Are even people who trust the science of climate change in denial of its seriousness?

[repoman]

By denial, I mean it being one of the stages of bargaining with the guilt and grief for our near future generations.

I have been getting down to the nuts and bolts of layman resources about climate change on my own for a about a month now in my free time. Finally reading the basic details about long range effects of these greenhouse gases and not focusing on the details of how the warming will happen (like how much different layers of the ocean will warm and when) the end result is that higher CO2 levels DICTATE a higher equilibrium temperature. This is not a maybe, this is rock solid science very close to the 2+2=4 level of certainty.

I almost feel as if it is being undersold because if it were talked about in the more dispassionate terms people just would get discouraged and depressed. Some would also feel threatened and lash out against the messenger.

Personally, once it really hit me the level that we will be screwed especially with relation to sea level and our very coastal civilization, it was like a body blow.

However, that was the only way that I was able to focus my thinking to PLAUSIBLE remedies - which are well known though require a serious investment. I am just some Joe Blow, so I am not saying this to build myself up, but I think we all need to some through this bad news and see reality for what it is now.

The remedies really can only be done by massive geo-engineering. CO2 sequestration (temporary and permanent) by any means possible. Mass release of aerosols which can cause many unwanted side effects. Placement of high albedo, sunlight reflective/infrared emissive material in whatever places are possible.

So does anyone here agree/disagree that the average person who trusts the climate scientists and not the skeptics is in denial of its import?

 

[repoman]

I hopefully will not be going to any discussion websites for the next month now, so I am not ignoring any responses on purpose.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We will have a higher temperature. For those in the developed world this will be a problem. The real catastrophe will be in the third world, though.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The problem with climate change is that in such massive systems, it may be absolute folly to try and predict the outcome. It may be more catastrophic than we think, it may be a drop in the bucket. We can hardly predict the weather that far out, forget try to accurately determine the effects of man's presence on the globe with the entire ecosystem. I tend to follow the "we should try not to fuck the globe" approach. Our laissez-faire attitude (based mostly on ignorance and not malice) on the environment back in the late 1800's and 1900's led to dust storms, rivers catching on fire, etc... The dust storms are really notable because that was a very large scale affect of man's attempts to farm in the central plain states. So clearly man can have substantial influence on the environment.

Independent of climate change, the truth is that energy is going to get very very expensive with China and India developing. They are already causing trouble with oil demand and they use a tiny fraction per capita that the US uses. So we need to ween ourselves as much off of carbon sources of fuel as soon as possible both for national security and economic sustainability.

 

[Underseer]

If you believe that the Earth is getting warmer, then you have been duped by a massive international conspiracy involving over 90% of scientists from the relevant field and over 90% of all scientists.

Ultraconservatives, right wing think tanks, and the employees of oil companies and coal companies are the only available source of unbiased information on this topic.

Also, the warming that is definitely not happening was definitely not caused by humans. [/conservolibertarian]

 

[Shadowy Man]

When the Center for Naval Analyses came out with a report saying that climate change is going to increase instability around the world due to its impact on resources and the struggle for those resources I became quite crestfallen about the future in which my child will grow up. If retired generals saying that climate change is a threat to national security won't convince Congress to take any action, then we're basically hopeless.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

If you believe that the Earth is getting warmer, then you have been duped by a massive international conspiracy involving over 90% of scientists from the relevant field and over 90% of all scientists.

Ultraconservatives, right wing think tanks, and the employees of oil companies and coal companies are the only available source of unbiased information on this topic.

Also, the warming that is definitely not happening was definitely not caused by humans. [/conservolibertarian]

Ya, it's great that we have that plucky band of oil company executives to look out for us!

 

[Turambar]

We will have a higher temperature. For those in the developed world this will be a problem. The real catastrophe will be in the third world, though.

i think you underestimate developing nations (or third world as some people still likes to call them). These are countries undergoing tremendous changes, with populations in average much younger than the developed countries. I was born and raised in Latin America, and still travel through the region twice or thrice a year. The people there are mostly young, optimistic, dynamic and full of hope. I believe that when (or if) climate change accelerates pace and hits us harder, devleoping countries will be able to adapt much faster than the developed ones. Developed and industrialized countries have invested trillions of dollars in infrastructure designed entirely on the average climate their respective regions had during the last 100-200 years. How are you going to change that infrastructure without incurring enourmous costs? Developing nations have little infrastructure and abundance of cheap labor.... We are the ones who will be screwed.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We will have a higher temperature. For those in the developed world this will be a problem. The real catastrophe will be in the third world, though.

i think you underestimate developing nations (or third world as some people still likes to call them). These are countries undergoing tremendous changes, with populations in average much younger than the developed countries. I was born and raised in Latin America, and still travel through the region twice or thrice a year. The people there are mostly young, optimistic, dynamic and full of hope. I believe that when (or if) climate change accelerates pace and hits us harder, devleoping countries will be able to adapt much faster than the developed ones. Developed and industrialized countries have invested trillions of dollars in infrastructure designed entirely on the average climate their respective regions had during the last 100-200 years. How are you going to change that infrastructure without incurring enourmous costs? Developing nations have little infrastructure and abundance of cheap labor.... We are the ones who will be screwed.

The problem is that they don't have the resources to implement the fixes that will be needed.

For example, we can respond to drought by throwing up nuke plants running desalinators.

 

[skepticalbip]

We will have a higher temperature. For those in the developed world this will be a problem. The real catastrophe will be in the third world, though.

i think you underestimate developing nations (or third world as some people still likes to call them). These are countries undergoing tremendous changes, with populations in average much younger than the developed countries. I was born and raised in Latin America, and still travel through the region twice or thrice a year. The people there are mostly young, optimistic, dynamic and full of hope. I believe that when (or if) climate change accelerates pace and hits us harder, devleoping countries will be able to adapt much faster than the developed ones. Developed and industrialized countries have invested trillions of dollars in infrastructure designed entirely on the average climate their respective regions had during the last 100-200 years. How are you going to change that infrastructure without incurring enourmous costs? Developing nations have little infrastructure and abundance of cheap labor.... We are the ones who will be screwed.

The problem is that they don't have the resources to implement the fixes that will be needed.

For example, we can respond to drought by throwing up nuke plants running desalinators.

But it takes on the order of a decade to "throw up a nuke plant". By the time it is operational, everyone who could have used it would be dead or moved on elsewhere.

 

[Petrel]

Are even people who trust the science of climate change in denial of its seriousness?

Yes. It's like the scenario you see in movies, where a missile or something is heading for New York, and the government won't tell the people, because they can't all be evacuated anyway, so why cause a panic?

They know - and probably have known for the last 30 years, as I have - that nothing can be done. The people in positions of political power, who could have made the necessary changes, didn't have the mandate or the honesty or the courage. The people who own the politicians didn't want anything done - because sensible adjustments to our lifestyle was incompatible with their megaprofits.

Besides, somebody has been saying "This will be the end of our civilization"* for thousands of years, and we're still here; anything that's been forecast and didn't happen can never happen, right?

(*And a couple of dozen civilizations did end. It's a bad idea to fund education - people might notice the discrepancies.)

 

[Kharakov]

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFRcFm-aY&feature=kp[/YOUTUBE]

The ones who get screwed the most will be the poor, unintelligent, disconnected people like me.

 

[OLDMAN]

Oceans will rise over the next one hundred years, buildings and populations will get moved. Some will die. The one graph that Gore left out of his talk was population growth. It rises nicely with CO 2 and warming levels. Mankind will survive. All it would take is a major volcanic eruption to cover the earth with dust clouds and the temps would drop to freezing overnight. My problem with people who complain about global warming never see themselves as the cause. Just buy more plastic junk and drive to walmart.

 

[Underseer]

If you believe that the Earth is getting warmer, then you have been duped by a massive international conspiracy involving over 90% of scientists from the relevant field and over 90% of all scientists.

Ultraconservatives, right wing think tanks, and the employees of oil companies and coal companies are the only available source of unbiased information on this topic.

Also, the warming that is definitely not happening was definitely not caused by humans. [/conservolibertarian]

Ya, it's great that we have that plucky band of oil company executives to look out for us!

If not for them, there would be no one to oppose this vast international conspiracy by over 90% of the world's scientists.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We will have a higher temperature. For those in the developed world this will be a problem. The real catastrophe will be in the third world, though.

i think you underestimate developing nations (or third world as some people still likes to call them). These are countries undergoing tremendous changes, with populations in average much younger than the developed countries. I was born and raised in Latin America, and still travel through the region twice or thrice a year. The people there are mostly young, optimistic, dynamic and full of hope. I believe that when (or if) climate change accelerates pace and hits us harder, devleoping countries will be able to adapt much faster than the developed ones. Developed and industrialized countries have invested trillions of dollars in infrastructure designed entirely on the average climate their respective regions had during the last 100-200 years. How are you going to change that infrastructure without incurring enourmous costs? Developing nations have little infrastructure and abundance of cheap labor.... We are the ones who will be screwed.

The problem is that they don't have the resources to implement the fixes that will be needed.

For example, we can respond to drought by throwing up nuke plants running desalinators.

But it takes on the order of a decade to "throw up a nuke plant". By the time it is operational, everyone who could have used it would be dead or moved on elsewhere.

1) It doesn't take a decade to make a nuke plant if you line up all the obstructionists and shoot them. (I'm *NOT* saying to cut corners on safety. I'm saying to not permit delaying tactics. The *MAJORITY* of the construction time these days is red tape.)

2) Climate change won't happen overnight. We will have time to react.

 

[Petrel]

It's already happened. We had plenty of time to react, and didn't. Pity.

 

[skepticalbip]

Oceans will rise over the next one hundred years, buildings and populations will get moved. Some will die. The one graph that Gore left out of his talk was population growth. It rises nicely with CO 2 and warming levels. Mankind will survive. All it would take is a major volcanic eruption to cover the earth with dust clouds and the temps would drop to freezing overnight. My problem with people who complain about global warming never see themselves as the cause. Just buy more plastic junk and drive to walmart.

Over the next one hundred years, over seven billion people will die even if they are provided all the food, clothing, and shelter they want and sea levels remain constant.

Even without AGW, sea levels will change. We are in an interstatial period of an ice age so glaciers have retreated, not vanished causing sea levels to rise about a hundred meters from their level during the last glaciatian period. From here one of two things will occur. Either we leave the interstatial period and return to a period of much greater glaciatian or we leave the ice age we are currently in and we loose the perminent ice caps completely (like a few million years ago). The first case will see sea levels drop about a hundred meters. The second case will see sea levels rise about a hundred meters.

 

[barbos]

In a hundred years most of the food will most certainly be synthetic requiring very little or no water and nutrients which will be recycled.
And yes I find it curios but we are actually lucky to have warm climate. For the most of the recent (last 20-50 million years) history we were under snow most of the time. In fact global cooling is probably worse than global warming.

 

[dcwolf]

In fact global cooling is probably worse than global warming.

The scientific history of Earth indicates the opposite. Four of the five largest mass extinctions in the planet's history have occurred due to global warming.

That is the result we're faced with. Not just in the animal kingdom but also whole foods...

 

[skepticalbip]

In fact global cooling is probably worse than global warming.

The scientific history of Earth indicates the opposite. Four of the five largest mass extinctions in the planet's history have occurred due to global warming.

That is the result we're faced with. Not just in the animal kingdom but also whole foods...

Where did you get such a nonsensical absolute certain claim?

Ordovician–Silurian extinction event

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovician–Silurian_extinction_event

The immediate cause of extinction appears to have been the movement of Gondwana into the south polar region. This led to global cooling, glaciation and consequent sea level fall. The falling sea level disrupted or eliminated habitats along the continental shelves.[2][6] Evidence for the glaciation was found through deposits in the Sahara Desert. A combination of lowering of sea level and glacially driven cooling are likely driving agents for the Ordovician mass extinction.[6]

Late Devonian extinction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Devonian_extinction
The causes of these extinctions are unclear. Leading theories include changes in sea level and ocean anoxia, possibly triggered by global cooling or oceanic volcanism. The impact of a comet or another extraterrestrial body has also been suggested.[8] Some statistical analysis suggests the decrease in diversity was caused more by a decrease in speciation than by an increase in extinctions.[9][5] This might have been caused by invasions of cosmopolitan species, rather than any single event.[5] Surprisingly, jawed vertebrates seem to have been unaffected by the loss of reefs or other aspects of the Kellwasser event, while agnathans were in decline long before the end of the Frasnian.[10]

Permian–Triassic extinction event

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_event
There are several proposed mechanisms for the extinctions; the earlier phase was probably due to gradual environmental change, while the latter phase has been argued to be due to a catastrophic event. Suggested mechanisms for the latter include one or more large bolide impact events, massive volcanism, coal/gas fires and explosions from the Siberian Traps,[13] and a runaway greenhouse effect triggered by sudden release of methane from the sea floor due to methane clathrate dissociation or methane-producing microbes;[14] possible contributing gradual changes include sea-level change, increasing anoxia, increasing aridity, and a shift in ocean circulation driven by climate change.

Triassic–Jurassic extinction event

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triassic–Jurassic_extinction_event

Several explanations for this event have been suggested, but all have unanswered challenges:
 Gradual climate change, sea-level fluctuations or a pulse of oceanic acidification[6] during the late Triassic reached a tipping point. However, this does not explain the suddenness of the extinctions in the marine realm.
 Asteroid impact, but so far no impact crater of sufficient size has been dated to coincide with the Triassic–Jurassic boundary. The eroded Rochechouart crater in France has most recently been dated to 201 ±2 million years ago,[7] but at 25 km across (possibly up to 50 km across originally), appears to be too small.[8] (The impact responsible for the annular Manicouagan Reservoir occurred about 12 million years before the extinction event - the Rochechouart crater is now thought to have been caused by part of the same fragmented impactor.)
 Massive volcanic eruptions, specifically the flood basalts of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP), would release carbon dioxide or sulfur dioxide and aerosols, which would cause either intense global warming (from the former) or cooling (from the latter).[9][10]

Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous–Paleogene_extinction_event

Such an impact would have inhibited photosynthesis by generating a dust cloud that blocked sunlight for a year or less, and by injecting sulfuric acid aerosols into the stratosphere, which would have reduced sunlight reaching the Earth's surface by 10–20%. It would take at least ten years for those aerosols to dissipate, which would account for the extinction of plants and phytoplankton, and of organisms dependent on them (including predatory animals as well as herbivores). Small creatures whose food chains were based on detritus would have a reasonable chance of survival.[78][93] The consequences of reentry of ejecta into Earth's atmosphere would include a brief (hours long) but intense pulse of infrared radiation, killing exposed organisms.[49] Global firestorms likely resulted from the heat pulse and the fall back to Earth of incendiary fragments from the blast. Recent research indicates that the global debris layer deposited by the impact contained enough soot to suggest that the entire terrestrial biosphere had burned.[112] The high O
2 levels during the late Cretaceous would have supported intense combustion. The level of atmospheric O
2 plummeted in the early Cenozoic era. If widespread fires occurred, they would have increased the CO
2 content of the atmosphere and caused a temporary greenhouse effect once the dust cloud settled, and this would have exterminated the most vulnerable organisms that survived the period immediately after the impact.[113]
The impact may also have produced acid rain, depending on what type of rock the asteroid struck. However, recent research suggests this effect was relatively minor, lasting for approximately 12 years.[93] The acidity was neutralized by the environment, and the survival of animals vulnerable to acid rain effects (such as frogs) indicate this was not a major contributor to extinction. Impact theories can only explain very rapid extinctions, since the dust clouds and possible sulfuric aerosols would wash out of the atmosphere in a fairly short time—possibly within 10 years.[114]

Contrary to your absolute certainty of the cause of the extinctions, actual scientists concerned with the matter have several theories, all debated. Also different extinction events have different theories to explain them and global warming isn’t their “go-to” solution to the mysteries. If you read through the above ideas given for the various extinctions you will find that global cooling (not global warming) is one of the contributers considered for most of them.