Global Climate Change Science News

[Tero]

The climate ”teach the controversy” lady.

[Sean Hayden]

It looks like the table was in WG1 and not WG2, and it says what she claimed it said. So, I'm going to have to give the claim a rating of true. --gawd, all this skepticism has become kooky these days eh?

[Animavore]

What do you think her point is?

I mean her whole article is full of misrepresentation and bullshit. She uses poo-pooing and scoffing in lieu of real arguments. Calls people concerned about the environment as well as fellow scientists names and writes them off as religious loons (you can nearly see her doing the finger twirl thing) without substance. Is that how science is done?

I guarantee you she is cherry-picking and omitting.

[Tero]

It's like them meters. "There was a meter tampered here, so therefore all the 400 meters in this continent are wrong." Tampered means the meter temps were adjusted because it got moved a bit from one year to the rest.

[Sean Hayden]

table_1_4_wrg1.png

The table for anyone interested in seeing what she was talking about.

Have you guys read either report? I can't believe very many people have. They're huge.

[Animavore]

Do you not see the bait and switch?

Do you know what's missing from the table?

You're gonna make me have to bother writing something long, aren't you?

[Sean Hayden]

Don't feel bad. I'm just exploring the subject. It's very complicated.

[Animavore]

Tired after a long day. Off to bed. If no one has pointed out the cherry-picking, equivocation, and bait and switch by tomorrow I might briefly come out of internet arguing retirement. But only because you seem interested in learning rather than trying to be right.

[Sean Hayden]

Hey, I get it. I know it's a pain in the ass. If you'd rather just recommend books that's fine.

[Animavore]

For books try Six Degrees, Brave New Arctic, and This Is How The World Ends.

[Scot Dutchy]

Or just get depressed.

[Animavore]

I don't think I need to go too much into Judith Curry's post. I'll just point out the bait 'n' switch is this, as well as the equivocation;

She points out one section of a publication which almost certainly doesn't support her views which has a table which says that Earth's systems look fine for this century and therefore no crisis. This is a deliberate quotemine, for one, and an equivocation on the word "catastrophic".

This table tells us nothing about sea rise, water shortages, climate migrants, crop failures, extinction rates and the related decline in biodiversity, and an increase in extreme weather etc. which are happening within these systems. We don't a catastrophic global collapse for a catastrophe, or probably more accurately a bunch of interrelated catastrophes, on the human scale to occur. Equivocation.

Also there's the tacit suggestion of kicking the can further down the road for future people to deal with by doing nothing, business as usual for her Koch sponsors. The most egregious part of all of this.

[Animavore]

Here's a delightful new book which dropped today.

The Uninhabitable Earth.

There is a widespread inclination to think of climate change as a form of compound payback for two centuries of industrial capitalism. But among Wallace-Wells’s most bracing revelations is how recent the bulk of the destruction has been, how sickeningly fast its results. Most of the real damage, in fact, has taken place in the time since the reality of climate change became known. And we are not slowing down. One of the sentences I found most upsetting in this book composed almost exclusively of upsetting sentences: “We are now burning 80% more coal than we were just in the year 2000.”

There’s also a temptation, when thinking about climate change, to focus on denialism as the villain of the piece. The bigger problem, Wallace-Wells points out, is the much vaster number of people (and governments) who acknowledge the true scale of the problem, and still act as if it’s not happening. Outright climate denialism as a political force, he argues, is essentially a US phenomenon – which is to say, essentially, a phenomenon of the Republican party – and the US is responsible for only 15% of the world’s emissions. “To believe the fault for global warming lies exclusively with the Republican party or its fossil-fuel backers is a form of American narcissism.” (I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone make quite so simplistic a case, but the point about denialism as largely a red herring is an important one.)

[Animavore]

The article upon which the book is based.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/ ... umans.html

[Animavore]

Troublesome reading. I just purchased the book on Kindle.