> So what you're saying is, everyone agrees, except for the
> people who don't agree?
No, I'm saying the vast majority of the people who don't agree have no credibility. I'm aware of *one* possible serious work that might provide some interesting arguments ('The Sceptical Environmentalist'), and it's on my Xmas list. (However, the person who brought it to my attention claimed that an entire edition of 'Scientific American' was devoted to refuting his arguments - he held this up as evidence of the *rightness* of the sceptical arguments, which isn't the way my brain works. But I'll try to read it with an open mind when I get it.
More precisely, then:
"Everyone who I have looked into so far who doesn't agree, puts forward arguments or data that have no credibility."
As for the rest of us, we remember all the threats about imminent human disaster that were made before we were born. After all, the world's population has been decimated by the famine of the 70's, we have run out of oil long ago, and the American empire has collapsed. Oh, and the ozone hole got so big it's not safe to go outside without SPF 20,000, the earth is experiencing global warming AND cooling simultaneously.
Isn't that what the scientists have told us?
No, it wasn't / isn't. If you know differently, please provide journal references. (BTW: the National Enquirer, USA Today, Fox News etc do not count as journals. Not in my universe, anyway.
Yep, I reposted the same URLs several times which I agree looks a it lame; I won't do that again. But I'm sick of seeing the same strawman arguments by uninformed twits, and those URLs do provide a lot of information that, were the posters of bullshit to be aware of, wuold save us all the trouble of refuting them. OTOH those who dismiss the hard science (as opposed to just not knowing about it) can be safely filed under 'kook' as far as I'm concerned.
typically it pops up after firefox crashes. have it configured to
send automatically. perhaps 1 in 5 times that it starts, does it
actualy get to upload the backlog of crash data.
Sometimes it's not even starting autmoatically, I manually start it & generate an incident by hand.
Newsweek is hardly an academic journal, and as I send in response to another post, it is disingenuous at the very least to suggest that the consensus now compares to the scaremongering of Erlich (who _clearly_ had his own axe to grind) then.
As I've said elsewhere, the 'history of global warming' link I've posted several times on this story has a good description of the 'global cooling' mini-scare of the 70s.
"Peer reviewed" journals also had calls to herald the
global drops in temperatures. Presidents and leaders were warned to
start stockpiling food for the comming shortages. Check Wikipedia for
a starting point. Science, Nature, National Academy of Science, are
all examples. And even then, we were told to stockpile food and that
aerosols and pollution were to blame.
Again, I refute your assertion that today's consensus compares to the
70s. Was there an equivalent of the IPCC then? Of Kyoto? I've got the
Wikipdeia article open in another tab, before reading it I have to
register my scepticism given your hand waving language about
'pollution and aerosols'. Sounds like you're conflating CFCs, more
generic concern about other man-made pollutants such as Sulphur
Dioxide, heavy metals, photochemical smog etc etc with the curren
concern over CO2. Science has, in fact, progressed in the last thirty
years...
But that didn't pan out. So they got a new gig. Now
it is warming (that in 99 they said would cause an ice age). Has
science gotten better in the last 30 years in this field? Hardly. Now
they just make up computer models...
OK let's break this down. 'They got a new gig'. Sounds to me like yuo suspect some sort of "research funds generation conspiracy theory"? Forgive me if I'm reading more into that phrase than you intended. OTOH if that _is_ your argument then I'm afraid that falls into the category of 'invisible snorg monster arguments' - I leave the search for that parallel to you.
'now it is warming (that in 99 they said would cause an ice age)' - I guess you're referring to the well-establised fact that the North Atlantic Drift (part of which you'd call the Gulf Stream) has, in the past, shut down, causing a significant local cooling effect across the north atlantic and western europe. SInce 1999, this idea has strengthened considerably. (a) there is more solid evidence that this has happened before, from ocean floor sediment cores and other proxy climate measurements; (b) computer models of ocean currents show that this is indeed one of the global climate's steady states; (c) considerable research into the thermo-haline pump that drives ocean currents backs up the idea; (d) measurement of salinity, water run off into the Barents Sea, density of the deep currents and the various gyres (where cold water sinks before heading back south) provide strong suggestions that this process is well under way.
I live in north west Europe; I have glaciated valleys a few miles from my present location, erratics (boulders dropped from retreating glaciers) around my home. I take a pretty close interest in this subject.
Has science gotten better in the last 30 years in this field? Hardly.
May I ask what qualifications you have to be able to dismiss so much work in so sweeping a way? Put it this way. Has computer technology gotten better in the last 30 years? What about molecular biology? astrophysics? Cosmology? materials science? particle physics? astronomy? astronmetry? planetary science? Geology?
You have no idea, do you?
Now they just make up computer models..
Oh, dear oh dear oh dear... I would like to see you say that to my old
colleague who worked on the Hadley
Centre's climate models. This is a factually incorrect statement
with absolutely no relation to reality. If you really think computer
models are just 'made up', why not make one up yourself and go win
typically it pops up after firefox crashes. have it configured to send automatically. perhaps 1 in 5 times that it starts, does it actualy get to upload the backlog of crash data.
Sometimes it's not even starting autmoatically, I manually start it & generate an incident by hand.
You are correct to remember that there were vague ideas in climatology that we were due for a cooling period. All things being equal they would be correct, in that we're in an inter-glacial period at the present; twenty years ago, these were believed to last 6000-8000 years on average.
However there was never any question that (if it happened) it would be due to anthropogenic factors. Since the early 80s climatology and paleoclimatology has come a long way. For one thing, consider how far computing's come in that time,and contemplate how much better the models must therefore be. Factor in that there has been an enormaous project over pretty much the same period to investigate what effects the (unquestioned) massive injection of CO2 into the atmosphere by humans in the last 200 years is likely to have had. (Ask yourself: how could any rational person think that almost doubling CO2 could NOT have an effect?)
Finally, the solid world-wide consensus amongst reputable climatologists, backed by vast quantities of data and peer reviewed studies in reputable journals (they don't get much more definitive than 'Science' and 'Nature') wasn't there 20 years ago. Neither were any climatologists so... consistently, persistently, and emphatically urging thatwe have got to do something about it, NOW.
Good background with details about the theory of global cooling, can be found here
If your point is simply: 'science has moved on in the last twenty years, therefore we can never trust science' then, fine, enjoy your early 80s lifestyle without the benefit of computers, networks, medicine, etc etc.
I think you read a different article from me. The point is not that variation in solar energy input is in any way controversial. The point is that *climatalogists know this* and the models take account of it.
The last time Mount Pinatubo (in the Phillippines) errupted, it threw of weather patterns in most of North America for almost a year, and put so much ash in the atmosphere that the US west coast witnessed unbelievably spectacular sunsets for months.
The last time Mount St Helens erupted, the ski slopes in Colorado got more snow than they had in over a hundred years.
Sorry, you are mistaken - actually this is a common misapprehension so you have at least thought about it somewhat:) and it's good to get put this one to bed...
ash != CO2.
a year != 'climate'
Colorado != 'global'.
(I could also mention that the plural of anecdote is not data, but that would be snide;)
Granted a major volcanic eruption affects *weather patterns*, and possibly for longer than a year - there are strong suggestions that an Icelandic eruption disrupted weather patterns for as much as a decade in, IIRC, the early second millenium (sorry, haven't precuise year) and Krakatoa's 1888 eruption had effects for three or four years. But this is *not the same* as the effects of human CO2 emissions affecting global climate's steady state. CO2 doesn't come leave the atmosphere because of gravity, or get rained out.
I'm not sure USA Today counts as a journal of record. However, assuming that figure's correct in a hand-waving sort of way (+/-, say, 20%) there are three main factors are not taking account of.
Firstly, if the Greenland ice shelf melts, the implication is that many other ice shelves and continental glaciers aruond the world will also melt(all things considered equal.) This will raise the sea level a *lot* more than 21 feet. If you're interested, check out the reasonably well-accepted data for sea-level maxima in the geological record. (We need to look a long way back - tens or hundreds of millions of years - to see what's likely to happen, as that's how long it's been since CO2 levels were this high. Hint: we're talking 10^2 _meters_, not feet.
Feedback mechanisms are likely to amplify the warming effects of an major ice-shelf melting. There is some evidence to suggest this is already happening.
The reason you might want to be in the Rockies sitting on a pile of tins with a shotgun and 10,000 rounds of ammo isn't that teh sea shore will be in the mid-west. Try a thought experiment. Draw a line along the continental US east and west seaboards at the - say - 21 foot contour. For shits and giggles carry on down thru' central America. Now spool forward in your mind what happens to the people who now have nowhere to live, and (factoring in deaths and economic damage caused by the fact that this rise is likely to come in a series of sudden jumps rather than a gradual increase, and that violent storms are highly likely to increase in severity and incidence), speculate as to the effects on society and the economy. Don't forget those people down South! Didja know that, post-911, with the US in a state of semi-permanent security alert, an estimated 1,500,000 Mexicans enter the US by just crossing the border, every year? Oh yeah, and posit widespread loss of agricultural production across the world caused by anciliary effects.
If you're not a bit frightened by this point, you either lack imagination, are doing the thought experiments differently from me, (eg: you have a naively optimistic view of human nature, or believe Americans are god's chosen people)... or you're a sociopath or suffer from some kind of affective disorder where you would actually quite like to live in a video game.
Exasperated after spending 5 hours wincing with pain afer repeatedly slamming his nuts in his wife's fridge door, kitchen installer Chris Spencer has written an impassioned Open Letter to a fitted kitchen industry.
it was clear that the oceans would die by the turn of the century, the ozone hole would be so large it would cover parts of Africa, people would be dieing of radiation poisoning from the sun... etc etc etc.
No-one ever suggested any of this would happen. The ozone hole has stabilised and perhaps started to shrink because the world took notice of warnings from atmospheric physicists and chemists and agreed to phase out the use of CFCs. It was called the Montreal Protocol and is an excellent examlpe of worldwide action to counter an imminent threat to the whole planet.
Weren't the ice caps supposed to be all gone soon?
I defy you to find a single reputable scientist who made this prediction. Just because your eyes glaze over when the subject comes up so that yuo hear the equvialent of radio static when peiople use words with more than two syllables doesn't mean that people talk bollocks you know.
Proof has been constantly cited since the 70s and yet all the dire predictions have come to naught.
Look, this is just bullshit. You keep on making these wild assertions that have no basis in fact and then knocking them downas if that proves something. These are what we call 'straw man' arguments.
A few good volcanoes provide visible effect that the public can see and in some cases experience.
This is just not true, and if you're so stupid as to regurgitate such outright crap it indicates you haven't bothered doing the most cursory attempt to research any, like,... 'facts'. You have humiliated yourself in public, well done. I'm not sure I can be bothered going thru' the rest of your post. Go away and read some facts about the subject, then come back and apologise for spouting nonsense on a subject yuo know nothing about. A google search for 'FAQ climate change science' would be a good start. Otherwise I recommend:
Pay attention, Oligonicella. You're about to learn something!
The post you replied to was sarcastic. The fact that you failed to realise that is ironic . Now go away and study some facts before shooting your mouth off in public.
Too late. The climate change is already under way. Increased heat waves in Europe, increased hurricane frequency, thinning of ice caps, retreating glaciers. Whether or not this is due to human activity, its happening. Now.
> I think its rather presumptuous to assume man can have any impact on
> the weather.
>
And the reason you think this, in spite of the evidence gathered by
thousands of scientists and decades of research published in reputable
peer-reviewed journals is... what, exactly?
> A volcano can dump more greenhouse gasses in an hour than man can
> produce in a year.
>
This is completely incorrect. It's just > WRONG. Human CO2 emissions are many, many times larger than the largest volcanic eruptions. I don't know where you think you're getting your information from...
> We can little affect the global climate fir good or bad.
>
You're so badly misinformed it hurts. Go get yourself a hot steaming cup of clue:
>>What's interesting, is that global warming might trigger an ice age
>>
> How convenient for the environmental alarmists. Now any weather
> event, hot or cold, can be used as "evidence" for further
> scaremongering.
>
This is utter nonsense - a troll in fact. Climate models are not
whipped up on the back of an envelope - if they were, any moron like
you could get themselves a Nobel Prize knocking the theory or models
down. Hasn't happened, you know why that is? Go on, take a wild guess.
> Guess what folks, there were floods and hurricanes and blizzards
> before humans ever existed.
And this has... what, exactly, to do with climate change? It's
what those of us who can read and think call a logical fallacy. Your
statement is irrelevant to the question at hand.
Before the first caveman learned to tame
fire, Earth's temperature and climate varied in ways that dwarf
today's minor fluctuations.
The point is that all the models and evidence we have strongly points
to this no longer being the case in a few decades' time. The death of,
say, 4 billion people probably wouldn't affect the surivival of the
species - does that mean we should engage in all-out thermonuclear war
because a few billion corpses won't matter in the long run?
> I'll believe in global warming the minute "scientists" find something to agree on.
Hey, fella, guess what? You're in luck!The consensus on human CO2 emissions causing climate change is about as solid as you can get - despite what the oil-lobby, uninformed trolls and assorted net.kooks would have you believe.
>Nobody actually knows how the whole climatic system works
Only in the sense that 'no-one really knows how gravity works'. Strictly speaking it's correct, but it doesn't mean you want to go jumping off a tall building.
To date there is no known way mankind can annihilate an entire planet or its life.
Straw man argument.... this is not what's worrying scientists - it doesn't take much of a peturbation to world climate to cause hundreds of millions of people who live on the coast to be under water, crops to fail, increased hurricane disrupting the economy, etc etc.
I remember how they kept telling us kids in the 70s how there would be a new ice age before the turn of the century. Boy we were gullible back then
This is actually a good point. Strangely enough, a vast amount ofnew research has been done in the last thirty years, and the computer power running the (much much more accurate) computer models, plus vastly improved knowledge of paleoclimatology from proxy temperature records such as ice cores, sediments from the sea bed etc, has now put that findnig into context.
from the article
"The evidence is clear that a major climate change is underway."
President George W. Bush disagrees with this. Therefore more study is needed.
Actually- and I know this will annoy the rabid nay-sayers who always post their ill-informed strawmen, non-sequiturs and logical fallacies to these Slashdot stories - a quick Google search will demonstrate that nowadays, even the Dubya regieme accepts that human CO2 emissions are causing climate change, just like the world's climatologists have been saying. They just aren't going to do anything about it.
I posted on the last Slashdot climate change story saying I was sick of reading the same tired old straw-man arguments trotted out by idiots who trust the scientific method to feed them, work their computers, fly their spaceprobes etc etc until the subject of climate change comes up at which point blind hysteria kicks in and they start trotting out ludicrous assertions that 'prove' that all the world's climatologists are wrong.
Thanks to all those who responded. It now turns out that some much more authoritative and better-informed people than I are already doing this! Please, if you're posting some pet theory about why all this peer-reviewed science is baloney to this story, do yourself a favour and check one of these sites out before you make a fool of yourself in front of your peers.
Slashdot Mirror
> people who don't agree?
No, I'm saying the vast majority of the people who don't agree have no credibility. I'm aware of *one* possible serious work that might provide some interesting arguments ('The Sceptical Environmentalist'), and it's on my Xmas list. (However, the person who brought it to my attention claimed that an entire edition of 'Scientific American' was devoted to refuting his arguments - he held this up as evidence of the *rightness* of the sceptical arguments, which isn't the way my brain works. But I'll try to read it with an open mind when I get it.
More precisely, then: "Everyone who I have looked into so far who doesn't agree, puts forward arguments or data that have no credibility."
Yep, I reposted the same URLs several times which I agree looks a it lame; I won't do that again. But I'm sick of seeing the same strawman arguments by uninformed twits, and those URLs do provide a lot of information that, were the posters of bullshit to be aware of, wuold save us all the trouble of refuting them. OTOH those who dismiss the hard science (as opposed to just not knowing about it) can be safely filed under 'kook' as far as I'm concerned.
typically it pops up after firefox crashes. have it configured to send automatically. perhaps 1 in 5 times that it starts, does it actualy get to upload the backlog of crash data. Sometimes it's not even starting autmoatically, I manually start it & generate an incident by hand.
Newsweek is hardly an academic journal, and as I send in response to another post, it is disingenuous at the very least to suggest that the consensus now compares to the scaremongering of Erlich (who _clearly_ had his own axe to grind) then.
As I've said elsewhere, the 'history of global warming' link I've posted several times on this story has a good description of the 'global cooling' mini-scare of the 70s.
Again, I refute your assertion that today's consensus compares to the 70s. Was there an equivalent of the IPCC then? Of Kyoto? I've got the Wikipdeia article open in another tab, before reading it I have to register my scepticism given your hand waving language about 'pollution and aerosols'. Sounds like you're conflating CFCs, more generic concern about other man-made pollutants such as Sulphur Dioxide, heavy metals, photochemical smog etc etc with the curren concern over CO2. Science has, in fact, progressed in the last thirty years...
OK let's break this down. 'They got a new gig'. Sounds to me like yuo suspect some sort of "research funds generation conspiracy theory"? Forgive me if I'm reading more into that phrase than you intended. OTOH if that _is_ your argument then I'm afraid that falls into the category of 'invisible snorg monster arguments' - I leave the search for that parallel to you.
'now it is warming (that in 99 they said would cause an ice age)' - I guess you're referring to the well-establised fact that the North Atlantic Drift (part of which you'd call the Gulf Stream) has, in the past, shut down, causing a significant local cooling effect across the north atlantic and western europe. SInce 1999, this idea has strengthened considerably. (a) there is more solid evidence that this has happened before, from ocean floor sediment cores and other proxy climate measurements; (b) computer models of ocean currents show that this is indeed one of the global climate's steady states; (c) considerable research into the thermo-haline pump that drives ocean currents backs up the idea; (d) measurement of salinity, water run off into the Barents Sea, density of the deep currents and the various gyres (where cold water sinks before heading back south) provide strong suggestions that this process is well under way.
I live in north west Europe; I have glaciated valleys a few miles from my present location, erratics (boulders dropped from retreating glaciers) around my home. I take a pretty close interest in this subject.
May I ask what qualifications you have to be able to dismiss so much work in so sweeping a way? Put it this way. Has computer technology gotten better in the last 30 years? What about molecular biology? astrophysics? Cosmology? materials science? particle physics? astronomy? astronmetry? planetary science? Geology?
You have no idea, do you?
Oh, dear oh dear oh dear... I would like to see you say that to my old colleague who worked on the Hadley Centre's climate models. This is a factually incorrect statement with absolutely no relation to reality. If you really think computer models are just 'made up', why not make one up yourself and go win
If I dismiss someone's "evidence", that dismissal is not invalidated just because he predicted it. Obviously.
typically it pops up after firefox crashes. have it configured to send automatically. perhaps 1 in 5 times that it starts, does it actualy get to upload the backlog of crash data. Sometimes it's not even starting autmoatically, I manually start it & generate an incident by hand.
However there was never any question that (if it happened) it would be due to anthropogenic factors. Since the early 80s climatology and paleoclimatology has come a long way. For one thing, consider how far computing's come in that time,and contemplate how much better the models must therefore be. Factor in that there has been an enormaous project over pretty much the same period to investigate what effects the (unquestioned) massive injection of CO2 into the atmosphere by humans in the last 200 years is likely to have had. (Ask yourself: how could any rational person think that almost doubling CO2 could NOT have an effect?)
Finally, the solid world-wide consensus amongst reputable climatologists, backed by vast quantities of data and peer reviewed studies in reputable journals (they don't get much more definitive than 'Science' and 'Nature') wasn't there 20 years ago. Neither were any climatologists so... consistently, persistently, and emphatically urging thatwe have got to do something about it, NOW .
Good background with details about the theory of global cooling, can be found here
If your point is simply: 'science has moved on in the last twenty years, therefore we can never trust science' then, fine, enjoy your early 80s lifestyle without the benefit of computers, networks, medicine, etc etc.
excellent post, good data, thanks very much!
I think you read a different article from me. The point is not that variation in solar energy input is in any way controversial. The point is that *climatalogists know this* and the models take account of it.
- ash != CO2.
- a year != 'climate'
- Colorado != 'global'.
(I could also mention that the plural of anecdote is not data, but that would be snideGranted a major volcanic eruption affects *weather patterns*, and possibly for longer than a year - there are strong suggestions that an Icelandic eruption disrupted weather patterns for as much as a decade in, IIRC, the early second millenium (sorry, haven't precuise year) and Krakatoa's 1888 eruption had effects for three or four years. But this is *not the same* as the effects of human CO2 emissions affecting global climate's steady state. CO2 doesn't come leave the atmosphere because of gravity, or get rained out.
If you're not a bit frightened by this point, you either lack imagination, are doing the thought experiments differently from me, (eg: you have a naively optimistic view of human nature, or believe Americans are god's chosen people)... or you're a sociopath or suffer from some kind of affective disorder where you would actually quite like to live in a video game.
Exasperated after spending 5 hours wincing with pain afer repeatedly slamming his nuts in his wife's fridge door, kitchen installer Chris Spencer has written an impassioned Open Letter to a fitted kitchen industry.
*PLONK!*
The post you replied to was sarcastic . The fact that you failed to realise that is ironic . Now go away and study some facts before shooting your mouth off in public.
Arctic climate is changing much more rapidly than models predicted.
And some slightly older random stories from my bookmarks file.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast07sep_1 .htm?list98953
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_ 1643000/1643156.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/uk/england/newsi d_1661000/1661560.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_ 1706000/1706823.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_ 1664000/1664887.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/americas/n ewsid_1375000/1375089.stm
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/early-earth-01k.htm l
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_ 1718000/1718183.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_ 1779000/1779619.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_ 1782000/1782691.stm
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/15jan_gree nhouse.htm?list98953
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_ 1804000/1804467.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/americas/n ewsid_1820000/1820584.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/in_depth/sci_tec h/2002/boston_2002/newsid_1825000/1825283.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_ 1528000/1528348.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_ 1833000/1833902.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_ 1899000/1899150.stm
http://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f=/s tories/20020327/463946.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_ 1940000/1940117.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_ 1951000/1951084.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_ 1993000/1993832.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/europe/new sid_2019000/2019349.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/americas/n ewsid_2137000/2137205.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/health/2168145.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/europe/2188407.s tm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/asia-pacific/220 2919.stm
http://www.whoi.edu/home/about/whatsnew_abruptclim ate.html
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=40977& cid=4354856
http://earth.agu.org/revgeophys/schmit01/node8.htm l
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/sci/tech/2333133.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/sci/tech/2369333.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/sci/tech/2385591.stm
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,69 03,837058,00.html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/10/202123 6&mode=nested&tid=134
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/1 1/1436214&mode=nested&tid=134
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-2 161625,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/sci/tech/2525041.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/sci/tech/2558319.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/sci/tech/2559633.stm
> the weather.
>
And the reason you think this, in spite of the evidence gathered by thousands of scientists and decades of research published in reputable peer-reviewed journals is... what, exactly?
> A volcano can dump more greenhouse gasses in an hour than man can
> produce in a year.
>
This is completely incorrect. It's just > WRONG. Human CO2 emissions are many, many times larger than the largest volcanic eruptions. I don't know where you think you're getting your information from...
> We can little affect the global climate fir good or bad.
>
You're so badly misinformed it hurts. Go get yourself a hot steaming cup of clue:
Hey, fella, guess what? You're in luck!The consensus on human CO2 emissions causing climate change is about as solid as you can get - despite what the oil-lobby, uninformed trolls and assorted net.kooks would have you believe.
Only in the sense that 'no-one really knows how gravity works'. Strictly speaking it's correct, but it doesn't mean you want to go jumping off a tall building.
Please educate yourself.
Straw man argument.... this is not what's worrying scientists - it doesn't take much of a peturbation to world climate to cause hundreds of millions of people who live on the coast to be under water, crops to fail, increased hurricane disrupting the economy, etc etc.
This is actually a good point. Strangely enough, a vast amount ofnew research has been done in the last thirty years, and the computer power running the (much much more accurate) computer models, plus vastly improved knowledge of paleoclimatology from proxy temperature records such as ice cores, sediments from the sea bed etc, has now put that findnig into context.
This is an excellent review of the history of climate change theory showing how the 'new ice age' idea fits into current understanding of where we're at, and what this handbasket is doing here.
Actually- and I know this will annoy the rabid nay-sayers who always post their ill-informed strawmen, non-sequiturs and logical fallacies to these Slashdot stories - a quick Google search will demonstrate that nowadays, even the Dubya regieme accepts that human CO2 emissions are causing climate change, just like the world's climatologists have been saying. They just aren't going to do anything about it.
In other news, a Greenland glacier has dramatically speeded up and is now running more than twice as fast as the current models assume (hint: this is VERY BAD NEWS)
Thanks to all those who responded. It now turns out that some much more authoritative and better-informed people than I are already doing this! Please, if you're posting some pet theory about why all this peer-reviewed science is baloney to this story, do yourself a favour and check one of these sites out before you make a fool of yourself in front of your peers.
Thank you.