“You remember how you said that you had no intention of even entertaining the notion of climate change, and that you wouldn’t do anything about it until it all blew up in your face?”
I guess it’s going to take some time before the “climate change” crowd catches up with the news. The climate scientists have said that they were wrong. The atmosphere isn’t warming as much as they predicted and it seems it was all hype and speculation.
@Kaka: Good name, because that’s what you are spreading. Global average temperatures continue to rise, in the atmosphere, and in the ocean. Sea level continues to rise, and melting of polar cap ice (not the same as sea ice) continues. And total sea ice continues to decline
Actually I thought this was as much in reference to legislation related to guns being discussed after mass shootings as it is to climate change. Although I do agree with Wiley’s implication that climate change from human activity is “upon us.”
There is no way humankind does not contribute to the biosphere. The questions are: what, how much, and to what length.
There is no question that much of it could be avoided with thoughtful planning and concerted effort, the two most important possible contributions that hardly ever appear on the chart.
“I can believe that a stone age man built a wooden boat large enough to house every species on Earth, but climate change just seems a bit of a stretch to me.” – Originator unknown
I take heart from the knowledge that we’re not actually destroying the planet; we’re just making it uninhabitable for current life forms, giving it a chance to get it right next time…..
Sullivan deletes his/her posts regularly. Which also means that, the replies that people have made to those posts vanish. So do not reply directly to him (or trolls in general)!
I’m sure he gets some jollies from effectively deleting many peoples comments along with his own
Use an @Sully: or some such to make replies. Again, do not reply directly!
As for Brass Orchid’s usual stuff, I paraphrase yet again the famous quote from Wolfgang Pauli, “It’s not even wrong.”
I’m clearly on one side of this debate, but with all that is going on, all the debates and scientific observations, etc, there is one observation that I hope everyone can agree upon: The earth and its environment are incredibly fragile. Is it man made? Is it a natural cycle? Are humans accelerating it? I’m not sure the answer really matters. We’re in this point in time were there are bona-fide observable changes in the environment.
Take oil for example. Sure..we could argue “does it or does it not affect the environment?” Again, who cares. Oil is too precious a resource to be burning it out tailpipes when we have the technology to replace it and thus save the resource for it’s other many useful purposes for which we DONT have a viable alternative.
People can be so stupid…they spend all their energy arguing some stupid insignificant point when they could use that energy solving problems.
When it comes to climate change, I’m a skeptic – that doesn’t mean I don’t believe it, it means I want to find out for myself rather than believe what other people tell me.
The best I can do are the articles in Scientific American. Elsewhere in life, it’s “Show me the money!” In science circles it’s “Show me the data!” Unlike Oil Companies, politicians and environmental groups, scientists can’t make any assertions without having data to back it up.
The studies agree: global warming is real. It’s been happening for the past 12,000 years. It’s been accelerating for the past 150 or so years. Which is about the time of the industrial revolution. Coincidence or causation? I don’t care. We do not have to add to the problem and industrial pollution has other bad effects besides greenhouse gasses.
The big debate in scientific circles isn’t whether global warming is real; it’s on how bad it is and how much we contribute to it. Opponents point to these disagreements as proof that scientists don’t know what they are talking about on the issue.
So while people argue about whether the elephant is in the room, nobody is willing to get the shovels to clean up his mess.
Even if we left the planet, warming will still occur – so we need to accept a simple policy: abate and adapt.
Personally, I don’t care: my grandchildren will inherit my beachfront property here at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Everyone, and I mean everyone in the world better get off their kister and buy that “ice-maker” fridge, ASAP. All this new ice will replace the melting of the icecaps. Our problems will be solved within one cycle.
An Iceberg the size of Delaware is .001% of the Ocean Area. .00025% of the planet’s surface. Even the entire Ross Ice Shelf is less than .01% of Ocean area, and all the naturally occurring ice on the planet is barely enough to increase ocean levels by 1 mm.
@Falc: “and all the naturally occurring ice on the planet is barely enough to increase ocean levels by 1 mm.”
I suggest you move to an island that’s 1 foot above sea level. That way, when the ice on Greenland melts, you’ll be 19 ft underwater. When Antarctica melts, that’s another 200 feet.
“If the Greenland Ice Sheet melted, scientists estimate that sea level would rise about 6 meters (20 feet). If the Antarctic Ice Sheet melted, sea level would rise by about 60 meters (200 feet).” https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html
Do you really expect people to believe your claptrap?
People who say “It’s snowing in my city, so that means that global warming doesn’t exist” might as well say, “There are no volcanoes on my block, so there must not be any volcanoes in the world.”
If global warming was real they wouldn’t have to lie about the figures……https://science.house.gov/news/press-releases/former-noaa-scientist-confirms-colleagues-manipulated-climate-records
Hagowar and Geophyzz and the rest: Citing past history as proof of future behavior? Really?
The Milankovitch cycles occur over tens to hundreds of thousands of years. The evidence from ice cores shows that CO2 increases (or decreases) of 80 ppm took a minimum of several thousand years. And yet, it has increased by more that amount in less than 60 years (1959: 315ppm, 2017: 405ppm). Ocean acidity has also increased significantly in that time.
It’s not just change, it is the rate of change that makes this so lethal. That’s pretty much true for all natural processes as well.
Volcanoes like Kilauea do not kill people. Volcanoes like Krakatoa do.
The slow steady movement of the continents doesn’t kill people, but those short sharp adjustments of big earthquakes do.
Daily winds don’t kill people, but tornadoes do.
The daily tide kills no one, but a storm surge does.
It’s the changes for which there is no or little time to adjust that are the problem. And the increase in CO2 is a sharp change to the global environment. More heat is retained by the earth. The effects in some places are greater than others. The arctic is warming fastest of any region because more sunlight is absorbed by ground and sea that is not covered with snow and ice.
From the two sources I cited above, the average ice mass loss from Greenland was 280 Gigatons per year, while Antarctica was losing 125 Gigatons per year. Lets call that 400 Gigatons per year lost. (That’s net loss by the way.)
1 cubic meter of water masses 1 metric ton. A cubic kilometer masses 1 gigaton. (1000m x 1000m x1000m). So the net mass loss is equivalent to 400,000,000,000 cubic meters of water. The area of the earth’s ocean is about 360 million square kilometers or 360 trillion square meters. A little division and you find that the yearly increase in sea level (because we are not talking sea ice here) is a bit more than 1 mm.(So much for the previous remark about melting of all of the ice contributing only 1 mm. Some people are simply not to be trusted with math— like politicians.)
However, the melting of the ice is only part of the story of sea level rise. If you raise the temperature of water, it expands. Simple physics, not dependent on anyone’s politics. As another of the sources cited above by me shows, the heat in the ocean is increasing.The net result is that the heating contributes more to sea level rise than does ice cap melting.
Plus, humans keep pumping out groundwater and letting it flow to the sea. Pity that we’ll run out of groundwater, and that it takes aquifers thousands of years to renew. But hey, conservation is for liberals, right? (Similarly, loss of soil into the oceans contributes a smaller amount to sea level rise.)
The net result is that the globally average sea level is rising more than 3 mm per year. That’s about a foot per century. Not so much, you think? Well, bad news. The rate of sea level rise is about twice what is was a century ago. And it will not get less. Because it is going to get warmer, even faster.
Stop complaining about it and do something to fix what is supposedly the problem. Stop exhaling for instance. Didn’t someone report that sea levels were dropping in the last few days?
You can tell them that it no longer matters what they believe, because renewable energy is cheaper than coal and oil, and we are closing in on natural gas.
I chose to acknowledge that this current cycle of so called natural and man made changes to our environment are the precursoes to the promised creation of a new heaven and a new earth promised by God, in Revelation, for the New Jesusalem.
It is ironic that the State of Florida prohibits the words “climate change” or “global warming” in official state documentation. If sea levels rise 300 feet, Florida will be reduced to a tiny island off the coast of Alabama.
Scientists do not try to prove each other wrong, well maybe a little bit, as everyone wants to be the first to discover something. More often, they just act to verify each others work. Sometimes they find it can’t be for a variety of reasons. Usually a variable that was overlooked. Good scientist try to replicate each others experiments and theories to prove it, and are often more disappointed when they can not. However, being scientists, facts matter. When something can be replicated consistently by others it becomes a Theory/Fact. Much as has been done with Evolution, which is why it is a Theory/Fact.
Theories can evolve as techniques and equipment improves, but does not change the fact. Einstein predicted gravitational waves, his science was good, but we have only recently discovered a way to ‘see’ them. Now we can trace them back to their source and perhaps find other things we can’t ‘see’ by noting disturbances in the ripples.
Science is cool.
If there is a problem, it’s with the misuse of the word Theory, most people use Theory in a sentence, when they should be using the word Hypothesis.
Hypothesis=not yet fact/may not be come a fact.
Theory=substantiated by fact.
Which is why most Conspiracy Theories should actually be called Conspiracy Hypothesis.
Anyway, spent far too much time on a day late dollar short comment. :-/
Adiraiju about 7 years ago
“OK, what just happened?”
“You remember how you said that you had no intention of even entertaining the notion of climate change, and that you wouldn’t do anything about it until it all blew up in your face?”
“Yeah?”
“Well… Kablooie!”
(Anyone remember That ’70’s Show?)
Dtroutma about 7 years ago
Anthropogenic climate change was being discussed on a reagional level, northern Europe and the Mediterranian, in the 1950’s, it got worse from there.
kakaako.fixtures about 7 years ago
I guess it’s going to take some time before the “climate change” crowd catches up with the news. The climate scientists have said that they were wrong. The atmosphere isn’t warming as much as they predicted and it seems it was all hype and speculation.
x_Tech about 7 years ago
Won’t be water. Be fire this time.
William Timm about 7 years ago
Wiley is an idiot if he believes the fake science.
Varnes about 7 years ago
“Now isn’t the time to discuss” it! I see what you did there Mr. Miller…….. I guess they don’t call you Wiley for nothing….Great cartoon!
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member about 7 years ago
@Kaka: Good name, because that’s what you are spreading. Global average temperatures continue to rise, in the atmosphere, and in the ocean. Sea level continues to rise, and melting of polar cap ice (not the same as sea ice) continues. And total sea ice continues to decline
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/30880
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/30879
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level
keenanthelibrarian about 7 years ago
Hasn’t the climate been changing all the time? the last Ice Age only finished 10-12,000 years ago – a mere blip archaeologically.
Trilobyte Premium Member about 7 years ago
Actually I thought this was as much in reference to legislation related to guns being discussed after mass shootings as it is to climate change. Although I do agree with Wiley’s implication that climate change from human activity is “upon us.”
jvo about 7 years ago
@BRICK FLAG…… the reason there was more ice is that a huge chunk came off a melting glacier 2yrs ago and it is blocking the penguins from the sea.
sandpiper about 7 years ago
There is no way humankind does not contribute to the biosphere. The questions are: what, how much, and to what length.
There is no question that much of it could be avoided with thoughtful planning and concerted effort, the two most important possible contributions that hardly ever appear on the chart.
Radish... about 7 years ago
Jss posts deliberately false comments and then deletes them later.
Silly Season about 7 years ago
“I can believe that a stone age man built a wooden boat large enough to house every species on Earth, but climate change just seems a bit of a stretch to me.” – Originator unknown
Germanshepherds4ever about 7 years ago
Tell this to the Orange Primate in the white house
Cozmik Cowboy about 7 years ago
I take heart from the knowledge that we’re not actually destroying the planet; we’re just making it uninhabitable for current life forms, giving it a chance to get it right next time…..
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member about 7 years ago
Sullivan deletes his/her posts regularly. Which also means that, the replies that people have made to those posts vanish. So do not reply directly to him (or trolls in general)!
I’m sure he gets some jollies from effectively deleting many peoples comments along with his ownUse an @Sully: or some such to make replies. Again, do not reply directly!
As for Brass Orchid’s usual stuff, I paraphrase yet again the famous quote from Wolfgang Pauli, “It’s not even wrong.”
twclix about 7 years ago
“Sullivan’s” citation of Lenin is a tell. He’s a Russian troll.
goblue86 about 7 years ago
I’m clearly on one side of this debate, but with all that is going on, all the debates and scientific observations, etc, there is one observation that I hope everyone can agree upon: The earth and its environment are incredibly fragile. Is it man made? Is it a natural cycle? Are humans accelerating it? I’m not sure the answer really matters. We’re in this point in time were there are bona-fide observable changes in the environment.
Take oil for example. Sure..we could argue “does it or does it not affect the environment?” Again, who cares. Oil is too precious a resource to be burning it out tailpipes when we have the technology to replace it and thus save the resource for it’s other many useful purposes for which we DONT have a viable alternative.
People can be so stupid…they spend all their energy arguing some stupid insignificant point when they could use that energy solving problems.
DanFlak about 7 years ago
When it comes to climate change, I’m a skeptic – that doesn’t mean I don’t believe it, it means I want to find out for myself rather than believe what other people tell me.
The best I can do are the articles in Scientific American. Elsewhere in life, it’s “Show me the money!” In science circles it’s “Show me the data!” Unlike Oil Companies, politicians and environmental groups, scientists can’t make any assertions without having data to back it up.
The studies agree: global warming is real. It’s been happening for the past 12,000 years. It’s been accelerating for the past 150 or so years. Which is about the time of the industrial revolution. Coincidence or causation? I don’t care. We do not have to add to the problem and industrial pollution has other bad effects besides greenhouse gasses.
The big debate in scientific circles isn’t whether global warming is real; it’s on how bad it is and how much we contribute to it. Opponents point to these disagreements as proof that scientists don’t know what they are talking about on the issue.
So while people argue about whether the elephant is in the room, nobody is willing to get the shovels to clean up his mess.
Even if we left the planet, warming will still occur – so we need to accept a simple policy: abate and adapt.
Personally, I don’t care: my grandchildren will inherit my beachfront property here at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
JennyJenkins about 7 years ago
Everyone, and I mean everyone in the world better get off their kister and buy that “ice-maker” fridge, ASAP. All this new ice will replace the melting of the icecaps. Our problems will be solved within one cycle.
; – /
falcon_370f about 7 years ago
An Iceberg the size of Delaware is .001% of the Ocean Area. .00025% of the planet’s surface. Even the entire Ross Ice Shelf is less than .01% of Ocean area, and all the naturally occurring ice on the planet is barely enough to increase ocean levels by 1 mm.
Silly Season about 7 years ago
A cartoon with explanation of Climate Change:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1732:_Earth_Temperature_Timeline
Cerabooge about 7 years ago
@Falc: “and all the naturally occurring ice on the planet is barely enough to increase ocean levels by 1 mm.”
I suggest you move to an island that’s 1 foot above sea level. That way, when the ice on Greenland melts, you’ll be 19 ft underwater. When Antarctica melts, that’s another 200 feet.
“If the Greenland Ice Sheet melted, scientists estimate that sea level would rise about 6 meters (20 feet). If the Antarctic Ice Sheet melted, sea level would rise by about 60 meters (200 feet).” https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html
Do you really expect people to believe your claptrap?
dabugger about 7 years ago
Age of anti-reality and facts in general. Otherwise, no science…
Dennis Nichols about 7 years ago
The strip is growing tedious.
Godfreydaniel about 7 years ago
People who say “It’s snowing in my city, so that means that global warming doesn’t exist” might as well say, “There are no volcanoes on my block, so there must not be any volcanoes in the world.”
Gameguy49 Premium Member about 7 years ago
If global warming was real they wouldn’t have to lie about the figures……https://science.house.gov/news/press-releases/former-noaa-scientist-confirms-colleagues-manipulated-climate-records
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member about 7 years ago
Hagowar and Geophyzz and the rest: Citing past history as proof of future behavior? Really?
The Milankovitch cycles occur over tens to hundreds of thousands of years. The evidence from ice cores shows that CO2 increases (or decreases) of 80 ppm took a minimum of several thousand years. And yet, it has increased by more that amount in less than 60 years (1959: 315ppm, 2017: 405ppm). Ocean acidity has also increased significantly in that time.
It’s not just change, it is the rate of change that makes this so lethal. That’s pretty much true for all natural processes as well.
Volcanoes like Kilauea do not kill people. Volcanoes like Krakatoa do.
The slow steady movement of the continents doesn’t kill people, but those short sharp adjustments of big earthquakes do.
Daily winds don’t kill people, but tornadoes do.
The daily tide kills no one, but a storm surge does.
It’s the changes for which there is no or little time to adjust that are the problem. And the increase in CO2 is a sharp change to the global environment. More heat is retained by the earth. The effects in some places are greater than others. The arctic is warming fastest of any region because more sunlight is absorbed by ground and sea that is not covered with snow and ice.
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member about 7 years ago
@Barry Hiebert: Ah, yes, the republican congress… a credible source of science… NOT!
They manipulated what was an internal dissent, not about the facts but about when the paper should be released.
The scientist they quote denies that there was any fraud.
Other analyses have concurred with the study the reptiles have questioned.
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060049630
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member about 7 years ago
OK, boys and girls, let’s do some math:
From the two sources I cited above, the average ice mass loss from Greenland was 280 Gigatons per year, while Antarctica was losing 125 Gigatons per year. Lets call that 400 Gigatons per year lost. (That’s net loss by the way.)
1 cubic meter of water masses 1 metric ton. A cubic kilometer masses 1 gigaton. (1000m x 1000m x1000m). So the net mass loss is equivalent to 400,000,000,000 cubic meters of water. The area of the earth’s ocean is about 360 million square kilometers or 360 trillion square meters. A little division and you find that the yearly increase in sea level (because we are not talking sea ice here) is a bit more than 1 mm.(So much for the previous remark about melting of all of the ice contributing only 1 mm. Some people are simply not to be trusted with math— like politicians.)
However, the melting of the ice is only part of the story of sea level rise. If you raise the temperature of water, it expands. Simple physics, not dependent on anyone’s politics. As another of the sources cited above by me shows, the heat in the ocean is increasing.The net result is that the heating contributes more to sea level rise than does ice cap melting.
Plus, humans keep pumping out groundwater and letting it flow to the sea. Pity that we’ll run out of groundwater, and that it takes aquifers thousands of years to renew. But hey, conservation is for liberals, right? (Similarly, loss of soil into the oceans contributes a smaller amount to sea level rise.)
The net result is that the globally average sea level is rising more than 3 mm per year. That’s about a foot per century. Not so much, you think? Well, bad news. The rate of sea level rise is about twice what is was a century ago. And it will not get less. Because it is going to get warmer, even faster.
ramblinfever14 about 7 years ago
Wiley take your strip to the Editorial page! Cartoons are for entertainment, not be force feed your political agenda.
Night-Gaunt49[Bozo is Boffo] about 7 years ago
When they tell you to wait, that it isn’t “the best time” means it is the best time for you, not them.
Bugbert about 7 years ago
Stop complaining about it and do something to fix what is supposedly the problem. Stop exhaling for instance. Didn’t someone report that sea levels were dropping in the last few days?
kaffekup about 7 years ago
Guy on the beach: “Sea level is falling. Now it’s rising. Good, it’s falling again. Uh-oh…”
GiantShetlandPony about 7 years ago
One thing that doesn’t change is the willfully ignorant and the trolls that will feed that ignorance.
Andylit Premium Member about 7 years ago
So many lies, so little time. Hockey Stick. Climate Gate. Polar Bear Population. NASA Removal of Early Stats. And lest we all forget….AL GORE.
Mokurai about 7 years ago
https://www.quora.com/What-do-I-say-to-people-who-deny-global-warming/answer/Edward-Cherlin
You can tell them that it no longer matters what they believe, because renewable energy is cheaper than coal and oil, and we are closing in on natural gas.
danketaz Premium Member about 7 years ago
Time to get serious. It’s watering the drinks!
Russell Bedford about 7 years ago
I chose to acknowledge that this current cycle of so called natural and man made changes to our environment are the precursoes to the promised creation of a new heaven and a new earth promised by God, in Revelation, for the New Jesusalem.
DanFlak about 7 years ago
It is ironic that the State of Florida prohibits the words “climate change” or “global warming” in official state documentation. If sea levels rise 300 feet, Florida will be reduced to a tiny island off the coast of Alabama.
GiantShetlandPony about 7 years ago
@Oakstone:
Scientists do not try to prove each other wrong, well maybe a little bit, as everyone wants to be the first to discover something. More often, they just act to verify each others work. Sometimes they find it can’t be for a variety of reasons. Usually a variable that was overlooked. Good scientist try to replicate each others experiments and theories to prove it, and are often more disappointed when they can not. However, being scientists, facts matter. When something can be replicated consistently by others it becomes a Theory/Fact. Much as has been done with Evolution, which is why it is a Theory/Fact.
Theories can evolve as techniques and equipment improves, but does not change the fact. Einstein predicted gravitational waves, his science was good, but we have only recently discovered a way to ‘see’ them. Now we can trace them back to their source and perhaps find other things we can’t ‘see’ by noting disturbances in the ripples.
Science is cool.
If there is a problem, it’s with the misuse of the word Theory, most people use Theory in a sentence, when they should be using the word Hypothesis.
Hypothesis=not yet fact/may not be come a fact.
Theory=substantiated by fact.
Which is why most Conspiracy Theories should actually be called Conspiracy Hypothesis.
Anyway, spent far too much time on a day late dollar short comment. :-/
GeorgeSteele over 5 years ago
Why are all the “smart” people – like Gore, and Obama, for example – buying oceanfront property?