Official (Alberta) Oil Discussion Thread

[blueski]

I downloaded the climategate code dump and took a good look at it. It was beyond amateur hour, all credibility lost.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by Slava

We also might have to get someone to look long and hard at the science and realise that "global warming" is a joke.

You mean, like actual scientists? Why would so many experts be in the con?

I definitely didn't see this coming from you, Slava.

[Looch City]

Here you go Slava, look through these. There have been lots of studies and lots of experts involved.

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

[blueski]

Originally Posted by Table 5

You mean, like actual scientists? Why would so many experts be in the con?

I definitely didn't see this coming from you, Slava.

The network analysis of those experts points to then being a very closed group, more then other areas of science.

[ae118]

I read this thread regularly, and I'm really surprised that several of you seem to doubt either that climate change is a phenomenon and/or that humans have a large part in it, even further arguing that it's some sort of rhetorical issue for the left rather than something for which there is broad scientific consensus. Among climate scientists, there certainly is. Are any of you climate scientists?

[OMG!WTF!]

On a vaguely related note, Notley is meeting with Kathleen "Ms Cap and Trade" Wynn to figure out ways to further provincial tax income....I mean, fix global warming. That can only be great news. Also...

It comes on the heels of an announcement in Montreal Thursday where the mayors of Montreal and neighbouring cities of Laval and Longueuil announced their official opposition to the Energy East pipeline.

Since when do mayors matter even slightly?

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by Slava

Something tells me we wouldn't mesh well to begin with, regardless of this particular issue.



I knew this was the reaction that I would get from some.



I think that I should've pointed out that its not that I don't believe the planet is warming. It might be. I just dispute the idea that its man causing it. Frankly there are so many factors that lead to it, we have zero idea whether its us causing the warming. I also find the "science denier" angle amusing. I have been hearing for decades now. The Kyoto protocol is about 19 years old, and before that we had the UN framework which was from 1992. Is there credible evidence that over those 25 years that we have experienced global warming? Is there any evidence that its been caused by man? Those were the two original premises of the UN framework.

I find the current carbon discussion troublesome for two main reasons (three if you count the fact that you can't have an adult discussion on it without being labelled as ignorant, or a pure knuckle dragging science denier!):

1. These issues are based on projections that go out 50 years. Frankly humans and our forecasting skill is tedious at best. We think we have things figured out, but in reality things tend to wind up very differently. So maybe the planet warms, maybe it doesn't. We are a society so bad at predicting things that we can bet on the outcome of hockey games (which a lot of us on here think we are experts) and the odds are against us...yet we can apparently predict the future temperatures for the planet five decades away? I'm sure that's completely accurate.

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read?
Do you honestly think there is any sort of equivalence between predicting the outcome of 1 random event, and making long term predictions based on validated scientific principles and statistics?



2. Is the warming man-made? We all know (thank you science!) that the earth has warmed and cooled before. We might have watched "An Inconvenient Truth" with Al Gore and saw the graph that looks like a hockey stick and fell for the "we've never seen this kind of temperature change before" kind of line. The thing is we might not have seen it directly, but its not the first time in the history of the planet. We know there was a "mini ice-age" in the middle of the last century or so. We also know that this was sandwiched between a couple of warmer periods. Were those warm periods because of increased carbon in the atmosphere? Seems unlikely. Most of that warming is attributed to things like solar activity, changing ocean currents and other things that man simply cannot control at this point. How much of the changes we perceive today are due to those factors?

First of all, even if you were correct that other warm periods were caused by things like solar activity and changing ocean currents (the currents don't even make sense, ocean currents are a result of temperature differences, not a cause of them), that doesn't change the fact that humans are increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, and that CO2 is responsible for at least some of the warming (I'm being generous here). To say that just because there are other factors causing change, means we shouldn't focus on the ones we can affect is ridiculous.


So, long story short (and in the wrong thread), I just think that there are more questions than answers. There are theories that aren't even close to proven. If that makes me some kind of "science-denier" in your eyes, that's your issue. I just think that since we as a world really began having this discussion the global temperature has increased something minimal like 0.14-0.2 degrees? (The science seems in dispute for these things), but as far as I can see we've seen a 1.2 degree increase over the past 140 years. That doesn't mean that we are going to rise forever. Maybe this is a good place to remind everyone that in the 70's science was concerned about global cooling. There is a significant division here.

Scientific opinion changing isn't a reason to discount it. That's exactly how science is supposed to work. When new data becomes available that challenges the current theory, you need to consider how it changes what you believe to be true. If that wasn't how science worked, the sun would still be rotating around the earth.
And saying that global cooling was a concern in the 70's is such a ridiculous argument.There was no where near the level of data, evidence and agreement between reputable sources that there is today.

You're trying to make yourself out to be this voice of reason, but when you say things like "Global warming is a joke" and then use pretty spurious and or outright incorrect arguments to try to prove how level minded you are, it becomes pretty clear that you aren't nearly as level headed or rational as you claim to be.

[Izzle]

Originally Posted by Iggy City

Here you go Slava, look through these. There have been lots of studies and lots of experts involved.

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

Thanks for posting this.

The sheer volume of information is daunting to climate change skeptics. Add in the fact that a lot of them do not have a post degree education in Science (not engineering... but science), all these reports become doubly daunting.

This leads to the climate change skeptics obfuscating climate change science and thus rejecting it.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Table 5

You mean, like actual scientists? Why would so many experts be in the con?

I definitely didn't see this coming from you, Slava.

I don't necessarily think that the actual warming isn't taking place, so much as the cause of that warming. I do wonder how much of this is natural cycles though? How much is actually man made? So those are the specific scientists I'm talking about.

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

You're trying to make yourself out to be this voice of reason, but when you say things like "Global warming is a joke" and then use pretty spurious and or outright incorrect arguments to try to prove how level minded you are, it becomes pretty clear that you aren't nearly as level headed or rational as you claim to be.

Well since I'm not rational and all that, just show me the evidence that proves that (A) humans are the cause or the warming, and specifically its carbon that has done this and (B) that we can reverse this effectively.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Slava

I don't necessarily think that the actual warming isn't taking place, so much as the cause of that warming. I do wonder how much of this is natural cycles though? How much is actually man made? So those are the specific scientists I'm talking about.

Well since I'm not rational and all that, just show me the evidence that proves that (A) humans are the cause or the warming, and specifically its carbon that has done this and (B) that we can reverse this effectively.

All these questions have been asked and answered:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

A natural cycle requires a forcing, and no known forcing exists that fits the fingerprints of observed warming - except anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

Multiple sets of independent observations find a human fingerprint on climate change.

http://www.ipcc.ch/

http://climate.nasa.gov/

Most climate scientists agree the main cause of the current global warming trend is human expansion of the "greenhouse effect"1 — warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space.

In its Fourth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 1,300 independent scientific experts from countries all over the world under the auspices of the United Nations, concluded there's a more than 90 percent probability that human activities over the past 250 years have warmed our planet.

The industrial activities that our modern civilization depends upon have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from 280 parts per million to 400 parts per million in the last 150 years. The panel also concluded there's a better than 90 percent probability that human-produced greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have caused much of the observed increase in Earth's temperatures over the past 50 years.

Several lines of evidence show that current global warming cannot be explained by changes in energy from the sun.

Is it too late to prevent climate change?

Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, global warming would continue to happen for at least several more decades if not centuries. That’s because it takes a while for the planet (for example, the oceans) to respond, and because carbon dioxide – the predominant heat-trapping gas – lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. There is a time lag between what we do and when we feel it.

Responding to climate change will involve a two-tier approach: 1) “mitigation” – reducing the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; and 2) “adaptation” – learning to live with, and adapt to, the climate change that has already been set in motion. The key question is: what will our emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants be in the years to come?

[peter12]

A good article by the great John Horgan .

Climate Change: Facts Versus Opinions

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...rsus-opinions/

[Krovikan]

Originally Posted by Slava

and specifically its carbon that has done this.

Let me get this straight, you are denying that CO2 is a greenhouse gas? I mean there is asking for

[GGG]

The A is settled. Although the causes are both Carbon and Methane. The B) part of the question is far more interesting.

The commitments made at Paris which won't be met by anyone don't sufficiently reduce emmissions to prevent catastrophic warming. There isn't the political will anywhere to do it. And with Oil Prices where they are there is no economic incentive to do it either. The delta in cost to stop global warming increased significantly.

Geo-engineering solutions are about the only options that can realistically reduce warming on the timetable we need. No one likes them though.

The other side of it which I have not seen analysed is is preventing global warming actually a net good vs bringing people out of poverty with the use of cheap energy. Saving lives by investing in clean energy is a very expensive way to improve global standard of living.

[ranchlandsselling]

meh

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by Slava

I don't necessarily think that the actual warming isn't taking place, so much as the cause of that warming

If you don't want to believe the scientists that there's a human link, do you believe the energy companies who came to the same conclusion decades ago?

http://www.theguardian.com/environme...denier-funding

http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic/

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Krovikan

Let me get this straight, you are denying that CO2 is a greenhouse gas? I mean there is asking for

I already hate that I opened my mouth here because I'm going to have to give the same clarifications over and over. I don't doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Is that the sole and largest reason that we have seen this warming? Surely there are many other factors? What precipitated the temperature increase following the mini ice-age? Are those factors still prevalent today?

[Izzle]

Between Troutman and Iggy City, there is more than enough reading material on the science behind climate change.

The question is, do climate change skeptics have the time, education and sheer stamina to read it all?

[OMG!WTF!]

Originally Posted by Slava

Well since I'm not rational and all that, just show me the evidence that proves that (A) humans are the cause or the warming, and specifically its carbon that has done this and (B) that we can reverse this effectively.

What I always considered the actual conspiracy is the hair brained plans we've sold as essential in ensuring our precious grand children's future. Paying polluters to continue polluting has been the real head scratcher.

[Flash Walken]

Wasted efforts guys.

The more evidence you provide, the stronger the resistance will be.

It's the Semmelweis effect, observable through psychological testing in the study of Agnoiology.

Hubris and ignorance are an unfortunate combination.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Izzle

Between Troutman and Iggy City, there is more than enough reading material on the science behind climate change.

The question is, do climate change skeptics have the time, education and sheer stamina to read it all?

I have the education. I probably don't have the time and who knows about the stamina. I'm already bored with this because it degenerates into partisanship and personal attacks almost instantly. I also love the idea that we can trust scientists who say that the globe is warming and its man made, but those "other" scientists who are engineers and geophysicists are just crackpots.

Anyway, I'm probably done with this. I will read a bunch of the materials when I have more time, but probably won't bother posting more on the topic here. Sorry for the derailing of the oil thread though!