Isn't global warming, in truth, a question of context?

The term “global warming” is a question of context since the correct term is “climate change.”

@kritiper
Oh.

Well in that case substitute the phrase Climate Change for Global Warming in my question.

OK. Yes, it is a question of context. Unfortunately.

Probably, there are corners of the world where climate change will result in a more hospitable habitat. Unfortunately, that will come at a great cost – the demise of coastal cities, mass extinctions, etc.

Climate change is a global phenomenon. On the balance, the planet and its inhabitants will suffer, and a minority of people will likely profit from the cause of that suffering. Isn’t it always the way? Like people who charge outrageous prices for bottled water in the middle of a natural disaster. It’s kind of crass to be on the side of the guy who does that. Likewise, you shouldn’t hope for global warming just so you don’t have to shovel snow. That’s a rather shockingly selfish statement.

Your premise is incorrect. I like the way that last article puts it, that global warming would better be thought of as “global wierding.” Winters may get warmer overall in your area, but the frequency of extreme cold snaps and heavy snows will increase as a result – i.e., a warmer winter does not equal a milder one.

There is more to environmental science than just comparing the temperature in Michigan to the temperature in Arizona, but I’ll take a swing at your straw man.

If you want a world with zero wind (wind requires temperature differential, or ΔT), zero redistribution of moisture (clouds are moved by wind… not that there would be any because we’d be in thermodynamic equilibrium), and sea levels that would bury the entire Eastern seaboard, take Florida off the map, as well as London, and the area of Australia where about 80% of Aussies live, then you can go on thinking that it’s merely a political movement to make you have to endure cooler summers than the middle of a desert that is far closer to the Equator than you. That won’t make it true, but you have the right to be wrong.

If you want a world that does not reduce livable land area as population rises, that still transports water by means of precipitation but in a way that gives your neighbors to the East (Buffalo NY) 7 feet of snow instead of 27 or none at all, or otherwise cause MASSIVE problems worldwide merely so you don’t feel a little nippy at night during the summer, then you will see that Climate Change is a documentable phenomenon that over 96% of experts in the environmental field have proven to exist through repeatable peer-reviewed observation and experimentation in accordance with the scientific method.

So climate change not so much a question of context so much as a question over whether one puts ideology ahead of facts and truth. Most people gather evidence before coming to conclusions; ideologues start at the conclusion and work backwards from there even if they have to make stuff up.

The context here is, your typical american remains stunningly ignorant on global issues, but that’s balanced with the fact that the rest of the world maintains a smug sense of superiority.
So we’re all good, doing our thing, just as before.

Anthropogenic climate change doesn’t uniformly and neatly increase temperatures.

“So isn’t the Global Warming problem really a political movement by people who live in temperate climates to maintain the status quo”

Maintaining the status quo would be not having a global warming problem.

There’s not going to be much of a status quo when people are forced to migrate away from coastal regions, and inevitably try to get into those countries with more temperate climates.

There’s not going to be much of a status quo when droughts and water shortages will affect agricultural ouput. I’m in the UK, and we import something over 60% of the food we consume. So much for being in a temperate zone.

Your parochialism is really misplaced. The world is interdependent. What affects one region will affect others, whether they want it or not.

Global means “of, or relating to the entire earth, world wide” – not just our backyard.

Why have countries stopped doing above ground nuclear testing? Because they figured out that radioactive crap released in the desert eventually spreads everywhere on the planet – and could have profound effects by increasing cancers, affecting food production, causing birth defects, etc (This experience is proof that we humans really can screw up the planet if we wanted.)*
I live in a cold climate, at a higher elevation and could stand to add a few degrees F to my backyard. My heat bill would go down and my winters would be nicer. And hopefully I won’t have snow in April! But…
I live in the US where we support other people in the country and planet. A flood in NJ will increase my insurance rates. An oil spill in Louisiana will increase the price of my shrimp dinner. A building washed into the water in Florida will put people out of work and increase the unemployment tax I pay into the system. Unless we live in a shack off the grid, grow all our own food, pay no taxes, and make our power, we are all related.
Sure we can put on blinders and only look in our backyards so we don’t see it. But one way or the other we will pay for it.

Here’s a real quick first order approximation of numbers for you. The coefficient of thermal expansion of water is 0.000038 / deg F. (38×10–6). The average depth of the ocean is 14,000 ft. 8th grade math problem how much does sea level rise if the ocean temperate increases 1 deg F? Ans: 0.53 ft. Of course some places the temperature does not go up only 1 degree. In other places the ocean is deeper. but these are just average numbers to get a feel for it. A 4 degree F rise in temp would mean 2 ft. I would not be buying land in Nauru, Tuvalu, or the Marshall islands.

*Not to derail the tread but a good friend of mine is a nuclear physicist researching exotic particles His experiments are extremely sensitive and require steel with no residual radioactivity. No problem right? Wrong! Every piece of steel above ground or made since 1945 has higher background radiation than he can use. They need to use steel from old scrapped and abandoned structures that have been under the water since before 1944. It then has to be processed in a special facility so they can use it.

If you notice it, it is weather. If it is a trend over decades it is climate change. With Climate Change, there is no ‘enjoying a few warmer degrees this summer’.... there is flood and there is drought and there are rising oceans and changing currents and more deadly storms and there is catastrophic loss of crops and arable land so there is famine and there is loss of habitable land, so there are refugees and displacement. Do you have any idea what the consequences the loss of the Gulf Stream is going to have? The oceans are becoming more acidic.

People who don’t want to see the problem always oversimplify to try to justify ignoring the issue.

^ @cazzie “People who don’t want to see the problem always oversimplify to try to justify ignoring the issue.” Yep! And they say stuff like: “This is the coldest month on record.”
They do not see the big picture – or the picture beyond their backyard fence.
I contend that unless they see how it impacts them directly they will continue to ignore it. That is a typical human response.
The negative effects must be described in terms that someone who never steps off their property will understand – cost. Cost of: lost business, lost jobs, increased unemployment, lost property values, higher insurance rates, insect infestations, southern bugs moving northward with no natural enemies, damaged food production, increased prices, etc.

The grandfather of my son was a hydrophysicist of very high regard from Norway (he earned a lifetime achievement award in his field and sat on the Swedish Water Prize award for years.) He and I had some very interesting conversations on climate change. He had no doubt some of the upcoming wars would be over fresh drinking water in some regions of the world. I was very lucky to be able to sit next to the man in a sauna and chat about life.

Why not move to Arizona instead of waiting for Arizona to come to you? You may not like it when it does.

@LuckyGuy ” But…I live in the US where we support other people in the country and planet. ”

~Socialist! No countries other than ‘Murica mean anything, and those states with all the Liber-dulls can just drown! And who scares about physicists; true science comes from the Bible and Fox News!

Seriously though, you are pointing out a degree of interrelatedness and a chain of causality that is beyond the ability of many to comprehend, not due to a lack of intellect, but rather just a self-induced/self-imposed blind spot. Don’t underestimate the power of willful ignorance!

What I see is the problem with climate change is if you want to find it, you will find it. If you don’t want to see it, then you won’t. Depending on where you live, you can say it happens or not. From what the talking heads of science seem to say from what I have read, is the earth goes through cycles, cooling, warming, etc. climate change is part of the natural process which neither man can hasten or accelerate more.

@Hypocrisy_Central So if climate change is a natural thing, man should just keep on doing whatever he’s been doing and not worry about it? Shouldn’t we do something to keep from adding to the possible problem? Maybe, if even for some laughs, you could watch Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth.” If not, at least do some more reading on the subject. It couldn’t hurt…

@Hypocrisy_Central Normal cycles have happened over the eons, but what we are experiencing now is absolutely unprecedented. It is undoubtedly the result of the burning of fossil fuels and the release of CO2 into the atmosphere due to human activity.

@kritiper So if climate change is a natural thing, man should just keep on doing whatever he’s been doing and not worry about it?
Man should do all he can to be a good steward of the planet, however, for some to enjoy the creature comforts they have, and not willing to part with, it produces negative effects on the planet. The Earth is more resilient than many give it credit. I have heard that one of the worse contributors to greenhouse gasses was bovine flatulence. How can one attribute that when we have had bovine, both wild and domestic for as long as can be remembered? Back when this country was young and bison roamed in herds thousands of head deep, they would have been harming the planet and the hide hunters who slaughtered them to near extinction would have been heroes and not greedy villains. Man and his industries have always had some impact on the planet, be it pollution, deforestation, but mankind has not killed the planet yet, and I doubt whatever man does, he can, even if he causes a lot of chaos.

@Hypocrisy_Central ”... mankind has not killed the planet yet, and I doubt whatever man does, he can, even if he causes a lot of chaos.”

Careful! There are some people that may read that and reply, “Challenge accepted!”, and I would rather not incite that particular sort of crazy.

@Hypocrisy_Central No. Mankind will not kill the planet. They will just make it difficult for humans in their vast current numbers to live on it.

It sure is. I believe it is in the context of Pirates. Global Warming is a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of pirates since the 1800s. By graphing the number of pirates from the years 1800 through 2000 on a sheet of clear plastic, and— on a separate piece of graph paper—tracking the increase in earth surface temperatures during the same span of time, then using the first graph as an over-lay of the second one, the correlation (see graph) is obvious. And it works on this graph as well. And this graph is even more graphic!

But this was only a hypothesis until Piracy upon the high seas began to rise in mid 2004, and guess what? GLOBAL WARMING WENT DOWN (see new graph). They are still working on why this is, but

THE SHEER PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE IS INCONTROVERTIBLE!

There is a theory that the great mass extinctions of the past, such as the ones at the Late Devonian and end of the Cretaceous, of the are due to climate change. The climate swings radically away from whatever it was to one that no longer supports the flora and fauna that exist in a particular area forcing said life forms to either move or die. Forests become prairies, prairies become deserts, water covers existing landforms or perhaps things go in the opposite direction; it does not really matter which because it is the fact that it does change that makes the habitat no longer suited for the life forms that have adapted to it, not to what it changes.

If it happens slowly you can see how plants could survive, as a species moving slowly in the direction better suited or more similar to the original but what is believed happens is a slow, steady increase of long term stresses on species that is then compounded by a sudden shock to the system.

Some times you will find relic species such as the Maple trees in the area of Vanderpool, Texas, survivors of a much wider population that existed when the climate was much wetter and cooler, and surrounded by the low scrub vegetation better suited to the dryer, hotter Texas hill country climate that exists today. To them, life goes on as it did 30 – 15,000 years ago so I suppose that yes, in a way you are correct, climate change is a question of context.

@Hypocrisy_Central I think the balance of nature and the Earth’s environment are more fragile than you think. It is past time to take the blinders off! The scales may have, and I believe they have, been tipped drastically enough so that the problem is/will be as unavoidable as it is real. It just won’t happen overnight.
I pity the children of tomorrow. What ecological horrors they will experience!

@kritiper I think the balance of nature and the Earth’s environment are more fragile than you think. It is past time to take the blinders off!
I have no blinders to remove. You just think of that for a few more support lurve? Fragile Earth, really? How long did those oil rigs burn when Saddam Hussein lit them up? The world did not crumble from all that pollution. Mt St Helen blows, tosses who knows how many mega tons of soot and ash in the air, the world not only survived but recovered. Not to mention all the wild fires and forest fires, even those so large you can see them from space, the world did not cave, A look back, 4–5 years of WWII, all that bombing, firebombing, millions of tonnage of shipping sent to the ocean depths, with their ordnance, fuel, sewage in the bilge, etc. The world survived. Man has been screwing up on this planet since before the pyramids, and have yet to make it uninhabitable, who needs to take off blinders?

@Hypocrisy_Central By that logic, smokers should never bother to quit because their first cigarettes didn’t give them cancer. I’m not saying you’re entirely wrong, just that your logic is a bit weak.

@Hypocrisy_Central you are seeing the effects of those things you mention now with the shifting climate and more intense weather patterns. You, I believe tend to thing about things I’m a more human timeframe while the world change in a more universal one.

@Hypocrisy_Central The end of the world doesn’t mean actual orbicular implosion. That is not the end result of climate change. This rock will continue it’s journey around the sun until the sun dies and envelopes it. But what of the living flora and fauna that may inhabit it at the relative present? Climate change could end all that. And within a fairly short amount of decades/centuries. Best to hedge Man’s environmental bets with positive action rather than living “business as usual.”

@jerv The body is vastly different from the planet. Lungs not only make up a larger percent than any one or two regions of the planet, and the Earth cannot get cancer that will continue to infect and consume the world. At one cigarette there would be no need to quit as a habit or pattern does not yet exist. There are things different nations do that are not benefitial to the planet but because one region experiences more severe weather or milder weather than usual could or could have nothing to do what their neighbors have way around the globe are doing.

@kritiper The end of the world doesn’t mean actual orbicular implosion.
Not the ”end of the world” I was referring to. More so the end of human dominance or existence in which some would see as the end of the worl, because it is an in the world as they know it.

@Hypocrisy_Central We humans will end our time here very soon. I predict less than 250 years. Why? Antibiotic resistant superbugs. Got your blinders off yet??

^ I never had them on so there is NOTHING to take off.

@Hypocrisy_Central After a few years of knowing you, I beg to differ.

@cazzie Mankind will not kill the planet.
No, but if mankind becomes a blight on the planet, the plane will certainly eliminate mankind!

@Espiritus_Corvus Ave conservus Pastifarianus!

@jerv After a few years of knowing you, I beg to differ.
That is the thing about opinion everyone has one like redacted, the amount of lurve it gets don’t make iot correct though.

Someone (Can’t recall who, I couldn’t find it again, but thank you just the same!) on this site passed this on to me and I thought it warranted sharing: Relevant