commentary on climate change denialism.

[UNFurbanist]

Ok, I'm going to just start out assuming climate change is really happening which it is. The evidence is overwhelming... What can you do? Individually there is a lot, obviously being green as in energy/water concience is a great start! You can also try to drive less and or walk/bike/take public transit more. Eating less meat and buying local is also good because that can reduce lots of attached emissions. But you're right that by yourself you can't stop it. Only if everyone suddenly cared about the environment would much happen on that front. Not likely... This is where I'm sure you will match the entire notion with a political agenda but it frankly comes down to policy. Yes at the national level because the US is the worlds 2nd largest emitter but also at the local, state, and international level. I agree we need to pressure China and India as well because with out that it would be futile and we are. The COP21 UN climate agreement had all 193 countries agree to reduce emissions for the first time in human history. That isn't nothing and though it honestly isn't enough it's significant. The difference between US policy and India and China is that those two countries have at least accepted the fact that they are going to have to make drastic changes and are doing it. India will soon be installing more solar panels than anywhere else on Earth and China is right behind them. The US at least under Obama's clean power plan would cut emissions 32% a good step but nowhere at the same kind of commitment. The Republican Party is quite literally the only Conservative party in the world that denies climate change exists. It didn't used to be the case because there were what they called green republicans who saw it as an issue but wanted to tackle the problem with capitalist approaches. They all got voted out in 2010 due to the tea party wave. If you want to talk about political spin that's it right there. Since then Exxon and other oil companies have been packing so much money into conservative candidates it would make your head spin. All while Exxon is currently being investigated for covering up data that their own scientists produced proving climate change would be caused by excess fossil fuel usage.

As far as just convincing you it's real I just have to try to level with you and say I was an independent my whole life who frankly didn't like dems or republicans. I recently became a dem because the Republican Party has become way too extreme for me. One of the issues is climate change, I have learned enough about the carbon cycle and environmental science to understand it and it's not a joke. I've seen glaciers half of what they were 50 years ago, I've seen drought conditions from California to Tanzania which haven't been seen this severe ever before. I've been to islands that have already lost miles of coastline to the ocean. It's real. Even in Jax there are issues, working at the UNF Environmental center has shown me enough of our vulnerabilities. Go to Miami and talk to any public official and they'll tell you it's happening right now. South Beach floods every high tide and that didn't used to be normal. I'm not going to tell you to educate yourself because I'm not in a position to talk down to someone and I'm sure you're a smart guy who just hasn't been convinced. I would just say keep an open mind and look beyond the politics at just the facts. The carbon cycle is something we've understood since the 1800s and it's still just as proven today. CO2 heat the atmosphere, the more CO2 and methane the hotter it gets. Simple as that.

[Josh]

Did someone seriously just compare climate change to the Mayan calendar? I'm not sure what opinion is worse; that, or the fact that there is nothing humans can do about an entirely human-created set of circumstances.

Not all climate change is caused by humans. We can address what humans do, but there may be some outside our control.

Which is why I quantified with "human-created set of circumstances."

i.e. not solar output, volcanic output, etc.

edit: I guess the "entirely" part is confusing/redundant since I was only intending to refer to the human-specific impacts to climate change.

[I-10east]

^^^How about you educate yourself about this farce? Don't worry about what I do.

[I-10east]

Blah blah blah. Don't you have a new SJW topic to talk about or something? 

[spuwho]

Interesting data.

http://m.phys.org/news/2016-04-citizen-scientists-rare-ice-industrial.html

Citizen scientists collected rare ice data, confirm warming since industrial revolution

In 1442, Shinto priests in Japan began keeping records of the freeze dates of a nearby lake, while in 1693 Finnish merchants started recording breakup dates on a local river. Together they create the oldest inland water ice records in human history and mark the first inklings of climate change, says a new report published today out of York University and the University of Wisconsin.

The researchers say the meticulous recordkeeping of these historical "citizen scientists" reveals increasing trends towards later ice-cover formation and earlier spring thaw since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Sapna Sharma, a York University biologist, and John J. Magnuson, a University of Wisconsin limnologist, co-led an international team of scientists from Canada, United States, Finland, and Japan looking at this early data. Their findings are published in Nature Scientific Reports.

"These data are unique," says Sharma. "They were collected by humans viewing and recording the ice event year after year for centuries, well before climate change was even a topic of discussion."

The records from Lake Suwa in the Japanese Alps, says Sharma, were collected by Shinto priests observing a legend about a male god who crossed the frozen lake to visit a female god at her shrine. A local Finnish merchant initiated data collection on Finland's Torne River because the river, and its frozen-or-thawed status, was important to trade, transportation, and food acquisition.
Ice seasonality, or when a lake or river freezes over in winter or thaws again in spring, are a variable strongly related to climate, says Magnuson. And while such a long-term, human-collected dataset is remarkable in and of itself, the climate trends they reveal are equally notable. "Even though the two waters are half a world apart and differ greatly from one another," he says, "the general patterns of ice seasonality are similar for both systems."

For example, the study found that, from 1443 to 1683, Lake Suwa's annual freeze date was moving almost imperceptibly to later in the year - at a rate of 0.19 days per decade. From the start of the Industrial Revolution, however, that trend in a later freeze date grew 24 times faster, pushing the lake's "ice on" date back 4.6 days per decade. On the Torne River, there was a corresponding trend for earlier ice break-up in the spring, as the speed with which the river moved toward earlier thaw dates doubled. These findings strongly indicate more rapid climate change during the last two centuries, the researchers report.
In recent years, says Magnuson, both waters have also exhibited more extreme ice dates corresponding with increased warming. For Lake Suwa, that means more years without full ice cover even occurring. Before the Industrial Revolution, Lake Suwa froze over 99 per cent of the time. More recently, it does so only half the time. A similar trend is seen with extremely early ice breakup on Torne River. Extreme cases once occurred in early May or later 95 per cent of the time, but they are now primarily in late April and early May.
"Our findings not only bolster what scientists have been saying for decades, but they also bring to the forefront the implications of reduced ice cover," says Sharma. The consequences of less ice span ecology, culture and economy. "Decreasing ice cover erodes the 'sense of place' that winter provides to many cultures, with potential loss of winter activities such as ice fishing, skiing, and transportation." Less ice and warmer waters also lead to more algal blooms and impaired water quality, she says.

The team of researchers say they are planning follow-up studies to better understand the ecological consequences of the big changes in these two water bodies.