"Man-made global warming is junk science"

[Bagor]

Originally Posted by FlamesFaninTO

One quote that was especially powerful for me was from this guy who doesnt get much more qualified to comment about polar ice warming or lack thereof.

Dr. David Bromwich--president of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology--says "it's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now

Interesting choice of words. I'm curious whether this is intentional to cover his bases. i.e. My question is ... Is the Peninsula technically considered part of the "mainland" and why he fails to mention or omits that warming temperatures (signals) have been observed on other parts of the continent?

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...c-warming.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=99681830

Another quote from a self proclaimed major 'expert' from the book.

Prof. Paul Reiter--Chief of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the famed Pasteur Institute--says "no major scientist with any long record in this field" accepts Al Gore's claim that global warming spreads mosquito-borne diseases.

Meanwhile the WHO (which just so happens to be made up of and advised by several minor scientists states that:

The malaria modelling shows that small temperature increases can greatly affect transmission potential. Globally, temperature increases of 2-3ºC would increase the number of people who, in climatic terms, are at risk of malaria by around 3- 5%, i.e. several hundred million. Further, the seasonal duration of malaria would increase in many currently endemic areas.....

http://www.who.int/globalchange/clim...en/index5.html

[Jake]

I work with oceanographers every day and I have yet to meet one who does not believe in global warming. It seems like the ones who do not believe in it are even more vocal than the ones who do.

As for as solar activity goes, I don't think any scientist will debate it influences global temperature. However, without human impacts, the increase/decrease in temperature would be much different than seen today. The two ideas are not mutually exclusive, like many in this thread seem to think.

[mikey_the_redneck]

Originally Posted by Nage Waza

Alright, I have about six years of formal education on climate...and in fact, I think the Michael Fox (mentioned above) was my prof several times.
Here is the thing: When I read and watch some of the stuff on TV, it makes me cringe because most of it is babble. The logic, quotes and reenactments are usually really bad and junk science. The point though is that the earth goes through regular climatic patterns...we basically are just coming out of an ice age. We have also had smaller ice ages since the last major ice age. The sun is the culprit and there are ways we can deal with the sun, by manipulating the gasses and the surface of our planet.

Could you expand on this a little please.........

[Flames Draft Watcher]

There are some who deny the holocaust happened.

There are scientists who claimed that tobacco is not harmful. I'm sure they had some pretty convincing studies to attempt to prove it too and some great soundbytes and quotes from so-called "respected" scientists.

Why aren't we believing those guys again?

There are lots of reasons why people don't want to believe in global warming. If it does exist, it may mean that we have to completely change our consumer society. That threatens the foundations of our economic welfare. Countries that choose to believe in global warming may make hard economic decisions that affect their economy and the well being of the citizens negatively in the short term. That's without even bringing non-renewable energy resources and their affect on politics and global power structures into the equation.

To me it pays to ask the question, who benefits from believing or disbelieving in global warming? Doesn't seem like scientists have much of a reason to believe in it beyond the actual proof, doesn't seem like there's much reason for the people who control most of the world's money to fund scientists to manipulate data to make a mythical global warming appear as reality.

On the other hand its not hard to see why those who stand to lose a lot if global warming is true and society is forced to change in order to stabilize climate change might want to fund scientists who think that it is a myth. It does not have to restricted to those in oil and gas either, many different industries may take significant hits if pollution is more closely monitored and companies are forced to pay for their pollution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externalities

"For example, manufacturing that causes air pollution imposes costs on the whole society"
"In a competitive market, the existence of externalities would cause either too much or too little of the good to be produced or consumed in terms of overall costs and benefits to society. If there exist external costs such as pollution, the good will be overproduced by a competitive market, as the producer does not take into account the external costs when producing the good."

If global warming is a myth then every company that produces a sizeable amount of greenhouse gases gets let off the hook because there is no link between greenhouse gases and climate change. But if it isn't a myth then some very large industries may have to start paying for their external costs, for their pollution via greenhouse gases and that may threaten the viability of numerous industries.

I think people that try to take money out of the equation here are missing a big point. There is a lot of reasons to fund scientists that downplay or completely refute the role of greenhouse gases in climate change.

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher

There are some who deny the holocaust happened.

[snip]

Why aren't we believing those guys again?

Because the two things aren't even close. To make the Holocaust similar to global warming in terms of evidence, you would have to take away the thousands upon thousands of eyewitnesses who saw the atrocities that were being comitted with their own eyes; and lived to tell about it.

Instead you would have to have a situation where a bunch of people in Poland start saying "hey, did you notice there aren't as many Jews around as there used to be." Then a few years later a mass grave is discovered, and somebody would have to say "those remains must be the missing Jews; never mind the fact there has just been a World War that killed millions of people."

This is the type of negativity that makes me wonder what are people trying to hide; if I have doubts about the source of global warming I'm just as good as a Holocaust denier?

Show me proof of what you want to claim. The point of this thread is that Nasa is showing the sun is at a certain point in it's cycle. I say let's see what happens over the next 5 years. If the Earth begins to cool again, then we know it was mostly a force of nature. If it keeps getting warmer, then we are responsible.

[Flames Draft Watcher]

Originally Posted by ken0042

This is the type of negativity that makes me wonder what are people trying to hide; if I have doubts about the source of global warming I'm just as good as a Holocaust denier?

Show me proof of what you want to claim. The point of this thread is that Nasa is showing the sun is at a certain point in it's cycle. I say let's see what happens over the next 5 years. If the Earth begins to cool again, then we know it was mostly a force of nature. If it keeps getting warmer, then we are responsible.

Nope, I didn't equate those who disbelieve global warming with holocaust deniers. My question was, "why don't we believe those guys again?" And you answered with the correct answer which is that the evidence is clearly on the side of holocaust having happened and the evidence is clearly on the side of cigarette smoking being harmful.

Personally all the evidence I've seen on the global warming side is much more convincing to me than the evidence against it. But I'm no climate scientist and I probably haven't examined both sides in close enough detail to even begin to have an informed opinion.

But I will echo the sentiments of several posters here which is that from everything I've read and seen, the majority of scientists believe in global warming and only a small vocal minority is disbelieving. The latter half of my post was an attempt to reason out why some scientists who disbelieve in global warming might be getting paid and having their voices amplified by those in the world who stand to lose A LOT if global warming is true and if society will be forced to change because of it.

I'm skeptical about any evidence that is talking about what, 15 year cycles of solar flaring when the evidence from the global warming is looking at trends over the past 100+ years and in the case of core samples from ice, they can look at trends over thousands and thousands of years. Glaciers are disappearing, lakes are evaporating, the polar ice caps are melting. This has been happening ever since we started to take photographs and started to make readings. If I have any specifics wrong I apologize.

Anyways I don't claim to be an expert myself. But the weight of the evidence and the support for it seems to be overwhelming to me. I listen to a bunch of lectures from respected scientists on some topics and every one I've heard mentions man-made climate change as if it were accepted fact in the scientific community. A community which you'd think would be careful to label something as a wild theory if it did not have solid evidence behind it. And a community which does not seem to have something to gain by supporting the idea of man-made climate change. The reverse however is clearly not true, I have to question who's funding some of these more vocal anti-global warming scientists.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher

Personally all the evidence I've seen on the global warming side is much more convincing to me than the evidence against it.

Is there any evidence one way or another? As far as I am concerned, neither side has anything that can be considered evidence.

Correlation is not causation.

However, I don't think efforts to reduce 'greenhouse' gases or limit our 'carbon footprint' are a bad idea though. Even if global warming is 100% not man-made, these efforts are probably worthwhile especially in the long run. As market pressure raise demand for more energy efficient cars or cost effective alternative energy sources, more effort is put into research for them. These efforts increase the total amount of energy available to us all to use, which improves our quality of life, even if it doesn't save the spotted 'who-gives-a-crap' owl..

[HOZ]

My stance with global warming is thus:

1) There was global warming and it looks as though we are now in a cooling trend. All that Arctic Ice that was suppose to disappear this year all came back and then some. BTW: Polar bears can swim very, very well. 30 - 80 km.

2) I do not believe that it is a man-made phenomenon. If we have any impact it is minimal. The Sun is our ONLY heat source and 99.9% of the mass in our galaxy. When it stops no amount of cow farts will fight off the glaciers.

3) There are so many charlatans about pumping the hysteria and selling their snake oil. Al Gore, bio fuels, overblown wind farm and solar power energy production, and carbon credits....stage front please.

4) Leading eviro-loonies say really stupid things: Porritt’s call will come at this week’s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.
The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably.

- Cut the population how? Forced migration? Culling? Why don't they put a gun to their own heads and save us their stupidity.


5) Top climate scientists, along with the media, are habitual "WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE AND IT IS ALL OUR FAULT" screamers.

1970's - Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A.
Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.



James Hansen a year ago (now advisor to Obama) - On June 23, 1988 I testified to a hearing, organized by Senator Tim Wirth of Colorado, that the Earth had entered a long-term warming trend and that human-made greenhouse gases almost surely were responsible. I noted that global warming enhanced both extremes of the water cycle, meaning stronger droughts and forest fires, on the one hand, but also heavier rains and floods.


6) Hypocrites: David Diesel (I own 2 mansions) Suzuki and Al "My house and private jets rock" Gore.



7) Dogma Nazis: Yes I am a skeptic but that does not mean I am shoving crude oil down my drains. Being a skeptic doesn't make you environmentally unfriendly.

[photon]

Originally Posted by HOZ

2) I do not believe that it is a man-made phenomenon. If we have any impact it is minimal. The Sun is our ONLY heat source and 99.9% of the mass in our galaxy. When it stops no amount of cow farts will fight off the glaciers.

The Sun is not our only source of heat, the planet itself is still hot and radiates heat, which contributes to the surface temperature. Not a heck of a lot though I don't think.

And I think you meant the Sun has most of the mass in our solar system

Incidentally, while you are right the Sun contributes the most HEAT to the system, by itself if the sun were the only contributing factor the earth's surface temperature would be -20 degrees centigrade. After water vapour, CO2 is the second biggest contributing factor which raises the average temperature from -20 to +15... 10-25% of the heat that makes our planet comfortable comes from CO2 in the atmosphere.

And given that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is measured in parts per million (180ppm to 300+ppm), it's not unreasonable to expect that small changes in the amount of CO2 would have a noticeable effect on average temperatures.

[HOZ]

Originally Posted by photon

And I think you meant the Sun has most of the mass in our solar system

Incidentally, while you are right the Sun contributes the most HEAT to the system, by itself if the sun were the only contributing factor the earth's surface temperature would be -20 degrees centigrade. After water vapour, CO2 is the second biggest contributing factor which raises the average temperature from -20 to +15... 10-25% of the heat that makes our planet comfortable comes from CO2 in the atmosphere.

And given that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is measured in parts per million (180ppm to 300+ppm), it's not unreasonable to expect that small changes in the amount of CO2 would have a noticeable effect on average temperatures.

Sorry 98.6% of our solar system's mass. My bad.

I will hedge my bet on the 99% mass versus your 330ppm on what is the primary cause of temperature change on our planet.

[Thor]

I really think most people are missing the point in these debates. We are losing vast expanses of nature, dead zones in oceans are increasing in size, our bio diversity is being threatened in all parts of the world.

Its not the debate I really care about, the science seems pretty clear what the affect of man is on the world, its hard to deny it. The speculation can definately get out of hand but what is clear is we need to find ways to stop destroying our biosphere with our pollutants and work towards a more harmonious future.

Otherwise we'll just be adding to the 99% of life that has been made extinct by our planet, certainly our planet will live on, I just doubt we can keep up this destruction of our waters, our land, and our air for many more centuries.

While we debate this stupid topic, we should be focused on real things we can do to improve the health of the planet without extreme ways of doing it. We certainly have the know how to get it done, we just need to stop bickering like the typical partisan way we seem to handle any debate.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Thor

I really think most people are missing the point in these debates. We are losing vast expanses of nature, dead zones in oceans are increasing in size, our bio diversity is being threatened in all parts of the world.

Loosing them at a faster rate than anytime in the past 4 billion or so years?

Seems a bit strange to think that a 'species' that has been on this planet for not even 1% of the time that it has supposedly existed.....and less then 1% of THAT time we've been in the industrial age.....and in that short time frame we can destroy a planet that has gone through God knows what the past 4 billion years?

IMO, George Carlin laid it out quite well.

Its a bit stupid to think that what we have done in the short time frame we have been here will amount to anything more than a blip on the historical notes the planet keeps.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by Azure

Loosing them at a faster rate than anytime in the past 4 billion or so years?

Certainly we are just keeping up the trend, but its dangerous to think we cannot harm or are not speeding up our demise with our destruction of our enviornment.

Seems a bit strange to think that a 'species' that has been on this planet for not even 1% of the time that it has supposedly existed.....and less then 1% of THAT time we've been in the industrial age.....and in that short time frame we can destroy a planet that has gone through God knows what the past 4 billion years?

Its not that we're destroying our planet, its gonna survive well beyond us. Its that we are destroying the conditions we as a species require to sustain our existence. We have massive challenges to the repair and recover what we've already made a mess of.

Suggesting we just keep going as we have been and thinking all will be fine because earth survived all this time is a bit naive. I mean Earth is one mean b*tch. She's destroyed 99% of life that has existed and we are doing ourselves no favors to buck the trend of our own existence.

IMO, George Carlin laid it out quite well.

Its a bit stupid to think that what we have done in the short time frame we have been here will amount to anything more than a blip on the historical notes the planet keeps.

I love George, but thats comedy. The reality is we are destroying ecological systems, we are seeing key indicators that are early warning signs for whats to come. Should we all panic and freak out, no. But should we stop bickering about "If theres a problem" and move on to doing what we know needs to be done to start cleaning up this planet so we can assure our children and their children a real future; hell yes.

Our blip is clearly all about technology, we've gone from feudal farmers to burning millions of tons of warming gases in 100yrs. To suggest this is safe because our planet has dealt with some crazy cycles in its life is silly. Our zone that allows us to live on this planet is rather small, we've seen whats happened in the past with regards to massive volcanic activity that created the dreaded toxic oceans, wiping out almost all life. We've seen the devastations of ice ages, warming ages..

The point we need to focus on is we need to behave better, this is the only habitable planet we have, and its not right for our generations to destroy what we do have.

I'm not a panicky person, nor do I think we need extreme action. I think we do need to smarten up and do the logical things to start moving away from fossil fuels, lessen our impact, and hopefully with future technology deal with the inevitable food and water issues for large portions of the world.

[Jake]

Originally Posted by HOZ

Sorry 98.6% of our solar system's mass. My bad.

I will hedge my bet on the 99% mass versus your 330ppm on what is the primary cause of temperature change on our planet.

I'm not sure if you're bring sarcastic or not. Out of all of the arguments against global warming, I can't imagine an easier one to argue against.

[Flames Draft Watcher]

Originally Posted by Azure

Loosing them at a faster rate than anytime in the past 4 billion or so years?

"The speed at which species are being lost is much faster than any we've seen in the past -- including those [extinctions] related to meteor collisions," said Daniel Simberloff, a University of Tennessee ecologist and prominent expert in biological diversity who participated in the museum's survey. [Note: the last mass extinction caused by a meteor collision was that of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago.]

Most of his peers apparently agree. Nearly seven out of 10 of the biologists polled said they believed a "mass extinction" was underway, and an equal number predicted that up to one-fifth of all living species could disappear within 30 years. Nearly all attributed the losses to human activity, especially the destruction of plant and animal habitats.

http://www.well.com/~davidu/extinction.html

That is a page with a few hundred links to articles on plant and animal species extinction. Interesting to skim the article titles.

Some species disappearance is being linked to "warming". In other cases its a habitat issue primarily, something which could not have occurred in the past on the scale humans have now undertaken with modern technology and the ever growing human population. In listening to this darwin series lecture from Cambridge that I found on iTunes Uni there was a scientist who had gone down to some equatorial country to try and locate some gecko species that had seemingly disappeared since the last major study there from years back. The scientists associated it with several degree shifts in the climate IIRC which were driving certain species up higher elevations or something like that.

Anyways lots of articles on large mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, etc. Even one on the earth expiring around 2050 and us requiring more than the planet provides based on resource consumption trends, lol.

[Displaced Flames fan]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Is there any evidence one way or another? As far as I am concerned, neither side has anything that can be considered evidence.

Correlation is not causation.

However, I don't think efforts to reduce 'greenhouse' gases or limit our 'carbon footprint' are a bad idea though. Even if global warming is 100% not man-made, these efforts are probably worthwhile especially in the long run. As market pressure raise demand for more energy efficient cars or cost effective alternative energy sources, more effort is put into research for them. These efforts increase the total amount of energy available to us all to use, which improves our quality of life, even if it doesn't save the spotted 'who-gives-a-crap' owl..

Best post in this thread bar none. Well said Rathji.

Whether man's contribution to climate change is tangible or exaggerated doesn't really matter. Clearly the activities that are being blamed for our contribution to climate change are harmful in other ways that can be measured and seen. What is the harm in changing these behaviors? None.

[Displaced Flames fan]

Originally Posted by Thor

I really think most people are missing the point in these debates. We are losing vast expanses of nature, dead zones in oceans are increasing in size, our bio diversity is being threatened in all parts of the world.

Its not the debate I really care about, the science seems pretty clear what the affect of man is on the world, its hard to deny it. The speculation can definately get out of hand but what is clear is we need to find ways to stop destroying our biosphere with our pollutants and work towards a more harmonious future.

Otherwise we'll just be adding to the 99% of life that has been made extinct by our planet, certainly our planet will live on, I just doubt we can keep up this destruction of our waters, our land, and our air for many more centuries.

While we debate this stupid topic, we should be focused on real things we can do to improve the health of the planet without extreme ways of doing it. We certainly have the know how to get it done, we just need to stop bickering like the typical partisan way we seem to handle any debate.

Sorry Rathji, but Thor ties you for best post in the thread.

Well said. I think if some of the more vocal doomsdayers would tone it down and talk in terms of what is happening now instead of what could happen in the future, they'd get a more favorable response and more action.

Great avatar Thor.

[photon]

Originally Posted by HOZ

I will hedge my bet on the 99% mass versus your 330ppm on what is the primary cause of temperature change on our planet.

I don't see anywhere where I said that 330ppm was the primary cause of temperature change on our planet...

Do you deny that it has an impact? What part of it do you disagree with? Keep in mind that how much heat gets absorbed by CO2 is dictated purely by physics, and is easily testable in a lab.

I don't really know a whole lot about the debate as a whole, but I look at it this way.

The earth is about equilibrium. As I said the greenhouse gasses that exist moderate the temperature of the earth, and life has evolved to fit into that temperature and thus helps maintain that temperature. To maintain an equilibrium, there has to be sources and sinks.

Over billions of years life itself has been a sink for the second most important greenhouse gas, trapping it in the fibre of its bodies in life and in death. Hence fossil fuels.

Now we're taking billions of years worth of the planet's effort to maintain an equilibrium and setting it free in a span of hundreds of years.

To say that has zero impact is foolish, at the very least sinks would have to compensate, or the equilibrium will shift. The question then becomes how much impact. That I don't know.

But I agree with the above posters. Even if there is no climate change due to increase in greenhouse gasses, moving from a fuel source we know is limited to one that is not, one we know is dirty to one that is cleaner, is a natural progression for us. Even if it's just to eliminate the toxic chemicals that get thrown into the atmosphere. Just like learning about germs makes us wash our hands, now that we know how dirty fossil fuels are, it's time to clean it up.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by Azure

IMO, George Carlin laid it out quite well.

Its a bit stupid to think that what we have done in the short time frame we have been here will amount to anything more than a blip on the historical notes the planet keeps.

George believed that humans were absolutely despicable creatures that the universe would be better off without. And he may be right in that. I have higher hopes for humanity. If I believed that humans were inherently evil, that we were lower form of life than pond scum and in the words of dear George "if our species is the lone intelligent life in the universe, then the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little". If I believed all that then I would agree with him that we'd be doing the universe a favour by wiping ourselves out. Even if it means that our children will live in a hellish future, it will be worth it for the good of cosmic wellbeing. As much as I love George, I don't have quite as much cynicism.

[Azure]

I'm not trying to say that loosing the 'environment' at this rate is not a cause for concern. I've always been in favor of reducing our footprint on the planet as a whole.

Honestly, I think as we progress, society will go down the road where we have cars that run on a battery as small as my hand. We will be able to reduce the amount of emissions we create. But we can't expect that to happen overnight.

10 years ago, nobody would have dreamed that the Chevy Volt was going to come out in 2010. Who knows where we'll be 20 years from now.