The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Yes vulcanism, solar events and the lack of them are a far greater threat to civilization than climate change.
While the cult of global warming is waiting for climate change to kill us all a volcano could easily pop up, take out hundreds of millions of people, same for a solar driven little ice age.

As far as immediate casualties go,I agree with you,if we're talking super-volcano eruptions,like Yellowstone,or Carson caldera,Nevada.The last ice age saw an 8-degree F lower average global temperature.Some could 'dress' for that.Food production would look different.A Pinatubo or Mt Aguno event would just be a minor cooling for a few years.
We know for a fact that solar irradiance-forcing is only 1/10th that of anthropogenic greenhouse forcing.It cannot compete with man-made emissions as far as warming goes.The Milankovich,solar-orbital forcings are on a minimum of 23,000-year cycle.
If we see a mini-ice age,it will be driven by Arctic,Greenland,and Antarctic meltwater shutting down the thermohaline cycle.And it won't be a 'global' event,only regional,as back in 1550-1850.
If we'd stopped all CO2 emissions in 2005,we'd still see another 1-F global temperature rise by 2105,and up to 110-feet of sea-level rise.
Climate change is already killing.We don't have to wait.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Been hearing that since the 1970s.
Not exactly that but close enough.

The three-dimensional atmospheric,solar,terrestrial,ice,ocean-coupled model outputs have been 'matching' observed data since the late 1990s.
Basically everything that the models have predicted has happened.And played backwards,the data matches the past.There's very high confidence/probability in the model predictions.Over 90% as of 2006.Even some predictions,down to a particular year have been accurate.In the 1980s,it took an entire year for a single computer model run.With Moore's Law,and model improvements,the speed and accuracy of predictions has only improved.Now,parallel supercomputers are doing the work.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

The sea level has risen 300 to 400 feet since the last end of the last ice age. A little more ice melting won't hurt anything.

I don't have the numbers with me,but between the Arctic Ocean,Greenland Ice Sheet,West Antarctica,and East Antarctica,we're looking at 270-feet of sea-level rise potential.Timing is an issue.We'll be warming for another 500-years,just with what we've already put in the atmosphere.

[oil pan 4]

I Google searched for a list of global warming predictions that came true and the only results that came back are ones that were wrong.
Garbage in, garbage out.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by RustyLugNut

I chose my real estate purchase carefully. My wife wanted a condo right on the bay waters of San Diego. I believe in global warming. So we bought a bit above the expected sea level rise. It saved us about half a million in upfront costs and it will provide beach front property in the near future if you and others are correct in your predictions ( I highly doubt the velocity of the schedules, but . . . I'll play both sides).

Aerohead feels destroying economies to provide stasis for an environment is worthwhile. I feel the environment includes humanity and is beyond the simple expedience of minimizing CO2 emissions. There will be losses for SOMEONE! And I say this as my family is from a Pacific Island and will suffer as much as anyone. Build an economy that allows people to thrive and that will include mobility.

The climatologists and their economic analyses say that it will be business as usual which will bankrupt us,not the cost of climate mitigation.We'll be losing $Trillions with inaction.I'm just a messenger.Haircut now,or decapitation in the future.Koch Industries will decide.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

We all decedent's of people who lived through hundreds of feet of sea level rise and we are doing alright.

That planet no longer exists.Nor that global population,Nor flora,Nor fauna.

[oil pan 4]

The earth is in a constant state of change.
For the planet to not be warming or cooling would be unnatural.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Anyone saying we've got an obligation to accomodate "displaced" people or that they will be coming at us with pitchforks are either corrupt or ignorant.

We won't just wake up one day with the seas being a foot higher. It incrementally raises over generations. If people can't get out the way over the course of generations, that's on them.

I could easily move to any number of baren locations in the US tomorrow, and the cost of living would be extremely low. Instead, it's the corrupt people who say that the "poor" have the right to live in places like Miami, and that we also need to make sure the seas don't rise and inundate the city. Neither of those statements is true or remotely resembles anything approximating rational thought.

We use twice as much energy,with no better standard of living than Europe.We could cut our energy consumption by half and suffer zero change to our standard of living.Since most energy production is currently tied to fossil-fuel,we could cut a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions and never see a change in the US,while benefiting already marginalized,coastal-dwelling population elsewhere.
It would be a master stoke for domestic economy.It has nothing to do with obligation,just good home economics.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

The problem is that excess is what drives innovation and exploration. If we simplify, we don't go to Mars. Going to Mars probably isn't immediately important or clearly beneficial to humanity, and I'm only using Mars as a representation of the many things we won't discover (or won't discover as quickly) if excess isn't leveraged. We've solved so many problems with technology precisely because we aren't spending 90% of our time farming. The larger and more productive our farming operations, the more time we get to spend being creative.

Sun Tzu,in the Art of War,speaks of a country developing a food surplus,which leads to the intentional development of a middle-class,which can invent and innovate advanced weapon systems with which to maintain state hegemony.
When the global population was 100,000,000,it wasn't a problem.In a consumer-capitalist economy working up to a population of 10-billion it's a different calculus.
Our biggest problems have been associated with access to cheap,plentiful,fossil-fuels.
We live on Earth.It's the planet NASA needs to consider terra-forming.When we have that under control,only then would we have the luxury of dinking around with lunar and Martian colonies.
Some of the smartest people come from s--t-hole nations that may go under water.You might consider protecting a potentially valuable asset.

[redpoint5]

We're going to die of heart disease or cancer, just like everyone else. Sure, some people will be tragically taken by weather-related events, but they will still pale in comparison to heart disease and cancer.

It wouldn't be crazy to hear some politician talking incessantly about heart disease and cancer, yet we would probably think them to be crazy.

We don't like to talk about things actually likely to happen to us, because that would require confronting our real vulnerabilities.

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

The earth is in a constant state of change.
For the planet to not be warming or cooling would be unnatural.

The faster the rate of change, the more disruptive it is to the inhabitants. Adaptation is a process that takes time, and when the time frame is accelerated, it puts more pressure on creatures to make the requisite changes.

The problem isn't that the climate changes, it's that it changes quickly relative to geologic time frames.

Still, it doesn't seem that humanity will suffer so much given that these "rapid" changes still take several human generations to manifest problems. As I said, nobody is going to wake up tomorrow with seas being a foot higher.

Seas have risen about a foot over the last 100 years, and people that old don't report how terrible that transition was, or how climate change was the most difficult thing they had to contend with. In the next 100 years seas are predicted to rise about a foot too. Any predictions on what people will be recounting as the most difficult things they have lived through?