The Climate Change AND contentious science thread- vampires and dark matter

[spacejunk]

I personally think carbon taxes and the like are a good way to nurture investment in renewables and sustainable technology research and development.

 

[Bagseed]

this is why scepticism is warranted, because there are so many factors at play and nobody knows all the parameters to put it into a proper context. precise data is meaningless without the right context, accurate data is what is needed before any reliable conclusions can be drawn about this whole issue. so far CO2 emissions have been like the lynchpin issue, but what of atmospheric ozone concentrations? and what of total human energy usage and its impact on total infrared emissions? i agree that greenhouse gases are probably the biggest factor at play, but do CO2 emissions really offer IGOs/NGOs legitimate grounds to decree how humans must act to reel in climate change in light of the fact that the earth itself naturally releases large volumes of greenhouse gases regularly?

does humanity benefit from me paying a carbon tax to reduce CO2 emissions (or rob me if I can't go any lower) if meanwhile there's an earthquake somewhere on the other side of the world that disturbs a large methane deposit and releases kilotonnes more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere with no human involvement? the net benefit of carbon taxing can very well turn out to be nil, but by the time we realize it in hindsight, we could have lost the opportunity to enact real change based on accurate data because the politicians were busy robbing us all blind on a shaky premise.

well, how the issue needs to be adressed in politics and society is a whole other dimension, and probably as complex as the scientific point of view, and not one I can really discuss, because my knowledge in these subjects (politics and sociology) are not really good enough to say "how I would do it". but running out of fossil fuels will wreck this society anyway, if we are not smart enough to completely switch to more sustainable methods before it's too late. so either way, it will be necessary to stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere.

and of course there are natural greenhouse gases. without the greenhouse effect, average temperature on earth would be below 0°C. but the amount of greenhouse gases released by man into the atmosphere is most probably bringing things out of equilibrium. interesting though that you mention heat radiation from cities, industry, etc. I think that they are not very significant, but any excess IR radiation is going to be subject to the greenhouse effect anyway.

 

[-=SS=-]

the net benefit of carbon taxing can very well turn out to be nil, but by the time we realize it in hindsight, we could have lost the opportunity to enact real change based on accurate data because the politicians were busy robbing us all blind on a shaky premise.

Exactly. All this effort into Co2 too when there are a myriad of other environmental problems that desperately need addressing.

Also, who should pay the most tax? The UK produces a tiny percentage of global Co2 output in comparison to say China or the USA.. so should we be liable to pay the same rate of tax? What about developing nations, are we supposed to tell them they can't utilize resources on their own soil, that they must go through our way of doing things?

 

[thujone]

well, how the issue needs to be adressed in politics and society is a whole other dimension, and probably as complex as the scientific point of view, and not one I can really discuss, because my knowledge in these subjects (politics and sociology) are not really good enough to say "how I would do it". but running out of fossil fuels will wreck this society anyway, if we are not smart enough to completely switch to more sustainable methods before it's too late. so either way, it will be necessary to stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere.

the political/social problems is what affects us all though. it takes years to collect an analyze reliable data and draw legitimate conclusions from that data, and as soon as the conclusions get published it's anyone guess how far that conclusion will be twisted to fit whatever narrative to convince the public to act as desired. we can't have a glorious, science-led technocratic society unless the scientific community makes an effort to gain champions in the political sphere capable of foiling the plots of demagogues who pervert the meaning of legitimate scientific data to fit their own narratives.

the notion of running out of fossil fuels is a complex economic issue. in modern times, the notion of "peak oil" was trotted out back in the 70s with data that people back then considered as reliable as we consider data about climate change to be today. what happened? dunno, but oil's at $32 a barrel, so clearly predictions about peak oil were premature. one of the factors that the peak-oil crowd overlooked is that we may very well have enough oil underfoot to last us the next fifty thousand years, it's just a matter of getting to it. some of the largest deposits now being pumped took many years to online because first technological requirements had to be met and billions of dollars had to be invested in the infrastructure necessary to set up not just the rigs but the whole supply chain so that the product can find its way to market.

the notion that we're not doing enough to 'stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere' is, well, not even true. We are doing everything feasible, unless you think it would be wise to pull money away from policing and emergency services and schools and clean water and all that other shit a civil society needs, just to afford green energy pipe dreams right now instead of as soon as is economically feasible to do. Everything around me already runs off nuclear and hydroelectric, which are the only feasible alternative energies capable of powering a modern city without the risk of brownouts every time the wind dies down or the sun goes away (as is the case with those other shitty alternative energies). my tax dollars are certainly doing enough to fund green energy, and countries across the globe are already forging ahead as we speak with revolutionary new reactor designs to replace the risky LWR designs of old (Google "China molten salt" and I'm sure you'll get something). Japan has restarted its nuclear reactors. India just made a deal with Canada to buy boatloads of uranium fuel. That's the bulk of the world's population right there, all moving towards green energy right now.

 

[drug_mentor]

Thanks for the response Kittycat!

First, these unprovable or unfalsifiable theories are not islands. They are very often the natural progression of science's attempt to better understand aspects of ideas that have been tested but are either incomplete or new data shows something unexpected. Theoretical physicists' jobs are to expand the current theories and follow the equations wherever they may take them. Sometimes it leads to a place that give the experimentalists nightmares, but as I will say below, may very well be the truth.

The history of physics has shown that elegant mathematical equations have be extremely successul at describing how nature works and have been validated through experimentation. Based on this history, the theoreticians continue refining their work, because discarding mathematics, that not only describe a physical process but also resolves the paradoxes or infinities that earlier equations could not, because they currently cannot be tested would be akin to throwing away the actual natural occurrances themselves.

I never suggested we discard mathematics. I never even suggested we discard unfalsifiable theories, I just think as a matter of definition it is hard to justify calling them scientific. The theories would be equally useful by another term, the name science does not afford them any additional explanatory power.

I am in no way suggesting theoretical physicists' should not be expanding these theories wherever the maths takes them. I am simply suggesting that when the maths leads them to unfalsifiable theories then what they are doing is more akin to philosophy than science. I would argue it is philosophy of science, which is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science.

And last is something many of us fail to consider. Physics has reached a point where the ideas are more advanced than the technology to test them. Take string theory for example. It would take an accelerator something like a billion billion billion times more powerful than the LHC to verify certain hypotheses and predictions of string theory. We are pretty near the capabilities of any telescope, terrestrial or in space, at any wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum, so seeing further away or back in time, may be decades to centuries away from what is needed to explore ideas already conceived in astrophysics and cosmology. And even when we can actually design and build experiments right now to test some of the more esoteric ideas of physics, they are such monumental feats of engineering, that even these real life experiments may still not be adequate technology.

I understand it is impossible to test these theories with current technology, that is my whole point here. If you have no way of showing something to be false then by definition any theory which posits the existence of that thing is not a scientific theory.

To say that at some point in the future we may be able to falsify it is not a sound argument, because by the same logic we would have to accept a great deal of pseudoscience as science. Who can say what might be falsifiable at an unspecified future date. The day a theory becomes falsifiable is the day it becomes scientific.

You haven't really offered any justification for calling unfalsifiable theories scientific. You have argued they are useful despite being unfalsifiable, and I agree with you there. But why does being useful mean it has to be called science? Not everything with explanatory power is scientific. To me it is clear that philosophy of science is a more accurate definition for what cosmologists and theoretical physicists are doing when they come up with unfalsifiable theories. Obviously I am not suggesting these fields as a whole are not science, a lot of what they do is science, just not all of it.

 

[Foreigner]

Exactly. All this effort into Co2 too when there are a myriad of other environmental problems that desperately need addressing.

Also, who should pay the most tax? The UK produces a tiny percentage of global Co2 output in comparison to say China or the USA.. so should we be liable to pay the same rate of tax? What about developing nations, are we supposed to tell them they can't utilize resources on their own soil, that they must go through our way of doing things?

I get the politicoeconomic concerns, but that should have no bearing on scientific fact. The discoveries about climate change are worldwide. Scientists collecting data in every niche have marked changes, and not all of them are even climatologists. It's sort of a "don't kill the messenger" kind of situation. People are rebelling against the notion of climate change because they are against the power grabs that will happen. I too hate these power grabs... they are totally obvious. At the same time, climate is definitely changing.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, environmental destruction at the hands of humans doesn't stop at climate change. There are also real, tangible, material ways that we are destroying the entire planet that aren't being addressed. People are just getting uncomfortable because their weather is getting more and more extreme, but there's barely any care for the fact that within 25 years there will be less than 2% of the world's original natural habitat left, there will be few viable fish stocks, arable land will be in short supply, many forest regions will be deserts, etc. The list goes on. Syria in many ways was tipped by the loss of its regular wet season, turning all of its farmers into refugees that headed to cities, which caused political unrest. The Syrian situation is just the tip of the iceberg. Estimates put the climate refugee projections into the hundreds of millions by mid-century.

There's no getting around the fact that people are going to die in droves due to lack of resource, and this whole debate about our energy economy is pretty pointless. Let's just assume AGW is true -- it doesn't matter, it's too late. Humans will only change as a survival measure, the word "prevention" does not factor into our future planning capacities. The plan is and always has been that this economic system will be here forever and all governments can look at is how to augment it to adapt to a global disaster. *shrug* We're fucked.

The sense I'm getting is that people just want the climate change issue to go away so they can go about the statuos quo, but the changes in weather keep pressing them to open their damn eyes. At this point I don't really care about the cause of global climate change, I'm just glad it's finally challenging people to end their complacency.

 

[swilow]

^If we're fucked, what does it matter if people are 'waking up' so to speak?

I admit that I am very troubled by our future, I can't see how we will get out of this. There is already so much poverty and need in the world that goes unfulfilled. And even with most humans being resource poor, we are tipping the scales. It would be unethical to deny other humans the right to security and affluence (as many of us in western countries have) but I just imagine if the entire populations of India and China lived like us, how bad that will be for the planet. And the worst part is that this affluence and resource rich culture we have doesn't even seem to make us happy. So we destroy the planet to create a society in which many people are miserable. We've forgotten how to live with nature and read/understand what it has always been telling us. I think it will do as ever, subsume us continue.

I personally think the only thing that may help us is to fully acknowledge the extent of our dillemma and our hand in it. Considering that we have done this ourselves. If we have done this, I wonder if it means we have the capacity to undo it... I believe we have the intellectual capacity to do so, which is why I think climate change denial is dangerous. Its a useful impediment towards us taking responsiblity for our actions and doing something which is going to be very, very difficult. Most useful things are though...

 

[spacejunk]

Syria in many ways was tipped by the loss of its regular wet season, turning all of its farmers into refugees that headed to cities, which caused political unrest. The Syrian situation is just the tip of the iceberg. Estimates put the climate refugee projections into the hundreds of millions by mid-century.

This is a very important point that is so often overlooked, glossed over or ignored in many of the discussions people around the world are having on these matters.
Global Warming is already displacing people due to droughts, floods, hearwaves, extreme weather events such as storms - as well as changing climatic condiitions and disrupted seasonal patterns.
As the process continues to escalate, so do the political and social complications.

In times like these it would be reassuring if more people acknowledged that we are all in this together, and that we all stand a better chance of surviving this impending disaster if we let stop trying to deminish our own personal and collective responsibilities in the matter, accept that an environmental crisis is looming and try to work together and cooperate with one another.

So much time, thought and work is going into political manoeuvres and financial agreements relating to this issue, and while debate is still apparentlly raging on the fringes, we are seeing a gradual - but far too little, too late - agreements being reached among political, economic and industrial leaders.
But amongst the general population, the rising resentnent in many countries to things such as immigration as well as suspicion of international influences and institutions - which isn't uncommon in a time of economic downturn, such as that which we are currently battling.

The frustrating thing about the extreme ideologies that flourish in tough economic times is that it makes life all the more difficult in communities going through major upheavals when tension and hostility towards "immigrants", "foreigners" or "refugees" reaches such heights.

Fear and self-interest can all too easily overwhelm our sense of perspective - especially on a community level.
It is all too essy for those of us living comfortable, relatively stable lives in regions not immediately threatened by climate change, to see islands disappearing in the Pacific, floods and landslides in SE Asia or the Subcontinent - as being "not our problem" or "not our fault".
The real, honest-to-goodness truth is that this is everyone's problem.

Lots of things must - and will inevitably - change, along with our climates.
One thing that needs to change, and hasn't yet - is how people sre thinking about this. The stigmatising and scapegoating of migrants and refugees acrosss the world has been building for a few years already, for a nunber of reasons - but i'm wondering what sort of catastrophic event it might take to start pulling us together in this struggle.
Talk about utopian optimism, huh?

My worst instincts tell me that no catastrophe will ever bring us together - and that compassion rarely triumphs in such circumstances...but i want to believe that social progress is always a possibility, no matter how much adversity we face - but my loyalty to this idea (that was tenuous to begin with) is being continually tested.

We seem to be overdue for a massive shift in social awareness, but are too absorbed in other concerns to embrace anything revolutionary - instead falling back into the positions we find most comfortable.

By the time the floodwaters are lapping against our toes, it will be too late to move to higher ground - but our neighbours won't want us taking shelter on their land anyway.
And why would they? It's not their problem.

 

[namnoc16]

Willow I hear you loud and clear!!!
I'm not so worried about my future(I'm 41) but scared shitless for my children and their children(hope theirs still a viable planet left). I know it's probably more symbolic but I do the recycling,don't use aerosol,mindful of what get's flushed in the toilet(no pills or other poisons just 1or number 2), conserve water and energy,yada yada yada! I could do more I'm sure but I feel if I don't make some effort I'm part of the problem.Though I'm sure my efforts are equivalent to putting my finger in the dam to hold the water back kind of thing!

I have flushed heroin down the toilet twice recently I just wanted it gone and could think of no better place!

 

[Vagina Lover]

I wouldn't be too worried. There is so much other stuff to worry about.

It's quite amusing hearing people "worry" about this, like it is some kind of excuse to bury their faces in drugs.

What's gonna happen will happen

Humanity is in for a rough ride, but we will survive.

The Earth's orbital characteristics are additive to the greenhouse effect. However, there are 3 main

 

[Xorkoth]

This is a very important point that is so often overlooked, glossed over or ignored in many of the discussions people around the world are having on these matters.
Global Warming is already displacing people due to droughts, floods, hearwaves, extreme weather events such as storms - as well as changing climatic condiitions and disrupted seasonal patterns.
As the process continues to escalate, so do the political and social complications.

In times like these it would be reassuring if more people acknowledged that we are all in this together, and that we all stand a better chance of surviving this impending disaster if we let stop trying to deminish our own personal and collective responsibilities in the matter, accept that an environmental crisis is looming and try to work together and cooperate with one another.

So much time, thought and work is going into political manoeuvres and financial agreements relating to this issue, and while debate is still apparentlly raging on the fringes, we are seeing a gradual - but far too little, too late - agreements being reached among political, economic and industrial leaders.
But amongst the general population, the rising resentnent in many countries to things such as immigration as well as suspicion of international influences and institutions - which isn't uncommon in a time of economic downturn, such as that which we are currently battling.

The frustrating thing about the extreme ideologies that flourish in tough economic times is that it makes life all the more difficult in communities going through major upheavals when tension and hostility towards "immigrants", "foreigners" or "refugees" reaches such heights.

Fear and self-interest can all too easily overwhelm our sense of perspective - especially on a community level.
It is all too essy for those of us living comfortable, relatively stable lives in regions not immediately threatened by climate change, to see islands disappearing in the Pacific, floods and landslides in SE Asia or the Subcontinent - as being "not our problem" or "not our fault".
The real, honest-to-goodness truth is that this is everyone's problem.

Lots of things must - and will inevitably - change, along with our climates.
One thing that needs to change, and hasn't yet - is how people sre thinking about this. The stigmatising and scapegoating of migrants and refugees acrosss the world has been building for a few years already, for a nunber of reasons - but i'm wondering what sort of catastrophic event it might take to start pulling us together in this struggle.
Talk about utopian optimism, huh?

My worst instincts tell me that no catastrophe will ever bring us together - and that compassion rarely triumphs in such circumstances...but i want to believe that social progress is always a possibility, no matter how much adversity we face - but my loyalty to this idea (that was tenuous to begin with) is being continually tested.

We seem to be overdue for a massive shift in social awareness, but are too absorbed in other concerns to embrace anything revolutionary - instead falling back into the positions we find most comfortable.

By the time the floodwaters are lapping against our toes, it will be too late to move to higher ground - but our neighbours won't want us taking shelter on their land anyway.
And why would they? It's not their problem.

Top notch post...

 

[Ninae]

This is interesting.

https://youtu.be/elOAQX4EPSc

I wonder if we'll actually see earth changes of that kind.

 

[Foreigner]

spacejunk, in reply to what you've said, I borrow ideas from various religious philosophies. Humanity is stuck in a cycle. We rise and fall, degenerate and regenerate, over and over, cyclically. People tend to view history in a linear fashion but it's just one big dialectic circle. Epic crises have happened on more local levels since the beginning of time. This is the first time that we've dealt with a global crisis of this nature. It's just another test. It might be a brutal one but it's part of our evolution. We either make it or we don't.

There's such great concern that political masterminds are hijacking the planet for their own benefit, but to what end? Are they building a space ship to some secret moon base? Do they have a self-sustaining fortress somewhere? Because as far as I know, nobody can be an island forever. If the earth gets totaled, even their moon base will die eventually. Nobody is really "above it", no matter how much money and power they accumulate. They're still a sack of mortal meat with survival requirements, stuck in a reality that is inherently dissatisfactory, and never-ending.

The sad truth is that there's no secret agenda at the highest level. It's as simple as humans shitting where they eat, with not much more capacity to overcome our basic natures than most animals, and with no long-term vision about it despite so much self-espoused superiority. Really, the world's environmental problems are going to require humans to overcome our animal natures and see things in a bigger-picture way, like cooperating with one another, putting aside greed and self-interest (individually and collectively, like transcending petty nationalism), stop making life about all of our basic impulses, and cultivating a different kind of awareness.

Personally, I am doubtful. We have so little time to make that transition. Many believe the time has past. If CO2 science is true, then we're already too late; but in terms of the other devastation we are reaping upon this planet, there's still time to pause. It's not necessarily a matter of laziness, but our own conditioning. When any species faces the tragedy of the commons, they may be directly aware of what is happening but still lack the level of attainment to stop overeating, fucking and making babies, attacking one another instead of cooperating, etc. Everything from this era that I've seen demonstrates that humans will tolerate A LOT of depravity before things change.

I think about England, the so-called seat of civility, before modern sewage sytems. It took a massive cholera epidemic with thousands of people dying regularly, and extensive investigation by top epidemiologists, before people realized they shouldn't be filling the basements of their homes with cesspools of their own shit, or dumping it into the same reservoir that the drinking water came from. That was 1854, just over 150 years ago.

So... why are people surprised that in the year 2016, people still don't see a connection between trashing the planet, causing mass extinctions, and climate change? Humans are indeed primitive.

 

[thujone]

the topic of climate refugees was one of the sideshows of the Paris Agreement. i can't help but think that even significant cities like NYC may have to be abandoned unless there's enough political and public will to pull together and endure great hardships to save these cities. for context, it took Tokyo two decades to construct a facility to handle overflow from typhoons. to save some place like NYC it's going to take that plus additional infrastructure that the city has not invested adequately in (according to the aftermath of Sandy). it's not even possible to budget for these kind of projects because of the extreme scale and time frames involved. and America is not Japan or China or any other place where either there's a strong enough sense of nationalism to band together and endure. In America, people say "fuck this shit" and move. Goodbye NYC

 

[Kittycat5]

Thanks for the response Kittycat!



I never suggested we discard mathematics. I never even suggested we discard unfalsifiable theories, I just think as a matter of definition it is hard to justify calling them scientific. The theories would be equally useful by another term, the name science does not afford them any additional explanatory power.

I am in no way suggesting theoretical physicists' should not be expanding these theories wherever the maths takes them. I am simply suggesting that when the maths leads them to unfalsifiable theories then what they are doing is more akin to philosophy than science. I would argue it is philosophy of science, which is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science.



I understand it is impossible to test these theories with current technology, that is my whole point here. If you have no way of showing something to be false then by definition any theory which posits the existence of that thing is not a scientific theory.

To say that at some point in the future we may be able to falsify it is not a sound argument, because by the same logic we would have to accept a great deal of pseudoscience as science. Who can say what might be falsifiable at an unspecified future date. The day a theory becomes falsifiable is the day it becomes scientific.

You haven't really offered any justification for calling unfalsifiable theories scientific. You have argued they are useful despite being unfalsifiable, and I agree with you there. But why does being useful mean it has to be called science? Not everything with explanatory power is scientific. To me it is clear that philosophy of science is a more accurate definition for what cosmologists and theoretical physicists are doing when they come up with unfalsifiable theories. Obviously I am not suggesting these fields as a whole are not science, a lot of what they do is science, just not all of it.

I wasnt saying you suggested discarding mathematics, nor anyone for that matter. I was saying because of the history of mathematical physics being an excellent description for much of nature, the physicists' deep understanding of this math, and how much of it can eliminate many of the problems that currently challenge scientists, to give up on it and start from scratch would be tantamount to throwing away the actual description or physical process of nature. That is how deeply some feel about these ideas. And it is not like there arent other people working on alternatives to whatever is the mainstream is in theoretical physics. Things are being looked at from different vantage points (loop quantum gravity as an alternative to string theory for instance) so simply ending one's work because they have reached a roadblock is counterproductive. At the roadblocks is where new physics is made. And if someone had a Eureka moment, they probably would scrap their theory anyway and see where this new idea goes. But because the physicist deeply believes in beautiful mathematics as real descriptions of what is going on, they will continue to work hoping to make the unfalsifiable, falsifiable or better proven.

I will comment on the second part in a bit.

 

[namnoc16]

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.--- Agent Smith I couldn't have said it better myself(from the matrix)

Oh and people it's not the math(math is concrete it doesn't change) it's in the way people apply it. They have some intelligent people that can twist the numbers so they will support their theory and another group will have the same numbers with maybe one minute variable in how they apply it and come out with something that is totally the opposite. I call it illusionary mathematics,but I don't care what the numbers say I've been on this planet for 41 years and in my time here shit has changed to the extreme very rapidly and it's accelerating!

 

[Xorkoth]

I have often thought of the human-virus comparison. If it's accurate, then right now we're still in the infectious stage, before we've been killed by the host's immune system. After a time we'll die out, the Earth will experience the peak of its sickness, then it will return to equilibrium.

 

[Foreigner]

If humanity is a disease then so is life itself. Viruses inject their DNA into the host cell, taking it over with their code for replication purposes. We're not altering the Earth we're just over-harvesting it like any species does that becomes too populous.

 

[-=SS=-]

Viruses are fucking cool, total disservice to compare humans to them. We're just a bit shit really, not cool like a virus. They do their job, in and out, bish bash bosh. We just seem to fuck around really.