How can climate change denialism be explained?

[spidergoat]

Balderdash. We're already two Paradigm Shifts past the Bronze Age, the last level of civilization in which agriculture was the dominant economic activity. The Industrial Revolution automated agriculture, freeing up 97% of the population to invent more enjoyable, interesting and valuable professions--which are also considerably less hard on the human body. The Electronic Revolution continues that trend, with the new wrinkle that electronic systems use far less energy than industrial systems.

It won't make a difference. People need goods and services and someone has to provide it. I agree there will be a revolution as significant as the Industrial Revolution, but it will not be based on the ever increasing consumption of energy, which oil and no combination of alternative energy can provide.

I suppose miracles can happen, maybe the cold fusion thing will work out. But until then, what I'm saying is true.

 

[spidergoat]

Then who's going to feed the billions? Digitally controlled industrial farming needs to be performed on a fairly large scale or it becomes too labor-intensive and too resource-inefficient, and we end up halfway back to the Stone Age. Maybe you're one of the neo-hippies who thinks it would be romantic to grow your own tomatoes, but my mother had a vegetable garden back in the 1950s and I never want to see another tomato plant close up as long as I live. Besides, it was a terribly inefficient and expensive way to feed a family. What a colossal waste of water!

This country doesn't have billions of people. In any case, there will be agriculture, and it will involve more labor than it has in the past, and no chemical fertilizers or pesticides. This isn't my wish, it's inevitable. A home garden will have to supplement local agriculture. Much of the suburbs will simply be abandoned to scrap and returned to the fields that existed before they were built.

 

[adoucette]

So you lack the ability to make predictions based on known reserves? That's why we are sleepwalking into an uncertain future.

Sure I do, but Reserves continue to grow, not decline.
You are the one who is out of touch with the amount of energy available to us.

OIL

Year	Reserves	Used
1980	644 <== Billion Barrels of Reserves in 1980	
1990	1,002	225 <== Billion Barrels used since 1980
2000	1,016	256 <== Billion Barrels used since 1990
2009	1,342	300 <== Billion Barrels used since 2000

Total Used since 1980 = 781 Billion barrels (140 Billion more than our estimated reserves in 1980)

Reserve growth even after using 781 Billion Barrels was 698 Billion Barrels.

Natural Gas

Year	Reserves	Used
1980	73 <== Trillion m^3 reserves in 1980	
1990	114	17 <== Trillion m^3 used since 1980
2000	147	23 <== Trillion m^3 used since 1990
2010	190	30 <== Trillion m^3 used since 2000

Total Used since 1980 = 70 Trillion m^3, or essentially all of what we had in reserves in 1980, yet today's reserves are nearly 3 times what they were back then.

Coal

The estimate for the world's total recoverable reserves of coal as of January 1, 2009 was 948 billion short tons, or well over a century at current usage rates, but if you double the price you are willing to pay, the amount of coal goes up significantly.

The ABOVE is why the IPCC is concerned.
Because we have so much oil, natural gas and coal left.

Just look at the energy conusmption that underlies the CO2 projections that are generated from the A1F1 and A2 scenarios. Indeed, most people who express concern about AGW temps almost always refer to the temp projections from the HOT models that are run on those fossil fuel intensive energy use scenarios. (personally I think we will actually be between the B1 and B2 scenarios, but the scenarios are in major need of an update as none are tracking reality)

In any case, when you add to those reserves our growing use of Nuclear, Hydro, Wind, Solar Thermal, Solar PV, GeoThermal and BioMass there isn't, and won't be, any shortage of energy in our future.

Which is why your belief that we are heading back to an agricultural based society is just bonkers.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_gas_proven_reserves
http://www.eia.gov/emeu/iea/Notes for Table E_3.html
http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=coal_reserves

 

[wellwisher]

The reason for denial has to do with the game that is being played. Even if it is true that the global temperature is rising slightly, any extrapolation of this fact, beyond that fact, is not automatically proven.

For example, all the doom and gloom predictions due to manmade, do not necessarily follow, even if the initial premise is true. The denialists try to nip the game in the bud, by attacking the initial premise, that is being used to make up extrapolations, that are there for social manipulations. The idea is to scare people into irrationality so they buy it all. They also will offer goods and services to appease the fear they are trying to create.

Here is how the game is played. If you eat cheese you will get fat. We noticed Joe likes cheese and has gained 2 pounds. Based on that "truth", we then say when you get fat you will increase the risk of diebetes, you will fall through the floor, your heart will explode, etc. It was only 2 pounds but the hype creates a sense of extrpaolated urgency out of touch with reality, that is being used to manipulate. We offer spa services.

The denialists will say 2 pounds is nothing and you are overblowing this with unproven hype. The fear factor will say, you deny that overweight can lead to diebetes? There is a game that you need to overcome, by staying the course, so the extrapolation can will not overgrow.

 

[origin]

Hmmm. I thought it was played this way. We measure the temperature of the earth the data shows that the average temperature has risen. The deniers say it hasn't risen. They are wrong.

If you want to say that it is not caused by man - you can make a case for that.
If you want to say that the temperature will not continue to rise - you can make a case for that.

The consensus on global warming of the climatologist is that it IS man made and that IT will continue to rise. They could be wrong so feel free put forth alternative scenarios.

Saying that global warming does not exist is wrong and stupid - end of story.

 

[adoucette]

Hmmm. I thought it was played this way. We measure the temperature of the earth the data shows that the average temperature has risen. The deniers say it hasn't risen. They are wrong.

Unfortunately there are morons out there who still believe the world is flat.

But one can be a skeptic (Denier is prejudicial) and still be quite up to speed on the science.

As to the instrumental record, there was some legitimate concern about the quality of our land temperature measurements.

And many of those concerns were generally valid, particulary the ones concerning Urban Heat Islands and changes in how sea surface temps were determined (for instance the switch to engine inlet temps vs the bucket method caused an artificial increase until it was adjusted for) and these resulted in the instrumental record being adjusted downward (for instance one of the downward adjustments made 1934 again the hottest year in the US).

Now Hansen at GISS uses station history and amount of lights as seen from satellites to adjust the temperature of Urban sites downward to remove the UHI effect, Phil Jones at Hadley has his own method, both give reasonably the same result.

Still the amount of downward adjustments from station/measuring errors wasn't as much as many skeptics thought it would be, and a very recent detailed study of the instrumental record has shown that the record, as adjusted, is reasonable and in pretty good agreement with the growing satellite record (available only since 1979).

But that issue has been mainly dealt with over the last decade and rational skeptics no longer have much issue with the instrumental record (though I prefer Hadley's data set since unlike Hadley, GISS still extrapolates temperatures out as far as 1,200 km from a reporting station) isn't the main issue that has AGW skeptics still skeptical.

There are maybe about 3 main skeptical issues remaining, and none of them have to do with the instrumental temperature record.

THIS is one of the issues:

The projected range of future temperatures are derived from Global Climate Models running with energy, GHG and land use change inputs based on multiple IPCC Scenarios.

Altogether 40 SRES scenarios have been developed and the issue that has the skeptics complaining the loudest is that the IPCC claims that they are all equally valid with no assigned probabilities of occurrence.

Really?

Yes, really.

Then there are multiple models and they run from HOT to COLD.

http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig9-3.htm

This is from the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) and it shows the differences of the models, based only on CO2 input with it rising 1% per year.

HOT models are the ones that are more sensitive to the effects of CO2 and also add in a higher COUPLING based on increased H2O in the atmosphere (that latter aspect is another major skeptic concern as it remains unproven).

Note that in this test there is a significant difference between the hottest model and the mean, roughly 100% hotter.

But that was with just 1% per year rise in CO2.

The input to the models is based on IPCC developed Scenarios and some of the scenarios increase CO2 beyond that and also pump up the CH4, yielding much higher rises in temperatures.

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/special-reports/spm/sres-en.pdf

These scenarios present a wildly different view of the future, but it is important to realize that ALL of them present a vastly more affluent future than today.

All scenarios describe futures that are generally more affluent than
today. The scenarios span a wide range of future levels of economic
activity, with gross world product rising to 10 times today’s values
by 2100 in the lowest to 26-fold in the highest scenarios.

Really?

A GDP 26 times greater than today????

Are you kidding me?

And that's in the A1F1 scenario that only has 7 Billion people in 2100, but still is using 8 times as much energy as we did in 1990 and getting 40% of that energy from Coal.

But why then would anyone care about global warming, if the scenario says that WITH THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF GLOBAL WARMING, the average wealth of everyone on the planet will be FAR FAR higher then it is today?

What is so bizarre is that the fear that we will ruin the earth is based on the notion that we will do so at the same time we will also be incredibly prosperous.

So yeah, I'm very skeptical of the A1F1 Scenario (and quite a few of the others as well) and it's use in projecting the future because I find it totally implausible.

But that's the scenario that when coupled with the HOT GCM models, that generates the highest projected temperature increases (mainly because it couples widespread deforestation with a 200% use of energy increase by 2020 and a 450% increase by 2050 (mostly from coal use)).

What happens then is that these upper temperature projections created by these Hot models running with year on year massive increases in energy use are then used by other non-climate scientists in other fields to project what will happen in their area of expertise if the temps projected by these totally bogus scenarios comes true.

Then of course they show the likely negative interaction of these changes, which is why we keep seeing these projections of a very BLEAK future even though the projections are based on us producing 2,600% more GDP than we do today, which with roughly the same population as today, means we will actually all be living a FAR more prosperous life than we are today.

I'm not sure if I should be happy or sad about that.

In any case, the issue that most science based skeptics focus on is the projections of the future and what they are based on.
Not so much about the past (well except for disagreements about how warm it was in the past, as in the magnitude and global extent of the MWP, and that issue is still not well settled)

Arthur

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

The world is going to add about 2 Billion more people, maybe more, over the next 40 years. The use of energy will continue to climb well past mid century. And while you keep saying that transportation energy use will go down, nothing suggests that is likely:
Motor vehicles produced:
1997 54,434,000
2000 58,374,162
2005 66,482,439
2010 77,857,705

You must be an American manager. You speak as though telecommuting is not just impractical, not just impossible, but that the idea has never been invented so you don't have to talk about it. I live in an area (the Washington DC region) where something like 90% of the population does "knowledge work." There's absolutely no reason for them to be schlepped back and forth across the landscape every day, except that their managers are so incompetent that they don't know how to manage people they can't see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry

You are basing your extrapolations about the future on information you got from the automotive industry??? I'm sure if you go to a tobacco industry website you'll come away feeling certain that by the end of the century five year-olds will be legally required to start smoking and that we'll have a cure for lung cancer.

Get with the program dude, you live in the Information Age. In another couple of generations most personal travel will be for socializing and recreation, and a lot of people won't even bother owning a car.

You remind me of the people in 1900 who thought the greatest environmental problem in New York City was running out of places to pile the horse manure.

This country doesn't have billions of people.

It won't. The second derivative of global population has been negative for thirty years. The first derivative will go negative before the end of this century. While you retro types are trying to figure out how to solve the last century's problem, the next century's problem will knock you off your feet: Every economic model since Adam Smith assumes that there will be a steadily growing number of producers and consumers, and that growth is its engine of prosperity. It's been something like a hundred thousand years since the last time the human population was not increasing, and their Paleolithic economy was just a little bit different from ours.

Much of the suburbs will simply be abandoned to scrap and returned to the fields that existed before they were built.

Actually some of the futurists predict that it is the cities that will be scrapped once the Post-Industrial Revolution (or Toffler's "Third Wave") is in full swing, believing that everyone will want to live out in the boondocks once they no longer have to live near an office center. Certainly many people will, but many of us actually like the critical mass of an urban population. It's more alive and more interesting. I've lived in the boondocks and it sucks.

The reason for denial has to do with the game that is being played. Even if it is true that the global temperature is rising slightly, any extrapolation of this fact, beyond that fact, is not automatically proven.

Duh? Have you looked at any graph of temperature over time? It's an endless cycle of quick descents into ice ages and slow warming back to a temperate climate. We're about a third of the way up the current warming rally, if I'm seeing the chart correctly through my trifocals.

But one can be a skeptic (Denier is prejudicial) and still be quite up to speed on the science.

A denier (or a denialist, since they do seem to be part of a movement, whether you're talking about evolution or global warming) is a person who goes through elaborate machinations to disprove the science to which he objects. They have three typical tactics:

• To claim that God is in control of everything so science is meaningless.
• To claim that science itself is not valid and that scientists are perpetrating fraud.
• To cherry-pick the evidence to make it appear to support their assertions.

While the first two may be sincere, the third is, himself, a fraud. I have personally encountered an evolution denialist in that category so I'm sure there are climate denialists of the same type.

A GDP 26 times greater than today???? Are you kidding me?

No. You simply don't understand the concept of a Paradigm Shift. The paradigm of human existence shifts in many ways (community size, mobility, etc.), but arguably the primary dimension of the shift is an extraordinary leveraging of human labor, typically increasing the per-capita productivity of a community by as much as two orders of magnitude.

Just look at the Agricultural Revolution. Paleolithic humans did almost nothing but hunt meat, gather fruits and nuts, and prepare meals. Their per-capita GDP was only slightly more than their daily nutritional requirement, supplemented by making clothes and tools.

The technologies of farming and animal husbandry brought the plants and animals to them so they no longer had to spend their days looking for them, and in addition increased both the number of plants and animals at their disposal and the quality of their edible tissues. In addition, agriculture allowed them to settle in one place so (with the spare time they now had thanks to having their food supply in their backyard) they could invent houses, furniture, pottery, and a host of other useful things--even whimsical things like dolls and musical instruments.

Their GDP skyrocketed.

Then they discovered that domesticated animals were good for more than food. They could do work! A bullock dragging a wooden plow could till a field much more quickly than an entire human family. A horse with a travois could haul a load of fish to the next village in a day instead of a week, and bring back a load of that village's wine made from the grapes that would grow there but not here. The productivity of human labor was leveraged again, and their per-capita GDP rose again.

People who didn't have to carry everything they owned on their daily excursions invented pottery, which is too fragile for a Paleolithic community. Pottery allowed them to store food, making the cyclical droughts and famines less frightening, so tribes didn't have to kill each other and steal their food for survival. People who aren't always looking over their shoulders to protect themselves against other people get more work done--more leveraging of their labor.

Skipping forward to the Bronze Age... Imagine what the discovery of metal did to everyday life! The things they could build with metal tools, the objects they could make out of worked metal--like wheels, which further leveraged the labor of their draft animals and therefore their own labor. So many people were freed from the food production industry that whole new occupations sprang up, such as entertainers, explorers and teachers. Their per-capita GDP was easily 100x that of their Stone Age ancestors.

Skipping forward to the Industrial Revolution, arguably its essence was the technology to convert the chemical energy in fossil fuels into kinetic energy. Industrial machinery caused an incredible increase in the efficiency of human labor. In fact one of the things it did was to industrialize agriculture. At its dawn in the early 18th century approximately 94% of the human race were farmers and the other 6% did all the other jobs. By its zenith in the mid 20th century those percentages were exactly reversed in the developed nations. The efficiency of human labor in the food production industry increased 15x. And look at what the other 94% of us were doing! Building fossil fuel-powered vehicles that increased our carrying capacity, using industrial processes to build stronger buildings, inventing an entire new cornucopia of "consumer goods" that make life both more pleasant (a sofa in every living room) an easier (an electric dishwasher in every kitchen). Human productivity had increased so dramatically that in the mid-1890s the U.S. economy toggled from scarcity-driven to surplus driven. We had to reinvent Christmas as a day of greed, gifts and gluttony to coax people to use their surplus wealth to buy the products of our surplus productivity!

I haven't got the figures handy, but the per-capita GDP in the Western nations in 2000 was at least 100x greater than in 1700.

The Information Revolution is repeating the same miracle. Of course the Luddites among us scoff at counting discussion boards, online encyclopedias and other databases, software, videogames, music recordings, photo libraries and a complete video library of Fraggle Rock as "goods and services," but these are the same guys who thought that pillows and windows were nothing more than a fad six thousand years ago. But there's a reason we call this the Information Age: information is the new commodity, and its value is immense.

This current Paradigm Shift is once again leveraging human labor. The work week will continue to shorten as more of the necessities of life are produced by now-electronically managed industrial processes, and we'll spend more time pursuing our other interests online.

For example, anyone with talent can be a musician now. I'm in an original-music band that is quite good but never had the opportunity or connections (much less the risk tolerance) to make it a full-time career and reach for stardom. Guess what? Hundreds of people have downloaded our music off of several websites, and those who live close by come to our shows. Our music has a vaguely Celtic flair and a radio station in one of the Celtic regions of the U.K. even has one of our tunes in rotation. We're not stars but at least this modest cash flow pays for our gear and our gas.

The Information Age is democratizing the arts. Look at all the poetry websites. All the books you can download from authors who are just about as successful as my band and just as happy with that state of affairs.

All of these songs and books are "digital goods and services" and their aggregate value pumps up the human race's GDP, but not nearly as much as iTunes and the Weather Channel. The Information Revolution has not yet increased our per-capita GDP by 10,000 percent, but it will.

And that's in the A1F1 scenario that only has 7 Billion people in 2100, but still is using 8 times as much energy as we did in 1990 and getting 40% of that energy from Coal.

One-fourth of America's petroleum is used directly in commuting. That doesn't count the second-order effects like people eating energy-intensive fast food because they can't get home in time to cook, or nannies driving all over town to take care of children whose parents never see them when they're awake, or plumbers, electricians and gardeners driving their trucks to houses whose occupants have no time for even the easiest DIY tasks.

As I have noted before, we won't really see a shift from "going to work" to telecommuting until today's children grow up, having always lived in a world in which people work, play and socialize together via cell phone, webcam and MOMRPGs. The idea that you have to be sitting next to somebody in order to work together on a project will be as quaint to them as my grandfather's reply to the phone company in 1911: "Hell no, I don't want one of these contraptions in my drugstore! People will never feel comfortable doing business over a damn telephone! They have to look into each other's eyes."

But when that shift comes, it will be massive. It will probably reduce America's per-capita energy consumption by one third. Since our population will be decreasing by then (especially if the Rednecks get their way and throttle down the influx of immigrants with their higher birthrate, the only thing that's keeping our Social Security system solvent), total energy consumption will drop even faster.

What is so bizarre is that the fear that we will ruin the earth is based on the notion that we will do so at the same time we will also be incredibly prosperous.

Today many Americans are worried that ours is the most prosperous generation that will ever have lived. And they're willing to trade future environmental ruination for a chance for their children to be slightly more prosperous before it all collapses. Fortunately our economy is slowly developing a more energy-efficient infrastructure.

If only we had some real leadership. *sigh*

 

[spidergoat]

The reason for denial has to do with the game that is being played. Even if it is true that the global temperature is rising slightly, any extrapolation of this fact, beyond that fact, is not automatically proven.

For example, all the doom and gloom predictions due to manmade, do not necessarily follow, even if the initial premise is true. The denialists try to nip the game in the bud, by attacking the initial premise, that is being used to make up extrapolations, that are there for social manipulations. The idea is to scare people into irrationality so they buy it all. They also will offer goods and services to appease the fear they are trying to create.

Here is how the game is played. If you eat cheese you will get fat. We noticed Joe likes cheese and has gained 2 pounds. Based on that "truth", we then say when you get fat you will increase the risk of diebetes, you will fall through the floor, your heart will explode, etc. It was only 2 pounds but the hype creates a sense of extrpaolated urgency out of touch with reality, that is being used to manipulate. We offer spa services.

The denialists will say 2 pounds is nothing and you are overblowing this with unproven hype. The fear factor will say, you deny that overweight can lead to diebetes? There is a game that you need to overcome, by staying the course, so the extrapolation can will not overgrow.

It doesn't matter if it's proven. You can still make predictions from the data, and it doesn't look good. What if they are underestimating the effects of warming? Did you know there are currently plumes of methane escaping from the shallow arctic seas at a scale that is unprecedented? Kilometers wide.

 

[quadraphonics]

It would be comforting to believe that the denialist army is composed of fools. This is simply not the case. Many of the denialists are accomplished and educated people. It would also be comforting to think that they represent a small island of unreason in an ocean of rationality, like people opposed to immunization. This also however is not true. In the United States, for example, a clear majority do not believe in human-induced global warming. Indeed only one per cent of Americans now consider it their country’s most urgent problem.

One aspect that's missing here is the relationship between attitudes towards climate change (and policies related to such), and the general state of the economy. I.e., the same polls showing that 52% of Americans do not believe in anthropogenic global warming, were showing just the opposite a few years ago when the economy was doing better, unemployment was low, etc. Likewise with the question of how urgent the problem is - going into the end of the Bush years, it was widely understood that the electorate wanted to take serious steps and saw it as a big priority, and that the next administration would move on that. But come 2009, the economy was in the tank and that quickly pushed climate change off of the agenda. It becomes very hard to sell people on the idea that we need to undertake costly steps at a time when they are hurting, and are much more interested in growth in the short term than in long-term issues like climate change.

Upshot is that I'd be sure to average such opinion poll results over at least one business cycle. Polls taken during downturns are going to understate support for efforts to combat global warming, and vice-versa.

This also points out a major facet driving opinions about the subject - it's seen as intimately linked with the economy, and industrialism generally. So, to deny climate change ends up being equivalent to advocating for higher growth, lower taxes, etc. Shouldn't be difficult to see why lots of politicians (and others) line up for such denial, then, especially when the economy isn't doing well. Probably the single most important thing for advocates of combatting climate change need to do, is to break that equivalence. This is, for example, why Thomas Friedman over at the NYT has been pushing a "green jobs" line of argument for some years now.

 

[GeoffP]

And it's that tradeoff that makes it increasingly unlikely to be achieved in a capitalist system.

 

[wellwisher]

The global warming makes use of the same dynamics as a paranoid military mentality. There is risk all over the world, which justifies control and expense to appease the fear that is created by stating the risk. Whether all the paranoia is true or not is not relevant to those who believe. in this fear. Fear is an easy way to manipulate, with the fear providing its own justification out of proportion with calm reality.

My resistance to global warming is by accepting the paranoia we also will institute another block of irrationality that will hog resources to appease the fear they they help to create for themselves. Military is very ancient and quite expensive. It is part off hum a nature. We don't need two of these. Let us keep the paranoia at the rational level, so we can address real concerns. Don't use the paranoia to manipulate for control and kickbacks.

Consider the concept of risk. this concept implies something in the future that is real even in cases where it will turn out not to be real. If we begin by assigning me a risk of something, and after a given amount of time nothing happens, there was never any real risk in reality for me, since it never panned out. All the fear was made up in my mind so I could be herded and sheared.

Yet , even without any connection to tangible reality, I will still be given a positive value of risk. It is magic math used to create the illusion of something even if it does not appear in reality. It is herd lumping that may not apply to individuals. The bogey man is hiding in the shadows, so even if he does not come out of the closet, he is still there.I don't like this fear manipulation game. My resistance to global warming is my lack of interest ini the bogey man game.

One way to balance this out is accountability. If you predict the bogey man and he does not appear, this who benefit by the game, now have to pay. The gamers will not like a level playing field but prefer stacking the deck with fear.

 

[adoucette]

You must be an American manager. You speak as though telecommuting is not just impractical, not just impossible, but that the idea has never been invented so you don't have to talk about it. I live in an area (the Washington DC region) where something like 90% of the population does "knowledge work." There's absolutely no reason for them to be schlepped back and forth across the landscape every day, except that their managers are so incompetent that they don't know how to manage people they can't see.

Nowhere near 90% of the Washington DC workers work in the information business and can work at home.

The town if full of tourists and visitors every day and there are huge number of workers to cater to them.

Besides that, there are so many other occupations that are necessary and simply don't lend themselves to working at home:

Nurses
Doctors
Dentists
Therapists
Veternarians
Pharmacists
Opthomologists
Hospital workers
Grocery workers
Delivery/Postal workers
Airport/Airline workers
Parks and Recreation workers
DMV workers
Museum/Library workers
Hotel workers
Jail/Prison workers
Manufacturing
Recycle center workers
Entertainers
Military
Bus Drivers
Cab Drivers
TV/Radio production
Newspaper production/reporters
Police
Fireman
Plumbers
Electricians
Locksmiths
Car Washes
Florists
Trash pick up/janitors/home cleaning
Painters
Roofers
Stonemasons
HVAC/heating repairman
Church workers Priests, Nuns, pastors etc
Gas Station attendents
Automotive repairman
Emissions/safety inspection
Mortuary workers
Tree and Lawn service
Street/Bridge Maint
Electric Company
Goodwill and Trift type shops
Gas Company
Water Company
Lineman
Construction Workers
Cooks & Waiters
Hair/feet/nail/tanning care
Health Club workers/trainers
Movie Theaters
Clothing stores owners and sales clerks
Drug stores
Hardware stores
Furniture stores
Electronics stores
Music/movies/game stores
Jewelry stores
Gun shops
Liquor Stores
Hobby stores
Retail Mall workers
Automobile sales
Motorcycle sales/repair
Party stores
Bakeries
Pawn Shops
Recreation/Sporting goods

etc etc etc

You continually over estimate the percent of people who don't have to go to a workplace.

And NO, it's not primarily because managers have to see them at work.

You are basing your extrapolations about the future on information you got from the automotive industry??? I'm sure if you go to a tobacco industry website you'll come away feeling certain that by the end of the century five year-olds will be legally required to start smoking and that we'll have a cure for lung cancer.

Of course the data came from the automotive industry, because they are production statistics, so no, those aren't extrapolations.
Those are what has happened.
Which means that during the last decade, the production of cars went up by 20 million per YEAR.

That trend isn't going to change any time soon.

Get with the program dude, you live in the Information Age. In another couple of generations most personal travel will be for socializing and recreation, and a lot of people won't even bother owning a car.

I am with the program, dude.
I work out of my home.
I've been doing it for almost 2 decades.
Doesn't mean I don't need a car.

 

[adoucette]

And that's in the A1F1 scenario that only has 7 Billion people in 2100, but still is using 8 times as much energy as we did in 1990 and getting 40% of that energy from Coal.

One-fourth of America's petroleum is used directly in commuting. That doesn't count the second-order effects like people eating energy-intensive fast food because they can't get home in time to cook, or nannies driving all over town to take care of children whose parents never see them when they're awake, or plumbers, electricians and gardeners driving their trucks to houses whose occupants have no time for even the easiest DIY tasks.

As I have noted before, we won't really see a shift from "going to work" to telecommuting until today's children grow up, having always lived in a world in which people work, play and socialize together via cell phone, webcam and MOMRPGs. The idea that you have to be sitting next to somebody in order to work together on a project will be as quaint to them as my grandfather's reply to the phone company in 1911: "Hell no, I don't want one of these contraptions in my drugstore! People will never feel comfortable doing business over a damn telephone! They have to look into each other's eyes."

But when that shift comes, it will be massive. It will probably reduce America's per-capita energy consumption by one third. Since our population will be decreasing by then (especially if the Rednecks get their way and throttle down the influx of immigrants with their higher birthrate, the only thing that's keeping our Social Security system solvent), total energy consumption will drop even faster.

But the issue I brought up was that the A1F1 scenario claimed that while global population would be the same as today in 2100 that our GDP would go up 2600% and that global fossil fuel energy use would be 300% greater than it is today.

You apparently have no problem with a GDP 26 times the size it is today (Highly unlikely in just 90 years, more reasonable predictions put it at around 10 times greater than today) but then you keep insisting that energy use will still go down.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/S3QSFzD8FLI/AAAAAAAAMuw/P6NWF_bXLFI/s1600-h/worldgdp3.jpg

(shows a doubling of GDP in about 30 years)

So if you presume that the energy use would go down then that would mean you don't agree with the A1F1 scenario either, and so that would make you a "denialist" as well.

 

[adoucette]

Have you looked at any graph of temperature over time? It's an endless cycle of quick descents into ice ages and slow warming back to a temperate climate. We're about a third of the way up the current warming rally, if I'm seeing the chart correctly through my trifocals.

Nope.

The OPPOSITE is true.

For the last 400k years or so, we slowly cool off but we typically warm up on a much shorter time interval.

 

[adoucette]

I haven't got the figures handy, but the per-capita GDP in the Western nations in 2000 was at least 100x greater than in 1700.

Nope.

About 40x

And of course that's a period of 300 years, not 100 and you are talking about just the Western world and the impact of both the industrial revolution and the information revolution.

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/TCEH/2000/World_GDP/Estimating_World_GDP.html

A1F1 says the per-capita GDP of the entire WORLD, which it estimates as the same as it is today, ~7 billion, will be 26 times what it is today, 90 years from now.

And YES it is highly unlikely, that's why most of the scenarios have much more reasonable estimates of 10 times the GDP by 2100, even the scenarios with up to 15 Billion people, but even those estimates are of a MUCH more affluent world at the end of this century than we are today.

Indeed ALL the scenarios predict that we will be very well off at the end of this century.

 

[RJBeery]

And it's that tradeoff that makes it increasingly unlikely to be achieved in a capitalist system.

Bingo! And that doesn't mean that I agree with your conclusions, but rather your admission of the motivational beliefs behind the biggest AGW proponents. Socialism failed in any practical sense, but now perhaps we could give it a "moral victory" by saving us from DEATH!

This fucking article, donning the Armor of Science and speaking the Word of Truth, uses the following phrases in the first paragraph:

If only fifty per cent of climate scientists accepted the greenhouse gas theory of global warming, it would still be prudent to curb greenhouse gas emissions radically. There is, quite simply, so much at stake – nothing less than the future wellbeing of the Earth. Yet in fact virtually all the people with true understanding – the climate scientists – accept that, primarily through the continued burning of fossil fuels, human beings are placing the Earth at risk. Among these scientists moreover there exists no plausible alternative theory to explain global warming. Two studies have been conducted to assess the size of the scientific majority who accept and understand the reality of disastrous, humanly-caused global warming via the greenhouse gas hypothesis. Both studies arrived at the same figure. Ninety-seven per cent (2009, 2010).

OK, first of all none of my emboldened words belong in a paper claiming to be serving facts. They're quite subjective and largely meaningless. Let me rewrite that first sentence and see if the author still finds it compelling:

If only fifty per cent of all humans accepted God, it would still be prudent to impose piety upon everyone. There is, quite simply, so much at stake - nothing less than Eternal Glory or Eternal Damnation for ALL!!!!!

Screw the polar bears, I'm talking about Fire and Brimstone filling your nostrils! Clearly for your own good you must submit to my dictums. Because, ya know, I'm just looking out for you and I care.

And..."The wellbeing of Earth"? Bwhaha!

So apparently two studies sent out surveys that read

Do you accept and understand the reality of the DISASTROUS, humanly-caused global warming via the greenhouse gas hypothesis?
[ ] YES
[ ] NO​

...and 97% of scientists surveyed said yes! My god, we're really screwed!! Or...is it possible that 97% of scientists surveyed personally felt that the greenhouse gas hypothesis was reasonable, but didn't necessarily attach words like IMMEDIATE RADICAL CURBING NECESSARY TO AVOID DISASTER AND DEATH TO ALL!

The author's panicked tone undermines the article's intent, which is to sway based upon reason...presumably.

 

[billvon]

Bingo! And that doesn't mean that I agree with your conclusions, but rather your admission of the motivational beliefs behind the biggest AGW proponents. Socialism failed in any practical sense, but now perhaps we could give it a "moral victory" by saving us from DEATH!

And here we see one of the primary motivation behind the deniers - fear. Fear of socialism, of Al Gore, of science "winning" over religion, of "letting the other guys win." Unscrupulous political types use that fear to manipulate ignorant people, to try to frame it as a political battle that will result in everyone freezing in the dark while communist music plays in the background if the battle is lost.

And, as posts like this demonstrate - often, it works.

 

[adoucette]

Can you (or someone) find these two reported studies:

Two studies have been conducted to assess the size of the scientific majority who accept and understand the reality of disastrous, humanly-caused global warming via the greenhouse gas hypothesis. Both studies arrived at the same figure. Ninety-seven per cent (2009, 2010).

 

[RJBeery]

And here we see one of the primary motivation behind the deniers - fear. Fear of socialism, of Al Gore, of science "winning" over religion, of "letting the other guys win." Unscrupulous political types use that fear to manipulate ignorant people, to try to frame it as a political battle that will result in everyone freezing in the dark while communist music plays in the background if the battle is lost.

And, as posts like this demonstrate - often, it works.

Clearly, we both know AGW is almost purely political in nature, and your mockery of the Socialist Bogeyman doesn't somehow defuse its threat, nor does it make the "IMPENDING CLIMATE DOOM RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER!!" any less of a fantasy. Christ, my father was having these discussions with people over The Silent Spring back in the 1970's! Population explosion, gas shortages, food shortages, global cooling...they all coincidentally seem to have the same solutions. It's almost uncanny isn't it?

Yes, I'll use fear against Socialism to defuse AGW over-reaction. I'll also hold my nose and embrace the anti-science Religious Zealots if I must. The difference is that I'm OPEN about my motives, while the mealy-mouthed, sackless Environmentalists only very rarely let their true motivations slip past their tongues.

 

[dumbest man on earth]

How can climate change denialism be explained? Seems to me the horse is really behind the cart on this question. When did whoever decide that climate change was fully explained? In the 1970's, we were warned of the coming Ice Age. Did whoever, ever find out "How can Ice Age denialism be explained?". Have humans ever been proven to be the cause of the last Ice Age? Were humans proven to be the cause of the 'Melting" of said Ice Age? Will it really matter what the temperature is if there is no clean water? Will a 5% or 10% or even a 50% rise or fall in carbon dioxide levels matter if we humans kill ourselves off by any of the numerous other Genies we constantly gamble on letting out of the bottle? The Earth has never had a "Static" climate and I do not believe that humans will ever be able to change that in the slightest! We are indeed a "Transient" life form on this planet. Heck, as far as I know, the dinosaurs never drove SUV's or built coal fired power plants and where are they now? The earth was here billions of years before us and barring some galactic intervention humans have absolutely no control over,will be here billions of years after humans are gone! Realize, if you will though - that these are only the ramblings of the dumbest man on earth - and that the really smart people will figure it all out for you and legislate the problem away regardless of all the "denialism" !!!