Global Warming. Fact or Fiction?

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Didn't really want to get into a lengthy discussion about this because it is difficult to have a lengthy discussion about this subject with people that believe the "science" is finalized.

So, start the personal attacks versus the people making counter claims to the Global Warming hysteria which is the Global Warming SOP instead of respecting the scientific process.

And, not all information concerning the climate is in the public realm concerning this subject. But what is now becoming public is the "demand" from certain groups to lobby congress to pass a cap and trade bill since the days of ENRON. Start connecting the dots and you will see what "green" many of these so called environmentally friendly groups are really after.

And, if I have to provide proof for everything I type on this site then I expect the same expectations out of everyone of y'all for now on concerning every post you make or comment on. This is what, the 20th Global Warming post on this site with the same results.

So, do the models predict within a respectable margin of error the transfer rate of CO2 from the Ocean?

Do the models predict within a respectable margin of error the absorption rate of CO2 from to plant life?

Do the models take into effect the "Iris Effect" being caused by cloud formations? El Nino and other current pheonominums?

Do the models take into effect solar activity?

Is there one model that incorporates EVERYTHING that is reliable enough to predict the climate for the next year or 10 years? And, would you bet your life on it?

These are just a few processes that affect CO2. Some models do some don't. Some models ignore certain processes deeming them unnecessary to the overall study. And, models are based of of data, and lots of it. The data is just as important as the model. There are already instances of this "data" being fudged to fit the hypothesis. BAD SCIENCE RESULTS IN BAD DECISIONS.

Congress is starting to wake up to this Cap and Trade swindle and Democrats are jumping ship.

Connect the dots.

What all of your objections seem to miss is the basic idea that increasing CO2, methane, chlorocarbons, etc in the atmosphere will increase heat retention - that aspect of atmospheric physics is not in doubt. The various questions you raised are valid in terms of modeling how the increase in heat is buffered and distributed, how fast polar ice melts, whether a particular region gets more rain or more drought, etc. ... but not whether certain activities do increase heat retention or cause global warming.


The article "Rise of sea levels greatest lie ever told" was actually interesting, as it does involve science, not merely attempts by deniers to obfuscate the issues. Will read more on that and get back with you ... while Morner is a real scientist, not all of his ideas are accepted by his peers (and he has won 'deceiver of the year awards' for promoting dowsing, yet refuses to take a controlled test of his claims to be able to dowse, even though he would win a million dollars if he could prove such ability). So he is a scientist with more quirks and eccentricities and red flags than normal ... will get back to you on the merits of his claims after investigating them further.

There are no short term weather models that include every possible factor, yet we rely on weather predictions from them because they are much better than throwing darts at a dart board with labels for sunny and rainy. And there has been a steady increase in the accuracy of computational models over time. The fact that these tools are limited does not mean that they are useless.

The "bet your life?" question is hyperbole - the question is, is it worth taking any action? If the weather report shows a massive storm headed my way, there is not 100% certainty it will rain .... but I might choose to sleep in instead of cutting hay that day for - if it does rain, the cut hay would mold. That is not a question of betting my life, it is a question of changing part of what I do in face of the best evidence or maximum likely probability. If it doesn't rain, I may lose a day where I could be cutting hay; if I do cut hay and it does rain, I would lose even more.

We know that burning fossil fuels creates smog, that a main source of mercury in seafood is from burning coal ... so the idea that we should move to less polluting sources of energy makes a good deal of sense even if we set aside the issues of global warming. There are also significant issues of economic and national security related to dependency on foreign oil.




Knowledge of the oceans is one limitation that is acknowledged in the models - in particular, we know that oceans can buffer against changes in temperature, CO2, and other variables ... up to a degree. These factors are being included, and updated as we develop more information ... as to whether one calls the accuracy 'respectable' or not involves a degree of subjectivity. If we model to predict an exact value 100 years in the future, then we are wasting our time. If we model to get a range of values that are most likely, then we are behaving more reasonably.




Actually, a fair amount has been written about this, and it is clear that CO2 levels have gone up (and will go up even further in the absence of action) in spite of the fact that plants absorb more CO2 when CO2 levels are higher. I worked with an ecologist who analyzed the amplitude of the swings in CO2 levels.



Although the obvious trend in CO2 levels is up, there is an increase in the size of the annual swing, which is due to increased uptake by plants. This change is much smaller than the overall trend. This is most important not for temperature, but for ecology - different plants respond differently to changes in carbon fertilization in the air. Doubling the carbon cycling for the entire atmosphere is likely to have effects on par with doubling nitrogen in the soils, or phosphorous in lakes and rivers ... overall photosynthesis may increase, it may resist slightly the increase in CO2, but the net effects are not too good. Changing this global variable is likely to have big effects on the different types of plants (C3, C4, CAM) and their ability to compete with each other.




At present, no. It is assumed that solar input is relatively constant. If you have a way to accurately predict variation in solar input to the Earth over the next century, that would be great, it could be incorporated into the models. It would also be helpful if you filed a list of all major natural disasters that will happen over the next century ... we could save millions of lives if we were prepared. But at present, all we can do is run various scenarios - most commonly, with a solar 'constant', but sometimes with an increase or decrease in solar activity.




Ahh - politics. The Democrats never supported ratifying the Kyoto treaty, and many current Dems are not deep ecologists in any sense.

When I was in grad school, it was the conservatives that were pushing cap and trade - the magic of the market would be harnessed to move us away from a carbon economy. Since it relied on markets and decentralized decision making by millions of individuals and corporations instead of government agencies, it was pushed as an efficient, benign mechanism. It would spur creativity and innovation and entrepeneurship. Now that we are getting closer to actually considering it, conservatives are against it, as it would actually involve some costs and some restrictions.



Yes, Virginia, fluorescent bulbs contain mercury. Mercury is in the long skinny tubes, and to a lesser degree, in compact fluorescent bulbs. When the long skinny obnoxious flickering tubes were being used in the 1960s, nobody was talking about the effects on the environment - it was strictly a question of low-cost lighting.

If those bulbs are made in China for the rest of the world, chances are good that people in China will be poisoned, because laws to protect workers or the environment are pretty much a joke there. And that is true of almost any product - if there is a cheap and dirty way to manufacture something, China is all over it.

Does that prove anything? Yes, that environmental decision making is about trade-offs. How much mercury is released by burning additional coal to power inefficient incandescents? Should we have a better program to recycle bulbs (and TVs, and monitors)? Sure. Are there even more efficient, less polluting technologies on the horizon? I think so.




We are all trying to do that. But simply invoking a few innuendos or isolated points, and then inviting people to connect the dots is not the most logical way to understand the world ... real consideration is more difficult, but more likely to result in a picture of the world that is useful.

I think you are confusing models used for very short term "weather predictions" and the models used for "climate change." Big difference.

Unfortunately, for the settled "science" of CO2 causing global warming, then why on earth has the planet cooled recently? If Ia m to believe that the more "greenhouse" gases we pump into the atmo then there should be a one to one correspondence in the increase in temps. But there is not. Temp readings are such a small snap shot and have been shown to be skewed in one direction by factors that have nothing to do with "greenhouse gases" and then on average show a decrease.

So, if the science establishing "greenhouse gases" is settled then why are the results not?

No confusion. I am using them as an analogy to demonstrate that all models are simplistic, all models fall short of reality, yet we can and do make use of these limited models - as I said, the fact that they are limited doesn't mean they are useless.





Has it cooled recently? Most data I have seen look something like this:



This data is consistent with a trend of warming, not a trend of cooling. What data sets do you have to support a hypothesis that the planet has been cooling recently??




Why a 1:1 correspondence? We know that the Earth is a complex system, and that in such systems, a simple input does not always have a simple result ... there will still be cycles related to el nino, other things ... no one said that measured temp will go up everywhere evenly at all times, merely that the trend or baseline will move upward.

I think it's all a big media scare for more control.

I mean, last winter 90% of the United States had huge winter storms at the same time. I don't know about other places, but where I live, the temperature's been below average all year.

Climate goes in cycles. Humans' effect is nothing but a dent in the grand scheme of things.

Did I ask for newspapers and websites or a scholarly source? Don't make me drag out the old Nature review of peer reviewed literature on the subject again.

For all those disbelievers just one point - you know that stuff that comes out the back of cars? you know the stuff thats lighter than air? well its measured in the millions of tons! Dont think thats a problem? Breathe it for a while!

I find it offensive to be called a "disbeliever" and it will not win anything with me by continuing to push an offensive term associated with Holocaust Deniers. All it does is make me dig my trenches a little deeper for the long fight.

Simply put, science is full of skeptical people like myself that hold broad accusations about the climate and man's influence to the test and who also find the "convenient" associations of science, media and politics as a sign of "untruths".

Now, the UN climate group has down sized their warnings about the amount of the sea will rise if we continue down this CO2 bandwagon. The margin of error is such that, to me, it blows the entire process "out of the water" used to create the "results" in the first place. This is not science , this is shaping science for a political goal. This is Evil in the eyes of a mathematician. Defend it all day if you must.

I understand that you would bristle at such a label, although the connotations are somewhat imagined ... there are people who agree/believe with the theory, and people that disagree/don't believe. Clearly your position is of disagreement, and that certainly doesn't put you in the same category as neo-nazis that deny the Holocaust. But the idea of digging in for a fight suggests that you are less interested in the evidence than in the conclusion.



And what of the convenient association of oil/coal companies and other powerful interests with those that opposes tooth and nail any research suggesting that human alteration of the atmosphere might have consequences? Surely, if such associations are to be considered, they outweigh the supposed profit motives of the environmentalists.... there is arguably much more 'untruth' coming from that side (not that non-scientific advocates affect the underlying science, although they can affect the public debate).




Are you sure the UN IPCC has revised their sea levels warnings down? I'm not sure that they have - there was a recent study in the news that suggested that a particular ice formation would only raise sea levels 10 feet (not 20) if it melted. But such 'down sizing' is merely honest science - if there is new information about the volume of an ice mass and a more sophisticated view of how gravity affects water, then science adjusts itself to the data. That is not shaping science for a political goal - in fact, if anything, it proves that those researchers were not shaping their findings to meet some political picture of the world.

I for one am a little disappointed.

Here it is the middle of may, and its cold and miserable out, with rain and flakes of snow. I paid a lot of money for global warming and I am feeling ripped off! I want a refund!

Before either side jumps on this: its HUMOUR.

The weather is not atypical for this time of year. I normally take the roof off my jeep on may 10th and suffer a few weeks of occasional cold spells. This year its a little cooler/wetter, but not so much that the plants arent sprouting on time.

Ask any polar bear.

Amen and selah! There is a positive refusal to consider any other causes for climate change (particularly global warming) other than human activity. In addition to being bad science, this is a perfect pretext for the government to increase its powers to intervene in the doings of the public. Think of it. Classifying CO2 as a pollutant makes every one of us polluters.

Having said this, I am not going to write a brief for people putting poison in the air or water that provably damages other people. If the local power station insists on burning coal to make the electricity, then I am going to insist they put electrostatic devices in their chimneys to catch pollutants and sequester them. I am also going to insist that the local factory filter their waste water and other liquid effluent before discharging it into the local river or stream from which drinking water is taken.

I think putting anti polluting devices on automobile exhausts is a nifty idea. I also think that developing effective engines and motors that produce mechanical work more efficiently and produce less atmospheric contamination is also a good idea. In the long run, we all profit by wasting less energy (which is expensive to produce) and have a somewhat cleaner atmosphere. This is definitely a win-win.

ruveyn

The kids have a point sand. Climatologists can be perfectly right and correct but thats no excuse to break protocol and have researchers peer review themselves and co-workers. If they are right, correct peer reviews wont make them wrong.

Never in the memory of current history has the Arctic been so free of ice to permit passage of ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans and the ice in Antarctica is melting at a phenomenal rate and glaciers all over the world are rapidly disappearing. This is not scientific tomfoolery. Animals all over the world are changing their habitats northwards to match the warming. There is nothing doubtful about it. And the ocean levels are rising. The leaders of the Maldives are looking for new places for their population as their land disappears.

Aww...you're just being an alarmist, sand, getting deceived by all that propaganda.

This is just a fluke. It's a well documented fact that no animal populations in the southern hemisphere are moving northward.

So buy some stock in an oil company, run the price up so the execs can get bigger bonuses.

Fifteen hundred years ago Greenland was.... green. Between 1300 c.e. and 1800 c.e. (approximately) came the Little Ice Age and the ice built up again. During this time the Nordic Colony on Greenland perished. The other people who frequented Greenland (called the Skrealings by the Nordics) survived very nicely. They were related to the Inuit and learned how to adapt to living in the cold.

ruveyn