Climate change

It's quite common. Replace "this bullshit" with any number of philosophies, religions, fads, cults, propaganda, movements, causes, etc.

Them resorting to equating AGW-skepticism with "flat earthers" tells me everything I need to know, which is to say, an honest scientific discussion is not possible because skepticism and criticism have no place in science today if it goes against consensus. Climate change is not the only scientific field this is true in, unfortunately.

As LKJ the Wise would say - "It's so EASY to understand folks!!"

Grats, AJ, your post couldn't have proven Candle's point better if you had tried. Sigh. You're right though, people were preaching imminent doom due to global warming in the 1920s already. Oops, didn't happen.

Atmospheric physics, oceanology, geophysics, and meteorology are not simple science and we are far from having a solid grasp on any of those fields. First rule of science is, you cannot prove anything -- only disprove. 

No one is saying changes in climate don't exist. 

Forget the numbers and anecdotes. Look at the real world. Can any of you, with a clear conscience, honestly say the intensity of hype and public outrage even remotely matches the intensity of any climatic changes that have occurred in the last 10 years? 20 years? 60 years? 100 years? The answer is an obvious "no".

But yes, let's ALL drive Teslas even though their production is not environmentally friendly and there are hardly any EV charging stations available (compared to the amount of drivers)!!! Yes, British Columbia's insane NDP government actually wants electric vehicles to be a requirement by 2040 or 2050. Let's strain the electrical grid more! Wait, isn't that gonna contribute to global warming?!!!  

As a chemist I mostly work with small and lab-scale stuff, I actually don't have much of a specific knowledge about this topic. Also, on the forum there are also other users who studied some scientific subject, often more pertinent than mine, to various extents.

My impression on the climate change in general is that it is a freaking hard topic to study, both because of the lack of measured weather records* and of a deep comprehension of the phenomena controlling its behaviour. In this conditions it is very hard to draw a definitive conclusion (anyway, in general scientists tend to be very reluctant when giving definitive and precise answers like yes/not because, as 🖕🏿Mörön🖕🏿 pointed out, in science you can only definitively disprove an hypothesis).

(*with this I mean both the lack of historical records and the lack of instruments really mapping all the lands and oceans).


Anyway, applying simple scientific principles, it is quite evident that the human activities can actually have some influence. The infamous CO₂ concentration rising and its effect in strengthening the green house effect is probably the most evident example: with more CO₂ in the air, the energy radiated back from the Earth surface takes more time before escaping into the space, and so more energy is accumulated into the climatic system (athmosphere + oceans + lands etc...). Evidently, this energy need to go somewhere. About this, I also remind you that the amount of radiation which manages to be transmitted trough an absorbing sample is exponential, and not linear. [1]
Other human activities, such as turning forests into fields, also have a not negligible effect on the Earth energy balance because they change the ratio between adsorbed and reflected incoming radiation.
This kind of consideration, makes the most of scientists at least cautious about this topic, and certainly it doesn't seem something which should be ignored. On the other hand, scientist also tend to avoid extreme alarmism, and I actually quite agree that many news reported by the media are exaggerated in their conclusions.

As for the political actions aimed to reduce emissions, personally I often agree with them but not because climate change alone. At the end, greenhouse gasses emissions are mostly related to the massive employment of petroleum derivatives as fuels. But burning such fuels also produces a not negligible air pollution (NO_x, particular matter), which was proven to be bad for people health. The extraction of these fuels itself, in particular now with the introduction of extraction from unconventional sources like shale oil or gas, are very demanding for the environment and risk to contaminate the soil where we cultivate our food and the water we drink. The environmental consequences are evidently quite long, there is no need to elencate the all of them right now.
Apart from that, fossil fuels are available in definitive amounts for definition. Soon or later (50 years? 200?) their availability will start to decrease and, eventually, they will run out, and at that point we will definitively need to have a B plan. For many people it could seem too soon to start to be concerned about this, but scientist and engineers do know how much time is needed to develop an alternative energetic source and to make it competitive and that's why we are working on it already now.

There is another right point in the last few posts which I saw myself, Ariete wrote it at some point: in the scientific research related to this kind of topics (in particular all the old and new fuels part), the real moneys come from the oil extractors. There is no comparison with any public founded lab...

The foremost disparity here, is that we sceptics yield far more compelling evidence reinforcing our position on the failed theory than you alarmists can ever wish to yield. "They're just conspiracists!" is not a valid argument, I'm afraid; I require hard evidence, NOT petty computer model predictions or statements from the IPCC—of which have failed miserably, or indeed any climate AWS dataset that has been subject to severe tempering and/or homogenisation(s).

The flat-earthers yield no compelling evidence to speak of, much like you alarmist looneys, so using them lot as an argument against us, only falters your own position; shooting yourself in the foot, if you will.

So, please, Ariete; do me a good favour and watch the materials provided to you, especially considering that you're often the fellow who begs for an "expert opinion" on these matters, as I cannot explain half as well in writing as another can in speech—and that's precisely what videos are for.

In theory, the Greenhouse Effect works; contrarywise, in practice, it is not so: the gathered evidence and much of the world's raw datasets show either miniscule, intermittent warming, or no warming at all—or even cooling. And how do institutions such as the BOM or NOAA manage to authentically and effectively cool the past, might you ask? They merely erase the past, as well as adjusting for regions of which do not even yield climate data altogether. 

You see, AJ, if you'd have watched the materials provided to you earlier...then you'd have already known this without me explaining excessively to no end. So long as the material remains unwatched, you have no right to accuse me—or any of the sceptics—for "denying the evidence", as you shall soon find that all the "evidence" is well and truly flawed.

And how do you know that the datasets you've researched are even raw? You're merely assuming, yet again.

Much of what is publicly provided to you, be it through either the BOM or NOAA, you must be quite wary of; their dataset homogenisation tactics have been proven and exposed countless of times, and you can research further into this matter if you wish.

RSS data is completely raw and unaltered, which is why I chose to use that as my example. What you're talking about are historical reconstructions of temps which have been created by NOAA etc and have been minutely "corrected" over time. Again I invite you to find a single example of raw observational data or a single (unaltered) station that doesn't show warming.