It amazes me that so many are in denial of what is obvious to the rest of us, that is there are huge changes happening and it is accelerating... Many can't seem to make the connection between rampant fire storms & floods in many states, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes, extreme heat waves, etc. Not to mention writing off the vast majority of scientific data and predictions.... ----- How the science of persuasion could change the politics of climate change Jerry Taylor believes he can change the minds of conservative climate skeptics. After all, he helped plant the doubts for many in the first place. Taylor spent years as a professional climate denier at the Cato Institute, arguing against climate science, regulations, and treaties in op-eds, speeches, and media appearances. But his perspective slowly began to change around the turn of the century, driven by the arguments of several economists and legal scholars laying out the long-tail risks of global warming. Now he’s president of the Niskanen Center, a libertarian-leaning Washington, DC, think tank he founded in 2014. He and his colleagues there are trying to build support for the passage of an aggressive federal carbon tax, through discussions with Washington insiders, with a particular focus on Republican legislators and their staff. A small but growing contingent of fiscal conservatives and corporate interests are arguing for similar policies in the United States. They include party elders like former secretary of state George Shultz, energy giants like Exxon Mobil, and nearly two dozen college Republican groups. Taylor and others believe it’s conversations like these—with political elites, and focused on policies they can justify in conservative terms—that could eventually lead to real action on climate change. While much of the research and debate today focuses on figuring out the right mix of clean energy sources, or on developing better and cheaper technologies, the real breakthrough that’s required might lie in the science of persuasion. We’ll never generate enough clean energy to dramatically cut emissions in the next few decades—while abandoning fossil-fuel plants that still work perfectly well—as long as so many political leaders adamantly deny even the existence of anthropogenic climate change. (continued at link) How the science of persuasion could change the politics of climate change
Many seem to have forgotten how polluted the air, water and cluttered the planet was before the EPA and other agencies stepped in to clean it up... ----- Vintage photos taken by the EPA reveal what America looked like before pollution was regulated Before the Environmental Protection Agency started regulating pollution in the nation's air, water, and land, things were dire. These photos show how bad it was. We've made significant progress since then, but there's still a lot of work to do to keep our environment and those who live in it healthy. The Trump administration's EPA aims to roll back a number of environmental protections, though Scott Pruitt resigned on July 5 amid ethics scandals. The new acting administrator of the EPA, Andrew Wheeler, is likely to continue with a similar agenda. Now that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has announced his retirement, many experts think a number of environmental regulations could get overturned. Vintage photos taken by the EPA reveal what America looked like before pollution was regulated
Not to detract from one trying to learn about climate, but it is a horrendously complex situation that scientists are only beginning to understand. Your average person and even non-climate scientists have little hope of knowing wtf they are talking about. It might be easier to trust the information if we didn't already know it is so highly politicized for nefarious purposes.
I'm one of those guys. Please tell me how a forest fire is related to a volcanic eruption. Other than they are both hot, of course.
I'm legit on the fence. I understand how people who purposely who are wasteful and, cause landfills are hurting the environment but, does that actually my climate in anyway? Like will I not be able to grow my cannabis and, strawberries? I'm not denying it I understand changes are taking place but, to what extent and, exactly what do I need to do to help even in the slightest? I recycle I don't drink bottled water unless its given to me I grow plants I'm to understand that helps the earth as well I clean up trash everytime I see it when I hike or walk outside my house I'd rather use hemp over plastic if I can I walk and, soon want to buy an electric car as my 1st car Educate me please if you know the answers.
If i had all the answers i would likely be busy working the solutions... the topic has just begun and i felt it will encourage me to check the data and reasoning... highly suggest you try to catch ONE STRANGE ROCK on National Geographic if they have a channel or actually a local Fox channel (of all places) is where i watched a few episodes, each are an hour long and on Sunday afternoon or night... Suffice to say there is an infinite correlation in the universe... the planet is alive, it is crawling with life, it lives and breathes in it's own way... i feel we need to take care of it not only for ourselves now but generations to come... Eastern thought says "if you take care of the earth she will take care of you"... instead since the industrial revolution we have be raping the planet, destroying rain forests, replacing them with grazing land and or feedlots for cattle or whatever critter man feels he needs to eat much of on a frequent basis.... one question at a time, i don't think for the planet but it does react to changes... i recall a couple of decades ago you never heard of a tsunami and rarely a volcano... after drought often comes fire storms, then floods and mudslides, etc... rinse and repeat again and again... Human beings are no longer in harmony with nature they have lost the communication link that was there when they were farming or before that the native american indians had their connection with it as well...
You are doing a lot of the right things by not leaving a smaller and greener footprint so to speak on the planet... i remember the days when it was common to burn trash in a barrel and each house had one in the alley or back yard... same for industry, just burn off all manner of gunk and toxic chemicals or dump them in the rivers.... things have come a long way to protect the Ozone which all life needs to survive here.... it's all tied together, healthy rivers mean healthy oceans and sea critters... Lichen is very important i just found out as well. If this topic lasts awhile perhaps answers will come at least scientific facts which i trust more than those who are merely climate or pollution change deniers.... so you may want to watch the topic if interested.
David Lappi was a geologist who wanted to open more mines, in fact he had a financial interest in loosening regulations. Totally biased and discredited by all but the looney right.
That graph has been attributed to many different people but from digging it seemed to originate on Joanne Nova's website. Lappi is usually credited for the graph.
I'd be skeptical because of Lappi's track record. I've seen copies of that graph up until 1950, extended till 2000 and even one that runs until 2015. The temperature drop between the low and high is also 1.5'. Tbh, climate change is low on my list of concerns. Warmongering and the spread of US style fascism is a far bigger threat.
Are you denying the Earth has gone thru warm and cold periods and several times it was a lot warmer than it is now?
A 2006 National Research Council review of the evidence concluded “with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries”. Michael Mann and his colleagues seems to confirm that the Medieval Warm Period and the “Little Ice Age” between 1400 and 1700 were both caused by shifts in solar radiance and other natural factors that do not seem to be happening today. It's not as simple as your graph Ed, climate deniers focus on that graph because it appears to reinforce their beliefs. I'd put my trust in the 97%+ of scientists who accept that climate change is very real and a threat to our existence.
As some are saying.... Even if Global Warming or Climate Change is a myth and we end up with cleaner air, cleaner planet safe drinking water, no more nuclear plants built so no more of that danger.... clean rivers, lakes, ocean, more abundant and safe sea food, etc... Yes, i'm mixing in just simple common sense, keep the regulations we have and add more if needed... i don't see it drifting off climate change topic that much if any when you consider the hole that was found in the ozone due to chemical plants sending toxins into the air... that hole is shrinking now that regulations were enforced... Ending up with a cleaner plant even if it is a myth as big oil would have us believe is worth it imo.
No, people say humans impact on Climate Change is minimal, and nature is the one effecting the Earth's temps. Like the sun, and it's solar cycles. Nobody is denying the planet doesn't go through warming and cooling periods. If you look at the warming trend over the last 100 years, and the predicted model for the next 100 years, no increase between the two. This is predicted to have the same level of rising even though the first 100 years had no industrial revolution. The earth warms, and cools. It goes through cycles, and we are in a warming cycle. For further evidence, look to our solar system, and how the planets are heating up at the same rate as Earth. We know Jupiter doesn't have SUV's, so what's causing the planet to heat up? The sun most likely.
18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time of first Earth Day in 1970, expect more this year 18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time of first Earth Day in 1970, expect more this year - AEI 1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” 2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment. 3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” 4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” 5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” 6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.” 7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness. 8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” 9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” 10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” 11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate. 12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles. 13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years). 14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'” 15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990. 16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” 17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.” 18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
Global Warming: A New Study Could Destroy Doomsday Climate Change Forecasts A Startling New Discovery Could Destroy All Those Global Warming Doomsday Forecasts Climate Change: Scientists just discovered a massive, heretofore unknown, source of nitrogen. Why does this matter? Because it could dramatically change those dire global warming forecasts that everybody claims are based on "settled science." The researchers, whose findings were published in the prestigious journal Science, say they've determined that the idea that the only source of nitrogen for plant life came from the air is wrong. There are vast storehouses in the planet's bedrock that plants also feed on. This is potentially huge news, since what it means is that there is a vastly larger supply of nitrogen than previously believed. University of California at Davis environmental scientist and co-author of the study, Ben Houlton, says that "This runs counter the centuries-long paradigm that has laid the foundation for the environmental sciences." Climate scientists have long known that plants offset some of the effects of climate change by absorbing and storing CO2. But climate scientists assumed that the ability to plants to perform this function was limited because the availability of nitrogen in the atmosphere was limited. As a 2003 study published in the same Science journal put it, "there will not be enough nitrogen available to sustain the high carbon uptake scenarios." In the wake of the latest findings, Ronald Amundson, a soil biogeochemist at the University of California at Berkeley, told Chemical and Engineering News that "If there is more nitrogen there than expected, then the constraints on plant growth in a high-CO2 world may not be as great as we think." In other words, with more nitrogen available, plant life might be able to absorb more CO2 than climate scientists have been estimating, which means the planet won't warm as much, despite mankind's pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.