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26 Common Climate Myths Debunked
holy_calamity writes to mention that New Scientist is revealing the truth behind the '26 most common climate myths' used to muddy the waters in this ongoing heated debate. "Our planet's climate is anything but simple. All kinds of factors influence it, from massive events on the Sun to the growth of microscopic creatures in the oceans, and there are subtle interactions between many of these factors. Yet despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences."
Having looked at the Firehose for some time now, I find it amusing that same-old, same-old (read: non-newsworthy) articles like this appear on the main page so quickly, whereas all articles that present a dissenting conclusion never get here in the first place. I doubt the "votes" have much of anything to do with that.
Slashdot editors please give both sides a fair chance here; this isn't science vs. religion; it's [supposedly] science vs. science and people should be promoting that.
I like basketball!!1!
You can't take the sky from me...
It seems to me that TFA is as much a myth as the 26 myths it points to.
Whether or not it is a myth, it is extremely curious. The first "myth" is that "human CO2 emissions are too small to matter", and the text goes on to talk about the amount of CO2 being put into the atmosphere, not its effect on the heat budget of the Earth. This is odd, because the effect on the heat budget of the Earth (independent of any feedbacks) must be well-known, and that is the only figure that is relevant.
It is always bad engineering and bad policy-making practice to drive action based on INPUTs rather than OUTPUTs. The idiots ultimately responsible for Three Mile Island were the engineers who decided that the current running to a valve actuator could be used to measure the state of the actuator, forgetting that sometimes valves jam and so the inputs have nothing to do with the outputs.
In the present case, I don't care how many tonnes of CO2 humans are putting into the atmosphere, and neither does anyone else. I care how many W/m**2 they are adding to the Earth's energy budget. Until we start discussing that figure, we are not talking about climate change at all.
Part of the problem with this issue is that neither side is very honest. Climate change deniers start by denying the brutally obvious fact that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased dramatically in the past century. This is an empirical measurement that only a lunatic would dispute. Having thus destroyed their credibility, they go on to make some interesting and valid points. On the other side of the issue, climate change proponents spend an awful lot of time focusing on INPUT measurements, which doesn't do their credibility any good either, while at the same time doing all kinds of excellent science.
If we could focus on the EFFECT of increased CO2 on the Earth's energy budget we might learn something important because CO2 forcing is global and well-mixed in the atmosphere, and so can be compared to other global forcings like insolation varation.
It's a curious thing that a simple figure like W/m**2/ppm is not universally available and serving as the basis for all these discussions, because if it was, at least both sides would be talking about the same thing, and it would be the thing that matters.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Quite to the contrary of the GP's assertion, climate has caused catastrophically large extinction events in the past. Thankfully, climate doesn't swing wildly very often on it's own.
Also, notice that it's not, say, a high temperature or high CO2 levels that are bad. It's the *rapid change* that is bad, and as far as rate of change, this current one is only really bested by asteroid/comet impacts and supervolcanism. A disturbing example of this is the "Great Dying" (the Permian-Triassic event), largely brought about by Earth's largest known volcanic event (the eruption of the "Siberian Traps"), which doubled Earth's CO2 levels, created acid rain, and all sorts of other effects that mimic Man's impact on the modern world (the other major theory also involves global warming, but from methane unleashed by the traps instead of CO2; either way, the warming aspect is generally uncontested, as the evidence is so strong). Over a million or so years (most concentrated in a few hundred thousand), the vast majority of multicellular life died as ecosystems were thrown out of balance, and hundreds of millions of years of evolution were undone. For a while after this eruption, the dominant species on the planet were fungi -- decomposers. Slowly eating all of the dead.
The only way I would lionize Dick Cheney would be while he was still alive, and it would involve actual lions.
try and post facts other than those supported by group think in relation to global warming and it will get editted out.
Example, the section about glaciers retreating has its own page, go make one showing all the growing glaciers and watch it vanish. I seriously do not believe them anymore when the say pages don't vanish. Its even more fun when your id goes missing too.
There is no place for intelligent discussion on global warming anymore. Too many of the people running sites have already decided and its evident in the stories that get posted and the comments that get nuked, stripped, or otherwise put into oblivion.
any scientist who supports something other than man made global warming gets labeled as an industry lackey whereas the obvious government we need continued funding lackeys get respect second to God.
The only science I trust now is that dealing with space. Too much of science about earth and mans effect is polluted by political ideaology.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Good one. It's funny to listen to a hundred scientists argue about this issue with so much more certainty and passion than scientists like me have. I'm not going to touch the issue, other than to lament the way that it has become politicized to the extent that random people buy ridiculous individual arguments and defend a position that has no scientific support.
/.
What I really wanted to point out, though, was that "organic" products are actually a major problem to the "let's emit less CO2 and remove more" strategy. "Organic" crops take up more that twice as much land area per unit output, which has led to huge sections of rainforest cleared out to allow for more land-hungry organic food production. Organic food was never meant to be a pro-environmental movement. When the labeling was first conceived, the idea was to imply that the food was healthier because it contained bugs instead of poisons. The idea that pesticides would then be less prevalent in water supplies became tied to it, with good reason. But then from that pro-environmental argument, people got the idea that organic food must be good for the environment in every way. It's certainly not. Organic food is an important cause of deforestation in Central America, both directly (organic food grown there) and indirectly (increased organic production in the United States means lower overall agricultural output, which then increases the demand for agriculture in Central America). Organic food in some cases may be better for your health. In some ways, it's better for the environment. However, it's a big problem for the environment in other ways, so you'll have to make an educated choice.
Okay, one more thing. "Does 1 person make a real difference? Hell no" is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen posted on
Just a side note... CO2 isn't dirty, and is typically named public enemy #1 of "greenhouse gases". If all our cars and combustion based power planets burned friendly carbs at 100% efficiency they'd still spit out lots of H2O and CO2. We'd have no smog, you'd breathe freely even on hot days, and the world would still get warmer (or at least the majority of scientist would predict it).
I'm not trying to agitate, just hear this "CO2 is pollution" argument too often. But whatever shuts your neighbor up... :)
So, claims that the planet has been warmer in the past can't be justified using temperature reconstructions or local phenomena.
What is clear, both from the temperature reconstructions and from independent evidence - such as the extent of the recent melting of mountain glaciers - is that the planet has been warmer in the past few decades than at any time during the medieval period.
Yet, somehow the same "guesswork"-ey temperature reconstructions and local phenomena *can* be used as evidence to support claims that the planet *hasn't* been warmer in the past.
Here's my issue: I'm not sure of the extent of our part in that warming, but I think we ought to minimize our negative impact as much as possible. But the polarized rhetoric about all of this is obfuscating the real, candid debate we ought to be having. You can't claim that it's a fact that we are causing a catastrophic warming trend that will kill billions based on what we know now. But you also can't claim that there's nothing to worry about, either!
The only way we're going to ever have a productive conversation about this is if we can get past the politics and posturing and admit the shortcomings of our knowledge, but at the same time, acknowledge that we can't ignore the issue.
Overall global warming could disrupt the oceanic currents, and actually make it _colder_ in Iceland and Europe. The reason Europe is temperate is because of oceanic currents bringing warm water to its shores. If those were to change too much, the climate in Europe could become like the climate in northern Canada.
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