Climate Change in California Article

[mrphil]

I don't really want to step into this subject, because I just don't know, but it would be nice to see longer term data sets.

I think we do have some inevitable warming because of industrialization, but where the proponents of human-induced CO2 being the primary cause shoot themselves in the foot and lose credibility is in cherry picking data to make their case. For example: when I started the thread on what people thought was causing the fires, I was amazed that the CONUS actually had a history of hotter and more frequent fires during past centuries, certainly prior to 1900. It told a much different story.

The other portion of Swain's temperature data as presented in the LA Times has to do with the selection of only only cities in Southern California. Basically, what's cited is data that might or might not be the result of a region that has been, is, and likely will continue to be going through the natural process of desertification, no matter what we do or don't do to it. As goes Los Angeles, so goes the world...hardly, unless Hollywood really is the center of the universe. I can buy that we're accelerating that process, but without the contentious redirection of water that keeps it habitable to begin with, So Cal reached its carrying capacity for human habitation a long time ago. When you live in the desert, you should expect it to be hot and dry.Whereas plants and animals either adapt or die if they aren't able to align their needs to what the environment is able to provide, we create a false nature wherein we force conditions to align with our habitation needs...too many people, resulting in too much traffic to sit in (thereby generating even more greenhouse gases, as just one example), more lawns, more showers, more resources committed to just maintaining the status quo, without even considering that it's a moving target based on an ever increasing set of numbers of people with a full-service mentality...all the daily things that society does and takes for granted that it has the right and need to, etc, and a tenuous situation, possibly on the brink to begin with, only being tilted in one direction, not so much because of what we're doing to the environment, but because we're where we shouldn't really be living as a species anyhow. Certainly not in the numbers that we are, and expect to be able to. That's called unrealistic.

We have to remember that the Ivory Coast and Sahara in Africa were once lush and tropical, but now they're largely wastelands with searing temperatures that are the highest on earth, as are our own Mojave Desert and Death Valley. And these were on their way to being deserts long before smokestacks and automobiles were even a concept.

I would just like to see real data in the scope of the bigger, longer term things. I think both sides are right, to some degree, but all we're doing is arguing over who's more right. We're not going to reasonably stop polluting, ever. It just goes along with our presence. And to be a successful species, if we don't adapt to nature and/or what we create in order to live with as a function of our needs within it, we're arrogant in our thinking that we're somehow exempt, and we might speed things up or slow them down, but if we can't even agree on whether we're the cause or just living with the effects of nature, be those what they may, we're just tossing around a political football. We might as well resign ourselves to the idea that we're just one more mindless species that was helpless to do anything but take whatever comes our way...lemmings unite for a better tomorrow. Let's just agree that it's both us and the natural progression of the planet's environment, then go from there without bickering over it. Address both. So we're going to go extinct and become the next Mars. Yeah, and....why? How stupid would we be if we focused on only one aspect and found out that we got it wrong?

[longri]

I don't really want to step into this subject, because I just don't know...

You should have stopped right there.

[mrphil]

You should have stopped right there.

I hear that a lot, but it's just not as fun as going for it and seeing what happens.

[longri]

...it's just not as fun as going for it and seeing what happens.

No doubt. So troll away...

[mrphil]

No doubt. So troll away...

Almost 900 posts later, and all i'm really left with for the most part is that you know the concept well yourself.

I take it you disagree with my comments? You obviously have no shortage of opinions, so let's hear them in an articulate manner that isn't designed as an ad hominem judgment of what my intentions actually are.

[rlown]

Fighting over this is bad. If it happens, it happens.

[longri]

No doubt. So troll away...

I take it you disagree with my comments? You obviously have no shortage of opinions, so let's hear them in an articulate manner that isn't designed as an ad hominem judgment of what my intentions actually are.

You said yourself that you didn't want to even step into the discussion because, as you freely admitted, you didn't really know what the truth is.

And yet you filled the water with chum.

[mrphil]

You said yourself that you didn't want to even step into the discussion because, as you freely admitted, you didn't really know what the truth is.

Granted. No doubt. Do any of us know for sure? My intent wasn't to chum the water, but to express my opinions, and maybe elicit a set of responses that hopefully furthers the conversation productively. I'm also just cynical enough to see how that could be interpreted as "trolling"...maybe for more feedback and understanding on my part, but not for the purposes of just antagonizing people into replying. It's not the subject of the conversation that makes me hesitant, it's the politics of what's become a circular war of ideologies that takes us nowhere. We each throw out what we believe, see each other's points, compromise if called for, admit to being wrong or accept being right graciously if we're either, and hopefully we maybe end up with what the truth really is. It's not us vs them or mutually exclusive to which side presented the best argument for the sake of arguing our party line's rhetoric, it's pretty much a big deal in that, as human beings with only one planet at our disposal, we all end up either winners or losers In the outcome.

[longri]

The science has been settled for a long time. There are many ways you could choose to learn. Posting a series of falsehoods and then saying that you want to "further the conversation productively" comes across as disingenuous at the very least.

[TahoeJeff]

The science has been settled for a long time

Glad Columbus didn't agree with that a long long time ago....