So when is this global warming supposed to kick in?

[Onasander]

I am in my Shorts, came to work, I'm off now, and its a blizzard outside.

 

It's been getting colder and colder each year, but the news keeps saying hotter and hotter.

 

This is false advertising. I remember a year or two back a global warming protest got snowed out in Washington DC in a blizzard.

 

What can we do to make it work? Everyone keeps getting my hopes up, and I get let down. 

 

Is it because I am failing to do my part? My carbon footprint is embarrassingly small. I don't use any kind of hairspray, or heat my place. I mostly walk or use public transportation. Am I to blame for this?

 

I have my hopes set on the Chinese to save us. This is, of course, assuming, their polluting is warming. They say all that sulfur they put in the air accidentally cooled everything.

 

You can't catch a break. 

 

It used to not even snow here before thanksgiving. Now, mankind is entering into another ice age.

 

I was actually thinking of walking 5 miles home tonight..... I'm dressed for the tropics. Doubt I could make it 4 miles before hypothermia takes me down. Cause of death: Global Warming.

[caesar novus]

The Chronicle of Higher Education opined:

 

http://chronicle.com/article/Against-Environmental-Panic/139733/

All the foolishness of Bolshevism, Maoism, and Trotskyism are somehow reformulated exponentially in the name of saving the planet. Authors, journalists, politicians, scientists compete in announcing the abominable and lay claim to a hyperlucidity

.

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Gallic-Gadfly/139731/

The green movement is being hijacked by extremists ... Europe is "wallowing in shame and self-loathing," and France "embodies the illnesses of Europe to excess." As a general rule, the more virtuous-seeming the liberal belief

[Onasander]

Am I the only one who have noticed the parallels between the Stoic endtimes and modern global warming. It is essentially adaptation of that old religion.

 

I told a very outspoken Stoic this, who is a member of the London Philosophy Group, and he immediately stopped talking to me, even though he primarily blogs about modern religion from a stoic perspective. I guess some things are too uncomfortable to deal with if it forces you to not just challenge your religious beliefs, but also your cultural identity and values.

 

Its extra interesting in noting he is a psychiatrist. Not the first time a psychiatrist turned hypocrite.

[Number Six]

You're treating global warming as a belief. In fact, it may be so for the most of the population, for that's how knwoledge ever works: we do grant our belief to people who are competent about information we cannot verify by ourselves, and forming one's knowledge is mostly about trusting someone's else competency.

 

But also yours is a belief.

 

The point isn't whether global warming may be a belief or not, the point is whether it's only a belief or it isn't. In fact it's not only a belief. There are countless scientific studies on it, and your personal experience with climate doesn't prove them wrong. I may bring up my own experiences, which differ from yours, but not yours nor mine are a good fundation for questioning global warming.

 

As a side note, although I'm aware that there are climate change denialists, the most debated issue isn't whether global warming is happening or not, but whether it's caused by mankind or not; and its extent.

Edited November 24, 2013 by Number Six

[Onasander]

I am honestly pro global warming, I see little long term loss in it, mostly advantage. Most of the land is up north, frosted over. 

[Onasander]

I would actually, come to think of it, most any belief system, however absurd in places, have a avalanche of positive facts behind it, and a decent philosopher can usually counter arguments quite well. When we line our facts up logically for argument, its easy to forget there are TWO hemispheres, and each side is ego centric with blindsides to the other.

 

I doubt any belief system could exist without a basis in provable facts and common sense intuition. Of course, every belief system also carries a Achilles Heel at its Crux. I always get a sick feeling when I know it, the person is in front of me, I want to say it, but also dont.want to break them pointlessly. Like telling a Mormon about Swedenborg, or a Buddhist about the Chandogya Upanishad.

[Maladict]

and he immediately stopped talking to me.

There is wisdom to be found here.

[Onasander]

Make it stop snowing

[Onasander]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/video/2013-12/14/c_132967541.htm

 

Nice blizzard in the middle east...... clearly more proof of Global Warming. So damn warm there. Another one of these BBC/MSNBC record breaking hot winters.

 

Or even better, they will finally admit its not getting warmer, but only because they got awareness out getting a couple of municipalities to recycle or something, and that did it.

 

Stop recycling, I dont want to see the sahara freeze over.

Edited December 15, 2013 by Onasander

[Melvadius]

The press  and those who have vested interests in denying it talk about 'Global warming' those who actually work in the field tend to talk more about 'climate change'. 

 

A rise in global average temperatures at a simplistic level is seen  by those who don't actually consider all the ramifications as a good thing but what it actually means is that our traditional weather patterns are changing globally. 

 

It will not be a great advantage to have hotter winters if your growing season during the summer becomes unstable and the you get hit by more frequent sudden storms or heat waves, which kill your crops 3 times out of 4.  Claimed hotter winters in the UK has only tended to mean more stormy weather without the benefit of an extended growing season since that is driven by the period of available sunlight NOT a degree or two increase in temperature.

 

Has anyone noticed how there has been an upsurge in tornado activity in the US grain belt.....?

[Onasander]

I have noticed there was been a decrease in dust bowls in the grain belt, compared to little under a.century ago.

 

Longer growing seasons, coupled to increase in northern agriculture land (if it indeed is thawing, which I hope) more than compensates.

 

Granarian culture in north africa lasted a long time after the sahara drifted north. I think we can do the same, be if colder or hotter. Our epecies evolved in the savannah, and survived a wide range of climate change. I have known forests and plains, deserts and tundras, and the tropics in my short life. People live in each.

[caldrail]

A lot of hot air has been said about global warming. The world is not a static enviroment. Our global climate changes all the time according to sun activity, orbit, planetary wobble, or the plethora of earthly influences especially those of a cataclysmic nature, or simply small variances from time to time. Unfortunately our human time frame is quite short - we only live three score years and ten ob average and our experience is limited to what we perceive either personally or via the media - thus we have a somewhat myopic view of our enviroment.

 

Back in the Jurassic Age, without any hint of industry or other human poisoning, there was ten times as much carbon dioxide in the Earths atmosphere. It was also one of the most extraordinarily rich and impressive eco-systems we've ever had, much more stable than our modern times - we are after al still coming out of the last Ice Age and it is going to get warmer because of that alone, regardless of anything our politicians impose upon us to save the planet.

 

In fact, the planet isn't doomed in any way whatsoever (at least in our frame of reference at least, though the sun will almost certainly destroy Earth in a few billion years due to natural changes) - it's just that humanity has been extraordinarily lucky in having a relatively stable and benign climate to flourish in, and that we're facing change we're not ready for. Hey, that's the name of the game and always has been. Creatures that can't roll with the punches end up in natural history museums.

 

Our success as a species has led to civilisation and complex infrastructure. That's fine when everything carries on happily, but change in the climate renders our complicated networks vulnerable. It is frighteneing - those who have personal experience of extreme weather will no doubt agree that nature isn't so easily conquered as the Romans believed - but the trick is not to sit on the beach demanding the waves turn back, but to find ways of surviving the changes. Aftaer all, historical and paleontological records do imply that warm climates aren't such a bad thing.

 

However, this "end-timer" stuff? There seems to be a little dark spot in our psyche that can get morose and prefers to believe that the "End is nigh" and all you sinners had better repent or else. In modern times this sort of cycle has been apparent since the Great Disappointment of 1844

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment

 

There's nothing new of course. Such prophecies as the Age of Aquarius, the Great Tribulation, the arrival of our alien overlords, or the Final Battle, are part and parcel of religious beliefs dating back a long time. Linked not by some inherent truth (how can you discern the future beyond immediate probability?), but by a need to fit ourselves into some kind of manifest destiny, to conform to a social construct, and to manipulate others.

 

Welcome to the Church of Global Warming everyone. Please be seated. Now hear ye sinners, your confortable lives will soon be at an end! Of course if you pay a few quid on your way out I'll have a word with the Almighty and reserve you a place in Paradise.

Edited December 16, 2013 by caldrail

[Northern Neil]

To anyone over the age of 35, the fact that global warming is occurring is blindingly obvious, and it  kicked in about a century ago, when coal burning in the industrial revolution began to make an impact.  A current local cold spell, or even a snowfall in Egypt, does not cancel out the upward trend in global temparatures over the past century which is a matter of record, and clearly visible to those who can be bothered to look at the meteorological records. Who can look at ice cap shrinkage and recession of glaciers all over the world, and still deny it is happening? News agencies may not have made much of a song and dance about it, but heatwaves in Europe in 2003, 2009 and 2013 each killed around 20'000 in Europe. The fact that each of these natural disasters affected mainly the old, and played out over  weeks rather than a single day, doesn't make them any less catastrophic than any Tsunami or hurricane. Just less sexy for news agencies - especially ones bankrolled by Exxon and Haliburton.

 

I find the use of the 'Church' metaphor rather amusing in this context - I rather thought that the Church traditionally was unshakeable in its beliefs, closed its eyes to science and denied empirical evidence which threatened its own paradigm?

 

One problem is, people now are much the same as they were in the Empire of the 4th and 5th centuries. We tend to see disasters or change  as individual events, rather than symptoms of a far bigger problem, and refuse to accept evidence that our way of life - which of course will last forever - could possibly be under threat.

 

And I havent even begun on the subjects of over population, peak oil  and the imminent collapse of fiat currency...

Edited December 16, 2013 by Northern Neil

[caldrail]

The far bigger problem is that we're living on a world that's changing around us and we don't like it. To say that global warming is merely a phenomenon that kicked in a century ago is blindingly short sighted. Whilst we aren't helping the situation, the link between industrialisation and warming isn't quite as convenient as its pundits like to have us believe. There are some serious discrepancies in pollution and temperatures that conventional warming wisdom doesn't want to answer.

 

The Earth is quite capable of polluting itself far worse than we can - it's done so a few times in the past - but here the problem is that I'm looking at a longer timescale rather than restricting myself to mankinds industrial rise as a cause to blame. I will concede that our own pollution is an issue - that can't be denied - but the major effect or urban society is to create hotspots, not hot planets. I will also concedce that our gross numbers are not helping either, but then, as I said frequently before, that is ultimately self limiting. The bigger the population, the harder it is to find food, amd eventually excess numbers starve until the situation rights itself. We're not exempt from those rules however much science bends them, and that cattastrophe is waiting in the wings.

 

In any case, I don't know what you're worried about The world has been a lot warmer than today more than once. During another interglacial period we had aftrican animals wandering the savannah of the Thames Valley. Within a few thousand years, the arctic mob moved in. In fifty or sixty thousand years the Earth will be poisitioned so that it's orbit and wobble coincide to produce the next glacial period. Britain will quite possibly be bulldozed flat by glaciers once again.

 

Closer to home, let's not forget the Medieval Warm Period. Were we responsible for that? Nope. But we did enjoy its benefits. In any case it doesn't matter. We can't stop climate change. So we either adapt or suffer. That's how the Earth has always worked.

[Northern Neil]

In essence I agree fully with most of Caldrail's points with a couple of exceptions. I wouldn't regard the climate change thing as something that 'Merely kicked in 100 years ago' - it is far more grave than that; I was simply answering the question posed by the title of this subject, and explaining that it already has. Also I would say that the absence of human activity as a causal element in previous climate shifts does not neccessarily rule it out now. But otherwise, fully agreed. Also I agree that whilst it is happening, it is by no means certain that human activity is the sole factor.

 

As John Bagot Glubb once said, the lesson we learn from history is that people dont learn from history. When our friiends from, say, cold regions of the US or Russia deny global warming because it is cold where they live, I am reminded once more of the refusal of many romans in the 4th and 5th centuries to accept that a major crisis was afoot, and it seems to be part of human nature to be oblivious of drastic change if it is played out over more than a generation, and see events contributing to that change as isolated events.

 

I am pretty sure that people living in Crete or Egypt in 450 may well have said: ' I dont believe all this crisis crap from the senators. Life seems fine here'.