From Discord:
Dan Conia: Brace yourself kids, more taxes coming as we are on the hook for more climate change:
http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/ ... ge-retrea/
Placidine Clonstack: I wonder why the quotes on "consensus."
Dan Conia: I think they're challenging that there were actually 97% of them supporting it, or that it was truly a general consensus and not a group of people predisposed to that line of thinking in the first place.
Sanctus Maleficus: That 97% concensus number as been debunked many times, you can find a lot of youtube videos talking about how dubious of a claim that was in the first place.
And continued:Shofitel: essentially. because of the "science" of climate isn't percise, and by the fact that it is esentially a statisctal estimation where each "scientest" (quoted because according to Al Gore anyone who agrees with apocalyptic global warming is obviously a climate expert) seems to weight data differently, and have different assumptions the whole thing becomes a disgusting mess.
the real fact of the matter is: we only have "hard" data for only a small portion of the world's weather extending more than 100 years.
because 500 years ago, there were minimal weather stations recording daily in central Africa, and the central pacific the Ice core sampling is goodish...but that doesn’t' necessarily equate to a global phenomena when gas content trapped in the ice. The fact is that it only tells us about the atmosphere when and where the ice is formed.
and I just realized wall of text...I'll stop now....
When we are talking these long term analysis, over thousands of years, specific instances are suspect. Each case of missing data is essentially filled with an assumption. Whether that assumption is "this slot is unnecessary for a complete understanding of the subject" or "this will fall into line with previously shown patterns/correlations," or any other assumption, all risk throwing the over all conclusions for tailspins. How data is managed and manipulated will change the outcome, such as: if you take the Rawest climatology data you will actually show a trend of global cooling, quite a drastic one as well. This is due to a greater number of weather stations that are reporting from relatively colder areas, such as tundra, sub-arctic, and arctic areas, this is also more common due to the both the greater population in the northern hemisphere and much greater economic presence in the same. For example: NOAA has more weather stations in Utah than there are in the Congo (this is an assumption on my part. I'm willing to attempt to prove it one way or another though if desired). If you also just use the weather data that has information for the last 175 years (the oldest data available to NOAA according to their site) you will likely see a great increase in temperature, due to urban creep literally growing cities over the weather stations, and the increased temperature in cities is a well known, and documented phenomena. Also, it would be remiss to point out that the methods to collect this data has changed over the years.
So, we are left with this conclusion: weather data isn't able to give us enough resource to conclude climate trends over the last 40,000 years, and likely isn't able to do the same for the last 500 years. Considering that climate shifts usually occur in the sense of hundreds, when not simply thousands of years...this doesn't bode well for having solid conclusions.
So how can we make assumptions about climate before we had people payed to write down readings daily/hourly? This is both an art and a science on its own, but through induction and inference. By using secondary clues we can get an idea of what the environment was like. this is using air bubbles trapped in ice, or the rare cases where you can sample gasses from rock reliably. Also through archeological, genealogical, and geological studies. It is important to note that these are all not as solid data. As such, we can conclude an area, due to flora, was once tropical, thus fitting in a certain range of climate, but we cannot say what a summer temperature average was, nor give a accurate trend of precipitation over 10 years. 100 to 1000 years, I think is something we could do, but 10 years is way to short. Essentially: the "softer" your data sources, the less exactly you can know a thing about it.
So, what do we know: (willing to edit list as things are added/disproved)
CO2 emissions by humans has greatly increased since industrialization. (note: Geothermal activity is still, by far, the greatest contributor of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere)
Methane production has greatly increased by Humans over the last 500 years.
Carbon dioxide and Methane both exhibit "greenhouse" like effects, in that they tend to "retain" heat better than the "standard" composition of "air"(in quotations due to the sheer impreciseness of the terms)
Climate is not static and has change, sometimes quite drastically over the millennia.
A higher CO2 content in the atmosphere seems to correlate to higher global temperatures (strong correlation from my understanding)
As the surface temperature of the Oceans increase, the Oceans tend to release stored CO2 (I have no data on this phenomena, but I'll put it here anyways)
Also higher sea temperatures tend to lead to more violent weather.
The earth has recently gone from what some would call a "little ice age" this is after what some call "the midieval warming period"
We only have second hand sources for weather beyond some 200 years ago, and 200 years is not likely enough to establish true climate trends.
The data we do have overall tends to show higher temperatures, when compensated for all known factors as best as possible (At least I hope I can trust the conclusion on that)
There is the potential for the earth's climate to change such that it would be inhospitable for human kind, and of course, other life as we know it.
No matter how bad we screw up the atmosphere...the planet is still going to be here, just maybe with one or two less sentient species.
What can we conclude:
Nothing.
In all seriousness:
We really don't have enough real data to show a reasonably predictable model of the future climate. There is too many unknown to even perdict weather beyond a week, and usually that is wrong. How the hell are we supposed to predict weather 200 years from now.
For many weather phenomena we don't have an understanding of the causes/mechanics of it. Such as: why does the Lake Effect only affect some weather systems on some days, and why not always to the same extent.
For the real truth of the matter, there is no such thing as "climate," or rather, there is no such thing as a set climate. Just as geography changes, so does the long term weather patterns. Geology and weather patterns are very much interlinked. For example: California would be a desert like Nevada if it wasn't for the mountains to "catch" rain from the pacific. over time the mountains will likely wear down, creating something similar to the uniformity of the east coast of the US, but probably no where near as wet, due to colder ocean on that side of the pacific. Weather will change the land, and the land will change the weather. The universality of this is likely the only truth that can be applied to this issue. I also use the word truth specifically, not as a fact, but in the same sense that laws of physics are truth.
Later I want to also discuss the practial aspects of this, such as:
Will I, by eliminating all consumption of pollutant products save the world from disaster?
Is it possible to stop climate change?
Is is probably to stop climate change? and in what circumstances?
Why the fuss?
That's enough rambling for one night, Cheers folks!
Shoft