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Many times matters pertaining to the environment come up in discussion here in bitcointalk, I remember seeing people that were very much in denial of the very existence of global warming and climate change as phenomena affected by human activity. Don't get me wrong, it's just my experience by reading and posting here ever since I became a member in 2013, but I think that bitcoin users are less environmentally conscious than the average techie.

But have things changed? Have people that were previously in denial perhaps reconsidered their sources? Any minds changed? I'd love to hear these stories.

First of all feel free to answer to the poll. I know that there's no reason to consider a bitcointalk poll representative of anything, but it'd be interesting to see the results nevertheless.

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Disclaimer: this thread isn't about pollution. Just to be clear, the poll and thread are about climate change/global warming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change). While pollution can be related, let's keep the thread focused.

Global warming is real, the world now know that as it is evident in the rising temperature in the world, many ice bags are melting, this is noticed in Denmark and many regions of the world and it is due to the increase in the heat from the sun that is reaching the earth, the water sea level is yearly increasing. It has also been said that increase in water level in the next 10 years will be more and will be mainly due to global warming.

Three positions on global warming are:

1. That global warming is not occurring and so neither is climate change
2. That global warming and climate change are occurring, but these are natural, cyclic events unrelated to human activity
3. That global warming is occurring as a result primarily of human activity and so climate change is also the result of human activity

But, if we can reason with the scientists, we will believe that global warming is mainly due to human activities because carbon particles and many other green house gases have been linked to it, it makes the sun heat to penetrate more into the earth.

The green house gases are
CO2 or carbon dioxide
Methane
Nitrous oxide in parean (laughing gas)
Fluorinated gases
Sulphur hexafluoride

These gases including black carbon can be responsible for global warming, that is why they should not be too much in the atmosphere but there should be some natural produced ones like CO2 to certain extent so that the world will not become too cold in a way sun will not be able to penetrate certain amount of heat also. So, the concetraction of the green house gasses are to certain level. If low, it will result to cold earth and if too much, it will lead to warm earth (global warming). But out of all, scientists link CO2 more to global warming.

The trees breath in CO2 in a way it takes up carbon, but in the world of today, trees are reducing due to several human activities, this decrease the amount of CO2 intake by tress. Humans also increase, and we breath out CO2, and contribute to the atmospheric carbon. Also there many ways CO2 and those green houses gasses listed above are produced by human activities, leading to global warming.

https://i.imgur.com/Th1bYfl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/S7JmI3L.jpg

From the above graph, you will noticed how carbon emitted into the atmosphere as been increasing drastically which is linked to human activities.

Specifically, gases released primarily by the burning of fossil fuels and the tiny particles produced by incomplete burning trap the sun’s energy in the atmosphere. Scientists call these gases “greenhouse gases” (GHGs) because they act like the wrong way reflective glass in our global greenhouse. Scientists call the tiny particles ‘black carbon’ (you call it soot or smoke) and attribute their warming effect to the fact that the resulting layer of black particles in the lower atmosphere absorbs heat like a black blanket.

Scientists date the beginning of the current warming trend to the end of the 18th or beginning of the 19th century when coal first came into common use. This warming trend has accelerated as we have increased our use of fossil fuels to include gasoline, diesel, kerosene and natural gas, as well as the petrochemicals (plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers) we now make from oil.

Scientists attribute the current warming trend to the use of fossil fuels because using them releases into the atmosphere stores of carbon that were sequestered (buried) millions of years ago. The addition of this “old” carbon to the world’s current stock of carbon, scientists have concluded, is what is heating our earth which causes global warming.

We people in the world should be able to regulate the green house gases in a constant state in a way it will not be less or too much so that we can maintain certain amount of heat emitted by the sun that will penetrate into the earth.



https://warmheartworldwide.org/climate-change/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw1qL6BRCmARIsADV9Jtab3-PqpH49u3InIbSMHXp9juFPyJ_NTqmv5MCBGC9K6NF456NWek8aAkuOEALw_wcB

I don't remember there every being a strong recognition of the fraudulent nature of the current implementation of the Club-of-Rome's climate scam even back in the earlier day when some of the main threads were more active.  But it seems that the current cohort of bitcointalk.org users are pretty much as likely as the average Joe to fall for whatever globalist-generated 'scienctism scam' is being pushed that day.  Maybe even more-so.

The education systems seems to have successfully pushed the narrative that 'science' means repeating whatever the (often falsely reported) 'consensus' view is according to the mainstream media.  The messaging is that if you believe what the media says scientists say, you are sort of a 'smart'(tm) junior scientist yourself.  Give yourself a social credit bonus!  If you don't, you are an anti-science person...who probably believes in Christianity or some anti-science shit.  Science and spirituality are compatible if and only if the spirituality is kabbalah-based and the church (if there is one) is registered correctly tax-wise.

What passes for 'science' vis-a-vis the climate these days is a LITTERAL doomsday cult replete with high priests, sacrifices, self-destructive rituals, etc.  It is kind of funny, if ominous, to watch.  For now,  But the cult is swelling daily, and more and more it is impacting us non-believers in tangible ways.

I don't really see a difference between these 2 options

• I'm skeptical of some related claims.
• I agree with most claims related.

If your poll is sorted in order of non-believer to believer, these options should probably be swapped. I would say the "agree with most" option indicates you flat out disagree with certain claims, whereas the "skeptical of some" option indicates you mostly believe in the problem but are suspicious of some aspects of it.

I chose the skeptic option because I think there are problems in how the climate issue has been politicized. We're presented with 2 options: you either believe in man-made climate change or you don't. Other issues include interpretation of data, issues with predictive models, and the absurdity of proposed solutions.

Given our current understanding of atmospheric science, as well as the recorded measurements of GHG concentration in the atmosphere over time (and the significant increase after the industrial revolution), it's pretty reasonable to conclude that human activity is increasing the concentration of CO2 and other GHG's. If the warming potential of CO2 and Methane are accurate, along with their suspected 'airbourne lifetimes' and if the assumed rate at which we emit these gases into the atmosphere is sustained, the climate of the planet will certainly change, and there will be a significant increase in the global average surface temperature (GAST).

With that in mind, I don't think the issue is as alarming as many environmental activists/organizations and the left wing media make it out to be. I also think there are a lot of balancing mechanisms that we don't properly understand yet, for example, the case of the missing heat (https://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525). I also think it's sketchy for universities, NGOs, and non-profits to collect billions of dollars from the government every year to pump out new climate science which turns out to be wrong every 10 years, or ends up being the same old green energy + (carbon tax)/(cap and trade) will save us all narrative. It pays to keep people scared, if the environmentalists really wanted to solve the problem they'd be funding advertising campaigns to reverse the damage they did to public perception of nuclear energy, which is the cleanest and safest energy per TWh.

I'm not even necessarily against carbon taxes/cap and trade, I've looked into this quite a bit and it seems it would get the job done. The thing is, depending on where you live, it may be in your best interest for global warming to occur, so coupling that with the misinformation campagins on carbon taxes make them almost impossible to sell to voters.

The climate problem is just unrealistically massive, there's no way any one country will be able to solve it. Even if the US stopped all emissions, China and India will continue and their emissions will likely rise as well. Australian politicians have shown they don't care (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/22/australia-is-the-only-country-using-carryover-climate-credits-officials-admit) about how other countries look at them in terms of their climate policy and will continue to invest in coal power (as they're a massive exporter of coal and LNG). All Canada has managed to do is ruin would be prosperous oil and LNG pipeline deals and ban plastic straws, even though Canadian agricultural yields are projected to increase (https://www.agr.gc.ca/eng/agriculture-and-climate/agricultural-practices/climate-change-and-agriculture/climate-scenarios-for-agriculture/?id=1329321981630) with GAST.

There's no "Montreal Protocol" for climate change because climate change isn't like the Ozone Layer problem. Hole in the Ozone layer = everyone gets skin cancer. Increase in GAST = more 'nice days' in currently cold climates. More droughts in currently hot climates. More dangerous oceanic events along coastlines.... in 80+ years (seriously, it's not like people will be 'displaced', you adapt or you move when you're gifted timelines like that). The problem affects everyone differently, maybe you can get Karen from Florida to stop driving her SUV through Miami in the summer, but can you get an Albertan to turn off their heating and stop driving their Ford F150 in the middle of a Canadian winter so that their great-great grandkids can go to the Maldives over Christmas break in 150 years?

You get points and facts why global warming may still continue and difficult to reduce. In modern days, the world is even depending more on activities that increasing green houses gasses that can add to global warming. How about deforestation which is the major reasons that too much carbon can also be trapped in the atmosphere. The rate at which the world is tackling deforestation and encouraging afforestation is poor. The world governments need to cooperate in a way more trees are planted. And also if there are ways they can reduce green house gasses to certain required level, it will be helpful.

Right now, thinking of activities that will address the global warming is very overwhelming and seems too much for ordinary people like us.  But there's a lot of ways to help in small ways as much as we can such as -

1. Lessen the use of plastics, i.e. use reusable cups whenever you go to coffee shops, avoid single-use plastics like shampoo in sachets
2. Recycle materials that you can found at home (use plastic bottles for plants)
2. Tend your own garden and plant as much as possible in your land
3. Use bike as much as you can, or drive less
4. Or in summary, practice 5 R's at your home: refuse, reduce, reuse, rot, recycle achieving zero waste as much as you can

Huge believer in pollution, non-believer in mad made global warming..

I believe some claims but think it’s mostly a hoax.. Voted hoax..

Climate change is real, and is caused by man. The evidence is overwhelming. I think most people (and many forum members) do believe this, it's just that the evidence is so overwhelming, that relatively few bother to engage with climate-skeptics. Similar to how relatively few people try to argue with anti-vaxxers or flat-earthers. The question has been settled. Those who can't see the evidence or disagree with it will never be convinced by data, empirical evidence, facts. The thing that I find strange is that they view whatever crap the fossil-fuel lobbyists come out with as unbiased and impartial.

There is close to a universal consensus amongst climate scientists - 97% agree (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002) that humans have caused recent global warming.

For those who don't want to look at the data, or prefer extremely selective evidence that confirms their own viewpoint, then the EDF has a simple nine point summary (https://www.edf.org/climate/9-ways-we-know-humans-triggered-climate-change) of how we know that humans are the cause:

A propagandist does not need to be clear thinking.

I wish people stopped using this argument. You can't say group A has majority consensus that it's not happening, so they're idiots, then say group B has majority consensus that it is happening, so it must be true. It doesn't matter if one group has more 'quallification' if both groups have a massive interest in being right. It's obvious what the fossil fuel industry's interest is in prolonging the switch to clean energy alternatives, you can argue it makes them less credible. However, you could also argue that the entire field of climate science benefits from overstating the problem because it gives them astronomical budgets and makes them the darling of the liberal media.

Scientists can be wrong, models can be wrong, data can be misinterpreted. University pedigree is irrelevant, look at Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford Biologist who predicted multiple famine/overpopulation related doomsday events that never occured. Yet seemingly each time he was wrong he only brought more people onboard to his school of thought, including many serious scientists.

Pushing a pop-sci x% of <insert authoritative group> believes y narrative is called dogmatism, not science. Unfortunately the damage is done and now we have to deal with Dunning-Kruger effect on both sides of the problem. I don't expect most people to be familiar with actual climate science, but here's some interesting info from my own experience. I've taken a handful of environmental studies (not science) classes at my university so I knew quite a few people who should be at least familiar with the basic science. From what I saw, I would confidently say that if you picked a student at random from any of those classes and asked them to list 5 GHGs and "which GHG has a higher warming potential, CO2 or Methane", there's a < 10% chance they would be able to answer correctly. What hope does a random "CO2 induced climate change" believer have in answering a simple question like that?

Considering how polarizing this issue is and how little the average person actually knows, I think the distribution of believers to non-believers is actually pretty reasonable.

That's not even considering the relation between concentration of such a gas and logrythmic decrease in additional warming.

But the narrative must be pushed, the truth is quite irrelevant.

Surprisingly, I heard (but have not verified) the US Democratic Party now includes nuclear power in their platform.

I'm not saying that. The consensus is that it is happening. There is no consensus that it's not happening. Certainly some of the 3% of scientists who believe it's not happening are idiots; others simply say whatever they're paid to say. The 'scientists' who are saying that either there is no climate change, or else there is but it's not caused by human activity... are exactly the same type of 'expert' who thought (or said they thought) a few decades back that there was no link between smoking and cancer.

I think you're undermining your own argument here. 97% indicates a huge weight of numbers. Whatever your viewpoint, you will be able to find a single scientist who supports it. You are unlikely to find a 97% consensus unless your viewpoint is in alignment with the actual underlying facts.

Put it this way, you have severe stomach pain and you phone the doctor. He is at a conference of 100 stomach specialists, and he puts you on speaker. 97 of the 100 specialists say that you've ingested poison and you need to go to the hospital immediately, the other 3 say don't worry, it's nothing. What would you do? I'll be extremely generous and assume the 3 are not employees of the poison company.

I would suggest trusting experts rather than random students. Students aren't experts, that's why they're students. You can certainly argue that some experts are biased, but it stretches credibility rather a lot to suggest that 97% of experts in a given field are deliberately lying in order that they might become "darlings of the liberal media".


Nuclear power is a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels... but reactors take a very long time to build. Given the pace of climate change, we probably don't have time for that, and need to switch our attention to renewables instead, as well as lifestyle changes. The ultimate dream I suppose is commercial fusion, but that is always a few decades away...

I know the consensus is that it's happening, I agree with that consensus. I just have an issue with using the fact that "97% of climate scientists agree" as an argument because it gives people a reason to not look at the facts. Why should they put any effort into understanding the problem when there's such overwhelming consensus? The wisdom of crowds dissipates quickly if everyone 'thinks' the same way.

I honestly think things like this push ordinary people further away from the actual science. I don't think we should be trying to scare people away from pursuing alternative theories. I think it's wrong to label people as 'climate-deniers' or idiots if they don't accept the consensus, unless of course they simply reject our accepted theories with no evidence or alternative theories to challenge them. If someone rejects the consensus and is both willing and able to test the science on their own, I think they should be encouraged rather than bashed for going against the crowd. If they're wrong, they'll be proven wrong. If they're right, we update what we know and we're all better for it.



Right, except this isn't about the professionals, this is about people's understanding of what the professionals have discovered. My argument is that there's a disconnect between the scientists and the people. This should be clear because in a random sample of experts you'll have overwhelming consensus on most climate issues, but in a random pool of ordinary citizens you're likely to find that no one know's what they're actually talking about (on either side of the debate), which is not good. People need to form their opinions based on the evidence, if you tell them that all climate scientists agree this is a problem and you're stupid if you think otherwise, not only will scientists not challenge it (they'd probably be defunded and ridiculed), but non-experts will use it as an excuse to stay ignorant of the professionals findings.

Hope that cleared some stuff up. Also sorry for putting you in the spotlight, I agree with a lot of your previous post I just wanted to point out that 1 bit because conformity always comes with tradeoffs.

Reactors take a long time to build?

No, they do not.

Yup.  Hand FULL control of all aspects of your life over to the oligarchs who thought up the 'global warming' idea as part of an excuse to install the technocracy they'd been funding into existence:

   “The common enemy of humanity is man.
   In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up
   with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming,
   water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these
   dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through
   changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome.
   The real enemy then, is humanity itself.“  – Club of Rome,


'Fusion' has been 'a few decades away' for the pretty much all of the 50 years of my life where I understood spoken language.  I've suspected for a long time that it's been accomplished, or at least that the path do accomplishment is well understood and simply in a holding pattern, for quite a long time.  It would be highly 'disruptive' to say the least.

The central characteristic of a technocracy as envisioned by those doing the early work pre-WWII involved a monetary system denominated in  energy units and a surveillance system powerful enough to track 'spending' with precision at an individual level.  The Covid-19 hoax is mostly about emplacing the elements of such a system (both physical and psychological) at a frantic pace, and making the cut-over under what they are now referring to as the 'global reset.'

Climate catastrophe has ALSO been a "few decades away..."

It's true there has been propaganda on the idealized vision of fusion power, but the reality such as the tokamak reactor test systems isn't so wonderful or great at all.

There's nothing wrong with various fission reactors and they make solar or wind farms look like a joke as far as energy production.

+1 to a lot of this. People don't engage with climate skeptics b/c of the sheer amount of data they'd have to provide to refute their points. It's just not something that people want to do when they can quickly just say -- the EARTH IS ROUND AND VACCINES DONT GIVE YOU AUTISM.

I personally am not sure, at this point, if we'd be able to walk back some of the issues relating to pollution by instantly changing now -- but I do think it is important to note that all of this is happening.

Not sure how crazy society would have to change to bring us to no more warming too.

I take your point, but I would argue that if everyone looked at facts, then we'd have 100% consensus. If a person's opinion is in wild divergence from the evidence, then I'd suggest that they started by forming a conclusion, and then sought (extremely selective) evidence to back up that conclusion... which isn't science.


Yes, they have been proven wrong. It shouldn't be a contentious issue, it's very similar to the smoking-doesn't-cause-cancer argument I mentioned. It doesn't matter to them that they've been proven wrong, because their arguments are not based on facts, because they started from a conclusion and worked backwards. This is also why a lot of people believe in the literal truth of the bible. Facts from this viewpoint are an irrelevance. It's faith, not logic, there is no real consideration of empirical evidence. This is why you'll never be able to use facts to change the opinion of a climate change denier.


Yes, there is a disconnect. This is due to the mechanism by which people receive information. Partly social media confirmation bias bubbles; partly TV new trying to be 'impartial' by having one expert from each side (which gives the erroneous impression that the scientific opinion is split 50/50). But mostly because news channels (on whatever medium) are owned and controlled by extremely rich people, who tend to represent the interests of extremely rich people, which are threatened by any disruption to the status quo.



Okay, start building one now, and post here again when you're done. Photo or it didn't happen.

I appreciate this could all be done somewhat more quickly if the political will and expertise was there, Japan for example has a history of building them quite quickly, but other countries face pushback due to environmental concerns, and may lack the Japanese expertise and experience. If we are talking about all nations switching to nuclear to avert climate catastrophe, then it's not going to happen. You're not going to get a fission reactor built in sub-Saharan Africa in a couple of years. It's not the rapid solution that we need right now.

That's intellectually very lazy at best.  More generally it is a tool custom-made for people who are both lazy and lacking the mental prowess to learn enough about a subject to actually discuss it.  Nobody I know who questions the mainstream narrative on either the 'global climate change' issue or the 'vaccination' issue believes that the earth is flat.

As a matter of fact, someone who puts any 'information' about flat-earth forward is highly suspect to me.  It's a pretty good marker for an individual who is basically participating in a psychological operation of some sort and is to be analyzed as such and obviously not to be trusted.  It is true that there are some weak minded people who probably do fall for the flat-earth psy-op, but I don's see much cross-over between them and the 'climate deniers' or 'anti-vax' crowd both of who are often vastly more knowledgeable about both science and medicine generally then though counterparts, and of a nature who are not averse to challenging authority and orthodoxy.

Back in the day it did seem that bitcointalk.org (formerly 'bitcoin.org forum' a decade ago) were prone to be the type who would challenge orthodoxy and mainstream dogma.  Now, sadly, it seems that the cadre is drawn from a more normie type pool if not skewed toward the pool who are indoctrinated by mainstream scientism more than your average bear.  It seems like a lot of the 'old-timers' who were of the more interesting type moved on.  Presumably to enjoy their new-found life  as multi-millionaires.

Operatives of the Democratic Party are funded to stall, litigate and prevent reactors being built and put into use.

Nothing could be simpler than this issue.

So now you are saying "They can't be built because my people are preventing them from being built."

Oh I'm not saying that everyone who beleives in climate change not being really also beleives that the earth is flat and vaccines cause autism. I'm saying that instead of refuting the points of climage change deniers, people would much rather attack the lowest hanging fruit of conspiracy theorist which is the flat earthers and vaccine people.

Very lazy, but that's how we are as a society.

But yes, I'd assume that anyone on here who was anti establishment / challenging of mainstream ideas are gone due to being rich now, lol. Does that mean they didn't fully believe in the BTC vision?

The Earth is not round, that would make it FLAT.

The Earth is approximately a sphere.

Your 97% slogan is misleading, if you didn’t know..

It is NOT that 97% of climate scientists agree that humans ARE the cause of climate change..
It IS 97% of climate scientists believe the climate IS warming and that humans MAY HAVE SOME effect on the warming......

So basically it means that they agree that humans may have caused atleast 00.000000001% of the climate change we see..

It absolutely does not mean that 97% believe human released CO2 is the cause, or even a main cause..

And yeah.. If you look at the CO2 vs temp chart for a few million years you will see that it doesn’t correlate for crap..
Actual warming has never kept up with their “models” either..

It’s nonsense..

The '97%' came from a laughable fraudulant 'meta-analysis' were some non-scientist skimmed a bunch of study titles and may (or may not) have bothered to read some of the abstracts from scientific literature and decided that in some measure the authors of the paper thought that human CO2 had at least an infinately small impact on greenhouse gasses.  Of course most people who are active in any sort of academics will 'admit' that 0.00000001 > 0.000000000.

As I recall, the study even counted Dr. Willie Soon as among their '97%' which is funny because, being an outspoken chap who made is (rather meager) living outside of the traditional academic funding sources, became something of a poster-child of the 'climate denier ' scientists.  Freeman Dyson would have been another were he not so famous and well respected that the mud would not stick to him.  The Climate Huckseters learned several decades ago to run-not-walk from a debate on the subject and choose only such battles as they could win.

Moreover, the 97% is not scientific. Science is inquiry and criticism, repeated over and over. The 97% is exactly the opposite, designed to squash critical thinking.

On encountering something such as this, any real scientist would begin asking questions. And he would not stop.

But this is not science. It's propaganda.

That's what happened to me.  I deferred looking into the issue for a long time expecting it to require a fair bit of research.  I anticipated finding that the 'global warming' thing was real and was a matter of concern since it was what I heard all of my life.

What actually happened was that I rather quickly ran into very strong indications of fraud of the above nature.  And on a scientific front when one gets into the numbers, the idea of 'climate change' vis-a-vis anthropogenic CO2 is laughable.  My research fairly quickly evolved into more of a political study of why 'they' were hyping this particular fraud.

The above said, methods of modifying the weather and manipulating climate on a regional level using methods such as 'solar radiation management' are not outlandish at all.  I strongly suspect that they can be effective, and probably already are.  They may have the potential to be catastrophically effective as they are further weaponized.

To the naysayers, I'd like to reaffirm the scientific credibility of the 97% claim. It is a statement supported by NASA  (https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/)(among others). Major organizations agree on the matter that global warming is a real phenomena and that it's affected by human activity.

NASA and NOAA or two of the most politicized (and useless) administrations in the whole US-branded corp/gov system.  Either of these two issuing a statement about something like this makes me confident that it IS bunk.  I'm not even being facetious!

Anyone who has sat through some of the CSPAN footage of the heads of these types of organizations talking (including specifically the CDC and FDA) really cannot come away without wondering if the people really are borderline retarded.  Sometimes they have assistants/handlers who seem to have it together somewhat.  Sometimes not.  I'm not being facetious about that either.

On occasion there is a chairperson who is actually mentally sharp but who is, politically and policy-wise, genuinely scary.  Obama's EPA Gina McCarthy was one such person fairly recently.

It is certain that the activities of man will affect local climates. Replacing arable land and forests with concrete cities is one obvious case. The killing of vultures by ivory poachers in India has caused a massive increase in disease, and the cost of combating it. Killing the elephants isn't too helpful either. I'm sure you can think of many other examples. However, the impact of the global climate is pretty minimal, and solar cycles have a far greater effect, as history shows. The CO2 reduction scam is a political move, and not based on much real scientific research as I see it. It is a great way to raise taxes, disadvantage certain countries,  and gain control and monitoring of traffic. Electric cars just export pollution out of the cities and into the countryside, but what a great way to take control of people's personal transport.

I suspect that humans (or hominids) may really have had a noteworthy impact on the global climate at some point a million or so years ago.  Basically when 'we' were of homo-habilis or australopithecus grade, knew how to use fire, and experienced a transient population boom.  The changes wouldn't have been via CO2 particularly, but more associated with deforestation which sifted the terrestrial flora somewhat.  It's just kind of an estimate on my part, but is something which seems to be a practical method by which climate could be shifted (over a 'short' several thousand year period of time) by human type creatures using primitive technology.

The current Club-of-Rome induced climate change fraud suggests that we humans are impacting the climate by having a tiny contribution to a trace atmospheric gas which itself has a tiny residence time (being highly in-demand plant-food) and is only a minor greenhouse gas in the atmosphere anyway.  It's quite ludicrous actually.  That's quite different than setting an entire geographic region on fire every year to help bag a few more rabbits.

Well, if you're going to call NASA politicized in regards to supporting climate change this heads towards the direction of the type of conspiracy theories that claim that the moon landing was a hoax, and that the earth is also flat. At some point you just have to stop and wonder, just how many people have to be in on it?

All universities would have to be in on it. But I doubt they'd have something to gain. Are all the students independently collecting measurements in on it too? Are weather stations in on it? Are animals whose migration patterns changed also in on it? And how are we supposed to know better? It'd have to be a huge conspiracy involving tons of people. I guess it would've been way expensive to keep all the mouthes of all these people shut too.

Climate change shills: “appeal to authority”

Obviously most universities are infiltrated by marxists/communists..
Also any government organization is the government and therefore biased towards increasing the size of the government in any way..

All these people trying to starve the trees of CO2..
At our current CO2 levels plant life is like barely surviving compared to history..

Gavin Schmit who ran that office, and Hansen, if I recall correctly.

They are right out in the open about their radical environmental politics.

Don't talk about stuff you don't know the facts on.

I won't lie, I kind of enjoy the arguments brought up against science.

Like, really, how can you make it politicized? This is such an america-centric approach. There are scientists all over the world, the overwhelming majority of which agree that climate change is real and man made... And yet one of the top arguments against any authority that speaks out against conspiracies, is that they're not credible because they must be dissidents to the republican party... It's a little mind-boggling if you ask me.

Well let's see here...  Oh, I have an idea!

Why don't we install a person who is perceived by one wing of the idiot public to be of an appropriate racial background and instruct him that one of the two top missions of NASA is to find ways to make Muslims feel good about their accomplishments?

Let's see, you could sneak in at night and monkey with the AC in the senate meeting on Climate in August 1988. That senate committee would be sweltering while the hearing was happening.

That's what Hanson did. Let's see, that's your NASA climate office head, right?

Now what were you saying?

I suppose the question here to all the fossil fuel lobbyists doubters is - if you disagree with 97%, then what of level of consensus would convince you? It's obviously a big subject, with a lot of papers published, and a lot of nuanced argument, so it's easy to challenge the figures, as we are talking about people who can be considered to agree, rather than those who have explicitly stated agreement. Arguing whether it's 97% or 85% or 92% is fair enough - but this is a few percentage points, it doesn't negate the overwhelming consensus.

With any contentious subject* when we are considering bias or lack of impartiality, it is important to consider the underlying motivations of experts who are promoting certain viewpoints. Obviously for fossil fuel lobbyists climate-change deniers, they represent vested interests who stand to lose if the truth is accepted (see also the "smoking doesn't cause cancer" argument). I've yet to see any convincing argument for why the "humans cause climate change" experts could be biased.
"Big Oil" is real. "Big Wind" is not (apart from in an unfortunate dietary sense).


*although this subject isn't contentious - there's a 97% consensus amongst experts

If the 97% argument has merit, then we should all NOT INVEST OR USE BITCOIN OR CRYPTO.

*although this subject isn't contentious - there's a 97% consensus amongst experts


I do hope that my phrasing it this way has helped clear up this crock of shit argument.

Not really. You're using a moral argument to try to refute a logical argument. That doesn't have any effect.

I believe that humans are causing climate change, and I also believe that bitcoin is the future... and will concede that bitcoin contributes to climate change.
Similarly, I only give a very small fraction of my income to families from poorer parts of the world, when I could afford to give more. Also I spend money on buying myself a phone or a PC, when the money could be much better spent my say buying mosquito nets (https://www.againstmalaria.com/).

I said that there is a consensus amongst experts that humans are causing climate change. I didn't say that I was morally perfect.

Not in the least. Unless you think Satoshi's nine page page is moral, instead of logic. I kind of think c programming is logic, though. Don't you? Or perhaps you didn't understand the parallel in my argument and refutation of yours?

Yes... although you should see some of my early code, it really stretches the definition :)

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pointers.png
_{https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pointers.png}

Maybe I didn't. I thought your argument was: It's not true that 97% of climate scientists believe that humans cause climate change... because bitcoin.
I still don't think that a non sequitur is a powerful argument. You are suggesting that, if humans cause climate change, then bitcoin is a part of that human-caused climate change. Yes, agreed. I'm not disputing that. Humans cause climate change. Bitcoin contributes to that.

No, that's not it at all. This is a simple logical refutation of the "consensus argument." Which, by the way, is the very antithesis of scientific method.

It is not an argument for or against the premise of the OP, but simply against the "Argument by Consensus" logical fallacy.

Here it is.

Many people have heard of Bitcoin, and asked their financial advisers about it. The advisors replied, "Almost all in the financial services and banking industries will advise you not to put money into Bitcoin. There is a consensus of opinion on this."

But you are here, so you went against the trend and the supposedly conclusive consensus.

I don't think many people here on the forum are skeptical towards global warming. Most people here seem very realistic, so far the poll shows that. There are some trolls on this forum too who just like to take the opposite site in an argument, even though they don't believe it themself. I mean it's the internet, we will always find people who are against something.

Ah. In that case, yes, I misunderstood. I thought it was a bit of a strange argument. Thanks for clarifying.

I'm still not convinced by your argument, though. We're not saying "97% of the general population believe it, so it must be true". Also we're not really saying "97% of qualified experts believe it, so it must be true"... the part that's missing, the part that's implied, is the belief that the experts have evidence to support their claims. We are not qualified to challenge experts in a field. But other experts are qualified, and fail to produce their own evidence.  So it's not really an ad populum or an appeal to authority, and relying on the evidence-based consensus of scientists is hardly antithetical to the scientific method.

I italicised 'belief' because it does of course rely on belief, as does anything. We trust experts all the time, in everyday life. Doctors, teachers, dentists, plumbers, lawyers, etc. We believe in their expertise. Whilst it is important to challenge received wisdom, the challenge should be for them to provide supporting evidence. With human-caused climate change, the whole thing is based on evidence. The belief is in the evidence.

Umm, yes it is. It is EXACTLY opposed to the scientific method, which is a method of critical inquiry.

But that doesn't stop you from BELIEVING in global warming, or global cooling or whatever.

I am only focused here on the reality that "Argument from authority" is a basic logical fallacy, recognized since Ancient Greece. "Consensus" really is an example of that. Summary, argue for man's destroying the earth all you want, but the "97% consensus" is a really bad way to make that argument.

This is essentially what I was trying to get at earlier in my post:


If you want to prove to me that something is happening then put in the effort to find the science that backs up that narrative. Don't throw figures around about consensus among experts.

Lets say I ask if bitcoin miners will still be incentivized to validate transactions and add them to blocks once the block reward goes to 0 after 2140. If you respond to my question with a figure like "93% of miners agree there will be incentives to continue mining", you may be right, but I'm not really any more knowledgable on the subject. If I haven't learned anything of any substance, I don't have a real reason to believe you. You haven't helped me gain confidence or develop an opinion. On the other hand, you could explain how there are pricing mechanisms that incentivize miners through transaction fees, and as long as miners and users can agree to a fair fee, the network will continue to operate. This answer would give me something to work with, I would be able to think about the reasoning and maybe we could actually debate that argument.

The 'trick' of the '97%' scam (Cook et-al) is to say the 'ninety seven percent' part, but leave the 97% believe XXX blank and allow the reader to assume one thing or another.  'humans cause' is deliberately vague,  And sometimes they even leave that out and say scientists 'believe in ' climate change.  Well, everyone 'believes in' climate change including 'deniers'.

I read somewhere that if the question is:

  "Do you [competent scientist with domain experience] believe that the human contribution of carbon dioxide
     to the atmosphere accounts for more than 50% of the warming which the earth has experienced over the last 100 years."

it is far fewer than 3% of the scientist who report to believe that this hypothesis is true.  In my study of the science and mathematics behind the subject that is what I would expect.  I cannot imagine (and have not seen) a competent scientist arguing that human contribution to atmospheric CO2 since the industrial revolution is a major factor in global warming.  The science simply isn't there.  A much more sustainable argument is that pollution and land use changes which humans are responsible for have induced a strong enough signal to be seen.  It just doesn't work for CO2 as a greenhouse gas is all.

Okay, your argument is basically that we cannot trust any evidence that we haven't gathered ourselves. In order to determine whether humans are causing climate change, I need to become an expert, and then gather and interpret my own evidence. But of course no-one will ever be able to trust my evidence... everyone needs to become an expert and gather their own evidence. This is clearly absurd. Society and the economy grind to a halt. No-one visits doctors, dentists, lawyers, plumbers etc, and instead tries to learn the relevant skills themselves. People are injured through trying to perform surgery on themselves (because you would never trust anyone else). You are typing on a phone or a keyboard, which presumably you have not built yourself from raw materials. You trusted the experts, and bought that device... why?




From earlier in this thread:


The poll suggests that most people here believe the science, but the contents of the thread suggest that they are reluctant to argue the point. In retrospect I should have followed their example.

Meaningless factoid.

-
A tiny percent of the CO2 released into the atmosphere (and absorbed out of the atmosphere) annually is from human activity.


Various scientists have challenged the results of other scientists over this finding and the magnitude of it.


CO2 is CO2.  It is not possible to distinguish one 'variety' as fossil fuel derived and another as the result of a biological process.  Nor does CO2 from one source act any differently than that from another in terms of being re-absorbed.


Every atom or molecule 'absorbs heat'.  Every atom or molecule also 'releases heat'.  Meaningless statement.


It's an observation which could be explained by a great many hypotheses.  Some mutually exclusive and some not.


The sun (which is responsible for something like 99.999% of the energy in the atmosphere (aka, heat)) has not been ruled out as a factor in so-called 'climate change.'


Computer models have nowhere near the power to simulate such tiny factors as human contribution.  They inevitably err on the alarmist side as has been proven by observations made.  Not surprising since money is allocated to people and programs which achieve this result and withdrawn or withheld from programs which tend to try to achieve accuracy.


Again, consensus about what exactly?  This is the trick I described.

No scientist wants to stand behind your list of ridiculous 'points' because they are not sustainable.  That's why, yet again, we see a vague assertion that 'scientists say something' but what the names of the scientists are and what, exactly, they say is left to the imagination of the (usually highly indoctrinated and propagandized) viewer.

That sounds very reasonable to me. If on the other hand you ask credible scientists "have humans contributed to (blah blah blaH) virtually all would answer "yes" because 1% is a yes answer, as well as 99% and all points in between.

Not true at all. Evidence is only one step in the scientific method, and it is often gathered by others than those doing a study. Let me just ask a simple question. What is the hypothesis you seek to prove or disprove?


The scientific method is an empirical method of acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century. It involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation. It involves formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; experimental and measurement-based testing of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings. These are principles of the scientific method, as distinguished from a definitive series of steps applicable to all scientific enterprises.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

So why isn't the overwhelming evidence published by established academics and institutions fit for your standards to confirm climate change is real and man made?

It's been here since the bottom of the last ice age.

You are not reading or thinking, but parroting.

Evidence is one single step in the method. I did link to it.

But one response to your assertion is worth making. Dr. Michael Mann, inventor of the "Hockey Stick" of global warming fame, hid his data and his procedures and methods.

As a result, his conclusions are worthless.

I'm curious if you have a problem with that.

I wonder if the  replication crisis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis) would show it's ugly face in climate science provided academics were allowed to pursue alternative theories without outstanding backlash.

Here's a relevant quote from Peter Thiel

Excellent question, link, and Thiel quote.

Here are a couple 'thought questions' on the general subject. All are the "show your work" variety, so answers parroted from the internet won't work.

1. What is the equilibrium temperature of the Earth?  The average temperature? The correct temperature?
2. Can anything prevent the next ice age? What?
3. What are the implications of the virial theorem for Earth's temperature?
4. If "global warming" is a scientific theory, what was the hypothesis?

And why exactly is that? This is the core of my question.

Hypothetically speaking, if a 100% neutral and insensitive AI was doing all the data collection, the would have been very much the same.
Yet you seem to disregard any and all proof of man made global warming for political reasons(?) because according to supporters of such theories scientists are politicized/controlled yadda yadda and therefore should not be trusted for their conclusion... So I'm just asking, who is to be trusted for stating the objective truth in that case? The outliers go against the overwhelming majority you might say. But are they really more credible than the entire scientific consensus?

So, you'll ignore completely my question about Mann's data and methods, and go on to another parroted talking point. Blah-blah-blah.

Or do you actually not understand why it's unacceptable for a scientist to actively prevent people from attempting to replicate his results?

If there is believed to be "a consensus", replication and verification of results is no longer required? (Hint: Your response to this tells us if you are an idiot bot or a human. Hint Hint: Humans can be bots also)

Obviously it's quite unacceptable for a scientist to not publish the data. As is the case with all the YouTube "scholars" that parrot conspiracy theories that global warming is a hoax etc. Always without citing credible sources and without being lead to this conclusion based on acceptable evidence.

Great, then we agree that any credible belief in the hockey stick of temperature cannot be based on Mann's work, and it should be discredited (more than it already is).

There are definitely some claims that are true, but not all. Thats why a lot of people dont trust the media.

I think this is true, our environment changes dramatically, but I'm still not sure to what degree it's anthropogenic and how much of it is naturally occuring process. The best stance about the issue I've stumbled upon was given by Jordan B Peterson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y564PsKvNZs

Honestly Peterson these days has a position on everything. Sometimes he should accept that things are beyond his area of expertise.

What did he say in the video that you disagree with?