The thing climate scientists have on their side is that because they do science you don't need to trust them. You can simply redo the studies and confirm their results for yourself as a previous skeptic has recently done.
Unfortunately for the deniers, science is not sophism.
His results only confirm what everyone but the deniers (and probably many of the deniers who are too loathe to admit it) already knew. The earth is warming dramatically and in 200-300 years time won't be suitable for human life.
The frightening thing about the current climate models based on carbon dioxide actually are accurate now, yet they don't take into account the dramatic increased warming that can be expected when carbon from tar sands and gases trapped in rock and released by fracking is burned. When these are added to the calculations of ultimate global heating, the rate of heating will accelerate dramatically so that we are in for 10-15 degree C warming in 200-300 years rather than 6-8. Keep in mind that a 6 degree rise in mean global temperature roughly translates into summer temperatures in Kansas City over one-hundred degrees F for more than 100 days out of the year. Just think what it will be like when it reaches 15 degrees of mean warming (all asphalt roads in Kansas City will melt more than 130 days out of the year).
Lets hope for your sake that you don't live in West Texas. Those poor folks are learning about global warming the hard way. It is criminal how the fossil fuels crowd treats the ranchers and farmers these days.
(ie you only looked at the emissions from use, not from manufacturing).
Where is the data that suggests that the cost in terms of emissions from producing a hybrid or electric vehicle is higher than the cost of producing an ordinary auto relying exclusively on an internal combustion engine?
Now being someone who always looks past the surface, you should have no problem providing us the source of your nugget of wisdom.
Leave it to a republican to get into a discussion of his anti-ninja rocks when talking about global warming. It would ordinarily be obvious to everyone but a republican that if the ninjas weren't really there then there would be no expectation for them to not having killed you. To the contrary, your own ideology will take care of that problem for you eventually.
Why not support UNICEF? It saves the lives of millions of women and children annually. Doesn't any one care any more? Have our morals become that depraved?
That's because solar output has been measured for quite a while now and the variability is really small, enough to perhaps account for perhaps 1% of all the warming being observed at most.
"The humans can adapt and thrive in changing circumstances!"
Only up to a point, and then when that point is reached they die, often in large numbers, such as in the most recent heat wave in 2010 in which perhaps 100,000 died in a few months.
Has it every occurred to you that if we could run the US entirely on solar and wind power then we wouldn't have to pay the Iranians, Iraqis Libyans, and Saudi Arabians for it and all that money would stay in the US?
If we make fossil fuels artificially expensive, not only will we burn less and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere, but also it will save us a great deal of money and destruction to of our environment, not to mention stimulate our economy as it shift toward 21st century technologies rather than attempting to compete using 19th century technology. But heck we don't have to make it artificially expensive, we can just cut subsidies to the fossil fuels industry and save even more. Current subsidizes, such as the oil depletion allowance, actually make oil artificially inexpensive to the producers and distributors at taxpayer's expense.
The only problem with your argument is that the Chinese recognize that it is in their interest to get off fossil fuels as fast as they can and are doing so by dramatically increasing their production and use of solar technology, while in the USA we have have to do battle with the fossil fuel industry operatives, who want to postpone the day of reckoning as long as possible. Last year China lost more soil to drought than the US so they have incentive to do something about it.
Suggesting that the US oppose China by making sure that we will not get out in front of them technologically to do what will be inevitably be required (get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible but instead cling to fossil fuels for as long as possible, is to make your concerns about China moot, since you seem more than willing to surrender the future to them in doing so.
about 30,000,000,000 mT of carbon dioxide produced by humans annually, entering into a system that otherwise would have seen only a 220,000,000 mT of carbon dioxide entering per year from natural sources (volcanoes).
Methane is about 30 times more capable than carbon dioxide in increasing global atmospheric temperatures and are known to be associated with major extinction events in the past, such as in the Permian. Your right we do have big problems, but ignoring the tremendous heat trapping effect of ever increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will only make them much worse. It is not as if we can simply blow off the effects because we find them inconvenient to our portfolios.
Statistically speaking the reality is that there has not been a slightly downward trend for the last 12 years. This year eliminated the artifact that results from looking at only short time frames to discuss "trends". One would have expected the last 11 years to be lower, since the sun is just now coming out of a solar minimum. The fact that it didn't get cooler during this period is not a reassuring sign considering the next 10 can be expected to be increasingly hotter and more extreme.
If it increases the risk of cancer because it results in physical effects that often lead to cancer, what is really the difference other than sophism?
Besides there is about as much chance that carbon dioxide does not causes global warming as their is that smoking doesn't eventually cause cancer and HIV doesn't eventually cause AIDS.
There comes a point, when its no longer political discourse and instead simply becomes the rantings of irrational minds, which if listened to will snuff out human life on the planet.
""It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources."
One keeps seeing so many who think that natural sources of carbon dioxide are small compared to human created carbon dioxide. All the volcanoes in the world produce about 220,000,000 mT of carbon dioxide annually. Humans produce about 30,000,000,000 mT of carbon dioxide annually, about 1,000 times that created by volcanoes. The amount of carbon going into and out of the environment due to respiration and decay must be very large, but because organisms die roughly in proportion to the number that are born, which should not be surprising given that no organism, save perhaps some bacteria, live forever, the net effect is largely close to zero on average from year to year.
When one stops to think that humans will raise global mean temperatures within 100 years between 4 and 6 degrees Celsius, and we haven't even yet started to burn the bulk of the oil in tar sands and the carbon based gasses trapped in rock that hasn't been in the atmosphere in the past several hundreds of millions of years of earth history, one thing is absolutely certain: its really going to get incredibly hot around here soon. Humans will have to begin to learn to adjust to an 8-12 degree Celsius raise in the mean global temperature in just a couple of hundred years. By the end of the first hundred, it will be over a hundred degrees F in Kansas City more than 100 days out of the year. Makes one wonder what they will do when it goes to 135-140 degrees F for 135 - 140 days out of the year. Certainly, a lot more praying in Texas.
Deniers will become increasingly marginalized as they will have to soon spend more and more time in Texas praying, leaving them little time to do much else. Its inevitable.
Heck, you don't have to get that exotic. All these groups have merged into the republican party, especially the Stalnist goon agitators determined to use state authority to control the will of the American people to freely assemble and state their grievances.
When everyone is too fearful to say anything ever. At that point a stable equilibrium is reached given the total absence of communication of any kind. Civilization as we have known it will cease.
" created all sorts of unelected offices and departments"
So the government sets out to save from destruction the environment of the planet upon which we depend for survival for and yet create and manage energy resources that the economy functioning. You think that problem is going to be so simple that it won't require lots of administrators and their staffs to actually make happen, or are we to just let that last shred of the natural world that keeps our environment healthy from pathogens and the predations of men not wise enough, too greedy, or too desperate to notice that they had stolen their own futures?
Sounds as if you now face two counts. Lets hope that as the Yuan rises and absorbs a greater and greater share of the World GDP that they won't use the money to invest in the US private prison industry. No doubt there are many on Wall Street, who are prepared to trade on the prospect of broad exchange of cultural values, to facilitate a Chinese entry into our markets. After all without rumor, you can't really run a business. One has to create a brand. Its important that we all understand what that will be..
Sadly as the world heats and as human attention is focused elsewhere there will reach a point at which the distinction will be irrelevant. Humans probably only have 100-300 years to do this to themselves and then their cooked.
This would the ultimate irony if the Chinese spend the money they have made off of Americans by enslaving their citizens and paying their police and information ministers in an effort to do so. Let us hope that somewhere we can find wisdom.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing climate scientists have on their side is that because they do science you don't need to trust them. You can simply redo the studies and confirm their results for yourself as a previous skeptic has recently done.
Unfortunately for the deniers, science is not sophism.
So what?
His results only confirm what everyone but the deniers (and probably many of the deniers who are too loathe to admit it) already knew. The earth is warming dramatically and in 200-300 years time won't be suitable for human life.
The frightening thing about the current climate models based on carbon dioxide actually are accurate now, yet they don't take into account the dramatic increased warming that can be expected when carbon from tar sands and gases trapped in rock and released by fracking is burned. When these are added to the calculations of ultimate global heating, the rate of heating will accelerate dramatically so that we are in for 10-15 degree C warming in 200-300 years rather than 6-8. Keep in mind that a 6 degree rise in mean global temperature roughly translates into summer temperatures in Kansas City over one-hundred degrees F for more than 100 days out of the year. Just think what it will be like when it reaches 15 degrees of mean warming (all asphalt roads in Kansas City will melt more than 130 days out of the year).
Obviously, you don't own a thermometer or spend time examining weather records.
Lets hope for your sake that you don't live in West Texas. Those poor folks are learning about global warming the hard way. It is criminal how the fossil fuels crowd treats the ranchers and farmers these days.
(ie you only looked at the emissions from use, not from manufacturing).
Where is the data that suggests that the cost in terms of emissions from producing a hybrid or electric vehicle is higher than the cost of producing an ordinary auto relying exclusively on an internal combustion engine?
Now being someone who always looks past the surface, you should have no problem providing us the source of your nugget of wisdom.
Leave it to a republican to get into a discussion of his anti-ninja rocks when talking about global warming. It would ordinarily be obvious to everyone but a republican that if the ninjas weren't really there then there would be no expectation for them to not having killed you. To the contrary, your own ideology will take care of that problem for you eventually.
Why not support UNICEF? It saves the lives of millions of women and children annually. Doesn't any one care any more? Have our morals become that depraved?
That's because solar output has been measured for quite a while now and the variability is really small, enough to perhaps account for perhaps 1% of all the warming being observed at most.
"The humans can adapt and thrive in changing circumstances!"
Only up to a point, and then when that point is reached they die, often in large numbers, such as in the most recent heat wave in 2010 in which perhaps 100,000 died in a few months.
Its not possible or sensible to hold the water back. How are you going to dam every river to keep sea water from moving up stream?
Has it every occurred to you that if we could run the US entirely on solar and wind power then we wouldn't have to pay the Iranians, Iraqis Libyans, and Saudi Arabians for it and all that money would stay in the US?
If we make fossil fuels artificially expensive, not only will we burn less and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere, but also it will save us a great deal of money and destruction to of our environment, not to mention stimulate our economy as it shift toward 21st century technologies rather than attempting to compete using 19th century technology. But heck we don't have to make it artificially expensive, we can just cut subsidies to the fossil fuels industry and save even more. Current subsidizes, such as the oil depletion allowance, actually make oil artificially inexpensive to the producers and distributors at taxpayer's expense.
The only problem with your argument is that the Chinese recognize that it is in their interest to get off fossil fuels as fast as they can and are doing so by dramatically increasing their production and use of solar technology, while in the USA we have have to do battle with the fossil fuel industry operatives, who want to postpone the day of reckoning as long as possible. Last year China lost more soil to drought than the US so they have incentive to do something about it.
Suggesting that the US oppose China by making sure that we will not get out in front of them technologically to do what will be inevitably be required (get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible but instead cling to fossil fuels for as long as possible, is to make your concerns about China moot, since you seem more than willing to surrender the future to them in doing so.
about 30,000,000,000 mT of carbon dioxide produced by humans annually, entering into a system that otherwise would have seen only a 220,000,000 mT of carbon dioxide entering per year from natural sources (volcanoes).
Methane is about 30 times more capable than carbon dioxide in increasing global atmospheric temperatures and are known to be associated with major extinction events in the past, such as in the Permian. Your right we do have big problems, but ignoring the tremendous heat trapping effect of ever increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will only make them much worse. It is not as if we can simply blow off the effects because we find them inconvenient to our portfolios.
Statistically speaking the reality is that there has not been a slightly downward trend for the last 12 years. This year eliminated the artifact that results from looking at only short time frames to discuss "trends". One would have expected the last 11 years to be lower, since the sun is just now coming out of a solar minimum. The fact that it didn't get cooler during this period is not a reassuring sign considering the next 10 can be expected to be increasingly hotter and more extreme.
If it increases the risk of cancer because it results in physical effects that often lead to cancer, what is really the difference other than sophism?
Besides there is about as much chance that carbon dioxide does not causes global warming as their is that smoking doesn't eventually cause cancer and HIV doesn't eventually cause AIDS.
There comes a point, when its no longer political discourse and instead simply becomes the rantings of irrational minds, which if listened to will snuff out human life on the planet.
""It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources."
One keeps seeing so many who think that natural sources of carbon dioxide are small compared to human created carbon dioxide. All the volcanoes in the world produce about 220,000,000 mT of carbon dioxide annually. Humans produce about 30,000,000,000 mT of carbon dioxide annually, about 1,000 times that created by volcanoes. The amount of carbon going into and out of the environment due to respiration and decay must be very large, but because organisms die roughly in proportion to the number that are born, which should not be surprising given that no organism, save perhaps some bacteria, live forever, the net effect is largely close to zero on average from year to year.
When one stops to think that humans will raise global mean temperatures within 100 years between 4 and 6 degrees Celsius, and we haven't even yet started to burn the bulk of the oil in tar sands and the carbon based gasses trapped in rock that hasn't been in the atmosphere in the past several hundreds of millions of years of earth history, one thing is absolutely certain: its really going to get incredibly hot around here soon. Humans will have to begin to learn to adjust to an 8-12 degree Celsius raise in the mean global temperature in just a couple of hundred years. By the end of the first hundred, it will be over a hundred degrees F in Kansas City more than 100 days out of the year. Makes one wonder what they will do when it goes to 135-140 degrees F for 135 - 140 days out of the year. Certainly, a lot more praying in Texas.
Deniers will become increasingly marginalized as they will have to soon spend more and more time in Texas praying, leaving them little time to do much else. Its inevitable.
Heck, you don't have to get that exotic. All these groups have merged into the republican party, especially the Stalnist goon agitators determined to use state authority to control the will of the American people to freely assemble and state their grievances.
When everyone is too fearful to say anything ever. At that point a stable equilibrium is reached given the total absence of communication of any kind. Civilization as we have known it will cease.
" created all sorts of unelected offices and departments"
So the government sets out to save from destruction the environment of the planet upon which we depend for survival for and yet create and manage energy resources that the economy functioning. You think that problem is going to be so simple that it won't require lots of administrators and their staffs to actually make happen, or are we to just let that last shred of the natural world that keeps our environment healthy from pathogens and the predations of men not wise enough, too greedy, or too desperate to notice that they had stolen their own futures?
Clearly, the solution is in the Jacobean matrix and its determinant.
Sounds as if you now face two counts. Lets hope that as the Yuan rises and absorbs a greater and greater share of the World GDP that they won't use the money to invest in the US private prison industry. No doubt there are many on Wall Street, who are prepared to trade on the prospect of broad exchange of cultural values, to facilitate a Chinese entry into our markets. After all without rumor, you can't really run a business. One has to create a brand. Its important that we all understand what that will be..
Sadly as the world heats and as human attention is focused elsewhere there will reach a point at which the distinction will be irrelevant. Humans probably only have 100-300 years to do this to themselves and then their cooked.
This would the ultimate irony if the Chinese spend the money they have made off of Americans by enslaving their citizens and paying their police and information ministers in an effort to do so. Let us hope that somewhere we can find wisdom.