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Could Global Warming Make Life on Earth Better?
mikee805 writes "A lengthy article in Spiegel explores the possibility that global warming might make life on Earth better, not just for humans, but all species. The article argues that 'worst-case scenarios' are often the result of inaccurate simulations made in the 1980s. While climate change is a reality, as far as the article is concerned, some planning and forethought may mean that more benefits than drawbacks will result from higher temperatures. From the article:'The medical benefits of higher average temperatures have also been ignored. According to Richard Tol, an environmental economist, "warming temperatures will mean that in 2050 there will be about 40,000 fewer deaths in Germany attributable to cold-related illnesses like the flu." Another widespread fear about global warming -- that it will cause super-storms that could devastate towns and villages with unprecedented fury -- also appears to be unfounded. Current long-term simulations, at any rate, do not suggest that such a trend will in fact materialize.'"
Only if you bought lake front property in Siberia for no money down ... and you were hoping that one day you could use it as a Winter home.
I live in the Netherlands. We are now taking measures to prevent the flooding of my country. But, recent calculations show that we can manage the extra water that we will have to cope with.
-- Cheers!
the increased popularity of scantily-clad women running around in bikini tops and shorts, due to the heat.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
Would the decrease in cold-related deaths be countered by an increase in heat-related deaths?
(IANAL)
Hate to tell you, but you can get the flu in summer. But all that aside, people die every year here in Texas because of the heat.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
I don't know if you can call it good or bad, but life will adapt. Some species will die off others will thrive. Humans? We're the best adapters of them all.
When the weather isn't consistent with what models predict, it's the weather that's wrong, not the models.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Regardless of why the earth is warming (either man-induced or a natural cycle of the earth), I welcome it with open arms.
Milder winters are going to open up trade routes through the arctic.
I will potentially be able to grow stuff in my garden that won't grow there today. My tomatoes may become perennials as they are in their native habitat. And I could do with some citrus trees in my yard.
If the ocean levels rise, landmass on the North American continent will shrink as populations rise. The equity in my real estate investments will grow at an unprecedented rate.
Living in Raleigh, I will be much closer to the coast than I am today.
OK yes this does mean I will have less buffer from hurricanes, and the hurricanes may be more frequent and more violent than is typical.
Inuit may lose their traditional way of life, but they are sitting on vast chunks of currently frozen land that will become desirable temperate areas that the yankees will pay good money to move to once they start experiencing the kind of weather that is more typical of the southeastern US.
It's not all doom and gloom, folks. There will be extensive collateral damages, whole species will be lost, but life has a way of moving on. And Homo sapiens is one of the most adaptable vertebrates on this planet, so I'm sure we'll find a way to thrive through this.
Yes, it's a nice sizable article, featuring women in bikinis enjoying a nice drink on a hot day, quotes from important figures, official-looking charts, and subtext in places like "a warm future" under a simplistic image of warmer-colored earth.
The problem is that I don't see it citing many sources, and when it does, it seems to selectively quote them, such as limiting it's considerations to "gradual thawing of the Greenland ice sheet" only when considering sea level changes. I'm not going to call this a whitewash, but it seems to be a sales job for a point of view, rather than a well-founded findings of a respectable research effort.
Ryan Fenton
Sir, this is Happy Thought Hour!
Didn't you see the pictures in the article of pretty young ladies enjoying the sun?
Eliminate the negative! Accentuate the positive!
Visualize palm trees in Germany, and put out of your mind the massive droughts and desertification in the torrid and equatorial zones.
The argument that "yay more sunshine, more warmth, what's the fuss, party!" is generally not considered a serious one.
Although arguing based on authority is something I don't usually do, but in the case of global warming most common people just display ignorance about the matter. That in itself is not a problem, but writing articles proclaiming truths which show signs that the guy didn't even bother to do basic research is bad. I wish people would try to inform themselves before trying to form the opinions of others.
Science is complex, deal with it. Naive, overly simplistic ideas set off my bullshit alarm, like in the case of "paranormal" stuff.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I never ceased to be amazed at the sheer number of "Global Warming's a Myth / Good for Us" stories in American Newspapers and on American websites.
Hmmm, a German media outlet, Der Spiegel, a German author, Olaf Stampf, and a Swedish physicist, Svante Arrhenius. You really didn't read the article before you jumped on the Anti-Americanism bandwagon, did you?
As for your minority dissent argument (A few "scientists" must be heretics, because the majority disagrees), you might consider that Galileo was considered a heretic because of his accurate minority opinion.
I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the article, because I don't think we have a clue one way or another what the future holds, but you've completely written off a possibility simply because it doesn't fit in with your political agenda -- kinda like the oil companies from the other direction.
The documentary wasn't broadcast by the BBC. It was broadcast by Channel4 (known for more controversial and speculative content). Many of the scientists interviewed in that programme have since complained that they were grossly mis-represented in it.
It's still an interesting programme though.
"Florida, much of California, Michigan, and many East Coast states, including much or all of New York City completely under water"
Hmmm...maybe it will be better.
It's now a feature. I love how spinners work, first, it was not happening, then it was not humans really doing it, now the spin is that it is happening, but it's actually a good thing.
It's like a politician caught in a lie trying to turn it to virtue.
And, speaking of Katrina, some scientists studying global warming believe that it is responsible for the more-active-than-usual hurricane seasons of the past few years. Which makes sense since the main cause of hurricanes is -- wait for it -- heat. Who paid these shills?
Is it also responsible for last year's dead hurricane season? Really, these things are far too complicated to generalize in that manner. While I do believe global warming is anthropogenic, I don't think it serves any purpose to use half-baked, unreasearched theories to blame everything short of a supernova on global warming.
The article is a nice try to put some good spin on Global Warming. To some extent, they're right. There will be positive effects from an overall warmer climate: Siberia won't be quite so forbidding. Canada could get some better agricultural areas. Cold spells will kill hundreds less of homeless people in nothern latitudes.
The problem is that this is akin to talking about the positive effects of smoking: weightloss, fewer old people to draw down retirement benefits, etc. It's disingenuous and generally only used to mask the drawbacks. Is it a necessary part of the discussion? Of course. Does it change the negative aspects of Global Warming? No. Do the negative aspects of Global Warming outweigh the positive aspects? Yes. The cost of Global Warming is still going to be in the trillions, because people generally already accounted for this.
Fewer deaths from flu spells will be offset by increasing deaths by malaria (which is already migrating north). Actually, reading through the article, it seems that the author has no idea about what has already happened, and is content with merely posting speculation about what could happen. I'm reminded of the troll piece recently posted on C|Net about intellectual property. Same lack of content, same latching onto vague promises that have not materialized, same complete lack of evidence for their position.
I'm off to tagging the article flamebait.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
i notice that the ones that are comfortable with "collateral damage" are the ones who won't be -- or at least believe they won't be -- "collateral damage".
note that i'm not necessarily talking about, just making an observation in the general.
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple.
The issue isn't that I want us not to clean up our mess. The issue is that we are using the spectre of a problem which doesn't exist to prevent the development of the non-industrialized world, and the effects of our preventing that development on the environment alone are far worse than allowing the development would be (and that's before you look into the starvation, the disease, the horror, the menial labor and so on involved in living like it's the 1700s.)
Industrialization is important for a whole lot of reasons. Lots of those wars going on in Africa would never have happened if they had had the kind of reasonable food supplies that you get from electrified irrigation, refridgeration, and cooking without animal dung.
I am not saying we shouldn't try to do the ecologically sound thing. All I'm saying is we have no idea what that is, and we're not doing things we should be doing out of a culture of fear spawned by 1960s science which has long since been disproven to a degree that would have scuttled any other movement in modern politics today.
It's time we started the science from scratch, and then looked a second time at the Kyoto treaty. The Kyoto treaty is well meaning, misguided, ecologically driven international scale murder.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
As for your minority dissent argument (A few "scientists" must be heretics, because the majority disagrees), you might consider that Galileo was considered a heretic because of his accurate minority opinion.
Galileo was considered a heretic (in a literal sense!) by the Church rather than his fellow scientists. This was because other scientists, after reading his arguments, were agreeing with him!
It's not a hoax. It's gotten so bad that our blatant disregard for the environment is even heating up mars http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/07 0228-mars-warming.html It's obvioysly us that's doing it. Not that giant orb of fire we orbit.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
Why is Michigan going to flood? Are great storms going to rain down upon us? Lake Erie(which the other four lakes that affect Michigan drain into) is 571 feet above sea level; pretty much all of Michigan is above that.
. shtmlt _lakes.htm7 0407/METRO/704070370
These guys think global warming will *drain* the lakes:
http://www.ecocenter.org/releases/20030414climate
http://www.greatlakesdirectory.org/oh/111803_grea
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200
So before you say 'shill' make sure you are dealing with actual facts.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
It's all there for a great satire: The vaguarity. The complete lack of citation. The telling reference to a controversial and widely decried TV movie. The potent mixture of credulity and cynicism. The reference to the sun.
On the other hand it might a real person who's just new to the subject and not very knowledgable yet.
If it's a joke then Internet Honor demands that I stay away and not get hooked. But if it's an honest post, Internet Honor demands that I respond with well-reasoned rational counters to everything that's wrong.
Maybe I should just go with a goatse link.
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.
El Niño the burrito, or El Niño the global coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon?
Oh, but didn't you hear? Global warming causes supernovas as well!
Ocean Warming, which is a recorded fact has severely harmed coral reefs.
I have no doubts that life will adapt to global climate change, fewer corals but lots of algae and red tide in the new warm oceans.
I think maintaining the status quo of historical climates seems to have many economic benefits that should not be ignored. And major global climate change would likely shift most markets fast towards the red. The markets would be forced to adapt quickly, which they are not very good at doing without a lot of suffering by the people at the bottom. Perhaps this is the conservative in me talking. (not neo-conservative!)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Is it just me or does this strike others as "lalalalalalalalalalalaI'mnotlisteninglalalalalala la!" Way to ignore the vast majority of solid information out there and try to put a rose on a pile of shit.
Unfortunately, it's not just you. Many people believe that all change must be bad because change, by definition, means things will be different. Some things will be better and some things worse, but all things will be different.
Different != Bad
That said, if I had to chose between between global warming vs global cooling, I'd take the warming 100% of the time! When the climate changes, it's going to go one way or the other.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I listen to the BBC World Service every day on my way to and from work. In my gas-guzzling SUV.
Just about every story is about how the world is ending, mostly because of man-made global warming. Yesterday, I heard that dams and hydro-electric power release more greenhouse gases than coal-fire electric plants. If they keep on like this, the only option for humanity will be mass suicide. Though, only if a decomposing corpse releases less methane than a living person, I guess.
Earlier this week there was a story about RFID devices in trash cans, to measure and control the amount of garbage thrown out by Britons. If this were in support of the George Bush's Global War on Terror, the masses would be out on the streets, but any invasive authoritarian measure can be justified in order to "Save the Earth" (tm).
I'm over it. Bother me no more with stories of global warming. At this stage, it's become a catchphrase to justify all sorts of bureaucratic intrusion and control, instigated by the watermelon left (green outside, red inside).
668: Neighbour of the Beast
How dare you, Slashdot! You have posted blasphemy in the name of Our Religion. The sins of man have sullied our great Eden, and when the Judgement Day comes and the waters flood and the fires burn, it will fall on your head, so sayeth the Lord Gore. You must repent your sins and pray through ritual recycling, carbon credits to make companies rich, dangerous mercury bulbs, and higher taxes. You damn Christian capitalists and your fundamentalist religion. You're a bunch of Nazis! Now pay the government for the shame of your existence.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Vostok ice core data: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/ vostok/vostok.html
/ molspec/irspec1.htm
/ warming_earth/scientific_evidence.htm
CO2 concentrations over the last 600000 years: http://www.realclimate.org/epica.jpg
Sadly, I can't find the graph that superposes the temperature record over the CO2 record. I'm sure another 30 minutes of googling for it will yield it.
The spike is over the last 150 years or so, and basic modeling techniques show you that it is abnormal. All your questions can be answered by looking through the two graphs I provided you.
Alright, I exaggerated when I said that our CO2 output dwarfs all natural emissions. You're right, that's probably wrong. However, our emissions are currently not being absorbed as fast as they are generated, and total concentrations are rising quite nicely. That's the key part - we are putting stuff into the regular cycle that doesn't get absorbed.
I know you don't think that it's affecting the earth. You still haven't given a reason why, despite the well known physics of infrared absorption, which are described quite nicely here: http://teaching.shu.ac.uk/hwb/chemistry/tutorials
The data about CO2 affecting infrared radiation from earth can be found here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142, and at the Wikipedia article about greenhouse gases. If you object to the sources, you can always check the referenced literature.
I've got plenty of data. I can pull data for days. Where's yours? Where's your peer reviewed article? All you have is a few people who had to get a BBC documentary made, because people kept laughing at their theories and wouldn't bother publishing their papers. BTW, I've seen the BBC documentary - the data referenced in there, as well as the analysis thereof, has been widely discredited. For something real, read the IPCC reports: start here (http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/pub.htm), and don't stop until the end. Then come back.
Oh, and just for the heck of it, because I like Woods Hole and a friend of mine worked there, here's a little summary they threw together about the CO2 data collected: http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications
Again - where's your data?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
But it quickly became apparent that the horrific tale of a melting South Pole was nothing but fiction. The average temperature in the Antarctic is -30 degrees Celsius. Humanity cannot possibly burn enough oil and coal to melt this giant block of ice.
Hello, Spiegel. Let me introduce my friend, the Larsen B ice shelf, along with Journalistic Integrity. No, you haven't met.
I'm always amazed by supposed scientists being so confident in predicting future states of chaotic systems so far in advance. I'm even more amazed by claims that certain changes to the present state will lead to a specific changes in future outcome. I believe this is called Hubris.
Now then, "Oy vey" is Yiddish for "Oh woe is me". This is a bit premature. Let's save it for when Nemesis gets his revenge.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
As much as I hate to sound like I'm defending the stupid documentary, people who "deny the science on climate change" are not even close to the same boat as creationists or flat-earthers.
Flat-earthers can prove themselves wrong with 2 sextants and a friend, or by using "American Practical Navigator" by Bowditch, among many other possibilities. Things easily accessible to anybody with a calculator and a library or a marine hardware store. Flat-earthers are exceedingly rare and inexcusably stupid. Although maybe not rare enough.
Creationists . . . I don't even know where to start. Creationism is more reasonable than Flat-earth theory, but not much. The only real defense there is it is hard to make your own experiments to test evolution. You could see how you are a combination of your parents and extrapolate from there. I suppose you could take a weak antibiotic once a month until you develop some resistant bacteria or something, but that is a whole different variety of bad idea.
How is any individual supposed to measure global climate change? Assuming they don't have access to a world-wide network of observatories and whatnot. Last I checked, most people don't. Factor in things like urban heat island effect and local weather variations, and things become even more difficult for the amateur scientist. Add in that the sea level is changing both at a slow enough rate that people don't personally notice it (maybe in places with extremely small tide action?) and the fact that sea level charts matched against global temperature charts don't correlate the way you would expect (sea level has been rising at a pretty much constant rate over the last 120 years, while temperature has decreased for 10 years or more at least 4 times).
I believe that there is indeed global warming, and I suspect that people are at the very least part of the cause, but I can't personally convince myself to care about it, one way or the other.
Stop it? Meh.
Slow it down? Meh.
Reverse it? Well, that seems like a bad idea, but still; meh.
Apathy; it does a body good.
The issue seems to be dynamics rather than specifics. My understanding for 20 years or so was that global warming would bring more violent weather, rather than more consistently bad weather.
Also, with respect to the warming is good for life argument, the Earth has most certainly been warmer, and likely more violent weather-wise. Our distinct problem is that we have virtually eliminated the possibility of more life spawning by killing its potential habitat and introducing toxic waste of various forms.
I wrote an article 15 years or so ago arguing that global warming wasn't the biggest issue, but rather that desertification and the elimination of biodiversity was. Whether we can live in a world without a functional ecology is going to be something we quickly find out. If it's warmer doesn't really matter, unless you are in a stressed area. My opinion is that a lot of people are going to perish, but as usual YMMV. As if they already are not perishing! It may simply be more permanent for many regions.
Predicting those regions is like predicting the weather!
I have always heard the same thing, FWIW. That "catching cold" wasn't actually caused by being physiologically cold, but occurred more often in the winter because people tend to be inside, packed together, with the houses/buildings all sealed up, basically creating little petri dishes for bacteria to thrive in.
I can imagine that if you were really cold, for a long time -- like, hypothermic -- that perhaps this would weaken your body's immune system to the point where you would become more susceptible to disease. However, I really don't think that there's much credence to the old adages about "putting your hat on so you don't catch cold!"
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Disclaimer: I have a PhD in meteorology. While paleoclimatology and climate change are not my research areas, I am fascinated by climate change and try to keep up on the research.
I naively thought once the IPCC report came out these types of "debates" about climate change would end. I was wrong. If anything, the naysayers are louder than ever.
I have read the Summary for Policymakers (and actually used it as a teaching tool in my numerical weather prediction undergraduate class). Have you? It's written at a relatively non-scientific level (hey, it's for politicians after all) but is very, very clear.
The results of this international (intergovernmental) exhaustive literature review? Humans are very likely (90%) responsible for the bulk of observed global warming.
That's it. Plain and simple.
Yet, no other topic in the world brings out the armchair scientists more than global warming. It's a frustrating phenomenon for me as a scientist. It's sort of like being an oncologist dealing with a chronic smoker who blames his lung cancer on some genetic anomaly, or living 50 miles away from a nuclear power plant, rather than the bloody obvious fact that smoking two packs of cigarettes for 40 years just might have something to do with the cancer.
This is science, not faith. Just about every climate change doubter starts his sentence with "I don't believe humans cause global warming because..." or "I don't believe in global warming." This clearly demonstrates a huge misunderstanding of the scientific process. Belief has nothing to do with it. It's about physics, meteorology, climatology, astronomy, biology, oceanography, chemistry etc., all of which rely on the peer-reviewed scientific process to further our understanding of the physical world.
I challenge any of the naysayers to do a little research of their own, not simply rely on cherry picking viewpoints which align with their own. It's sort of like a game, holding up their "most credible scientist" as a shield, challenging me to do the same. Never mind the fact that my "army" of scientists is about three orders of magnitude greater than their own... but I digress...
The very least anyone should do before arguing against... or for... anthropogenic climate change is to pick up an undergraduate meteorology textbook and opening up to (usually) chapter 3, the chapter on heat transfer. The section on radiation is the most crucial one. Read about blackbody radiation. The solar spectrum and the terrestrial spectrum are a function of their temperatures. Because the Earth is much colder than than the sun, it emits in the infrared (longer wavelength than visible light etc. from the sun).
Then read about greenhouse gases, those by-and-large trace gases which exist in our atmosphere. Understand how they respond to longwave and shortwave radiation. A little light bulb should eventually go on over your head when you realize "oh, so *that's* why the Earth is habitable." You see, without these trace gases (CO2, H20, CH4) the earth would be in a deep freeze - estimated at about 50 degrees F colder global average temperature.
Once you make it that far, you're almost there. Realize that humans are responsible for increasing atmospheric CO2 levels from preindustrial levels of 280 ppm to a modern day value of 380 ppm, an increase of over 30%. It takes very little stretch to realize that this would lead to a shift in the radiative equilibrium temperature of the earth (related to the global average temperature).
You see, this is really easy science. There is NO REASON TO ASSUME that CO2 values increasing the way they have would NOT lead to an increase in global average temperature!! This is exactly what we'd expect! And this doesn't even involve the scary discussion of feedbacks (water vapor feedback, snow/ice albedo feedback) which may accelerate the warming.
And that's just the back of the envelope part. Yes, there are still unknowns. Not, it's not the sun (we've checked into that if you can believe it). No, it's n
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
I had with a friend who is a *very* fundamentalist Christian who believes in the Rapture. A time when all the "good" Christians (opposed to what?) get taken up to heaven for a thousand years. It went something like this:
Him: And then there will be plagues.
Me: What kind of plagues?
Him: The earth will get hot.
Me: Let me get this straight...all you right wing Christians will be gone and the rest of us can live our lives in peace without your religious dogma and misguided legislative agenda and it will be endless summer here? What's the bad part again?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Your attitude is fairly typical, but contains a very troubling assumption -- namely that if the global warming phenomenon currently ongoing is not anthropogenic, that somehow we don't need to worry about it.
I think this is completely false, and quite dangerous. Furthermore, I think that the debate over what has caused global warming, has really just become a distraction to the real issue, which is quite simply "what the hell are we going to do about it?"
It doesn't really matter whether the cause of the warming is anthropogenic or not; unless you're going to debate that the planet is not getting warmer -- and it doesn't seem like you are -- we still have a serious problem on our hands. It's a little academic to most people whether it's caused by power production, or automobiles, or cow farts, or energy fluctuations in the Sun, or a lack of pirates.
Telling people in Bangladesh who are up to their knees in seawater that "hey, we're just coming out of a geological cold phase!" isn't particularly useful. Or when the power grid and water supplies in the whole Eastern half of the U.S. fail because the average summer temperature is up in the mid-to-high 90s (or higher), saying "it was a lot worse a few million years ago" isn't getting us any closer to a solution.
The causes of the warming phenomenon are only interesting insofar as they give us possible solutions for dealing with the problem -- because it's not CO2 that's the problem, it's the warming that's the problem. If you don't think it's anthropogenic CO2 that's the cause of the warming, fine, but that doesn't mean that the actual problem just goes away because we didn't cause it, which seems to be the attitude taken by many of the anti-anthropogenic-global-warming side. We still have to deal with the same consequences even if the cause isn't anthropogenic. (And if it's not anthropogenic, then we're probably screwed even further, because it's probably a lot more difficult to reverse the process.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm still highly amused that you have not provided a single graph, analysis or paper that supports your position or your claims. This, in spite of a lengthy post that must have taken a good chunk of time to write up. BTW, here's a quick link for you to peruse about volcanic emissions versus human emissions: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volg as.html
Oh how wrong you are about volcanoes. Sucks when you have no data to back you up, doesn't it? For someone who harps on data and models, you are amazingly bad at picking your supporting graphs, your supporting models and your supporting papers.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It was a dead hurricane season in 2006? Typhoons in Asia
Sounds to me like you're forgetting the world is a big place, every year one part of the world has a worse season than another part. Weather is crazy, when Katrina hit during a bad year the rest of the world saw less storms. It's been happening for as long as we've been keeping records.
Despite what you seem to think the relationship between heat and the intensity of hurricanes is very well researched and documented. Just because its hot in one place one year doesn't mean that same place is going to be the hot spot the next year. Ocean currents and trade winds take quite a while to round trip the earth.
So yes, global warming contributed to the weather that we are currently enjoying, except for the fact that Florida is in drought and experiencing some mighty bad forest fires along with Georgia. Yep, no affect at all. Oh yeah, all those extremely powerful tornadoes, also not affected by increased temperatures. Climate change is violent, it always has been in the past, I have no idea why people seem to think it would be easy to deal with now.
Do we need to outlaw oil and stop all emissions? Of course not, but we need to do something about the problem at hand, the problem we can see now, projections of the future don't mean jack as we know now that the climate is changing and we're in a position to do something about it.
And which historical climate do you propose maintaining? The Little Ice Age? The Medieval Warm Period? With or without human intervention, climate is constantly changing. We need to learn to deal with it.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
I don't think you are a shill or dumb. But I reject the weather vs. climate argument, and the coin-flipping analogy is a pretty good one.
Predicting weather is about forecasting the dynamics of a system on time- and distance scales on which the system is chaotic. This is coin flipping. It's possible to predict the distribution of the results, but it's impossible to do much predicting the next flip.
Here's another analogy. Take a cup of coffee. Pour milk in it. Can you predict the precise way in which the milk swirls around? No, that's weather. Can you figure out what the average temperature and milk concentration of that cup will be in five minutes? Yes, depending on your ability to measure the thermal conductivity of the cup, the ambient temperature and humidity, etc.
Modeling climate sure isn't easy or particularly precise. But it is a false premise to reject such activities based on the fundamental constraints of weather prediction. Weather and climate are obviously governed by the same dynamics, but they differ fundamentally in terms of their time and distance scales.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Wow. Not a single reference. Not a single discussion about how CO2 absorption works or how it compares to the absorption of other gases. Not a single discussion of the physics of atmospheric warming, the statistics of ice cores and satellite measurements, or even of the carbon cycle. All I see is massive hand waving, lots of statements, lots of posturing. Apparently, it's ok for you to demand - in bold and italics and all caps, no less - data and support, but when it comes to providing it for your claims, it's ok for you to wave your hand and say "it's all here". All there is is vapid posturing.
None of the data is there. All I have is your word that what you say is accurate - and from the brief googling I've done on some of your claims (like the volcanoes - hah!) they're just patently wrong. You make pompous claims about your knowledge, about how science is supposed to work, about how everyone needs to support their claims with data, and then fail every last one of your own boastful demands and statements.
As for real scientists.... I sure hope you don't consider yourself one of them. I've worked with them, and you are so far out in crackpot land that you don't even qualify as an amateur scientist in the Scientic American sense, nor even as someone who has any idea how to interpret data. All you are is a complete waste of time whose only method of debate is intimidation. Shoo.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The total CO2 output of all the volcanoes in the world in any given year is still less than 2% of annual anthropogenic emissions.
You are probably getting CO2 confused with aerosol precursors. There are more than a dozen things on this planet that regularly put out more CO2 than we do. That's kind of a red herring, just like the wingnuts who like to point out that more of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor than CO2.
As the previous poster pointed out, there are large non-anthropogenic sources of CO2, but until recently they have been essentially balanced by non-anthropogenic sinks of CO2, so that net CO2 concentrations remained pretty much constant on timescales of millennia. We are now sourcing CO2 at a much greater rate than it can be sunk, leading to a rapid rate of accumulation.
Out of curiosity, what do you believe is responsible for the current rapid increase in CO2 concentrations? They were until 1983, and our CO2 output has not increased much since then (sure we're growing, but we're also becoming more efficient.) I challenge you to justify that claim with published data.
Not only is that not true, it's also not as relevant as you would have it appear: even if our CO2 output leveled off (which it most definitely has not), it would still continue accumulate in the atmosphere because we would still be sourcing it faster than it can be sunk. (Unless we go in for sequestration in a big way.)
Incidentally, you say: Most climatologists believe that humanity has a net decrease on global CO2 creation, because industry generates less CO2 per acre than biota do. I challenge you to justify that claim with published data. It certainly disagrees with every land use CO2 estimate I've seen (e.g., Jain, Houghton,
Furthermore, the paleo T/CO2 record does not contradict anthropogenic global warming, nor does it explain the current temperature or CO2 trends.
"Or did you just miss the half dozen places where I said I was able to read the models, and was doing so at that time? Or the links, the references to work, et cetera?"
I've just managed to browse through the tedium of your entire body of posts in this thread, and I found only two relevant links: the documentary on google video, and the umich.edu page, which you summarily dismissed as supporting your points anyway.
I now officially think that you're batshit fucking crazy, and just forgot to take your meds. I've said it before, I'll say it again - it's nice to know that the opposition to global warming seems to to be comprised almost entirely of paid whores or nutbags off their meds.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Just about every argument I've heard about global warming can be summarized by a few talking points:
Liberal talking points
* Because of over a century of adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, the average temperature in Earth is increasing.
* This has foreseeable negative impacts.
* The scariest impacts are from subtle effects that we can't even predict.
* Models say we are approaching a tipping point where the changes become self-sustaining and self-feeding.
* We can slow or stop this, but we're running out of time, and must act now.
Conservative talking points
* Global warming is not happening. It's a liberal myth.
* It's a normal cycle, not caused by man.
* It's pointless for us to try to slow global warming because India and China are putting much more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than the United States is, and they won't stop.
* What's the big deal? It's only a few degrees change, and will make life better on Earth. Don't you like nicer weather?
* It's too late to stop the major effects of global warming. Better for the the government to encourage and subsidize business to adapt to and profit from the major changes that will inevitably occur.
I'm in eastern Canada. The worst winter of my life is easily January/February 2004. I don't think it peeped over -20C more than a couple of times during those two months (I remember starting my car one morning and the car thermometer read -37C, despite the car being in the sun and that it was at 8:45 AM, I don't want to imagine what the temperature was at 4 AM). This winter kicked in late but wasn't warm and stuck around a fair bit longer than normal with frequent snow fall even in late April (I'm on my summer tires since last week). It all depends on your locality. What you're seeing in BC doesn't necessarily describe the entire situation too well.
[update: Damn you, NeutronCowboy, for beating me to the punch. But really, thank you. You have been a lot more elequent than I in this thread.]
0 2/1686
You do *not* get to have the last word. Everyone here is mostly trying to have a civil discussion with you. But so far, all you've done is insult and intimidate your critics. You say I don't provide any references or resources. I need to cite only one:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/57
Oreskes has sampled almost a thousand seperate scholastic studies across multiple disciplines. and there was *NO* direct dissent. This is a far cry from the "gobal warming hoax" you claim. These researchers are serious scientists. They only responsibility they have is to their own designated area of research.
What have you done? Aside from providing a link to that god-awful documentary and a reference to "the global carbon cycle" at the Umich website cited by one of your critics, you have produced absolutely squat. I have gone through all your comments and as of 2 PM PDT, everything you've expressed so far in reply to those in this discussion thread has been a whole bunch of hand waving, groundless assertions, or evasive facts. You're quick to dismiss the references provided by others but other than just those two citations, I can't find any other sources despite your repeated assertion that you have indeed provided references. In reply to my earier comment, you mention:
ice record
CO2 sedimentation
weather balloons
atmospheric temperature gradient
oceanic outgassing measurements
the CO2/temperature correlation
(basic common sense)
saying doesn't make it so. where is the reference to back up your position? Where are the figures and charts from studies that use these methods to disagree with the conclusions of our current understanding of global warming? I think your engaged in this exchange just for the sake of arguing without any genuine intention to enlighten or be enlightened. Some of what you say just makes absolutely no sense. "realistic data that predates animal life"????? "wholesale rape of baby seals."??????
In light of such bizarre comments, I am left with no alternative but to urge you to stop bothering the nice folks at slashdot and don't skip out on your medications.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
You just hit all the standard talking points, don't you? Show me that this theory was anything other than a footnote (as opposed to a broadly held consensus view).
Well here is a newsweek article from 1975 which states that global cooling is(was) coming:http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/cooling1.pdf
Does it matter what the scientific consensus was in 1975 if the public was made to believe a certain view based on "scientific evidence"? No, the only thing that matters is that global cooling was credited as legit in the mainstream press, albeit it's not the wide spread panic / money making machine that global warming is today.
So that's where the skepticism comes from. It's not baseless or a simple talking point, it's real history. Shocker, science has been wrong before and the public was made to believe the wrong thing. So that's where you get the skeptics from.
Honestly I don't understand why people so involved in science are outright angry at global warming skeptics. If anything they should embrace skepticism within their own work and prove with testable evidence that it actually is man made, instead of just calling someone a idiot in so many words because they don't believe.