"Increasing carbon emissions in the atmosphere are having a warming effect." - ExxonMobil

Pretty sure that ship has sailed...

@Snarflak Hahaha. ExxonMobil looks pretty independient. I recommend you to check your sources

@Rupert "independient"?

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@Rupert Investigation of what? Invest time in what? I already know that CO₂ causes global warming.

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@Rupert "Independent" of what?

@Snarflak do not expect to get the conclusions made by others plz.

@Rupert Your comments don't even make sense. I'm going to block you because conversations like this are a waste of my time on this earth.

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Other questions that do not have answers:

1. If the clouds are irrelevant to the rain, why we hold this concept into our little minds?

2. If the practice is irrelevant to the getting better at things, why we hold this concept into our little minds?

3. If the childhood experiences are irrelevant to the people we become as adults, why we hold this concept into our little minds?

4. If the water flowing downhill rather than uphill is irrelevant to the sea level, why we hold this concept into our little minds?

Truly life is filled with mysteries, and there are many more questions one could ask, than answers one could find...

😏

@equinoxhq I don’t think it’s fair to compare stuff that you can check through direct experience to climate change. The latter obviously requires extra steps. Note that I am not taking sides here, just wanted to point out that (most of) science is outside of the realm that the average individual can check directly.

@mariopasquato I acknowledge that you have a point.

5. If the force holding us to the earth is irrelevant to the force holding the planets in their orbits, why etc.

6. If the amount of radon gas you are exposed to is irrelevant to the chance of you getting cancer, why etc.

7. If magnets are irrelevant to the thing that makes a lightbulb bright, why etc.

The group of things I was attempting (apparently unsuccessfully) to gesture at was "The set of extremely well established causal relationships", not "The subset of extremely well established causal relationships that are easy for an untrained person with no equipment to notice". Hopefully the addition of the above examples makes this clearer.

@equinoxhq Yeah these ones are more to my liking, even though it’s hard for someone who is not a climatologist to tell how similar they are to the CO2 claim. 5 requires a Cavendish experiment to measure G and a measurement of the radius of the Earth; 6 some relatively large scale and long term data collection and statistics plus the ability to measure Radon concentration, and the ability to exclude spurious correlations; 7 is easier if you have a length of copper wire, an LED and a roll of toilet paper. For the CO2 you need detailed climate models, which appear harder to secure than any of the above.

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@mariopasquato you would need approximately all of climate science to make predictions at the accuracy that climate science does. But I recall reading that establishing the basic fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and having more of it in the atmosphere would make things warmer (and so CO2 is not irrelevant to climate change), was theorized and tested in the late 1800s with fairly simple equipment.

Here are two examples of how one can test this at home:

https://youtu.be/kwtt51gvaJQ

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xitg2tDZnXg

@Rupert I believe it is you who are confused. It is not logically correct to think that because CO2 is involved in biological processes, it can't cause climate change. One key mistake you seem to be making is pointed at by your use of the words "in any amount". How much CO2 is put into the atmosphere, and how quickly, matters for what the effect will be, and over what timescale. The ability of the natural world to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere is not unlimited.

@Rupert I am aware of climatology work that criticizes the global warming thesis. I was trying to make an epistemological point though.

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@Rupert you think the world is getting colder, and we are seeing glaciers grow rather than shrink each year?

If I could show you that the opposite was true, would that change your views on climate change?

Edit: sorry to butt into your conversation with Mario, I just happened to see your comment and was so surprised it didn't register that the comment wasn't directed at me.

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@Rupert

Factually speaking, the relationship between CO2 concentrations and increased atmospheric temperatures is very well established.

By saying I believe you to be confused, I was being polite and allowing for the possibility that you may surprise me even though I'm pretty sure who's got the facts on their side in this case.

"Anything is unlimited" is an ambiguous statement. I'm going to assume you don't mean "everything is unlimited", because that is clearly false, but then, I don't know what you do mean.

In any case, your question above and the alternatives presented seem to exclude the possibility that any thoughtful person familiar with the facts could come to a conclusion different from yours - your position seems to be that if only people "go deeper into the topic" they would come to agree with you.

This is demonstrably false, as many scientists who spend their entire lives studying climate change do not agree with you that CO2 is irrelevant. You're not just calling me a thoughtless sheep who doesn't do his homework, you're saying the same about the vast majority of people who dedicate their lives to studying the climate. It is very unlikely that the problem with them is they haven't dug deep enough into the science.

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@Rupert Are you just trolling to waste people's time?

@Rupert

How many time you have invested to understand what the climate is and how It works?

Let's see... I'd estimate that back in the late 1990s and early 2000s when the idea of climate change was relatively new, I invested a few hundred hours in getting an overview of what the science said at that time. Since then, I've spent probably tens to hundreds of hours reading the IPCC reports as they came out (they're long). Plus I'd say an hour a week reading other things to keep up with the state of knowledge in this area, so say 50 hours a year, for 20 years = 1,000 hours? So maybe a total of 2,000 hours over 20 years, not counting things like podcasts, where I have several that are climate-related and maybe listen to a couple hours per week, or standard journalism, because that's usually pretty fluffy and just makes me want to go read the original source.

Did you follow the money of the researchings and what organisms are behind ?

My initial position, back in the late 90's/early 2000's, was that the scientific consensus was a scientific consensus and not a lie funded by shadowy groups wishing to mislead the public, so I can't say I've done a great deal of looking for who the shadowy conspirators are. I have however noted that "there is doubt around climate change/there is no scientific consensus/we don't know enough to act" was a fossil-fuel funded message, as was the later "dealing with climate change is too expensive", which came out after "there is no scientific consensus" was shown to be false. "It's too expensive" was thoroughly debunked by the Stern report back in 2006. I had read that many of the anti-climate-change messages such as those above were put out by the same "scientists" who the Tobacco industry funded to say that smoking doesn't cause cancer, or if some studies show it does then there is reasonable doubt/no scientific consensus. I fact-checked that claim (about the pro-tobacco and anti-climate-change spokespeople being the same people, funded by the interest groups with clear interest in spreading confusion) at the time and found it was true, although it was decades ago and I couldn't give you details now. I also know that the Canadian government funds a lot of climate change research, as I assume do most governments in most developed countries. The primary vehicle for climate information in the US is NOAA, which I understand to be government funded and a source of information for a lot of other groups. Some of the observations come from NASA as well, also government funded. Or the European Space Agency, also government funded. Or universities, which are a mix of funded by government grants, student tuiiton, private philanthropy, and private-sector collaborations. It's fun to hear Quirks and Quarks talk with Ph. D. candidates about their field studies, and know that they came from a university nearby.

So, although I haven't gone "assuming all climate science is funded by a shadowy cabal, let's see if I can find out who the cabal is..." I am nonetheless pretty sure I've got a good idea where a lot of climate data comes from and who pays for it to be collected (mostly taxpayers, and the mix of funding sources that fund universities) - to the point where if there are other groups producing different data funded by shadowy cabals, at least I know there are data sources independent of the cabals.

Do you have plans to check the information I gonna send you?

I hereby commit to skim it. I'm pretty confident in my own ability to do independent reading on topics that interest me, and careful about letting any one person's perspective carry too much weight, so you shouldn't have high hopes that a few links are going to fundamentally change my views on climate change.

As for politeness, it isn't a trap. If I want someone to listen to me, I often have to treat them with a level of kindness and patience they are not extending to me. This is just how people are, in my experience. I'm not trying to police how you express yourself, you do as you wish. But I've found that if what I want is to be heard and have my views accepted as correct, politeness and even moving beyond that to kindness and patience, helps that to happen, because people get all flustered if I'm mean. So I'm going to continue doing as I wish.

@Snarflak check the information

@equinoxhq so you have found corporations who support the researchings againts the climate change but none corporations who support the official version. Well that is suspicious, dont you think so? There is something wrong here, It is obvious.

So I guess so the actual politics about the climate make sense to you. In your world the politics and the official versions works but the history and the reality where we live dont agree that with. China is the most generator of CO2 Who doesnt have any consecuence white Europe generates the 8% of the CO2. Then how well you think the politics gonna work over that 8%. It is ridiculous as much as the agenda 2030 (which is part of the problema by the way. It is not a solution, is a condemn.)

I recommend (with your permission) to you get involve into the geopolític and the finances. Maybe you gonna understand better why the things happen and why others not.

I apreciate your intentions with your modes and forms from the patience and the polite but is not useful enough for a civilitation limited by the time as we are. You have to move the hornet's nest if you want results (specially with this levels of mediocraty into the sociaties).

I do apreciatte your interest and your intentions to give value. Could be interesting to swap sources. I still waiting someone who makes me considere how much ignorant I am into this field.

@Rupert

so you have found corporations who support the researchings againts the climate change but none corporations who support the official version.

That's not exactly true. What I said was that I've heard of corporate funding by oil companies to people publishing results casting doubt on the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels causes climate change. And that most funding for climate change research (whether the result of that research supports or opposes a particular narrative) does not come from corporate sources, but from governments. Some of it, I'd barely call "research", it's more "data collection". Like, a lot of climate data comes from weather stations, which collect temperature and precipitation data because it's useful to have for many purposes.

I have observed that some corporations publicize climate change adjacent findings that would be to their advantage if more widely known, such as battery manufacturers posting on their websites about studies that show battery storage is going to be key to the energy transition, electric vehicle manufacturers promoting findings that show how much CO2 gas cars emit and debunk the idea that electric cars are more polluting, gas car companies which promote the conclusion that electric cars are more polluting than gas cars, or putting in place charging infrastructure is going to be expensive... basically, corporations all over the place will promote any scientific result they can find where it would be to their advantage if more people knew about it. But most research to find out basic facts about the world isn't done or funded by corporations, it's funded by governments or private philanthropy. I wouldn't call the few people who the oil companies can find to say things they'd like someone to say "scientists" - particularly as these are the same people who the tobacco companies paid to say things they wanted said, while wearing white labcoats. Someone who is an "expert" in whether cigarettes cause cancer and says they don't, and also an "expert" in whether fossil fuels cause climate change and says they don't, is in fact not an expert in either thing, and funding such a person is not "funding science".

Instead of deciding what's true based on "well it appears that there is differential funding for different stories, that's suspicious...", let's get back to basic facts, and decide what's true based on that. You think the world is getting cooler, I think the world is getting hotter. Regardless of who funds what, a thermometer doesn't care, and we can't both be right, there is a reality of what the temperature is, and what it has been. We should find out who's right by looking at the data. We should look at a dataset we both agree looks like it was collected without any undue influence from corporate interests, but neither of us has seen it before, so it might say that either one of us is wrong, it's not picked by one of us to support what we already believe. Agreed?

I'll tell you a story about how politics actually affect climate change research. This from my own country, which I know best, where one side of the climate change debate would not agree to just follow the data, because it knew what the data would say and didn't want to admit it. Back a decade ago, the Canadian government was the Conservative Party of Canada. This political party gets most of its support from the province of Alberta, and a large part of the Alberta economy is tar sands (we have in the same ballpark amount of oil as Saudi Arabia, but ours is dirtier, more tar-like). So politically, it is awkward for the Conservatives to say something oil companies operating in Alberta would prefer they didn't say. The Conservative government pulled us out of the Kyoto Protocol. We were the only country to pull out, out of 200 countries. But instead of justifying this by saying "studies we have funded conclude that climate change is not real", what the Conservative government did was to cut funding to science. Ships that were scheduled to go up to the arctic and look at what the situation was there, couldn't go because the money to pay for the trip was cancelled. A region called the Experimental Lakes, where many datasets had gone back many decades, had its funding cut by a huge amount. Satellites that were scheduled to go up and continue observational datasets that had been going for decades, got cancelled and so those datasets now have big holes in them. Any scientists that the government did fund, were expressly forbidden from writing the words "climate change" or "global warming" in their reports, or they'd have funding cut. Not "you can write about climate change as long as you say what we want", "do not use the words 'climate change'". Any scientists that were studying climate, and would normally have been allowed to give interviews on news shows and such, were forbidden from talking to the media about their work directly, all communications had to go through a government minister. All of this caused something unprecedented - a large number of scientists, protesting on Parliament Hill. Not all scientists fit the stereotype of a quiet nerd who doesn't like interacting with people, but a lot do, and it is unheard of for scientists to get together as a group and start a public protest.

That's what you do when reality doesn't support the thing you'd like science to say - you don't "fund science that says what you want to say", because you can't, reality won't cooperate. If you want to fund someone to say something that's against what the data scientists have collected says, you can find a few people who will say whatever you want and pretend to be scientists, but actual people who are working to find out what's true are going to be a problem for you.

The point is, if we're arguing over something where there is no "this is the way it is in reality" answer to the question, just different people's opinions, then you could expect that maybe people think a certain way because one side is better funded than the other, and if the "research" into that question has lopsided funding, maybe that's suspicious. But when it's a question about the way reality is, you shouldn't find it strange that one side will only fund people who tell a certain story, and there is no balance with another set of interested parties funding people who only tell a different story. Like, with tobacco, it was the cigarette companies saying "smoking doesn't cause cancer, or if some studies say it does, there is still doubt about it", and there was no other corporation funding scientists to say smoking causes cancer. There was just science, funded by a diversity of different funding sources, trying to figure out what causes cancer, and finding that one answer is "smoking". And similarly with climate change, oil companies have funded people to say that oil companies aren't responsible for climate change, because of course the oil companies would fund that. But there is no other corporation funding a counter-narrative (except as mentioned above, in a few edge cases where what the research is finding aligns with a particular manufacturer's interest, they may spend some money to get that result some more publicity), just a bunch of scientists trying to figure out what's true. And no amount of funding more thermometers, or more people to go measure carbon dioxide concentrations, would make the instruments say what the oil companies wanted to be said, so instead, once "there is no scientific consensus" and "it would be too expensive to stop buying oil" didn't work, they pushed the government to defund science that gave results they didn't like. No amount of corporate funding allocated only to scientists who say "climate change is real" was needed, because you could just fund scientists to measure things, and government is perfectly willing to do that, because it's useful to know what the temperature is and what the atmosphere is made of, whether or not climate change is a thing.

If climate change isn't real, we should expect oil companies to be willing to put up billions and billions of dollars to fund climate science, as in scientists with measuring instruments going out to flesh out the data that would prove the truth. Instead, we see them trying to discredit the science that exists, and the political parties that are most beholden to oil companies tend to cut funding to science. And instead of the people oil companies paid saying "the science says climate change is not real", which oil companies would definitely have paid people to say if they could have, the oil company "experts" just said "the science isn't settled, there is enough doubt that we shouldn't jump to conclusions". Strange...

As for China, they are the leading producer of solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. Which is a strange direction for the government of China to choose to go, if climate change isn't real. You say there is no consequence for them, but they're pushing harder than anyone else to transition their energy and transportation systems. Also, the fact that Europe is only a small percentage of emissions is because they've already done a lot to reduce their emissions, up until 2005 their emissions were higher than China's. Here's an Our World in Data graph showing emissions for Europe, the US, China and the world as a whole, from 1950 onward:

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@Rupert

Do not confuse the false increasing of the temperature with the climate changing. You have done that a few times. The climate changing was here before the human with its consecuences.

You want me to stop using the words "climate change" to mean the thing that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is studying, where temperatures go up because of greenhouse gas emissions, while you continue to use the words "climate change" to mean some other thing that isn't very clearly articulated in this discussion yet but has to do with global cooling and a coming glaciation?

That doesn't work for me.

I think, since you use the words "climate change" in a very nonstandard way which is different from most people's understanding of those words, the market you have created is going to confuse people. Certainly, when I began this conversation, I thought you meant what everyone else means when they say "climate change". You should put an explanation of what you mean by "climate change" into the question description, so that people will be less confused and you won't have to argue with them about definitions half way into a conversation.

If you would like me to stop using the words "climate change" in the way I have been, then I'm willing to suggest a compromise. We taboo the words "climate change" going forward, and pick another word or phrase to refer to our understanding of what is happening to the climate. Although "global warming" isn't quite right for what I understand to be happening (on average things are getting warmer, but that is not true 100% of the time over 100% of the globe) it's good enough for discussion purposes. And your view might be named "global cooling"? Or you can pick a different name you think is more suitable.

"let's get back to basic facts, and decide what's true based on that. You think the world is getting cooler, I think the world is getting hotter"

You are wrong again. The both are right but we are not using the same timings or the complete data. The time period that you are using is not right why is not enough extensive. Lets see what happens after the next 3 years in case your data of the increasing of the temperature keep working.

I think this ^ is important. We have had a conversation that has brought up a lot of different topics that we can get back to in time, but let's focus first on clarifying our most basic disagreement. I think, based on every dataset I've ever seen or heard of, that the global average surface temperature is rising because anthropogenic (man-made) processes are putting greenhouse gases (the main one being carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere. You think... well I'm not quite sure what you think, if you say both this:

the false increasing of the temperature

The planet is not getting hotter even if we esfort to believe It. (The opposite, even if It looks in the same levels we are going into a glaciation I insist)

Edit to add, a clearer example of where you said the climate is getting colder:

@mariopasquato Looks like I am not explaining myself rightly. The world is getting colder, a glaciation in fact. There is climate change (as always) and there is not global warning. That is a fact.

#facts

and yet you also say this:

You think the world is getting cooler, I think the world is getting hotter"

You are wrong again. The both are right but...

Here is an opportunity to say clearly what you think and why you think it. I think this is a prerequisite for us to have a coherent and useful discussion.

@Rupert

I have now read the link you provided, to americanstewards.us The website seems super sketchy, not a source I would trust without independent corroboration. The letter "signed by 1,609 scientists", is in fact promoted by a couple of retired people who started "CLINTEL" a few years ago. More details here: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Intelligence_Foundation (just use text translation in Google Chrome if you can't read French). Basically, as is standard for this sort of misinformation, a few people collect a list of "scientists", using that term very broadly and including scientists who are not currently working in the area of science they are speaking out against. In this case it's actually "scientists and other professionals" as a large portion of the signatories are engineers who used to work for Shell. For Covid misinformation, a similar tactic was used, where various statements were endorsed by "doctors" who were things like osteopaths, naturopaths, had a Ph. D. in a nonmedical field, had their licenses revoked for spouting untrue things but frame this as the establishment trying to hide the truth... basically anyone that could be found who was willing to say or agree with the misinfomration that someone wanted to put on the Internet.

The basic claims you are making in this thread seem to be mirroring the claims put forward in this "letter" by the clintel foundation. You can google "clintel" to see that the results are either stuff they have written themselves (links to their network of websites) or investigative reporting that says they're a misinformation group and gives details about why their claims are incorrect.

Do you have sources of information that are not linked to this "Clintel" foundation? It seems to me like you would benefit from looking for information from a broader variety of sources, and looking into the claims made by the IPCC yourself. "Digging deeper" doesn't mean reading some website that says something different from the mainstream and accepting what the website says, it means for example reading a news story about some new science and then finding the paper the news story is based on and reading that and seeing if the claims it makes match what's in the news story. All of the IPCC reports are filled with footnotes and references to the original papers (even though the IPCC reports can be thousands of pages long, they are still summaries, and you can read the original research that is being summarized if you want to).

If I were in your shoes and I wanted to find out the truth, here's what I'd do:

1. Go to the IPCC website.

2. Open up one of their latest reports.

3. Read the executive summary. Find a claim you think seems wrong.

4. Check the footnotes to find out what that claim is based on.

5. Read the original paper. If there are several for that claim (there often are, for each claim) pick one. It's probably accessible on the Internet. See how well the claim is supported. Does what the scientists did make sense? Do the conclusions they drew follow from the information they gathered? Does the text in the executive summary of the IPCC report match the conclusions from the paper?

It's easy to write a letter, and then claim "this many thousands of scientists agree", and put it up on a website. Or even to start a network of websites which all copy each other's stuff, to make it look like a broad community all agrees, even though it's just a few people running the websites. It's much harder to fake a whole bunch of research literature, in a way that couldn't be detected if you check the footnotes. That is why I think the method above is reliable, and don't put much weight on some random website that says "thousands of scientists disagree with mainstream science".

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