Climategate-gate

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CO2 is NOT pollution. We all exhale it and the plants need it to live.

Sulphoric acid int he air is pollution. Fly ash in the air is pollution. Poison in the water supply is pollution.

ruveyn

I'm not sure you read what I wrote there. I didn't say CO2 was a pollution. I said there are other emissions being released along with CO2 that are both greenhouse gases and major pollution contributors, such as NO2. When we talk about reducing emissions, we're addressing both greenhouse gas emissions as well as pollutants. CO is both a pollutant and a greenhouse gas (albeit a weak one). Pollution and global warming often overlap because they both result from emissions.

Indeed. What would you recommend? That we freeze in the dark?

ruveyn

Maybe electric heaters and lamps powered by solar panels? I realize that's much easier said than done. Certainly there are cost constraints and even solar panels have a degree of toxicity. There's no perfect solution, but I think it's in our best interest to address the problems and work towards feasible solutions.

In the meantime, I think public consciousness can go along way towards eliminating the copious amounts of needless waste we dump into our environment. Simple acts like putting on a sweater and turning down the thermostat, or washing laundry in cold water, or refilling a water bottle instead of buying packs of disposable bottles can make a difference. One thing i like to do is to buy used goods. You'd be amazed what some people consider useless or trash. Much of the clothes I buy at thrift stores are new with tags, never even worn. I save cash, reduce waste, and my money goes towards charitable causes instead of overinflated corporate profits. It's a win-win-win.

One of the best things I ever heard on the subject was this, "When you throw something away, where do you think 'away' is?" I wish i could remember who said it, but my memory's not the greatest. But it really makes you think each time you head towards the trash can.

What do you do with your stinking reeking garbage if you don't have a garden or farm in which to bury it as fertilizer? I will tell you what you do. You throw it in the garbage pail and it is collected and taken away from your nostrils.

ruveyn

Over simplistic. Excessive CO2 is pollution, just like excessive Ozone can be pollution even though it naturally makes the infamous layer.

When there is a lot of CO2 and no plants to live out of it, the CO2 is a residual waste, it is pollution.

Oceans absorb CO2. Besides water vapor is more of a "greenhouse gas" than CO2. Is water vapor pollution? Water evaporates when it is warmed. Water vapor enters the atmosphere. Some of it turns into clouds. Are clouds pollution?

There is probably too much CO2 in the atmosphere, but it still isn't pollution. If the CO2 went away the Earth would enter a new Ice Age. CO2 is absolutely necessary to keep the temperature comfortable for mammals and plants.

ruveyn

some municipalities have collection programs for green kitchen waste/yard waste. There are also businesses which will take green/yard waste and turn it into compost, because they (the cities or the private businesses) can then sell the compost in a year or two at a profit.

Around here, most of the large restaurants are paid by biodiesel companies to save their cooking grease; it's collected in huge drums that are bolted to the ground and secured by padlocks with half-inch thick shanks because the rancid, used grease will get stolen by other biodiesel makers otherwise.

Sooner or later used cell phones will be a commodity, as the cost of separating out and recycling the rare earths used to make them becomes less than the cost of exploiting new sources; they're already looking at very deep deposits in the oceans, and that can't be cheap to mine.

dissolved CO2 increases the acidity of the aqueous solution it is in. This is one of the most basic, well-understood chemical processes on the planet; it's part of how we regulate the pH of our own blood. Right now, the oceans are becomming measurably more acidic and organisms which build their skeletons out of calcium carbonate - some of them quite important to oceanic food webs - are losing ground in part because of that. There is a limit to how much CO2 the oceans can absorb, but even if there wasn't the damage caused to the oceans is extreme enough to impact human food chains.

Unlike CO2, water vapor condenses and falls out of the atmosphere as rain. The water cycle is consideraby shorter than the carbon cycle.

And, yes, too little CO2 would also be very bad. How is that an argument against too much CO2?

Try living in Great Britain where carbon con taxes have completely ravaged our economy. I am a 'global warming' skeptic who completely agrees with Piers Corbyn. If you havent heard of him before take a look at his site 'weatheraction'. I attended the climate fools day conference in London this year on the 26th Oct at Portcullis House and it was very good.

Hah, you picked the worst possible thread to admit that.

Global warming is real, there is no way around it anymore. The proposed 'solutions' like carbon taxes may be stupid and need change but the problem is really there.

No, it isnt happening. Can you see any evidence that our world is getting warmer? The climate is controlled by solar activity, not man. In fact we are now heading for a mini ice-age with global temperatures being in freefall for the past ten years now. I strongly suggest anyone to look up 'Piers Corbyn'. He is excellent and he gets the forecast right where as the UK Met office is a complete tax payer funded failure.

This guy seems very suspicious to me, primarily because he does not and will not disclose his methodology. What kind of scientist refuses to show his or her work? Even on his homepage under 'Methodology' there's a message saying, "This page is being updated - please try later." From what I've gathered, it seems that he frequently pats himself on the back for a job well done, but gives himself and overly generous window from which success can be defined and then fails to acknowledge his innacuracies.

On his global warming stance, he claims the IPCC data is faulty (ironically, by not disclosing all methodology), but hasn't addressed independent research that has also shown the same hockey puck, such as satellite data and Muller's research shown on the previous pages of this thread. There has been a slight cooling in the past decade (no "freefall"), but the overall trend is still upwards. Another interesting thing to note is how this recent dip correlates to a recent dip in CO2 emissions. Both CO2 emissions and temps are on the rise again.



[img][800:768]http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/CO2_Emissions_IPCC_1024.jpg[/img]

CO2 content of the atmosphere is -correlated- to global average temperate.

Question: Does CO2 increase follow temperature increase or does it cause temperature increase. Or are both the effect of an underlying common cause?

That is the weakness of statistical models. They do not always distinguish between cause and effect or two effects of a common cause. Mills method of identifying causes suffers from the same weakness.

ruveyn

True, it is just a correlation, but I think the cause for a rise in CO2 is clear (we're emitting more of it and reducing natural reducers such as trees). How would a temperature increase cause a rise in CO2 by itself? That's a rather strange hypothesis.

The cause for the temperature rise is not 100% clear, but I think enough signals are pointing to CO2 to make that the focus. That's not to say other possibilities shouldn't be examined - they should be and they currently are, but nothing has been shown to be as likely as CO2, so far.

Nothing ever will be 100% proven here. The system is chaotic and there are too many variables, but at some point it becomes prudent and wise to say "I've seen enough." To endure a never ending research endeavor while observations continue to reflect a very widely held hypothesis is just foolish. We could go on for centuries saying "but there's doubt," and get nowhere.

This is bit different from other scientific theories because it directly impacts so many lives. I can't find the statistics, but I think something like half of the world's population lives within 50 miles of the coast. That's a significant change from past habitation patterns. When you consider the number of lives and the real estate at risk here, it becomes clear that sitting on our butts and nitpicking over insignificant discrepancies is dumb. Then, when you take a step back and look at the larger picture of our goals, primarily energy independence and a reduction of pollution, it becomes even more clear that cleaning up our act is the smart way to go.