[JoeBrown]

One cannot argue, the history of real time climate change history is  short.

But in prospective so is the industrial revolution.

We don't know what all changed climate in the past, but we know its happened.

Today we'll pump about 26.8 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere.  The average daily has increased just about every day for at past 100 years (365,000 days).  I doubt we hit the 1 million ton mark 100 years ago.  Funny thing about human activity...

You can blame politicians, billionaires, whomever you like, it doesn't matter.  Humans like electricity, music, TV, microwaves, heat, air conditioning, phones, computers and transportation provided by trains, planes and automobiles.

The more we use these, the more CO2 we have produced.  By adding renewable resources we may have reached the peek. Wouldn't that be great?
 
Some of us have enough brain cells to rub together to make the connection that these increases, so too may come climate changing consequences.

[Craig W. Thomson]

Ok I am not trying to defend any position but this statement, I find rather exagerated, you are not allowing in your statement room for new technologies, changes in behaviour, and better use and re use of materials.

That's not my statement. That's something I read in a magazine several years ago. Mathematicians did those calculations, not me. And it doesn't seem that exaggerated. This is the nature of exponential growth. Human population has doubled in about 50 years, keep doubling every 50 years, that leaves you with about 4 trillion people in 500 years. Even if they use less resources in the future, that's still a lot of people.

Industry is more to blame then humanity, industry is only thinking about it own interests and has been consistenly supressing technologies they feel threaten their market share. People can only consume what they are offered, and the offers available are limited by the producers, by design. Big business is far more to blame for today situation then the populations they impose themselves on.

False. Business doesn't work that way. "Job creators" are largely a myth. When the economy is good, businesses hire. When the economy is bad, they lay people off. What drives a market or consumer economy is consumers. Business responds to their demand by producing supply. People are as much to blame as anyone. Even basics like food are a good example. There is plenty of lettuce out there to make salads, but Americans don't eat salads, they eat cheeseburgers. That's their choice. That's why there's an obesity epidemic. Similarly, I have no biological children. I don't drive a car. I eat low on the food chain. These are all personal decisions anyone can make. People can always NOT consume what they are offered. However, especially in the US, conspicuous consumption is a status symbol, and that's a big part of the problem.

Another part of the problem is education. Kids don't like math and science, it's "too hard," they would rather watch videos and play video games all day, just like they have since I was a kid, and every generation gets a little bit farther from the knowledge that could help them make good decisions about things like obesity and climate change. That's something you could blame on Big Business. They control the curriculum. American kids are basically indoctrinated to become part of the Consumer Class and the present system, but when we try to change the curriculum, conservatives claim we are the ones doing the indoctrination.

[Craig W. Thomson]

7. A dead hippopotamus cannot lie. Finding the bones of several such animals in Cambridgeshire suggests that this part of the world, at least, was a heck of a lot warmer a few thousand years ago. Knife marks on the bones suggest human activity, and I very much doubt that anyone was importing hippo thighs for fun and profit.

I never heard of that, so I looked it up. Wikipedia says those bones are from 120,000 years ago. That's a lot longer than the "few thousand years" you said.Quote: "They eventually discovered 127 bones that came mostly from a hippopotamus, with a few belonging to rhinoceros and elephant," so that's not "several such animals" like you said. Like most skeptics, you are playing loosely with the facts ... again. And it's sort of hard to believe a single hippo, single rhino, and a single elephant would have teamed up to make a trek to Derby across a land bridge. Seems more like they were placed there. Are you sure you're not getting this story mixed up with the movie Ice Age or something?

Maybe you are under the impression that when the planet gets warmer or cooler, that warm or cool gets evenly distributed. Maybe you haven't heard of things like the Atlantic Conveyor. Fresh water is less dense than salt water, which sets the trend for circulation of the Atlantic's waters. A sufficient influx of fresh water could shut it down, meaning as the rest of the planet gets warmer, the British Isles could get cooler. The opposite could in fact happen and probably has. There's more to climate change than just a simple, evenly distributed temperature rise. Due to the geography and physical features of the Earth, the distribution, absorption and dissipation of heat is never going to be even, so yes, you can get anomalies like hippos in places you might not expect, especially given 120,000 years.

You seem pretty desperate to poke holes in climate science. What exactly is your motivation?

[Tim the Plumber]

Maybe you are under the impression that when the planet gets warmer or cooler, that warm or cool gets evenly distributed. Maybe you haven't heard of things like the Atlantic Conveyor. Fresh water is less dense than salt water, which sets the trend for circulation of the Atlantic's waters. A sufficient influx of fresh water could shut it down, meaning as the rest of the planet gets warmer, the British Isles could get cooler. The opposite could in fact happen and probably has. There's more to climate change than just a simple, evenly distributed temperature rise. Due to the geography and physical features of the Earth, the distribution, absorption and dissipation of heat is never going to be even, so yes, you can get anomalies like hippos in places you might not expect, especially given 120,000 years.

You seem pretty desperate to poke holes in climate science. What exactly is your motivation?

The Atlantic convayor is wind driven.

Picture a strip of ocean surface 1m wide from the Carribean to Ireland. Say 6,000km. On each square meter have the wind cause a 1N force along the current's direction. Add that up and you have enough force to support a collum of water 600m high. 1N is the weight of 100g. Imagine holding a 1m square of cloth just above the ocean's surface in the middle of the North ATlantic, where the winds are strongest. I assure you the force would be much more than 100N. Then allow for the big walls of water all over the surface that are the perfect shape to grip the wind.

When ever a depression goes over the area a 10 feet high swell follows along. And say 15km diameter. 1/2 a cubic kilometer twice week or so. Unless there is a bigger storm.

The last quote of Greenland's ice mass loss was of 12.9Gt per year.

The North Atalntic convayor is not going to be affected by a tiny amount of fresh water mixing with the already cold Arctic water and then mixing with the warmer southern waters and decending to the ocean floor. Keep dreaming alarmists.

[Craig W. Thomson]

The Atlantic convayor is wind driven.

FALSE. Like any other example of thermohaline circulation, the Atlantic Conveyor is driven by density gradients arising from uneven surface temperatures ("thermo") and freshwater influx into salt water ("haline").

I would have imagined that, being a plumber, you would AT LEAST know something about how water flows. If you aren't even an expert on that, maybe you shouldn't be commenting about mass/energy conservation, thermodynamics, entropy and climate change.

[Craig W. Thomson]

Ok I am not trying to defend any position but this statement, I find rather exagerated, you are not allowing in your statement room for new technologies, changes in behaviour, and better use and re use of materials.

https://books.google.com/books?id=d_arS8LsAtIC&pg=PA266&lpg=PA266&dq=diminishing+returns+of+technology+rifkin&source=bl&ots=2Y90VmpEWU&sig=riCbydTijX1-7_tC8nywzSx59_Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj54NHRkMPLAhVRyWMKHSCnBsIQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=diminishing%20returns%20of%20technology%20rifkin&f=false

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/02/globalisation.globalrecession

[alancalverd]

You seem pretty desperate to poke holes in climate science. What exactly is your motivation?

The apparent lack of science in climate scaremongering.

[Craig W. Thomson]

Using the word "scaremongering" is spin, plain and simple. You're biased. You use science to support your arguments, too. You just cherry pick data that support your claims, that's all.

Once upon a time, humans learned how to control fire. One of the first important science lessons we learned is, "Ugh, me burn stuff, me get heat."

Pointing out that applying combustion to 100 million years worth of stored solar energy in just 150 years is likely to make it a bit warmer isn't scaremongering. It's acknowledging reality.

Pointing out that disrupting the climate could cause famines, floods and droughts, leading to economic repercussions isn't scaremongering. It's acknowledging reality.

Again, if you don't believe that burning fossil fuels affects the temperature and composition of a finite atmosphere, pull your car into the garage, leave it running, close the garage door, and roll down your windows.

"Ugh, it getting hot in here ..."

[JoeBrown]

The apparent lack of science in climate scaremongering.

That's curious, because you're also opposed to spending on researching the topic based on this remark:

Government expenditure on "climate concerns" (mostly, it seems, on ridiculous transport and security costs for pointless conferences) is not the point. By claiming some green credential, governments can impose massive taxes on fossil fuel, so the global warming swindle is perpetuated because a direct tax on food, health and all the other things that use fossil fuel, would be considered immoral. Some of the tax revenue filters back to the scaremongering industry: a very efficient use of your money to extract more.

I doubt anyone would argue the climate is not a complex system.  While I find it ironic the costs of conferences would also have climate consequences, it must be reasons that complex problems, require a complex efforts to resolve.

There is a general consensus that unearthing fossilized hydrocarbons CH₄, C₂H₆, C₃H₈, C₄H₁₀, etc., and burning them increases insulation of the atmosphere.

CO₂ is the lowest common denominator of the process.  CO₂ is not a direct measure of the hydrocarbons released into the atmosphere, but has correlation.  Hydrocarbons have a greater heat insulation quality.

The volume has increased to a substantial quantity, it is affecting the climate.  There is scientific understanding there is an imbalance, introduced by human activity.  It's quite scientific, tho you claim its based on scaremongering???

One would not be at fault, to perceive you, much like the American Republicans, rely upon pure faith to understand the world around you.

[Jolly]

Ok I am not trying to defend any position but this statement, I find rather exagerated, you are not allowing in your statement room for new technologies, changes in behaviour, and better use and re use of materials.

That's not my statement. That's something I read in a magazine several years ago. Mathematicians did those calculations, not me. And it doesn't seem that exaggerated. This is the nature of exponential growth.

 exponential growth of humanity?

Human population has doubled in about 50 years, keep doubling every 50 years, that leaves you with about 4 trillion people in 500 years. Even if they use less resources in the future, that's still a lot of people.

Which is speculative, if, if, if. I really do not see that happening,

Industry is more to blame then humanity, industry is only thinking about it own interests and has been consistenly supressing technologies they feel threaten their market share. People can only consume what they are offered, and the offers available are limited by the producers, by design. Big business is far more to blame for today situation then the populations they impose themselves on.

False.

No it's not false

Business doesn't work that way. "Job creators" are largely a myth.

Nothing to do with job "creators" this was about how business acts and behaves.

When the economy is good, businesses hire. When the economy is bad, they lay people off.

Assumptive, business acts, in their best interest related to profits, regardless of the ecconomic situation, they will lay people off in the good times to and also hire in the bad times, relative to interests of Profit- Noam Chomsky as an example has complained, protested, or maybe demonstraighted that the Corporate sturcture is set up with a mandate and that mandate is to get as much profit as is humanly(or inhumanly) possible, the mandate itself sets restictions on, and impluses CEOs and the corporate structure itself to sacrifice everything in the interest of profit- that has not happened by accident, social concerns, enviromental concerns, moral concerns, are all, if on any list anywhere at all, secoundary- to profit.

Corportions are not there to employ they are there to make money, if employing people helps that agenda, they employ.

What drives a market or consumer economy is consumers.

No false, the market drivers are those who make and maintain a market, primarily. It took 6 attemps to get people to buy premade sandwiches on the 6th attempt after all the investment, advertising, marketing, free tasters, people actually started to buy pre made sandwiches, 5 attempts failed because there was no market, they the sandwich makers, built one.
 
And covered the sandwiches in plastic, kept them in fridges, and throw them away after a few days because they are off now. It took many years, lots of investment and 6 attempts.

Consumers were not asking for premade sandwiches, business decided that they should ask(want) for them.

Business responds to their demand by producing supply.

NOOO! utterly false it makes the demand, that's why marketing and advertising exist! "Get your new widge and get it while its hot, women will sleep with you if you do"

Newspapers state the same lie- "We right the stories that our audience want to hear" Maybe thats not a lie, when you see it's all stories. "We newspapers have no effect on what people think, we just respond to demand"

"we companies have no influence on what people consume, we just respond to demnand" could there be a bigger lie when most people do not even actually know what it is, they are consuming? "it's says blue berry pie, but theres no blue berries in it? really?"

They market to make believe, no?

People are as much to blame as anyone.

People are as much to blame as anyone? although anyone is still a person I assume, well yes people do work for and control business.

Even basics like food are a good example. There is plenty of lettuce out there to make salads, but Americans don't eat salads, they eat cheeseburgers.

Yes and companies spend millions trying to keep them eating them, they even put chemicals in Cheese burgers they know are addictive. They also increase the suger and hype up the taste- can you guess why?

That's their choice. That's why there's an obesity epidemic.

Really, you dont think it's possible to make a chemical free, lower suger, low transfatty acid burger?

Maybe these burger producers are all feeders "I love my customers"

Similarly, I have no biological children. I don't drive a car. I eat low on the food chain. These are all personal decisions anyone can make. People can always NOT consume what they are offered. However, especially in the US, conspicuous consumption is a status symbol, and that's a big part of the problem.

Sure the American way. UMM, a status symbol- thankyou.

Another part of the problem is education. Kids don't like math and science, it's "too hard," they would rather watch videos and play video games all day, just like they have since I was a kid, and every generation gets a little bit farther from the knowledge that could help them make good decisions about things like obesity and climate change. That's something you could blame on Big Business. They control the curriculum. American kids are basically indoctrinated to become part of the Consumer Class and the present system, but when we try to change the curriculum, conservatives claim we are the ones doing the indoctrination.

Ofcourse they do Politicans are an extencion of corporate power today, Once upon a time apparently politicains used to regluated business to protect "the people" today politicians regulate the people to protect the business.

Important to note: it is a very time consuming process to research and look into the activity of a company, espically considering that companies do all they can to protect their image and the image of their products. To make informed decisions(if its even possible in that climate) about products is therefore by default an exhastive process, add-inf, if you gonna look at everything you buy. To blame consumers for poor choices is really a copout that defends the business community- it's all on the comsumers blame them and lets us the business world carry on: which ofcourse makes sense when you realise that democracy means "business rules" and provides for the dumb masses. The sad thing in all of that is ofcourse that while on the one hand big business can offer solutions to enviromental problems, often their own interests are more interesting, which brings us to the sad part that the planet and all its different forms of life should really be at the mercy of something better; Logically, reasonably and morally, but as for whatever that answer is, it should surely be reasonable and moral with at least a hint of logic in there somewhere.   

[Jolly]

Ok I am not trying to defend any position but this statement, I find rather exagerated, you are not allowing in your statement room for new technologies, changes in behaviour, and better use and re use of materials.

https://books.google.com/books?id=d_arS8LsAtIC&pg=PA266&lpg=PA266&dq=diminishing+returns+of+technology+rifkin&source=bl&ots=2Y90VmpEWU&sig=riCbydTijX1-7_tC8nywzSx59_Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj54NHRkMPLAhVRyWMKHSCnBsIQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=diminishing%20returns%20of%20technology%20rifkin&f=false

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/02/globalisation.globalrecession

It's a sad situation but really the only way you can became a accepted member of the intelectual class, is by imbracing the status quo and structure. To say "They are all captured" would'nt really be an under statement.

The deminishing "RETURNS" is that business speak for hard profit? it is isnt it, hard profit and power, and all those other benefits of oligarchy status.

Technologies can be used to liberate they can also be used to enslave and control- I wonder which direction the Elites are choosing?
---------

With regards to the artical, it interlinks completly with the point I made before from Noam Chomsky, if Corporation' put Profit first, you can only arrive at a place where no-one works in the corporation but it has huges profits.

Business in the past, when it was family owned for example, would take pride in the fact that it was employing people, that was part of the reason they were in business, to employ people, to benefit the local ecconomy, and society, to make the world a better place, but older business ideals about contributing to society, have been thrown out and the new ideal is "make as much money as possible".

So they start buyiung up all the other companies, laying off everyone they can, so I supoose in the grand dream there is one giant company, that employs about five people and gives all the profits to it's share holders it's a really well thought out dream isnt it.

Oh and it's hedgefund and ther hostile take overs, that have destroyed industry more then anything, they buy it, cut it up and sell off the bits, made huge profits doing so.

[alancalverd]

That's curious, because you're also opposed to spending on researching the topic based on this remark:

Government expenditure on "climate concerns" (mostly, it seems, on ridiculous transport and security costs for pointless conferences) is not the point. By claiming some green credential, governments can impose massive taxes on fossil fuel, so the global warming swindle is perpetuated because a direct tax on food, health and all the other things that use fossil fuel, would be considered immoral. Some of the tax revenue filters back to the scaremongering industry: a very efficient use of your money to extract more.

Conferences at which so-called "word leaders" lock down cities for "security" and play brinkmanship games in order to improve their chances of re-election, are not scientific research.

Several years ago I proposed a simple experiment in which we would reduce worldwide anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions by 25% over a 5 year period without anyone suffering a change in standard of living, to see what effect it might have. The idea was taken up by the World Bank and the UK government's chief economic adviser, but nothing useful has been done. No experimental research.

It is plain to me that farm animals are a major and increasing source of anthropogenic CO2. The green lobby (or at least the worst part of it) insists that animal exhalates are taken up by plants, but vehicle exhausts are not. So we subsidise hill farmers and tax motorists. This is utter drivel, not science.

I still await anyone's definition of global mean temperature, and an explanation of how it has been measured for the past 100 years. If you don't define your parameter, and explain how it is measured, you aren't doing science. No observational research.

Building computer models of an inherently chaotic system, adding fudge factors instead of addressing the inherent nonlinearities in the real system, and massaging such historic data as you have in order to make it fit your naive hypothesis, is not science. 

But the worst offence of all is to faff about building windmills and taxing air passengers instead of facing up to and mitigating the inevitable human disaster of climate change. Unfortunately the modern world is run by religion and politics, not science.

[Craig W. Thomson]

exponential growth of humanity?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth

http://www.zo.utexas.edu/faculty/sjasper/images/52.20.gif

Duh.

Industry is more to blame then humanity, industry is only thinking about it own interests and has been consistenly supressing technologies they feel threaten their market share. People can only consume what they are offered, and the offers available are limited by the producers, by design. Big business is far more to blame for today situation then the populations they impose themselves on.

I disagree. It takes 2,000 calories or so per day to sustain a human life. Everything else is optional. That's a pretty extreme point of view, but it is factual. We don't need pretty much any of the stuff we buy when it comes right down to it. You can always refuse the stuff you are offered. When enough people do that, they offer you something else. Keep buying what they offer, and they'll keep offering you the same thing. You know, people like me are ultimately responsible for the GMO debate. You see, I made the choice to start drinking soy milk about 20 years ago, even though it used to cost a lot more than milk. Thanks to people like me creating demand for the product, other producers got on board thinking they could make as good or better product cheaper. Mass production ensued, competition drove down the price, and soy milk started taking up grocery store space where milk used to be. Voila, the GMO scare was born. They want people to be scared of the soybeans they make soy milk out of so they will go back to buying milk. It's just that simple. They claim that because the genes of the soybean aren't "natural," they should be labelled that way, even though "cows" never existed in nature until humans started selectively breeding them and modifying their genes. I had the opportunity to see an uncle of mine in Missouri put on a rubber glove and shove his hand up a cow's vagina when I was a kid. That's more dangerous than drinking soy milk, and less natural.

What drives a market or consumer economy is consumers.

No false, the market drivers are those who make and maintain a market, primarily. It took 6 attemps to get people to buy premade sandwiches on the 6th attempt after all the investment, advertising, marketing, free tasters, people actually started to buy pre made sandwiches, 5 attempts failed because there was no market, they the sandwich makers, built one. And covered the sandwiches in plastic, kept them in fridges, and throw them away after a few days because they are off now. It took many years, lots of investment and 6 attempts. Consumers were not asking for premade sandwiches, business decided that they should ask(want) for them.

No, your statement is false, mine is true, I frigging hate it when people do that. Have you studied economics at the college level? I have. Consumer spending drives about 70% of an economy like that of the U.S. That's why the economy is sluggish. This thread is about climate change, but you went there, so let me break it down to you using some arguments I've used before to keep it quick. These figures are about a year old and from memory. The four Walton heirs, owners of Walmart, are worth about $150 billion, or about 1% of the entire U.S. gross domestic product for an entire year. They employ about 1.4 million Americans and pay them about $27,000 a piece per year. That's an average, which includes not just floor staff, but managers and people at all levels of the heirarchy. So, a few years back, Walmart was in the news because they were collecting canned goods and donations from customers so that their employees could have Thanksgiving dinner. That's the sluggish economy in a nutshell. It's the reason "supply side economics," or "Reaganomics" has been proven not to work. When millions of people are out of work, and millions more are barely scraping by, a business owner may notice he has no customers, all of his employees are standing around, his inventory is collecting dust. How is the government giving him a tax break supposed to stimulate the economy? So he can hire more people to stand around? So he can buy more inventory to collect dust? Maybe open another location where more employees can stand around watching inventory collect dust? The alleged "job creator" can't do anything about the economy. He needs customers. His employees are those customers. Think about the Waltons. If they paid those 1.4 million people better, my fictional business owner would have busier employees. If McDonalds did the same, he would have even more. By paying his employees better instead of pocketing a big tax break, he is doing his part to make the consumer economy go.

You make some points I can sort of agree with in your illustration about pre-wrapped sandwiches. If you like those sorts of example and would like a better grasp of this subject, I suggest you read this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wealth-Nature-Economics-Survival/dp/0865716730

Business responds to their demand by producing supply.

NOOO! utterly false it makes the demand, that's why marketing and advertising exist! "Get your new widge and get it while its hot, women will sleep with you if you do" Newspapers state the same lie- "We right the stories that our audience want to hear" Maybe thats not a lie, when you see it's all stories. "We newspapers have no effect on what people think, we just respond to demand" "we companies have no influence on what people consume, we just respond to demnand" could there be a bigger lie when most people do not even actually know what it is, they are consuming? "it's says blue berry pie, but theres no blue berries in it? really?"

No. The most common business model for success is to "find a need, and fill it." This goes back to your sandwich illustration. The inventors of the prewrapped sandwich probably had the foresight to realize people in cities were working long hours in factories and had a limited period of time for lunch. Great idea, but people were turned off by the idea of prepackaged food in those days when home cooked meals were more the standard. So, it took some marketing to get the "good idea" out there. Steve Jobs fits your illustration. He was brilliant, he created products so ingenious that everybody wanted them and were willing to stand in line for days at a time eating prewrapped sandwiches to get them first. Most people who call themselves "job creators" are not Steve Jobs material. They merely ride waves of supply and demand created largely by consumers spending money when they have it. By the way, that book I posted a link to also has an example that will help explain what happened to your blueberries; funny twist, at least to me, is that his best analogy is what happened to the shoe cobbler, not blueberry cobbler.

Yes and companies spend millions trying to keep them eating them, they even put chemicals in Cheese burgers they know are addictive. They also increase the suger and hype up the taste- can you guess why?

I know why. That's an excuse. I used to eat cheeseburgers pretty much every day. When I was 18 or 19, my diet was incredibly poor. I ate whatever I wanted, which was actually just a few things: Cheeseburgers, fries, pizza, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, potato chips, doughnuts, anything chocolate. You couldn't have force fed me a salad. I didn't have to go to rehab to get off junk food. I didn't have any withdrawal symptoms. I simply decided I needed to start eating healthier, and did. I have a hard time believing people when they blame "food addiction" for being overweight. I get hungry too, just like everyone else. We are all quite literally addicted to food. It's a survival mechanism. 50,000 years ago, if you found something sweet or fatty, your body would respond and say, "Hey, that tastes good, eat more of that. We could use it to survive." Now, when there is a fast food restaurant on every corner, you have think about what you are doing. It's sort of like with the penis. I have a biological urge to reproduce. That doesn't mean I have to act on it every time it crosses my mind. If I did, I would be locked up. Similarly, I don't need to go diving into a bag of potato chips every day just because they taste good. I try to control my brain rather than letting it control me. I'm not a dog or cat. They get those same sorts of "addictive" chemicals you spoke of in their pet chow and respond by having brand preferences, but they don't know about nutrition like human beings, so they have an excuse.

Important to note: it is a very time consuming process to research and look into the activity of a company, espically considering that companies do all they can to protect their image and the image of their products. To make informed decisions(if its even possible in that climate) about products is therefore by default an exhastive process, add-inf, if you gonna look at everything you buy. To blame consumers for poor choices is really a copout that defends the business community- it's all on the comsumers blame them and lets us the business world carry on: which ofcourse makes sense when you realise that democracy means "business rules" and provides for the dumb masses. The sad thing in all of that is ofcourse that while on the one hand big business can offer solutions to enviromental problems, often their own interests are more interesting, which brings us to the sad part that the planet and all its different forms of life should really be at the mercy of something better; Logically, reasonably and morally, but as for whatever that answer is, it should surely be reasonable and moral with at least a hint of logic in there somewhere.   

Again, I disagree. I'm 47, so I remember when it USED to be an exhaustive process to research a company. Now, we have the Internet, so there are really no excuses. It's pretty easy now. In fact, I heard about an app for your phone so specific that you can check and see if a company donated money to Republican or Democratic candidates and causes. Sorry, but a person's life is a person's life. Everyone has the right and the ability to find out whether or not the stuff they buy is good or bad for them and the environment they share with the rest of humanity. If it isn't important enough to a person to do that research and vote with their dollars, choosing instead to ignorantly empower big business with their dollars and ruin the health of themselves and the environment in the process, then they really have no one to blame but themselves. This is a cultural issue in my eyes. Everyone wants to "live for the moment" because "we might not be here tomorrow." That just exacerbates the problem. People buy stuff to make themselves feel good. People don't want to think about consequences. Ours is a superficial, materialistic culture. I'm no fascist, but I do think there's been too much focus on the "individual" and "individual rights" in the U.S. "Socialism" is practically profanity here, as is "communism." God forbid people should sacrifice the freedom to do whatever they want whenever they want to in order to be part of a larger community with common goals. I think being against socialism is "antisocial" to a degree. We are social creatures like monkeys and dogs, not solitary animals like cheetahs. People seem to have forgotten, we're all part of a single entity: humanity. We're all part of that tiny blue pixel Voyager saw when it turned back and looked at Earth from billions of miles away. In an age when a perspective like that is even possible and nearly everyone on the planet is interconnected electronically, that's the one thing we shouldn't have forgotten.

[Craig W. Thomson]

adding fudge factors ... and massaging such historic data as you have in order to make it fit your naive hypothesis, is not science. 

You mean like when they found 127 bones, most from a single hippo with a few elephant and rhino bones mixed in, and you extrapolated that to mean the climate was warm enough 120,000 years ago for "several such animals" to have "crossed a land bridge" to Derby? You can't massage and fudge data any better than that. Give me a break. Maybe some prehistoric explorers took some bones home as a trophy or a resource or something, because there's no way a hippo, a rhino and an elephant befriended one another and wandered up to the U.K. via a land bridge.

Which wouldn't be possible anyway. You could get to the British Isles via an "ice bridge" during heavy glaciation, but sea level should be higher when the British Isles are experiencing tropical weather, as ice caps and glaciation would be negligible during such a warm period, covering any land bridges ...

Unless you know of some ultra-fast tectonic process I've never heard of ...

How the heck did you get a moderator position at a science forum ?? I only have 8 hours of Biology and 8 hours of Physics at the college level, and I'm finding all sorts of holes in your science.

[Tim the Plumber]

Several years ago I proposed a simple experiment in which we would reduce worldwide anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions by 25% over a 5 year period without anyone suffering a change in standard of living, to see what effect it might have. The idea was taken up by the World Bank and the UK government's chief economic adviser, but nothing useful has been done. No experimental research.

What the F!

How exactly would you reduce CO2 emissions without shutting off power? Reducing the world's wealth growth?

You are not on the same planet as the rest of us. The idea was never taken up by anybody with a brain. You are deluded. I say this because somebody has to, otherwise you will become more mad.

[Jolly]

exponential growth of humanity?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth

http://www.zo.utexas.edu/faculty/sjasper/images/52.20.gif

Duh.

You are arguing that the human population wil just keep on growing until it is just not possible to grow anymore. The signs do not point to that, all advanced ecconomies have slowing population growth. Infact the more advanced an civilisation becomes the less children it's members have, as most countries are set to advance, population should stablise and not grow exponentailly. not forgetting dieases ofcourse which are slowly actually becoming medication resistent.

Industry is more to blame then humanity, industry is only thinking about it own interests and has been consistenly supressing technologies they feel threaten their market share. People can only consume what they are offered, and the offers available are limited by the producers, by design. Big business is far more to blame for today situation then the populations they impose themselves on.

I disagree. It takes 2,000 calories or so per day to sustain a human life. Everything else is optional. That's a pretty extreme point of view, but it is factual.

Factual it might be, extreme also, your extremity misses the point, why under such circumstances are people consuming soo much more then they need?

We don't need pretty much any of the stuff we buy when it comes right down to it. You can always refuse the stuff you are offered.

Sure you can but why should anyone? The system we all live in seeks to promote an appathetic attitude in the population(and for many reasons). You are crediting the population with more agency then the system wants them to have; apathy is in the end a by product from a form of indoctrination.

When enough people do that, they offer you something else.

If the mass population stated doing that the management would panic.

Keep buying what they offer, and they'll keep offering you the same thing. You know, people like me are ultimately responsible for the GMO debate. You see, I made the choice to start drinking soy milk about 20 years ago, even though it used to cost a lot more than milk. Thanks to people like me creating demand for the product, other producers got on board thinking they could make as good or better product cheaper. Mass production ensued, competition drove down the price, and soy milk started taking up grocery store space where milk used to be. Voila, the GMO scare was born. They want people to be scared of the soybeans they make soy milk out of so they will go back to buying milk. It's just that simple.

Umm intimidation, how much to blame are those that sucum to fear compared to those that induce it?

They claim that because the genes of the soybean aren't "natural," they should be labelled that way, even though "cows" never existed in nature until humans started selectively breeding them and modifying their genes. I had the opportunity to see an uncle of mine in Missouri put on a rubber glove and shove his hand up a cow's vagina when I was a kid. That's more dangerous than drinking soy milk, and less natural.

What drives a market or consumer economy is consumers.

No false, the market drivers are those who make and maintain a market, primarily. It took 6 attemps to get people to buy premade sandwiches on the 6th attempt after all the investment, advertising, marketing, free tasters, people actually started to buy pre made sandwiches, 5 attempts failed because there was no market, they the sandwich makers, built one. And covered the sandwiches in plastic, kept them in fridges, and throw them away after a few days because they are off now. It took many years, lots of investment and 6 attempts. Consumers were not asking for premade sandwiches, business decided that they should ask(want) for them.

No, your statement is false, mine is true, I frigging hate it when people do that. Have you studied economics at the college level? I have. Consumer spending drives about 70% of an economy like that of the U.S. That's why the economy is sluggish.

You honestly want to argue that your college education was an unbiased look at how ecconomics actually works? The current keynesian ecconomic models used are rediculas, I'll stay with Austrian school I think, I have for the record studied some ecconomics, But certainly studied more in the areas of advertising and marketing tho.

This thread is about climate change, but you went there, so let me break it down to you using some arguments I've used before to keep it quick. These figures are about a year old and from memory. The four Walton heirs, owners of Walmart, are worth about $150 billion, or about 1% of the entire U.S. gross domestic product for an entire year. They employ about 1.4 million Americans and pay them about $27,000 a piece per year. That's an average, which includes not just floor staff, but managers and people at all levels of the heirarchy. So, a few years back, Walmart was in the news because they were collecting canned goods and donations from customers so that their employees could have Thanksgiving dinner. That's the sluggish economy in a nutshell. It's the reason "supply side economics," or "Reaganomics" has been proven not to work. When millions of people are out of work, and millions more are barely scraping by, a business owner may notice he has no customers, all of his employees are standing around, his inventory is collecting dust. How is the government giving him a tax break supposed to stimulate the economy? So he can hire more people to stand around? So he can buy more inventory to collect dust? Maybe open another location where more employees can stand around watching inventory collect dust? The alleged "job creator" can't do anything about the economy.

Not the case its a question of motives, if all he is interested is profits then he wont do anything however, if he was prepared to take less profit share more with the staff they would shop at other places and the staff at other places would shop at wall mart and so on, it's the gross and obsessive demands companies have for profits thats gonna kill them, it's a non ractional model of business in my oppinion.

He needs customers. His employees are those customers. Think about the Waltons. If they paid those 1.4 million people better, my fictional business owner would have busier employees. If McDonalds did the same, he would have even more. By paying his employees better instead of pocketing a big tax break, he is doing his part to make the consumer economy go.

Yeah ofcourse, my point, but you'll find companies today are not interested in their employees in the way they used to be, when complanies were smaller and more intermate.

You make some points I can sort of agree with in your illustration about pre-wrapped sandwiches. If you like those sorts of example and would like a better grasp of this subject, I suggest you read this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wealth-Nature-Economics-Survival/dp/0865716730

Business responds to their demand by producing supply.

NOOO! utterly false it makes the demand, that's why marketing and advertising exist! "Get your new widge and get it while its hot, women will sleep with you if you do" Newspapers state the same lie- "We right the stories that our audience want to hear" Maybe thats not a lie, when you see it's all stories. "We newspapers have no effect on what people think, we just respond to demand" "we companies have no influence on what people consume, we just respond to demnand" could there be a bigger lie when most people do not even actually know what it is, they are consuming? "it's says blue berry pie, but theres no blue berries in it? really?"

No. The most common business model for success is to "find a need, and fill it."

Make a need and fill it. Drug dealers do that. You are putting individual agency in a position that really it does not hold in society and deminishing the affects of cohercion. Both are present but the individual does not have the resourses the cohercers do.

This goes back to your sandwich illustration. The inventors of the prewrapped sandwich probably had the foresight to realize people in cities were working long hours in factories and had a limited period of time for lunch. Great idea, but people were turned off by the idea of prepackaged food in those days when home cooked meals were more the standard. So, it took some marketing to get the "good idea" out there. Steve Jobs fits your illustration. He was brilliant, he created products so ingenious that everybody wanted them and were willing to stand in line for days at a time eating prewrapped sandwiches to get them first. Most people who call themselves "job creators" are not Steve Jobs material. They merely ride waves of supply and demand created largely by consumers spending money when they have it. By the way, that book I posted a link to also has an example that will help explain what happened to your blueberries; funny twist, at least to me, is that his best analogy is what happened to the shoe cobbler, not blueberry cobbler.

Yes and companies spend millions trying to keep them eating them, they even put chemicals in Cheese burgers they know are addictive. They also increase the suger and hype up the taste- can you guess why?

I know why. That's an excuse. I used to eat cheeseburgers pretty much every day. When I was 18 or 19, my diet was incredibly poor. I ate whatever I wanted, which was actually just a few things: Cheeseburgers, fries, pizza, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, potato chips, doughnuts, anything chocolate. You couldn't have force fed me a salad. I didn't have to go to rehab to get off junk food. I didn't have any withdrawal symptoms. I simply decided I needed to start eating healthier, and did.

And that's great and your choice.

I have a hard time believing people when they blame "food addiction" for being overweight. I get hungry too, just like everyone else. We are all quite literally addicted to food. It's a survival mechanism. 50,000 years ago, if you found something sweet or fatty, your body would respond and say, "Hey, that tastes good, eat more of that. We could use it to survive." Now, when there is a fast food restaurant on every corner, you have think about what you are doing. It's sort of like with the penis. I have a biological urge to reproduce. That doesn't mean I have to act on it every time it crosses my mind. If I did, I would be locked up.

 Similarly, I don't need to go diving into a bag of potato chips every day just because they taste good. I try to control my brain rather than letting it control me.

And thats great and everyone should, self control, education and responsibility are keys to human freedom, sadly human freedoms are not really being promoted socially, Going back to apathy issue, and global warming itself, wether true or false apathetic people are not interested. If humanity is to improve our enviromental situation, apathy will only get in the way. I am a community of soultions person, so I see that some technologies can take up the slack that apathetic people will cause, but really only self control and people actually caring about their world and society will really be able to cause a true change. If you just use technology to answer issues people might even become more destructive in their enviromental behaviour as no consideration is given to how they live and act. It's a real issue here systems of social control are preventing human development and slowing attempts at effective responces to enviromental issues.

Still I will say that I see habitat destruction as a far greater issue then global warming, if we can maintain, protect and increase habitates for all the different speacies that live on this earth, even if tempertures rise, many spieaces will be given a better chance at adapting and coping, wiping out the rain forests is a nightmare.   

I'm not a dog or cat. They get those same sorts of "addictive" chemicals you spoke of in their pet chow and respond by having brand preferences, but they don't know about nutrition like human beings, so they have an excuse.

Cant agree if a pet rejects a food it will be because of something they find wrong with it. They say cats are choosy, but in my experience they'll eat anything provided it does not have signs of danger.

[Jolly]

Had to break it into to post too many words for one:

Important to note: it is a very time consuming process to research and look into the activity of a company, espically considering that companies do all they can to protect their image and the image of their products. To make informed decisions(if its even possible in that climate) about products is therefore by default an exhastive process, add-inf, if you gonna look at everything you buy. To blame consumers for poor choices is really a copout that defends the business community- it's all on the comsumers blame them and lets us the business world carry on: which ofcourse makes sense when you realise that democracy means "business rules" and provides for the dumb masses. The sad thing in all of that is ofcourse that while on the one hand big business can offer solutions to enviromental problems, often their own interests are more interesting, which brings us to the sad part that the planet and all its different forms of life should really be at the mercy of something better; Logically, reasonably and morally, but as for whatever that answer is, it should surely be reasonable and moral with at least a hint of logic in there somewhere.   

Again, I disagree. I'm 47, so I remember when it USED to be an exhaustive process to research a company. Now, we have the Internet, so there are really no excuses. It's pretty easy now. In fact, I heard about an app for your phone so specific that you can check and see if a company donated money to Republican or Democratic candidates and causes. Sorry, but a person's life is a person's life. Everyone has the right and the ability to find out whether or not the stuff they buy is good or bad for them and the environment they share with the rest of humanity.

An yet companies do everything they can to hide potencailly damaging information, you are ignoring reality, to say what you are. The media isnt interested in reporting, they risk losing their advertising fees.

I see you hold your self as a self made man, but you should not let that cause you to belittle those you feel are lower then you, I would say it would be better to show some understanding and try to encourage people to do the same, everyone is not like you, some things are harder for others than they are for you and vice versa, the 'If I can, you all can, and all should' attitude can come across as slightly elitist.

If it isn't important enough to a person to do that research and vote with their dollars,

Well sorry the entire idea of voting with dollars is a disgusting one, which inherently faviours the richest first, I could really careless how good a company is a making a product when it comes to decision making about the future of society, being a good cake maker bares no relation or qualifcation or right to answer those questions.

I believe in democracy, the coporate polyarchy that changed democracys defintion to mean "business rules" is utterly undemocratic.

If you work for a company what power does the manager have? They cant change anything, they follow proceedures, they have no say over the running of the company really save in the odd place where they are delegated a responsibility. As an employee what does it change if you can vote for who manages you? Who ever it is they are going to do the same job and demand the same things- as your manager. 

Now understand politician are managers in the current "democratic" system, they have no power really its been given away, without public consultation.

choosing instead to ignorantly empower big business with their dollars and ruin the health of themselves and the environment in the process,

You have not understood the Thatcher Reagun revolution to say this, politicains empowered business not the people.
 

then they really have no one to blame but themselves. This is a cultural issue in my eyes. Everyone wants to "live for the moment" because "we might not be here tomorrow." That just exacerbates the problem. People buy stuff to make themselves feel good. People don't want to think about consequences. Ours is a superficial, materialistic culture. I'm no fascist,

I would argue technically you could be considered one, if you feel that business control over society and politics- is a good thing. You are not seeing the wood for the trees on this issue.

but I do think there's been too much focus on the "individual" and "individual rights" in the U.S.

Cant agree, there has not been enought

"Socialism" is practically profanity here, as is "communism." God forbid people should sacrifice the freedom to do whatever they want whenever they want to in order to be part of a larger community with common goals.

Well these things do not have to be mutually exclusive. And Groups themsleves can take on asspects of individual behaviour. Like it or not we are all a part of a larger group, however common goals is where it gets scarey.

I think being against socialism is "antisocial" to a degree.

Not at all, depends on what you mean by social, if you mean a group you hang with and that group is communist, being a socialist could be considered anti-social, if you mean society, certainly not, it's all relative, socailism has its good and bad points as does capitalism and any other ideology you might care to mention. I can't agree that simply being against a certain idea inherently makes a person anti social. unless their idea is anti-social-ism itself, in which case they are by definition.

We are social creatures like monkeys and dogs, not solitary animals like cheetahs. People seem to have forgotten,

Come on, people have forgotton? You really ignore the elephants in the room, seem to think you live in a society that has just appeared naturally with no influences or social planning.

Devide and conquer.

we're all part of a single entity: humanity. We're all part of that tiny blue pixel Voyager saw when it turned back and looked at Earth from billions of miles away. In an age when a perspective like that is even possible and nearly everyone on the planet is interconnected electronically, that's the one thing we shouldn't have forgotten.

Well it's a rather recent reality, some have not woken up to it yet, so it';s not really something that today can be forgotton, thats for tommorrow.

[Jolly]

Several years ago I proposed a simple experiment in which we would reduce worldwide anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions by 25% over a 5 year period without anyone suffering a change in standard of living, to see what effect it might have. The idea was taken up by the World Bank and the UK government's chief economic adviser, but nothing useful has been done. No experimental research.

What the F!

How exactly would you reduce CO2 emissions without shutting off power? Reducing the world's wealth growth?

You are not on the same planet as the rest of us. The idea was never taken up by anybody with a brain. You are deluded. I say this because somebody has to, otherwise you will become more mad.

Hold his breath

Clean coal power plants would reduce co2 emmissions, as would moulton salt reactors.

Reverse combustion systems placed over cooling tanks to capture and so covert CO2 emmissions.

You can tell me there are not ways to reduce Co2 emmisions  without shutting off power.

we are wasteful even with waste.


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/turning-carbon-dioxide-back-into-fuel/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_coal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor

Totally possible to increase energy production and reduce Co2 emissions at the same time. Still I'd like to see more research into new forests really, and maybe new forest housing.
http://images.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http://a.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/imagecache/slideshow_large/slideshow/2015/06/3047952-slide-s-2-in-these-new-neighborhoods-the-houses-look-like-trees.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.fastcoexist.com/3047952/in-these-urban-forest-neighborhoods-the-houses-are-disguised-as-trees&h=422&w=750&tbnid=dTG3TBGlDi_c9M:&tbnh=90&tbnw=160&docid=GZk3xuYOFSjceM&usg=__ZL0snpL5JRsVo7QoKKXzZnK3Ktc=&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihk5-lmMbLAhVjQZoKHYUzDgEQ9QEISzAH

P.s we really dont have any wealth growth, it's all gone upstairs, we just have ever increasing bubles of fiat debt paper and the illusion of a house bubble.

[alancalverd]

How exactly would you reduce CO2 emissions without shutting off power? Reducing the world's wealth growth?

Stop farming animals for food.

[JoeBrown]

Stop farming animals for food.

LOL,

That would help a lot.  Unfortunately, its difficult to persuade ppl to refrain from consuming animal products.

I'm a rather spotty vegan. Not because I want to be green, kind to animals, etc.  Its a personal choice, for my health.  I'm eating veggies & pasta, right now, infact.  Once in a while, I break down and eat meat, or some kind of processed cheese product.  Not too often, if I can help it, but us Yank's find it difficult to not eat meat, cheese &/or milk.

I urge friends & family to be more veganistic, and they scoff and contend with issues from not minding their diets better. 

Education helps, but you can't make ppl learn when they choose not to.