Problem Solved!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vb3xkhBA4Y

That's the trouble with science - there's really no certainty in anything (and in fact there's a minimum uncertainty in everything). All you can do is talk about probabilities and use terms like "yes", "no" or "probably" in everyday speech.

Car analogy: "Do seatbelts in cars make you safer?" I answer "Yes". What I'm really saying is "Yes, on average (statistcs show this). But the seatbelt may have positive, no or negative effect depending on: the severity and type of collision (ie what hits you, where and how hard); seat, headrest, belt and airbag configuration (not a simple matter); whether there's seat or belt mounting failure or major passenger cell structural failure. Other factors are important such as crush zones, rollover protection, intrusion protection - it's complicated. A seatbelt will protect you most of the time, but sometimes it won't help and sometimes it will harm"

"Is AGW happening?" "The probability is so high that the safest answer is "yes" (saying nothing about the harm)".

To use that reasoning, then the probability is highest that its a natural phenomenon with lesser probability that humans caused/accelerated it. Given that as enorbet pointed out mankind is but a drop in the bucket with regards to life on the planet and the planet itself, even less of a drop for the Universe, yet, Climate Change has always occurred and will always occur.

"There is one constant in this Universe and that constant is change." ---I-Ching (5,000+ years ago).

I have always been tempted to make and display a bumper sticker that declares:


But I would fear for my car's safety.

Better to blame industrialism rather than capitalism per se.

I burned wood to heat my house in Wisconsin. After 11 winters, there was more wood in my 6 acre woods than when i bought the place. The trees were growing faster than i was burning wood. The difference was that i was not bulldozing huge tracts of land, but taking a tree here, a tree there. I was living on the interest without touching the principal, if you understand the analogy. Burning wood is eminently renewable, when done in a sane way. Burning fossil fuel, on the other hand, ALWAYS releases carbon from long, long, long ago.

Since when is burning wood a 'craze'?

Sorry, but no.

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03102017/infographic-ocean-heat-powerful-climate-change-evidence-global-warming

https://royalsociety.org/topics-poli...limate-change/

https://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-global-warming.htm

https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/global-warming/science-and-impacts/global-warming-science

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2995507/

And yes, two of those are "news" sites.

But the evidence suggests that one we're arguing about is anthropogenic.

Logic is common sense,,, unlike a seed becoming a tree or not.

Welcome to the real world. That science has come to realize and work with probabilities instead of imposing some human need for certainty is it's increased strength and in no way translates into "trouble". It's like taking off side vision blinders... Wow! what a view!

What? You wouldn't bet on 900,000,000 to 1 odds? Shoot! I'll bet on 10 to 1, and many of the people who deny the evidence of the Higgs Boson was/is actually real and compelling (thus the 900,000,000 number) routinely bet on Lotteries that are 1,000,000 to one AGAINST them. That's just one example of how far down the rabbit hole many go in denial of Reason. There is considerable of that, here in this thread as well, especially when it wanders into Politics.

No matter how inane it gets on both poles of Human Caused Global Climate Change, and both sides have their nut jobs, the evidence is real and compelling and stands apart from politics and personality. Real study has far greater odds of being accurate than mere speculation.

If the short odds play out and the best minds and equipment humanity has to offer turn out to be mistaken what will we have lost? There are numerous reasons we need to move away from the burning of fossil fuels. Climate and human responsibility is just one of them. I think we should at the very least err on the side of caution and safety. If there was some solid way to gather odds that if you engaged in some activity that 5 to 1 you would be killed, or even just badly hurt, wouldn't you avoid that activity? Wouldn't you demand that of your children? Why would anyone ever put a loaded pistol with the safety off into the hands of a 7 year old? Is anyone in their right mind willing to risk they haven't the strength to pull the trigger or that it wouldn't fire if dropped?

Uncertainty is a fact of life, but we are wise to "bet with The House" in any gamble.

Seriously? I do hope that was tongue-in-cheek as that guy is a complete buffoon... maybe not as moronic as Arnold in that clip but then what should we expect of a man whose highest ambition at one time in his adult mind was to be a body building contestant? Dice though doesn't apparently have the "success gene" that Arnold seems to possess since he has tried out many scams, like writing books about "How to Date Hot Chicks" and "Satanism" before settling on writing about Illuminati and 9/11 inside Job conspiracies, etc etc etc. However he even stands out among those nutjobs urging people to write to men in the armed forces serving in war zones his newsletter "proving" 9/11 was a US Government planned and executed inside job.

I can't decide if I'm confused or disappointed. You actually seek out such drivel? I'm less than impressed by the vast majority of what you list as evidence and who you seem to consider valid authority if this guy is any sort of example added to many similar you've listed before. I do detect a trend and it isn't good.

Much more importantly, please don't twist my words to mean something I very obviously don't support. It is true that the span of time that Homo Sapiens has inhabited this planet is unimaginably short relative to the planet, and even many other species, BUT in that time we have grown in numbers and abilities to where humans exert powerful influences on the planet that no other species has "accomplished". Most species survival is all about adapting themselves to the environment (naturally a long, slow process) and are thus contained in fairly small domains. Humans adapt the environment to human needs which is why there is no place on Earth we can't reside and very few places left that we don't already. The very fact that in such a short time we have had such a huge impact makes the situation more urgent, not less.

What will we have lost? Ask the citizens of Paris, France that are either rioting because of gas taxes or are suffering the riot because of the climate change agenda.

I don't believe the bright minds that say this is urgent. I think there is a non-climate motive that drives them and shapes the data that's produced. Innocent bright people read the data and are duped and believe it and go along with it. The real motive is control.

I can only think of one valid reason. The energy-return-on-investment (EROI) is falling. That is, the average energy it take to extract a barrel of oil is increasing as the easier stuff is used up. This suggests the earth's supply of oil is limited and will run out. At some point, it will take the energy potential of a barrel of oil to extract and refine a barrel of oil. At that point it's worthless. Fracking and other technologies have delayed the inevitable, but it can't be avoided forever.

So yeah, that's a very good reason to shift to renewable energy and especially to thorium molten salt reactors. But it's not urgent.

I think you may misunderstand the seriousness with which I am approaching this and asking this question. I am not some "pie in the sky" SJW. I suffer no illusions that there is some perfect, rose-colored glasses solution with no cost. Reality is that we must do the work, invest, before we get a return. I agree with your approach of looking at return on investment, though not just on energy scales, and I see a substantial net gain.

The reason the residents of Paris are rioting is not the cost of gasoline. It's that the cost is out of balance with the economy (basic cost of living vs/ avg income) where they find the cost a burden they can't or don't perceive they can or should shoulder. I haven't yet researched what percentage of monthly bills compared to average income transportation costs are for the average Parisian and how that stacks up to other nations, but I will.

The price of gasoline is affected by many things and began rising ever since it became a commodity. "Climate Agenda" is hardly a major factor and still barely exists. I'm 72 and recall when gasoline was $0.20 (20 cents) and in my lifetime I saw it hit almost $5.00 a gallon (a 4000% increase) when the perceived threat was not what you call "climate change agenda" but dependence on (somewhat hostile) foreign sources. That threat, and the perception of it, has changed very little. Perception of Climate Threat has increased a lot but so far has had little influence on most governments and their economies. Even today at over $2.00 a gallon this is a 1000% increase and NOT due to anything having to do with "climate change agenda". Even accounting for inflation this outstrips every other increase many times over.

Example: In 1972 I bought the cheapest import car (user of gasoline) I could find and it was roughly $3000.00 USD. 10 years later prices had risen roughly by a factor of 2. 40 years later the cheapest car by that same company is $19,000.00 a huge increase for sure but still compare that car at 630 percent increase to 1000+ percent for gasoline. That is not a trivial difference.

Point - the riots in Paris are not because of some imagined "climate change agenda". I suggest that if you are serious asking this question please research how much Parisians, indeed all the residents of France, benefit from being the lowest cost electricity in Europe and the largest exporter amounting to over $3,000,000,000.00 a year not to mention near total energy independence.

Regarding public perception and reaction to economic changes created by governments in response to perceived threats, I recall outrage when The Clean Air Act and other EPA bills were passed even though driving around the Beltway circling Washington DC was almost daily through orange air with visibility at best 200 yards. I saw people wearing face masks in St Louis just to walk outside. Today both cities are crystal clear most days. You do realize that the river in Cleveland used to regularly catch fire from industrial waste dumping, right? So was the Clean Air Act and other EPA costs worth the investment? Ask those residents.

2nd Point - Apart from basic planetary hygiene there are many positive results from moving away from the burning of fossil fuels. nothing can possibly improve and seure the future of Mankind more than low cost energy. Ceasing dependence on diminishing fossil fuels is a necessary step in that evolution. In addition to many other factors, wars are fought over economic reasons at least as much as ideology, maybe more, so just maybe increasing energy independence and increasing availability of cheap power will reduce destructive conflicts and certainly will raise standards of living.


Please do explain how concern over fossil fuels and their multiple effects on economies, conflicts, standard of living and climate (not to mention the existing stranglehold Big Oil has on Global AND Local events) increases anyone's control and over whom?

Hopefully I have opened the door on far more concerns that EROI but do you deny that sea levels have already risen globally? or that weather has a wider range of extremes now and more frequently? Do you deny that increases in global temperature average have exceeded the most dire predictions since 1980? These things are measurable not some abstract concept. How is that not urgent? Do you actually suggest waiting until there is zero possibility of effective response?

Point 3 - It's pretty freakin' urgent unless you view life like a frog in a gradually increasing temperature cooking pot.

Just for fun consider this all too human behavior --- Johnny Cash - Five Feet High and Risin' ---

A little. But I don't think man had anything to do with it. And trying to stop it is like spitting into the wind.

I've read some estimates that North America is losing (if memory serves) something like 2/3 of a centimeter of soil per year on average. I figure if that's true for N.A., it's probably roughly true for the world. Wind probably dumps loads of sand from deserts into the ocean too. And there is just about twice as much ocean as land. So that much soil running into the world's ocean should raise ocean levels by 1/3 cm per year, just due to erosion alone, regardless of the weather.

Seriously? Weather gets worse and better, worse and better. Several times in past decades we were told we only had 10 years to solve climate change or we were done. Done! (We're still here.)

Response to what? Evil-doers want you to run around with your hair on fire so they can control your vote by feeding you lies from the Apoplectic Church of Sensational Destruction.


Oh, I should have mentioned that even though coal burns much, much cleaner than in yesteryear, it's still pollutes a little, so that's a good reason to switch coal plants to thorium molten salt reactors. (But the holdup is the stinking government's regulations.) So that's a second valid reason to switch from a fossil fuel.

enorbet, sea levels have risen? Compared to what?

I am sure that you aware that at one time the current USA landmass was once approx. 50%+ underwater. Just the USA alone has changed formation many many times... So are the sea levels really rising, or are they returning to what they once were at an earlier time period? Geological evidence shows the later is true, "sea levels rise and fall, temperatures rise and fall, the sun rises and sets, and man thinks that he can control or alter that, that's laughable" (indirect quote Lao Tzu, 2,500 years ago). https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/continents/

That video was chosen because it reflects the true nature behind the man made climate change advocates---purely political with a smidgen of abused scientific data. That is why the label was created "Climate Change Denier", well one could easily create a label "Natural Climate Change Denier".

They cannot even accurately predict the weather, how can they predict the climate in the future? Just today New Jersey (USA) shore area, was predicted to have just flurries, well the snow fall is currently at 7" and counting, still coming down.