Global warming?

[tw]

Originally Posted by classicman

There is much dissent in the community and more scientists are leaning away from the "Its all mans fault" theories.

Dissent? classicman recently blamed temperature changes (that he once denied) on sunspots. Those who know without first learning will even lie to justify their conclusions.

Number of science articles explaining global warming are increasing (even though Fox News says otherwise). Even scientists for "we don't believe global warming exists" coalition said the facts are irrefutable. And still classicman knows otherwise. How? Simply put his head in the sand and deny what even his own scientists say.

Latest research suggests nitrogen oxides may be even more destructive than carbon oxides. classicman tells us man is not generating these nitrogen oxides. Even lie to justify the political agenda. Man is not creating nitrogen oxides. Maybe it is aliens? Martians are taking revenge for our crashing spacecraft. Even classicman would not believe that lie - maybe.

Wacko extremism is alive and well. None of this is about global warming. It's simply another example of how extremists will blatantly lie to promote a political agenda. No wonder Saddam had WMDs.

Did you hear? Latest biblical research also proved that global warming does not exist. When sunspot lies don’t pan out, is that the next promoted myth?

[Aliantha]

Originally Posted by tw

Meanwhile the consenus is almost unanamous. Global warning is created by man.

My response to tw's outrageous statement.

Originally Posted by Aliantha

BULLSHIT! Where in the world can you find any data suggesting that scientists are in any way unanimous about if and how much human habitation has contributed to global warming?

Are you stupid that you'd post such a thing and expect to be taken seriously? Come ON tw! Get real!!!

There is no concensus. That's why the issue is so contentious.

Originally Posted by Redux

Consensus doesnt mean unanimous......it means a majority opinion.

There is consensus among the thousands of scientists who contributed to the IPCC.

There is consensus among the member scientists of 30+ National Academies of Sciences around the world that have taken a position on global warming.

There is consensus among the member scientists of numerous scientific bodies like the World Meteorological Association , the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics and dozens of other international and/or national scientific bodies.

That is not to say that in all of those instances that there are not minority opinions within those associations or scientific bodies

In terms of official positions of such national and international scientific associations, bodies and organizations....where they have taken a formal position, it is near unanimous in support of the finding that anthropogenic GHG emissions contribute to climate change or global warming.

With the release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2007, no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scienti...climate_change

I don't dispute the suggestion that emission from human habitation have contributed to our current climate, but I also don't see any irrefutable facts to support that this would not be occuring naturally anyway.

We have a very small amount of data with regard to real climate conditions and we apply this to what we 'think' happened thousands of years ago.

I could spend time googling my head off finding stuff to support these notions but then anyone who wanted to could find just as much info to refute any claim I might make, hence my suggestion that there really is no consensus because so many reasonable scientists can't even make up their minds.

We even have/had a poster here who was a scientist on a climate change research committee here in Australia and he wouldn't even speculate avout the degree to which man can be blamed for climate change.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Redux

With the release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2007, no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.

Yes, but what are they saying? They are not saying that global warming is all our fault.
They know damn well that the warming and cooling of the climate is a natural cycle that's been going on since the beginning. What they are saying is they believe we have accelerated the warming and may be causing an increase that will be greater than it would have been without our help.

What they don't know is, how hot it would have been, how hot it's going to get, all of the repercussions of that increase, or how much we can do about it.
They have a shitload of computer models that don't agree because they are guessing. They don't have a previous case to base the models on.

But again, they are not saying that climate change is all our fault, because it clearly is not.

Ali and Bruce....I agree that there is no consensus that human activity is the sole or primary cause of global warming.

The consensus among the scientific bodies of the world is that there is compelling data that human activities contribute to the adverse atmospheric buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases and that policies should be adopted and measures taken to reduce GHG emissions and minimize that impact.

If we wait until there is unanimity among the scientific community or the facts are completely irrefutable (rather than a minority position as is currently the case) to adopt sensible policies to lower GHG emissions, wont it be that much harder and more costly to reverse the trend?

Does anyone really believe, or is there any hard science to suggest, that spewing millions of metric tons of GHG from fossil fuels (primarily automobiles and power plants) into the atmosphere every year is healthy for the environment...or even neutral in its impact?

The extremist rhetoric of the Al Gore types doesnt help...but, IMO, the complete and utter denial of any responsibility for the increase in GHG emissions by the other side is worse.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

Does anyone really believe, or is there any hard science, that spewing millions of metric tons of GHG from fossil fuels (primarily automobiles and power plants) into the atmosphere every year is healthy for the environment...or even neutral in its impact?

Get China and India on board then give us a call.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Get China and India on board then give us a call.

I am of the opinion that the US should demonstrate that it is a world leader in much the same manner as it did with the environmental movement of the 1970s.

Or we can be petulant and cast blame and point fingers with a "you first" attitude and pretend our hands are clean despite the fact that we are responsible for more than 20% of worldwide GHG emissions.

In any case, why would I want to call you?

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

I am of the opinion that the US should demonstrate that it is a world leader in much the same manner as it did with the environmental movement of the 1970s.

Or we can be petulant and cast blame and point fingers with a "you first" attitude and pretend our hands are clean despite the fact that we are responsible for more than 20% of worldwide GHG emissions.

In which case we would play right into the hands of those who wish us to spend billions of our GDP while they do nothing. China is second only to the US and will surpass it in the next few years. They emit 16% of GHG. They would love nothing more than to have us spend ourselves into the third world while they have no such restrictions. Add India to the mix and the two of them emit more than the US. They are among the most rapidly growing economies in the world.

http://www.unep.org/cpi/briefs/2008M...tersFactBOXWhy

The pollution leader was China, followed by the United States, which past data show is the leader in emissions per person in carbon dioxide output. And although several developed countries slightly reduced output in 2007, the U.S. churned out more.

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/sep...n/na-warming26

China’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Highlight The Need for New Technologies And An International Commitment to Reduce Emissions
China is building new coal-based electric generation at an astounding pace. The rapid growth in the use of coal in that country highlights the importance of developing and deploying “climate-friendly” technologies, including advanced coal technologies, which can be exported to developing countries. In addition, China’s aggressive use of coal demonstrates why it is so critical that all major emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs) commit to reducing emissions in order to reduce overall global GHG emissions.
•
In 2007, China built one new coal-based electric generating unit about every two and half days on average, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
•
In 2007, China built just over 100 gigawatts (GW) of new power generating capacity. While it took 110 years (from 1882-1993) for the total power generating capacity in the United States to reach a little over 800 GW, China will have reached the same number in 7 to 8 years, if the country’s current growth pace continues.
•
The current demand for coal in China exceeds 2 billion tons per year, which is twice the current demand for coal in the United States.
•
IEA predicts that global energy-related CO2 emissions will increase 57 percent between 2005 and 2030, with developing countries accounting for more than 75 percent of this projected increase.
•
Between 2005 and 2030, China and India alone are expected to account for 56 percent of the worldwide increase in CO2 emissions.
•
China’s GHG emissions have risen 80 percent since 1990, and emissions are projected to rise another 65 percent by 2020.

http://www.eei.org/ourissues/TheEnvi...mateChange.pdf

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

In which case we would play right into the hands of those who wish us to spend billions of our GDP while they do nothing.

Dejas vu all over again.

The same alarmist rhetoric we heard in the 70s with the passage of Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Toxic Substances Control Act, Hazardous Materials Disposal Act...

"Economic doomsday!" screamed the affected industries at every opportunity.

Didnt happen...in fact, many of those laws and environmental initiatives stimulated innovation.

[TheMercenary]

Hardly alarmist at all. Basic economics 101. People like you stick your head in the sand anytime someone points out the contributions of China and India to the global warming problems and their lack of restrictions combined with unregulated growth.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Hardly alarmist at all. Basic economics 101. People like you stick your head in the sand anytime someone points out the contributions of China and India to the global warming problems and their lack of restrictions combined with unregulated growth.

The same alarmist "basic economics 101" argument that was utterly and completely baseless in the 70s?

And, if you want to make it personal, "people like you" have no concept of the meaning of leadership by example. You are much better and it is much easier to just point fingers.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

The same alarmist "basic economics 101" argument that was utterly and completely baseless in the 70s?

And, if you want to make it personal, "people like you" have no concept of the meaning of leadership by example. You are much better and it is much easier to just point fingers.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Redux

The same alarmist "basic economics 101" argument that was utterly and completely baseless in the 70s?

Kinda like the global cooling that "all the scientists" told us about back then.

Originally Posted by classicman

Kinda like the global cooling that "all the scientists" told us about back then.

Another myth perpetrated by the denier crowd....that "all the scientists" at the time predicted global cooling.

In fact, if you look at studies from the 70s, there were more that predicted global warming than global cooling.

But no where near the almost unanimous consensus among the world's scientific bodies that exists today, with better science and more advanced modeling, that human activities contribute to the adverse impact of GHG emissions.

added:
Study debunks 'global cooling' concern of '70s

The supposed "global cooling" consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can't make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era.
...

But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.

The study reports, "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

"A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales."

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/clim...-cooling_N.htm

[classicman]

The study reports, "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

Good point. Good thing we missed that imminent ice age.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

How anyone can think we are totally responsible is beyond me.

Originally Posted by tw

Even their own scientists said the facts are irrefutible. And they still challenged gobal warming by only trying to confuse the issue. Confused issues work especially well on those who know only because they are told how to think. Meanwhile the consenus is almost unanamous. Global warning is created by man. Only question left is how much and how destructive. Extremists fear such questions. It threatens a political agenda which include doing anything necessary (even torture) to protect *OUR* oil.

Originally Posted by Redux

Ali and Bruce....I agree that there is no consensus that human activity is the sole or primary cause of global warming.

Which was my point, but tw has been telling us it's all our fault... doing the wacko extremist Chicken Little thing... complete bullshit, or should I say chickenshit.