Alpinism and Religion

J Squared wrote:
the scientific method is founded on doubt... and testing a hypothesis from all angles.
how are you going to learn anything new by only listening to the people who already believe that "we're all going to die in 12 years unless we 'fix the climate'

your raging bias to not look at anything which is contrary to your norms is quite sad.

oh please, paragons of intellect.  debunk this
http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/index.php/645-climate-tipping-alarm-vs-scientific-forecasting

or debunk this.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/06/28/nature-unbound-ix-21st-century-climate-change/

meanwhile.. out in the real world.  business.financialpost.com/…

The third link doesn't deny climate change it confirms it. Its predictions (that temps will stabilize) require that human caused emissions stabilize, which you may recognize would only be due to regulation and the switch to reduced emission technologies. Or are we just farting less?

First sentence in  third link: "For the past decade anthropogenic emissions have slowed down, and continuation of current trends suggests a peak in emissions by 2050."

Which is a sneaky way of saying: even though emissions are still increasing, they haven't been increasing as much lately.

From the first sentence we find suspicious language suggesting there is an agenda behind the paper. 

This article in a nutshell: Some models aren't perfectly predicting the future because the assumptions that set up the model turned out to be incorrect. We think something different will happen but our model requires assumptions too, but we think our assumptions are right.

Who knows? Their model might be the right one. But the aren't denying climate change. If they are wrong and CO2 levels don't stabilize then the temps will keep rising.

Anonymous wrote: If you all were really worried about such things being as catastrophic as you seem to suggest then why use the political system to make change? Seems a slow means to solving a dire situation. That is, climate change believers are not much better than climate change deniers.

Political / government leadership is required.  

Individuals in aggregate will not do it on their own.

This was demonstrated when the automobile average mpg went up, I think in the Carter era but not sure.  When it went up, oil consumption from automobile usage largely stayed them same.  People simply had the means to drive more mileage with the same amount of money ... and did so.

Anonymous wrote: Climate Change, Global Warming, what ever happened to the Ozone Layer?

ETA

If you all were really worried about such things being as catastrophic as you seem to suggest then why use the political system to make change? Seems a slow means to solving a dire situation. That is, climate change believers are not much better than climate change deniers.

What happened to the ozone layer? 

So in an attempt to discredit climate change believers you have referenced one of the very few human caused environmental issues that actually sparked a global response and subsequent remedy. A rare success by government to regulate an environmental problem away.  I hope we can be as successful with carbon emissions on a whole as we have been with chlorinated floro-carbons.

Anonymous wrote: Except for some off grid self sustained hippies (or perhaps a tribe in the Amazon, for example), the ones who aren't online like us (running computers, phones and the servers in some air conditioned server farm that power this site), we are all at fault. All of us.

Yet some claim innocence 'cause they hold the supossed political high ground? Meh, I smell hypocrisy.

Innocence? Hypocrisy? Not sure who that was directed at. But assuming it was my last post, I can answer for me.

I have a lot of paid time off these years.  And all my kids are out of the house. And when I make vacation plans, I usually drive part or all of a day each way.
Honestly, time is my limiting factor when I am choosing between driving destinations.  I never think of how much green house gasses I could save the world by always climbing locally. 

And while almost every work day I commute by bicycle, it is primarily not because I want to save green house gasses. It is because I need / want the exercise (but I do not recommend bicycing for the risks).

And my wife and I have one vehicle. It is not very gas efficient - 2009 Honda CRV. But is also not the worst. Since we have just one vehicle that we use for everything, we compromised on green house emissions.

One could hold up my life and say, “Well, Bill is not doing everything he can to reduce green house emissions.  So his wish for government help in doing so can be ignored.”

If my life style and still looking for government involvement represent hypocrisy, I’ll take the personal hit. And I will also take the hit if / when government intervention thwarts my car choice or my travel plans ... assuming that fits into an organized plan regarding climate change.

Bill Lawry wrote: With religion, getting to the top is usually the eternal everything. And how you did it is diminished in that eternity. And bailing is unthinkable which leads to all sorts of surprising partnerships.

Try Cam,
The above was just a simple thought about how memories from decades ago become more and more irretrievable as we age. That and presumably one isn’t just reexperiencing one’s human life for eternity. Plus it seems very unlikely one would have infinite capacity for memory in eternity - not that I am a believer.

Anonymous wrote: Except for some off grid self sustained hippies (or perhaps a tribe in the Amazon, for example), the ones who aren't online like us (running computers, phones and the servers in some air conditioned server farm that power this site), we are all at fault. All of us.

Yet some claim innocence 'cause they hold the supossed political high ground? Meh, I smell hypocrisy.

Hey Nate. I live off the grid in a small carbon foot print, passive/active solar home and I ain't no hippy!  Self described "dirt bag" thank you very much.  Point is, WE all need to work together to solve large problems.  My itsy-bitsy contribution does little for the rest of the planet (though it does make me feel better).  But together, governments, churches, climbing organizations, individuals, etc. can make an impact, eg. we plugged that hole over Antarctica.

I have been working on a solution to this mess we are in weekly for the last 5 years. I am definitely a climate hypocrite but am not simply watching the world self destruct. Big changes are needed but they are not out of reach. 

bttrrtRock Charles wrote:
The third link doesn't deny climate change it confirms it. Its predictions (that temps will stabilize) require that human caused emissions stabilize, which you may recognize would only be due to regulation and the switch to reduced emission technologies. Or are we just farting less?

First sentence in  third link: "For the past decade anthropogenic emissions have slowed down, and continuation of current trends suggests a peak in emissions by 2050."

Which is a sneaky way of saying: even though emissions are still increasing, they haven't been increasing as much lately.

From the first sentence we find suspicious language suggesting there is an agenda behind the paper.

This article in a nutshell: Some models aren't perfectly predicting the future because the assumptions that set up the model turned out to be incorrect. We think something different will happen but our model requires assumptions too, but we think our assumptions are right.

Who knows? Their model might be the right one. But the aren't denying climate change. If they are wrong and CO2 levels don't stabilize then the temps will keep rising.

your idea of "if CO2 levels don't stabilize" is a broken premise.   the system was never 'stable' to begin with.  the climate is always in a state of change.

C02 is correlated with a temperature increase....but by a factor which is WAY smaller than the IPCC-AGW crowd professes it will be.
http://notrickszone.com/2017/07/17/swiss-physicist-concludes-ipcc-assumptions-violate-reality-co2-a-very-weak-greenhouse-gas/

"A summarizing conclusion from the calculations may be that if we doubled today’s concentration (400 ppm) to 800 ppm, the consequent temperature response would be less than 1/4th of a degree Celsius. "

The sun is correlated with the rise and fall of global temperatures to a much greater degree than CO2
http://www.co2science.org/subject/g/summaries/globalmwp.php (observed data from tree rings and ice cores and sunspot cycles)

also relevant is this study, which uses observed (not theoretical) data from multiple planets in our solar system.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/pressure-warming-effect-featured-on-wnd-study-blows-greenhouse-theory-out-of-the-water/
(the authors reply in the comments section, the comments section is also rather illuminating if you can make it all the way through)

beware of anyone who is attempting to make you feel "carbon guilt" ;) and, as always, follow the money. (especially when you're deciding that the reason to dismiss an AGW skeptical paper is because it "has an agenda")

Worrying about “Hypocrisy” is misleading.

Assuming changing our “ways” is needed, the questions are What and How much?  From there we would move forward together.

If you want to go far, go together.

Or we can stick with the greedy algorithm of the last couple years and reach with abandon for as much money / wealth as we can amass without regard to the future, without regard to concern from the scientific community.

As an alternate view, if one believes in eternal bliss with an omnipotent god, what we do now with the earth matters not so much. And our alpinism is greatly diminished in a comparison with religion.

In any case, I believe applying religion to alpinism and nature in general has the effect of numbing any concern about the environment in which alpinism lives.

Yes - getting weary of what is being done in general in the name of the Christian God. Carry on.

Heard on morning talk radio yesterday that the Pope came out and said that Priests were making Nuns sex slaves.  And the Baptist Church also has some sort of major issue right now but didn't catch the details on that.  Religion is dare I say worse than American Politics.  More and more I believe firmly that every major religeon is a sham to control man and get their money.  Although I still believe in a Creator and that all of this is some sort of test.  Climb on and be good to your fellow man.

J - There are millions of articles on the topic. You can keep posting links - we get your point - the same point I made above - that all of these theories are based on assumptions that may or may not be true. You want to go against the grain that's fine. Please make sure that the end result of your crusade is helpful to the planets future.

If something (fossil fuels) looks toxic, tastes toxic and is proven toxic then we should stop extracting, using, breathing, ingesting it, ect. I don't like breathing exhaust do you? I don't like plastic killing marine life and destroying marine environments. Its bad, global warming or no global warming.

The bottom line is that the world needs to shift to a sustainable system and in general, climate deniers and faith based religions are working against that shift.

Up thread I have not been arguing against Christianity because its incorrect (though it seems pretty out there), but rather because the outcome is negative for the global community. Same here. I don't know what theory is right - no way to know. I am fine with the human caused global warming theory (not the same as believing it) for two reasons 1) its simple and makes sense 2) the resulting outcomes are positive. 

on the subject of "it's simple and it makes sense"

https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/the-holocene-context-for-anthropogenic-global-warming-2/

it's important to have the proper timescale perspective before assuming you know the cause of the outcome

• the last millennium 1000AD – 2000AD has been the coldest millennium of the entire Holocene interglacial.
• each of the notable high points in the Holocene temperature record, (Holocene Climate Optimum – Minoan – Roman – Medieval – Modern), have been progressively colder than the previous high point.

it's not a theory, or an assumption.  it's observed data from ice core samples.  The more you dig, the more the idea that "our current situation is that man is causing the temperature to rise, and the temperature rise is a bad thing" ... falls apart.

if anything, we are due for a return to glaciation. 

^ rate of change

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

THIS RATE OF WARMING HAS NOT BEEN SEEN BEFORE

Yes, warming and cooling happen over years, decades, millennia, eons, etc
But with human-forcing, the current rate of change is greater than has been measured previously. This is what is going to kill off species. It takes a long time to adapt via evolution.

I'll even add a chart for you:

Are you now going to run out and "disprove" NASA as a left-wing funded organization? With an elitist agenda? I'm sure there are plenty of sites that will give you what you desire. Why not start with InfoWars?

J Squared wrote
it's not a theory, or an assumption.  it's observed data from ice core samples.  The more you dig, the more the idea that "our current situation is that man is causing the temperature to rise, and the temperature rise is a bad thing" ... falls apart.

So, we have an observation, and a working hypothesis, that seems to account for all the data. And that's *not* a theory?

Or do you mean, that's not what laypeople call a theory, because they don't understand that tentativeness is foundational to post-Cartesian science?

Matt N wrote: 
I'll even add a chart for you:

Are you now going to run out and "disprove" NASA as a left-wing funded organization? With an elitist agenda? I'm sure there are plenty of sites that will give you what you desire. Why not start with InfoWars?

why do we need to be afraid of CO2 again?  http://notrickszone.com/2017/07/17/swiss-physicist-concludes-ipcc-assumptions-violate-reality-co2-a-very-weak-greenhouse-gas/

http://www.co2science.org/index.php
http://www.co2science.org/data/acidification/results.php

did you even read the Holocene Context?
we could use some temperature recovery anywhere we can get it.

bttrrtRock Charles wrote: J - There are millions of articles on the topic. You can keep posting links - we get your point - the same point I made above - that all of these theories are based on assumptions that may or may not be true. You want to go against the grain that's fine. Please make sure that the end result of your crusade is helpful to the planets future.

J ^

J Squared wrote: why do we need to be afraid of CO2 again? 

Try an experiment with a plastic bag...

^^ the earth is not a closed system.  but if you DO believe in the doom of CO2, you can feel free to stop breathing as an act of nobility.

you can also feel free to admit you're having thought fatigue, and that you'd rather just walk away feeling like you're "doing the right thing for the planet"

My crusade? going against the grain?  a stellar win for rationalism here, guys.  keep up the great work!  (bttrrtRock Charles , feel free to make an actual argument instead of sweeping generalizations, like "there are millions of papers on the subject" [blatant hyperbole] or "AGW skeptics want to pollute the earth" or "but rather because the outcome is negative for the global community."  if you think that 'the global community' is an entity with a discrete opinion that you can know...)

why do you think you know what's better for the future of the planet? if it's all just theories, when it comes down to it... you just have faith?

 people talk about 'terraforming mars'... we might actually be doing some minor terraforming here to stave off an impending ice-age.

Matt N wrote:

Try an experiment with a plastic bag...

#MPGold