Comments

1
yep

thats why they call it Global Warming.....
2
"climate change is predicted to pose a far greater threat to the planet than many scientists thought...."

morons.

climate change poses NO threat to the planet what so ever.

maybe to the notions of credulous homoliberals.

but the planet? no threat at all.....
3
Climate Change happens.

Always has, Always will.

Even if HomoLiberals are not there to wring their hands about it.......

adapt. evolve. or die.
4
that is not what i heard on fox news.
5
The "in layman's terms" bit would have been better placed literally anywhere else within that excerpt.
6
The troll is partially right. The planet will be here until the sun explodes, or whatever else happens that causes planets to go away.

What he misses, however, is that we are making it uninhabitable for our sort of civilization. We're squatting in our own waste, as it were, and that is starting to affect the climate.

The simple-minded will cling to the old "global warming" label, just as they cling to their guns and their religions. That's because they fear change and are compliant by nature.
7
Apropos Cliff Mass today: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/
8
Meanwhile, the southern hemisphere is setting heat records (notably Australia and Argentina).
9
@8 Yeah, but those places are so far away, it's like another planet.
10
One weather event does not define climate change.
11
6

it is liberals who fear change, dear.

hysterically trying to keep species from going extinct.

silly. and ignorant.

trying to stop climate change.

foolish. and futile.

puny silly frightened liberals.

embrace climate change. don't fear it.
12
@8:

Wha - ? Another Hemisphere?!? How duz that werk?
13
Conservatives used to wail about how climate change was a myth.

Now conservatives are saying, "ok climate change is happening, but it's natural and we didn't cause it and there's no need for alarm."

I wonder how the conservatives will flip-flop next?
14
@13 "It's too late, and it will cost too much to fix, so just continue to purchase SUV's". They're only concerned about their grandkids when government debt is involved.
15
Climatology is such a malleable subject that there's plenty of theories to suit every angle.
16
@15 I'm an atmospheric scientist and you are so wrong on this comment you should lose your commenting privileges. Also, way to insult an entire scientific discipline you don't understand. Do you have specific questions I can answer for you? I want to tell you to go fuck yourself, but the NSF funds me partly to do outreach so I will answer your questions.
17
@15 the NSF doesn't fund me, so go fuck yourself!
18
@15

Genuinely curious- in your view what specific changes would/could be made to stop climate change? That is, how would the way in which I and my neighbors light our homes, commute to work or play, eat and so on need to change? How do the economic costs stack against those of adaptation to the new climate conditions you believe are imminent?
19
@16 - You can buy into the climate change science and still not believe humans need to change our behavior. That spending unbelievable sums of money to possibly maybe influence a fraction of degree temperature change over a decade is a terrible waste. So that's one way to form a theory about climatology. Climate scientists are a bunch of whinny bitches who think they involved with some big problem when, in truth, nobody fucking cares about it. So how about you spend some of your very important funded scientist time looking for an energy solution to the problem rather than trying to outreach to people who will not give two shits?
20
@15 You can do your bit to reduce that malleability. Go stand on a hill at the golf course in a thunderstorm.
21
Sorry, comment at 18 was meant for @16
22
Humans will do what we always do. Ignore the problem until we're dying by the thousands from it. At that point, there will be an inefficient, ill-planned, poorly implemented rush to fix things; costing untold trillions more than if we simply spent large amounts for prevention now.

Penny wise and pound foolish. As always.
23
I, for one, look forward to an Earth with a smaller human population. Perhaps we can figure out an economic system that doesn't rely on "growth" to remain solvent, and still have innovation and science, along with sustainable survival.
24
@19 Because, despite your churlish response, outreach works (and because most of us can do both science AND outreach). Outreach doesn't work with everyone, and it takes a long time, but only by providing consistent, understandable responses over and over again, do people who are factually ignorant begin to accept what appears to be obvious to people who understand the science.

One of my tasks in my current job is responding to constituent letters from people who don't believe in climate change. I cannot tell you how many times I've been tempted to write "Here's the link to one of the 12,000 peer reviewed reports on the subject, you mouthbreathing yokel" and go grab a coffee. I never do. I'm polite, I research, and I answer their specific questions, because when I send a response out (on U.S. Govt letterhead), it may make someone actually consider the information we provide.
25
p.s. Sometimes I do have to deal with people like Phoebe, who are stubbornly, willfully, even gleefully, ignorant. In that case, I just try to be polite.
26
@24

Still curious (and, alas, my wife assures me I am mouth breathing while asleep) if I accept your assumptions about catastrophic climate change, what policies would change the change?

Care to take a stab at it?
27
@18 "in your view what specific changes would/could be made to stop climate change"

Currently the biggest thing we can do is keep the carbon in the ground. That means transitioning as quickly as possible away from coal, shale sands, and other carbon-rich energy sources. These are political decisions so your vote and your voice are what is really needed. Electricity consumption is the biggest CO2 emitter in the US, followed by transportation, so go after those in whatever ways you can.
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemis…

I don't have figures for costs of adaptation vs mitigation but I refer you to the IPCC AR5 chapter on the subject.
28
Also not sure I understand the extreme reaction to Phoebe. Climate isn't exactly simple to understand, whatever cocky attitude some who work in it might adopt. And scientific consensus isn't proof of anything but the agreement of your peers, who would be out of a job if they dared question the global warming hypothesis.
29
What *are really needed. Sorry.

Thanks @24 for responding to the vitriol in @19. I don't know why @19 thinks nobody cares about this issue. In my department alone, we enroll 300+ students every quarter in the intro to climate courses for non-majors. Almost everyone I meet who finds out what I do is interested and has questions. Public talks on the topic are typically standing-room. I think people feel apathetic or aren't sure what they can do to help, but plenty of people are interested.

@26 nobody used the word "catastrophic" but you. Nice straw man. If you want to talk about actual predictions, we can do that. What's your feeling on the predicted expansion of the subtropical subsidence region? This is a fairly robust result that well supported by the physics of the hydrological cycle (see, e.g. Held & Soden 2006).
30
@28 Phoebe basically said climatology is so open to interpretation which strongly suggests that we don't know anything about the underlying physics. Substitute "medicine" where she said "climatology" and read it to yourself -- it is pretty insulting to medicine and medical research, right?

Scientific consensus is indeed not proof, but it is a way for laypeople to get a sense of what the science is without having to delve into the actual evidence, equations, arguments, etc. I am not qualified to evaluate and judge the evidence for say, the epidimeology of equine encephalitis, so I rely on the scientific consensus as a shorthand. You do this too, I bet, all the time in your daily life.
31
@27

Thanks.

Apreciate the link. Though from what I've read all non carbon based energy sources combined wouldn't get us even to half our current energy needs, what I've read may be out of date. At any rate, even if wind, hydro, solar and so on did meet needs the costs appear (again, using years old numbers) to be considerably higher.

And using nuclear energy appears to be a non starter, particularly in the wake of Fukashima.

Nor is there any way to force such changes on China, India or any of the nations ramping up industry to meet the needs of enormous populations.

So you kind of have your work cut out for you. You and your colleagues are asking of people that they give up comforts and luxuries and increase the costs for common necessities in their lives. Or they could ignore the warnings or choose to disbelieve them and continue as they are. Tough sell.
32
Here's one peer-reviewed study I can get behind:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/…
33
@31 indeed we do have our work cut out for us, and that work is made more difficult by a public that rejects the science or scientists based on I'm not sure what ideology or conspiracy they believe in.

I suggest you check out the "wedge initiative" which might actually work if we can get enough political support. The idea is to ramp up non-carbon fuel sources over time with each one only doing part of the lifting. It could also address delivery issues -- e.g. there's more wind energy at night, but no solar, so they complement each other. One wedge might be efficiency, another wind, another carbon capture/storage, etc. A lot of climate & energy professionals feel optimistic about this approach.
http://cmi.princeton.edu/wedges/intro.ph…

Getting other nations on-board is definitely a key component to all this -- the US can't do it alone. China is leading more on these issue right now than we are, though. For a long time, developing countries have refused to do anything if the US wouldn't, which has been a sticking point. Our leadership here would be helpful.
34
@32 The American Meteorological Society has done more detailed analysis of the skepticism more common among meteorologists (who include people of varying education levels working in a variety of jobs from TV weather person to NWS and NOAA). Their results are presented in draft form here: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1…

It is an interesting read. They found that the more climate expertise the individual held, the more likely they were to accept global warming is real.

Oh, and pro-tip: it is generally better to argue about physical evidence than about surveys.
35
@28
And scientific consensus isn't proof of anything but the agreement of your peers, who would be out of a job if they dared question the global warming hypothesis.
Not at all. The fact that we continue to see new publications on climate change is evidence that scientists are questioning the global warming hypothesis and producing research on it. If they were out of their jobs, you wouldn't hear anything new about climate science from the scientists at all.
36
@34 - So in your expert opinion, what is the most likely outcome in number of climate related deaths in the next 25 years if no changes are made by humans in that time?
37
@35 is correct. The "global warming hypothesis" is surprisingly simple: carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that warms the planet, humans have increased CO2 concentrations, and global mean surface temperature has increased since the late 19th century. That's very basic and everyone accepts it. It leaves a lot of room for a lot of research into the particulars, where there are indeed researchers who dispute precisely how bad it will be in different places or times. People like Bill Cotton don't say the premise isn't true, they say it won't be as bad as all that because __________ (it varies). Bill Cotton still has his professorship, attends conferences, and gives talks. He hasn't been black balled.

Everyone should read the IPCC AR5 executive summary:
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/…
keeping in mind that it was edited line-by-line by political and science representatives from 120 countries during a week of marathon sessions. The scientists and diplomats all had to agree on every word, so it is kind of a political document and rather circumspect in that regard.
38
@36 that's a question of geopolitics, public health, and resource allocation -- not climate science. I can tell you about drought risk, but not whether that will lead to regional upheaval. I can tell you about how climate intersects with malaria but not how many children that will kill at any given time. I think you'd need to ask different experts to weigh in on this, or go look in the literature.
39
@38 - How many years from today would have to pass without any % change in energy sources and without a clearly obvious climate change disaster before you'd admit the issue wasn't dangerous to the planet after all?
40
33

pissing into a hurricane might help also.

what an arrogant asswipe you are.

explains a lot.

no wonder most people would rather freeze or fry or whatever the hell your models project rather than turn any aspects of their life over to asses like yourself.

suppose mankind does everything you demand.
and then a Krakatoa sized volcano farts.
what happens to your models and projections?

climate changes.

it did before man came on the scene.

it will after.

adapt to and accept the change.

or piss into a hurricane.
41
@39 I will attempt to answer that, but would you first please define "climate change disaster"? How many millions of poor people displaced by rising sea level? How many millions of acres of cropland with dry soil? Give me something measurable and then I'll search the literature and see if we have projections for it.
42
@39 Oh, and define "planet" too. The rotating mass of rock and minerals will be just fine. The species inhabiting it (including humans) are what most of us are concerned with.
43
@33 and thank you for providing a concise and precise answer to SB @26's question than I probably would have managed.

@31 (I can't believe I'm doing this). You're partially correct: renewables cannot satisfy our current energy needs, as they exist right now. But that doesn't mean that that they will never be able to, for a couple reasons.

-The first is that our energy needs aren't static; household energy consumption has actually decreased the last few years (1), and can continue to do so with improvements in technology and fairly minor changes in consumer behavior (turning off lights when not in a room, smart thermostats, etc).

-We are not necessarily short of energy, per se. There is energy all around us. What is missing is the ability to get that energy to do meaningful work, at the time when it is needed. Capture and storage, in other words. Massive improvements in batteries and the grid are necessary to ensure that the energy is available when needed, but it is not beyond our current technological or engineering capability. It is expensive, especially at startup, as prices tend to drop as technologies mature.

-One of the largest consumers of energy is transportation, specifically the internal combustion engine, which is woefully inefficient, on the order of about 20%. The transition to electric vehicles has the potential to greatly reduce total energy consumption by replacing internal combustion engines with electric motors, which operate above 90% efficiency (even factoring in losses due to transmission and distribution). Of course, electric vehicles are a long way from achieving full market penetration, but the fact that Tesla has a 6 month backlog on their vehicles would seem to indicate that the demand is there, and again, as technology matures, ranges will increase and battery prices will drop, making them more available to a wider range of people. I should also add, by the way, that China is making large commitments to electric vehicles, trying to get ahead of a growing middle class which is looking to purchase vehicles for the first time.

So, yes, you're correct that we are not there. We're not even so close that we can afford to be optimistic, or rest on our laurels. But we're also not so far away that we can't see it from here.

(1) http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_24…
44
To reiterate @34: "So, yes, you're correct that we are not there. We're not even so close that we can afford to be optimistic, or rest on our laurels. But we're also not so far away that we can't see it from here. "

This, exactly. There is hope, and there is good technology emerging. What is lacking is political will. As I said earlier, we need people to accept the science and advocate for solutions. Mitigating climate change isn't out of reach, technologically or probably economically, but politically in the USA it has hit a brick wall. That's why I'm spending my morning talking about this instead of working on a paper, because how the public feels about this is (don't tell my boss) probably more important than the results of my little research project.
45
*To reiterate @43, not @34
46
wxPDX: Thanks for responding to that Forbes article. I was reading through it and laughing. Geologists don't believe in manmade global warming! Ok? Call me when the belief of people not expert in a subject is required for that thing to happen.

See also: Evolution. It has happened, is happening every day in laboratories, but half of America doesn't "believe" in it. That and $2 will get you a cup of coffee.
47
@46 One of the things I have learned is to take off my "expert" hat when speaking about things on which I have little expertise. All scientists should learn this, but some do not, and the media uses this. A non-climate example appeared in a recent NYTimes article about organ transplants, where experts on disease Y were invited to opine about the ethics of a particular patient's case -- the reporter shouldn't have asked, and the scientists shouldn't have answered, but both did and the article used the expert's credentials to bolster a particular outcome of the case that they really didn't know enough about.

It is pretty common to track down the CV of a person quoted by a climate-change skeptical article and discover that person's educational background is in plasma physics, or petroleum engineering (a big branch of geology), or something else.
48
@18: To try and reduce emissions due to fossil fuels, we fund research into and exploitation of viable alternatives, such as hydroelectric (riparian and tidal alike), solar, wind, and even things like biodiesel. Advance those technologies enough and they'll be more economically viable.
Better regulation of industrial issues (such as waste dumping, agricultural runoff, and emissions) allow us to keep ecosystems healthy and diverse, ramping up primary production (carbon fixation) on land while keeping biodiversity hotspots alive in the oceans. (Trust me, this is more important than you may think. Ocean productivity is VITAL for a healthy climate.)
To counteract what warming we can't prevent by cutting emissions and bolstering ecosystems, there are plans to increase atmospheric reflectivity by pumping sulfate or seawater particles into the upper atmosphere. The science is a bit more experimental behind this kind of geoengineering, so we'd prefer to do as little of this as possible.
Rest assured, science has some answers.
@28: Global warming/climate change actually counts as a THEORY, not a hypothesis, by most standards. That is, there's a body of evidence to support it.
And there ARE credible scientists who question it. There are people who are skeptical as to the extent of climate change and its effects. They haven't been blackballed or isolated for the simple reason that, unlike your side on this issue, they base their intellectual positions on EVIDENCE.

@40: You just told us not to piss, because a hurricane might come along. We are men and women of action; we're not going to sit on our asses all day because we might get tagged by another Chicxulub tomorrow. I'm not going to wager that something unexpected happens to substantially change the climate; I'm going to work with the situation as it is.
Climate changes, always has, always will (within the Sun's lifetime as a main-sequence star). But WE are capable of changing the climate through our actions as a species. Natural processes are most certainly NOT the only player here. (And if a large volcano erupted and spewed an ash cloud into the stratosphere, we could actually counter most of its effects if we felt like it, albeit at prohibitive cost.)
49
@46:
One of the things I have learned is to take off my "expert" hat when speaking about things on which I have little expertise. All scientists should learn this.

Now, if we could just get the people who have no expertise whatsoever to take off their expert hats we'd be getting somewhere.
50
@49: The problem is that Dunning-Kruger tell us that they don't know the difference between the dunce hat they have and the expert hat they think they have. It's sort of like playing that wagering game where you put a card on your forehead and then wager on whether it's higher than the other people's cards. Except that the people you're playing against think that they get to pick the highest card they see, and that's the card they have.
51
@50: How did I get this old without knowing about that effect? Thank you, internet stranger.
52
@51: Delighted to help!
53
@28 You could not be more wrong about what makes a scientists career. A scientist who could credibly debunk the consensus on climate change would be instantly famous. Not only would they become a star in their field, likely winning a Nobel Prize, but Fox News would name a channel after him/her.

The problem is, of course, that no one has been able to debunk it because the evidence clearly supports it. Look at Richard Muller, who for years was a climate skeptic. Then, the Koch Bros (!) gave him funding to do his own study, and he found that the consensus on climate change is accurate. Oops. At least Muller had the intellectual honesty to stand by his result, even if he didn't really admit that he had previously been wrong. The Koch Bros and their ilk carry on as if this study never happened.

I get really tired of this argument that scientists produce biased climate change studies to get ahead. Anyone who has ever known anyone in any scientific research field knows that this idea is absurd.

54
@53: He really underestimates scientists' tendency to backstab if there's a good enough scoop to be gained.

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