He says forrests are growning in the north due to burning of coal. Well that is a rather simplified version. Take my native Norway. We have net growth of forrest, but we are not using coal at all. We still use wood logs for heating, but more importantly we use a lot of hydro-electric power. Many other countries have seen coal usage drop significantly, e.g. the UK. Sure that is partly because of increased natural gas usage. But it is still an improvements as CO2 emissions from natural gas is significantly less.

The issue I have with Peterson is that he presents it as if nobody has any clue about how to make anything any better what so ever. In fact we do. The most simple and cheap way of doing substantial cut in CO2 emissions is to replace coal with natural gas. Natural gas plants can power up and down really fast, which makes them combine very well with renewable energy. If you build wind, solar and gas power plants you have a pretty good mix which can reduce emissions significantly compared to going 100% coal or oil.

Even if you can't use natural gas, the problem is not insurmountable. It is a question of developing a cheap electricity storage solution. There are various battery options. One can even use metal, yes metal can be burned under the right conditions. Burn iron and you get essentially rust back, which we know very well how to usage energy to convert back to metal.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686229)

no one takes you queers seriously

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686278)

Please use common sense. Would you get into climate science to get rich? Of course not? Research is extremely poorly paid compared to the skill and work required. People who do science, tend to do it because it is a life calling. They want to find the truth.

Governments have an enormous incentive to kill climate science research because it costs them a LOT of money to enact green policies. My home country Norway makes a ton of money from oil. We accept that climate change is real. It is NOT in our own economic interest to accept climate change as real. Why would we get behind a theory which push us to reduce our oil production? Oil production we profit immensely from?

I work in the oil industry myself. Why would me and lots of other highly educated people I work with accept global climate change as man-made when such acceptance is directly jeopardizing our own jobs? Are you aware of how insane that is?

Why do you think we accept the need for change? Because we care about the future of our own children.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686292)

what utter nonsense @ governments wanting to kill climate science research

governments are the ones funding lots of climate research and lots of the people running govts are libs who love scientific-authority-backed excuses for more control over people's lives, or are green true-believers themselves

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37687346)

(vox day)

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686297)

Still I don't think oil and gas is our future. It is an industry which has to be scaled back and eventually shut down, for the benefit of the planet and future generations.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686367)

He hates white people and frequently praises Islam.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686376)

> But american smog problems weren't as big as the smog problems China is facing now but granted, it is hard to compare these countries and their industry.

Hard to compare given the much higher total population, population density as well as more rapid industrialization of China. It does not seem obvious to me that China is doing worse than the US at comparable levels of development in terms of CO2 emissions and smog problems. Keep in mind that China is more like Britain in terms of population density. London was infamous for its smog. So was the black country. More people died in London than got born. Even China is not that bad.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686382)

The whole premise that climate can be projected out for decade much less a century is the biggest joke.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686381)

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/

They show all the factors we know can affect global temperature plotted against the rising temperature we see. None of the graphs match what we observe as well as CO2.

Do you not think it is reasonable to act according to the best explanations we currently have?

If you think there are any other measurements which better predict global warming, then please provide it. I've yet to hear any climate sceptic provide such data.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686407)

So you also think that the earth mustve been about 500 degrees for the dinosaurs?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686442)

What about evidence for any of these short-term CO2 fluctuations? Recent research has uncovered evidence for lower ocean temperatures during the Ordovician than previously thought, creating ideal conditions for a huge spurt in marine biodiversity and correspondingly large drawdown of CO2 from the atmosphere through carbon burial in the ocean. A period of mountain-building was also underway (the so-called Taconic orogeny) increasing the amount of rock weathering taking place and subsequently lowering CO2 levels even further. The evidence is definitely there for a short-term disruption of the carbon cycle.

Another important factor is the sun. During the Ordovician, it would have been several percent dimmer according to established nuclear models of main sequence stars. Surprisingly, this raises the CO2 threshold for glaciation to a staggering 3000 ppmv or so. This also explains (along with the logarithmic forcing effect of CO2) why a runaway greenhouse didn't occur: with a dimmer sun, high CO2 is necessary to stop the Earth freezing over.

In summary, we know CO2 was probably very high coming into the Late Ordovician period, however the subsequent dip in CO2 was brief enough not to register in the GEOCARB model, yet low enough (with the help of a dimmer sun) to trigger permanent ice-formation. Effectively it was a brief excursion to coldness during an otherwise warm era, due to a coincidence of conditions.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686504)

> know CO2 was probably very high coming into the Late Ordovician period

I'm not even talking about the glaciation that happened during that period, which is undisputed in your reference.

But your previous post was to insist CO2 being ASSOCIATED WITH recent temperature changes means IT CAUSED the temperature to rise. Any 105 IQ redditor will understand that "correlation is not causation".

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686558)

EVEN IF TRUE you think mankind will die out due to a literal 1-2 degree change?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686684)

Climate Change Hastened Syria's Civil War

Climate change can make storms stronger, cold spells longer and water supplies drier. But can it cause war? A new study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says drought in Syria, exacerbated to record levels by global warming, pushed social unrest in that nation across a line into an open uprising in 2011. The conflict has since become a major civil war with international involvement.

Drying and drought in Syria from 2006 to 2011—the worst on record there—destroyed agriculture, causing many farm families to migrate to cities. The influx added to social stresses already created by refugees pouring in from the war in Iraq, explains Richard Seager, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who co-authored the study. The drought also pushed up food prices, aggravating poverty. “We’re not saying the drought caused the war,” Seager said. “We’re saying that added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.”

Seager added that the entire Middle East “faces a drier, hotter climate due to climate change. This will stress water resources and agriculture, and will likely further increase risk of conflict.” Global warming is desiccating the region in two ways: higher temperatures that increase evaporation in already parched soils, and weaker winds that bring less rain from the Mediterranean Sea during the wet season (November to April).

A number of research efforts in recent years have suggested that warmer temperatures and drought increase the risk of violent conflict around the world. A 2009 study found that over the past 30 years in sub-Saharan Africa, temperature rise correlated with an increase in the likelihood of civil war. A 2011 study implicated climate change in pushing up food prices in Egypt, fueling revolution there.

Trouble related to drought in the Middle East may get worse. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted that human effects on climate change will make the area drier than it would have become without the manmade influences.

The U.S. Defense Department is taking the warning seriously. It issued a report last November declaring climate change a "threat multiplier” that will impact national security. When Scientific American asked Seager if his group’s research supports that point of view he said, “Yes. It does. Climate change is very much a cause of concern for national, regional and international security and this study makes clear how that can work. The Syrian war has now taken on a life of its own…however, a drought made worse by climate change was one important factor that initiated the social unraveling.”

Colin Kelley, a climatologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who led the work while finishing his doctorate at Lamont-Doherty, concurred, but was also careful to state that severe droughts can have a catalytic effect and contribute to, but not cause, civil unrest.

Although snowstorms and rising sea levels garner more of the headlines about extreme weather driven by climate change, drought is quickly rising as the most troublesome, near-term impact. Another paper in PNAS suggests links between global warming and the terrible, ongoing drought in California. Although civil unrest is far less likely there, tension is indeed growing between political leaders in northern and southern California over who gets the increasingly scarce water from rivers, underground aquifers and snow melt, all of which are declining.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686749)

I've looked at a lot of different technologies to try to see what our future renewable energy solutions look like. To me what looks most promising the McGill engineering is doing: stuff https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/article/mcgill-engineering-experiment-takes

They combust metal powder. You could probably modify a pulverized coal fire boiler to use metal powders instead. Hence you can use existing coal power plants. The reason this is great compared to say biofuels, is that you don't lose material. Once you burn coal or oil, you lose the carbon into the atmosphere as CO2, where it becomes a trace gas. Photosynthesis is a relatively inefficient process to bring that carbon back. Say you burn iron, you get iron oxide back, which is easy to transport and we already have over a 1000 years of experience in turning iron-oxide into iron again.

There is work on solar smelters: https://www.energymatters.com.au/renewable-news/iron-ore-solar-em5596/ If not you can use electricity from solar cells or wind. That way you got a loop. Surplus solar/wind power is used to make iron powder (or some other metal). This powder is burned to generate electricity when the sun or wind is not blowing.

The appeal of this to me, is that it is all pretty low tech. It should be a lot quicker and cheaper to build than nuclear reactors, and it allows us to utilize excess wind and solar power. Unlike nuclear you can likely scale this both up and down easily. It may be possible to build car sized engines, thus broadening the usage of metal powder and solving another problem.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37686486)

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37687597)

That and the question is of course so vague the better answer between the two answers is no rather than yes.

I was unaware that the only thing that counts is the yes or no. I thought the reasoning behind the response counts at least as much on a question such as this.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37687629)

He spent 5 minutes saying "climate change might be real but even if it is, there's nothing we can or will do to fix it." OK.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37694035)

it was a dumb yes or no question: will fighting GW bring us together.

He should have stuck with, "No".

The extra-bit (we have no idea how to combat it, if it is true) was just five minutes of a professor filling time

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4189530&forum_id=2#37698118)