Hurricane Patricia kindly requests that all climate change deniers shut up now and forever after.

Not sure how useful that calculator is. In the fine print, they say that "The baseline emissions scenario against which all climate dioxide reductions were measured is scenario A1B from the IPCC’s Special Report on Emissions Scenarios"

The IPICC report describes scenario A1 as "a future world of very rapid economic growth, low population growth, and the rapid introduction of new and more efficient technologies. Major underlying themes are convergence among regions, capacity building and increased cultural and social interactions, with a substantial reduction in regional differences in per capita income."

So the calculator finds that, in this hypothesized future where we are already rapidly shifting to less carbon-intensive technologies, a carbon tax only gives marginal benefit. That's both unsurprising and unhelpful.

Jasmo said:
It is hard to deny temperature records that the world has been getting warmer, on average, from year to year. A more sensible debate would be about the extent to which it is caused by man-made by-products. While no doubt this is part of the problem, the world has gone through dramatic periods of warming and cooling cycles before there was ever an industrial revolution, and it seems difficult to determine, for example, whether an independent warming cycle is occurring separately or in conjunction with the release of carbon into the atmosphere, and how much each factor contributes the total.

Explain to me how laypeople are supposed to "debate...the extent to which it is caused by man-made by-products." ?

This is an incredibly complicated scientific issue. There is nothing for the layperson to "debate". We do not have the knowledge or expertise to do so.

To me it always comes down to this: among the community of climatologists - all of them highly educated, many of them superlative minds - there is an essentially unanimous view of the issue. There may be disagreements around the margins, but the main point, that man-made action is warming the climate, is simply undisputed.

Does anyone really think that they can stand in a room with some climatologists and "debate" with them and not be torn completely to shreds? And doesn't that mean that your position is extremely weak?

I just don't get this mentality. Now, you can choose to believe them or not, but don't think for a minute that arguments like "the world has gone through dramatic periods of warming and cooling cycles before there was ever an industrial revolution," would not immediately be destroyed by a climatologist.

There are no arguments to make for the layperson. We don't have the skill. Our choice is to believe that these guys know what they're doing, or to not believe them.

And if you choose not to believe them, your only choice at that point is to explain to us how an entire branch of science has been completely wrong for decades now.

Good luck with that.

TigerLilly said:

GL2 said:
I believe that thinking "deniers" aren't really deniers. Their concerns are the economy, the seeming futility of attempts at correction (which will never manifest in their lifetimes), the expectation of no cooperation from others, the tree-hugging liberal crowd, etc.
Further, any imminent major changes will affect the third world rather than us. We'll be fine. We'll adapt. Fcuk the future.

If anyone believes we have an immigration problem now, just wait until this happens. People will have to go somewhere.

Agree completely. People are going to go to where they can to survive - whether it's economics, war, or climate.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/