climate change denial is worse than anti-vax movement

[rah]

either because they think the consequences aren't that bad, the outlay would not achieve the desired effect,

More like they aren't convinced that the consequences are as bad as many are saying. And there is no guarantee that it achieves the desired effect, but most importantly, if the major countries like the US and Euros do it While the Chinese continue to choke themselves to death, will we be able to achieve any results.

Do we have to force every other developing nation to stop, because they can't afford to stop unless they want to stop developing?

I'm convinced that man is responsible and something is changing, but I am far from convinced of what it will take to stop it or how bad the change is going to be.
I'd hate to spend trillions of dollars that could potentially collapse the world economy to do something that may not have any impact.
Yes doing something is better than doing nothing but to what degree?

[Dauphin]

And we end back at beggar thy neighbour. We all act, or someone will freeload and ruin it all with the ensuing race to the bottom.

[rah]

If it's a fact it's a fact.
If the hole is draining the water faster than you're bailing, you're going to sink.
Every agreement I've see has exceptions for developing countries. I don't see how that will help.
Heck there are days where you have to travel over a 100 miles in China to find safe air to breath.
A planet wide solution will be quite ineffective if a majority of the planet isn't participating.

[rah]

Let's say we put heavy restrictions on Manufacturing. Or costly fines for discourage any emissions.
What happens? The corporations will move manufacturing to countries that are exempt.
So we lose jobs so someone else can pollute.

If you want to call that beggar thy Neighbor, go ahead. But you know that will happen.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

So let's not do anything because it's difficult and complicated.

What's good for Milo Minderbinder is good for you.

[Lorizael]

As always, I'm in favor of the solution that puts the greatest number of lives at stake: costly, last minute, untested geoengineering projects. If it works, cool. We've got a sun shade or some genetically engineered species of algae that spits out the right gases. If it fails, cool. We've got an apocalypse and all the excitement that brings.

[Berzerker]

the effort to clean up our pollution will warm the globe faster

maybe China will save us by clogging their airspace

or we could just roll out a sun shade between us and the sun, maybe a few - like the monolith in 2001

I still support buying off a few villages in that depression SW of the Red Sea and flooding the land, that should buy us a few decades of sea rise

[Dauphin]

Let's say we put heavy restrictions on Manufacturing. Or costly fines for discourage any emissions.
What happens? The corporations will move manufacturing to countries that are exempt.
So we lose jobs so someone else can pollute.

If you want to call that beggar thy Neighbor, go ahead. But you know that will happen.

That's my point.

"Beggar thy neighbour" is an economic term meaning just that - akin to the prisoners' dilemma - explaining why two (or more) actors will act in their own self interests, harming each other's in the process, even though co-operation between all actors would be the overall best choice.

[pchang]

The climate is changing. Change is disruptive. We will all pay one way or another. After a while, we will eventually reach a new equilibrium.

[Berzerker]

ommmm

[Lorizael]

The climate is changing. Change is disruptive. We will all pay one way or another. After a while, we will eventually reach a new equilibrium.

I agree, with the caveat that the new equilibrium might just suck.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

How to talk to a climate change contrarian (if you must)
Climate trolls make the link between climate change and extreme weather seem highly complicated. It isn't.
The Week
By Ryan Cooper | 6:08am ET



Don't sweat the small stuff. (Reuters)



Nate Silver’s hiring of noted stats whiz Roger Pielke Jr. to write for FiveThirtyEight sparked a minor internet scrape last month over climate change, extreme weather, and how those issues are covered in the press. Pielke made his career repeatedly accusing climate scientists of scientific malfeasance for exaggerating the link between climate change and extreme weather (see here for dozens more). His latest effort was another entry in the canon, arguing that the rising economic costs of extreme weather had little to do with climate change.

Now the Breakthrough Institute, which is about as troll-y as they come with regards to climate change, is out with a true-to-form defense of Pielke, claiming that a new, devastating report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change entirely vindicates his approach to weather disasters. (I know, I know, I've called on the universe not to feed the trolls, but sometimes I’ll take requests.)

As is typical for Breakthrough, Pielke, and other climate change contrarians, the debate they're trying to have is almost totally pointless. It’s long past time to kill forever the idea that quibbling over the current costs of weather disasters matters either for climate policy or politics. When it comes to climate change and extreme weather, one simple fact takes care of the vast majority of what’s really important. You ready? Here it is, drum roll…

More global warming means more extreme weather.

To put it another way: Why do we care about climate change? Because it could cause serious, potentially catastrophic damage to our civilization. Extreme weather is a big part of how this will happen, according to the new IPCC report, which even Breakthrough and Pielke apparently agree is a good source:

Impacts from recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones, and wildfires, reveal significant vulnerability and exposure of some ecosystems and many human systems to current climate variability (very high confidence). Impacts of such climate-related extremes include alteration of ecosystems, disruption of food production and water supply, damage to infrastructure and settlements, morbidity and mortality, and consequences for mental health and human well-being. For countries at all levels of development, these impacts are consistent with a significant lack of preparedness for current climate variability in some sectors. [IPCC]

It’s really that simple. Organized science is highly confident that unchecked climate change will cause more extreme weather in the future, along with a grim parade of horribles. So we should stop the carbon pollution that causes it.

The Pielke post that kicked off this whole mess is about an ancillary question: is the economic damage from past natural disasters the result of climate change? Right away we’re in trouble, because extreme weather events are by definition rare and random, and there have been only a few decades on record that have been much hotter than average. As this post explains in detail, with the exception of heat records, we simply don’t have very much data yet on the question, and it will take a while for the statistics to shake out.

In contrast, the IPCC's conclusions above are more powerfully based on scientific knowledge: quantum mechanics tells us that greenhouse gases trap heat, and climate models tell us that will cause more extreme weather.

But remember, Pielke is asking a narrower question still: not just whether extreme weather events are becoming more common, but whether the economic damage thereof is the result of climate change. Now we’ve got little data and confounding factors! As Pielke points out, a higher GDP does mean that there will be more expensive stuff for natural disasters to destroy, thus bumping up the financial cost of extreme weather. But a higher GDP also means there will be better construction quality and disaster prediction. Compare the death toll from the 2010 Haitian earthquake to that of a much, much stronger one in Chile. (Earthquakes have nothing to do with climate change, of course, it just gives a sense of the problem with Pielke's logic. See here for more.)

But whatever. When it comes to the big issues, none of this matters. It's a question that might make a nice dissertation in 20 years or so, but right now it's a D-list scientific inquiry at best.

Economic damage is a completely cockeyed way of looking at any of this. Poor countries are going to be hit hardest by climate change, but since they’re poor the damage isn’t going to be very "expensive." As some dude named Nate Silver showed us back in 2009, you could delete something like 3 billion people off the face of the Earth and it would only add up to 5 percent of world GDP. What happened to that guy?

http://theweek.com/article/index/259...an-if-you-must

[Dinner]

The climate is changing. Change is disruptive. We will all pay one way or another. After a while, we will eventually reach a new equilibrium.

But that equilibrium might be in a place we don't like especially if we keep tipping the scales further and further with ever more CO2 pollution. It's a classic tragedy of the commons.

[Berzerker]

global warming = more rain
more rain = extreme weather
and thats a bad thing

[Felch]

http://theweek.com/article/index/259...an-if-you-must

The problem with that argument is that there isn't really much evidence to support it. Here's a chart showing the Accumulated Cyclone Energy in the Atlantic from 1948 to 2012:



CO2 has been going up consistently over that time period. It's a span covering over 60 years, which should be plenty of time to detect some sort of pattern, which according to your model should be generally upward. But there isn't much of a pattern, unless zig-zagging is a pattern. 1950 was one of the highest years, which doesn't mesh well with the CO2=hurricanes thesis. Which all makes me seriously question the models. And it makes me wonder why you keep spamming this thread with articles that are just rehashing unconfirmed predictions based on fundamentally flawed models. It's not changing my mind.