Still Concerned About Climate Change Research; Recent Report From the US Government?

Question

This study is the kind that caused me to accept climate change as human-caused. The study claims it is "extremely likely" that human activities are the "dominant cause" of global warming, according to the most comprehensive study ever of climate science by U.S. government researchers.

It's the US government! From long long ago I would tend to trust something like that, without myself checking the science too deeply. On something THIS important, can we really be intentionally misled?

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/usgcrp-climate-science-special-report

Answer 1

I have read a summary of this report and still question its conclusion that the (undisputed) warming over the past hundred years is necessarily caused by human activity.  There is still no plausible explanation to the questions I raised earlier on this site:

1. Why was there just as large an increase in temperature (0.5 C) between 1910-1943, when human carbon emissions were only 1/4 of what they are today?

2. Why did the temperature stay constant for 40 years thereafter, even though by then human carbon emissions had doubled?

3. Why was the 0.5 C increase since 1980 no faster than the 1910-1943 increase, even though human carbon emissions are now 4 times greater than they were then?

The summary has NO plausible explanation for these perfectly straightforward questions, nor have several climatologists (including one who teaches a university course on the subject) that I have personally questioned.  "harumph, harumph... mumble, mumble... it's complicated... but the vast majority of climatologists agree..." 

P.S. Lie about something this important?

Wasn't the Gulf of Tonkin resolution based on misinformation?

Wasn't Saddam's 'weapons of mass destruction' based on misinformation?

Comments

You have some good points here, O'Tink, imo...well, from the beginning it is true I never did trust the Saddam stuff, but still believed in the core of US gov't integrity...thought we would self-correct when the executive branch changed over.

Your climate questions are good ones, they are the questions which when you brought them up, they reminded me of sensitive dependence on initial conditions. And if that is in play here, then the science is a precariously fabricated house of cards. I don't like to think darkly, but if so then there could indeed be an agenda here.

Answer 2

Wow Tink! That's some good info all the way around! The government has been slinging misinformation for so long, it's sickening.

When I was in the Green Hell, my Mother would send me packages and the inner wrappings were usually newspaper articles of some large NVA battle that we lost or of some of the atrocities we committed. All of which we knew weren't even true! I still question the supposed My Lai massacre also.

Who do you believe any more???

Comments

@ Rooster,

As far as I can gather, the newspapers of the time played a significant role in turning public opinion against the war, especially regarding the Tet offensive, which by any military standard was a huge defeat for the NVA.  I have a feeling that if the newspapers had reported the Battle of the Bulge in the same defeatist way, we might have negotiated a peace with Nazi Germany.

But of course the latter battle wouldn't have been reported that way, since the enemies in that case were extreme-right totalitarians, whereas in Vietnam, they were extreme-left totalitarians, who had a long history of receiving more favorable treatment in the press, ever since the days of that NY Times liar, Walter Duranty.

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O'Tink, your comment to Rooster is quite stunning to me. Rooster, as I recall you don't usually come back for followup discussions, but if you see this would you tell me if you agree with Other Tink's observations about the Battle of the Bulge stuff?

Other Tink, with WWII, I have always believed we were fighting for our freedom from the oppression of Nazism world domination. With Vietnam, by contrast, I always assumed the US government used the excuse of containing Communism, but the gov't got found out by the people who then put pressure to end the war with its unnecessary loss of American lives. And that the North Vietnamese fought so hard because they were defending their homeland from invaders, which is always a tremendous incentive to fight very hard.

I am guessing O'Tink might have another interpretation here?

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@Virginia: Yes, I agree with Tink here. As the Germans surprised everyone at The Battle of the Bulge and were nearly successful in their efforts? A handful of defeatist journalists could have convinced the American people that the war couldn't be won. I do agree with her in her assessment. Another reason I'm leary of all this stuff about North Korea.

We thought that's what we were fighting for and as more real news reached us? We started to realize what was really going on. The NVA used the Viet Cong to begin Tet hoping that we would wipe them out and the NVA could make a more peaceful transition to them unifying their country. The NVA didn't think much of the VC and saw them as a threat to peace.

It's hard to watch any news anymore and believe even half of it. They never even reported the earthquake we had here last week, so again, I'm really un-sure of of just exactly what's causing this climate change.

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Virginia, wasn't going into Vietnam precisely for the purpose of containing Communism, which I remind you, had the self-proclaimed goal of taking over the world?  "We will bury you," Nikita Khrushchev once infamously said.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_will_bury_you

Unlike the Nazis, however, the Communists were much more patient in their strategy, preferring instead to grab territory piecemeal, as opportunities presented themselves, but avoiding all-out war. Nevertheless, once a country was communist, it was not allowed to revert, so change could ONLY go in one direction, according to the Brezhnev doctrine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brezhnev_Doctrine

I think the the Viet Cong insurgency, heavily supported by North Vietnam, China and the USSR, was seen as an invasion of South Vietnam, very similar in its purpose, if not in the overt regular military style as the North Korean invasion of South Korea had been a decade earlier.

I think one important factor that was overlooked, and what made the defense of South Vietnam ultimately fail, was that the national hero, Ho Chi Minh, was from the North, whereas in Korea, the national hero, Syngman Rhee, was from the South.

And of course, there was no shortage of well-heeled folk singers on Ho's side in the West.

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Amazing! Thank you Rooster, even after all this time my mind is still opening more and more on Vietnam. 

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Some fascinating observations, O'Tink...the contrast of Ho Chi Minh and Syngman Rhee, I had never considered that. I was coming into my majority as all the communism intensity was transpiring (although only age six when Korea began), so I do recall it well. I remember I passionately wanted to help the soldiers in Korea, I thought maybe I could roll bandages!

I did not know of the specific name for the Brezhnev Doctrine, that was intriguing. Poking around, I saw on a YouTube video that the US is considered to have lost the Vietnam War, I never really faced that before...I guess I assumed it was a stalemate, like Korea.

Your insights on Vietnam are appreciated, do you have any comment on the fact that France fought there SO long, in futility, before the USA entered? As for the folk singers, I thought of actress/activist Jane Fonda; and learned that she eventually regretted some of her actions:

"I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I'm very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their families." 

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Hi, Virginia, Indochina had been a French colony, overrun by the Japanese in WW2.  It was returned to French rule after WW2, but of course like many colonies after WW2, the Vietnamese wanted their independence, which the French resisted until 1954, when they agreed to Vietnamese independence, with the proviso that only the northern half would be a Communist dictatorship; the South would also be independent, but under a pro-Western dictatorship. (i.e., your swine in the North, our swine in the South)

Well, we know what happened after that.

As for Jane Fonda, I don't believe her latter-day apologies are at all sincere. She was an intelligent, grown woman when she went to North Vietnam and allowed herself to be used for blatant propaganda purposes; she knew exactly what she was doing, just as Walter Duranty did 40 years earlier in the Soviet Union.  I think any after-the-fact regrets she may have had later stemmed from the fact that her unpopularity cost her money professionally, as if she weren't rich enough already.

https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celeb/actress/jane-fonda-net-worth/

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Oh Other Tink, I had forgotten about the colonial dynamics in Vietnam...that tends to explain a WHOLE lot...and as far as Jane, sometimes I think your own tongue is even more deeply in your cheek than is my own!   

Answer 3

Yes, Virginia, I have been looking for many years into environmental problems and their causes.

And ecological problems due to human "activities" are not so recent as many think, but there were and are also other than human interferences.

Climate changes occurred during earth history, long before the human species was "born":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_disaster

And smaller climate variations followed during human history, for instance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

But the list of environmental issues is very long, and the human presence on earth caused significant impacts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_issues

These are just a few of the main causes for a climatic change, which can be caused by human and non-human interferences (check references and links):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erosion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertification

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overexploitation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_irrigation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_war

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_sprawl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_farming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_security

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_engineering

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aridification

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_retrogression_and_degradation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_collapse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity

Useful tools to assess the ecological impacts of single products, services, activities, etc. are the so called "life cycle assessments", involving every step, action, interaction, "footprint", circumstances, etc., from the cradle to the grave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_assessment

And we know that since long, the human impact is one of the main causes of environmental depletion, because certain changes are much too fast to be caused alone by natural processes.

Additionally, most ruling and warfaring clans, monarchs, ministers, big bosses or "religious" leaders did/do not really care for the welfare of their own people - in the past and in present times ... Humans are too often the worst ennemy of their own species - at all the levels.

With the present propaganda, hate, threatening, shaming and insulting campaigns, most people don't know whom they can trust, as radicalism, fascism, sexism and perversion are on the rise.

Comments

Thank you very much, Marianne! Your points are representative of the reasons I really do think humans are causing global warming - although I now suspect that is not yet adequately scientifically proven, and may never be. 

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Yes, Virginia, science has still a long way to go, but there are also lots of visible damages, which are very sobering, even for non-experts.