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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).
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
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.
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.
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.
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.