Comments at the Coffee Party, and Pictures of Xynthia (aka Doomer Porn)

Over at The Coffee Party website, on a climate change discussion, someone posted a comment that this topic just "isn't that important" which inspired me to make the following series of replies:

1. Personally, I consider a habitable climate to be of primary importance! Global warming is an existential threat to humanity and every other form of life on the planet. There is no debate among climate scientists about whether catastrophe will be the result of adding millions of tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, every day. They only debate how fast the ice will melt, how quickly the oceans will rise, how much land will be lost to desertification, and how much to extreme weather events producing floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes.

There is plenty of uncertainty about the exact progression of catastrophe. How quickly will the ocean acidify, dissolving all forms of life at the bottom of the food chain - how soon before the sea is anoxic?

Anybody who doesn't understand how crucial it is for society - and the coffee party - to come to grips with the urgency of climaticide just isn't paying attention.

Try reading climateprogress.org for starters - there are many links to research about actual empirical current effects - you don't even need to pay attention to the models of future effects. Read desdemonadespair.blogspot.com, to get an idea of the impacts on the rest of the world - the US is on the same titanic as everyone else, and there aren't any lifeboats!

2. An Excellent Analogy:

Let's suppose a neurosurgeon tells you, sorry, the CAT scan shows you have a tumor in your brain. It could kill you tomorrow, or next week, or maybe in a year - we just can't predict that exactly. But we're sure it is going to kill you.

But you don't like that diagnosis because you have an important project at work this week, and a special dinner out next Saturday night.

Can you find some crank who will tell you not to worry, he's got a homeopathic remedy? Of course you can! And besides, that CAT scan...can you trust it? After all, you have no idea how it works, right? Besides, that neurosurgeon is making the whole thing up to get money from you, and government grants for a study.

Well, the climate scientists are telling you there is a tumor in your brain - and only a few quacks disagree.

What would you do if you were diagnosed with a terminal illness? Probably what practically everyone does - get on the internet and find all the information from reputable sources about the disease. Like the National Academy of Science, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, every major scientific organization in the world. They all agree we are in a climate emergency from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

3. Another great analogy:

This is fun!

Let's suppose you are building a house and some geeky scientists tell the government you are in a fault zone and eventually - maybe tomorrow, maybe in a hundred years, but quite likely within 25 years, there will be a major earthquake. So the government tells you that you must reinforce it to withstand the predicted earthquake.

Well! You protest: Those scientists can't even agree when the earthquake will come, and a few say it won't ever come, and I don't understand plate tectonics or seismographs, and this will cost me money, and I don't like government regulations!

So, you sneakily don't build as required - maybe you pay off the building inspector. And you live happily in your house the rest of your life and die peacefully in your bed, smug in the knowledge that those scientists were wrong.

Your son loves the pretty house you built and so he and his wife are raising your grandchildren there when whoops, the earthquake hits! The whole family is trapped in the rubble and they all die within the next few days, in agony, from crushed limbs and organs.

Thanks, Grandpop!

(Those conifers at the top look like they have an awful lot of bare branches - and the interior of this tree is rotted...just sayin'!)