You asked the same question a year ago. Did you forget?

https://www.fluther.com/201826/climate-change-real-issue-or-giant-scam/

Global temperatures are rising.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature
Glaciers are melting.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-glacier-mass-balance
CO2 levels are rising.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide
Sea levels are rising.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level

Global Warming is an observed fact.
The Greenhouse Effect due to CO2 is a scientific fact.
Humans pumping gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year is a fact.
Humans being a large, if not the main, driving factor in that observed global warming is inescapable reality.

@seawulf575: “Lots of controversy over man-made climate change.”

No there isn’t.

Since this came from a different question, I will start by explaining my views. I believe that the narrative about man-made climate change is a scam, a hoax…whatever you want to call it. The reasons I believe this are many. First, the IPCC that first came up with this narrative did so by cherry-picking data to support their conclusions. Many of the scientists that worked on that effort have distanced themselves from it and some have outright opposed the conclusions in the official report. The Global Warming crowd came up with all sorts of predictions and models, based on the cherry-picked data, and none of them have proven true. When it became apparent that there was no substance to their claims, they started changing to “climate change” instead of “global warming” and then started attributing any weather anomalies to it. No real actual, factual ties, just claims.
The narrative itself causes thinking people to pause. There is a claim that man-made carbon emissions are causing the earth to heat up. The only solution they can come up with is to turn over all carbon emissions to the decisions of bureaucrats. Every school child can tell you that plants love carbon dioxide and that, through the miracle of photosynthesis, they convert it to oxygen. So if CO2 is one of the big scare gases, why not be preaching about planting trees and bushes? Why not a huge global campaign to save the rainforests? Why is the only answer to turn over carbon emission control to the governments? It seems suspicious.
Additionally, when you start looking at ice core samples from various places on the planet, you find that there were far bigger climate swings in our planet’s history that could not possibly have had anything to do with man since man didn’t exist.
I believe that mankind has an impact on our environment. I believe that to my bones. But I don’t believe that any of the climate change fear mongers understand what that impact is. And being a scientist, I recognize that if you start trying to fix a problem that you don’t fully understand, you could actually make it worse.

And being a scientist, I recognize that if you start trying to fix a problem that you don’t fully understand, you could actually make it worse.
(Pardon the subject change, but) how do you feel about the wisdom of deploying GMO crops into the environment?

Some examples of what I am talking about:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11561629/Top-scientists-start-to-examine-fiddled-global-warming-figures.html

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

http://www.aproundtable.org/tps30info/globalwarmup.html

https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/17736-no-proof-of-man-made-climate-change-says-greenpeace-co-founder

@Zaku It offends me on every level. We just don’t learn from our history. I have seen too many examples of introduction of a non-native species into a local ecosystem only to have that species cause more problems than could ever have been anticipated. Yet we believe, in our arrogance, that we can genetically alter something and somehow make it suddenly safe to put back into the environment. We play russian roulette with our ecology every time we do this.

@elbanditoroso yeah, I asked it once before, but since I was in a different thread and this started to take over the conversation, I thought I would be polite and ask it again.

OK, let’s look at some very simple realities. Industrialism is becoming global, at an exponential rate. Industrialism produces heat. Every machine more complex than a screwdriver produces heat. Lighting produces heat. Heating and cooling produce heat. Humans simply existing produce heat. Transportation of people and goods produces heat. There’s a start.
Someone else can discuss greenhouse gases, particulates in the atmosphere, how something as simple as asphalt can alter the ambient temperature range around high population areas.

@seawulf575 Thanks, that’s refreshing to read!

So if CO2 is one of the big scare gases, why not be preaching about planting trees and bushes? Why not a huge global campaign to save the rainforests? Why is the only answer to turn over carbon emission control to the governments?
It seems to me that there are campaigns about planting trees, saving rainforests, reducing land development, and reforestation, and that those are very important and deserve attention, even if it weren’t a concern for CO2 processing.

However it also seems clear that that’s not a complete solution because plants only process so much CO2.

Additionally, when you start looking at ice core samples from various places on the planet, you find that there were far bigger climate swings in our planet’s history that could not possibly have had anything to do with man since man didn’t exist.
Yes, and they occurred over a very long period of time and were challenging for the species who couldn’t relocate to compensate. They also were not accompanied by massive human-caused species extinction and habitat destruction.

Seriously.. This shit is covered in geography 201. The science isn’t hard.

And you might be wondering why the shapes of states would teach the atmosphere and soil. Geography is pretty much the science of earth. We spent a week on why rivers move the way they do.

The science is sound. I will applaud you for being honest and say economics trumps environmental concerns. That is legit if and I can respect it.

If you flat out deny it you are a fucking idiot.

Hi seawulf575….

@Zaku the problem with the ice cores is that they tell a different story. They show that there have always been fluctuations in temperature on this planet. And if all we are doing is looking at a relatively small period of change, we don’t start with enough evidence to draw conclusions. Looking at the core samples, they show many periods of change almost identical to what we are seeing now. And those are relatively brief periods overall. Yet there were no humans. So to see a change we have seen before and draw the conclusion that it can only be due to humans is a jump that cannot be scientifically made.

I’m curious how your interest in this came about. Are you a climate scientist who works with the data and the models and have discovered something that nearly all scientists have not? What has been your experience here?

If you are not a climate scientist and study this for a hobby, what other areas of science do you follow? Are you coming up against the consensus in other areas as well?

The reason I ask is that you might want to look at why this is on your radar. It’s likely no accident. The reason you might feel as though you’re in on a secret that the rest of the climate scientists are unaware of is likely due to the fact that there has been a concerted effort to present this science as controversial or incomplete. Why? Because the scientific reality is potentially harmful to certain industries.

Real. It might not be the entire fault of mankind, but, if not our fault, we sure as hell may have exacerbated it.

If you’re interested, this group of climate scientists uses models to analyze weather patterns and determine the extent to which man-made climate change has affected them.

From their about page

WWA [World Weather Attribution] is a partnership of Climate Central, the University of Oxford Environmental Change Institute (Oxford ECI), the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), the University of Melbourne, and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre (the Climate Centre). Climate Central also administers WWA. WWA was initiated in late 2014 after the scientific community concluded that the emerging science of extreme event attribution could be operationalized.

Identifying a human fingerprint on individual extreme weather events —“probabilistic extreme event attribution” — has been an important goal of the scientific community for more than a decade. In 2004, Dr. Peter Stott of the UK Met Office and his colleagues, published a paper in Nature showing that climate change had at least doubled the risk of the record-breaking 2003 European summer heat wave that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

Since then, advances in the field have prompted numerous studies, leading the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) to dedicate an annual special issue to extreme event attribution for the past four years. The 2016 BAMS special issue, Explaining Extreme Events of 2015 from a Climate Perspective, stated that “The science has now advanced to the point that we can detect the effects of climate change on some events with high confidence.” In addition, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine issued a report in 2016, Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change, that states, “In the past, a typical climate scientist’s response to questions about climate change’s role in any given extreme weather event was ‘we cannot attribute any single event to climate change.’ The science has advanced to the point that this is no longer true as an unqualified blanket statement.”

@thisismyusername there are some assumptions you make that really do you a disservice. I get interested in things that don’t make sense to me. I hear about something like global warming and I start digging in to learn more. When I dig in and find that many of those that worked on the original science were against the final product that started the entire global warming issue in the world, it makes me question why. When I start actually listening to what the cause is being claimed to be and what the solution is that is being proposed, it doesn’t add up. These are things that really make me question the validity of the entire thing.
As for other sciences I look at I enjoy chemistry, nuclear physics and some of the environmental sciences. And yes, I approach all of them with a questioning attitude. That is what a scientist does. He asks why. He questions results. He looks at theories and tries to prove or disprove them. That is how science works. It does not work by picking data to match the conclusion you want and then stop looking.
As for what I know that the other climate scientists don’t know, you are doing exactly what I just said doesn’t work. You make a conclusion and then try to pick data that supports it. I already cited a reference that had lists of climate related scientists (since there really is no such thing as a climate scientist) that question this whole thing the same way I do. I’m not alone. There are people far more knowledgeable about the climate of this planet than I that agree with my views.

@Soubresaut that is actually what SHOULD be done. They are looking at the individual aspects of weather and looking for trends. However I looked at several of the analysis that were on the page you cited. They are nothing more than comparisons with historic trends and there was nothing that actually tied back to humans. But what they appear to be doing is what should have been done up front…analysis of weather patterns and events. Then you coming up with hypotheses and testing them against the data. But I’ll be honest…I didn’t see anything on that website that was actually coming up with a predictive model.

I put this right up there with flat Earth theories. If you don’t believe we’re at least accelerating global warming, I put that person in with the flat Earthers.

More simple than trying to look at history, is possible future technology. When talking about making planets habitable, there is a process called Terraforming. Essentially, we pump greenhouse gases into an atmosphere, to raise the temperature and for other atmospheric reasons. The process is the exact same as what is being done without design on this planet.

…being a scientist…

How so?

@seawulf575 According to probably more recent views of “climate scientists,” most have changed their minds. Your statements sound more pre 2007 than 2018. Be sure to keep studying the (up-to-date) data. You might be surprised!
If you haven’t seen Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth,” watch it. If you’ve seen it, see it again.

@MrGrimm888 You slam anyone that challenges the climate change narrative yet you roll out science fiction and act like it’s real? Please. Yes, I understand that there is actual scientific considerations for terraforming, but it goes way beyond just greenhouse gases. AND…it has never been done. Nor is it actually being worked on seriously. Mars would be the most likely candidate but there are so many more issues with it than just raising the temperature that it might not be viable at all.

@kritiper the Telegraph article I cited was from 2018. The New American article is from 2014. Here’s another from 2013

https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/16643-top-scientists-slam-and-ridicule-un-ipcc-climate-report

This one from 2014 is also interesting

https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/03/31/the-ipccs-latest-report-deliberately-excludes-and-misrepresents-important-climate-science/#76415e0f428e

And this one is from a whole panel of climate scientists that are not bought and paid for by governments that want control. They disagree with the UN IPCC on many points and have the science to back it up.

http://f1a.fa0.myftpupload.com/why-scientists-disagree-about-global-warming/

Yep….there is still a lot people that disagree with the “official” story on climate change. But I did notice one thing that amuses me. You accuse me of making statements that are pre 2007 but then recommend I watch a movie that was made in 2006? Project much?

@seawulf575 your sources are again dubious. Take the last report by the Heartland Institute. This organisation worked with Philip Morris to deny that cigarette smoke had adverse health effects. It no longer divulges who is sponsoring its activities but it has in the past been funded by oil and gas companies.

The author of the Forbes article is Joseph Bast who happens to be CEO of Heartland. The Newamerican article I have not had time to check out but I suspect it is equally flaky but perhaps you can prove me wrong.

Climate change is dead center between several competing agendas, is it any surprise that it is so political and misunderstood? The basic science I don’t question. I have been called anti-science, climate denier and other things simply because I question the magnitude of the alarm being raised about it. I guess the same should go for believing humans are largely contributing but I don’t get that kind of pushpack from people who don’t believe it at all. I believe is a problem and humans are a contributor so we should work to resolve the issue but I’m not so sure it’s such the catastrophy that would resemble a disaster movie. I’m not against clean energy in any way but I am against using some of these CO2 taxation schemes being proposed and treaties that are signed but not followed. There is a general gov’t-buisiness political mess that not only obfuscates the issue to the public but also fails to find any viable solution. Nobody in this thread really knows the first thing about it. The “hoax” is that people think they understand it, really I’m only seeing politically spiked articles and papers that argue the extremes. I’m calling B.S. on that. This shit has become political, even on the front lines with the scientists themselves.
I actually have some background in this, I spent years designing and deploying temerature stations that are used in environmental modeling I was a historical geology not geography major for several years, I know people who work in this field.

Is there any scientific evidence that there is no global warming? Just because one or two groups might have fudged the data does not account for the evidence uncovered by others. Science is a group process. You can contribute by taking your own measurements. All the evidence points in the same direction. The National Weather Service (are they part of the conspiracy?) shows that average temperature is rising. National Geographic talks about the increase in oceanic acidity. Are they in on it too? Wow, this must be a really massive conspiracy! I urge you to get out your thermometers and expose all these charlatans. You can publish your results on Fluther. We will help spread the word.

In a system as chaotic and large (in terms of human scale) as Earth’s climate, and which changes quite slowly (except for “weather”, which changes all the time, and confounds all measurement), and with the degree of measurement uncertainty that exists with our instruments, our observational capability and local changes around measuring stations (not to mention that precision in all of these things changes over time, too – usually for the better as time marches on and technology improves) – it’s just not possible to say from one single year to another. That should be repeated: not possible to tell from one year to the next.

However, over a longer term, it does appear that Earth’s climate has been warming gradually over the past hundred and fifty years or so. So, do I believe that? Yes, I do. (Some recent studies seem to indicate that the warming trend has paused in the past fifteen to eighteen years, and that might be so… but go back to my first claim: it’s just not that easy to tell. But, maybe.)

Again with the however: “Climate”, that is “the atmosphere” does not warm the oceans and land masses. Arctic tundra is not defrosting “because the air got a few degrees warmer”. To the extent that the oceans are warming – which they seem to have been doing – and the landmasses thawing (the permafrost, that is) and glaciers receding – that’s because of the sun and its insolation. The warming of the atmosphere is an effect, not a cause, of the warming of the oceans and the landmasses.

That’s the physics of the thing, which anyone can demonstrate to themselves pretty easily. If you fill a bathtub with 60°F water (what’s that, around 17°C?) and turn the air inside the room to a “roasting” temperature – that is, actually too hot for you to stand – check how long it takes for that tub of water to get to a temperature that you can step into comfortably. It takes a lot of heat – intolerable heat – in the room to achieve that effect. That’s because of the varying density between air and water: it takes tremendous heat transfer through very much air to heat much smaller volumes of water.

And the volume of air in our atmosphere is quite a bit smaller than the volume of water in our oceans. There’s not enough air to have heated the oceans – unless the Earth were turned into an actual oven, in which case none of us and no other life that we know would have survived. So, the atmosphere warming is an effect, not a cause, of ocean and landmass warming. (Humans probably contribute somewhat, but the effects are negligible. Even if we stopped altogether, the warming oceans and landmasses – assuming they still are! – would continue to make the changes in the atmosphere.)

But wait – that’s not all!

Some of the receding glaciers (in Europe, that I know of, but also in Alaska, I believe) are exposing Alpine forests that existed before the glaciers did. Those forests are thousands of years old, far older than any puny human effects that existed at the time. So the climate has been far warmer than it is. (And it’s not as if the forests used to be at sea level and the mountains were raised in a few thousand years – although on a geological scale of hundreds of thousands to millions of years that also happens.)

The best that we can do IS to consider the economic changes that gradual warming (and cooling, because that will happen again, too) will have on our growth, migration, transportation, agriculture and distribution systems. And we can barely do economic modeling even in a static climate. (Which is to say “we can’t, yet”.)

@seawulf575 . The theories regarding terraforming, have been around for decades. They have not changed, and yes are viewed as a way to help colonize Mars. It’s sound science, and is completely applicable to the man made global warming debate. Most importantly, it was not researched, or developed by a biased group on either side of the global warming debate. All of the research that you or anyone else can come up with could be considered biased based on the source in which the data was published. Keeping that in mind, it is quite relevant.

It isn’t science fiction. It’s science. Just as much as any other research done on space exploration, colonization, propulsion etc. In fact, most such research is done by the sharpest human minds. And again, without any agenda linked to political biases…

@seawulf575 Perhaps you could visit the northern coast of Canada and see the ocean that was once ice, and the starving, drowning polar bears. Also, can you cite any other (say, 10) publications besides the ones that back what you wish to believe?

Here is an article exposing the NIPCC as a fraud. Notice where they get their funding from. Not exactly a disinterested third party.

Another article exposing the NIPCC. Which should we trust more, the U.N. report or a report by an organization whose president said that smoking in moderation is safe?

I’m not very scientific but I think 1. The Earth is over populated with humans and that IS impacting the planet and our quality of life. 2. Drilling/ burning oil/fossil fuels is harmful to wildlife and we produce so much garbage it’s also killing wildlife. Put simply, why not try to be more environmentally friendly not for money or politics but so that the human race has a good quality of life as well as all other living creatures. The Earth will be ok no matter what we do to it, she will overcome (not without some casualties) but it’s idiotic to not care how or when the human race goes extinct. I don’t think it’s a hoax, I think everyone is analyzing too much and letting money and politics speak louder than the simple facts. The Earth will always have climate changes but what we are doing is not heathy for anyone living on it.

@flutherother I notice you attack the source and not the material. Interesting.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Bravo! Exactly! I’m not saying there is not global warming, but I am challenging the conclusions that it is all man-made and that those making those claims don’t fully understand what’s going on.

@MrGrimm888 I wholeheartedly agree that science fiction has been the driver behind most of our scientific advancements. But until we can actually prove it works, it is still fiction. Hypothesis at the very best. And with all hypotheses, you need to question. You need to challenge. You need to test and experiment. All these things apply to man-made climate change as well. Yet as soon as someone challenges or questions, you slam them. What scares you so much about questioning a hypothesis?

@kritiper Are you really so silly as to believe that hasn’t occurred before in our planet’s history? It has happened many times and most of them have been when mankind was not a factor. So what is it this time that makes it absolutely, positively, without a doubt man-made? You cannot answer that without using bogus data.

@LostInParadise both of those citations you gave are not proving anything. They are basically opinion you are trying to pass off as fact. They are not actually addressing, with an evidence, how the NIPCC is bogus. That is the problem with this topic. There is much out there that says someone is right or someone is wrong, but not as much that actually shows science. As for who we should believe…the UN who can only put forth a solution of having everyone sign over carbon control to them and uses cherry picked data to support their ideas or a group that questions their conclusions?

@TheGirlInterrupted I agree that mankind impacts our environment. I agree there are much cleaner and healthier ways for us to live and that we should pursue them. But where I cannot get to is that a cycle of global heating that we have seen on this planet dozens, possibly hundreds of times, is suddenly due only to mankind. Not without some solid evidence that, to date, has been lacking.

@seawulf575 No educated climate scientists are ignorant that there were warm epochs and ice ages periodically in Earth’s history. That’s not a revelation or anything anyone informed is trying to deny, and has nothing to do with the climatologists’ conclusions.

Why do you think it’s credible that the scientific community is involved in a conspiracy to keep concluding that industry is causing climate change? Doesn’t that seem like an extremely improbably difficult conspiracy to be able to pull off all around the world? What would the motive even be? How is it plausible that practically the only people in the world who don’t largely agree (that human industry is causing global climate change), are the oil industry, their investors, and right-wing Americans?

@seawulf575 – I’d love to hear your responses to @Zaku‘s questions above.

Additionally, if you put aside your own doubt on the science – what are your thoughts on the implications of the science? The globe is quite convinced that humans are contributing to climate change (despite seawulf575’s pleas), and are taking actions to invest in renewable cleaner energy. Are you ok with the fact that the U.S. is now falling way behind the rest of the world – especially China – in investments in future energy?

It seems that there might be some disconnect between the “Go USA!” right-wing nationalist jingoism, and its embrace of setting up the U.S. to be an economic failure. Even if you have some doubt about the science, do you at least support the U.S. having some role in the future of energy? Why hand it over to China and other countries? Can’t the right at least focus their nationalism on something worthwhile?

@seawulf575 , Does it not disturb you that the NIPCC gets its funding from the Heartland right wing libertarian organization? What about the fact that the NIPCC report listed 34 authors and reviewers of questionable credentials compared to 1290 authors and reviewers for the U.N. IPCC report?

@Zaku I don’t believe the scientific community is involved in a conspiracy. That is why many of the scientists that worked on the original IPCC reports on climate change have spoken out against it. The conclusions that the politicians/bureaucrats put forth in that report were not what the scientists concluded. Now, do I believe that politicians would scam people to gain power? Oh absolutely. There is ample evidence of that throughout human history. Why is that so hard to believe?

@thisismyusername Please see the response above to Zaku’s question. As to the rest, I have already spoken at length of my views. Do I believe mankind is influencing our ecological structure on this planet? Absolutely. I have stated that repeatedly. Do I believe that all changes in our planet are due to mankind? Absolutely not. Do I believe, like the UN would propose, that the only way to save the planet is to allow them to control all carbon emissions on this planet? That is really stupid in my book. Should we pursue renewable energy sources? I wholeheartedly support that. I feel that we need to sink more research and development into these things so that we can make them more efficient and effective to supply our energy needs. But not because I believe that mankind is going to superheat the planet. That is where all this seems to fall apart. Most of the Climate Change enthusiasts believe that if you aren’t all in, you are somehow against everything. I have stated before and will state again that mankind may very well be having a negative impact on the planet. This may even be in the form of some sort of global warming. But I don’t for one minute believe that the UN IPCC has an understanding of the extent of that impact. They are going for scare tactics.

@LostInParadise Does it not disturb you that the IPCC will not actually list the names of scientists or reviewers that work for it? I have gone to their web pages and have found exactly zero actual names. So what you have is a group that is willing to put their names out there and another that will just tell you there are “thousands” of scientists. They won’t tell you who they are or what their credentials are. So yeah…given the choice I would lean towards the group that has way more transparency. The bigger question is why would you believe at face value, without a shred of evidence, that the people working with the IPCC are actually ral people or that they have any sort of expertise on the subject?

Ok. Sounds like your mind is made up.

What if you’re wrong? What are the consequences for moving forward assuming it’s all scare tactics? Seems to me that if I were in your position and convinced that I the scientific community were wrong (or overstating it), I would still feel the most prudent course of action would be to take brisk action. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of taking anthropogenic climate change seriously….

pros: jobs – tons of jobs, new industries, growth, national and international security

cons: one particular industry needs to stop fighting and embrace new technology

So, if you’re right – what’s the harm in taking it dead seriously?

But let’s look at if you’re wrong and we move forward as though it really isn’t that bad a threat:

pros: a few corporations get to make a ton more money on old technology

cons: the speck of dust we reside on gets destroyed

I still don’t believe you’re being honest with yourself about why this is a hobby of yours. But even if you do believe it, and you are convinced that the world is making a huge mistake, I’m confused why you feel that the mistake would be a bad thing.

@seawulf575 , You obviously did not search very well. Try googling “ipcc authors”

The controversy about man made climate change is mainly coming from the people who aren’t knowledgeable about man made climate change

@thisismyusername You are missing some of the key points. You are trying to read things into my answers and so you come up with a list of pros and cons that is incomplete. Remember, the solution proposed by the IPCC is that the UN be in control of carbon emissions all over the world. So yes, that is energy production. But it is also homes. Cars. Pets. Jobs. People. Every aspect of your life can be reduced to carbon emissions if you care to get down to it. It is better to only use mass transit so private automobiles are outlawed. It produces more carbon emissions to heat individual homes, so private home ownership is forbidden. There are too many people, so we will regulate how many children you can have and what sexes they can be. Cows, goats, sheep, etc all produce carbon emissions so we will make meat outlawed. Are these extremes? Maybe. But some have already come to pass in the world. China started putting a limit on the number of children that could be born a while back. They have recently recinded that law due to some of the unforeseen effects it brought about, but a government tried it. And I’m sorry…I just don’t feel that politicians are good at deciding anything. Look at just about any government. Corruption, inefficiencies, bureaucratic tangles….they all exist en masse in every one of them. So why is the only answer to give them control of anything? It makes zero sense.
Do I believe that we should pursue greener energy? Absolutely. I have stated so a number of times. But also as I have stated before, taking Climate Change at face value and attempting to control things as stated may not be the right answer. All I am saying is that we should be questioning. We should challenge the bases. Want another example where the government told us something was evil and all the “Scientists” agreed? Sodium in our diets. All the experts agreed that sodium led to health problems, specifically with heart and arteries and blood pressure. So everyone was supposed to cut out sodium in their diets. It became the fad to push no sodium and those that dared to salt their food were ridiculed…told they were going to die! But after a decade or two of this what actually started to be seen was that there were a number of health issues cropping up because people didn’t have enough sodium in their diet. Want another? Sugar vs Fat in a diet and which caused obesity. Sugar was the winner because they lobbied harder than the meat industries. Fat in your diet was branded as the biggest contributor to obesity. Low fat became the name of the game. But sugar ran rampant. The actual science shows that sugar actually contributes more to obesity than does fat. You can look back at a number of things and find that due to popular culture, lobbying and advertising, we have accepted things that weren’t right. Because we don’t question. We just accept and then try to ridicule those that don’t just accept.

@LostInParadise Your link was a 404 error. I did do a search on IPCC authors and what I found really didn’t instill any more faith in it than I had before. A list of names and what organization they came from, but not what their actual credentials are. No job titles, no degrees, no years of experience. For all I know these are admin people or staffers…maybe TAs from a university.
Oh, and there are far less than 1290 that you cited before.

@seawulf575 “I don’t believe the scientific community is involved in a conspiracy. That is why many of the scientists that worked on the original IPCC reports on climate change have spoken out against it.”
They did? Do you have a source for that we can look at?

“The conclusions that the politicians/bureaucrats put forth in that report were not what the scientists concluded.”
Oh? I’m not familiar with what you mean, and I’d be interested to see what you’re referring to.

“Now, do I believe that politicians would scam people to gain power? Oh absolutely. There is ample evidence of that throughout human history. Why is that so hard to believe?”
It’s not at all. Though my version of government conspiracy theory usually involves non-government groups with extreme wealth and power who are pulling the strings of the politicians and getting their pawns elected.

What I don’t see is what power there is to be gained by advocating action to address climate change and reduce emissions. How does a politician stand to gain power from that? Even if you think it’s just a popular issue to get votes, that would seem like a thin gain especially if it’s a forced political misinterpretation of what scientists really think – if it turned out that you’re right that the scientists were intentionally misrepresented, that would seem like a far worse political consequence than whatever votes they gained by perpetrating it, no?

“Do I believe that all changes in our planet are due to mankind? Absolutely not.”
No one who knows much about it believes that either. But industry has been dumping huge amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere (and industrial/agricultural deforestation has reduced plant biomass too), which corresponds with overall global temperature increase, and as others have mentioned, the planet is a complex interrelated system where one input can lead to many cascading effects.

You’re right that we don’t know what all the details of the impact of global climate change will be, or exactly how much of the change is due to industry, or what we can do about it, because there are far too many factors involved. But it looks like we have been doing massive damage, and that there seems to be a rapid increase in global temperatures as well as many other environmental catastrophes underway, and some of the predictions look extremely bleak, and such systems can lead to stacking cascading effects so there’s lots of inertia in the systems, so it seems rational (to most people who are not short-sighted investors/stockholders or people invested in the oil industry or who have been paid off by them or informed by the media who are owned by the related companies) to do what we can to mitigate the damage as soon as possible.

@LostInParadise Your link ended with an extra letter so it wasn’t working. Should be: https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ar5/ar5_authors_review_editors_updated.pdf

@seawulf575 what is interesting is how you continue to believe in a discredited source. Everything you accuse the IPCC of being (without evidence) has been demonstrated to be true of Heartlands. And yet you apparently have greater trust in Heartlands conclusions?

http://www.climatedepot.com/2010/12/08/special-report-more-than-1000-international-scientists-dissent-over-manmade-global-warming-claims-challenge-un-ipcc-gore-2/

But maybe that is too generic. Here is the senate minority report on that same topic:

http://www.cfact.org/pdf/2010_Senate_Minority_Report.pdf

Here is another:

http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/08/21/un-scientists-who-have-turned-on-unipcc-man-made-climate-fears-a-climate-depot-flashback-report/

There are many more examples of scientists, some of whom worked on the original products for the IPCC that have refuted the official findings Here is a breakdown of how the IPCC actually counts people. I find it interesting that when the facts are compared with the official claims, the numbers don’t add up. On a topic as important as this one, I would think transparency and accuracy would be paramount. But that is just me, I guess.

http://mclean.ch/climate/docs/IPCC_numbers.pdf

The list goes on and on. There are a whole lot of scientists that disagree with the IPCC publications. Generally there are several groups of scientists: Those that believe in man-made global warming. Then there are those that believe that the climate is changing but mankind has nothing to do with it. Then there are those that believe that the climate is changing and man may have an impact, but it is impossible to determine to the severity of that impact. Then there are those that say the climate is really doing what it always has done. The majority of scientists fall somewhere in the latter three groups. And many of those scientists that worked on the IPCC initial report were in those groups.

^ Aahhh.. Now I get it. :) Marc Morano!
seriously?

@seawulf575 Yes, it has happen before. But now there is so much more CO2 in the atmosphere, SO much of it man caused, and it continues to increase in measurable levels!! How’s that for a “bogus” answer???
It wouldn’t hurt anybody or anything if mankind tried to do something to stem the threat, no matter what/who is to blame. Wait a minute; – Is that “bogus” too??

@seawulf575 . “What scares” me? Making the planet a living Hell. If the sea levels rise, even a couple feet over 150 years, it would be catastrophic. Can you imagine the famine, wars, and disease that would rage on our much smaller land masses?

If you care about your children, and the world they will have to live in, you should be scared too.

I’ve only just recovered from three floods, each past October. A pattern that seems to be the way it is now. Yes. I’m aware that there are cycles, etc. And there is no guarantee that storms wouldn’t be more plentiful/powerful naturally. It’s getting worse though. Should I ignore reality?

Sometimes, in life, it is brought to your attention that your actions are harmful. Most then change their behavior.

@kritiper It has happened before and in even more extreme ways than it is happening now. So when the Earth has shown it can fluctuate that much, how can you honestly say all changes now are man-made? You can’t. Can we help by not polluting? Absolutely. Should we. Hell yeah! But the answer is not to turn over control of carbon emissions to bureaucrats. That is just silliness. Why should we do that? Because they tell us too. Is that where you are at? someone tells you to do something and you are all in? If CO2 is the issue, then why isn’t a huge part of the answer to protect our plants? Why is a huge part of the solution not to plant more trees, bushes, grasses or flowers? All these things scrub CO2 from our air. Yet do we hear the UN IPCC recommending any of that? Nope. It is time to wake up and ask “WHY?”

@MrGrimm888 if you go back in time you will find that the Earth has experienced many wide variations in our weather. Some have been quite extreme. And none of them have been man-made. Again…as I have said a number of times, I am all in for green energy. But I am not all in for turning over control of carbon emissions to bureaucrats that offer no other solution.

So what I am seeing is that (A) there are a number of jellies that can only spout what they hear from the media. (B) There are more jellies that feel we should be concerned with using more green power and protecting our planet. (C) there are one or two that are like me that are not willing to buy the official story, but who also feel we should protect the planet. Along with these conclusions, I am finding that (D) there are still those that want to win the climate change debate by ridicule and offensive behavior instead of actually using facts and logic. Additionally, I am finding (E) that no matter how many citations I give, none of the die hards that are all in for climate change will even read them. They will try to ridicule sources without actually trying to address substance. Or they will not address the citations at all and just fall back to spouting the official propaganda. And finally, I am see that (F) I am somewhat alone in my belief that it is necessary and proper to question what I am told.

@seawulf575 Oh, no, it hasn’t! CO2 levels are higher than any time in the past. Haven’t you seen Al Gore’s film?? He explains it VERY well!
It’s hard to plant enough trees to offset Man’s influence on the climate when there are so many of us, and more coming every year. (About 7.5 billon now, 15 billion by 2100, 24 billion by 2200, if indications remain unchanged.) And the deforestation in places like South America continues unabated!
If you constantly question everything you are told, you can never believe anything.

Al Gore mentions in his film that changes need to be made to correct the issue before 2017 or it could be too late to correct. Here in 2018, although it would help, planting trees seems too little, too late…

@seawulf575 I don’t ridicule the Heartlands Institute I just point out that it receives funding to further particular commercial agendas. That seems to be the entire purpose of the organisation. It seems pretty effective at what it does and I suppose its directors find it profitable but it isn’t science.

@flutherother And looking at motives is a good thing. But I believe you need to look at the whole picture. If you look at the UN, there is motive there to have man-made climate change be real. There is political power. I do search after search and find more and more sites that are identifying scientists that are speaking out against the politicized info the IPCC is putting out. Yes, some of them could be on the payroll of some industry that wants to negate climate change. But I can’t believe all of them are. So maybe Heartlands is one of those that is on the take. Look at their data and find out…does it make sense? Is it worded in a way that is actually opinion trying to pass as fact? Is there sound science that makes sense behind it. THAT is what I would expect a sane, rational person to do. That is what I am suggesting everyone does with this topic. Shoot, they should do it with every topic.

@kritiper…how was it you put it to me? Your statements sound more pre 2007 than 2018. Be sure to keep studying the (up-to-date) data. You might be surprised! Aren’t you citing a 2006 movie? Please stop…things have changed. And if you really want to get down to the idiocy of that movie, then please be honest and talk about some of his other predictions. The polar ice caps were supposed to be melted by 2014. Did that happen? No. In fact 2015 saw the biggest refreeze in a decade. The sea level was supposed to be up 20’ due to the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice packs. Antarctic ice has been growing and Greenland cycles are normal. CO2 is supposed to be the only thing that can impact the Earth’s temperatures. That might be true….except for the sun. The prediction models have fallen woefully short of being anywhere near close to accurate

https://climateequilibrium.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/models-vs-reality-nov-2015.png

He claimed polar bears are dying off due to the melting of the polar cap. Yet populations of polar bears continue to rise. He claimed the Sahel is drying up. However satellite photos show it is more lush than it has ever been. He claims CO2 is a poison for the Earth, yet ignores the fact that it is vital for the life of plants.
I’m not sure why you are so wrapped up with this schlock, but really, it doesn’t help your credibility.

@seawulf575 The UN has a motive in establising the facts about climate change as unlike the Heartlands Institute it will be responsible for dealing with its effects.