What level of responsibility do you feel for the negative impacts of anthropogenic climate change?

[Monte_RCMS]

Need to see GASLAND before making a final judgment on this issue. Even tho fracking might actually help re AGW, it does cause tremendous local pollution, health problems and death. .

Instead of “Gasland”, view “FrackNation”.

fracknation.com/

youtube.com/user/noteviljustwrong

rottentomatoes.com/m/fracknation/

 

[migueltojose]

A great deal of responsibility. I think God expects us to be good stewards of the planet, not do whatever we want to it.

I think God would want us to continue to increase the quality of life for all, which we did with the industrial revolution, infrastructure, utilities, mobility, independence, technology, discovery, research and development. Should we have stayed in caves?

At the time we did those things we didn’t undrstand or couldn’t comprehend or foresee the consequences. There is no fault. Just facts.

So now what do we do? Go backward? No. Not gonna happen and wouldn’t be right anyway. Technology is the answer. Always has been, usually just in the nick of time. Hmm… wonder how that happens…

 

[lynnvinc]

Then think of this as a thread for those who are trying to quit beating their wives.

I think that is an extremely important point, because who is NOT treating their spouse (if they have one) in a miserable way? Let’s be honest, most of us are pretty mean to the ones we love the most, at least at times, at least occasionally or rarely, and those times can cut deep into the heart of the victim.

A good examination of conscience will reveal many faults and flaws. And if we are completely honest, will also reveal we are not doing much to mitigate AGW, at least not as much as we can. And for those who reject AGW (even if they accept GW), it will reveal we have accepted and promoted the risk of enormous number of human lives and others of God’s good creation over prudence of doing what we can to mitigate, despite our serious doubts. Perhaps even reveal our disrespect for climate scientists and their work, and lack of compassionate understanding when they make a few mistakes (which are ultimately caught and corrected by the scientific community, or time and new data). Might even reveal serious sins, such as slander of Al Gore.

Now God only expects us to “be perfect” to the extent we can – not perform miracles. That’s His job. And to understand that if we have made any strides at all in reducing our GHG emissions, it is His doing and benevolent grace, not ours. So there is nothing at all for us to be proud about, except the Cross of Christ, and there is every reason for us all to do a good examination of conscience daily or weekly at least.

 

[lynnvinc]

1. I have no doubt that these fellows did their level best to calibrate their models and get an accurate projection. What I’m not sure you understand yet is that calibration itself is where bias and opinion are introduced into model results. When they increase the sensitivity parameters related to greenhouse gases in order to get predictions that match the results, they have functionally built an ASSUMPTION into the model that greenhouse gasses ARE the primary driver of temperature increases. If this IS the blunder they made and there are actually other mechanisms not fully identified that contributed to the temperature rise, then by the principle of error analysis one would expect that when the calibrated model is used to project the effects of FURTHER increases in greenhouse gases that these effects would be OVER-predicted if the actual drivers not identified in the model did not change (whew, what a mouthful!). The fact that this is PRECISELY what has happened (models are significantly over-predicting temperature rises in the last decade), suggests that their calibration isn’t good yet.

As I stated I know full well, bec I have queried climate scientists about this – they are NOT including longer term positive feedbacks of huge gigatons worth of carbon release from melting hydrates and permafrost, so they are GROSSLY underestimating the problem. And you are right, they seem to have a tendency to think their models are reality. Comes with the territory.

They indeed do include ALL the known factors into their models … to the extent they are able, given computer power, and whether the factors are quantifiable with functions (they admit there are other factors that do not meet these specs). They run the models without the GHGs, and find they do not match up at all with actual data; in other words, only when they add in the GHGs and their impact (which has been long accepted in science for over 100 years, and now with paleoclimatological proof going back millions of years and from Venus and Mars, as well) are they able to closely match their models with actual data. You might want to contact these scientists and find out more. I’ve found them to be very forth-coming, as long as they think someone is trying to find out the truth and not merely attack them.

The reason computer models are important is because we do not have 2 earths on which to run this experiement – one with extra GHGs added, and one without extra GHGs added. In fact such an experiment would never pass IRB. What we are conducting is a natural experiment, and we have to do the best we can outside of the laboratory.

RE climate sensitivity – that is not merely determined by computer models, but also paleoclimatology, which has set certain possible boundaries of what sensitivity can be. Of course time will be the ultimate determinant of what the actual sensitivity is. I understand it is a log function, which for all intents and purposes is being treated as a linear function for the next 100 or so years – but the idea is if GHGs were to jump way way up, the impact would not be as great as these initial phases of them increasing. OTOH, at that point of tremendous GHGs AND solar irradiance having increased over the past millions of years, we’d probably all be dead by that time anyway – so no one to tell us the extact sensitivity at such&such a really high GHG level. I wonder if anyone is still alive on Venus doing climate science there?

On a final note, climate science is NOT restricted to computer models, but includes a wide array of many different studies…and they all dovetail into “AGW is real” and is happening…

1. Few to no serious research scientists have permanent jobs in endowed institutions. The vast majority of them will starve unless they produce study results sexy enough to allow them to sell their NEXT research grant request. This increasingly makes the science business like the journalism business: If you don’t make headline news, you don’t keep the revenue flowing. Attention and money flow to those who make the biggest splash. Findings of “Studies are Inconclusive and More Research is Needed” stop selling papers and grant requests very quickly.

Many climate scientists came from related fields (or had the option of going into non-controversial fields) and would have been quite happy to remain there, obscure in some lab or field doing their work without being viciously attacked. It is true brilliant scientists have been flowing into climate science because it is a very important field and a highly complex one (we’re talking about nearly all of earth systems).

It is good, decent, and very courageous of them to risk their lives and their children’s lives to do climate science. I don’t think any whacko denialist has actually killed any climate scientist yet, but they have lobbed death threats at them and their families, and I think it is just a matter of time before a climate scientist or his/her family member get assassinated.

Climate scientists are true heroes. I applaud them for not being bought out or intimidated by the denialist industry.

We should all have the courage to stand up for truth and justice.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It is good, decent, and very courageous of them to risk their lives and their children’s lives to do climate science. I don’t think any whacko denialist has actually killed any climate scientist yet, but they have lobbed death threats at them and their families, and I think it is just a matter of time before a climate scientist or his/her family member get assassinated.

Climate scientists are true heroes. I applaud them for not being bought out or intimidated by the denialist industry.

We should all have the courage to stand up for truth and justice.

You know, Lynnvinc, everybody on here believes he/she is standing up for truth and justice. You believe people will die because of the MMGW you believe in. Many believe people will die if they can’t afford their food or utility bills due to artificial and unnecessary curbs on energy use.

But it’s very far from the “truth” you espouse to continuously apply the derisive term “denialist” (taken from the term applied to those who deny that the Holocaust occurred, and with the very same spirit of opprobrium) to people of entirely good will, many of whom have looked into it extensively, and then to further suggest that they are “whacko” and perhaps murderers to boot.

Not only is that an expression of an (undoubtedly inadvertent) untruth, but it is hardly “justice” to accuse people of being murderers in intent when, in fact, they are not.

Your discourse is generally quite civil, but it is unfortunately marred on occasion by inadvertent lapses of this kind. I do realize that people who are deeply imbued with literature promoting a particular point of view tend to adopt the language of the writers of the literature espousing that point of view. But to the extent that excessive and insulting language is used, it detracts from the message in the same sort of way the astonishingly profligate use of fossil fuels personally by the major political proponents of MMGW does.