He posted in SSLHE what I took to be a really weak excuse to walk away from 2p2 so I don't expect to see him around anymore. Too bad, the man's very sharp.

I PMed him. In times like these we need a hero.

Agree, he's one of the really clear thinkers and, what's more, he's good on so many topics. Here's his post, fwiw.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...&postcount=113

A reminder from a more innocent time, when the biggest problem facing the environment (of which we were aware) was uncontrolled disposal of non-biodegradables.

OP, you're right, there is no temperature the climate "supposed" to be, and the planet will be just fine. However, if you are concerned about more than just what happens in your own lifetime and the well-being, or even existence, of your progeny, you might want to re-think your stance on this issue. You seem like a reasonable person, not a bat**** insane conspiracy nut, so why do you think all these scientists who are telling you that anthropogenic climate change is real and will have devastating consequences for most life forms on earth, including humans, within the next few generations are wrong?

You don't get to choose which scientific findings to "believe" any more than you get a vote to repeal the law of gravity. Science deals in facts and evidence, not in opinions, politics, or religion. Unless you think that all these scientists are part of some global conspiracy to propagate misinformation on this topic, you don't get to be a sceptic in this spot.

TJ, you conveniently seem to have skipped returning to this line of questioning. Why?

Why is it only "possible" that rising temps are causing rising sea levels?

What do you think friends, did we change his mind?

OP appears to already be aware of the scientific consensus on this matter, and appears to accept the validity of the scientific method in ascertaining the truth or falsity of statements about the natural world, yet remains unpersuaded. I am not sure what, if anything, can be said to change his mind.

"I don't want to believe this thing, make me understand it" rarely has a successful outcome..

I think that OP knows in his gut that humans are affecting the climate, but as a rationalization for avoiding what he perceives as the economic sacrifices that would be required to address the situation, he likes to imagine that there is more uncertainty about the science, both in terms of what is happening and what the consequences will be, than there really is.

In other words, I think OP is an ostrich with his head in the sand. But he seems to be a good-natured ostrich.

Looks like he was shouted down by the liberal echo chamber.

If ikes was still here or d.0m3r ever found this thread - they would throw out enough out-of-context sciency-sounding stuff put out by industry shills to completely satisfy OP that there is a lot of uncertainty and a legitimate debate.

Only posters like callypigian are knowledgeable enough to painstakingly pull all that apart and point out why it's BS masquerading as science. And as a reward for all that work they immediately get a new giant ball of yarn, which was basically copy-pasted from a denial site, to unravel.

The fact that a position by an industry shill was proven to be BS counts for nothing. And the goalposts are always flying all over the place - but in general retreating from "no temp change" to "yes temp change but not man man-made" to "yes temp change and man-made but not as severe as is being predicted" etc. The only goal is to keep sowing the air of legitimate debate.

Which may be why callypigian is not around anymore.

As a profession in general, scientists may well have more intellectual integrity and be less willing to sell out for cash than others. However, let's not forget that scientists testified in court that lead in gasoline was A-OK, or that there was no causal link between smoking and lung cancer, in those respective situations. Even amongst scientists there will always be enough people willing to spew BS for money to persuade those who are already asking to be persuaded that the overwhelming consensus is wrong.

When I was a teenager I thought about going into environmental science but the more I learned about it the more I realized there we no chance in hell America was ever going to have to political will to keep us from massive environmental damage. I was sure right about that. It’s 2019 and we’re still arguing over the basics of global warming. It was obvious in the 80s that this **** is a serious problem and people denying it are liars or morons.

It's not strictly this, either. We also don't get a clear enough sense from the OP about what he values in order to construct appropriate appeals. It's pretty clear that he doesn't have the same empathy for the hundreds of millions of people whose current homes could likely be under water in our lifetimes that we do, and if his outlook on the situation is supremely selfish, then trying to convince him to change his mind is a fool's errand. I mean, he'll either be dead or have lived a relatively full life even if the worst of predictions come to pass in their time, and he sounds like he's fairly well to do, so he'll be able to cope with higher food prices towards the end of his life, so even inflicting a minor discomfort like a 5% tax hike now is a big burden compared to what he'll personally face in the worst case scenario. So, we'd have to be crafting appeals like making a case that a Green New Deal can make him better off now rather than focusing on how bad things will be for other people. But maybe there's some other key value he has that would be more persuasive still.

This kind of gets to the heart of it. If they're being honest, everyone would agree that they would rather not have the composition of earth's atmosphere change materially from where it was before the industrial revolution started and where it was for the few thousand years prior. You'd rightly be very nervous about even minor changes to something as vital and complicated as the air we breathe.

On the other hand, most people would or should (a lot less universality here) admit that radically restructuring our economic system, which has to support 10-20 times as many people as it did in the pre-industrial period (where most everyone used to live on the edge of starvation, to boot), is also pretty nerve-wracking. And decarbonizing the economy, at least in some visions, does entail very radical changes to how the system can function.

A very natural and common reaction to this bind is to try and deny one or the other prong of it. If you're worried that a bunch of lefties are going to impose green communism, it's convenient to belief that there actually is no threat from climate change to even worry about. On the other hand, if you want green communism anyways, it's easy to ignore the risk of massive economic dislocation. Despite being natural, this is a pretty horrible way to approach a real problem. Most scientists believe that climate change is happening and poses serious risks. In light of that, it's certainly a smart reaction to try to put a damper on CO2 emissions (even if we aren't able to estimate with 100% certainty what damage they cause--the EV is negative) and try to develop technologies (electric cars, better batteries and solar panels, better nuclear power, etc.) that have the potential to allow our economy to function in a way that produces less CO2.

Any particular program naturally has its own cost-benefit analysis, but you can't really think that through if your baseline is to try and "prove" that climate change is fine or not happening or whatever.

I’m old enough to remember conservatives saying the *exact* same thing about CFCs degrading our ozone layer and now in 2019 we can look back and see that the scientists were completely ****ing spot on and the solutions they proposed worked without destroying our economy. And of course the scientists get zero credit and the morons spreading lies were never held accountable.

Fortunately there were fairly easy non-ozone-destroying replacements for CFCs. Oil not so much.

One of them was still doing it in 2016 and was held accountable - he got elected president.

While people argue about a transition away from fossil fuels it's going to just happen. I'd like it continue to be sped up with incentives. It wouldn't have gotten where it is without them. But it's happening.

Contracts are now being written for solar WITH STORAGE at 2.3 cents per kwh.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/artic...ce#gs.gbwibDuB

Electric cars are a few years behind solar and wind in the price curve, but they cost about a third as much to operate per mile as fossil fuel cars and similar up-front prices are right around the corner.

Merchants of Doubt is an excellent book on this. The very same people were denialist "experts" for the tobacco industry, acid rain, and ozone depletion.

Using CFCs inside doesn't effect the ozone layer. Mind blown!

Yeah, the coal miners with their deadly accidents and black lung disease just hate those stupid regulations.

Indeed. Prometheus unfettered by the strictures that bind the rest of us in our quotidian existence, Trump has formulated the epiphanous principle that his bathroom is hermetically sealed.

If only it were true.

Damn, I just came here to post that.

OP, check out Robert Balling (Arizona State) and see if you find his work to be more credible than all of the other climate scientists combined. The people I know that think aspartame is a gov't plot to cause a brain cancer epidemic certainly do.