[tomder55]

All this green talk got me wondering about what it would take to "restore our Earth " (whatever that means ) . I think it is a whole lot of Malthusian nonsense .

Restore our Earth proposed to focus on " natural processes, emerging green technologies, and innovative thinking that can restore the world’s ecosystems. In this way, the theme rejects the notion that mitigation or adaptation are the only ways to address climate change. "
Toolkit | Earth Day 2021: Restore Our Earth | Earth Day

To what condition should the Earth be restored to ? Humans have impacted the earth environment for over 5,000 years and probably more (I based that on when agrarian society roughly began) .

Do we want to restore the earth to pre-industrial revolution ;a time when human life expectancy was less than 30 years ? Today the average life expectancy is over 70 years .Median age has increased from 21.5 in 1970 to 30.9 in 2020.

Maybe go back to the 1970s where 8.4/100,000 people died from famine compared to 0.5/100,000 in the last decade?

Do we wish to reverse some of the positive gains to the human condition that advances have made ? Death rates from air pollution per 100,000 declined from 111.3 in 1990 to 63.8 in 2017.Deaths from poor people burning dung, crop waste, charcoal, and coal for heat and cooking- has declined from 5.8% to 2.9 % over that same period .
Human emissions of ozone depleting gasses have declined from 215,000 tons in 1961 to 155,000 tons in 2014. (Natural emissions are about 165,000 tons annually.)Deaths from polluted water has declined from 4.5 percent in 1990 to 2.2 percent in 2017 Death from unsafe sanitation has declined from 31.4/100,000 to 10.7/100,000 .

So restore the earth to when ?????????? ...a time where humans were smaller ,poorer per capita and had a shorter life expectancy ??????
My own sense is the the environmentalists believe humans are the plague that has to be eradicated .

[Athos]

All this green talk got me wondering about what it would take to "restore our Earth " (whatever that means )

Pretty simple. It means to stop polluting the environment. Why is that so hard to understand?

Reminds me of how some people can't understand "Black Lives Matter". They think it means ONLY black lives matter, when it obviously refers to the careless and murderous killing of unarmed blacks by cops.

[tomder55]

Pretty simple. It means to stop polluting the environment. Why is that so hard to understand?

if it was that simple . you mean simplistic .

Like JFKerry telling the climate conference that not only do we need to go carbon neutral ; but we need "to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere."

Again ,no thought process there . Carbon dioxide is an essential gas . But let's rush to it because Greta and All Out Crazy say we only have a few years left

"And that means we need the innovative technologies to do that, or to be able to know that we can store it and – or turn it into something. We haven’t discovered that yet."
John Kerry's Closing Remarks at Virtual Leaders Summit on Climate - United States Department of State John Kerry Virtual Leaders Summit on Climate Day One Closing Remarks

[Athos]

Like JFKerry telling the climate conference that not only do we need to go carbon neutral ; but we need "to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere."

Could the context have referred to EXCESS carbon dioxide? Too much can cause all life on earth to die.

[tomder55]

John (a private jet is the only choice for someone like me ) should lead by example . Maybe he can start by sucking all the Co2 from his jet .

What level of C02 in the atmosphere is excessive ? During the Ordovician period atmospheric CO2 concentration was at 3000 to 9000 ppm! Still the average temperature wasn’t much more than 10 degrees C above today's temps .

There were also higher concentrations during the Silurian and the Jurassic-Cretaceous periods.

The assumption is that Co2 levels are the only drivers of climate change . It is not . I can think of at least 3 other non-anthropological reasons that the climate changes ...volcanic activity ; solar cycles ; El Nino in the Pacific .

[Athos]

John (a private jet is the only choice for someone like me ) should lead by example

Legitimate point. But not really germane.

The assumption is that Co2 levels are the only drivers of climate change

No one has made that assumption. It gets publicity because it is relatively easy for the average person to understand.

I can think of at least 3 other non-anthropological reasons that the climate changes ...volcanic activity ; solar cycles ; El Nino in the Pacific .

That does not eliminate man-made causes.

[jlisenbe]

"to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere."

That was a really funny comment and reflects perfectly the non-thinking approach to so many subjects. There is, at present, no technology available or even conceivable which could "suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere" in anything that even comes within sight of meaningful amounts. He might as well have suggested we "suck the excess heat out of the atmosphere", or that we simply cool off the sun in some marginal amount. And in an age of beyond reckless spending and deficits, with no solution in sight for any of that, to propose these kinds of massive spending programs would be laughable if not for the fact that he, and other liberal dems like him, actually take all of this seriously.

It's beyond incredible.

[tomder55]

It's beyond incredible.

"And in terms of innovation, there are great possibilities, I think, and I’ve been amazed by the number of countries that are already really chasing after green hydrogen, blue hydrogen. And hydrogen, I think, is something that makes a lot of us salivate a little bit. "

[jlisenbe]

Hydrogen is an attractive fuel in that the only product of combustion is water. Now coming up with lots of hydrogen?? There’s the rub, and water vapor is a green house gas itself.

[Athos]

Tomder --

How do you explain the great majority of climate scientists warning that man-made climate change is a not very distant catastrophe in the making? Also, ordinary run-of-the-mill scientists in agreement?

[jlisenbe]

How do you explain the great majority of climate scientists warning that man-made climate change is a not very distant catastrophe in the making?

Very simple. The basic premise (the great majority of climate scientists warning that man-made climate change is a not very distant catastrophe in the making?) is not true.

If you look at the literature, the specific meaning of the 97% claim is: 97 percent of climate scientists agree that there is a global warming trend and that human beings are the main cause--that is, that we are over 50% responsible. The warming is a whopping 0.8 degrees over the past 150 years, a warming that has tapered off to essentially nothing in the last decade and a half.

2. How do we know the 97% agree?
To elaborate, how was that proven?
Almost no one who refers to the 97% has any idea, but the basic way it works is that a researcher reviews a lot of scholarly papers and classifies them by how many agree with a certain position.
Unfortunately, in the case of 97% of climate scientists agreeing that human beings are the main cause of warming, the researchers have engaged in egregious misconduct.
One of the main papers behind the 97 percent claim is authored by John Cook, who runs the popular website SkepticalScience.com, a virtual encyclopedia of arguments trying to defend predictions of catastrophic climate change from all challenges.
Here is Cook’s summary of his paper: “Cook et al. (2013) found that over 97 percent [of papers he surveyed] endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.”
This is a fairly clear statement—97 percent of the papers surveyed endorsed the view that man-made greenhouse gases were the main cause—main in common usage meaning more than 50 percent.
But even a quick scan of the paper reveals that this is not the case. Cook is able to demonstrate only that a relative handful endorse “the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.” Cook calls this “explicit endorsement with quantification” (quantification meaning 50 percent or more). The problem is, only a small percentage of the papers fall into this category; Cook does not say what percentage, but when the study was publicly challenged by economist David Friedman, one observer calculated that only 1.6 percent explicitly stated that man-made greenhouse gases caused at least 50 percent of global warming.
Where did most of the 97 percent come from, then? Cook had created a category called “explicit endorsement without quantification”—that is, papers in which the author, by Cook’s admission, did not say whether 1 percent or 50 percent or 100 percent of the warming was caused by man. He had also created a category called “implicit endorsement,” for papers that imply (but don’t say) that there is some man-made global warming and don’t quantify it. In other words, he created two categories that he labeled as endorsing a view that they most certainly didn’t.
The 97 percent claim is a deliberate misrepresentation designed to intimidate the public—and numerous scientists whose papers were classified by Cook protested:
“Cook survey included 10 of my 122 eligible papers. 5/10 were rated incorrectly. 4/5 were rated as endorse rather than neutral.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexeps...h=1bb7e5623f9f

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) What We Know site states: "Based on the evidence, about 97 percent of climate scientists agree that human-caused climate change is happening."

That is far, far removed from your "catastrophe" addition.

https://www.climate.gov/news-feature...global-warming

[paraclete]

The catastrophe is that many people believe this new religion

[jlisenbe]

All too true.

[tomder55]

Tomder -- How do you explain the great majority of climate scientists warning that man-made climate change is a not very distant catastrophe in the making? Also, ordinary run-of-the-mill scientists in agreement?

When did science become something of consensus? Can a skeptic get funding to do research ? Consensus is the business of politics. Think the Goracle who in 2006 made a fortune by claiming the earth sea levels would rise by 20 feet in the near future . Still waiting . The sea levels have not significantly changed since then. (he also admitted that he used his influence as a climate guru to promote ethanol . He later admitted to that being a hoax to prop up corn producers. )



Science only needs one person to be right and then the consensus becomes irrelevant even if the 'great majority' disagree .
I have seen consensus proven wrong too many times . Galileo is too easy . How about all that consensus in the 1970s that said that a coming ices age was the result of anthropologic activity ?


Remember when that hole in the ozone layer was going to lead to human extinction ?


'We want action now !'is the battle cry . What action ? That is less clear . ]Nobody ever seems to articulate very well what the action entails except it involved more tax and spend ;more power to the leviathan ,with more control over citizens and how they live their lives . The pattern is the same . The left seizes on the idea that we are in crisis and then acts the way Rahm Emanuel advised ..... don't let a crisis go to waste .

The catastrophe is that many people believe this new religion

[jlisenbe]

[Athos]

When did science become something of consensus?

Science has always been about consensus. I'm surprised you appear not to know that, or criticize it. A theory is proposed after research (sometimes years) is tested, and is tested again. The testing goes on until science is satisfied the theory is correct. The tests may have been done thousands of times yielding the same result until a consensus is formed. That's how science becomes science.

Your idea of consensus is more like a political compromise. That is NOT scientific consensus. You may also be confusing consensus with prediction based on observation. Predictions are never 100% but they are never 0% either. One prediction that is coming true is the rise in sea level.

Sea level rise is significant over the last 25 years and is the result of global warming leading to future (not very distant) catastrophic coastal flooding affecting 300 million people. Global warming melts glaciers (observed) and water expands as temperatures increase taking up more volume (proven science). The attached Forbes article below estimates this starting to occur by 2050.

'We want action now !'is the battle cry. Nobody ever seems to articulate very well what the action entails except it involved more tax and spend ;more power to the leviathan ,with more control over citizens and how they live their lives . The pattern is the same . The left seizes on the idea that we are in crisis

I appreciate your including this last paragraph. It tells me what I suspected all along. The opposition comes from the right-wing and it is not about science at all, it is about politics. I needed to see it in black-and-white, which you have done. Thank you.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimdobs...h=2c305b40456c

[Wondergirl]

Have you seen the Texas-size area of discarded plastic that's in the Pacific, or the incredibly enormous sea of discarded plastic near the Philippines? And there are too many more sites to count! Animals (birds and large fish) get trapped in discarded fishing nets and plastic bags, land mammals get their heads stuck in the mouths of mostly empty and discarded glass and plastic jars.

We are killing this Earth!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4GBJjKaX7u8

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yomf5pBN8dY

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6jCmYUQ1Q88

[paraclete]

the petrochemical industries are to blame, every product should be sold with a requirement to be recycled

[jlisenbe]

Have you seen the Texas-size area of discarded plastic that's in the Pacific, or the incredibly enormous sea of discarded plastic near the Philippines?

One of the great exaggerations on the planet. There are some patches of plastic, but hardly the entire area. At any rate, what does that have to do with climate change?

[Athos]

One of the great exaggerations on the planet.

The Pacific patch is between 275,300 and 698,000 square miles depending on how it is measured. Texas is about 270,000 square miles. The patch is three times the size of France.