Climate change

[pietillidie]

It'd be more accurate to say "The science was settled when everyone thought the Earth was center of the universe"

The belief was stable because it was intuitive, useful, and extremely difficult to contradict given the technology of the day.

In contrast, anthropogenic climate change has always faced stiff winds as a popular idea. The notion that humans can impact the climate is counter-intuitive given the atmosphere seems incalculably large and uncontained. Even when emissions exploded as a function of population and industrialisation, their magnitude remained inaccessible to naive calculation, barely improving the intuitive case for the idea.

By way of contrast, consider the theory of evolution; the time scale might be bamboozling, but at least the relationships between many species can be grasped prima facie.

If people struggle with something as simple and integral to their everyday lives as, say, compound interest, it's not hard to see why denial is so easy to peddle. Add to that aggressively-incentivised counter-investment by corporations, tyrants and tyrannies who have shown they are willing to kill at scale to maintain control of their assets, and denial is a giant snare ready to draw people into its clutches. As if on cue the Saudis underscore what real incentive looks like: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50070823

[bokka]

No, “deniers” is a perfectly accurate description.

If you think it's OK to use emotive derogatory words like "denier" in scientific treatises, you clearly know very little about scientific method. Well that's normal for average people but unfortunately it has become quite normal for so-called scientists too.

[Pies4shaw]

Yeah, nah. A denier is someone who denies something. A climate change denier is someone who denies climate change. The word is neither derogatory nor emotive. It is being used in a purely factual sense.

Of course, a certain degree of mockery and ridicule is always going to follow those who want to deny the obvious. It goes with the territory. That’s not so much a semantic matter as it is a reflection of an all-too-human desire to mock those perceived as being so intellectually challenged as to be incapable of rationale debate.

[stui magpie]

Yeah, nah. A denier is someone who denies something. A climate change denier is someone who denies climate change. The word is neither derogatory nor emotive. It is being used in a purely factual sense.

Of course, a certain degree of mockery and ridicule is always going to follow those who want to deny the obvious. It goes with the territory. That’s not so much a semantic matter as it is a reflection of an all-too-human desire to mock those perceived as being so intellectually challenged as to be incapable of rationale debate.

Exactly how I feel about the climate change activists.

[Pies4shaw]

You’re not alone there. Apologies for the typo, by the way.

[stui magpie]

rationale or rational, it still works.

[Skids]

“First you make people believe they have a problem, and then you sell them the solution. That's how advertising works. Every snake oil salesman knows that.” Al Gore

[David]

[Wokko]

“First you make people believe they have a problem, and then you sell them the solution. That's how advertising works. Every snake oil salesman knows that.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles

5 seconds in Google, you're welcome.

[David]

I found that too, Wokko, but just didn’t want to ruin my own joke.

[stui magpie]

[Skids]

40 forecast for Perth today.... would that be the hottest November day in Perth?

No, sorry, that was all the way back in 1913, when it hit 40.3.
That climate change is really gaining some momentum this past 106 years

[Pies4shaw]

I think I may need to start a thread so people who have no scientific expertise (and claim to have none) have a genuine opportunity to explain to the rest of the world how it is that they can be so certain that they know better than 15,000 climate scientists. I take it that it isn’t hubris. Perhaps it’s divine revelation?

[stui magpie]

How many people here believe that Climate Change is to blame for the current bushfires and, if so, to what degree.

Ie, totally to blame, partially to blame, contributory but not fault, etc.

For me, I think contributory to minimal.

Explanation:

The drought and other weather factors that have definitely contributed to this are within the normal range of weather for Australia, which has always been far less predictable and more extreme (to Europeans) than the Northern hemisphere. As such, it's difficult to impossible to say to what degree increased CO2 has contributed to / caused this weather.

Regardless of the weather on any particular day or week, you need ground fuel to get a fire liker this going. It needs fuel to burn hot and high enough to ignite the Eucalyptus tree canopy which then spreads the fire. Dry grass alone doesn't do it. For evidence go up to Kakadu at the end of dry season and witness the burning off. The Eucalypts and a few varieties of palms get blackened trunks but survive well without actually catching fire. The ashes from the grass etc fertilise the soil so when the rains come, the native grass which is the primary food source of the local Wallabies (which in turn were the primary food source for the local Aboriginals, see the pattern?) grows thick and high. Rinse and repeat.

Most of the native forest up the Eastern Seaboard was managed the same way until European settlement. Our idea of "managing" the forest now seems to be to not touch it, preserve it rather than conserve or manage it, hence ground fuel builds and when we get bush fires, they're intense .

So, summary, not learning from the people who lived here for 50,000+ years before us in how to manage the land is the primary reason why we have, had and will continue to have, sever bushfires regardless of climate change.

[David]