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After Reddit's Science sub banned non peer-reviewed sources regarding climate change denial and reading the comments on another thread here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=374873.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=374873.0)), I was wondering what your views are in relation to the effects humans have on the climate. I've included 3 options so far, but let me know if I'm missing other views on the subject.

EDIT: included 3 extra options in the poll. I'm not sure those that voted can change their choice though, and it's probably not a good idea to reset the counter.

The CO2 levels in the atmosphere has increased by around 30% during the last 150 years or so. And the lion's share of that increase occurred within the last 50 years. Scientific study has proven that the burning of fossil fuels, both by thermal power plants and by automobiles has caused much of that increase.

The only options to save our planet are:

1. Replace thermal energy with nuclear energy

2. Replace gasoline / diesel oil with bio-fuels

3. Prevent the loss of forest, especially in the Amazon Basin, Indonesia and Central Africa

I think it's funny that some people are so unconcerned about human rights that they really have nothing more to be active about than the weather.

Human rights must be respected. But that doesn't mean that we should destroy the earth and its wildlife. And preserving the earth for the future generations will ensure that the human rights are indeed respected.

Pollution and deforestation are an inevitable side-effect of the economic growth that is lifting the poorest people out of degradation.  Both cause the climate to change and we should be looking at ways to reduce them.  Deforestation is particularly damaging.

Climate change has been going on for millions of years as evidenced for example in ice core data, Ice Ages, etc..

Your poll is worded such that when we vote for the middle choice it is as if it is implied that climate change means global warming.

No! The climate is oscillating. I voted the middle choice with this interpretation of "climate change is real".


This was one of the causes of the fall of Rome after 400 A.D.

The earth and the human species survived and much more development followed.

The problem was caused by excessive debt and the misallocation of resources caused when everyone can do the same thing because everyone can borrow.

Currently we have $150 trillion in global debt, $quadrillion in derivatives, and another $quadrillion in unfunded social commitments.

No. Only the big corporates and the oligarchs are gaining from destroying the environment. If you don't believe me, go to Brazil. The very people who cut down and burn 2 million hectares of rain forest every year doesn't earn more than $10 a day. On the other hand, the Soya giants who illegally possess the ex-forest land soon after are making thousands of usd per acre.

Regardless of who you think benefits, deforestation is still a bad idea. 

I'll go with the first one, the new generation of reactors is very safe and efficient, ally that with electric cars and everyone will breath cleaner air.


Future generations have the right to a clean planet.

Definitely it is. Unfortunately we are not able to prevent it or even to slow the rate down in many parts of equatorial Africa, Asia and South America.

The replacement of primary forest with timber plantations is also another bad idea, as it kills the biodiversity.

Such a right does not exist.

I'm not having any children - my bloodline ends with me.  Why should I deny myself use of the planet so that someone else's children can use it instead?  I have just as much right to use it as they do.  It's unfortunate that use of the planet pollutes said planet, but everyone does it.

It is not for you to decide.


Because the planet is not your sole property. Some 7 billion plus people, and trillions of other living organisms have the right to live on it. You are most welcome to destroy something that you have the sole ownership of. But as far as clean air and drinking water is concerned, you have no authority or permission to destroy them.  ;D

I'm with you on that boat.

I've grown up and live near an industrial zone, the river that passes in my small town was considered, a few years ago, the most polluted in Europe, when I was a young teenage boy that river had a different color every day. In the past 10 years a lot was made to clean the water, I still wouldn't swim in that water.

I heard the stories from older people about they fishing and swimming in the clear waters of the river, I only see dark water now.

I know rights are what they are but now we know better.

Here is another bad idea regarding deforestation
http://grist.org/article/2010-04-13-raising-cane-the-trouble-with-brazils-much-celebrated-ethanol-mi/

From the same website celebrating banning climate change deniers on reddit... It must be true then. ;)

I think this poll is irrelevant, because belief doesn't enter into it. That's the beauty of scientific facts - they're going to stay the same, no matter what you think about them. The world is going to stay round even if you really believe it's flat.

As for the policy enacted in regard to these scientific facts, that's something we should all debate. We're all entitled to our political opinion, and we should certainly have our say when it comes to responding to climate change. Hence, a better poll might ask whether or not we believe in carbon regulation and taxation, cap and trade schemes, alternative energy subsidies, and other such environmental policy. But whether or not we believe in the existence of anthropogenic climate change is entirely irrelevant.

That doesn't mean that ethanol is a bad idea. No deforestation should be conducted for cane farming. A lot of fallow and barren land is available for cultivating cane, if irrigation schemes can be implemented properly.

And Brazil is a horrible place. Anyone can cut down the forest and anyone can massacre the tribal people. No one is going to be prosecuted. Lawless country. Entire timber / agricultural industry is in the hands of the organized mafias.

I think we know fuck all and we need far more data to come to a conclusion that global warming is actually going to be a problem as well as human caused climate change which I view as two different things, the people out their who bring out only a few years of global temperature data ( which I remember reading were based off averages anyway ) and declare they know everything really piss me off especially when you take into account the Earth itself is billions of years old and we have very little actual evidence as to the cycles of the planet.

p.s. OP your poll sucks and is very skewed in favour of climate change not being man made and doesn't go into any detail lol. I haven't dismissed the possibility entirely because there is at least circumstantial evidence pointing to Carbon Dioxide affecting planetary temperature

I believe the only way we're going to tell whether or not man made climate change is causing a problem is if we do the opposite of polluting the earth with Carbon Dioxide and put in a ton of Oxygen instead to see if that has any affect.

The only question that needs to be asked is why is it now referred to as "climate change" instead of "global warming"?

Not too confident that the globe is warming? Have to hedge your bets in case of global cooling?

That is also true, people have gotten so antsy about it a lot of scientists refuse to call it global warming anymore :P

Because global warming is not the only side-effect of the rising Carbon di Oxide levels that we face. The ongoing droughts in many parts of the world, for example is another aftermath of rising CO2 levels. So climate change is the ideal terminology.

People overall are stupid.  They thought "Global Warming" meant temperatures were going to increase over the entire planet.  The term was changed to "Climate Change" to make it easier for people to understand that it is an overall trend, and not something that happens everyday.

I'll say it more simply in this thread.

"Green" technology has economic and environmental benefits other than those that support the global warming theory. Why not just adopt it anyway?

• Cheaper energy prices (fossil fuels are finite and running low)
• Greater potential for local and/or individualised energy independence
• Less/zero non-controversial atmospheric pollutants
• More efficient altogether (less waste in acquisition, in processing, in transporting the resources, in using them... etc)
• Further research into alternative energy will have spin-offs, i.e. not only vehicle fuels and electricity production will benefit

So supporters of the global warming theory can mitigate ecological disaster, and carbon tax skeptics can avoid paying a charge related to science they don't recognise. Everyone's a winner when you look at it that way. Stop crying everybody!

Nuclear energy is great, why else do you think the us govt won't issue new permits for reactors (they only issue permits to add reactors to plants already in existance.

Diesel has it's own problems, even though it is favoured in the UK, biofuel generally uses oil that is not in ready supply for mainstream.

Prevent the loss of forest. OK, look what the US and Canada has done and model that. there is now more forest in N America than ever before (depending on what stats you use)

I still have yet to understand why people are so up in arms about co2 levels... the increase of greenhouse gasses as they are called have a very beneficial use and it is much easier to adapt to it than to resort to giving up all of our freedoms for big government in the hope that getting the environment sorted out doesn't lead to utter catastrophe, which I think is vastly more likely.
Also, the herds of cattle worldwide are probably as much to blame if not more than industry, I certainly don't want to give up having meat in order to hopefully knock down co2 levels a few notches.   

I agree, if all of these global warming nuts focused on making green products better and more cost effective than regular products their self interests may just get accomplished.

Instead they tend to push the government to just stand in the way of progress in the most inefficient way possible against their own interests.

Exactly. Don't forget about the increasing ocean acidification which has profound effects on marine life, the accelerate migrations of plant life in various microclimates, and potentially even impacts on the frequency of severe weather events (e.g. hurricanes), all due at least in part anthropogenic CO2.

Hence we refer to it as climate change, because far more than the average surface temperature is changing.

The Coal lobby is too strong in the US and many other developed nations. Increased production of nuclear power can mean massive losses to the coal industry.


No. I don't want timber plantations to be classified as forest. The amount of bio-diversity which we have in the primary forest is tens of times of that present in the plantations.

And Canada is still cutting down a lot of primary forest, especially in British Colombia.


I don't see any benefits from rising temperature.

Solyndra.

Seems like the average number of growing days for crops would increase.

But don't they say we are now on year seventeen of no increase in temperature?  That's contrary to all the predictions, right?

I thought they probably changed it to stop getting laughed at, like when Gore went to give a talk in the midst of the worst snowstorm in a town's history....on "global warming".....

Basically they want to be able to blame anything weather they can call 'extreme' on man's activities.

This is actually really, really dumb.  Dumber than the dumb that people are assumed to be.

From where did you get the idea of 17 years of static temperature?

http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/global-temp-and-co2-1880-2009.gif

http://www.cheaperpetrolparty.com/Images/Global_Warming/Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

This is a cool interactive tool that shows how hot it will get in your lifetime.  :)

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/interactive/2013/sep/27/climate-change-how-hot-lifetime-interactive

He probably means something like this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/34410241/trend.png (http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/trend)
But that's only 12 years.

I thought it was well known?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released--chart-prove-it.html

The important thing here is not that there were 17 years of no warming, but that it illustrates obvious and glaring errors in the premises and constants used in computer modeling.  Which means, don't believe their computer models.

This is a very interesting article from november
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/20/90-companies-man-made-global-warming-emissions-climate-change

I won't call for hanging him from the nearest tree.  But could we just all agree to jail Al Gore for life?

Wow. It seems like the global warming debate really is defined by extremists. If somebody isn't screeching inflammatory retorts or whipping out provocative one-liners, then they won't be respected. If somebody tries to take any non-polarised position, those from either side can attack you, saying "you're just one of them".

Think I'm going to sit this "debate" out permanently, it seems like fighting is all that most people are interested in. Presumably all the shriekers also have a strong ethical position against aggressive and intolerant behaviour too

There's a problem with the existing temperature data:
We have barely any data from the artic / antarctic region and parts of central africa.
And there's a problem with some computer models:
They didn't predict the extreme solar minimum.

too late to stop it

Did you mean to say: humans have had a significant impact in changing the climate, but are now powerless to stop it? If so, that's kind of a defeatist attitude, considering it is acknowledging that humans at least helped create the problem in the first place... but it's also a valid point of view, and if some of the people that hold this view are voting in the "climate change is real, but humans have no impact", I should probably add this option to the poll, I guess... though it's kind of conflating two different things.  ::)

True, it doesn't matter if we believe in gravity; we'll still fall to the floor (unless you miss the ground apparently). But when you have representatives in power (US at least) which claim that climate change can't be a problem because god told Noa that the flood wouldn't happen again (or some such nonsense), then we've got a more fundamental problem to deal with first.

EDIT: and I note that while the numbers involved are obviously too low to take any broader conclusions, out of 32 votes, 40.6% are from people that don't believe humans have had a substantial impact on climate, which is worrying. Furthermore, and considering the other thread about this, they are far more vocal.

...didn't exactly FIX your statement, made it worse, actually...

Nuclear power is useless because our methods of building and maintaining the plants currently involve burning massive amounts of fossil fuels. They look good on paper but end up consuming more in carbon than they will ever produce, but because crude oil is so cheap (considering what it is), governments like it for economic reasons. As a means of saving our planet, it sucks.

Wave power.

No. Definitely wrong. Do you have any proof for this? The energy required for constructing a nuclear power plant is almost similar to that required to build thermal plants.

Ice age.

If we are in fact having a meaningful impact on the climate and we had done nothing we would eventually get another ice age. It could be here already statistically speaking. Therefore, burn more. It may or may not help, but it probably won't make things worse.

And if not then all is well and we will still get another ice age soon.

But this doesn't matter, of course. Climate change is entirely a political/religious issue.

If you think so, then nothing can be done. If you think that burning trillions of tons of fossil fuels is good for the earth, then go ahead. Burn some more.

The earth doesn't care what we do. It is a planet, it doesn't need us, or any life at all. That is an emotional argument trying to sound reasonable.

It's also incredibly arrogant to think that we're actually a threat at all to the planet.

Those hockey stick graphs are widely discredited in the scientific community, they are only used to scare schoolchildren and make hype on tv about how we must do EVERYTHING to prevent global warming climate change.

I know many of us have been taught so HARD that it's real and it's bad and it's just gonna get worse because "Scientists" say so, but those who actually look at the numbers and dig into the research find that the numbers have been fudged so much that those graphs should look nothing like that.

Nowadays, people forget that just a few decades ago, liberals in the US told everyone that because of human society that we were about to head into the next ice age (not warming, cooling) and now it seems they are doing it again.

We have always been at war with Eurasia.


We have always been at war with Eurasia.


We have always been at war with Eurasia.

I am saying this quite a few times. If you think that the data is fudged, then give me the proof. Do you have any proof to contradict the argument that the CO2 levels rose from 280 ppm to 400 ppm in the last 100 years?

Curious what you think of the ice age argument. And anyone else for that matter.

Also, everyone, please keep in mind that in science you call things what they are. Emotional arguments are not useful.

This is an interesting question, because prominent solar scientists tell us to be concerned about it.  There is not one group of solar scientists saying one thing, and another saying the opposite, such as their is cast to be with the general AGW discussion.

Further, the basic solar argument is very understandable. 

A) there was a decrease in solar sunspots leading up to the Little Ice Age.
B) there is now a similar decrease in sunspot activity.

Really, the consequences of a LIA today would be extremely serious because of the higher population density and it's distribution.

Fortunately we don't have many big volcano erutions right now:
http://nldr.library.ucar.edu/repository/assets/osgc/OSGC-000-000-010-465.pdf (http://nldr.library.ucar.edu/repository/assets/osgc/OSGC-000-000-010-465.pdf)

I have had the time to review this article you quoted and no, hell no.

Best to listen to what the solar scientists are trying to tell us, than to listen to people who have a vested interest in propping up the old theories.

Well, I admit my opinion on this has been guided by an expert I know, I will try and find some proof to back up what I said.