Positive effects are in the various IPCC reports. For example, my home country, New Zealand should improve the supply of power (NZ generates a good proportion of it's electricity from hydropower, increased tempertures should lower the seasonal effects on the power supplies). As another NZ example, the following is suggested: "Grain phenological responses to warming and increased CO2 are mostly positive, making grain filling slightly earlier and decreasing drought risk (Pyke et al., 1998; Jamieson and Munro, 1999). Although grain-filling duration may be decreased by warmer temperatures, earlier flowering may compensate by shifting grain filling into an earlier, cooler period."
All of this was taken from Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability by the IPCC.
CFC's are a greenhouse gas. However, their concentration is very low relative to other greenhouse gases (mostly H2O and CO2) so their warming effect is small.
In atmospheric chemistry, they speed up the rate of ozone removal, leading to increased UV penetration of the atmosphere.
It is a bit of a pet subject for young-earth. He or she has an ideology to defend, and will hence use what ever it takes to support it.
To use his mollusc example, radiodating is frequently very bad to the point of being useless on very young samples (the definition of very young depends on the technique). Also, carbon dating requires that the organisms derive their carbon from the atmosphere. Molluscs get very little of their carbon from the atmosphere.
The creationists have take a system which is well known to geologists to be bad for carbon dating, applied it anyway, and use the results to discredit radiodating.
However, the only thing which they discredit, is any claim of honest or integrity which they once may have had.
Will you ignore the fact that radiometric dating frequently produces different answers for one set of samples, and that the "correct" date is then selected?
Now would be the time were you present some supporting information on this slur that you've just cast on the scientific community. I know that I'll be waiting in vain for you to supply some.
Will you ignore the fact that the most widely accepted model of continental drift now in favor is one put forward by a creationist, as his computer model explains things that nothing else does?
What objective evidence do you have for his model being the most widely accepted?
The relationship between greenhouse gases and global temperature is only well "known" among the environmentalist extreemists and the uninformed. Nobody is claiming that CO2 levels are decreasing in the atmosphere, but there is no evidence scientific or otherwise that can conclusively link a rise in C02 to a rise in global temperature.
Actually, it's well known to the informed as well. As I've stated before, global warming is supported by the vast majority of the worlds climate scientists.
Yes, global surface temperatures rose an average of 0.053 degrees C per decade in the 20th century, but at the same time atmospheric temperatures decreased , particularly in the latter half of the century.
Wrong. Parts of the atmosphere have cooled. Not the whole thing.
Specifically, the cooling effect has been concentrated in the stratosphere, where ozone is most concentrated. Now, if you start removing that ozone, high energy photons pass through the stratosphere (whereas normally they would hit it and cause it to heat up), and hit us instead causing an increase in skin cancers. Hence, a cooling effect in the stratosphere is expected.
It is a historical fact that global temperatures have fluctuated as much as 10 degrees C. The Ice Ages alone prove that global temperatures vary regardless of human involvement. Why is this any different?
It's the rate of heating that is surprising. Combined with large increases in the amounts of greenhouse gases (which are one of two heat sources for the earth's surface).
Again, if you check the facts you can see that this is easily disputed. Here [nasa.gov] is a graph showing the size of the ozone layer since 1980. The 2002 datapoint of about 15 million km^2 isn't even on there (a little more than 1/2 of the 2000 size). CFC aerosol cans were banned in 1976 and the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1989. Can you see any kind of link in the ozone size to this reduction on "greenhouse" gases? Are you honestly trying to convince me that these two are somehow related? Why would the hole in the ozone reach its peak a full 11 years after the Montreal Protocol was signed?
Interesting graph. However, your explaination which goes along beside it is badly flawed.
The Montreal Protocol was considerable modified over a ten year period. Each of these modifications had a significant effect on stratosphere Cl concentration. In 1998 the WMO predicted that the concentration of Cl and Br should peak at approx. the year 2000. (Source)
Unsurprisingly, the peak has occured, and now the ozone hole is starting to shrink.
I'm sorry, I let my subscriptions to all the 1970's scientific publications run out. I guess that means this is propoganda.
I guess your right. But don't take it too badly, as all of the conservative think tanks have also failed to find a peer reviewed scientific publication which supports this. That they still try and link the two together says more about them, than anything else.
Actually, Peter Singer (one of the more lefty whacko's out there) has written several books on a variety of subjects, including the "global freezing" scare of the 1970's.
I must be confused here, as the only Peter Singer that I've heard of isn't a scientist of any kind. Surely your not trying to suggest that because a non-scientist says something, scientists must agree with him. Perhaps you could supply links to Peter Singer the great climatical scientist?
Give me a list of scientists that support this theory, and I'll show you a list that don't.
Here is a list of contributed to a IPCC report on the Science basis for climate change. And here is a list of scientists who have reviewed their report.
I await your list with bated breath. And as a little hint, if you are planning on submitting a certain petition, then you might like to read Scientific American research into it first.
Its just plain bad science, and the only reason people think it is supported by a majority of scientists is because it isn't politically correct to argue it. For example, here [cnn.com] is the CNN writeup of the shrinking ozone hole this month. The size of the hole reaches a 12 year low, and the only scientific opinion expressed is: "Scientists caution that the data are insufficient to conclude that the fragile ozone layer is on the mend.
Perhaps you should read up on science as a whole, before slagging off the scientists cited by CNN. What they said was entirely correct.
My point is that by making information such as lists of addresses of abortion doctors harder to find, you will rule out 90% of fanatics. It won't stop them all, but it does improve the odds.
Actually you would be surprised about how dumb fanatics can be.
I once read an interview of Peter Singer, and he pointed out that out of all of his death threats, only one was considered creditable, and the guy who was making them from his own phone, and was even surprised when the police showed up at his house.
Given the extreme number of posters who have laid into this report without even reading it, I'd be surprised if the deaths of all slashdotters would have a negative effect on IQ.
Actually, many third world countries population growth is also dropping. It seems that as women get more control over their lives, and easily access to birth control, the number babies per families drops.
I'm quite happy to call myself a environmentalist, however on issue's like population and the ozone hole, I'm confident that we are heading in the right direction.
Give me a break. The relationship between greenhouse gases and global temperature is ambiguous at best.
Wishful thinking on your part here. The relationship between greenhouse gases and global temperature is quite well known.
Why did the average global temperature go DOWN between 1920 and 1987 despite a 40% increase in "greenhouse gas" emissions at the turn of the century?
Wrong.
The average global temperature started to increase in the 1920's. This site on reconstructing global tempertures from the American Geophysical Union has a graph showing tempertures from 1961 to 1992 showing a steady increase.
Do you want to ignore the fact that the "hole" in the ozone has shrunk to half the size it was 2 years ago?
Because CFC's were cut out (think back to the Montreal Protocol). Interesting the alarmists turned out to be the conservatives who complained about the damage that the phase out would do to the economy.
Do you not remember that 40 years ago, environmentalists like yourself were more concerned about global freezing than they were about global warming?
As an aside, can you name a single peer reviewed scientific publication from that time period which is about this global freezing? I'm just wondering because their are hundreds on global warming, but nobody can cite one on global freezing, and I'm beginning to suspect that the comparisons between the two are just pure propaganda put forward by greenhouse skeptics who have lost the scientific battle, and are now stuck just playing the propaganda game.
The simple fact is that "global warming" is nothing more than a hypothesis that is backed up by ambiguous and contrary facts. There has been no conclusive evidence proving this idea, so why to you treat it as a proven theory?
Scientific theories are never proved. So global warming will always be a hypothesis.
However, the simple fact is that the vast majority of the worlds climatical scientists support this theory.
Maybe faking your figures is dishonest, and wrong in principle, and maybe even such sacred figures as professional environmentalists should (god forbid) be held to the same standards of integrity as the rest of us.
Exactly how are they faking the figures?
As far as I can tell, your just making this up (just like your earlier Club of Rome post), so perhaps you should think about this "standards of integrity" thing.
It is funny how many engineers and scientists tend to be libertarian, free-market types. There is this tendency to have supreme faith in the existence of "natural laws."
This isn't a observation which I've made. I'm a chemistry PhD student, and have worked in a number of institutions, and have never met a libertarian in the flesh. Only a few scientists that I know have heard of them, and the ones that have generally think that they are a joke (as do I).
However, on Slashdot, everything changes. Maybe it is because the average slashdotter is much more knowledgable on computing than chemistry/physics/biology, or perhaps it has to do with the average age of slashdotters. Or perhaps slashdot simply attracts strange points of view.
"Markets" form with or without goverments. People naturally trade goods and service ebtween each other. Try an Econ 101 class.
Perhaps if you weren't so busy trying to be patronisng to the parent poster you would have noticed that he or she wasn't denying the existance of markets.
Sorry I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Could you please rewrite this sentence "refering to the evidence supporting the over abundence of greenhouse gases that so many people seem to take as fact when it is nothing more than a hypothosis"?
If your refering to greenhouse gas concentrations rising, then that's about as close to a fact as one can get.
Slashdot Mirror
Positive effects are in the various IPCC reports. For example, my home country, New Zealand should improve the supply of power (NZ generates a good proportion of it's electricity from hydropower, increased tempertures should lower the seasonal effects on the power supplies). As another NZ example, the following is suggested: "Grain phenological responses to warming and increased CO2 are mostly positive, making grain filling slightly earlier and decreasing drought risk (Pyke et al., 1998; Jamieson and Munro, 1999). Although grain-filling duration may be decreased by warmer temperatures, earlier flowering may compensate by shifting grain filling into an earlier, cooler period."
All of this was taken from Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability by the IPCC.
Wrong. Volcanic emissions of CO2 are approx. 150 times less CO2 than humans. (Link)
CFC's are a greenhouse gas. However, their concentration is very low relative to other greenhouse gases (mostly H2O and CO2) so their warming effect is small.
In atmospheric chemistry, they speed up the rate of ozone removal, leading to increased UV penetration of the atmosphere.
So, do I have this right, your evidence is a paper from the 60's, and another work by a creationist well known for trying to mislead others.
This article shows how your reference plays up small differences in dating.
It is a bit of a pet subject for young-earth. He or she has an ideology to defend, and will hence use what ever it takes to support it.
To use his mollusc example, radiodating is frequently very bad to the point of being useless on very young samples (the definition of very young depends on the technique). Also, carbon dating requires that the organisms derive their carbon from the atmosphere. Molluscs get very little of their carbon from the atmosphere.
The creationists have take a system which is well known to geologists to be bad for carbon dating, applied it anyway, and use the results to discredit radiodating.
However, the only thing which they discredit, is any claim of honest or integrity which they once may have had.
Will you ignore the fact that radiometric dating frequently produces different answers for one set of samples, and that the "correct" date is then selected?
Now would be the time were you present some supporting information on this slur that you've just cast on the scientific community. I know that I'll be waiting in vain for you to supply some.
Will you ignore the fact that the most widely accepted model of continental drift now in favor is one put forward by a creationist, as his computer model explains things that nothing else does?
What objective evidence do you have for his model being the most widely accepted?
Or sending the rocket through their house, and into the sheep behind it.
The relationship between greenhouse gases and global temperature is only well "known" among the environmentalist extreemists and the uninformed. Nobody is claiming that CO2 levels are decreasing in the atmosphere, but there is no evidence scientific or otherwise that can conclusively link a rise in C02 to a rise in global temperature.
Actually, it's well known to the informed as well. As I've stated before, global warming is supported by the vast majority of the worlds climate scientists.
Yes, global surface temperatures rose an average of 0.053 degrees C per decade in the 20th century, but at the same time atmospheric temperatures decreased , particularly in the latter half of the century.
Wrong. Parts of the atmosphere have cooled. Not the whole thing.
Specifically, the cooling effect has been concentrated in the stratosphere, where ozone is most concentrated. Now, if you start removing that ozone, high energy photons pass through the stratosphere (whereas normally they would hit it and cause it to heat up), and hit us instead causing an increase in skin cancers. Hence, a cooling effect in the stratosphere is expected.
It is a historical fact that global temperatures have fluctuated as much as 10 degrees C. The Ice Ages alone prove that global temperatures vary regardless of human involvement. Why is this any different?
It's the rate of heating that is surprising. Combined with large increases in the amounts of greenhouse gases (which are one of two heat sources for the earth's surface).
Again, if you check the facts you can see that this is easily disputed. Here [nasa.gov] is a graph showing the size of the ozone layer since 1980. The 2002 datapoint of about 15 million km^2 isn't even on there (a little more than 1/2 of the 2000 size). CFC aerosol cans were banned in 1976 and the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1989. Can you see any kind of link in the ozone size to this reduction on "greenhouse" gases? Are you honestly trying to convince me that these two are somehow related? Why would the hole in the ozone reach its peak a full 11 years after the Montreal Protocol was signed?
Interesting graph. However, your explaination which goes along beside it is badly flawed.
The Montreal Protocol was considerable modified over a ten year period. Each of these modifications had a significant effect on stratosphere Cl concentration. In 1998 the WMO predicted that the concentration of Cl and Br should peak at approx. the year 2000. (Source)
Unsurprisingly, the peak has occured, and now the ozone hole is starting to shrink.
I'm sorry, I let my subscriptions to all the 1970's scientific publications run out. I guess that means this is propoganda.
I guess your right. But don't take it too badly, as all of the conservative think tanks have also failed to find a peer reviewed scientific publication which supports this. That they still try and link the two together says more about them, than anything else.
Actually, Peter Singer (one of the more lefty whacko's out there) has written several books on a variety of subjects, including the "global freezing" scare of the 1970's.
I must be confused here, as the only Peter Singer that I've heard of isn't a scientist of any kind. Surely your not trying to suggest that because a non-scientist says something, scientists must agree with him. Perhaps you could supply links to Peter Singer the great climatical scientist?
Give me a list of scientists that support this theory, and I'll show you a list that don't.
Here is a list of contributed to a IPCC report on the Science basis for climate change. And here is a list of scientists who have reviewed their report.
I await your list with bated breath. And as a little hint, if you are planning on submitting a certain petition, then you might like to read Scientific American research into it first.
Its just plain bad science, and the only reason people think it is supported by a majority of scientists is because it isn't politically correct to argue it. For example, here [cnn.com] is the CNN writeup of the shrinking ozone hole this month. The size of the hole reaches a 12 year low, and the only scientific opinion expressed is: "Scientists caution that the data are insufficient to conclude that the fragile ozone layer is on the mend.
Perhaps you should read up on science as a whole, before slagging off the scientists cited by CNN. What they said was entirely correct.
There are some extreme cases where I have no problem with censorship (child pornography, hitlists etc).
Life isn't black and white.
My point is that by making information such as lists of addresses of abortion doctors harder to find, you will rule out 90% of fanatics. It won't stop them all, but it does improve the odds.
Actually you would be surprised about how dumb fanatics can be.
I once read an interview of Peter Singer, and he pointed out that out of all of his death threats, only one was considered creditable, and the guy who was making them from his own phone, and was even surprised when the police showed up at his house.
Notice how I refute an argument with observables instead of insults and circular arguments?
Acutally you refute it by just making stuff up.
If you want to see what the exact terms and methodology are, READ THE REPORT, IT'S ALL THERE.
It doesn't assume anything about technology (static or otherwise), instead it sets out to measure the amount of land used in some ways by humans.
Just a quick question, have you read this report, or are you just dismissing it out of hand?
Perhaps you should read the report. Then you could answer these questions, before you dismiss it as BS.
The same goes to the person who gave your post an insightful mod.
Given the extreme number of posters who have laid into this report without even reading it, I'd be surprised if the deaths of all slashdotters would have a negative effect on IQ.
Actually, many third world countries population growth is also dropping. It seems that as women get more control over their lives, and easily access to birth control, the number babies per families drops.
I'm quite happy to call myself a environmentalist, however on issue's like population and the ozone hole, I'm confident that we are heading in the right direction.
Austrialla (sp?)
The continent is spelt Oceania.
Cheers,
A New Zealander.
The Economist, Wall Street Journal and others of their ilk have, in the past, railed against:
1) De-segregation.
2) Abolition of slavery.
3) Civil Rights for blacks/minorities.
on the grounds that "we should let the market decide".
I"m not disagreeing with you, but do you have a citation for this? I would be very interested in finding out more about this.
Give me a break. The relationship between greenhouse gases and global temperature is ambiguous at best.
Wishful thinking on your part here. The relationship between greenhouse gases and global temperature is quite well known.
Why did the average global temperature go DOWN between 1920 and 1987 despite a 40% increase in "greenhouse gas" emissions at the turn of the century?
Wrong.
The average global temperature started to increase in the 1920's. This site on reconstructing global tempertures from the American Geophysical Union has a graph showing tempertures from 1961 to 1992 showing a steady increase.
Do you want to ignore the fact that the "hole" in the ozone has shrunk to half the size it was 2 years ago?
Because CFC's were cut out (think back to the Montreal Protocol). Interesting the alarmists turned out to be the conservatives who complained about the damage that the phase out would do to the economy.
Do you not remember that 40 years ago, environmentalists like yourself were more concerned about global freezing than they were about global warming?
As an aside, can you name a single peer reviewed scientific publication from that time period which is about this global freezing? I'm just wondering because their are hundreds on global warming, but nobody can cite one on global freezing, and I'm beginning to suspect that the comparisons between the two are just pure propaganda put forward by greenhouse skeptics who have lost the scientific battle, and are now stuck just playing the propaganda game.
The simple fact is that "global warming" is nothing more than a hypothesis that is backed up by ambiguous and contrary facts. There has been no conclusive evidence proving this idea, so why to you treat it as a proven theory?
Scientific theories are never proved. So global warming will always be a hypothesis.
However, the simple fact is that the vast majority of the worlds climatical scientists support this theory.
Maybe faking your figures is dishonest, and wrong in principle, and maybe even such sacred figures as professional environmentalists should (god forbid) be held to the same standards of integrity as the rest of us.
Exactly how are they faking the figures?
As far as I can tell, your just making this up (just like your earlier Club of Rome post), so perhaps you should think about this "standards of integrity" thing.
It is funny how many engineers and scientists tend to be libertarian, free-market types. There is this tendency to have supreme faith in the existence of "natural laws."
This isn't a observation which I've made. I'm a chemistry PhD student, and have worked in a number of institutions, and have never met a libertarian in the flesh. Only a few scientists that I know have heard of them, and the ones that have generally think that they are a joke (as do I).
However, on Slashdot, everything changes. Maybe it is because the average slashdotter is much more knowledgable on computing than chemistry/physics/biology, or perhaps it has to do with the average age of slashdotters. Or perhaps slashdot simply attracts strange points of view.
"Markets" form with or without goverments. People naturally trade goods and service ebtween each other. Try an Econ 101 class.
Perhaps if you weren't so busy trying to be patronisng to the parent poster you would have noticed that he or she wasn't denying the existance of markets.
Sorry I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Could you please rewrite this sentence "refering to the evidence supporting the over abundence of greenhouse gases that so many people seem to take as fact when it is nothing more than a hypothosis"?
If your refering to greenhouse gas concentrations rising, then that's about as close to a fact as one can get.
Perhaps instead of listening to Greenpeace etc, you should read up on the science behind global warming (or anyother environmental issue).
While the environmental activists are wrong on many things, they get far more points than usual on global warming.
It is unreasonable to define the overall scientific concesus as:
1) The earth is getting warming
2) Humans are causing at least part of this warming
3) This warming will cause more negatives than positives
Well, the point is that it is fundamentally wrong for the government to do anything to hinder the workings of the market economy.
Fundamentally wrong? What tablets of stone are you getting this from?
Methinks you should apply a little skeptism before making such broad statements as these.