When I employ someone to perform a job, I expect them to perform the job as I want it to be done. You and I both know that if they weren't advancing the global warming political agenda, they would no longer be funded. I know you're impressed with experts, but it doesn't take an expert to figure this out.
There There are also studies that correcting our relationship with soils and plants grown on them could reverse the CO2 balance WITH the natural balance including animals. We have been strip mining the earth and will continue to do so with rare earth metals to accomplish green industry. We have been destroying sea life with the insane amount of plastic garbage dumped into oceans but not much money to be made cleaning up the mess so the political machine does not mention fixing this problem. Pretty sure balance in the ocean, or lack of it, contributes to so-called climate change and food shortages and needs to be dealt with.
To begin with, I don't have the scientific background to be a climate change expert. Further, I doubt that very many have. Many climate change 'experts' in past decades believed we were headed into a cooling period. Accepting such people as 'authorities' and blindly repeating government, mainstream media and corporate talking points does not make anyone an expert. There are many science disciplines that have to be mastered. All that said, this is my layman's opinion. CIA DIRECTOR JOHN BRENNAN ADMITS TO CHEMTRAILS (STRATOSPHERIC AEROSOL INJECTION) Loosing what are real toxins high in the atmosphere is an attempt to dim the sun and reduce global warming. It is really happening. Globally, plant life is being poisoned by acid rain. If continued, the diminution of sunlight cannot help but result in fewer crops being grown with the resultant mass die off of mammals and people all over the planet. The reduction of sunlight will destroy or diminish ocean ecosystems with the inevitable loss of much of that food source - another source of mass starvation. If I grant for the sake of argument that global warming might be a problem, we can deal with it in a gradual way. If indeed atmospheric CO2 needs to be reduced we can rely more heavily on solar generation, fission energy and (hopefully) fusion energy. A crash program of development is needed for the latter. The infrastructure for less reliance on fossil fuels for personal transportation will have to be built and managed. We will probably not find a good alternative to the diesel tractor and other such farm machinery. Human life on earth is reliant on them. If the planet is overpopulated ( and not everyone believes so ) a gradual reduction could be had by providing free, universal and humane conception control, excluding child abortion. This along with economic development and widespread education would, in my opinion, solve the problem. The cures for global warming being proposed and the cures being practiced would result in a return to the subsistence farming of 150 years ago - yet one more cause of mass starvation. The very worst that global warming could do is to cause the crop growing belts to move further towards the poles and raise ocean levels a few inches. Less ice, more water. There would be more rainfall for areas that need it. Further global desertification is unlikely. These things are not disasters but might even result in more crops able to be grown and more animals supported - a global rise in prosperity.
But isn't one of the arguments given by skeptics and deniers is that the science isn't conclusive? If so, then doesn't that mean more studies are needed, and thus more funding?
Oh, I think it's far too late for objective study. Once global warming became a political agenda, government-funded studies are geared toward supporting the goals of the agenda, and can no longer be trusted. We will, of course, be forced to continue to fund this nonsense, just as we have funded every other progressive political agenda, but whether it is to be believed or not is simply a matter of faith, not science. Arguing climate change with a true believer is like trying to talk a Jehovah's Witness out of his religion. You're going to believe what you're told to believe, and you'll feel like you're wise for doing so.
Unfortunately, we need more economic activity, which means we need more fossil fuels, minerals, etc. That's because around 7 out of 10 human beings worldwide live on less than $10 daily, and they want to live on more. Meanwhile, the remaining 3 are counting on the 7 to do so because their own wages and returns on investment are dependent on selling more goods and services to those 7. In order to stop that, we will have to live in the equivalent of ecovillages, but that means no more cars, Internet forums, TV sets, computers, trips abroad, malls, golf courses, beach resorts, etc. It'll be similar to living on only $2 a day.
Thanks for sharing that. Scientists during the 1960s and early 1970s believed that we were entering a cooling period because of natural cycles: every hundred thousand years or so, the distance of the sun from the earth becomes greater, leading to more cooling and even ice ages. During that time, as ice core data reveals, both surface temperature and CO2 ppm were low and tracked each other. The catch is that CO2 ppm never exceeded 300 across more than 600,000 years, and as mentioned in one post in this thread, probably across more than three million years. As it reached that, scientists wondered whether carbon emissions would block sunlight, then accelerating a natural cooling period. Hence, fears of a coming ice age. The problem is that after 1975, when CO2 ppm breached 300 and continued going up, more realized that CO2 could also trap heat. Ten years later, they began to argue otherwise. This led to more intense study of the matter, leading to multiple reports published after 2000, and which the NAS analyzed. Meanwhile, scientists were also detecting over 50 positive feedback loops taking place pointing to effects of climate change and not mitigated by only around 4 negative feedback loops, including oceans absorbing both heat and CO2. During that time, the phenomenon of global dimming appeared: https://gacp.giss.nasa.gov/ Apparently, it's the particles in air pollution that block sunlight but the CO2 that traps heat, thus making matters worse because we've been pushing for cleaner emissions rather than cutting down on emissions. And we can't cut down on emissions because the global economy we live in is heavily dependent on burning fossil fuels: around 70 pct of mining involving heavy machinery, up to 50 pct of manufacturing requiring fossil fuels to compensate for other energy sources, and a substantial chunk of shipping requiring diesel for transporting large amounts of materials across extensive supply chains spanning tens of thousands of miles and multiple countries. When we try to consider limiting population, population aging takes place coupled with lack of consumers. And we need more young people and consumers because the global economy we live in is also capitalist and competitive: our businesses are dependent on maximization of profits, and most people want higher wages and better returns on investment, plus conveniences beyond basic needs, like accessing Internet forums and going on vacation. On top of that, it turns out that we're also facing diminishing returns. Oil production per capita reached a peak in 1979 and has never recovered. Conventional oil production started peaking in 2005, and we've been resorting since on unconventional production like shale and tar sands to make up for that lack, and they require more processing. The renewable and other energy sources we use turn out to require extensive amounts of fossil fuels (not to mention petrochemicals derived from them to make tens of thousands of applications, from the synthetic fiber used for our clothes to the computers that we are using) for mining, manufacturing, and shipping, and what affects oil also affects minerals needed for these. We also don't want to return to subsistence farming because we want white-collar jobs, spend on returns from investments in mining, manufacturing, and services like financial speculation, and all sorts of middle class conveniences. We don't even want to go back to manufacturing and mechanized agriculture, preferring to pass them on to those with fewer skills in developing economies. On top of that, it turns out that they also want what we have, and we want them to have the same because our jobs, returns on investment, pensions, etc., are dependent on increasing sales to increasing numbers of consumers worldwide.
UN Agenda 21 calls for sustainable development, but "sustainable" doesn't mean conservation but development that can be sustained, which is what capitalists want: population can't decrease or increase too fast but just right. Resources must be marshaled so that we can have slow but steady growth instead of boom-and-bust cycles. And pollution has to be curtailed together with environmental damage so that businesses can operate in the long term. But is that possible given the points that I raised?
That is how I see the progressives ideas for green energy. The energy they propose cannot produce what we need to get the energy we need now. To support the present windmill and solar producers is like subsidizing high school science projects while cutting power to the high schools. If they work, we should buy them.
. Perhaps the radical greenies should set us an example and give up their cars, computers, TVs and electricity itself. Are candles allowed? Living on 2 dollars a day under totalitarian governance? Thanks but no thanks.
Both sides have a political agenda, as NAS is funded by the government (which in turn is funded by the rich) and Berkeley Earth is funded by the rich. But what do those who are in power want? First of all, who is in power: governments or rich corporations that fund them?