To Think Global Warming Can't Be All Bad?

[afteralongsquawk]

My carefully planted main crop tomatoes are long finished; but the runty little seedlings I dumped on the compost heap are doing great and still producing lovely toms in the last third of Nov!

AIBU to rather approve of this global warming thing?

Yes a disprovable theory is great if the attempt to prove the theory wrong fails.

however that was not what oldmac meant when she said "a good scientific theory is one that can be proven wrong" and you both know it! When you look at their other posts regarding special relativity.

A lot of people are being terribly generous in the interpretations of what oldmac "meant" to say!!!

I have to go out for a bit now in my car

sardine can. let me try a different tack..

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
Albert Einstein

and here are ten experiments you might like to try. I am sure you can think of more

I am surprised (as ever) to find that this is a view which is met with such outrage. It's very peculiar really

No, you are being met with rational arguments and becoming outraged is all.

The UK has about 1% of worlds population, consumes about 1.5% of it's energy output (of which the bulk is industry, not fluffies buying low energy light bulbs) and currently spends more on itself than it earns. There is no surplus to hand over.

Anthropomorphic Global Warming was a scam and unfortunately put rational discussion and solutions back 20 years. The fundamental issue remains No. of people x their consumption, not what type of energy they consume

I'm not outraged, I am a little surprised at some of the quasi-scientific stuff being spouted on here!

What I said was

"I want to move away from dependence on highly polluting fossil fuels and to cleaner renewable alternatives.

I am surprised (as ever) to find that this is a view which is met with such outrage. It's very peculiar really."

I haven't seen any rational arguments as to why that is a bad idea.

oldmac yes that makes sense, shame you didn't put it more clearly in your first post! Now to tackle special relativity and those pesky signals...

"not what type of energy they consume"

You don't see any problems with the oil industry?

No problems with the gas coming from a part of the world that can switch it off if they feel like it?

No problems with pollution and death and all that stuff?

Okeydokey.

YANBU to think it won't all be bad. A few areas will have better crop growth and better weather.

However, YABVU to approve of it, even in a joking way. It will have devastating effects on poorer countries, partly beacuse of the geography of weather systems and partly because they don't have the resources to adapt to the change. There will be more famines and more flooding, because an increase in the average temperature is predicted to make many weather systems much more extreme. Sea level rise may mean some Pacific islands become uninhabitable, so these people would lose their land and have their cultures torn apart.

Plus it will contribute to the mass extinction of species that is currently happening. Fair enough, species have gone extinct before in history, but it will take millions of years for new ones to evolve, so in the mean-time the many generations after us will be left without them.

OldMac - yes, if we could somehow reduce the output from the sun, then we might be able to counteract the warming effect from CO2, but unfortunately we can't do that, so I'm not sure what your point is?

If you're trying to imply that the sun might be causing the warming that we're seeing, then unfortunately for your theory, over the past 35 years, the earth has been warming while solar activity has if anything, been lower. See graph and explanation here

Oh and another big issue from the massive increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is ocean acidification - what that will do to fish stocks and the whole ocean ecosystem in the future could be pretty catastrophic - but I imagine the people who dismiss climate change would dismiss that too.

Does no-one care about all the fluffy kitties who will die?

And the doggies panting their little hearts out in the outrageous deadly heat?

I haven't seen any rational arguments as to why that is a bad idea

No, you are just ignoring them. To recap what you have been told:

• no renewable energy today is efficient as they all cost more to produce than they generate.

• the issue is not type of energy, it is sheer volume consumed, which is a population issue.

• The UK is such a small player in this, anything we do directly to help is irrelevant.

The UK is better off spending its limited resources on trying to improve the efficiency of renewable energy systems than putting a few sticking plasters on the totally predictable and unfixable global disasters.

IMO of course.

Whatmeworry, well of course if you assume that "Anthropogenic Global Warming was a scam", and see the International Energy Agency for example as a bunch of hippie cranks, then your ideas about what we should do about energy will be a bit different from those of us who don't think that's it's all a giant conspiracy theory.

Obviously renewables have a major benefit which you don't mention - the energy source doesn't run out, but I don't know enough to go into the details of different forms of energy - I just know that if you start off with the wrong question, i.e. leaving climate change out of the equation, then the answers won't have any relevance.

HRW - the energy source doesnt run out.
maybe so. maybe solar energy will be there for the harvesting.

But fossil power plants will have to be on standby, for when the sun doesnt shine

or for when the wind doesnt blow

Whatmeworry, well of course if you assume that "Anthropogenic Global Warming was a scam", and see the International Energy Agency for example as a bunch of hippie cranks

You hadn't noticed it's all been rebranded as "Climate change" now, or of all the scandals with the data? What is true is that we cannot, with 7 bn people, use energy at the levels of the West sustainably.

Obviously renewables have a major benefit which you don't mention - the energy source doesn't run out, but I don't know enough to go into the details of different forms of energy

It doesn't work that way, even renewable is not limitless.

There is a limit to the biofuels land mass and water you can use, even now you are starting to see conflicts with crops. There is a limit to useable hydro and wind both in space and time, and it costs more energy to extract wind energy than it produces. The one that has fewest limits is solar power, yet that is the one that has had the least payola investment money so far.

The other issue with all renewables except wave and hydro is that you can't turn it on when you need it.

Does renewable energy costing more include all the environmental externalities? Either way, the era of cheap energy is increasingly over, at least for oil-based sources.

Species have been going extinct for a long time BUT not at the rate they are going extinct now.

I don't get how humans cannot be upset about the possible extinction of magnificent animals such as polar bears, snow leopards and tigers. Even the extinction of smaller and less rvered beasts will effect us.

Humans will probably make ourselves extinct due to our crap attitude to the environment. YABU op.

revered

Either way, the era of cheap energy is increasingly over, at least for oil-based sources

I agree, and the impact of price rises will IMO do more good than a legion of hand wringing fluffies buying energy efficient light bulbs and Toyota Pious 's as with prices going up industry has an incentive to become more efficient and seek alternatives.

"I don't get how humans cannot be upset about the possible extinction of magnificent animals such as polar bears, snow leopards and tigers. Even the extinction of smaller and less rvered beasts will effect us."

Precisely. That's what I mean about people getting all upset about a cat being put in a wheelie bin, swung by its tail, etc. What we're all collectively doing to polar bears and arctic foxes is worse.

how come nobody mentions that the earth has in fact globally cooled this past decade, the warming isn't happening any more.

personally i'd love to never put my heating on again :D

"You hadn't noticed it's all been rebranded as "Climate change" now"

Climate change and global warming are the same thing. The average temperature of the globe will increase due to the increased CO2. Because climate is a very complex system, the local climate will change in different ways in different regiions. The reason scientists say "climate change" isn't because it's a great conspiracy, it's because some people can't seem to understand the idea of a global average temperature, and come up with arguments like "last winter was really cold where i live so that disproves global warming".

how come nobody mentions that the earth has in fact globally cooled this past decade, the warming isn't happening any more

Hence the rebranding as "Climate change" - but warming or freezing, there will Still be Doom of course :)