They
Hmm, interesting argument.
“They” have been warning us about global warming since the late 70s, and sure enough it’s been getting worse and worse, therefore it’s time to stop believing in it.
Uh…what?
Tip Jar
Hmm, interesting argument.
“They” have been warning us about global warming since the late 70s, and sure enough it’s been getting worse and worse, therefore it’s time to stop believing in it.
Uh…what?
So, he likes his catastrophes nice a prompt then? Okaaay.
Or he thinks they have a deadline, and if they don’t meet it, the clock goes back to zero?
I don’t know, I can’t grasp the logic of this at all.
In the 70s didn’t “they” think it was a few hundred years off? Now that it’s become a present threat definitely time to stop catastrophizing, correct?
Classic straw dude argument. “Apocalypse” is Judeo-Christian bullshit. From the Greek word for “unveiling,” it represents “John of Patmos'” eschatological vision of Christ’s return and the Final Tribulation.
Climate change ain’t none of that shit (and neither are Peak Oil, ecological overshoot, or over-population).
It don’t need to be no “apocalypse” to be Hell on Earth.
No, the world is NOT going to end. No matter how hard you may wish it…
I recall that back in the 70’s there was a popular prediction that, due to pollution, we were right on the brink of another Ice Age. There were also a lot of concerns about drastic effects of overpopulation which were supposed to have already occurred by now. I’ve since read that these unfulfilled prophesies weren’t made by experts in the fields, but popularizers.
My guess is that the Disaffected One is referring to something like the above.
There are no hurricanes in Vermont yet? He’s just a contrarian floating intellectually in space these days.
@sastra – the reason that there was a prediction towards a an ice age in the 1970’s was that science did not yet have good enough models to determine if the particulates from pollution would deflect sunlight and cause cooling, or if the carbon load in the atmosphere would cause warming. Governments actually took action to reduce particulates and reduce the threat of cooling. As the science of climate data collection and modeling has improved the answer has become clear. According to Skeptical Science, even then, the consensus of climate science was towards warming:
https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm
Steven Schneider admitted his mistake in predicting cooling.
I don’t know what would make Josh happy. Things are changing rapidly. Ash borers are moving north as the climate warms and they are killing trees that don’t have a defense for them. The fishery is dying off due to bleached corals, fires are burning, Lake Mead is drying up, the Jet Stream is out of wack and will be pushing the polar vortex further south again this winter.
If you don’t pay close enough attention to the changes that are happening, things probably look pretty peachy in places. My grass is green and the maples out front still have most of their leaves. It’s mid-October and I have only turned on the heat for three days so far this autumn. Just last year, I had benen using 3 times as much gas for the furnace, according to the statement from my power company. Almost makes one forget about the drought this summer!
Josh just thinks he’s smarter than anyone else and his proof is that he’s cynical, moreso than us sheeple.
This wasn’t really a function of science so much as the media. Yes, there was a scientist who predicted it, but the scientific literature was already pointing to warming.
This is an argument I hear ALL THE TIME, and I guess you could say I’m sick of it, because I keep having to explain that no, scientists were not wrong then, it was the media, and one or two scientists, and no, even if they were wrong then that does not automatically mean they are wrong now.
You can work a lot of mischief with selective demands for rigor. And while it’s hardly limited to self-proclaimed skeptics, it is one of the common ways that such people go wrong.
All you have to do is hold one side of an argument — and only that side — to incredibly strict standards. So if climate scientists ever got anything wrong, if even one prediction was a little off, then the whole field of study can be dismissed. Of course, the same is not true of the other side — climate change denialists can get one prediction wrong after another, and be caught in outright lies, and their credibility is somehow deemed unblemished. This is where the “but the burden of proof is on the claimant” can be abused to try to give critics a free pass. The game is to implicitly assume that the truth is a binary: either the claimant is 100% right, or 100% wrong, and since the claimant bears the burden, we ignore the critic’s misses and count anything less than perfection by the claimant as a fatal flaw.
Creationists have been doing this all along. If Darwin got one thing wrong, then the entire theory of evolution must fall. If two biologists disagree on something, then the field is unsettled and therefore anything goes. Piltdown Man was a hoax, therefore all evidence in favor of evolution is discredited. Of course, they never apply these standards to their own side. Creationists can make one wrong statement or prediction after another, and it goes down the memory hole. Old Earth and Young Earth Creationists can’t agree on whether the planet is thousands of years old or billions of years old, but never mind that, they agree that evolution is a lie. Creationists get caught in one lie after another — including perjury — and it isn’t supposed to affect their credibility.
Of course, people like this disaffected podcaster can spot these techniques when they’re being used by people they aren’t inclined to agree with, but will happily invoke them when it suits their own purposes.
Down here in OZ, the Murdoch media has done a 180 turn, from vehement opposition to any mitigations of climate change to suddenly having a 16-page wrap around on every capital city tabloid on the same day. The shills on Sky (our Fox) are apoplectic that their boss has hung them out to dry, but are still spewing their misinformation.
This is a classic ploy from Lord Molloch. His tabloids pivot and turn whichever way the wind blows to reap the greatest number of advertising dollars. Sky isn’t reliant on advertisers, it is a subscription service. Sky has a much narrower viewership profile than the tabloids, so he can appeal to his advertisers and keep his core pay TV audience happy at the same time.
Yet of course there are people out there thinking we should just spew particulate into the upper atmosphere intentionally to try and increase the planets albedo and therefore reduce warming, because, like, what could possibly go wrong. It’s mostly tech bro’s, engineers and simpletons – which to be fair are mostly the same crowd – but even so. Some people are determined not to learn the lesson of unintended consequences. They want everything to be reducible to a sound bite.
Wind-driven advertising direction, sounds highly environmentally friendly.
I actually have a slide in my global warming lectures that deals with this particular issue, and why it wouldn’t work.
@iknklast I’m interested in what you have to say on it. I have my own guesses, inexpert of course. It seems to me that gravity may pose a problem, I would think.
But even if there were an egineering solution that didn’t involve reducing the carbon dioxide and methane (and water vapor) in the air, it would be a matter of running to stand still. It seems like it makes more sense to reduce the greenhouse gases in the air.
Michael, you’re right, but that would involve changing lifestyles and shifting capital from one area of investment to another. People with money invested in industries directly or indirectly linked to fossil fuels don’t want to see that happen by and large. Also, most of the first and second world population are probably down with ‘saving the climate’, as long as they can still buy the car they want, the nice big house, the kitchen appliances that use electricity from a coal fired power station and of course take a holiday somewhere nice as soon as Covid is under control. In short, other than maybe a bit of half-hearted recycling, most of us do shit to prevent climate change.
Michael, I actually make three points. One is that the particulates tend to be regional; it only works where pollution is the greatest (which is probably why we see the highest levels of warming in the polar regions). Also, the pollutants tend to only last a few days to weeks in the atmosphere, so they dissipate while the greenhouse gases continue to collect, so they pretty quickly overwhelm the particulates. Finally, the fact that we cleaned the air up for a reason. Some of the pollutants are toxic. They all tend to interfere with visibility, which is problematic for animals that hunt visually, such as some of the birds.
Which will, of course, be used as evidence against global warming. If there were a hell, I would have wished for James Inhofe to be confined to an extra-specially unpleasant part of it.
Ah yes, the “antacid” solution to climate change; find a fix for the painful symptoms that doesn’t require any change to the behaviour that caused them in the first place.
The CCP wants to control the world for a few centuries right? Given the global response to COVID-19, why not just engineer something nastier, build a series of mRNA vaccines to counteract it, then let it loose in rival countries? Throw in a cyber attack during hurricane season in the US for good measure and you’ve significantly reduced the output of one of the biggest CO2 generators in the world without China changing anything locally.
Or am I thinking too much like a supervillain?