Climate Change

[CarolKing]

I had been noticing that this subject needs its own thread. Is climate change fact or fiction? Why are the glaciers melting in Canada and Alaska? The polar bears are having a difficult time finding ice - their ice is melting..... What to do. Are the oceans changing? What's going on?

The astronauts say that they can see pollution out in space hovering over large populations.

Either where I live we are having too much rain or not enough.

An official US Government science committee has tweeted an article suggesting that global temperatures were in a "plunge" - despite scientific consensus saying the opposite - which elicited a derisive response from Bernie Sanders.


“Where'd you get your PhD? Trump University?” the 75-year-old Vermont Senator, who was defeated by Hillary Clinton in his bid to become the Democrat presidential candidate, retorted, retweeting the article to his 3.21 million followers.

The House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology shared the story, published by right-wing news site Breitbart, on Thursday, commenting: "Global Temperatures Plunge. Icy Silence from Climate Alarmists".

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson explains why he believes that climate change deniers can't get behind the science.

Produced by Darren Weaver and Kamelia Angelova. Additional production by Kevin Reilly.

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StarTalk Radio is a podcast and radio program hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, where comic co-hosts, guest celebrities, and scientists discuss astronomy, physics, and everything else about life in the universe. Follow StarTalk Radio on Twitter, and watch StarTalk Radio "Behind the Scenes" on YouTube.

 

[Stevenski]

It is a tough one Carol. On one hand the earth is steadily getting hotter as it has since the ice age & that is perfectly reasonable. On the other hand we as a species are almost certainly accelerating the planet getting hotter. Much like with all things somewhere in the sea of grey is the truth but we prefer to focus on things being either black or white rather than the shades of grey they really are.

 

[Receptor]

NATGEO, "Years of Living Dangerously" gives us a good look into our near future.
I had to get more medicated then usually in order to watch it.
Depressing to see what is going on, not only locally, but even more severe
in other parts of the world

I try very hard to thread lightly on this earth. I have Dutch nationality and was born
in West Papua New Guinea, most pristine place on this planet for undiscovered plants species and animals. FreePort Mining co. is extracting gold and copper, polluting everything
in its surrounding, without transparency......business as usual....exploit & extract!!

Our Pica rabbits in California are near extinction.....tiny, tiny rabbits.

"A savage is not the one who lives in the forest, but the one who destroys it"

 

[GreenDragon]

The House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology shared the story, published by right-wing news site Breitbart,

U.S. Congress Committee on Science is getting it's information from FrightFart ?!?

Oh...ahh...mmmmm, yeah.... that feels so good.
Shame...sweet, sweet shame.
Shame feels much better than disgust and sadness.
Ah crap, they are still there too.

Welcome to the planet's newest banana republic.

 

[CarolKing]

Trump met very briefly with Al Gore today. He's all over the map around a lot of things including climate change.

Trump's Cabinet Picks Have One Thing in Common: Climate Denial - EcoWatch
www.ecowatch.com › trumps-cabinet-cli...
Nov 21, 2016 - Three Trump cabinet picks announced on Friday are all climate change deniers. Sen. ... Hisunwillingness to acknowledge the true threat posed by Islamic extremism will get Americans killed.

 

[Receptor]

Depressing....time for my MEDS!!
Will do my best to thread lightly....EARTHLINGS.

 

[Havelock Vetenari]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

Nothing tough about it AFAICS.
Apart maybe from the blatant denialism and outright lies from invested parties...

 

[Receptor]

Dammmmttt....thanks....planting some more vines and annuals for my own sake
of carbon sequestering...SAYONARA. Keep seeds in pocket when traveling (tree type)...
plant a..long...but be respectful...thxs

 

[vapirtoo]

I do not understand greed.
What good is being in the top 1 percent if you are killing the planet.?

 

[Receptor]

GREED=Living for TO...DAY. I think need to go to the....FU thread

 

[ginolicious]

Global warming has everything to do with Chem trails and HAARP. It's all about the elites making their money. Rothschilds and Rockerfellers run the world.

 

[Receptor]

Chem trails.....140 miles long. From the FreePort mine, on West Papua New Guinea?
Does not take a scientist to figure out the correlation of destruction to the Australian
barrier reefs.
I need my MEDS....Durban Poison...nice chem trail...
HAARP....?? Dutch??

 

[herbivore21]

U.S. Congress Committee on Science is getting it's information from FrightFart ?!?

Oh...ahh...mmmmm, yeah.... that feels so good.
Shame...sweet, sweet shame.
Shame feels much better than disgust and sadness.
Ah crap, they are still there too.

Welcome to the planet's newest banana republic.

I've gotta agree man, if a governmental committee on science is using any non-scholarly, let alone tabloid media organization (even if they weren't as demonstrably partisan/biased as the source in question) as a source with which to inform discussion or answer questions regarding the physical sciences, then that committee is a fucking joke.

It doesn't matter what the topic is, scientific questions need scientific answers. The media fucking suck at communicating about science. Journalists are much more often than not useless when it comes to understanding and accurately reflecting scientific information - ask just about any scientist in just about any field and they'll tell you the same thing.

Broadly speaking (and in the absence of the rarest of serendipity), we can only reasonably expect useful answers to recent scientific questions from the scientific research literature and qualified scientists in relevant disciplines! If we can't even settle on that approach, what's next? Asking bartenders for their learned legal opinions? Barbers instead of doctors for medical advice?

 

[grokit]

Much like with all things somewhere in the sea of grey is the truth, but we prefer to focus on things being either black or white

Especially if there's any $ to be made

 

[BuzzDanklin]

Living next to Glacier National Park it is sad seeing the glaciers going away, soon it will be Glacierless National Park.

 

[grokit]

Yup ^.

Ice melts > weather gets more extreme > oceans rise.

While we continue to "debate".

 

[GreenDragon]

Town Rejects Solar Panels That Would ‘Suck up All the Energy From the Sun’

A North Carolina town council approved a sweeping moratorium on solar power development after residents expressed fears that solar panels cause cancer and drain the sun's energy, which would leave their town dark and devoid of plant life.

The Woodland Town Council was meeting to re-zone land for a proposed solar power project from Strata Solar Company. During the meeting, a retired science teacher raised concerns "that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the plants from growing,"
**********************

A retired science teacher ?!?!!!
These kooks are "educating" children.

The earth is now opening bids for the next dominant life form. Next!

 

[Havelock Vetenari]

Global warming has everything to do with Chem trails and HAARP. It's all about the elites making their money. Rothschilds and Rockerfellers run the world.

Wut?!

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Chemtrails
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...debunks-chemtrails-conspiracy-live-180960139/

HAARP....?? Dutch??

Dutch?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program

Leave us out of this one please...

And again, there are no grey area's here, climate change due to human activities is quite real sadly...
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

 

[HellsWindStaff]

I believe the climate is changing and I believe we as humans are influencing it. I don't put much stock into "how much" we are. 80s were "global cooling" fears. So while I don't deny we should move to better more "green" resources, I do take a lot of "we're melting" with a grain of salt. Not saying we aren't, just not sure the rate and if it's truly fear inducing

I think this promotes a bigger discussion though, regarding green energy. I'm all for that, but I think a lot of those plans are also kind of shortsighted. Or, rather, they are looking at the end result of green energy without looking at the path.

Solar Panels, for example, green energy. Sounds great IMO. How do we build them? How much metal do we have to dig up?

Computers, electronics, etc, that are using earth metals, how do you reckon we continue to use them without continuinally digging for the components that make them work?

Wires....

Guess what I'm trying to say is that the world is too dependent on unclean energy/boring out the earth IMO for any real sense of "true 100% green energy" I'm all for investing and discovering alternate energy but we should acknowledge how much bad energy that will encompass to get that green energy up and running.

 

[Tranquility]

Town Rejects Solar Panels That Would ‘Suck up All the Energy From the Sun’

A North Carolina town council approved a sweeping moratorium on solar power development after residents expressed fears that solar panels cause cancer and drain the sun's energy, which would leave their town dark and devoid of plant life.

The Woodland Town Council was meeting to re-zone land for a proposed solar power project from Strata Solar Company. During the meeting, a retired science teacher raised concerns "that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the plants from growing,"
**********************

A retired science teacher ?!?!!!
These kooks are "educating" children.

The earth is now opening bids for the next dominant life form. Next!

http://www.snopes.com/north-carolina-town-rejects-solar-panels/

 

[seaofgreens]

If anything, we know that fossil fuels are finite. We also know that once you have less fossil fuel resources to transition into other means (i.e. digging up metals/creating plastics/running mahinery etc.) you exponentially decline. We are at a critical juncture (imo) where we can either do things right, or fuck right off back into the dark ages. I assume you know where we are more than likely going to go though.

And whether or not you agree with global warming, it is very clear that releasing millions of years of sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere will undoubtedly have some sort of effect... There is a reason that giant cold blooded reptiles were able to exist all those millions of years ago ago aside from not having been hit by an asteroid... just putting that out there.

 

[crawdad]

kind of wish the initiative would center itself less on specific changes on this planet (which provide points to debate on) and focus more on living harmoniously with our surroundings since that is what would be most natural for Earth. we have an effect on this planet that can be measured but can also be understood easily without taking a damn measurement at all.

 

[Tranquility]

I've gotta agree man, if a governmental committee on science is using any non-scholarly, let alone tabloid media organization (even if they weren't as demonstrably partisan/biased as the source in question) as a source with which to inform discussion or answer questions regarding the physical sciences, then that committee is a fucking joke.

It doesn't matter what the topic is, scientific questions need scientific answers. The media fucking suck at communicating about science. Journalists are much more often than not useless when it comes to understanding and accurately reflecting scientific information - ask just about any scientist in just about any field and they'll tell you the same thing.

Broadly speaking (and in the absence of the rarest of serendipity), we can only reasonably expect useful answers to recent scientific questions from the scientific research literature and qualified scientists in relevant disciplines! If we can't even settle on that approach, what's next? Asking bartenders for their learned legal opinions? Barbers instead of doctors for medical advice?

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/154082416051/the-non-expert-problem-and-climate-change-science

If you have been involved in any climate change debates online or in person, you know they always take the following trajectory: Climate science believers state that all the evidence, and 98% of scientists, are on the same side. Then skeptics provide links to credible-sounding articles that say the science is bunk, and why. How the heck can you – a non-expert – judge who is right?

You probably are not a scientist, and that means you can’t independently evaluate any of the climate science claims. You didn’t do the data collection or the experiments yourself. You could try to assess the credibility of the scientists using your common sense and experience, but let’s face it – you aren’t good at that. So what do you do?

You probably default to trusting whatever the majority of scientists tell you. And the majority says climate science is real and we need to do something about it. But how reliable are experts, even when they are mostly on the same side?

Ask the majority of polling experts who said Trump had only a 2% chance of becoming president. Ask the experts who said the government’s historical “food pyramid” was good science. Ask the experts who used to say marijuana was a gateway drug. Ask the experts who used to say sexual orientation is just a choice. Ask the experts who said alcoholism is a moral failure and not a matter of genetics.

There are plenty of examples where the majority of experts were wrong. What you really want to know is whether climate change looks more like the sort of thing that turns out to be right or the sort of thing that turns out to be wrong. Let’s dig into that question.​

 

[Receptor]

Charles Homans: How Steven Chu lost his battle in Washington.
Steven Chu....Nobel Prize......Sec. of Energy 2009-2013
In my opinion, he has a good grip on these issues. Top Notch Person....
Berkely.edu./growing energy:Berkely labs Steve Chu on what termite guts
have to do with global warming. Sept. 2005

The Holy GRAIL to......."sustainability" is not one of a linear economic model but rather circular.
A.....TAKE...(exploit), MAKE....(cheap labor), WASTE.....(nimby)..... linear is what we have.
The....CRADLE...to.....CRADLE.. or..GRAVE to GRAVE ..circular. Mimics the NATURAL world SYSTEMS,
where one organisms WASTE BECOMES VALUABLE nutrients for another.

There is not one ....SILVER BULLET......but a lot of little ones.
Cradle2.org.....Original Unverpackts......DesignTex Fabrics(climatex life cycle)

I think tne most important decision we make, is whether we believe,
we live in in a friendly or hostile enviroment.

CANNABIS......Cluster Headache......ReNew.....Mission......Good to-Go.

 

[GreenDragon]

Town Rejects Solar Panels That Would ‘Suck up All the Energy From the Sun’

A North Carolina town council approved a sweeping moratorium on solar power development after residents expressed fears that solar panels cause cancer and drain the sun's energy, which would leave their town dark and devoid of plant life.

The Woodland Town Council was meeting to re-zone land for a proposed solar power project from Strata Solar Company. During the meeting, a retired science teacher raised concerns "that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the plants from growing,"
**********************

A retired science teacher ?!?!!!
These kooks are "educating" children.

The earth is now opening bids for the next dominant life form. Next!

http://www.snopes.com/north-carolina-town-rejects-solar-panels/

Did you read the entire Snopes report that you linked?
They rated the article they used a "Mixture". Some was true and some was not.
Every word I quoted was true.
Some publishers/websites articles showed more or less of the story, some true, some false.
You are correct if you mean that there was more to the story.
The article I quoted from did lack some content and details from the original story, but was all true.

Just saying, climate issues should not be decided by science deniers.