Global Warming

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There is a lot more undeveloped land than there is developed land. Look on google satellite. That's plenty of forest for animals to live in and they do live in them. I don't think when they say livestock that they are just referring to animals we farm. People eat elk and deer, they are wild animals. How I think they could be way off in their estimates is because they don't scan all the woodlands that exist, tag and count animals. So it's like playing the game, guess how many jellybeans are there are(everywhere), yet the jar only contains a small unknown percentage of the jellybeans. They do this for each species then total unverified estimates up to give another estimate. Odds are, they can be much more than 20% off and have no way to verify how much they are off. Estimates are important to have an idea, it's still not reliable information.

Giant squid were a myth 30-40 years ago(Something like that), now they have been confirmed to be real, up to like 20 meters(I'm not sure how big the biggest one so far is). The ocean is even more vast than land mass, by a lot. The proposal that they could actually have an idea of how many creatures dwell in it is ridiculous, far fetched. They don't even know where blue wells give birth.

A pattern sticks out, information like insect count, land animals, ocean life and global warming are all very tricky things to calculate or understand(Maybe impossible for today's technology), or prove to be true, they are all linked by something 'severe warnings' and something we can prove, extending the arm of the government, regulations, restriction and money.

Just listen to the claim and it seems like nothing but a scare tactic.....Mass extinctions going on due to the global average rising 1.4 degrees over a period of 80 years. Really? So, animals can survive in 98 degrees, but 99 degrees causes mas extinction. Animals can adapt fairly easy and have throughout time.

The planet has naturally went through cycles and has been way hotter than it is now, CO2 levels have been way higher than they are now, and we didn't fix that issue, the planet naturally changes, it was before our time. Places that are deserts now used to be jungles, even locations change(that was before us also).

there's not many mammals in the oceans, so the giant squid doesn't help us much as an example.

the insect mass thing: well, there are no large areas of land in germany away from civilization - the settlement is very dense. But it should strike you that it's in a nature reserve, the one place where there's no pesticides directly being sprayed on the area.

The argument that there's loads of insects near where you live is the same as "there's no global warming because I feel cold". You haven't even made long term measurements, so you can't even say anything about the change in this ine spot - it's only a one-off impression of yours that there's "a lot".

regarding "wild land": yes, there's large unsettled areas. mountains, deserts. There's no large amount of elephants hiding in caves in the himalayans, or some sort of sand-whale living benath the sand-dunes of the gobi desert.
If it's arable land and not a nature reserve, it's subject to some kind of use, be it logging or farming (with pesticide use) or hunting. Otherwise, the owner's just loosing money.

the appendix of the appendix of that study shows inly cattle, pigs, sheep, buffalo, goats, camelids (including llamas), horses and donkeys. No mooses or elk. Livestock means that humans raise it, not game.

regarding mass extinction with global warming:
the problem with mass extinction and global warming is ocean acidification, which hinders tiny animals from forming calcium shells, and that makes the whole food chain collapse. Plus, breeding ground ecosystems like coral reefs havebeen dying for decades, because they're very sensitive.
- and the other bits are desertification and that animals might need to move a hundred miles north to find food and all, but the reserve they live in doesn't include the area a hundred miles north.
Plus the soil might be different and not able to have their foodplant grow on it.

the global warming that's projected is pretty drastic compared to anything that happened since the last ice ages, and in a very very short amount of time.

they way humans and animals live side-by side with each other has changed a lot in the last century, so historical data on how animals weather climate changes is not awfully predictive.

yes, this stuff is very conplicated, and no, it's not possible to give exact numbers. The numbers given are the attempt to put give us a sense of scale.

A discussion on fossil fuels and climate change



I recommend watching this. The devil of climate change Alex Epstein. How people demonize human existence, how they demonize human accomplishments yet they are hypocrites because the greatly benefit by being able to use the energy that fossil fuels produce. If you want to be a real green energy protester, move back into the woods and grow all your own food. What fossil fuels gives us is the time to explore in all fields of science, it gives us all the technology we have. What green activists truly want in principle is for humans to not exist or to have no technology, no science and to be cast back in the woods. Currently, that's the only alternative. No source of green energy, solar and wind energy, can even touch the energy we get from fossil fuels, thus we would all be farmers again.

The basic thing is we need fossil fuels to progress our advance means of living, that is what gave us the ability to study climate in the first place. It seems it would be a lot more productive to take the money we are using to 'prove' humans have an impact on the planet and use that money to actually try to produce safer forms of energy that cause less impact. Seems that would be much better than using our resources to prove we have an impact on the planet by existing and suggesting we should move back into the woods, letting millions die by disease and starvation and making survival rates dramatically drop for your average person. In fact, it is fossil fuels that allow us to survive in harsh climates.

Now you're just insulting people.
You are right that we can't go back to some state of nature. That's a romantic idea, which started coming up in Europe in the 18th century, when industrialization spread.

It's not that we don't "like" fossil fuels. we'd just like to not steer off a cliff. Or throw our children off that cliff.
Btw.: gemany runs on 33% renewables now.
And we could build solar powered direct carbon capture plants in the desert, which scrub the air for co2, which we could in part reuse as fuel for all the combustion engines everywhere, and we could sequester the other part, slowly reducing co2 in the atmosphere and recycling the amount we need as easily portable fuel through direct air capture.
we could, the technologies are available and they're not incredibly expensive - just more expensive than the current supply.

climate research costs a tiny amount, compared to what restructuring the power grid costs, or power plants, and policy makers could move ahead if they didn't have to prove, exactly!, how much this will save in comparison with staying on fossil fuels. But the problem is of course, that we can't put an exact number on climate effects, and that's messing up the economists, and the people profitting from fossil fuels use that uncertainty.

alex epstein is running a for profit think tank and is a member of the cato institute. he's not a scientist, but receives funding from the Koch brothers, who are oil-billionaires.
He's not a scientist, just some random guy getting rich off oil-money.

Fossil fuels drive our entire modern society. People who think we can just switch to a different source are grossly ignorant of just how hopelessly dependent on fossil fuels we are, and the numerous, engineering and infrastructure challenges that quite frankly are beyond our grasp right now. I think everyone on the planet can agree that being permanently dependent on fossil fuels is a dumb strategy, and we should invest in developing alternatives.

The entire conversation on climate change angers me. The science isn't good enough to give us precise predictions, which leads to overzealous advocates making grand unsupported claims and deniers challenging those claims. No one really knows what an Earth that is on average 2 degrees warmer with humans on it looks like. We make our best guesses on how it will affect sea levels and animal populations etc. based on predictive modeling, but the truth is that this is complicated as hell and there are more factors at stake than just the mean temperature of the planet.

To my knowledge no one has studied whether it would be easier to adjust to a warmer earth than to make the necessary changes to prevent its warming. I suspect the former is more feasible.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't be investing in alternative energy and chemical sources we definitely should , it just means that fantasy policies like the Green New Deal destructive to a productive conversation. There is no way if we committed every person and dollar to the task right now that we could be fossil fuel free in 10 years.

I'm not insulting people, I'm stating the truth. The answer is obvious, and extremists exist on both sides. One of the things holding technology back is big corporations buying patents and sitting on them to maximize profits, that should be talked about more. I think people should have equal opportunity for patents, to introduce the technology into our world.

While he may be paid by Koch brothers, he makes very valid points. Who he gets paid by does not take away from things that are obvious. Like Cortez's green new deal(ban all fossil fuels in 12 years), is an extremists idea that would fail greatly. I'm not saying nothing should be done, there is plenty that can be done that never even gets talked about. A lot of the science insisting things are so bad is speculative, that's how they keep making extreme predictions that never pan out.

He seems to make very legit arguments, even referring to the scientists who fog the line between speculation and confimable science. It's a bad argument to suggest that because he is paid by Koch brothers means nothing he says is true.

Humans were not around during those high CO2 periods and would not have likely been able to survive.

Also even if the planet does naturally change you think all the scientists are just lying about humans contributing to the current changes? I mean if humans want to kill themselves with temperatures we can't live in respiratory ailements from smog and pollution so be it I guess.

I just don't get why people would actually be 'against' people becoming more sustainable with how we use resources and using cleaner sources of energy...its just stupid. Even without the risk of contributing to global changes we may not be able to survive it would still make sense to do that.

I mean its ridiculous to think humans have not had any effect on the climate whatsoever.

I haven't insisted humans have no impact on earth, that much is very obvious. I also haven't said anything about being against green energy. Green energy patents that could be very useful are being bought up and sat on to maximize profits. I think attacking that issue would greatly benefit us all.

This is why I shouldn't post on forums first thing when I get up...before I've even had my tea or coffee.

IDK who is suggesting we move back into the woods and shun all technology...I mean that is crazy. I mean fossil fuels have served a purpose and still do there is a lot of progress that would not exist without it probably. If we are to move on from it however...the alternatives need to be further developed and perfected to make the switch.

I would agree money may be better spend developing these than further trying to convince people global warming is real...anyone who doesn't believe it now probably wont...so perhaps it would be best to just forget them and start developing the alternatives and make them 'appealing' to the masses that might work best.

For instance, it has yet to be seen if this wasn't just some kind of stunt or something but..Xcel energy has claimed they will work towards becoming carbon free. So if what they say is true, instead of going around trying to convince people that say 'global warming is false because its cold outside where I am at' that its for real. They will just be switching coal plants to plants ran by renewable energy.

Or we could say 'its an evil company' because they've been using coal...shut em down, but that does not seem like it would encourage innovation on a bigger business level.

It's ok. That's what bothers me about all of our issues, the extremists are the ones who seem to get the spotlight. I haven't just watched this one video, which I do recommend watching. I also watched a video of a climate change activist, whom also wasn't a scientist, insisting we are driving the planet into catastrophic problems. Alex Epstein was not an extremist. he simply pointed out that we really don't even hear much from the scientists within climate change, we hear from a small group of extremists who often aren't even scientists within the fields they are discussing. Different sources also come up with different percentages of scientists that are on-board with the idea. Then to add, he pointed out how they are subject to loose their jobs if they don't agree. He seemed more of an in the middle kind of guy rather than the extremist some would point him out to be and he did state that it's obvious that our activities do affect the planet. He pointed out the big oil spill in the gulf and stated that it's funny no one seems to talk about the places where this naturally occurs. But anyway, I'm not against green energy, I'm more against suppressing green energy.

Extremists are the ones suggesting that, the green new deal is impossible to carry out yet that's the offer on the table, do nothing or adopt a ridiculous plan that's not possible and would cause a great loss in energy which causes a great loss in technology. 12 years, no fossil fuels is the only offer on the table.

Had I seen this thread, I wouldn't have started my own...
It appears I am not the only one who is influenced by subliminal suggestion...

Zealots on both sides damage their cause, agreed...



Yep...



"...how much impact do humans have on global warming?"...
Well, at a guess I'd say about this much: <-------------------------------->



Within reason...
There comes a point where the negative consequences outweigh the benefits...
Do we want a situation where: "The operation was a success...However, the patient died..."?

I think intellectual modesty is a very valuable trait.

Let's say you don't know anything about biological sampling methods. Why would you? They don't affect your life, so unless they were part of your study or career then you have no real reason to know about them.

But at least acknowledge that you know nothing. Don't make things up about biologists extrapolating from one park to the whole world. Don't make things up about scientists not knowing that insect populations fluctuate seasonally. And certainly don't assume that there's nothing you don't know about ecology. (Incidentally the highest recorded atmospheric temperature in the world is 56.7 degrees in Death Valley; nothing lives at 97 degrees)

There's a lot of information out there on the internet for you. If you're interested in biological sampling methods, ecology, or the observed impacts of climate change upon the natural world, then look them up!

Pardon the aside, but you are aware that the use of the term "denier" is a pejorative?
And that people who use the term erode their credibility in terms of objectivity...?
If you want to maintain an emotive free argument, may I suggest you use "skeptic" instead?