Isn't it convenient that they release the summary for policy makers first? Why not release the whole document at once? Is it because everyone can overreact to the summary, then when they get the details (which can then be disputed), everyone has already reacted and nobody is paying any attention. How convenient.
At this point, "skeptic" is no longer a good word; it implies reasonable doubt [...] "when it comes to attributing global warming to human activity,..." The scientific debate has moved on from that question;
First of all, there should not really be any such thing as "consensus" when it comes to science, particularly when it comes to relatively new findings. Scientists should always be trying to disprove their work. Scientists themselves should be their own worst "skeptics".
In fact, they are. There is nobody watching over a professor's shoulder reporting him to the climate nazis if he says the wrong thing to a colleague.
What happens is that they get accused of working for the evil Exxon and being a "Global Warming denier." They get letters threatening to sue if they don't stop teaching heresy, etc. They are afraid of controversy, so they don't speak up.
That's also wrong -- quite absurdly so, in fact. The entire GHG output of all of the volcanoes in the world put together, in one year, is only about 1-3% of what humans put out in one year.
Sorry, I was thinking aerosol emissions.
If scientists are so sure about this, then they should make predictions and test their hypothesis. What are the predictions for the next so many years? Say 10-30 years? Isn't that how it works? Tell me what the predictions are.
Remember that Greenland used to be green and England was once known for its wine. While I am all for cutting down on all pollution, I am not for UN imposed socialism or an anti-US laden guilt trip.
I appreciate your cool headedness and desire to stick with facts and data. I am no expert on the subject, however even experts need non-expert intuition every now and then to show them the forest through the trees. If we listened to "scientists" during the 1970s, we would have been painting tar on the artic ice to melt it. The scare at that time was global cooling. In fact, the same type of "science" issues were going on back when Eugenics was the big thing. They now label sceptics "global warming deniers" to give it the same sound as "holocaust deniers". How scary is that? Why do you think there is so much "conscensous" about global warming? Universities are not areas of freedom of discussion and debate like you think. They are some of the worst when it comes to political correctness. If Sierra Club, Greenpeace, or some other leftist front group funds a study, then it is perfectly fine, but if Exxon funds a study, it is called into question. Scientists are basically welfare babies, they need to keep the government money coming their way. This is why there seems to be life on mars every time NASA wants to fund a mars mission.
Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies has stated that "the Sun's possible influence has been largely ignored because it is so difficult to quantify over long periods." If this is the case, how can you be so sure that it has had little effect?
One volcano can put more CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere than we would be able to do in 10-50 years. I very well doubt that we can compete with that. Of course, even if we went back to the stone age immediately, we would have little effect on the CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Bottom line: we know how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere, we know how much of it we have put there, and we know how much heat it retains. We know that the Sun hasn't generated enough extra heat to be responsible for the recent warming trend; its contribution is comparatively even less relevant to the accelerating warming over the last 30 years.
Assuming that all the data collection methods are correct and have very small error (which I doubt), and assuming that you've accounted for all the carbon sinks with very small error (which I doubt), and assuming that record lows in Hawaii recently means nothing, and assuming that there is not some unkown heat source that you have not accounted for (which I doubt), even then you have to rely on some "tipping point" theory because the amount of CO2 that man has put into the atmosphere is very small compared to natural sources.
Even if mankind is _completely_ responsible for global warming (which I doubt), our response to the problem is going to be HIGHLY political. So you cannot leave politics out of the debate. Much of the hype has come from leftist front groups, so it is not surprising that Exxon would go on the defensive. Is it a coincidence that your politics are left leaning? I don't think so.
Your rebuttal is by Gavin Schmidt (a well known AGW activist) and a bunch of "scientists" who happen to live in socialist countries. Here's a rebuttal to Gavin Schmidt's overall findings, drawn out from Gavin Schmidt himself:
" "Climatologists calculate that annually the oceans dissolve between 92 and 107 Gigatons of carbon, and emit variously between 90 and 103 Gigatons back into the atmosphere, accuracy unknown."
These are HUGE numbers. In comparison, the entire yearly emissions of all human activity are estimated at 7 Gigatons. [...]
" The anthropogenic crowd presume that the 90 GT figure is natural equilibrium and that the excess uptake of 2 GT is associated with anthropogenic CO2. Of course, this is nonsense. The 2 GT figure is merely the difference between two large, uncertain estimates. The sources for both the 90 GT and 92 GT figures and the 103 GT and 107 GT remain a mystery, concealing the method of computation, its probable accuracy, and the dependence on conditions and assumptions, especially but not exclusively global temperature (climate). "
There's a ton more there, worth reading, including the fact that the Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 samples (widely cited as the definitive atmospheric CO2 record) are higher than anywhere else because Hawaii sits right next to where the biggest part of Oceanic CO2 is released. "
" "Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming," he[Dr. Shaviv] states, particularly because of the evidence that has been accumulating over the past decade of the strong relationship that cosmic- ray flux has on our atmosphere. So much evidence has by now been amassed, in fact, that "it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist."
The sun's strong role indicates that greenhouse gases can't have much of an influence on the climate -- that C02 et al. don't dominate through some kind of leveraging effect that makes them especially potent drivers of climate change. The upshot of the Earth not being unduly sensitive to greenhouse gases is that neither increases nor cutbacks in future C02 emissions will matter much in terms of the climate.
Even doubling the amount of CO2 by 2100, for example, "will not dramatically increase the global temperature," Dr. Shaviv states. Put another way: "Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant."
The evidence from astrophysicists and cosmologists in laboratories around the world, on the other hand, could well be significant. In his study of meteorites, published in the prestigious journal, Physical Review Letters, Dr. Shaviv found that the meteorites that Earth collected during its passage through the arms of the Milky Way sustained up to 10% more cosmic ray damage than others. That kind of cosmic ray variation, Dr. Shaviv believes, could alter global temperatures by as much as 15% --sufficient to turn the ice ages on or off and evidence of the extent to which cosmic forces influence Earth's climate.
In another study, directly relevant to today's climate controversy, Dr. Shaviv reconstructed the temperature on Earth over the past 550 million years to find that cosmic ray flux variations explain more than two-thirds of Earth's temperature variance, making it the most dominant climate driver over geological time scales. The study also found that an upper limit can be placed on the relative role of CO2 as a climate driver, meaning that a large fraction of the global warming witnessed over the past century could not be due to CO2 -- instead it is attributable to the increased solar activity.
CO2 does play a role in climate, Dr. Shaviv believes, but a secondary role, one too small to preoccupy policymakers. Yet Dr. Shaviv also believes fossil fuels should be controlled, not because of their adverse affects on climate but to curb pollution.
"I am therefore in favour of developing cheap alternatives such as solar power, wind, and of course fusion reactors (converting Deuterium into Helium), which we should have in a few decades, but this is an altogether different issue." His conclusion: "I am quite sure Kyoto is not the right way to go." "
I don't doubt that there is more man made CO2 in the atmosphere, or that the earth is warming. What I doubt is that man is the cause of global warming. Much of this 'conclusive' evidence relies on error prone computer models and a disproved hockey stick study. Even if mankind were the cause, we can cut down on CO2 using a market based approach rather than big government or the UN, or some treaty that ties our hands or slows our economy. I suspect that this all has more to do with hatred toward Capitalism (big oil represents evil capitalism). This is why even if we cut down on CO2 tomorrow using some magic technology, the leftists would find some other enviro-concern. The real goal is socialism.
It is like what is happening in the press with Hillary Clinton. We have audio recordings of her talking about Iraq's WMDs to code pink and trying to convince them that she has done 10 years of research and that Saddam must go. We also have recordings of her talking about how a troop surge is needed, not long before GW proposed it. All we hear is silence from the main stream press. Why is this? Aren't they supposed to uncover the truth? Why aren't they holding these people accountable? The answer is easy. The ends justifies the means. They are biased.
You all will get what you deserve. Socialism and the poor house. You will be slaves to the state. There will be no opportunity or upward mobility. Everyone will be poor and manipulated like cattle. You will get more than your share of "sensitivity training" and "wellness wheels" and skin deep "diversity" and political correctness. Sociologisms and psycho babble. "Generation this and generation that." It will be so much as to make you sick. You will then realize that 1984 was real, just 20 years off.
The short answer is, because we are unable to quantitatively explain the warming without appealing to the effects of mankind's CO2 emissions. There is a much longer answer justifying the reasons why we can now be confident in that attribution.
What you are saying is that we don't have enough data on these other factors, therefore it must be the CO2? I've read that Mars just so happens to be getting warmer too. Also, assuming that the rise in CO2 coincides with the rise in population, how do we know that it isn't just a coincidence? I assume there was also a rise in farm animals, cows, etc., too. All giving off methane, btw.
Why do socialist dictators such as Chavez immediately take control of the country's energy sector? Because this is the heart of the country. It pumps the blood and it makes the money. This is what socialists have always tried to do. They want to bring the US to its knees and have world wide socialism. Is this not true? Are you left leaning politically? Is this a coincidence? Why was green day started by leftists? Why is the green party leftist? Why is the WWF leftist? Why is greenpeace leftist? I can go on and on. If we can find a common sense market approach that is not bad for the US, I am all for it. However, nobody has answered why putting tons of water vapor into the air and competing with our cars for water and food is a better idea. Do you really think, like some others, that we should all take a break and just sit back and let China build coal plants every second of the day? Why is this a good idea? Chirac, one of the ones behind all of this, wants to tax the US for pollution. This alone tells me everything I need to know. Socialists want control over the world's economy and the world. They need to be able to tax in order to do this. They want to slow our economy down and institute a world government. They hate capitalism, and it isn't about pollution because communist countries (and even france) have been some of the worst polluters.
This is good because the Dems stole this last election, probably by rigging those machines. How else do you explain the fact that Nanci Pelosi, one of the most left leaning Democrats, is speaker of the house? If all these Dems won by moving to the center, shouldn't a centrist be put in her spot?
I doubt this is true. How much data do we have on Sun activity over these years? I am not talking about "brightness of the sun," either. Brightness is visible spectrum, and does not necessarily correspond to heat, etc. Have other planets experienced a similar level of warming? How good are the studies on this? How about water vapor in the atmosphere? From what I've read, water vapor is a strong contributor to global warming. Even if we all switched to fuel cell vehicles and "growing" our fuel, we will then be putting large amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere from these technologies. How about the fact that there are a lot more man made lakes? How about more people/cities? How about the fact that there are more plants and trees (phoenix AZ used to be a desert)? How about salt levels in the Oceans? How do we really know that global warming is caused by mankind?
While I am all for taking care of our environment, this UN stuff smells of a socialist scheme. Europe wants to keep their socialism and they are trying to level the economic playing field so that the US cannot dictate everything. Many scientists are sympathetic with left leaning causes, this should not be surprising as they live on government money, work mainly with theory rather than reality, and live at Universities. Why shouldn't "Big Oil" fund alternate studies? They are being attacked by socialist enviro-wackos on a constant basis. They have a right to defend themselves by funding their own studies. Lots of studies are funded by organizations that are really leftist front groups, but this is rarely mentioned.
We don't have to sign some agreement in order to reduce our own CO2 emissions. Once we've proven that it can be done here at home, then we can try to persuade others to do it. First, it has to be economically viable. If our economy goes down the drain, then we will all be riding methane producing, ground water polluting, grain eating horses to work. Think of the pollution if we all gave up SUVs for horses? Kyoto was meant to tie our hands so that other countries can catch up to us. Other countries like the Kyoto treaty because they don't like the fact that we are the one superpower. They created the EU in order to compete with us. They dislike the fact that we are keeping them from living in their socialist fantasy world. If you cannot see this, you are blind.
I agree, but my point is that there are a lot of people bashing oil as some conspiracy energy. Now the guy who wrote this article is bashing the ethanol lobby. He doesn't mention the fact that environmentalists were pushing ethanol for quite some time before the ethanol lobby stepped in and took advantage of their situation. The article is very disingenous. The truth is that no solution would be good enough for the hard core environmentalist. They want us all living in farm based communes.
This only proves that environmentalists really just want everyone to go back to the stone age. It isn't about oil, it's about disgust for producer-consumerism and industrialism. They act like they are for a particular alternative, then when you get closer to implementing that alternative, they shoot it down.
Those people that show up to events with "God hates fags" signs do not represent the majority of Christians. Just because homosexuality is a sin does not mean that Christians should hate homosexuals. However, the word "progressive" is a loaded word here. It basically means Socialist or Communist, generally secular or atheistic in nature. It does not mean enlightened or forward thinking any more than liberal means liberated. Government imposed equality is basically a progressive's highest moral. As soon as homosexual marriage is legal, polygamists will be arguing for their 14th amendment rights. Eventually, our society will suffer the fate of Rome, all in the name of secular progressivism and pluralism.
If you were to ask a progressive whether or not a Mexican American's heritage and culture is worth preserving, they will tell you flat out "of course." Then, if you ask whether or not American heritage and culture should be preserved, they will flinch "what do you mean by that?"
Water vapor is a greenhouse "gas" that is much worse than CO2. The lefties will be screaming that we are getting the water cycle out of balance. It's a no win situation people!
The government does not deserve to be rewarded simply because people pollute. Tax this, tax that. Why do slashdotters want such a large government? One can have BOTH a healthy environment and small government capitalism. There is nothing wrong with making sure that manufacturers do something with their waste so that the environment remains healthy. This does not require a treaty or a tax. CO2 is not a pollutant per se, but that does not mean people can just let it go into the atmosphere in large quantities without making sure that there is something to balance it out.
As far as reducing CO2 goes, there's nothing stopping you from creating something to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and selling it to all your slashdot socialist friends. Invent a scrubber that runs on solar power or something. Too hard? Then knock it off with all the tax and treaty talk. Do something about it yourself. Geesh.
You are making the same argument that the wright brothers made about the airplane. Also, you seem to be assuming that living under a dictatorship or islamic state is fine as long as people are not poor. One could still make fusion bombs with this technology, and if radicals wanted to blow up Israel or the US with it, there's nothing about this technology that would stop them.
You also seem to subscribe to the currently popular "super friends justice league" model of problem solving, where one can simply talk with a wild animal and try to understand it and "feel its pain" and then it will not bite anyone. War happens when communication breaks down, or when people are backed into a corner, or when they are over taxed by your justice league, or when people are raised to feel like everyone else should either convert to islam or die. It isn't always about natural resources.
Socialists have it backwards. They value dependence on the government and forced equality over individual liberty.
Absurd, and dishonest - but I fear not, since everyone can see what I'm actually saying, as opposed to what you say I'm saying.
All one has to do is look at history (or France)!
As for state run school systems, the people who say they are good are the same ones who send their children to private schools. There is no question that dictatorships run the most efficient form of government. Does this mean that dictatorships are a good thing? No. Same with state run school systems. Choice is always a GOOD thing.
Do you believe it ever can be? Do you imagine there can be a functional market for electricity?
Yes, we just need to think outside the box. The biggest problem to overcome is the delivery mechanism/infrastructure. If we all generated and stored our own electricity, which eventually might happen, then the competition will be in selling us the equipment.
It sounds like you are suggesting you can somehow have a currency without human agency, but the money supply cannot regulate itself, nor can the "market" regulate it - an incoherent concept.
The fed rate can be based on an equation of market variables and thus "float". The money supply could also do the same. Sure, somebody would have to physically print and destroy money, but the amount would be set by the market. The fed would be out of the picture. They don't do this because they want to try to prevent hard recessions, etc.
Markets run on rules, and those rules are made by human agency, and no one set of rules is any more natural than the other
Not really true. Humans have been trading with each other long before governments have existed. The most natural rule is "what are you willing to trade for that?" Agreement sets the value. If you are trying to trade an ordinary rock, which exists everywhere, then most people will not be willing to trade anything for it. Supply and demand is the most natural rule. Most other rules are based on manipulation of supply, demand, or both.
The idea is not to stop competition, just to use it effectively instead of badly.
I agree, but the government is a big ugly powerful monopoly in itself. It will always be such. It should stay out of our lives as much as possible.
Aside from your comment on artists and musicians, which I don't really get, I wholeheartedly agree
The blues was not started by rich people, and the phrase "starving artist" came from somewhere.
For instance, your figures and citation are counting all those picturesque ex Sov-bloc countries...
And France.
But the point is, "the government sucks" is a maxim, not an ideology. Know its limitations. Surveil it like a bank vault (it is). Never let it get any larger than it needs to be, and always show it its place. Participate in it. Never, ever cease your vigilance of it. But don't get all misty eyed about what it does every day.
Yes, but his argument was overly wordy and full of holes:
1. These countries that have supposedly tried free market capitalism and have failed are the same countries that have tried socialism "more times" and have failed.
2. Our constitution was written to protect individual liberties from the state and to limit the powers of the state. Socialists have it backwards. They value dependence on the government and forced equality over individual liberty.
3. The best schools in the world are not state run. For instance, Forbes listed Harvard and Columbia as the best business schools in the U.S. and Insead and IMD as the best business schools outside the U.S., ALL are private.
4. The EU has 9% unemployment right now, compared to our 4.4%. Socialists take care of their poor by putting them out of work, apparently.
1. Socialism is by very nature price fixing. Socialism provides nothing for "free" like you state. Socialists say "here is your school that you will go to, this is how much it will cost (in taxes), this is the value it must provide." Then when the school does not provide the value that they say it must, socialists say "well we must not be giving it enough money" and raise taxes, and the cycle continues. There's no innovation because there is no reason for innovation.
2. The great depression happened mostly because the feds were messing with interest rates (i.e. basically price fixing) and doing it badly.
3. When most people say "free market," what they mean is that they want supply and demand AND competition to determine value, not some government or oligopoly or monopoly. Most free market people have no problem with the government stepping in to break up monopolies and to create a fair playing field. The government should govern and protect, that is its job.
4. Wealth redistribution is using the strong arm of the government to steal. It is tyranny of the majority and discrimination against one group of people based on wealth/status. The government has had a domestic spy program since the early 1900s called the income tax, and the Democrats are all FOR it. Talk about an invasion of privacy. It is most un-American. (We won't talk about FDR opening and reading mail that was entering and leaving the country, or putting Japanese into camps.)
5. Your citation is misleading because it only takes into account presidents, who don't make laws. There were very few Democrat presidents during the last half of the 20th century, so their sample data is small. The Democrats made the laws for 40+ years. They should be held to account for the high unemployment rates during the Republican president's terms too. You will get a much different picture.
6. Even socialist countries are starting to attach money to the student and have schools compete for students. What does that tell you?
7. Have you ever been to the DMV? Socialism at its finest, pick a number.
Meanwhile our bitter lessons learned from the Great Depression led us to socialist-lite economic policies that created the wealthiest nation on earth.
Huh? We were already set to become wealthy prior to the Great Depression, and it didn't hurt that all the other nations had destroyed themselves during WWI and WWII. The Great Depression was not caused by the free market, it was caused by people gaming the system. You cannot control prices or interest rates and also say you have a "free market". Free markets act like the weather. If you try to control the weather by building a huge mountain, then you might solve your rain problem for your city, but you've then created a desert on the other side of the mountain for everyone else. Like the weather, free markets have boom and bust (rain and drought). Socialism (i.e "price fixing" or artificially setting the value of something) is akin to trying to control the weather. Gaming a free market is also akin to trying to control the weather. Both end up causing more problems than they solve.
Socialist-lite is what caused housing projects, welfare dependency, our failing public schools, the Jimmy Carter economy, etc. Good riddance!
An alcoholic cannot give up alcohol that easily. Alcoholism and food addiction are very similar. However, both analogies are incorrect. The better analogy is a group of people who are thirsty and must drink foul water because they have no fresh water. Everyone knows it is wrong, but nobody comes up with a better alternative. There are a bunch of know-it-alls in the group who keep screaming at everyone that they should not do it, but they themselves also drink the foul water because they also cannot come up with a better alternative.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't it convenient that they release the summary for policy makers first? Why not release the whole document at once? Is it because everyone can overreact to the summary, then when they get the details (which can then be disputed), everyone has already reacted and nobody is paying any attention. How convenient.
At this point, "skeptic" is no longer a good word; it implies reasonable doubt [...] "when it comes to attributing global warming to human activity, ..." The scientific debate has moved on from that question;
First of all, there should not really be any such thing as "consensus" when it comes to science, particularly when it comes to relatively new findings. Scientists should always be trying to disprove their work. Scientists themselves should be their own worst "skeptics".
In fact, they are. There is nobody watching over a professor's shoulder reporting him to the climate nazis if he says the wrong thing to a colleague.
What happens is that they get accused of working for the evil Exxon and being a "Global Warming denier." They get letters threatening to sue if they don't stop teaching heresy, etc. They are afraid of controversy, so they don't speak up.
That's also wrong -- quite absurdly so, in fact. The entire GHG output of all of the volcanoes in the world put together, in one year, is only about 1-3% of what humans put out in one year.
Sorry, I was thinking aerosol emissions.
If scientists are so sure about this, then they should make predictions and test their hypothesis. What are the predictions for the next so many years? Say 10-30 years? Isn't that how it works? Tell me what the predictions are.
Remember that Greenland used to be green and England was once known for its wine. While I am all for cutting down on all pollution, I am not for UN imposed socialism or an anti-US laden guilt trip.
I appreciate your cool headedness and desire to stick with facts and data. I am no expert on the subject, however even experts need non-expert intuition every now and then to show them the forest through the trees. If we listened to "scientists" during the 1970s, we would have been painting tar on the artic ice to melt it. The scare at that time was global cooling. In fact, the same type of "science" issues were going on back when Eugenics was the big thing. They now label sceptics "global warming deniers" to give it the same sound as "holocaust deniers". How scary is that? Why do you think there is so much "conscensous" about global warming? Universities are not areas of freedom of discussion and debate like you think. They are some of the worst when it comes to political correctness. If Sierra Club, Greenpeace, or some other leftist front group funds a study, then it is perfectly fine, but if Exxon funds a study, it is called into question. Scientists are basically welfare babies, they need to keep the government money coming their way. This is why there seems to be life on mars every time NASA wants to fund a mars mission.
0 30320.html )
Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies has stated that "the Sun's possible influence has been largely ignored because it is so difficult to quantify over long periods." If this is the case, how can you be so sure that it has had little effect?
( From: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_
One volcano can put more CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere than we would be able to do in 10-50 years. I very well doubt that we can compete with that. Of course, even if we went back to the stone age immediately, we would have little effect on the CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Bottom line: we know how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere, we know how much of it we have put there, and we know how much heat it retains. We know that the Sun hasn't generated enough extra heat to be responsible for the recent warming trend; its contribution is comparatively even less relevant to the accelerating warming over the last 30 years.
Assuming that all the data collection methods are correct and have very small error (which I doubt), and assuming that you've accounted for all the carbon sinks with very small error (which I doubt), and assuming that record lows in Hawaii recently means nothing, and assuming that there is not some unkown heat source that you have not accounted for (which I doubt), even then you have to rely on some "tipping point" theory because the amount of CO2 that man has put into the atmosphere is very small compared to natural sources.
Even if mankind is _completely_ responsible for global warming (which I doubt), our response to the problem is going to be HIGHLY political. So you cannot leave politics out of the debate. Much of the hype has come from leftist front groups, so it is not surprising that Exxon would go on the defensive. Is it a coincidence that your politics are left leaning? I don't think so.
Your rebuttal is by Gavin Schmidt (a well known AGW activist) and a bunch of "scientists" who happen to live in socialist countries. Here's a rebuttal to Gavin Schmidt's overall findings, drawn out from Gavin Schmidt himself:
v in_schmidt_on_the_acquittal.html
x .php/t116707.html
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/11/ga
"
"Climatologists calculate that annually the oceans dissolve between 92 and 107 Gigatons of carbon, and emit variously between 90 and 103 Gigatons back into the atmosphere, accuracy unknown."
These are HUGE numbers. In comparison, the entire yearly emissions of all human activity are estimated at 7 Gigatons. [...]
"
The anthropogenic crowd presume that the 90 GT figure is natural equilibrium and that the excess uptake of 2 GT is associated with anthropogenic CO2. Of course, this is nonsense. The 2 GT figure is merely the difference between two large, uncertain estimates. The sources for both the 90 GT and 92 GT figures and the 103 GT and 107 GT remain a mystery, concealing the method of computation, its probable accuracy, and the dependence on conditions and assumptions, especially but not exclusively global temperature (climate).
"
There's a ton more there, worth reading, including the fact that the Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 samples (widely cited as the definitive atmospheric CO2 record) are higher than anywhere else because Hawaii sits right next to where the biggest part of Oceanic CO2 is released.
"
Quotes from a forum (albeit political in nature):
http://www.rightnation.us/forums/lofiversion/inde
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1 56df7e6-d490-41c9-8b1f-106fef8763c6&k=0
"Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming," he[Dr. Shaviv] states, particularly because of the evidence that has been accumulating over the past decade of the strong relationship that cosmic- ray flux has on our atmosphere. So much evidence has by now been amassed, in fact, that "it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist."
The sun's strong role indicates that greenhouse gases can't have much of an influence on the climate -- that C02 et al. don't dominate through some kind of leveraging effect that makes them especially potent drivers of climate change. The upshot of the Earth not being unduly sensitive to greenhouse gases is that neither increases nor cutbacks in future C02 emissions will matter much in terms of the climate.
Even doubling the amount of CO2 by 2100, for example, "will not dramatically increase the global temperature," Dr. Shaviv states. Put another way: "Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant."
The evidence from astrophysicists and cosmologists in laboratories around the world, on the other hand, could well be significant. In his study of meteorites, published in the prestigious journal, Physical Review Letters, Dr. Shaviv found that the meteorites that Earth collected during its passage through the arms of the Milky Way sustained up to 10% more cosmic ray damage than others. That kind of cosmic ray variation, Dr. Shaviv believes, could alter global temperatures by as much as 15% --sufficient to turn the ice ages on or off and evidence of the extent to which cosmic forces influence Earth's climate.
In another study, directly relevant to today's climate controversy, Dr. Shaviv reconstructed the temperature on Earth over the past 550 million years to find that cosmic ray flux variations explain more than two-thirds of Earth's temperature variance, making it the most dominant climate driver over geological time scales. The study also found that an upper limit can be placed on the relative role of CO2 as a climate driver, meaning that a large fraction of the global warming witnessed over the past century could not be due to CO2 -- instead it is attributable to the increased solar activity.
CO2 does play a role in climate, Dr. Shaviv believes, but a secondary role, one too small to preoccupy policymakers. Yet Dr. Shaviv also believes fossil fuels should be controlled, not because of their adverse affects on climate but to curb pollution.
"I am therefore in favour of developing cheap alternatives such as solar power, wind, and of course fusion reactors (converting Deuterium into Helium), which we should have in a few decades, but this is an altogether different issue." His conclusion: "I am quite sure Kyoto is not the right way to go."
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From: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=
I don't doubt that there is more man made CO2 in the atmosphere, or that the earth is warming. What I doubt is that man is the cause of global warming. Much of this 'conclusive' evidence relies on error prone computer models and a disproved hockey stick study. Even if mankind were the cause, we can cut down on CO2 using a market based approach rather than big government or the UN, or some treaty that ties our hands or slows our economy. I suspect that this all has more to do with hatred toward Capitalism (big oil represents evil capitalism). This is why even if we cut down on CO2 tomorrow using some magic technology, the leftists would find some other enviro-concern. The real goal is socialism.
It is like what is happening in the press with Hillary Clinton. We have audio recordings of her talking about Iraq's WMDs to code pink and trying to convince them that she has done 10 years of research and that Saddam must go. We also have recordings of her talking about how a troop surge is needed, not long before GW proposed it. All we hear is silence from the main stream press. Why is this? Aren't they supposed to uncover the truth? Why aren't they holding these people accountable? The answer is easy. The ends justifies the means. They are biased.
You all will get what you deserve. Socialism and the poor house. You will be slaves to the state. There will be no opportunity or upward mobility. Everyone will be poor and manipulated like cattle. You will get more than your share of "sensitivity training" and "wellness wheels" and skin deep "diversity" and political correctness. Sociologisms and psycho babble. "Generation this and generation that." It will be so much as to make you sick. You will then realize that 1984 was real, just 20 years off.
The short answer is, because we are unable to quantitatively explain the warming without appealing to the effects of mankind's CO2 emissions. There is a much longer answer justifying the reasons why we can now be confident in that attribution.
What you are saying is that we don't have enough data on these other factors, therefore it must be the CO2? I've read that Mars just so happens to be getting warmer too. Also, assuming that the rise in CO2 coincides with the rise in population, how do we know that it isn't just a coincidence? I assume there was also a rise in farm animals, cows, etc., too. All giving off methane, btw.
Why do socialist dictators such as Chavez immediately take control of the country's energy sector? Because this is the heart of the country. It pumps the blood and it makes the money. This is what socialists have always tried to do. They want to bring the US to its knees and have world wide socialism. Is this not true? Are you left leaning politically? Is this a coincidence? Why was green day started by leftists? Why is the green party leftist? Why is the WWF leftist? Why is greenpeace leftist? I can go on and on. If we can find a common sense market approach that is not bad for the US, I am all for it. However, nobody has answered why putting tons of water vapor into the air and competing with our cars for water and food is a better idea. Do you really think, like some others, that we should all take a break and just sit back and let China build coal plants every second of the day? Why is this a good idea? Chirac, one of the ones behind all of this, wants to tax the US for pollution. This alone tells me everything I need to know. Socialists want control over the world's economy and the world. They need to be able to tax in order to do this. They want to slow our economy down and institute a world government. They hate capitalism, and it isn't about pollution because communist countries (and even france) have been some of the worst polluters.
This is good because the Dems stole this last election, probably by rigging those machines. How else do you explain the fact that Nanci Pelosi, one of the most left leaning Democrats, is speaker of the house? If all these Dems won by moving to the center, shouldn't a centrist be put in her spot?
I doubt this is true. How much data do we have on Sun activity over these years? I am not talking about "brightness of the sun," either. Brightness is visible spectrum, and does not necessarily correspond to heat, etc. Have other planets experienced a similar level of warming? How good are the studies on this? How about water vapor in the atmosphere? From what I've read, water vapor is a strong contributor to global warming. Even if we all switched to fuel cell vehicles and "growing" our fuel, we will then be putting large amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere from these technologies. How about the fact that there are a lot more man made lakes? How about more people/cities? How about the fact that there are more plants and trees (phoenix AZ used to be a desert)? How about salt levels in the Oceans? How do we really know that global warming is caused by mankind?
While I am all for taking care of our environment, this UN stuff smells of a socialist scheme. Europe wants to keep their socialism and they are trying to level the economic playing field so that the US cannot dictate everything. Many scientists are sympathetic with left leaning causes, this should not be surprising as they live on government money, work mainly with theory rather than reality, and live at Universities. Why shouldn't "Big Oil" fund alternate studies? They are being attacked by socialist enviro-wackos on a constant basis. They have a right to defend themselves by funding their own studies. Lots of studies are funded by organizations that are really leftist front groups, but this is rarely mentioned.
We don't have to sign some agreement in order to reduce our own CO2 emissions. Once we've proven that it can be done here at home, then we can try to persuade others to do it. First, it has to be economically viable. If our economy goes down the drain, then we will all be riding methane producing, ground water polluting, grain eating horses to work. Think of the pollution if we all gave up SUVs for horses? Kyoto was meant to tie our hands so that other countries can catch up to us. Other countries like the Kyoto treaty because they don't like the fact that we are the one superpower. They created the EU in order to compete with us. They dislike the fact that we are keeping them from living in their socialist fantasy world. If you cannot see this, you are blind.
I agree, but my point is that there are a lot of people bashing oil as some conspiracy energy. Now the guy who wrote this article is bashing the ethanol lobby. He doesn't mention the fact that environmentalists were pushing ethanol for quite some time before the ethanol lobby stepped in and took advantage of their situation. The article is very disingenous. The truth is that no solution would be good enough for the hard core environmentalist. They want us all living in farm based communes.
Everybody acts like 'big oil' is all a conspiracy until they try to come up with an alternative, then they realize how stupid they are.
This only proves that environmentalists really just want everyone to go back to the stone age. It isn't about oil, it's about disgust for producer-consumerism and industrialism. They act like they are for a particular alternative, then when you get closer to implementing that alternative, they shoot it down.
Those people that show up to events with "God hates fags" signs do not represent the majority of Christians. Just because homosexuality is a sin does not mean that Christians should hate homosexuals. However, the word "progressive" is a loaded word here. It basically means Socialist or Communist, generally secular or atheistic in nature. It does not mean enlightened or forward thinking any more than liberal means liberated. Government imposed equality is basically a progressive's highest moral. As soon as homosexual marriage is legal, polygamists will be arguing for their 14th amendment rights. Eventually, our society will suffer the fate of Rome, all in the name of secular progressivism and pluralism.
If you were to ask a progressive whether or not a Mexican American's heritage and culture is worth preserving, they will tell you flat out "of course." Then, if you ask whether or not American heritage and culture should be preserved, they will flinch "what do you mean by that?"
Water vapor is a greenhouse "gas" that is much worse than CO2. The lefties will be screaming that we are getting the water cycle out of balance. It's a no win situation people!
The government does not deserve to be rewarded simply because people pollute. Tax this, tax that. Why do slashdotters want such a large government? One can have BOTH a healthy environment and small government capitalism. There is nothing wrong with making sure that manufacturers do something with their waste so that the environment remains healthy. This does not require a treaty or a tax. CO2 is not a pollutant per se, but that does not mean people can just let it go into the atmosphere in large quantities without making sure that there is something to balance it out.
As far as reducing CO2 goes, there's nothing stopping you from creating something to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and selling it to all your slashdot socialist friends. Invent a scrubber that runs on solar power or something. Too hard? Then knock it off with all the tax and treaty talk. Do something about it yourself. Geesh.
You are making the same argument that the wright brothers made about the airplane. Also, you seem to be assuming that living under a dictatorship or islamic state is fine as long as people are not poor. One could still make fusion bombs with this technology, and if radicals wanted to blow up Israel or the US with it, there's nothing about this technology that would stop them.
You also seem to subscribe to the currently popular "super friends justice league" model of problem solving, where one can simply talk with a wild animal and try to understand it and "feel its pain" and then it will not bite anyone. War happens when communication breaks down, or when people are backed into a corner, or when they are over taxed by your justice league, or when people are raised to feel like everyone else should either convert to islam or die. It isn't always about natural resources.
Socialists have it backwards. They value dependence on the government and forced equality over individual liberty.
Absurd, and dishonest - but I fear not, since everyone can see what I'm actually saying, as opposed to what you say I'm saying.
All one has to do is look at history (or France)!
As for state run school systems, the people who say they are good are the same ones who send their children to private schools. There is no question that dictatorships run the most efficient form of government. Does this mean that dictatorships are a good thing? No. Same with state run school systems. Choice is always a GOOD thing.
Do you believe it ever can be? Do you imagine there can be a functional market for electricity?
Yes, we just need to think outside the box. The biggest problem to overcome is the delivery mechanism/infrastructure. If we all generated and stored our own electricity, which eventually might happen, then the competition will be in selling us the equipment.
It sounds like you are suggesting you can somehow have a currency without human agency, but the money supply cannot regulate itself, nor can the "market" regulate it - an incoherent concept.
The fed rate can be based on an equation of market variables and thus "float". The money supply could also do the same. Sure, somebody would have to physically print and destroy money, but the amount would be set by the market. The fed would be out of the picture. They don't do this because they want to try to prevent hard recessions, etc.
Markets run on rules, and those rules are made by human agency, and no one set of rules is any more natural than the other
Not really true. Humans have been trading with each other long before governments have existed. The most natural rule is "what are you willing to trade for that?" Agreement sets the value. If you are trying to trade an ordinary rock, which exists everywhere, then most people will not be willing to trade anything for it. Supply and demand is the most natural rule. Most other rules are based on manipulation of supply, demand, or both.
The idea is not to stop competition, just to use it effectively instead of badly.
I agree, but the government is a big ugly powerful monopoly in itself. It will always be such. It should stay out of our lives as much as possible.
Aside from your comment on artists and musicians, which I don't really get, I wholeheartedly agree
The blues was not started by rich people, and the phrase "starving artist" came from somewhere.
For instance, your figures and citation are counting all those picturesque ex Sov-bloc countries...
And France.
But the point is, "the government sucks" is a maxim, not an ideology. Know its limitations. Surveil it like a bank vault (it is). Never let it get any larger than it needs to be, and always show it its place. Participate in it. Never, ever cease your vigilance of it. But don't get all misty eyed about what it does every day.
We can agree on that.
Yes, but his argument was overly wordy and full of holes:
1. These countries that have supposedly tried free market capitalism and have failed are the same countries that have tried socialism "more times" and have failed.
2. Our constitution was written to protect individual liberties from the state and to limit the powers of the state. Socialists have it backwards. They value dependence on the government and forced equality over individual liberty.
3. The best schools in the world are not state run. For instance, Forbes listed Harvard and Columbia as the best business schools in the U.S. and Insead and IMD as the best business schools outside the U.S., ALL are private.
4. The EU has 9% unemployment right now, compared to our 4.4%. Socialists take care of their poor by putting them out of work, apparently.
Cheers!
1. Socialism is by very nature price fixing. Socialism provides nothing for "free" like you state. Socialists say "here is your school that you will go to, this is how much it will cost (in taxes), this is the value it must provide." Then when the school does not provide the value that they say it must, socialists say "well we must not be giving it enough money" and raise taxes, and the cycle continues. There's no innovation because there is no reason for innovation.
2. The great depression happened mostly because the feds were messing with interest rates (i.e. basically price fixing) and doing it badly.
3. When most people say "free market," what they mean is that they want supply and demand AND competition to determine value, not some government or oligopoly or monopoly. Most free market people have no problem with the government stepping in to break up monopolies and to create a fair playing field. The government should govern and protect, that is its job.
4. Wealth redistribution is using the strong arm of the government to steal. It is tyranny of the majority and discrimination against one group of people based on wealth/status. The government has had a domestic spy program since the early 1900s called the income tax, and the Democrats are all FOR it. Talk about an invasion of privacy. It is most un-American. (We won't talk about FDR opening and reading mail that was entering and leaving the country, or putting Japanese into camps.)
5. Your citation is misleading because it only takes into account presidents, who don't make laws. There were very few Democrat presidents during the last half of the 20th century, so their sample data is small. The Democrats made the laws for 40+ years. They should be held to account for the high unemployment rates during the Republican president's terms too. You will get a much different picture.
6. Even socialist countries are starting to attach money to the student and have schools compete for students. What does that tell you?
7. Have you ever been to the DMV? Socialism at its finest, pick a number.
Meanwhile our bitter lessons learned from the Great Depression led us to socialist-lite economic policies that created the wealthiest nation on earth.
Huh? We were already set to become wealthy prior to the Great Depression, and it didn't hurt that all the other nations had destroyed themselves during WWI and WWII. The Great Depression was not caused by the free market, it was caused by people gaming the system. You cannot control prices or interest rates and also say you have a "free market". Free markets act like the weather. If you try to control the weather by building a huge mountain, then you might solve your rain problem for your city, but you've then created a desert on the other side of the mountain for everyone else. Like the weather, free markets have boom and bust (rain and drought). Socialism (i.e "price fixing" or artificially setting the value of something) is akin to trying to control the weather. Gaming a free market is also akin to trying to control the weather. Both end up causing more problems than they solve.
Socialist-lite is what caused housing projects, welfare dependency, our failing public schools, the Jimmy Carter economy, etc. Good riddance!
I have not read any comments that relate this technlogy to basically being DLP in reverse, which seems obvious to me.
An alcoholic cannot give up alcohol that easily. Alcoholism and food addiction are very similar. However, both analogies are incorrect. The better analogy is a group of people who are thirsty and must drink foul water because they have no fresh water. Everyone knows it is wrong, but nobody comes up with a better alternative. There are a bunch of know-it-alls in the group who keep screaming at everyone that they should not do it, but they themselves also drink the foul water because they also cannot come up with a better alternative.