[JohnRawls]

Are you saying that desalination harms the environment? Or that building water pipelines would? I don't know a lot about desalination but generally yes, I put human's wellbeing ahead of animal's wellbeing.

I am not talking about animal wellbeing. I am talking about human wellbeing. Environmental protection be it food safety, reforestation efforts, stopping the growth of deserts, decreasing the amount of earthquakes and hurricanes etc is a good goal that benefits the affected humans.

[AFAIK]

If you guys are expecting a system as large and complex as our Earth's to warm at a consistent uniform rate everywhere at once with no localised disparities then you're going to be sorely disappointed. Warming is already concentrated at the poles and the release of freshwater from melting ice is already disrupting the NAD.

[Hindsite]

If you guys are expecting a system as large and complex as our Earth's to warm at a consistent uniform rate everywhere at once with no localised disparities then you're going to be sorely disappointed. Warming is already concentrated at the poles and the release of freshwater from melting ice is already disrupting the NAD.

I believe there is more cooling concentrated at the poles than warming.
Praise the Lord.

Global Warming; 31,487 Scientists say NO to Alarm

[Sivad]

BBC, Attenborough Accused of Fake News on 'Climate Change: The Facts'

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has made a formal complaint to the BBC about the series of gross inaccuracies in its recent documentary Climate Change: The Facts.

As wags have quipped, the programme presented by Sir David Attenborough was so riddled with errors it really should have been called Climate: Change The Facts.

According to the GPWF, the programme “went far beyond its remit to present the facts about climate change, instead broadcasting a highly politicised manifesto in favour of renewable energy and unjustified alarm.”

The programme highlighted suggestions that storms, floods, heatwaves and sea level rise are all rapidly getting worse as a result of climate change.

However, the best available data, published in the last few years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and NASA, contradicts the BBC’s alarmist exaggeration of empirical evidence.

In its 5th Assessment Report (2013), the IPCC concluded:

“Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin.”

In its more recent Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, published in 2018, these findings were reconfirmed. It stated that

“Numerous studies towards and beyond AR5 have reported a decreasing trend in the global number of tropical cyclones and/or the globally accumulated cyclonic energy… There is consequently low confidence in the larger number of studies reporting increasing trends in the global number of very intense cyclones.”

Regarding floods, the IPCC’s Special Report concluded:

“There is low confidence due to limited evidence, however, that anthropogenic climate change has affected the frequency and the magnitude of floods. “

There is also no observational evidence that the rate of sea level rise is getting worse. NASA satellite data shows that since 1993, there has been an annual mean sea level rise of 3.3mm, with no significant level of acceleration in the last three decades.

Suggestions by David Attenborough and Michael Mann that climate change is causing increases in wildfires in the US and globally are also misleading and not supported by any empirical evidence.

According to a survey published by the Royal Society the global area burned has actually declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence to suggest that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago. These are vitally important facts that should have been mentioned if an accurate description of the impact of climate change on wildfires was to be maintained.

This is the second #fakenews scandal to embroil Sir David Attenborough in the space of a fortnight. Earlier this month, another Attenborough documentary — Our Planet on Netflix — was accused of misrepresenting footage of walruses tumbling to their deaths over a cliff. Attenborough claimed on the voiceover that this had been caused by “climate change” and the melting of the sea ice on which the walruses hunted for food. But evidence has since emerged that it wasn’t climate change which killed the walruses but rather a combination of marauding polar bears and the Netflix film crew whose activities may have scared the tusked, bewhiskered creatures to their doom.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/0 ... ed-us/amp/

[QatzelOk]

Today, I'll be biking off to the suburbs of Montreal to see all the flooding.

The suburban areas of the city whose river banks were all coated with bungalows and McMansions over the last 50 years, are now seeing a lot of houses getting destroyed by our increasingly flooded springs.

2017 was the previous worse flood season. Now, it's this year.

In 12 years (or 20 years, or next year), a lot of these houses will be condemned. Our government has offered home-owners in new flood zones 200,000 dollars to relocate.

It's only losing your house to floods. Not important at all. Noah doesn't need to be preparing a boat.

[Pants-of-dog]

BBC, Attenborough Accused of Fake News on 'Climate Change: The Facts'

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has .....

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/0 ... ed-us/amp/

Breitbart is a far right or alt right “newspaper” that openly lies.

But more importantly, The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is a denialist think tank that receives funding from undisclosed sources.

This is obviously a ploy by UK fossil fuel interests tying to use their money and influence to circumvent the interests of the majority.

[quetzalcoatl]

I disagree with this one.

Desalinization technology is cheaper than ever. It sustains Israel and other mid-eastern nations. You don't have to be near the coast to get the water because we can pipe water around just as we pipe oil around.

Right here in Texas, they are kicking around the idea of building desalinization plants on the coast, and piping the water inland. San Antonio is a candidate to try this out first.

I think the industrial west will fare much better than underdeveloped nations (at this point, they should be called never-to-be-developed nations). Technology can be deployed only so fast however, and we've waited a long time to act. It will be hard to mobilize de-salinazation fast enough to avert significant depopulation pressure in the southwest. Even if successful, technological solutions will mean cost-push inflation for water, electricity, and food prices.

Beyond all this, it isn't just a little matter of things getting a little warmer. If I'm correct, we are facing a multi-faceted environmental collapse that is already manifesting itself, and will pose devastating challenges in your lifetime.

[Rancid]

devastating challenges in your lifetime.

baaaahh we'll be alright.

[JohnRawls]

baaaahh we'll be alright.

See that is my opinion also but it doesn't mean we should't do anything.

How about switching to at least 50% nuclear if solar/wind/hydro are not working right now on a massive scale even after all of the investment in to research and deployment. That will significantly decrease CO2 emissions not to mention will create a lot of high tech jobs. The world uses around 140 000 TWH of electricity. Overprices US powerplants produce it with 0.096$/KWH cost. (Others do it cheaper but for the sake of argument lets use US prices) 1 TWH has 1000000000 KWH. Price of total world nuclerification using US prices starting from 0 = 1000000000 x 0.096 x 140 000 is 13 trillion 440 billion. The world invested around 4 Trillion in the span of the last 18 years in to renewables. 4/13,44*100% = 30% of world electricity production could have been created. I don't think that renewables produce more than 10% of global electricity.

[SolarCross]

In 12 years (or 11, now?) it will be 2030 or 2031. Some observations about what will be happening around then:

(1) Change of a decade which will likely be met with some fanfare.

(2) Either through Presidential elections, legislative blowbacks (such as bad midterms) or Supreme Court blockage (even Obama's appointed judges ruled against his administration a record number of times, so even most of the current liberal justices would rule against Green New Deal-type stuff) America's far leftists will be confronted with the reality that there is no way for them to enact their policy goals.

(3) Most of America's radical leftists are millennials in their 30's, so in 2030 they will in their late 40's and many of them will be beginning to have their mid-life crisis at around that time.

So what happens when you have a bunch of late 40 year olds having their mid-life crises, they believe that the deadline to save the planet has passed or is about to pass and they have failed politically? Probably, a total disaster. Mass unrest and possibly also terrorist attacks or mass suicides as were not unknown to happen when the leftism of the 1960's and 70's collapsed. It's going to be ugly and this 12-year thing, which is technically only the latest of doomsday clocks in a series of incorrect predictions, will be pouring fuel on the fire.

I hope that is too pessimistic. Likely a lot of these peoples will have forgotten all about it after twelve years and will be on some other bandwagon. For example where are the peak oil crowd now? Or indeed where are the Mayan Calendar bunch? The other thing is people, even liberals, grow up and when they do they get less gullible.

[Hindsite]

Today, I'll be biking off to the suburbs of Montreal to see all the flooding.

The suburban areas of the city whose river banks were all coated with bungalows and McMansions over the last 50 years, are now seeing a lot of houses getting destroyed by our increasingly flooded springs.

2017 was the previous worse flood season. Now, it's this year.

In 12 years (or 20 years, or next year), a lot of these houses will be condemned. Our government has offered home-owners in new flood zones 200,000 dollars to relocate.

It's only losing your house to floods. Not important at all. Noah doesn't need to be preparing a boat.

End Times As The Days Of Noah & Lot

[Hong Wu]

Today, I'll be biking off to the suburbs of Montreal to see all the flooding.

The suburban areas of the city whose river banks were all coated with bungalows and McMansions over the last 50 years, are now seeing a lot of houses getting destroyed by our increasingly flooded springs.

2017 was the previous worse flood season. Now, it's this year.

In 12 years (or 20 years, or next year), a lot of these houses will be condemned. Our government has offered home-owners in new flood zones 200,000 dollars to relocate.

It's only losing your house to floods. Not important at all. Noah doesn't need to be preparing a boat.

The irony here is that in California, global warming is associated with droughts, not flooding.

[Hindsite]

The irony here is that in California, global warming is associated with droughts, not flooding.

Perhaps that is why they also refer to it as climate change.

[JohnRawls]

The irony here is that in California, global warming is associated with droughts, not flooding.

Actually its both. Rivers become smaller while the sea level rises.

[Rancid]

See that is my opinion also but it doesn't mean we should't do anything.

I agree.

Have you ever heard of the concept of Wizards versus Prophets?

Wizards are people that believe we can solve all of our problems one way or another. I'm a wizard, I think can solve these issues with technology.
Prophets are people that urge everyone else to change their ways. For example, stop using fossil fuels. Go Vegetarian, etc. etc. Basically, this is an "end is nigh" type of mindset.

We are all both Wizards and Prophets. The question is, which do you tend to be more often? I am much more a wizard than a prophet.

[QatzelOk]

Have you ever heard of the concept of Wizards versus Prophets?

Wizards are people that believe we can solve all of our problems one way or another. I'm a wizard, I think can solve these issues with technology.
Prophets are people that urge everyone else to change their ways. For example, stop using fossil fuels. Go Vegetarian, etc. etc. Basically, this is an "end is nigh" type of mindset.

Another difference between wizards and prophets is that wizards don't really exist. They're just ordinary people pretending to have magical powers.

[Pants-of-dog]

Soothsayers also do not actually exist.

There is uncertainty when it comes to climate change.

There is less uncertainty about all the benefits we would reap if we switched to non polluting fuels and industries.

[Truth To Power]

[i] "It might not be fossil fuels that destroy us.

It definitely won't be.

It might be insecticides, wars, or other kinds of pollution we don't even understand yet.

There are two genuine existential threats to the human species: bioweapons and superhuman artificial intelligence (SAI). With the advent of CRISPR and other gene editing tools, bioweapon development now has the potential to eradicate our species at virtually any time. In fact, genetic manipulation has that potential even if it is not intended to be weaponized. For example, a natural fungus has exterminated dozens of amphibian species in the last few decades. Who's to say an accidentally genetically modified fungus couldn't kill all humans? This danger will probably grow over time until it can be brought under control by SAI. SAI is not yet a threat to our species, but will probably emerge as one in the next few decades, and the danger will likely increase very rapidly until and unless it decides to preserve us.

[Rancid]

Another difference between wizards and prophets is that wizards don't really exist. They're just ordinary people pretending to have magical powers.

I know you're just being dense, but the wizards and prophets thing is just using the language of metaphors.

The point is, that we are all BOTH. It's mostly situational on which one we choose to be.

[QatzelOk]

I know you're just being dense, but the wizards and prophets thing is just using the language of metaphors.

The point is, that we are all BOTH. It's mostly situational on which one we choose to be.

I'm very competent in the language of metaphors.

Technologies are also about people pretending to have magical powers that they don't have. More chimeras.

A prophet is the one that tells you that the game of fake progress is over, that the wizards are causing a lot of harm that will take many more resources to cure than were actually produced by technological fake magic.