Obama: No time for 'flat-earth society' on climate change

I don't think I quite understand.

Are you saying we should reduce our impact to the point where the temperature increase is stopped? Or should we put in efforts to try to lower it back down to some other temperature?

 

We should try to remove whatever negative influences we caused that we can act upon.

 

But not if we actually happened to be in a time where the earth was in a cooling cycle?

 

If we are causing a problem, we should try to fix it. Either direction.

 

I know you're aware that the Earth, well before we were significant, went through times of significant cooling and ice ages. My question is whether or not we should try to slow / stop the cooling if that were happening now.

 

This feels like entrapment, but if we know what the cycle should be roughly, then no, we shouldn't try to supersede it.

 

It's not entrapment, I'm trying to understand your position.

People are going to suffer whether the earth warms or cools dramatically. And we know that either can happen regardless of whether humans are contributing or not. I'm just curious why you think we should only do what we can to not have people suffer if the earth is warming, but if people are going to suffer from cooling we should let it happen.

 

I agree that ALL of your statements are accurate, but I believe you are leaving out the rate of change. That is an important factor.

Directly addressing your last point, if we knew the earth was cooling caused by man, then we should stop it.

 

Can you explain why it matters whether or not the cooling is cause by man? People will suffer and die regardless of the cause of the cooling.

 

It's not? Maybe you're not paying close enough attention. It's just like extinction. Species go extinct all the time. No big deal. It's the rate of modern day extinction that is alarming (compared to historical rates). Same story for climate change. We're not worried about a warming trend, but we are worried about an accelerated rate of warming.

 

Exactly right. Repped.

 

So, you would be fine with another ice age?

 

Then you should be rooting hard for Super-flu.

 

I would be concerned.

 

solve mass destruction with more mass destruction? No.

 

I'm just saying that the only way out this is probably a massive die-off, because it just isn't going to happen by people changing their lifestyle or executive fiat. 7+ billion people (and growing every day) is the root of resource use and its polluting byproducts.

 

knowing a mass die off would solve our problem and rooting for it are very different.

 

What's the "correct" rate of change? What's the "correct" absolute temperature?

 

"Rooting" was probably a poor word choice.

 

Really, I don't want a lower population. I want the problems that come with a high population to be resolved. And there are other ways around that I believe.