The lessons of the pandemic and global warming

[_Themis]

Have you guys dropped the "man made" part of climate change in your rhetoric on purpose? Climate change has been happening since the earth was formed. Are you telling me that if Hillary Clinton were president these wildfires would not have happened? Do you not realize that only a few countries were forced to cut carbon emissions in this nonglobal agreement while the biggest polluters like China were exempt for the next 50 years? Do you really think this agreement changed the global climate that drastically in under four years? That doesn't sound very scientific to me at all.

Green energy is not cheap. Brackite are you fine with your utility bill tripling in cost to use less efficient green energy and of course pay the electric bill for those that cannot do so themselves? Do you realize that once these suckers can claim a medical condition it's illegal to cut their utilities off, hence they never pay again.

See how Ajax just spouts off gibberish he read from some alt right science denying sources and never thought to go to the source to see how bad his information is.

[_Gunnar]

Ajax and subby are just trolling. Ajax is a science denier who probably believes in a young earth and global flood, and has no interest in learning if he is wrong about any of that including climatology. Hopefully they will be a dying breed or the world is in deep ____.

Oh, I have no doubt about that, and I fervently share your hope that they are dying breed!

[_Brackite]

Have you guys dropped the "man made" part of climate change in your rhetoric on purpose? Climate change has been happening since the earth was formed.

The following is from NASA:

The Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is extremely likely (greater than 95 percent probability) to be the result of human activity since the mid-20th century and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented over decades to millennia.1

Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. This body of data, collected over many years, reveals the signals of a changing climate.

The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century.2 Their ability to affect the transfer of infrared energy through the atmosphere is the scientific basis of many instruments flown by NASA. There is no question that increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response.

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earth’s climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming.

[_MeDotOrg]

Both present a similar problems: They required action long before noticeable effects began. Both were also highly politicized, leading significant numbers of people to simply deny the evidence. And both required changes in lifestyle that people were simply unwilling to make, making the damage much worse than it had to be.

Thank you for putting so succinctly. Business looks at the future in terms of 3-month increments. Governments get a progress report every 4 years. Climate change is like a gigantic cruise ship sailing on an ocean of time: It does not respond to the helm instantaneously. It doesn't turn on a dime. If the Planet was to somehow stomp hard on the brakes with respect to carbon emissions, the earth's temperature would continue to rise in the short-term. These wild fires are actually occurring a period of reduced carbon emissions. But the fuse had already been lit.

Ajax is right when he suggests if the United States remained a signator of the Paris Climate Accords, we may not have prevented these wild fires. It may very well have been too late to have prevented this. The pace of this crisis unfolds over decades, and perhaps centuries.

Inconvenient truth? It is a massively inconvenient truth. But the truth requires humanity to change its perception and action in response. If I'm lucky, I probably have 20 years left on this planet. We're just seeing the beginning of global warming. It will be a threat for the next century The children who cannot vote now will have great grandchildren who suffer the consequences of our inaction.

[_subgenius]

No one is claiming that, but it is a given that wildfires will continue to become more frequent and serious if the climate continues to get hotter, droughts become more frequent, and humidity continues to decrease. That is just basic, inexorable and brutal physics. No amount of wishful denial and sticking one's head in the sand can change that.

Ajax and subby are just trolling. Ajax is a science denier who probably believes in a young earth and global flood, and has no interest in learning if he is wrong about any of that including climatology. Hopefully they will be a dying breed or the world is in deep ____.

With regard to the CA wildfires, science is in favor of my position. The majority of wildfires are started by man. The poor forest management is by man and the destruction of property is due to man.
Now
I recognize that drought conditions do not favor the "fight", but the failure to manage the forest with the knowledge of drought conditions is once again on man.
So
It is not reasonable, or scientific, to label the CA wildfires as a "climate change problem". These fires are a man v. nature problem, and while climate has a battle front in that war, these wildfires are not enlisted in that army.
Therefore
If you are going to continue to deny the science and politicize the CA wildfires then you are actually the troll; and if you are going to insist that they be drafted into the service of Her Majesty's Royal Climate Brigade, then you are just a fool.

[_Themis]

With regard to the CA wildfires, science is in favor of my position. The majority of wildfires are started by man. The poor forest management is by man and the destruction of property is due to man.
Now
I recognize that drought conditions do not favor the "fight", but the failure to manage the forest with the knowledge of drought conditions is once again on man.
So
It is not reasonable, or scientific, to label the CA wildfires as a "climate change problem". These fires are a man v. nature problem, and while climate has a battle front in that war, these wildfires are not enlisted in that army.
Therefore
If you are going to continue to deny the science and politicize the CA wildfires then you are actually the troll; and if you are going to insist that they be drafted into the service of Her Majesty's Royal Climate Brigade, then you are just a fool.

CFR for your assertion the increase in wildfires is due to poor forest management. I will make it easier in that you can just stick with North America.

by the way I didn't politicize the California wildfires, but the science has predicted they will get worse in California and elsewhere. A prediction that is showing to be accurate. Even areas with very few people live like Northern Canada and Alaska.

[Guest]

It is not reasonable, or scientific, to label the CA wildfires as a "climate change problem". These fires are a man v. nature problem, and while climate has a battle front in that war, these wildfires are not enlisted in that army.
Therefore
If you are going to continue to deny the science and politicize the CA wildfires then you are actually the troll; and if you are going to insist that they be drafted into the service of Her Majesty's Royal Climate Brigade, then you are just a fool.

The only ones denying the science and politicizing the CA wildfires are the fools, like Trump, who continue to deny that human activities, like burning ever increasing quantities of fossil fuels, are contributing massively to problematic climate changes we are experiencing. True, human carelessness and mismanagement of forests contribute to the problem, but a big part of that is how we are contributing to climate change. According to NASA and Solar Scientists who monitor the Sun's output and the Milankovitch cycles, the earth should be in a slight cooling trend right now, yet the opposite is true. We have already presented on this forum evidence adding up all the known factors that should be affecting global temperatures, and minus the human caused factors, the earth should be cooling. When we add back the human caused factors, they add up to just the warming trend actually observed. I'll try to find again the study that conclusively showed that fact. It left very little room for doubt about it.

ETA: Here it is. How Global Warming Stacks Up.

Those who continue to deny the fact of human caused and influenced climate change are almost as scientifically illiterate and foolish as flat-earthers.

Trump tried to blame California's supposed mismanagement of forest lands on the current wildfire catastrophes, but, as Governor Newsome pointed out, the vast majority of California forest land is owned and managed by federal agencies such as the The U.S. Dept. of Forestry, and Bureau of Land Management -- not Californian government and private agencies. Admittedly, for one thing, the density of some of these forest lands is greater than is healthy for the entire ecosystem, including the trees themselves. This is much more the fault of Federal mismanagement than California State mismanagement.

Also, though it is certainly true that some of the current crop of fires were started by human carelessness, the vast majority of them were caused by a perfect storm of record high temperatures, low humidity and unusually massive clusters of lightning strikes. According to the overwhelming majority of scientists, especially those best qualified in climate science, we humans have contributed and are still contributing the climatic factors responsible. Only a very tiny and still shrinking minority of scientists still dispute that, like it or not!

[_Res Ipsa]

Deniers will always play games with causation because it is easy to do. Increasing the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases has some direct effects: warming the average global temperature and increasing ocean acidity. It is a "sufficient" cause of both effects. But "causes" of something are not limited to "sufficient" causes. Climate scientists have long predicted that one effect of heating the atmosphere will be more extreme weather events: hotter and longer heatwaves, more severe droughts, more intense rain events. Increased atmospheric greenhouse gases cause warming, which changes the odds of extreme events. It's like rolling ten dice. The highest total you can get is 60, and it's pretty rare. The effect of global warming is like slowly and randomly increasing the number of pips on the dice. Not only does the average increase, but the frequency of extreme results does as well. And, as the randomly chosen side of a die increases from 6 to 7, the potential extremes get more extreme. The highest possible total increases from 60 to 61 to 63, etc.

When global warming makes extreme events more likely to occur, it is proper to say it is a "cause" of those events. Not a sufficient cause. Not a necessary cause. But a contributing cause, which is a cause whether or not deniers like it. When global warming results in extreme events analogous to rolling a 65 on ten dice, it becomes a necessary cause. And that's where we are with fires on the west coast. Fires that were controllable under climactic conditions 30 years ago are starting to happen under combinations of high temperatures and low humidity that make them more difficult, or in some cases, impossible to control. Necessary causes are causes, whether or not deniers like it.

Forest practices that worked okay 30 years ago aren't necessarily going to work under our new climate. But changing them takes $$$ and the same people that deny global warming also are unwilling to pay taxes to change things like forest practices. This is what life is going to be like as global warming continues to accelerate. Our civilization was created in and highly adapted to a certain climate that was relatively stable over a long period of time. As the climate changes, we are going to discover more and more things that have worked for a long time that no longer work. Changing how we are going to do those things will cost billions of dollars. We're too cheap to pay to maintain our existing infrastructure. How are we going to afford the new infrastructure to replace that destroyed or rendered obsolete by the effects of global warming?

[_ajax18]

Oh, I have no doubt about that, and I fervently share your hope that they are dying breed!

Then you shall be severely disappointed. I have a healthy and strong children who I work every day to support. I have never relinquished my 2nd amendment rights nor would I hesitate to defend them if necessary.

[_Gunnar]

We're too cheap to pay to maintain our existing infrastructure. How are we going to afford the new infrastructure to replace that destroyed or rendered obsolete by the effects of global warming?

Exactly! Our refusal to take earlier action to ameliorate and slow climate change is going to cost us almost incomparably more than it would have cost us to aggressively address that problem much earlier, just like it would have cost much less to invest in fire prevention measures than it would cost to replace a house that has burned to the ground.