tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2313427464944392482.post963466747553660020..comments2024-03-25T05:30:23.847+11:00Comments on HotWhopper: How scientists feel about climate change plus Anthony Watts mixes logic and emotionSouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08818999735123752034noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2313427464944392482.post-52157080496670253582014-08-27T15:08:32.476+10:002014-08-27T15:08:32.476+10:00Dan, as an ecologist also I feel exactly the same ...Dan, as an ecologist also I feel exactly the same things that you do, and Anthony Richardson's letter echoes my own thoughts.<br /><br />I've often spoken about Dan Pauli's shifting baseline concept, and I see it manifesting more frequently, and more strongly, over the last few years. I also see the precipitous decline of many species I worked with during my Masters and PhD candidatures, and in my professional life afterward, and I know that many if not most are already committed to extinction by human-caused global warming. And yet getting politicians, bureaucrats, and uninformed lay people to understand and appreciate the loss seems to be an impossible task...<br /><br />The Great Barrier Reef is an extraordinary manifestation of this. What many people fail to understand is that it's decline will follow an increasingly-precipitous decline trajectory (whether hyperbolic, exponential, sigmoid, or similar) where things will seem to tick along fine for a while, and then a calamatous failure will occur over a relatively short period. It's pretty much already locked-in as a consequence of inevitable carbon dioxide emissions, and the Coalition government's kowtowing to the fossil fuel industry in terms of export through the World Heritage Area is simply shitting on the corpse before it dies.<br /><br />Many other ecosystems will follow to a greater or lesser extent, and this will include systems on which we inextricably rely.<br /><br />The problem is that human thinking at both cultural and species levels is fundamentally flawed. Oh, the way it evolved to a few thousand years ago is fine, as it produced useful algorithms to cope with lions and tigers and bears, but the refinement of the algorithms wasn't honed at the same scale of time required for the evolutionary experiments of opposable thumbs and bipedalism, and of complex language and symbolism, to manifest their synergies. The result is that magical thinking trumps logical and informed understanding.<br /><br />This is exemplied in the typical incorrect assumptions that predict the result of the two-balloons experiment. Humans too frequently assume that one system can reliably describe another - for example that two inflated, connected balloons would mirror in action two bodies of water at different heights, linked by a tube - when such assumptions ignore other conditional phenomena such as hysteresis (which, by the way, is why the Coalition is likely about to set back higher education and research in Australia by at least a generation).<br /><br />Humanity's respond to global warming has been the same as that of a smoker who has the beginning of emphysema but who won't listen to his doctor's exhortations to quit. There's simply a disconnect between the addicted-to behaviour and the consequenses of the same. And like the smoker we've already committed the planet to severe damage: the question is how badly we'll compound it before we try to pull away...<br /><br />Of course, on the greater scale of time evolution will realise that the experiment with intelligent, standing, chattering apes was a bit of a mistake, and eventually clean up after the mess.<br /><br />I hope that every one of the people who deny the existence of, and/or obstruct action on, human-caused climate change tells as many of their friends and family that they do so. In that way there will at least be folk around who know who are the people who have been complicit in the destruction of the only habitable planet in the known universe.<br /><br />Our kids will want to know who it was that scuttled their ship. Bernard J.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2313427464944392482.post-10268425612234206302014-08-24T03:22:48.844+10:002014-08-24T03:22:48.844+10:00Sou
If they really weren't concerned about it...Sou<br /><br /><i>If they really weren't concerned about it, they'd not spend hours every day on anti-science blogs.</i><br /><br />Oh yes. As I have said before, they are terrified. Partly of CC (hence the vehemence of the denial) and partly of being forced to accept that there is no freedom without responsibility. They are very like children.BBDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10687930416706386215noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2313427464944392482.post-17861090403263179882014-08-23T15:37:43.288+10:002014-08-23T15:37:43.288+10:00Punchy. That is what these Wattsian impulsives mak...Punchy. That is what these Wattsian impulsives make me feel. Their common value is disrespect, born from willful ignorance.Anthony Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02513872551156179165noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2313427464944392482.post-71260679734073565592014-08-23T04:47:41.471+10:002014-08-23T04:47:41.471+10:00"In the end, the WUWT crowd are just a bunch ..."In the end, the WUWT crowd are just a bunch of good-for-nothing layabouts".<br /><br />Your comment pretty much sums it up. They are intellectually lazy.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11552461190113661645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2313427464944392482.post-90149177390290716132014-08-22T17:16:15.255+10:002014-08-22T17:16:15.255+10:00It's observing the people around me that makes...It's observing the people around me that makes me despair: the addiction to a slob lifestyle where everytime you leave your property boundary you do so in a car, even if its to drive just 200 yards to the local shops.<br /><br />In the vastness of the US or Oz it might be necessary to own and drive a car. but here in the densely packed island that is the UK it is very easy to live without one. But its very rare. And what makes it even more odd is that living without a car has considerable benefits for your health and your finances. I would not have been able to retire before I was 50 if I'd been giving a large chunk of my disposable income to the oil and motor lobby over the previous 30 years. And I would not have been so fit and healthy. I get told how 'lucky I am' by people who could have been in the same position if only they'd been prepared to get off their fat arses.<br /><br />But it goes beyond even that now. We had an air pollution incident where the combination of weather and diesel engine pollution was killing people. Not even that would stop the slobs from driving, even for just a few days until it cleared. It seems to me that my generation is, very largely, the dregs of humanity.Millicentnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2313427464944392482.post-67438922313568868282014-08-22T14:48:31.380+10:002014-08-22T14:48:31.380+10:00"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn y..."One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out"<br /><br />In an entirely different context, I still recall my favourite saying that I used to have pinned to the wall of my office cubicle. <br /><br />= If enough people beat their heads against a brick wall, it _will_ fall down. =adeladynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2313427464944392482.post-45022960268146815742014-08-22T13:34:43.648+10:002014-08-22T13:34:43.648+10:00Watts and his readers remain clueless about scienc...Watts and his readers remain clueless about science and the environment, and are only interested in a pissing contest about their indifference??<br /><br />Who knew?Nickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09537772941984056434noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2313427464944392482.post-77018186766635931772014-08-22T05:00:00.133+10:002014-08-22T05:00:00.133+10:00Eric Holthaus writes about that we should be appea...Eric Holthaus writes about that we should be appealing more to people's emotions to raise awareness of climate change.<br /><br />http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/08/20/climate_change_alarmist_optimistic_realistic_not_na_ve_assessment_of_global.html<br /><br />Reading Anthony and co's comments on his blog made me so angry. He and his followers really can be nasty pieces of work.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2313427464944392482.post-88047073857969437222014-08-22T04:29:38.389+10:002014-08-22T04:29:38.389+10:00Glad to see there was one letter from a biologist....Glad to see there was one letter from a biologist. I'm a wildlife biologist/ecologist and understand that viewpoint. Where most people admire a coral reef and its denizens, I see what once was there, I see the decay, I see the sickness. I know what species should be there and in what numbers.<br /><br />Same with forests. I see the trees that once would have been there, I see a bird species and know that even within my lifetime it would have been 80% more abundant. I hear the chorus of birds in the spring mornings, and recognize it's just a former shadow of the chorus from 40 years ago, a 100 years ago, 500 years ago. <br /><br />In short, I see slow creeping death nearly everywhere I look. The sound of birds migrating overhead at night makes me shed quiet sad tears---I'm not quite sure why...it's all jumbled and confused but there's a sense of loss, a sense that things are damaged, a sense of passing like maybe the magic is slowly draining from the world. <br /><br />To counter the sadness and sometimes despair, I read Edward Abbey's quote a couple of times a week (it's pasted on my desk wall). It starts, "One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out". Google the rest if you haven't read it---well worth it. Dan Andrewsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2313427464944392482.post-76471390800750444652014-08-22T03:02:14.888+10:002014-08-22T03:02:14.888+10:00I dropped a single drive-by comment there, which I...I dropped a single drive-by comment there, which I expect will be greeted with fury and/or removed. What a den of fools. palindromnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2313427464944392482.post-10385173925318030512014-08-22T02:05:35.145+10:002014-08-22T02:05:35.145+10:00You may be right, Victor. It's as good an expl...You may be right, Victor. It's as good an explanation as any for why people who don't think climate change is anything to concern us, why they spend so many hours of the day, days of the week, weeks of the year, and years of their lives shouting their denial from the (cyber) rooftops.<br /><br />If they really weren't concerned about it, they'd not spend hours every day on anti-science blogs.Souhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08818999735123752034noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2313427464944392482.post-74702415165088120392014-08-22T01:56:35.389+10:002014-08-22T01:56:35.389+10:00Those of us who don't work in climate science ...<i>Those of us who don't work in climate science or an environmental science - we spend most of our time thinking about other matters, like earning a living or caring for family and friends or simply enjoying life as it happens day by day, or struggling through life as the case may be. We can avoid thinking about what we are doing to the world for much of the time. People who work in climate science every day - they cannot avoid it.</i> <br /><br />I do not think that climate scientists think more about the worrying possible consequences of climate change as you do. Most of the time you are thinking of how to get a detail of a detail of a specific small question as accurate as possible. During working hours there is normally no need to think of the big picture, except those few that are active in science communication.<br /><br /><i>Maybe people will look back from the future and be as perplexed as we are today at the incomprehensible reaction to science that some humans manage to maintain.</i><br /><br />These humans only claim to have problems with the science. There is no need to assume they really do. If they were interested in better science, you would expect them to put much more care into selecting the best possible counter arguments, instead of publishing the most improbable nonsense possible. Most likely they simply do not like mitigation and pledge allegiance to their cause this way. Victor Venemahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02842816166712285801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2313427464944392482.post-48170630216933195962014-08-22T01:48:04.692+10:002014-08-22T01:48:04.692+10:00I learned cursive in Canada in the 80s; seems to s...I learned cursive in Canada in the 80s; seems to still be taught, according to some rants from a friend in the US whose school-age kid is suffering it. Apparently there's a debate there about whether to stop teaching it.numerobisnoreply@blogger.com