Their letter refers to the first world climate conference of 1979. However, the letter which was written by the scientists back then to President Nixon (which led to the climate conference) said the opposite - that we were approaching an ice age:
So I find it disturbing that they don’t mention that in this letter even though they claim they have been researching greenhouses gases causing warming since then.
"CHAMBERLIN (1897, 1898, 1899) presented in detail the geological implications of the carbon dioxide theory. As a result of these early articles, during that eriod the carbon dioxide explanation of climatic change. In recent years the carbon dioxide theory has had relatively few adherents. Most authors have dismissed this theory with a remark similar to the following quotation from C. E. P. BROOKS (1951): the carbon dioxide theory was “abandoned when it was found that all the long-wave radiation absorbed by CO, is also absorbed by water vapor.” This often quoted conclusion is based on early, approximate calculations of the radiation flux in the atmosphere. The results of more accurate calculations of the radiation flux have recently become available. Thus it seems worthwhile to reappraise the CO2, theory of climatic change."
Climate change is treated the same way it is today. People refuse to believe it, waste time doing nothing and then the pressure to ignore the problem grows with every single year fueling a vicious cycle.
The essence of the scientific method is testable predictions. When it keeps not happening, the perfectly rational - in fact scientific - response is to discount it. If you want to blame anyone blame the scientists who overegged the pudding once too often.
The ice age, acid rain, holes in the ozone layer etc etc were all presented by scientists as imminent existential threats, yet none of them materialised as such. Obviously “doom fatigue” has set in amongst the general population.
You are correct the essence of science is repeatable predictions. Sadly I don't think the majority demographic of HN was around to see all the other fear mongering that happened in decades past, so they just down-vote and move on, not thinking about what science actually entails. All of those real environmental issues where dealt with, in measured response and we survived. If we had listened to the extremists agendas we would have all started living in mud huts instead of taking lead out of gas and banning CFC's. There are real environmental disasters happening like the reef's dyeing near agricultural runoff and deforestation due to industrialization. These real issues get drowned out by this incessant fear mongering that cannot make an accurate prediction, because they try to conscript every disaster as being related to AGW, then the predictions go south when they try to support their claims. Fixing CO2 is not going to save the reefs, getting rid of nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from agricultural farming will. We know this for a fact, we have repeatable test that prove it conclusively. Fixing CO2 will not stop deforestation, the increase in CO2 has actually lead to a greener earth, controls on logging, returning to sane preventative burning policies and limiting growth into forest areas will.
I don't think the majority demographic of HN was around to see all the other fear mongering that happened in decades past
I suspect you’re correct. I remember when I was a child the children in my village were not allowed to play outside for a while because our parents had seen or read scare stories about acid rain and thought we would be burned by it! But I don’t believe there was a single case in Wales of a child being dissolved... and it rains here every day!
This piece is far short of a scientific paper, it has all the tells from proclaiming a vegan diet as healthy to advocating for population controls. This is not science it is an agenda paper. I mean what in the world does full gender equality have to do with the climate. I have no idea but it's in the papers conclusion as a must do to contain climate change. And why is a scientific climate piece advocating for social and economic justice.
Because environmentalism is either in the process of, or has already been hijacked by leftist radicals. Why does the Green New Deal Bill spend so much ink talking about universal healthcare, housing security, and labor unions?
Environmentalism is not an inherently leftist concept. Basic economics recognizes that externalized costs like pollution can lead to market failure. But instead of trying to build a coalition to push things like carbon taxes, leftists have co-opted the movement to peddle socialism.
It's only been hijacked because the centrists and right-wing people have let it be hijacked.
Up until a few years ago, the standard way to get bills passed was for Democrats and Republicans to jointly write bills. Failing that, they'd each write their own bill and then hammer together a compromise.
If the only politicians with a climate change proposal are those on the far left, they're the ones that are going to get heard and set the agenda. I'd love to see a nice Republican environmental proposal, something based on market economics, like a carbon tax & tariff (https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding) But until such exists, you can't complain about the far left setting the agenda.
Greta is on stage calling for not net zero emissions but actual zero. It’s a religion at this point complete with prophets (whose prophecies are always wrong) and demagogues.
> Because environmentalism is either in the process of, or has already been hijacked by leftist radicals.
Environmentalism has always been a cause of the (mostly, as now, center- rather than radical-) left.
> Why does the Green New Deal Bill spend so much ink talking about universal healthcare, housing security, and labor unions?
Because, as the name suggests, it is intended as a New Deal that is also Green. Sure, it's a left-of-center proposal. But where, if environmentalism isn't inherently left, is the equally strongly advocated proposal from the right?
The left isn't hijacking environmentalism, they are just the only group showing up for it.
> Basic economics recognizes that externalized costs like pollution can lead to market failure.
Basic conventional economics does recognize that, but that center-right isn't interested in much policy action based on that, and farther right factions reject conventional empirical economics for openly ideological schools that hold that markets can't fail they can only be failed.
> Environmentalism is not an inherently leftist concept
It's inherently inconsistent with the capitalist doctrine that is universal in the center-right to right. It's not fundamentally incompatible with some of the not-exactly-capitalist economic views of the far right, I guess, but it has other conflicts with most of them.
> But instead of trying to build a coalition to push things like carbon taxes
Left environmentalists would try harder to build a compromise coalition with other environmentalists around solutions that weren't specifically tied to other left-wing agenda items if, you know, any other environmentalists were showing up.
> leftists have co-opted the movement to peddle socialism.
Nah, it's using socialism to overcome the working classes natural resistance to policies whose broad outcomes they would prefer, but who know that without some guardrails the capitalist class is going to assure that the working class pays all the (gross) costs and more. That is, it's using socialism to peddle environmentalism, not the other way around.
Environmentalism has always been a cause of the (mostly, as now, center- rather than radical-) left.
This absolutely is not true. Who is, by a massive margin, the top polluting nation right now? Communist China. The Soviets did plenty of environmental damage also. Meanwhile the Western capitalist countries are all on a downward trend for emissions.
The “rapid industrialisation at any cost” approach is an essential hallmark of socialism, always has been. Human lives are of no importance to it, let alone plants or animals.
> > Environmentalism has always been a cause of the (mostly, as now, center- rather than radical-) left.
> This absolutely is not true.
Yes, it's true.
> Who is, by a massive margin, the top polluting nation right now?
Per capita? The top three (and they are very close to each other, with a decent gap to number 4) are Saudi Arabia, Australia, and the US.
> Communist China
Sure, the PRC is high in aggregate for the same reason that, say, Qatar is low in aggregate. (OTOH, Qatar is pretty high per capita.)
Also, even if the ROC was as bad as, say, the US, I don't think anyone has ever described the ROC as center-left.
> The “rapid industrialisation at any cost” approach is an essential hallmark of socialism
No, it's a hallmark of underdeveloped countries seeking to escape or protect against foreign domination, whether there governments are communist, right-wing nationalist, or anything else.
It's also a hallmark of unrestrained capitalism; the downward trend in Western mixed economies is a result of center-left environmentalist interest restraining capitalism.
In 1972 there were two things humans were doing that if they continued growing at the pace they were could seriously affect climate:
1. emitting CO2 and other greenhouse gases, which would cause warming, and
2. emitting air pollution in the form of particulates, which would cause cooling.
Most climate scientists though that #1 would be the stronger effect, although a few thought #2 would win out. The latter got more attention in the popular press and from politicians, probably because an ice age is a more dramatic image than a world a few degrees hotter.
There was a pretty big effort to address #2, for a variety of reasons. Probably the biggest is that this kind of pollution has an immediate effect. You can see it and smell it and taste it and feel it. These efforts paid off, and we greatly reduced this kind of emission.
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[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 62.8 ms ] threadhttps://i.imgur.com/X0DSNU1.jpg
So I find it disturbing that they don’t mention that in this letter even though they claim they have been researching greenhouses gases causing warming since then.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2153-3490....
The first paragraph:
"CHAMBERLIN (1897, 1898, 1899) presented in detail the geological implications of the carbon dioxide theory. As a result of these early articles, during that eriod the carbon dioxide explanation of climatic change. In recent years the carbon dioxide theory has had relatively few adherents. Most authors have dismissed this theory with a remark similar to the following quotation from C. E. P. BROOKS (1951): the carbon dioxide theory was “abandoned when it was found that all the long-wave radiation absorbed by CO, is also absorbed by water vapor.” This often quoted conclusion is based on early, approximate calculations of the radiation flux in the atmosphere. The results of more accurate calculations of the radiation flux have recently become available. Thus it seems worthwhile to reappraise the CO2, theory of climatic change."
Climate change is treated the same way it is today. People refuse to believe it, waste time doing nothing and then the pressure to ignore the problem grows with every single year fueling a vicious cycle.
The essence of the scientific method is testable predictions. When it keeps not happening, the perfectly rational - in fact scientific - response is to discount it. If you want to blame anyone blame the scientists who overegged the pudding once too often.
The ice age, acid rain, holes in the ozone layer etc etc were all presented by scientists as imminent existential threats, yet none of them materialised as such. Obviously “doom fatigue” has set in amongst the general population.
I suspect you’re correct. I remember when I was a child the children in my village were not allowed to play outside for a while because our parents had seen or read scare stories about acid rain and thought we would be burned by it! But I don’t believe there was a single case in Wales of a child being dissolved... and it rains here every day!
Environmentalism is not an inherently leftist concept. Basic economics recognizes that externalized costs like pollution can lead to market failure. But instead of trying to build a coalition to push things like carbon taxes, leftists have co-opted the movement to peddle socialism.
Up until a few years ago, the standard way to get bills passed was for Democrats and Republicans to jointly write bills. Failing that, they'd each write their own bill and then hammer together a compromise.
If the only politicians with a climate change proposal are those on the far left, they're the ones that are going to get heard and set the agenda. I'd love to see a nice Republican environmental proposal, something based on market economics, like a carbon tax & tariff (https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding) But until such exists, you can't complain about the far left setting the agenda.
Greta is on stage calling for not net zero emissions but actual zero. It’s a religion at this point complete with prophets (whose prophecies are always wrong) and demagogues.
Environmentalism has always been a cause of the (mostly, as now, center- rather than radical-) left.
> Why does the Green New Deal Bill spend so much ink talking about universal healthcare, housing security, and labor unions?
Because, as the name suggests, it is intended as a New Deal that is also Green. Sure, it's a left-of-center proposal. But where, if environmentalism isn't inherently left, is the equally strongly advocated proposal from the right?
The left isn't hijacking environmentalism, they are just the only group showing up for it.
> Basic economics recognizes that externalized costs like pollution can lead to market failure.
Basic conventional economics does recognize that, but that center-right isn't interested in much policy action based on that, and farther right factions reject conventional empirical economics for openly ideological schools that hold that markets can't fail they can only be failed.
> Environmentalism is not an inherently leftist concept
It's inherently inconsistent with the capitalist doctrine that is universal in the center-right to right. It's not fundamentally incompatible with some of the not-exactly-capitalist economic views of the far right, I guess, but it has other conflicts with most of them.
> But instead of trying to build a coalition to push things like carbon taxes
Left environmentalists would try harder to build a compromise coalition with other environmentalists around solutions that weren't specifically tied to other left-wing agenda items if, you know, any other environmentalists were showing up.
> leftists have co-opted the movement to peddle socialism.
Nah, it's using socialism to overcome the working classes natural resistance to policies whose broad outcomes they would prefer, but who know that without some guardrails the capitalist class is going to assure that the working class pays all the (gross) costs and more. That is, it's using socialism to peddle environmentalism, not the other way around.
This absolutely is not true. Who is, by a massive margin, the top polluting nation right now? Communist China. The Soviets did plenty of environmental damage also. Meanwhile the Western capitalist countries are all on a downward trend for emissions.
The “rapid industrialisation at any cost” approach is an essential hallmark of socialism, always has been. Human lives are of no importance to it, let alone plants or animals.
> This absolutely is not true.
Yes, it's true.
> Who is, by a massive margin, the top polluting nation right now?
Per capita? The top three (and they are very close to each other, with a decent gap to number 4) are Saudi Arabia, Australia, and the US.
> Communist China
Sure, the PRC is high in aggregate for the same reason that, say, Qatar is low in aggregate. (OTOH, Qatar is pretty high per capita.)
Also, even if the ROC was as bad as, say, the US, I don't think anyone has ever described the ROC as center-left.
> The “rapid industrialisation at any cost” approach is an essential hallmark of socialism
No, it's a hallmark of underdeveloped countries seeking to escape or protect against foreign domination, whether there governments are communist, right-wing nationalist, or anything else.
It's also a hallmark of unrestrained capitalism; the downward trend in Western mixed economies is a result of center-left environmentalist interest restraining capitalism.
1. emitting CO2 and other greenhouse gases, which would cause warming, and
2. emitting air pollution in the form of particulates, which would cause cooling.
Most climate scientists though that #1 would be the stronger effect, although a few thought #2 would win out. The latter got more attention in the popular press and from politicians, probably because an ice age is a more dramatic image than a world a few degrees hotter.
There was a pretty big effort to address #2, for a variety of reasons. Probably the biggest is that this kind of pollution has an immediate effect. You can see it and smell it and taste it and feel it. These efforts paid off, and we greatly reduced this kind of emission.
Move on, nothing to see here.
But this isn't an example of that happening. This is activism dressed up as science.
Their use of charts is a textbook example of how to mislead.
https://twitter.com/SamuelPatt/status/1191787079820365830?s=...