# Is Global Warming real?



## Janx (Aug 18, 2015)

I've been reading State of Fear by Michael Crighton.  It's about Global Warming and eco-terrorists.

I would preface this discussion with some things:
generally speaking, pollution and mass destruction of nature are bad things.  Arguing against global warming might be mistaken as support for these things.
Folks who disbelieved in Global Warming might have been assumed to be in cahoots with BigOil or Ignorant.  I posit there might be a third option.
Climate Change is not the same as Global Warming.  Technically, the climate is always changing, moving from one ice age to the next, etc.

------------- To the discussion at hand --------------------


I got this book for a $1 off Amazon.  I could not tell you if all his "facts" are correct or not.  But knowing Crighton, there's a nugget of truth or issue in his book.

The premise here is that some folks are manipulating the message about the science to promote Global Warming as an issue. The glaciers are melting, when it might be only that SOME glaciers are melting, while the vast majority are not.
Or that cities are hotter because of more concrete, not because of global warming because other places are actually cooling.  Or that increased CO2 is actually better for the crops, not worse.  Or that the Sahara has been shrinking since the 1980s per satellite photos.

So, given that before I assumed Global Warming was a thing, I hadn't actually read any science.  Who's got time for that?

Now, I have to ask, how do WE actually know if Global Warming is a real thing going on, or just a scare tactic?

Back to my disclaimer, I certainly bet a demographic exists who resisted the idea of Global Warming because it was inconvenient.  They liked the benefit of polluting.  Or that they had their head in the sand.  But it is possible there are folks looking at the data who actually don't see the proof.

I'm curious if it can be figured out here to some degree.


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## Morrus (Aug 18, 2015)

Climate Change is the preferred phrase these days, I think.



> So, given that before I assumed Global Warming was a thing, I hadn't actually read any science. Who's got time for that?




Well, I don't think I'd personally choose a science fiction author as my source of information. There are thousands of actual scientists studying this sort of thing.

I would say that Wikipedia's page on the subject is a decent overall view, but I read just the other day about how it was one of a couple of dozen Wikipedia pages which are edited constantly by PR firms and other organizations.

I think it's a bit of a struggle if you're position is that climate change isn't happening; the discussion ground is - as far as I can tell - more in the area of what's causing it: is it _man-made_ climate change or not?

I do enjoy it when people mistake the the weather right there where they are right now for the global climate, though.  That's always funny!  It's rather like me claiming Americans don't exist because there aren't any here right now.


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## Kramodlog (Aug 18, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Climate Change is the preferred phrase these days, I think.



Climate disruption, some suggest. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcm...nd-climate-change-call-it-climate-disruption/

But global warming is a better term. Climate change was suggested by Republican propaganda guru Frank Luntz because it sounded less dangerous and urgent to USian voters. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange


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## Homicidal_Squirrel (Aug 18, 2015)

I think John Oliver can help out here.

[video=youtube;cjuGCJJUGsg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuGCJJUGsg[/video]


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## Umbran (Aug 18, 2015)

Janx said:


> I got this book for a $1 off Amazon.  I could not tell you if all his "facts" are correct or not.  But knowing Crighton, there's a nugget of truth or issue in his book.




And, don't all the best lies not have some basis of truth in them?  There is a "nugget of truth" in Jurassic Park, too.  There are actually mosquitoes trapped in amber.  That doesn't mean we can have T-Rexes wandering around eating people.



> The premise here is that some folks are manipulating the message about the science to promote Global Warming as an issue.




"Some folks"?  Let us be clear about something....

A search for peer reviewed articles from 1 January 1991 and 9 November 2012 that discussed whether the globe is warming found 13,950 such papers.  The number of those that said the globe was not warming?  24.  Two dozen.  So, about two-tenths of one percent of scientific papers on the subject in the past decade don't agree that temperatures are rising.

Of those nearly 14,000 papers, only about 4,000 touch on the cause of global warming (this is not surprising - most astronomy papers are about measurements observations of stars, not about how galaxies form).  Of those 4000,  97% agree that our current change in climate is due to human action.   

So, if Chrighton actually suggests as you say, he can go fold his conspiracy theory five ways, and put it on the dark side of his moon.  THERE IS NO CONTROVERSY in the scientific community on this.

This idea has the same flaw as "the Moon landing was faked".  It requires hundreds to thousands of people to be in on it, and keep their mouths shut, for years and decades.  This is not plausible.

Citations for my points above:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/11/15/why-climate-deniers-have-no-credibility-science-one-pie-chart

And, from a decent science-communication blogger (and scientist himself) Phil Plait, who often covers the topic:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astr...why_don_t_they_publish_scientific_papers.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astr...ts_overwhelmingly_agree_it_s_real_and_is.html




> The glaciers are melting, when it might be only that SOME glaciers are melting, while the vast majority are not.




Nope.  Sorry.  They are melting wholesale.  Arctic and Antarctic ice is melting.  Permanent ice is melting all over the place.  Polar bears are having a bad day.  Your sea is rising.  Hope you weren't planning to leave your coastal real estate to your grandkids....



> So, given that before I assumed Global Warming was a thing, I hadn't actually read any science.  Who's got time for that?




See above.  You have specialists whose job it is to know this stuff for you, and tell you about it.  Why do you doubt them?  The same basic method produced not just climate science, but pretty much every  technological advance since the Renaissance.  Why doubt it on this, when we accept it everywhere else?  To quote Randall Munroe, "Science!  It Works, B*tches!"

When you have a question about your health, you go to a doctor.  When you wonder about that doctor's diagnosis and treatment plan, you go to another doctor.  If you go to 100 doctors, and 97 of them agree that you have cancer, do you listen to the 3?  Or, do you accept that maybe you're actually sick?


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## Legatus Legionis (Aug 18, 2015)

.


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## Janx (Aug 18, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Well, I don't think I'd personally choose a science fiction author as my source of information. There are thousands of actual scientists studying this sort of thing.





In the case of Michael Crighton, I wouldn't look at it that way.

His more recent novels have had an activist bent to them.  He finds a science point, writes some fiction about how that could be bad, but the point is to raise awareness that "this thing isn't quite right."

I couldn't tell you if his charts and graphs are accurate, but he's the kind of writer to go grab real charts and graphs and paste them into his work.  

I've also read the Freakonomics' guys work prior to this, and they raise some similar points about the data not indicating what the common folk think is going on.


So, the question raised is whether climate change (formerly known as Global Warming) is really happening in a significant way.  Let alone based on man made factors.  Levitt and Dubner reference how volcanoes impact the global weather (cooling it down) and contrast that to certain kinds of pollution.

Factoids I'd be curious to confirm:
Of all the glaciers on Earth, is there growth/shrinkage happening?
Of the sea level, what has been it's trend over time?
Of temperatures around the world, how have they charted outside of cities over time?


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## Ryujin (Aug 18, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Climate Change is the preferred phrase these days, I think.




And there's a reason for that. Far too many people, when addressed with the expression "global warming", come back with comments like, "Then why was I buried in six feet of snow last winter?" The average person doesn't understand that adding more energy to a system results in more chaotic reactions. They don't understand that an overall increase in temperature doesn't necessarily mean that their garden thermometer is going to show a couple of degrees higher all the time.

Then you have the people who break it down into "climate change" and "anthropomorphic climate change." they'll accept the former, deny the latter, and throw up their hands saying, "There's nothing that we can do."


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## Umbran (Aug 18, 2015)

Legatus_Legionis said:


> The earth goes thru cycles of warmer and colder weather.  Who is to say that this is not just another one of them?




People who have spent their lives studying the phenomenon, and can see the difference between what we are going through, and the natural cycles, that's who.



> The data the scientist/media are using does not go back far enough to justify there conclusions.




I don't know upon what you based that assessment.  We have evidence from rocks, sediments, tree rings, ice cores, corals, shells, and microfossils.  "paleoclimatology" is a real thing.  We can speak to climate on geologic timescales.  Sure, we know more about the most recent 11,000 years or so, but there is still basis to speak on how current changes are not part of the regular cycles of the planet.


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## Umbran (Aug 18, 2015)

Ryujin said:


> Then you have the people who break it down into "climate change" and "anthropomorphic climate change." they'll accept the former, deny the latter, and throw up their hands saying, "There's nothing that we can do."




I think the term you want is "anthropogenic".  Anthropomorphic climate change would be climate change that is shaped like a person 

"There is nothing we can do," is a great self-fulfilling prophecy.  There is a point when you don't actually worry too much about who is at fault - it will ultimately destroy world economy who/what ever is at fault, so we'd better do something about it.


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## Umbran (Aug 18, 2015)

Janx said:


> Factoids I'd be curious to confirm:
> Of all the glaciers on Earth, is there growth/shrinkage happening?




To quote National Geographic:
"Everywhere on Earth ice is changing. The famed snows of Kilimanjaro have melted more than 80 percent since 1912. Glaciers in the Garhwal Himalaya in India are retreating so fast that researchers believe that most central and eastern Himalayan glaciers could virtually disappear by 2035. Arctic sea ice has thinned significantly over the past half century, and its extent has declined by about 10 percent in the past 30 years. NASA's repeated laser altimeter readings show the edges of Greenland's ice sheet shrinking. Spring freshwater ice breakup in the Northern Hemisphere now occurs nine days earlier than it did 150 years ago, and autumn freeze-up ten days later. Thawing permafrost has caused the ground to subside more than 15 feet (4.6 meters) in parts of Alaska. From the Arctic to Peru, from Switzerland to the equatorial glaciers of Man Jaya in Indonesia, massive ice fields, monstrous glaciers, and sea ice are disappearing, fast."

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/big-thaw/

Not that wikipedia is the end-all, be-all of science documentation, but it is a place to start reviewign a topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850



> Of the sea level, what has been it's trend over time?




The very next paragraph of the National Geographic article, above:

"When temperatures rise and ice melts, more water flows to the seas from glaciers and ice caps, and ocean water warms and expands in volume. This combination of effects has played the major role in raising average global sea level between four and eight inches (10 and 20 centimeters) in the past hundred years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."

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

If you prefer NASA
http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/

Images on this page seem to be broken, but the text and references hold:
http://www.wunderground.com/climate/SeaLevelRise.asp




> Of temperatures around the world, how have they charted outside of cities over time?




I don't know where you got the idea that cities are the central part of measuring warming.  Cities are measured, sure.  But so are rural areas.  And surface and deep ocean measures are taken.  

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

This article speaks to what datasets are used to make determinations:

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/01/explainer-how-do-scientists-measure-global-temperature/


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## Ryujin (Aug 18, 2015)

Umbran said:


> I think the term you want is "anthropogenic".  Anthropomorphic climate change would be climate change that is shaped like a person
> 
> "There is nothing we can do," is a great self-fulfilling prophecy.  There is a point when you don't actually worry too much about who is at fault - it will ultimately destroy world economy who/what ever is at fault, so we'd better do something about it.




You are of course correct, but that's the term I heard in reports 

The global warming debate has taken a rather interesting track. In the beginning the deniers simply said it wasn't happening. Then it was happening, but it was a natural cycle (sunspot cycles and the like). After that it was yes, it's happening, but it's only partly because of human activity. Now, finally, I think that it's being said by deniers that it's caused by humans but the worst offenders are places like China and India, and until they stop dumping carbon dioxide it's pointless for anyone else to stop.

Years back there was a website that addressed most of the common points of denial, and was created by climatologists. I haven't been able to find it recently, so it may no longer exist, but they asked one simple question; "If you admit it's happening and there's nothing we can do about it, then why is no one getting people's homes off the threatened shorelines?"


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## Morrus (Aug 18, 2015)

Ryujin said:


> And there's a reason for that. Far too many people, when addressed with the expression "global warming", come back with comments like, "Then why was I buried in six feet of snow last winter?"




Yup! Like I said:



Morrus said:


> I do enjoy it when people mistake the the weather right there where they are right now for the global climate, though.  That's always funny!  It's rather like me claiming Americans don't exist because there aren't any here right now.


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## Umbran (Aug 18, 2015)

Ryujin said:


> Years back there was a website that addressed most of the common points of denial, and was created by climatologists. I haven't been able to find it recently, so it may no longer exist, but they asked one simple question; "If you admit it's happening and there's nothing we can do about it, then why is no one getting people's homes off the threatened shorelines?"




Now, there are many websites that address the common points of denial.  Putting "debunking climate change denial" into Google returns some useful resources:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/seven-answers-to-climate-contrarian-nonsense/
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ten-global-warming-skeptic-arguments-debunked
http://grist.org/series/skeptics/
https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/10/28/_10_failed_climate_change_denial_arguments.html

If you want a science blogger's approach, try putting "Phil Plait debunking climate denial" into google, and you'll get a number of his articles which collect various references for you.

Oh, and just for the point - we've just had the overall hottest July on record:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/08/17/july_2015_hottest_july_on_record.html


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## Janx (Aug 18, 2015)

Umbran said:


> I don't know where you got the idea that cities are the central part of measuring warming.  Cities are measured, sure.  But so are rural areas.  And surface and deep ocean measures are taken.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record
> 
> ...




a) thanks for hunting down science stuff.  This was my goal to ascertain what ideas in the book had some basis in fact or have since been debunked.

b) Urban Heat Island effect:
https://sites.google.com/site/globalwarmingquestions/ar4uhi

The book mentioned it.  I figure the simplest way to deal with it was to bypass looking at cities for the moment, as they are complicated.  If there was a consistent temperate rise (going with the Global Warming concept), it should be reflective in boring places.

c) as the book is 10 years old, many of its premises (potentially flawed) may now be better disproved/supported.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Fear


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## tuxgeo (Aug 18, 2015)

There are people who do read the scientific literature. For some, it's part of their job. I understand Crighton does so (at least to some degree) as background research for his stories. With that said, however, science is a human activity, and is therefore not immune to its own fads and trends. Back in the 1970s, global temperatures had been falling since about 1945, and there was some concern about "Global Cooling" (Wikipedia overview); but the favored terminology largely shifted to "Global Warming" as more and more science was done.

There are more factors affecting global warming than merely human-released CO2 in the atmosphere: 
• human-poured, sun-exposed concrete and asphalt trap heat, and continue to radiate it back into the atmosphere at night; 
• deforestation reduces transpiration of water from the subsoil, because trees can have deeper roots than many other plants, and trees transpire water from the levels where their roots reach; 
• other greenhouse gasses besides CO2 can also trap heat -- water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, chlorofluorocarbons, and others. 
• improvements in solar capture of electrical power, and the accompanying storage and transfer of electrical energy, are permitting a gradual but perceptible shift in human energy usage away from the burning of fuels to the installation of hardware for human purposes. 

_End result? It doesn't "end," but it does go in trends._ 
As prices of solar technology continue to come down due to advances in the art, the economy will continue trending away from CO2 release from burning fuels. ("Anthropogenic global warming is scheduled to slow.") 
We'll still have oil, but its financial price, while falling recently, won't go to zero. Fracking is expensive; drilling is expensive; refining is expensive. As prices adjust due to both oil depletion and changes in technology, we'll release lower amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere in proportion to the amount of energy we use. 

We'll still need to do more to alleviate climate change; and I suggest reforestation, where possible, as a great option because: 
• trees absorb carbon, taken from the CO2 in the air, and sequester the carbon for later; and trees gain the ability to absorb more carbon as they grow larger _(plant redwoods)_; and while the sea is also a great carbon-sink, it acidifies a bit as it does so; 
• trees shade the ground, absorbing light from the sun for use in photosynthesis, thereby reducing the amount of solar radiation that hits the ground and is there converted to infrared, then to be trapped on earth by the greenhouse effect; 
• the water transpired by trees adds to atmospheric moisture until it falls as precipitation or is removed by other means; where it falls, it refreshes other vegetation, not necessarily in the same country. If the sahara desert is shrinking, that may be a good thing. 

Is the US going to reforest Iraq and Syria? No, those lands don't belong to the US; instead, they belong to their residents. If those residents desire cooler daytime temperatures, they might collaborate to plant some trees; but they would need to select varieties that can survive and grow in such lands.


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## Ryujin (Aug 18, 2015)

Umbran said:


> Now, there are many websites that address the common points of denial.  Putting "debunking climate change denial" into Google returns some useful resources:
> 
> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/seven-answers-to-climate-contrarian-nonsense/
> http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ten-global-warming-skeptic-arguments-debunked
> ...




Oh, I'm well aware that we now have a plethora of sites from which to choose. It's just that this was the first such site that I came across and I was quite fond of its matter-of-fact plain language explanations, and use of common sense examples.


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## Janx (Aug 18, 2015)

tuxgeo said:


> There are people who do read the scientific literature. For some, it's part of their job. I understand Crighton does so (at least to some degree) as background research for his stories. With that said, however, science is a human activity, and is therefore not immune to its own fads and trends. Back in the 1970s, global temperatures had been falling since about 1945, and there was some concern about "Global Cooling" (Wikipedia overview); but the favored terminology largely shifted to "Global Warming" as more and more science was done.




Normally Crighton seems pretty good at turning a science thing into a story.  I really liked his book about DNA Patenting becoming a problem.

That said, the wikipedia link reveals there's been quite a bit of science disagreement with his book.  And his book has been used by Republicans apparently to bolster their denial.

Wikipedia's references section leads to a pretty good debunking by some sciency organization.

I think there is value in double-checking what folks are citing as evidence.  I get the sense that 10 years ago, some articles existed with an introduction saying "global warming is happening" and then the tables and charts showed no problem.  At least that seems to be Crighton's claim in the book.  The problem is, that stuff's hard to read, so who's going to check?

Advising folks to not fall for hype or become a zealot's not bad advice.  Unfortunately, his choice of topic here, by picking the "wrong" side, has possibly done a disservice to science, which normally I think Crighton was a supporter of.


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## Umbran (Aug 18, 2015)

Janx said:


> c) as the book is 10 years old, many of its premises (potentially flawed) may now be better disproved/supported.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Fear




Reading the link you provide - many of his premises were disputed *at the time*, much less now: 

"Sixteen of 18 U.S. climate scientists interviewed by Knight Ridder said the author was bending scientific data and distorting research."

"James E. Hansen, former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies at the time, wrote "He (Michael Crichton) doesn’t seem to have the foggiest notion about the science that he writes about." Jeffrey Masters, Chief meteorologist for Weather Underground, writes: "Crichton presents an error-filled and distorted version of the Global Warming science, favoring views of the handful of contrarians that attack the consensus science of the IPCC.""

The Union of Concerned Scientists put up a section of their website to address Chricton's distortions.  It is still there:  http://go.ucsusa.org/global_environment/global_warming/page.cfm?pageID=1670

So, while it is always okay to seek the truth, it seems you can probably set aside doubts that reading this book may have generated, because the book does not reflect reality on the matter.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 18, 2015)

Umbran said:


> I think the term you want is "anthropogenic".  Anthropomorphic climate change would be climate change that is shaped like a person



I, for one, WISH it were anthropomorphic climate change...we could REALLY do something about it.


"What did you do, Ray?"
"I tried to think of the most harmless thing...something that could never, ever possibly destroy us."


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## Dioltach (Aug 18, 2015)

Personally, I believe that climate change is a thing. Why not? I mean, we've known about ice ages for years, mini ice ages even. And I'm pretty sure human pollution is bad for the environment and needs to be stopped. Are the two linked? I couldn't say, but even if they're not, that's no reason to stop caring about the environment. There are plenty of other things -- poisons and plastic in the seas, smog in cities, deforestation and all its resulting problems -- that we need to sort out, not just the possibility that the current climate change is our doing.

(One thing that always makes me slightly cynical about these things, though, is that the people shouting the loudest warnings are generally the same people who get paid to research the issue. It's in their interests to keep the money flowing in to fund them.)


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## Umbran (Aug 18, 2015)

There is, of course, a larger point to make.  The changes generally recommended to combat global warming are, for the most part, changes we should make for other good reasons.  Remaining a fossil fuel powered culture is not a good long-term plan.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 18, 2015)

There is also the element that we are currently using petrochemicals for both fuel and man-made materials.  We have other increasingly viable energy sources, but the alternate means of producing the myriad plastics we depend on daily are not anywhere near industrial feasibility.  It is arguable that petrochemicals are far more important to us as a manufacturing ingredient than as a fuel.


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## tuxgeo (Aug 18, 2015)

Umbran said:


> And, don't all the best lies not have some basis of truth in them?  There is a "nugget of truth" in Jurassic Park, too.  There are actually mosquitoes trapped in amber.  That doesn't mean we can have T-Rexes wandering around eating people. . . . < snip there >




A newly-released paper reports the major portion of an intact salamander (missing one leg) found trapped in amber in the Dominican Republic. (The link is to Daily Mail UK, which may be helpful if you trust them for news.)


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## Umbran (Aug 18, 2015)

tuxgeo said:


> A newly-released paper reports the major portion of an intact salamander (missing one leg) found trapped in amber in the Dominican Republic. (The link is to Daily Mail UK, which may be helpful if you trust them for news.)




That's fine.  The half-life of DNA, even in bone or trapped in amber, seems to be about 520 years or so.  A 65 million year old dinosaur cell has gone through about 125,000 half-lives.  Thus the amount of DNA has been cut in half 125,000 times, leaving nothing useful.


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## Janx (Aug 18, 2015)

Umbran said:


> That's fine.  The half-life of DNA, even in bone or trapped in amber, seems to be about 520 years or so.  A 65 million year old dinosaur cell has gone through about 125,000 half-lives.  Thus the amount of DNA has been cut in half 125,000 times, leaving nothing useful.




This might be a good question for the Physics AMA, but if the half life of DNA is 520 years, how does a tree get to be a 1000 years old?


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## Thunderfoot (Aug 18, 2015)

I have to say that our current activity - using a computer, smartphone,etc to convey information is the largest usage of petrochemicals known to man, why because all of these things utilize plastics and polymers that are developed from the refinement of oil - want to save the universe or at least your home in it, turn off your computer, go off the grid and live off the land.  Oh, wait you're a non-hunting, non-fishing progressive farming vegan?  Then you're screwed I guess.    

My problem with this problem is that people in cities (the largest cause of all things pollution) tend to turn their noses up at those in the rural areas where we live day to day a lot closer to the "old ways" and yet are looked at as "savages" because we don't ride our bikes to work, well when work is 25 miles away, that's just not possible.  Look at yourselves first city dwellers, leave us hicks alone.   (Keep in mind I lived almost 20 years in the DC - Baltimore metro area so I know of what I speak regarding urbanites)


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## Morrus (Aug 18, 2015)

Janx said:


> This might be a good question for the Physics AMA, but if the half life of DNA is 520 years, how does a tree get to be a 1000 years old?




How does the half life of DNA prevent that? The life span of an organism has nothing to do with the half life of DNA.


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## tomBitonti (Aug 18, 2015)

We can ask the same question of _any_ propogation of DNA: Everyone's DNA has been passed down and copied, millions of times, over a couple of hundred million years.

It certainly hasn't stayed the same for all that long, but (I thought) it has been mostly stable for the last few thousand years.

A part of the answer, I think, is that during reproduction, a culling of bad copies is made (that being that non-viable copies don't survive).

Also, living cells have repair mechanisms for DNA.  Is the quoted half-life for DNA in a living cell?

Here is a nice starting point for DNA repair:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9900/



> DNA, like any other molecule, can undergo a variety of chemical reactions. Because DNA uniquely serves as a permanent copy of the cell genome, however, changes in its structure are of much greater consequence than are alterations in other cell components, such as RNAs or proteins. Mutations can result from the incorporation of incorrect bases during DNA replication. In addition, various chemical changes occur in DNA either spontaneously (Figure 5.19) or as a result of exposure to chemicals or radiation (Figure 5.20). Such damage to DNA can block replication or transcription, and can result in a high frequency of mutations—consequences that are unacceptable from the standpoint of cell reproduction. To maintain the integrity of their genomes, cells have therefore had to evolve mechanisms to repair damaged DNA. These mechanisms of DNA repair can be divided into two general classes: (1) direct reversal of the chemical reaction responsible for DNA damage, and (2) removal of the damaged bases followed by their replacement with newly synthesized DNA. Where DNA repair fails, additional mechanisms have evolved to enable cells to cope with the damage.




Thx!

TomB


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## Ryujin (Aug 18, 2015)

Dioltach said:


> Personally, I believe that climate change is a thing. Why not? I mean, we've known about ice ages for years, mini ice ages even. And I'm pretty sure human pollution is bad for the environment and needs to be stopped. Are the two linked? I couldn't say, but even if they're not, that's no reason to stop caring about the environment. There are plenty of other things -- poisons and plastic in the seas, smog in cities, deforestation and all its resulting problems -- that we need to sort out, not just the possibility that the current climate change is our doing.
> 
> (One thing that always makes me slightly cynical about these things, though, is that the people shouting the loudest warnings are generally the same people who get paid to research the issue. It's in their interests to keep the money flowing in to fund them.)




Those people stand to make a lot more by supporting industry, than they do by supporting the side that would shut industry down. Research dollars come from people who stand to make money by funding said research, or from government. When it comes to governments, the Government of Canada has been actively muzzling scientists who speak out against things like The Tar Sands and climate change.


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## Morrus (Aug 18, 2015)

Dioltach said:


> (One thing that always makes me slightly cynical about these things, though, is that the people shouting the loudest warnings are generally the same people who get paid to research the issue. It's in their interests to keep the money flowing in to fund them.)




Obviously. Why would someone not researching it shout a loud warning?

The only people who *can* warn you are those researching it. 

So when the people who are researching are the ones warning you... 

You'd believe someone who hasn't researched it over someone who has? 

Oh, logic!


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## Umbran (Aug 18, 2015)

Janx said:


> This might be a good question for the Physics AMA, but if the half life of DNA is 520 years, how does a tree get to be a 1000 years old?




While the tree is alive, it has mechanisms to repair and maintain its DNA.  When the tree stops living, those mechanisms stop functioning.


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## Umbran (Aug 18, 2015)

Dioltach said:


> (One thing that always makes me slightly cynical about these things, though, is that the people shouting the loudest warnings are generally the same people who get paid to research the issue. It's in their interests to keep the money flowing in to fund them.)




Um, dude, it takes major education to be able to do research.  That costs money - most often debt-financed these days.  And, once they are educated, the researcher needs to buy food, housing, and all that.  So, yes, researchers must be paid to do research.  Just like any other professional.

Consider your point the next time funding for colleges, universities and scientific research comes up in your local and national elections.  The more that is publicly funded, the less they will need corporate funding.


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## juanlb (Aug 19, 2015)

I believe it's real.


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## Scorpio616 (Aug 19, 2015)

Oh, there is change, but big thing is it is really hard to empirically prove how much is done by man vs how much the natural cycles of Earth's climate are in flux. Make no mistake, scientific research is politics, whether it's a researcher bought off by Big oil, or a marine biologist trying to tout their agenda.

I'm more concerned with folks figuring out a way to let potential super volcanoes blow off some 'steam' to avoid catastrophic eruptions in the future.

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


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 19, 2015)

Scorpio616 said:


> Oh, there is change, but big thing is it is really hard to empirically prove how much is done by man vs how much the natural cycles of Earth's climate are in flux.




From what I have heard, not really.  The natural factors are in a cooling cycle, not a heating cycle.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=57

Which would mean they have acted as a brake on global warming, meaning this chart would look worse, but for those factors.


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## Scorpio616 (Aug 19, 2015)

Your source gives me a chuckle.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 19, 2015)

Even if you don't believe man is the primary cause of the warming trend, that is no excuse for inaction.

The Pentagon's 20 page report on the effects of climate change identifies no causes.  However, the report DOES identify many reasons for concern linked to climate change- compromise or destruction of military assets, political instability, supply chain uncertainty, etc.- and outlines certain responses they intend to take in order to mitigate those concerns.


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## Umbran (Aug 19, 2015)

Scorpio616 said:


> Your source gives me a chuckle.




It isn't like that graph was made by the source - it was only *reported* by the source.  

But at this point, the source comment is a little facile.   97% of published papers on the topic (which is thousands of papers) agree on the source of the problem.  Take your pick of sources, at this point, they'll agree, because the numbers are all pointing the same way.

Yes, politics impacts science.  But scientists are not all of one political stripe - they don't generally agree on basis of political leanings.  And, it is in general in their own best interests to be the guy who proves others wrong.  So, you don't get this level of consensus without evidence.


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## Kramodlog (Aug 19, 2015)

Scorpio616 said:


> or a marine biologist trying to tout their agenda.




What is there agenda? 

All I think of is George Costanza trying to get into a woman's pants.


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## Umbran (Aug 19, 2015)

goldomark said:


> What is there agenda?




"Not have all our coastal cities under water in a century," I'd guess.

Or maybe, "Not have massive economic dislocation and famine across the world as crops fail, leading to international strife."

Those climate scientists.  Always thinking of themselves.


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## Kramodlog (Aug 19, 2015)

ENworld needs a shaking fist emoji.


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## Janx (Aug 19, 2015)

Morrus said:


> How does the half life of DNA prevent that? The life span of an organism has nothing to do with the half life of DNA.




Because a given cell sitting at position X.Y.Z in a stationary biological entity is going to be sitting there with a glob of DNA for longer than its half life.

From the sense of the tree growing that long, obviously it didn't matter.  But from the sense of there's a tree made of matter that is passing it's half life.  That's interesting.


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## Umbran (Aug 19, 2015)

Janx said:


> Because a given cell sitting at position X.Y.Z in a stationary biological entity is going to be sitting there with a glob of DNA for longer than its half life.




But that's not quite how it works.  While the organism as a whole may live some number of years, no individual cell lives that long - so no individual molecule of DNA has to exist for that long.  Each time the cell divides, there's a maintenance on the DNA, where errors or degradation can be corrected.  

This, on top of how the living cell environment actively eliminates things that damage DNA, when a dead cell does not.  It'd be reasonable to say that half-life number does not apply to DNA in cells that are still actively maintaining homeostasis.

It is like... typically, an abandoned house will crumble after so many years.  But it won't crumble at all if someone is living in it and maintaining it.


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## tuxgeo (Aug 19, 2015)

goldomark said:


> ENworld needs a shaking fist emoji.




EN World's sister-site, Circvs Maximvs, has a nice one (in red) named "curses.gif" -- but to use it here, you would need to save it to your file system, them upload it as one of your allowed files to EN World. (Merely copying and pasting doesn't work using Windows 7; I've tried.) 

That kind of thing is a bit of work. I have seen such things done, but few users here bother about it.


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## gamerprinter (Aug 19, 2015)

I don't necessarily believe that the current state of climate change (and that's the term I use, not global warming) is entirely caused by human action, especially when you consider that the amount of pollution caused by volcanic eruptions are greater than the amount caused by human action each year, though I agree that human action has an effect on the situation. Climate change is inevitable and constant, to suggest that altering the activities of humans will somehow stop the climate change from occuring is bunk, IMO. No amount of government decisions, nor curbing of industrial activities will stop the climate from changing - the ice is melting globally and there's nothing we can do about it. Generally phenomena that is completely outside my control (like climate change) is something I don't worry about it. I only worry on those things that my personal actions can alter. If I can't alter it, then it doesn't matter - it's going to happen anyway, so why worry?


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## Kramodlog (Aug 19, 2015)

I've seen this a few times in this thread some people say that volcanoes release more CO2 in the air than us. It ain't true.

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/volcanoes-still-not-source-increasing-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere/


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## gamerprinter (Aug 19, 2015)

The real point is, short of becoming the absolute ruler of Earth and forcing everyone to stop driving cars, stop creating green house gases through industrial processes, no one can stop the progress from happening - its like trying to stop a volcano from erupting (it ain't going to happen). I still believe there's nothing that can be done, nor will be done. So I still don't worry about it.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 19, 2015)

gamerprinter said:


> The real point is, short of becoming the absolute ruler of Earth and forcing everyone to stop driving cars, stop creating green house gases through industrial processes, no one can stop the progress from happening - its like trying to stop a volcano from erupting (it ain't going to happen). I still believe there's nothing that can be done, nor will be done. So I still don't worry about it.



But that isn't true, either.

Anti-pollution regulations & technological advances have reduced emissions from automobiles and industrial processes.  If not for them, we'd be MUCH worse off.

Have they eliminated the threat?  Clearly not.  But they have bought us decades of time with which to deal with the issue.

Doing nothing is simply a recipe for creating a second Venus in our solar system...


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## gamerprinter (Aug 19, 2015)

I don't know, I'm not a scientist, and one can easily find 2 scientists that don't agree with each other on any matter. Will the legislation help, you believe that it does, and maybe it will, but I don't really buy into that. Besides we're liable to be destroyed in any number of ways (over population, meteor strike, pandemic) before Earth becomes another Venus - we're doomed anyway, but as long as that isn't during my lifetime, I'll keep it out of my thoughts.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 19, 2015)

gamerprinter said:


> Will the legislation help, you believe that it does, and maybe it will, but I don't really buy into that.




Not only do I believe it, there is proof.  Right now, average MPG for cars is on an upwards slope, in large part because of regulations mandating automakers improve their fleet's MPG.  In the 1970s, we actually had _declining_ fleet MPG averages.  The less fuel we use for the same task, the better off we are.

http://www.slate.com/articles/busin...y_has_made_stunning_progress_in_the_past.html

The same goes for industrial pollutants: regulations in the USA have reduced emissions and improved air & water quality.  See Los Angeles...because now that its smog has been reduced, you can.  Europe has seen improvements as well- acid rain, for instance, is no longer eroding the architecture of Eastern Europe like it did in the 1980s.



> Besides we're liable to be destroyed in any number of ways (over population, meteor strike, pandemic) before Earth becomes another Venus - we're doomed anyway, but as long as that isn't during my lifetime, I'll keep it out of my thoughts.




Earth becoming Venus isn't immanent, no.  But why continue taking steps in that direction?


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## Umbran (Aug 19, 2015)

gamerprinter said:


> especially when you consider that the amount of pollution caused by volcanic eruptions are greater than the amount caused by human action each year




That isn't true.

"According to a summary of evidence by the U.S. Geological Survey, the entire collection of volcanoes around the world emits an average of 0.26 gigatons of CO2 per year. (A gigaton is equal to one billion metric tons.) Humans today, on the other hand, emit over 30 gigatons every year, from power plants and factories, cars and airplanes, agriculture, and other activities."

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php
http://www.factcheck.org/2015/07/huckabees-hot-air-on-volcanoes/


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## gamerprinter (Aug 19, 2015)

I'm not advocating to continue the practices that will doom us. That said, US legislation does nothing for the pollution in Asia, Middle East, or other up-in-coming industrial powers. I'll agree that the US is the largest consumer, thus the largest polluter historically, so its good that we are trying to curb that here. I just have very little faith that it will or can be controlled globally. If we all lived like the Amish, maybe we could actually stop it all, but who really wants to be Amish...?


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## gamerprinter (Aug 19, 2015)

Umbran said:


> That isn't true.
> 
> "According to a summary of evidence by the U.S. Geological Survey, the entire collection of volcanoes around the world emits an average of 0.26 gigatons of CO2 per year. (A gigaton is equal to one billion metric tons.) Humans today, on the other hand, emit over 30 gigatons every year, from power plants and factories, cars and airplanes, agriculture, and other activities."
> 
> ...




That was already pointed out, a couple posts ago. Again, I'm not a scientist, so I'm not looking at either the promoters nor naysayers. Its not that I don't care, but since I can't do anything about it personally (I already minimize my automobile driving to practically 2 miles per day on most days), I don't really worry about it.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 19, 2015)

gamerprinter said:


> I'm not advocating to continue the practices that will doom us. That said, US legislation does nothing for the pollution in Asia, Middle East, or other up-in-coming industrial powers. I'll agree that the US is the largest consumer, thus the largest polluter historically, so its good that we are trying to curb that here. I just have very little faith that it will or can be controlled globally. If we all lived like the Amish, maybe we could actually stop it all, but who really wants to be Amish...?



We aren't alone in our regulatory attempts.  Even China has stepped up its anti-pollution game in the last decade.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...o-unveil-180-billion-anti-pollution-plan.html

And developing nations benefit from our efforts, too.  They're able to buy into anti-pollution technologies demanded by our regulations after we've spent the money adopting and perfecting them.  This lets them skip tech generations and avoid problems we had to wrestle with at the same stages if development as they are now.


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## Ryujin (Aug 19, 2015)

goldomark said:


> I've seen this a few times in this thread some people say that volcanoes release more CO2 in the air than us. It ain't true.
> 
> http://www.wired.com/2015/04/volcanoes-still-not-source-increasing-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere/




And even if it was (which it isn't), the question of balance comes into play. If the Earth was in balance, between CO2 emissions and plant life, we've royally screwed that balance. What we don't know is if we've screwed it up past the tipping point yet.


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## Ryujin (Aug 19, 2015)

gamerprinter said:


> I don't know, I'm not a scientist, and one can easily find 2 scientists that don't agree with each other on any matter. Will the legislation help, you believe that it does, and maybe it will, but I don't really buy into that. Besides we're liable to be destroyed in any number of ways (over population, meteor strike, pandemic) before Earth becomes another Venus - we're doomed anyway, but as long as that isn't during my lifetime, I'll keep it out of my thoughts.




Well you certainly can find two scientists who don't agree on climate change. The thing is that you might have to go through 53 scientists who agree with the first, before you could find that one who actually disagrees. Scientists who disagree with global warming and who also don't have an axe to grind are scarce as hen's teeth.


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## gamerprinter (Aug 19, 2015)

Well I'm not looking at any scientists for any reasons about any subject, so what they agree or disagree about is beyond my concern. I will quietly drop out of this thread now...


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## Janx (Aug 19, 2015)

Umbran said:


> But that's not quite how it works.  While the organism as a whole may live some number of years, no individual cell lives that long - so no individual molecule of DNA has to exist for that long.  Each time the cell divides, there's a maintenance on the DNA, where errors or degradation can be corrected.
> 
> This, on top of how the living cell environment actively eliminates things that damage DNA, when a dead cell does not.  It'd be reasonable to say that half-life number does not apply to DNA in cells that are still actively maintaining homeostasis.
> 
> It is like... typically, an abandoned house will crumble after so many years.  But it won't crumble at all if someone is living in it and maintaining it.




and that's why I asked the question...


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## Umbran (Aug 19, 2015)

gamerprinter said:


> Well I'm not looking at any scientists for any reasons about any subject...




And that's a problem.  You see, "I'm not a scientist" is not an excuse.  If you are not a scientist, then you can learn to listen to scientists, and not pundits!  We live in a technological society.  Science literacy is necessary to make appropriate decisions.  Those decisions can and will impact each of us, in our lifetimes.

I mean, if you want to give up, turn off, and tune out, that's your choice.  But the rest of us are probably going to shove you out of the way rudely, because there's some urgency involved.  

As for "nothing we can do" - How about "have the entire planet powered by sustainable sources in 20 to 40 years" strike you as, "something"?

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/january/jacobson-world-energy-012611.html


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## Kramodlog (Aug 19, 2015)

Ryujin said:


> And even if it was (which it isn't), the question of balance comes into play. If the Earth was in balance, between CO2 emissions and plant life, we've royally screwed that balance. What we don't know is if we've screwed it up past the tipping point yet.




Yup. Most of the coal, oil and gas we burn today are plants that grew in prehistoric area. It was more hot back then because in part there was more CO2 in the atmosphere. Plants grew big in and over millions of years absorbe that CO2 and the planet cool down. 

The equilibrium we have now took a lot of time to reach and now we are releasing quickly trapped carbon that hasn't seen the light of day for millions of years.


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## Kramodlog (Aug 19, 2015)

gamerprinter said:


> Well I'm not looking at any scientists for any reasons about any subject, so what they agree or disagree about is beyond my concern. I will quietly drop out of this thread now...




Droughts and flood that affect food supplies and prices should concern you. Food scarcity means more diseases too. The availability of drinking water will be a serious problem. Destructive weather that is more frequent will also affect the price of insurance and some goods. Not to mention the armed conflicts over food, water and land that isn't under water.


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## RangerWickett (Aug 19, 2015)

If you have an hour and want to get a good understanding of our current situation regarding fossil fuel use and carbon emissions due to transportation, I recommend this article: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html

It's the second part of a 4-part series about Elon Musk and his various efforts to improve the human condition and stave off really bad consequences.

The metaphor the author uses really resonated with me. He says that sometimes he's exposed to a topic that he doesn't know much about, and it's like coming upon branches of a tree. But he doesn't understand how the whole tree looks, so the branch isn't that interesting. But if he puts the effort into understanding the basis of a topic, that basically creates the trunk of the tree, and then there's context for all the branches. He no longer gets frustrated or dismissive when people talk about details of the topic because he understands the core of the issue. 

Basically, the author, and the site as a whole, is very pro-knowledge. I'd like to think gamers in general pride themselves on knowing interesting stuff. The article is a fun way to learn about a topic that's very important for the modern world.


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## Umbran (Aug 20, 2015)

goldomark said:


> Yup. Most of the coal, oil and gas we burn today are plants that grew in prehistoric area. It was more hot back then because in part there was more CO2 in the atmosphere. Plants grew big in and over millions of years absorbe that CO2 and the planet cool down.




This is largely true in the parts, but put together this way it is highly misleading.  Yes, fossil fuels we burn today have carbon that was taken out of the atmosphere in bygone eras.  But, the idea that sequestering that carbon led to an overall cool down to current levels is... an oversimplification.  



> The equilibrium we have now took a lot of time to reach and now we are releasing quickly trapped carbon that hasn't seen the light of day for millions of years.




Note that the "equilibrium" we reached is not a static one.  Even without the release of fossil carbon, we have a warming and cooling cycle apparently driven by slow changes in the tilt of the planet's axis and the shape of its orbit around the Sun.

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

The shortest such orbital cycle is about 20,000 years, and there's a strong rhythm of glaciation every 100,000 years.  

The reason I mention all this is that... it doesn't matter.  Someone will mention it as part of the overall, "the climate is always changing" argument.  But the current change does not seem to be part of these cycles.

So, yes, the overall picture of climate is complex, and we know about the complexities, and those complexities have generally been ruled out by climatologists.  This current warming is our fault.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 20, 2015)

Umbran said:


> The reason I mention all this is that... it doesn't matter.  Someone will mention it as part of the overall, "the climate is always changing" argument.  But the current change does not seem to be part of these cycles.
> 
> So, yes, the overall picture of climate is complex, and we know about the complexities, and those complexities have generally been ruled out by climatologists.  This current warming is our fault.



That was what I was getting at earlier- supposedly, the natural climate fluctuators are in a cooling cycle, not heating.  Since we're still warming, that points the finger at us.


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## was (Aug 20, 2015)

...IMO, global warming is real.  Average temps over the last hundred or so years do show a warming trend.  Technically, temps have been gradually rising since the end of the last ice age/Pleistocene (12,000 years ago ?).
...Is it caused by humans?  Probably not, the planet does go through natural warming and cooling cycles.  
...Is the problem greatly exacerbated by our carbon emissions?  Yes, there's too much evidence out there to rule out human industrialization as a contributing factor to the problem.


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## Umbran (Aug 20, 2015)

was said:


> ...Is it caused by humans?  Probably not, the planet does go through natural warming and cooling cycles.




So, let me get this straight - a bunch of scientists figure out that the planet does have natural warming and cooling cycles.  They figure out a lot about the rhythms of these cycles, and why they happen.  You trust them on this, take it as true.

But, when they tell you that *this* warming trend isn't one of those natural cycles (97%, remember) you doubt them?

How does that make sense?  You accept what they say in one case, but not another?  Why?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 20, 2015)

According to James L. Powell, director of the National Physical Sciences Consortium, the consensus is currently measured at 99.9%+:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/how-climate-change-deniers-got-it-very-wrong


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## was (Aug 20, 2015)

Umbran said:


> So, let me get this straight - a bunch of scientists figure out that the planet does have natural warming and cooling cycles.  They figure out a lot about the rhythms of these cycles, and why they happen.  You trust them on this, take it as true.
> 
> But, when they tell you that *this* warming trend isn't one of those natural cycles (97%, remember) you doubt them?
> 
> How does that make sense?  You accept what they say in one case, but not another?  Why?




...It is my understanding that we have taken a slow, natural warming process and artificially ramped it up via pollution to geologically breakneck speeds.  Subsequently, changes are occuring at a far greater pace than the environment is capable of adjusting to, making the warming cycle 'unnatural'.


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## freyar (Aug 20, 2015)

Something I see a bit in this thread and a lot in political discussion is people talking about what's going on in nature as if it's their opinion.  It's just not.  Nature is doing what it's doing.  There can be discussions about what data mean, but the data are what they are.  The point is that, in proportion to the general public, only a very few people are educated about the data or how to make sense of the data. And essentially all the people who know what the data mean are in agreement that they mean human behavior is changing the climate.  Seriously -- in politics, a 60%-40% split in an election is a landslide.  Climate scientists are nearly unanimous on this.

Frankly, we tend to say that everyone gets an opinion about everything, so the public lets politicians get away with bluster about the climate.  But that's not really how it works in science.  The only people who have an opinion worth listening to on a scientific topic are the people who do science in that field.  As a theoretical particle physicist and string theorist, I would not be asked to referee a journal article on climate science --- I don't get a scientific opinion on that because I'm not an expert.  I've seen a few talks and read a few general-level articles, and I can follow those, but, really, I defer to the experts.  And, you know, if a climatologist wants to know about the Higgs boson, they ask me.  They wouldn't then say, "in my opinion, the Higgs doesn't exist."  Sounds silly, right?

One other event worth pointing out, though I don't remember the links to the news articles on it.  A few years ago, a scientist who was a skeptic about anthropogenic climate change (please note: this was not a climate scientist) got a big group of other non-expert scientists together to reanalyze the data that the climate science community had already gone through. So they spent a couple of years, and then, lo and behold, they came to the same conclusion that climate scientists had all along -- the climate is changing, and the main cause is human civilization.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 20, 2015)

> In essence, I accept that we have taken a slow, natural warming process, that the planet is currently undergoing, and artificially ramped it up to geologically breakneck speeds. Subsequently, changes are occuring at a far greater pace than the environment, and nature, are capable of adjusting to. This makes the current warming cycle 'unnatural' in nature.




...except we are not in a natural warming cycle, we're in a natural cooling cycle...but we're still warming.



> Where are we currently in the natural cycle (Milankovitch cycle)?  The warmest point of the last cycle was around 10,000 years ago, at the peak of the Holocene. Since then, there has been an overall cooling trend, consistent with a continuation of the natural cycle, and this cooling would continue for thousands of years into the future if all else remained the same. But since 1750 however, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has deviated from the natural cycle. Instead of decreasing, it has increased because of the fossil-fuel burning. Methane and nitrous oxide have also increased unnaturally because of agricultural practices and other factors. The world has also warmed unnaturally.  We are now deviating from the natural cycle.



http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/natural-cycle



> For example, we are warming far too fast to be coming out of the last ice age, and the Milankovitch cycles that drive glaciation show that we should be, in fact, very slowly going into a new ice age (but anthropogenic warming is virtually certain to offset that influence).
> 
> The "1500-year cycle" that S. Fred Singer attributes warming to is, in fact, a change in distribution of thermal energy between the poles, not a net increase in global temperature, which is what we observe now.
> 
> The Little Ice Age following the Medieval Warm Period ended due to a slight increase in solar output (changes in both thermohaline circulation and volcanic activity also contributed), but that increase has since reversed, and global temperature and solar activity are now going in opposite directions. This also explains why the 11-year solar cycle could not be causing global warming.




http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-natural-cycle.htm


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## was (Aug 20, 2015)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> ...except we are not in a natural warming cycle, we're in a natural cooling cycle...but we're still warming.




Do you have a good source on this?  It's my understanding that we have been warming since the end of the Pleistocene (11000-12000 years ago) with the end of the last ice age/glacial retreat.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 20, 2015)

Edited in while you were posting.


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## was (Aug 20, 2015)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Edited in while you were posting.




Sorry, a bad internet connection, late night posts and awful spelling lead to me editing/taking a long time on my posts. 

I'm perusing the listed links but I have never heard of these authors/agencies.  Are there any leads to a more well-known source?  It's so hard to tell who's legit anymore on the web.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 20, 2015)

Well, NASA.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GISSTemperature/giss_temperature2.php

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page4.php



> Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase.



http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

The EPA


> Changes in solar energy continue to affect climate. However, solar activity has been relatively constant, aside from the 11-year cycle, since the mid-20th century and therefore does not explain the recent warming of Earth. Similarly, changes in the shape of Earth’s orbit as well as the tilt and position of Earth’s axis affect temperature on relatively long timescales (tens of thousands of years), and therefore cannot explain the recent warming.



http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/causes.html


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## Ryujin (Aug 20, 2015)

With respect to opinions, not all of them are equal. Here's an example of one of the "foremost Canadian climate change deniers"; Tomothy Ball. Note the issue regarding his credentials.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tim_Ball


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## Umbran (Aug 20, 2015)

was said:


> Do you have a good source on this?  It's my understanding that we have been warming since the end of the Pleistocene (11000-12000 years ago) with the end of the last ice age/glacial retreat.




We can start here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age

Specifically, with this graphic, which shows the pattern of temperature over time for glacial periods, as well as CO2 and dust concentrations for the same times:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#/media/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg

Let me see if I can attach that:



The 0 of time at the right is the present, and time goes farther back into the past as we go further left.  The end of the last glacial period is the low near the right end of the graph.  

In this, we can see that "warming since the end of the glacial age" is not the usual pattern.  A glacial period ends in a sharp snap of rising temperature, and then an overall slow cooling down into the next glacial period. We had the sharp rise some 11,000 years ago or so, and we should have been in a cooling trend into the next glaciation period.

We can see, in fact, that our current temperatures are near the highest we typically get for the current epoch.  For the past 400,000 years or so, Earth has been spending most of its tie much cooler than it is right now, not warmer.


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## Kramodlog (Aug 20, 2015)

I have a question for climate skeptics. 

What would you need to be convinced of global warming and that it is a serious matter that affects us?


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## Umbran (Aug 20, 2015)

We should note an ambiguity of terminology.  Specifically, "Ice Age".

From a paleoclimatological/geological sense, there have been 5 Ice Ages - periods that can have significant glaciation on the planet.  The two first Ice Ages may well have had the planet *entirely* covered in ice (a "snowball earth").  But generally, within an Ice Age, there are several periods of glaciation followed by inter-glacial periods.  From this standpoint, we are in an ice age, during an inter-glacial period.  When you leave an Ice Age, there is no more extensive glaciation anywhere on the planet - including the poles.  

Colloquially, we refer to any glaciation period as an ice age.


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## Janx (Aug 20, 2015)

goldomark said:


> I have a question for climate skeptics.
> 
> What would you need to be convinced of global warming and that it is a serious matter that affects us?




probably an education in how to read that graph.


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## Umbran (Aug 20, 2015)

Janx said:


> probably an education in how to read that graph.




That graph, plus the "hockey stick" graph, which shows recent time in greater detail.

This is the original, which has been revised in particulars, but the general remains the same.  From the year 1000 to 1900, we see a slow cooling trend (from around -0.2 degrees below the 1961-1991 average to about -0.4 degrees below it), with a strong lift from 1900 or so onward.


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## Kramodlog (Aug 20, 2015)

Janx said:


> probably an education in how to read that graph.




But then the counter argument is, and we've seen it in this thread, "I do not trust the data used/collected". Cause agenda.


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## Umbran (Aug 20, 2015)

goldomark said:


> But then the counter argument is, and we've seen it in this thread, "I do not trust the data used/collected". Cause agenda.




The counter to that is twofold:

1) Produce actual *evidence* of agenda.  Because "plausible-sounding story that there's an agenda" does not mean there actually is one, especially when we require an agenda covering hundreds to thousands of individuals.  

2) Produce actual data yourself that can be reviewed.  Saying, in essence, "I don't trust you so you must be incorrect," does not actually settle the question.

Which is to say, there's a, "put up or shut up," point.  We are at it - really, beyond it, to the point of our being ludicrous.


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## Kramodlog (Aug 20, 2015)

Umbran said:


> The counter to that is twofold:
> 
> 1) Produce actual *evidence* of agenda.  Because "plausible-sounding story that there's an agenda" does not mean there actually is one, especially when we require an agenda covering hundreds to thousands of individuals.
> 
> ...




Not that I disagree with you, but I'd rather have climate skeptics explain to me what they need to be convinced rather than ask them somethings most of them won't be able to give us. 

I think asking them what they need might lead to them question their biases.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 20, 2015)

IOW, conversation, not lectures...with people tuning out.


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## Umbran (Aug 20, 2015)

goldomark said:


> Not that I disagree with you, but I'd rather have climate skeptics explain to me what they need to be convinced rather than ask them somethings most of them won't be able to give us.
> 
> I think asking them what they need might lead to them question their biases.




In some cases this can work.  But, there are some very common issues with the approach, based in the fact that we are not nearly so rational as we like to pretend.

Belief, or lack thereof, is often not based on a rational process.  We frequently come to a state of beliefs for reasons other than factual evidence, and having come to a belief, we put an emotional stake in the ground regarding it, that we are often not really aware of.  So, when you ask that question, they will come up with a rational or rationalized answer.  You may meet the requirements of that answer... and they still don't believe you.  While they said X was required, X actually didn't convince them.  

Now, you have *two* issues

1) You *said* X would to it, and it didn't - a commitment was made, but failed to resolve.  This brings in a bunch of issues of ego, and will tend to the person moving the goalposts, or otherwise digging in, and blaming you, or your data, or just about anything other than themselves for the breach of agreement.  While occasionally in the real world you can manage this, and even *use* it (my wife has some great techniques for using this to eventually make a breakthrough with people), but on the internet it just becomes argument, and nobody gets anywhere.

2) You still haven't convinced them.  (1) has probably led them to dig their emotional stake in even deeper, so you've actually made reverse progress.

In another post, a little later this afternoon, I would like to try to elucidate some of the common emotional stakes involved in this particular discussion.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 20, 2015)

Money is an issue.  People's livelihoods ARE at stake.

Oddly, religion is one, too.  We've had people- Sen. Issa was one, as I recall- who claim that God would not permit man to make a permanent harmful change in His creation.  Pretty bad theology, I know.  I'd love to ask him face-to-face if he could cite one Biblical instance of God preventing anyone from suffering the consequences of choices made contrary to God's edicts.


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## Kramodlog (Aug 20, 2015)

Of global warming, and general environmental degradation, are signs of the coming End of times and that is a good thing.


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## Umbran (Aug 20, 2015)

So, I'd like to elucidate a few of the emotional issues involved in the Climate Change discussion.  Any and all of these can come into play, and make it very difficult to engage in constructive discussion.  These things can make a person's brain into a crazed weasel within your skull, searching for *any* way to not accept points.

1) Us vs Them.  In the US (and other places in the world) this topic is, for several reasons, attached to political parties/philosophies.  Generally, people of the other party are The Enemy.  And The Enemy cannot be allowed to win.  A staunch member of one party or philosophy will emotionally resist the notion not on any merits of the notion, but because it comes from the other side - a kind of internal _ad hominem_, dismissing and resisting the notion due to who its proponents are.

2)  Admitting you are Wrong.  This is a big one.  Nobody likes to admit they are wrong.  If you say, even just to yourself, "I believe X is true," then any argument against X is a challenge to you, and engages not just your reason, but your ego - in effect, admitting you are wrong entails a sort of loss of status and face to the group, and nobody likes to face that.

3) Accepting Responsibility.  Similar to admitting you are wrong - but this isn't just about an intellectual curiosity.  This is *real*.  If you accept antrhopogenic climate change, you accept that *WE* did this.  We undertook Wrong Action, and have actively resisted correction, making things worse - it is confessing guilt, which most folks really don't like doing.

4) Accepting the Cost of Action.  If you Accept Responsibility, you then also accept that it is up to you to do something.  This will be difficult and expensive.  It is so, so much easier to reject the notion, and not accept the cost and effort and change in our lives required to make it better.

5) This Crap Is Scary.  We are talking about things that could mean, on the one end, massive property damage and loss of life, to the other end, destruction of all current coastal cities and perhaps reducing the planet to being no longer suitable to what we currently consider civilization.   Humans are known to avoid fear and anxiety through denial and rejection.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 20, 2015)

Good breakdown.


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## tomBitonti (Aug 20, 2015)

Perhaps more reasonably:

* Not trusting other folks to do the right thing even though they are correctly describing the problem.

For example:

Using global warming to ask folks to reduce resources, but going ahead of using a lot of them yourself.

Going ahead with very untested proposals (carbon sequestration; seeding the ocean with iron, &etc).

My sense is this underlies a lot of folks reservations about global warming.  They believe that something is happening, but very much distrust folks to address the issue fairly.

(Or, only half in jest:

* Having an uncomfortable sense that having the tools to understand global warming requires a civilization which uses resources to a degree to cause global warming.  If you unwind all of that, vast resource use may be synonymous with modern civilization.  Then any real solution would be of a scope to make most folks extremely uneasy.)

Thx!

TomB


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## Janx (Aug 20, 2015)

tomBitonti said:


> Perhaps more reasonably:
> 
> * Not trusting other folks to do the right thing even though they are correctly describing the problem.
> 
> ...




Along this line, as I'm even further in the book of bad ideas State of Fear...

Crighton raises the point that environmentalists don't really know enough to do a good job protecting the environment anyway.  He raises Yellowstone Park as his example from its founding, and how allegedly, a number of mistakes were made in killing this, or bringing that back, etc that drastically changed it from how it was.  Again, no clue how correct that is (he also advocates DDT usage, which wikipedia says actually has diminished value now as the insects have grown more resistant).

But this concept that folks think they know how to handle the environment, but make just as bad a mess of it may play a part in the mindset.

Oddly enough, the native americans, he asserts, meddled with the environment, burning areas, exterminating species, and somehow that was OK.

Which seems contradictory.  Surely we have white folk who have learned similar ideas that the natives had to not muck it up.  People are all people.


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## Umbran (Aug 20, 2015)

tomBitonti said:


> Perhaps more reasonably:
> 
> * Not trusting other folks to do the right thing even though they are correctly describing the problem.
> 
> ...




These are certainly issues to address once you start talking about solutions.  

I don't think they are going to be common emotional reasons to deny the problem exists, though - these require you to first consider the solutions, and thus accept the problem, and then step back again and deny the problem exist.

That, as compared to the reasons I noted, which are more simple emotional drivers like fear and pride.


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## Umbran (Aug 20, 2015)

Janx said:


> Oddly enough, the native americans, he asserts, meddled with the environment, burning areas, exterminating species, and somehow that was OK.
> 
> Which seems contradictory.




It is.  However, note that there is an issue of scale.  The Native Americans were basically a stone-age civilization, with, by today's standards, low population densities.  That limited (but did not eradicate) their ability to do things on a scale large enough to have major ecological impact.  So, when they did it, it wasn't a big deal, because they didn't do it enough to really hammer on the ecology.  If we take on the same practice, on our scale today, the results can be disastrous.

This is something we have to accept - anything done on the scale of modern human populations (providing food, power, clothing and housing and so on) *WILL* have a major impact, because our populations are large.  It is *NOT* the case that the things we do to avert global warming will have no negative impacts - their negative impacts may simply be less disastrous for us and out current ecosphere.  We are populous enough that we cannot do no harm - we only get to pick and choose what harm we do.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 20, 2015)

> Crighton raises the point that environmentalists don't really know enough to do a good job protecting the environment anyway.




And scientists who were interviewed by Crighton while he was writing the book were sorely disappointed with his..."interpretation" of the facts.



> In summary, I am disappointed, not least because while researching his book, Crichton visited our lab at the NASA Goddard Institute and discussed some of these issues with me and a few of my colleagues. I suppose we didn’t do a very good job of explaining matters. Judging from his bibliography, the rather dry prose of reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change did not stir his senses quite like some of the racier contrarian texts. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Crichton picked fiction over fact.




http://grist.org/article/schmidt-fear/

See also:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 20, 2015)

Umbran said:


> It is.  However, note that there is an issue of scale.  The Native Americans were basically a stone-age civilization, with, by today's standards, low population densities.  That limited (but did not eradicate) their ability to do things on a scale large enough to have major ecological impact.  So, when they did it, it wasn't a big deal, because they didn't do it enough to really hammer on the ecology.  If we take on the same practice, on our scale today, the results can be disastrous.
> 
> This is something we have to accept - anything done on the scale of modern human populations (providing food, power, clothing and housing and so on) *WILL* have a major impact, because our populations are large.  It is *NOT* the case that the things we do to avert global warming will have no negative impacts - their negative impacts may simply be less disastrous for us and out current ecosphere.  We are populous enough that we cannot do no harm - we only get to pick and choose what harm we do.




There is also the aspect of perspective.

As a nomadic, tribal society with Stone Age tech surrounded by seemingly boundless natural resources, they lacked the ability to see the full impact of their actions.  "Extinction" is a concept beyond the grasp of most pre-industrial societies.

As a modern society with the ability to photograph license plates from space and measure particles in parts per millions, we don't have the luxury of willfully disregarding what we can so easily discern.

As a small child, you might have twisted a cat's tail or thrown rocks at frogs.  As an adult, you recognize the cruelty of those acts.  The child you most likely does not grasp what he does, the adult you can't ignore it.


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## was (Aug 20, 2015)

Umbran said:


> These are certainly issues to address once you start talking about solutions.
> 
> I don't think they are going to be common emotional reasons to deny the problem exists, though - these require you to first consider the solutions, and thus accept the problem, and then step back again and deny the problem exist.
> 
> That, as compared to the reasons I noted, which are more simple emotional drivers like fear and pride.




...Unfortunately, I think that basic drives towards greed and sloth may prove to be bigger obstacles in forcing people to recognize the problem and take action.


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## tuxgeo (Aug 21, 2015)

Skipping backward a couple of pages for this: 



RangerWickett said:


> If you have an hour and want to get a good understanding of our current situation regarding fossil fuel use and carbon emissions due to transportation, I recommend this article: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html
> 
> It's the second part of a 4-part series about Elon Musk and his various efforts to improve the human condition and stave off really bad consequences.
> . . . < snip >




Good site. Thanks for the link. Interesting read. Hmm. 

_Lithium-ion batteries for the masses._ Free recharges at recently-built power stations, with more coming. 
Lithium is the 25th-most-common element on earth, so that lightweight metal is an available resource, but much of it is scattered -- low concentrations in rocks and oceans.


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## Umbran (Aug 21, 2015)

was said:


> ...Unfortunately, I think that basic drives towards greed and sloth may prove to be bigger obstacles in forcing people to recognize the problem and take action.




Yes, those are issues - but not the emotional blocks to acceptance of the facts in discussion.

I am quite sure the executives of the various oil companies actually know the score.  They simply don't feel compelled to do anything other than make sure a small number of people live very comfortable lives before things to to heck in a handbasket.

Would that Elon Musk or Warren Buffet owned, say, Exxon/Mobil, and we might see a different scene indeed.  Imagine the profits of a major oil company fully devoted to alternative energy production and research.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Aug 21, 2015)

If we could get a Tesla into the hands of the Pope...


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## tuxgeo (Aug 21, 2015)

. . . we could be sure that the Pope had large hands. 

On a more factual note, the Tesla Model 3 (approximately _affordable_ for people) isn't planned to appear until 2016, if then.


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