What's causing climate change?

Just saw this:
Scientists Release Climate Change ‘Deception Dossier’

The fossil fuel industry knew about potential dangers of climate change – but took steps to deny the public perception and education about it, according to a new report issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“The Climate Deception Dossiers” compiles decades of internal files, documents, and speeches that were released through public-records requests, litigation, and other investigations.


The Climate Deception Dossiers: Internal Fossil Fuel Industry Memos Reveal Decades of Corporate Disinformation | Union of Concerned Scientists

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It is obviously a Russian plot to green Siberia and “brown” the rest of the world.
They are letting all of that core heat out – just like poking a balloon with a pin.

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The Heartland Institute has decried what it calls “the Left’s attack on an innocent climate scientist.”
My favorite from the article! Because you know, the *Heartland Institute* has a long history of *refusing to attack* innocent climate scientists.

I’m curious, is there a name for the way these kinds of pro-money groups prefer criticism based on what would be better directed at themselves? You know, how climate scientists are accused of ignoring evidence for money, alternatives to private health care of introducing death panels, Obama for breaking the economy and opening up America to terrorist attacks, and so on?

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Hmm… Yes, the name is Republicans.
That was not even a soft-ball question. It felt more like T-ball.

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Hypothetically even if we reduced greenhouse gas levels to pre 1900 levels, we are still very fuct. Ocean acidification, coral reef die off, nitrates and phosphates runoff, plastic patch, marine mammal die offs, deforestation, monoculture crops and on and on.

The problem with overpopulation is the solutions are not palatable to most, and they are in complete contradiction to how we gauge economic prosperity.

So we go round and round debating with jackass’s about whither the science is real and what’s the cause of it all.

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Gee… could it somehow possibly be that “economics” has been just a delusionary self-serving belief system all along? A way of organizing society by making it “just happen” that resources go where we decided we preferred them to be?

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Fine! It’s me! I admit it! Me, I did it, all alone, and without anybody else’s help!

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Funny except it contains one of my personal peevs…the shorter lifespan myth…which is incorrect and often said…so excuse the rant, it isn’t directed at you! :smile:

We didn’t use to live shorter lifespans, and people in poor countries don’t live shorter lifespans.
Humans have always had relatively the same biological lifespan limiter.
People misunderstand averages. AVERAGE LIFESPAN.

In older times and in third world countries there are 2 main factors that bring down the average, higher infant mortality, and death from disease, especially the infant mortality. The number one factor that changed this actually isn’t fancy medicine of any kind, it was sanitation and plumbing.

People never lived shorter lifespans, just fewer made it to old age, and infant mortality really brought down the average. Every time I hear…we only used to live into our 30s i want to slap someone silly. :slight_smile:

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absolutely correct. ground temperature below a certain depth is very stable and consistent in most areas. the earths core is not getting hotter or at least no additional heat is radiating through the crust to any measurable degree.

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I sided a long time ago with those who see the idea of overpopulation as a myth. It’s not too many people that’s the problem, since the way most people live is not destructive to the environment, and doesn’t cause climate change; it’s the misdistribution of resources, and abuse of resources by a relatively small elite.

http://socialistworker.org/blog/critical-reading/2011/10/26/overpopulation-myth

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Outside of your anger issues, people live longer now.

I didn’t actually say the core is heating up, I said that the ice which is receding may have insulated us from the heat of the core.

Just a thought.

Algore can’t tax that though.

Do you have any data that refutes what @redesigned said, which is true?

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We need to take down all those greenhouses.

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Possibility 1: The Earth’s core has not changed temperature, but in the past we were insulated by ice sheets, which somehow kept the world from being exposed to the constant flow of outward heat without said ice melting for literally thousands of years.

These disappeared leaving the world exposed, and then 10000 years later, the core’s heat finally started warming things up. Abruptly and by pure coincidence within the same few decades that greenhouse gases have gone up. Researchers the whole world over have been uniformly neglecting this oh-so-plausible cause so that Al Gore can tax people, even though they receive funding from governments that have been reluctant to do so.

Possibility 2: the sudden rise in temperatures is related to the sudden rise in greenhouse gases, as even very simple thermodynamics predicts. No magic physics or inexplicable millennia-level delays are involved. Most researchers are neither idiots nor involved in a vast conspiracy, though right-wing think tanks have as usual been happy to smear them with such accusations.

Yeah, these are definitely alternatives equally worth considering. We should all give them a serious look, and of course hold off on any precautions about our continued pollution in the mean time. :unamused:

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Well it is wrong either way. There isn’t enough radiant heat from the ground for ice to insulate anything, the ground that far north/south is frozen to the same depth whether under the ice or exposed, it is called permafrost and is a very stable and consistent temp. seriously, this is not a factor at all, even slightly.

Geological Heat is 47 terawatts = Only 0.03% of the Earth’s surface heat comes from inside of the earth
Solar Heat is 173,000 terawatts = 99.97% of Earth’s surface heat comes from incoming solar radiation

[quote]The flow of heat from Earth’s interior to the surface is estimated at 47 terawatts and comes from two main sources in roughly equal amounts: the radiogenic heat produced by the radioactive decay of isotopes in the mantle and crust, and the primordial heat left over from the formation of the Earth.

Earth’s internal heat powers most geological processes and drives plate tectonics. Despite its geological significance, this heat energy coming from Earth’s interior is actually only 0.03% of Earth’s total energy budget at the surface, which is dominated by 173,000 TW of incoming solar radiation.[4][/quote]

so yeah…not a factor at all.


No, no they do not. Less people die at birth, less people die of diseases along the way, but the human biological lifespan has remained static. high infant mortality really lowers the average, that is basic math. average lifespan != biological lifespan. In other words people have always lived the same length lifespans, just a lower percentage made it to the end previously, lifespans were not shorter, just a higher percentage were cut short. A percentage always made it to a very similar old age. The Hayflick Limit for humans cells, which is the number of times a cell can divide before Telomere shortening prevents further cell division, has remained consistent as long as the human species has been in existence.


pro tip: it is possible to look stuff up before making claims and refuting what other people are saying.


huh? what anger issues? :lollipop:

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Yay! The world is fucked and it’s not my fault!

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sorry, peev issues…