Quickest way to shut down a Climate Change doubter

[Cetacea]

Just ask he or she to talk to anyone who has been alive for sixty years their own observations and recollections of how the seasons changed over a forty year period. Tell them to get back to you when they have.
You don't even need the cool scientific facts which they are in convenient denial about anyway.

Having always had an interest in meteorology and birds, I myself noticed how the Florida State bird, the Mockingbird, gradually began making appearances in New York in the mid-seventies. Now the mockingbird is a year round, common bird in New York, where the ponds and bays seldom freeze over any longer, unlike when when I was a child.

It was the late seventies when I started asking people from the previous generation if they'd noticed changes in the winters in particular.
The answers were always affirmative. No one had heard about climate change back then. So, here in the year 2007, on the heels of the ten hottest summers and years on record, I am quite confident that if you ask an older person about his own observations on how the weather has changed over the decades, you will get an enthusiastic and revealing answer. Stubborn people can argue that science isn't in total agreement about the causes and the wheres and whens. Just ask an an elder. The changes have been occurring for the past forty-plus years.

Sorry if this was a bit long-winded.

[BlooInBloo]

1. Tell him not to worry, that it'll take 1000 years before the climate....

... gets as hot as his momma was last night?

[Little Wing]

2. Well, I guess that requires having an 'old timer' nearby and willing to answer questions

but it's an idea

[Cetacea]

3. A quick call to ones grandparents or other relatives should suffice

:)

[Little Wing]

4. err, yeah

I'm gonna use that tactic

please.

[Cetacea]

6. ah..the ignore button...

Well then, maybe you should ask yourself? Oh wait, you are obviously too young to have seen many changes.

[Little Wing]

9. Wow, I see you're one to talk about arguing things in public

when you can't even handle a single comment on DU.

Sheesh, you might not want to get in actual debate in public.

[Cetacea]

12. Will you help me strong?

A strong, macho person like your yourself could teach me a thing or two about being thick-skinned. In turn, I can teach you the solutions to the extremely difficult problem of how to ask an elderly person a simple question. Deal?

[Little Wing]

14. It's not about asking elderly people questions

your argument requires having elderly people locally available. Most of the people I talk to haven't been around that long, but that's by no fault of ours. However, in order to use your argument, an elderly person needs to be available to corroborate the claim that the weather has in fact changed. If one is not available, or doesn't want you interrupting his or her dinner, then you suggest calling a grandparent on the cell phone.

Which would go something like this:

Them : Global warming is bullshit

Me : No it isn't, it's a trend, just ask anyone who's been around the last 40 years

Them : I don't see anyone that old

Me: Hang on, I'll call gramps and ask him



Right, great plan. Not gonna use it.

[Cetacea]

19. I see your point.

You can however tell the person to get back to you when they have spoken to someone. But you win on a an OP technicality. I should have wrote " IF there is a person present .... you win.
Peace.

[Cetacea]

22. Also...

regarding my being "fucking weak". When you've posted something that may get you into trouble with the "Powers that Be" get back to me, ok? And I am not referring to this thread. You shouldn't make generalizations about people that you don't know, keyboard warrior.

[Little Wing]

25. Also

You'll have hopefully noticed I edited that statement, which in a sense, is taking it back. If that's not taking it back enough, "I take it back, and apologize".

Otherwise I don't know what you mean by offending the "powers that be", or who you mean by "the powers that be", but rest assured, I've offended just about every "power that is" I've ever ran across :)

[Cetacea]

33. No worries

Thanks for that. And I apologize for my snarky responses..


:toast:

[Little Wing]

35. We're both on the same side of this fight

:toast:

It's only a shame it has to be a fight in the first place.

[Sal Minella]

24. Dear Little Wing: When I was a kid in the 'forties and 'fifties, we went ice-fishing on our lake

right after Thanksgiving. Now, people are still out motoring around in boats at Christmas. You asked if I'd noticed changes in climate or weather over the past half-century, and yes, I have. Nice of you to write, good to hear from you, did I remember to mail the birthday card I bought for you?
love,
gramps

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. There's been a noticeable change in my lifetime, and I'm not thirty yet.

My recall goes back over a quarter of a century, and I know that summer temperatures weren't as extreme, and that winter weather conditions have altered. (Of course, that's just subjective experience...but it's supported by the data.)

[Cetacea]

7. True. Though the length of the trend becomes more apparent

when you ask people who are older. It's more serious than we have been told. Thanks for your response!

[Clark2008]

28. Same here and I'm only 37.

When I was a teenager, it used to snow here. It never snows, save a slight dusting, now.

And I'm only in Tennessee - not hardly the "deep" South.

[Uben]

8. But

The climate will always be changing due to the earth's eliptical orbit of the sun. We are about 20,000 yrs away from the next ice age, if indeed the climate is not being changed by humans.

We now know the climate can make abrupt changes in yrs instead of centuries, which was revealed from ice core samples taken from 2 miles deep that date back some 100,000 yrs. Greenlands average temp changed 20 degrees farenheit in a decade, according to the ice cores, and this was thousands of years before the advent of man. How can one be sure what we are experiencing now is not just an anomaly of nature?

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. "How can we be sure that what we are experiencing now is not just an anomaly of nature?"

Because combined analysis of ice cores, tree rings, etc, have shown that the rate of climate change over the past century (coinciding with the industrial age of fossil fuels) is unprecedented in human history, and because there is broad agreement among some 90% of climatologists that human activity is the x-factor responsible for the difference. That's why.

[Cetacea]

13. Yes. That little Inconvenient Truth.

:toast:

[Uben]

15. I beg to differ

While we are reaching a peak in temps, the url below shows that temps have been higher, but this trend follows a pattern. 150,000 yrs ago, we were even higher. The recent peak seems to be a repeat of the pattern in normal occurrence.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying man has'nt affected climate, I am only citing evidence from the past indicates this could just be a cyclical occurrence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record#The_long_term_ice_core_record:_the_last_800.2C000_years

[Spider Jerusalem]

16. It's not the peak; it's the rate of change.

The current rate of climate change is, as I said, from all available evidence, unprecedented. And, again, there is broad agreement among almost all scientists in the field that human activity bears the responsibility for the accelerated rate of change. (Do you need it spelled out with flash cards?)

[Uben]

18. Hey, chill bud

I just showed you evidence of what I am saying. I am open to any evidence you can produce to the contrary.

[Spider Jerusalem]

21. You didn't show me "evidence" of anything at all.

Other than that cyclical changes in global climate have occurred in past ages (a fact of which I was already well aware).

You want evidence?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article516033.ece

http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/4496

http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/2007-02-09-voa1.cfm

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/science/earth/03climate.html?ex=1171256400&en=3147ee81c2b0aa7e&ei=5070

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6321351.stm

That should do, for a start; let me know when you've got through those and I can supply more.

[Uben]

23. That's all I am claiming, bud

...that cyclical chamges have occurred in the past, not unlike what we are seeing today.

I am not a climatologist or a meterologist, but I do know how to read charts. Claiming that recent changes are unprecedented is based on opinion, depending on whose research you cite.

Man-made emissions are dwarfed by those emitted by nature. In eras heightened by increased volcanic activity, the emissions were a thousand-fold those of today, making one wonder if mankind can even have an impact on climate.

[Spider Jerusalem]

26. I'm not your "bud", so I'll thank you to stop calling me that.

And your ability to read anything (or at least to comprehend it) is somewhat questionable if you can't parse the meaning of the statement "over 90% of scientists in the field agree that climate change is occurring at an unprecedented rate, and that human activity is to blame".

Perhaps the following will make it somwewhat easier for you:

The atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased from 280 ppm5 in 1750 to 367 ppm in 1999 (31%, Table 1). Today’s CO2 concentration has not been exceeded during the past 420,000 years and likely not during the past 20 million years. The rate of increase over the past century is unprecedented, at least during the past 20,000 years (Figure 10). The CO2 isotopic composition and the observed decrease in Oxygen (O2) demonstrates that the observed increase in CO2 is predominately due to the oxidation of organic carbon by fossil-fuel combustion and deforestation. An expanding set of palaeo-atmospheric data from air trapped in ice over hundreds of millennia provide a context for the increase in CO2 concentrations during the Industrial Era (Figure 10). Compared to the relatively stable CO2 concentrations (280 ± 10 ppm) of the preceding several thousand years, the increase during the Industrial Era is dramatic. The average rate of increase since 1980 is 0.4%/yr. The increase is a consequence of CO2 emissions. Most of the emissions during the past 20 years are due to fossil fuel burning, the rest (10 to 30%) is predominantly due to land-use change, especially deforestation.
More...

[Uben]

29. Sorry, but evidence contradicts you

Look at the charts on Phanerozoic carbon dioxide emissions. It shows that much of the last 550 million years has experienced carbon dioxide concentrations significantly higher than the present day.

[Spider Jerusalem]

32. I think I'll trust the IPCC's data over Wikipedia, thanks.

Wikipedia can be fairly reliable for some things, but there are too many people with axes to grind editing articles on politically sensitive and controversial subjects.

[Uben]

36. Our information is only as good

...as the sources we read. There are so many differing opinions on this subject that I like to keep an open mind.

I am 52 yrs old, and I certainly remember colder temps in years past. The lake where I live has been below level for two years now. Ten miles away, lakes and ponds are full to the brim. The folks in northern Missouri where I order trout from are also experiencing a drought. The claim their streams are running 15% of their normal flow. Something is occuring, whether it is man-made or cyclical is anyone's guess, and will only be resolved by futute statistics. We do know this is not uncommon, however, the climate the last two thousand years have been exceptionally docile compared to past millenia.

Thanks for presenting your argument. I enjoy folks who have a passion for their views, as I have.
I am not saying what you claim is untrue, only that there are differing opinions as to what is occurring in present day. You may very well be right. At the same time, I cannot dispute others research that present opposing facts.

[Cetacea]

37. 550 million years ago?

I would venture to say that Nature corrected itself and it didn't have much affect on us mollusks. The problem is that HERE and NOW, we have billions of peoples lives at stake, as well as those of other life forms. We have the capacity to blow up the planet one hundred times over, pollute the lakes, rivers, streams and oceans that make up seventy percent of the Earth's surface, while we simultaneously destroy the lungs (trees) on the remaining land surface. Common sense alone and Occam's Razor should be enough to convince you that WE are accelerating this change, even if (and that's a big if) this is part of a natural change. And do consider the overwhelming percentage of scientists who disagree with you.
I respect your opinion, but I ask you to think more in the present than dealing in theories that involve what may have happened millions of years ago.

[LoZoccolo]

10. I just tell them that if everything dissolves into anarchy, I'll chop off their head and eat them.

Suddenly the stakes are raised! They now have a reason to consider this question seriously.

I have actually told two people this.

[hiaasenrocks]

17. Here's how I do it.

I simply ask them, "What's the difference between meteorology and climatology?"

That ends it right there, most of the time, because the vast majority of them have no idea what the difference is. And these are the same numb-nuts who say things like, "Oh yeah, if there's global warming, then why is it so cold outside?"

:eyes:

On a more general point, I've found that this method of debate works very well with right-wingers. Ask them questions. Ask them to elaborate on definitions, labels, data, etc. They can almost never do it.

[Cetacea]

20. Funny but sad.

And your spot on about using that method on any topic.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. I'm in my fifties, and I have seen huge changes in my lifetime

Here in Minneapolis, we used to get -20° or lower as daytime highs for long stretches. When I was a senior in college, the temperature didn't go above zero (even during the day) for a month, and on the coldest day, the daytime high was -27°.

Since I moved back here in 2003, the lowest temperature I've experienced is -25° at night. That's at night.

Right now we're in a stretch of twelve days in which the nighttime low has been below zero, although the daytime high has been below zero for only about 1/3 of those days.

However, almost up until Christmas, it was so unusually warm here, as in close to 50°, that I almost felt as if I was back in Oregon.

Snow fall has been meagre ever since I came back. There's maybe 3-4" on the ground at the moment, whereas during my childhood and teenage years, there would have been 12-24" on the ground at this time of year.

[Elwood P Dowd]

30. How do you live up there?

I can't keep warm when it's 20 above, much less 20 below. It's freaking colder in Minneapolis in the winter than Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and Finland.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

34. We have several secrets

1) Layers. The day that it was -27°, I put on a turtleneck sweater, a sweatshirt on top of that, ballet tights under my jeans, two pairs of socks, boots, gloves inside mittens, a hat, a heavy coat, and a scarf wrapped around my face so that just my eyes showed.

2) Insulated houses with storm windows. Older houses in Mpls. have entryways that can be shut off from the rest of the house, like the airlock on a spaceship.

3) Coffee.

4) Not going outside unless it's to do something active, like cross-country skiing.

5) Soup.

6) Block heaters for cars, and jumper cables in every trunk. In the olden days, digging total strangers out of snow drifts was a fine Minnesota tradition.

7) On really cold days, the teachers at my high school used to take their lunches outside and sit in their cars with the motors running. This was to make sure that the cars started at the end of the day.

8) Flannel sheets on the beds, even better with an S.O. to cuddle with

9) Hot alcoholic beverages.

In the old days, blizzards in the country used to be so bad that farmers would get lost and freeze to death between the house and the barn. The smart ones therefore strung a rope between the house and the barn so that they could tend the animals without risking their lives.

[kurth]

31. My experience as well

The upper Midwest was much, much colder for longer periods. For WEEKS on end, everybody would bitch and moan and say how bad they wanted to get out and move to Florida...