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Global Warming Debunker Debunked
Earlier this month we ran an article linking Christopher Monckton's attempt to discredit global warming. The submitter asked plaintively, "Can anyone out there go through this piece and tell me why it might be wrong?" George Monbiot has now done so. From the article: "This is a dazzling debunking of climate change science. It is also wildly wrong... In keeping with most of the articles about climate change in [the Sunday Telegraph], it is a mixture of cherry-picking, downright misrepresentation, and pseudo-scientific gibberish. But it has the virtue of being incomprehensible to anyone who is not an atmospheric physicist... As for James Hansen, he did not tell the US Congress that temperatures would rise by 0.3C by the end of the past century. He presented three possible scenarios to the US Senate — high, medium, and low. Both the high and low scenarios, he explained, were unlikely to materialise. The middle one was 'the most plausible.' As it happens, the middle scenario was almost exactly right. He did not claim, under any scenario, that sea levels would rise by several feet by 2000." And on the political front, the only major ally for Pres. Bush's stand on global warming, Australia's Prime Minister John Howard, is now willing to look at carbon trading.
Try and pick somebody who isn't a complete loon next time.
Regardless of what you think of him, he does point out crippling flaws in the article. A more thorough and technical demolition would be quite welcome too, of course.
i didn't read the article, but i'm pretty sure the answer is cake!
$action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
It's amazing how many monikers this "debunker uses". "cock-a-hoop", "cherry-picking, downright misrepresentation and pseudo-scientific gibberish." And while the original article mentioned sources and showed the numbers he was talking about, this article just keeps saying how the first was incorrect, and how others have proven this or disproven that. However, the details are not found there.
This is just pandering to those who want thim to respond. But there's really nothing to see here if you don't like name calling.
Have you read my journal today?
Can we make a hole in the ozone so some of that CO2 can leak out and make everything right again?
There's higher pressure in a warm beer because the product of pressure and volume increases with temperature. Carbon dioxide doesn't magically leak into the beer as it gets warmer. You're not an atmospheric scientist, don't try to act like one on slashdot.
ResidntGeek
If you'd like to run a global climate model (GCM) yourself, you can now do so. The NASA GISS Model II GCM has been ported to run on Mac/Win computers and wrapped in a point-and-click interface. GISS, the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, is the lab that Hansen (mentioned in the summary) runs.
The EdGCM project provides this free GCM wrapped in a GUI. If you want to add CO2 or turn down the sun or whatever, you may now do so with some checkboxes and sliders.
Space and Computers.
The earth *IS* getting warmer. This is a fact. Annual temperatures are hotter than they have ever been since we started keeping records, glaciers are drastically smaller than they've ever been in recorded history, and the polar ice caps are shrinking. The earth _IS_ getting warmer, ergo, global warming is real.
What is causing it, however, is another matter... some say there is proof that humans are causing it, others will say it's merely circumstantial... that this warming is just part of a natural cycle the earth goes through before another ice age and then a gradual reheating (the latter period being one in which we are currently living).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The Debunker who debunked the debunker has been debunked.
Now, I'm not a 'professional' scientist however I do take interest in such matters, I was wondering if anyone has any information on what it would realistically take to begin to reverse the damage.
How do we make any significant progress to undo what we have already done?
"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture." - Learned Hand
I really think almost all of these questions end up as what I call side of the room questions. People line up via their political orientation, and they end up on the side of the room with Michael Moore and Al Gore, or Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. You might not like everything about the people on your side of the room, but if you find the other side of the room more unpalatable, you shut up and live with your reservations. The polarized nature of politics makes you at least act as if you buy into everything from your side of the room--if you vacillate (waffle!) you might embolden the other side of the room. Aaargh! So smart people end up believing stupid stuff, just so they don't have to stand on the same side of the room as Michael Moore (or Anne Coulter, depending on your aversion). And no, I'm not exempting myself from this. I find Michael Moore's stuff smarmy and irritating, but I'd do some serious soul-searching if I ended up on the same side of the room as Anne Coulter.
So... If you inventory of 5.4kg/m2 is correct, then how can the rain scrub 800 kg/m2? Where does the other 794.6kg/m2 come from?
I'm not trying to be a troll - I'm just asking...
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Wrong. There *is* scientific consensus, their is just not media or lay-person consensus. Also, there was not one scientific article claiming global cooling, again, that was the media. Get your sources straight and don't waste your time with sources that are not knowledgable in the domain.
By your own statistics, we will double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in less than 100 years. That is not a negligible point.
CO2 provides the most climate forcing due to its chemical properties and relative bulk in the atmosphere. To forestall the atmospheric H2O canard - H2O is a more powerful GHG, but it only maintains the current temperature. It is not a forcing agent because it cycles too fast. H2O cycles in 14 days. CO2 cycles in ~150 years.
The comment about rain scrubbing is utterly nonsensical. It shows no time component and is irrelevant because rain doesn't fall evenly over every square meter of the planet.
From the Financial Times, July 7 2006:
"I recognise the surface of the earth is warmer and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem," he said during a visit to Denmark en route to Gleneagles.
technically slashdot is exactly the place to pretend you know shit about stuff you don't - the whole commentary for this story will prove this.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
... the pantomime season is early this year.
Quite right about a better technical rebuttal, but whose eyes will ever see it? The Sunday Telegraph speaks for the vested interests. Unless an unimpeachable authority finds the ear of those who don't want to hear it, we'll sail along over the waterfall still arguing about how to start the engine.
The author (Monbiot) seems to have garnered much criticism so far, but the final two paragraphs of TFA are well-crafted.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006 /11/cuckoo-science/
Maybe so, but Monbiot is also a masterful spinner of information - his books are intentionally written to appeal to the downtrodden masses to increase sales volume. Any piece, PERIOD, by Monbiot is suspect because he doesn't bother with things called "logic" or "the scientific method."
No idea about him and the scientific method, but he definitely bothers with logic in this article..
Any discussion on this piece is a waste of time. Please see the appropriate peer-reviewed articles in the appropriate scientific journals and/or conferences for a proper discussion of the facts on global warming.
Interestingly enough, the fact that the 'climate change debunking' article was not published in such a form is one of the main complaints from Monbiot, so you may find yourself in agreement with him on where to look for good information on this.
But hey, this is slashdot, so why bother to read the article before commenting..
>Effect, not cause.
Both. One of the reasons we need computer models. Especially since warmer climates speed up some processes that *absorb* CO2 as well as speeding up processes that release CO2.
CO2's causal role is simple phsyics. The numbers on feedback have been hard to pin down. But there's not any question that *other things being equal* more CO2 means a warmer planet on average.
>Humans are unlikely to be the cause:
We are, indeed, responsible for only a small percentage of the CO2 in the atmosphere. The amount that was there before we started is responsible for keeping the oceans from freezing. A small change to that large an effect is worth thinking about.
Wrong, there is not scientific consensus, and yes, most scientists were claiming global cooling, based on the temperature drop that occurred from the 1940s to the 1970s. They predicted natural disaster by the 1980s and a "new Ice Age."
Please, do your research before making yourself look uninformed. This is a serious debate that requires knowing all the facts.
"Sufferin' succotash."
and I think you begin to notice that in -this- way GWB is reflecting the will of the American peoples.
There is no set of eco-friendly economic or political rules where the balance of power shifts away from the U.S. that will ever be adopted. For example, when the world starts trading polution credits, a country with rich forests pumping out oxygen won't suddenly become an economic superpower.
Every developing nation with some "fire in the belly" is going to laugh at the foolish american who has no choice but to acknowledge that we have pillaged huge amounts of natural resources and continue to pollute with reckless abandon on our way to global dominance. So why can't they? Well, they can and they will.
I'm all for a less polluted planet, but I don't see how it happens. I see lots of little nature preserves acting like ecological museums or zoos without cages making us feel better. (Yosemite anyone?) But that's about it.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I've been following global warming for a long time now doing a lot research on the side for the last couple of years. Here are some facts about global warming. Some of which you hear and don't hear from the main stream media: 1.) The world appears to be getting warmer with many computer models showing an increase in global temperature. 2.) Tying a trend to warmer temperatures based on older data from the early 1900's is suspect at best. Good, reliable, accurate scientific equipment that measures the temperature wasn't readily available until recently (late 1900's). 3.) Apparently, the Earth magnetic field has decreased by 10% in the last 150 years (source: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/earth_magnet ic_031212.html). I'm an electrical engineer and during my studies in particle physics, I learned that a particles velocity can be affected by magnetic fields. I keep hearing about the increased activity of our Sun and believe it's possible that more of the Sun's radiation is penetrating the Earth's magnetic field due to it being weaker. If more radiation hits the Earth and the Sun is spewing out more heat, shouldn't that also increase the overall temperature of the Earth and can global warming be attributed to this?
4.) Jupitor is experiencing the same climate change that Earth is. (source: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060504_red_j r.html [space.com])
5.) Mars is experiencing the same climate change that Earth is. (source: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ mars_snow_011206-1.html and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/new s/news.html?in_article_id=410901&in_page_id=1770)
How can you explain the recent same climate changes on different planets? I doubt it's all those cars being driven there.
Is it possible that the warmer temperatures that Earth is experiencing are caused by cyclical natural phenomena? What about glaciers in Greenland that have been shrinking for 100 years (source: http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/08/21/060821191 826.o0mynclv.html [breitbart.com])? Also, how do you explain huge ice ages on Earth? Were thse caused by huge carbon emissions or was it a small natural climate cycle that just happens? Were those climate changes, which are no doubt more extreme than what's going on now, caused by the combustion engine?
Indeed, Monbiot isn't known as Moonbat for nothing. I remember listening to a Radio Four interview where he outlined much the same, nanny^WMonbiot knows best, agenda. The man is a loon and the first post should be modded Informative rather than Troll.
--
Reverse outsourcing: it's the future
When I was a kid, the highest SPF suntan lotion you could buy was SPF 8.
I was told: "Higher than that you'd be crazy"
Today I see SPF 50 on the shelves and nothing below SPF 16.
Maybe once I see SPF 1000 we'll finally know what is the cause of Global warming.
Until then we should still cut back on any emissions that would make things worse in terms of climate change, REGARDLESS OF the real cause.
While we're at it cut back,..err, cut out polution of ANY kind. I have to dump my AA batteries in the garbage because they wont recycle that but they'll gladly polute the air and water to recycle my newspaper which can rot by itself anywhere.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
It wasn't that long ago that Bush was claiming that he knew for certin that Iraq had WMD (based on secret evidence that the people could not be allowed to see) and that people should be properly obedient and do what he wanted without question and attack Iraq. Just the sort of thing one expects from an American anti-intellectual.
Thermodynamics is not a one-way street, nor is it limited simply to gasses. Liquids (such as rain) must come to thermal and chemical equilibrium with the atmosphere. Mass and chemicals (including CO2) do not just go away.
If the increasing temperature is decreasing the solubility of CO2 into the oceans, where is the rain "scrubbing" the CO2 away to, and how is it keeping it from coming back out into the atmosphere via normal thermodynamic means?
In short, your physics is wrong.
A 22.5% increase over 2 centuries, 19.4% in 45 years, is a small percentage?
[ http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/siple.htm ]
>>
An atmospheric CO2 record for the past 200 years was obtained from the
Siple Station ice core.
[...]
Neftel et al. (1985) concluded that the atmospheric CO2 concentration
ca. 1750 was 280±5 parts per million by volume (ppmv) and that it
increased by 22.5% to 345 ppmv in 1984 essentially because of human
factors.
>>
[ http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-mlo.htm ]
>>
The Mauna Loa record shows a 19.4% increase in the mean annual
concentration, from 315.98 parts per million by volume (ppmv) of dry
air in 1959 to 377.38 ppmv in 2004.
>>
Well, I suppose it depends on what you mean by "consensus". Certainly not all qualified scientists believe "human caused global warming" is a dominant factor in current climate change. You might check this 2002 article (for instance):
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/5/14 /161152.shtml
The one tangible thing that's been done to try and address global warming is the Kyoto Protocol. It is quite flawed, though, in that it gives exemptions to the countries which are most likely to be big polluters in coming decades. It would also impose economic penalties on countries like the US which are already doing quite a lot to reduce their environmental impact.
If /.ers want to rally around a single approach that would be beneficial not just to human related global warming if it exists, but also to energy independence and reduced pollution, do whatever you can to advocate constructing new nuclear reactors here in the US. That is the single best thing we could do at this point.
Those who can plug in hybrids or electric cars to charge would then be running nuclear powered vehicles...sweet! :-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Well, there's what Hansen said, and there's what got reported. The meta-debunker went back to primary sources and found:
Let's take your numbers. CO2 levels have only started to rise fairly recently, so your 800 kg/m2 of scrubbing must have been extremely well balanced by natural CO2 emissions.
Furthermore, you're arguing that humans, so far, have not contributed much. Now, human are adding 0.07 kg/m2 (your numbers) per year. Even if that rate doesn't increase, that means that in merely 77 years we'd be doubling the amount of CO2 that's been the steady state for as long as there have been humans. And, on top of those human emissions, you also postulate that warming will release further CO2 naturally, meaning that atmospheric CO2 could double in a fraction of the time. Basically, what your numbers and analysis implies is that there will be a devastating runaway greenhouse effect within our lifetimes.
In fact, the reason why the atmosphere has been stable despite such a large amount of scrubbing is strong evidence that there must be some kind of negative feedback mechanism; otherwise, you'd expect natural fluctuations to lead to much higher changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Right now, we're still somewhere around the equilibrium of that feedback mechanism, but we are moving away more and more. If we keep adding CO2 to the atmosphere, eventually, the current feedback mechanism will break and a new feedback mechanism will pull us rapidly towards another equilibrium at much higher CO2 concentrations and probably much higher temperatures. That's not a question of "if", it's only a question of "when".
Talk about pseudo-scientific gibberish. Good frickin lord. What's your alternative hypothesis for the relationship between human emissions and atmospheric concentrations? Yes, there's a lot of natural carbon flux going both ways. But we've tipped the balance. No one with more than three neurons firing debates this. There are plenty of things about global warming to debate; please for everyone's sake find a topic that's not so obviously wrong and easily disproved.
Here's another fun graph
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
> Ever open a warm beer? CO2 increases at warmer temperatures.
This one nearly made me spill my coffee !
Ever hear of the law of Conservation of Mass?
Put in simple terms, it says that the amount of Carbon in the can is fixed at the time the can is sealed.
Heating it, cooling it, or giving it a really good shake makes no difference.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Ever flown into LAX? Seen the giant toxic mushroom cloud that sits over the LA basin? Still doubt humans have any affect on the atmosphere?
The only flaw in your analogy is that Christianity states that it's not up to humans to fix things, but that God fixed things already (through Christ - hence "Christ"ianity). Oh, I guess that wasn't the only flaw - in the Christian "Judgement Day", everyone will be judged, not just "the infidels". This will be done, however, in a truly just manner and, oddly enough, isn't based on how much "good" or "bad" you have done. (By the way, Christianity also does not have any bit of sacrifice, in the Old Testament sense at any rate. Then again, there is no activity that you can do without some "sacrifice" - if you post on /. you're sacrificing time you could spend doing something else, for instance.)
I don't know how that applies to nature - because nature is both a cause of and response to human behavior, and nature cannot itself cause humans to get "right" with nature again. "Nature" also has no impetus to become "pristine" again - there is no physical forcing function to make things "environmentally sound" (and what does that mean anyway?). As far as "natural" "Judgment Day" would go, I don't know that there's any judging going on other than the consequences of the laws of physics. Incidentally, those are also completely impartial.
I don't disagree that 'environmentalism' is a religion, however. There are a lot of things that are religions, but aren't necessarily "spiritual" in nature.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
OK, so the temperature is either going up or going down, or going up and will soon go down, or going down & will soon go up.
The QUESTION: Can the collective world do anything, and then WILL the collective world societies do anything of consequence?
The Pundits & Politicos in the U.S. & E.U. may wring hands, put on dour and earnest faces, make proclomations and AGREE on ACTION!
But try telling, persuading or cajoling China, India, Indonesia, South America and Africa to alter their pollution output (particularly soot and CO2).
GOOD LUCK FOLKS!
The best we might hope for are a couple of quick moderately large size volcanic eruptions to cool the planet for a couple decades to give us a chance to change other countries actions. But then China, et al, will just have reason to continue as is and delay reductions in pollution.
I look for continued posturings & isolated governmental "resolutions". Oh, but wait, the U.N. can issue orders to its members, & maybe now with a new administration in "control" they can negotiate the U.S. into paying for everyone elses nappy messes. Yeah, and if you believe that, you have to be ready for the next civil war.
Gee, that's a lot of broken links.
Ok, so I'll have to repeat my standard response to stuff like this.
I love this logic:
1. The climate has always been variable.
1a. The climate is variable on other planets.
2. Therefore, man is not having an impact on today's climate!
QED, right?
Here's an exercise: Explain to me how increased levels of CO2 (which are rising due to humans- I challenge you to find an alternative explanation that has not been debunked from here to Shanghai and back), which Arrhenius demonstrated over 100 years ago [nasa.gov] could cause climate change, can't possibly be causing climate change?
Hey, climate science is uncertain, and questioning the current consensus is great. But if you are going to do so, please find a coherent argument why the current thinking is incorrect (again, please stick to the stuff that hasn't been shown to be wrong 100x over). So please go read RealClimate, debunk them (you have to do better than the M&M side show), and then we can have a conversation.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
noisy followers trying to convince everyone to believe what they believe or face disaster.
That's what I said, but noooooooo, noisy followers had to whine to the EPA and make me spend $500 out of my corporation's pocket to quit pumping mercury into the water supply. Damn those noisy followers, do they think money grows on trees?! Do they not understand that coughing up black shit and dying of lung cancer is a sign of PROGRESS! Back in my grandfather's day you had to smoke plants to get lung cancer, now we have plants that smoke for everyone!
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
To be fair, part of the reason for his behaviour is a long standing medical problem. I wouldn't mention this if it were not for the fact that Wikipedia has seen fit to publish it.
Oops I screwed up the Arrhenius link. Just Google for him.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Ahh, fine poppycock you're spouting there. Have you ever worked in a lab with solutions in equilibrium? How about buffer solutions, simple high school chemistry stuff? Or indicator solutions? The effects of 1 mL reagent in 100L solution can indeed be drastic, depending on how much reagent is there already. Do you know for certain that 5.6 kg/m2 isn't the tipping point at which we face drastic climate change? I sure as hell don't, and I'm not sure I want to find out.
And your figure for rain scrubbing of 800kg/m2? Utter bullshit, on two counts -- 1) CO2 is simply not that soluble in H20 at atmospheric pressures. 2) That CO2 that does get "scrubbed" finds its way back into the air. It's not a one-way reaction, it's a global equilibrium.
When we add carbon into the cycle, we add atmospheric CO2. Plain and simple. The question is at what point the extra carbon disrupts our welfare to a degree that is unacceptable -- and the answer is based upon the magnitude of the effects and our tolerance for the effects. We're constantly learning more about the magnitude of the change, but our tolerance to change will be in debate as long as humans exist.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
There is big difference between "this is a potential issue that needs more research" and journalists sensationalizing out their wazoo in popular rags.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94
http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/
The Monbiot article explains
o The textbook Stefan-Boltzmann equation doesn't apply to a reflecting body
o The original article leaves out time-delayed effects
o The original article compares a graph of average worldwide temperature to a graph of European temperatures
>nothing to see
Plenty to see, even though it's not a point by point rebuttal. A point by point rebuttal would have mentioned Monckton's claim that scientists were predicting global cooling in the 70s. The facts are readily available and even summarized on the web at the global cooling bibliography.
Papers cited here.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
The bellboy kept it?
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
The best we might hope for are a couple of quick moderately large size volcanic eruptions to cool the planet for a couple decades to give us a chance to change other countries actions.
So, you're saying that Dr. Evil could save the world from global warming?
Speaking of hubris; I am amazed at how people can speak with such authority on this subject when they are not doing any kind of real research into the matter at all. What makes someone think that they know more about this subject than the climatologists who have worked on this for decades? That's like some layman trying to tell me (a physicist) what's wrong with quantum theory.
No one here, including me, knows crap about what they're saying unless they're quoting a sound and well established study. Don't think humans are causing global warming? Then go argue with these scientists. I'm sure they'll be glad to hear where their research went wrong.
Rant summary: There will be no carbon credit scheme unless and until it binds _all_ nations, including China, Russia, Kazakhstan, etc. The USA won't stand for anything less, thank goodness. Also, hypocrites complaining about US not joining Kyoto while almost all other signatories blow by its limits with impunity. And forget the science, it's all caused by Mutant Fish Frogs under the influence of the Bavarian Illuminati, using transferable power from the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Orbital Mind Control Lasers.
And before you get all pissy about me not giving a crap about future generations, say hello to my little friend, I've even got a fresh slice of fairy cake.
Took me all of 10 seconds to find the Wikipedia entry on global cooling.
Apparently there was some formal support, though it was apparently more popular in the media than it was with the scientific community (gee, why in the world does that sound familiar...?) What I find particularly amusing is the apologetic tone of the article. It's obviously trying to make the case that nobody worth anything ever seriously thought that global cooling was a possibility. The article actually uses some of the same arguments (lack of data, local min/max vs. overall change in global temperature, etc.) that global warming skeptics use in order to demonstrate that real thinking scientists back in the 70's didn't hold with any of this environmental change nonsense. Priceless.Better than some of mine, actually. At least you're giving it a shot.
My little site.
You are right. I remember the guy from when I used to live in Britian Georges Monbiot is some kind of postmodernist, leftist public figure whose arguments tend to be totally fallacious. I can't remember exactly what his positions are, but I remember that I hate him.
The
Global warming is a myth. Just like those dinosaur bones.
Maybe you aren't aware of all the dissenting scientists, including the head hurricane researcher in the country. Of course, you conveniently dismiss them as "crackpot outsiders," but just because you call them that doesn't mean there aren't dissenters. Slashdot has even posted stories on the fact many younger scientists are afraid to speak up because of the politics involved in contradicting the alleged "consensus."
There is not a consensus. You can claim I'm not involved in any scientific discipline (I'm oh-so-sure you are), but that doesn't change facts.
Any comment on the new ice age we were supposed to enter?
"Sufferin' succotash."
I don't mind doing your research for you. Does the National Science Board count?
I'm being modded "Troll" for challenging the global warming hivemind on Slashdot, but that's cool. I have common sense on my side and don't go around declaring the end of the world when we can barely predict the weather tomorrow, much less 10 years from now.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Nor should you. Look at the second graph down. CO2 is almost linearly more soluble in a colder liquid than a warmer one. It has nothing to do with the absolutely minute volumetric changes in a liquid from those relatively minor temperature changes. Carbon Dioxides actually DOES "magically" leak OUT of beer as it gets warmer, because it's less able to stay dissolved.
Looks like they let some idiots have mod points again. I'd have modded it down, but no one would have known why. C'est la vie.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I would like to see a climate study done by someone who doesn't have an agenda.
It seems like everyone I see starts with the premise that Global Warming is reaching epic proportions or that it is bullshit. It doesn't seem like anyone is going out there from a neutral point of view.
It seems like anyone can spin data to prove a point they already have in mind.
I do not think that we can be certain of any trend when we have a very small set of collected data in relation to the size of this phenomenon (both here on Earth and within our Solar System) Do a google search and there are scientists writing papers about Global warming on Mars, Jupiter, Titan, and perhaps more if I cared to keep looking. Perhaps our Sun is going through a different phase? Solar flares have been on the extreme end of the scale in the last few ears. My gut feeling is this is larger trend not yet understood. However, for political parties and their minions, this is a hot button issue. It is bad enough when politics get mixed into science, and worse when we are dealing with something so large and complicated as weather changes on a solar system scale. We can barely predict weather now, so I think it is rather smug for some of these groups to be so certain of themselves. Yes, I believe things are warming up here, but why? How? What will be the outcome? Who knows. All we can do is collect more data and leave politics out of the equation. My .02 cents.
What causes the higher carbon dioxide pressure in warm beer than in cold beer is the fact that gasses generally dissolve more poorly in warm liquids than in cold ones. (I think they covered that in the chemistry course I had my third year of high school.) Since a great deal of carbon dioxide is dissolved in the oceans, the ocean's surface temperature will affect the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
even to the most dimwitted individual, with an advanced degree in atmospheric physics.
True, for large values of one and extremely small values of 3... Seriously, I find much of the battle over this topic hilarious as most of the people posting here are in the field of IT, CS, or some other variant thereof. I would wager that the entire cast of characters here on Slashdot contains less that 1% climatologists.
No animals were harmed in the making of this sig.
Well, there was that one puppy, but he is all better now.
Why would we really even care about China, India, Indonesia, South America and Africa at this point? They're a drop in the bucket compared to the US, and most of their industry is driven by our needs, not theirs. Therefore USians do bear the bulk of the responsibility. We are the only ones who can stop buying cheap Chinese crap or insist on pollution controls.
While I might agree that global warming is happening and that people may be contributing to it, that's only the first step. The next step is somewhat more difficult: what, if anything, should be done about it?
Significantly slowing human CO2 production will be quite expensive and, from what I've read, will result in some marginal change in world temperatures in 40-50 years time. The question, though is whether spending, say, $600B right now makes a whole lot of sense when you could take the same money and do things like wipe out AIDS in Africa or find a cure for childhood leukemia. At least there is universal agreement that AIDS is rampant in Africa -- there is no such universal agreement about global warming.(*) What if the naysayers are correct?
At some point, you have to do the math -- you have to look at the expected value of the good you're planning to do, discount to present-day and multiply by the likelihood that you're right. Then, you have to compare that to all the other options. It may be that the first $5B you spend on global warming gives you the biggest bang, but after that you should spend it on Cancer or Heart Disease. Heck, it may be that the right thing is to spend the money moving people away from the coast instead of trying to avoid global warming. It could be that the right choice is to do nothing and let people enjoy the next 50 years in their hummers.
Newsflash: Methodology is EVERYTHING in science. If your methodology is bad, your data is less than bad - it is misleading. Hence why so much revolves around whether people followed proper methodology when presenting their data.
The reason that the "save the rainforests" is quieter now is because people are actually doing something about it.
Finally, this entire "you have to present both sides of a story" has to stop. Now. This is not a game show where you get to choose which door to open. There is a public debate on an important topic, and that debate needs to happen in public. That's true. However, debating something in public does not mean that you simply pick a side you like and then clamor that everyone needs to listen to you "because all sides need to be heard". It means debating the theory, the data, the methodology, investigating problems and striving towards finding the most reasonable answer or theory. Granted, most news stories don't get this either, but that doesn't mean that we can't tell them to stop being idiots about the way they present science debates.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Uh hmm.
I respectfully disagree that they are a drop in the bucket.
Please post the confirming data summary.
By "much needed common sense", do you mean "agrees with my beliefs"? We know that the cigarette companies have been employing people to discredit global warming scientists. We know that the author of this book did research for the cigarette companies on the relative safety of second hand smoke. And we're supposed to take this as "common sense". Sounds like you're astroturfing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer
I'd be interested in hearing some "common sense" on this subject, but not someone who gets paid by the tobacco and oil industries. That's just common sense.
From the Arrhenius link which you provided:
.005 degree rise? If the latter, do we really need to be worried about it?
As Arrhenius predicted, both carbon dioxide levels and temperatures increased from 1900-1999. However, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased much more quickly than he expected, but the Earth hasn't warmed as much as he thought it would. (Graphs by Robert Simmon, based on data from NOAA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies)
You'll be hard pressed to find anyone who believes that carbon emissions have no effect at all on the global temperature. What's in debate is just how much effect they have. Will a tripling in global carbon emissions cause a 5 degree rise, or only a
That's the kind of questions which lead to questioning of the overall global warming theory, because they've never been successfully answered. And that's why questions about climate change on Mars and Venus become relevant - because if the temperature is changing on those planets then it's quite possible that carbon dioxide is an almost insignificant factor in the temperature rise which OUR planet is experiencing, and that the major cause is the sun.
Hell, for all we know, the rise in CO2 might be the symptom instead of the cause of global warming. Granted, it's unlikely, but how do we know for sure? Has anyone measured CO2 levels on mars and venus? So far the only proof we have that co2 is linked to global warming is that any time in the past when temperatures have gone up, so has CO2. How can we prove which one is the cause, and which one a symptom? And if we can't even prove that, how in the world can we possibly expect to determine exactly how much effect CO2 has on temperature?
Simple thermodynamic reasoning is not sufficient when ppCO2 operates in a complex chemical system.
This Nature paper discusses the process. See the second paragraph.
an ill wind that blows no good
The real problem with many of these articles 'debunking' global warming is that they have no real intent to disprove the science behind global warming, rather they have the goal of creating confusion and the appearance of controversy with a net result of inaction and a continuation of the status quo. This is why virtually all 'debunking' publications occur in the mainstream media whereas the actual science continues where it always has, in academia, away from the public eye.
One can only speculate on the motives of these 'debunkers'. Obviously there are those who profit mightily and so have a powerful interest in the status quo. Next, there are skeptics who will never accept anything, no matter the evidence or risk of inaction. As near as I can tell, their only goal is to drag as many people as possible to their side. Finally, as an Albertan, I see many other people who have been frightened by the economic doom and gloom emanating from certain quarters. These people will not accept Climate change because they see it as an attack on them and their livelihood. They don't want to change how they live so they choose only to believe what will enable them to continue as they are. The first two groups of people can never be convinced so we shouldn't really bother trying, rather we must be mindful of their effects on legitimate debate. The third, and far largest group, can be convinced once they realize that combating climate change is not just a problem but can be an opportunity; an opportunity to reinvent society and unleash innovation! Certainly, once you accept the science behind climate change most rational people must acknowledge a moral imperative to our fellow human beings to combat this issue.
That's a bit of a leap there, comparing the there-is-no-global-warming "scientists" (with degress in journalism no less) to Gallileo and Darwin.
WRT attacks on methodology, consider:
Sometimes the methodology is the problem.
In this case, the methodology of cherry picking (other comments have explained this well), over-simplification (using theoretical black bodies to model empirical data), and comparison of "apples to oranges", ie global temperature trends to europe temperature trends, are attack-worthy.
Your attempt to relate this debunking, even if it is a bit sensationalised (cock-a-hoop, etc...) to religious-inspired attacks upon people advocating logical thought and divorcement of science from dogma is spurious.
I'm perfectly happy to read articles, studies, etc... (light on the details though, IANACS) claiming humanity's impact on global warming is minimal provided they aren't using tricks and written "sleight of hand" to make their points. The more misinformation I read claiming global warming is not humanity's fault, the more I believe it is our fault. If there were valid reasons to doubt this, oil execs would be shouting it from the rooftops.
Has anyone measured CO2 levels on mars and venus? So far the only proof we have that co2 is linked to global warming is that any time in the past when temperatures have gone up, so has CO2. How can we prove which one is the cause, and which one a symptom? And if we can't even prove that, how in the world can we possibly expect to determine exactly how much effect CO2 has on temperature?
o xide.html
With regards to Mars, the following pages (among many others) contain info about the exact makeup of the Mars atmosphere:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003AGUFM.P42A0425K
http://www.earthsci.unimelb.edu.au/mars/Carbon_Di
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/mars.htm
This would suggest that such measurements have been made.
I'm pretty sure this is true for Venus as well.
Christianity also does not have any bit of sacrifice, in the Old Testament sense at any rate.
Have you ever actually read the Old Testament? Strong's Exhaustive Concordance lists four columns' worth of citations for the word "sacrifice" and its variants, and almost all of them are in the Old Testament, often with elaborate instructions on how to perform one. Even in the New Testament, the central story of most varieties of Christianity is that Christ Himself was a sacrifice that made all other ritual sacrifices unnecessary.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
I can't, but I'm sure the Republicans are behind it.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
1) Yep.. lots of scientific consesnsus on that.
2) If you are talking about human recorded temprature mesurements from those periods then we agree. And so scientists generally try and use non-human recordings, such as effects on tree rings, the growth of coral (very temprature dependant, and in the middle of a huge heat sink), etc... So there is a lot of data that can be distilled into good records.
3) If you took engineering then you should know about the laws of thermodynamics, and thus know that you are mearly playing with where the energy is absorbed or reflected, not changing those ratios. You should also know that most of the suns energy output that is absorbed by the earth is not in particales that are affected in any real way by magnetic fields.
4) Your source does not say that Jupiter as a whole is warming up... only that certain spots seem to be. There is a huge difference in those two statements.
5) We don't know enough about Mar's climate to be able to take any lessons out of it. In fact your article states this repeatedly.
6) The answers to many of the rest of your questions are avalible from a lot of sites. A lot of them do examin cyclical effects, and look for the causes. But the very people who are doing those studies and are the best informed about these things are the ones who are very loudly sounding the alarm.
The better question is why do people keep listening more intently to politicions and businessmen who have a vested interest in the status quo, as opposed to the scientists who have dedicated their lives to studying these things and have no vested interests (or at least not as big an interest).
m2 of what?
I'd rather search for CO2 in a volume , not on an area.
Atheism is a non-prophet organisation
As long as you mean "consensus" then no, it doesn't depend. Having a scientific consensus does not mean that every last scientist agrees - only that the broad mass of scientists agree. And on this issue, there is consensus. A very large majority of climatologists agree that human emissions are increasingly causing climate change.
Pointing out one, or ten, dissenters from the consensus does not prove the consensus doesn't exist.
Whoops. I should have read more closely. I didn't see that one word ("sense") that makes all the difference in the meaning of your sentence. We are in agreement here, more or less. Sorry about the attempted drubbing... I'll go sit in sackcloth and ashes now.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
it is a mixture of cherry-picking, downright misrepresentation, and pseudo-scientific gibberish. But it has the virtue of being incomprehensible to anyone who is not an atmospheric physicist...
...
I thought this was about an anti-global warming article, not a pro-global warming one, but then I read this paragraph and
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
The US has done and is doing virtually nothing to reduce your carbon footprint, and ought, by rights, be penalised. The average US person has a carbon footprint 20 times the size of the average Indian. Someone has to pay for your indulgence - it should be you.
The majority of Slahdotters are not from the US, if the demographic from the rest of the web is true here. So we cannot advocate for more nuclear reactors in the US. What we can (and will) do, is advocate for a carbon trading scheme - user pays.Wanda: To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people. I've known sheep who could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs, but you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape? Otto: Apes don't read philosophy. Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don't understand it.
The debunker of Viscount Monckton is entirely correct. The details there-in are sufficient to appreciate the content.
Yes, I read the original Monckton manuscript and the flaws are as described.
Basic summary: Monckton thinks that pulling out a formula
from Physics 101 like a clever schoolboy he can show up with some elementary analysis
what thousands of serious scientists over decades had inexplicably "forgotten" to
understand.
He's wrong.
The correctness of any debunking doesn't require long pages of formulae, references and tables, any more than saying "you are assuming you can divide by zero in line 311" in some lunatic's supposed 32 page disproof of the Riemann-hypothesis
with 11 grade algebra.
As described far better at www.realclimate.org, Monckton assumes that things with similar units must mean the same thing. He doesn't understand albedo and other things that the very first real scientists who thought seriously about the greenhouse effect (planetary geophysicists in the 1960's studying spacecraft data about planets, including those outside Earth) knew.
When it is cleverly deceptive propagandistic puerile bullshit, then that's what it deserves to be called---early and often.
There are not two reasonably valid sides to this issue any more than the phlostigon theory of heat is as equally reasonable as atomic statstical mechanics.
Why isn't there any teaching of "alternate" theories for chemistry which deny atoms, molecules and the periodic table? Elecricity & magnetism with three kinds of charges (happy, dopey & sneezy) and not two?
Genetics without DNA?
Zoology without evolution? (oh wait)
Yes, I am a physicist, but not in climate. Read www.realclimate.org if you want to understand a little bit about what actual climate scientists know and don't know. I'm not at their level certainly but I can discern most of the real stuff from the fake stuff.
I'll nominante Lord Monckton for a first-ever dynamic double of honors: the Ig Nobel Prize and the Upper Class Twit Of The Year.
"Christianity states"
Christianity says pretty much whatever any given sect wants it to say, by listening to them. One thing for one, something else for another.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Common sense would tell you that second hand smoke is actually "relative safety". The question is weahter you are sharing a room with a smoker the size of a telephone booth or the size of an airport terminal. See?
We need to stop with demonizing of dissenters and start talking about the very real possibility that global warming is cyclical. There is actually quite a bit of evidence in the fossil record that this happened once before, 1500 years ago.
... which brings us back here.
.005 degrees if we go 3x baseline CO2 (closer on a log scale that is). If we could gain high confidence that the impact would be more like .005 degrees than yeah, you can rest your case, but we aren't exactly there yet. Of course, we'd still have to worry about acidification of the oceans (guess where a lot of the excess CO2 goes [CO2 + H2 = HCO3- + H+]), but that's another story.
Man is causing the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. I don't know of any alternative hypotheses that come close to fitting the data. There are large carbon natural fluxes and we've tipped the balance.
OK, climate sensitivity is something worth talking about. I'll bet you my house the sensitivity is closer to 5 degrees than
So, to recap:
Increased CO2 concentrations: Our fault. I'll bet my wife and 1st born.
Increased CO2 concentration leads to higher temperatures: Yup. I'll throw in kids 2 and 3.
Climate sensitivity to 3x CO2 is Y degrees: There's pretty good science here, but there's room to haggle. I'll throw in my two cars and road bike that we need to be worried.
Impact of the sun: Obviously a factor, but if there's a smoking gun tying temperature to solar output this century, I sure haven't seen it. Here's a RealClimate article on the subject.
Ocean acidification: Definitely happening; this is basic chemistry. Severity of impact not well known, but think "Alka Seltzer'
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
No, we can't predict exactly how much warmer it will be, or exactly what the rate of change will be. We don't know exactly how much humans contribute to this anyway.
The problem with this argument is that it's just as politicized as the pro arguments it attempts to politicize. You attack those who support the theory of global warming by saying scientists can't predict this exactly? They just did! The facts have been laid at your feet! Read the article! Scientists have been collecting global warming data for years now. The fact is that global warming is here. It's getting warmer, and human activity is to blame. I'm sorry we can't measure the impact down to the tiniest fern or in terms of micrograms of pollution, but the facts have been pounded on over and over and over, and people like you say "I'm sorry you haven't given me any facts." Typical political denial.
Conservatives politicized this, by being in the pocket of corporations that want to fight this because they feel that this will hurt their profits tremendously. They cast doubt. They drag the issue through the muck, then blame anyone for continuing to push the issue as "liberals" who are dragging the issue thru the muck. It's clever, but I see right through it.
Enough facts have been laid out on this problem. However, no one wants to try the solution until it's too late. Companies demand a holy grail of absolute proof, which consists of a middle school science project that demonstrates global warming is real. None exists, and they know it, so they demand the proof to hold off on any attempt to reduce emissions in order to save their own profits.
And that's the only thing that's stopping us here, are personal and corporate profits. Emission controls could be put in place for the same price as all the effort that is going into litigation and spreading FUD and long term profits would not be affected. You don't have to spend huge amounts of money to cut down on your own carbon emissions, and often it just requires some mental effort to think about and you'll end up not spending anything.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
"It is quite flawed, though, in that it gives exemptions to the countries which are most likely to be big polluters in coming decades. It would also impose economic penalties on countries like the US which are already doing quite a lot to reduce their environmental impact."
wow. you brought out my inner troll.
so your argument is...
"it's bad because it exempts countries WHICH ARE LIKELY to be big polluters..." (at some point in the future)
&
"it's bad because it doesn't exempt the US" (provably the biggest polluter by any measure at all, say, per capita GHG emissions)
huh? in what way is the "quite a lot" the US is allegedly doing actually solving this problem? Say, compared to the Kyoto treaty?
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
In every other aspect of science we were taught alternatives to established theories to compare the merits and why one theory is more valid than others, from Ether to creationism. If you're taught alternatives alongside the norm you can get a far better understanding of science and helps you analyse things better. With global warming we were never given alternate theories, we were given the one theory and told to accept it. We're told to question everything throughout science yet we're told to accept a theory which has minimal proof outside of simulations and small scale tests.
There has never been a debate about the cons of the greenhouse effect theory, we're just forced to accept it. By flat out saying "you're wrong" to deniers you acheive nothing but make them more determined. The critisisms should be in the public arena so that people can feel their making their own decisions rather than feel they're being given propoganda.
So what if warming preceded CO2 rise?
Climate scientists certainly do know that there are OTHER things which contribute to warming as well. In geological time you can have other effects start warming which then causes some biosphere-correlated feedback effects which result in CO2 emissions.
Taking them into account is precisely the goal of immense work by the scientific community.
This is the result: you cannot satisfy the known laws of physics and observed facts without including
significant human-induced greenhouse forcing.
And the fact that geological evidence sometimes showed warming before CO2 rises is NOT in the slightest comforting. The correct conclusion is that there can be very powerful physics and biology in the natural ecosystem which will rapidly amplify human-generated warming, perhaps to a degree significantly more than we worry about now.
Ok why can't we be logical about this? That ex world bank economist said acting to prevent global warming would effect global GDP by 2%, thats the worst case senerio (of acting). Not acting it could cost the world 20% GDP to deal with the results.
Ok so worse case senerio's are we could act for no reason and lose 2% of the worlds GDP for no reason what so ever, or we could not act and cause human extiniction as glocal warming causes the planet to turn into the next Venus.
Personnally I'd rather play it safe be a bit more poor, even if it turned out to be for no reason.
Yes, correlation does not prove causality in the absence of plausible scientific theory linking the two.
We're talking about a simple mass balance here. Sources, sinks, and reservoirs. The theory fits the data (Increased anthropogenic CO2 leads to increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2). No other theory comes close (don't even try to start with volcanos). What else do you frickin want?
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
No, I just answered your question. I'm a context-free machine.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Throughout history, CO2 levels have always lagged behind temperature increases. Even RealClimate admits it http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13.
A major component of this is that climbing temperatures release large amounts of CO2 locked in the permafrosts. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/
So there, in two links, are strong evidence that CO2 change could be a result of temperature change and not vice-versa.
Now I await the flames... let me guess the order:
Like I said, I've done this before.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Even more importantly, rain only falls in the lowest parts of the atmosphere. Anything above 40,000 feet won't ever see a drop of rain until it falls to lower altitudes. So expecting rain to clean the entire atmosphere is, at best, a slow process.
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
Just because no-one spoon-fed you the debate that went (note the past tense) on about Global Warming doesn't mean it didn't exist. I suggest you delve into the actual research papers and do some reading on your own. Anything else just screams lazyness.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
To the extent there has been global warming, I'm not really sure the cause. The most likely to me appears to be variations in solar output. Perhaps variations in near-vaccuum absorptivity as the solar system travels through different regions of space.
What is causing it, however, is another matter... some say there is proof that humans are causing it, others will say it's merely circumstantial... that this warming is just part of a natural cycle the earth goes through before another ice age and then a gradual reheating (the latter period being one in which we are currently living).
This isn't good enough.
If you want to assert a non-human-generated cause you can't just imagine something random might be out there. You need mechanisms and observable facts. Saying "there might be something else" is true, and facile, and has been explored heavily for decades.
If we had climate scientists 10,000 years ago with modern scientific understanding and observations we'd also be able to attribute climate change then to specific causal factors.
Answer is that no explanation which excludes major human-induced greenhouse warming is compatible with known physics and current observations.
Obviously there is a natural cycle of some sort relating to astrophysical parameters, and there are other effects in geological time due to volcanism. But the Earth has not magically changed its axis and violated angular momentum since the advent of industrial civilization, nor has global volcanism simultaneously gone haywire. Those are measured facts.
As to the "circumstantiality" of the proof: direct measurements of infrared emissions from the upper atmosphere (the causal source of the greenhouse effect) have been taken for decades by aircraft, balloons and satellites, simultaneously with samples of the chemical composition of such atmosphere. The result is that the increase in IR flux has been observed and correlates exactly with the significant change in atmospheric composition (due to human activity) and known laboratory-verified facts about the scattering cross sections of molecules. This is the forcing term from the greenhouse effect, and it has changed on human timescale.
It is really impossible by the laws of physics for the climate not to change as a consequence.
And this is but one small piece of the evidence.
How?
By destroying the credibility of the Monckton article in several of its major assertions, it makes any claim by Monckton suspect. This is basic skepticism 101.
Do you remember the principle, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?" The Monckton article is at the extraordinary end of the scale because he is a journalist making claims that run contrary to the consensus of climate scientists. To be credible, his evidence has to be impeccable and virtually irrefutable. Monckton did well for a pseudo-scientist, getting a normally credible, but known to be biased widely read mainstream British newspaper, to print his claims. When I read the original article, I thought to myself that he may have some valid points, and raised some interesting questions. I judged it likely that he was wrong -- the scientific consensus is not easily overturned -- but I was opened minded to his views to some degree. Now that Monboit has shown several of Monckton's claims to be not only wrong, but an egregious misrepresentation of the facts, now I know that he is not credible. His somewhat extraordinary claims have weak or no evidence that we can believe, so his claims should be rejected by reasonable people. In this way Monboit, by answering some major claims convincingly as shown that we can believe nothing really that Monckton says on this issue and has refuted indirectly everything.
If someone else has a separate claim regarding some particulars that were mention in Monckton's original article, then they will have to show some somewhat extraordinary evidence for that claim, and to give us some good reasons to listen to them. It is not up to the rest of us to refute any more of Monckton's claims. He credibility is shot. Nor is there any need to congratulate him or give him further attention.
The ice in the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets alone contain enough water to raise global ocean levels by an average of 35 feet.
The main scenario for their meltwater not drowning >50% of humans and driving the rest into refugees of a collapsed civilization is also bad. That's the collapse of the Thermohaline circulation currently keeping Europe temperate. When it collapses, as has already begun, the icy Scandinavian climate will spread southward, covering probably everything down to the Alps. That regional Ice Age will freeze a lot of water on the surface, keeping the seas from their maximum rise.
But then, the Himalayan and Andean ice sheets will melt, and more from Antarctica and Canada. So the resulting "rebalance" will be chaos, anyway.
--
make install -not war
it's lazy for people under 16 not to read research papers? You must've had one strict school!
You've missed one subtle point... the total concentration of CO2 water can dissolve at saturation does decrease with increasing temperature. However, Earth's oceans are nowhere near saturation. In fact, they are one of the largest CO2 sinks in most climate models, but that's a reservoir which is rapidly filling up.
Have sources for those numbers? Also, the removal of CO2 via rain is mostly a net change of zero, given this thing called the hydrological cycle. That water eventually evaporates and whatever CO2 it had dissolved goes right back into the atmosphere, minus the small fraction that does react to form an inert species (i.e. via weathering of certain rocks).
P.S. as an aside to someone mentioning 1% of slashdotters having a degree in climate science... I actually do and I can tell you it's a very small field, I'd be surprised if it were even 0.1% of the people here.
If what you're saying is true, then science has nothing to do with analyzing observable facts, and everything to do with politics (that is, appeals to authority and argumentum ad hominem)
Joe Mainusch http://www.weber-amps.com
John Howard is a very accomplished politician. He's making "climate change" noises now purely to distance himself from the US election results. This is the man who claimed that the Boat People refugees were "throwing their children overboard" even though the military told his people that wasn't true within 24 hours after the alleged event. He continued to support the Children Overboard story for over a month, until after the Federal Election. See http://www.alp.org.au/features/lies.php for a breakdown of some of his side-stepping and double dealing. Or even better try http://www.google.com.au/search?q=john+howard+lies for a wider view.
John Howard has been using his absolute majority in both Houses to force all sorts of ideologically motivated laws through, regardless of how they may change Australian Culture. He seems to be intent on making us a new state of the USA. He is the person responsible for ensuring that the USA is not alone in its' Kyoto stance. He is responsible for a "Free Trade" agreement which is dismantling our fair-use provisions under copyright, is introducing DMCA legislation, is changing our patents office to be in line with the US model, is diluting our PBS (the Government sponsored sale of pharmaceuticals, all of which must happen before 2010, yet the USA is under no obligations under this agreement until 2022.
He is responsible for setting up concentration camps for refugees (more precisely, for illegal immigrants who are requesting refugee status). Most of these camps are in the back of beyond. There are children who have liven for most of their lives behind the razor wire, and there is a horrific incidence of mental illness associated with this detention in sub-human conditions.
Now that public opinion can be shown to be swinging against the US Republican approach to the Middle East and "The War on Terror" he's simply waving an extremely large, colourful and exciting flag (climate change acceptance) to distract people from his complete failure to interface with the Democrats. The news is now that the Democrats are going to demand a US inquiry into the AWB scandal (The AWB, run by Howard's mates, was busted paying hundreds of millions of dollars to Saddam Hussein to get around the trade sanctions, abusing the UN "Oil for Food" program).
I, along with many other informed Australians, do not believe there is any change of heart in Howard's new "Climate friendly" position. It's all just an attempt at distraction from the real issues.
There is a difference between what Christianity is, and what "any given sect" says Christianity is.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Most of what you say is true. Up to the "and not vice-versa" part. Bzzzt! Faulty logic! The first part of your statement is true (CO2 can lag temperature changes), but you present nothing to prove the vice-versa (CO2 can't be a driver) part.
Sure, in the past CO2 has lagged temperature. However, that doesn't mean that it hasn't sustained climate changes as a positive feedback. What it does mean is that CO2 has often not been the driver for climate change events. Until now.
We are generating lots of CO2. A small amount relative to natural fluxes, but enough to . Can anyone provide a plausible alternative hypothesis for current conditions?
CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas. This is basic physics. What's not so basic are all of the other feedbacks, positive and negative- water vapor, ice cover, and so forth. That's where the action is. Let's talk about that. But to get caught up talking about whether we are responsible for increases in CO2, and whether or not CO2 is a greenhouse gas, is just a colossal waste of time. It's basic frickin physics and chemistry. It's the fluid dynamics that makes everything so hard to resolve.
To recap:
Climate varies naturally. That doesn't mean it can't be affected unnaturally.
Historically, CO2 concentrations have lagged temperature changes (b/c yes, Virginia, there are other factors that affect climate). That does not disprove that you can drive climate change with CO2; it just hasn't been tried often.
All else equal, higher CO2 = higher temperatures. Basic physics. The problem is the all else equal part.
Humans are trying an interesting experiment. What happens if we try to force climate change with CO2?
Why does everyone here think that they are smarter than climate scientists?
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
semper ubi sub ubi
Show me where I said "it must be true", and we'll talk. In the meantime, stop trolling.
Numbers, easy: I just calculated them per m2 of earth from: 250 MBoe/d fuel, 350 ppmv CO2 in 14.7 psi atmosphere, and 32" global average rainfall (incl oceans&deserts). Correction welcome.
There is plenty of genuine debate going on and opportunity for journalistic and political "balance" in covering it
I've no doubt that journalists could do an excellent job at explaining this (and some do). But that would assume that the majority of journalism and media is about informing people. It's not. The media outlets are very clearly about selling eyeballs. What do you think would sell more eyeballs, an honest discussion about what we really know about global warming (it's happening, it's caused by us, we're not sure how large of an effect it'll have). Or examining the extreme positions? "Global Warming May Reach Tipping Point Soon!", or even "Global Warming is Big Fraud Created by Lefties!" sure will sell a lot more eyeballs to advertisers than "Will Average Global Temperature rise
AccountKiller
We can argue until the cows come home about the relationship between human activity and climate change. At the end of the day, however, the costs of climate change, if we are responsible and choose not to act, could be catastrophic and irreversible. Even if the probability that our action is related to climate change is small the potential costs are so high as to make acting to reduce emissions, etc., the only realistic strategy.
Democrats now controlling the Congress (in January, anyway) are driving out the antiscience, pro-pollution bureaucrats who the Bush Republicans stuffed into their offices. With at least 6-12 years of lies under the bridge, the new bureaucrats have a lot of shoveling to get to their desks.
--
make install -not war
So a system that hits the same point twice in a random time period is cyclical? Nice. I don't think I'll go through the pain of reading that book.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
A significant part of the problem is that global warming has been turned into a proxy argument for other issues. Ecologically minded individuals want to use it to strong-arm their entire ecological agenda. Dyed-in-the-wool capitalists need to fight against it because it is an assault on their production schedules. It's the ecology equivalent of the partial-birth abortion morass. Neither side feels they can give an inch, so even though plenty of moderates may see the potential for an effective policy somewhere in the middle which acknowleges the importance of both economic advancement and conservation, the fringes drive to make compromise impossible out of fear of a "slippery slope."
The oceans are not saturated with CO2, buddy. The oceans were roughly at equilibrium with the atmosphere before atmospheric CO2 increased. The driving force is into the ocean. People actually measure this stuff. Find me valid research that shows a global (not regional- global) net flux of CO2 from the ocean to the atmosphere and I'll buy you beer for a year.
Here's a decent page at NASA:
Evidence for solar output as a driver for current warming is weak (but at least plausible). Please stop the idle speculation; there is a rich body of knowledge here.
I did write my M.S. thesis on oceanic carbonate chemistry, so you'll have to do better than 'If water gets warmer, it absorbs less CO2.'. Yes, solubility decreases with temperature, but that's a completely irrelevant factoid.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
There is a difference between what Christianity is, and what "any given sect" says Christianity is.
." So, I never understand what it is about.
Really? Maybe that's why I find Christianity to be so confusing - everyone I talk to says "no, that's not right. REALLY it is about
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Well, unfortunately these questions won't be answered any time soon with any degree of reliability, but rest assured that if they are I'll be coming around to collect that house, bike, car, etc :) You can keep the wife and kids though, I'm not in a hurry to acquire any of those.
Anyway, the way I see it, as long as we can't determine how much effect CO2 has on the earth, we can't effectively combat it. I mean, realistically, if we believed the global warming studies, we should be switching entirely to nuclear power within the next decade, and then bombing the shit out of any country that refuses to do the same. If the global warming proponents are right, the growing economies of India and China are a massive threat to the survival of our whole species. We either get them to stop polluting within the next 10 years, or we have to kill them off in order to preserve as much of our species as possible.
On the other hand, I'd rather not be an alarmist. I'd rather not ruin our economies, turn global politics upside down, and start multiple wars on the idea that maybe, just maybe, CO2 might cause the world to overheat. We can't be certain just how much CO2 affects global temperatures....but we CAN be certain that the Kyoto protocol is useless at combating it...and we CAN be certain that the only truly effective ways to combat CO2 pollution would also cause massive global economic disruption, as well as requiring force to implement. So let's do a little more research first, huh?
Fortunately, none of us have to search for CO2 in a volume. Rain already does that for us. It falls through the atmosphere, scrubbing all the way.
Science is not a political debate. It is not about which side looks prettier or which side makes a better argument. In fact, science does NOT choose sides. Either the hypothesis stands on its own or it fails on FACTS. Evolution is NOT strengthened by debunking Creationism. You can ONLY support and solidify Evolution by presenting FACTS supporting the Evolution itself.
Which also explains why Intelligent Design is not real science because their ENTIRE position is based on "weakness" of Evolution and not why ID is valid.
GPP said "a small percentage" NOT "a small increase in the percentage". Two totally different things.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
You're actually able to determine the exact amount CO2 that get scrubbed due to rain only by analyzing what you see with your own eyes? What, no need for yearlong studies, theorizing and experiments?
So you're saying we should definitely NOT look at your degree and the amount of experience you have when deciding if what you're saying is worth listening to?
Come on! This is science we're talking about, not the local debating club.
(And the part about argumentum ad hominem I don't get, I seen no relevance to the remark made by the GP)
There are various point by point rebuttals scattered here and there. see www.realclimate.org.
And in at most every place that the paper was probed major errors and enormous misrepresentations come to light.
At some point it is not worth further efforts, and you can judge
with nearly 99% accuracy that the author has a fundamental lack of understanding,
which is corroberated with the factually true observation that he has no credential, education or experience, and most importantly, past achievement in professional climatology.
An ad-hominem argument attacks somebody's irrelevant personal characteristics, like "distrust so and so because he is an animal-screwing pervert with bad taste in furniture." One's credentials in a difficult scientific field of study have plenty to do with ones reliability in discussing climate.
Suppose this guy were not an upper-class Briton of the same stratum as the Telegraph's editors but some random dude emailing people from Moldova. Would it ever have gotten any attention? No.
Sorry, I assumed you were a little farther along in your education. You certainly can read through research papers yourself, even though that's gonna take quite some dedication. If you're less than 16, I'd say give the school some time to arm you with more of the math and physics behind Climatology. Then they can (and should) give you more of the discussion behind it.
However, I'll stand behind my initial assertion: if you are unhappy with how much information your school gives you, your best bet is to go and get that information yourself. Right now, this might simply mean to head to your local library and read up on general Climate theory. Then later, once you have the basic concepts and science down, you can start to read the actual papers. Knowledge is no one's responsibility but your own - and you certainly don't want to leave your education solely in the hands of what could be a bad school and bad teachers, do you?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
According to the Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group at the University of Colorado has stated that CO2 forcings contribute a maximum of 28% of global warming. He also pointed to a paper on his site that stated:
"We estimate that the sun contributed as much as 45-50% of the 1900-2000 global warming, and 25-35% of the 1980-2000 global warming. These results, while confirming that anthropogenic-added climate forcing might have progressively played a dominant role in climate change during the last century, also suggest that the solar impact on climate change during the same period is significantly stronger than what some theoretical models have predicted."
Further:
"For all of the human-caused warming radiative forcings, which includes the 0.5 Watts per meter squared value for the shortwave albedo change, and estimating tropospheric ozone as 0.3 Watts per meter squared, the aerosol black carbon direct effect as 0.2 Watts per meter squared, the black carbon on snow and ice as 0.3 Watts per meter squared, the semidirect indirect effect as 0.1 Watt per meter squared, and the glaciation indirect effect as 0.1 Watt per meter squared (with the latter two forcings using a nominal value, since these forcings are very poorly known), the contribution due to CO2 will fall to about 28%."
Strictly speaking, this is not an equilibrium but a steady-state.
Wow... Lack of comprehension for the win.
If there is a percentage increase essentially because of human factors, then that is the percentage of the whole that humanity is responsible for.
"a small increase in the percentage" isn't even a valid concept in this discussion.
There is a lot of hypocracy and conflicting information in the global warming research.
Not among people who understand what they're doing.
But there is a large motivation for those
Its really hard for me to buy into that its a people problem and that its even a problem at all until all of this gets sorted out.
It has been sorted out. But there are powerful forced who don't like the answer and the consequences thereof who want to make you believe there is some either conspiracy or misunderstanding.
For the skeptics: be skeptical about your own position as well. Try this for a moment.
Suppose, hypothetically, that actual evidence were fairly conclusive about global warming but there are some wealthy people with a vested interest in confusing the facts because it might be detrimental to their own personal agendas.
What would the most likely characteristics and pattern of the debate be like?
To me, it is pretty much identical to what is happening now.
This is what always confuses me about the environmentalist movement in the United States. On the one hand, global warming weighs heavy on the movement's mind (and rightly so). But then cleaner sources of energy are actively denied by groups like NIMBY.
It's fairly impossible for the US to remain a global economic superpower and at the same time decrease its energy consumption. Something has to give.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
And now onto policy. Uncertainty yields inaction. That's quite a gamble. What happens if you wait too long?
That's a nice strawman, that we have to go to war to reduce CO2 emissions. It's especially funny that you talk about turning 'global politics upside down', like the status quo hasn't had any of that (see: Middle East oil). The cost of (low carbon) energy independence, fully accounted, might not be so high.
I agree that China and India are huge factors in the CO2 game. Especially considering their economic growth and coal reserves. Kyoto doesn't cut it. Agreed. One interesting issue here is fairness. In the U.S. we've generated a lot of wealth by burning fossil fuels; hardly seems fair to make the rest of the world cap their emissions at a fraction of our per capita emissions. But that's a challenge, not a deal-killer.
I would submit that we can address our CO2 problems without "massive global economic disruption," but that's another debate for another time. I need to ride my bike home and play with my kids.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
I was wondering if someone could point me to a site where people can discuss things in a cival manner?
I find it hard to make any decision when everyone's debating is filled with hate and spite for any view which doesn't agree with their own.
You missed the whole point. Your original post asked for any information that said CO2 followed warming and not vice versa. Read in that context, the single sentence you decided to pick at, makes perfect sense. I did not claim that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. That would be foolish, nay, idiotic. I attempted no such thing.
.
My answer was in reply your original comment which said, and I quote, "Explain to me how increased levels of CO2 (which are rising due to humans- I challenge you to find an alternative explanation that has not been debunked from here to Shanghai and back)...."
So, that's what I did, I presented a source other than humans
Read in that context, the single line you chose to pick out has exactly that meaning. It is a mechanism for CO2 increase that is not the cause of warming, but the result of it.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
You guys coming up with silly plans like "pollution credits" and what not, that is ridiculous. Here, we go FULL STEAM in the US and invest money into things like nanotech solar cells and THAT, my friend, will be your saving grace! Here come the capitalist pigs, put away your monopoly money pollution credits, and start thinking of something else to shake your fist at.
You take a step back and look at yourselves, you want to wrestle control from the capitalists and impose economic sanctions. What the fuck man, what the fuck?
Not trying to troll, you just have to realize how frustrating this is to watch, people on this board collaborate on such a fucking stupid idea as pollution credits, which will certain make the situation WORSE, as the petrolium age drags on for another century!
www.nanosolar.com
www.konarka.com
www.daystartech.com
Energy revolution, around the corner, folks. In this country those with the money have the power, not some low life politician. It SHOULD be that way! Tired of stupid fucking politicians who think they are going to lead the world into a new century.
Let me get this straight. Country A has 400 units of extra carbon. Country B has a deficit of 400 units. So B sells those to A and A is now compliant.
Sounds good. But um, the carbon is still there. Please explain to me how this sceheme helps eliminate global warming?
If beer causes CO2 as suggested whats the impact of dropping Mentos into Diet Coke. I blame Youtube
WTF - Speak in acronyms already, i can't figure out what you mean otherwise boss
AARGHHH. There is a TON of research on this stuff. Readers of ./: I know how this place works (post before thinking), but this is ridiculous. Why speculate when basic facts are a Google away? Start here.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Ok, you kinda sorta have a point. You demonstrated that CO2 has lagged temperature historically, but do not provide a case that demonstrates that the current CO2 pattern (past 150+ years) is a response to the temperature trend. That's what I was (implicitly, I suppose) focusing on. Do you have anything on that? Where's the extra CO2 coming from now?
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
If CO2 was causing a change in the environment, we really couldn't combat or reverse it anyways. We are in a non-linear chaotic system. Of course, this is /., and the internet, so everyone's opinion, no matter how ill-informed, is equal.
You are right, you should be modded up. In an honest world, the climate scientists would be laughed out of the room and we would have real mathematicians creating real theorems. We live in a world of headlines and pretty computer models. Plus, the math behind a system like the climate is insanely complex. It is easier to say CO2->warming.
Yes, you are right, strictly speaking, it is (was) a steady-state.
So you concur, then, that there is a net flux of carbon into the oceans? And that given carbonate chemistry, this will tend to reduce pH?
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
So, the people who are against Kyoto would support a far more strict treaty which included emerging markets and science-based cutbacks on greenhouse gases (which would be far harsher than Kyoto)?
Sure. And monkeys might fly out of my butt.
By the way, keep in mind that existing Western industrial civilization has a large head start in infrastructure generated by cheap fossil fuel burning without regard to atmospheric consequences.
Okay, we are getting somewhere. The oceans aren't currently a net source of CO2, they are a net sink. In the ocean the extra CO2 forms carbonic acid and dissolves limestone. And this might be a problem for calcifying organisms because... anyone? anyone?
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
The existence of naturally observed causes for physical climate change does NOT rule out human-induced causes in any posssible way.
All it does is point to a starting place for understanding the underlying physical mechanism.
Everything you discuss has been known by actual climate scientists for decades upon decades.
Consider yourself as an electrical engineer: It would be like observing "gee when I move my magnet there are induced EMFs" (true) and then going from that to being skeptical about elementary, and professionally-established, facts regarding the fundamental physics of all sorts of classes of transistors which have been professionally studied in laboratories for decades.
The answer, "yes those people who make the transistor models do happen to have heard about Faraday's laws and can say whether some effect is important or not or explains the working of the transistor."
Also, how do you explain huge ice ages on Earth? Were thse caused by huge carbon emissions or was it a small natural climate cycle that just happens?
complicated answer, but best belief is that there are astrophysical and other forcings which can start warming and then there are feedback loops which amplify greenhouse gas emissions. This is bad for current climate change because human induced forcing could end up being multiplied to a large degree.
Were those climate changes, which are no doubt more extreme than what's going on now, caused by the combustion engine?
No.
Does the existence of naturally occurring lightning in any way debunk the theories of physical causality in transistors? No electrical engineer imagines so. What they care about is of course the underlying physical principles of electromagnetism in in natural and engineered systems and these predict behavior. This is of course the right way to proceed.
Why is it that when it comes to climate, and pretty much climate alone among scientific subjects, the equivalent sort of incomprehensible "arguments" or "skepticism" against the professional understanding of climate scientists come up?
Well, we seem to agree on some things, so I'll just address the bits I take issue with:
1) If you think middle east oil is causing political instability, what do you suppose a war against a nation with 1 billion people would be? Especially when the only reason for the war is carbon dioxide, of all things?
2) If you don't think war would be necessary, what do you suppose India's reaction would be if we said "hey, listen guys, we know your economy has finally just started to make some progress....but we need you to stop using all that nasty oil and coal stuff".
They'd tell us to f*** right off, that's what. Probably assume it's just a CIA plot to keep the western world ahead of them. And I really couldn't blame them. So, how do YOU plan to stop them?
Even if the evidence for CO2 causing global warming were 100% bulletproof, it's useless unless we can convince ALL countries to do something about it. I don't see any way of achieving that short of war. And before you start talking about economic incentives, consider the size of the populations you'd need to bribe, AND consider how little effect economic incentives have had in nations like North Korea.
I'm more convinced that algae will grow!
1000years ago it was Fact that there were only four elements, 400 years ago it was fact the sun revolved around the Earth, 100 or so years ago it was a fact that an atom was the smallest thing in the universe. Science is constantly evolving and what used to be a commonly accepted theory may later be proven false. Many children are brought up with the simple equation F=MA and believe it to be correct until they hit more advanced quantum physics and learn that it's an over simplification that will always produces inaccuracies (just not significant until you get to high velocities).
The only thing that's constant about science is that our perception of it is always changing, the second we accept things as fact is the second scientific progress will end.
I was educated in physics up till A2 level (closest US equilivant is high school level) but most people aren't and won't go out and look at these papers, either because they can't have access or are unable or unwilling to spend their freetime reading. That's why it should be the responsibility of educational establishments to give people the whole picture of important issues rather than a blinkered view
Wow, you believe that the Earth is warming because its field is weakening, then you claim that we're not causing global warming because Jupiter and Mars show climatic shifts. And after all of that research you claim to have done, you don't see the obvious flaw in that position? Jupiter's field isn't weakening and Mars's field has been too weak to stop solar wind particles for as long as we've been around to see the planet. Any warming you see now on those two planets is not due to particles. (Nor is it on Earth: particles would be stopped higher up in the atmosphere, not near the surface where the warming is occurring. However, thanks to the way the atmosphere works, the stratosphere is actually *cooling*, as predicted by the greenhouse effect physics.)
Also, you have to ask yourself, if you're a smart person: if the Sun is getting brighter, why hasn't it been observed? We've been monitoring the Sun quite closely for over 50 years now and less careful for more than a century. We've been taking daily measurements of it and yet you can't point to any source that says its energy output is increasing by any measurable amount. Why? Because it hasn't been observed. But don't let data get in the way, you've done your own *research*!
As for explaining ice ages, the fact that you bring them up shows that you're either woefully ignorant of climate science or just trolling. There are very good reasons why ice ages occur and why they takes many thousands of years to start and then to reverse. And if you know a thing about what you were talking about, you'd know that they don't cause temperature fluctuations of the scale we're seeing now over a span of a century or less. But, again, you seem to think you're an expert so don't mind me or the facts!
You see these "fake debunkers" all the time. Even here on Slashdot. They post a bunch of "pseudo scientific gibberish", and just outright mincing of words. Are they flamers? Lazy scientists looking for a pseudo scientific forum with zero accountability? Wankers looking for self justification through mindless modding? My favorite fake debunker even finishes off his masterpiece by agreeing that global warming is, in fact, a problem.
This may seem like I'm being picky but the 'adds up to 11' example you gave is an observation, not a proof, go to a high level mathetmatician and they'll tell you the same (incidently the proof that 1+1=2 is something like 50 pages of very complex maths iirc). Perhaps it's a more fitting analogy then you realise?
Why pick just Mars and Venus? What about the other 4 planets, everything should be increasing to some degree in order to support your solar radiation theory. Either that or those 2 planets were picked because they are randomly in agreement with this theory.
The smaller point is that it *could* be cyclical. The larger point is that we should not all be collectively closing out minds to alternative theories.
What do you think caused the the global warm-up 1500 years ago?
Slightly OT but.... someone needs to use a dictionary. Plaintively means "mournfully" or "sorrowfully", which I assume isn't what the author intended.
Here is Christianity explained as simply as I know how:
God created humanity, but we're quite fallible and often make life miserable for ourselves and each other through our own failings. The way the world happens to work, God can't have a decent relationship with us under such circumstances. The workaround to this problem is that the burden of sin can be removed if an innocent persons accepts the punishment for sin in our place (which is where Jesus comes in, and the reason why he died in such an unpleasant way). We then have the option to cast off our shame and guilt and restore our relationship with God by asking forgiveness for our sin (for which Jesus died), and then when we die we can live with Jesus forever in heaven.
I hope this was helpful in some fashion. I have skipped over quite a few things; creation, the role of satan, the end times, the return of Jesus, the holy spirit, etc... Most of these things are details that Christians may disagree over and yet remain Christians. For instance, it doesn't matter a bit (as far as I understand) to a person's salvation whether they believe the world is 6 thousand years old or 4 billion.
Love your logic dude.
You can use it to deny anything (mostly because the steps you lay out are actually all unrelated, but hey, why let logic/the truth stand in the way of a good story, yeah?)
Lets see:
1. The pacific ocean has fish
1a All oceans have fish
2. Therefore, man is not having an impact on todays fish.
or
1. I got drunk on Friday
1a Everyone gets drunk Friday
2. Therefore, getting drunk is not having an impact on my relationship.
Maybe:
1. I voted Bush
1a. Everyone votes Bush
3. Therefore, Bush isn't having an effect on Man.
QED right?
You know, it's not a secret. There's this book that really easy to get, you can read it for yourself, and draw your own conclusions. The trick is to really just read it and see what it says rather than see what it says about pre-conceived notions or how it does or does not support some particular viewpoint.
That's a great thing - there is this final authority on the matter, and that final authority is not the opinion of one or many men. And, if you don't want to use just one translation, you can compare all of them that are out there, and even (if you're really gung-ho about learning if something is or is not true) learn Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic - or maybe just this version which lists the (ancient) word and its possible translations in line with an English (or whatever your native language) text.
But that's the thing: anyone that tells you that you cannot on your own is selling something. That's not to say you'll understand everything (I know I don't) but there's nothing there that says "Only certain people have the priviledge to interpret this."
So, you can either just take the television and media stereotypes, or even the words (good or bad) of those around you at face value, or do a little legwork yourself. It is not, nor has it ever been, supposed to be 'blind' faith. In fact, a good bit of it is related to how to not be blind about the world...
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Glad you mentioned Mars and Venus. Mars has a very thin atmosphere containing CO2, and it is pretty cold. Venus has an extremely thick (about 200x ours) atmosphere almost entirely made of CO2. And guess what? Its hotter than Mercury. Hot enough to melt lead. And did you know that Venus is closer to earth (and closer in size) than Mars is?
In regards to the speed of warming, it is generally supposed that, much as there is a delay from the longest day of the year before the hottest day, there is also a delay from the onset of high CO2 to when the atmosphere warms up. This is because the oceans took a while to warm up. In the last 2 decades we've experienced the 15 hottest years on record, and even a lot of climatologists are surprised by the rapid heating over this period.
Jeremy
Well... We can always do an experiment. Let's release massive amounts of greenhouse-gasses and see what happens.
Oh, wait. We started that experiment at the beginning of the industrial revolution, didn't we?
If nothing happens, we saved lots of money and effort on not developing low-emission technologies.
If the outcome is screwing up the earth, it's lucky we've got nice biospheres like venus and mars right around the corner.
But we have no reference so we wouldn't know what would have happened in the other scenario anyway...
Maybe we should just restrain our emissions anyway... Just in case.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Oops... my bad, I didn't even stop to think. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so quick with the submit button.
It doesn't much matter, though, does it? The carbon dioxide content of the oceans is increasing too; you can't very well claim the current atmospheric CO2 increase is from the oceans, if that is indeed what you're claiming.
ResidntGeek
Hate it say it, but that was actually the almost the first thing that I thought of too - right after "Christopher Monckton - wasn't he that loony from the Thatcher years?" (a quick google suggested that yes he was, and also that he held some, er, "unusual" views that I wasn't aware of).
The fact that idiot A and idiot B disagree about a major issue of the day isn't surprising. The problem is that they're both arguing in religious rather than scientific terms (neither the Guardian nor the Telegraph are peer-reviewed scientific journals, and both have opposing, decidedly non-neutral points of view on many issues).
The future climate of this planet is too important to be left to people selling newspapers or massaging their own egos, and I'm not convinced that politicians (of whatever colour) are helping much at the moment either - The Stern Review (an economist throwing some numbers together based on existing scientific data) won't help "convert" people who don't "believe" the scientific data in the first place. More actual science would help - maybe some of the cash that went into the Stern Review should have gone there instead?
Where did you get your science education? Bob Jones University?
Almost every example you mention was "common sense" knowledge that was passed from generation to generation without any scientific testing. What corrected those mis-conception was actual testing of FACTS which proved that they were wrong (as in observing the stars and planets and calculating their path and turns out it is much simpler when you put the Sun in the middle).
And no scientist would or ever say that atom is the smallest thing in the universe. What scientist would say is that it is the smallest object that we can observe (either directly or indirectly), which is exactly what we say about quarks.
Seriously, you need to go back and take some realy scientific courses.
The way it was explained to me (by an ethics prof a Christian college), there are two main schools of thought when it comes to Christianity and the environment:
According to dominion theology, God gave us the world to do whatever we want with. "Rule over the earth and subdue it, be fruitful and multiply, etc..." The earth exists only to serve our purposes. We might choose to avoid widespread environmental destruction, but only because we need a comfortable place to live, and not because the world has any intrinsic value of its own.
According to stewardship theology, God gave us the world so that we could take care of it, and it's something that he rather we didn't destroy. We have the authority to make decisions regarding its governance, but we should take care of it, like we might take care of a valuable painting that we couldn't paint ourselves, and who's artist might return some day and be upset if we drew mustaches on all the characters depicted therein.
There were other options that didn't mesh well with Christianity, as well, including the idea that the world is God, and that when we damage the environment we hurt God directly.
Why does everyone here think that they are smarter than climate scientists?
That is very simple to explain. It is fear of what they (or their descendants) are likely to face if the climate scientists are right - either significant lifestyle changes or major climate problems. Far better try to convince yourself that the majority of respectable scientists are wrong than to live in fear of the future.
Let me try.
1. I believe global warming is caused by people.
2. I cannot present evidence to support this assertion.
3. I cannot explain why other planets with no people are also experiencing global warming.
4. Since I cannot explain it, it is irrelevant.
5. Therefore I am right.
QED, hey this is fun.
> Try and pick somebody who isn't a complete loon next time.
Yea, someone else noticed that. And went straight to -1 same as my post will go. You can't rationally discuss religious issues with fanatics and most of slashdot fits that description when it comes to socialism and it's pet front causes.
Good grief, Slashdot thinks (from the way the posted it it is clear the editor is advancing this drivel as an "answer" to the earlier article) an op-ed in the freaking Guardian! by a socialist mouthpiece who thinks writing a book makes him an expert.
Ok, other than hearing the name pop up in moonbat circles on a regular basis all I know about the guy I just pulled from Wikipedia. But it is generally held to be a leftist dominated site so it is probably being biased for him and not against. Other than what looks like a politically motivated "environmental science" gig his other formal education is all fuzzy/political/socialist stuff except a degree in Zoology. And he is criticizing his opponent for not being an expert. Pot, meet kettle.
This only reenforces the asstertion I made in the thread for the original piece that in the end all us laymen can do is evaluate the credibility of the proponents for each side. On the pro GW side we have an assortment of socialists and marxists who, coincidence of course, are preaching that if we don't all adopt a one world socialist government that will be powerful enough to save us from Global Warming that we are all going to die. Meanwhile the GW believer who also belives in individual liberty and Repreventetive governments is all but unheard of.
Now combine with the fact that all the leading lights in the political face of GW have been WRONG on every other major issue they have championed and it gets hard to buy into it. You name the failed idea, they pushed it. Appeasement of the Soviets, Nuke Freeze, Alar scare, Fat nazis, hell a lot of em were on board the Ice Age scare of the seventies. Then you get the ones who fell for Paul Erlich's doomsday scenarios like the population bomb who are now sure GW is going to kill us all... unless we abandon free markets and liberty.
Plus we get what looks like blatent supression of alternate theories and contrary evidence on these political science theories. Somewhat related example: I was watching Nove recently, the ep about the impending magnetic pole reversal. They showed a map of localized distortions in the field. Guess where the biggest one is? Right about where the Ozone Hole is. Now a weak spot would allow more radiation in and radiation breaks up ozone. Plausable enough that even if there is a hole in that reasoning they should have anticipated it and added a few seconds to deal with it. Silence, nary a word. Considering the political bent of the show it tells me there is probably something being covered up.
But back to GW. Solar output is up, temp increases are being observed on planets other than the Earth. No computer model to date have made an accurate PREDICTION of future longterm patterns. Managing, with enough massaging, to roughly reproduce past datasets isn't good enough to justify the sort of upheavals in society the GW faithful are proposing. We haven't had powerful computers long enough, period. Do a run today that predicts the weather patterns twenty years from now and in twenty years I'll consider the theory... IF it gets it right.
Right now we have two theories. The earth is warming slightly along with the rest of the solar system, perhaps with some influence from us but it has both warmed and cooled in the past and will almost certainly continue to do both in the future. The other says it is all our fault and will spiral out of control unless we act NOW and only socialism can save us. Occam's razor makes short work of this decision.
Democrat delenda est
It is only when I hear global warming 'debunking' coming from someone who willingly commutes ten miles to work every day by bicycle that I will lend it any credence as being, beyond question, objective.
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.
Experts apparently do not think the climate changes are related. Here is one example.
Has not been the cause.There are tremendous difficulties when one is studying a system that cannot be broken into components and cannot be tested experimentally. Every result should be assessed skeptically.
"Will a tripling in global carbon emissions cause a 5 degree rise, or only a .005 degree rise? If the latter, do we really need to be worried about it? "
Has anybody even suggested the latter? I don't mean oil companies I mean actual climatologists.
Also what if "worrying about it" is good for other reasons. For example what if we all concerved our usage, got better insulation, used public transportation more, walked more, bicycled more, carpooled more. How harmful is that?
evil is as evil does
"Well, these mushrooms are the only available food source...and there's a chance they may be poisonous. So, in order to avoid getting poisoned, I'm going to starve to death, just in case."
I don't know chief, that logic doesn't make much sense to me. If the global warming hysteria is right, we're screwed no matter what we do. Reducing emissions just puts off the inevitable, so bust out the sunscreen, grab yourself an ice-cream cone, and come enjoy the Last Days before Armageddon with me.
No, you do. There is no such thing as a scientific fact.
There is experimental data, and you make a hypothosis based on that data. You test your hypothosis against new data. If your hypothosis stands up against such data, then it is a theory. Multiple theories can both be supported by the same data, so you come up with new experiments to try to distinguish which theory is more likely true. No where, ever is there any facts... just hypothosis, theory and data.
If you want facts, you need to look down the hall and to the right in the Mathematics department. This is the science department. Here, even numbers are a theory.
"Anyway, the way I see it, as long as we can't determine how much effect CO2 has on the earth, we can't effectively combat it. I mean, realistically, if we believed the global warming studies, we should be switching entirely to nuclear power within the next decade, and then bombing the shit out of any country that refuses to do the same. If the global warming proponents are right, the growing economies of India and China are a massive threat to the survival of our whole species. We either get them to stop polluting within the next 10 years, or we have to kill them off in order to preserve as much of our species as possible."
This is the "perfect is the enemy of good" argument. If we can't solve the entire problem then we should take no action at all. Not even a little.
It's a dumb argument. Saying that you don't know the exact degree of risk and beause you can't quantify it to nth degree of certainty you will do absolutely nothing is just insane.
"nd we CAN be certain that the only truly effective ways to combat CO2 pollution would also cause massive global economic disruption, as well as requiring force to implement. So let's do a little more research first, huh?"
Bullshit on all accounts. Oh and by the way I think a little more research has been done. It's just that you refuse to believe it. I don't think more research is going to change your mind. Lucky for us not even bush is that stupid. Even he is starting to come around.
evil is as evil does
Of course the anti-capitalists (which is the true goal of the so-called environmental movement) would never present a low probability wild guess based on intentionally falsified data (such as the "hockey stick") as fact...oh wait...that's exactly what they did.
Do you really need to name calling for those who you disagree with? You're doing the same thing as what you accused the grandparent of doing. Fact is is not all environmentalists are anticapitalists, sure some are but not all. I know people who, like me, are both environmentalists and capitalists as well. And more and more companies are getting into the act as well. The book Natural Capitalist offers a bunch of case studies and such illustrating how businesses have been able to cut expenses by reducing resources and waste. The Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) is a nonprofit that "shows businesses, communities, individuals, and governments how to create more wealth and employment, protect and enhance natural and human capital, increase profit and competitive advantage, and enjoy many other benefits--largely by doing what they do far more efficiently."
FalconShould there be a Law?
The article itself has been given a good thrashing by Steven Milloy. Look under Tuesday (11-14-06) section. http://www.junkscience.com/
Nice try, hotshot.
Guess where the money for all the Global Warming supporters comes from? Grants, government funding, university funding, etc. Guess what happens if their pet theories don't get any press? That's right, hotshot. No funding.
Before you start the tired old cries of "anyone who takes money from X must be corrupt!", you should consider the implications for your favorite side since they are funded with money taken by force.
One man's religion is another man's belly-laugh. - LL
And on the political front, the only major ally for Pres. Bush's stand on global warming, Australia's Prime Minister John Howard, is now willing to look at carbon trading.
Not true. Stephen Harper has also taken Bush's stance of ignoring the problem, bringing shame and ridicule on Canada.
I came here for a good argument
As a scientist working in a related field I find this desire to polarise the whole thing utterly exasperating. For whatever reason, mainstream scientific opinion gets lumped on one side of this divide, and the other side is left fixated on fringe opinions from a tiny minority of dissenters on one wing of the science.
There! He said it! The Left is fixated on fringe opinion from a tiny minority! Even this genuine scientist agrees with us - global warming is a hoax!!
This message brought to you by Saudi Aramco, Halliburton, and the Bush administration. All rights reserved.
More to the point it was the Roman's not the Jews that killed Jesus. Even Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ shows that.
Ah but Gibson portrayes the Roman Legionare as a doubting Thomas when historically he was known to be sadistic and vindictive. He would of taken pleasure in doing not just watching the whippings and such in the movie.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Of course that's highly important, because human beings must specialize in one topic, and can't possibly be knowledgable about any other unrelated topic.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Agreed that political opposition to Kyoto motivates some people; they'd be better served by highlighting that than by trying to undercut the science. I was hearing about the GW debate for quite a while before I learned about the developing-countries Kyoto exemption.
In 2000 instead of voting for who I wanted to vote for I specifically voted against Bush. Within weeks he confirmed my doubts about him when he came out against Kyoto. However when he did he said something I hadn't known, that not all countries had to meet emission limits. That very night I looked it up and sure enough some countries didn't have limits. China and India being two of them. At the tyme both were building a bunch of new coal fired power plants. In 2000 the per capita emissions of China and India was about 2 tonnes CO2, and the US emitted about 22 tonnes per person. With 300 million people that's 6.6 billion tonnes whereas together China's and India's emissions are about 6 billion. With a population of about 3 billion people between China and India if they were to double their emissions to 4 tonnes even if the US elimited all of it's emissions their increase would of made up for the emission reduction of the US. Fact is is without China and India limiting their emissions there's nothing any other country can do to reduce emissions.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Great question, good answer.
I'd only add that interested, wealthy parties (the energy industry being the most significant) have deliberately fuelled the idea that those climate scientists are corrupt or have some bizarre malign agenda of their own. For those who don't follow the basic concepts of science (eg. peer review) and are conspiracy minded, it's convincing, reassuring and reinforces their basic view of the world.
You also get to play smart-ass by pointing out how different from the 'herd' you are by holding the 'alternative' view. Cool.
Dangerous, self-defeating, stupid...
I believe this is the great challenge of our maturing generation - everyone in their 20's and 30's now. The last couple of generations created this mess. The middle-aged politicians of this generation aren't capable of getting their heads around fixing this: they're still fighting the cold war and trying to fight for oil. We're going to have to step up or watch our children suffer the consequences.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
The original article asked for a point by point analysis and evidence that the first article was wrong. This "believer" in global warming throws out a few personal attacks against the original author, and then boldly states that "The medieval warm period is accepted as having not happened" But gives no evidence whatsoever. I was taught about this period all through elementary school (in the early 80's). The leading theory then was it was this warm period that allowed the world to escape the dark ages because less people had to spend 100% of their time subsistence farming.
.1C? or even .3C?
Basically this article says "Global warming is happening, accept it" while providing no evidence other than "This guy's an idiot, he doesn't even have a degree". He only tries (very weakly) to debunk one of his claims, that the world has been warmer in the past. A claim which if not confirmed by the warm period of 5-600 years ago, is certainly confirmed in the earth's history. I read an article in Scientific American or National Geographic just last month that conceded this point, stating that the fluctuation of the earth's temperature has a range of 15-20C over the past 3-5 million years. Obviously more than 5 9s of that data is pre-industrial revolution (thus not caused by man). Those articles also plainly laid out that we are at historical lows in both temperature and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
If this Stefan-Boltzmann equation is designed to model a "black body" how is the UN justifying any modification to this model? What are they basing their alterations on? How do they decide how "non-black" the earth is.
The only other thing he mentions is Hansen's predictions. Ok, so Hansen had 3 predictions low, middle, high and said it would probably be middle, and it was close to that (.1C). The UN itself had much higher predictions (3C-5C) so why are we supposed to believe the UN now when they say 5C-9C over the next 100 years if its going to be closer to
In short, this is a completely typical article to see from global warming believers. They pretty much all go like this "The world is over, if we don't turn off all electrical devices by tomorrow and start riding bikes then global warming will kill us all. If you don't believe this statement you are an idiot!". If you ask global warming advocates for evidence they say things like "The evidence is all around you! Look at the hurricanes! Look how many people died in the heat wave last year!" People die in heat waves every year, the temperature and localized weather events fluctuate wildly. The climate on the whole remains pretty steady, and if anything activity on the Sun is much more likely to change the climate than anything we do.
"http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/5/1 4 /161152.shtml"
LOL! This is too good. To refute claims of scientific consensus, you refer us to an article on NEWSMAX.com. "Well it depends on what you mean by 'consensus'". Just like the meaning of "is"? Or is this different?
Do you people modding this guy up know what NEWSMAX is? It is an online conservative news re-publishing magazine.
When I clicked through the ad on the right said "Conservative T-shirts" picturing a T-shirt reading "Hippies Smell". God, this has scientific, scholarly research written all over it!
There were an additional 11 ads lined up along the left column. And a further 6 ads on the bottom of the page.
The linked article is actually an article from csnnews.com (it says so at the top of the article).
CSNNews.com claims:
"Study after study by the Media Research Center, the parent organization of CNSNews.com, clearly demonstrate a liberal bias in many news outlets "
And further:
"The Cybercast News Service was launched on June 16, 1998 as a news source for individuals, news organizations and broadcasters who put a higher premium on balance than spin and seek news that's ignored or under-reported as a result of media bias by omission."
LOL. The Slashdot mods are being duped by the online equivalent of FOX "News".
Example: it's been asserted many times that there's been a rise in temperatures that coincide with the industrial revolution. Now why is that? Could it be because that temperatures were being measured where people were, rather than where people were not? It's reasonably clear that human concentration in urban areas increase local temperatures. We weren't taking temperature readings in the 1800s because we were worried about the Earth. We wanted to know about the local weather.
Scientists can pretty reliably determine historical temperatures from things like tree cores. Humans aren't needed to record the temp, it was recorded in the trees.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Well, these mushrooms are the only available food source.
Fossil fuels are not the only available (or indeed the only practical) energy source. Your analogy fails.
Hi,
Mann claimed that the temperatures were the hottest in 1000 years.
Monckton claims that there was a Mideval Warm Period where temperatures were as high or higher than they are today.
The report claims there is less confidence that the current temperatures are unprecedented prior when records to 1600.
If you read the full NAS report then it largely confirms what Monckton claims.
See <URL:http://fermat.nap.edu/books/0309102251/html>
Also from the report:
<blockquote>
In summary, MM05 [McKitrick and McIntyre] show that the normalization employed by MBH98 [Mann] tends to bias results toward having a hockey-stick-like shape, but the scope of this bias is exaggerated by the choice of normalization and errors in the RE critical value estimate. Those biases truly present in the MBH98 temperature estimate remain important issues...
</blockquote>
Can we make a hole in the ozone ...
No, of course we can't. It is axiomatic that humans can have no measureable effect on the atmosphere.
Why is it that you people accept the overwhelming scientific, scholarly consensus on most issues that affect your life, yet become staunch ultra-skeptics when it comes to issues that cast doubt on your pet religious and political ideologies?
... perhaps with some influence from us"???
You can't have it both ways. If you go and do the research you can find crazy fringe elements affecting just about every field of science.
Is it that you are uniquely qualified in the fields of environmental and atmospheric science? Does your extensive research background in these fields put you in a position of being able to uniquely reject the scientific consensus on global warming, where you accept the scientific consensus on nearly every other issue?
I think not. I think you are politicizing something that ought not be political.
"The earth is warming slightly
Are you aware we also have 3 theories of the development of the planet earth? One theory posits that it formed some 4.5 billion years ago. Another theory posits that it formed some tens of thousands of years ago. Yet a third theory posits that it formed 6000 years ago.
Now, I'm no "man of science", but gee golly, it looks like we have one theory WAY out of line claiming the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago. And then we have two theories claiming that the earth is less than 20-30 thousand years old. What makes more sense to you? That 4.5 billion years old theory seems pretty far out there in left field. 2 theories vs 3. Boy, by the looks of it the scientific consensus is that the earth is only a few tens of thousands of years old at most! I think it's important to take a balanced view on these things you know?
Oh, wait... you're a political idealogue, not a religious idealogue, so you buy into the wacky anti global warming speculation but not the young earth speculation. Is that right? I thought so. But boy do you have a long winded way of saying it.
You also get to play smart-ass by pointing out how different from the 'herd' you are by holding the 'alternative' view. Cool.
Also, there does seem to be this belief that because science sometimes advances dramatically because of individuals with different ideas, that any individual with an idea that isn't mainstream is worth listening to, as if being 'alternative' is, by itself, being closer to the truth.
What those who belief this conveniently forget is that the majority of 'alternative' ideas are always wrong, and you only get to know which ones are right when they are accepted by the mainstream. Picking whichever 'alternative' idea supports what you want to believe is no way to be scientific or get to the truth.
Dangerous, self-defeating, stupid...
I agree - very dangerous.
Man, you really need either another drink, or a refill of your anti-psychotic prescription--or maybe a tinfoil hat.
Have a cup of tea. Tea's a good drink. It'll get you through.
Why does everyone here think that they are smarter than climate scientists?
... It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong....It is those who support ideas for emotional reasons only who can't change."
Asimov's Corollary
"If a scientific heresy is ignored or denounced by the general public, there is a chance it may be right. If a scientific heresy is emotionally supported by the general public, it is almost certainly wrong
I think the problem is that science has become emotional, politicized, and suppressed on BOTH sides of the aisle. People know this and start to question ESPECIALLY when one side declares that the debate is over and a consensus has been reached. I personally sleep better at night knowing that global warming has joined the ranks of Newton's Three Laws of Motion and the Ideal Gas Law where a scientific consensus has been reached.
Scientists are not immune from politics, egos, or having vested interests.
Want to get another grant from Bad Guy Oil Company?
Better make sure your research supports the notion that global warming is a hoax.
Want to get another grant from Good Guy National Science Foundation?
Better make sure your research supports the view that global warming is real and that humans are responsible.
Want to make money beyond the dreams of avarice on the speaker-circuit while planning future presidential pursuits?
Push the panic button early and often and come up with the research to show that global warming will lead to the Ghostbusters Syndrome (tm):
Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling.
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.
"Slashdot contains less that 1% climatologists"
/. The exception to this is the environment and earth sciences, on this subject many of the early posts contain a similar form of logic to flat-earthers and creationists (see first post for a shining example). This is not because of a failure amoungst /.ers to understand science but rather a success for industry propoganda, astroturfers and fools. Come back to the article in a few days (when the mods are finished), read at +4 and you will see that a bunch of computer nerds do indeed understand the basics of climate science.
It should be such that a BSc in any field gives one the basic capacity to sort the shit from the clay when faced with conflicting scientific claims. This is the normal outcome for psuedo-science posted on
A BSc certaily does not give you knowledge about the climate but it should give you the ability to recognise and debunk psuedo-science when it smacks you in the face.
Disclaimer: I have a general interest in science and a BSc in computer science, I use this site ( > 1% climatoligists ) to help me with any unfamiliar concepts peculiar to climate science.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Is that what you just said when you said that 4 and 2 were the same? Sweet.
Hey man,
Here's an interesting exercise: replace "India" everywhere in your post with "the U.S.", and you'd basically have the status quo. If anyone is getting invaded over global warming, it'd be us. Except no one else is really into invading right now. You may not have noticed, but the U.S. is a teensy bit behind the rest of the developed world on this issue. And we're the ones accusing others of plotting to tear us down by saddling us with emissions restrictions. You've actually captured the situation quite nicely, but in reverse.
it's useless unless we can convince ALL countries to do something about it. I don't see any way of achieving that short of war.
There was a time, ancient history now, when nations employed something called- wait for it- diplomacy. You seem fixated on some sort of war on global warming. Frankly, I think that idea is, pardon me, retarded.
You are mixing up a lot of issues. India and China have less oil than the U.S., so they will have similar geopolitical motivations to move away from it. Interestingly, the US, India, and China all have a buttload of coal; what will be necessary is to strike a deal on using that, or at least sequestering the CO2. Sequestering carbon will probably increase generating costs by 20% or so (that's the number I recall). Factor in distribution costs and you're looking at a 10% increase at the outlet of the cost of electricity. Not insignificant but not exactly catastrophic. Transportation is more challenging but still feasible. Let GreenFuel get their technology mature and use the CO2 from the coal plants to make biodiesel. I don't know what the technology will be, but the point is it's not that hard to do. But right now utilities, oil companies, etc. don't have the incentives to do jack. We do need global consensus, (and yes, it's OK if North Korea and friends don't play), and that isn't easy. But to oversimplify, it really comes down to the US, China, India, and Russia. That's where most of the coal is. Oil will more or less take care of itself through the price of scarcity and where it's located. Natural gas is a low carbon/unit energy fuel, so we don't need to worry about it so much either. If we figure out how to mine the methane hydrate deposits, though, all bets are off!
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
That said, to all of those who believe that the solution is to go back to a wonderful agrarian society where we don't have cars, or planes, or plastics, it's too late. If we stopped using the worst offenders, millions of people would starve to death. There is no going back to the 15th Century, and I for one don't particularly want to.
Kyoto is also not the answer because it'll simply mean that even more companies move their factories to the third world, all the same polution will continue to occur(probably even more so because the third world has even less stringent laws than we do), and jobs will be lost in the process.
Personally I reckon there's a pretty simple first step to be taken. The free market responds to money, that is cost and profit. Currently we fine people who pollute to much, but that tends to just send them to places which don't fine them. That means the better option is to reward(probably through tax breaks) companies which reduce their emmissions. If the reward is greater than the cost, companies will do it on their own.
Science may not be "about consensus", however science indeed makes use of consensus. That's what peer review is: people reaching consensus on the reliabilty of data on and the chain of reasoning use to build conclusions from that data.
In my physics lab classes many years ago, I managed to disprove pretty much every principle of optics. The scientific consensus on these principles, though, strongly suggests that I was just a piss-poor experimentalist. (As least as far as staring at spots of light in a dark room went; my other lab work was better.)
The stronger the consensus, the stronger the evidence needed to overturn it. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," as the cliche goes; extraordinary claims are those that go against scientific consensus.
The consensus on climate is now strong enough that claiming that releasing billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year has no significant effect, is an extraordinary claim.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"Science is not about consensus (which is a political thing) nor is it about an appeal to authority (which is a religious thing) but about data and the conclusions that can be drawn from that data."
You are confusing science with absolute truth, there is no such thing. Scientific "fact" is by definition a consensus amongst scientists on a particular question, the consensus can be wrong and any scientist worth his title will support a valid argument against it. The problem with both evolution and the earth's climate is not the science itself but a bunch of crackpots who (due to religion, politics or greed) attempt to shout down the consesus with arguments that were thouroughly discredited years ago.
CO2 and the ocean: The ocean is a net sink for CO2, leading to fears that it could become too acidic for the phytoplankton that convert CO2 into sediment, it's effect on climate is a hell of a lot more complex than releasing CO2 from a can of beer.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Given the potential consequences, if we don't know, wouldn't it be wise to err on the side of caution?
We can always dump more CO2 into the atmosphere later if we learn that it won't be a significant problem.
http://outcampaign.org/
What about things like forest fires and volcanoes? Those operate independently of man and spew out a lot of carbon dioxide.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
- Is carbon dioxide the most important greenhouse gas?
- What percentage of the currently detected carbon dioxide increase is directly attributable to human causes, and how can you verify that percentage?
- What is the real motivation for the current defamation of carbon dioxide, a gas that is vital to the well-being of all plant life on earth?
(It couldn't be that carbon dioxide defamers are merely plugging their political platform of economic regression, de-industrialization, and humans-as-antiplanet-cancer, could it? Nahhh. Impossible!)(What about water vapor?)
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
I think the problem is that science has become emotional, politicized, and suppressed on BOTH sides of the aisle.
Both sides? Please have, even just a cursory, look at a good scientific abstracting service. You'll find there is no debate, there are no two sides of the aisle. The science is unambigious, the planet is warming. Moreover, I challenge you to find current papers published in a reputable peer-reviewd journal which pruport the notion that human activity is unrelated to the increasing atmopsheric C02, or that increasing atmospheric C02 is unrelated to the observed warming.
Before you comment on the emotionality, politicisation etc. of science, you should have some familiarity with that science. Since you are under the impression that there is something controversial here, it is clear that you are more familiar with the political rather than the scientific debate.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
> it's all about risk management from here on in, and any individual's 'opinion' regarding the 'facts'
> should be ignored.
Exactly. RISK MANAGEMENT and FACTS are the last things the GW faithful want to discuss. Before we get to risk management we have to get down to real facts so that we can determine the ODDS of each proposed action, the cost of implementing it and the potential costs of not implementing. And Paul Erlich had a lot better 'facts' on his side than Al Gore does and was still WRONG, WRONG WRONG.
> If the nay sayers are right, and there really isn't this terrible threat to our planet, then the worst that
> can happen is that nothing will happen, whether we choose to change our world dramatically or not to
> accommodate... we'll get cleaner air and a whole stack of other benefits for free.
In your land of Fairie perhaps. Here on planet Earth nothing is "free", not even Free Software. (Said as a 90% Pure member of the GNU Generation.) Poverty, lost productivity, millions dead when resources are diverted away from lifting the third world into the 20th Century, high probability of a new Dark Age when it is realized the only way to force the required measures on people is to remove what little liberty remains in the West. Perhaps you don't consider these things to be a 'cost.' I do.
> If on the other hand the tree hugging socialist swine you refer to are right, then not doing anything
> about the problem MAY cause our civilization to suffer irreparably, or worse.
The fallacy of a binary choice with an assumption of 50-50 odds. Almost as stupid as any argument that begins with "if it saves just one life...." or when they have to invoke "the children" to sell a crackpot idea. By your logic we should say screw global warming and devote all our industrial output to building an asteroid defense. We KNOW there is a danger there and that the odds of another strike approach 100% eventually.
But we don't do that because sane people know the game of life is about risk management, not risk elimination. Is man made change to our environment a problem? Probably. Important enough, at this time, to kill millions over? No. Important enough to divert resources from other more pressing problems? No. And that is exactly what the choice you propose is all about. You utopians get these grand notions so you can feel better about yourselves... because YOU are enlightened.... because YOU care more. Same sort of binary decision insanity that banned DDT and caused tens of millions of dead bodies in the third world from malaria. Was/is DDT a problem? Yup, but one that with proper RISK MANAGEMENT could have still saved millions AND kept concentrations low enough to keep secondary effects to managable levels.
Democrat delenda est
I particularly like how you "prove" your point by offering your family as property.
I'll "Bet" they feel special.
Just for the record, Roger Pielke (Jr.) supports the very lowest end of estimates, he is at odds with most climate scientists on the issue of solar forcing but is at least arguing from a scientific viewpoint and not a political one. He often posts interesting comments and questions on the realclimate site.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
One data point that argues that there is more involved with global climate change than CO2 is the change in temperature readings across the US during the 2 to 3 days of the "No-Fly" restrictions after 9/11/2001 - the nights were a couple of degrees cooler.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
It is a mixture of cherry-picking, downright misrepresentation, and pseudo-scientific gibberish.
Are they talking about the propagandists or debunkers?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Oh give me a break! I have seen too many journals succumb to peer-pressure within nominally "scientific" areas such as computer science to believe that most journals are un-biased.
Which leaves you relying for your science on the Sunday Telegraph?
In any case you reply lacks any relevance. No claim was made that any particular journal, nor the entire world of journals was unbiased. I simply pointed out that you need to be reading journal papers (not the political press) to get an idea of where the scientific debate (or lack thereof) is at. The OP, in assuming that this issue is scientifically controversial, evidently has not.
BTW, was the "sustained amount of effort to prevent the disclosure of ulcers having a bacterial source" ultimately successful?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
2) That's one hell of a funny cycle that occurs exactly once (two data points) over a 100K year time period. Or did everyone miss the warm periods 3000 years ago, 4500 years ago, and so on? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the guy is a crackpot. Just because someone has an opinion doesn't mean I need to take it seriously.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Does not mean it is true.
if you're a scientist make some testable predictions. The ones mentioned in the original article sure didn't come true.
Yes, because the ones listed in the original article were not true representations of any actual predictions. The original author lied in what he wrote--that's the whole point of today's article.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Diplomacy only works when you have something to offer, or something to threaten with. What do you propose offering to India and China in order to make them play ball? Keep in mind that while the technology you're talking about may not be "hard to do", you're looking at it from a modern perspective. For a lot of these places it's going to come down to cost issues and availability of technology. You're asking them to make things a hell of a lot harder (and more expensive) with no real benefit to them. At this point you need either the carrot or the stick. What's your carrot? Do we subsidize their economies? How much? For how long? In which way? And what do we do if they take our "assistance" and fail to comply with their end of the bargain? You seem to think the whole world is a very reasonable and honest place. I'm sorry to break it to you, but that just isn't so.
As for the US being "a teensy bit behind the rest of the developed world on this issue", I seem to recall that Canada and Australia are nearly as bad, and their emissions have been rising at a greater rate than those of the US. In fact, toxic emissions in the US (not-CO2) have fallen in recent times, while those in Canada have risen. This despite the fact that Canada is a Kyoto signatory.
Anyway, cast the US as the bad guy (again) if you want, it doesn't make a difference. The point is, for it to be effective, control of CO2 emissions has to be global, and that's not likely to happen without warfare. We can't even agree globally on simple things like human rights; do you really expect the whole world to agree on emission control?
As the GP pointed out realclimate has plenty of esoteric and usefull data, their discussion of "how much CO2 is too much" can be found here.
I don't see how Mars or Venus can give us insights into Earth's current climate, Mars barely has an atmosphere, Venus has a surface temprature hot enough to melt lead, neither have an ocean. The red herring of variable solar forcing is also debunked on realclimate if you care enough to find it for yourself.
There will never (and can never) be precise enough answers to staisfy all comers, but we do know (to a very high degree of certainty) the outcome will be bad if we continue with "business as usual". Ressurecting old and invalid arguments on slashdot will not change that prediction.
"So far the only proof we have that co2 is linked to global warming[...blah, blah, blah,..]"
The "proof" comes from hard core physics, ie: the absorption spectra of CO2 molecules. Throw that out and you also have to throw out a lot of our notions about physics in general.
I find it sad that unsubstaniated dribble such as you post is modded +5 insightfull when there is such a wealth of information available to debunk such claims. However I do agree we are not certain about the effects on humans and the environment and therefore must look for the most likely outcomes rather than the extreme outcomes at either end.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I'm not worried about global warming. By the time our governments truly accept its consequences for everything living or dead, we will already be playing with sticks and stones...
Ok, I lied, I'm worried about global warming.
If you were taught creationism as a valid argument in science class, then you had a very bad education. How the fuck does creationism enter into science in any way?
... and then they built the supercollider.
We have to means now to study climate by looking at the tree rings our oldest living trees, tree rings on petrified trees, and doing deep-core ice samples of Antarctic ice.
From that analysis so far, we know that Earth's climate has always wildly varied over the years. Indeed, from reading the journals of Church monks in Europe during the Middle Ages we know that Europe during the early Middle Ages was quite warm and the later Middle Ages was quite cold; it's possible that we're returning to the warmer climate of early Middle Age Europe again.
But try telling, persuading or cajoling China, India, Indonesia, South America and Africa to alter their pollution output (particularly soot and CO2).
GOOD LUCK FOLKS!
And that was why the original Kyoto Protocol as signed was flawed to start with. If what they agreed to did include China, India, and the Third World (e.g., essentially the whole world) to comply with the CO2 limits, I think public support in the USA would have been far higher, to say the least.
Because climate scientists can't predict the weather. A theory is only as good as its predictive ability. How do you test climate theories? These days, you create a computer model.
However, the model is only as good as the designer and the data you put into it. And as all mutual funds say, "past performance is not indicitive of future performance."
What if the models are wrong? Are you willing to spend money to fix something that may not happen (or may not be fixable), taking money away from people and projects that need it today? Would you take cancer research, welfare payments, and public transportation subsidies to fund...what would they fund, exactly? More climate research? That sounds a bit self-serving. That's like the poor saying that they want more money from the government.
How well do the models predict things? Economic models, with a ridiculous amount of real, measurable data, are no better than 50% right. In fact, the financial models used on Wall Street, which are the best that money can buy, are no better than 50% right (give or take a few basis points). Why do climate scientists think that they can do a better job?
The biggest credibility problem, though, is simple: weathermen can't predict the weather next week. Climate != weather, but really - why would anyone think that people could predict the weather in the next 200 years when they can't see through to next week?
As to people that argue that it's a complex phenomenon, etc, etc - exactly.
There are people who have been doing unbiased studies for decades. They're called scientists.
I am not a environmental scientist. However I am an expert at statistical analysis. (An expert statistical analyzer?) There is absolutely no question that the earth's core temperature is rising abnormally. However it is not entirely clear whether or not C02 is the prime culprit. At this point it is the best guess. As I'm sure all of you know, the scientific method requires laborious testing in closed conditions with isolated variables. In the best conditions an experiment can be run multiple times (often times in the 1000's). This allows for a large pool of data reducing the general variable error rates. Basically, if you flip a coin 4 times and record the results, you are more likely to see data sets of all heads or all tails. This might lead one to believe that one side is more likely to be flipped than another. However flip the coin 1000 times, you are more likely to get something close to a 50/50 split. Scientists are dealing with 1 earth. At best they have 3 examples to compare (Earth, Venus which has a dense C02 atmosphere, Mars) Point being, its clear that global warming is happening, its hard to be sure that C02 is the single most influential cause. Honestly I am very concerned that global warming has more than just a single cause. We are so eager for a simple, "single shot" answer in general these days... Outside of carbon dioxide emissions, I would like to see more done to combat the heat island effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_island/) which may or may not be contributing to global warming.
"I challenge you to find current papers published in a reputable peer-reviewd journal which pruport the notion that human activity is unrelated to the increasing atmopsheric C02"
The relevance is that for years you could hardly find anything published in reputable peer reviewed journals supporting the theory that ulcers are bacterial in origin, despite the fact that the theory was correct. He was illustrating that your challenge does not carry the weight you'd like it to, given that peer reviewed journals have in the past shown egregious and irrefutable bias against theories that upset the status quo, even when they're true. In other words, presence or absence from the journals is not the mark of respectability you imply.
Yes it was. After nearly a decade of repeated experimentation and rejected paper submissions, the medical science community finally accepted the truth. The refusal of the medical community to accept the proven bloody obvious despite easily reproducible results is a classic illustration of how consensus cannot be substituted for experimental proof.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Is being butchered and misrepresented. The constant varies with the medium upon which it is measured. This varies from the Quantum to the Relative Laws. For a solid understanding of it's application please download Heat Transfer Textbook by Lienhard IV/V at MIT. As a Mechanical Engineer the state of transition we use with the notion of a black body allows one to empirically measure [put bounds], on the integral energy measurement, that a material medium emits when concerning monochromatic emissive power. The point of a black body aides in the determination of the material medium's possible levels of transmitted and reflective radiant heat flux, in relation to the theoretical maximum absorptive value of the material medium. What purpose does it serve to mention this crucial law when it's not even understood?
I was giving a rundown for the masses of what we are seeing. But yeah...
:)
Nice to see you mention Enron too. "It's what we breathe out and the plants breathe in", if I remember correctly. Photosynthesis, now that's real science.
P.S. If this was just a trolling joke, feel free to laugh at me for biting...I probably should've taken more care on the last mail.
Slashdot is powered by your submission.
By what measure do you say past climate changes were more extreme that what's going on now? You are comparing a final result to a process that is just beginning.
It's not over yet.
What's the point to this? Do any of these Global Warming or Climate Change articles ever affect anyone's opinions? Let's throw in a discussion of Evolution v. Creationism/ID while we're at it. I vote the first person to post just declare the thread dead, it'll save everyone alot of time.
As the summary noted there has also been a rapid political shift in Australia, A few weeks ago I watched an interview with our environment minister and could not belive it was the same person who inhabited that body a year ago. However I think the most significant shift in opinion has been Rupert Murdoch "turning green", I also think Tony Blair deserves an honourable mention for the current u-turn towards "greener" politics.
OTOH: The political shift in Australia could be due to the "worst drought in 1000yrs" or some other anecdote, such as today's news where we saw snow falling around bushfires! For those unfimilair with Australia, snow in November is a rare occurence, it's happened twice in the last month along with a record breaking heatwave in October that reached 37C in Melbourne.
On a more somber note: Currenty we have culled 20% of our dairy heard and reduced our forecast grain harvest by 50%. The markets are flooded with malnourished livestock, the antarctic blasts and the associated frost has ruined our fruit and wine crops, and our bannanas are still recovering from a cyclone that wiped them off the map earlier this year. I understand our agricultural problems are not all directly caused by AGW but it certainly isn't helping the situation (except maybe for snowing on bushfires).
Speaking of agriculture it is difficult to get much in the way of historical data (last 20yrs) for total world harvests without paying a few hundred bucks, anyone got a link?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Stephen Colbert posts on Slashdot! Excuse me, I'll go and kill a bear to celebrate...
Hell, for all we know, the rise in CO2 might be the symptom instead of the cause of global warming. Granted, it's unlikely, but how do we know for sure? Has anyone measured CO2 levels on mars and venus? So far the only proof we have that co2 is linked to global warming is that any time in the past when temperatures have gone up, so has CO2.
I'd like to remind you that we've actually discovered a method by which CO2 does warm up the planet.
You're claiming that we know very little and you're forgetting everything doesn't need to be empirical. Let's take an example: we know that the date of the Chicxulub impact crater coincides very nicely with the extinction of dinosaurs. Which caused which? Maybe the global extinction triggered the falling of meteoroids! Wrong. Why? Because we understand very well how a meteor impact could cause mass extinction, but we don't have a silly clue to how an extinction could cause meteor impacts.
By what I know about climatology, there's no doubt whatsoever that there is a process by which greenhouse gases are warming up the planet.
Sure, it's not the only process, and not even the most important one. It is actually completely dependent on another, solar radiation hitting the planet (imagine Earth without that!). Maybe the effect of the variability of solar input is even larger than the largest possible impact of the greenhouse effect - even that doesn't nullify the fact that the greenhouse effect is the part we can do something about.
Anyway, we know from theory that the potential of the greenhouse effect is far from insignificant. Yeah, it could be countered by some yet unknown other effect, but I wouldn't count on that.
Nonsense. It is written by St Paul in Romans that "we walk in faith and not by what we see."
Hardly telling people to use their own eyes to see the world rationally, wouldn't you agree?
Oh - and if you start telling me I'm cherry picking, absolutely right. Whatever you quote from the Bible I'll find something else in there that flatly contradicts it.
And yes, I HAVE read the book (various versions) and you can probably guess already what my conclusions are.
To quote Martin Luther, "Reason is the enemy of faith."
Instead of fighting over whether global warming will kill our children or grandchildren, why not focus on the possibilities of new technology?
Not only from an ecological point of view, but also from an economical point of view, old technologies like burning fossil fuels (incl. brown coal power plants and nuclear power plants) are a dead end. Nuclear power plants have the problem of where to put the depleted radioactive material (making it an economical risk), and brown coal, oil, and gas power plants have the disadvantage of limited availability, which also make them economically unfeasable, despite all the efforts to filter their emissions (which makes them have less impact on the environment, but that still doesn't solve the availability issue). Some national governments have decreed laws on pollution long ago that makes polluters liable for their impact on environment. Hence, all these technologies are economically becoming extinct, especially in those countries (I think we can give a hand to the Green party here).
Renewable energy resources have become large markets; not just for the recycling industry which saves the manufacturing industry billions annually; but also for solar energy, wind energy and the like which are very widespread now. The currently emerging hydrogen engine market will solve the CO2 problem for good -- and hydrogen can be generated in solar power plants as well. The only emission of a hydrogen engine is water.
Energy corporations worldwide are undergoing a paradigm shift away from fossil fuels towards the more profitable renewable energy sources market.
A new solar panel type was recently developed that is dirt cheap and can provide electricity to homes and communities at a low price. And this is just one example.
So, I think, there's still room for optimism.
What happens if you wait too long?
What happens if instead of waiting, knee-jerk reactions take place instead, the world's economy is trashed and then it turns out that not only was CO2 not the threat that it was made out to be, it was actually a red herring and that something else was really behind global warming and, without a functioning economy, there's nothing we can do about it.
I'm all for reducing CO2 emissions (actually, I'd like to see a reduction in all forms of pollution) but there has to be a way to reduce C02 that doesn't require the destruction of the worlds economy.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Indeed, but they also have a short term (3 years) cooling effect from the particulates (sulphur mostly). Think nuclear winter. These things are included in the models, and are significant, but not as significant as the anthropogenic CO2.
This sort of thing has been sorted for several years now, I suggest you read up on the basics, paying particular attention to the attibutions from the models.
It might be a bit tiresome for you to have to do some research before contributing to discussions, but trust me, its nowhere near as tiresome as seeing the same old misunderstandings and misrepresentations go past again and again.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
Monckton is the guy who came up with the Eternity Puzzle.
http://www.mathpuzzle.com/eternity.html/
He was convinced the puzzle was insoluble and put up a million pounds, which was won a few months later.
Clearly someone with more money than sense. If his analysis of the eternity puzzle is anything to go by I don't think anyone need take any notice of his gibbered ravings about climate change.
Perhaps this may shed some light on why... (or rather the lack of it ;)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon /dimming_prog_summary.shtml
The problem isn't the logic, it's the premises. Rigorously applied logic to faulty premises is nonsense. Both guys start out with flawed premises and that is why neither presents a compelling argument. What they're doing is debate, not science. One starts with the premise that "Global Warming is real, and this is how to interpret the data" The other starts with the premise that "Global Warming is a hoax and here's why" I've been very interested in the phenomena of global warming since I first heard about it in the early eighties. I've also had the priviledge to travel a great deal and visit glacier fields in Alaska and ice shelves in Antarctica. ALthough early on I dismissed the idea, I've come to suspect that Global warming is both real and, at the very least, accererated by Human activity. I suspect it's real, but I don't know that it's real. I've looked at the data, and some of it clearly shows dramatic warming. Other data however, does not. The only data that I can personally vouch for is the local 'weather' data that I gather. Weather is not climate though, which for supporters of global warming is a good thing - where I live, this is one of the coolest years in a very long time. I read a lot on the subject and there's a lot of crap out there presenting itself as science that is nothing of the kind. The strongest proponents of either side tend to spout the worst nonsense too.
That's not a claim of global cooling. That's a statement that there is one mechanism that is leading to global cooling, but there are other mechanisms also acting and we don't know which one will dominate.
The evidence for WMD was seen by everybody, including everybody in Congress who voted to oust Saddam. Considering the Post just was screaming about Bush putting up documents that outlined Iraq's secret nuclear program (less than a year from making a bomb), I'm truly surprised that people are still whining about WMDs.
There's this book that really easy to get, you can read it for yourself, and draw your own conclusions. The trick is to really just read it and see what it says
I did.
deut 22:11 Thou shalt not wear a garment of diverse sorts, as of woolen and linen together.
deut 22:12 Thou shalt make thee fringes upon the four quarters of thy vesture, wherewith thou coverest thyself.
I guess god does fashion - kind of like queer eye for the straight guy, but with eternal consequences...
deut 23:1 He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD.
deut 23:2 A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD.
So I can't go to church if I've been kicked in the balls, had my long john bobbed, or if my mom fooled around with the dominos pizza delivery guy, or if any of my ancestors had little bastards who had little bastards.
Oh wait - those are old testament things and are superseded by Christ (Luke 16:16/ Eph 2:15/ Rom 7:6).
Oh wait again - no they're not, according to Jesus (Matt 5:17-19).
Claiming that the bible is some kind of authority on anything at all is pure religious fantasy. Its just a bunch of books written by dozens of disparate authors separated by hundreds and in some cases thousands of years, not some kind of all-powerful (or not - Judg 1:19) all-knowing (or not - Gen 11:5; Gen 18:20,21; Gen 3:8) anthropomorphized super-spirit. That doesn't mean there aren't good things to be found in it, just that claiming it as a unified authority is at best inconsistent.
Christians take some parts literally, like Jesus being the only way to heaven/god, and other parts not literally, like banning people with damaged testicles from church. The reason given? Nothing consistent (even within new testament literature) or reasonable. I invite you to offer a consistent and reasonable criteria for when to interpret the bible as a literal authority and when to interpret it not literally. And if you try the 'new testament supersedes the old', you have to admit that Matt 5:17-19 is wrong, or not interpret it literally. Then come up with a new criteria as to when to take what Jesus says literally and when not to - maybe he didn't die for your sins after all, since we can take Matt 5:17-19 not literally and maybe other parts too. This, it seems to be the most common thread in the bible, and perhaps the religions which use it for their foundation.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Who are you to determine what is the 'normal' amount of co2 in the atmosphere?
Much of this climate change guff is based on forensics, not on laboritory experiment. Models are based on our inputs and understanding of the basics. Hence, it is circular to think that they will lead to better understanding of the fundamentals.
From my crude observations, colder weather sees a decline in insect activity. Many die off and many go into lower activity states. Considering that the amount of insects in mass significantly exceeds the amount of people (in mass) and that the metobolisms of very small critters are much higher per mass than of larger critters, one would then come to realize that the co2 and methane production of insects would be lower when cold and higher when warm.
It seems that most whackos forget that vegetation requires co2 to live. The need increases while warm and decreases in the cold. Of course living vegetation eventually gives up it co2 once it is dead and decayed. What this implies is that some, if not most of the additional production of co2 is being sunk in new vegetation between warming and cooling cycles.
And, considering bacteria is actually the largest biomass on the planet - what effect is it having? Are these being included in any model?
If there is new co2 in the atmosphere, where is it coming from? If we exhale, it's coming from the organic food we ate. If we burn fossil fuels - hey - it's coming from plants that absorbed it out of the air in the first place, back before the plant died and became fossil fuel. Or, if you believe in the myth that oil comes from squished rotted dynosaurs - well - then it still came from the plants those critters ate.
New co2 comes from space and volcanic erruptions. Why is the earth not like venus, apparently in a co2 hothouse with an atmosphere of a thousand psi, mostly from co2? It's because most of our co2 is locked away in sedimentary rock - limestone. Of course venus is a bit closer to the sun also, but hey, we're being told by the whackos that the sun - a variable star on all time scales (and fortunately not a cataclysmic variable) - has no effect.
As for negative effects, there are too many people with little sense and lots of power who now think that this cockeyed, human - caused global warming theory is proven fact. AND, they're starting to do something about it!
The odds are that the actions which will be taken, will be morally reprehensible, punishable by the most severe penalties in 'normal' times, and, most likely have far more detrimental effects than any possible positive effects. Of all the lifeforms on earth, present and past, man is the only one that has created technology. If the current life on planet earth is to survive, we will need even more technology to deal with preventable catastrophes such as asteroid and comet impacts, which have been implicated in mass extinctions in the past, every few tens of millions of years. These are far in excess of the typical more short term cycles of global warming and cooling - of which, we apparently are already over extended in the warming cycle.
Answer to the better question... Because the 'scientists' have vested interests unlike your claim. The need funding for research. Crisis and doomsday scenarios attract research $$$. It is clear that there is questionable results and theories proported as fact. Nothing new, something that has been done forever. Difference is that media latches onto and promotes things more than ever. It is science that told us we were going to outlive our food supply, kill ourselves with ______ weapons (fill in the blank), die of this or that disease and that the oceans are going to become sterile (I forget, was that 20 years ago or is that one new?). In the big picture, if one looks at the other events like quakes, volcanoes, impacts or near misses from external heavenly bodies, and indeed the sun itself, is it very hard to swallow that man, who occupies such a small part of the world has the power to change climates over the long term. What's even harder is that we cannot adapt to the change. For if evolution is a true theory, we would need to believe that real issue is how we will adapt because all species are commanded to do so as the essence of survival. This would apply regardless of the cause of the change.
With the exception of the Daily Express's obsession about Princess Diana being dead, most UK newspapers eventually get tired of repeating the same news all the time.
Let's make a calculation as to how far they were out. Now, taking a football field as the largest in the Premiership at 105 × 68 metres, that gives a football field a minute clearance rate as 7140m^2 per minute, or about 3750km^2 per year (about the size of the county of Kent in England). In Nature in March this year (doi |doi:10.1038/nature04389), Soares predicted that at current rates, 2.1 million km^2 would be lost between 2003 and 2050. Which is 44680 km^2 per year (about the size of the South West and South East of England added together).
So a football field every minute is indeed wrong. According to Soares numbers (and my back of the envelope calculations), it's nearly 12 football fields a minute.
In reality, of course, no-one knows the exact rate at which the Amazon basin is currently being cleared.
That's all I'm saying.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Here's one of the references (from memory and with a bit of help from google):
Manabe, Syukuro, and Richard T. Wetherald (1975). "The Effects of Doubling the CO2 Concentration on the Climate of a General Circulation Model." J. Atmospheric Sciences 32: 3-15.
There are a few more but I'll have to find the paper. I might even throw in the source code if you ask nicely.
The science-by-consensus argument to the exclusion of all other viewpoints is fallacious. From Wikipedia, which I might add, has one of the best explanations of the scientific method that I've seen:
Yes, I personally believe that the increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere from pre-industrial levels is man-made. I also believe that increasing concentrations of CO2 will lead to increase warming. How much of a warming is open to debate as it has always has been from day one. What is less settled are the global and local effects of this warming. Everything from negligible all the way to "Day After Tomorrow" type scenarios using unvalidated models - this is where I have my doubts.
This is precisely the reason I posted Asimov's Corollary. People, especially non-scientists, become so emotionally and almost religiously attached to a particular theory that any evidence or theory to the contrary is treated as blasphemy. I'm perfectly willing to admit that I could be wrong
What happens if your "world's economy is trashed" is nothing but moronic babble? Care to back up that reducing CO2 would do that?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
How exactly can increasing temperature increase CO2 levels? Hasn't anyone done a study on that? It's possible that higher temperatures reduce the speed at which plants convert CO2 to O2, but I would have thought the opposite is the case.. (no I'm not a biologist or even a physicist)
which is totally what she said
Don't you understand?
Nuclear power baaad! Car baaad! Cellphone baaad! Agriculture baaad!
Our technology is SIN. Every comfort we've taken away from earth/nature/gaija.
Unless we repent, the SKY WILL BE FALLING!
Don't bother discussing about CO2: these people will not settle for anything less then the abolishment of human culture.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
A: No, but Gaia is. And are millenia-old stores of CO2 being released by volcanoes, ocean outgassing, and animals enough to even completely mask human "contributions"?
A: Well, have you done that? Has anybody? Al Gore? Bueller? Bueller?
A: 02. So?
Three more questions:
A: Who said it wasn't? But if it is a minor contributor instead of the awful horror it is being made out to be by the CO2 detractors, then maybe the fuss is a smokescreen for something else.
A: "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." -- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
A: Good question. How about methane? How about the aforementioned H20 vapor? Consider "Does increasing carbon dioxide affect Earth's mean temperature? Yes, although probably only trivially and to a declining extent."
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
You seem to think the whole world is a very reasonable and honest place. I'm sorry to break it to you, but that just isn't so.
Thanks for the newsflash, kid. Your conclusion seems to be that there is no hope for nations to cooperate, ever, because not everyone is 100% honest and reasonable. Bullshit.
India has a shitload of people who would be threatened by sea level rise. China has atrocious air quality, and at some point their citizens are going to be pissed about their kids dying from asthma (increased wealth leads to people caring about these things- see: US, Clean Air Act). Keep in mind China has a wee problem with civil uprisings already.
You are asking me to provide The Solution. I'm not that smart. But if you have a global carbon emissions cap and trade system, for instance, who benefits? Perhaps those countries with, say, low-cost labor that can crank out solar panels at $0.50 per Watt? Whom might that be? And would it be advantageous to have an agreement that stimulates global demand for such products?
The point is, it's conceivable to have a framework that are potentially beneficial for these countries, and not overly injurious to us.
Your powers of recall appear weak. Canada says it remains in Kyoto climate pact, posted 12 hours ago. Australia didn't follow through because the US didn't. Sure, Canada's waffling and having a hard time. But that doesn't exactly excuse the US for failing to offer any constructive alternatives to the (admittedly flawed) Kyoto protocol.
In the CO2 game, compared to our peers in Europe, we are the bad guy, if you think CO2 is a problem. If you don't, we're frickin heroes. I am rightly critical of the US when our leaders do not act in a fashion that is consistent with our country's greatness. I criticize not because I hate my country, but because I love what it stands for.
Do you remember the Non-Proliferation Treaty? It was created at the height of the Cold War. I would submit that the world is collectively much, much better off than if this treaty had never come into place. Sure, you have Iran and North Korea, and we have to deal with that.
And how about the Montreal Protocol on CFCs? Did we have to go to war over that one? Or did countries see a mutual problem and actually agree to do something? Did the switch to CFC alternatives lead to massive economic upheaval?
War (used to) require an immediate threat. No one (myself included) is going to send their kid to die invading another country to reduce their CO2 emissions. The threat is too vague. Like CFCs, it'll have to happen through diplomacy.
Anyway, I'm done here. Good luck.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Yes, forest fires and volcanoes spew out a lot of carbon dioxide. They just spew out over an order of magnitude less CO2 than man. And most forest fires aren't "operating independently of man" either, for that matter.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
"Well, these mushrooms are the only available food source ... so I'll better eat them all at once, so none gets wasted."
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
What bugs me most about "Climate change debunkers" is that they are obviously doing so out of greed and have lost sight of the objective we should all have - long term survival. What is obvious is that the sources of CO2 we have the power to limit, also produce other pollutants for the air which we KNOW are health hazardous to humans in other ways than flooding and drying our land. Even IF Climate Change isn't something we can stop, we should be changing our consumption and pollution pattern to correct other emissions problems.
Oh You POS
Actually, the second article I link to is all about how the thawing permafrost might contribute up to 500ppm to the atmosphere as it thaws, that implies an amount nearly twice the total "normal" level of 280ppm, for an overall tripling of CO2. (The number might have been from a different article -- use the google search for a better authority than USA Today.)
Clearly, that's an amount more than enough to explain the 25% increase we've seen in the past century.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
What would you rather have? One good final meal, or a few dribs and drabs over the course of a couple days? What's the point of reducing emissions if it only delays global warming by a small factor? If we're fucked no matter what, might as well go out with a bang.
The only way to validly interpret the Bible is actually by using the Bible. Sounds a little strange, but the only 'contradiction's that people find are because of the tendency to look at the parts rather than the whole. Look at the words of Christ - sometimes he spoke in parables (definitely not literal stories) and other times he spoke literally. Think about life in the present: when do you know to interpret things literally versus figuratively?
Regarding your difficulty in reconciling the OT laws with Christ's statement that he "did not come to change any of the old law": that difficulty is not in thinking that if we don't follow those laws then we can't be 'clean' - the point is that those laws are still in effect, but Christ's work on the cross took care of the consequences of not following those laws to the letter (read up on the purpose of the Law - described greatly in Romans and Hebrews). Reference the section in Acts where Christ tells Peter explicitly to eat 'unclean' food. Also reference the section where Christ sits down in the temple, and look back to what that means in the OT (referenced in Hebrews). Also remember to reference Paul's writings where he talks about how "just because all your sins are forgiven doesn't mean you can sin all you want!" - not because it will change your basic stance with God, but because it changes the fruits of your labor and how others see God.
For every "contradiction" that people claim can be found in the Bible, there has been a repudiation; also remember that there is no argument that people now have that has not been proposed many times in the past 2000-plus years, and they have all been proven insubstantial.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Lars my man, if you can come up with a way to effectively combat CO2 emissions without damaging the economy...well, GREAT! Run it by me and I'll be more than happy to take a look at it. Unfortunately every scheme I've seen discussed would have pretty disruptive effects on the economy. I don't see a need to go into detail on it, since it's really up to the anti-CO2 people to come up with a workable solution. Me, I'd be quite content letting CO2 rise, so if you want to lower CO2 emissions then people like YOU are going to have to come up with a plan, and convince people like me that it's worthwhile, and won't damage the economy. Until you've succeeded in that, I'm more than justified in believing that CO2 reduction programs would damage the economy, and don't need to justify that belief to you. So far, the best your side has come up with is Kyoto, and that was a total joke.
> Er... you post to and (I assume) continue to visit (if you don't then you won't read this and it won't matter that I'm wrong) a website
/. is ONTOPIC, i.e. tech related it is often very useful to read. When it goes political it highlights everything wrong with higher education. But I, and a growing cadre of defenders of liberty, do our part to expose the users here to new (to them) ideas that were left out of their formal educations. Two years ago the parent both of my longer posts in this thread would have ended at -1 flamebait yet we have now been through a night and even the euroweenie contingent didn't have enough mod points to silence all disent.
> you are quite clearly disgusted with (slashdot)?
Well when the topic on
> We can see that with with equal odds of climate change then you should be all for stopping climate change. (I know there aren't "odds", and
> they aren't argueably "equal", but as you said, we need at least 20 years to find out. If there is climate change we don't have 20 years) .
Let me reuse your numbers and arguments with an asteroid impact:
The cost of acting now (if climate change) == 1% GDP
The cost of acting later (if climate change) == 50-90% GDP (Asteroid impact much more deadly than GW)
The cost of acting now (if no climate change) == (1% GDP)
The cost of acting later (if no climate change) == ($0)
We can see that with with equal odds of asteroid impact then you should be all for stopping asteroids. (I know there aren't "odds", and they aren't argueably "equal", but...
So why are we worrying about a minor problem like GW when we should be worrying about another extinction level impact? Because assuming 50-50 odds between normal and a doomsday scenario is usually the first warning sign of a bad argument in favor of something dumb. Should we be doing something about long range detection of asteroids? Yup, and we are. Should we be working towards tech that reduces our net carbon emissions. Yup, and if for no other reason to stop sending Sagan's of dollars to Islamic dicattorships who we will soon be a war with.
Democrat delenda est
What makes you think that there is some 'catastrophic' amount? Also, what makes you think that if there is a 'catastrophic' amount that it is not a function of other more predominant greenhouse gases such as water vapor and hence is not a unique value? What makes you think that the status quo is a viable value or that keeping it unchanged is possible - even to the extent that all mankind is eliminated? What makes you think there is a 'threshold'?
So far as global warming and cooling goes, what are the effects of clouds? What are the causes of cloud formation? What are the effects of earth's magnetic field and the effects of the solar magnetic field on cloud formation? Does that have anything to do with the 11 yr sunspot cycle and cosmic ray flux into the atmosphere?
Sorry, but the proponents have already proclaimed that the sun has nothing to do with global warming. That means they have suborned science to a political agenda.
You do know that if you are going to enter an argument you dissect the postulates and don't use adhominem attcks in order to discredit your oponents, don't you?
Just a couple of weeks ago a recognized UK economist, who can't be classed as a left looney, told us very clearly what can be expoected if we don;t take action now.
And if you class most of the scientific concensus and most political parties of all orientations in most countries as leftists, well, good luck to you, enjoy the shadow under the rock you are living.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Tell us how emitting less CO2 will kill people.
For goonies sake man, stand back and look at what you are saying.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Well, you guys said the same thing about every pro-environment measure ever taken. World economy should have broken down dozens of times by now because of them.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
All those repudiations involve alternate interpretations. Suppose I feel that the account that jesus died for my sins is nothing more than a metaphor or a story? The very method used to repudiate theological contradictions found in the bible can also be just as useful as a way to repudiate christian doctrine. Also, under the notion that the OT laws still hold, its still wrong for people with poor eyesight and damaged stone to go to church under the notion the the bible is a unified authority inspired by the hand of a not-so all powerful and not-so all-knowing spirit. Under biblical law, I would be perfectly excused from attending church due to bad eyesight or a hunched back.
The OT 'laws' have nothing at all to do with what is 'sin' - they are just social and political laws and rules that existed at the time those books were written. People who were sick were not wanted in a church because the would spread disease in a crowded place, not because god somehow dictated it. People in those days didn't understand germ theory, but knew that when the sick mixed with the healthy, the healthy became ill. Hence the ban not only of the sick in temples, but also of those who looked sick.
The god depicted in the bible is just an anthropomorphization of all the things people didn't understand about the universe around them. That's why god kills people as a favor to his friends, throws temper tantrums, on one had is all powerful and the next minute is powerless against iron chariots, makes lying a sin, and then puts 'lying spirits' into people he doesn't like.
Alternate interpretations also don't account for purely textual inconsistencies, where one part of the bible tells a story with one account, and another describes the same story with a different set of circumstances. That list is too long to be compiled here, but would include:
- baby jesus taken to egypt - Matt 2:14,15,19,21,23;
- baby jesus not taken to egypt - Luke 2:22, 39;
- Christ preached his first sermon on the side of a mountain - Matt 5:1,2;
- Christ preached his first sermon on the plain - Luke 6:17,20;
Of course, the fact that a story get told so differently in multiple instances is because the books were written by human hands, and contain natural errors. As such, all the literature found in the roman empirical compendium christians call the bible has the kinds of inaccuracies intrinsic to all human communication. That's why using the bible to interpret the bible requires alternating interpretive methods when needed to maintain the appearance that its one complete book rather than an eclectic. Its also logically fallacious to use a book to prove itself. That's a logical fallacy called 'appeal to authority'.Think about life in the present: when do you know to interpret things literally versus figuratively?
Of course things like a story about someone coming back to life to satisfy the needs of a god requiring sacrifice for sins would be and example of something taken figuratively. The bible is more useful for what it really is - a diverse collection of literature from the ancient middle east. Its no more useful as a guide to living or what to believe or what 'god' is like than are the writings of confucius, lao tzu, mohamed, or the buddha. Those at least are works that don't pretend to be something they are not. I'm not saying the bible is bad, its just not what christians claim it is.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
The real problem with climate change advocates isn't their fuzzy science, it's their Luddite solutions.
They mostly talk about emissions control solutions that involve trimming around 1% off of world GDP, and may not have much effect on climate change anyway. That's about $500 billion every year. For that much money, we'd be much better off trying to build some kind of active climate control systems (space mirrors, massive carbon sinks, etc) that are more likely to have a real effect and not leave us poorer with little or nothing to show for it.
No, actually what I'm saying is that when some slash-dotter posts an argument backed up only with "...and if you don't believe ME, then you are disagreeing with these *real scientists*", they are not arguing based on facts, but rather based on appeal to authority. And when they say that my opinion does not count because I don't have a doctorate in climatology, that's argumentum ad hominem. Again, not based on facts, but a fallacious argument.
If you're going to debate, you MUST debate based on facts, not fallacious arguments.
These are well defined terms, and are quite fitting here.
Joe Mainusch http://www.weber-amps.com
If I decide to try to tell you what's wrong with quantum theory, then, by all means, address my objections, and show where I'm wrong. Do NOT just say "where's your degree? No? Then shut your mouth"
If you are indeed a physicist with some expertise in the matter, then you can address the actual arguments presented.
Joe Mainusch http://www.weber-amps.com
Well, I don't know who "you guys" is, but I never said any such thing, and I can't recall anyone else saying it either. Although I'll admit I did think banning DDT was a bad idea. Turns out I was right about that one.
Anyway, we'll just assume you're statement is true, and I'll say "keep up the good work and keep coming up with non disruptive ways to save the environment".
...he's worked for the UN! It's in his bio.
Seems kind of silly to attack the credibility of the author he's supposedly rebutting when he isn't actually objective himself! He also didn't refute all that many of the points in the original article.
To me, the original article stands.
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." --Marx (Groucho)
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Let me start by saying that I am suspicious of a lot of the global warming 'facts' being tossed around by people saying its the end of the world.
The fact is that most people engaged in this debate, on the internet, in the media, in the government, are debating facts and opinions derived not in scientific circles, but in debate circles and media stories.
Part of the scientific process is to state a theory or hypothesis and encourage debate and the reproduction of others results. The problem here is that people who are trying to debate what we are being told, are being demonized and portrayed as whack jobs and delusioned.
The fact is that it is going to take a long time, maybe even your entire life time, to really understand what is going on with the planets climate. There is just so much data, and a lot of the computer models being used are so new, that the conclusions we form now will probably be proven wrong either way at some future time.
Climate models do not explain everything about our climate and anybody who puts their full belief in a model, or treats it as some kind of absolute is not being scientific. You have to accept that we don't know everything and the logical argument by the people against the hysteria of global warming is we are jumping to conclusions based limited data and understanding.
I have some suggestions for restoring some sanity to the debate.
1. Do not get your information from the media. Read scientific journals and reports that are intended for peer review and not a media package pushing their opinion. It is shameful that we don't have more impartial and non-partisan debate going on.
2. Pick up a history book and look at previous debates to get some perspective on the kinds of attacks and arguments being made. This will help you sort out the facts from the opinions. Read up on such greats as debate over the origins of disease (people laughed when it was suggested that mosquitoes spread malaria), The origin of species, not just Darwin's take, but the scientific consensus at the time and their reaction to his ideas and the ides of others at the time. Anything dealing with scientific debate at the late 18th century is good because it was the dawn of the age of reason when we didn't quite get everything right, and there are many parallels to arguments going on today.
3. Beware of people with agendas. I wouldn't trust our oil baron government to give me factual information on climate and fossil fuels, and I don't trust the greenpeace terrorists telling me the world will drown and bake either. The best information will not be tied to an agenda, the person releasing it will have nothing to gain.
4. Question everything. Don't implicitly accept information because it fits your world view, and vigorously protest any that doesn't. Look at everything you read or hear critically.
The global warming debate should take place in the science circles, amongst scientists and researchers. Not in the media or in government hearings.
We need to keep in mind that every decade produces a new perceived threat to man kind and the reactions are always the same. It produces doomsayers proclaiming the end and in the end, life goes on the same. African bees, save the whales, acid rain....
Our planets climate is the most complicated piece of machinery you could ever imagine. It has checks and balances and will naturally resist change. If the planet could so easily change it's climate it is very unlikely that any higher organisms could have evolved at all. Our ancestors lived through an ice age, and global warming gave us an end to glaciers in Europe and North America, and the most fertile farm land in the world.
Things do change, but it's not the end of the world.
And lastly, the talk of a solution, of changing the way we make energy, making direct changes to the environment, these all have un-predictable consequences due to the complexity of the system.
Part of the reason the earth is holding in more heat now is becaus
I thought the fact that the extra CO2 comes from fossil fuels and burning forests was well-established, by comparing carbon isotopes.
Let's see how it works in practice.
The relevance is that for years you could hardly find anything published in reputable peer reviewed journals supporting the theory that ulcers are bacterial in origin, despite the fact that the theory was correct. He was illustrating that your challenge does not carry the weight you'd like it to, given that peer reviewed journals have in the past shown egregious and irrefutable bias against theories that upset the status quo, even when they're true.
If that was his case, you have put it far more effectively then he was able to. So much so that I concede that what he wrote is not invalid for lack of relevance, but rather because it is a tendency argument. It is also demonstrably untrue. If Nature rejected McIntyre and McKitrick's paper, then Geophysical Research Letters accepted it. (Though admittedly McIntyre and McKitrck aren't really scientitsts this represents the best answer to my challenge ;) since Feb 2005 might still be counted as "current") There are a lot of journals out there, which is why eventually "truth" will win through.
I never said that what is published is either unbiased or true, merely that it reflects the current scientific (as opposed to political) debate (or consensus). And please people do take a look at what is actually being written before you mischaracterise a debate. That being said a bias against theories which upset the status quo (providing such bias is not egregious, of course) isn't necessarily undesireable. I think conservatism in science is kind of a good thing.
Yes it was. After nearly a decade of repeated experimentation and rejected paper submissions, the medical science community finally accepted the truth.
These two sentences directly contradict one and other. Remember I asked whether "the effort to prevent disclosure ... [was] ultimately successful?" Once again, despite initial conservatism, when there is work of worth, the status quo will eventually be revised. Although a decade represents probably too much conservatism in any particular field.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
I was talking about science in general.
I'm sorry, I completely misread your as saying the science ...
Back in my university days circa 1978, I did a bit of research and computer modeling on the effects of increasing CO2 concentrations on global temperatures some 14 years before Al Gore invented global warming.Kudos to you ... also I didn't realise that Gore invented global warming all the way back in '92, for myself I only became seriously (to the point of reading the literature) involved with it in '89. As I recall there was still a lively debate concerning inter alia heat island effects, which was being published, but perhaps I should actually take the time to search for some, before I commit to that ... ;) I'm no longer seriously involved in the science, but in perusing the abstracts recently I'm struck by the fact that the debate has moved on from whether it is happening, and whether anthropogenic contributions are significant, to largely cataloging localised instances of climatic change.
The science-by-consensus argument to the exclusion of all other viewpoints is fallacious. From Wikipedia, which I might add, has one of the best explanations of the scientific method that I've seen:
There we will have to part company, unfortunately I read Feyerabend a too young an age and it has permanently warped my mind. I don't accept that science is defined by any putative 'scientific method,' nor that Popperian falsificationism is an apt description of science (neither of which is to denigrate the experimental method, nor the desirability of falsifiable predicitons). On the other hand, pointing out that consensus has pretty much been achieved (twas not always so) on the questions of warming and the (at least partially) anthropogenic nature thereof, shouldn't be read as proffering a "science-by-consensus argument" (if by that you mean Kuhnian paradigm theory).
Yes, I personally believe that the increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere from pre-industrial levels is man-made. I also believe that increasing concentrations of CO2 will lead to increase warming. How much of a warming is open to debate as it has always has been from day one. What is less settled are the global and local effects of this warming.
We are of one mind on that then (although I still entertain the possibility that non-human sources of CO2 are additionally responsible).
I'm perfectly willing to admit that I could be wrong ... are you?
More than perfectly willing, I genuinely hope that I am wrong! Unfortunately, living in Australia, that seems a hope that becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
The Max Planck Society has an article on this very subject, written all the way back in 2004. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research found that the variations in solar activity matched similar variations in Earth's mean temperature for about 120 of the last 150 years. However, the last 20-30 years have seen no appreciable increase in solar activity while Earth's mean temperature has risen "dramatically". http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentati on/documentation/pressReleases/2004/pressRelease20 040802/
Bring on the asteroid
1. Global cooling will follow global warming. But it's not on a sensible time scale for us to call it a solution.
:).
2. Interesting article, but both tidal gauges and satellite measurements read the sea level as rising over the last 10 years. Only dispute is by how much it has risen.
3. Ice floating in water raises water level minimally. But no one said the seas will rise from icebergs. The fact is most of the ice they talk about is run off from above the waterlevel on land ie. antarctica and greenland. This obviously would add to the oceans volume. And by a pretty similar amount if you add salt
The places that are most likely to rebound up are also the ones that have lost the most ice. Depending on the nature of this rebound it could make it better or significantly worse. If it means the ocean floor is raised around Antarctica say, then the water levels would rise more. If it opens up deeper holes beneath the ocean so the ocean can hold more water water levels would rise less.
4. It has always been about shifts in climate. Call it climate change it will confuse you less.
5. What I was pointing to, is that it is not necessarily good to promote large amounts of algae in the ocean. Algae is not just a fish food source. And you wouldn't do it near any beach I wanted to swim at.
On the subject of being an environmentalist. I think it is a good thing. But you shouldn't be following the environmentalists on global warming. Follow the scientists, and the majority rather than the minority. Because in science the minority are usually a minority for a reason. It's good to read up on it too. I'm actually interested how the one thing you found in a science journal was to disagree with the general opinion. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it is just the accepted version of scientific theories normally takes preference over the ones on the edge. Like if I did a literature review on global warming and posted your journal article as the only thing I found in the area, and debated it based on that, I'd get laughed into the ground. It is good to try to pick holes though. But finding holes in a theory that has tens of thousands of journal articles and 30+ years of research by top scientists behind it, usually refines the theory, doesn't disprove it. May be different this time, but with the odds I wouldn't be placing bets.
Slashdot is powered by your submission.
The article you cite claims that the CO2 comes from fossil fuels or plant/vegetable matter burning. In fact, it starts with the line "Since fossil fuels are ultimately derived from ancient plants, plants and fossil fuels all have roughly the same 13C/12C ratio" which suggests that any plant-derived CO2 is going to be the same ratio of isotopes.
Now, where do you think the CO2 locked in the permafrost comes from? Most of it is frozen peat bogs or similar swampy terrain.
Time's up. It's all ancient plant matter. Which means it's chemically indistinguishable from burning fossil fuels or forests. Since something like 90% of airborne CO2 comes ultimately from vegetable matter decomposition (either through decay or burning), they're whole statement that they can prove it's all man-made is laughable. If they could do that, without any shred of doubt, then there would be no debate whatsoever.
The problem is that you can't determine, without error, what the source of atmospheric CO2 is. The Carbon Cycle in the atmosphere is mind bogglingly complex. The U.S., often cited as the worst polluter in the world, actually shows a net drop in CO2 as air passes over it (from a NASA satellite that measures CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.) This is largely a result of the large tracts of farmland and forested land that still cover a large chunk of the continent. On the other hand, China, which has deforested huge tracts of land and flooded more of it for the growing of rice paddies, has such a huge CO2 output that it dwarfed the output of a giant (50,000 sq. mile) forest fire during the same period.
Even if the atmospheric CO2 were man-made, it doesn't mean that permafrost melt hasn't contributed to the baseline level of CO2 in the atmosphere. If it adds enough CO2 to overcome some natural sink (like the permafrost itself, which is a natural CO2 sink) then the overall level of CO2 will go up. It's kind of like pouring liquid from 20 different pitchers into a bucket with 20 different holes. Change the rate you're pouring from any given pitcher and the level in the bucket will change. The problem is, you can't tell, from looking at the bucket, which pitcher is pouring faster. Isotope tracing is like adding food coloring to the buckets. But 18 of them all pour green....
Of course, in reality, the bucket's holes also change, and some of those holes lead straight back to refill the pitchers. And some of the holes get bigger based on the amount of liquid in the bucket, and some of them get smaller, and all of them are just one bucket in a bigger bucket that has 200 more pitchers pouring into it with 200 more holes, and all of those other pitchers and holes might affect the flow of the CO2 bucket.
And we don't even know for certain what half of the pitchers and holes are.
That's the problem here. If you think any answer in climate science is certain then you've fallen for propoganda.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
That line almost makes it sound as if Hansen still runs Model II for research, but he doesn't. Model II is a legacy GCM which isn't used anymore.
n g=r&q=%22giss+model+ii%22&as_ylo=2003
Except, it is still used for research: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&scori
Space and Computers.
True, I should address the actual argument, and would if the naysayer stated their objections to me. But when people argue about global warming they're not talking to the climatologists, they're just ranting at other people who also don't know anything.
So my analogy was a bit off. Instead of it being like some layman trying to tell me what's wrong with quantum theory it's more like some layman arguing with other non-physicists about what's wrong with quantum theory.
The fossil record indicates that it's happened more than just once. You mentioned the medieval warm up... There were once massive glaciers millions of years ago in California (the ones that carved out Yosemite). There is plenty of evidence of multiple warm ups.
More importantly, more work need to be done on the subject. Anyone who tells you the debate is over is a fraud. There is still a lot of science to do and a lot more to learn.
I think that if you back your statements up by giving pointers to official reserach done by experienced scientists the appeal to authority would be more than justified IMO. A debate can not be done by itself, any information given has to come from somewhere and sometimes you have to admit that you don't know and others are more than quilified to fill in any blanks for you.
And of course if you disagree with those scientists somebody would be right in asking for your credentials, that's not argumentum ad hominem, that's just plain common sense: why should I believe you and somebody who has studied the subject for years?
Because, like I said, this is not a debating club. You don't score points for knowing the names of debating techniques.
Through-out my schoolastic life I was never ever taught anything other than the greenhouse effect is going on as we speak and global warming is all our fault. The curriculum over here never even covers possible alternative theories
Well that's probably because you were being taught this stuff in science class, and the science here is so clear. There are no credible alternative theories.
n every other aspect of science we were taught alternatives to established theories to compare the merits and why one theory is more valid than others, from Ether to creationism.
You were taught that Creationism as an alternative theory to evolutionary theory?! It's demonstrably untrue that the universe is only 6000 years old, so I'm sorry Creationism isn't a credible alternative theory either ... just as well you were not misinformed about global climate change as well!
We're told to question everything throughout science ...
What a load of liberal claptrap! What position is a 16 yr old to question anything about science? Your teacher deserves a good spanking for that one!
There has never been a debate about the cons of the greenhouse effect theory ...
Which planet did you say you were from again?
By flat out saying "you're wrong" to deniers you acheive nothing but make them more determined.
Yes, that's a problem, but the fact is you are wrong! If you become more determined to deny reality, when your errors are pointed out, the only advice I can really give is to seek help from a mental health professional.
The critisisms should be in the public arena so that people can feel their making their own decisions rather than feel they're being given propoganda.
Most people simply lack the expertise to make any informed decision. The problem is that the criticisms are being made in the public arena (outside the public scientific arena), and that they are being made by experts in mass-communication and spin, not by scientists. Thus the many members of the public (and especially in those countries where the disinformation dollar has predominantly been spent) are refusing to accept the reality of global warming, or the expert opinion that it is anthropogenic in nature. You yourself, seem to have fallen vicitim.
Oh my fucking god, how can this bullshit become and insightfull rating?
... ... how fast and in what amount will that lead to temperature increases.
Hell, for all we know, the rise in CO2 might be the symptom instead of the cause of global warming. Granted, it's unlikely, but how do we know for sure?
Do you know where CO2 comes from? It seems not
CO2 comes from a reaction where C is burned with O2. Agreed? So, where does the C come from? It comes from Coal and Oil and Gas. Agreed?
So, to quote you again: but how do we know for sure? Because we fucking know for sure how much Coal, Oil, Gas is burned each year on earth. And we fucking see for sure what that means in "parts per million" as CO2 concentration in the athmosphere, as that is trivial to measure. A nd we know for fucking sure that temperature increased over the last 30 years. The only thing we dont know is: If we burn 1 billion tons of coal this year, how much does this contribute to the warming next year and the year after that, and after that and when is the peak reached and the temperature increase (for this one single billion tons alone) is reached.
And then: what is about the burning of C and the creation of CO2 next year
In other words: we don't know if the CO2 we produce now will contribute for 1 year or for 5 or for 10 years to the increase. What we very well know is the final temperature will be a matter of the final CO2 concentration. And what we also know as noted above: we know exactly how much CO2 mankind produces every year.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
ARGGGG .... I have to answer to you again ....
... yes.
/. ers forgive me the usage of the term "heat", its only to make it more simple to that moron
Has anyone measured CO2 levels on mars and venus?
Uh
Both Mars and Venus have a nearly 100% CO2 athmosphere.
So far the only proof we have that co2 is linked to global warming is that any time in the past when temperatures have gone up, so has CO2. No. Thats compeltely bullshit. We are currently talking about only one question: how much will the increasing CO2 level increase the temperature on earth. We don't talk about anythign else.
CO2 is a green hosue gas, that is 7th grade school knowledge, I'm sorry if you only picked that up during the last monthes. So yes: if more green house gas is there, then more temperature is there, plain simple. E.g the temperature on Venus is about 450 degrees celsius. Guess why? Sun hits planet, heating up the planet, CO2 as a greenhouse gas keeps the heat good. Result: hot Venus. Why is Mars colder? Because the atmosphere of Mars is less than 1% of the one of earth, its to thin to hold much heat. OTOH the total amount of CO2 on Venus is 90 times more than the whole earth atmospheres nitrogen.
So simple spoken the scale is:
mars, barely an athmosphere, but mainly CO2: cold; earth, "standard athmosphere", less than 0.5% CO2 (but that is 20 times the amount mars has): warm; venus: thick athmosphere, huge amount of CO2: very hot
angel'o'sphere
P.S. all the other
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
We are, indeed, responsible for only a small percentage of the CO2 in the atmosphere. The amount that was there before we started is responsible for keeping the oceans from freezing. A small change to that large an effect is worth thinking about.
Thats wrong. Since the industrialization mankind produced about 25% of the current CO2 level. Before the industialization it was something around 0.3x percent and now its around 0.48%. (Numbers from my mind, should be easy to google for correct numbers).
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I agree! We *know* a lot of our what we do is terrible for our health and the health of the environment in general.
...
What really bugs me is that climate change is getting all the political attention, and therefore all the money. A lot of human activity is damaging the environment in ways which seem like they will have a much greater impact on us a lot sooner than climate change may have. We already *know* about depleted fish stocks, heavy medal accumulation at the top of food chains, deforestation, etc., etc..
Yet global warming is getting all the attention. 'Environmentalists' are recommending we build more fission power plants to cut our reliance on 'dirty' power. So instead of investing _millions_ to modernize coal plants and reduce CO2 emissions, we're going to change the local environment in whatever body of water is going to be used to cool the plant, and build up hazardous waste we have no idea how to dispose of at the cost of *billions*?
I think climate change 'promoters' are just as guilty of overlooking real problems in their mad rush to eradicate CO2 emissions as you say the 'debunkers' are to state that there is no problem.
I live in Canada. I still have sulfur in my gasoline, my provincial government (Ontario) wants to spend billions building new nuclear power plants, ground water contamination is in the news (in some new community) every few months
Yet all David Suzuki can write about in my local newspaper is how poor a job the government is doing w.r.t. climate change.
I'm not sure if this is true, but sometimes I feel that some are using Kyoto and climate change as a cover for not dealing with more pressing environmental issues. And what's worse, they've got the environmentalists to go along for the ride.
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seus
Gentlemen (and ladies, if applicable), I'm with ccarson here, Although I do think one needs to use reliable facts. I am paraphrasing here from Bill Bryson's book; A short history of nearly everything. But your average volcano eruption (I know we don't have too many) apparently releases more CO2 in one go than humans have in their entire existence, and by existence I do mean the whole car exhaust and industry emissions. I do have to add my disclaimer that I did not ask every scientist within a 5 mile radius if it was accurate, but since I have yet to come across any serious and credible accusations about it's factual accuracy, I assume it's true. Granted, humans are not exactly gentle with their environment, but bear in mind that the Earth is a very destructive planet and that it's been around for a long time before we arrived and it will most likely be very capable of living on after we cease to exist. This is my 2c worth.
you've also been posting this exact same post for some time now: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=199715&cid=163 54223