FloridaJohn

From your own link, "The current editor of Energy and Environment Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen ... states elsewhere 'I'm following my political agenda' " So you don't think that the editor of a journal who publically admits to following a personal political agenda is a problem for the credibility of a journal? But we can also look at it another way. Journals are judged by their Impact Factor that measures how useful to the body of scientific knowledge papers from that journal are. This includes, among other things, how many times those papers are cited in other research papers. Energy & Environment has an Impact Factor of 0.410. As a comparison, Nature has an Impact Factor of 42.351. So it is the opinion of other scientists that there isn't much good science coming from that journal. There is a difference between peer-reviewed and pal-reviewed. E&E is definately a pal reviewed journal. If you do a little more web searching on this journal, you will find that there are papers that passed the "peer" review of Energy & Environment that have basic math errors and other basic science gaffs, like one paper that claims the sun is made of iron. So you are free to assume that the reson for my statement is that I disagree with the results, but the real reason is because that journal has shown time and time again that it cannot filter out the bad science from the good. Therefore, all papers in that journal are suspect.

Ugh, Energy & Enviroment is not a good publication to cite from.

I notice that you have large doubts about the instrumental temperature record, however you seem quite confident in the measurements of the Holocene temperature record. I believe there is more uncertainty in that record than there is in the more recent instrumental temperature record. There does exist some Holocene temperature records that are cooler than our current temperatures. If I remember correctly, there is something like a 75% chance that we are already warmer than the highest temperature of the Holocene. Either way, it is safe to say that we are very near the top of the Holocene (either slightly above or slightly below). Interestingly, over your career you should be seeing less extreme events. The fact that the relative frequency has stayed the same is actually evidence that they are increasing, since rare events should become rarer over time (i.e. more years to divide by the number of rare events). Here's a pretty good description of that phenomenon. These extreme events are not evenly distributed around the globe, though. So it is possible that in your particular location the weather has been pretty stable. That doesn't mean it has been like that everywhere. I do agree that the news stations are hyping it up more than they used to which also affects our perceptions on what is happening.

So you believe we only have about 0.2C of warming left to go? So in a couple decades global temperatures will level out, even though we continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere?

No, I am not. Please enlighted me on what year the AI experts are predicting the robot apocalypse. In regards to economic revolution, my point was that your basic premise was in error as can be shown by history. Even a near collapse of the world banking system a couple years ago (remember that?) did not result in an "economic revolution." Gradually changing our sources of energy and increasing efficiency over a timeframe of several decades will not result in an "economic revolution." But maybe that is too abstract for you to handle.

It's grim, but it is not hopeless. The world has come together on similar circumstances in the past, so it is possible to make it happen again in the future. The battle is tougher now, because the invested interests have learned from their past mistakes and are more formidable adversary now, and, as you pointed out, human nature works against these sort of initiatives. It's a literal tragedy of the commons. It will happen, but it won't be easy or quick.

Sorry, no they don't. That second article is just a summary of the first article. Neither Stephen Hawking nor Bill Gates are experts in Artificial Intelligence. But even ignoring that, this is not something society should be concerned with at the moment. There is almost an infinate number of things that could change that would make their prediction never happen. The "warning" they are giving has been around since the 1950s. As of yet, none of those predictions have come true. I do believe that one day there will be robots that look and act human walking among us, but that day is very, very far away. The time that HAL from the movie 2001 or the Terminator exist is much farther in the future than that. What I do know is that continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere will result in changes to the environment that are harmful to our society. Those changes will be more disruptive, cost more, and happen long begore the threat of robots taking over the earth. If you want something to be concerned about that is within our current event horizon, climate change is it.

That's a good point. When resources get scarce in Country A, but are still plentiful in nearby Country B, Country A will invade Country B to get access to those resources. The news will report it as "unrest in central Albania," and won't link the cause directly as climate change, but climate change will be an underlying factor in situations like this.

I disagree. Who will be programming those "humanless" financial advisors? Who will build the robots? Who will program the robots? Who will repair and upgrade the robots? Who will design next year's version of the robot/software/etc? Even discounting all of that, the economy will invent and require new jobs that we haven't even thought of. 100 years ago, who ever thought there would be such a job as a "web programmer?" Or a "software programmer?" Of course, the demand for horse-drawn carriages has subsided dramatically since then, too. So there will always be jobs, they will just be different. Just like there always has been. People will still be able to aquire wealth and the incentive to do such that implies. Global warming, in the long run, is a net negative for humans and most animals. Our advanced society has existed only in the climate we are experiencing today. Our cities, transportation, and farming practices are finely honed to work in this climate. Major disruptions will only make these less efficient and more expensive. Gaining farm land in more northern lattitudes will not be able to offset the farm land lost further south. Not only is that northern land less hospitable to farming (poorer soil, etc.), but the amount of light available is different than what we have now. Growing season will have to start later due to available sunlight, and it will be shorter in length. We are unsure at this point if these new, further north farmlands will have enough rain during the growing season in a new, warmer climate. Or maybe too much rain. This doesn't account for all the coastal cities that will be lost to sea level rise. How much cost is there to build giant seawalls to hold back the ocean, or to relocate entire populations? These are not trivial tasks. All current research shows that it is far cheaper to stop emitting CO2 now than it will be to live with the effects in the future. That will have a larger effect on the ecomony than the concern of losing jobs to robots.

Thanks, Phillip.

[An aside: Boy, this forum software is really hard to work with. I was trying to do this reply as a multi-quote post, but never got it to work.] I have yet to see you build an argument on any topic. Usually it is unsubstatiated, unreferenced charts. Where are the links to the papers that back up your positon? Where are the rebuttals to counter-arguments from fellow board members? In order to be a skeptic, you need to be skeptical of other positions as well as your own. If you aren't willing to examine your own biases and pre-concieved notions, then you are a contrarian, not a skeptic. When you say "None of what you folks on this forum have presented anything that would convince a skeptic like me" that sounds to me like someone who has already made up their mind as is not open to new data or ideas. Very unskepic-like. Regarding your idea that "There is not enough land ice...glaciers... to abruptly change ocean currents which abruptly change climate," I guess it depends on what you call "abrubt" climate change. If you think people are contending that there is an upcoming "Day After Tomorrow" scenario in the works, then you are mistaken on what "abrubt climate change" is. We are already experiencing abrubt climate change, as multiple records show there are very few analogs to the radipdly changing temperature which we are currently experiencing. Our society is highly optimized to live in our current climate. Large changes to this will cause a major disruption to our lifestyle. Miami, for example, has already had nine inches of sea level rise in the last century. This was fairly easy to cope with. The next nine inches will not be as easy, and the nine inches after that will be even less so. And each increment of nine inches of rise will come in less time. So 100 years for the first, maybe 80 for the next, 50 for the one after that, and maybe 20 after that. There comes a point when you can't hold the ocean back anymore, and the city has to be abandoned. How disruptive do you think that will be? How about animal and plant species that have evolved for a certain range of climates? As the world warms, they can safely move to higher elevations. But eventually, they run out of mountain, and then die off. There is evidence that this is already happening. We, as a society, are already using the ideal locations to grow crops to feed the population. If those become less ideal due to reduced rain, excessive rain, warmer temperatures, etc. feeding people will become more difficult and more expensive. There are lots of other examples where even moderate climate change has negative consequences for our society. Calling CO2 a "trace gas" shows a lack of understanding about the chemistry of our atmosphere. CO2 has unique properties that makes it's influence outweigh it's proportion of the atmosphere. This can be proven in lab experiments, so I don't understand you "skepticism" on the mechanics of it's influence on our climate. The models you use every day are not the same models the climate scientists are using. Your models are highly tuned to return useful information in extremely short timescales. Timescales that have no influence on long-term climate. So your experience with short-term models is not really applicable to long-term models. For example, I could use the model y=mx+b. This is a really good model that describes a line. But it is a lousy model for describing a sine wave, which is better modeled by the function y=sinx. Now, depending on what values I pick for m and b in my model of a line, I can have several values of y that will fit both the line model and the sine wave model. But that doesn't mean that my line model is somehow flawed, or that my sine wave model is not accurate. They are modeling different things, so they react differently, even if they share the same x and y values. This is how you have to think about climate models. They are not the same thing you work with every day. Anyway, I look forward to your rebuttal to why you chose that particular graph to illustrate your point.

I see no evidence of this. You have yet to build any argument (credible or otherwise) to back up your statements. When presented with conflicting data, you simply ignore it. Where are the studies, reports, etc. that back up you assertions? For that matter, where have you been proven wrong and admitted it? What I have seen is when you get backed into a corner, you disappear from the forum. 10-12 months later you reappear with the same debunked arguments as before, without any new data.

In which way? Please elaborate on your above statement.