Weather patterns do change, as you say. Snow falls where it never hasin recent history. Ski slopes lose tourist dollars because there is no snow. Wildfires erupt because there is no rain. But this pattern has been going on worldwide for thousands of years.

All people should respect the environment and not abuse the land by overharvesting or over cultivating or spreading civilization in lands that ought to remain pristine. But people have said climate change, warming or cooling, was an inevitable and immanent threat since the 1970s.

No such thing as climate change. That’s what Trump says.

Nobody says it, because of their own greed.
Global warming would cause the significant loss of real estate worldwide. When politicians go on about how animals would be affected, they are really worried about lost property.
That is the hoax our president refers to. He knows our planet is warming. He also knows the true reason wealthy people are worried.
The human race is not at risk, only land ownership is at risk, and some animal species. Not nearly as many animals are at risk as most would have us believe. The majority of time that animals have lived on this planet, there was no ice at the poles.
I’m not worried at all.

Temperatures are rising, both on land and in the ocean. Glaciers are melting and the sea level is increasing. Hurricanes, wildfires and tornadoes are becoming more frequent and greater in severity. Many claim that if we don’t act within the next few decades, the changes will be irreversible. We are already experiencing what many biologists call the sixth great extinction, due to habitat loss, pollution and climate change.

@Patty_Melt …“some animal species…”

How many species are at risk do you reckon—just a ballpark: dozens? hundreds? thousands? millions? billions?

I probably have my TV in the Spring.

When it snows, if my driveway is not shoveled, the left over boys in the neighborhood figure “Hey the dude’s gone again” and they try to get my TV.
But if it is clear, they figure “He’s home, let’s not” and I keep my TV.
I was out of country a lot this winter, but it never snowed where I am so there was no snow to shovel. Which means my driveway was clear. Which put doubt in their minds. They are afraid of doubt.
So I probably keep my TV.

“Global warming” is actually an incorrect term. The proper term is “climate change.”
Get a copy of Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” if you want to know more.

Wacky weather and rising oceans (Florida is toast) – we can move somewhere else. But when it starts affecting food production e.g. ocean acidification, droughts in farmlands, then people will be starving. Nothing you can do about that except start producing Soylent Green.

There are a few things to keep in mind about ‘Climate Change’. The ‘little Ice Age’ Ended in the late 1800s before the industrial revolution so if the temperatures are higher than they were 150 years ago it should be of no surprise. Temperatures have been fluctuating for millions of years and the most devastating times were when temperatures decline. Warmer temperatures bring much higher crop yields and both plants and animals thrive. If we have the ability to affect the global climate we would be better served by using it to stave off the next ice age, which will be coming.

@RocketGuy “Nothing you can do about that except start producing Soylent Green.”

If it comes to that, I say we start with the climate deniers first…

@gorillapaws – Red State “ham” and “bacon”! Mmmm!

@Jaxk – if our food growing areas get drought or flooded, we will be screwed.

This is not a replacement for your own research. You are new here, so, maybe you didn’t know that.

@kritiper The term Global Warming was changed to Climate Change when it was discovered that the world was actually getting colder.

Parts of Florida were considered uninhabitable by French and Spanish colonists because of the frequent hurricanes..

In 1980, here in Memphis where I live, the temperatures were over 110 degrees for six or seven weeks. In 2013, we never reached the triple digits at all. We still don’t get temperatures over 102, only ‘heat indexes’

@kritiper Yes, we should all watch “An Inconvenient Truth” and pay attention to all that hasn’t followed those dire warnings Al Gore threw at us. Hey! I live a few miles from the coast. I shouldn’t even be able to be here because it was supposed to be underwater in 2014. Oh! and if rising ocean levels are the great threat he claims, why did he buy a beach front home? How about all the other things that fell apart following his the-sky-is-falling movie? He claimed the Arctic was melting, but in reality, it ended up refreezing. He claimed polar bears were going extinct and yet their numbers continue to increase. He claimed the Sahel, an area of the Sahara, was going to be getting hotter and drier and yet it continues to show consistent flora growth increases. How rude of it to not behave like Gore told it to act?!? The list goes on and on. Here’s a clue: CO2 is necessary for healthy plants. If we are trying to treat it as a pollution, we are assuring the destruction of many, many plants which WILL damage our environment. Oh! and if CO2 is so bad, why is organic gardening such a great thing? It puts more CO2 into the air than the old fashioned chemical treatments.

The gulf of Mexico will creep up the Mississippi River, and widen it across the middle states. Florida will be gone. Russia will warm, and become the largest supplier of farm goods. That is what politicians know, and fear. The us will lose quite a lot of real estate, mostly in the farmland areas. The US will become almost insignificant to the rest of the world. Much further down the road, Canada will be tropical.
Right now, we are experiencing an equalization of the world’s temperatures. It is a big shift, and that is causing extremes in some places. It is going to even out, and when it does, the final pieces of the ice age will thaw. The panic is. Not over loss of life, or species. The uproar is over the knowledge of the political shift that will result.
In order to remain relevant on the world stage, the US and Canada will have to bind politically.
Alaska will become our major farmlands. Why do you suppose Obama showed such a great interest in Alaska?

World leaders know what’s coming. That is the reason for so many stresses over property lines lately. When I say lately I don’t mean years. I mean decades.
Manufactured islands; becoming a thing.
Trump, hedging his bets, buying property all over the globe.
Coffee will be e a thing of the past, because there will no longer be places cool enough for it to grow.
It will take a while for all that stuff to happen. During our lifetimes, it will remain environmental unrest.

Siberia

By the way, our sun is cooling, so that might balance things for a while.

The inconvenient truth is, none of it happened/

The inconvenient truth is: all of it is happening.

Never saw those fish swimming on main street in Miami.

Here ya go @Yellowdog It wasn’t on Fox News so you must have missed *IT!”
Miami streets flood at high tide !

You should get out more often @Yellowdog ! Things are happening.

@Yellowdog and @seawulf575 The comment I made was for the OP. If the OP is intelligent enough to ask the question, then the OP is intelligent enough to watch the film and make up their own mind on the subject. You instructing me as to whether the specific title is what it is or something else serves no purpose.

@kritiper These are open pages. If you only wanted the OP to see your movie suggestion, you should have private messaged him. Putting it out for all of us to see invites comments. I have seen the movie and have watched all of its predictions fall apart over time. In other words, it is, in my opinion, not a valid case for climate change. Basically, it throws out a bunch of scare tactics and none of them have come true. So I feel the urge to respond to your recommendation by calling it a flawed basis for your claims.

@seawulf575 You need to see the film again and pay more attention.
Climate change is occurring at a very slow but steady rate. Like the frog in the soon to be boiling water, you will not be aware of it until it’s too late. I doubt you will live to see the predictions play out, so how could you know they will be false?

@kritiper I suspect YOU need to see the film again. Many of the predictions made in that film have already failed to come true. If you remember, that film dealt with “Global Warming”. According to that film, the polar caps would be melted and the sea level would have risen 20 feet by now. When the polar caps started freezing again and gaining ice, the “global warming” crowd changed it to “climate change”. NONE of the prediction models they have created have ever been found to work. They just aren’t accurate. There is one reason for that: They are working off bogus ideas and data.
But don’t let any of these facts stop you from supporting a film that should have been put in the fiction section.

@seawulf575 Again you err in assuming that the changes brought on by climate change will occur in a short amount of time. If you wish t see the effects of REAL climate change, go to the northern coast of Canada where the polar bears are drowning and starving to death because the sea ice is melting.
To address another issue you brought up, if I had PM’ed the OP, it would have looked to the OP that I might be trying to hide something, which I was not.

@kritiper No, You err in trying to rewrite my statements. I say that “An Inconvenient Truth” had many, many, bogus claims. I have stuck to that topic since you mentioned it as a source of truth. And you even tried telling me I needed to go back to watch it again. That the predictions were going to take a long, long time to happen. Except that isn’t what the predictions were. They gave actual dates things were going to happen. They talked about certain events that were going to happen and when they would happen. None of them came true. They even cited climate models that predicted it….and none of those have ever been correct. The entire movie is a farce. I stand by my statement that this is one of the biggest pieces of crap of a propaganda movie and should not be viewed if you are looking for anything resembling facts.
And I suspect you have been reading way too many propaganda pieces. Your bit about the polar bears is just another example. This shows that to be a complete falsehood.

@seawulf575 get in a car and drive up to North Topsail and Topsail Island and count the number of houses gone !

Polar Bears do not eat sea ice. Less frozen ground would yield them more opportunities for hunting on land. They also eat fish and sea life, such as seals. Polar bears have drifted on ice and swam in waters for weeks as long as we’ve been exploring, and are ravenously hungry when they find land.

The Polar Bear population is thriving, not shrinking.

@Tropical_Willie I don’t even have to go that far to see hurricane damage. But hurricanes have been going strong since time began. Some years are worse than others, some storms are worse than others. That alone proves nothing at all, other than supporting my claim that climate changers will use any weather to claim they are right.

@yellowdog, Polar bears hunt off of ice. Sea ice gives them access to the seals they catch. They do not hunt on land. Article

@seawulf575 You didn’t get the gist of the fact that high tide is higher and hurricanes make it worse. The land is sinking or the water level is rising guess which is happening while the ice caps melt.

@LostInParadise Thanks for posting the link to that article. I hate to see the ice diminishing where it IS diminishing. I’ll study that article.

Here’s the part that, I think, most lay people miss: Ice takes up more space than water. And there is no land under the North Pole. So if the polar ice melts, the water level should actually go down in the oceans since you are removing the ice. Now, that doesn’t hold true for Antarctica, but the south pole ice has been growing. Now THAT could impact ocean levels. Also the Greenland glaciers would put a bunch of water into the ocean that could impact ocean levels. But so far, the polar ice seems to be cyclic. It goes up and then goes down in quantity. And if you look historically over the millions of years of Earth’s history, we are seeing very reasonable levels of climate change and ice melt or growth.

@seawulf575 “So if the polar ice melts, the water level should actually go down in the oceans”

Why has it been rising then?

@gorillapaws Here is an interesting pictorial. It doesn’t show the 20 feet in 10 years as was predicted in An Inconvenient Truth. And, in fact, it shows very little increase in most places. It also, interestingly, shows decreases in some spots. So I’m not sure where the crisis is. Ocean levels have cycled throughout our planet’s history.

So the increase in North Carolina is real and shows a 2 foot increase. You don’t have to drive up to North Topsail to see the difference in height.

According to this article, sea level is rising 3.3 millimeters per year, 91 millimeters since 1995, with some potential additions by several really huge melting glaciers in Antarctica.

I think the expectation that water levels will rise with mass melting is due to the fact that most of the ice is on land, or above water.

Don’t forget that white ice reflects the sun’s radiation back into space, whereas the blue ocean will absorb the energy. That’s a major fucking problem with the arctic caps melting. And while it is true that climate has changed over the course of the planets history. The only times in our planet’s history that it changed this quickly was after catastrophic events like meteor strikes. Those also resulted in mass extinction events.

If we slowly get rid of the atmosphere, either through environmental factors or deliberately, this should compensate for rising ocean levels.

So here is another pictorial, showing the climate trends since 2500 B.C. Interestingly, it shows several periods of temperatures both higher and lower than anything we have seen since the industrial revolution. Here are a couple other excerpts from the article associated with this graph:

“Our planet seems to be in a cycle of constant change. According to an article by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Climate.gov in August, 2014, our planet likely experienced its hottest weather millions of years ago. One period, which was probably the warmest, was during the Neoproterozic around 600 to 800 million years ago. Approximately 56 million years ago, our planet was in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum as global mean temperatures were estimated as high as 73 degrees Fahrenheit, over 15 degrees above current levels. Ocean sediments and fossils indicate that massive amounts of carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere.”

So the planet has been going through constant change with some far greater than anything we are seeing today and all without man causing it. Amazing. How can that possibly happen!?!

“Climate scientists are not completely certain why ocean waters suddenly warm up and cool down over a period of months or years. The warming of sea-surface temperatures may be due, at least in part, to increased underwater volcanic activity. Researchers are constantly finding new active underwater volcanoes and thermal vents that may be contributing to the warmer temperatures.”

So Climate Scientists don’t really know why ocean waters suddenly warm up or cool down. They even say it might be due to underwater volcanic activity. Were those eruptions caused by mankind? Probably not.

“Recently, scientists discovered at least three to six times more heat-spewing thermal vents along the seafloors where tectonic plates are pulling apart. In 2003, at least nine hydrothermal vents along the Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean were found. Arctic ice has been melting at a steady pace in recent years and may be due to the warmer than normal ocean waters. In April 2015, an underwater volcano known as the Axial Seamount, about 300 miles off the coast of Oregon, erupted for a month and added 88 billion gallons of molten rock to the ocean floor.”

So 3x to 6x more underwater thermal vents along the sea floor with 9 new ones up by the arctic. All of these cause increases in water temperature. So did mankind cause these thermal vents to happen? Was it our carbon foot print?

See…this is what I have always said about the Climate Change scare and why I consider it a sham. It fails to discuss other possible causes, does not address why or how our climate changed in the past without mankind playing a role, and really doesn’t offer any solutions other than to give control of carbon emissions to the government. That is extremely poor scientific method being used and the conclusions are grossly inadequate.

Did you read the accompanying text? Here is the second paragraph:

We, Climatologist Cliff Harris and Meteorologist Randy Mann, believe in rather frequent climate changes in our global weather patterns. Geologic evidence shows our climate has been changing over millions of years. The warming and cooling of global temperatures are likely the result of long-term climatic cycles, solar activity, sea-surface temperature patterns and more. However, Mankind’s activities of the burning of fossil fuels, massive deforestations, the replacing of grassy surfaces with asphalt and concrete, the “Urban Heat Island Effect” are likely creating more harmful pollution. Yes, we believe we should be “going green” whenever and wherever possible.

@LostInParadise Do you understand what you are highlighting? When someone says “likely” it doesn’t mean it is scientific proof. It doesn’t mean they are saying we have to give control of all carbon emissions to the government or else. Now, let’s get back to what I always say about this “climate change” mumbo-jumbo. Do I believe that mankind is impacting our environment? Absolutely. Do I believe it is a negative impact? Yup…I’m there too. Do I believe we fully understand what that impact is? No, I do not…not even a little bit. And as with ALL problems, unless you fully understand the cause of the problem, you can’t hope to solve the problem except through blind luck. Do I think that we should go green? Yes, I believe that as well. Not for climate change, but because it is good for the air I breathe and it is economically smart, if we can make going green more efficient and reliable. I’m all for doing lots and lots of research and development of wind, solar, and possibly several others.
The big push from the Climate Changers is for us to give control of carbon emissions into the hands of bureaucrats that have a proven record of corruption and serving themselves. If you are concerned about CO2 being released into the atmosphere, we should be pushing equally as hard, if not harder to planting trees and other greens, protecting forested areas, and limiting expansion into these areas. These are the scrubbers of the CO2 from the air. If you have a system that has a contaminant going into it, there are several things that have to happen. The very first one is to ensure you maximize clean-up of the system while you set about stopping the influx of contaminants. Every thing the IPCC and the Climate Changers push is not even stopping the influx of contaminants…just giving up control of them. Ever wonder why the world leaders and the arrogant celebrities that speak out loudly against climate change go to speech, give their opinion, and then get back on board their private jet to go to the next stop? These are the same arrogant idiots that want us to give up control of carbon emissions. They don’t really see that their views and diatribes apply to them, just to the lowly folks.

@seawulf575 How would you feel if I emptied my hypothetical septic tank in your driveway? I imagine you’d be pissed.

What if 1,000,000 people each sprinkled just 1oz of shit each on your yard instead? That ends up being 62,500lbs of shit… See why the government has an interest in preventing small individual amounts of pollution created by a very large number of people? It’s about protecting your property and person.

Read the tragedy of the commons.

Also your source lacks credibility, Cliff Harris’ only qualification is that he studied insurance law…

@gorillapaws Maybe if you read all of my previous statement you would get my view on things and your entire statement could be eliminated. As for my source, in typical liberal fashion, you avoid the substance and attack the source. Your criticism lacks credibility on that basis.

The Tragedy of the Commons has a common thread in it. It’s called greed. That’s why it applies to so many areas. Everyone wants their piece of the pie, they want to do only what satisfies their needs. When you figure out how to do away with human greed, let me know. Oh! but there is one other aspect of that you entirely avoid: that our elected officials, the ones you are rushing to give control over you, also do what is best for them and not for the people. They want power and control and money. None of those things are in your interest.

Scientists tend to be guarded in their remarks, but it is pretty clear where they stand. How do you interpret the statement Yes, we believe we should be “going green” whenever and wherever possible. You can’t get much stronger than that.

First we must agree that there is a problem. Then we can talk about how to solve it. You seem to be open to the possibility that something is very wrong. If we don’t have the government heading up an effort to reverse climat change, how exactly do you propose to solve the problem?

@LostInParadise I agree there is a problem…we shit where we eat (and live). We pollute like crazy and it is gross. But I don’t agree we are the sole, nor even the primary cause of climate change. So if we want to stop pollution, there are steps that can be taken. But see, where I differ from most climate changers is that I don’t think they have the science behind their jump to conclusion. I don’t think they fully understand the issue. Which is exactly what that article said as well. “Climate scientists are not completely certain why ocean waters suddenly warm up and cool down over a period of months or years. ” How else can you interpret that other than the scientists don’t fully understand what they see as a problem? They want to attribute it to mankind, but can’t really prove that.
Add to that the fact (and yes, it is a fact) that CO2 is absolutely required for plants to live and that when CO2 goes up, plants thrive. So limiting CO2 is potentially the entirely WRONG move. It might be that we need some but not too much. But to date, as far as I know, no one has ever actually studied how much is too much. CO2 BAD…it’s sort of like ORANGE MAN BAD. No specifics, just buzz words. Again…the parameters were not established nor tested, but somehow conclusions were reached.
Add that to the fact (and yes, it is again a fact) that many of the scientists that worked on the first UNIPCC came out against the report. It was given to the bureaucrats who re-wrote it to come to the solid conclusion that global warming was real and it was only mankind that was causing it. Oh! and they left the scientists’ names on it to give it legitimacy.
I don’t believe our elected officials are willing nor capable of dealing with any problem. And something like this is just ripe for them to come up with the entire wrong answer. They want only the answer that is easy and benefits them. That is why that is all they are pressing for. Do you really believe that will solve the problem?
Let’s take it a step further. If you truly believe that CO2 is the culprit and mankind is the source, then you have to believe that we ought to just do mass exterminations. After all, the average human breathes out about 1.5 pounds of CO2 per day. There are about 8 billion people on the Earth. That means we are breathing out about 12 billion pounds or 6 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every day. That is about 2.2 billion tons of CO2 each year…just from breathing humans. So shouldn’t we do mandatory sterilizations of half the population (or more)? That would help. Not to mention as the population drops, so does the other sources of carbon humans create. Does this sound nuts? Sure. But that is the sort of thing you are willing to let bureaucrats decide, isn’t it? Don’t think it could happen? How about what China already tried? limiting the number of children a couple could have and doing mandatory abortions and sterilizations?
So let’s not go stupid halfway…let’s go whole hog!

Alternatively we could invest in renewable energy. We are going to eventually run out of fossil fuels, so it makes sense just from an energy perspective to move away.. Green energy is also cleaner – fewer pollutants and less CO2. The cost of renewable energy has been going down, but more government investment would help to accelerate the trend/

@LostInParadise I absolutely agree. I don’t like using consumable energy. I entirely agree that we need to invest in making renewables more efficient and usable. By usable I mean finding new uses….solar cars for instance, or wind turbines that can power a small factory without needing 100 of them. I truly believe the problem with renewables is not really the cost, it’s the reliability/efficiency. If you have a few cloudy days in a row, your output from solar is drastically reduced. If you don’t have a steady wind, your wind turbines don’t put out steady output. I think there are ways to help minimize these issues, but the research needs to be funded.

The way I see it, if we invest in green energy now we can make $$$ as the market expands. America has let China get ahead on solar, and Germany get ahead on wind. We keep pushing fossil fuels, which is a contracting market. Not a smart way to go.