Climate Change is not a Political Issue.

[Dexter Rutecki]

Thanks Klar. Here's a question not about the scientific minutia but rather about "the science".

I come from the perspective that we absolutely ought to be reducing carbon consumption to reduce our impact on climate change, yet I still hesitate to call Human caused global warming a scientific fact. This seems to upset some of my friends, some of whom think I'm some kind of denier kook. But my take is this, since we're saying the "scientific consensus" is that our human production of greenhouse gases is causing the climate to warm, isn't that an admission that the climate change theories are more of well supported theory and fall short of scientific fact? Maybe that's splitting hairs, but it seems much more honest to admit there is some room for doubt in the science. After all, the history of science is replete with examples of the scientific consensus being wrong.

So where would you put the confidence level of scientists in the current theories? Are you 90% certain this is what will happen? 95%? 100%.

Thanks for your thoughtful posts.

If you also hesitate to refer to gravity as a 'fact' then you would be consistent, but somehow I doubt you refer to the 'theory of gravity' and deny that it is a fact.

[Dexter Rutecki]

Pittsburgh

See, this is a political thread. Can someone get a moderator over here so we can get this shit out of the padded room? Clearly inappropriate. Who's asleep at the switch back there? My TGR experience is being ruined by this political thread that I was unable to avoid clicking on--my poor, delicate sensibilities.

Of course hard core porn and photos of dead people are all good.

Fucking idiots.

edit: this isn't even the padded room--even worse! Oh, the suffering this will cause.

[telefreewasatch]

Climate change is not just global warming.

Climate change is also about carbon poisoning. We have come to a point where we are changing the acidity of the ocean. The planet is really ill, and all we do is argue about whether earth is running a fever or not .

How many species do we lose a day due to this illness? Who made us "god" to eradicate these fellow inhabitants?

If this were just about us humans, the cancer of this planet, who stood to be eradicated, then it would be like a suicide where one no one else is affected. But no, we are determined to drag all these innocent species down with us. They didn't even have a vote.

Does anyone of any political slant really think that burning fossil fuels, for one, does not change the climate through pollution?

Does anyone of any political slant really think that if we used cleaner energies that we could not help slow / stop this process?

There are so many uses for fossil fuels that benefit mankind and the planet. Why are we burning them to make our planet cancerous?

Its really great to see that so many people, politicians, and organizations were ready to commit so quickly after Trump's announcement.

There is hope, yet.

[hutash]

Klar, a simple question. ..among the circles you work it, is there any significant doubt or disagreement with your colleagues about anthropogenic climate change?

I kind of feel this is like the evolution debate. The vast, vast majority of anybody in the life sciences fully believes it occurs, and more important is driven by natural selection. There are of course many lay people who don't believe it, and a very small number of trained life scientists as well (altough interestingly one of the biggest intelligent designers is a chemist.) Sure there are still thins to be learned, fine tuning, and whole fields that can contribute new info (think massive advancement of genetics.) Over all, though, is the science settled, are we there with ACC? near there? truly still debating the issue?

Also, I am curious about the international differences. It seems it is the Americans who truly want to ignore ACC, just like evolution. Are the euros as skeptical?

[klar]

Say we cut carbon emissions in half, how much will the earth stop cooling / heating? I guess that is more of what I am curious about. Earth is warming, so if we take austere measures what will the outcome be.

Short answer: cutting global carbon emissions in half would not stop warming but would slow it down significantly, probably after a time lag of a couple of decades.

Longer answer:
Even if we stopped all carbon emissions completely right now (here is more on this idea), overall warming would likely continue for a while due to a time lag in ocean response. Once that stabilizes and no new CO2 or other GHG are added, temperature would probably remain more or less at that level for centuries, depending again on details in ocean response. Atmospheric CO2 has a very long life span and the majority of what is in the atmosphere will stay there (on a time scale relevant to humans) unless active measures are taken to remove it.

There are various scenarios (RCPs - representative concentration pathways) that are used for modeling future change, which incorporate different trajectories of future emissions, population growth and a few other factors. Here is a detailed explanation of what RCPs are. There are scenarios for a future with far lower emissions, some in a sort of middle range and others where things continue along the same kind of trend we’ve been on for the last decades. This plot is from the latest IPCC report. It shows projections of temperature anomalies relative to the time period 1986-2005 under various scenarios (RCPs).



Figure caption from IPCC report:
Time series of global annual mean surface air temperature anomalies (relative to 1986–2005) from CMIP5 concentration-driven experiments. Projections are shown for each RCP for the multi-model mean (solid lines) and the 5 to 95% range (±1.64 standard deviation) across the distribution of individual models (shading). Discontinuities at 2100 are due to different numbers of models performing the extension runs beyond the 21st century and have no physical meaning. Only one ensemble member is used from each model and numbers in the figure indicate the number of different models contributing to the different time periods. No ranges are given for the RCP6.0 projections beyond 2100 as only two models are available.

This shows the emission scenarios corresponding to the RCPs (those refer to GHG concentration rather than emissions). Note that „emissions“ is not the same thing as atmospheric concentration. RCP2.6 is closest to your scenario of an immediate, large cut in emissions, although it assumes ongoing reductions and eventually negative emissions. It goes down to about half of the 2010-ish levels around 2050. RCP2.6 corresponds to the dark blue line in the above figure. RCP4.5 cuts emissions by half-ish around 2080 and keeps them at that level, that is the light blue line in above plot.




Here are some numbers (pulled from here) "Global temperatures averaged over the period 2081– 2100 are projected to likely exceed 1.5°C above 1850-1900 for RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 (high confidence), are likely to exceed 2°C above 1850-1900 for RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 (high confidence) and are more likely than not to exceed 2°C for RCP4.5 (medium confidence). Temperature change above 2°C under RCP2.6 is unlikely (medium confidence). Warming above 4°C by 2081–2100 is unlikely in all RCPs (high confidence) except for RCP8.5, where it is about as likely as not. "

The IPCC defines the likelihood terminology used above as follows: likely: >66% probability. more likely than not: >50% , unlikely<33%

And another quote from the IPCC with a point worth noting:

"Global temperature is a useful aggregate number to describe the magnitude of climate change, but not all changes will scale linearly global temperature. Changes in the water cycle for example also depend on the type of forcing (e.g., greenhouse gases, aerosols, land use change), slower components of the Earth system such as sea level rise and ice sheet would take much longer to respond, and there may be critical thresholds or abrupt or irreversible changes in the climate system."

[klar]

Thanks Klar. Here's a question not about the scientific minutia but rather about "the science".

I come from the perspective that we absolutely ought to be reducing carbon consumption to reduce our impact on climate change, yet I still hesitate to call Human caused global warming a scientific fact. This seems to upset some of my friends, some of whom think I'm some kind of denier kook. But my take is this, since we're saying the "scientific consensus" is that our human production of greenhouse gases is causing the climate to warm, isn't that an admission that the climate change theories are more of well supported theory and fall short of scientific fact? Maybe that's splitting hairs, but it seems much more honest to admit there is some room for doubt in the science. After all, the history of science is replete with examples of the scientific consensus being wrong.

So where would you put the confidence level of scientists in the current theories? Are you 90% certain this is what will happen? 95%? 100%.

Thanks for your thoughtful posts.

I'm pretty much with Buster here.

This is an issue of semantics more than anything else. The normal use of the word "theory" is not the same as what is meant by "scientific theory" when used in science. The latter has a pretty clear cut though technical definition. The Wikipedia entry for scientific theory explains in detail what it is. Special and general relativity and quantum mechanics are theories, as are cell theory, plate tectonics, heliocentricity and so on. You would be correct in calling AGW a scientific theory.

I am curious what you would consider an example of "scientific fact"?

Regarding the confidence level in current theories - that is a very broadly framed question. We are very, very certain of our understanding of the physics behind the greenhouse effect, which includes the idea that adding greenhouse gasses - as humans are doing - causes rising temperatures. There are far larger uncertainties when it comes to more specific processes and feedback mechanisms as well as future developments. Quantifying uncertainty and identifying sources of uncertainty is an important part of science in general. It is also one of the hardest aspects to communicate.

The first plot in my last post has shaded areas around the RCP projection lines showing how uncertainty grows with time. The IPCC uses words like "likely", "unlikely" etc to convey confidence and defines those words as percentage probabilities, there are a couple of examples below that plot.

So in summary, certain aspects of the general topic are very certain, others are considerably less so, and uncertainty is a complex topic in and of itself.

Klar, a simple question. ..among the circles you work it, is there any significant doubt or disagreement with your colleagues about anthropogenic climate change?

I kind of feel this is like the evolution debate. The vast, vast majority of anybody in the life sciences fully believes it occurs, and more important is driven by natural selection. There are of course many lay people who don't believe it, and a very small number of trained life scientists as well (altough interestingly one of the biggest intelligent designers is a chemist.) Sure there are still thins to be learned, fine tuning, and whole fields that can contribute new info (think massive advancement of genetics.) Over all, though, is the science settled, are we there with ACC? near there? truly still debating the issue?

Also, I am curious about the international differences. It seems it is the Americans who truly want to ignore ACC, just like evolution. Are the euros as skeptical?

The general, underlying principles are settled. As in "this is how physics works" and humans can and do influence climate. It is probably comparable to the evolution debate though I don't know enough about how you would argue for intelligent design or how many people seriously do to really judge.

There are certainly ongoing debates about various issues ("exactly how bad is it", "what does bad even mean", "what can we do", "what should we do" etc) but as far as climate science is concerned, those largely base off the same starting point regarding the fundamental stuff.

The public climate debate does seem particularly, let's say, emotional in the US. By and large it seems like people here are more accepting of AGW but that's based only off my personal experiences.

More specific aspects of the climate debate do get heated here, particularly when it comes to regional and even local policy decisions. It's generally very difficult to have neutral discussions about anything without people getting weird.

An example we deal with with some regularity is: ski resort wants permits to build new snow making infrastructure or expand to new zone, environmental groups say this is bad for climate, there wont be anymore snow soon anyway and also it disturbs the habitat of the local mice. Science is then called upon by both sides, as they cherry pick data and take results out of context.

[DBdude]

klar, what do you think of geo-engineering? I think adding sun blocking chemicals to the upper atmosphere is inevitable to slow or reverse global warming.

[klar]

klar, what do you think of geo-engineering? I think adding sun blocking chemicals to the upper atmosphere is inevitable to slow or reverse global warming.

We are very, very far away from a real world implementation of something like that. Apart from the general political and ethical issues with geo engineering (who makes the decision to intentionally do something major to the world's climate?), the science is not there yet. Adding something to the atmosphere to block radiation could have a lot of other effects that aren't necessarily good and are not fully understood.

Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is an approach that currently seems somewhat more realistic but probably also not in the very near future.

[Jong Lafitte]

Climate change is not just global warming.

Climate change is also about carbon poisoning. We have come to a point where we are changing the acidity of the ocean. The planet is really ill, and all we do is argue about whether earth is running a fever or not .

How many species do we lose a day due to this illness? Who made us "god" to eradicate these fellow inhabitants?

If this were just about us humans, the cancer of this planet, who stood to be eradicated, then it would be like a suicide where one no one else is affected. But no, we are determined to drag all these innocent species down with us. They didn't even have a vote.

Does anyone of any political slant really think that burning fossil fuels, for one, does not change the climate through pollution?

Does anyone of any political slant really think that if we used cleaner energies that we could not help slow / stop this process?

There are so many uses for fossil fuels that benefit mankind and the planet. Why are we burning them to make our planet cancerous?

Its really great to see that so many people, politicians, and organizations were ready to commit so quickly after Trump's announcement.

There is hope, yet.

QFT

[philippeR]

Klar, what would be your answer to SJG' argument that long term climate predictions, as relayed to the general public anyway, has been pretty unreliable (see the ice age forecasted in the 70's) ?
Why would you say a warmer earth is necessarily a "bad" thing ? Not from a skier perspective, obviously... But large areas would became inhabitable, in Russia for instance, while others would became hostiile. What's the bottom line, if we forget the migratory movements ? Would it be worse, for mankind, in 200 years ?

[panchosdad]

I'm pretty much with Buster here.

This is an issue of semantics more than anything else. The normal use of the word "theory" is not the same as what is meant by "scientific theory" when used in science. The latter has a pretty clear cut though technical definition. The Wikipedia entry for scientific theory explains in detail what it is. Special and general relativity and quantum mechanics are theories, as are cell theory, plate tectonics, heliocentricity and so on. You would be correct in calling AGW a scientific theory.

I am curious what you would consider an example of "scientific fact"?

Regarding the confidence level in current theories - that is a very broadly framed question. We are very, very certain of our understanding of the physics behind the greenhouse effect, which includes the idea that adding greenhouse gasses - as humans are doing - causes rising temperatures. There are far larger uncertainties when it comes to more specific processes and feedback mechanisms as well as future developments. Quantifying uncertainty and identifying sources of uncertainty is an important part of science in general. It is also one of the hardest aspects to communicate.

The first plot in my last post has shaded areas around the RCP projection lines showing how uncertainty grows with time. The IPCC uses words like "likely", "unlikely" etc to convey confidence and defines those words as percentage probabilities, there are a couple of examples below that plot.

So in summary, certain aspects of the general topic are very certain, others are considerably less so, and uncertainty is a complex topic in and of itself.




The general, underlying principles are settled. As in "this is how physics works" and humans can and do influence climate. It is probably comparable to the evolution debate though I don't know enough about how you would argue for intelligent design or how many people seriously do to really judge.

There are certainly ongoing debates about various issues ("exactly how bad is it", "what does bad even mean", "what can we do", "what should we do" etc) but as far as climate science is concerned, those largely base off the same starting point regarding the fundamental stuff.

The public climate debate does seem particularly, let's say, emotional in the US. By and large it seems like people here are more accepting of AGW but that's based only off my personal experiences.

More specific aspects of the climate debate do get heated here, particularly when it comes to regional and even local policy decisions. It's generally very difficult to have neutral discussions about anything without people getting weird.

An example we deal with with some regularity is: ski resort wants permits to build new snow making infrastructure or expand to new zone, environmental groups say this is bad for climate, there wont be anymore snow soon anyway and also it disturbs the habitat of the local mice. Science is then called upon by both sides, as they cherry pick data and take results out of context.

Thanks, I agree that to a degree it's semantics, but would say that there are many areas of Science that are so well settled that they rise to the level of fact. Newtonian Physics seems an obvious example. It's highly testable, has been repeatedly tested, and it works. Much of Chemistry would fit as well. As you point out, things like Quantum Physics seem to be more of a well supported scientific theory. Evolution would seem to be more on the theory side, because it seems like something very difficult to test, even if it does a great job of explaining how we got here. Climate theory seems similarly very difficult to test.

[klar]

Klar, what would be your answer to SJG' argument that long term climate predictions, as relayed to the general public anyway, has been pretty unreliable (see the ice age forecasted in the 70's) ?

Climate models are tested by running them on old, measured data and then comparing the results with what we know happened from observations, i.e. "predicting the past“. They do that pretty well. This is an IPCC graph showing past climate as observed and as modelled when models are run with (a) natural forcings only (b) athropogenic forcing only and (c) both. We know what non-anthorpogenic factors cause climatic changes and those can be measured and quantified, just like anthropogenic contributions can be measured and quantified.



Predicting the future is more complicated because we don’t know the future so we can’t know if the model works. Climate models are mathematical representations of the physics behind a very complex system. There will always be many sources of uncertainties and room for improvement. However, we are really pretty sure that we have a good grasp of the main climatic drivers and we have quite a few examples where the models have been running long enough that we know that they predicted things correctly, e.g. response to the Pinatubo erruption, stratospheric cooling, greater warming in the Arctic, and a bunch of other stuff. Here is some more info on whether models work.

The graph SJG posted is something that has been floating around for a long time, although it was never published in a scientific journal. Many people have discussed in detail what is wrong with it, here is a fairly exhaustive example. Essentially it only shows part of the story and the presentation is intentionally misleading. Someone even made a gif:




As for the ice age predicted in the 70s: While there was no consensus of the scale we have today, the large majority of peer reviewed literature was in fact predicting a warming due to CO2. (yes, someone actually wrote a study about just that). There were a few studies that suggested a cooling and those got picked up by the media, who turned the relatively tentative predictions into a full blown ice age.

The reasons behind the cooling debate are quite interesting, imo. The reason given for the potential cooling was a predicted increase in atmospheric aerosols, essentially what we today think of as air pollution. In the 70s and 80s particularly SO2 emissions were increasing fairly rapidly, so a further increase was not an unreasonable guess. These particles block sunlight and thereby have a cooling effect. However, people disliked the air pollution and large scale measures to clean up the air were soon introduced (eg US Clean Air Act), cars and industry got better filters and the air did actually get cleaner. The amount of aerosols in the atmosphere decreased and the cooler phase ended. For more background see Global Dimming.

Why would you say a warmer earth is necessarily a "bad" thing ? Not from a skier perspective, obviously... But large areas would became inhabitable, in Russia for instance, while others would became hostiile. What's the bottom line, if we forget the migratory movements ? Would it be worse, for mankind, in 200 years ?

From the IPCC report FAQs: "Are the future impacts of climate change only negative? Might there be positive impacts as well? [Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, and 30] Overall, the report identifies many more negative impacts than positive impacts projected for the future, especially for high magnitudes and rates of climate change. Climate change will, however, have different impacts on people around the world and those effects will vary not only by region but over time, depending on the rate and magnitude ofclimate change. For example, many countries will face increased challenges for economic development, increased risks from some diseases, or degraded ecosystems, but some countries will probably have increased opportunities for economic development, reduced instances of some diseases, or expanded areas of productive land. Crop yield changes will vary with geography and by latitude. Patterns of potential catch for fisheries are changing globally as well,with both positive and negative consequences. Availability of resources such as usable water will also depend on changing rates of precipitation, with decreased availability in many places but possible increases in runoff and groundwater recharge in some regions like the high latitudes and wet tropics.“

It is also worth noting that the warmer it gets, the more likely it is that we will reach tipping points in a number of possible feedback mechanisms that would accelerate changes in a comparatively sudden and unpredictable way. Large scale release of methane from thawing arctic permafrost would be one such example. Uncertainties as well as potential for very negative consequences (in terms of humans having to somehow adapt to a new situation) increase significantly if such thresholds are reached.

Thanks, I agree that to a degree it's semantics, but would say that there are many areas of Science that are so well settled that they rise to the level of fact. Newtonian Physics seems an obvious example. It's highly testable, has been repeatedly tested, and it works. Much of Chemistry would fit as well. As you point out, things like Quantum Physics seem to be more of a well supported scientific theory. Evolution would seem to be more on the theory side, because it seems like something very difficult to test, even if it does a great job of explaining how we got here. Climate theory seems similarly very difficult to test.

I get where you are coming from, but for the sake of the argument, what part of "climate theory" as you understand it does not fall squarely into the realm of chemistry (not even the super complex kind) or classical physics?

I have never heard anyone use the term climate theory, by the way. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what exactly you mean by that expression.

[philippeR]

Thanks, Klar. Much appreciated.

[neufox47]

We are very, very far away from a real world implementation of something like that. Apart from the general political and ethical issues with geo engineering (who makes the decision to intentionally do something major to the world's climate?), the science is not there yet. Adding something to the atmosphere to block radiation could have a lot of other effects that aren't necessarily good and are not fully understood.

Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is an approach that currently seems somewhat more realistic but probably also not in the very near future.

Thanks for all your input.

Wasnt the Iron Hypothesis recently shown to be very ineffective at sequestering carbon?

[panchosdad]

I get where you are coming from, but for the sake of the argument, what part of "climate theory" as you understand it does not fall squarely into the realm of chemistry (not even the super complex kind) or classical physics?

I have never heard anyone use the term climate theory, by the way. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what exactly you mean by that expression.

I think most of the individual mechanisms of how our climate works (like CO2 or CH4 being effective greenhouse gases because they absorb IR radiation) are very well understood and do fit into classical chemistry and physics, but our attempts at modelling and understanding how they work all together is far more complex. As you point out, there are numerous potential feedback loops that could make the outcomes of rising CO2 levels far worse (or better) than models currently predict. Hence the significant uncertainty bars in the graphs you presented.

By climate theory I just meant current modelling efforts at predicting outcomes of our experiment here on planet earth.

Thanks for taking the time to answer, somehow this has actually turned into a productive TGR thread.

[klar]

Thanks for all your input.

Wasnt the Iron Hypothesis recently shown to be very ineffective at sequestering carbon?

I think the verdict is still out on that, but I am not particularly up to date, nor do I know a whole lot about this field in general. My understanding is that BECCS is more or less working on a limited scale and that is generally considered the most realistic looking option. People are also trying to make chemical CO2 scrubbing a workable, commercially viable thing, (see eg here). There are various options how you could theoretically get CO2 out of the air, the main problems are storage, scalability, and cost.

panchosdad: fair enough

[Mazderati]

The Iron Sheik may know more.

[brutah]

Thanks klar, I really appreciate that you take the time to answer all these questions and back everything up that you are saying with links to prevalent scientic articles on the topic. I've learned a lot from your posts and you've helped me to articulate the science to my friends and family that may still be on the fence about the climate change. you are by far one of my favorite members of the TGR community and I salute you

[Game Over]

Meanwhile over at Breitbart they have 58 peer reviewed studies from 2017 and 80+ graphs disproving climate change!!!'

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...c-papers-2017/

[wyeaster]

hilarious

[klar]

That links to an obvious denier blog where someone has compiled a bunch of graphs from recent studies, interpreting them as they see fit and quoting stuff completely out of context (here is an older rebuttal to a similarly sweeping article from that site).

The general argument of this post appears to be: Climate has changed before and there were phases that were warmer than now. The implication being that therefore it is normal that the climate is changing now.

The first part is true and no one is saying that it's not, but the conclusion reached is a weird non-sequitur. Along the lines of, say, "there are cliffs of size X to Y on my local mountain and those are natural features. The terrain park also has jumps of size X to Y, therefore the terrain park is also a natural feature."

Climate has always changed and we know why, generally speaking. Going by natural forcings, we should currently be in a gradual cooling phase. (People making the "it's changed before, it's a natural cycle" argument mostly seem to assume that we are in a natural warming cycle...)

There are plenty of more or less in depth explanations around this general kind of argument, eg here,here or here.

The papers that the plots in that post are pulled from all seem to be about regional paleoclimatic proxy records, reconstructing past climate in specific places over a large variety of time spans from a few hundred years to a few thousand, using things like tree rings, carbon dating of stuff they found in the ground, the time of the grape harvest etc. That is a legitimate and difficult thing to do. Climate does not change uniformly everywhere and it is interesting to investigate what exactly things were like in different regions 500 or 5000 or 500 000 or 5 000 000 years ago. Note that regional temperature, precipitation, whatever trends can be very different from global trends and there is no reason why that shouldn't be so. The annoying thing about scientific papers is that most of the time you actually have to read them to get what they are saying.

[Game Over]

Sorry Klar I should have put a at the end of that post to save your time.

But I'm actually glad I didn't since you provided another post of great info that I hope to use in the future (although not much gets thru to science deniers of any type)

The cliff analogy is so simple and perfect. Thanks!

[bodywhomper]

I got to meet and talk to Michael Dettinger today. That was cool

[Mister Moose]

The general argument of this post appears to be: Climate has changed before and there were phases that were warmer than now. The implication being that therefore it is normal that the climate is changing now.The first part is true and no one is saying that it's not, but the conclusion reached is a weird non-sequitur. Along the lines of, say, "there are cliffs of size X to Y on my local mountain and those are natural features. The terrain park also has jumps of size X to Y, therefore the terrain park is also a natural feature."

Climate has always changed and we know why, generally speaking.

So when they say it it's a 'non-sequitur implication' but when you say it it's ...not?

I'm glad the latest models are more closely able to predict the past. However at the end of the day that amounts to nothing more than curve fitting. Note that I'm not saying direct manipulative curve fitting. But the field is still modifying its model as it learns from its mistakes, and that still is a form of curve fitting. Having a model that correctly predicts future events is when you have it right.

I agree that CO2 is a source of warming, and I agree some glaciers are receding and I agree research is a good thing. I haven't seen yet definitive data on what amount of current warming is from man made sources, and how natural warming or cooling is caused and at what rate it will change. I agree that well educated specialists know more about their field than the rest of us do. We may not be capable of knowing all that they know and comprehend. That does not relieve them of the burden of providing predictable, repeatable results from their theory. Some are willing to do so, I am not.

Discovery does not emanate from debate, or the majority, or the consensus, it emanates from correctly ascertained relationships.



I notice that while the country bemoans the US withdrawal from a purely voluntary participatory agreement that redistributes dollars and sets the voluntary compliance far in the future as a solution, for some reason no one in New York City is building a dike or ceasing new construction in the endangered area.

[BGnight]

I would do away with the Paris Climate Accord and its great discussions of CO2 PPM and forecasted warming and such. Instead there would be the following goal:

- By the year 2100 human civilization will not in any way use the burning of fuels to do work.

That’s the starting point. The future emerges from there.

Bravo! People getting all huffy puffy about Trump and the Paris accord have no idea why they're mad. It's pure knee jerk idiocy. The Paris accord is a joke. I need to find the article but a scientist figured out if we did everything in that accord, according to IPCC projections, it would slow down warming by some ridiculously miniscule number. World gov'ts don't have yours or the earth's interests in mind. You're incredibly naive if you think any of these CO2 treaties first, will do any good, and second, are in the interest of humanity. We should be solely focused on creating more renewable energy projects locally and funded by the private sector. If it wasn't for government we'd already be commuting in zero emissions flying cars by now. Everyone wants government to save them. They're the same asshole bureaucrats that literally made it illegal to live off the grid and collect rainwater. And all of you want these same asshat politicians to save the world from evil CO2.

And if you don't think AGW CO2 induce global warming science research isn't corrupted, your head is up your ass. Anytime anyone actually posts conflicting scientific data it's immediately dismissed with: "that's right wing propagandaz!" and "97% of scientists agree!" as if that trumps all arguments. Yes, it's obvious the climate is changing but no one can say with certainty how exactly it's tied to humans nor how exactly to fix it. Our "system" is so fixed on certain fuel sources that any large scale attempt by world gov'ts to change anything is only going to cause more chaos and suffering than what any warming could do. We should make it a goal to reduce pollution in both the air and land for IT'S OWN SAKE. And change must come locally with entrepreneurship free from gov't restriction.