Are we screwed or what? Global warming to 'Continue for Centuries'

[Patriarch of Constantinople]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070202/ap_on_sc/france_climate_change

PARIS - Scientists from 113 countries issued a landmark report Friday saying they have little doubt global warming is caused by man, and predicting that hotter temperatures and rises in sea level will "continue for centuries" no matter how much humans control their pollution.

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A top U.S. government scientist, Susan Solomon, said "there can be no question that the increase in greenhouse gases are dominated by human activities."

Environmental campaigners urged the United States and other industrial nations to significantly cut their emissions of greenhouse gases in response to the long-awaited report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"It is critical that we look at this report ... as a moment where the focus of attention will shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity, whether the science is sufficient, to what on earth are we going to do about it," said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program.

"The public should not sit back and say 'There's nothing we can do'," Steiner said. "Anyone who would continue to risk inaction on the basis of the evidence presented here will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible."

The 21-page report represents the most authoritative science on global warming as the panel comprises hundreds of scientists and representatives. It only addresses how and why the planet is warming, not what to do about it. Another report by the panel later this year will address the most effective measures for slowing global warming.

One of the authors, Kevin Trenberth, said scientists are worried that world leaders will take the message in the wrong way and throw up their hands. Instead, world leaders should to reduce emissions and adapt to a warmer world with wilder weather, he said.

"This is just not something you can stop. We're just going to have to live with it," said Trenberth, the director of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "We're creating a different planet. If you were to come up back in 100 years time, we'll have a different climate."

The scientists said global warming was "very likely" caused by human activity, a phrase that translates to a more than 90 percent certainty that it is caused by man's burning of fossil fuels. That was the strongest conclusion to date, making it nearly impossible to say natural forces are to blame.

It also said no matter how much civilization slows or reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and sea level rise will continue on for centuries.

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level," the scientists said.

The report blamed man-made emissions of greenhouse gases for fewer cold days, hotter nights, killer heat waves, floods and heavy rains, devastating droughts, and an increase in hurricane and tropical storm strength — particularly in the Atlantic Ocean.

Sharon Hays, associate director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, welcomed the strong language of the report.

"It's a significant report. It will be valuable to policy makers," she told The Associated Press in an interview in Paris.

Hays stopped short of saying whether or how the report could bring about change in President Bush's policy about greenhouse gas emissions.

The panel predicted temperature rises of 2-11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. That was a wider range than in the 2001 report.

However, the panel also said its best estimate was for temperature rises of 3.2-7.1 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2001, all the panel gave was a range of 2.5-10.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

On sea levels, the report projects rises of 7-23 inches by the end of the century. An additional 3.9-7.8 inches are possible if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues.

The panel, created by the United Nations in 1988, releases its assessments every five or six years — although scientists have been observing aspects of climate change since as far back as the 1960s. The reports are released in phases — this is the first of four this year.

"The point here is to highlight what will happen if we don't do something and what will happen if we do something," said another author, Jonathan Overpeck at the University of Arizona. "I can tell if you will decide not to do something the impacts will be much larger than if we do something."

As the report was being released, environmental activists repelled off a Paris bridge and draped a banner over a statue used often as a popular gauge of whether the Seine River is running high.

"Alarm bells are ringing. The world must wake up to the threat posed by climate change," said Catherine Pearce of Friends of the Earth.

Stephanie Tunmore of Greenpeace said "if the last IPCC report was a wake up call, this one is a screaming siren."

"The good news is our understanding of the climate system and our impact on it has improved immensely. The bad news is that the more we know, the more precarious the future looks," Tunmore said in a statement. "There's a clear message to governments here, and the window for action is narrowing fast."

[Devastatin Dave]

It must have been caveman farts that ended the last ice age and eskimo piss that caused the world to cool down after that warm up. Its called cycles and the earth's climate does the same thing. Kind of like the hysterical cycles of liberals screaming about the next ice age in the 70's to idiotic poverty pimping buerocrats in socialist inhabited gatherings (the UN).Nothing like a eco-socialist/terrorist wet dream to put all lesser beings in a panic.

[Patriarch of Constantinople]

It must have been caveman farts that ended the last ice age. Nothing like a eco-socialist/terrorist wet dream to put all lesser beings in a panic.

Aye! Glad to see you back on, Dave.

[Devastatin Dave]

Aye! Glad to see you back on, Dave.
I've even edited my post, just for you!!! Good to see you BTW, oh and the sky is falling.:laugh4:

[Samurai Waki]

Its amazing how can someone can take the crudest words available in the dictionary and make a completely logical sentence out of them.

Anyways, I pretty much agree with Dave. I blame global warming on too much Hippy Smoke from the '60s.

[Patriarch of Constantinople]

It must have been caveman farts that ended the last ice age and eskimo piss that caused the world to cool down after that warm up. Its called cycles and the earth's climate does the same thing. Kind of like the hysterical cycles of liberals screaming about the next ice age in the 70's to idiotic poverty pimping buerocrats in socialist inhabited gatherings (the UN).Nothing like a eco-socialist/terrorist wet dream to put all lesser beings in a panic.

Makes more sense than a penguin skating in lava ;)

[Devastatin Dave]

Makes more sense than a penguin skating in lava ;)
Touche':beam:

[Patriarch of Constantinople]

So if 113 countries say this, then 113 countries are pinko commie/socialist neanderthals?

[Samurai Waki]

113 countries with an agenda.

[English assassin]

OK. So, if a panel of the worlds leading scientists, having considered all of the evidence, concluding that global warming is real and is man made is not enough to convince you, what would it take?

Because I'm certaintly thinking a few euroweenie posts from me on a games board aint going to do the trick?

Good to see you back DD.

[Samurai Waki]

It doesn't say anywhere in the bible that global warming is being caused by man :laugh4:

[Vladimir]

What ever happened to global cooling? Back in the 70’s we were headed into another ice age. And I still want to know when the government of Mars is going to adopt the Kyoto protocols. I hear they’re having the same problem we are.

Oh well, if we’re screwed we’re screwed, might as well live it up :medievalcheers: . My great great great grandchildren may have to move to Canada or Russia some day, I’m sure they don’t mind the warming.

[English assassin]

make sure you get yours, fellas:

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2004397,00.html


Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).


Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "The AEI is more than just a thinktank, it functions as the Bush administration's intellectual Cosa Nostra. They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash."

:yes:

[KukriKhan]

They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash."

Why does he hate freedom? ~:smile:

More interestingly: did AEI have any takers? With $39.5 Billion profit reported, Exxon could certainly have afforded decent bribes.

edit:forgot the smiley

[Devastatin Dave]

Mr Boortz says it all for me...
"WHY AM I SKEPTICAL ABOUT MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING?

A 21-page report from something called the "Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change" has been released today...in Paris, no less...and as expected, it's predictions are dire. According to the report: "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level." Yeah right...we've heard all this before.

But the biggest bombshell here is this one: no matter what we do, global warming will not be reversed. It will go on for centuries, according to this report. The sea levels will continue to rise as polar ice caps melt. So I guess if Al Gore wins his Nobel Peace Prize, we'll still experience global warming. So much for riding to work everyday in your hybrid car...it's not doing a thing. The situation is futile, according to this report.

But really, it makes sense that the global warming crowd would come to this conclusion. After all, global warming is a religion. The anti-capitalist enviro-nazis don't ever want the problem to be solved. After all, if global warming were to be solved tomorrow, what would they blame the United States for? They'd have to find some other reason.

Sorry .. I'm still a skeptic. In no particular order here are just a few of the reasons why I'm not buying this man-made global warming scare:

The United Nations is anti-American and anti-Capitalist. In short .. I don't trust them. Not a bit. The UN would eagerly engage in any enterprise that would weaken capitalist economies around the world.


Because after the fall of the Soviet Union and worldwide Communism many in the anti-capitalist movement moved to the environmental movement to continue pursuing their anti-free enterprise goals. Many of the loudest proponents of man-made global warming today are confirmed anti-capitalists.


Because the sun is warmer .. and all of these scientists don't seem to be willing to credit a warmer sun with any of the blame for global warming.


The polar ice caps on Mars are melting. How did our CO2 emissions get all the way to Mars?


It was warmer in the 1930s across the globe than it is right now.


It wasn't all that long ago that these very same scientists were warning us about "global cooling" and another approaching ice age?


How much has the earth warmed up in the last 100 years? One degree. Now that's frightening.

Because that famous "hockey stick" graph that purports to show a sudden warming of the earth in the last few decades is a fraud. It ignored previous warming periods ... left them off the graph altogether.


The infamous Kyoto accords exempt some of the world's biggest CO2 polluters, including China and India.


The Kyoto accords can easily be seen as nothing less than an attempt to hamstring the world's dominant capitalist economies.


Because many of these scientists who are sounding the global warming scare depend on grant money for their livelihood, and they know the grant money dries up when they stop preaching the global warming sermon.


Because global warming "activists" and scientists seek to punish those who have different viewpoints. If you are sure of your science you have no need to shout down or seek to punish those who disagree.


What happened to the Medieval Warm Period? In 1996 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a chart showing climatic change over a period of 1000 years. This graph showed a Medieval warming period in which global temperatures were higher than they are today. In 2001 the IPCC issued another 1000 year graph in which the Medieval warming period was missing. Why?


Why has one scientist promoting the cause of man-made global warming been quoted as saying "we have to get rid of the medieval warming period?"


Why is the ice cap on the Antarctic getting thicker if the earth is getting warmer?


In the United State, the one country with the most accurate temperature measuring and reporting records, temperatures have risen by 0.3 degrees centigrade over the past 100 years. The UN estimate is twice that.


There are about 160,000 glaciers around the world. Most have never been visited or measured by man. The great majority of these glaciers are growing, not melting.


Side-looking radar interferometry shows that the ise mass in the West Antarctic is growing at a rate of over 26 gigatons a year. This reverses a melting trend that had persisted for the previous 6,000 years.


Rising sea levels? The sea levels have been rising since the last ice age ended. That was 12,000 years ago. Estimates are that in that time the sea level has risen by over 300 feet. The rise in our sea levels has been going on long before man started creating anything but natural CO2 emissions.


Like Antarctica, the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass.


Over the past 3,000 years there have been five different extended periods when the earth was measurably warmer than it is today.


During the last 20 years -- a period of the highest carbon dioxide levels -- global temperatures have actually decreased. That's right ... decreased.


Why did a reporter from National Public Radio refuse to interview David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma studying global warming, after his testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unless Deming would state that global warming was being caused by man?


Why are global warming proponents insisting that the matter is settled and that no further scientific research is needed? Why are they afraid of additional information?


On July 24, 1974 Time Magazine published an article entitled "Another Ice Age?" Here's the first paragraph:
"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."

Hey ... I could go on. There's much more where that came from. But I need to get ready to go on the air. Just know that many of the strongest proponents of this "man-made" global warming stuff are dedicated opponents to capitalism and don't feel all that warm and fuzzy about the United States."

edit: wrapped the long part in spoiler tags, for those who want to read the whole thing. -Kukri

[Devastatin Dave]

Oh and one more thing, here's another Nobel Peace Prize nominee...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20070201/pl_usnw/landmark_legal_foundation_nominates_rush_limbaugh_for2007_nobel_peace_prize
HAHAHAHA!!! Stick that in your pipe Al Gore and smoke it...

[Vuk]

Global Warming is BS. Plain and simple.

[Lemur]

Global Warming is BS. Plain and simple.
It would be interesting to know what you're basing that comment on. If you read about the ice cores they're drilling up in Greenland, it's pretty obvious that the Earth's climate changes radically over time. Nothing suspicious about that. The only point of contest is whether our activities are having a measurable impact on that cycle.

No matter which way you slice it, I wouldn't recommend beachfront property in Florida to anyone I like.

[Xiahou]

Global Warming is BS. Plain and simple.
Man-made Global warming is BS. :yes:


Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).That cracks me up. How come we never hear about the pro-global warming groups that Exxon also gives funding to? Why isn't their credibility challenged?

[Banquo's Ghost]

It would be interesting to know what you're basing that comment on. If you read about the ice cores they're drilling up in Greenland, it's pretty obvious that the Earth's climate changes radically over time. Nothing suspicious about that. The only point of contest is whether our activities are having a measurable impact on that cycle.


Personally, I'm baffled as to why conservatives in particular tend towards irrational hostility on the issue.

The steps needed to combat global warming should encourage careful and economical use of costly resources, reduce the US and EU dependence on unstable countries that supply fossil fuels and drive innovation and new technology.

The first step reduces costs through efficiency, which should then lead to increased profits for business and less taxation for government. The second step is strategically desirable. The third step keeps US technology leading the world, creates new industries for highly skilled workers and opens new markets that the sweat shop economies will desperately need but are not in a position to exploit.

Even sticking-plaster solutions like Kyoto and carbon trading give the US an edge - their economy is better set up than most to exploit the opportunities of trading ephemerals.

If human-caused global warming proves to be a myth, all of these things are still desirable. If it isn't, you're ahead of the game.

I can understand the knee-jerk reaction to the looney greens that want us to return to the stone age, but why the stubborn nay-saying when there are so many advantages?

[Incongruous]

I thought that it had been made fairly clear, that man did have an effect on Global warming.
Were pumping alot of crap into the atmosphere, even that has got to make you think more than twice.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Is man-made global warning BS?

I don't think so, however I do think that the evidence points to an accelleration over the last 200 years of a natural phenomanon. Saying that "it will go on for centuries no matter what" means they either believe that no one will listen to them, that they are just trying to pin it on man, or that Bush has already payed them off.

After all, this report means America can produce as much muck as it wants.

[Ser Clegane]

Global Warming is BS. Plain and simple.


Man-made Global warming is BS.

You better hurry to get those 10k then ~;)

[Hosakawa Tito]

Oh well. Everyone must believe in something, and since it's Friday evening....I believe I'll have a beer.

[Watchman]

It's always reassuring when people prioritize short-term finances over global "better safe than sorry" issues. :deal2:

[Xiahou]

It's always reassuring when people prioritize short-term finances over global "better safe than sorry" issues. :deal2:
What? Even the report says there's nothing we can do about it, doesnt it? :shrug:

[Crazed Rabbit]

Short term finances? I don't call a strangulation of the economy for the foreseeable furture short term, nor do I call it better safe than sorry to radically alter our way of life due to unproven, highly politized science, especially when the authors of this paper say even going back to medieval technology won't stop warming.

Ever heard of sun cycles?

CR

[Husar]

Well said Watchman.:sweatdrop:

[Watchman]

:inquisitive: 'Scuse me for asking a stupid question, but what particular 'paper' have you irresponsibility apologists been reading ? The big heap o'crap Dave kindly provided for fertilizing the lawn ?

[Xiahou]

Here (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0701/31/lkl.01.html) is an entertaining transcript from Larry King that has a debate (mainly) between Bill Nye and Richard Lindzen on man-made global warming. Heidi Cullen was there too, but her comments were generally vacuous and consisted of repeating over and over again "the evidence is overwhelming" without saying what evidence.

There are some other segments involving politicians in the transcript as well- feel free to skip those.

[Cataphract_Of_The_City]

were generally vacuous and consisted of repeating over and over again "the evidence is overwhelming" without saying what evidence.


You have a report that took six years to compile with the help of almost 3000 field leading scientists. Perhaps you can read the report, read the biblography of the report and then come up with a cheesy "what evidence" line. You might as well admit that you disregard evidence in favor of blind faith on what you think is true.

[Xiahou]

You have a report that took six years to compile with the help of almost 3000 field leading scientists. Perhaps you can read the report, read the biblography of the report and then come up with a cheesy "what evidence" line. You might as well admit that you disregard evidence in favor of blind faith on what you think is true.
An interesting thing about that report can be found here (http://www.ipcc.ch/about/app-a.pdf), in it's AppendixA.


IPCC procedures state that: Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter

In other words, it's being held for 3 months now that the summary is released, so that they can edit the actual report to make sure the data squares with the politicized summary. :dizzy2:

[Caius]

We need to change.We need to wait the world is destroyed to change?

[Watchman]

Apparently, so as not to make offence to the fickle, wrathful and allmighty Bottom Line. :dozey:

[Tuuvi]

I don't know if global warming is real or not, my instinct tells me that it is a bunch of bullcrap but since statistics are more important I won't take a side on that issue...But if it is real, why are we wasting our time and money on trying to stop it? Stopping global warming isn't going to be easy. But what would be easier is figuring out how to adapt before it becomes a big problem. As far as cutting emissions goes I think that is something we need to do global warming or no global warming.

[macsen rufus]

Global warming is a political agenda? Yeah right. What about GW denial? That's not about, "Oh dear this is uncomfortable, better pretend it's not true" is it? It's amazing how (effectively) uneducated people can think up oh, "sun cycles", "natural factors" whatever, and simply assume the actual experts haven't considered them. Yes, these things are factored in, and they are not big enough to explain what's happening. CO2 emissions do effectively explain what's going on. The climate is a homoeostatic system intricately and intimately linked with the biological and geological carbon cycles, and has managed to maintain itself in a remarkably stable condition in the face of solar output increases way above the piffling "sun cycles" that are supposed to be responsible for recent temperature rises. OK so some of the evidence does pre-date the Bible, so is obviously God's little trick, along with the fossils, chimpanzee DNA, and isotope ratios etc etc.

It's very simple - carbon sequestered, cool planet, carbon in the atmosphere, hot planet. We have managed to put most of the sequesterd carbon back into the atmosphere faster than it can be resequestered. We have exceeded the homoeostatic capacity of natural systems.

So, yeah we are screwed, mostly thanks to the denial lobby. They're the sort who'd fall out of a plane and say they don't need a parachute because they haven't hit the ground yet. :wall:

[Cataphract_Of_The_City]

Lets be serious. Cause and effect stipulates that if we pump insane amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, then it will have effect on global warming. The Earth does not have a heater so it can warm when it wants to. It has to use the same mechanisms. Namely, increasing methane and CO2 emissions. This has not happened so far. Naturally emitted greenhouse levels are the same as always.

And besides, there is not only CO2. NOx, SOx anyone? Acid rain?

[Hosakawa Tito]

We need to change.We need to wait the world is destroyed to change?

I agree. We need to change human nature itself. Eliminate greed, the need to "dominate", survive at the expense of others, etc..., and make it stick. Got any ideas how?
Yeah, me neither. Hence why I try not to get upset over things I can't really control. If one wishes to tilt at this particular windmill, then have at it.

[Rodion Romanovich]

We're not screwed yet. According to a report made last summer we only need to pay about 1% of BNP of the state's tax money and other incomes to save ourselves, if we do it now (if we do it later it will cost a lot more...). That, along with measures to limit population growth so that it stops at a maximum of 10 billion and then starts declining towards 6 billion or so again within the nearest future. If we reach 10 billion we'll have almost no safety margins and it would create extreme political tension all over the world. 1-6 billion is a long term sustainable world population size. If every person in the world wants to have European/American living standards, my guesstimate is that maximum possible world population size would be something like 300 million people.

Second thing is that nobody should really try individually to cut down on pollution. A few people with conscience cutting down on pollution so the most reckless people get room to pollute more and get richer in the short term won't solve the situation, it will only make it worse. A sustainable solution requires that states and the UN pass laws regulating pollutions of different forms. If you want to help, it's most important to 1. vote for someone who wishes to pass laws to save the situation, 2. educating yourself and others on the subject.

However, one person alone becoming a vegetarian or stopping to buy plastic stuff won't help anyone. And if people out of bad conscience now cut down on consumption for 3 years or so, there will be greater difficulties deciding at what level the laws should be, with a risk of the laws becoming too soft or too harsh. My advice is for all to just continue business as usual, no bad conscience, doing what they can/want within the limits of the laws. That will make sure the politicians are forced to put the laws on decent levels, neither too harsh nor too soft. This is a political matter solved by passing adequate laws, not a matter of a small number of individuals trying to be heroes.

[Idaho]

I find it tragi-comic that so many yanks are whistling past the graveyard on this one.

It's just like they were on the invasion of Iraq. They don't listen until they have already ^%$ed up, and then they deny it was really their fault.

:shrug: When the whole of your grain belt is one big dust bowl.. that's your business.

[Hosakawa Tito]

I put more faith in Mother Nature making the "necessary correction", if it comes to that, than anything dear old homo sapiens can or will do.
Danged Austrolipithicus should have stayed in the trees, eh?

[Hosakawa Tito]

I find it tragi-comic that so many yanks are whistling past the graveyard on this one.

It's just like they were on the invasion of Iraq. They don't listen until they have already ^%$ed up, and then they deny it was really their fault.

:shrug: When the whole of your grain belt is one big dust bowl.. that's your business.


From Davos:

Listen to the new powers. China, which in three years will likely become the world's biggest emitter of CO2, is determined not to be a leader in dealing with global environmental issues. "The ball is not in China's court," said Zhu Min, the executive vice president of the Bank of China and a former senior official in the government. "The ball is in everybody's court." India's brilliant planning czar, Montek Singh Alluwalliah, said that "every country should have the same per capita rights to pollution."

Yep, definitely all the obstinant yanks fault.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I put more faith in Mother Nature making the "necessary correction", if it comes to that, than anything dear old homo sapiens can or will do.
Danged Austrolipithicus should have stayed in the trees, eh?
Mother earth has no agenda whatsoever of making sure she is inhabitable. Life is a side-effect, not a goal, of earth's behavior. The "necessary correction" for mother earth would in this case mean eliminating some forms of life. The elimination of most of life would mean massive heaps of cadavers, which would sink below earth, become sediment, and thus mean rebinding of carbon below the earth surface. This would decrease CO2 in the atmosphere, and provided that enough plants have survived to repopulate earth, in a few 100 million years mother nature may very well lower its temperature again.

[macsen rufus]

Mother earth has no agenda whatsoever of making sure she is inhabitable. Life is a side-effect, not a goal, of earth's behavior.

I totally disagree with you on this, Legio. The whole homoeostasis of the climate is a direct result of life on the planet. Without life, the planet would be VERY different. Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis goes into a lot more detail than I can do in a brief post whilst the boss isn't looking, but if you consider "Mother Earth" as "Life as a whole", then it has EVERY possible interest in keeping the planet inhabitable, ie self-interest. This includes maintaining global temperatures and atmospheric composition. The entire planet is far removed from a chemical equilibrium, without Life it would quickly revert to an equilibrium state, with most materials becoming oxidised and very little free oxygen. The level of oxygen in the atmosphere is finely regulated by the balance of organisms, not through any over-arching consciousness, but by feedback mechanisms. Too little oxygen, animals suffocate and die, plants proliferate, restore the oxygen levels, animals can recover etc etc. Too much oxygen (ie about 1% more than we have now) and plant materials become highly flammable. Through feedback loops, the system is kept near optimum for Life as a Whole. Obviously there are a lot of interacting factors (ocean acidity, ocean currents, rock formation and erosion, trophic webs etc etc).

That's how we can tell there's no significant life on Mars or Venus -- they are close to chemical equilibirum. Without life, Earth would be a lot more like Venus.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Well the gaia theory is IMO a bit two-edged, since it contains both some good points, and some statements that are IMO totally unfounded. Let me just attack the most central part of the theory that I don't agree with: that mother earth would regulate itself to remain inhabitable to humans:
1. first life came before there was oxygen in the atmosphere. The first life forms, not mother earth, created oxygen.
2. the species adapt to nature, nature doesn't adapt to the species. It was when the air became inhabitable by no. 1 that species were able to adapt to life above water.
3. only animals with a reasoning capability can deliberately make choices that affect how well earth manages to remain inhabitable. Other animals have their behavior affected by evolution, and evolution is a slow process. Evolution means the organisms adapt to how mother nature changes. Nature has changed a lot, and life forms have adapted to the changes of nature. As the air became inhabitable, species could adapt to that niche. In an area where a swamp is developed, swamp animals soon settle either by migrating from other places with swamps, or by being developed from local species that adapt to the swamp.
4. you should be aware of the fact that billions and billions of organisms are extincted by the way earth looks today. Many more are extincted, than have a continuing chain of offsprings over a period of 100,000 years. It's nature commanding what niches will remain, and the species are dependent on the niches. Lakes are built, and lakes disappear. Forests grow up, and forests fall. The species adapt, by only the small percentages capable of surviving the new conditions surviving.
5. there have been at least 5 mass death events in prehistory, including the massextinction of dinosaurs, and the even larger massdeath around 250 million years ago IIRC, where 80% or so of life was eliminated. Would there really be so much death and extinction if mother earth itself tried hard to be inhabitable?
6. nature often creates niches that make a certain behavior successful in the short term but dangerous in the long term. A species whose males kill all competing males, **** all the women in the herd and kills all babies of the other males will in the short term become strong, and absolutely dominant in the gene pool. In the long term, it undermines the genetical variety of the species, eventually resulting in an "evolutionary dead end", where the entire species becomes extincted, or at the very least heavily reduced in numbers through either mass death, or mass-failure-of-reproduction. This phenomenon is yet another example of earth not adapting to try and be friendly to species, but that earth dictates the conditions of life, and life adapts to the conditions given, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully.
7. we can observe cases of symbiosis in nature, for instance the plants consuming CO2 and generating oxygen, and the animals generating CO2 and consuming oxygen. However, symbiosis is developed by first the development of one organism, which creates a possible niche for another animal. Once that niche is established, another animal eventually may become adapted to it. The larger the niche, the greater the chance that at least some organism fills it eventually. Such was the case with the enormous niche created by plants, allowing the production of animals. However there are no guarantees that a symbiosis will hold, if one of its parts is destroyed. Indeed, many of these prehistoric mass deaths were caused when one disruption of a very central part of the ecosystem affected entire food chains and similar.

I think these facts are quite good demonstrations that it's life that is trying to adapt to earth, not earth trying to adapt to life. And that while there are examples of symbiosis between life forms, there is no guarantee that they will hold if parts of the symbiosis cycles are eliminated. While most other theories than gaia agree with gaia that there will in most cases be regulation that will allow at least some form of life to survive, there is almost nothing saying that human life will be capable of surviving in a too changed environment.

[Caius]

7. we can observe cases of symbiosis in nature, for instance the plants consuming CO2 and generating oxygen, and the animals generating CO2 and consuming oxygen

Well, we kill the trees.We kill the only posibilty to change Co2 to O2.
We dont care.We can change, but that can be something to long term.But we are destroying it now.Not the next year nor decade.Today change and tomorrow see.The Governament should make something.Or we have to be a Greenpeace member to stop it, when the governaments only thinks in money?
We need a Global change.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Basically Caius has the right idea. The world needs to change by being more efficient with energy (eg. lights off when room is empty, computer off when not being used, lights off if the room is light enough with sunlight ect.), using more nuclear and renewable in our energy sources, helping countries like China and India develop sustainably (right now they are increasing their emissions while we are cutting down), promoting better use of forests to help absorb emissions and of course kicking that cursed Republican government (America is influential - with a more responsible Democrat government in the world biggest polluter will probably cut down their emissions and influence other countries to copy and do the same).

The evidence is clear and has been from the 60s, just nobody decided to take any action when the report was first published. We need to act fast or it will be the end of the world as we know it. Even if at the end it all did turn out to be a load of generic rubbish then there would have been no mistake made - it is better to act even if we have no idea than leave it and suffer the consequences. :end:

And by now I think you all may have realised that this is my first unconvincing, idiotic and immature Backroom post :grin:

[Caius]

Lets take Argentina Governament like an example(the only i know).
President Nestor Kirchner, want to 'destroy' the factories in Uruguay, because they are polluting.He is doing that correctly, but...
Whats the problem?
There is a city called Tartagal, in a northern province.Massive rains make that city lost the bridge.And the deforestation have done a big problem.
The city is going down.The river, was eating the land more and more and much people lost their houses.

That is a simple example.

[macsen rufus]

@Legio

Gaia does NOT claim that the system will maintain conditions suitable for humans specifically, just an overall system suitable for Life as a Whole. In fact it follows from the general case that ANY species which overburdens the system will distort it in such a way as to deplete numbers of that species. The metabolic byproducts of most species are toxic to that species - animals exhale CO2, and are suffocated by it; yeast metabolises sugar to alcohol, and alcohol kills yeast; plants exhale oxygen and suffer when it's too high etc. To put it crudely, any over-successful species either eats all its food or drowns in its own crap, unless some other species gets into the crap-recycling business. This is how the systems are maintained. As I said there is no overarching consciousness, no species (except humans) make any decisions about what happens, they just do their thing, but their thing has consequences that will eventually have an impact.

Regarding the mass extinction events - a lot were due to external events: meteorite strikes etc. "Mother Nature" is a bit helpless in the absence of a satellite based laser meteorite guard.... but the extinction of species does not argue against Gaia. Imagine that species are like cells in a body - the body maintains itself as a whole, but that doesn't stop individual cells dying, or even whole organs atrophying.

I think you need to think about your definition of "Mother Earth" and "nature". Earth (as a planet) is not "trying" to do anything. Without life it would be an inert lump spinning round the sun. Life has the sole aim of survival. Yes, through evolution the actual make up of the system varies as species come and go, but the real drivers of evolutionary pressures all come from life in one way or another.

"Nature" not only responds to species, it is defined by the actions of living beings. A swamp cannot form without the influence of life - it requires rainfall (driven by life), soil (created by life), inhabitants (life!) and so on. Without life the only possible environments are bare rock, or submerged bare rock. Early microorganisms changed the atmospheric composition, hence later life forms could find niches to exploit. Life is adaptive and anti-entropic, and any excess of a resource (either localised or general) is an opportunity to exploit. About the only environmental influences which aren't regulated by the 'Life as a Whole' system are plate tectonics, vulcanism, solar input and meteorite impacts - and even these are modified by life in various ways. Things you might think of as inanimate are the results of life - chalk and limestone for instance. Life determines patterns of rainfall and its acidity, which affects erosion. Without life, the Himalayas would be nearly twice as tall as they are today, for instance.


While most other theories than gaia agree with gaia that there will in most cases be regulation that will allow at least some form of life to survive, there is almost nothing saying that human life will be capable of surviving in a too changed environment.

As I said above, Gaia theory offers no special place for humanity, except that we have a greater capacity to disrupt the system than any other (possibly even all the other) species. And the big issue regarding global warming is that's exactly what we're doing by returning to the atmsophere billions of tonnes of carbon that Gaia has taken millions of years to sequester. To repeat, Gaia is not a conscious entity, but a complex system of interlocking feedback loops.

[Tuuvi]

promoting better use of forests to help absorb emissions and of course kicking that cursed Republican government (America is influential - with a more responsible Democrat government in the world biggest polluter will probably cut down their emissions and influence other countries to copy and do the same).
That is why I don't want to believe in global warming. Once politics get into an issue like this, any truth it might have had is destroyed and exploited for the sake of getting more people's votes.

[Caius]

And by now I think you all may have realised that this is my first unconvincing, idiotic and immature Backroom post
Should i quote Jack Sparrow?

And this day, you will remember as the day [name here]posted in the Backroom!

[Rodion Romanovich]

Gaia does NOT claim that the system will maintain conditions suitable for humans specifically, just an overall system suitable for Life as a Whole. In fact it follows from the general case that ANY species which overburdens the system will distort it in such a way as to deplete numbers of that species. The metabolic byproducts of most species are toxic to that species - animals exhale CO2, and are suffocated by it; yeast metabolises sugar to alcohol, and alcohol kills yeast; plants exhale oxygen and suffer when it's too high etc. To put it crudely, any over-successful species drowns in its own crap, unless some other species gets into the crap-recycling business. This is how the systems are maintained. As I said there is no overarching consciousness, no species (except humans) make any decisions about what happens, they just do their thing, but their thing has consequences that will eventually have an impact.

I think I may have misunderstood your initial post then. If I understood you correctly, you actually meant that any methods for actively reversing the global warming are impossible, and that we should stop doing active things that increase the problems, since a slow passive repair by nature's own regulation methods is the only thing that will save us? Or did you mean something else?



Regarding the mass extinction events - a lot were due to external events: meteorite strikes etc. "Mother Nature" is a bit helpless in the absence of a satellite based laser meteorite guard.... but the extinction of species does not argue against Gaia. Imagine that species are like cells in a body - the body maintains itself as a whole, but that doesn't stop individual cells dying, or even whole organs atrophying.

Well, the meteorite is first of all just a suggested theory (by people within the field of astronomy, more than within the field of biology IIRC), and secondly it only applies to one of more than 5 mass extinction events. The 250 million years ago mass extinction was a lot more massive than the 65 million years ago mass death.



I think you need to think about your definition of "Mother Earth" and "nature". Earth (as a planet) is not "trying" to do anything.

Yes, this was exactly what I was trying to point out: the behavior of all dead things (and also all those living things that lack a reasoning ability) is beyond our control. Those things have no agenda to make the world remain inhabitable to human beings.



Without life it would be an inert lump spinning round the sun.

There could still be cyclical chemical reactions. Furthermore, just like Venus, there could be volcanoes, which could cause storms (and in our case, since we have water, rainfall).



Life has the sole aim of survival.

Actually, life has no aim of survival unless it has reasoning capability. Some individuals have survived because their preprogrammed way of acting in certain situaitons (reflexes) and ways of remembering (storing old stimuli to be activated later) and learning (doing pattern recognition and generalizations) happen to sufficiently coincide with what a theoretical and absolutely rational being would do in their situation. The closer their actions are to that rationalism, the greater chance they have of surviving. But there is no guarantee that their instincts will be based on causality. More often, it is based on correlation. That's why a changing niche can lead to mass death, because the instincts don't necessarily coincide well with what a rational being would do in the new situations that suddenly arise. The classical example: it's best for most mammals living far north to have sex at a time such that the offspring is born in an upcoming spring where there will be plenty of resources to supply the offspring. How can an animal then know beforehand when such conditions will arise? Well, by experience and long time of evolution, we can generalize somewhat and state that it's good enough for a 9 month pregnancy animal to have sex in the summer, because then the child will be born in spring, and most springs have good supply conditions, even if there is no guarantee that this particular upcoming spring will have good supply conditions. Now, how do we know it's summer? Well, usually in the summer, the sun shines, it's hot, and most trees have leaves - if we live near a forest or on a meadow, we will see a lot of green color. The rule for increased sexual urge for the animal can then become: "if it is hot, plenty of green color, and the sun shines, increase the sexual urge". This instinct is reasonable in almost all situation we can think of, but since it isn't based on causality, it can fail if the animal comes to a place where those conditions can't be met. For example, if the animal comes to a place where there is little grass, and cold. It requires a long period of adaption through evolution to fix that, and the new instinct will probably also be based on correlation (another correlation), and not on causality. People who are self-critical should be able to find at least 10 examples of correlation-based behavior leading to them behaving irrationality in situations that couldn't arise before civilization, because we aren't programmed for these new situations. If we manage to cope with a situation we haven't been developed for, it's just a bonus/side-effect. That we can think rationally and do logic, for example, is a side-effect of greater reasoning capability being excellent for hunt among other things.

There are plenty of other examples of this phenomenon, but I think I've mentioned this phenomenon, and examples of it, in at least 20 previous threads in this forum so I won't repeat it again unless specifically asked for...



Yes, through evolution the actual make up of the system varies as species come and go, but the real drivers of evolutionary pressures all come from life in one way or another. "Nature" not only responds to species, it is defined by the actions of living beings. A swamp cannot form without the influence of life - it requires rainfall (driven by life), soil (created by life), inhabitants (life!) and so on. Without life the only possible environments are bare rock, or submerged bare rock. Early microorganisms changed the atmospheric composition, hence later life forms could find niches to exploit. Life is adaptive and anti-entropic, and any excess of a resource (either localised or general) is an opportunity to exploit.

Not only life, but also the form of the dead matter can affect how life takes shape. The unorganic chemical compounds have a great effect here - just think of elements such as sulphur that the first life forms consumed to survive.

I agree that most modern niches include the existence of other life or the previous existence of some form of life as a necessary condition...



About the only environmental influences which aren't regulated by the 'Life as a Whole' system are plate tectonics, vulcanism, solar input and meteorite impacts - and even these are modified by life in various ways. Things you might think of as inanimate are the results of life - chalk and limestone for instance. Life determines patterns of rainfall and its acidity, which affects erosion. Without life, the Himalayas would be nearly twice as tall as they are today, for instance.

...however, I disagree that the non-life factors don't have any affect. They have a major effect - just think of the sunlight, for example. It is the effect of something that isn't alive... The question of what has most impact - dead or living things, is pretty pointless IMO. Suffice to say that both factors have a major importance and impact! The sun ceasing to shine, or all plants dying, would both result in our death.



As I said above, Gaia theory offers no special place for humanity, except that we have a greater capacity to disrupt the system than any other (possibly even all the other) species. And the big issue regarding global warming is that's exactly what we're doing by returning to the atmsophere billions of tonnes of carbon that Gaia has taken millions of years to sequester. To repeat, Gaia is not a conscious entity, but a complex system of interlocking feedback loops.
Ok! Then I suppose we agree. As stated above, I agree with you if what you're saying is that the greatest chance of repairing the problem lies in the systems provided by earth. However if someone comes up with some ingenious way of reversing it by active measures, I don't have any prejudice in that matter.

[macsen rufus]

Ok! Then I suppose we agree.

Yes, I think by and large we do, I was just nitpicking :2thumbsup:

My pessimism about whether we SHALL save ourselves from the effects of global climate change do not arise from a belief that we CAN'T do so. We have the capacity and the intelligence to address the causes. I am pessimistic because we simply WON'T do it, mostly through the self-interest of various economic sectors and those in denial about the impacts their lifestyles have. That famous Bushism "The American way of life is not open for negotiation" was the real nail in the coffin of a timely intervention. Not that I'm laying all the blame on the USA (tempting as it may be :laugh4: ) as it applies equally to all of the rich, consumerist societies. The only approach to deal with resource use is on a per capita basis, so for all the whingeing about China and India overtaking us on a nation by nation basis, in per capita terms their populations are living on a tiny fraction of the resources us rich westerners use.

I don't hold that individual action is futile. As the saying goes, it may just be a drop in the ocean but the ocean is made up of drops. To say that individuals shouldn't do anything, says NOBODY will do anything. Okay, maybe only a few will, but in time that should grow. As for governments and politicians, I just despair....

As with alcoholism, the first step towards a solution is actually admitting you have a problem.

[Crazed Rabbit]

We have no problem!

Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide
Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?

By Timothy Ball

Monday, February 5, 2007

Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was the first Canadian Ph.D. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and that for 32 years I was a Professor of Climatology at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.

What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?

Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.

No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don't pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?

Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. "It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species," wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.

I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on.

Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.

The real deal?
Against the grain: Some scientists deny global warming is caused by man
Lawrence Solomon, National Post
Published: Friday, February 02, 2007

Astrophysicist Nir Shariv, one of Israel's top young scientists, describes the logic that led him -- and most everyone else -- to conclude that SUVs, coal plants and other things man-made cause global warming.

Step One Scientists for decades have postulated that increases in carbon dioxide and other gases could lead to a greenhouse effect.

Step Two As if on cue, the temperature rose over the course of the 20th century while greenhouse gases proliferated due to human activities.

Step Three No other mechanism explains the warming. Without another candidate, greenhouses gases necessarily became the cause.

Dr. Shariv, a prolific researcher who has made a name for himself assessing the movements of two-billion-year-old meteorites, no longer accepts this logic, or subscribes to these views. He has recanted: "Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media.

"In fact, there is much more than meets the eye."


Dr. Shariv's digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is no concrete evidence -- only speculation -- that man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-- the United Nations agency that heads the worldwide effort to combat global warming -- is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence. In fact, according to the IPCC's own findings, man's role is so uncertain that there is a strong possibility that we have been cooling, not warming, the Earth. Unfortunately, our tools are too crude to reveal what man's effect has been in the past, let alone predict how much warming or cooling we might cause in the future.

All we have on which to pin the blame on greenhouse gases, says Dr. Shaviv, is "incriminating circumstantial evidence," which explains why climate scientists speak in terms of finding "evidence of fingerprints." Circumstantial evidence might be a fine basis on which to justify reducing greenhouse gases, he adds, "without other 'suspects.' " However, Dr. Shaviv not only believes there are credible "other suspects," he believes that at least one provides a superior explanation for the 20th century's warming.

"Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming," he 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."

If CO2 causes global warming, why did the earth cool 1940-1970s, whilst CO2 rose? Hmm?

CR

[Lorenzo_H]

Global Warming is so over done. It's mostly a bunch of crap if you ask me.

[Watchman]

I see "solar cycles" have become the Climate Sceptic edition of Intelligent Design. Sure hope they paid for the license.

...is it just me or does that Timothy Ball guy in Rabbit's first quote use total Bullshit Artist(tm) syntax ? The whole too-smooth way he goes about his arguments gives me Thank You For Smoking flashbacks, nevermind makes my neck hairs bristle alarmingly.

[Tuuvi]

Solar Cycles causing global warming makes perfect sense to me. What is the earth's main source of heat? The sun. So why wouldn't the sun have an effect on how hot or cool the earth is? Of course the atmosphere also has an effect on the earth's climate, but it acts more as a stabilizer than a heater or cooler. Places where there is no atmosphere, like the moon for example, is extremely hot during the day and freezing cold at night. Just my thoughts on the subject.

[Watchman]

The whole global warming thingy is all about the rate at which the energy from the sun is absorbed and then eventually radiated back into the space from the outer layers of the atmosphere, if you happen to recall.

Well, there's the planet's internal volcanic activity as well of course.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I see "solar cycles" have become the Climate Sceptic edition of Intelligent Design. Sure hope they paid for the license.

...is it just me or does that Timothy Ball guy in Rabbit's first quote use total Bullshit Artist(tm) syntax ? The whole too-smooth way he goes about his arguments gives me Thank You For Smoking flashbacks, nevermind makes my neck hairs bristle alarmingly.

Oh, man I love it. First we label skeptics 'deniers' and now other theories are just evil-neo-con-dogma.

I love how eager the leftists are to debate this.

CR

[Fisherking]

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=156df7e6-d490-41c9-8b1f-106fef8763c6&k=0

Global warming is pretty much like anything else in the news…It is something to scare and worry people so they tune in to the next broadcast or buy tomorrow's newspaper. The fixes vary from the strange to the absurd. Both sides make their cases based on selected data and there is nothing most of us can do about it except out-gassing. But that is what we do about most everything.

[Watchman]

Oh, man I love it. First we label skeptics 'deniers' and now other theories are just evil-neo-con-dogma.

I love how eager the leftists are to debate this.I can recognize "smarmy" when it's oozing out of the monitor, you know.

[Mooks]

Who cares about global warming? Ill be dead by the time it in theory destroys the planet, so im not too worried about it.

[Watchman]

"After us the Deluge", huh ?

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

BTW: More scientists say "Global Warming is due to man made activities" than say "Global warming is just due to natural cycles" do they not.

In my opinion natural climate cycles do have something to do with GW. Man is causing global warming and natural climate change is amplifying the terrible effects.

[Tuuvi]

Who cares about global warming? Ill be dead by the time it in theory destroys the planet, so im not too worried about it.
yes, but it will kill your grandchildren,(removal of personal attack by Ser Clegane)

[AntiochusIII]

yes, but it will kill your grandchildren,[removal of quoted personal attack by Ser Clegane)Hey, hey. No need to be hostile, you know. It's just a debate. :smash:

[Xiahou]

It's pretty simple in my book. Man-made global warming is far from a proven fact. But, even if it is true the specific dangers of it are unclear and there is nothing really we can do about it anyway. The CO2 reducing measures currently bandied about mainly consist of capping/trading and still completely ignores developing countries. What you'd be talking about is a single-digit reduction in the increase of man-made CO2, which in itself is only a fraction of overall CO2. And, if you look at the Kyoto protocol you'll see that even the countries that signed onto it failed to live up to their commitments.

So why take on trillions of dollars of economic damage to fight a problem that may or may not be man-made and even if it is man-made, fighting it is essentially futile anyhow? Let's worry about environmental issues where we can actually make a difference. :yes:

[Samurai Waki]

My time on this earth matters little to me. I care about the world that my daughters will be born into, and I care about the world my Grand Children, and Great Grand Children, and Great Great Granchild etc. Will live in. I think it is a foolish and callous thought to just let someone else deal with it. Afterall it's not our problem. But it is our problem, and we need to figure out a way to end it. I'm not entirely convinced on what causes global warming, wether it is man made or natural, but it cannot be disputed that man is having some effect on our climate, and we need to minimalise the damage that has already been caused, or that will be caused. If you care so little about what will happen to future generations, nobody will convince you otherwise, and you probably live in an unhappy existance where nothing matters to you as it is. Everybody needs to make sacrifices once and awhile, fuel is a precious commodity, but by ignoring the consequences of our actions, we really show how shallow our society really is. I believe that as an American, it is part of my duty to show the world that not all of us are uncaring, or unintelligeable, because thats obviously not the case here, what the case is, is that we've become so stubborn and grounded in fantasy that the ingenious revelations of our time go unheeded, and we slowly wallow into obscurity. If any Americans want to continue the way of life that we have, we must be on the cutting edge of technology, and we always need to evolve to meet the demands that befall us, wether or not in the short term it hurts us, in the long run it will save us.

[Watchman]

It's pretty simple in my book. Man-made global warming is far from a proven fact. But, even if it is true the specific dangers of it are unclear and there is nothing really we can do about it anyway. The CO2 reducing measures currently bandied about mainly consist of capping/trading and still completely ignores developing countries. What you'd be talking about is a single-digit reduction in the increase of man-made CO2, which in itself is only a fraction of overall CO2. And, if you look at the Kyoto protocol you'll see that even the countries that signed onto it failed to live up to their commitments.

So why take on trillions of dollars of economic damage to fight a problem that may or may not be man-made and even if it is man-made, fighting it is essentially futile anyhow? Let's worry about environmental issues where we can actually make a difference. :yes:
"You cannot win; but you must fight, because you can lose."
- some Celtic hero cycle quoted in EB

[Pannonian]

It's pretty simple in my book. Man-made global warming is far from a proven fact. But, even if it is true the specific dangers of it are unclear and there is nothing really we can do about it anyway. The CO2 reducing measures currently bandied about mainly consist of capping/trading and still completely ignores developing countries. What you'd be talking about is a single-digit reduction in the increase of man-made CO2, which in itself is only a fraction of overall CO2. And, if you look at the Kyoto protocol you'll see that even the countries that signed onto it failed to live up to their commitments.

So why take on trillions of dollars of economic damage to fight a problem that may or may not be man-made and even if it is man-made, fighting it is essentially futile anyhow? Let's worry about environmental issues where we can actually make a difference. :yes:
Put it another way, if we decrease our dependency on oil, we can release ourselves from the hold the accursed middle east has on us. No more dealing with the Saudis. Even putting aside your dispute with environmental studies, that has to be a worthy goal.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Oh, apparently global temperature change has been going on...forever-

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st279/st279.pdf

Of course, that doesn't provide a good excuse to spread socialism under the guise of environmentalism.

CR

[Watchman]

To paraphrase good ol' Civilization: "I recommend we research:
A Point
so we can:
Get It"

[Fisherking]

Oh, apparently global temperature change has been going on...forever-

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st279/st279.pdf

Of course, that doesn't provide a good excuse to spread socialism under the guise of environmentalism.

CR

That's rich!

But you don't think governments will want to here they are trying to fix a natural cycle do you.

Gosh! If we aint gona fry what are we going to worry about next?

[Xiahou]

Here's some more material for everyone's reading pleasure:

One from Reid A. Bryson (http://ccr.aos.wisc.edu/contacts/reidbryson.html):
Remember Otzi, the Ice Man? The fellow that was found in the mountains between Austria and Italy a few years ago? He had been shot a little over 5000 years ago, and then covered with snow, and more snow, until a few years ago the snow melted back enough for Otzi to be found. Between his burial under snow and his exhumation by nature there was more snow and ice than before, or now. Are we just getting back to what the snow climate used to be?

When the Vikings settled part of Greenland circa 900 CE, they established a settlement that lasted longer than the United States has been around. There was a considerable amount of traffic between Greenland and Europe, by the standards of the time, so some skippers were making their first trip. The directions were, at first, to sail two and a half days west from Iceland to the shore of Greenland where there stood the landmark Blasark (black shirt) Mountain. Then sail down the coast to Eriksfjord, a beautiful broad straight passage across southern Greenland. Reaching the west coast they should turn right up the coast to the navigation marker on Herjolf’s Ness. (About “Bluie West 3”in WW II.) Turning in to Tunugdliarfik Fjord Erik’s homestead Brattahlid was only 75 miles at the end of the fjord (across from Bluie West 1, for you old timers).

After 1200 CE the directions changed. Sail one and a half days west from Iceland to the edge of the ice pack. If it is clear you might see the mountain Hvitsark to the west (snow covered now?), then go all the way down around hazardous Cap Farvel and up the other coast to Herjolf’s Ness. Eriksfjord was no longer open, nor is it now. As of a decade or so ago there were two valley glaciers blocking it from the sides. Yes, I saw them. If Greenland ice diminishes some, will we be getting back to conditions like it used to be?

One of the well known climatic episodes (to well-educated climatologists) is the Little Ice Age. The hemispheric cooling started in the 1400s, really got going about 1570 (see Frobisher’s journal) and was full-blown by mid-1600s. The Pilgrims picked a lousy time to come to America. After a little amelioration, things got worse culminating in the “Year Without a Summer”. Since then the hemispheric temperature has risen, and we even have thermometers to attest to it. Gee, getting back to what it used to be sure doesn’t sound like the sky is falling and catastrophe looms. Besides, warmer weather reduces the Climatic Overhead and we get more income per unit of energy used.

Incidentally, this sequence can be modeled without even referring to anthropogenic carbon dioxide.

The Northern Hemisphere temperature history as modeled using Milankovitch variations in solar radiation modulated by volcanic aerosols, using oceans and carbon dioxide only as minor dependent variables. BP means before 1955 CE.

This figure captures very well, the “little ice age”, the Medieval Warm Period, and other known variations of late BCE and early CE times. The drivers of this model are Milankovitch calculations (average for the entire Hemisphere) and the observed volcanic record described above. Carbon dioxide is treated as a very minor dependent variable. It is unlikely that a general circulation model which assumes a major role of carbon dioxide can duplicate this known climatic sequence.link (http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/02/08/history-getting-back-to-what-it-sort-of-used-to-be-a-guest-weblog-by-reid-a-bryson-phd-dsc-dengr/)

And here's something from the Boston Globe entitled: Chicken Little and Global Warming (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/07/chicken_little_and_global_warming/)
Chicken Little and global warming

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | February 7, 2007

YOU KNOW that big United Nations report on global warming that appeared last week amid so much media sound and fury? Here's a flash: It wasn't the big, new United Nations report on global warming.

Oddly enough, most of the news coverage neglected to mention that the document released on Feb. 2 by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was not the latest multiyear assessment report, which will run to something like 1,500 pages when it is released in May. It was only the 21-page "Summary for Policymakers," a document written chiefly by government bureaucrats -- not scientists -- and intended to shape public opinion. Perhaps the summary will turn out to be a faithful reflection of the scientists' conclusions, but it wouldn't be the first time if it doesn't.

In years past, scientists contributing to IPCC assessment reports have protested that the policymakers' summary distorted their findings -- for example, by presenting as unambiguous what were actually only tentative conclusions about human involvement in global warming. This time around, the summary is even more confident: It declares it "unequivocal" that the Earth has warmed over the past century and "very likely" -- meaning more than 90 percent certain -- that human activity is the cause.

That climate change is taking place no one doubts; the Earth's climate is always in flux. But is it really so clear-cut that the current warming, which amounts to less than 1 degree Celsius over the past century, is anthropogenic? Or that continued warming will lead to the meteorological chaos and massive deaths that alarmists predict? It is to the media. By and large they relay only the apocalyptic view: Either we embark on a radical program to slash carbon-dioxide emissions -- that is, to arrest economic growth -- or we are doomed, as NBC's Matt Lauer put it last week, to "what literally could be the end of the world as we know it."

Perhaps the Chicken Littles are right and the sky really is falling, but that opinion is hardly unanimous. There are quite a few skeptical scientists, including eminent climatologists, who doubt the end-of-the-world scenario. Why don't journalists spend more time covering all sides of the debate instead of just parroting the scaremongers?

Only rarely do other views pierce the media's filter of environmental correctness. A recent series by Lawrence Solomon in Canada's National Post looked at some of the leading global-warming dissenters, none of whom fits the easy-to-dismiss stereotype of a flat-Earth yahoo. There is, for example, Richard S.J. Tol -- IPCC author, editor of Energy Economics, and board member of the Centre for Marine and Climate Research at Hamburg University. Tol agrees that global warming is real, but he emphasizes its benefits as well as its harms -- and points out that in the short term, the benefits are especially pronounced.

Another dissident is Duncan Wingham, professor of climate physics at University College London and principal scientist of the European Space Agency's CryoSat Mission, which is designed to measure changes in the Earth's ice masses. The collapse of ice shelves off the northern Antarctic Peninsula is often highlighted as Exhibit A of global warming and its dangers, but Wingham's satellite data shows that the thinning of some Antarctic ice has been matched by thickening ice elsewhere on the continent. The evidence to date, Wingham says, is not "favorable to the notion we are seeing the results of global warming."

Still other scientists profiled by Solomon contend that the sun, not man, plays the dominant role in planetary climate change.

Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center, for instance,believes that changes in the sun's magnetic field, and the corresponding impact on cosmic rays, may be the key to global warming. Nigel Weiss, a past presidentof the Royal Astronomical Society and a mathematical aerophysicist at the University of Cambridge, correlates sunspot activity with changes in the Earth's climate. Habibullo Abdussamatov, who heads the space research laboratory at Pulkovo Astronomical Observatoryin Russia, points out that Mars is also undergoing global warming -- despite having no greenhouse conditions and no activity by Martians. In his view, it is solar irradiance, not carbon dioxide, that accounts for the recent rise in temperature.

Climate-change hyperbole makes for dramatic headlines, but the real story is both more complex and more interesting. Chicken Little may claim the sky is falling. A journalist's job is to check it out.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Apparently, then, our pollution is causing changes in the sun's magnetic field :rolleyes:

Look at this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
The interesting thing isn't primarily the temperature. The interesting things are: 1. the correlation to the industrialism and pollution levels. 2. notice the sharp rise almost without fluctuations. Compare to the Medieval warm period, in which there is a zig-zag movements, a slow increase and decrease bump over almost 600 years.

The derivative of the temperature is quite extreme! Compare 0.2 degrees change in 300 years or more (Medieval warm period) to 0.8 degrees change in 90 years. Medieval warm period thus has average temperature increase of 0.0006 degrees, whereas modern global warming has an average increase of 0,009 degrees. We are talking about more than 10 times faster temperature increase, and a temperature increase that is highly correlated to our pollution levels.

[Fisherking]

I am surely no expert on the climate and I am still a bit unsure whether the fearmongers or the do-nothings will cause the most harm, but I do feel informed enough and knowledgeable enough to parrot a few criticisms of the instrument data.

Almost all of the instrumentation is located in major cities which are more susceptible to false reading of higher than average regional temperatures. Cities often produce their own cloud cover (smog and pollutants) which keep them warmer than the surrounding countryside. The buildings and lights also produce heat with eventually gets outside and into the air. Anyone living in the country can tell you that the city temperature and that at home is often at wide variance.
While we now have satellites capable of measuring mien temperatures that is not the data used in these surveys.
I do think we need a better data set than what we are being provided with before making massive expenditures or implementing stringent regulations that may have no effect at all on the problem at hand…if there is a problem that we can effect.

Unfortunately governments seem capable of only two responses. The first is to study the phenomenon and never do anything. The second is to go off with little or no clear idea of what to do but to throw money and regulations at the problem until it drops out of the press.

Take your pick; in the end we will spend exorbitant amounts of money either way and likely to the same effect.

[BDC]

I am surely no expert on the climate and I am still a bit unsure whether the fearmongers or the do-nothings will cause the most harm, but I do feel informed enough and knowledgeable enough to parrot a few criticisms of the instrument data.

Almost all of the instrumentation is located in major cities which are more susceptible to false reading of higher than average regional temperatures. Cities often produce their own cloud cover (smog and pollutants) which keep them warmer than the surrounding countryside. The buildings and lights also produce heat with eventually gets outside and into the air. Anyone living in the country can tell you that the city temperature and that at home is often at wide variance.
While we now have satellites capable of measuring mien temperatures that is not the data used in these surveys.
I do think we need a better data set than what we are being provided with before making massive expenditures or implementing stringent regulations that may have no effect at all on the problem at hand…if there is a problem that we can effect.

Unfortunately governments seem capable of only two responses. The first is to study the phenomenon and never do anything. The second is to go off with little or no clear idea of what to do but to throw money and regulations at the problem until it drops out of the press.

Take your pick; in the end we will spend exorbitant amounts of money either way and likely to the same effect.
The EU is finally doing something about cars though. They'll have to produce a max of 130g/km of CO2. So any cars that are made will be clean. Plus they'll be so expensive and quiet and generally disappointing fewer people will drive.

Not that that helps in places where public transport is already full (like the UK! Yay!).

[Xiahou]

The EU is finally doing something about cars though. They'll have to produce a max of 130g/km of CO2. So any cars that are made will be clean. Plus they'll be so expensive and quiet and generally disappointing fewer people will drive.What other pollutants will it get to belch out in exchange for decreased CO2?

[Ser Clegane]

What other pollutants will it get to belch out in exchange for decreased CO2?
Why should a car that emits less CO2 "blech out" something else in exchange?
Consumption of less gas for example is certainly a feasible way to reduce emissions, don't you think?

[KafirChobee]

For those still in denial about Global Warming, may I humbly suggest "An Incovenient Truth" for their viewing pleasure.

http://www.climatecrisis.net/


To Legio and Macsen, excellent summarys and explanations for an overall perspective of what life versus a planet is (and then some). Truely enjoyed the exchange between the two of you and your summations. Thx

Reality is, that since my birth the population of our planet has tripled (am a nam vet, baby boomer), and will double again by 2050 making it 12 billion humans bumping into one another and fighting each other over every resource from water to food. Oil will be of historical interest, but pretty much non-existant.

To believe that man doesnot or is not affecting the environmental conditions he is living in ... is hooey. Only those with their heads firmly planeted in the sand or their dexterious orphous can possibly believe that what is occuring today is because of some simplistic climactic cycle ordained by a supremebeing.

And btw, the GW could verywell instigate an iceage - but according to what I have read and seen in a variety of documentarys on the subject - it is doubtful. The gulf stream would have to be interupted - as it was during the 12th (?) century when an ice damn (in Greenland) collapsed dumping billions of acres of fresh water into it and disrupting its cyclic flow.

Regardless, for those maintaining the oil companys' view that GW is a fantasy - view "An Inconvient Truth". What could it possibly hurt? :balloon2:

[Louis VI the Fat]

Two things are quite certain:

- human activity causes an unnatural amount of emission of certain substances in our atmosphere, and
- the substance of the atmosphere is an important variable of the earth's climate.

So really, previous ice-ages, solar cycles, only half-understood greenhouse effects are not even important. The simple fact remains that human activity will be or is already a major factor in the earth's climate.
One doesn't have to interpret meteorological data or use indeed only half-understood climatic theories to see and accept this simple fact.



To believe that man doesnot or is not affecting the environmental conditions he is living in ... is hooey.
:yes:


"Reality is, that since my birth the population of our planet has tripled (am a nam vet, baby boomer), and will double again by 2050 making it 12 billion humans"
Amazing, isn't it?

[Xiahou]

For those still in denial about Global Warming, may I humbly suggest "An Incovenient Truth" for their viewing pleasure.
Hah! No. :laugh4:

Mind you, I am planning to sit down and watch it for a giggle one of these days- but as a source of accurate or unbiased information? Heck no. :dizzy2:


Reality is, that since my birth the population of our planet has tripled (am a nam vet, baby boomer), and will double again by 2050 making it 12 billion humans bumping into one another and fighting each other over every resource from water to food. Oil will be of historical interest, but pretty much non-existant.12 billion by 2050 seems a bit high (http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm) an estimate to me.


Two things are quite certain:

- human activity causes an unnatural amount of emission of certain substances in our atmosphere, and
- the substance of the atmosphere is an important variable of the earth's climate.And then there's things that aren't certain.... like how much of atmospheric gases are a result of man- there's certainly no direct relationship between how much we pump out and how much is in the atmosphere. Much of it seems to be locked in the oceans or.... other places. :shrug:

Another unknown would be what exactly will occur as we see shifts composition. The only thing we could be relatively sure of is that it would not be much like the maps showing 20+ft increases in sea level that Al Gore is peddling.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Why should a car that emits less CO2 "blech out" something else in exchange?
Consumption of less gas for example is certainly a feasible way to reduce emissions, don't you think?
There already is the hybrid car which produces half the emissions. Sadly they are very expensive, being new and all, so most drivers, me included, cannot afford to purchase them. In the future there will probably be cars that run on hydrogen and only produce water. Useful if you want a drink while your driving :wink:

[Ironside]

Another unknown would be what exactly will occur as we see shifts composition. The only thing we could be relatively sure of is that it would not be much like the maps showing 20+ft increases in sea level that Al Gore is peddling.

Big ice shelf's disappearing act (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6206672.stm)

I would say that the only thing that's relativly sure is the we will get atleast a few years warning if it should happen again.


There already is the hybrid car which produces half the emissions. Sadly they are very expensive, being new and all, so most drivers, me included, cannot afford to purchase them. In the future there will probably be cars that run on hydrogen and only produce water. Useful if you want a drink while your driving

The problem with hydrogen cars is that the hydrogen is needed to be produced somewere. And that costs energy, so you can't really use coal plants to supply the energy.

[Fisherking]

There are other thoughts on this whole thing. Some of the Scientists we assume are on the band wagon aren't exactly….where is the darn link…well…I'll keep looking…any way...

Seems some that believe global warming is real and that CO2 is rising don't think it is a big problem.

Dr. Tim Ball, the head of the National Resources Stewardship Project in Canada, shared his views on global warming. Many different types of climate cycles, specifically those related to the sun, can cause warming trends, he suggested. The increase in C02 emissions is overemphasized as a factor in warming, he argued, and the science in the film An Inconvenient Truth is based on faulty computer models.

http://www.nrsp.com/

I don't know if any of this is so or not but I do know that people who try to scare you into doing things, and use fear as their motivating issue usually have much more to hide than those who approach it in a calm manner.

Any time some one wants to do something now without further debate or research is being just a little bit hysterical.

When you react due to fear you are not usually acting on logic. (fright = fight or flight)

Politicians seem to love emotional issues; they seem to work in polarizing the populous much quicker than rational debate and help at getting us to go along with what ever measures they want to take. Once that it done there is usually no going back.

The left and the right both use it mostly to our great detriment. The best approach is to remain sceptical and make them prove their point.

If those in power can get you stirred up and emotional they can get away with some pretty dumb things.

If this doesn't make sense…I have about 102 fever…I'll read it again later LOL

[Xiahou]

Big ice shelf's disappearing act (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6206672.stm)

I would say that the only thing that's relativly sure is the we will get atleast a few years warning if it should happen again.Interesting article. :bow:

It's also worth noting that the entire ice shelf could melt away tomorrow and there would be no change in sea levels. :yes:

[Fisherking]

Privet sector: Someone putting their money where their mouth is.

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2009530,00.html


better than a fear based approach…but will he ever have to pay?

[Pannonian]

Xiahou, what do you think of the Defense and State Department arguments for minimisng oil dependency?

[Crazed Rabbit]

To believe that man doesnot or is not affecting the environmental conditions he is living in ... is hooey.

Wow, you make such a persausive point :dizzy2:


Only those with their heads firmly planeted in the sand or their dexterious orphous can possibly believe that what is occuring today is because of some simplistic climactic cycle ordained by a supremebeing.

Oh, I love this. Everyone who disagrees is stupid, especially those who point who the holes in your logic with science and fact. :dizzy2:


There already is the hybrid car which produces half the emissions.

And what does it run on? Electricity or Hydrogen? Either way, you have to spend energy - by burning coal in electrical plants, for instance, or extracting the hydrogen using electricity - to get that electricity or hydrogen to your car. Sure, the car itself may use less CO2, but what about the places that produce its electricity?

EDIT: A link with a list of articles pointing out flaws in Al Gore's movie and global warming nuts:
http://blog.nam.org/archives/2006/05/an_inconvenient.php

CR

[KafirChobee]

Hah! No. :laugh4:

Mind you, I am planning to sit down and watch it for a giggle one of these days- but as a source of accurate or unbiased information? Heck no. :dizzy2:

12 billion by 2050 seems a bit high (http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm) an estimate to me.

And then there's things that aren't certain.... like how much of atmospheric gases are a result of man- there's certainly no direct relationship between how much we pump out and how much is in the atmosphere. Much of it seems to be locked in the oceans or.... other places. :shrug:

Another unknown would be what exactly will occur as we see shifts composition. The only thing we could be relatively sure of is that it would not be much like the maps showing 20+ft increases in sea level that Al Gore is peddling.

We all need a good giggle these days, so what is keeping you from yours? That is, viewing "An Inconvenient Truth"? What Gore presents is substantiated, and though he may not be one of your favorite personalities - he certainly has something of importance to say on this issue (can you say "Nobel Prize"?). Those that ignore it do so either out of prejudice toward him, or fear he may alter their thinking on this subject. But, what the hey. It's just for giggles - right?

12billion by 2050: http://www.popconnect.org
BTW, you maybe right - it may only be 10Billion.

Still, if you feel that the earth can support the +9.5billion your survey suggests - fine. Not that we are doing a bang up job today at 5Billion, or we were doing much better when it was a mear 2billion in the 1950's. Is just a thought - but regardless of which population growth senario one accepts, there are limited resources to support life on this planet.

Also, One thing some have ignored is the depletion of life in the seas. Over fishing, the altering of habitats, and that the depletion of the smallest organisms affect all life there. The food chain is being disrupted - and that is a fact. Coral reefs are dying. Areas once plentiful with sea life are now deserts (of a sort). And many Marine biologist point out that a change of even a few degrees in some areas can and is destroying the natural flow of life.

Still, keep your idealist optomistic view that nothing is happening to the environment. Who knows, maybe you are right and the vast bulk of scientists and their information are wrong.:eeeek:

[Xiahou]

We all need a good giggle these days, so what is keeping you from yours? That is, viewing "An Inconvenient Truth"? What Gore presents is substantiated, and though he may not be one of your favorite personalities - he certainly has something of importance to say on this issue (can you say "Nobel Prize"?). Those that ignore it do so either out of prejudice toward him, or fear he may alter their thinking on this subject. But, what the hey. It's just for giggles - right?Gore is a twit, no matter what side of the global warming debate you're on, that much should be apparent to anyone. Rush Limbaugh is also nominated for a Nobel Prize- does that automatically make what he has to say important? I am going to watch his scare tactics at some point, but I'm not willing to waste a Netflix rental on it right now... maybe if it comes on HBO. :shrug:


Still, if you feel that the earth can support the +9.5billion your survey suggests - fine. Not that we are doing a bang up job today at 5Billion, or we were doing much better when it was a mear 2billion in the 1950's. Is just a thought - but regardless of which population growth senario one accepts, there are limited resources to support life on this planet.I have little doubt that the world could support that many people.


And many Marine biologist point out that a change of even a few degrees in some areas can and is destroying the natural flow of life.This really illustrates the false premise that global warming fanatics operate from. Throughout its histroy, the world's climate has varied wildly from being warmer than it is now to being far, far colder- yet here we still are and the "natural flow of life" is still flowing. The fanatics would lead us to believe that the "norm" for climate is static- this has never been the case. Our climate is always changing.


Who knows, maybe you are right and the vast bulk of scientists and their information are wrong.:eeeek:Two points here: One, science isn't a popularity contest; two, I would strongly dispute the idea that a majority of scientists share Gore's apocalyptic views. Even among those that believe in man-made global warming, few would buy wholesale into the fear-mongering the Gore is getting rich off of.

[Xiahou]

Xiahou, what do you think of the Defense and State Department arguments for minimisng oil dependency?
We should do what we can to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We should drill more domestically, we should develop more nuclear power and where appropriate and viable, we should make use of solar and wind power.

Not buying into the global warming spiel doesn't automatically make one pro-pollution. I think a lot of environmentalist-types would be worried about the global warming hype as well. This narrow-minded concentration on CO2 is undoubtedly taking focus away from more dangerous and pressing concerns.

[Papewaio]

Interesting article. :bow:

It's also worth noting that the entire ice shelf could melt away tomorrow and there would be no change in sea levels. :yes:

The article contradicts that statement:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6206672.stm


If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and its northern counterpart on Greenland, were both to melt, sea levels around the world would rise about 10 to 12m.

As does the heat_pdf that you linked to in:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1419827&postcount=10



The recent cooling of the upper ocean implies a decrease in the thermosteric component of sea level. Estimates of total sea level [Leuliette et al., 2004; http://sealevel.colorado.edu], however, show continued sea-level rise during the past 3 years. This suggests that other contributions to sea-level rise, such as melting of land-bound ice, have accelerated. This inference is consistent with recent estimates of ice mass loss in Antarctica [Velicogna and Wahr, 2006] and accelerating ice mass loss on Greenland [Rignot et al., 2006] but closure of the global sea level budget cannot yet be achieved.

Rising sea levels due to ice mass loss, from a link that you posted.

I believe the next round is on you ~:cheers: or better still coffee :coffeenews:

[Xiahou]

I suspect they mean land bound ice. Melting sea ice can not have any significant effect on sea levels. If the article is referring to sea ice affecting sea level..... it's wrong.

[Ironside]

I suspect they mean land bound ice. Melting sea ice can not have any significant effect on sea levels. If the article is referring to sea ice affecting sea level..... it's wrong.

It refers to it indirectly. The Ross ice shelf stabilizes the surrounding ice, that will rise the sea level if it melts. In fact, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1996/nstc96rp/sb4.htm) doesn't even have to melt to make a considerable mess (the only scenario that possibly fits those disaster movies). A collapse of the Ross ice gives makes it come in direct contact with water.

[Vuk]

thinks that the snow they've been having in NY is a good sign of global warming? Could someone please explain how it all tyes in?

[Xiahou]

thinks that the snow they've been having in NY is a good sign of global warming? Could someone please explain how it all tyes in?
You know, I was having a separate debate with someone via email on global warming- he tried to suggest that the warm winter we had up to that point was proof of global warming and pointed to news stories that declared that El Nino couldn't account for the warm winter... yada yada.

I replied with an article from a former Airforce Meteorologist who talked about how El Nino and an unusual jetstream had bottled all of the arctic air and cautioned that at some point in Jan/Feb there would likely be a severe cold snap when all the bottled up air breaks southward. Of course, being an avid believer, he dismissed the story... it was only a few days later that our cold snap started- I had a good laugh at his expense. :laugh4:

Here (http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070113/OPINION01/701130311/1035/OPINION), I found the link for the story I referred to. Looks like he nailed it pretty good. :yes:

[Fisherking]

Ok…a breath of fresh air… It looks like there really are journalists who examine the facts before printing a story!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece

[ShadeHonestus]

Remember in Al Gore's movie when he talked about the water pooling in the one area of Antarctica? He went on to call it the "canary in the coal mine." Well that represents about 2% of the ice down there. What he purposely didn't tell you is that in that same reseach sample that quantified the ice melt there, they found that the other 98% of ice was expanding. Not remaining constant, but expanding, and has been for a number of years.

[Rodion Romanovich]

thinks that the snow they've been having in NY is a good sign of global warming? Could someone please explain how it all tyes in?
I don't see why that would be a good sign. Nobody is using a few hot summer days as an example of global warming, so why should we use a few cold winter days as example of the opposite? The global warming issue is about average temperature increase, not about special cases of exceptionally cold or hot days. Global average temperature increase by pollution has already been confirmed by all scientists except those whose research is payed by the oil companies. What remains unanswered are the questions:
- how much of the temperature increase comes from pollution? Could it be that up to maybe 30% could be caused by sun storms and magnetic field things?
- how will extreme temperatures be affected? Will storms be more or less likely? Will the hottest days get hotter, or is it the coldest days that will get hotter? Etc.
- everything indicates that a temperature increase will cause further temperature increase (positive feedback), until a new equilibrium is reached (negative feedback). Where will that new equilibrium lie? At +1 degree from today? Or at +5 degrees? Or +10 degrees compared to now?

The funniest thing is how global warming deniers tend to, whenever there is an exceptionally hot summer day, explain how futile it is to judge global warming by the weather of a single day, then as soon as we get a day with snow, start exclaiming how the 99% of scientists and educated people who aren't denying global warming have been proved wrong. :rolleyes:

[Fisherking]

Regardless if you are still trying to deny the actually or think it is man made you need to read that article I posted above and see what you think.

Of course the guy is selling a book but the data is worth looking at and I don't think the scientist behind it is in league with huge oil interests.

[Banquo's Ghost]

What depresses me about this whole debate, as I've noted before, is the entrenched positions that both sides have allied to the wilful refusal to see that the solutions to global warming (whether it exists or not, is man-made or not) are desirable in their own right.

Governments are using the arguments simply to raise taxes and develop protectionist measures against growing economies in the developing world. Refuseniks react against this with an "everything is dandy" or "nowt we can do anyhow" and the apparent belief that resources are infinite, even when those developing countries really start playing alongside.

Resource efficiency is a desirable goal for any organisation. Since energy costs money, using as little of it as possible is worth a bit of effort even if you think it can last forever.

Efficient use of fossil fuels, coupled with serious research into alternatives (not just renewables, but nuclear - including the oft-ignored thorium reactors) reduces dependence on unstable states and brings strategic control of energy supplies back into our own hands.

Encouragement of technological innovation to solve energy dependencies plays into the hands of high-wage, leading edge economies that the West aspires to. Such technologies will be attractive to the developing economies too, providing another robust market.

All this requires from governments is a set of agreed frameworks within which business and research institutions can work and innovate. If we had a less short-term commercial mentality these days, one wouldn't even need frameworks from government.

All of the above would substantially impact on economic growth and strategic priorities in a positive manner. It doesn't matter a whit whether global warming exists in reality, whether it's the sunshine or cow farts or Al Gore eating too many sprouts - the very idea has provoked new ways of thinking that could bring benefits regardless.

[Xiahou]

Resource efficiency is a desirable goal for any organisation. Since energy costs money, using as little of it as possible is worth a bit of effort even if you think it can last forever.

Efficient use of fossil fuels, coupled with serious research into alternatives (not just renewables, but nuclear - including the oft-ignored thorium reactors) reduces dependence on unstable states and brings strategic control of energy supplies back into our own hands.

Encouragement of technological innovation to solve energy dependencies plays into the hands of high-wage, leading edge economies that the West aspires to. Such technologies will be attractive to the developing economies too, providing another robust market.Simple economics should take care of this. Instead, we have constant meddling by our politicians that is actually counterproductive. In the US, we have corn ethanol being pushed hard by our government- mainly as a gift to the agricultural lobby. Corn ethanol is a horrible choice for a gasoline alternative, yet our government pushes it anyhow for special interests. It takes more energy to produce it than you get out of it and it's also driving up the costs of corn which leads to more expensive livestock feed and hurts those that depend on cheap corn for sustenance. But, this is where the federal subsidies and funding are going- so competing alternatives are getting ignored.

[Banquo's Ghost]

Simple economics should take care of this. Instead, we have constant meddling by our politicians that is actually counterproductive. In the US, we have corn ethanol being pushed hard by our government- mainly as a gift to the agricultural lobby. Corn ethanol is a horrible choice for a gasoline alternative, yet our government pushes it anyhow for special interests. It takes more energy to produce it than you get out of it and it's also driving up the costs of corn which leads to more expensive livestock feed and hurts those that depend on cheap corn for sustenance. But, this is where the federal subsidies and funding are going- so competing alternatives are getting ignored.

It's a good point - I wasn't aware of the corn ethanol politics.

I would differ a little on the need to leave it entirely to the market. Markets are notoriously slow to react to long-term resource challenges, as environmental costs are not fully factored in and short-term shareholder pressures are strong.

But markets work extremely well to innovate from agreed and relatively stable frameworks.

[Caius]

If we had a less short-term commercial mentality these days.
This thread cant exist.I agree with you, but some companies dont take care. Never.I bet if the companies had done a 'ambiental research', those companies, had continued.They are killing trees.Thats a part or the entire problem.
Now, we have to talk about petrol.We are not going to change the petrol politic unless the petrol prices are going to have an excesive valour.Then we will find something a bit cheaper.
And we cant forget the water.And the acid rain.The animal killing.

World=Market.

If you change the market, you change the entire world.

[Fisherking]

What depresses me about this whole debate, as I've noted before, is the entrenched positions that both sides have allied to the wilful refusal to see that the solutions to global warming (whether it exists or not, is man-made or not) are desirable in their own right.

Governments are using the arguments simply to raise taxes and develop protectionist measures against growing economies in the developing world. Refuseniks react against this with an "everything is dandy" or "nowt we can do anyhow" and the apparent belief that resources are infinite, even when those developing countries really start playing alongside.

Resource efficiency is a desirable goal for any organisation. Since energy costs money, using as little of it as possible is worth a bit of effort even if you think it can last forever.

Efficient use of fossil fuels, coupled with serious research into alternatives (not just renewables, but nuclear - including the oft-ignored thorium reactors) reduces dependence on unstable states and brings strategic control of energy supplies back into our own hands.

Encouragement of technological innovation to solve energy dependencies plays into the hands of high-wage, leading edge economies that the West aspires to. Such technologies will be attractive to the developing economies too, providing another robust market.

All this requires from governments is a set of agreed frameworks within which business and research institutions can work and innovate. If we had a less short-term commercial mentality these days, one wouldn't even need frameworks from government.

All of the above would substantially impact on economic growth and strategic priorities in a positive manner. It doesn't matter a whit whether global warming exists in reality, whether it's the sunshine or cow farts or Al Gore eating too many sprouts - the very idea has provoked new ways of thinking that could bring benefits regardless.

That is much different and as surprised as you may be I agree with you. Or at least to there is a big problem. As to any agreement on what that is or how to fix it…Its going to be a shipwreck.

But the problem as I see it is that the politicians are not going to actually do anything except throw your money and mine at the problem (and maybe a bit to their friends) and hope they are re-elected before the water reaches their lower lip.

As to the overall problem Jared Diamond did a decent job in outlining it in his last book "Collapse"…I am sure most of you have read it.

Frankly though, studying the problems of global warming may save us money and not be as counter productive as some knee-jerk reactions they are willing to implement. We are all in it together and there are no lifeboats…..