The Donald vs Big Tech

[Bürggermeister]

Not quite. One side is saying it is an inadvertent consquence of our fossil-fuel burning lifestyle, the other is saying the hurricance is created by design, possibly by Musk's 12" moon robots. There is quite a substanatial difference.

The same lads who are saying it's inadvertent think that it can be manipulated back the other direction on purpose. No there really isn't the difference there that you're saying.

They're actually not the same thing at all and you know it too. It's really very, very different.

[astfgyl]

So the maga boys think there's some sort of energy weapon to manipulate the weather and the soy crowd think that by making everyone poorer that the weather can be manipulated. Different ideas, same level of bullshit. So thinking we can't make a hurricane in one area but we can change the whole temperature of the earth is just as retarded as anything else, including hurricane machines

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

So basically you're labeling distinct things that you don't fully understand "retarded bullshit" and then claiming that all the things you've slapped that label on are in fact the same, cos look: they've all got the same label on them!

[astfgyl]

I am saying that humans thinking they can control the weather either locally or globally is retarded, yeah. I absolutely think that humans would control the weather if they could, but beyond seeing clouds to encourage rain there really is fuck all doing. A hurricane machine to me doesn't seem any less stupid than thinking giving up my car will get the whole earth to some sort of optimum temperature by 2050. People can't even predict the weather in many cases, showing that the mechanisms behind global temperatures, climate and extreme weather events are not fully understood at all and yet here we have two extremes of the Chicken Licken variety both thinking that humans have the wherewithal to be going around controlling the weather. And don't pretend to be naive enough to think people don't want to be proved right. Just imagine if tomorrow it turned out that it was actually undersea volcanic emissions that was the real driver of global temperature and not me and my western opulence... How many reputations are staked on that not being the case? What if it turned out that oil and natural gas were fully renewable sources.... How many reputations in the renewable energy industry are staked on that not being the case?

Yeah, right. Pure shite. Hubris.

Edit: You can replace the word "reputations" with "profits" and it makes another bit of the point

Edit 2: A serious question:

Can anyone tell me what the optimum global average temperature actually is? Just one figure as an average for the whole earth. I'll bet nobody can, even if they go looking it up, but many will think being told that global average temperature is going up is a bad thing without any foundation whatsoever. Fuckin madness

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Climatologists aren't trying to "control the weather." They also understand much better than you seem to realize why individual, local weather events are hard to predict. Climatologists say that there is a load of crap (so to speak) in the environment which is having, in the perspective of life as we know it on earth, a negative impact on the climate in terms of overall temperature, related shifts in atmospheric pressure, etc., and certain extreme weather events that these make more likely. They hypothesize that by reducing that crap to a minimum, these negative impacts may also be reduced to a minimum along with the likelihood of those extreme weather events. On the face of it, this part so far is at the very least plausible rather than "retarded bullshit."

What anyone else, politicians, CEOs, etc., do with that analysis and hypothesis is another matter. For example, for decades, the heads of fossil fuel companies actively covered up the results of investigations they'd launched themselves, and then later sowed doubt about the meaning of independently conducted ones which, nevertheless, largely confirmed their own. Cos if you're going to go on about elites who want to use climate science to "make you poorer" or whatever, it seems odd to at the same time give a free pass to the elites who were in fact the first ones to know all this stuff and decided that the public didn't need to know about it. Isn't that precisely the kind of elite behaviour you claim to hate?

[Ollkiller]

So the maga boys think there's some sort of energy weapon to manipulate the weather and the soy crowd think that by making everyone poorer that the weather can be manipulated. Different ideas, same level of bullshit. So thinking we can't make a hurricane in one area but we can change the whole temperature of the earth is just as retarded as anything else, including hurricane machines

If you're dumping million of tonnes of Co2 into the atmosphere every year, then yes is does change the temperature of the earth.

[astfgyl]

So the maga boys think there's some sort of energy weapon to manipulate the weather and the soy crowd think that by making everyone poorer that the weather can be manipulated. Different ideas, same level of bullshit. So thinking we can't make a hurricane in one area but we can change the whole temperature of the earth is just as retarded as anything else, including hurricane machines

If you're dumping million of tonnes of Co2 into the atmosphere every year, then yes is does change the temperature of the earth.

Like a volcano? Lots of those going off all the time.

Can you tell me what the optimum global temperature is, seeing as you're saying a rise in it is bad anyway? I'll bet you can't because nobody can.

[Ducky]

The temperature where the icecaps don't melt? Or the Gulf Stream doesn't face disruption and plunge the average temperature in Europe by 15 degrees Celsius? Or where wildfires aren't common? Where parts of the planet become literal scorched earth? Where crop failures across the globe don't become more frequent due to drought or flooding?

I can't give you an ideal temperature, but things were a lot more tickety-boo pre-Industral Revolution, so how about where the temperature was then? It shouldn't take a genius to work out that's when we started pumping CO2 into the atmosphere on a large scale.

[Yung Led Zeppelin]

Optimum global temperature to sustain life as we know it has been discussed pretty frequently actually, especially comparing earth to other planets

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Volcanoes and CO2:

five recent studies suggest that volcanoes worldwide (such as Alaska's Shishaldin, shown) emit, on average, between 130 million and 440 million metric tons of CO2 each year. But in 2010, anthropogenic emissions of the planet-warming gas were estimated to be a whopping 35 billion metric tons

https://www.science.org/content/article/scienceshot-volcano-co2-emissions-no-match-human-activity

The notion of us not knowing what an "ideal global temperature" is was popularized in 2018 by Trump's choice for head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-epa-pruitt-exclusive/exclusive-trumps-epa-aims-to-replace-obama-era-climate-water-regulations-in-2018-idUSKBN1EZ079/).

Let's have a closer look at him:

As a candidate for Oklahoma AG, as well as the head of RAGA and its Rule of Law Defense Fund, Pruitt was bankrolled by the fossil fuel and power sectors, and by the Koch family of energy billionaires. When The New York Times won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for a series showing state AGs to be the puppets of lobbyists, Pruitt was Exhibit A. In one notorious instance, Pruitt let Devon Energy, an Oklahoma-based fracking giant, ghostwrite a letter in his name to the EPA, resisting a rule that would limit methane leakage from natural gas wells. The coal miner Murray Energy sent a cheque to RAGA shortly after Pruitt intervened in support of Murray's suit against the EPA over-regulating carbon emissions.

https://www.ibanet.org/article/41b50bfa-f214-453a-8a7b-30883352a8c1

And a deep dive expert critique of the claim itself for good measure:
https://science.feedback.org/review/epas-scott-pruitt-incorrectly-suggests-climate-change-might-not-bad-thing/

Here's the tldr take home:

Unsupported: There is no basis to Pruitt's claim that humans have flourished during past periods of similarly rapid warming. The last 10,000 years, during which human civilization has developed, have seen stable climate conditions.
Misleading: Research unambiguously shows that the net effect of continued climate change this century—factoring in both positives and negatives—is significant harm to humans and the rest of Earth's ecosystems.
Misrepresents the scientific process: Scientists do not simply assume that warming has dangerous consequences. This is a careful conclusion derived from extensive research.

[Ollkiller]

So the maga boys think there's some sort of energy weapon to manipulate the weather and the soy crowd think that by making everyone poorer that the weather can be manipulated. Different ideas, same level of bullshit. So thinking we can't make a hurricane in one area but we can change the whole temperature of the earth is just as retarded as anything else, including hurricane machines

If you're dumping million of tonnes of Co2 into the atmosphere every year, then yes is does change the temperature of the earth.

Like a volcano? Lots of those going off all the time.

Can you tell me what the optimum global temperature is, seeing as you're saying a rise in it is bad anyway? I'll bet you can't because nobody can.

Average global temperature is 15 Celsius. About 1 to 2 degrees high than it was pre industrial age. By 2050 could rise another 1.5 to 3 degrees. And yes it'd us causing that rise through Co2 emissions.

[astfgyl]

Average over how long?

Have the measuring methods changed at all since the pre industrial age?

Could it be the case that the change in method has simply given a more accurate reading?

Can the global average be stable and yet some places have extra drought and others extra rain?

Is climate localised at all?

Is there evidence of previous global temperature changes?

Do I care if death Valley is record hot when it's freezing in Ireland?

No I'm afraid I have to conclude that a global measure of temperature is useless but it makes for great terror headlines.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Cut it any way you want:

2023 was 0.60°C warmer than the 1991-2020 average and 1.48°C warmer than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level

https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2023-hottest-year-record

Highest global average temperatures

The ten highest annual maximum global-average daily temperatures of the last 50 years have all occurred since 2015

https://climate.copernicus.eu/new-record-daily-global-average-temperature-reached-july-2024

Last 22 July 2024 was the hottest day since at least 1940 with an average global temperature of 17.16ºC, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), and 23 July was a virtual tie at 17.15ºC.

https://climate.copernicus.eu/what-degree-uncertainty-c3s-daily-global-temperature-data

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

I'm afraid I have to conclude that a global measure of temperature is useless

The fucking bad faith: you're the one who raised it!! You've done here exactly what Scott Pruitt did in 2018. At least he was getting handsomely paid to be disingenuous: you're just vomiting it back up for free!

It is useful as a measure of overall trends. It is useless in the sense that if the temperature at every location on the globe was 15° then the average would still be 15°, but that would mean that all the ice caps would be melted while in other places the ecosystems would have completely collapsed from the relative cold. The climate scientists, the people who know what they're talking about, have obviously accounted for all your armchair-climatology counterpoints.

[astfgyl]

No they haven't though. They speak about this shit as if it's gospel and can't be challenged. There are thousands of variables and temperature is only one of them. This notion that it can all be fixed by trying to maintain some optimal global average temperature simply by reducing carbon emissions for the losers at the bottom is just fucking ridiculous, as is the scientism that follows it. So back to the original point, a lot of people won't be too happy if the weather doesn't fuck us all up as predicted, certainly.