictions, but the scientific consensus predictions turn out to be quite good. If you disagree then lay your cards on the table.. You point out all of the predictions that are widely accepted by the scientific community that you feel were egregiously wrong and I'll point out the ones the denier community got wrong. Fair warning though...this is going to be WAY more fun for me than it is for you.

 

According to this survey, 36% of Republicans do deny that the climate is currently changing.

 

Soooo...anyone here trade in their car for a bicycle or start carpooling to work? Doubt it! Do you climate change fanatics think you can fix the environment through the magic healing powers of complaining ?

 

I'm gonna laugh when they start posting their excuses.

 

The climate is cyclical. It is likely to turn cooler again and that will be far more troublesome than the current warming.

 

Maybe you can help me understand something.

If a "climate change fanatic" fails to procure alternate transportation to work how does that prove that anthroprogenic global warming isn't happening?

Also, how would burdening only the "climate change fanatics" with the responsibility of solving global warming be fair considering that the problem is caused by everyone?

Can you present a rational argument against people taking responsibility for their actions in proportion to the amount of damage they cause to the environment?

 

Really? What is going to cause the Earth to cool? And when should we expect this happen?

 

Have you taken steps to mitigate the harm you do to the environment? If not what is your excuse?

 

As I said, the climate is cyclical. I can't tell you when we should expect a turnaround. I did read one estimate that the next ice age would occur in about 5000 years. We have plenty of time to prepare.

 

When do you expect that it will likely turn colder again? Because the current warming cycle is going to be near catastrophic levels of bad in about 100 years.

 

I bike to the train station and ride that to work. So now that I've successfully passed your weak ass inquiry into exposing hypocrisy, do you have a comment to make about the topic of the thread?

 

Some steps, yes.

As for other steps, my excuse is that I am not a hypocritical enviro-wacko-nutjob.

 

Why is that a talking point? I don't want to live in the climate from 60 million years ago, why the **** do you?

 

So the Earth will begin cooling in the next 5,000 years...maybe? And you don't know how this will happen? You just know that it will happen...eventually...hopefully. Right?

You mean this gives you plenty of time to steal wealth from future generations. I bet we could really dig a deep hole for humanity to try to get themselves out if given 5,000 years to do it.

 

I've taken steps too. Though my motivation is primarily return on investment. Helping the environment is a bonus.

As for other steps my excuse is that I'm not altruistic. I don't think it's fair that I should be burdened with the responsibility and put my family at an economic disadvantage to pay for the damage other people cause.

This is a tragedy of the commons problem. The solution requires a set of rules that are fair and that all parties must abide by. No one group should be disproportionately burdened with fixing the problem. Putting the burden on those that cause damage in proportion to the damage they cause is the fairest solution IMHO.

 

You missed my point. Im republican amd have always beleived in global warming. Its a very simple science. You dont need to be a genius to understand the concept of CO2 increases contributing to global warming.

But it does annoy me that the fanatics like to preach about it but dont actually do anything about it. NO the responsibility does not remain solely on those individuals, however, such individuals should practice what they preach.

 

Congrats on doing your part!

 

And the regulations, imposed on us by those who pander to the hypocritical enviro-wacko-nutjobs, have caused the exportation of the worst of our pollution to the poor nations of the world.

Yay, us.

 

To this I would add that to satisfy the need for magnets for windmills and solar cells that make us feel good, we are buying rare earth elements from China. Mining that stuff is a really messy business. Disposing of dead solar cells will also be a messy business.

I have not heard of recent improvements, but not too long ago a solar cell took more energy to manufacture than it could produce in its lifetime. Let's see a completely solar-powered rare earth mine combined with a solar-powered factory making solar cells and solar powered vehicles shipping the cells to their destination. Let's see anyone produce ethanol fuel using nothing but ethanol to plow fields, water crops, process corn, an ethanol-powered refinery and ethanol powered trucks to ship it around the country. And when the farmer's tractor needs to be replaced, you need an ethanol-powered tractor factory that doesn't depend on a fossil fuel electrical grid.

 

You are underestimating humanity. Focusing on fossil fuels specifically, the technology to make synthetic oil has existed since at least WWII. There are bacteria that excrete oil as a waste product. You get my point. Science can always find a way. Talk of peak oil is similar to talk of peak coal during the industrial revolution when some people thought the world would grind to a halt and end when all of the coal ran out. We have more known coal reserves now than ever and the focus shifted to oil based fuels for transportation which they could not see coming.
If you bet against humanity you are going to lose, because we are f*cking awesome.

For your second point, where are you getting a rise of 3C, and how do you know this will suppress GDP? People thrived and expanded during the medieval warm period for example. As a general rule life thrives where it is warm and struggles where it is cold. There are more types of desert creature than arctic creature and so on.
You say it is either pay now or pay later, and mitigation is cheaper than adaptation. How can you claim to know any of this? I am not trying to be a pedantic ass here and ask you for a citation or anything like that, I am just trying to draw attention to these unfounded alarmist claims that get slipped in the discussion. How do we know it will be bad? What are you basing this on? Because if you look at human history we are pretty great at adapting to things. The climate is going to change no matter what and the climate in the future WILL be different than it is today, for better or worse. We will adapt like we always do.

Since you bring up GDP let's just be frank about it. Carbon taxes are a way to stifle industry and make people in industrialized nations poorer and slow their consumption of resources. There is really no incentive for industrialized nations to go along with this until a better alternative for cheap energy is available. All of the doomsday scenarios in the world aren't as scary as paying twice as much to heat and cool your house or to drive to work. You would be asking people to take a very real hit in their standard of living today to avoid a potential future crisis that may never materialize. That seems like a hard sell. This is made worse when one notices that other environmental issues are essentially ignored in favor of hyperfocus on CO2. I am sure it is a coincidence that the issue whose solution is a global tax takes supremacy in every discussion by policy makers, but it looks bad.

 

Man made warming didn't exist 60 million years ago, what made the earth that hot that there were Herbivore Dinosaurs living near the north pole? Why isn't that cycle simply repeating?

 

I agree with you. Humanity is far more adaptable and innovative then most people give us credit for.

IPCC AR5.

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/

 

Are you incapable of answering your own question?

 

Because CO2 concentrations aren't as high as they were back then and the Arctic ocean is more land locked now. The later prevents the penetration of warmer waters into the prime sea ice area. As a result sea ice sticks around (or at least it did) for the whole year reinforcing higher albedos and lower heat uptake. These effects are large enough that they more than offset the higher luminosity of the Sun today vs back then.

 

I don't know and neither do you.