Climate Change: Why aren't more people concerned about it?

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pud

climber
Sportbikeville & Yucca brevifolia
Dec 4, 2016 - 04:25pm PT
The most eccentric thing about the GW crowd is, they actually think they are going to live long enough to witness the doom and gloom they forecast.

Denying the truth is one thing, refuting an unproven theory of the effects of global warming quite another.
StahlBro

Trad climber
San Diego, CA
Dec 4, 2016 - 06:10pm PT
7 billion people going to 9 in the next 20 years. All wanting the same lifestyle. No problem.

Stupid homo sapien sapien's...
wilbeer

Mountain climber
Terence Wilson greeneck alleghenys,ny,
Dec 4, 2016 - 06:42pm PT
It will be figured out
rottingjohnny

Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
Dec 4, 2016 - 07:23pm PT
Anti Fresno Dave... ROFL...Sure you are and Americans losing jobs is f*#king hilarious....I like your sense of humor....
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Dec 4, 2016 - 10:15pm PT
madbolter1 seems to have decided on being provocative, and in a bit of a disingenuous way.

Part of doing science is testing theories and hypotheses, which can be shown to be false... and while not proven to be true, their power is in their predictive ability. And when theories weave together a large number of observations and measurements into that predictive framework those predictions can be used as a basis for planning.

In part, the failure of the climate science to explain the rising 20th century temperature and the observed changes in climate resulted in the current climate model, a model that provides the best scientific explanation of that temperature rise, human activities which have released in to the atmosphere large enough quantities of CO2 to create that temperature rise.

While not "proving" this is the case, one cannot simply dismiss it as a "mere theory," for it to be false many other components of the theory would also have to be false, and that is unlikely at this point.


Now whether or not climate change, in particular global warming is "good or bad" we'd have to define that... but if you judge on the basis of human societies, global warming and climate change, will be very disruptive.

Displacing the populations living on the costs in a relatively short timescale cannot be belittled by stating "that subset of people will just move to some better place." Certainly people moving from one place on the globe to another has become a huge political issue recently, and climate change will make it worse. That is not to mention the places in the arctic which have already been disrupted, villages having to move due to melting permafrost, or rising oceans.

The productivity of crops does not benefit from increased atmospheric CO2 unless other factors also exist, in particular, water, nutrients, and moderate temperatures. Increased temperatures result in reduced crop productivity among two of the four major crops (the difference being the different photosynthesis used by the plants). With the prospects of climate change, and the rising global temperatures, many studies have been conducted on plant productivity, ones that I have seen show a reduced productivity at a time of still increasing populations and a reduction in the ability to maintain the "green revolution" increases.

As for increased rainfall, the climate models predict that currently arid regions will get more so, and regions with rainfall will also get more, it is not something that gets "spread around." Once again, these changes are being studied at a more detailed scientific level in an attempt to understand what the changes would be.

Certainly madbolter1 must have citations in the scientific literature supporting his enthusiasm for rising global temperature.
F

climber
away from the ground
Dec 4, 2016 - 10:50pm PT
So Ed, I'm kind of like the Mudbolter, not real good with sciency stuff. Can you clarify something for me?
Does this mean we won't be smoking a tasty sativa harvested from the fields of the soon to be agrarian paradise in Antarctica after Trump proves that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese?
AP

Trad climber
Calgary
Dec 5, 2016 - 06:47am PT
The US Defence establishment has identified climate change as one of the biggest problems facing our future.
Increased conflict brought upon by climate change (Syria is a good example because the war started after 3 years of drought where many of its farmers were wiped out).
The need to rebuild/relocate naval facilities due to sea level rise.
This is hardly a leftish environmental organization.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Dec 5, 2016 - 08:29am PT
pud wrote: "...refuting an unproven theory of the effects of global warming quite another."

I was unaware that pud or anyone else has provide a refutation of the current climate science conclusion that human activity is the cause of the 20th century (and now into the 21st century) global warming.

Perhaps a concise statement could be made by those who think this refutation has happened.

Splater

climber
Grey Matter
Dec 5, 2016 - 01:08pm PT
Here is a fascinating paper that gets at the roots of the acceptance of the scientific consensus on climate change, which was linked in an article at the Atlantic monthly.

"When Yale law professor Dan Kahan surveyed 1,540 adults about climate change, he found that scientific literacy did not correlate with perceiving climate change as a greater risk."
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503&download=yes

Figure 2 depicts the general finding, which is that even smart people rely mostly on their gut and their peers to form their opinions.

Note however, the scale of "scientific" literacy is a very basic knowledge test that does not approach the level of expert scientist as indicated by the 97% expert consensus.

A few quotes:

[often it is assumed] "that that members of the public are divided about climate change science because they have limited scientific knowledge and limited capacity to reason about evidence in a scientific manner. Our data, however, show that as individuals become more science literate and more proficient in the mode of reasoning featured in scientific inquiry, they don’t reliably form beliefs more in line with scientific consensus. Instead, they form beliefs that are even more reliably correlated with those of the particular cultural group to which they belong."

[because the effects of climate change are a seemingly distant global issue]
"Nor is it plausible for the typical member of the public to imagine that anything she, as an individual, does - as a producer of carbon emissions, say, or as a voter in democratic elections — will by itself aggravate or reduce the dangers that climate change might pose. She is just not consequential enough one way or the other to matter.

"At the same time, the beliefs that the typical member of the public forms about climate change will likely have an impact on how she gets along with people she interacts with in her daily life. A Hierarchical Individualist in Oklahoma City who proclaims that he thinks that climate change is a serious and real risk might well be shunned by his coworkers at a local oil refinery; the same might be true for an Egalitarian Communitarian English professor in New York City who reveals to colleagues that she thinks that “scientific consensus” on climate change is a “hoax.” They can both misrepresent their positions, of course, but only at the cost of having to endure the anxiety of living a lie, not to mention the risk that they’ll slip up and reveal their true convictions. Given how much they depend on others for support — material and emotional — and how little impact their beliefs have on what society does to protect the physical environment, they are better off when they form perceptions of climate change risk that minimize this danger of community estrangement.

In such circumstances, that is exactly what is likely to happen. A long-standing body of work in social psychology suggests that individuals are motivated to fit their beliefs to those of people with whom they are intimately connected. Both to avoid dissonance and to secure their standing within such groups, they predictably seek out and credit information supportive of “self-defining … values and attitudes” "

"As ordinary people learn more science and become more proficient in modes of reasoning characteristic of scientific inquiry, they do not reliably converge on assessments of climate change risks supported by scientific evidence. Instead they more form beliefs that are even more reliably characteristic of persons who hold their particular cultural worldviews."


Another related link:
Interesting the four societies listed that have now decided to mostly stay silent on climate change are all involved in extracting fossil fuels. They used to declare skepticism, but received too many dissenting opinions, so decided it would cause the least arguments to stay out of fields (climatology) in which they have no expertise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
eeyonkee

Trad climber
Golden, CO
Dec 6, 2016 - 04:21pm PT
I, for one, am grateful to you for continuing to post relevant links, Malemute. This thread is a great resource. By the way, the link that Ed posted upthread of the climate model simulation over a year's time is fantastic. I've run through it a number of times.

The effects of growing versus dormant plant-life as well as the point sources emanating from the industrial powerhouses are clear. Obviously these are just models, but they fold in all of the available understanding of the processes with a detailed dataset into a picture that, through time, becomes a video. I'd love to be a climate modeler!
EdBannister

Mountain climber
13,000 feet
Dec 6, 2016 - 04:21pm PT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GujLcfdovE8

97% is the accurate number for those that acknowledge that man has some contributing factor.
of course man is a factor.... but many, many, included in the 97% are dissenters to the theory that man causes a large portion, of climatic change.

but,
the satellite data over the last 18 years, show no warming, even among alarmists it has become known as the "PAUSE"

and the North American record, for temperature, was set, in 1913

If the weathercaster's model, does not match the weather, is the weather wrong, or the model?

and you are correct Mute! it has become your religion, the left no longer actually looks at the science.

even the ecological disaster of 70,000 penguins perishing because of too much ice, was not reported

because it did not fit the narrative.
Splater

climber
Grey Matter
Dec 6, 2016 - 04:36pm PT
Actually 97% consensus value is now an Underestimate.
If you actually looked at the link I already posted,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Surveys_of_scientists_and_scientific_literature

A 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS) reviewed publication and citation data for 1,372 climate researchers and drew the following two conclusions:

(i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC (Anthropogenic Climate Change) outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.[116]

A 2013 paper in Environmental Research Letters reviewed 11,944 abstracts of scientific papers matching "global warming" or "global climate change". They found 4,014 which discussed the cause of recent global warming, and of these "97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming".[120]

James L. Powell, a former member of the National Science Board and current executive director of the National Physical Science Consortium, analyzed published research on global warming and climate change between 1991 and 2012 and found that of the 13,950 articles in peer-reviewed journals, only 24 rejected anthropogenic global warming.[129] A follow-up analysis looking at 2,258 peer-reviewed climate articles with 9,136 authors published between November 2012 and December 2013 revealed that only one of the 9,136 authors rejected anthropogenic global warming.[130] His 2015 paper on the topic, covering 24,210 articles published by 69,406 authors during 2013 and 2014 found only five articles by four authors rejecting anthropogenic global warming. Over 99.99% of climate scientists did not reject AGW in their peer-reviewed research.[122]
eeyonkee

Trad climber
Golden, CO
Dec 6, 2016 - 04:38pm PT
EdBannister, do you have a really high IQ? High enough that you think that you are somehow seeing something that these tens or hundreds of thousands of climate scientists are not seeing? Do you really think that that is how science works? That everybody falls into line? All of those thousands of scientists from countries all over the world? They don't want to upset "the narrative"?

I'll bet that somewhere around 3 percent of the general population believes that the earth is flat.
EdBannister

Mountain climber
13,000 feet
Dec 6, 2016 - 04:43pm PT
hundreds of thousands of climate scientists

thats funny, there are not that many climatologists. perfectly consistent.


but you are correct about the fact that there is a percentage that will believe whatever they are incented to.


Stanford got 250 million in grant money to research global warming, everyone there has an obligation to not screw it up for the rest, or would you disagree with that?

70,000 years ago Yosemite Valley was full of ice.
the valley is flat on the bottom because 4 recessional moraines dammed the river and it silted in.
A recessional moraine is a result of a period of warming, followed by a period of stability.
it got warmer, and still is because we are in the Holocene interglacial. Can you tell me when the Holocene will be over? or what the percentage of warming is caused by man, and what would have happened anyway? Of course you cannot, there is no way to measure it, and anyone that proports to know, is fishing for a grant or a book deal..
Al Gore? how much does he affect his life by what he has led you to believe? He flies in a private jet!

in 1972 is was scientific statistical and unavoidable inevitability that the great populations of the earth would die of starvation.. Dr. Paul Erlich led the crusade for dollars and fame with "Zero Population growth" he made a lot of money, but his theory was completely wrong.. but at the time, many maintained you were stupid not to accept the inevitable.

i think the current alarmism is in the same category.
Splater

climber
Grey Matter
Dec 6, 2016 - 05:12pm PT
Ed B,
You might ask yourself,
since the best funded people who write about climate are the ALEC and Koch funded deniers,
Why can't they come up with anything that is not easily refuted silliness?

In fact ALEC and Koch would gladly pay billions of dollars if someone could refute climate change science. But it can't be done.
So instead they invest their money in faux news shlepticism.

Last ice age: Irrelevant

Al Gore: Irrelevant

Population vs. Food 1972 prediction: Irrelevant.
A prediction by one man is not the kind of consensus we have on climate. Relevant only in that population and GNP growth does cause even more climate change until we start decreasing GHG gases.
EdBannister

Mountain climber
13,000 feet
Dec 6, 2016 - 05:25pm PT
a majority of scientists agreed on the food and overpopulation issue... the scientific majority has been wrong more than once.. bird flu, overpopulation, heterosexual aids,

and to say the last ice age is irrelevant means we cannot reason with one another...

to deny that Canada was covered with ice, or that it got warmer, is to deny geologic facts.

it is warmer than it was, with or without man. Yosemite Valley is a witness, of what you deny, with or without your personal attacks on me.
eeyonkee

Trad climber
Golden, CO
Dec 6, 2016 - 05:42pm PT
I had this couple of paragraphs written. I whittled them down to - Sigh!
wilbeer

Mountain climber
Terence Wilson greeneck alleghenys,ny,
Dec 6, 2016 - 05:57pm PT
That is what happens when you try to reason with someone who has a poor grip on science or the belief of.



Edit;Been there .

Edit #2;And also why this or any other thread on CC is a bad idea ,

YOU ARE GIVING EQUAL TIME TO DENIERS.
rbord

Boulder climber
atlanta
Dec 6, 2016 - 06:29pm PT
Ok, so the rest of it all - honest disagreement among reasonable people. Science, anti-science, approver, denier ... just small minds processing big ideas, with a moral equivalence of beliefs on either side of the equation.

But Yosemite the result of global warming??!!! Everyone knows God made Yosemite! :-)
pud

climber
Sportbikeville & Yucca brevifolia
Dec 6, 2016 - 07:17pm PT
pud wrote: "...refuting an unproven theory of the effects of global warming quite another."

I was unaware that pud or anyone else has provide a refutation of the current climate science conclusion that human activity is the cause of the 20th century (and now into the 21st century) global warming.

Perhaps a concise statement could be made by those who think this refutation has happened.

Ed, read what I posted again.

The theory in question is not whether or not humans are responsible for an impact on climate, rather the gloom and doom forecasts of all the chicken littles.
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