Ocean Concerns

[StuM]

Still getting your arguments from SkepticalScience I see.

[SailOar]

I see you're still using ad hominem arguments, rather than scientific arguments...

[CatNewBee]

SkepticalScience? never heard about it, but I will check it out.

No, it is much easier. Just look at the arguments and apply some dialectic to them. Ask simply who benefits.

As said, everything has two sides and perception requires a point of view. Change the point / perspective and you will see a different picture.

Even if you do not question climate change / not think about it - several questions come up:

How life was developed on earth, what periods of time have the most bio-diversity and what climate was there during this periods. Why do all this animal die / got extinct, what climate was during this time periods, how do life recover from those catastrophes and what climate was there that helped develop new species...

No conspiracy theories, no man made climate at all.

There is evidence, best environment for a bio-diversity is warm, humide climate, the worst place is ice and cold climate.

Even if you do not know anything about warming - you just need to go to a warm moist region and wonder about the bio-diversity in the rain forest -
there are no seasons, all year long the nature blossoms and produces fruits - it is a paradise and then travel to Iceland / Greenland / Alaska and enjoy the very sparse vegetation and glaciers there, almost no edible fruits, life almost dies during the winters. Also look at the desert regions, that were wet in warmer periods and now they are almost free of life - because of the polar ice and therefore loss of moisture there.

You would not deduce, warming is a bad thing from your experience at all.

The polar region will be ice-free, life will recover and adapt, the climate will be more moderate, the deserts will experience rain after centuries and become fertile again, this could help in the fight against the hunger in Africa. It will rain more frequently, yes. But it is worth it. Even in moderate regions we will have more harvests during the year because of extended vegetation periods, shorter winter and longer summer.

I like the warming.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

SkepticalScience? never heard about it, but I will check it out.

No, it is much easier. Just look at the arguments and apply some dialectic to them. Ask simply who benefits.

As said, everything has two sides and perception requires a point of view. Change the point / perspective and you will see a different picture.

Even if you do not question climate change / not think about it - several questions come up:

How life was developed on earth, what periods of time have the most bio-diversity and what climate was there during this periods. Why do all this animal die / got extinct, what climate was during this time periods, how do life recover from those catastrophes and what climate was there that helped develop new species...

No conspiracy theories, no man made climate at all.

There is evidence, best environment for a bio-diversity is warm, humide climate, the worst place is ice and cold climate.

Even if you do not know anything about warming - you just need to go to a warm moist region and wonder about the bio-diversity in the rain forest -
there are no seasons, all year long the nature blossoms and produces fruits - it is a paradise and then travel to Iceland / Greenland / Alaska and enjoy the very sparse vegetation and glaciers there, almost no edible fruits, life almost dies during the winters. Also look at the desert regions, that were wet in warmer periods and now they are almost free of life - because of the polar ice and therefore loss of moisture there.

You would not deduce, warming is a bad thing from your experience at all.

The polar region will be ice-free, life will recover and adapt, the climate will be more moderate, the deserts will experience rain after centuries and become fertile again, this could help in the fight against the hunger in Africa. It will rain more frequently, yes. But it is worth it. Even in moderate regions we will have more harvests during the year because of extended vegetation periods, shorter winter and longer summer.

I like the warming.

Global Warming is amoral -- it is neither "good" nor "bad". But any life form thrives under certain climatic conditions, and suffers under other conditions. Looking narrowly at our own interests, we humans thrive best in a temperate climate, and do less well in either tropical or arctic conditions. We also do best in areas of moderate rainfall, and less well in areas of precipitation extremes.

Perhaps more importantly, we've developed our relatively permanent and expensive infrastructure to accommodate the climate that we've had over the last few centuries. If that changes (and it is in fact changing), it could cost us a huge amount to adapt to the new climate conditions. This is perhaps most visually noticeable in the rise in sea levels (see my next post). If you live in a tepee and water starts lapping in your front door, it's easy to pull up the stakes and move. But if you live in a billion-dollar high-rise, it's very costly to move.

But there are many other areas of disruption that will/are occurring as the climate changes. For instance, millions of people rely on the summer melt of winter's snow to provide drinking and irrigation water, and hydro power. All around the world mountain ice fields are melting, putting huge populations at risk.

Many other examples can be given. "Warmer" is not categorically "better".

[SailOar]

Sea levels to rise 1.3m unless coal power ends by 2050, report says | The Guardian

Australian scientists, writing in Environmental Research Letters, conclude that it is necessary to reduce the contribution of coal power to less than 5% of total energy production by 2050 to limit the rise in temperatures to 2°C. Failure to do so will result in an increase in sea levels by 1.3 meters by the end of the century. That is 50% more than was previously thought, with the IPCC’s AR5 report suggesting 85cm was possible by the end of the century.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

So NO, warming is not bad at all, HUMANS were invented by nature to CORRECT the climate and FREE the buried fossil resources and bring them back into the circle of life. This is our purpose on earth.

Is evolution by natural selection wrong as well then?

[john61ct]

Human activity, especially purposeful fire setting and grazing hoofed animals, created many "deserts" (arid regions of the world not supporting food production) where there used to be rainforests.

Our shaping Earth's conditions into ones no longer supporting human life goes back at least 50,000 years.

Thousands of past civilizations have collapsed as a result, but humanity always had "someplace else" to move on to.

Now there is one global civilization, and its economic foundations are a house of cards, built on very fragile foundations of sand. When it crumbles next from our own lack of foresight, there isn't any other place to go.

Unless you buy into space fantasies constructed to give us a rationale to continue fouling our nest and moving on.

All for short-term greed for new shiny junk, "advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy **** we don't need."

[jimbunyard]

Since the thread has taken a decidedly 'PC' turn, allow me to warm it up a little.

To steal a de rigueur tactic from the 'skeptic' community, a cherry-picked direct quotation from William Rees, courtesy of Hpeer's post and link (horrors; a cut and paste)

https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/e...e-limitations/

At 21:08


"I do not think that the now-available sources of green alternative energy is [sic- typical scientist-haha] adequate to replace fossil fuel."


So, obviously, any attempt to preserve the THC or meridional overturning circulation through the reduction of GHG is a moot point; destined to fail because

a) human nature is immutable
b) it will send the economy into irretrievable collapse
c) the 'standard litany' of other important reasons

Of course, if we do what most everyone else does, and listen to the statement in context with the rest of what Rees says in response to the interviewers question, from about 18:30, a different meaning might (what a weasel word!) become evident. (Since I'm too lazy for 2 minutes of dictation , a paraphrase will have to do.)

It is what all well-informed, rational people have known about for the last 50 years and on which many have been actively working for at least the last 20 years.

And that is that the unprecedented growth in population and (false) economy is almost wholly a result of fossil fuel production and consumption, and that there is no replacement, now or on the horizon, to replace the sheer quantity of energy available from the use of those fuels.

He also brings up the questions of living in a finite world and the prospect of already declining 'secondary recovery' (fracked) gas and oil, and leaves to the imagination what the result of not having the energy to replace, for whatever reason, the quantity of energy produced by fossil fuel.

I say great, let's get the population back to somewhere between a historically (.5 - 1 billion) and biologically (700,000) reasonable level. Then I'll be free to waste stuff to my hearts' content (just like all other [non-sentient] lifeforms)

Maybe we can resume evolving naturally and I can quit hearing about the cyborgs we're supposedly destined to become on this current trajectory...

Originally Posted by Exile

I'm afraid you may be living in a bubble. It would be far too easy for someone on the other side of the debate to assert the exact same argument, and in fact do so using your exact same words. Simply repeating the mainstream mantra that one segment of the science community is "objective" and the other is not does nothing to advance the scientific debate.

Leaving aside the (admittedly wussy) apparent violation (by 'you' do you mean 'me' or the whole 'non-denier' community?) of the first part of the infamous rule 2, I'll again have to ask for an example of how one could use my 'exact same argument' and 'exact same words' to make said arguments.

It is not clear that you understand the meaning of 'objective' or how to determine when something is or is not.

Without getting into the nature of 'reality', there are unambiguous ways of determining if something is objective as regards to 'correspondence to our perceived reality'. I go outside, see my breath condense when I exhale, it's cold (to me); I look at the thermometer it's 40F.

If your are unable to recognize the difference in the 'relative' objectivity of a scientist whose livelihood is based on that objectivity, and the subjectivity of a media source (though they're very objective about one thing, profit), then you are correct, there is no reason to continue the topic.

Nonetheless, objectivity is not determined by the adherence of facts to my desires...



Originally Posted by jimbunyard
'...many of the more notorious predictions have not in fact come to pass'

Hard to de-bunk without some examples. Can you provide them?

Why would I want you to "de-bunk" -- or validate for that matter -- anything related to the science of CC unless you were a climate scientist or related expert? Like you, I can just as easily type a google search along the lines of "climate change predictions that didn't happen" and uncover the same articles that either de-bunk or validate whichever conclusion suits. As I'm sure you know, the conclusion drawn correlates with the political orientation of the publication, and facts are conveniently marshaled accordingly. Haven't we already gone through this ad nauseum in previous threads? OK, so you reply with a cite -- linked or not -- to skepticalscience.com and someone else angrily responds with an article from National Review. Hence a purely political debate ensues with nothing accomplished towards understanding the actual science. Is this the pseudo-scientific merry-go-round you want to repeat?

Pretty evasive...so you have none? If you did I would expect you to be eager to provide them. The false, straw man debate about the credibility of scientists originates with the pseudo-skeptics. Regarding the insinuation that I'm somehow 'stealing' from Skeptical Science, well, they are a little shrill for me, though I have, just like I have the 'deniers' sites, perused their pages. Though it might seem that something I say may come from SS, it is more likely that it came directly from the source publishing it, and is being 'parroted' by SS as part of the WWCS (world wide conspiracy of scientists)...


'...using "human recorded history" is problematic given the brief period of time humans have populated the planet'

Except when the data is manipulated or cherry-picked so that it seems to support a preconceived notion, like Stu's convenient slice of the rapid warming period at the end of the last ice age? (which is comfortably within the range of time 'humans have populated the planet'.)

I'm honestly not sure what you're talking about here.

Seems obvious to me. You say '...using "human recorded history" is problematic given the brief period of time humans have populated the planet', yet when Stu provides a graph, with no context, implying everything is status quo, he is using a period of time in which humans lived
.Certainly it's 'problematic' in the same way that figuring the rate of change through proxy data is problematic in any field, but it seems from the context of your entire statement that you were impugning climate science particularly. Pardon me if I misunderstood your intention.


'...to say nothing of the quality of measuring devices from earlier technologies'

Yet when adjustments are made to allow for discrepancies induced by them, that's presented as more 'evidence' that there is a vast conspiracy of scientists working together toward a nefarious end, or to ensure their grants into perpetuity. (I love that one because it so clearly illustrates how little the claimant knows about science and its' tenets)

I'm not one who believes there's "a vast conspiracy of scientists." I've only pointed out that there's likely systemic bias on both sides. That's entirely different from individual corruption or conspiratorial manipulation of data. So what is it that qualifies you to know so much "about science and its' tenets" that leads to such confidence in the complex adjustments used to compensate for older measuring technology?

Science, unlike politics and mass communications, is generally self-correcting; it cannot function without a fairly rigid system of internal self-policing. Nothing 'qualifies' me as anything, my 'confidence' comes from the trust in the checks and balances inherent in the way the system works and my ability to think soberly about multi-dimensional problems (sorry about that). Do you worry about the rationalizations and statistical shortcuts inherent in the application of any other science?



'...the examples you and many others cite don't take into account previous natural warming periods in the Earth's history and how they influenced temps, currents, glaciers, etc. (For e.g., the medieval warming period in Europe'

If you're saying that layman or 'believers' if you like, don't take these 'natural warming periods into account, so what? If you have a specific question about a specific occurrence, cause or effect, you can be sure it has or is being studied. What do you think those grants pay for?

Please advise any specific examples supporting this statement.

Again, this was all discussed & argued in the last threads, and I don't recall anything dispositive to explain the (pre-industrial) medieval warming period. All I recall was that some scientists believe it was a "localized event," whereas others disputed that hypothesis. Do you have the definitive answer to this one as well?


As you should've realized by now, I'm not the one to come to for 'definitive answers'. It appears most think it was not localized but sequential, and the proxy temperature records show that, taken globally, the temp was lower than present. Which is handily beside the point, because it is known conclusively that indiscriminate use of fossil fuels is responsible for a large to very large part of the problems currently facing the 'world-as-we-know-it'...


'...there is at least a minority of well-respected and equally-credentialed climate scientists who agree that humans have had negative impacts, but dispute whether those impacts override natural forces, or at least do so to the extent that such impacts would be serious'

You've said this several times but so far I've seen you list only one, Judith Curry, who quit her post at Georgia Tech earlier this year claiming, basically, the conspiracy of other climate scientists as her reason. At one time she had an at least reasonable amount of credibility, but as time progressed her false claims and failed predictions pretty much put paid to her credibility, at least outside of pseudo-skeptic and industry funded bloggers sites.

Can you provide any other 'well-respected and equally-credentialed climate scientists' who fail to march to the 'MMGW religion'?

I'm surprised you appear to have forgotten two of the more famous ones, namely John Christy & Roy Spencer, both former NASA scientists, who have been using NASA satellites to record temps from the lower atmosphere the past 27 years. But it doesn't seem as though people as entrenched as you like to address the sat temp data, presumably because it doesn't show nearly as much warming as the land & sea based thermometers.

Btw, Christy & Spencer are "skeptics" not "deniers." Like Judith Curry, they do not dispute that humans have contributed to warming, so how could they be labeled anything other than "skeptical?" Right, I know -- because they don't support the prevailing consensus 100%, that's why.

If you missed it last time, this interview is worthwhile, and explains many topics, incl. why they believe measuring temps from the lower atmosphere is more reliable than from the surface, as well as the oft-cited "97% consensus." You'll likely disagree with their comments and their research, but maybe you can respond on the merits of the actual science as opposed to weak, unpersuasive, and unbecoming attacks on their credibility as you have done with Judith Curry. And btw, do you remember their rather famous graph comparing the two temp data sets? If not, then here it is again:

7 questions with John Christy and Roy Spencer: Climate change skeptics for 25 years | AL.com


Didn't forget about Christy and Spencer, just thought you might come up with some new ones. Believe your quote was 'thousands', even if we knock that back to the singular thousand, out of the remaining 997 surely you can provides some more. Also, given they are bona fide Scientists, you don't think that that the 'article' linked to is published by none other than the university they work at is sorta a conflict of interest? kinda like 'the foxes guarding the henhouse'?, (hoped to be able to work this in, How is it that the 'skeptic community' don't get that 'freedom for wolves means death to the lambs' actually means freedom for wolves means death to the lambs and wolves, whilst freedom for lambs [actually protection for lambs, but that's not as catchy] means plenty of lambs and wolves...)

Don't blame me for their lack of credibility, they earned that one all on their own by inserting themselves (or maybe being dragged; I'm not particularly interested in the minutia of the CC political scene)

The Christy and Spencer interview you linked to above is a perfect example. It is ridden with disingenuousness and contradictions. Granted that could be more of a product of the producers of the paper, but the fact remains that they must have signed off on it, or surely we'd have heard of their rebuttal.

While they say many things that make sense as quotes, when you put them together, the overall effect is to cast doubt on the science on a whole. From the interview

"The American Meteorological Society did their survey and they specifically asked the question, Is man the dominate controller of climate over the last 50 years? Only 52 percent said yes. That is not a consensus at all in science."

Which would seem to indicate that the duo believe that this somehow validates their assertions. Trouble is the linked-to study (it would be educational for some here to read it) was done to elucidate the difference in the perception of the causes of climate change between meteorologists (who don't study it) and climatologists and geophysicists (who do). It certainly appears that they were deliberately misrepresenting the study to make it seem that it said and meant something that it definitely did not.

They've made their own bed.

Regarding Curry, I'm lazy and just going to go with my own subjective opinion. Who you hang out with can generally be taken as an indication of your character and proclivities. And hanging out with The Global Warming Policy Foundation seals her fate with me...Hey I told you it was subjective (though I read a bunch of stuff on her blog, Climate,etc.
Yeah, she's asking for money too. Patreon in this case.



'...that involves a cost-benefit analysis by objective scientists and policymakers, something we seem to sorely lack these days.'

There is no lack of objective scientists (though you, or they for that matter, may not like what they find); the good ones are selected naturally by their objectivity. Policy makers, not so much, the multiple-edged sword of money, re-electability, special interest groups, public perception etc., ad nauseam, all conspire against it...


Well, since you didn't object I guess it's ok to assume I'm glad we agree on this one...

[CatNewBee]

Originally Posted by SailOar

Global Warming is amoral -- it is neither "good" nor "bad". But any life form thrives under certain climatic conditions, and suffers under other conditions. Looking narrowly at our own interests, we humans thrive best in a temperate climate, and do less well in either tropical or arctic conditions. We also do best in areas of moderate rainfall, and less well in areas of precipitation extremes.

Well, humans are everywhere on earth. The densest population is in Asia in regions with subtropical to tropical condition and Monsoon rain periods, and flooding / severe weather phenomena including hurricanes. Also dangerous volcanoes do not prevent humans to settle.

Maybe your comfort temperature will change a little, I am pretty sure you would not even notice that. This scaremongering do not work. The climate save programs - if they are enforced - will have a more terrifying impact on my life then the whole climate change itself.

[rgleason]

Good point, science is a work in progress. Dogma from both sides is not productive, however the overwhelming body of knowledge supports certain facts about the cumulative effect of humans on the climate of this increasingly smaller planet (with respect to our presence here).

This is a peer accepted "scientific" fact as now understand it. That is not dogma.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

Well, humans are everywhere on earth. The densest population is in Asia in regions with subtropical to tropical condition and Monsoon rain periods, and flooding / severe weather phenomena including hurricanes. Also dangerous volcanoes do not prevent humans to settle.

Maybe your comfort temperature will change a little, I am pretty sure you would not even notice that. This scaremongering do not work. The climate save programs - if they are enforced - will have a more terrifying impact on my life then the whole climate change itself.

Yes, some of the most densely populated areas are in the tropics. But they are typically poorer countries. Almost without exception, the richest countries are in temperate climates. That is not a coincidence. Temperate climates have the best balance of soil fertility, precipitation, warmth vs cold, lack of diseases (plant and animal), etc.

And no, temperature does matter to comfort. Until the widespread distribution of the air-conditioner after WWII, the hot, humid south-east US was a miserable place to live, and was one of the poorest areas in the US. It takes a far-simpler technology to heat in a cool climate, than to cool in a hot climate.

[Pegu Club]

Originally Posted by jimbunyard

And of course this is why threads like this get closed down so often.

I didn't expect you to provide citations, or even sources (and, as assumed, you've proved my expectation), so I looked your assertions up based on a verbatim quote of them.

And, predictably, the first assertion appears to come from a bloggers opinion, complete with an 'Al Gore is getting rich conspiracy theory':

NASA Confirms Falling Sea Levels For Two Years Amidst Media Blackout | Zero Hedge

I would say to their credit, the blogger did reference a NASA report

https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/

but what the report says and the blogger states (and implies) are so far from each other that no credit is deserved, in fact, a cautionary note describing the level of misrepresentation would be more appropriate.


A slightly more informative report, also from NASA, explaining the slowing of the rate of sea level rise, is available here.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/n...-water-on-land


The second assertion,

'there was recently a large kill-off of penguin chicks in Antarctica due to vastly thicker sea ice'

yields the same kind of misrepresentation from ClimateDepot, a well-known 'denier' site.

Thousands of penguin chicks starve in Antarctica in ‘unusually thick sea ice’ | Climate Depot

This particular 'article' was written by none other that Marc Morano, a well known scumbag who encourages death threats to climate scientists and their families, and professes to enjoy them himself when he gets them.

You can hear the words from his own mouth at about 48 minutes here, but it would be more educational to watch the whole film...

As for what really happened to the penguins, far from the implication of their deaths 'due to vastly thicker sea ice', a huge iceberg that broke off in 2010, likely as a result of increased melting, has changed the environmental conditions in the local area, causing the penguins to have to travel much farther to reach their normal food source.

As reported here,

https://phys.org/news/2017-10-thousa...ntarctica.html


"Yan Ropert-Coudert, senior penguin scientist at Dumont D'Urville research stion, adjacent to the colony, said the region was impacted by environmental changes linked to the breakup of the Mertz glacier.
"The conditions are set for this to happen more frequently due to the breaking of the Mertz glacier in 2010 that changed the configuration of the stretch of sea in front of the colony," he told AFP.
"But there are other factors needed to have a zero year: a mix of temperature, wind direction and strength, no opening of polynya in front of the colony.""


As for

'You're rebutting my relaying of NASA's statement on worldwide sea levels with graphics regarding sea ice extent'.


what I'm actually doing is using sea ice extent as a proxy for sea ice volume; extent has a direct relation to volume, and therefore would counter your implication that Antarctic-wide ice was growing 'vastly thicker'.

Sea ice volume is by far the hardest to calculate, and it is only recently that extent has not been a primary consideration in the calculation. (that is my assumption)

The areas of low concentration, the much smaller-than-average area, and the (likely) much smaller volume all argue against the (implied) statement that Antarctic sea ice was everywhere vastly thicker.


To address several other 'objections' all at once.

The original post, about the potential collapse of the thermohaline circulation of the ocean, is intimately tied to the questions of climate change, sea level rise and Adelie penguins, not so much Milankovitch cycles (only because they're not so chaotic).

Since the force of the circulation is determined by, among many other things, the salinity and temperature of the ocean, effects of the atmosphere on the ocean from rain, temperature and wind all have potential effects on that force.

There is no doubt in the scientific community that greenhouse gases have a thermostatic effect on the climate; roughly speaking, add gases, the temperature goes up, remove them, the temperature goes down. This has been known for over 100 years. Anyone who thinks there is some kind of 'debate' about this is completely out of touch with the scientific community, the parallel of the 'debate' between young earth creationists and evolutionary biologists comes irresistibly to mind...

So, if climate can (and does) effect the thermohaline circulation, changing the climate must affect the THC (haha). And not to forget the Adelies, they feed on krill, which are dependent on (again, among other things) the upwellings of nutrients provided in part by, you guessed it, the THC. So maybe the loss of a few hundred thousand penguins is --good?--appropriate?--to be expected?--completely natural? --survival of the fittest?...but if krill are in trouble, what about the whales?

This is of course just to demonstrate a point. The concern with the climate over, say, the loss of arable top soil, or overfishing, of lack of clean water, or overpopulation, or any of the myriad of problems over any other is just--to put it nicely--ignorant.

These problems cannot be separated, because the earth operates as a system and is finite. Therefore, the only way to solve any of them is to treat them as a whole, or at least as much as possible as a whole, with long-term results in mind.

A very tall order indeed...

and the microphone hits the floor....

[SV THIRD DAY]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

Hey folks, calm down.

What is science?

Well science is:

- to produce a hypothesis
- to try to prove it by experiments or fail to refute it by experiments...
- let other scientists redo / refine your experiments either to prove or refute.

Science is nothing static. science lives of try and error, discussion, prove and refute of former / current findings. This is what scientists do all day long, science is evolving and nothing considered final, every thing / law within science can be challenged by science at any time and can be revised.

If you claim MMGW is given and no one is allowed to dispute it, this is no science at all, it is a dogma.

So either you claim climate change "science" exists - then it is essential to allow discussions and tries to refute this hypothesis - or it is a dogma and not a science - then of course it is a hoax, rip-off,fake, because you do not even allow to use scientific methods to refute or prove it.

And where oh where are the scientific models that accurately predict what is happening, and can plug data in as a test to predict the past. Sorry folks...they don't exist. Remember....I've been to the Environmental Conferences...spoken at them....and since I hold first to science I had to bail on the MMGW issue once the data was shown to be faked and not supported by letitigimate testable and provable Models.

MMGW is simply a replacement religion.
CO2 is the Sin.
Green Cars are the indulgence.
And value signaling that you are a "Believer" makes you a better person than the "Denier". You don't think the MMGWC use religions language by accident do you?

It's all pretty simple when you realize the science doesn't exist...it's been replaced with Dogma.

Heck, look at the Fake and Bogus 97% of Scientists BS line...would honest real scientists use a bogus stat to push a true fact? Come on folks...the truth is out there...it's time to take off the blinders of groupthink and think for yourselves. I've tried to wake you up with a FlashBang...if that won't snap you out of it, then stop driving your car, stop flying, stop using Air conditioning, stop eating meat and DO the things your position as a MMGWC demand you do...after all isn't the world at stake, so how could you knowingly eat a steak knowing it is destroying the planet! Bingo...because in your Gut you know it's bogus, but just don't want to say it/think it because then that makes you an evil denier. The MMGWC has done a great job of brainwashing....speaking of brainwashing....

Gov Brown says we need MMGW Brainwashing....
https://allenwestrepublic.com/govern...hing-for-what/
You can't make this stuff up it's so good!

[a64pilot]

Global warming aside, what will happen as oil and gas gets harder to procure and rarer is we will become more efficient, and will develop alternate forms of energy. I believe fusion is possible, it may take as much as the Manhattan project did to do it, but I think it’s solvable.
An issue to me is that petroleum is far more than a energy source, it’s a raw material that quite a lot of our modern life is made from, and not just plastic.
I’d like to see petroleum energy become far more expensive than it is, cause I think that is the only thing that will cause us to become more efficient, but until then we will want bigger and bigger SUV’s and bigger and bigger houses, and of course bigger and bigger boats.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by StuM

Still getting your arguments from SkepticalScience I see.

Originally Posted by SailOar

I see you're still using ad hominem arguments, rather than scientific arguments...

As your Wiki link explains in more detail, an ad hominem argument is one that is fallacious because it attacks the character, morals, motives, etc. of the person rather than that person's ideas or argument. In other words, it's irrelevant along with being disrespectful and even rude. But if that same person is demonstrating obvious bias in presenting their arguments then challenging that bias cannot be ad hominem because it's not fallacious. On the contrary, it's directly relevant to the credibility of the positions begin asserted.

Thus far I don't recall seeing you quote many of the "scientific arguments" you claim are lacking from StuM. Instead, your sources mostly seem derived from media outlets who comment on those scientific arguments, and are known to have their own bias. No different, generally speaking, from those on the other side of the political divide. There are no rules against using whatever sources we are comfortable with, but who exactly are you trying to influence? Either way, exposing the bias or predisposition of any source can only add to the truthfulness of the debate, whether people want to believe it's relevant or not. In any event, doing so is definitely not ad hominem.