The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

When the science is only based on observations then at best you can start to form a hypothesis.
It can be a sound hypothesis and competing hypothesis should be welcomed.

It seems that enough hypotheses have been batted around,that now we have enough theory,supported by empirical measurement to demonstrate the ability to predict climate trends,based upon chosen scenarios,with a high degree of confidence.NASA and NOAA have been nailing predictions for over three decades now.
We're at the Ockham's Razor stage in the maturity of climate science.There's no longer a need to explore any new,potential drivers for global warming.We know how it works already,and we know we're in it.And we know where it's going to go,based upon any scenario we want to throw at the models.
The only real mystery is,whether we'll choose to do anything about it,in a meaningful and timely way.

[sendler]

Originally Posted by aerohead

I would make two points:
Secondly,as it's been technology which has gotten us to this juncture, we may rely on technology to move us off our current trajectory.We have the technology.Congress and special interests have been the issue.

Unfortunately this is commonly repeated but doesn't tell the whole story. Green advocates constantly state that we have the technology to just totally replace all of the carbon energy to get all we need using solar and wind. They have been repeatedly and erroneously told that all we would have to do is to choose. And that it is the continued profit interests of fossil energy corporations that hold it back. But there is a complete lack of understanding by pretty much everyone of the scale of what we are using. If we were to scrap or retrofit and perform a perfect electrification of all of the $100's of trillions of built out machines, processes, buildings, ect, that run on and were built by the current carbon energy bolus we have been accessing for the last 70 years, The efficiency gains would still leave us needing 9TW average. Lack of understanding of this scale leads to unjustified animosity toward "the evil white men" who are said to refuse to leave carbon in the ground.
.
Civilization has undergone a "Great Acceleration" for 70 years building to 17.5 TW and 100 million barrels a day and cannot undergo any diminished access to energy without a complete crash of the world economic system and large scale human misery. There is no feasible wind and solar build out that can take us to 9TW average and the complete electrification that is need to go with it will take decades and still not do as much as we are doing now due to storability and intermittency constraints. Just leave it in the ground is not so easy. People need to learn about the entire system of energy, economy, human behavior, resource depletion., and start informing others so that we can take the heartfelt energy from the climate protests and add real, pragmatic solutions.
.
Which will involve human activity eventually getting much smaller to fit with the real time solar flows that we can access.
.
Stating that we have 12 years to reach net 0 carbon or we will go "extinct" is just on the face of it obviously not possible. On either count. And just fosters denial and push back.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

The definition of science is:
A systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions.
The AGW religion is lacking in the "testable" area.
So they collect, build and organize knowledge or data and make predictions. Make lots of predictions, but are very short on testable anything.
Normal science uses tests, experiments, reproducible experiments.

The only 'test' they can do,is run their simulations backwards and see if that 'fit's' the record.Which they can do.As to the present and future,all they can do is compile measurements, analyze it,and compare to the simulation.For thirty years they've been pretty good at that.
We don't have an Earth 'clone' on which to experiment and 'test.'

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by Vman455

I don't know that much about him, actually. One of these I'll go visit his house in Carbondale.

The funniest anecdote I heard about Fuller,from someone who worked with him,was that he couldn't ever leave a design alone.The fella's comment was: 'At some point you've got to shoot the designer,or nothing will ever get built.'

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Got any credible sources saying man is going to warm the planet 3c?

The 3C value is a contextual value,and limited specifically to a doubling of the pre-Industrial Revolution atmospheric carbon dioxide level of 280ppmv.
It has to do with what climate scientists refer to as 'climate sensitivity.'
The concept originated with Svante Ahhrenius in 1896.
Climate scientists,over time,and as new data became available,have continuously refined this value,and 3C,today,remains a widely held metric for the atmosphere's response to 560ppmv of CO2.
With a business-as-usual scenario,560ppmv will be reached,and we'll see conditions on Earth as they were,the last time there was that much CO2 in the atmosphere.
We have the paleoclimate data.We know how warm or cold it was in the past.And we know what the greenhouse gas loading in the atmosphere was for each temperature condition recorded,thanks mainly to the Vostok Ice Core Project in Antarctica,with parallel data from both Greenland,and sea-bed sediment cores.
It's hard science.Nothing theoretical about it.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

Unfortunately this is commonly repeated but doesn't tell the whole story. Green advocates constantly state that we have the technology to just totally replace all of the carbon energy to get all we need using solar and wind. They have been repeatedly and erroneously told that all we would have to do is to choose. And that it is the continued profit interests of fossil energy corporations that hold it back. But there is a complete lack of understanding by pretty much everyone of the scale of what we are using. If we were to scrap or retrofit and perform a perfect electrification of all of the $100's of trillions of built out machines, processes, buildings, ect, that run on and were built by the current carbon energy bolus we have been accessing for the last 70 years, The efficiency gains would still leave us needing 9TW average. Lack of understanding of this scale leads to unjustified animosity toward "the evil white men" who are said to refuse to leave carbon in the ground.
.
Civilization has undergone a "Great Acceleration" for 70 years building to 17.5 TW and 100 million barrels a day and cannot undergo any diminished access to energy without a complete crash of the world economic system and large scale human misery. There is no feasible wind and solar build out that can take us to 9TW average and the complete electrification that is need to go with it will take decades and still not do as much as we are doing now due to storability and intermittency constraints. Just leave it in the ground is not so easy. People need to learn about the entire system of energy, economy, human behavior, resource depletion., and start informing others so that we can take the heartfelt energy from the climate protests and add real, pragmatic solutions.
.
Which will involve human activity eventually getting much smaller to fit with the real time solar flows that we can access.
.
Stating that we have 12 years to reach net 0 carbon or we will go "extinct" is just on the face of it obviously not possible. On either count. And just fosters denial and push back.

I would say that,it all depends.
If we were to mobilize as a nation,as we've done in world wars,I don't see any reason we couldn't get to carbon-neutral,and then start removing existing atmospheric CO2.
And we've been given 30-years,so why don't we use that value instead.
Hansen's Institute on Climate and Planets did a thought experiment over two consecutive summers.They came up with a template for carbon mitigation:
*get rid of coal unless we can capture and sequester 100% of stack products.
*get rid of SUVs
*get rid of Pickup trucks
*Tighten National/ISO Building Codes for all residential construction
*Tighten National/ISO Building Codes for all commercial construction
*Get the most efficient home appliances into the hands of all Americans
*Get the most efficient lighting into the hands of all Americans
There are entire segments of the economy which were never needed in the first place,and we could get along fine without them.
Shed load wherever possible.
We use twice the energy of Europe,with no improvement in standard of living.It follows that,we can dispense with 50% of current power/energy production and do just fine.
Dubai already has a zero-carbon 'Sustainability City'.Are Americans as smart as rag-heads?

[Vman455]

Originally Posted by aerohead

I don't see any reason we couldn't get to carbon-neutral,and then start removing existing atmospheric CO2.

I can think of several off the top of my head:
-Who's going to pay for it?
-How would we deal with the psychological fallout? (People don't like being told what cars they can or cannot buy, what modes of transportation they can or cannot use, what foods they can or cannot eat, etc.)
-Where will the resources necessary to accomplish the buildout of solar and wind capacity (huge amounts of various metals, concrete, silicon, etc.) come from?
-Where will the resources necessary to accomplish the buildout of energy storage come from?
-How will we get the above out of the ground, refined, manufactured, transported, and installed without using fossil fuel energy?
-And again, who's going to pay for all of that and how?

When we can't even recycle the vast bulk of our plastic waste in this country because we were shipping almost the entirety of it to one country which then decided it wasn't economically feasible to keep accepting and recycling it, it isn't realistic to assert we could handle a complete energy transition simply by willing it into being. You might not think greed, selfishness, laziness, etc. are desirable human traits and we should wish them away, but we can't--they're real, and in order for such a scheme to work, they must be dealt with somehow.

[aerostealth]

Oil Pan, that is crazy talk. In point of fact we need the rich to cut their emissions most of all. Only a small percent of the rich account for about 50% of the emissions so asking a majority of the small emitters to cut their emissions and leaving the rich out of the equation would accomplish nothing. That said however we need everyone to chip in.

I have to ask why you care since you can cut your emissions drastically and still accomplish all the same task you accomplish today. Why should you care if your electricity is low emissions and your car is electric if it is better then what you are driving now? That is unless you are emotionally attached to oil?

[freebeard]

The funniest anecdote I heard about Fuller,from someone who worked with him,was that he couldn't ever leave a design alone.The fella's comment was: 'At some point you've got to shoot the designer,or nothing will ever get built.'

Because violence is always funny? The uninformed opinion you heard expressed refers to Fuller's dictum that three pre-production prototypes are necessary to shake out the bugs. The money people wanted to go after just two. Fuller, like our President, wasn't afraid to walk away from the deal. That ended with the U. S. Marines and the trade fair pavilions.

The Dymaxion house was an example. Here's a Kirsten Dirksen tour so you can appreciate the details. It's more interesting than Fuller's (restored) home in Carbondale. Best view I've seen of the kitchen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDicKcO6Xuk

A tour of a derelict Dymaxion Deployment Unit at https://youtu.be/HRtV77_3rWA

Hansen's Institute on Climate and Planets ... came up with a template for carbon mitigation:
*get rid of coal
**put loopholes in the definitions of the vehicle fleet.
**Tighten National/ISO Building Codes
**Get the most efficient stuff into the hands of all Americans

Shed load wherever possible.

Load shedding is consistent with aerostealth's assertion. The rest, like 'tightening' codes and 'getting it into hands' is very possible to get wrong; and leaves a lot on the table, like Moon power and Biochar.

[redpoint5]

Just listened to an interesting Ben Shapiro podcast. He had Jonathan Safran as the Sunday special guest, and Jonathan made about the most level-headed and well thought out appeal towards taking some initiative to reduce CO2 emissions, and he did so without formulating the argument in such a way as "you're either with us or against us". He pointed out that many people claiming to be climate advocates live almost indistinguishable lives from "climate deniers".

The main point of topic was that meat production is among the highest contributors to increasing CO2 levels. Other reasons why people might reduce meat consumption is to reduce inhumane treatment of animals, or to improve one's health, with red meat especially being linked to cancer and other health problems. So his argument was that there's something that would appeal to most people to give them pause about how much meat they consume. Rather than treating the topic in a religious sort of way, where any meat consumption at all is shameful and evil, he suggests each person evaluate where they can reduce meat consumption and create a plan for how they will accomplish that, for instance by eliminating meat from breakfast.

Anyhow, I'm not going to eliminate meat from my diet, but I did think more about the topic than I have before and would consider planning a diet that included less of it. As it is now, practically all my meals include meat unless I'm having a bowl of cereal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GU-yTOYQl4