NASA’s Climate Change Portal

[donsutherland1]

This portal addresses many issues over which the public has received inaccurate or worse information from sources whose aim is to undercut public understanding, often to serve political, ideological, or other non-scientific ends. This portal can be found at:

https://climate.nasa.gov/

The shortcut for facts about climate change is here:

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

[Typhoon Tip]

Don ... despite all your tireless efforts ( and I would never intend to dissuade you from trying...), the forces of intelligentsia et al simply cannot penetrate denier minds with words like unequivocal ...or incontrovertible ...etc, because when you do, they summarily equivocate and controvert -

We are not bouncing reality off skeptics ... we are attempting to move unlikable fact through an immorality wall. I just I don't think people frustrated on the sanity side of the hot skillet handle are actually aware enough of what they are arguing against... ? I just keep seeing this as a stalemate ... where the boundary of acceptance is sort of halted in wait of ...I dunno, some kind of gray tsunamis wall cresting the oceanic horizon or some kind of faux Hollywood cinema of a comet impact ...This apocalypse ... it won't come like that - unless all this inexorably leads to Human duress-caused a nuke fest... Assuming that does not happen,  the idea of dominoes going down in a row really is the best metaphor, where each monolith is just another ecological piece... when one tips, we don't notice as much as when all them have finished tipping. In a sense, a stealthy breakdown.

Denying is not skepticism... Deniers will try and couch their mantra in with legitimate scientific skepticism ..but that's just strategy to be evasive.   For the general person reading this... Denying is something people do when they are trying to avoid accepting that which causes fear or deep apprehension do to uncertainty and loss of control - psyche 101... Okay?  And in most cases... it is done so because it is convenient to keep doing so, more so than what acceptance implies.  Sound familiar?  It should - because that in a nut-shell sums up what's going on in the greater argument.  IF deniers accept the reality .. that means they have to render just about everything they have been wired in life to associated to personal being to forces they do not control.... It's just that simple -  there is no way to set down half the biomass of population and perform an intervention....  One way to get through - education ?  perhaps...but the world doesn't have multiple generation's worth of time for that sort of zeitgeist to get a toe-hold.... So, the only other way is to cause them some sort of discomfort - that's the apocalypse... Believe me... rhetoric aside, I have have no interest in seeing that dystopian landscape.

I just ... I have trouble with the tenability of a solution to this denial game, so long as climate change remains such a silent stalker, and fear we have to go ahead and witness carnage at a minimum scale, hopefully not massive one, before people stop with the bullshit.  This climate change thing ... man, it really is tailor made for causing extinctions... Humans, like all other animals... don't respond as well to threats they cannot directly observe through one of the corporeal senses... Add in that Humans unique talent that sets them apart from all other species being their adaptability ... they will go ahead and adapt and deny ...and adapt and deny...until they attempt to adapt and cannot adapt any further - only then ... when it's too late ...

I'm almost willing to guess that Humans can adapt over the threshold where they find themselves left upon a proverbial island of dwindling resources with no where else to go - it's to the extent that their adaptation and ingenuity has outpaced pragmatism...  But I'm wondering now ...sorry -

[donsutherland1]

Very good piece, Tip.

I’m really not focused on those who reject climate science and the overwhelming body of evidence that supports its fundamental conclusions. An anti-science rigidity and motivated reasoning preclude meaningful prospects of evidence-based reconsideration of their conclusions. There is a distinct difference between honest skepticism where one seeks additional evidence and then refines one’s thoughts based on that evidence and denialism where one seeks or contrives all rationalizations necessary to reject the conclusions drawn from the evidence.

I do think this subforum has the potential to become a useful source of information on climate change and its realities. Others have been providing some good information. I have decided that I should also participate to a greater extent than I have.

[Typhoon Tip]

14 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

Very good piece, Tip.

I’m really not focused on those who reject climate science and the overwhelming body of evidence that supports its fundamental conclusions. An anti-science rigidity and motivated reasoning preclude meaningful prospects of evidence-based reconsideration of their conclusions. There is a distinct difference between honest skepticism where one seeks additional evidence and then refines one’s thoughts based on that evidence and denialism where one seeks or contrives all rationalizations necessary to reject the conclusions drawn from the evidence.

I do think this subforum has the potential to become a useful source of information on climate change and its realities. Others have been providing some good information. I have decided that I should also participate to a greater extent than I have.

Eloquently summarized !  .... And to that I only segue .. 

As my friends in the Professorial circuitry of Boston agreed with me, ...as recently as the last Superbowl party come to think of it..., it follows logically that this is more so a sociological problem than a geophysical one.  Change the attitudes ... the 'how' and 'why' word - Smith to preemptively out-leverage rationalization tactics in contrarian points of views, all that strategic time biding ... concomitantly goes away. 

People stop buying plastic...or, invest in technologies that advance bio-degradable forms; stop engaging in frivolous automobile/internal combustion purchases/operations; investing in renewable energy generation technologies... The entire Human contribution in the "A" part of the AGW ... while perhaps not negligible... could reduce back to mass that can be absorbed by background geophysical/biologic process. 

Then, hey - if we're f'ed... at least we didn't f our selves... But this ...this profligate usage of this world by a species of many billions ...?  Dead meat. It is simply going to kill us.

See...that is a glaring logical flaw in any contrarian point of view to this AGW versus GW - not that you or anyone asked or don't suspect this already... But, if there is any question as to the injurious engagement in a system, if one cares about the system... they don't keep engaging while they figure that out.  That's baser logical precept - incontrovertible - is no differently applied to the nature of Human presence in the Global environment...

Shockingly simple...

Yet, complexly evaded in the eliding denier mind - and it's particularly bad because there are a lot of captains of industry and ... societal "string puller" types - paranoia notwithstanding - who are denying.  They really appear to be "conditional sociopathic"  When they know ( or should...) that they have the power to affect inertial changes in the system, ones that will assist in bringing about fundamental change, yet don't for immediate profit concerns.. that unconscionable.  There's a spectrum of psychologies that bias people... but I think it is a form of sociopathic refrain to sit by and and stew in inaction for embracing profit now... because it is too self-satisfying than the finality of future generations... These are intelligent people - they are capable of understanding all these geophysical concepts ( one does not have to slog through the equations to get it!); no, they have the power yet, turn away.  Look ... we have psychos in charge.. We create a system of economic value dependency,...then, people of a certain mindset/ilk are uniquely tended to own the ballast of said wealth... and, have no interest in these broader ramifications ... Too big to fail?  ha    ha   ha    ha 

This will only change on said island; only there is where and when money no longer has any meaningful collective illusory value. Sorry for the digression -

Anyway,  I HUGELY agree... that the engagement in this social-media is more than a mere time-waste in verbal grab-assery.. Yeah, we put up with trollic nimrods from time to time... But you know? If I were on a secretive sort of Government think-tank/panel of those who are tasked with Global threat assessing..., I most certainly would want/need barometer into the heart of the proletariat zeitgeist - where the attitudes of this era and how the general population mass views/accepts/understands this crisis (or not) is being registered.  etc...etc...  So, when I said "...cannot penetrate their minds,"  ha, I certainly didn't mean not to try - sardonic overtones.