climate change

C ISnt a Torah Hashkafa while obviously Hashem runs the world, we perform Hishtadlus IF our actions are say, going to cause ocean levels to rise, it is not a “proper Torah view” to say eh, Hashem will take care of it.

As to whether or not climate chaneg is real or what its causes are, that is a question for scientists, climatologists etc, I’m not sure what that is a question with a “proper Torah view”

“highly respected gentilescientists”
Isn’t that an oxymoron for its poster?

Joseph, let me give you an analogy.
Suppose you go to a doctor, and he tells you that you need to fix your diet. You decide to seek a second opinion, so you go to another doctor. He tells you the same thing. You go to doctor after doctor, until the 98th doctor tells you, “These doctors are in the pockets of the health food companies, no need to change your diet, just eat what you want!”
Who will you trust?

Iv’e passed the stage of writing long megillos (that nobody reads), but this one really go me.

HaShem, in all His wisdom, capabilities, has not left the Driver’s Seat. He’s still in charge of the world AND EVERY THING IN IT. ואתה מחיה את כולם. He devised a world so magnificent, so complex and intricate, far more than any mortal can begin to grasp. How many myriads of science books are written upon one minute detail of our most wondrous world?!? There are entire colleges, divisions for learning but just one spec of this great creation. Only someone foolish as Haman will attempt to say ח”ו… Nope. Us Yidden (that’s Jews, for the uninitiated) know and believe He’s pretty much in charge. Was, is and will be. Till when He decides time’s up. No user intervention will alter any part of His will. Like they write. “Do not open – no user serviceable parts”!!!!

Come. Enjoy your ride. Leave to managing up to the Great Driver up there.

Interesting part is – what He did leave for us do to – לעבדה ולשמרה, which Chazal say means to do Mitzvohs and keep away from sin… Somehow in this area they’re all slacking… putting it mildly. We don’t see such organizations, committees, societies worrying about the great, huge, enormous decline in morals and decency. This is the area He left to us… to better the world… ourselves… with proper morals and decency. To live an upright life. Suddenly… silence. The world has been plunged into such depravity – far, far worse than in the Dor Hamabul (the great flood). It’s sinking lower and lower with each day. And they’re working so hard at the other end to destroy any visage of shame and embarrassment. “NO NEED TO CONTROL YOURSELF, DO IT FOR ALL TO SEE”. Deprave, deprave, Deprave.

Anyone see a connection here? עולם הפוך ראיתי!!!

cheifshmerel. you could use the same analogy for evolution and the big bang

Are there still respected scientists who have good-faith disagreements on the role of man-made actions on the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and its role in climate change? YES

Do the largest percentage of respected scientists agree that man made actions are causing climate change: Yes

Are there always a few dissenters in any widely held scientific debate: Yes.

We generally base public policy on the most widely held view of any scientific issue. Our religious beliefs inform our policy decision but in a democracy, are not the basis for making policy. There will always be dissent and we never have 100 percent consensus.

“Reminds me of the Coffee research… Drinking coffee is terrible…”

I dont really understand this argument. Do you smoke in the hopes that one day soon it will AGAIN be discovered how beneficial they are?
As GH says public policy should be determiend based on CURRENT scientific consensus. not hope for what future studies may show. and the fact that when faced with conflicting evidence gets them to change their mind, onlt makes them MORE belevable not less. Just the opposite, its the fellow who isnsits that ciggarettes are safe or that vaccines cause autism based on one study from decades ago that we should be wary of.

“HaShem, in all His wisdom, capabilities, has not left the Driver’s Seat. He’s still in charge of the world AND EVERY THING IN IT.”

Again that doesnt absolve us from histhadlus. yesterday I built my home on the beach It seemed safe since just before I built it the water was rushing away. Some Kofer told me this was a bad place to build there since later that afternoon the water would rush back flooding my home. I tolfd that kofer that only Hashem was incharge of water and if he wanted by basement to flood it would flood wherever I built it. Of course due to some aveira I did when high tide came by basemnent flooded .

while of course not the same, I’m not sure why warning of rising sea levels and making efforts to reverse it or avoid it is inherently a bad thing , and that doing so indicates that He isnt in charge ch”v

ubiquitin: You totally missed my point. When some bright scientist can claim that some oxyhyperflorurobihydronation in the hypershpheric region of the iosphere causes our weather to get hotter, and then tomorrow claim that the oxyhyperflorurobihydronation in the hypershpheric region of the iosphere causes out weather to get cooler and then claim that oxyhyperflorurobihydronation in the hypershpheric region of the iosphere causes out WEATHER TO CHANGE!!! is when we need to get a hard look at our UNBIASED, HONEST scientists!!! Sure they will claim that the cold weather is really a heating pattern in the upper middle-lower top-side of the bottom-most middle-upper left-handed right-side of the hyperoxyhyporflorobihydronate in the hyperbolicshpheric region of the hyperiosphere. Left is really right, and cold is really hot. And we MUST take their word for it… YEP.

And the national center for “CLIMATE CONTROL” will claim – it makes sense. (boy am I sure there are guys there just plotzing, laughing, rolling and LOLing at us, how we take, feed off all their wisdumb…)

square root of 2,

“I do think there seems to be a hashkafic side to whether or not scientists can be believed, as is evident from the subsequent posts.”

I think the issue is not so much whether to believe scientists within context of their field, but how much weight to give to “their” opinions outside of their field. I think most of the rage on the right against climate science has nothing to do with climate science per se, but with political and economic policy. Much of the anger towards Hawking, likewise, was due to his athiestic pronouncements and stances on Israel where his knowledge and intelligence was no better than the next guy’s, not his research on black holes.

LF
“When some bright scientist can claim…”

IT isnt “some” it is most (by far)
And again, changing your conclusion based on new evidence is a sign of being unbiased and honest. I’m not sure why that led you to the opposite conclusion

Square root of two
“however, I do think there seems to be a hashkafic side to whether or not scientists can be believed,”
I dont follwo, so what is the hashkafic view on smoking being bad. for that matter waht is the Torah view on the goal blood pressure various studies/guidlines disagree, So I guess we should let the Torah be machriah.

Avram in MD: Can/Should one daven for snow in July, which goes against the natural order of things in our part of the world

I don’t get it. Avram is talking about davening for helpful weather within the natural order, and akuperma is talking about davening for unnatural weather.

Are you two talking to each other, or over each other’s heads?

DaasYochid,

“Are you two talking to each other, or over each other’s heads?”

We’re parallel pontificating.

LF

I am by no means an expert on globa warming. A few qucik points though none of their conclusions are based on it being hot or cold “today” Similarly they arent based on the weather where yo u live. for example while in NY 2017 ma yhave been a colder than average year worldwide it may have been higher (this is just an example I dont know if it is true) thus ” It’s really hot, you just don’t realize it. ” is in fact true. YOU are cold but the global temparture may be rising .

“They have an agenda”
who is they? and what do they gain?

ubiquitin,

“for example while in NY 2017 ma yhave been a colder than average year”

It was actually the 10th warmest year for New York statewide since 1895 (123 year period), despite the sharp cold snap to end the year.

When your car breaks you call the mechanic. When you’re sick you call the Doctor. When you want to know about the climate you go to the people who study this stuff. Hashem runs the world. He made the world with rules and order and gave as bechira to be able to function in it. He made gravity and we rely on that to function. He gave us food to eat and if we didn’t eat it we’d die. Are you going to say I don’t have to eat or breath bc Hashem gives life and not science? So there is Hashem and there is a world and what we do matters.

If you want to say they are all biased because they are all atheists thats a pretty bold claim. And even if it’s true you have to refute the claims not the people.

Just because someone is a scientist doesn’t mean they know anything about this specific area of science. But what people do is when they don’t know something they go to the experts in that field.

According to Wikipedia “IPCC, Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis – Summary for Policymakers (AR5 WG1)” (PDF). p. 17. It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.

Do people disagree that the vast majority of climate scientists agree on this issue?

Or are they just wrong because they are atheists? (Which you would have to prove) how about those athiests you built your car do you trust them?

From a Torah perspective the climate change is being caused by a society that is extremely gashmiusdig. Living with unbelievable excess of physical things driving around in huge vehicles throwing out millions of tons of gifts from Hashem. Mostly ignoring Hashem spending most of ours days chasing after more and more money and material positions. Should it be surprising to us that there should be some negative consequences of this anti Torah life style? Or shouldn’t it be expected that there should be negative consequences when we stray so far from Hashem?

Square root: humans increase “greenhouse gasses” by simply breathing. So yes, Hashem commanded us to do so by commanding us to live, and to light fires – to give 2 basic examples.

The left (liberals) embrace climate science conclusions and disparage the right as “science deniers” when we question results. This despite numerous reports of manipulation of data , or numerous top level scientists who question the data being fired from governmental and academic positions (you would think scientists would want people Around to question results, isn’t that how you arrive at good conclusions, by debating methodology?!)
Yet these same leftist seem to deny the science of XX and XY and don’t see the hypocrisy

And for those that believe the climate scientists (and i am not stating personal views, only questions that I believe should be asked logically)
How do you deal with something that is clear to everyone, weather modeling is highly unpredictable?
This past month my office closed early for two Wednesdays due to high patient cancellation rates due to predictions of 8-12 inches of snow. On both days we got an inch of snow and then rain. These were predictions made in the am of the storm . It is hard for the average joe to believe that 10-20 year modeling has any chance of being correct.
And isn’t that the case.? The modeling during the 90’s predicted warming. Then when that paused we got climate change. And how many of al gores predictions are true 10 years later?

Scientists don’t have a good record when they get involved with politics. In the not too distant past, leading scientists, to choose one example, supported genetics and were instrumental in convincing various democracies to support policies such as race-based slavery (abolished due to “science denying” religious fanatics), not to mention the holocaust. In the 20th century, a king of Britain was killed by doctors relying on accepted sciences, who encouraged him to smoke. Depending on the settled science of the week, doctors have been encouraging, and the discouraging, mother to nurse their babies. Forty years ago they were predicting an ice age.

On top of that, the environmentalists regard any of their dogmas with a religious fervour without thinking things through (which has caused many deaths, e.g. banning DDT thereby causing massive increases in malaria, and banning GMOs causing hardships in many countries whose farmers are forced to use old fashioned and less productive seeds).

However none of this has anything to do with Torah. We should always be a bit skeptical of the goyim’s hachmos since they are based on ignorance, or denial, of Ha-Shem.

Mammele,

“One of the problems we Frum Yidden have – or should have – with environmentalism is their logical conclusion against population growth. If one believes carbon dioxide is bad for the environment, there’s no way to escape this conflict. We can’t simultaneously believe that we need to reduce our carbon footprint yet actively increase our numbers.”

This is a good point about the current state of policy debate with respect to our response to climate – and an example of why I feel it’s important to make distinctions between the climate science itself, which is politically neutral, and the policies proposed by people with their own biases. I personally see your inescapable conflict as a false dilemma. City planners who try to develop the urban landscape to mitigate traffic congestion as the population grows are not lacking faith in Hashem, nor advocating for a cessation of city growth. I see this problem as city planning on a larger scale. We should be smart about how we use our resources, because we want to create a great quality of life for as many people as we can. And when we’ve optimized resource usage as much as possible and it’s still not enough for our children, it’s time to move to the suburbs or grow the city! Hashem created a vast universe beyond Earth that is full of resources. I personally don’t believe that a need for population control must be part of any plan to try to create an environment that is optimal for a thriving humanity.

“City planners who try to develop the urban landscape to mitigate traffic congestion as the population grows”

What’s climate change, or even societal population growth as a general matter, have to do how much population growth a particular city experiences?

Ubiq: you are right about breathing being part of a cycle, yet water usage is part of a cycle as well, which still doesn’t prevent these wise environmentalists from warning us not to consume too much water even in places with ample water supply.

And you’d be hard pressed to find an environmentalist that doesn’t believe exponential population growth is a problem, because no matter how much some may try to reduce emissions humans definetely add to the “carbon footprint” in the course of even modest living. We cook, travel, heat our homes, build these homes – in addition to producing all necessary items as well as comforts we desire. And this is all part of our task of living in and enjoying Hashem’s world.

Mammele,

“yet water usage is part of a cycle as well, which still doesn’t prevent these wise environmentalists from warning us not to consume too much water even in places with ample water supply.”

Is there a big push in the NYC metro area to conserve water? If so, is the reason based on supply/environmental factors, or economic/infrastructure considerations?

Mamale
“you are right about breathing being part of a cycle, yet water usage is part of a cycle as well, which still doesn’t prevent these wise environmentalists from warning us not to consume too much water even in places with ample water supply.”

ITs not the water that is being conserved. There is plenty of water over 70% of the Earth is covered in water. As yo umay know though most of that water isnt drinkable. He needs to be processced. While sea water isnt directly being used for drinking generally the rain water too is processed (not sure wh you put it in quotes) purifying the water takes energy. THAT is what “conserving water” conserves.
Plus rain water isnt always predictable, thus yes droughts occur .

air on the other hand does not need to be purified the little CO2 we exhale is more than adeuqrtly handled by plants and does not contribute muc hto global CO2 emissions