You guys both know perfectly well what I meant.

@ Kasz - 

At what point did I say that it was ok to lie to people? I didn't even suggest it, no, what I said was that if climate change was proven to be false in the future we have still made some radical advances out of it. As I said "even if it does turn out to be a myth", this proves that I wasn't insinuating that we lie to people for the greater good, it shows that I think people acknowledge it as a real threat and if the future comes and the climate change predictions were false then perhaps we would still have the benefit of the technology that arose out of the "green" trend.

I didn't even remotely suggest that lying to people is ok as long as the results are positive, did I, you put those words in my mouth.

I'm actually a little bit angry and appalled Kasz because I know you said that just to irritate me.

@ Slimebeast

If someone came up to me tomorrow with conclusive evidence that it isn't man made I would still think that the climate change 'trend' has brought us a major step closer to cleaner and renewable energies, which is a positive thing. Advances like...

• Far more efficient solar panels.
• Sustained nuclear fusion.
• Biofuels (although the benefit is debatable)
• The hydrogen economy.
• Whole host of energy saving devices.
• Far far far more efficient batteries.

I mean the list goes on and on really.

And the Christian analogy doesn't sit with me. If you're a Christian you devote your life to god on the promise you go to heaven, if you die and nothing happens you have wasted your life. Now with climate change the trend has lead a lot of companies to cash in by producing more efficient products and ride the "green" wave, If a scientist announced that they had found conclusive evidence that climate change was not man made then we would still benefit from a society that has a pick of clean fuels instead of just burning coal and oil. We've already made the advances.

@highwaystar

No. You are dismissing the fact that changing away from fossil fuels cost huge amounts of money. If man-made climate change is a myth we're wasting lots of resources (and mental energy and frustration) prematurely on things that future technology could fix a lot cheaper.

Not at all. I said it because you suggested that it'd be a positive move even if it's found out they've been lieing.

Which we actually do already know since the entire science on the matter hasn't even been developed enough to make such judgments.

No matter how many good things come out of it i'd still see it as a bad thing that a large group of people thought it was a good idea to lie to the world because they had a theory that would lead to positive change.

Afterall it's not like the majority of these sceintists have been "mistaken" this whole time.  Anyone who knows anything about the scientific method could point out how grossly flawed their studies were.  They were working with what they felt were "best guess" models and "best way we can currently do it" models that were obviously inadequet.

This was discussed in a similar thread a few weeks ago but for anyone who missed it the graph in the OP has little if any significance when looking at current climate trends. Past correlations of CO2 and temperature have NO relevance to current climate predictions. Climate is controlled by many factors such as the position of the continents, height and distribution of mountain ranges, planetary terrain as well as atmospheric gases. The Earth was vastly different in the past and so the CO2 and temperature correlations in the OP graph are simply irrelevant.

What is much more relevant is the climate records over the past ~1Ma years as the that is a long term trend with the planet in a comparable state to today (continents, mountain ranges ect). If you look at the data below (from the Vostok Ice Core) you can clearly see there is a correlation between CO2 and temperature over the past 500k years. Now the issue is which drives the other. The cycles seen also correlate very strongly with orbital variations known as Milankovitch cycles which alter the amount of heat the Earth receives. This causes the Earth to warm, raising the temperature of the oceans causing them to release CO2. Therefore it is likely that temperature initially drives CO2. However, the major question is whether this increase in CO2 causes a feedback effect further raising temperature thus creating a cycle of increasing CO2 and temperature. If that is the case than man made emissions of CO2 (and other gases) will cause temperatures to go up (to what degree no one can accurately predict).

Regardless of CO2 emissions, I would rather all my beaches not be poisonous sludge pits.
I think emissions and waste and overpopulation all adversely affect the envornment, whether or not it affects global warming.

Acid rain, poisoned rivers and serious lack of food and clean water supply in the world are real.

I think that idea of making rain clouds with those boats would be great for countries like Australia, which has had water shortages (in the south), and also help increase food production.

Analogy time: So if I invented a new type of drill that never worn down, dispersed heat so efficiently that it could be used forever to drill into just about anything, and is infinitely better than any other drill. Then I shouldn't be allowed to sell it because other drill makers have spent a lot of time, money and effort investing into developing their drills and a move away would cost them money?

Boo fucking hoo...

The eventuality of modern cleaner energies is that they will be cheaper and friendlier to the environment, the eventuality is that they will be developed to be much more effective and superior than oil, if the oil companies can't handle the change then they should move on like sore losers. Changing away from fossil fuels is only a waste of money and effort for the people that refuse to embrace the new technologies that are forcing fossil fuels into redundancy.

It's pretty simple:

1 - we must be having an effect on global climate - our idustry levels, etc. are simply to high to not be having an effect

2 - the exact impact is unknown, because

a - we have no previous data to go on, we are the only data set for an industrial society to use
b- we cannot be exact on external impacts. The global climate changes over time all by itself

3 - it is of course prudent to move steadily to cleaner approachs because:

a - it would be better to known we are reducing any possible impact than not
b - we have, I believe, a moral obligation to reduce extinctions and other human directed impacts
c - it is in our own species long term interest anyway


Put simply, even without evidence of climate and other global impacts, we should as a matter of course move ever forward with cleaner, purer technology, anything else is a short term cop out.

lol, your analogy is rubbish. No one is against the super drill if it was already invented. The problem is that the government and lobby groups are working against the guys with the old drills, claiming them to be dangerous without proof. Plus, out of paranoid fear of the old drills they are stealing tax payers money to push the development of the super drill before the technology and market has matured naturally for such a drill to come out by traditional market supply & demand mechanisms.

This is the problem; there are countless real problems that are caused by humans that can be solved that are being ignored so that we can focus on a gas making up less than 0.039% of the atmosphere, of which humans are responsible for roughly 1/3 of, where emissions have to grow exponentially to create linear increases in temperature, when we’re at a point where we’re producing (close to) the peak amount of CO2 we can due to limits on fossil fuel production.

@highwaystar101,

Here is the issue (and this is a real issue). Today in the US, dozens of people die a year due to not being able to afford energy costs, and freezing to death.

If we more then tripled our energy costs (a requirement to do what you want) It will move to hundreds, or maybe thousands who will die.

Now, If we knew the world was going to be destroyed if we didn't do this, then I say we still do it, as it's what's required for the planet, and the tragic side effect of killing people can't be avoided.

If it makes very little difference in that regard however, forcing those people to go without heat is irresponsible, and possibly criminal.