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Humans are Causing Global Warming
Big_Al_B writes "A Times Online article discusses a new study comparing 7 million real world datapoints with several computer models of global warming. Each model had a possible cause associated with it." From the article: "It found that natural variation in the Earth's climate, or changes in solar activity or volcanic eruptions, which have been suggested as alternative explanations for rising temperatures, could not explain the data collected in the real world. "
No way!!! And all this time I was blaming the sun...
Sorry Sol.
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
Even the Bush White House has said over six months ago that humans are responsible for global warming. Unfortunately, there are many people who will refuse to let your overwhelming evidence influence their dogma...
I mean, it isn't even a topic of debate outside the US, people accept it as fact.
Well, depends what kind of side are you talking about. If about scientists, i think the majority of scientists claim global warming is happening and it's likely to be caused by humans.
If you're talking about common people, well, it's mostly the fault of the media which covers the issue as if there would be two equal sides in the story.
Personally, i'm always willing to see facts, if they are facts for real, from both sides. It doesn't mean i'm going to accept those facts without challenging them.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Both sides are missing the point that George Carlin bought up and I have mentioned it previously. The Earth is warming itself up because it needs to get rid of us. We were here to deliver plastic and that need is satisfied already.
"The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic...plastic came out of the earth, the earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children...could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place: it wanted plastic for itself, didn't know how to make it, needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old philosophical question...why are we here? plastic, assholes"
Free XBox, PS2
It's funny when you read the articles arguing against Kyoto, though: they always end with "Kyoto is fatally flawed, and it'll cost too much to cut CO2, so we should wait to do it." Do you think it's going to be any easier to cut GHG emissions even more drastically in 10 years, just as we're realizing oil is getting more expensive and having to switch back to coal?
The funny thing about all of this is that Canada stands to make out really well. Our four-month growing season will probably become more like the American midwest's 6 -8 months, and our boreal forest ecosystem will shift to a St.Lawrence-Deciduous style forest, which is much more habitable for humans. Also we have a ton of oil here.
Of course, there's the problem of Prince Edward Island probably being under water by then. And oh yes, countries like Bangladesh or the Maldives which will be entirely under water if Antartica (i.e. Ross Ice Shelf) starts to melt. My view is that the best thing to do as an individual is a) bike to work (which I intend to do for the first time this summer), b) keep your house colder than you normally would, and c) evangelize energy efficiency. I don't really see that I can do anymore (aside from reading everything I can) as an just one person with no government connections.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
Not that facts often change politics-based opinions.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/etc/graphs.html
Hey, just because it's Friday and some of us started drinking early doesn't mean we're responsible for global warming. Leave my cow orkers out of it!
Here's a hypothesis.
1. Global warming will result in colder temperatures in some currently heavily populated regions.
2. People tend to stay inside when it is colder.
3. Staying inside increases the likely hood of procreation.
Therefore, global warming will cause humans.
I'm sure once again we'll see more pointless deabate as opposed to thinking over the issues involved.
Me? I look at it this way. There's a lot of good information out there and a lot of experienced people have made very sober arguments about the issues of global warming. So, I give them credit, and figure that the efforts to reduce global warming, even if they do nothing, are unlikely to have a significant negative impact.
I'd say global warming appears to be one of those things like evolution . . . but I'd be right in more ways than one.
I do find it amusing to see people argue that a large number of experienced, intelligent, educated people are somehow irrelevant because some pundit shoots off his mouth. I'd like to start a talk show, then begin discussing how only egghead crackpots believe seatbelts save lives and that eating fried lard is unhealthy. I wonder how many people I could decieve into terribly unhealthy habits just by shooting my mouth off long enough.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
No, it just shows that you know how to use Google.
i) The propagation mechanism for Rossby Waves
ii) The primary sources of deep water formation in the Atlantic
iii) How a western boundary current is formed
iv) What Meddies are.
v) What a pycnocline is.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Your point reminds me of idiots who get overly shook up over 'record highs', 'record lows', 'record snowfall'. . .
"OMG! Did you hear the Weather Channel guy? He said it's NEVER been this cold in February before! That's AMAZING!" -- like they're living a part of history.
Um, pretty sure it's been colder. And hotter. And wetter. And you name it. Just not that we're aware of.
Sweet informative mod.
And that is really disgusting considering the fact that we are the worlds #1 producer of CO2. The response I heard to this yesterday was that we can't because it would cost us jobs if we had to slow down on energy consumption. Isn't it funny how the conservatives can selectively decide when they care about jobs? I mean, so what if IT jobs are being outsourced over seas, according to Bush during the debates, he will enact some programs to help us get retrained at 'community colleges'. !
"I am a patient boy. I wait I wait I wait. My time is water down the drain..." Fugazi
Actually, President Clinton signed the Kyoto treaty in 1998. However, under the US Constitution, all treaties must be ratified by a two-thirds vote of the Senate -- no such vote has ever been scheduled, because there's not enough Senate support for the treaty.
In 2001, President Bush "withdrew" the US signature on the Kyoto treaty -- I have no idea if such a withdrawal is legitimate, not that it matters much.
Because global warming can only be stemmed through the wacky anti-US industry restrictions of the Kyoto Treaty?
Dude, being anti-Kyoto treaty doesn't necessarily make one anti-environment, although the media would have one believe so (It's in their best interests to dumb down complex issues into a 22-minute Captain Planet cartoon). Pull that Matrix-plug-thingie out of the base of your neck and do your own thinking on this one.
Weather is not climate. Climate is based on long-term trends. Weather is unpredictable.
An analogy would be that if you flipped a coin once, you wouldn't be able to tell if it would end up heads or tails, but if you flipped it a thousand or a million times, you'd notice a general trend of 50-50.
If about scientists, i think the majority of scientists claim global warming is happening and it's likely to be caused by humans.
The phrase "caused by humans" is dangerous to use in this topic. It implies that global warming is directly caused by humans. However, many scientists believe that global warming is indirectly caused by humans. For instance, we eat a lof beef, so we raise a lot of cows. The cows fart and burp a lot - creating greenhouse gasses. Then we get global warming.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
We have climate data from ice cores drilled into miles of ice in the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica. This data goes back hundreds of thousands of years. The method uses stable isotopes Oxygen-16 and Oxygen-18. Using the ratios of those two isotopes a scientist can determine climate as old as the ice he is sampling.
Also worth reading is their original article examining the science in State of Fear.
The large majority of researchers are planting themselves on ground that humans are at least partially to blame for global temperature rising. A few scientists disagree, which is fine, and that's how science works.
However, it seems those who think that burning fossil fuels and other activities of like nature should simply go on as it is are quite quick to latch on the minority view, declare the majority a bunch of scaremongers and go on their way.
How many other fields of inquiry are there where a small minority of experts are declared right, while a majority are called fear mongering and wrong? I mean, do we do this with physics or chemistry? How about archaeology or cosmology?
I can only think of one other field where a vocal minority (virtually all of which aren't even really scientists) seem to be trumpeted as having some valid perspective, and that's biology. Here Creationists are very popular due to religious and political leanings, even though virtually every reputable biologist states that evolution happens, and is responsible for the way life has developed over the last 4 billion years.
The similarity between climatology and evolutionary biology is that in both cases the opposition is largely not scientific at all, but political.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Until you understand the difference between "fossil records" and "climate data", you will never understand the debate. The simple fact is that we don't have climate data for more than a very short period of the earth's history. The rest is guesswork.
And the other fact you need to face is that modelers spends hours and hours tweaking their models until they "look right", and if "humans are the cause of global warming" is what looks right to them (and they get paid to get that result) then that is what the models say. Models need real data to work right (which we don't have) and real understanding of the processes (guess wrong and you get the wrong answer.)
I remember one NOAA model that came out a few years ago showing a sudden upturn in temperatures just about to happen. CALAMITY! WOE! This was supposed to be the latest and most accurate model. Proof beyond all doubt that we were ruining the planet!
It didn't happen.
Insightful indeed.
The biggest problem that the anhtropogenic global warming scenario has with the public is that some of them remember the world is headed toward a new ice age theory from the early Seventies. The other problem is that first your told that carbs are good, then your told that carbs are bad. First your told that stress causes ulcers, but come to find out ulcers are caused by a type of germ.
People really are suffering from information overload. They live busy lives, and it's all they can do to keep up with their own lives, and that that of their families. It also does not help that 'The Academy' has become so heavily populated with folks with very left-wing social, and political agendas. Large sections of Americans do not trust institutions that they view as hot beds of neo-marxist pointy-headed, ivory tower bound granolas. Most of all they don't trust the chicken-little, 'doom is at hand' rhetoric that so many advocates (those who advance the theory of) of anhtropogenic warming. They have seen this pose before, and it's has become a pose that they very deeply distrust.
It's also not helpful that the whole dooms-day asteroid scenario has gotten so heavily played up by the Discovery Channel, etc.. In fact the dooms-day via natural event thing has completely out of control on several of the cable "science" channels, and in the general media as well. Many Americans see global warming as just another of the scenarios, and like the others interesting but not relevant to daily life. Indeed, it seems to me at least that the shows that draw big ratings on the cable 'science' channels are really nothing more that 'scientific' soap-operas. Drama! Drama! Drama! Will the world survive the crash of the asteroid?!?!!!!!! Tune in tomorrow, and find out!
Computer models are not going to change the publics mind. Hey you can use a computer model to generate FX such as in the Matrix and other movies to produce whatever scenario you'd like.
Hard data, analyzed by trusted, and calm minds is the only thing that the public will take seriously. The chicken-little presentations must get flushed, and solutions, plans, etc. must be presented with a 'can do' attitude. i.e. 'we've got a problem, and here's our options.' 'The problem is serious, but not insurmountable.' Until such time as those who believe in the anhtropogenic global warming scenario come to this realization very many Americans will view this theory with deep skepticism.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
When the definition of "reputable" includes "accepts human-generated global warming as fact", then of course one side of the argument is "reputable" and the other is not.
To use comments out of context is a disengenous ploy. Willful ignorance and deceit are not virtous behaviour.
I'd hate to be a conservative these days. Either the world is only 6000 years old and there is definitely enough historical data to confirm that global warming is man-made, or it's millions of years old and there isn't enough evidence for us to be completely certain.
Either way, they lose...
As for me, whether global warming is man-made or not, I'm still going to work to make the earth cleaner and more hospitable, by trying to use less energy or use it more efficiently, find cleaner fuels, not dump junk into the air and water and basically try to be a good steward. Have conservatives just completely lost the desire to be good like that? Is the quest for money so overwhelming that it blocks out all those other desires? What's going on, and when did it become wrong to try to do good for Mother Earth?
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
There is, at this point, as much debate between climatologists on whether or not humans are causing global warming as there is between biologists on whether or not new species arise via evolution. There is a great deal of debate on the specifics, but essentially none on whether or not the phenomenon occurs. Only a few loudmouthed cranks are keeping the idea that "there really is debate on the issue" alive, in the sense you mean.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
"Every Reputable Scientist on the Planet" believed in Global Cooling in the 70s and early 80s.
... wait a minute, I'm thinking ... hold on ...
There's a word for this argument. It's on the tip of my tongue
Oh yeah! It's called a "lie."
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Wow. Every single sentence in your post is wrong. How you even manage to breathe is beyond me:
Why is it that anyone who goes against the common, left-leaning attitude here on /. regarding politics or science is automatically branded with either "troll" or "overrated"?
They aren't. I see plenty of posts which go against the common, left-leaning attitude on /. which have been modded insightful or interesting.
The parent is 100% correct!
He is not.
We have practically no climate data of any real value beyond a few hundred years or so, yet we're expected to just ooh and aah every time some simulation from some scientist comes across that purports exactly how climates change over eons.
There is plenty of climate data beyond a few hundred years or so, such as ice cores, the fossil record, geological evidence, etc.
Our own weather forecasters can't even get the weather correct 48 hours in advance most of the time (save for areas like the equator and extreme north/south, of course). Yet, we're supposed to believe that the climate can be accurately simulated for millions or billions of years by having a few hundred years of data and some simulations?
The one has nothing to do with the other. Weather is small scale (in space and in time) and chaotic, climate is large scale. It is much easier to predict large scale behaviour due to the law of averages. Don't make the mistake of thinking that climate must be chaotic because weather is; climate causes weather, not the other way around.
We're going to have global warming because the scientists so!
No, where going to have global warming because of polution of the atmosphere.
Oh, wait! Just 30 years ago we were supposed to be entering a new ice age because the scientists said so!
First of all: no scientist ever said that we definitely were going to enter a new ice age. Scientists don't talk like that. They speak in theories and likelihoods. If a scientist says an event is likely, and it doesn't occur, that doesn't mean he was wrong. You clearly don't understand the first thing about science or scientists.
Secondly: we still might get an ice age. The global warming might trigger one because it may increase the cloud cover of the Earth, causing more sunlight to be reflected back into space.
Sailors from hundreds of years ago reported the unusually warm, Pacific waters hundreds of hears before the Industrial Revolution! Oh, wait! El Nino is actually being caused by global warming because the scientists said so!
Nobody says that El Nino is caused by global warming. Nobody actually knows what causes El Nino, since it is caused by an incredibly complex and diverse set of circumstances. All scientists ever said is that the likelihood of El Nino occurring seems to be increasing as the Earth warms up. That doesn't mean that El Nino couldn't be occurring already hundreds of years ago.
An asteroid is going to slam into us in 30 years because scientists said so!
No scientist ever said that. They said as far as they could tell with the available data, it was possible that it would hit the Earth.
Oh, wait! It's actually going to miss us by about 1 million miles because other scientists said so.
Wrong again. They were the same scientists, and the reason they were now saying it was probably going to miss the Earth is that they now had better data (since the asteroid was closer) so they could determine more accurately what the probably trajector of the asteroid was going to be.
And now ... humans are the cause of global warming because some scientist said so, and the parent is a troll because some moderator said so. Oh, wait! ...
Not some scientist said so, the majority of scientsts say so. Just not the ones in Bush's cozy little world...
Dumbass...
Fair enough, but we have a little more.
1) We have a plausible mechanism of action. CO2 traps infrared light (simple spectral tests easly back this up), and therefore we have reason to believe that all else being equal, increased CO2 might cause the earth to warm up.
2) We have 400,000 years of CO2 records, CO2 has recently reached higher concentrations than at any point in the last 400,000 years, and it's climbing at an incredible rate.
3) We have know that people produce a lot of CO2, primarily from burning of fossil fuels.
4) Seems plausible that humans (in the industrial age) are causing (through the increased CO2 emissions) the increased atmospheric CO2. Especially reasonable considering that the levels started to shoot up when the industrial revolution came, and have more or less tracked human emissions since.
5) Seems plausible that due to higher CO2 concentrations, the earth should warm up somewhat.
6) The earth is slowly warming, and has been for decades. Simple historical temperature data confirms this easily enough.
7) Is it crazy to assume that the earth is warming because the CO2 levels are higher, just as a naieve model would predict?
8) We don't know what the long term effects of this warming will be. Maybe things will stabilize, maybe not, we don't really know.
9) Given that we don't know what will happen as CO2 levels continue to rise, and we are pretty sure that we're responsible for rising CO2 levels, doesn't it make sense to at least start to take precautions until we know for sure what we're dealing with?
You are right to have doubts, but don't just reject things out of hand. It seems likely that we are causing the equilibrium of the earth to shift. How much it will shift, we don't really know, but maybe we shouldn't just plow ahead blindly. Maybe this should be the time to take a look around and see if we can perhaps be a little more careful, specifically because we don't know.
The skeptics should still side with the global-warming-is-happening crowd, as reducing CO2 is the natural position to take if you DON"T KNOW. Only the dogmatic conservatives (most of them religious) are anti CO2 control, and that's just because they flat out reject the notion that they could be causing anything bad for business.
Doubt all you want, but don't be one of them.
Hmmm. Interesting you are saying there is an organized conspiracy by scientists to commit fraud upon the entire planet. It's amazing how these scientists have been able to co-operate on such a massive scale. All over the world the scientists are working hard to carry out their conspiracy and are doing it very effectively.
"I remember one NOAA model that came out a few years ago showing a sudden upturn in temperatures just about to happen"
There was an uptrun in tempratures. Species are suffering, the ice caps are melting, the glaciers have all but gone away. I guess none of that qualifies as a calamity in your book though.
evil is as evil does
And the other fact you need to face is that modelers spends hours and hours tweaking their models until they "look right", and if "humans are the cause of global warming" is what looks right to them (and they get paid to get that result) then that is what the models say.
Perhaps this is true. But those on the other side do it as well - they also train their "there's no problem" models to fit all the weather data that is available.
Which is why this particular study is so very important - they didn't tweak the models, they took a bunch of existing tweaked models and applied them to another set of data. The models made predictions about ocean temperatures, but hadn't been tweaked with them.
And it turns out that the predictions of the "the greenhouse effect is currently causing warming" models were very close to the actual measurements, and the predictions of the "it's volcanic activity / a solar cycle / natural fluctuations in weather" models totally failed.
This study addresses exactly that criticism of yours, and it blows it away.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
The simple fact is that we don't have climate data for more than a very short period of the earth's history. The rest is guesswork.
Not quite. We don't have weather data for more than a very short period of the Earth's history. We've got millions of years of climate data.
To say the Earth was warmer when the dinosaurs roamed, we don't need to know that the high was 97 degrees in what will become Los Angeles on January 19th, 2,619,847 BCE, and it rained 2 inches. Instead, we can look at the fosilized tropical plants and thus know it was warmer and wetter.
I remember one NOAA model that came out a few years ago showing a sudden upturn in temperatures just about to happen.
Yes, one model was wrong, therefore all future models should be completely ignored. The geocentric model of the solar system was wrong, therefore this new-fangled heliocentric model must be wrong too.
In all seriousness, predictive models about the climate are really in their infancy...but this story is not about predictive models. These models are being compared to historical trends in the earth's climate, in order to figure out which one matches what we can already tell about the climate.
The fact the closest match was a model where human activity did cause global warming does lend some support to the idea that we do cause global warming...but it's also possible that it was a combination of the natural factors instead of individual factors that caused it.
Or even more likely, a combination of natural and human factors.