What more proof do climate deniers need?

By
Latifa Daud
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57
0

A-new-Banksy-piece-near-t-001

July 2015 was the hottest month this planet has seen and this year is predicted to be the hottest on record. This is considered one of the many definitive proofs that the planet is getting warmer.

But why do we need extra proof? The science has been shoved in our faces for years.

The atoll nations in the Pacific such as Kiribati and Tuvalu are clearly sinking. Imagine if the land your ancestors are buried in ends up in the ocean and you had to leave. Last year Kiribati purchased 20km of land in Fiji to resettle their people for when their islands become inhabitable.

This is the reality of what we’re doing to our planet. This is a human rights issue as well as an environmental issue. No one should have to leave their homes because of forces beyond their control. Pacific nations aren’t even the ones causing global warning yet they’re the ones paying the ultimate price.

For decades the world leaders have been saying we need to do something about climate change. But what exactly are we going to do? How much do we have to destroy ourselves before we genuinely put human rights before industrial expansion?

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57 COMMENTS

  2. Earth’s Most Famous Climate Scientist Issues Bombshell Sea Level Warning

    ”

    In what may prove to be a turning point for political action on climate change, a breathtaking new study casts extreme doubt about the near-term stability of global sea levels.

    The study—written by James Hansen, NASA’s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields—concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, brings new importance to a feedback loop in the ocean near Antarctica that results in cooler freshwater from melting glaciers forcing warmer, saltier water underneath the ice sheets, speeding up the melting rate. Hansen, who is known for being alarmist and also right, acknowledges that his study implies change far beyond previous consensus estimates. In a conference call with reporters, he said he hoped the new findings would be “substantially more persuasive than anything previously published.” I certainly find them to be. ”

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/07/20/sea_level_study_james_hansen_issues_dire_climate_warning.html

    CC deniers are a waste of breath and irrelevant. It’s a non issue concerning yourself with these flat earthers!

  3. See you started off with a nice little factoid – it was hot in June in the northern hemisphere. Although of course one swallow does not summer make.

    Then you drift off into a different topic: Pacific atolls

    Have you ever wondered why all those thousands of atolls are exactly the same height – JUST above sea level?

    Ever wondered at the mechanism that makes them so?

    Having got that far, could you consider that if the sea level changed, that mechanism would continue to work and adjust the height of the atolls?

    (Hint: Coral grows far quicker than sea levels change)

    • Geezus you are a moron.

      Coral grows under water. Some PI atolls are only a metre or two above current sea level.

      • I think the moron here is the person who doesn’t realise that the Atolls with sand on them are not generally the result of a larger land mass eroding down but from sand accumulating on coral reefs growing up.

        • (roll eyes)

          The comedy writes itself.

          An atoll (/ˈætɒl/, /ˈætɔːl/, /ˈætoʊl/, /əˈtɒl/, /əˈtɔːl/ or /əˈtoʊl/),[1][2] sometimes called a coral atoll, is a ring-shaped coral reef including a coral rim that encircles a lagoon partially or completely. There may be coral islands/cays on the rim.[3](p60) [4] The coral of the atoll often sits atop the rim of an extinct seamount or volcano which has eroded or subsided partially beneath the water. The lagoon forms over the volcanic crater or caldera while the higher rim remains above water or at shallow depths that permit the coral to grow and form the reefs. For the atoll to persist, continued erosion or subsidence must be at a rate slow enough to permit reef growth upwards and outwards to replace the lost height

          source

          You might find the recurrence of the word submerged in the list under distribution and size to also be of interest.

          You see masterminds such as Gosman and Andrew believe that the fact that submerged coral can keep pace with sea level rise it also magically produces dry land at the same pace. Furthermore, that it presumably levitates all existing buildings and infrastructure along with it.

          • Typically in the tropics coral can grow at about 10mm per year and sea level change is less than a tenth of that.

            Beach formation is due to protection from large waves action by the atoll rim and a combination of erosion and fish eating the coral and ejecting it into the lagoon.

            As for where coral lives, that depends on the state of the tide. I am currently writing this post from a tropical island whose coral shelf is only paddling depth at high tide and pretty much at sea level at low tide.

      • I think the moron here is the person who doesn’t realise that the Atolls that have sand on them are not generally the result of a larger land mass eroding down but from sand accumulating on coral reefs growing up.

        • Gosman – fascinating that several people have clicked the ‘thumbs down’ button for this.

          Is this because they don’t understand how atolls are formed and maintained or is it because they don’t like this fact intruding in their bizarre view?

          Here’s a nice little article targeted at kindergarten level which will get those ‘thumbs down’ folk up to speed:

          http://education.nationalgeographic.com.au/encyclopedia/atoll/

    • Hint 1, Andrew. So far as I know coral is no longer growing faster than sea level change. Two reasons; 1) clearly sea level change at present is growing much faster than it has historically according to the report 2) coral is not growing as fast now as it has historically because higher carbon di-oxide levels in the atmosphere increase the acidity of the oceans, causing existing coral to dissolve. Hint 2, coral is a living organism. The higher acidity is killing the coral. Sometime soon it will be totally dead.

      • Dennis, I’m just presenting the facts. If you look at the charts of sea level change since the last ice age you’ll see:

        1/ Sea level has been rising for over 10,000 years and the current rate is far lower than it has been in the past.

        2/ There has been no increase in the rate of sea level rise during the industrial era.

        3/ The current rate of change is between 1.5 and 1.9 mm per year.

        This is why the dire predictions regarding islands being swamped have not transpired: Under current conditions the coral can easily keep up with sea level rise.

        So I can only presume that the people making these extravagant predictions are either ignorant or lying or both.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltwater_pulse_1A

        http://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/climate-science/climate-change-future/sea-level

    • Oh thank God for that Andrew! I thought we were all fucked.

      You’ve managed to solve climate change. Be sure to let someone know, won’t you?

      No doubt the continents and lands around the world have a mechanism too.

      Ooh I know, the land is rising as fast as the seas, the methane (in a slap in the face to scientists) will react with the CO2 to cancel it out and the free market will ensure all is well.

      Don’t cancel your swimming lessons just yet…

      • I certainly haven’t fixed climate change!

        The whole AGW topic has moved from being a subject of scientific interest to something resembling a religion, such that if I question any aspect of the current dogma I’m accused of being a “denier”. It’s just not a black/white topic.

        Let’s recap:

        1/ We are increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere: Yep 100% correct.

        2/ We have millions of years of history of highly variable climate: Yes 100% correct – even without our help…

        3/ Some recent average temperature changes could be due to human activity: Probably, although the unreliability of computer models to predict just one year ahead indicates that there are other factors at play which, as yet, we don’t fully understand.

        4/ In the last 40 million years the Earth has been in Ice Age for about 92% of the time, so if you want to worry about temperature, you’d should worry most about cold. One super-volcano and we’ll all be starving 😉

        http://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/toba_catastrophe_theory.htm

        5/ There is a 15 + year history of hysterical warnings over climate change, none of which have yet transpired. So pardon me for being a bit cynical and wondering about the motivations of some of these people.

    • Kiribati and Tuvalu are not sinking, in fact they are growing.

      That does not change the facts of climate change though. The world is getting warmer, the oceans more acidic, deserts are expanding and ice is melting. It is measurable fact. The cause is human industry and agriculture, the hypothesis has been proven. Repeatedly.

    • There is no point in trying to argue the “science”.
      The fundamental science was substantially settled over a century ago – we can quibble over details of how it plays out but the fundamental science of GHGs absorbing energy is immutable.

      The “debate” is really a proxy on how society and the world works i.e. it’s a political debate which the deniers dress up as a scientific debate.

      To a person whose political persuasion is that maximising individual freedoms to exploit the planet’s resources is the way to earthly nirvana, the concept of global warming (let’s remember that use of “climate change” is a term that was promoted by Frank Luntz as it suggests a more gradual change and less imminent problem) is more than an issue of climate. It’s a big threat to their whole philosophy.

      Global warming suggests that we’re all connected, an action here can have an influence there, that we operate inside a bigger interconnected whole that needs consideration. That’s a pretty big mindfuck for your basic Individualist/Authoritarian (see Cultural Cognition).

      And so, as the islands disappear as the extreme weather events increase in severity and frequency the denial will only increase. Because it’s very unlikely that anytime soon that the Andrews and Gosmans will wake up one day and think OMG I was wrong… and if it did happen at some time in the future it’d be too late. The only amusement will be watching their explanations become wilder and more exaggerated and more desperate while we try and explain just what the hell is going on to our kids and their kids.

      To quote Mark Twain “you can’t reason a man out of an opinion he didn’t reason himself into”.

      • The physics of gasses absorbing heat energy was indeed settled a long time ago.

        In the case of CO2 even the small amount currently in the atmosphere can absorb most of the heat in the wavelength that CO2 can interfere with (say 80%) so adding lots of CO2 will absorb less and less of that wavelength until it is saturated.

        So in a static atmospheric model adding CO2 will only increase temperature by a small amount (like ~1C -1.5C) and then stabilize at that level. But the whole climate change claim is based on this small increase destabilizing the atmosphere and causing runaway temperature increases. This was predicted to have happened many years ago but hasn’t occurred yet. So we’re left scratching our heads as to what will happen: certainly the predictions to date have been WAY off.

    • Ocean acidification Andrew …. Nuremberg type trials for the Andrews of our unique and sadly dilapidating planet soon i hope

      • Ah yes – a timely change of subject… So does that mean you’ve caved on the points I made above? 😉

        I’ve not followed the science on this aspect so I won’t comment either way.

        However, since the atoll drowning claim has turned out to be a complete lie, aren’t you concerned that ocean acidification is too, since it’s come from the same source?

  4. the rather large elephant Hanson missed is the methane.
    Arctic methane skyrocketing. Paul Beckwith
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2ckkxEnWpA
    The Arctic Methane Monster’s Rapid Rise
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9PshoYtoxo
    Our time is running out – The Arctic sea ice is going!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xdOTyGQOso
    Dr Natalia Shakhova East Siberian Arctic Shelf – Methane And Climate Change
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVi1lotRLRU

    If the above links don’t freak you out, you must be dead.

  5. Utter bollocks from cheque book scientists. A UN plan for compulsory global taxation. Agenda 21. Rampant capitalism and taxation is destroying the planet, such as fukushima disaster. A nuke plant making power to drive industry to make crap we dont need. so the elite can get rich of our slave labor. You want to save the planet stop participating at the consumerism and taxation level generating polluting activities to satisfy your egos.
    total idiots scientists included!

    • Utter bollocks from cheque book scientists. A UN plan… blah blah blah

      …and that just about about sums up the denier creed and depth of thinking.

      Nicely illustrated, muribaba.

  6. Latifa, I support your intention but you shouldn’t write about about “proof” in this context, as it buys into a common denier fallacy.

    The term is “evidence”, of which the scientific community has an overwhelming amount, that supports the existence of man made climate change.

    Science seldom deals with proof, it mostly deals with evidence, as it does in climate science. Mathematicians and logicians deal with proofs. Deniers know this, and so will always call for proof and talk up the existence of anomalies in the evidence.

    • Cheers Dick il take your reply as a compliment as can all who go through life with both eyes open we truly have greater depth to our thinking.
      A denier certinly not, change is, has and will always be happening. That being said do you really need a pollitition to force change by way of economic dissentive like they do with smoking? so the the for profit system can carry on tickitee boo. The artical correctly implies the cause being industrial expansion supporting so called modern civillisation. Which was my point, maybe a little obscure for some. In simpler terms People will be required to pay Tax for the solutions mandated by UN or other convensions.
      Which will in turn force MAN to do more of the activity which created to problem in the first place. Hence I refer to these people as idiots, really just a short way of saying one eyed shallow thinking ignorant primitive
      sorts god bless em. There bias is more to do with the fear of not being able to adapt if it means personal change. Do you realize the amount of petro-chemical-super-phosphate being dumped onto NZ farms so you can buy your food instead of growing it yourself.
      The pressing issue is our economic slavery to a self distructive system. Relying on centralized authority for a solution to Pollution and enviromental degradation. Authority whos determined to keep the for profit slavery system going as long as possible.
      Radiation Contamination land sea and air, fresh safe water, unatural stressers to our biology is going to kill us off long before we have to worry about wet feet from a rising tide.
      So Richard cheers for your reply i suggest opening the other eye aswell.
      And did you pay a mortgage or rent or have tax taken this week? Its being used to fund corporate welfare the very ones ultimately benefiting from the destruction of the enviroment and all wars.
      Perhaps some people need only one eye open when riding a high horse.

    • Your not a fan of Carl Popper then?

      Inductive evidence is of little worth, especially in complex systems.

      Some bedtime reading for you: The Logic of Scientific Discovery

      • Was Carl Popper a climate scientist?

        Did he assess data for NASA, NOAA, AGU?

        What was his contribution to the analysis of increased CO2 and rising temperatures?

        I look forward to your response, Andrew.

  7. Tim Groser and John Key and the rest of them have their heads firmly stuck inside a camel’s backside, I fear. Sadly so do far too many “ordinary” New Zealanders, not changing their daily living behaviour one tiny bit, and continuing to drive around in their individual motor vehicles to get to whatever destination, including the nearby corner shop.

    I am absolutely shocked also about the wide spread silence on the refugee crisis in many parts of the world, now becoming evident also to many Europeans, who seem completely unprepared and in disarray about how to help the hundreds of thousands streaming into the EU countries from the Near East, Middle East, certain places in Africa and even Central and South Asia.

    Right wing extremism is suddenly seeing another opportunity, to win public support and votes, using xenophobia and other fears to stir up the emotions. But at the same time governments and state agencies seem unable to get themselves organised, and to work together in addressing this development.

    That is just a tiny bit of what our future will look like, I fear. Over coming decades and centuries we will see radical changes to the global climate, we will see more significant sea level rises than many will have expected, and millions, tens or hundreds of millions will be displaced, not just by rising water levels, but by desertification, by flooding in other regions, by nasty, horrible, large storms that will devastate landscapes and human settlements.

    So New Zealand’s government seems to be sitting on the sideline. A major climate summit is about to take place in Paris, and the government goes there with rather humble offers to reduce emissions.

    In the meantime suburban dwellers keep driving around 24/7, to and from work, to do their shopping, to drive to see friends or go on holidays, all in their loved cars, as petroleum is cheap like it has not been for a long time, and as petrol prices are probably going to come down again.

    And then there is the wet dream of the economic experts, the business sector and banking sector who pay most of them, going on about growth, growth, new markets, bla, bla, bla, as if there are no finite resources.

    I see some huge shake up coming upon us, and most are busy living in Lala Land, that is apart the minority, who actually care and see the writing on the wall.

  8. Change the way you live or loose it all. At this stage you are going to loose most of it anyway.
    Check your personal carbon footprint.

  9. People living free on the land not needing to generate polluting causing profits for the privilege of being alive at no cost or harm to anyone or anything. Land and the inherent need for it to live on and laws allowing people to own more than they need to profit by creating immoral competition. land taxes (also tied to land values) Income taxes fees and fines keep this slave system rolling on at the planets and ultimately our expense. STOP that and you solve all problems to do with modern civilization be it health, enviroment, social cohesion, crime etc. etc…
    Fuk the RMA, and hand it down or hand it back!

  10. I have a theory Latifa, that the free market neo-liberal knuckleheads will be splashing away in the rising waters still claiming climate change hasn’t been proven and where the hell is the proof anyway…

    Let’s face it guys, there is no legal requirement for people to be intelligent.

    And nature certainly makes no exemptions for it.

    The donkeys will drown with the scientists and so will the innocent…

  11. The world may well be getting warmer (although cold temperatures are also claimed to be proof of man made climate change as well.)

    The fact is that the world has been gradually getting warmer for the last 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age when it was on average 8 deg C colder, and sea levels were 110 meters lower.

    It doesn’t prove its man made – its just as likely that the current overall trend is continuing, and is due to the well known fluctuations in the earth’s orbit.

    If human activity didn’t cause the last 110 meter rise in sea levels, why assume that the small rise currently observed is?

    • Bollocks! How about doing some proper scientific research on the subject – and I don’t mean trawling pseudo-scientific denier websites…….

          • I noticed that current temperatures and sea-levels are no different to similar points in numerous previous glacial cycles – is that the point you’re trying to make?

            • Difference is, Sceptic, that those temperature and sea level rises/changes occurred at… well… glacial speeds. Over millenia. The current rise in sea levels and temperature has occurred over mere decades. Since human beings have been pumping tonnes of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere.

              Just as our pumping of chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) into the atmosphere very nearly destroyed the Ozone Layer. Luckily we caught that one in time – thanks in part to people accepting the obvious and not being derailed by bogus counter-claims and Deniers motivated by trivial human politics.

              • The bogus claims being made are that temperatures and sea level rises have accelerated – they are actually less than the average rise since the end of the last ice age.

                Good to see you now no longer dispute these figures, now all you need to do is take the reasonable inference – that the climate has always been changing by much greater amounts and over shorter time periods than most people realise, and that hysteria is unnecessary.

                  • Exactly – not yet.

                    So to answer the question raised in the title of this blog post – I would like a lot more proof before turning the world economy upside down.

                    • I think by the time peiople like you are satisfied, Sceptic, I fear it may be too late.

                      Anyway, this is not about “evidence”. There is plenty there for anyone wanting to find it.

                      This is about fossil fuel industries funding denier-groups, and making this a “Left-Right” issue, when it’s not. It’s about deniers seeing anthropogenic climate change as some kind of left-wing conspiracy to undermine capitalism, when it’s not.

                      It’s interesting that most of the links to “evidence” opposing AGW does not link to climate organisations, Universities, NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and other scientific bodies. Instead they link to political, financial, fringe, or conspiracy websites. It’s interesting that AGW deniers will readily point to articles on Bloomberg – yet ignore NASA which has gathered vast amounts of satellite and antarctic ice-core data.

                      It’s like, the more data and evidence gathered, the wilder the opposing views presented…

                      I wonder if this is what it was like for scientists when they first presented evidence to the governing and religious authorities that (a) the Earth was not flat and (b) the Earth was not the centre of the solar system. (And we know the shit Darwin when he published his theories!)

                    • Nothing but unsupported assertions, Frank, and clearly you didn’t notice that I referenced a pro- climate change website, not a “denier” one.

                      I never cease to be amazed how many people, including you, are unaware of the repeated sea level rises and falls of 100’s of meters in regular cycles over geologically short timeframes, with no man made causes.

                      You say its not about evidence because there’s plenty of it out there, but don’t point to any. Its actually all theory and modelling about what might happen, the measured results are all within natural ranges.

                      Stop spreading hysteria.

                    • Do you even read these links Frank? The first one says:
                      “Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) in the last century. The rate in the last decade, however, is nearly double that of the last century”

                      17cm (or perhaps now 34cm) rise in seal level per century. Compare that to the 110meters rise in the last 10,000 years that you now seem to agree with – by simple maths this equals 110cm per century. So the current rate is either a third or a sixth of the average rise experienced since the end of the last ice age.

                      Hopefully you now see my point.

                    • Compare that to the 110meters rise in the last 10,000 years that you now seem to agree with – by simple maths this equals 110cm per century. /i

                      In simpleton maths, you are correct.

                      In simple maths it is 1.1cm.

                      It is no surprise that “sceptic” prefers the former.

                    • Whoops, I note you say per century, not per year, so I because I jumped the gun, I apologise and and withdraw comment.

                    • @Richard Christie

                      So will you then accept this evidence, make the obvious conclusions, and become less fanatical about climate change?

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