Thread for discussing climate change

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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Gunnar »

Binger wrote:
Thu Dec 02, 2021 11:25 pm
I sorta miss extreme paralyzing fear and paranoia about acid rain, the ozone (particularly the hole over Australia), a new ice age, the end end end of fossil fuels. Those were much more fun than this political threat.
Why are you so determinedly ignorant about the abundantly established and still growing evidence of human caused climate change? Do you really think that the 99.9% of scientists who confirm the reality of it are all stupid, liars or would somehow earn more money from lying about it than by telling us the truth? Do you deny that the fossil fuel industry has an enormous financial incentive deny the reality of it if it's true? Why would any rational person think that the powerful and wealthy entities who obviously have the most financial incentive to lie about it are more credible that the hardworking scientists who have spent their entire academic lives studying the phenomenon and trying their best to warn us about the potential danger?
No precept or claim is more suspect or more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Binger »

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Last edited by Binger on Sat Dec 04, 2021 7:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Gunnar »

Res Ipsa wrote:
Thu Dec 02, 2021 11:36 pm
Binger wrote:
Thu Dec 02, 2021 11:25 pm
I sorta miss extreme paralyzing fear and paranoia about acid rain, the ozone (particularly the hole over Australia), a new ice age, the end end end of fossil fuels. Those were much more fun than this political threat.
The threats of acid rain and depletion of the ozone layer were both eliminated through the type of international agreement and cooperation that certain folks keep claiming is impossible with respect to climate change.
It too often happens that when a potential disaster is successfully averted by comprehensive preventive measures taken by qualified people who understood what needed to be done to avert it, there is a tendency for many, sometimes even a majority of the general public, to conclude that since the predicted disaster didn't happen, because of those efforts, the original concern about it must have been some sort of hoax.

Yes. Thanks to international agreements to limit releases of these into the air, the ozone layer is slowly rebounding (as predicted), causing many underinformed, mostly conservative people to dismiss the "ozone hole crisis" as just another unfounded hoax. Perhaps ironically, one of the most influential proponents of establishing the international protocols about limiting the use of the most damaging fluorocarbons, was the staunchly conservative, former UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. She had been a highly qualified, professional chemist before becoming Prime Minister, and understood the recently established chemical facts concerning fluorocarbon emissions too well to honestly dismiss the danger.

Yet another example is the once much ballyhooed "C2K Panic" before the turn of the century. Since only minor problems occurred with the transition to year 2000, there was, again, a widespread misconception that C2K concerns were also an unfounded hoax. Unrealized by most people was the literally millions of man hours of work done by computer programmers, behind the scenes all over the world to frantically identify and correct the literally billions of lines of computer code that depended on using dating and timing shortcuts that only worked properly for dates earlier than 2000 AD. That there were as few problems as there were was a near miracle, and a testament to the abilities and dedication of the many thousands, if not millions of computer programmers and engineers all over the world. Simulations using the uncorrected software running critical infrastructure systems past the date of 2000 revealed some very scary and even disastrous scenarios that could have occurred.
Climate change is a political issue only because certain industries with a metric crapload of investment in fossil fuels politicized the science as a tactic.
It is both dangerous and potentially tragic how many people (particularly prominent conservative politicians and leaders) are blissfully or determinedly ignorant of this glaring and increasingly obvious fact, and/or just don't give a damn!
No precept or claim is more suspect or more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Binger »

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Last edited by Binger on Sat Dec 04, 2021 7:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Chap »

Binger wrote:
Fri Dec 03, 2021 1:26 pm
What came first; Purple Rain, or acid rain? I miss them both. Acid rain was a particularly visual bogeyman. It was like having a poltergeist in every cloud. That was a good one.
Acid rain declined in importance as an issue because of a major and successful effort to reduce the kinds of emissions (principally sulfur dioxide) that were causing it. Yet another problem successfully resolved by science-based action.

Whatever Happened To Acid Rain?
Acid rain is rain or any other type of precipitation, including snow or fog, that is unusually acidic. Acid rain is caused by sulfur dioxide, or nitrogen dioxide emissions released into the air and react with water molecules before falling to the ground as rain or snow. Most sulfur or nitrogen dioxide comes from electrical power plants, with a smaller amount coming from cars and other vehicles and natural sources such as volcanoes and wildfires. Both emissions, move by circulating air and wind, can travel long distances so that acid rain may be found in areas far from its source.

Acid rain can create highly acidic soils, adversely affecting the growth of forests and crops. Acidic waters can result in the death of fish and other aquatic species. Acid rain also enhances the deposition of mercury, which has adverse effects on human health. Direct impacts on human health have also been documented. A severe episode of acid fog, the Great London Smog of 1952, resulted in an increase in the daily average death rate from 252 to approximately 1,000, and acid fog was responsible for several severe air pollution episodes in southern California in the 1980s.

History

1852 - Scientists identified a relationship between acid rain and air pollution in Manchester, England.
1972 - Scientists discovered rain deposited in the White Mountains in New Hampshire was acidic.
1980 - Congress passed the Acid Deposition Act establishing an 18-year assessment and research program on acid rain.
1983 - National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issues a draft report saying that acid rain is a real problem that needs to be addressed.
1990 - Congress passed a series of amendments to the Clean Air Act establishing a cap-and-trade system designed to control sulfur dioxide emissions. A more traditional regulatory program was established to control nitrogen dioxide emissions.

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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

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Last edited by Binger on Sat Dec 04, 2021 7:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Gadianton »

1990 - Congress passed a series of amendments to the Clean Air Act establishing a cap-and-trade system designed to control sulfur dioxide emissions. A more traditional regulatory program was established to control nitrogen dioxide emissions.
Yep, a bunch of "regular guys" with old trucks got owned for the greater good of society. They'll have to find another way to take vengeance on their grandchildren.

...I think they have a few ideas.
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Manetho »

Res Ipsa wrote:
Thu Dec 02, 2021 11:36 pm
Climate change is a political issue only because certain industries with a metric crapload of investment in fossil fuels politicized the science as a tactic.
As I detailed in a previous post. From this interview, the history of climate change science:
Nathaniel Rich wrote:The industry's been following this issue for a long time. There are studies from Exxon or even Humble Oil, the predecessor to Exxon, going back into the mid-1950s, and even then, those studies were not about whether this was happening. The question was how much of the added CO2 in the atmosphere was because of Exxon, basically, because of the fossil fuel industry. And they continued to monitor this over the decades, there were occasional CO2 working groups, study groups, this was going on also at the American Petroleum Institute, the big trade group for the oil and gas industry, and at some of the other companies. And those efforts continued through the '80s, but during that decade it was never a high priority. And I spoke with a lot of people who worked in the industry during that time and people at the highest levels of API, and they really weren't concerned about it, in part because there were no serious efforts in DC to pass laws or policies to reduce emissions.

And it wasn't really until James Hansen spoke before Congress in '88 and generated huge national headlines that they started to worry. And the story of how they began to mobilize this multi-decadal effort to sow propaganda, disinformation, to buy off politicians and scientists and ultimately to convert an entire political party to denialism — the seeds of that you see emerging in the weeks and months after the Hansen hearing. Before that, it was really on the back burner.

After Hansen's hearing, there are these high-level conversations at the American Petroleum Institute and at Exxon about, essentially, what do we do about this? It seems clear that regulation is coming, George Bush is talking about it, and so on. And they reach the same conclusions, Exxon and API. They say, we need to be an active participant in any kind of policy discussion; we need to burnish our credentials as scientific experts on the subject, so we have credibility in it; we need to make sure that the policy doesn't extend beyond what science says; emphasize uncertainty in the science where it exists—that would become crucial later on—and perhaps most important, don't accept any policy that would hurt the bottom line. That's the beginning of it.
And here's the damning bit:
Nathaniel Rich wrote:And then, as almost an afterthought at the time, API through its press office, which is coordinating the press for this industry group, Global Climate Coalition, starts to reach out to a couple of scientists who are friendly with the industry who have expressed some doubt about either the ozone or CO2, and they start encouraging them to speak to the press. Sometimes that encouragement takes the form of payouts — the head of the API program told me they gave $2,000 to a scientist whenever he wrote an op-ed for a national publication.

And that is almost an afterthought at the time, it's pretty low on the totem pole of what they're doing. They're also meeting with congressmen and so on. But it pays enormous dividends, because all of a sudden, national news publications start quoting these scientists — and it's really a handful of people, four or five people — over and over again. And an issue that to this point has been a story about fear of what's going to happen all of a sudden has two sides. And of course that's like catnip for journalists, and all of a sudden you have these pieces that start to appear that say, maybe there's not scientific consensus about this problem.

It starts almost tentatively, it starts with saying, well, it's not as certain as people say it is, as James Hansen says it is, there's problems with the climate models, the computer models, that Hansen uses. And then it goes into, we really don't know what the regional effects will be. And it grows and grows. It's almost like they're encouraged by their success and they become more and more brazen.

And then ultimately you get, after a number of years, into the '90s, you get into this bizarro universe where all of a sudden they're questioning the basic fundamental science itself, and of course that science goes back not just to 1979 but to the late 19th century, about what's the effect of pumping a bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere and what warming will that cause.

And so we've entered this weird funhouse realm where now, if you jump ahead to the present day, you have a political party, the only major political party in the world that endorses a position that's essentially to the right, even, of what the industry now says in their public statements. Exxon publicly today doesn't deny climate change, but you have a party that does. And so I think it's something that future historians will spend a lot of time piecing out, is how this little lie grew into a big lie and overwhelmed our politics.
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by Res Ipsa »

Manetho wrote:
Fri Dec 03, 2021 4:06 pm
Res Ipsa wrote:
Thu Dec 02, 2021 11:36 pm
Climate change is a political issue only because certain industries with a metric crapload of investment in fossil fuels politicized the science as a tactic.
As I detailed in a previous post. From this interview, the history of climate change science:
Nathaniel Rich wrote:The industry's been following this issue for a long time. There are studies from Exxon or even Humble Oil, the predecessor to Exxon, going back into the mid-1950s, and even then, those studies were not about whether this was happening. The question was how much of the added CO2 in the atmosphere was because of Exxon, basically, because of the fossil fuel industry. And they continued to monitor this over the decades, there were occasional CO2 working groups, study groups, this was going on also at the American Petroleum Institute, the big trade group for the oil and gas industry, and at some of the other companies. And those efforts continued through the '80s, but during that decade it was never a high priority. And I spoke with a lot of people who worked in the industry during that time and people at the highest levels of API, and they really weren't concerned about it, in part because there were no serious efforts in DC to pass laws or policies to reduce emissions.

And it wasn't really until James Hansen spoke before Congress in '88 and generated huge national headlines that they started to worry. And the story of how they began to mobilize this multi-decadal effort to sow propaganda, disinformation, to buy off politicians and scientists and ultimately to convert an entire political party to denialism — the seeds of that you see emerging in the weeks and months after the Hansen hearing. Before that, it was really on the back burner.

After Hansen's hearing, there are these high-level conversations at the American Petroleum Institute and at Exxon about, essentially, what do we do about this? It seems clear that regulation is coming, George Bush is talking about it, and so on. And they reach the same conclusions, Exxon and API. They say, we need to be an active participant in any kind of policy discussion; we need to burnish our credentials as scientific experts on the subject, so we have credibility in it; we need to make sure that the policy doesn't extend beyond what science says; emphasize uncertainty in the science where it exists—that would become crucial later on—and perhaps most important, don't accept any policy that would hurt the bottom line. That's the beginning of it.
And here's the damning bit:
Nathaniel Rich wrote:And then, as almost an afterthought at the time, API through its press office, which is coordinating the press for this industry group, Global Climate Coalition, starts to reach out to a couple of scientists who are friendly with the industry who have expressed some doubt about either the ozone or CO2, and they start encouraging them to speak to the press. Sometimes that encouragement takes the form of payouts — the head of the API program told me they gave $2,000 to a scientist whenever he wrote an op-ed for a national publication.

And that is almost an afterthought at the time, it's pretty low on the totem pole of what they're doing. They're also meeting with congressmen and so on. But it pays enormous dividends, because all of a sudden, national news publications start quoting these scientists — and it's really a handful of people, four or five people — over and over again. And an issue that to this point has been a story about fear of what's going to happen all of a sudden has two sides. And of course that's like catnip for journalists, and all of a sudden you have these pieces that start to appear that say, maybe there's not scientific consensus about this problem.

It starts almost tentatively, it starts with saying, well, it's not as certain as people say it is, as James Hansen says it is, there's problems with the climate models, the computer models, that Hansen uses. And then it goes into, we really don't know what the regional effects will be. And it grows and grows. It's almost like they're encouraged by their success and they become more and more brazen.

And then ultimately you get, after a number of years, into the '90s, you get into this bizarro universe where all of a sudden they're questioning the basic fundamental science itself, and of course that science goes back not just to 1979 but to the late 19th century, about what's the effect of pumping a bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere and what warming will that cause.

And so we've entered this weird funhouse realm where now, if you jump ahead to the present day, you have a political party, the only major political party in the world that endorses a position that's essentially to the right, even, of what the industry now says in their public statements. Exxon publicly today doesn't deny climate change, but you have a party that does. And so I think it's something that future historians will spend a lot of time piecing out, is how this little lie grew into a big lie and overwhelmed our politics.
I think it's more complicated than that. Climate science as a specific field of study is a relative newcomer. In the 1970s (or '80s –– damn old man brain), there were separate areas of study that had potential ramifications for climate. The discovery of the Milankovitch cycles, which stems from astronomy, showed that earth was in a cooling period that, all other things being equal, would lead to an ice age in a couple thousand years. Atmospheric scientists were studying two separate topics that also had ramifications for future climate. Rising levels of particulate pollution were discovered to cool the atmosphere. And, when past trends were extrapolated, much more rapid cooling was predicted. Both of these developments in science resulted in alarmist headlines about global cooling for a relatively short period of time. The other subject being studied by atmospheric sciences was the effect of increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, especially CO2. Extrapolations based on the rate of increase predicted significant heating of the atmosphere.

What was needed is what developed –– a specialized field of science devoted to studying the climate as a subject. At some point, the President asked the National Academy of Sciences to figure out which of the three potential causes of climate change was most significant. Accounting for all three factors, the academy determined that the effect of greenhouse gas emissions was more significant. That kind of spearheaded the formation of the IPCC, the international organization devoted to study of climate change.

I've oversimplified a bunch of stuff. The best history of climate science that I've found is by Spencer Weart. I link to it often.
https://history.aip.org/climate/index.htm
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Re: Thread for discussing climate change

Post by doubtingthomas »

Binger wrote:
Thu Dec 02, 2021 11:25 pm
I sorta miss extreme paralyzing fear and paranoia about acid rain, the ozone (particularly the hole over Australia), a new ice age, the end end end of fossil fuels. Those were much more fun than this political threat.
You defend a paranoid idiot.
"I have the type of (REAL) job where I can choose how to spend my time," says Marcus. :roll:
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