Floods-Climate change-Global warming-Causes-Outcome-Precidtions....

Grand and mild.

Where is the option for "Illuminati/Patriarchy/Lizard people/Reverse vampire plot"?

It's a mixture of issues. While natural climate variations do occur as a normal part of Earth's 'life' they never happen to quite the rapid extent we have seen since the dawn of the industrial revolution with the exception of massive one off events such as volcanic eruptions or asteroid strikes. To deny man made climate change is literally pissing into the wind at this stage, the amount of evidence for it is overwhelming. Eventually the Earth will reach an equilibrium and the climate will stablise but this takes millions of years.

Personally I feel we've gone too far in reversing the effects and can at best just mitigate and adapt. These weather patterns of severe flooding in northern Europe are likely to be the norm in the future.

Anyone who denies climate change is right up there at the same level of idiocy as anti-vaxxers.

There is no denying that climate change is occurring, and if it's not due to human activity, then it's a very big fncking coincidence that this once-in-60-million-years sudden change event happened at the same time that our CO2 emissions went through the roof.

Something is always needed to scare the sheep and keep them in line

smash wrote: »

Where's the options for "Climate change is due to the natural cycle of the planet, but accelerated due to human activity"? Option 4 doesn't really fit.

2015 will be recorded as the hottest year since records began. Global warming deniers were falling over themselves pointing at an alleged 'hiatus' in global warming at the start of this year. (based on cherrypicked data as usual)

smash wrote: »

I don't believe in Global Warming. I believe in Climate change though. There's a difference. :P

Not really. They're both the same thing. Climate change is what happens because of global warming.

Most scientists will talk about 'anthropogenic global warming' which is the part of global warming that is attributed to human activity

The fact that the total energy budget on planet earth is increasing changes the climates of every region differently, so this is why both global warming and climate change are valid terms to use.

Akrasia wrote: »

Not really. They're both the same thing. Climate change is what happens because of global warming.

Most scientists will talk about 'anthropogenic global warming' which is the part of global warming that is attributed to human activity

The fact that the total energy budget on planet earth is increasing changes the climates of every region differently, so this is why both global warming and climate change are valid terms to use.

It is a pain in the hole to explain to deniers why some regions of the world will get colder due to a varying energy budget while some will get hotter so I usually stick with climate change so I don't get pulled into the whole "well it's colder in xyz location now then it was 100 years ago so how is it getting warmer?" bull****.

riffmongous wrote: »

I prefer (anthropogenic) climate change too, as the atmosphere is complicated enough that global warming could also lead to global cooling later through feedbacks

Calling it 'Climate change' leads the idiots to retort 'But the climate is always changing'

Which is in itself a betrayal of ignorance, because climate is supposed to be stable on human timescales, that's the difference between climate and weather

Climate only changes rapidly due to an abnormal event forcing a change (Astroids striking, large volcanic eruptions, humans pumping millions of years worth of sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere in only a few decades)

You can't win when you're talking to wilfully ignorant people

It's always dangerous to ascribe one set of weather events to "climate change". It's a pattern that we need to look for. There is a strong El Nino event this year, and random strong events -do- occur. But scientists will always be very cautious in saying "this happened because of climate change" because it's just plain unprovable.

I would say that we -are- seeing an increase in extreme events in the last few decades, and that fits the pattern we would expect to see with a warming planet. We are also seeing an increase in strong El Nino events, and particularly strong Modoki events (a variant form of El Nino, where the warming starts at two distinct points rather than one warm patch), and that, along with resultant extreme weather events, may well also fit that pattern.

Part of the issue is that a lot of non-scientists that are following this in the news are understandably confused by what seems to be contradictory information, coupled with half-remembered geography lessons from long ago on natural cycles such as Milankovitch cycles, and ice ages.

I chose the first option, because from all available evidence, the sort of abrupt climate change that we're really worrying about -is- due to anthropogenic influences. Yes, there are slow natural changes in the climate over a long period of time. But..hm...okay, taking an analogy. One's weight naturally changes over one's lifetime. But when one puts on a stone suddenly, one doesn't talk about the natural weight shifting, one considers that it's probably due to the diet of fast food over the past couple of months! To argue about the natural cycles is a bit analogous to taking into account that one suddenly had their thirtieth birthday. Sure, metabolism slows down, but that extra stone was probably the pizzas!


Edit: Attempted to make my analogy a bit more fitting...

c_man wrote: »

Which parts of Ireland will be underwater? Will the Irish be displaced and become a race of sailors/boat people forever chasing "the land" like the Smokers in Waterworld?

Cork!

There is no such thing as anthropogenic climate change.

It really is the natural cycle of the planet, but human history is such a narrow band within that, that we have never seen the entire cycle in action before - yet we know non-human induced extremes such as ice ages have been around lots before. The same goes for other planetary effects we have only seen a tiny aspect of, such as continental shift.

However, reducing carbon emissions is still a good idea, as the fuels that generate them are running out and certainly some cities suffer badly from pollution, so we do need to move to alternatives quite quickly. If that addresses the gripes of the climate lobby at the same time, so be it.