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The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism (1 Viewer)

jon_mx said:
That prediction is still only a fraction of what Al Gore predicted over a decade ago, so we are still good.  
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Your irrelevant sarcasm aside, this new development is pretty damn scary because it sounds like it's going to happen a lot sooner than earlier was projected. It also sounds like the Paris agreement, which folks like you dismissed and resist implementing, will be nowhere near enough. 

And nobody seems to care. This is the biggest issue of our lives and it's barely on the news, Hillary and Bernie barely mention it, and the Republicans don't talk about it all. 

 
timschochet said:
Your irrelevant sarcasm aside, this new development is pretty damn scary because it sounds like it's going to happen a lot sooner than earlier was projected. It also sounds like the Paris agreement, which folks like you dismissed and resist implementing, will be nowhere near enough. 

And nobody seems to care. This is the biggest issue of our lives and it's barely on the news, Hillary and Bernie barely mention it, and the Republicans don't talk about it all. 
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It ain't going to happen.  You have to realize the scaremongers in the media never give the full accurate picture.  A study will say something like we expect the sea levels to raise between 0.6 and 2 meters over the next hundred years.  All the media will ever report is the scarier 2 meters number and ignore the fact it is given as a range.  It is extremely unlikely we hit the higher end number.  

This study in particular is on the fear-mongering side to begin with as the BIG number provide assumes that the current trends continues unabated for the next 500 years, which is an absurd assumption as we are already taking action to curb out CO2 emissions.   You really need to get past getting facts from the media and go to the source to see what is really being said. It is never as scary as reported.  

 
3C's said:
Just rename climate change/global warming to Ebola and jon will get on board.
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In some ways it is similar as many very smart people in science tend to overstate facts and tend to assume the very worst.  In the case of Ebola, we were already in a very rapid growth period and it required people to act very quickly which they did and which made a huge difference.  Had the reaction been delayed even just a few months, the death toll would have been in the hundreds of  thousands instead of around 20,000.  

Global warming requires some action too, but for the most part that is happening, at least in the developed nations.  The real problem is the China's and india's of the world are not really onboard yet and are only going along to the extent it benefits their own self-interest.  

 
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As long as we keep funding investment into alternative energy - especially thorium nuclear - all of our problems with global warming can be solved. We already have giant CO2 sucking machines that if connected to a thorium nuclear plant would be safe, reduce CO2, and produce energy. In addition, we are already moving into an era where carbon-based fuel is unnecessary and not cost-effective.

 
jon_mx said:
It ain't going to happen.  You have to realize the scaremongers in the media never give the full accurate picture.  A study will say something like we expect the sea levels to raise between 0.6 and 2 meters over the next hundred years.  All the media will ever report is the scarier 2 meters number and ignore the fact it is given as a range.  It is extremely unlikely we hit the higher end number.  

This study in particular is on the fear-mongering side to begin with as the BIG number provide assumes that the current trends continues unabated for the next 500 years, which is an absurd assumption as we are already taking action to curb out CO2 emissions.   You really need to get past getting facts from the media and go to the source to see what is really being said. It is never as scary as reported.  
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The media tends to over-report things from many fields - medicine, sports and climate change. But the Washington Post piece is balanced, has lost of explanatory material and links, even a link to the entire published article. Most people don't have patience or knowledge to read and understand the science behind climate change. But there is no scaremongering with the Post title: "Scientists nearly double sea level rise projections for 2100, because of Antarctica."

Note that when a new prediction comes out based on new and better science and more data collection, the recent predictions are always worse - hotter earth and more sea-level rise than previously predicted. The article from the PNAS in Fab 2016 shows some convincing data that the sea-level rise is accelerating and that humans have contributed. The number of nuisance flooding days in coastal cities around the word is accelerating. Locally, last years king tides in South Florida were the worst high tides on record, not associated with a hurricane. The sea-level rise is relatively slow and it hasn't stopped buying and building in South Florida coastal areas, yet. Most people don't think 10-20 years into the future; that's when I predict coastal flooding will have a major impact on flood insurance and mortgages over 15 years.

 
SoBeDad said:
The media tends to over-report things from many fields - medicine, sports and climate change. But the Washington Post piece is balanced, has lost of explanatory material and links, even a link to the entire published article. Most people don't have patience or knowledge to read and understand the science behind climate change. But there is no scaremongering with the Post title: "Scientists nearly double sea level rise projections for 2100, because of Antarctica."

Note that when a new prediction comes out based on new and better science and more data collection, the recent predictions are always worse - hotter earth and more sea-level rise than previously predicted. The article from the PNAS in Fab 2016 shows some convincing data that the sea-level rise is accelerating and that humans have contributed. The number of nuisance flooding days in coastal cities around the word is accelerating. Locally, last years king tides in South Florida were the worst high tides on record, not associated with a hurricane. The sea-level rise is relatively slow and it hasn't stopped buying and building in South Florida coastal areas, yet. Most people don't think 10-20 years into the future; that's when I predict coastal flooding will have a major impact on flood insurance and mortgages over 15 years.
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The lead paragraphs were on the sensational side, which were balanced out later with the appropriate caveats and Explainations later on.   

The most recent studies have been worsening predictions, but I am a bit puzzled by your use of the word 'always'.  There have been papers in the past which had far worse projections than today.  

 
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jon_mx said:
:lol:  .  I am sorry, but are the authors that stupid with their wording to imply that man has been polluting the air for 66 million years?  Of ####### course the recent levels of human pollution are unprecedented over the last 66 million years.  
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This comment leads me to believe that you either did not read the paper (or even the summary) or that you didn't understand it. Either way, the answer is no, the authors are not "that stupid."

 
Gr00vus said:
This comment leads me to believe that you either did not read the paper (or even the summary) or that you didn't understand it. Either way, the answer is no, the authors are not "that stupid."
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I understood and read their summary.  I did not call them stupid, but their wording implies something they were not intending to say.  Also, as a matter of comparison, their analysis leaves a lot to be desired.  Comparing a recent peak one year average to an average rate of a period that lasted some 4000 years is silly.  It is akin to watching a guy hit a 2 home runs in a game in 4 at-bats, then scoffing at Babe Ruth for only one home run in every 11 at bats.  We are not going substain the current rate of carbon emissions for 4000 years. 

 
jon_mx said:
I understood and read their summary.  I did not call them stupid, but their wording implies something they were not intending to say.  Also, as a matter of comparison, their analysis leaves a lot to be desired.  Comparing a recent peak one year average to an average rate of a period that lasted some 4000 years is silly.  It is akin to watching a guy hit a 2 home runs in a game in 4 at-bats, then scoffing at Babe Ruth for only one home run in every 11 at bats.  We are not going substain the current rate of carbon emissions for 4000 years. 
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Right. So you didn't understand it. Let me help clarify things for you, via another article discussing the findings:

New research published today in Nature Geoscience by Richard Zeebe, professor at the University of Hawai'i -- Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), and colleagues looks at changes of Earth's temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) since the end of the age of the dinosaurs. Their findings suggest humans are releasing carbon about 10 times faster than during any event in the past 66 million years.

The research team developed a new approach and was able to determine the duration of the onset of an important past climate event, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, PETM for short, 56 million years ago.

"As far as we know, the PETM has the largest carbon release during the past 66 million years," said Zeebe.

Zeebe and co-authors Andy Ridgwell (University of Bristol/ University of California) and James Zachos (University of California) combined analyses of chemical properties of PETM sediment cores with numerical simulations of Earth's climate and carbon cycle. Their new method allows them to extract rates of change from a sediment record without the need for an actual sediment age model. Applied to the PETM, they calculated how fast the carbon was released, how fast Earth's surface warmed, and constrained the time scale of the onset, which was at least 4,000 years.

The rate of carbon release during the PETM was determined to be much smaller than the current input of carbon to the atmosphere from human activities. Carbon release rates from human sources reached a record high in 2014 of about 37 billion metric tons of CO2. The researchers estimated the maximum sustained carbon release rate during the PETM had to be less than 4 billion metric tons of CO2 per year -- about one-tenth the current rate.

"Because our carbon release rate is unprecedented over such a long time period in Earth's history, it also means that we have effectively entered a 'no-analogue' state. This represents a big challenge for projecting future climate changes because we have no good comparison from the past," said Zeebe.

Whereas large climate transitions in the past may have been relatively smooth, there is no guarantee for the future. The climate system is non-linear, which means its response to a forcing (such as our CO2 emissions) is a complex process involving a whole suite of components.

"If you kick a system very fast, it usually responds differently than if you nudge it slowly but steadily," said Zeebe. "Also, it is rather likely that future disruptions of ecosystems will exceed the relatively limited extinctions observed at the PETM," Zeebe added.

"In studying one of the most dramatic episodes of global change since the end of the age of the dinosaurs, these scientists show that we are currently in uncharted territory in the rate carbon is being released into the atmosphere and oceans," says Candace Major, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research.

Scientists like Zeebe also study the PETM to better understand long-term changes in Earth's future climate. Most of the current climate debate concentrates only on this century but the PETM suggests that the consequences of our massive fossil fuel burning will have a much, much longer tail.

"Everyone is focused on what happens by 2100. But that's only two generations from today. It's like: If the world ends in 2100 we're probably OK!" said Zeebe. "But it's very clear that over a longer timescale there will be much bigger changes."

Zeebe and his colleagues continue their work on the PETM to study other aspects of the event -- for example, determining how severe ocean acidification was during the PETM and what impact it had on calcifying organisms in the ocean. This may provide insight about what to expect in the future as Earth's climate continues to warm and oceans keep acidifying.

Funding for this research was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the European Union.
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There's nothing in there that says they haven't taken years prior to 2014 into consideration in their findings, only that 2014 was a new peak. Do think it reasonable to assume that the rate was vastly different in 2013? 2012? Etc.? I don't. We're producing C02 at an off the charts rate, and we know what kind of extinctions were experienced in the past at a much lower rate. What they're saying is that we've so far surpassed that rate that we can't even begin to make fine estimates on what kind of extinctions and climactic disruptions we'll see, only that they'll probably be much worse than what's been observed from what had been the worst episode in the last 66 million years. That's the point.

But you should write them with all your misgivings. I'm sure they'll totally change their findings based on the brilliant insights of JonMX from the free for all. I'm sure they haven't thought of any of these non-obvious objections you're bringing up.

 
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Gr00vus said:
Right. So you didn't understand it. Let me help clarify things for you, via another article discussing the findings:

There's nothing in there that says they haven't taken years prior to 2014 into consideration in their findings, only that 2014 was a new peak. Do think it reasonable to assume that the rate was vastly different in 2013? 2012? Etc.? I don't. We're producing C02 at an off the charts rate, and we know what kind of extinctions were experienced in the past at a much lower rate. What they're saying is that we've so far surpassed that rate that we can't even begin to make fine estimates on what kind of extinctions and climactic disruptions we'll see, only that they'll probably be much worse than what's been observed from what had been the worst episode in the last 66 million years. That's the point.

But you should write them with all your misgivings. I'm sure they'll totally change their findings based on the brilliant insights of JonMX from the free for all. I'm sure they haven't thought of any of these non-obvious objections you're bringing up.
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I completely stand by my statement.  The researches do not have enough granularity in the data to make the statements they made.  It is not accurate to compare an average over thousands of years to a peak year, or even several decades if you wish.  There could have been many short periods during that time which has much higher rates than today. 

 
jon_mx said:
I completely stand by my statement.  The researches do not have enough granularity in the data to make the statements they made.  It is not accurate to compare an average over thousands of years to a peak year, or even several decades if you wish.  There could have been many short periods during that time which has much higher rates than today. 
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I don't think you know enough about their process, their data or their findings to make any such statement. You're just wishing what you said were true to suit your agenda. And keep in mind that they're comparing this current rate to the previous worst ever in the past 66 million years, with all the upheaval that ensued. Even if you are right in your assumptions, it's still really bad news that we're in that ballpark. That's the main takeaway. If this really is a peak that's not been seen in 66 million years, it's super really bad news.

 
Gr00vus said:
I don't think you know enough about their process, their data or their findings to make any such statement. You're just wishing what you said were true to suit your agenda. And keep in mind that they're comparing this current rate to the previous worst ever in the past 66 million years, with all the upheaval that ensued. Even if you are right in your assumptions, it's still really bad news that we're in that ballpark. That's the main takeaway. If this really is a peak that's not been seen in 66 million years, it's super really bad news.
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Perhaps, but it is based on exactly how they described their analysis in their summary.  Perhaps there is more granularity in the details of the report, but I imagine the summary accurately describes what they did. 

 
jon_mx said:
The lead paragraphs were on the sensational side, which were balanced out later with the appropriate caveats and Explainations later on.   

The most recent studies have been worsening predictions, but I am a bit puzzled by your use of the word 'always'.  There have been papers in the past which had far worse projections than today.  
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Fair enough. How about this: in the last 3 years, the vast majority of revised predictions about sea-level rise, glacier melt and global warming have favored even greater sea-level rise, faster overall glacier melt and greater temperature rise than predicted just a few years earlier. Locally, I'm very curious to see if the recent acceleration in sea-level rise near downtown Miami continues. BTW, the scientist Brain McNoldy is cautious and says this about the data from Miami: "Longer data records allow for greater confidence in a linear trend, but cannot account for accelerating rates".  

 
Last month was the warmest March since NOAA started keeping records back in 1880. By a pretty significant amount - 0.58 degrees F. 

This surpassed the previous record set in 2015 by 0.32°C / (0.58°F), and marks the highest monthly temperature departure among all 1,635 months on record, surpassing the previous all-time record set just last month by 0.01°C (0.02°F). Overall, the nine highest monthly temperature departures in the record have all occurred in the past nine months. March 2016 also marks the 11thconsecutive month a monthly global temperature record has been broken, the longest such streak in NOAA's 137 years of record keeping.
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Some additional analysis of these results:

This is a huge margin for breaking a monthly global temperature record, as they are typically broken by just a few hundredths of a degree. The margin was just a shade larger than NOAA's previous record for any month of 1.21°C (2.18°F) above average, set in February 2016. NASA also reported the warmest March in its database, with the departure from average in its analysis slightly less than that for February (1.28°C vs. 1.34°C).The past six months (as measured by departure from average in both the NOAA and NASA databases) all set records for their respective months as the warmest since 1880...
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Another quick comment from a climate scientist on this result and the results of the previous two months:

I estimate >99% chance of an annual record in 2016 in @NASAGISS temperature data, based on Jan-Mar alone
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I'm sure it's just due to solar flares and monkey farts. Nothing we could prevent with changes to our lifestyles/economies.  :whistle:

 
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Gr00vus said:
Overall, the nine highest monthly temperature departures in the record have all occurred in the past nine months
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Hmm, 9-for-9. An amazing coincidence.

Last year and this year are going to blow away any of the false talk that global warming has paused. It will be interesting to see what happens with the temps as this strong El Nino dissipates.

 
The_Man said:
Hmm, 9-for-9. An amazing coincidence.

Last year and this year are going to blow away any of the false talk that global warming has paused. It will be interesting to see what happens with the temps as this strong El Nino dissipates.
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The 18 year pause started before the last big El Nino, it's really not a good idea to use a natural event with no connection to the AGW theory to refute the pause.

 
"We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation."

Rinse and repeat every half century. 

 
Gr00vus said:
The article I linked is stating that that satellite data supports the generally measured warming trend after correcting for satellite drift.
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The other major satellite temperature data set, run by University of Alabama Hunstville professor John Christy, shows slight warming after 1998. But if 1998 is included in the data, it sees no warming
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Above is from the article....below is me
__________________________________________
what all of this data manipulation shows me is that there is a lot of uncertainty about even measuring global temperature.  20 years from now, they could adjust the numbers for 2015 again.  The evidence  suggests, and I believe it was mentioned by the IPCC that something anomalous happened in early part of the century - during a period of unprecedented carbon emissions) It could very well be a natural variation, but we still have much to learn ( even in how to measure global temperature)
[/QUOTE]

 
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Sea level rise is an immediate concern in Florida and many large cities along the east coast. Erika Spanger-Siegfried of the Union of Concerned Scientist has a great write-up of last fall's king tide, with many links to pictures of coastal flooding in Miami, Hollywood, Delray Beach, Savannah, Charleston, Hampton, Tybee Island, etc. The pictures show "nuisance flooding", which has increased in recent years and will continue to increase in the coming years. And its actually more than a nuisance, causing damage to cars, houses, roads, landscaping, effectively shutting down Indian Creek Hotel in Miami Beach for days. In this century, there will be a massive relocation of entire communities. 

 
SoBeDad said:
Sea level rise is an immediate concern in Florida and many large cities along the east coast. Erika Spanger-Siegfried of the Union of Concerned Scientist has a great write-up of last fall's king tide, with many links to pictures of coastal flooding in Miami, Hollywood, Delray Beach, Savannah, Charleston, Hampton, Tybee Island, etc. The pictures show "nuisance flooding", which has increased in recent years and will continue to increase in the coming years. And its actually more than a nuisance, causing damage to cars, houses, roads, landscaping, effectively shutting down Indian Creek Hotel in Miami Beach for days. In this century, there will be a massive relocation of entire communities. 
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This evidence does not equate to any kind of global warming. These are just natural occurrences in that area. I live in Nebraska and there are no oceans flooding my area... therefore, there is no global warming. C'mon!

 
You "forgot" to quote the key part of that paragraph:

But that should change with a warm 2016, Christy said. In fact, Christy used his measurements to determine that February 2016 was 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the average for the month—the largest such disparity for any month since records were first kept, in 1979.
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Regardless, if you don't cherry pick a start date of 1998 and end date of 2013, there is a clear warming trend over nearly any time span you'd like to choose using even Christy's data - which has itself been called into question numerous times by numerous people. Which isn't a first for him. It seems he's produced erroneous reports based on faulty processes and programs multiple times in the past as well. He seems to have problems with his ability to analyze data. Sorry, but I don't find much about Christy's findings or work in this area to be worth taking into consideration.

 
Rove! said:
Bumping this for Groovus

Even Michael Mann is throwing shade at the NOAA pause buster study 
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You read this, right? They're saying the rate of warming wasn't as high over that interval as it was over other intervals, but there was still an upward trend in warming even over that interval. I.e. slowdown != pause.

 
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Slowdown or not, global warming is still happening.

To be sure, the researchers behind the current paper absolutely do not think that global warming is over or anything of the sort — rather, the argument is that there was a real slowdown that’s scientifically interesting, even if it was brief and is now probably over. After all, even if they paused, temperatures now seem to be rising again, with 2014 and 2015 setting back-to-back global temperature records.

Ed Hawkins, one of the researchers and a scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading, put it on his blog when the paper emerged: “climate scientists agree that global warming has not ‘stopped’ – global surface temperatures and ocean heat content have continued to increase, sea levels are still rising, and the planet is retaining ~0.5 days of the sun’s incoming energy per year.”...

“As far as we are concerned,” Lewandowsky said by email, “there is no discrepancy between us and Fyfe et al. as we address two distinct scholarly questions–and they agree with us about the ‘warming didn’t stop part,’ which is the only thing we addressed.”
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Slowdown? Can't keep going up and up at the same increments because once you get to boiling, who cares if it is just over the boiling point. Fact is, it's still boiling. To try to spin this as a "slowdown" defeats the purpose that it is out of hand already. 

You can apply this to all facets of life. 

 
At this point, climate change deniers require that the average global temperature go up every single month, without fail, or it can be seen as evidence that global warming is not happening. The really scary party is that this is precisely what has been happening for the last year.

Here's a super depressing story from yesterday's Washington Post about how 93 percent of Australia's Great Barrier Reef is bleaching, and how the reef's northern region is now experiencing 50% coral death.
 

Coral bleaching occurs when corals are stressed by unusually high water temperatures, or from other causes. When this happens, symbiotic algae, called zooxanthellae, leave the corals’ bodies. This changes their color to white and can also in effect starve them of nutrients. If bleaching continues for too long, corals die.

There already have been reports of mass coral death around the Pacific atoll of Kiribati this year — and widespread coral bleaching worldwide, a phenomenon that scientists attribute to a strong El Niño event surfing atop a general climate warming trend.

Hughes tweeted the bleaching map, writing, “I showed the results of aerial surveys of #bleaching on the #GreatBarrierReef to my students, And then we wept.”
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The_Man said:
At this point, climate change deniers require that the average global temperature go up every single month, without fail, or it can be seen as evidence that global warming is not happening. The really scary party is that this is precisely what has been happening for the last year.

Here's a super depressing story from yesterday's Washington Post about how 93 percent of Australia's Great Barrier Reef is bleaching, and how the reef's northern region is now experiencing 50% coral death.
 
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Won't the corals eventually appear further south, where it used to be too cold?

 
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Mario Kart said:
Slowdown? Can't keep going up and up at the same increments because once you get to boiling, who cares if it is just over the boiling point. Fact is, it's still boiling. To try to spin this as a "slowdown" defeats the purpose that it is out of hand already. 

You can apply this to all facets of life. 
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No ocean temperatures can't keep increasing in same increments to the boiling point, there is a hard limit around 89F that is due to the properties of water. Basically higher than 89F water starts evaporating much faster, its not a linear sort of relationship, and evaporating water cools water.  There is plenty of discussion about this 89F max ocean temperature on the Internet.   If you understood your steam tables you wouldn't say such things.  

 
spreagle said:
No ocean temperatures can't keep increasing in same increments to the boiling point, there is a hard limit around 89F that is due to the properties of water. Basically higher than 89F water starts evaporating much faster, its not a linear sort of relationship, and evaporating water cools water.  There is plenty of discussion about this 89F max ocean temperature on the Internet.   If you understood your steam tables you wouldn't say such things.  
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Wow, you missed the sarcasm above. To spin data into a slowdown knowing it has to slowdown at some point, there is no reason to spin the data. Warming is occurring no question about it. 

 
The White House on Monday defended President Obama’s decision to enter into the Paris climate accord without Senate ratification but stopped short of confirming a Chinese report that he will do so this week during his trip to China.

Still, it would surprise no one if Mr. Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping were to announce the ratification of the sweeping climate change agreement before the Sunday opening of the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang.

White House senior adviser Brian Deese said the president has the legal authority to ratify the accord without the two-thirds Senate vote required for treaties. He said the pact negotiated by 195 countries in December is merely an “executive agreement.”

“The president will use his authority that has been used in dozens of executive agreements in the past to join and formally deposit our instrument of acceptance, and therefore put our country as a party to the Paris Agreement,” Mr. Deese said at a White House press conference.

He noted that both presidents announced in March that they “would seek to formally join the Paris Agreement in 2016.”

“That’s a process that is quite well-established in our existing legal system and in the context of international agreements and international arrangements,” Mr. Deese said. “There is a category of them that are treaties that require advice and consent from the Senate, but there’s a broad category of executive agreements where the executive can enter into those agreements without that advice and consent.”

Republicans have insisted that the accord requires Senate ratification and warned the Obama administration as well as international leaders that Congress will not be bound by an agreement ratified by unilateral executive action.

Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, predicted Monday that Mr. Obama will “pretend to ratify the treaty in China.”

“What could be more insulting to our Constitution than ‘ratifying’ it in the presence of the Chinese president-dictator?” asked Mr. Ebell, who opposes the deal. “And what could be more appropriate, since, like Xi, Obama is unaccountable?”



Speculation about the ratification soared after the South China Morning Post reported that two leaders are “set to jointly announce their ratification” as early as Friday. The report cited sources who said that “senior climate officials from both countries worked late into the night in Beijing on Tuesday to finalize details.”

Mr. Deese confirmed that he traveled to China last week to meet with officials on the Paris Agreement, which calls for nations to adopt emissions limits with the aim of holding increases in global temperatures “well below” 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.

“I anticipate when the presidents meet, they will discuss topics that will include this issue of trying to get the Paris Agreement to enter into force as quickly as possible,” Mr. Deese said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a plea last month for world leaders to accelerate the ratification process, which lost steam after the agreement was announced in December.

To take effect, the accord must be signed and ratified by 55 nations responsible for at least 55 percent of global emissions. So far, 23 nations emitting about 1 percent of greenhouse gases have completed the ratification process, according to Climate Analytics’ ratification tracker.

“Together, the U.S. and China represent just under 40 percent of global emissions,” said Mr. Deese. “So the act of our two countries joining and when that happens will help move us closer to that goal.”

Climate change skeptics dismissed the anticipated executive ratification as a sham designed to prop up Mr. Obama’s legacy.

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano predicted that “Obama will surely do his best play-acting and pretend the ‘ratification’ has actual meaning, but as a former constitutional law professor, even he knows better.”

“What they need right now is a game-changer, and if they can’t get it then, true to form, they will manufacture the illusion of it,” Australian science writer Joanne Nova said on her JoNova blog.

Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chairman, has repeatedly said that the Paris Agreement will change nothing. He issued a white paper in April that said the pact amounts to “empty promises that will have no meaningful impact on the climate.”

“The problem with international climate change agreements is that they ignore basic economic and political realities and therefore are doomed to failure,” said Mr. Inhofe. “When the hype over the signing fades, the reality will set in that the policies President Obama is promising will not last.”

Critics fear that the executive branch will use the Paris Agreement, while not legally binding, to enact sweeping climate policies without Congress.

Mr. Obama has argued that urgent action is needed. “No challenge poses a great threat to future generations than climate change,” he said last year.

Mr. Deese credited the president with reaching out to China to reset the international malaise on climate change that followed the failed 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, which resulted in a weak accord that was not adopted.

“I think the second significant thing about president’s approach to climate change is seen in his engagement with China,” Mr. Deese said. “The president recognized early on in the administration that if we were going to have an effective global response to climate change, we were going to have to write a new playbook. That the old approaches had not succeeded.”

The Paris Agreement was the result of “a very consistent and steady diplomatic effort that the president prioritized year after year, working to restore U.S. credibility on climate issues through our Climate Action Plan, demonstrating that we actually could make progress in reducing emissions,” he said.

Mr. Obama is scheduled to embark Wednesday on a Pacific Rim trip that includes a stop in Honolulu for the World Conservation Congress, the G-20 Summit in China and a visit to Laos for the first such presidential visit in history.
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I always wonder what it must have even like when people argued the world was flat hundreds of years ago....this thread gives some good insight into that.

 
wikkidpissah said:
I continue to be mystified that there's another side....
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People who fail to see two sides are the least enlightened ones.  Certainly there are those who take the points too far on the 'denier' side, but there are also those on the global alarmist side which have admitted exaggerating the case for global warming to advance the cause.  There is a lot more uncertainty and assumptions in this debate than you understand. 

 
Megaton said:
People who fail to see two sides are the least enlightened ones.  Certainly there are those who take the points too far on the 'denier' side, but there are also those on the global alarmist side which have admitted exaggerating the case for global warming to advance the cause.  There is a lot more uncertainty and assumptions in this debate than you understand. 
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Oh, i'm well familiar with the sides. Fifteen yrs ago, among the first online conversations i had was one where the alarmists jumped down my throat for suggesting that being at the warmest end of earth's climactic cycle had something to do with the stats. It just amazes me that there remains an entire SIDE to the hackiest talking point the Fox cartoon nazis ever came up with. Abortion, absolutely. Death penalty, guns, well yeah. i guess there are moral points to be made. But to hold steadfast for polluting?!  :lmao: :excited: :P  I was around when Pittsburgh was black with soot, when eastern rivers were burning and scary to even approach. We did that, then we changed that. It's health. It's replacing your divot. But you go, boy - stay on us so we make sure to keep polluting. Goodonya!

 
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