The Great Debate Thread - ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!

[Searcher]

Orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Climate change is way too complex to distilled down as they have tried to do

Where has anyone distilled down anything? Climate modelling is an ever evolving business, strongly dependent on accessible computing power. No scientist will claim their models are perfect, and utterly irrefutably correct. But just because they aren't doesn't mean they should not be used, and improved upon. You know, when you compare the predictions of the models from, say, 10 to 15 years ago with the data from today, it turns out the models weren't that good - because the true situation is a lot worse than predicted. I even noticed this effect when watching An Inconvenient Truth for the first time several years after it came out.

When I was a kid in the 70's, I remember the Big Freeze was coming. By 2010 we would be in an Ice Age, with world wide starvation and distaster just waiting to happen (that is if America didn't go crazy and nuke the world first but that is a seprate issue). So yea, I will concede that as time goes on our information does get better, however we are still talking about actual first hand recorded climate information that has happened in the past ... what 200, 400 years? Compared to millions of years? Yes, I know ice cores and tree rings but they only give you local conditions which you can make a educated guess about global conditions. While that makes good science, and extremely good reading, it makes me squimish when you want to make public policy.

and they could actually be wrong

And they could actually be right. But let's just do Business As Usual, since they might be wrong...

What if we did all this and it made things worst?

or maybe no one is really comfortable destroying our entire way of life

Soooooo, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other assorted climate protection == going back to the primitive and living in hovels with no electricity and no running water? Or is your "entire way of life" the right to drive gas-guzzling SUVs and get cheap fast food?

Yes, yes I do but with the cost of energy going up the fast food is getting too $$$ for me to indulge

based on hypothesis and theory.

It's actually based on incredible amounts of empirical data gathered worldwide. As stated above, the models which these data are fed into are not perfect, and never can be perfect, but we are a lot more sure of these things than your wording of "hypothesis and theory" suggests.

Mark me, I'm no tree-hugger, I've never voted for the Green party, and I'm even pro atomic power *le gasp*.

Man, I wish we had more nuke plants, then maybe, just maybe I would be more on board with some of these changes but us power hungry Americans can't use solor and wind power instead of oil, we could never generate enought.

[JVDifferent]

Oh shit maybe we should start trying to fly because gravity is just a theory.

[Tenjen]

Well we still don't really know why gravity is so strong yet so weak.

[Pneumonica]

Because it is? I mean, who defines "strong" or "weak" when it comes to cosmic forces? I never understood the idea that there needs to be a reason why different things behave differently.

[Don Alexander]

Well, gravity is usually seen as "weak" in terms of how strongly its interactions are respective the other forces.

The atomic cores in the atoms in a piece of rock (say, fist sized) are held together by the strong force. Short range, ultra-powerful.

The whole rock is held together by the electromagnetic attraction between the atoms which form crystal lattices. Unlimited range, strong enough to keep the rock solid unless a lot of force or high temperature is applied.

The actual gravitational attraction that rock exerts is extremely minimal.

A very roughshod answer invokes the Anthropic principle: If gravity were much stronger vs. the other forces, we would not exist to ponder it. Strong gravity means any reasonably large accumulation of mass collapses into a black hole. No stars, no nothing.

[Iceman]

What about the weak force, while you're at it?

[Searcher]

The theory of gravity is fairly consistent (at least here on Earth and our local solar system but not sure you can say the same thing about black-holes and other exotic areas of the universe) and pretty predicable. If you do X, then the result is Y. In other words, if you stepped out of an airplane naked at a height greater then, oh lets say 10000 feet above sea level, the force of gravity will pull you back down to zero feet above sea level at a certain speed and cause you to impact with the surface of the Earth with such force that the outcome is you dieing and leaving a very messy pile of goo behind. We know this because we can observe the results not only on the chalk board but in real life when someone makes a mistake jumping out of plane with defective parachute.

Man made Climate change is, as Don pointed out, still evolving and as a layman, I can not judge it by my own observation due to the fact that all thvariableses are not known. Has the weather shifdrasticallyly in the past, by a lot ?Slowly? What factors caused it to change the fastest? How much does the Sun play? Is the energy levels higher or lower then the norm? What is the norm?

For almost as long as I been alive, there has been a theory that an asteroid impact in Gulf of Mexico killed dinosaurs. Heck, they even taught us that in high school science, but recently there has been some evidence put forward that the big guys were already on the way out, the impact was just the icing on the cake. That theory is less then forty years old. Man-made Climate change, Yucatan Crater, Evolution ... great areas of science, interesting studies and should encourage to be study more but not to be used to as the justification for major changes to society. Do not tell me that someone in a lab knows for sure it will kill us all if we don't do X now! Especially when they can't even tell me if it is or isn't going to rain next Saturday with any certainty. Heck, here in Central Florida, they can't even get the next day right most of the time.

On a unrelated Evolutionlution theory is still just a theory, not a finished product and not a fact, but a good theory. Do not assume because I am one of the few right wing Republicans in here that I believe in Creationism or Intelligent Design or whatever they call it now, is a valid theory ... it is not. Nice story maybe but not scientific by any means. I'm only putting that out there because I do not discuss religion ... ever. I don't want to have people mistake my actions on Evolution as a sign that I endorsing Intelligent Design ... or you know ... whatever it's called it now.

[Adamas]

*Looks at searcher* Are you sure your a Republican and not a Moderate?

[Azrael]

Meh, that's alright. I have difficulty believeing that the Universe in all it's diversity was made by some Great Cosmic Sparrow Fart at the dawn of time.

[Adamas]

It wasn't a sparrow fart!...The goddess had had gas.

[TheDude]

Man made Climate change is, as Don pointed out, still evolving and as a layman, I can not judge it by my own observation due to the fact that all thvariableses are not known. Has the weather shifdrasticallyly in the past, by a lot ?Slowly? What factors caused it to change the fastest? How much does the Sun play? Is the energy levels higher or lower then the norm? What is the norm?

It is a fact though, that all serious meteorologists agree on the fact that the climate is changing and that man is speeding up the process.
These are the people best qualified to answer the question whether it is happening - and they say it is!

Therefore, if humanity were governed by rational thought, we should all combine our efforts to adapt and change - which is not happening at the moment.
While I don't think global conspiracies to be likely, there is a global dominance of greed and shortsightedness and stupidity which is better at hurting all of humankind than a conspiracy ever could be.

Therefore any kind of attempt to discredit science and undermine exploration and scientific research is especially galling.
And as far as it can be determined from over here in the US republican politicians seem to lead the anti-science movement.

[Adamas]

Ehh pretty much lately .The politicians anyway since they're the ones getting paid to play demagogue and to let their corporate sponsors do whatever the hell they want. (Although I admit the Democrats are just as guilty of the latter and at times the former) Then add assholes like Limbaugh and Murdoch and his pets and it get's worse.

[Gil Hamilton]

I like when asked why most scientists would try to play a hoax on the masses, but it evolution or anthrogenic climate shift, that the scientists, researchers, and graduate students are doing it for the money. Man, that gets me every time.

[Don Alexander]

It's a complete lie. Back when I was forced into the indoctrination lecture to prepare me on how to fabricate data and lie to the public, they had good salami rolls, though.

Anyway, I "love" the "it's just a theory" argument. Because of course, what they are actually implying when they say that is:

It's just a theory = It's not a fact!!
Since it is not fact, it is potentially, no, strike that, possibly, hell, probably WRONG!!
And since it's wrong, we are doing the right thing by ignoring it.

Or here, in the style of the Devil's Dictionary:

"theory" - Something which we need to convince people that it is wrong, or else our profit margin will be hurt.

But you know what? Of course it's "only a theory". In any kind of physics, you can only have theories, not absolute facts. Absolute facts are reserved for mathematics.
Physics has error margins. Physics has statistical significance level. The "theory of gravity" has been shown to be correctly applicable (please never use the word "proven", again, proofs only exist in math) to a very, very high statistical significance level, so it's generally acceptable to accept it as "fact" (and we scientists would be as astonished as everyone else if it suddenly went haywire).
You see, the thing is that the word "theory" has been artificially given a bad connotation by Science Defamation League (flamebait catch-all term (c) me ;) ), as I state above. "Theory = something that's not really shown to be correct, is wishy-washy, maybe even a thing of opinion."
Whereas any scientist knows that theories, if done correctly, are a fundamental part of science. A good theory not only is in agreement with all known data so far, but should also make falsifiable predictions (a point where string "theory" still comes up empty, by the way...).

In this sense, I do not like calling "climate change" a "theory" even in the correct sense. It's a huge agglomeration of data (which at least partially is affected by not fully understood biases) combined with highly complex numerical models which, as any reputable climatologist will admit, are by necessity still incomplete. These models do make predictions, and as anyone who follows the local weather report knows, they aren't correct all the time. Though of course the SDL seems to demand that scientists be correct near 100% of the time, any time they predict something wrong, a lot of people immediately point their fingers and call everything into question, because of course if you are wrong once, you must be wrong almost always...

Another thing that aggravates me just thinking about is the post-Y2K phenomenon. So everyone was worried the world's computer systems would crash. A lot of money was invested. Y2K came, and hardly anything happened. But instead of saying: "Whew! Looks like our preparations worked out and we averted the crisis!" a lot of people were stating that everything was just scaremongering beforehand and nothing would have happened even if no one had lifted a finger. And if 2050 arrives, and world population is stable at 8.5 billion, sea level has only risen half a meter and CO2 levels and temperatures are back to levels last seen in the 1990s... (a very optimistic scenario) Then I'm sure a lot of people will yammer that all those billions that were invested were completely wasted because obviously it did not turn out as bad as those conspiratal, fear-mongering scientist kept predicting...

[Pneumonica]

As a fundamental statement, to say that the climate doesn't change is ludicrous. If you want to know about climate change, look up the Little Ice Age (and some of its associated events, like the Year Without a Summer, also known as "Poverty Year"). It can be stated as historical fact that the climate does change. The question is when and how will it change. Certainly, we all know the weatherman is wrong from time to time, and weather prediction deals in so many variables that accuracy is, at best, a relative concern. That being said, we know from historical record that it does, at least in some way, change, so it's in our best interest to devote time and effort into figuring out how to predict, prepare for, and perhaps prevent change.

Whenever I bring this up to people who don't believe in climate change, they always say that the Little Ice Age was "a fluke". They tend to not react very kindly when I ask, "What happens if we get another fluke?" I'm not saying that, by definition, we're about to enter a period of climate change, but honestly, I'd really like to invest the time (and money) in refining the models to a point where we can accurately state whether climate change is going to happen, where we can accurately determine the causes of it, and where we can figure out how to mitigate the potential harms of it.