Why people don't believe in climate science

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Wasn't the Gobi forested during the Holocene Climatic Optimum?

That's not an indication of a change in altitude, but a change in climate. During the Holocene Climatic Optimum, temperatures were sharply warmer than today which would make farming possible in areas where it is not possible today.

YES but OTHER places would have not been optimal for farming. Don't you see? The overall reduction of farm land and crop failure is the problem, not a few spots that undergo change that allow for farming.

Seriously, man. You are only seeing half the picture. You think, oh, all these places will suddenly be open for farming that and the season will be longer so climate change = good when in reality, crops will be less abundant, poorer quality and will fail more often while big swaths of land could end up too arid for much to grow at all.


I mean, look at what is happening in California, right now, a place that grows a good deal of the food we consume. Then you got Florida, another big producer, which will mostly be under water. The Mississippi River Valley that grows crops, gone. Underwater. Not even looked at the data from Mexico, another agricultural zone. If you lose a lot of that to water, there goes even more valuable crop land. And if you are going to say it will be replaced with other areas, you don't know if that's true because you haven't seen that happen. You are merely SPECULATING. Well you better hope you are right.


California is quickly becoming a place that will grow less food, it's happening right before our eyes as I type this. They are running out of water, have been for years. Look at New Mexico and Arizona...not much growing going on there. Well, you could be looking at most of California ending up like those two in the next fifty years.

That's nothing but panic. The reality is that there is no indication that warmer temperatures will reduce the amount of farm land and increase crop failure. It is nothing but imagination run amok.



In the 1990s, I believed the Global Warming Disaster myth as much as anyone else. But then I started to look at what has really happened in the past when it has been warmer and found the myth to be completely unfounded. It is nothing more than fear of change. Since people aren't sure about the precise details it worries them and opens them up to thinking the worst regardless of fact.

In my case, I started to wonder WHY it would be a disaster. Once I got past that stumbling block, it became clear that there would be a great many benefits to Global Warming. And as time passed and we saw through the idiocy of many of the doom and gloom predictions by the Global Warming Panickers I could see just how little they really knew and were able to predict. Not only that, how willing they were to sieze upon any doom and gloom conjecture and use it as additional arguments for why it would be a disaster.

I've said it many times -- look at the history. Simplistic models are no substitute for looking to see what really happened in the past. Look at what happened when the world was warmer. Look at how our temperatures compare today to the past. If you take an honest look at the past, and not one tinged with panic, you can only see that the predictions of doom and gloom are nonsense.

Sure, there will be some problems. Some people will be worse off. Some people may not be able to live at the spot where their great grandparents lived because of rising sea levels. Other people will be better off. Many will be much, much better off.

Look at how warmer weather affects crops. In most cases, they grow better and are more productive. Higher CO2 helps as well, so much so that many greenhouse owners pump CO2 into the greenhouses to increase the productivity of the plants growing inside them. And if you want to see what crops can grow if temperatures are a couple of degrees warmer where you live, don't just assume you are going to be growing precisely the same crops. Any farmer who would insist on growing the same crop regardless of the temperature is a pretty useless farmer. Real farmers are quite ready to change to other crops when appropriate. Instead of assuming that a farmer will grow the same crops (and the same varieties of those crops), look to see what grows where it is warmer now.

Disaster? Not hardly.



Just how much sea level rise do you think is going to happen? It is not physically possible for that much ice to melt in such a short period of time to raise the sea level enormously.

As for other areas, yes it is true. There is vast amounts of area in the north that is hardly farmed at all. There is some farming in Alaska, but not much. From what I understand, most of the farmland in Canada is relatively close to the US border because the climate is too cold further north. Warm the planet and much of that area will be available for farming.

And like I said earlier, we have far more farmland today than it takes to feed the world. The problem with hunger in some parts of the world has little to do with farming, but about both government policies and transportation issues. And for that matter, better transportation can increase hunger if the food is given away and leaves the local farmers unable to compete and thus no reason to keep farming.



There have been droughts in the past and there will be droughts in the future. There is nothing about this drought that requires Global Warming to explain it at all, although many people jump to the conclusion that they must be related.

Much of the issue with water is with very poor practices included those created by so-called environmentalists. What ethanol really requires is the use of enormous amounts of ground water to grow the corn to make ethanol. Take away the government pushing for ethanol and it will be much more likely that the farmland is used for other crops that don't require as much water.

By the way, if there is one lesson you should really learn from the past, it is that those who predict doom and gloom are most likely wrong. Quit listening to the soothsayers and look around for yourself.

What's happening in California at this exact moment tells a different story. We are losing farm land. We are also losing farmland in the state in which I live. Conditions have been consistently dry for years, farmers have taken hits on their cattle, had to sell them off because they didn't have enough hay in which to feed them over winter and costs were going off the board so you see, it's already impacted farming. Time to get the head out of the sand and start thinking in terms of land, air, water, instead of only thinking of monetary debt because it's a fact, you cannot eat money, you can't breathe it, you can't drink it. The value is actually in the land, air, water, things you need for your survival because if something happens to them...

I try to get people to see the reality of it. Money just confuses people and causes some of us to do ridiculous, harmful things. We should value what will physically care for us, not money.

The entire western US, consistently dry for years now. It should be a concern. Not necessarily a panic, but yeah, we should all be concerned it is happening.

So by your thinking, if we have a drought and the climate is slowly warming, then there must be a connection between the two. What you have to prove is that one is the cause of the other or that they have a common cause. It is a gross error to just assume that they are related.

The fact is that the science is NOT in agreement that there is a relation between the two. Some think that they may be connected and some think that any connection is weak or nonexistent. From what I've read, it appears that those who seem to think that there is a connection are also less expert on the California climate and weather than those who dismiss the notion that Global Warming is a significant factor in the drought.

If you read that link I sent, you will find out, evaporation of soil moisture (leading to drought and arid conditions, generally) is one of the "very likely" results of climate change.

Lack of soil moisture has plagued the Western US for years now.

Like right now, the wind is blowing like mad outside and even though it just rained a couple hours ago, since the wind is blowing so dang hard, the soil is going to lose a lot of moisture very quickly. Wind is one of the things that causes soil to lose moisture and since climate change, windy days could possibly increase, meaning more of them with faster wind speeds, on average, which would mean it is easier for moisture to evaporate out of the soil even with rainy days. See? There are many factors at play. When the soil holds less moisture, land is more prone to burn in wildfires and crops need more irrigation.

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 19 Apr 2015, 5:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The term drought refers to a lack of rainfall. And a lack of soil moisture is brought about by the lack of rainfall, not the other way around. In fact, in every drought I'm familiar with, the soil gets drier.

And if your link says that the evaporation of soil moisture causes a drought, then I'm very glad I didn't waste the time to read such a work of pure nonsense.

Yes, it can lead to drought and less rain, AND hotter summers. We have battled drought in this state for years now and on the weather I have heard about drought conditions from SCIENTISTS many times, too many to count and one thing they mention over and over is soil moisture and how quickly it evaporates because you see, this makes rainfall obsolete in some cases. It is like it never happened.
It leads to a cycle.
Weather is very complicated. It's not just a matter of no rain. It's also, how fast does the moisture evaporate out of the soil? That is a very big deal.

So you can scoff at me and say what I claim is not right all you want but it is not going to change FACTS about climate change. Facts that are unfolding before our eyes as I type this. Facts we are living in this state, and others, everyday. It's not going to change them.

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 19 Apr 2015, 5:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Are you often confused with the difference between cause and effect?

You are obviously in denial but you need to take into account these windy days and how they affect recent rainfall and soil conditions because this is going to impact crop production, surface water and aquifers because when rain is scarce and soil is dry, that's when aquifers shrink.

And, also, take into account soil moisture levels, dryer air, hotter summers and how this keeps rain clouds from forming.
When there is abundant moisture in the soil, summers are cooler and if you want to negate that, take it up with the head meteorologists at KFOR and KWTV.

If dry soil causes drought, then with all the agricultural irrigation around here, we should be getting plenty of rain.

We aren't.

I may be wrong, but I think I read that meteorologists attribute California's drought to a rather persistent high pressure over the Pacific Ocean that changes the path of the storms that would have led to rain or snow.

Could there be some small influence from drier soil? Possibly. But that is far from sufficient to cause a drought.

By the way, I misspoke earlier. The term drought refers to insufficient rainfall, not a lack of rainfall. One can actually have a few pretty good rainfalls and still be in a drought.

You should be very concerned about the amount of moisture in the soil. Take a desert, for instance. It has very hot days, cooler, to sometimes below freezing nights. Soil moisture is very very low to almost non existent. You know what it's like there.

Deserts get rainfall but it's like it never happens. Usually it causes flash flooding and the rain runs off quickly into washes that stay dry most the year.

You focus on rainfall but please think about WIND SPEED and frequency. That has FAR more impact. That will take the moisture out of the soil at a relatively rapid rate.

Right now the wind is blowing at 23 mph and although it doesn't seem like much it is very windy outside. If I were to water my yard right now, I would just be wasting water with that wind blowing and it's the same with crop irrigation. You have several day with wind around 25 mph and it's like you never watered the crop and when you have a long, hot summer with very little rain, lots of wind, irrigation doesn't have much impact so you can't say it puts moisture back into soil under such conditions. This is what we are up against with climate change. Imagine more and more days like that, lots of wind, very little rain. Pretty soon, the humidity will be lowered due to lack of moisture in the soil. When humidity is low, even when there's storm systems, the likelihood of them causing storms lessens.

Think about this neat idea! What if, everyone decided they were going to rely on bikes more, not for everything but for some things, more than they rely on them at the present time? What if manufacturers made them more functional, so people could pedal them easily, and they could carry more than one person as in rickshaws that could easily be converted into something that could carry not only passengers, but also sacks of groceries or other shopping?
Of course, there are some things you need the car, pickup or SUV for, like longer trips, but what if the majority of people used bikes for shorter trips? Not only would they get more exercise, their stress level would decrease AUTOMATICALLY and immediately. Life would be so much more enjoyable and so much less stressful. Pollution would be significantly cut. People would have a much more rewarding experience, they would feel more connected with others, not sealed off in their vehicles.

If the majority of people took advantage of this method of transportation, so there were far fewer autos on the road, there would be an instant decrease in auto accidents. I would hope people wouldn't injure themselves on bikes because, of course, you know how the government would retaliate - by charging an fortune for bike insurance.

So people would have to be careful but most adults are. It's mostly kids that would take risks on bicycles.

Think of all the money that would be saved, no gas to buy, no oil, less expensive auto maintaining. You would still need insurance if you kept the SUV in the garage for longer trips.

This way you wouldn't deprive people of their SUVs and other motor vehicles entirely which we all know is everyone's worst nightmare realized, you would just give them an opportunity to improve their lives by relying on bicycles more than they do now. I think it's a great idea and would be a very positive change in the lives of many.

I can't believe you took the bait.
Well, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.....

Yes. The North American megafauna were already suffering severe stresses (we don't know what exactly, but their numbers dropped - and it wasn't anthropogenic because we weren't around) a few thousand years before the cooling. They then stabalised, before being wiped out within a few generations of the warming. Obviously we can't say for certain that the warming was related to the extinctions.

It was also a stressful time for Eurasian wildlife, but they kept going extinct for a thousand years after the warming, so it seems unlikely the warming contributed to extinctions for many of them.

Obviously, I was not talking about the present day, but rather 11,500 years ago. However, I think you would be surprised how many species are considered threatened.