its funny to have a bunch of guys who will debate endlessly the specifics of a single 1mm of toe and its effect on handling of a car, hold up there hands and say "the earth system either has to get warmer or colder, it can't do anything else, EVER. the entire thermodynamic system that is the earth can only do one of two things. and if scientists argue that the entire earths thermodynamic system is perhaps a BIT more complex than that, it must mean that they are communists and hate cars"
yup, makes perfect sense.
if a miata's handling is a complex problem with many trade offs, interaction effects and variables, then wouldn't the entire earths thermodynamic properties maybe ... just maybe ... be more complex than "its get hotter everywhere a uniform amount at a uniform rate?"
crazy, i know.
BTW, the earth is, on the whole, warming. this does not mean that climate change is in an inaccurate term, or a "hedge" against cooling ... something that is not, and has never actually be predicted. yes, im aware of the right wing's popularizing of the TIME article predicting global cooling in the 1970s. thankfully, TIME, is not a scientific journal, with peer reviewed articles. such an white paper was written recently showing that actually in the 1970s, the majority of climatologists still were predicting warming.
sorry.
if we can apply science to improve automotive performance, then we can apply science to the climate too. thousands of people every day do. that doesn't make them communists.
https://3kpnuxym9k04...print-chart.jpg
https://upload.wikim...-2013-top40.svg
Consider these two charts simultaneously. The fastest growing factor in energy consumption and carbon emissions is the 3rd world developing towards the per capita energy usage of the U.S., Canada, EU, Russia, wealthy Middle Eastern countries, etc.
The base energy needs (and "wants") of every first world human exceeds the potential savings of more negligible virtue-signalling activities included at the bottom of the first chart.
Having spent 8 years trying to model complex systems, I'm curious that anyone can have high confidence opinions about the causes of "climate change".
As a model, it looks to me like this:
A massive spinning ball (Earth) filled with molten iron (lava?), with massive internal friction (Tectonic plates?), magnetically orbiting the world's hottest "space heater" (the Sun), and it has been doing so for 2000 years, or billions of years, depending on which person who has been alive less than 100 years I am listening to? How am I to model the internal heat source of the Earth? How do I model the external heat source of the Sun? How do I model the conductive, convective, and radiant coefficients between the hot spinning ball and hot burning star it is orbiting?
And the oldest semi-reliable measurement of temperature we have are ... what ... about 150 years old? Taken by guys wearing tophats in London, using mercury thermometers?
In summary, the population growth in the 3rd world, combined with their increased energy "wants", would appear to be at least 2 orders of magnitude greater than anything the 300M people of the U.S. can affect. Even a full 100% reduction in per capita emissions in the U.S. will be akin to bailing out the Titanic with Solo cups.
Unless, of course, there isn't really a "problem", to begin with. But if there is a real problem, such a believer should transfer calories and dollars spent on virtue-signaling "conservation", and allocate them to proposals that have a chance of actually solving the problem. Maybe that is directly replenishing the Ozone layer, or developing CO2-hungry ground cover. Maybe it is invading Canada, or nuking Asia, or some other means of "population control". With current technology, electric cars are not much of a solution, to my eye.
But, like the Horseshit Crisis of 1894, I am optimistic we will solve "climate change". It would be nice to see more reliable (and less politicized) work done to understand it.
P.S. The copy of that first chart that I keep on my office wall has an edit adding the 1+ Million tons of excess emissions caused by Dieselgate. "Environmentalists" that drive VW/Audi/Porsche or other VAG products is like a Safety Professional riding an ACME Rocket Unicycle, or driving a Spec Miata race with a leather helmet and no belts