What Do You Think About Climate Change?

[Queequeg]

@Queenqueg - This isn't a debate about facts, but of first principles, same as environmentalism vs. humanism. You can either see the failure of peak oil predictions in the past as a failure of the philosophy and start to think about resources like an economist, believing you can't predict what values or inventions the future will bring, or you can say that they were just off in their timing and a new technology pushed the inevitable collapse event a few decades later. We are using the former, zztr the latter, and there's no facts that can bridge the gap. It's like arguing evolution vs. creationism between a Christian and an atheist, they cannot meet in this issue for deeper reasons than factual discrepancy

I agree. Speaking in general, I think it is difficult to sometimes accept new information that challenges what you are already know to be true. For me, changing my ideas about climate change was a very long process. I also used to be a hardcore democrat and am now somewhat embarrassed of the crap I believed.

 

[Kyle M]

I agree. Speaking in general, I think it is difficult to sometimes accept new information that challenges what you are already know to be true. For me, changing my ideas about climate change was a very long process. I also used to be a hardcore democrat and am now somewhat embarrassed of the crap I believed. I think it was Socrates who said he was the smartest man around because he knew he didn't know anything.

But it wasn't a piece of factual information that changed your mind, but a slow revolution in your foundational precepts, right? You can communicate all of the science about climate change in the world to someone, show the corruption in academia, present evidence of a total inability of climate scientists to predict climate with their models, but climate catastrophists are armored against this information. They don't refute it with information as much as with perspective. Everything is the oil companies sponsoring research, dumb Republicans that hate and/or don't understand science, etc. As long as people they relate to and respect are telling them something is real, that's what they will believe. This election cycle the social progressives had millions of people convinced that Donald Trump, the most pro-lgbt rights president elect of all time (including Obama, who opposed gay marriage until somewhere around his second term) is going to round up gays in concentration camps. That's where people's minds are about social issues.

 

[Queequeg]

But it wasn't a piece of factual information that changed your mind, but a slow revolution in your foundational precepts, right? You can communicate all of the science about climate change in the world to someone, show the corruption in academia, present evidence of a total inability of climate scientists to predict climate with their models, but climate catastrophists are armored against this information. They don't refute it with information as much as with perspective. Everything is the oil companies sponsoring research, dumb Republicans that hate and/or don't understand science, etc. As long as people they relate to and respect are telling them something is real, that's what they will believe. This election cycle the social progressives had millions of people convinced that Donald Trump, the most pro-lgbt rights president elect of all time (including Obama, who opposed gay marriage until somewhere around his second term) is going to round up gays in concentration camps. That's where people's minds are about social issues.

True. I think once you get used to that humbling feeling, it gets easier to change your mind on things you never would have before.

 

[zztr]

Man, you guys, have, like, totally escaped the matrix. Taken the red pill, ya know. Not like the entire press haven't been blaring for 20 years that there isn't an energy problem and you're stupid if you think there might be.

 

[Kyle M]

Man, you guys, have, like, totally escaped the matrix. Taken the red pill, ya know. Not like the entire press haven't been blaring for 20 years that there isn't an energy problem and you're stupid if you think there might be.

So what's the bet going to be? Or are you not putting your $$$ where your mouth is?

 

[Queequeg]

 

[zztr]

So what's the bet going to be? Or are you not putting your $$$ where your mouth is?

I have hundreds of thousands riding on positions informed by understanding of the markets and the interplay with energy supply. Why on earth would I take bit wagers with you.

 

[Queequeg]

based on your prepper reading I bet you've been trying to short the market too. How has that been working out?

 

[Kyle M]

I have hundreds of thousands riding on positions informed by understanding of the markets and the interplay with energy supply. Why on earth would I take bit wagers with you.

If that were true, then a bit wager wouldn't be no thang. If you don't want to do it, it's likely that you're lying. Either way it's insincere.

 

[zztr]

based on your prepper reading I bet you've been trying to short the market too. How has that been working out?

Very well! Rode Tesla and Ralph Lauren down.

 

[Queequeg]

well you must be one of the last shorts standing, or...

 

[Kyle M]

Very well! Rode Tesla and Ralph Lauren down.

If you believe Peak Oil you would be long in Corrupt Musk Inc.

 

[schultz]

Speaking of oil, what do you guys think about Abiogenic petroleum origin - Wikipedia

I first read about it in Peat's book Generative Energy where he starts off talking about it with this paragraph...

"When complex organic compounds were found in petroleum, some people argued that this was evidence that the petroleum was the residue of dead organisms, that had seeped into porous geological formations. Another view is that petroleum was directly created by the earth, and that life is a parallel creation."

Then he goes on to talk about Mendeleev dissolving high-carbon iron in hydrochloric acid and having an oily residue form on the surface of the acid. Apparently it smelt identical to petroleum. A few paragraphs later is he talks about Sydney Fox which is also interesting.

 

[Queequeg]

Speaking of oil, what do you guys think about Abiogenic petroleum origin - Wikipedia

I first read about it in Peat's book Generative Energy where he starts off talking about it with this paragraph...

"When complex organic compounds were found in petroleum, some people argued that this was evidence that the petroleum was the residue of dead organisms, that had seeped into porous geological formations. Another view is that petroleum was directly created by the earth, and that life is a parallel creation."

Then he goes on to talk about Mendeleev dissolving high-carbon iron in hydrochloric acid and having an oily residue form on the surface of the acid. Apparently it smelt identical to petroleum. A few paragraphs later is he talks about Sydney Fox which is also interesting.

I don't know how much of the oil is abiotic vs biotic, but as far as I can remember abiotic oil is accepted as a scientific phenomenon. I think at high enough temps and pressures carbon in rocks such as limestone can breakdown and reform as small hydrocarbons. Certain older once thought exhausted oil fields, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico are refilling with oil. Based on carbon isotopes, some think its mostly abiotic.

 

[Kyle M]

I don't know how much of the oil is abiotic vs biotic, but as far as I can remember abiotic oil is accepted as a scientific phenomenon. I think at high enough temps and pressures carbon in rocks such as limestone can breakdown and reform as small hydrocarbons. Certain older once thought exhausted oil fields, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico are refilling with oil. Based on carbon dating some think its mostly abiotic.

Yeah when I first read about this a long time ago it came off as "out there" but more recently I've seen it discussed in a main stream way. Seems to only be oil though, not coal or natural gas. I think the ultimate proof was that petroleum-ish hydrocarbons were found in the rings of Saturn or something like that, some other planet.

 

[luke gadget]

So what's the bet going to be? Or are you not putting your $$$ where your mouth is?

I'm curious - who would be the arbiter of such a bet? It couldn't be you, since you could always say it (human-made climate change) wasn't real even if you secretly became convinced it was true. It couldn't be the other party because you could always say you didn't believe them.

It would have to be in some kind of escrow, managed by a neutral third party with strict, concrete criteria for determining a 'win' - even if you and the others never agreed with the result. Is such a bet even possible?

On a totally separate topic, I think the idea of hard rock (abiotic) oil formation is really interesting. There are a lot of unknowns in deep earth/high temp/pressure geology and I could totally imagine an oil or oil precursor 'rising' to the top of a magma flow, like pond scum, and captured under a hard cap where it's found today.

 

[Kyle M]

I'm curious - who would be the arbiter of such a bet? It couldn't be you, since you could always say it (human-made climate change) wasn't real even if you secretly became convinced it was true. It couldn't be the other party because you could always say you didn't believe them.

I envisioned a bet, like the Simon-Ehrlich wager, where zztr comes up with the metric and time period, as Simon allowed Ehrlich to do. Something like "in ten years the price of oil/energy will be x" or "the standard of living of Americans will be reduced in such and such substantial ways in x years."

 

[Kyle M]

Was just listening to an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, which had information that undermines the peak oil theory. Richard Maybury explains how government, which control about 90% of the global oil supply, regularly lie to each other and their citizens about what that supply is, not unlike how they make up GDP and inflation numbers. He gives the example of Kuwait claiming oil reserves of approximately 90 billion barrels for over a decade. If that were true, that would mean that they pumped and sold the same amount of oil year after year. Of course that can't be true, so they are either lying or simply too lazy to update their reserve numbers. Point being, all of the peak oil calculations use oil reserves made by governments (the biggest liars in the world) and on the back end use estimates of usage that are also largely from government economic data. Garbage in, garbage out.

 

[thomas00]

What do I think about climate change?

1. It's frustrating to hear appeals to consensus and/or authority that are often relied on by climate scientists and journalists. It's entirely possible for popular positions to be utterly wrong and there is no need to resort to logical fallacy when you can use evidence instead.

2. I've never seen anything presented by the 'skeptics' that wasn't easily shown to be cherry picked or something which exposed their ignorance to a wider set of data that needed to be considered

3. The fact that the skeptics won't even attempt (as far as I'm aware) to get any of their ideas published says volumes. Yes, journals do engage in censorship at times for political reasons. But there are plenty of examples of controversial ideas being published that have cost people their reputations and careers and more importantly, those people have continued to try to get things published

4. All the skeptics are of a certain political bent which says plenty. They are people that look at any kind of environmental protection as hippy ***t.

 

[luke gadget]

What do I think about climate change?

1. It's frustrating to hear appeals to consensus and/or authority that are often relied on by climate scientists and journalists. It's entirely possible for popular positions to be utterly wrong and there is no need to resort to logical fallacy when you can use evidence instead.

2. I've never seen anything presented by the 'skeptics' that wasn't easily shown to be cherry picked or something which exposed their ignorance to a wider set of data that needed to be considered

3. The fact that the skeptics won't even attempt (as far as I'm aware) to get any of their ideas published says volumes. Yes, journals do engage in censorship at times for political reasons. But there are plenty of examples of controversial ideas being published that have cost people their reputations and careers and more importantly, those people have continued to try to get things published

4. All the skeptics are of a certain political bent which says plenty. They are people that look at any kind of environmental protection as hippy ***t.

That's basically it. All the "denier" positions depend on vast conspiracies of "them" doing something something to "us", and make sweeping claims about huge numbers of organizations and people - like "they" are being paid, "they" want to "enslave us", "they" have some nefarious agenda. And "they" being scientists and researchers in multiple countries and multiple sometimes competing organizations who are somehow all participating in a grand lie because - well for no coherent reason. I find this argument particularly offensive - they clearly have n0 idea who scientists are or what they do. I do know many and I know they care deeply about their work. And they do science because they love it - "grant money" is NOT a fortune and many are choosing to be poor and doing real science instead of working for corporations.

And of course there's also all the very clear documented efforts by real corporations to suppress discussion of climate change. Even Exxon has known about it for decades, and planning for it - while funding denier sites and phony "research" "organizations" (scientifica plublica is the worst, in the way it sounds so scienterrific!! while publishing utter bull**** - and it's basically one guy who IS being paid by industry groups. Oh that English hack is another one like that; Morton Mock Morton or something like that.. Republicans in Congress luuuv his English accent). Meanwhile very sober groups like insurance companies are including climate change predictions into their actuarial tables, and they are NOT flying by the seat of their pants here.

And then there's the silliness of the arguments. It's like Round Robin - first it's not happening, then it's happening but not now, then it's happening but 'we' didn't cause it, then it's the sun, no geothermal, no space fairies, no it's not happening after all since it snowed last week somewhere. Meanwhile real scientists have completely debunked that bs over and over and over - but of course nobody is interested in what REAL scientists have to say but hey some blogger in their basement "proved" that a hundred years of scientific data is wrong because they saw a cloud.