How to Tell the Average Person About Global Warming

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I agree with what you say.

China is the worst "offender" with India running a close second. But the left liberals love to bash the U.S. which has very clean air for an industrial nation (much cleaner than Britain, for example). The U.S. produces less than half the CO2 overload than that of China which is the biggest user of coal to generate electric power.

Coal is very 19 th century. It is time for the advanced industrial nations to go full speed on nuclear fission generated electricity. We can generate so much power that we can use electricity to break water up into O2 and H2. With free hydrogen we can have clean vehicular power. When hydrogen is burned the only waste it produces is water vapor

The best way to tell him about it is to point out that it is far more beneficial to mankind than it is detrimental. Sure, there are a few minor problems, but the benefits are great.

The disaster would be cooling. It would take very little cooling to increase the number of people around the world who don't have enough to eat. Cooling means starvation.

Ask yourself why it was during a period known as the Holocene Climatic Optimum about 9,000 or 10,000 years ago when it was noticeably warmer than today (about 2 degrees Centigrade) that mankind was finally able to settle down and take the first steps toward civilization?

When I tell someone about how Global Warming is good for us, they are often surprised. Some reject the explanation, but the more enlightened think about it and many come to understand just how good Global Warming is for us.

BuyerBeware those are two VERY good posts and I about gave you a standing ovation for them.

This especially:

Very true. It would be easier to deal with global warming if the opportunist left hadn't politised it. Al Gore did a lot of harm to the environment just by adding his name to the global warming issue. Imagine if the issue of global warming had been championed by an actual scientist, like Steven Hawking, it would be totally apolitical (Yes, I know Stephen Hawking is a physicist, not a climate scientist).

The left has mixed in a lot of nonscience in with the actual science. For example, the way the left wants to ban GMOs. Why? Is it because the left want third world people to starve? Is it because the left don't realise GMOs help the environment by reducing the amount of land that needs to be cleared? (same yield with from less acreage)

Another example? The left are positively paranoid about nuclear energy. Why? Why is they don't like this CO2 free source of energy? Why do the left want to shut down the nuclear power plants and replace them with coal power plants?

Why do the left think wind power is the solution to everything when it can't run without something else base power? I saw this first hand during the South Australia blackout. We had very high winds so 100% of the state's power was coming from the wind farms. The gas power plant was shut down as it wasn't needed at the time. The winds became so high it triggered the automatic safety shut off. Now 100% of the state's power was coming from Victoria. Not for long. Those power lines weren't intended to power the entire state so the automatic shut off for the power connection to Victoria was triggered, causing a state wide blackout. It took four hours to boot up the gas power plant from a cold start. There will probably be a new protocol that the gas power plant will be kept running during high winds so if the wind farms are shut off, we can switch to gas power instantly. The problem with that is high winds are the only time we have enough wind power to run the entire state. So in low wind, we use gas power and in high wind, we keep the gas powered steam turbine power plant fired up so we don't have to boot it from a cold start (yes, it uses a massive amount of fuel just idling because it constantly has to boil several thousand tons of water).

Is there profiteering from the left? Maybe not from leftist politicians themselves but there's always a corporation looking to fill a niche. Take Toyota and their Prius. The not quite electric car which gets 100% of it's energy from petrol. It uses more fuel than a smaller, non-hybrid car. Anyone who scrapped their car to buy a Prius should remember that making a car uses more energy than keeping their existing car.

The real problem I have with the left is that they think because they're the "good guys" they can get away with anything and say it's for the greater good.

I believe the environment is facing serious threats from mankind but the first priority should be to save the environment from environmentalists.

Did you hear the one from Canada? They proposed a hydroplant to generate gigawatts of clean energy. The environmentalists should be thrilled, right? Nope. They blocked it on the basis that it would cause environmental damage to one valley. Didn't it ever occur to them that preventing global warming through the use of clean energy could save all the valleys in the world?

They prevented that valley from being flooded but in 100 years it will be destroyed due to global warming. Environmentalists do more harm to the environment than anyone else.

BuyerBeware has the right approach. You need to convince people of the benefits of being green. People are willing to do things to help the environment, but usually only if they're easy, or there's a disaster right in front of them, like an industrial smog. If someone doesn't buy into the cause for whatever reason, you have to give them cause to. Speak to them about things that they understand. Try to appreciate what they value and why changing their behaviours (in a way that coincidentally will also save the planet) will benefit them immediately.

This can even work on the people who are convinced that they are right, and that climate change is not happening or not worth worrying about. You see users on here who have had the science explained to them multiple times but still don't understand. That doesn't matter - convince them that it's better for them to do this, that, and the other, and they'll do it, even if it goes against their political convictions.

One approach that seems to have been successful in the UK is only collecting rubbish every other week. This encourages people to recycle whatever they can so that their bin doesn't get full.

Frankly, I find collecting rubbish every other week to be rather disgusting.

Yep. And many households end up making regular trips to the dump, whilst millions of tons of "recycling" waste goes to landfill or gets incinerated.

That's why we pay other people to do it for us.

Preventing Global Warming won't save much of anything except maybe the beachfront houses of the very wealthy.

Glacier National Park has gone from over 150 glaciers in the early 1900s to 25 in the early 2000s.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... DT1r9_Gwyg

The Marshall Islanders aren't wealthy.We have a population of them here in Arkanasa.The first of the "climate refugees."
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015 ... .html?_r=0

According to Wikipedia, the estimated population of the Marshall islands is 53,376 in 2016.

Does this mean that you would have us try to stop Global Warming at very great cost for the benefit of those 53,376 people? What about the millions of people who will die from starvation if we were able to reduce the average temperature by just 1 degree Fahrenheit?

Regarding sea level, sea level is always changing. At the end of the last glaciation and the beginning of the Holocene, sea levels were approxiamately 100 to 120 meters below their current height.

Even more, a few thousand years ago, sea level may have been between 3 and 8 feet higher than today. For example, there are places in England where ocean sediment dated back to 4,000 years ago has been found at a height of one meter above sea level.

Sea level is always changing. It is not possible for mankind to guarantee that low-lying areas will not be overtaken by sea level rise and it is folly to try to do so.

Didn't say I wanted to "save" The Marshall Islamds,I doubt that's possible.My point was it's effecting more than rich people's beach homes.Plenty of poor people that live along costal areas.Rich people have nice insurance policies.They can afford to relocate and rebuild.Not the same for the majority of the worlds poor that live in low areas.
As for people starving,that may happen anyway.All it takes is a big drought or flood to wipe crops out.Its just as likely temperatures raising a degree or two will bring that about.
Sure sea level changes,I can find sea shells embedded in the limestone rocks here.This was all under ocean at one time.
It could be natural, but what's wrong with making changes for clean air and water??Better to error on the side of safety.

Beach houses are often rebuilt from time to time. Instead of rich people cashing in on insurance policies, it is far more likely that at some point they will choose not to tear down a house and build another in its place. At some point, with rising sea levels, property values will begin to decline. The smart ones will get out by then, if not earlier.

Regarding droughts, are you aware that warmer weather can carry more moisture? The worst deserts are not miserably hot places, but are places that are quite cold.

The two driest places on Earth are the Atacama in Peru and Chile and some place in Antarctica. There was a village of dirt/mud houses in the Atacama on which rain had not fallen in the previous four hundred years when my brother visited them. It has rained twice since then.

There is a place in Antarctica where it is so dry that the ground is bare of snow and ice.

Did you know that during the Holocene Clmatic Optimum when it was approximately 2 degrees Centigrade warmer than today, on average, the Sahara Desert was green, the Gobi desert was a forest, and northern Mexico was considerably wetter than today?

With a change in climate, there will be some difference in the patterns of rain. Supposedly the midwest US will get a little less rain and the desert southwest will get more.

Speaking of climate change and the desert southwest, there has been many questions of why the Anasazi people moved out of their dwellings and went elsewhere. One common thought is that it may have been due to drought that forced them to move away. It is interesting is that they moved away about the time of the period known as the Little Ice Age when temperatures were dropping. There is a good possibility that they were "climate refugees" and it was due to cooler weather, not warmer weather.

As for floods, floods tend to occur in certain low lying areas. In some places in the past such as along the Nile, it was floods that helped make the land sufficiently fertile to grow food and support the population.

To err on the side of safety, I think, is to err on the side of Global Warming, not against it.