UN 95% certain that climate change is caused by humans

[Metsfanmax]

Al Gores Carbon footprint = Huge

From his Reddit AMA:

Cvasquez12: What specific things are you doing in life to lower your personal carbon footprint? And what is the biggest one specific thing I as an individual can do to reduce mine?

Gore: I use only carbon-free electricity. Have 33 solar panels on my roof, seven deep geothermal wells under my driveway, LED lights and highest-grade energy-saving windows, max insulation, hybrid plug-in car, etc. No fountains, btw.

He also buys carbon offsets for the parts of his energy usage that he hasn't been able to eliminate carbon emissions from. How many of us have taken that step?

Does he fly in airplanes?

Yes (which is presumably the main target of his carbon offset purchases).

How much do carbon offsets cost?

Prices vary widely, but a good quality offset costs, say, $15 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. To put this in context, the average car you might drive emits 5 tons of carbon dioxide per year, so if you were offsetting the costs of your own driving that would cost you an additional $75 per year.

[Metsfanmax]

That's an interesting concept. Do you know what the carbon offset purchases fund exactly?

I do not know what Al Gore's carbon offset purchases fund. I do know that the best way to use your carbon offset purchases is to fund renewable energy projects. Basically, you can think of your money as funding a wind turbine or solar panel somewhere that will be used to generate electricity so that we don't have to burn coal to produce that same amount of electricity.

[thegreekdog]

Prices vary widely, but a good quality offset costs, say, $15 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. To put this in context, the average car you might drive emits 5 tons of carbon dioxide per year, so if you were offsetting the costs of your own driving that would cost you an additional $75 per year.

Can you send me a good (i.e. reputable) website?

[Lootifer]

Im pretty sure carbon price has been kicking around a few bucks for the last few years. Not sure thou, haven't checked in a while.

[Lootifer]

They're few and far between TGD because there are no major transparent markets for the purchase and sale of them. Thus information on transactions is voluntary.

[Agent 86]

So lets see what the rich pay..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset interesting reading. The U.S is voluntary

[Metsfanmax]

Prices vary widely, but a good quality offset costs, say, $15 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. To put this in context, the average car you might drive emits 5 tons of carbon dioxide per year, so if you were offsetting the costs of your own driving that would cost you an additional $75 per year.

Can you send me a good (i.e. reputable) website?

Agent's link to Climate Friendly is a good one. I checked their calculator and they're asking about $20/ton right now.

[Neoteny]

Al Gore!

GOOOOOOOOORRRRREEEE!

[AslanTheKing]

yes , its us humans who kill this planet

sometimes we try to correct the damage, sometimes its to late, or it need a long time to recover
example
the mediterranean used to be full of fish
its overfished
now the french, italians greeks and spanish, northafricans wonder why

actually i am tired of more examples, u know them yourselve

we in germany have a deposit on every plastic bottle we have to pay
25 eurocents each bottle, and u get that 25 eurocents back if u bring it empty back
and in big cities u see plasticbottle collectors with big bags full of plasticbottles which have been thrown away on the streets,
4 bottles are 1 'Euro

another example, why do you think it does rain mostly on weekends?
make a guess

[thegreekdog]

They're few and far between TGD because there are no major transparent markets for the purchase and sale of them. Thus information on transactions is voluntary.

Not sure how I feel about that.

[Lootifer]

Lol 22 AUD/tonne. Theres a whooper of a retail margin on that little bad boy.

Like I say I havent done any serious research for a while; but I remember someone (by someone I mean someone who will have done verifiable research, I work in the industry) saying they were less than 5 EUR, and have been for a while.

[_sabotage_]

Player,

I got runner up in the Commonwealth essay contest when I was 11, I wrote about grey water systems for houses. I say this because when I went to Dalhousie's Sustainability program, I hadn't been doing much research and vaguely "knew" global warming was right and had known since the start of the nineties when I wrote the paper.

The program is touted as one of the first of its kind, branching far and wide to open the scientific discourse for us to go and create a more sustainable future. We had the heads of Agriculture, Energy, Chemistry, Biology, Wetland specialists, Business, Law, best selling authors, politicians, and all held together by a ice core guy and architect.

The prevailing theme was climate change will get us within 40 years. They described the complexity required to generate models and showed the birth of climate change science linking it back to some few basic scientific principles, they talked a lot about how data was acquired and showed some past catastrophic events that are on the horizons.

They talked about everything under the sun, but not on how to become sustainable.

And yes, there was a wetland guy there telling us about the fragility of wetlands, their importance in our pending doom, their water, wide life, flooding, etc and maybe somewhere in there, there was a relation to you. But more publicly, here on the site, you claim to be a scientist who supports climate change.

So, yes, I've heard the story, old to new straight from the horses' mouths which you praise so highly; mainstream respected scientists. But if they were not teaching us about being sustainable, what were they doing? To be honest, from what these "experts" were saying, climate could be going either way, as it had in the past, all of the catastrophe's were natural, and that what they actually were trying to produce in us was no major lifestyle switch to circumvent this looming doom but guys who would be the new health and safety officer, but this guy would do it and help a business cut down it's emissions by 8% and greenwash the company.

They have no solutions and they seek no solutions. They come with ill tidings seeking careers for future generations. They don't want an end in sight.

I had taken global warming for granted until they started me researching it. Unfortunately, upon hearing both sides of the story, from what party of either may deem their experts, the scale has been weighed against the global warming crowd.

I agree with their conclusion that climate has and will always change, that there is great potential for catastrophic disaster, as has happened in the past and is always possible, but I disagree with their solution of creating an industry perpetuating control and the need for their everlasting services.

There are real solutions to their proposed problems which would leave us better off regardless the change in climate and that is the mans ability to use the most abundant resources to the greatest effect. But I don't mean man as a unity, but as an individual within his immediate community and environment. As a unity, the top may grow to big and stifle the competition of the start-ups, entrenching a system which should be improving.

With our communication ability, knowledge of growth, water, energy, it should be possible to bring competition back to a smaller framework which can allow for specialization, cooperation and competition on a level open playing field without the compulsion of need behind it. But I don't want to free the markets as those with the most would just buy up whatever was worthwhile and leave us all worse off.

These climate change professor/scientists have some targets they are going after, and one is that they feel there are too many people, we can't sustain them. I find this rather mysterious as permaculture offers a completely different calculation based on their practical wide-spread success. They say that with a little elbow grease we could coast along for 50 years before we will reach a hurtle based on our current ability.

And those are the real two sides of the debate. The doers who are doing it for the good of the planet and our ability to feed of it and those who say we can't anymore. On the one hand you have a group of people teaching and helping people to live off their own land, off grid in an easy to manage ten hours a week to be fed, housed, and with modern utilities and no bills forever, and among the people this scares the f*ck out of are the climate scientists at Dalhousie. If they get too good at that, bring a zero carbon footprint that results in generally disposable time to earn a purely disposable income, then it would catch on and their days would be numbered. As would those of many industries and control mechanisms.

We have to move boldly into the new century and let go some of the encumbrances we've had in the past. If hemp can bring energy use down by 50 or more percent in a house, can be local made, is healthier and can be grown as a non-competing crop, then put it in place, eliminate the greenhouse gases associated with the construction, manufacture, transportation of the materials as well as the future energy operating costs. If rocket stoves do release 90% of the available energy from small scrappy wood at 1/8 the annual requirement of a normal wood burning stove, then put them in those new constructed hemp houses and burn 1/4 cord in a year instead of 4. If water drip cooling systems save 90% of the energy from conventional systems incorporate it into new building designs in the tropics. All these things make sense to me. Tackle the problem at the source. A lot of the supposed solutions that are poo-poohed become more available as you lessen the individual consumption load.

This is way too long. The point is quite simple, with our ability to share information, active competition and open sharing of information would lead to an ability to unchain ourselves from this massive system we've created and place one that recognizes basic needs as ongoing realities that have to be solved and not serviced in its stead. But global warming is just an attempt to market new controls, costs, and fear, so know what you support.

[Metsfanmax]

Lol 22 AUD/tonne. Theres a whooper of a retail margin on that little bad boy.

Like I say I havent done any serious research for a while; but I remember someone (by someone I mean someone who will have done verifiable research, I work in the industry) saying they were less than 5 EUR, and have been for a while.

You are likely thinking of the carbon trading credits in the EU (the whole EU is basically in one large cap-and-trade market). These are slightly different from the carbon offsets being discussed here.

[PLAYER57832]

They're few and far between TGD because there are no major transparent markets for the purchase and sale of them. Thus information on transactions is voluntary.

Not sure how I feel about that.

Right now, in the US, you can do a lot more by directly supporting and/or actually doing things. The old "plant a tree" (or any other vegetation, for that matter) does help, though I am too lazy to figure out the rates. Working in Philly, living in NJ, I suspect you can easily find some project that do everything from helping inner city people grow their own food to just providing prettier places. Those types of projects help in multiple ways.

I believe you said you live in NJ, not PA, so not sure if this applies to you, but under deregulation, we can now pick our energy suppliers. Green mountain, for example, is supposed to be concentratingon increased alternative energy sources. I like that option because it uses regular market dynamics. Right now, that energy costs a tad more, but they project costs will decrease.

I would be extremely leary of shelling out money to a third party, unless I really did not have another ready option.

[thegreekdog]

They're few and far between TGD because there are no major transparent markets for the purchase and sale of them. Thus information on transactions is voluntary.

Not sure how I feel about that.

Right now, in the US, you can do a lot more by directly supporting and/or actually doing things. The old "plant a tree" (or any other vegetation, for that matter) does help, though I am too lazy to figure out the rates. Working in Philly, living in NJ, I suspect you can easily find some project that do everything from helping inner city people grow their own food to just providing prettier places. Those types of projects help in multiple ways.

I believe you said you live in NJ, not PA, so not sure if this applies to you, but under deregulation, we can now pick our energy suppliers. Green mountain, for example, is supposed to be concentratingon increased alternative energy sources. I like that option because it uses regular market dynamics. Right now, that energy costs a tad more, but they project costs will decrease.

I would be extremely leary of shelling out money to a third party, unless I really did not have another ready option.

I live in Pennsylvania now. I've chosen an energy supplier (there is nepotism involved, so I'd rather not say). We purchased all new light bulbs (energy efficient) and done some other stuff.

[AslanTheKing]

save water,
dont take a bath
or do it like the yapanese,

if one of your familymembers takes a bath,
u go after him, and use the same water in the tub
and if u are 10 People in your family, than do the same

after reuse the water, cook it up and boil a nice pot ( imagine the plural of pot)
pot pot
and invite your neighbours too

[PLAYER57832]

Player,

I got runner up in the Commonwealth essay contest when I was 11, I wrote about grey water systems for houses. I say this because when I went to Dalhousie's Sustainability program, I hadn't been doing much research and vaguely "knew" global warming was right and had known since the start of the nineties when I wrote the paper.

The program is touted as one of the first of its kind, branching far and wide to open the scientific discourse for us to go and create a more sustainable future. We had the heads of Agriculture, Energy, Chemistry, Biology, Wetland specialists, Business, Law, best selling authors, politicians, and all held together by a ice core guy and architect.

The prevailing theme was climate change will get us within 40 years. They described the complexity required to generate models and showed the birth of climate change science linking it back to some few basic scientific principles, they talked a lot about how data was acquired and showed some past catastrophic events that are on the horizons.

They talked about everything under the sun, but not on how to become sustainable.

And yes, there was a wetland guy there telling us about the fragility of wetlands, their importance in our pending doom, their water, wide life, flooding, etc and maybe somewhere in there, there was a relation to you. But more publicly, here on the site, you claim to be a scientist who supports climate change.

So, yes, I've heard the story, old to new straight from the horses' mouths which you praise so highly; mainstream respected scientists. But if they were not teaching us about being sustainable, what were they doing? To be honest, from what these "experts" were saying, climate could be going either way, as it had in the past, all of the catastrophe's were natural, and that what they actually were trying to produce in us was no major lifestyle switch to circumvent this looming doom but guys who would be the new health and safety officer, but this guy would do it and help a business cut down it's emissions by 8% and greenwash the company.

They have no solutions and they seek no solutions. They come with ill tidings seeking careers for future generations. They don't want an end in sight.

I had taken global warming for granted until they started me researching it. Unfortunately, upon hearing both sides of the story, from what party of either may deem their experts, the scale has been weighed against the global warming crowd.

I agree with their conclusion that climate has and will always change, that there is great potential for catastrophic disaster, as has happened in the past and is always possible, but I disagree with their solution of creating an industry perpetuating control and the need for their everlasting services.

There are real solutions to their proposed problems which would leave us better off regardless the change in climate and that is the mans ability to use the most abundant resources to the greatest effect. But I don't mean man as a unity, but as an individual within his immediate community and environment. As a unity, the top may grow to big and stifle the competition of the start-ups, entrenching a system which should be improving.

With our communication ability, knowledge of growth, water, energy, it should be possible to bring competition back to a smaller framework which can allow for specialization, cooperation and competition on a level open playing field without the compulsion of need behind it. But I don't want to free the markets as those with the most would just buy up whatever was worthwhile and leave us all worse off.

These climate change professor/scientists have some targets they are going after, and one is that they feel there are too many people, we can't sustain them. I find this rather mysterious as permaculture offers a completely different calculation based on their practical wide-spread success. They say that with a little elbow grease we could coast along for 50 years before we will reach a hurtle based on our current ability.

And those are the real two sides of the debate. The doers who are doing it for the good of the planet and our ability to feed of it and those who say we can't anymore. On the one hand you have a group of people teaching and helping people to live off their own land, off grid in an easy to manage ten hours a week to be fed, housed, and with modern utilities and no bills forever, and among the people this scares the f*ck out of are the climate scientists at Dalhousie. If they get too good at that, bring a zero carbon footprint that results in generally disposable time to earn a purely disposable income, then it would catch on and their days would be numbered. As would those of many industries and control mechanisms.

We have to move boldly into the new century and let go some of the encumbrances we've had in the past. If hemp can bring energy use down by 50 or more percent in a house, can be local made, is healthier and can be grown as a non-competing crop, then put it in place, eliminate the greenhouse gases associated with the construction, manufacture, transportation of the materials as well as the future energy operating costs. If rocket stoves do release 90% of the available energy from small scrappy wood at 1/8 the annual requirement of a normal wood burning stove, then put them in those new constructed hemp houses and burn 1/4 cord in a year instead of 4. If water drip cooling systems save 90% of the energy from conventional systems incorporate it into new building designs in the tropics. All these things make sense to me. Tackle the problem at the source. A lot of the supposed solutions that are poo-poohed become more available as you lessen the individual consumption load.

This is way too long. The point is quite simple, with our ability to share information, active competition and open sharing of information would lead to an ability to unchain ourselves from this massive system we've created and place one that recognizes basic needs as ongoing realities that have to be solved and not serviced in its stead. But global warming is just an attempt to market new controls, costs, and fear, so know what you support.

Why no mention of sustainability directly is that conference? Probably because conferences tend to be centered on specific topics and not broad forums to discuss all topics. Also, not sure if you were talking about that same conference or other discussions, but any group of "industry" magnates, dominated and funded by standard industry leaders will tend to focus on ways they can make money. That is how a market economy works. Wether that is, at its root good or bad is another debate. (in the balance there are good points and bad points), but of course they are going to look for profit...and, to the extent it motivates them to do things that benefit us all, that is for the good.

Sustainability is related to the Earth's climate and, to some extent, things that provide sustainability may also lead to stemming our negative impacts on climate. However, the biggest point for sustainability is about other types of impacts..more direct pollution, for example. Even "buying more local", while a good idea in generality, doesn't always work in practice. One example is that it can actually cost more, in energy use to grow applies in New York state traditionally than to bring bananas here. The main reason? Bananas come by boat which is a very efficient and cost-effective method of transport.

Anyway, I have no idea what greywater systems you are referring to, but the types of systems I referred to above, for not just greywater (shower and sink waste, for the uninitiated), but blackwater systems (blackwater is toilet waste) and a good many more were already mainline in the 90's, not really new technology. However, it doesn't function well in very cold climates where decomposition is very slow. Similarly, using vegetation even to clean heavy industry is old technology.

None of that really has anything directly to do with global climate change. My comment was that these things help in MANY ways, are beneficial apart from global climate impacts...but also may well help mitigate the greenhouse impact.

You get into that at the end of your post, but you seem to think that all that is some big secret, nto things that most all of us have been discussing in school and general life for decades. On the one hand, you seem to imply that prior estimates were wrong (Not entirely true) and that because the world did not end this past year, the theories are just wrong. On the other hand, You keep pointing to mysterious solutions that are being ignored, some of which seem strangely like technology that really is well known, even used, but just not the overall panacea you seem to think.

[PLAYER57832]

save water,
dont take a bath
or do it like the yapanese,

if one of your familymembers takes a bath,
u go after him, and use the same water in the tub
and if u are 10 People in your family, than do the same

after reuse the water, cook it up and boil a nice pot ( imagine the plural of pot)
pot pot
and invite your neighbours too

We watched a show called "extreme cheapskates" last night. They showed families who washed dishes in the kiddie pool AFTER the kids had their swim....and several other stomache-turning "wonderful ideas".

[PLAYER57832]

Do you think Al Gore runs the US government?

Your denial gets more bizarre with every post.

No, not currently. But he tried to in 2000.

Presidents are PART of the government, they don't "run it".

Perhaps that is the problem... you need to review your basic civics class.

[PLAYER57832]

Player,

Please stop misquoting me. That was PS quote you used, not mine.

Al Gore did not invent global warming due to CO2, that was done by Edmond de Rothschild at the 4th International Wilderness Conference in 1987. Since then, thousands of scientists have tried to link CO2 to increased temperature and they have successfully and continually shown that CO2 follows temperature by about a thousand years, with one study saying merely hundreds of years.

Gore has just married into the dynasty, his daughter marrying a Schiff, the Schiffs who lived in the same house while working for the Rothschild's for 80 years, then funded by them to create their US banking empire. Again the same Rothschilds who managed the carbon credit scheme in Australia, who own the largest weather information institute in the world, who have one of their heirs, David Rothschild preaching climate change at the UN, who own the conservation banks that have acquired up to 30% of countries' land through the agenda.

But whatever, we wouldn't expect them to co-opt the debate, they don't need to, they created the debate. And they are raining shit across our land because of it.

It must be nice to be ignorant. To see a pattern time and again and then just say, well they are doing their best. They are; doing their best at screwing the world for their own agenda and benefit.

Missed this one... having computer problems, I apologize if i misquoted you (that is a BIG issue for me!) If you let me know which post it was, I will go back and correct it.

At any rate, if Global climate change was invented in 1987, then why was I discussing it with my granparents neighbor, after hearing it on the news, back in the 70's?

How much CO2 and how much other emissions are a problem is still questioned..perhaps that is what you are referring to? Methane ( CO ),for example, may be far more harmful than CO2.
Anyway, I addresed most of your points above, just wanted to apologize for the misquote...and did I already fix it? I cannot find the post.

[_sabotage_]

Player,

I am not sure what conference you are referring to. I was talking about a degree program which thousands of students are enrolled in at Dalhousie U. The program is called "Sustainability", and yet after more than 100 hours of lectures, all I found is that it is trying to convince us that climate change is real, that there aren't any solutions and we will all die within forty years.

You may have heard about global warming before 1987, but most people hadn't and it had not been a major agenda until after 1987. But let's ignore the science aspect, the fct that co2 follows warming by about a 1000 years, or hat when the ice caps were melting here, they were similarly melting n other planets; here I will assume that science is spot on and as climate scientists like to say, the debate is over.

Can you think of a major policy that has followed the science when it meant losing an economic incentive because it was better for the people? I've brought up marijuana in the past as the science was there. Surgeon Generals who undertook studies of the harmful effects of marijuana all came to the same conclusion, it wasn't harmful and to the same end, they were fired. If I remember correctly, we have fired three of them for their findings. How about think tanks? Rand is one of the premier think tanks in the US, it's where the beautiful mind worked who came up with our nuclear stance policy. Their report suggested treatment would be 1/17th the cost of enforcement and more effective, yet they went with enforcement. What about the supposed social contract? 800,000 people are arrested for marijuana each year, which gets them their first strike, puts them in the system and leads to violent actual crime. So we are arresting people and making them worse. There are many studies to prove this.

So the science is there, and yet the government and business follows the path of greatest GDP and empowerment. What leads you to believe this will be anything different? If the pattern exists within just about all major industries, that they in fact proliferate problems to ensure a high return on servicing them, why are they going to change for global warming?

The ACA forced people onto health insurance, thereby increasing the market for the health insurers, increasing the number of government workers and increasing the price of health care. There is no benefit to the people, the debate was co-opted and Obama blatantly lied to the people regarding its outcome, and yet, for some reason, you want to throw your support and empower the very same people who have abused your support to work against you and your compatriots so many times in the past.

Assuming the science is there, then it will still follow the same pattern that occurs when the people provide the government with a mandate, the mandate will be abused for power and money and leave the problem unsolved.

I am happy to discuss pollution, but as Bush said, * "It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." I guess I will pass on having a discussion with him.

The government will just use the trust of the people to carry out further controls and leave us no better off. If I were you, instead of maintaining how climate change is of immediate importance that needs to be tackled by the government, see what the major players are planning and see if you agree with the implementation of their plans, because it will be their "solutions" that will be enacted, paid for and lead to enforcement. If you don't agree with their proposals, then I would back off vocal support on public sites especially claiming scientific expertise which is neither here nor there, as you yourself say that your expertise does not go into climate change and your expertise is not being used for any useful purpose by the climate change crowd.

The supposed big bad wolf of climate change is the oil companies. During the lectures, they were always pointed out as the dissenters on climate change because they have so much to lose. In the summer of 2013, the NYT released a story on the "real" reason for attacking Iraq. While many people seem to manifest a short term memory lose when It comes to government activity, I remember quite distinctly that Bush was planning on attacking Iraq long before 9/11. The NYT writer provided a reason why, according to a 500 + page DoD document composed before the attack, they wanted to decrease the output of Iraqi oil. You see, we were sanctioning Iraq and nearly 2,000,000 people had died of starvation according to CIA whistleblower Susan Lindauer (she has many interesting things to say on the issue) and the Iraqis were limited to one bartering tool, oil. They therefore increased output and were taking it off the USD. What does this mean and why would the US attack Iraq for this issue?

De Beers controls 70% of the world's diamond market. When a competitor comes along, they flood the market with that grade of diamond until they run the competitor out of business, then buy up the competitors diamonds at the lowest price and reinstate their former pricing or increase it. Diamonds' value is due to their rarity and De Beers does everything it can to ensure the rarity of diamonds on the market. It is similar with oil, except that oil is a standardized product. During the period of increased production and Iraq's attempt to trade it in Euros, the US was the major consumer, not because we needed it, but to maintain the world price of oil. After the invasion, oil production in Iraq was immediately cut to pre-sanction levels. So, we see that to maximize profits, oil output must be restricted. And yet, all the climate scientists will say the opposite, that oil companies are afraid of climate change because it will reduce demand. This is nonsense, because if demand is reduced, then output will be reduced and the oil companies will get higher profits off less production which will give them a greater total profit off their reserves while meaning less work and therefore cost to them. Canada is a prime example of the oil industry's ability to benefit off of climate change. The tar sands have a mush higher cost involved with oil extraction than do the wells in the middle east and when the price drops below a certain point, oil production ceases in Canada. If supply was decreased, then it would raise the price of oil making production in Canada stable and more profitable.

And yet the policy which can cause a war, increased output of oil, the climate change scientists claim is that preventing climate change initiatives. In fact, the force behind the climate change initiative is most likely big oil. If successful, it will allow oil production to be decreased and therefore improve profitability while eliminating cost.

Player, I don't expect you to understand this. When I say university program, you say conference. When shown the failure of Obamacare, you stick to the rhetoric and ignore the outcomes. When PS says something, you attribute it to me. When I use lesser known scientists, you ask for mainstream, when I give you mainstream, you ignore them or obfuscate. When I tell you the cure is worse than the disease, you tell me I'm nuts. So I don't expect you to get anything out of this. The things which are clear and apparent, you have the ability to muddle within your mind, and those which require you to put two and two together, you ask for the official scientific study to validate. When I provide the official studies, you say, Yeah...but... When I show the track record of the government, you say, yes, they have done it each and every time, but NOT THIS TIME!

The misquote was you attaching a PhatScotty quote under my name, idk how it could have happened.

[PLAYER57832]

Player,

I am not sure what conference you are referring to. I was talking about a degree program which thousands of students are enrolled in at Dalhousie U. The program is called "Sustainability", and yet after more than 100 hours of lectures, all I found is that it is trying to convince us that climate change is real, that there aren't any solutions and we will all die within forty years.

Well, even great universities sometimes have classes that fail expectations. At any rate, that you did not happen to get much out of that doesn't mean no one does.

You may have heard about global warming before 1987, but most people hadn't and it had not been a major agenda until after 1987.

No, it was absolutely a matter of general discussion. Such discussions waned somewhat in the early 80's, but they never died entirely. It just went from the evening news to classrooms, houses and various other formats. As to whether it is a "major agenda" -- well, that's a matter of opinion. Some would argue it still is not really a major agenda. It did become more of a political deal in the early 90's, (that much Al Gore did do).

But let's ignore the science aspect, the fct that co2 follows warming by about a 1000 years, or hat when the ice caps were melting here, they were similarly melting n other planets; here I will assume that science is spot on and as climate scientists like to say, the debate is over.

Debate is never "over" in science. Also, a lot of what you claim above that "science says" is not true. What is true is that the Earth is warming,overall... has for some time, and that its already having a detrimental impact on humans.

Can you think of a major policy that has followed the science when it meant losing an economic incentive because it was better for the people?

You have it essentially backwards and just wrong. If the climate is changing, it WILL impact people,businesses negatively. Other businesses will benefit. Its not a case of "science versus economics". Its a matter of communicating how they go together.

I've brought up marijuana in the past as the science was there. Surgeon Generals who undertook studies of the harmful effects of marijuana all came to the same conclusion, it wasn't harmful and to the same end, they were fired. If I remember correctly, we have fired three of them for their findings. How about think tanks? Rand is one of the premier think tanks in the US, it's where the beautiful mind worked who came up with our nuclear stance policy. Their report suggested treatment would be 1/17th the cost of enforcement and more effective, yet they went with enforcement. What about the supposed social contract? 800,000 people are arrested for marijuana each year, which gets them their first strike, puts them in the system and leads to violent actual crime. So we are arresting people and making them worse. There are many studies to prove this.

Uh, yeah... not going to take the time to get into this ...again. Do a search of old posts if you want to know what I have to say. You are essentially correct in that enforcement has not worked (has made the situation a LOT worse,in fact),but you are wrong about the why's.

So the science is there, and yet the government and business follows the path of greatest GDP and empowerment. What leads you to believe this will be anything different? If the pattern exists within just about all major industries, that they in fact proliferate problems to ensure a high return on servicing them, why are they going to change for global warming?

Change? No. However,do you seriously think irreperable change to the world climate is quite the same as buiding refridgerators that are designed to break? To some folks, I am sure it does. But, that is where real education comes into play. On that front, science has been failing.

The ACA forced people onto health insurance, thereby increasing the market for the health insurers, increasing the number of government workers and increasing the price of health care. There is no benefit to the people, the debate was co-opted and Obama blatantly lied to the people regarding its outcome, and yet, for some reason, you want to throw your support and empower the very same people who have abused your support to work against you and your compatriots so many times in the past.

"The same people" --LOL as if the us government were one,unified entity, instead of a constantly changing group of people that very much respond to the political wills of the day.

Per ACA... Phattscotty has a thread on it, now reaching a few hundred pages. Not sure how many pages have my comments,but quite a few.

Assuming the science is there, then it will still follow the same pattern that occurs when the people provide the government with a mandate, the mandate will be abused for power and money and leave the problem unsolved.

Fine, then give up, roll over and just give up... or go along with the wackos and decide that government is the ultimate enemy, causing all our problems, instead of just reflecting them.

Player, I don't expect you to understand this. When I say university program, you say conference. When shown the failure of Obamacare, you stick to the rhetoric and ignore the outcomes. When PS says something, you attribute it to me. When I use lesser known scientists, you ask for mainstream, when I give you mainstream, you ignore them or obfuscate. When I tell you the cure is worse than the disease, you tell me I'm nuts. So I don't expect you to get anything out of this. The things which are clear and apparent, you have the ability to muddle within your mind, and those which require you to put two and two together, you ask for the official scientific study to validate. When I provide the official studies, you say, Yeah...but... When I show the track record of the government, you say, yes, they have done it each and every time, but NOT THIS TIME!

The misquote was you attaching a PhatScotty quote under my name, idk how it could have happened.

OH, I see... yes, I misquoted you once. I am between computers, working on a microscreen that makes typing difficult, but of course it is not just an error, it is stupidity or a vendetta against you

Per the rest... my field of study is stream restoration, which naturaly involves dealing with a LOT of things you dance around. You seem to like the idea that you are one of a select few aware of the bast global warming conspiracy. The trouble is, while that makes great discussion in dorm rooms and bars over beer, it really doesn't do much to solve things.

Go ahead and talk all you want about how the government is keeping your from the real solutions. I am busy growing things, changing local laws. We'll see who accomplishes more.. without even considering what I have done already.

[Metsfanmax]

Can you think of a major policy that has followed the science when it meant losing an economic incentive because it was better for the people?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_ ... ts_of_1990

[Metsfanmax]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronom ... apers.html

To me, one of the most fascinating aspects of climate change denial is how deniers essentially never publish in legitimate journals, but instead rely on talk shows, grossly error-laden op-eds, and hugely out-of-date claims (that were never right to start with).

In 2012, National Science Board member James Lawrence Powell investigated peer-reviewed literature published about climate change and found that out of 13,950 articles, 13,926 supported the reality of global warming. Despite a lot of sound and fury from the denial machine, deniers have not really been able to come up with a coherent argument against a consensus. The same is true for a somewhat different study that showed a 97 percent consensus among climate scientists supporting both the reality of global warming and the fact that human emissions are behind it.

Powell recently finished another such investigation, this time looking at peer-reviewed articles published between November 2012 and December 2013. Out of 2,258 articles (with 9,136 authors), how many do you think explicitly rejected human-driven global warming? Go on, guess!

One. Yes, one. Here’s what that looks like as a pie chart:




Huh. Here’s the thing: If you listen to Fox News, or right-wing radio, or read the denier blogs, you’d have to think climate scientists were complete idiots to miss how fake global warming is. Yet despite this incredibly obvious hoax, no one ever publishes evidence exposing it. Mind you, scientists are a contrary lot. If there were solid evidence that global warming didn’t exist, or that CO2 emissions weren’t the culprit, there would be papers in the journals about it. Lots of them.

I base this on my own experience with contrary data in astronomy. In 1998, two teams of researchers found evidence that the expansion of the Universe was not slowing down, as expected, but actually speeding up. This idea is as crazy as holding a ball in your hand, letting go, and having it fall up, accelerating wildly into the sky. Yet those papers got published. They inspired lively discussion (to say the least) and motivated further observations. Careful, meticulous work was done to eliminate errors and confounding factors, until it became very clear that we were seeing an overturning of the previous paradigm. It took years, but now astronomers accept that the Universal expansion is accelerating and that dark energy is the culprit.

Mind you, dark energy is far, far weirder than anything climate change deniers have come up with, yet it became mainstream science in a decade or so. Deniers have been bloviating for longer than that, yet their claims are rejected overwhelmingly by climate scientists. Why? Because they’re wrong.