catastrophization

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by sculptor, Aug 13, 2019.

  1. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    There's really no catastrophising. Not from the scientific experts. The IPCC, for example, has consistently made conservative predictions, and new data has tended to show that things are worse than what whose conservative estimates predicted.

    There's a very well funded movement to muddy the waters on climate change. Some of the same people that pulled the wool over people's eyes about the health risks of smoking cigarettes have moved on from working for Big Tobacco into working for Big Fossil Fuels instead.

    No. Scientist have been warning about global heating since at least the 1970s.

    It sounds like you think climate change is a left-wing conspiracy theory. If that's what you think, I suggest it's time you started reading some less biased sources than whatever it is you're getting your information from right now.

    That sounds like the line that only 0.04% of the atmosphere consists of carbon dioxide, so therefore we needn't worry about pumping all that extra CO$_2$ into the atmosphere.

    That 1.6 degrees may sound like chicken feed to you, but it is causing glaciers across the world to melt that have not melted in hundreds of thousands of years. It is causing the next great extinction of species across the planet. It is causing the Great Barrier Reef to die. It is already starting to displace millions of people from their homes. It is causing an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events - something that will only get worse as the temperature continues to rise.

    In 1750 (industrial revolution), carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million. Today it is more than 400 parts per million. That's in the space of only two and a half centuries, and the increase is almost entirely attributable to human activity.

    The temperature trend - despite some plateaus and the occasional decrease in some years - is only going in one direction - upwards. That will continue for some time, even if we give up all fossil fuels now.

    Emissions standards haven't generally concerned carbon dioxide, to my knowledge.

    Nonsense. Maybe you don't hear much about China in the United States, but China is a massive greenhouse emitter, with a population of a billion people who are starting to demand luxuries like electricity and motor vehicles. At least the Chinese leadership seems to recognise that global heating is a problem, and they are taking some steps to address the problem. Meanwhile, many Americans are more worried about Trump's latest controversial tweet, while they think about how to elect him for a second term.

    So, if I understand you correctly, you're saying global heating is a communist conspiracy aimed at promoting China as the pre-eminent world power, at the expense of the United States. Is that the gist of it?
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    He is well aligned with Trump then!
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    You keep trying to hide the reality of AGW behind local changes of the distant past.

    The "G" is for global. The AGW warming has been and is predicted to continue to be about ten times as fast as any global warming of the past, with the only known rivals found in the recoveries from major meteor strike cooling - which were short term, plateaued, and not the continual boost AGW promises if not curbed somehow.
    - - - -
    That increase, which is accelerating, is catastrophically rapid and large. You can learn that by following the research into AGW, which has been piling up for forty or fifty years now.
    Don't be silly. Childish Republican Party propaganda, pure and simple - adults should know better.
    The researchers into AGW have no such agenda, and calling them "alarmists" will not conjure one up for them.

    The people with the radical social change program are the US Republicans who want to revoke the remaining provisions of the New Deal, revoke the Civil Rights legislation of the 60s, militarize the US borders and foreign policies, privatize governmental services (including military ones) by selling or contracting them to their corporate backers, lower taxes on the wealthy still more, etc. AGW is a real problem for them, because preparing for it and adapting to it requires competent and effective government on a continental scale - and competent, effective government ruins their plans.
    The pileup of CO2 in the atmosphere would be one obvious factor: https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=carbon dioxide production 1980 2000 model&fr=yhs-symantec-ext_onb&hspart=symantec&hsimp=yhs-ext_onb&imgurl=https://www.iea.org/newsroom/energysnapshots/170317GlobalCO2Emissions.png#id=28&iurl=https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/climate-CS_global_temp_and_co2_1880-2012_V3-759x575.png&action=click
    At least, that's what the research indicates. All of it.
    Do you know of another candidate factor, that the AGW researchers are not aware of?
     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2019
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,266
    The last paragraph is rather deceptive, in that you seem to have (deliberately?) ignored quite a number of factors which also contribute greatly to AGW: dramatic increase in global human population, and consequent increase in overall consumption; suburbanization in affluent nations and consequent increase in motor vehicles miles driven (work commutes); agriculture, agriculture, agriculture, and drastically increased consumption owing to growing population and the well-documented alarming fattening of this growing populace; and feedback loops, to name just a few.

    Kinda make your "what was happening since 1980..." bit seem a tad disingenuous.
     
  8. exchemist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,451
    This is quite funny. I vividly recall when Myron Ebell was interviewed on the BBC many years ago and explained, to the incredulous interviewer, that climate change was all a scam got up by the EU to undermine the US economy.

    Scroll on a decade and what do we see? The self-same Myron Ebell, as an adviser to The Chump, telling everyone it is a scam got up by the Chinese to undermine the US economy.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Idiotic conspiracy theory.
     
  9. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    That's one of the easiest ways to tell a climate change denier from a skeptic.

    A skeptic is skeptical of one or more claims. For example, he might be skeptical that climate change will increase the intensity of hurricanes in the Northern hemisphere, because some storms are driven by north-south temperature differentials - and the Arctic is warming faster than any other place on the planet. And he will maintain that skepticism until he sees enough to prove or disprove that.

    A denier just denies, and his denial changes day by day. On Monday he might claim that NASA faked the climate change records because they corrected one once. On Tuesday he might use those exact same records (the ones he claimed were fake) to prove that 1931 was the hottest year ever, not 2016. On Wednesday he might claim it's an EU conspiracy; on Thursday he might claim it's a Chinese conspiracy. And on Friday he will say "well of course the climate is changing, but all the changes will be good!" The one constant is denial.
     
    exchemist likes this.
  11. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
  12. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
  13. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,447
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansgaard–Oeschger_event

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    i am trying to digest this, my brain is not currently running in optimal so its slow going.








    only 1 ?

    soo off to bond events for some reading(probably not today or for a few days atleast) ... or is that just observational speculation by comparative data ?(scientific speculation)
     
    sculptor likes this.
  14. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
    the quoted:
    was relevant to exchemist's posted claim about "rate of change"
    see post #39
    Many have claimed an "unprecedented" rate of change for anthropogenic global warming:
    Which seems to be in conflict with known paleoclimate data.
    ergo my posted.
     
  15. exchemist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,451
    This is 50 pages long. Where in it does it say that past rates of change have been comparable with anthropogenic change?
     
  16. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,266
    He's filibustering. But, based upon a quick perusal of the graphs contained within the 66 pages, I'm not sure how one could glean a comparable "rate of change"--compared with the recent century-plus--given that the graphs all seem to cover millenia.
     
  17. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
    If you would learn, you must read.............
    less words/less information: from wiki
    There were most likely over 20 D-O events during the last glacial phase with similar rapid temperature changes.

    Finding proxies to determine rates of temperature change for previous interglacials is a bit more difficult if you want anything more accurate than centuries timescales. There have been recent improvements like using midges as a proxy coupled with pollen proxies and studies of caves. But, still, combining the proxies remains more of an art than a hard science.
    If we knew the complete causal variables og D-O events, then extrapolating to previous interglacials might be a tad easier?
    ......................
    There have been several strides made in climate and paleoclimate science since I became interested circa 1980---back then people were still arguing over how many glacial cycles had occurred in the pleistocene/quaternary. (it seems that most believe that we have 64 marine isotope stages--so far)
     
  18. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
    epimetheus
    Perhaps. 'twould have been more apropos to have started this thread under psychology?
    I had thought that that might be too constraining...
    (maybe it does not matter, this thing is wandering all over the place anyway)
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Not global. Not continual. Not greenhouse gas based.

    Not equivalent. Not similar. Not the same kind of event as AGW,
    Extrapolating to anything supposedly "similar" to AGW would still be an obvious mistake.
    Such as all the researchers and analysts working from sound theory and solid data.
    No, it doesn't. It seems to agree perfectly and without exception with all known paleoclimate data.
    This has been explained to you many times, often using your linked data.

    Your most frequent error has been to extrapolate a local atmospheric temperature swing in or around the North Atlantic to the ocean, atmosphere, and land area of the planet as a whole. (you also attempted to claim predictions of increased rainfall and predictions of more severe droughts were in conflict somehow, and several other indications of an odd and fundamental refusal to comprehend even the research you linked yourself - let alone AGW research and findings in general).

    In the course of dealing with these unsupported and generally bs extrapolations of yours,
    (which are not made by the researchers or in the research you reference,)
    you have been reminded of the difference between "global" and "local" many, many times. You have also been reminded of the differences between global greenhouse gas boost warming and the other causes of local temperature swings, especially in the fraught and unstable North Atlantic (but also in Antarctica, etc). In response you have even argued against these reminders of basic fact (remember the time you posted the ability to detect - barely - one of your Greenland centered transitory air temp swings in Southern Hemisphere data as evidence of it being a "global" event?).

    It's not that complicated a factor, this global/local matter, and while bollixing it you have been posting (under the cover of "science" and links to actual research) misleading innuendo, personal attack, and Republican faux doubt-casting swill from the straight Partisan feed on AGW, for years now. You have learned nothing about the politically motivated and corporate interest organized propaganda effort to deny AGW, apparently. You have learned nothing about AGW, or the research and analysis devoted to it, apparently.

    For years now.

    Why?
    What motivates the willful maintenance of ignorant AGW denial exhibited by the victims of US rightwing corporate marketing pros?
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2019
  20. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,266
    I can't tell if you are addressing me as Epimetheus (in response to #73), or characterizing... something as epimethean. The latter makes more sense, I think. However, unless you've undergone a radical change of mind here, and you are no longer wont to characterize the informing persons of the possible, and likely, consequences of action/inaction as "catastrophizing", the latter seems unlikely (as your intent). Insight?
     
  21. exchemist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,451
    But you have not answered my question, fobbing me off instead with another source, on what appears to be a different subject.

    I conclude that the article you quoted does not support your claim, and that you were being dishonest in pretending that it did.
     
  22. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
    Perhaps, the grand solar maximum of the latter 1/2 of the last century(also known as the modern maximum) was a contributing factor.
    old chart:

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    grand maxima were more common at the beginning of the Holocene when temperatures were rising rapidly into the Holocene temperature optimum---not so much so during the cool down into the little ice age, from which, we were emerging at the dawn of the instrumental temperature record.
    another:

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    sunspots as a proxy for net solar output.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Sure. So?
    Yep. Familiar and long incorporated information.
    That was a key factor in the complete dismissal of the solar fluctuation hypothesis for the recent and unprecedented warming. It didn't match - in rate, scale, duration, distribution, side effects, measured solar flux, or timing.
    They work reasonably well. The AGW researchers have been dealing with them, routinely, for several decades now.

    Apparently we're supposed to guess your argument again - your brief moment of candor has returned to the mud from whence it sprung.
     

Share This Page