"Letting coral reefs die will cost us more than saving them".

[Daniel@R2R]

Guys, just a quick reminder to please keep this thread civil. Disagreement and debate is fine, healthy, and encouraged. However, we take very seriously the rule to be courteous to one another. Keep your comments focused on the issues and refrain from personal attacks.

 

[Scrubber_steve]

NASA does a nice job of explaining the overwhelming evidence that recent warming is linked to human activity here:
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Again, no they don't.
They note the rise in CO2, & incorrectly describe it as "heat-trapping" rather than absorbing & then releasing heat, & neglect to say that the effect of doubling it only results in 1C.

They half lie when they state "Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earth’s climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels".
Its well proven that its the other way round with CO2 levels responding to changes in Earth’s climate. And they should say how a vast amount of methane is released into the atmosphere from growing rice, & from wetlands.

Nothing on that page gives evidence that the warming of, & glacier retreat, starting at least 200 years ago is anything but natural. Its just assumptions through correlation, & correlation does not prove causation.

 

[themcfreak]

Again, no they don't.
They note the rise in CO2, & incorrectly describe it as "heat-trapping" rather than absorbing & then releasing heat, & neglect to say that the effect of doubling it only results in 1C.

They half lie when they state "Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earth’s climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels".
Its well proven that its the other way round with CO2 levels responding to changes in Earth’s climate. And they should say how a vast amount of methane is released into the atmosphere from growing rice, & from wetlands.

Nothing on that page gives evidence that the warming of, & glacier retreat, starting at least 200 years ago is anything but natural. Its just assumptions through correlation, & correlation does not prove causation.

I will say up front that you clearly have more knowledge than I do. both of you do.
However, how do you call NASA 'half liars'? How do you discredit so much that NOAA says? You seem to think that all of these scientists are just lying throughout their teeth? You are both giving information, graphs, data. How does one determine which ones are fake and which ones aren't? And these are legitimate questions, not questioning what you are saying with the data you are showing. And on the flip side, Bio is doing the same thing. You are calling each other liars (essentially, or at least the scientists that are saying the information each of you is backing). So this goes to both of you. Both of you each seem to be very smart, and have data to back your theories. But each of you is absolutely right, and the other is wrong. So how do each of you know that you are correct and the other is wrong? Seems like it has to come to an opinion, and opinion is just that. It can be based on interpretation of fact, but it is still just an opinion, right?

 

[WVNed]

I will say up front that you clearly have more knowledge than I do. both of you do.
However, how do you call NASA 'half liars'? How do you discredit so much that NOAA says? You seem to think that all of these scientists are just lying throughout their teeth? You are both giving information, graphs, data. How does one determine which ones are fake and which ones aren't? And these are legitimate questions, not questioning what you are saying with the data you are showing. And on the flip side, Bio is doing the same thing. You are calling each other liars (essentially, or at least the scientists that are saying the information each of you is backing). So this goes to both of you. Both of you each seem to be very smart, and have data to back your theories. But each of you is absolutely right, and the other is wrong. So how do each of you know that you are correct and the other is wrong? Seems like it has to come to an opinion, and opinion is just that. It can be based on interpretation of fact, but it is still just an opinion, right?

Perhaps an internet search on "NOAA Rigged Data" would be enlightening.

 

[Oldreefer44]

Or a search on what percentage of actual "scientists" believe that climate change is exacerbated by humans. And before you start berating scientists and science in general, I suggest you think about where we would be in reefing and the human existence in general without science and scientists. Rush Limbaugh is not a scientist.

 

[biophilia]

I will say up front that you clearly have more knowledge than I do. both of you do.
However, how do you call NASA 'half liars'? How do you discredit so much that NOAA says? You seem to think that all of these scientists are just lying throughout their teeth? You are both giving information, graphs, data. How does one determine which ones are fake and which ones aren't? And these are legitimate questions, not questioning what you are saying with the data you are showing. And on the flip side, Bio is doing the same thing. You are calling each other liars (essentially, or at least the scientists that are saying the information each of you is backing). So this goes to both of you. Both of you each seem to be very smart, and have data to back your theories. But each of you is absolutely right, and the other is wrong. So how do each of you know that you are correct and the other is wrong? Seems like it has to come to an opinion, and opinion is just that. It can be based on interpretation of fact, but it is still just an opinion, right?

I can only speak for myself, but the way I look at it is as follows:

I’m not a climate scientist or an expert by any means. I have had the privilege of being taught by many who are experts, though, so that’s the place I can draw my own conclusions from. The lessons I learned from them is that it’s possible to find individual studies that show nearly anything (coffee causes cancer! Coffee doesn’t doesn’t cause cancer! Cephalopods come from outer space! Etc, etc). As a result, it’s important to keep the skeptic muscles in our brains working, but often the pragmatic thing to do is go with the sort of emergent “truths” that come from decades of literature, meta-analysis studies, etc. because the alternative is to slip into some sort of bizarre postmodern world where there are no truths to be known about anything — in which case why do anything? Why study anything? Why care?

Because I’m not an expert, but have learned enough from people who are to know that the climate is an immensely complex system with many variables that work together in ways that make it possible for individual studies of specific variables to sometimes show things that contradict other processes, my gut instinct is to trust the people, agencies, and academies who have spent half a century or more studying this. Therefore the position of all 200
National Science academies, the curriculum taught at every major research university on the planet, NASA, NOAA, all of the world’s governments, and the greatest scientific minds of our century (Hawking, E.O. Wilson, etc, etc) is good enough for me.

I also look at it from the perspective that even if they’re all wrong and humans are not the cause of all of the recent warming, almost nobody is debating the fact that we’re responsible for at least some of it. And that alone is reason to do everything we can to limit emissions. Not to mention all of the other associated issues like ocean acidification, PM 2.5 particulate pollution which kills millions, energy poverty issues, wars fueled by desire to control extractive resources, etc.

I distrust positions that frame climate issues entirely around partisan policy. I don’t care about the policy of any particular party. I just want solutions. I didn’t come to care about the future of earth and her species because of some political agenda. I came to it because I’ve spent hundreds of days and thousands of miles traveling by foot through some of the most remote wilderness areas in the lower 48 over the last decade and have come away from that experience fairly heartbroken over the obvious strain I’ve witnessed firsthand that humans are putting on our fragile planet.

 

[Scrubber_steve]

I'll go ahead and stick with NASA on this one. Since I'm not a climate scientist myself, I try to get my information from reputable agencies that employee hundreds of them rather than blog posts. They seem to be smart folks.

"Since the early 1980s, surface temperature data clearly and strongly suggest that the surfaces of the global oceans warmed in response to naturally occurring ocean-atmosphere processes, not as a result of greenhouse gas emissions."

Lets look at the Last Interglacial Period (LIG).

Temperature LIG

Regional and global sea-surface temperatures during the last interglaciation
Hoffman, Clark, Parnell, Feng He
https://www.researchgate.net/public..._temperatures_during_the_last_interglaciation

Abstract
The last interglaciation (LIG, 129 to 116 thousand years ago) was the most recent time in Earth’s history when global mean sea level was substantially higher than it is at present. However, reconstructions of LIG global temperature remain uncertain, with estimates ranging from no significant difference to nearly 2°C warmer than present-day temperatures. Here we use a network of sea-surface temperature (SST) records to reconstruct spatiotemporal variability in regional and global SSTs during the LIG. Our results indicate that peak LIG global mean annual SSTs were 0.5 ± 0.3°C warmer than the climatological mean from 1870 to 1889 and indistinguishable from the 1995 to 2014 mean. LIG warming in the extratropical latitudes occurred in response to boreal insolation and the bipolar seesaw, whereas tropical SSTs were slightly cooler than the 1870 to 1889 mean in response to reduced mean annual insolation.
===============================================================

Sea levels during the last interglacial period were 6 to 9 m higher than present. Sea level is rising now, naturally, because ice left over from the last iceage is still melting.
The last interglacial period was known to be warmer than present, & sea surface temperatures were indistinguishable from present.
And CO2 concentrations during the last interglacial period were 280ppm (present 408ppm)

All that & all natural. Nothing to do with CO2!

 

[samnaz]

The number of domesticated cows in the US far outnumbers wild bison populations.

Took the words right outta my mouth...