Beyond the Tribal Marker: The Real Arithmetic of Climate Change

Patricio wrote:
The science is unusually coherent; the politics is where the friction begins. Why an honest conversation requires moving past binary thinking to face the real trade-offs.

Climate change has achieved the dubious honor of becoming one of those topics that Americans discuss incessantly while conspicuously avoiding its actual substance. It is treated as a tribal marker rather than an empirical question, a litmus test of political identity rather than a problem to be understood and managed. This is odd, because beneath the noise the scientific picture presented by the major research institutions is unusually coherent. The Earth is warming. Human activity is widely understood to be the primary driver [2][3]. The evidence cited in support of both propositions is extensive, overlapping, and drawn from many independent lines of observation. What remains controversial is not the basic physics of the atmosphere, but how a modern society should respond when the bill for two centuries of industrial success finally arrives.

It is worth starting from ground that, according to mainstream climate science, is no longer seriously disputed. Instrumental temperature records, satellite data, ocean heat measurements, and reconstructions of past climates are repeatedly cited as pointing to the same conclusion: global average temperatures have risen sharply over the past century, with the most recent decade standing apart even from the recent past [1][3]. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations now exceed 427 parts per million, a level scientists say has not occurred for hundreds of thousands of years, based on ice-core records and modern measurements [1]. The timing of this increase closely tracks the industrial era. Human activities such as burning fossil fuels, clearing forests, and producing cement are widely identified as the dominant contributors [2]. By contrast, natural influences--changes in solar output, volcanic activity, and long-term orbital cycles--are generally regarded by climate researchers as insufficient to explain the observed warming on their own [2]. Meanwhile, the consequences are no longer abstractions. Heat extremes, altered rainfall patterns, rising seas, and shifting ecosystems are increasingly reported across many regions and datasets by institutions with differing methods and missions [3].

None of this implies that climate science has reached some priestly certainty beyond further inquiry. On the contrary, scientists are often explicit about the limits of their projections. Uncertainty here does not mean ignorance; it reflects a range of possible outcomes rather than a single, fixed prediction. Broad global trends are easier to estimate than local effects. Predicting how average temperatures change worldwide is more straightforward than predicting how rainfall patterns will evolve in a particular state or how individual storm systems may behave decades from now. Estimates of climate sensitivity--the amount of warming associated with higher carbon dioxide levels--fall within a studied range rather than a precise figure [2]. Potential tipping points, such as ice-sheet loss or changes in ocean circulation, are discussed as real risks but with acknowledged uncertainty about timing and thresholds [2]. Add to this the difficulty of forecasting economic impacts, whether from climate damage or from climate policy, and it becomes clear why reasonable experts can disagree without disputing the core diagnosis.

Where the argument truly begins is not in the laboratory but in the legislature. Democratic climate policy, broadly speaking, treats emissions reduction as an urgent imperative. It favors rapid decarbonization, large-scale deployment of renewable energy, electrification of transport, regulatory pressure on industry, international agreements, and significant public investment in clean technologies. The underlying wager is that early action is cheaper than delay, that prevention costs less than repair, and that the risks of inaction grow faster than the costs of transition. This is not an irrational position; it reflects a particular approach to managing long-term risk under uncertainty.

Republican approaches are more varied than their caricatures, and their strongest arguments are often misrepresented by opponents who prefer straw men to engagement. Many on the right do not deny warming so much as question the proposed remedies. They emphasize the economic and social costs of rapid decarbonization: higher energy prices, disproportionate burdens on lower-income households, disruption of existing industries, and potential loss of competitiveness. These concerns are not imaginary. They reflect real tradeoffs, and acknowledging them is part of taking the issue seriously rather than turning it into a moral contest.

There is also a defensible case for technological optimism. Major energy transitions in the past were driven less by bans than by better alternatives. Advanced nuclear power, carbon capture, geothermal energy, hydrogen systems, and next-generation batteries are often cited as examples of technologies that could reduce emissions without requiring abrupt economic dislocation. Many researchers argue that innovation of this kind may ultimately prove more effective than regulation alone. To raise this point is not to deny urgency, but to question which tools are most likely to work.

Then there is the arithmetic that refuses to be wished away. The United States is no longer the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. China now accounts for more than 30 percent of global emissions, with India rising rapidly behind it [4]. Even the most ambitious American climate policy cannot, by itself, stabilize the global climate. This does not excuse inaction, but it does underscore the necessity--and fragility--of international cooperation. Climate change is, by definition, a collective-action problem. The atmosphere does not recognize national borders.

Republicans also draw attention to uncertainty in climate modeling, sometimes clumsily, sometimes fairly. Models generate ranges of outcomes rather than definitive forecasts. Regional projections are less certain than global ones, and uncertainty grows over longer time horizons. This is not a concession forced from scientists; it is part of how climate research is routinely described. Uncertainty does not negate risk, but it complicates long-term planning. Finally, there is the emphasis on adaptation: wildfire management, water systems, coastal defenses, and infrastructure hardening. These measures are necessary regardless of how emissions trajectories unfold, and many climate scientists themselves note that adaptation receives less attention than mitigation [5].

For all the shouting, the overlap between the parties is larger than commonly admitted. Support for nuclear power has grown substantially in recent years. Investment in carbon capture, grid modernization, energy efficiency, research and development, and infrastructure resilience has attracted bipartisan support through legislation and funding. These areas offer the most plausible foundation for durable progress, precisely because they do not require either side to pretend the other is acting in bad faith.

The real dispute, then, is not about whether the planet is warming. It is about how to respond, how fast to move, how much to spend, and who should bear the costs. Democrats tend to emphasize speed, regulation, emissions reduction, and international coordination. Republicans tend to emphasize cost, innovation, energy independence, adaptation, and competitiveness. Both sets of priorities contain insights, and both contain blind spots. A serious climate strategy will almost certainly borrow from each.

What an honest conversation requires is a refusal to reduce climate change to a morality play. The mainstream scientific conclusion--that the planet is warming and human activity plays a central role--is well established [2][3]. Everything beyond that is strategy. A productive debate acknowledges the reality of the problem, the legitimacy of economic concerns, the importance of innovation, the necessity of global cooperation, and the value of both mitigation and adaptation. Climate change is not a binary proposition to be believed or denied. It is a complex challenge that demands scientific humility, economic pragmatism, technological ingenuity, and political maturity. No party has a monopoly on wisdom here, and no ideology will be vindicated by the atmosphere.

References:

1. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

2. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

3. https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/evidence

4. https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025

5. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/

IBdaMann wrote:

Patricio wrote:Patricio rebuts:

Spongy, you just revealed exactly where you stand--and it isn't on solid ground.
"Calling it" isn't an argument. It's a concession dressed up as a victory lap.

This was written by an AI assistant.

Into the Night is probably correct, i.e. that this account is a sock (of Robert's).

I should have noticed right away when "Patricio" used the term "species" (with respect to chemistry) when he doesn't even know any science fundamentals whatsoever, just as Robert doesn't know any science fundamentals. "Species" wrt chemistry is an AI term.

Patricio wrote:Let's be precise about what ITN and IBdamann actually claimed,

This is AI wording.

Patricio wrote: That is not the greenhouse mechanism.

This is AI-speak.

Now I understand why Robert is the excited cheerleader ... "Patricio" is his sock! This is why Robert immediately declares victory for "Patricio" before anyone has had any chance to respond. This is why Robert is so desperate to get "Patricio" recognized as a "true scientist", just as he is desperate to have himself viewed as a "true scientist."

Patricio wrote: Here's what the greenhouse effect actually says:

There is no greenhouse effect model that says anything.

I think we're done on this.

sealover wrote:

Patricio wrote:
The science is unusually coherent; the politics is where the friction begins. Why an honest conversation requires moving past binary thinking to face the real trade-offs.

Climate change has achieved the dubious honor of becoming one of those topics that Americans discuss incessantly while conspicuously avoiding its actual substance. It is treated as a tribal marker rather than an empirical question, a litmus test of political identity rather than a problem to be understood and managed. This is odd, because beneath the noise the scientific picture presented by the major research institutions is unusually coherent. The Earth is warming. Human activity is widely understood to be the primary driver [2][3]. The evidence cited in support of both propositions is extensive, overlapping, and drawn from many independent lines of observation. What remains controversial is not the basic physics of the atmosphere, but how a modern society should respond when the bill for two centuries of industrial success finally arrives.

It is worth starting from ground that, according to mainstream climate science, is no longer seriously disputed. Instrumental temperature records, satellite data, ocean heat measurements, and reconstructions of past climates are repeatedly cited as pointing to the same conclusion: global average temperatures have risen sharply over the past century, with the most recent decade standing apart even from the recent past [1][3]. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations now exceed 427 parts per million, a level scientists say has not occurred for hundreds of thousands of years, based on ice-core records and modern measurements [1]. The timing of this increase closely tracks the industrial era. Human activities such as burning fossil fuels, clearing forests, and producing cement are widely identified as the dominant contributors [2]. By contrast, natural influences--changes in solar output, volcanic activity, and long-term orbital cycles--are generally regarded by climate researchers as insufficient to explain the observed warming on their own [2]. Meanwhile, the consequences are no longer abstractions. Heat extremes, altered rainfall patterns, rising seas, and shifting ecosystems are increasingly reported across many regions and datasets by institutions with differing methods and missions [3].

None of this implies that climate science has reached some priestly certainty beyond further inquiry. On the contrary, scientists are often explicit about the limits of their projections. Uncertainty here does not mean ignorance; it reflects a range of possible outcomes rather than a single, fixed prediction. Broad global trends are easier to estimate than local effects. Predicting how average temperatures change worldwide is more straightforward than predicting how rainfall patterns will evolve in a particular state or how individual storm systems may behave decades from now. Estimates of climate sensitivity--the amount of warming associated with higher carbon dioxide levels--fall within a studied range rather than a precise figure [2]. Potential tipping points, such as ice-sheet loss or changes in ocean circulation, are discussed as real risks but with acknowledged uncertainty about timing and thresholds [2]. Add to this the difficulty of forecasting economic impacts, whether from climate damage or from climate policy, and it becomes clear why reasonable experts can disagree without disputing the core diagnosis.

Where the argument truly begins is not in the laboratory but in the legislature. Democratic climate policy, broadly speaking, treats emissions reduction as an urgent imperative. It favors rapid decarbonization, large-scale deployment of renewable energy, electrification of transport, regulatory pressure on industry, international agreements, and significant public investment in clean technologies. The underlying wager is that early action is cheaper than delay, that prevention costs less than repair, and that the risks of inaction grow faster than the costs of transition. This is not an irrational position; it reflects a particular approach to managing long-term risk under uncertainty.

Republican approaches are more varied than their caricatures, and their strongest arguments are often misrepresented by opponents who prefer straw men to engagement. Many on the right do not deny warming so much as question the proposed remedies. They emphasize the economic and social costs of rapid decarbonization: higher energy prices, disproportionate burdens on lower-income households, disruption of existing industries, and potential loss of competitiveness. These concerns are not imaginary. They reflect real tradeoffs, and acknowledging them is part of taking the issue seriously rather than turning it into a moral contest.

There is also a defensible case for technological optimism. Major energy transitions in the past were driven less by bans than by better alternatives. Advanced nuclear power, carbon capture, geothermal energy, hydrogen systems, and next-generation batteries are often cited as examples of technologies that could reduce emissions without requiring abrupt economic dislocation. Many researchers argue that innovation of this kind may ultimately prove more effective than regulation alone. To raise this point is not to deny urgency, but to question which tools are most likely to work.

Then there is the arithmetic that refuses to be wished away. The United States is no longer the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. China now accounts for more than 30 percent of global emissions, with India rising rapidly behind it [4]. Even the most ambitious American climate policy cannot, by itself, stabilize the global climate. This does not excuse inaction, but it does underscore the necessity--and fragility--of international cooperation. Climate change is, by definition, a collective-action problem. The atmosphere does not recognize national borders.

Republicans also draw attention to uncertainty in climate modeling, sometimes clumsily, sometimes fairly. Models generate ranges of outcomes rather than definitive forecasts. Regional projections are less certain than global ones, and uncertainty grows over longer time horizons. This is not a concession forced from scientists; it is part of how climate research is routinely described. Uncertainty does not negate risk, but it complicates long-term planning. Finally, there is the emphasis on adaptation: wildfire management, water systems, coastal defenses, and infrastructure hardening. These measures are necessary regardless of how emissions trajectories unfold, and many climate scientists themselves note that adaptation receives less attention than mitigation [5].

For all the shouting, the overlap between the parties is larger than commonly admitted. Support for nuclear power has grown substantially in recent years. Investment in carbon capture, grid modernization, energy efficiency, research and development, and infrastructure resilience has attracted bipartisan support through legislation and funding. These areas offer the most plausible foundation for durable progress, precisely because they do not require either side to pretend the other is acting in bad faith.

The real dispute, then, is not about whether the planet is warming. It is about how to respond, how fast to move, how much to spend, and who should bear the costs. Democrats tend to emphasize speed, regulation, emissions reduction, and international coordination. Republicans tend to emphasize cost, innovation, energy independence, adaptation, and competitiveness. Both sets of priorities contain insights, and both contain blind spots. A serious climate strategy will almost certainly borrow from each.

What an honest conversation requires is a refusal to reduce climate change to a morality play. The mainstream scientific conclusion--that the planet is warming and human activity plays a central role--is well established [2][3]. Everything beyond that is strategy. A productive debate acknowledges the reality of the problem, the legitimacy of economic concerns, the importance of innovation, the necessity of global cooperation, and the value of both mitigation and adaptation. Climate change is not a binary proposition to be believed or denied. It is a complex challenge that demands scientific humility, economic pragmatism, technological ingenuity, and political maturity. No party has a monopoly on wisdom here, and no ideology will be vindicated by the atmosphere.

References:

1. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

2. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

3. https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/evidence

4. https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025

5. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/

Patricio, your new thread has gotten more than 300 "views" per day since you started it. I predict that it will increase almost exponentially in the coming weeks.

There is a blue box near the bottom of the home page: "View older threads (all forums) can be seen just above it. Clicking on "view older threads" opens up a much longer list, beyond just the 15 most recently active threads. And it displays the number of "views" the threads have gotten.

Your new thread is picking up steam fast.

Buckle up! This could be a wild ride!

Patricio wrote: By challenging "chemical species,"

Patricio wrote: It is, in a word, settled,

Patricio wrote: your refusal to engage seriously,

Patricio wrote: So, indeed, you are correct on this point: we're done here.

Patricio wrote: I shall not be giving any of your future rebuttals to my posts and threads any attention whatsoever.

Patricio wrote: I realize that, to you, it is of no consequence,

Patricio wrote: I expect you will respond with claims amounting to self puffery, posturing, claims of victory, and assorted sophomoric and soporific examples of mediocrity.

IBdaMann wrote:

Patricio wrote: By challenging "chemical species,"

What position of mine are you trying to butcher now?

Patricio wrote: It is, in a word, settled,

AI wrote your post, not you. Your feeble rationalizations are lame.

Patricio wrote: your refusal to engage seriously,

... meaning you have no science and it's my fault. I get it.

So, are we done?

Patricio wrote: So, indeed, you are correct on this point: we're done here.

Great. At least now you won't have to copy-paste from an AI assistant and claim it as your own.

Patricio wrote: I shall not be giving any of your future rebuttals to my posts and threads any attention whatsoever.

Thank you.

Patricio wrote: I realize that, to you, it is of no consequence,

I try to be obvious; I don't like surprises.

Patricio wrote: I expect you will respond with claims amounting to self puffery, posturing, claims of victory, and assorted sophomoric and soporific examples of mediocrity.

More testaments to your poor judgement. I give your defeatist attitude high marks, however. You do the "victim" schtick quite well.

You haven't produced any science and it's everybody else's fault.

I'll just refer to you as "Robert's sock #3". They're is no difference between them.

Im a BM wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:

Patricio wrote: By challenging "chemical species,"

What position of mine are you trying to butcher now?

Patricio wrote: It is, in a word, settled,

AI wrote your post, not you. Your feeble rationalizations are lame.

Patricio wrote: your refusal to engage seriously,

... meaning you have no science and it's my fault. I get it.

So, are we done?

Patricio wrote: So, indeed, you are correct on this point: we're done here.

Great. At least now you won't have to copy-paste from an AI assistant and claim it as your own.

Patricio wrote: I shall not be giving any of your future rebuttals to my posts and threads any attention whatsoever.

Thank you.

Patricio wrote: I realize that, to you, it is of no consequence,

I try to be obvious; I don't like surprises.

Patricio wrote: I expect you will respond with claims amounting to self puffery, posturing, claims of victory, and assorted sophomoric and soporific examples of mediocrity.

More testaments to your poor judgement. I give your defeatist attitude high marks, however. You do the "victim" schtick quite well.

You haven't produced any science and it's everybody else's fault.

I'll just refer to you as "Robert's sock #3". They're is no difference between them.

In the good old days, GasGuzzler, gfm7175, and Harvey would have had your back on this shit, IBdaMann. Your pathetic little sidekick remains, but let's face it, he doesn't have a clue what hit him. But it's NOT a chemical.. waaa waaa

Trolling on this website is not as fun as it used to be, is it?

But where else can you go where they don't BAN your stupid ass?

Patricio wrote:

Im a BM wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:

Patricio wrote: By challenging "chemical species,"

What position of mine are you trying to butcher now?

Patricio wrote: It is, in a word, settled,

AI wrote your post, not you. Your feeble rationalizations are lame.

Patricio wrote: your refusal to engage seriously,

... meaning you have no science and it's my fault. I get it.

So, are we done?

Patricio wrote: So, indeed, you are correct on this point: we're done here.

Great. At least now you won't have to copy-paste from an AI assistant and claim it as your own.

Patricio wrote: I shall not be giving any of your future rebuttals to my posts and threads any attention whatsoever.

Thank you.

Patricio wrote: I realize that, to you, it is of no consequence,

I try to be obvious; I don't like surprises.

Patricio wrote: I expect you will respond with claims amounting to self puffery, posturing, claims of victory, and assorted sophomoric and soporific examples of mediocrity.

More testaments to your poor judgement. I give your defeatist attitude high marks, however. You do the "victim" schtick quite well.

You haven't produced any science and it's everybody else's fault.

I'll just refer to you as "Robert's sock #3". They're is no difference between them.

In the good old days, GasGuzzler, gfm7175, and Harvey would have had your back on this shit, IBdaMann. Your pathetic little sidekick remains, but let's face it, he doesn't have a clue what hit him. But it's NOT a chemical.. waaa waaa

Trolling on this website is not as fun as it used to be, is it?

But where else can you go where they don't BAN your stupid ass?

Précisément, mon ami

sealover wrote:
...deleted trivial self promotion and whining...

sealover wrote:
[

Patricio wrote:

Précisément, mon ami

I am truly delighted that you haven't already ditched this website.

IBdaMann's blinding light of "truth" usually sends the "cowards" fleeing.

As you can see, the newest New Messiah is back.

I already emailed the website administrator about it days ago.

Sooner or later, all the New Messiah posts will be deleted.

But the obnoxious trolls will never be banned.

They do seem to be dying off, perhaps due to starvation.

Some had already resorted to cannibalism.

Having the home page cluttered with New Messiah threads is a confounding variable, and the pace of "views" is... well, let me check before I say more.

Yeah, the pace of new "views" has slowed rather than accelerated.

I still predict that by July 4th weekend (superstition based on last year) this thread will get several hundred new views a day.

At least SOME of them will be views by people who understand enough science to learn something new from it.

A sudden surge of new views suggests to me that someone is forwarding links to someone else and encouraging them to view it. But I can only guess about that.

I still think your new thread and your participation broke the dam, and large flows will surge out of it.

Not everyone who views this website is a scientifically illiterate troll.

Patricio wrote:

sealover wrote:
[

Patricio wrote:

Précisément, mon ami

I am truly delighted that you haven't already ditched this website.

IBdaMann's blinding light of "truth" usually sends the "cowards" fleeing.

As you can see, the newest New Messiah is back.

I already emailed the website administrator about it days ago.

Sooner or later, all the New Messiah posts will be deleted.

But the obnoxious trolls will never be banned.

They do seem to be dying off, perhaps due to starvation.

Some had already resorted to cannibalism.

Having the home page cluttered with New Messiah threads is a confounding variable, and the pace of "views" is... well, let me check before I say more.

Yeah, the pace of new "views" has slowed rather than accelerated.

I still predict that by July 4th weekend (superstition based on last year) this thread will get several hundred new views a day.

At least SOME of them will be views by people who understand enough science to learn something new from it.

A sudden surge of new views suggests to me that someone is forwarding links to someone else and encouraging them to view it. But I can only guess about that.

I still think your new thread and your participation broke the dam, and large flows will surge out of it.

Not everyone who views this website is a scientifically illiterate troll.

That's good, as long as there are a few I'll hang out. I noticed there is no 'ignore' function that would block undesirables (at least for the user)? Or did I miss the link?

I noticed a lot of the threads are really old, and the newest ones seem to be in the general climate debate forum. I prefer the newer threads. This site doesn't have that many participants.

Another thing, how do you post an img, say a .jpg or .png? The choose file button doesn't upload, for some reason.

Patricio wrote:
That's good, as long as there are a few I'll hang out. I noticed there is no 'ignore' function that would block undesirables (at least for the user)? Or did I miss the link?

Patricio wrote:
I noticed a lot of the threads are really old, and the newest ones seem to be in the general climate debate forum. I prefer the newer threads. This site doesn't have that many participants.

Into the Night wrote:

Patricio wrote:
That's good, as long as there are a few I'll hang out. I noticed there is no 'ignore' function that would block undesirables (at least for the user)? Or did I miss the link?

...and the first thing you turn to is censorship. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Censorship doesn't work. Ignore features (if any) simply remove you from the conversation.

Patricio wrote:
I noticed a lot of the threads are really old, and the newest ones seem to be in the general climate debate forum. I prefer the newer threads. This site doesn't have that many participants.

It never really did. Typically one or two religious adherents like you, and two or three trying to explain the science you ignore.

Patricio wrote:Another thing, how do you post an img, say a .jpg or .png? The choose file button doesn't upload, for some reason.

Save pic to phone

Upload pic to blogspot

Open blogspot img in new tab.

Copy the url

Paste the url in climate debate post

Highlight the url

Click img

Post pic

Spongy Iris wrote:

Patricio wrote:Another thing, how do you post an img, say a .jpg or .png? The choose file button doesn't upload, for some reason.

I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not the same poster as sealover / Im a BM.

I already sent him these instructions, but he refuses to learn them. There may be other ways, but this works for me when I'm using my phone.

Save pic to phone

Upload pic to blogspot

Open blogspot img in new tab.

Copy the url

Paste the url in climate debate post

Highlight the url

Click img

Post pic

Patricio wrote:

Spongy Iris wrote:

Patricio wrote:Another thing, how do you post an img, say a .jpg or .png? The choose file button doesn't upload, for some reason.

I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not the same poster as sealover / Im a BM.

I already sent him these instructions, but he refuses to learn them. There may be other ways, but this works for me when I'm using my phone.

Save pic to phone

Upload pic to blogspot

Open blogspot img in new tab.

Copy the url

Paste the url in climate debate post

Highlight the url

Click img

Post pic

So we can only link to images, we can't upload them?

[img]https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTbFksWuGvRKD2-3YqnLTcjdH2cnRghJIPHVQ&s[/img]


this image doesn't load for some reason

Spongy Iris wrote:

Patricio wrote:Another thing, how do you post an img, say a .jpg or .png? The choose file button doesn't upload, for some reason.

I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not the same poster as sealover / Im a BM.

I already sent him these instructions, but he refuses to learn them. There may be other ways, but this works for me when I'm using my phone.

Save pic to phone

Upload pic to blogspot

Open blogspot img in new tab.

Copy the url

Paste the url in climate debate post

Highlight the url

Click img

Post pic

sealover wrote:

Spongy Iris wrote:

Patricio wrote:Another thing, how do you post an img, say a .jpg or .png? The choose file button doesn't upload, for some reason.

I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not the same poster as sealover / Im a BM.

I already sent him these instructions, but he refuses to learn them. There may be other ways, but this works for me when I'm using my phone.

Save pic to phone

Upload pic to blogspot

Open blogspot img in new tab.

Copy the url

Paste the url in climate debate post

Highlight the url

Click img

Post pic

Spongy Iris, I appreciate that you shared this information with Patricio.

I appreciated it when you shared it with me, although I never employed it.

Everything I ever posted was the product of my typing directly into this "Write post" box. I was relentlessly accused of cutting and pasting.

Writing that scientific gibber babble in a manner that looks like an AI reference or cut and paste off a search engine, because that's just the way they taught me to do in in grad school at UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

Trolls couldn't imagine that I actually knew the material and understood it well enough to use my own unassisted brain to write it.

Because it was PERFECT gibber babble!

And that's why I no longer need any stinkin' instructions to download shit.

Spongy Iris wrote:

Patricio wrote:

Spongy Iris wrote:
[quote]Patricio wrote:Another thing, how do you post an img, say a .jpg or .png? The choose file button doesn't upload, for some reason.

I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not the same poster as sealover / Im a BM.

I already sent him these instructions, but he refuses to learn them. There may be other ways, but this works for me when I'm using my phone.

Save pic to phone

Upload pic to blogspot

Open blogspot img in new tab.

Copy the url

Paste the url in climate debate post

Highlight the url

Click img

Post pic

So we can only link to images, we can't upload them?

---

Edited on 09-06-2026 01:37

Patricio wrote:

sealover wrote:

Spongy Iris wrote:

Patricio wrote:Another thing, how do you post an img, say a .jpg or .png? The choose file button doesn't upload, for some reason.

I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not the same poster as sealover / Im a BM.

I already sent him these instructions, but he refuses to learn them. There may be other ways, but this works for me when I'm using my phone.

Save pic to phone

Upload pic to blogspot

Open blogspot img in new tab.

Copy the url

Paste the url in climate debate post

Highlight the url

Click img

Post pic

Spongy Iris, I appreciate that you shared this information with Patricio.

I appreciated it when you shared it with me, although I never employed it.

Everything I ever posted was the product of my typing directly into this "Write post" box. I was relentlessly accused of cutting and pasting.

Writing that scientific gibber babble in a manner that looks like an AI reference or cut and paste off a search engine, because that's just the way they taught me to do in in grad school at UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

Trolls couldn't imagine that I actually knew the material and understood it well enough to use my own unassisted brain to write it.

Because it was PERFECT gibber babble!

And that's why I no longer need any stinkin' instructions to download shit.

Perfect rebuttal.

Spongy Iris wrote:

Patricio wrote:

sealover wrote:

Spongy Iris wrote:

Patricio wrote:Another thing, how do you post an img, say a .jpg or .png? The choose file button doesn't upload, for some reason.

I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not the same poster as sealover / Im a BM.

I already sent him these instructions, but he refuses to learn them. There may be other ways, but this works for me when I'm using my phone.

Save pic to phone

Upload pic to blogspot

Open blogspot img in new tab.

Copy the url

Paste the url in climate debate post

Highlight the url

Click img

Post pic

Spongy Iris, I appreciate that you shared this information with Patricio.

I appreciated it when you shared it with me, although I never employed it.

Everything I ever posted was the product of my typing directly into this "Write post" box. I was relentlessly accused of cutting and pasting.

Writing that scientific gibber babble in a manner that looks like an AI reference or cut and paste off a search engine, because that's just the way they taught me to do in in grad school at UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

Trolls couldn't imagine that I actually knew the material and understood it well enough to use my own unassisted brain to write it.

Because it was PERFECT gibber babble!

And that's why I no longer need any stinkin' instructions to download shit.

Perfect rebuttal.

Suit yourself. But you know what they say. A picture can paint a thousand words.

Patricio wrote:

Spongy Iris wrote:

Patricio wrote:

Hey Blossom, you figured it out. Looks like you're using IMGUR. Congratulations.

Im a BM wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:

Into the Night wrote:So they retrench into their religion (like Robert does), or finding they are unequipped to discuss science or mathematics, run for it (like Patricio did), to try to find some kiddie pool where they can enjoy their echo chamber.

Did you notice how Robert frames his congregation's scientific illiteracy as his congregation somehow being the VICTIM! of a violent RAPE! in which we REPEATEDLY ATTACK them with DEMANDS that they discuss science and define their terms?

Most four-year-olds I know pout and whine far less than Robert and his ilk.

What time is it?

Time for some RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION!

Party time! WOO HOO!

Patricio wrote:

Im a BM wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:

Into the Night wrote:So they retrench into their religion (like Robert does), or finding they are unequipped to discuss science or mathematics, run for it (like Patricio did), to try to find some kiddie pool where they can enjoy their echo chamber.

Did you notice how Robert frames his congregation's scientific illiteracy as his congregation somehow being the VICTIM! of a violent RAPE! in which we REPEATEDLY ATTACK them with DEMANDS that they discuss science and define their terms?

Most four-year-olds I know pout and whine far less than Robert and his ilk.

What time is it?

Time for some RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION!

Party time! WOO HOO!

I won't name any names, but on every forum I've had the occasion to be a contributing member, there are always a couple of posters whose idiocy ruins it for everyone else. I'm reminded of the metaphor of the fellow with BO but everyone in the room can smell him but himself. The intellectual diarrhea that has infected two or three others here is rather strong. I think I'll be wearing a gas mask and making good use of a can of Ozium in the future.

Patricio wrote: I'm reminded of the metaphor of the fellow with BO but everyone in the room can smell him but himself..

Spongy Iris wrote:
Patricio wrote: I'm reminded of the metaphor of the fellow with BO but everyone in the room can smell him but himself..
Spongy Iris wrote:
Perhaps you are aware of this already, having taken acid at 14, but being Super Dumb and Full of Cum, and burning your heart out regularly, causes God Awful BO in everybody. Once that Cum nestles in and finds a good resting place, it's almost impossible to get rid of it

Im a BM wrote:

Patricio wrote:

Im a BM wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:

Into the Night wrote:So they retrench into their religion (like Robert does), or finding they are unequipped to discuss science or mathematics, run for it (like Patricio did), to try to find some kiddie pool where they can enjoy their echo chamber.

Did you notice how Robert frames his congregation's scientific illiteracy as his congregation somehow being the VICTIM! of a violent RAPE! in which we REPEATEDLY ATTACK them with DEMANDS that they discuss science and define their terms?

Most four-year-olds I know pout and whine far less than Robert and his ilk.

What time is it?

Time for some RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION!

Party time! WOO HOO!

I won't name any names, but on every forum I've had the occasion to be a contributing member, there are always a couple of posters whose idiocy ruins it for everyone else. I'm reminded of the metaphor of the fellow with BO but everyone in the room can smell him but himself. The intellectual diarrhea that has infected two or three others here is rather strong. I think I'll be wearing a gas mask and making good use of a can of Ozium in the future.

One of the old gang dropped in for the first time in a long, long time to weigh in on the New Messiah's refusal to return until Trump is no longer US president.

IBdaMann wanted Harvey's attention again so badly..

They had a falling out because Harvey was "gullible" enough to believe petroleum deposits formed from the remnants of dead photosynthetic organisms, rather than the endlessly renewable product of magic synthesis deep below the surface, purely abiotic and of geologic origin.

"Fischer-Tropsch is your God", Harvey astutely observed. Harvey teased IBdaMann about how much it looks like a WACKY religion based purely on FAITH. IBdaMann was pretty pHuckin' condescending to Harvey. Harvey only believed in geology because he was GULLIBLE. There was NO NEED to actually ever observe the conditions or verify what materials are present or offer a mechanism that doesn't require a cobalt platinum catalyst and a blend of pure H2 and carbon MONOXIDE. Not even CO2, it's gotta be CO.

But our faith is strong, so we KNOW with absolute certainty that what they think formed from dead organisms deposited on an ancient shallow sea floor of the continental shelf is not really a finite limited resource. It's just the tip of the iceberg of the magic petroleum oozing up from deep below, continuously and renewably forever.

They took it a step even further to COAL, and that was a bit much for Harvey. Harvey knew the evidence was strong for coal having been formed from organisms that died long ago. IBdaMann only had scolding and insults to offer to anyone GULLIBLE enough to believe in NON magic coal and petroleum.

HarveyH55 has been encouraged to engage with you, Patricio, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I just don't think the old gang will ever get the magic back.

Im a BM wrote: what they think formed from dead organisms deposited on an ancient shallow sea floor of the continental shelf is not really a finite limited resource.

IBdaMann wrote:

Im a BM wrote: what they think formed from dead organisms deposited on an ancient shallow sea floor of the continental shelf is not really a finite limited resource.

This is another religious regurgitation that your science-denial religion requires you to proselytize.

Science: Nothing rots/decays into a higher form of energy.
Robert: Dead things in the past rotted/decayed into higher energy forms

Robert, you are stupid. Feel free to enlist "Patricio" to pretend to mock me for accepting the 2nd LoT instead of buying your combined science denial.

Too funny!

sealover wrote: "Higher energy forms"?

sealover wrote: I doubt that you mean carbon compounds that contain more chemical energy than originally in the dead organisms.

sealover wrote: I suspect that by "Higher energy" you mean lower entropy.

sealover wrote: Some would claim that life itself violates the laws of thermodynamics,

sealover wrote:
"Higher energy forms"?

I doubt that you mean carbon compounds that contain more chemical energy than originally in the dead organisms.

I suspect that by "Higher energy" you mean lower entropy.

sealover wrote:
Some would claim that life itself violates the laws of thermodynamics, as chemical compounds are transformed into LOWER entropy forms. The plant assembles a complex carbohydrate molecule of much lower entropy than the starting ingredients used to make it.

sealover wrote:
A human eats that starch a plant made. Somehow, the human's body doesn't spontaneously fall apart into a higher entropy state. Some of the organic carbon in that starch becomes part of the human's very low entropy cell structure. It all seems to violate the law that says entropy always increases.

sealover wrote:
Let's compare coal and petroleum, because these low entropy fossil fuels were derived from very different (chemically) kinds of photosynthetic organisms.

sealover wrote:
Whether it was coal formed from buried plants in terrestrial wetlands, or petroleum formed from buried photosynthetic marine organisms deposited on the shallow sea floor of the continental shelf, they represent the degradation products of dead organisms.

sealover wrote:
Coal or petroleum both form when the buried dead organisms are subjected to pressure and heat. Gases get baked out of them and squeezed out of them. Solids and liquids remain as fossil fuel.

sealover wrote:
The petroleum formed from mainly dead microorganisms deposited on the sea floor. Their overall chemistry is rich in carbon and hydrogen, but relatively little oxygen. They have a lot of hydrocarbons, such as lipids. They have virtually no cellulose, lignin, or polyphenols with a lot of oxygen in their chemical structure. It has low carbon-to-hydrogen ratio, and high carbon-to-oxygen ratio. When it gets baked and squeezed, what little oxygen it had combines with hydrogen to become water. All that is left behind is hydrocarbon.

sealover wrote:
The coal formed from mainly dead organisms deposited in the terrestrial wetland. Their overall chemistry is rich in carbon and oxygen, but relatively little hydrogen. Rather than being rich in lipids, these deposits are loaded with cellulose, lignin, and polyphenols. It has high carbon-to-hydrogen ratio, and low carbon-to-oxygen ratio. When it gets baked and squeezed, the abundant oxygen in its structure consumes what little hydrogen it contained to form water. All that is left behind is carbon.

sealover wrote:
These "higher forms of energy" are the product of spontaneous chemical reactions during which the overall entropy actually INCREASED. All the water vapor and other gases that got squeezed out were in very high entropy state compared to when they were hydrogen and oxygen atoms attached to carbon.

sealover wrote:
No violations of LOT here. Just natural fossil fuels.

Patricio wrote:
The science is unusually coherent; the politics is where the friction begins. Why an honest conversation requires moving past binary thinking to face the real trade-offs.

Climate change has achieved the dubious honor of becoming one of those topics that Americans discuss incessantly while conspicuously avoiding its actual substance. It is treated as a tribal marker rather than an empirical question, a litmus test of political identity rather than a problem to be understood and managed. This is odd, because beneath the noise the scientific picture presented by the major research institutions is unusually coherent. The Earth is warming. Human activity is widely understood to be the primary driver [2][3]. The evidence cited in support of both propositions is extensive, overlapping, and drawn from many independent lines of observation. What remains controversial is not the basic physics of the atmosphere, but how a modern society should respond when the bill for two centuries of industrial success finally arrives.

It is worth starting from ground that, according to mainstream climate science, is no longer seriously disputed. Instrumental temperature records, satellite data, ocean heat measurements, and reconstructions of past climates are repeatedly cited as pointing to the same conclusion: global average temperatures have risen sharply over the past century, with the most recent decade standing apart even from the recent past [1][3]. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations now exceed 427 parts per million, a level scientists say has not occurred for hundreds of thousands of years, based on ice-core records and modern measurements [1]. The timing of this increase closely tracks the industrial era. Human activities such as burning fossil fuels, clearing forests, and producing cement are widely identified as the dominant contributors [2]. By contrast, natural influences--changes in solar output, volcanic activity, and long-term orbital cycles--are generally regarded by climate researchers as insufficient to explain the observed warming on their own [2]. Meanwhile, the consequences are no longer abstractions. Heat extremes, altered rainfall patterns, rising seas, and shifting ecosystems are increasingly reported across many regions and datasets by institutions with differing methods and missions [3].

None of this implies that climate science has reached some priestly certainty beyond further inquiry. On the contrary, scientists are often explicit about the limits of their projections. Uncertainty here does not mean ignorance; it reflects a range of possible outcomes rather than a single, fixed prediction. Broad global trends are easier to estimate than local effects. Predicting how average temperatures change worldwide is more straightforward than predicting how rainfall patterns will evolve in a particular state or how individual storm systems may behave decades from now. Estimates of climate sensitivity--the amount of warming associated with higher carbon dioxide levels--fall within a studied range rather than a precise figure [2]. Potential tipping points, such as ice-sheet loss or changes in ocean circulation, are discussed as real risks but with acknowledged uncertainty about timing and thresholds [2]. Add to this the difficulty of forecasting economic impacts, whether from climate damage or from climate policy, and it becomes clear why reasonable experts can disagree without disputing the core diagnosis.

Where the argument truly begins is not in the laboratory but in the legislature. Democratic climate policy, broadly speaking, treats emissions reduction as an urgent imperative. It favors rapid decarbonization, large-scale deployment of renewable energy, electrification of transport, regulatory pressure on industry, international agreements, and significant public investment in clean technologies. The underlying wager is that early action is cheaper than delay, that prevention costs less than repair, and that the risks of inaction grow faster than the costs of transition. This is not an irrational position; it reflects a particular approach to managing long-term risk under uncertainty.

Republican approaches are more varied than their caricatures, and their strongest arguments are often misrepresented by opponents who prefer straw men to engagement. Many on the right do not deny warming so much as question the proposed remedies. They emphasize the economic and social costs of rapid decarbonization: higher energy prices, disproportionate burdens on lower-income households, disruption of existing industries, and potential loss of competitiveness. These concerns are not imaginary. They reflect real tradeoffs, and acknowledging them is part of taking the issue seriously rather than turning it into a moral contest.

There is also a defensible case for technological optimism. Major energy transitions in the past were driven less by bans than by better alternatives. Advanced nuclear power, carbon capture, geothermal energy, hydrogen systems, and next-generation batteries are often cited as examples of technologies that could reduce emissions without requiring abrupt economic dislocation. Many researchers argue that innovation of this kind may ultimately prove more effective than regulation alone. To raise this point is not to deny urgency, but to question which tools are most likely to work.

Then there is the arithmetic that refuses to be wished away. The United States is no longer the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. China now accounts for more than 30 percent of global emissions, with India rising rapidly behind it [4]. Even the most ambitious American climate policy cannot, by itself, stabilize the global climate. This does not excuse inaction, but it does underscore the necessity--and fragility--of international cooperation. Climate change is, by definition, a collective-action problem. The atmosphere does not recognize national borders.

Republicans also draw attention to uncertainty in climate modeling, sometimes clumsily, sometimes fairly. Models generate ranges of outcomes rather than definitive forecasts. Regional projections are less certain than global ones, and uncertainty grows over longer time horizons. This is not a concession forced from scientists; it is part of how climate research is routinely described. Uncertainty does not negate risk, but it complicates long-term planning. Finally, there is the emphasis on adaptation: wildfire management, water systems, coastal defenses, and infrastructure hardening. These measures are necessary regardless of how emissions trajectories unfold, and many climate scientists themselves note that adaptation receives less attention than mitigation [5].

For all the shouting, the overlap between the parties is larger than commonly admitted. Support for nuclear power has grown substantially in recent years. Investment in carbon capture, grid modernization, energy efficiency, research and development, and infrastructure resilience has attracted bipartisan support through legislation and funding. These areas offer the most plausible foundation for durable progress, precisely because they do not require either side to pretend the other is acting in bad faith.

The real dispute, then, is not about whether the planet is warming. It is about how to respond, how fast to move, how much to spend, and who should bear the costs. Democrats tend to emphasize speed, regulation, emissions reduction, and international coordination. Republicans tend to emphasize cost, innovation, energy independence, adaptation, and competitiveness. Both sets of priorities contain insights, and both contain blind spots. A serious climate strategy will almost certainly borrow from each.

What an honest conversation requires is a refusal to reduce climate change to a morality play. The mainstream scientific conclusion--that the planet is warming and human activity plays a central role--is well established [2][3]. Everything beyond that is strategy. A productive debate acknowledges the reality of the problem, the legitimacy of economic concerns, the importance of innovation, the necessity of global cooperation, and the value of both mitigation and adaptation. Climate change is not a binary proposition to be believed or denied. It is a complex challenge that demands scientific humility, economic pragmatism, technological ingenuity, and political maturity. No party has a monopoly on wisdom here, and no ideology will be vindicated by the atmosphere.

References:

1. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

2. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

3. https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/evidence

4. https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025

5. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/

Im a BM wrote: what they think formed from dead organisms deposited on an ancient shallow sea floor of the continental shelf is not really a finite limited resource.

sealover wrote:
"Higher energy forms"?

I doubt that you mean carbon compounds that contain more chemical energy than originally in the dead organisms.

I suspect that by "Higher energy" you mean lower entropy.

Some would claim that life itself violates the laws of thermodynamics, as chemical compounds are transformed into LOWER entropy forms. The plant assembles a complex carbohydrate molecule of much lower entropy than the starting ingredients used to make it.

A human eats that starch a plant made. Somehow, the human's body doesn't spontaneously fall apart into a higher entropy state. Some of the organic carbon in that starch becomes part of the human's very low entropy cell structure. It all seems to violate the law that says entropy always increases.

Let's compare coal and petroleum, because these low entropy fossil fuels were derived from very different (chemically) kinds of photosynthetic organisms.

Whether it was coal formed from buried plants in terrestrial wetlands, or petroleum formed from buried photosynthetic marine organisms deposited on the shallow sea floor of the continental shelf, they represent the degradation products of dead organisms.

Coal or petroleum both form when the buried dead organisms are subjected to pressure and heat. Gases get baked out of them and squeezed out of them. Solids and liquids remain as fossil fuel.

The petroleum formed from mainly dead microorganisms deposited on the sea floor. Their overall chemistry is rich in carbon and hydrogen, but relatively little oxygen. They have a lot of hydrocarbons, such as lipids. They have virtually no cellulose, lignin, or polyphenols with a lot of oxygen in their chemical structure. It has low carbon-to-hydrogen ratio, and high carbon-to-oxygen ratio. When it gets baked and squeezed, what little oxygen it had combines with hydrogen to become water. All that is left behind is hydrocarbon.

The coal formed from mainly dead organisms deposited in the terrestrial wetland. Their overall chemistry is rich in carbon and oxygen, but relatively little hydrogen. Rather than being rich in lipids, these deposits are loaded with cellulose, lignin, and polyphenols. It has high carbon-to-hydrogen ratio, and low carbon-to-oxygen ratio. When it gets baked and squeezed, the abundant oxygen in its structure consumes what little hydrogen it contained to form water. All that is left behind is carbon.

These "higher forms of energy" are the product of spontaneous chemical reactions during which the overall entropy actually INCREASED. All the water vapor and other gases that got squeezed out were in very high entropy state compared to when they were hydrogen and oxygen atoms attached to carbon.

No violations of LOT here. Just natural fossil fuels.

Patricio wrote:

Im a BM wrote: what they think formed from dead organisms deposited on an ancient shallow sea floor of the continental shelf is not really a finite limited resource.

IBdaMann wrote:
This is another religious regurgitation that your science-denial religion requires you to proselytize.

Science: Nothing rots/decays into a higher form of energy.
Robert: Dead things in the past rotted/decayed into higher energy forms

Robert, you are stupid. Feel free to enlist "Patricio" to pretend to mock me for accepting the 2nd LoT instead of buying your combined science denial.

Too funny!

sealover wrote:
"Higher energy forms"?

I doubt that you mean carbon compounds that contain more chemical energy than originally in the dead organisms.

I suspect that by "Higher energy" you mean lower entropy.

Some would claim that life itself violates the laws of thermodynamics, as chemical compounds are transformed into LOWER entropy forms. The plant assembles a complex carbohydrate molecule of much lower entropy than the starting ingredients used to make it.

A human eats that starch a plant made. Somehow, the human's body doesn't spontaneously fall apart into a higher entropy state. Some of the organic carbon in that starch becomes part of the human's very low entropy cell structure. It all seems to violate the law that says entropy always increases.

Let's compare coal and petroleum, because these low entropy fossil fuels were derived from very different (chemically) kinds of photosynthetic organisms.

Whether it was coal formed from buried plants in terrestrial wetlands, or petroleum formed from buried photosynthetic marine organisms deposited on the shallow sea floor of the continental shelf, they represent the degradation products of dead organisms.

Coal or petroleum both form when the buried dead organisms are subjected to pressure and heat. Gases get baked out of them and squeezed out of them. Solids and liquids remain as fossil fuel.

The petroleum formed from mainly dead microorganisms deposited on the sea floor. Their overall chemistry is rich in carbon and hydrogen, but relatively little oxygen. They have a lot of hydrocarbons, such as lipids. They have virtually no cellulose, lignin, or polyphenols with a lot of oxygen in their chemical structure. It has low carbon-to-hydrogen ratio, and high carbon-to-oxygen ratio. When it gets baked and squeezed, what little oxygen it had combines with hydrogen to become water. All that is left behind is hydrocarbon.

The coal formed from mainly dead organisms deposited in the terrestrial wetland. Their overall chemistry is rich in carbon and oxygen, but relatively little hydrogen. Rather than being rich in lipids, these deposits are loaded with cellulose, lignin, and polyphenols. It has high carbon-to-hydrogen ratio, and low carbon-to-oxygen ratio. When it gets baked and squeezed, the abundant oxygen in its structure consumes what little hydrogen it contained to form water. All that is left behind is carbon.

These "higher forms of energy" are the product of spontaneous chemical reactions during which the overall entropy actually INCREASED. All the water vapor and other gases that got squeezed out were in very high entropy state compared to when they were hydrogen and oxygen atoms attached to carbon.

No violations of LOT here. Just natural fossil fuels.

Patricio wrote:

Sealover, that was a masterclass.

IBdaMann wasn't just waving the 2nd LoT around -- he was making a specific claim: that hydrocarbons form abiotically via Fischer-Tropsch processes in the lower crust, and that the biogenic origin model is thermodynamically impossible. That's a real hypothesis, which makes your response all the more effective, because you didn't just rebut his tone -- you dismantled the substance.

Fischer-Tropsch synthesis does occur in nature, but the conditions required -- high temperatures, metal catalysts, specific pressure regimes -- are not characteristic of the sedimentary basins where virtually all commercially extracted petroleum is found. More tellingly, the isotopic signatures of fossil fuels, particularly the carbon-13 depletion consistent with biological fractionation, are not what abiogenic Fischer-Tropsch products would produce. The geochemistry doesn't lie.

The irony is that he trapped himself with his own vague language. Invoking the 2nd LoT against someone who can detail exactly why it isn't violated is a massive unforced error. The gases and water vapor expelled during coalification and petroleum formation carry the requisite entropy increase. The low-entropy residuals left behind are exactly what thermodynamics predicts when energy is added to an open system under heat and pressure.

Your plant-and-starch illustration was spot on -- the kind of grounding analogy that separates someone who genuinely understands thermodynamics from someone who merely wields it as a rhetorical bludgeon.

Well played.

sealover wrote:

Patricio wrote:
The science is unusually coherent; the politics is where the friction begins. Why an honest conversation requires moving past binary thinking to face the real trade-offs.

Climate change has achieved the dubious honor of becoming one of those topics that Americans discuss incessantly while conspicuously avoiding its actual substance. It is treated as a tribal marker rather than an empirical question, a litmus test of political identity rather than a problem to be understood and managed. This is odd, because beneath the noise the scientific picture presented by the major research institutions is unusually coherent. The Earth is warming. Human activity is widely understood to be the primary driver [2][3]. The evidence cited in support of both propositions is extensive, overlapping, and drawn from many independent lines of observation. What remains controversial is not the basic physics of the atmosphere, but how a modern society should respond when the bill for two centuries of industrial success finally arrives.

It is worth starting from ground that, according to mainstream climate science, is no longer seriously disputed. Instrumental temperature records, satellite data, ocean heat measurements, and reconstructions of past climates are repeatedly cited as pointing to the same conclusion: global average temperatures have risen sharply over the past century, with the most recent decade standing apart even from the recent past [1][3]. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations now exceed 427 parts per million, a level scientists say has not occurred for hundreds of thousands of years, based on ice-core records and modern measurements [1]. The timing of this increase closely tracks the industrial era. Human activities such as burning fossil fuels, clearing forests, and producing cement are widely identified as the dominant contributors [2]. By contrast, natural influences--changes in solar output, volcanic activity, and long-term orbital cycles--are generally regarded by climate researchers as insufficient to explain the observed warming on their own [2]. Meanwhile, the consequences are no longer abstractions. Heat extremes, altered rainfall patterns, rising seas, and shifting ecosystems are increasingly reported across many regions and datasets by institutions with differing methods and missions [3].

None of this implies that climate science has reached some priestly certainty beyond further inquiry. On the contrary, scientists are often explicit about the limits of their projections. Uncertainty here does not mean ignorance; it reflects a range of possible outcomes rather than a single, fixed prediction. Broad global trends are easier to estimate than local effects. Predicting how average temperatures change worldwide is more straightforward than predicting how rainfall patterns will evolve in a particular state or how individual storm systems may behave decades from now. Estimates of climate sensitivity--the amount of warming associated with higher carbon dioxide levels--fall within a studied range rather than a precise figure [2]. Potential tipping points, such as ice-sheet loss or changes in ocean circulation, are discussed as real risks but with acknowledged uncertainty about timing and thresholds [2]. Add to this the difficulty of forecasting economic impacts, whether from climate damage or from climate policy, and it becomes clear why reasonable experts can disagree without disputing the core diagnosis.

Where the argument truly begins is not in the laboratory but in the legislature. Democratic climate policy, broadly speaking, treats emissions reduction as an urgent imperative. It favors rapid decarbonization, large-scale deployment of renewable energy, electrification of transport, regulatory pressure on industry, international agreements, and significant public investment in clean technologies. The underlying wager is that early action is cheaper than delay, that prevention costs less than repair, and that the risks of inaction grow faster than the costs of transition. This is not an irrational position; it reflects a particular approach to managing long-term risk under uncertainty.

Republican approaches are more varied than their caricatures, and their strongest arguments are often misrepresented by opponents who prefer straw men to engagement. Many on the right do not deny warming so much as question the proposed remedies. They emphasize the economic and social costs of rapid decarbonization: higher energy prices, disproportionate burdens on lower-income households, disruption of existing industries, and potential loss of competitiveness. These concerns are not imaginary. They reflect real tradeoffs, and acknowledging them is part of taking the issue seriously rather than turning it into a moral contest.

There is also a defensible case for technological optimism. Major energy transitions in the past were driven less by bans than by better alternatives. Advanced nuclear power, carbon capture, geothermal energy, hydrogen systems, and next-generation batteries are often cited as examples of technologies that could reduce emissions without requiring abrupt economic dislocation. Many researchers argue that innovation of this kind may ultimately prove more effective than regulation alone. To raise this point is not to deny urgency, but to question which tools are most likely to work.

Then there is the arithmetic that refuses to be wished away. The United States is no longer the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. China now accounts for more than 30 percent of global emissions, with India rising rapidly behind it [4]. Even the most ambitious American climate policy cannot, by itself, stabilize the global climate. This does not excuse inaction, but it does underscore the necessity--and fragility--of international cooperation. Climate change is, by definition, a collective-action problem. The atmosphere does not recognize national borders.

Republicans also draw attention to uncertainty in climate modeling, sometimes clumsily, sometimes fairly. Models generate ranges of outcomes rather than definitive forecasts. Regional projections are less certain than global ones, and uncertainty grows over longer time horizons. This is not a concession forced from scientists; it is part of how climate research is routinely described. Uncertainty does not negate risk, but it complicates long-term planning. Finally, there is the emphasis on adaptation: wildfire management, water systems, coastal defenses, and infrastructure hardening. These measures are necessary regardless of how emissions trajectories unfold, and many climate scientists themselves note that adaptation receives less attention than mitigation [5].

For all the shouting, the overlap between the parties is larger than commonly admitted. Support for nuclear power has grown substantially in recent years. Investment in carbon capture, grid modernization, energy efficiency, research and development, and infrastructure resilience has attracted bipartisan support through legislation and funding. These areas offer the most plausible foundation for durable progress, precisely because they do not require either side to pretend the other is acting in bad faith.

The real dispute, then, is not about whether the planet is warming. It is about how to respond, how fast to move, how much to spend, and who should bear the costs. Democrats tend to emphasize speed, regulation, emissions reduction, and international coordination. Republicans tend to emphasize cost, innovation, energy independence, adaptation, and competitiveness. Both sets of priorities contain insights, and both contain blind spots. A serious climate strategy will almost certainly borrow from each.

What an honest conversation requires is a refusal to reduce climate change to a morality play. The mainstream scientific conclusion--that the planet is warming and human activity plays a central role--is well established [2][3]. Everything beyond that is strategy. A productive debate acknowledges the reality of the problem, the legitimacy of economic concerns, the importance of innovation, the necessity of global cooperation, and the value of both mitigation and adaptation. Climate change is not a binary proposition to be believed or denied. It is a complex challenge that demands scientific humility, economic pragmatism, technological ingenuity, and political maturity. No party has a monopoly on wisdom here, and no ideology will be vindicated by the atmosphere.

References:

1. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

2. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

3. https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/evidence

4. https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025

5. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/

I am at a loss to explain why in thirteen days, this thread hasn't exceeded 1166 "views". Perhaps the New Messiah's many threads made the whole site less viewable for a while.

I am reluctant to generalize "Republican approaches and their caricatures", because they have changed so much during my life time.

Richard Nixon was a radical tree hugger environmentalist compared to Trump.

Ronald Reagan was a big-government environmental-intervention extremist compared to Trump.

John McCain was the last Republican candidate for president who openly acknowledged the scientific reality of anthropogenic climate change. His running mate, on the other hand, denounced the "snake oil science" of climate change as she was launched to national stardom as a leader in the Tea-Party-proto-MAGA movement.

Mitt Romney was the last Republican candidate for president to understand the scientific reality of anthropogenic climate change. But he had some mysterious epiphany which he never really explained to make him become a "skeptic" for his run for president. As Governor, he had eloquently pushed for CO2 reduction.

I hated Nixon and Reagan both. The "dirty little wars" in third world nations were a particular point of contention for me regarding the wisdom of policies.

But it was Nixon's EPA, Clean Air Act, etc. that really turned things around when I was young. The Republican party SUPPORTED basic scientific research. Under Nixon, the National Science Foundation paid for me to get my first chemistry training in a summer program for high school students at San Diego State, now known as California State University, San Diego.

It was Reagan's willingness to sponsor basic scientific research which paid for my master's degree education. Reagan hoped research such as ours would confirm that "acid rain" wasn't really a serious problem requiring policy change. We didn't give them the results they would have liked, nor did any of the other NSF-funded basic research into acidic deposition. Reagan was a good sport about it and accepted the truth of the scientific findings.

The new Republican president is no Ronald Reagan. He doesn't even reach the rather low bar that Nixon set. Nobody ever accused Reagan of being exceptionally intelligent, nor did they accuse Nixon of being honest to a fault.

But the stupidest, most corrupt Republican president in history has declared war on science. That isn't really a Republican tradition.

sealover wrote: Some would claim that life itself violates the laws of thermodynamics, as chemical compounds are transformed into LOWER entropy forms.

sealover wrote: Let's compare coal and petroleum,

sealover wrote: or petroleum formed from buried photosynthetic marine organisms deposited on the shallow sea floor of the continental shelf,

sealover wrote: Solids and liquids remain as fossil fuel.

sealover wrote: They have a lot of hydrocarbons, such as lipids.

Patricio wrote:I hear ya. Trump has certainly murdered the GOP. I'm very curious to know what form it will take when he is gone, if there is anything left of the nation when he goes. I've been a lefty since my hippie days in the 60s, dabbled as a right winger in the 80s, but came home after being delusioned by Iran Contra, etc. I really became interested in climate science when Al Gore's film was released.

It would be nice of the old GOP came alive, but, the MAGA crowd has taken over, and some other demagogue wannabe is no doubt waiting in the mud ready to spring out, at some point.

If you look at all the indictments and prosecutions of members of the executive branch, I'd say some 90% of them are on the GOP side. I'll have to double check this but I think it's something like 209 indictments on the GOP side and 4 on the Democrat side.

IBdaMann wrote:

Patricio wrote:I hear ya. Trump has certainly murdered the GOP. I'm very curious to know what form it will take when he is gone, if there is anything left of the nation when he goes. I've been a lefty since my hippie days in the 60s, dabbled as a right winger in the 80s, but came home after being delusioned by Iran Contra, etc. I really became interested in climate science when Al Gore's film was released.

It would be nice of the old GOP came alive, but, the MAGA crowd has taken over, and some other demagogue wannabe is no doubt waiting in the mud ready to spring out, at some point.

If you look at all the indictments and prosecutions of members of the executive branch, I'd say some 90% of them are on the GOP side. I'll have to double check this but I think it's something like 209 indictments on the GOP side and 4 on the Democrat side.

All you had to write is that you are an uneducated, TDS-infected, intellectually dishonest troll trying desperately to pass himself off as a thienth geniuth to advance his religious Climate agenda.

Patricio wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:

Patricio wrote:I hear ya. Trump has certainly murdered the GOP. I'm very curious to know what form it will take when he is gone, if there is anything left of the nation when he goes. I've been a lefty since my hippie days in the 60s, dabbled as a right winger in the 80s, but came home after being delusioned by Iran Contra, etc. I really became interested in climate science when Al Gore's film was released.

It would be nice of the old GOP came alive, but, the MAGA crowd has taken over, and some other demagogue wannabe is no doubt waiting in the mud ready to spring out, at some point.

If you look at all the indictments and prosecutions of members of the executive branch, I'd say some 90% of them are on the GOP side. I'll have to double check this but I think it's something like 209 indictments on the GOP side and 4 on the Democrat side.

All you had to write is that you are an uneducated, TDS-infected, intellectually dishonest troll trying desperately to pass himself off as a thienth geniuth to advance his religious Climate agenda.

Patricio wrote:

sealover wrote: Oh, those "value-added" posts!

sealover wrote: Pictures depicting you as a troll, with specialized features to mock you.

sealover wrote: You may have noticed that IBdaMann and ITN don't really coordinate their arguments very well.

sealover wrote: For example, IBdaMann said, "I refuse to use the term 'entropy'. Scheisters who don't understand thermodynamics hide behind the term 'entropy' to conceal their shortcomings."

sealover wrote: After that Into the Night said, "You obviously don't understand what entropy is. Entropy can never decrease. You cannot decrease entropy... ever."

sealover wrote: I'm pretty sure that I explained how fossil fuel formation includes increasing entropy, as hydrogen and oxygen bonded to carbon break away to join together and become water molecules.

sealover wrote: I'm pretty sure I never asserted that entropy actually decreases, unless ...

sealover wrote: On the other hand, these guys will literally tell you that "there is no such thing as 'fossil fuel'."