[quote]lucasa wrote:
While we’re on the topic of results, care to name a nation that is on track to meet it’s Kyoto quota? [/quote]
Not a nation, but the Portland metropolitan area here managed it, reportedly. They made major investments in public transportation, among other things, in order to enable this.
[quote]Bane wrote:
You’re failing to take into account the scaling of water vapor in the atmosphere in response to increases in temperatures.
See, In climate models an increase in atmospheric temperature caused by the greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic gases will in turn lead to an increase in the water vapor content of the troposphere, with approximately constant relative humidity. The increased water vapor in turn leads to an increase in the greenhouse effect and thus a further increase in temperature; the increase in temperature leads to still further increase in atmospheric water vapor; and the feedback cycle continues until equilibrium is reached.
Thus water vapor acts as a positive feedback to the forcing provided by human-released greenhouse gases such as CO2.
(http://www.msc.ec.gc.ca/education/scienceofclimatechange/understanding/FAQ/sections/2_e.html)
[/quote]
I can’t access this link, but this doesn’t change anything about what Lorisco said, water vapor is still, by far, the dominant greenhouse gas and while CO2 does have an effect, it’s only hypothesized as to how great an effect it has on water vapor. Even then, there are counter hypotheses wherein man-made vapor is counteracting/masking global warming.
You dismiss his arguments as rhetoric and substitute it with more rhetoric?
What exactly is ‘in balance’? Will cutting our emmisions back to 1990 standards repair the damage? No. Will cutting them back to 1890 standards repair the damage? Maybe. Does ramping up CO2 production and then (if it were possible) eliminating CO2 production sound like balance to you?
And behold, there is agnosticism!
This is the type of subtlety that the IPCC is known for flagrantly disregarding:
A December 20, 1995, Reuters report quoted British scientist Keith Shine, one of IPCC’s lead authors, discussing the Policymakers’ Summary. He said: “We produce a draft, and then the policymakers go through it line by line and change the way it is presented… It’s peculiar that they have the final say in what goes into a scientists’ report”. It is not clear, in this case, whether Shine was complaining that the report had been changed to be more skeptical, or less, or something else entirely.
Don’t chastise Lorisco and then defend the IPCC. Especially since Lorisco (and his associated website) are largely a composite opinion and non-authoritative (As opposed to the IPCC which is a largely composite opinion and authoritative).
I don’t know where he got the quote exactly, but this is how the IPCC makes it’s decisions. Between 35 and 40 models are selected, the initial data is chosen by the panel of scientists, and the resulting numbers are spewed forth. Of course, many of these models are admittedly flawed (as in can’t account for effects which date back two decades), produce drastically dissimilar results with the same input, and even produce non-linear responses which the IPCC won’t even support, but that’s non-empirical ‘science’ for you.
True, there is a large disconnect between the economics of the situation and the ecology of it. To the point where people think that emissions trading is somehow going to make Kyoto a much more profitable venture on a large scale.
The UK House of Lords felt fit to say:
We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations. There are significant doubts about some aspects of the IPCC?s emissions scenario exercise, in particular, the high emissions scenarios. The Government should press the IPCC to change their approach. There are some positive aspects to global warming and these appear to have been played down in the IPCC reports; the Government should press the IPCC to reflect in a more balanced way the costs and benefits of climate change. The Government should press the IPCC for better estimates of the monetary costs of global warming damage and for explicit monetary comparisons between the costs of measures to control warming and their benefits. Since warming will continue, regardless of action now, due to the lengthy time lags.
and John Maddox (former editor of Nature), in his book, is pretty openly critical (not necessarily derisive) of the IPCC. Something to the effect that the IPCC might be more convincing if they showed genuine belief in the fact that they may be wrong.
The IPCC TAR itself is somewhat inconsistent “the major 1997/98 El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event could bias the above estimates of sea level rise and also indicate the difficulty of separating long-term trends from climatic variability.” They might be able to predict the level of ocean rise in the next 100 yrs. if the last decade hadn’t made it so unpredictable? I guess we’ll see how much ‘better’ they get in February.
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
lucasa wrote:
While we’re on the topic of results, care to name a nation that is on track to meet it’s Kyoto quota?
Not a nation, but the Portland metropolitan area here managed it, reportedly. They made major investments in public transportation, among other things, in order to enable this.[/quote]
Assuming we’re talking about the actual people and not just the municipality, out of the 300M Americans contributing to GW (the number becomes laughably insignificant if you collected the total population of all emitters), some .2% managed to spend some money to stop warming the globe? No. They spent the money to stop emitting CO2? No. They managed to reduce their emissions to a rate that isn’t as damaging as they are now but is still drastically above the level at which this all started? Yep. So if you spent the money to combat global warming and it had a negligible effect is it still an ‘investment’ or did you just not ‘invest’ enough? I don’t necessarily agree that Kyoto would be an economic ‘Black Tuesday’ but it is far from being effective. If this is a problem, it is not one that we can’t just throw money and lawyers at.
[quote]Bane wrote:
Lorisc,
I had some questions about your 10 facts.
Lorisco wrote:
Here are some interesting facts about global whining, I’m mean warming:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/ten_facts_about_global_warming.htm
The Domesday book was commissioned in 1085 and finished in 1086. According to your earlier posts, we did not even have accurate records of temperatures until the 1850’s. If this is correct, then it would be impossible to even know the temperature in the mid 1080’s. Please explain.(http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk/)
You’re failing to take into account the scaling of water vapor in the atmosphere in response to increases in temperatures.
See, In climate models an increase in atmospheric temperature caused by the greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic gases will in turn lead to an increase in the water vapor content of the troposphere, with approximately constant relative humidity. The increased water vapor in turn leads to an increase in the greenhouse effect and thus a further increase in temperature; the increase in temperature leads to still further increase in atmospheric water vapor; and the feedback cycle continues until equilibrium is reached.
Thus water vapor acts as a positive feedback to the forcing provided by human-released greenhouse gases such as CO2.
(http://www.msc.ec.gc.ca/education/scienceofclimatechange/understanding/FAQ/sections/2_e.html)
This is only rhetoric. There are plenty of things which life is reliant on, however, a “more is better” philosophy doesn’t work. For example, there wouldn’t be any life on earth without sunlight, however, that does not mean that its beneficial for me to stand out in the sun all day long.
Of course the greenhouse effect is important. No one says we should eliminate it. However, the issue is not throwing it out of balance.
In a previous post of yours you said this, “So the fact is that the earth’s surface air temp has gotten warmer since 1850.”
Which is it?
This internally contradicts points 1 and 5. If the data is so corrupt that it cannot be used to claim global warming is happening, then it is also too corrupt to use to say global warming isn’t happening.
Also, I read the source that the website you copied this top 10 list from. The source (Global Warming - Greenhouse Effects, Global Warming, Climate Change), however, actually does NOT make the same point that the author of the top 10 list makes. Be VERY careful not to turn “some” into “only.”
I could not locate the reference for this claim. What are these models being used to do, specifically. Secondly, when was this idea published - and which technological advances have we seen in the field since then?
This is a red herring. Even if the agreement would have been terrible because it was harmful to the economy, that does not prove or disprove the fact that global warming occurs. I’ll leave you up to your own opinion on the agreement, however, realize that this says nothing about global warming as a phenomenon.
Please take a moment to read Chris Landsea’s letter (the source your webpage uses to make this claim). Realize, then, that most of the claims you’re making right here are exaggerated. Some of them even entirely unfounded. Moreover, please recognize that the “source” of this information is one man’s open letter to his colleagues about why he chose to quit. The letter itself does not actually prove any of his claims to be true. Can you please provide me the evidence which does?
[/quote]
My issue is not that GW exists or doesn’t, but that it is a political issue more than actual science. The science on both sides is manipulated to prove a point, but no one is talking about pollution.
Just like the other eggheads on this form. Everyone on the Dem side wants GW to be true. Even if it’s not true shouldn’t we put plans in place to address pollution? Why do we need some politically motivated football to know that pollution in all forms needs to be addressed?
Dems seem to want this to be true in order to get votes. But if it is not true don’t we still have a pollution problem? Anyone who has every been to Southern California will know that the answer is yes!
ps - I stated that it could not be accurately measured until that date, not that they didn’t try and measure it. My source is: Temperature measurement - Wikipedia
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
Lorisco wrote:
In my very first post on this issue I stated that pollution in all forms need to be seriously addressed.
Apple-hood and Mother-pie to you, too. The fact you think global warming is a crock is more interesting.
[/quote]
No, the fact that you need GW to be true and state nothing about pollution shows your politically motivated insincerity!
[quote]Lorisco wrote:
endgamer711 wrote:
Lorisco wrote:
In my very first post on this issue I stated that pollution in all forms need to be seriously addressed.
Apple-hood and Mother-pie to you, too. The fact you think global warming is a crock is more interesting.
No, the fact that you need GW to be true and state nothing about pollution shows your politically motivated insincerity!
[/quote]
Sorry, you’re babbling again. I haven’t a clue what you are talking about. I don’t need any such thing, and I’ve talked about pollution in other threads, just not this one.
As for the record, GW is an unneeded, unwanted fact, so is our contribution to it.
[quote]lucasa wrote:
endgamer711 wrote:
lucasa wrote:
While we’re on the topic of results, care to name a nation that is on track to meet it’s Kyoto quota?
Not a nation, but the Portland metropolitan area here managed it, reportedly. They made major investments in public transportation, among other things, in order to enable this.
Assuming we’re talking about the actual people and not just the municipality, out of the 300M Americans contributing to GW (the number becomes laughably insignificant if you collected the total population of all emitters), some .2% managed to spend some money to stop warming the globe? No. They spent the money to stop emitting CO2? No. They managed to reduce their emissions to a rate that isn’t as damaging as they are now but is still drastically above the level at which this all started? Yep. So if you spent the money to combat global warming and it had a negligible effect is it still an ‘investment’ or did you just not ‘invest’ enough? I don’t necessarily agree that Kyoto would be an economic ‘Black Tuesday’ but it is far from being effective. If this is a problem, it is not one that we can’t just throw money and lawyers at.[/quote]
They were talking about the metropolitan area’s emissions as a whole, I believe. Incidentally, everybody is pretty happy with the economic benefits of what was done, most of which was light rail, bike paths, and trolleys.
I think Kyoto, or something like it, could buy us a little more time before we reach the point where things might start to accelerate because of the warming that has already happened. This is an experiment we just don’t want to run.
In my opinion, the elephant in the room is that we need to drastically reduce the number of human beings living on the planet. We’re never going to manage to put innocent technology under all of us in time. Doing what the Chinese have done for mandatory birth control planet-wide is a possible solution, but you have to stop the acceleration of the atmospheric problem.
Think of Kyoto-like solutions as a stopgap measure. Unless you want to use a faster acting solution to the underlying problem, of course, in which case by all means blow off Kyoto.
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
They were talking about the metropolitan area’s emissions as a whole, I believe. Incidentally, everybody is pretty happy with the economic benefits of what was done, most of which was light rail, bike paths, and trolleys.[/quote]
I would love to see the data that says ‘everybody’ is happy with it. I would also love to see the same in ten years when the tax burden catches up and it costs money just to keep the rails and trolleys running.
Your missing or dodging my point, for a burgeoning city like Portland, this is a cheap(er) and feasible option. For a city like Chicago (or any of the other 10 most populous U.S. cities) where bike paths and light rail have existed for more than two decades, the cost of emission reduction and/or reconstruction is phenomenally larger.
[quote]lucasa wrote:
endgamer711 wrote:
They were talking about the metropolitan area’s emissions as a whole, I believe. Incidentally, everybody is pretty happy with the economic benefits of what was done, most of which was light rail, bike paths, and trolleys.
I would love to see the data that says ‘everybody’ is happy with it. I would also love to see the same in ten years when the tax burden catches up and it costs money just to keep the rails and trolleys running.
Your missing or dodging my point, for a burgeoning city like Portland, this is a cheap(er) and feasible option. For a city like Chicago (or any of the other 10 most populous U.S. cities) where bike paths and light rail have existed for more than two decades, the cost of emission reduction and/or reconstruction is phenomenally larger.[/quote]
The stuff is popular, it was financed handily at the polls, it has stimulated the local economy, and folks appreciate the fact that it is there.
All that stuff existed for decades here as well. Portland is a fairly old city. They added more of it, and made it work in the suburbs.
Hey, it’s your choice, but I wager in a few decades with nothing done you will be bitching about more than your wallet. A lot of folks on the eastern seaboard are starting to wonder how they’re ever going to insure their homes, going forward. Seems the InsuranceCos want out of the hurricane business.
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
… A lot of folks on the eastern seaboard are starting to wonder how they’re ever going to insure their homes, going forward. Seems the InsuranceCos want out of the hurricane business.[/quote]
This is my first post on the rapidly degraded political forum in a while because you two are actually having a civilized conversation.
I would like to interject two things here.
First, damaging hurricanes are way down this year. Trying to blame last years hurricanes on global warming was silly and I don’t see anyone wondering why hurricane season wasn’t worse this year.
Second, insuring coastal properties is far more difficult than it was years past because the values of the properties have skyrocketed.
Old shacks and cottages are being torn down and replaced with multimillion dollar homes. The risk is higher to the insurance companies due to the value of the properties.
Trying to blame this on global warming is a disingenuous argument.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Second, insuring coastal properties is far more difficult than it was years past because the values of the properties have skyrocketed.
[/quote]
Sorry Zap, that’s actually not correct. Insurers have been taking a shellacking and are getting out of the market altogether, and homeowners can’t find coverage at any price, even when their property values have increased at only a steady pace, or even recently stagnated. They are not taking renewals on existing policies in many areas. This is not a long term trend, it is new this year. According to the NYTimes article I read recently.
Dump more energy into the ocean, get larger storms. Is it going to make a monotonic trend line? Of course not, this is Mother Nature we’re talking about. But it will trend upward. I won’t argue it any further with you. The actuaries aren’t bothering to argue it anymore either.
[quote]hueyOT wrote:
Lorisco wrote:
catalyst wrote:
Laura and I just watched this documentary recently. We were impressed with the material and the presentation of it.
I’m curious as to what some of you think about the climate change issue. I’m relatively young, so this seems to be reinforcing what we were taught in school. Needless to say, I was very surprised when I talked to some friends of mine that are a little older.
They said that when they were younger, people were talking about how they’re going into another ice age because it’s so cold, and that climate change is just another “The sky is falling” theory that is to be dismissed.
What does T-Nation think? How much involvement should our government have? Do you believe that we’re damaging our atmosphere? What solutions are there?
I’m sure this has been discussed on these forums before, but I’m specifically wondering if anyone truly believes that we should ignore this.
Global warming is not a scientific fact as Gore would have you believe. The fact is that they have not had instruments to measure the temperate for that long. So there is no way to accurately determine if it is really warmer or just a warm cycle. But Al is just using this for publicity like always to try and scare people into voting democrat.
The actual concern is pollution. Whether GW exists or not is irrelevant. Pollution needs to be better managed so we can just breath. So we do need to clean up the environment, but using unproven pop science to scare people is not the way to do it.
oh no, you’re talking about science, facts, theories, and proof again? didn’t you get spanked hard enough in the creationism thread?
global warming is a fact. the earth is getting warmer. period. not debateable. if you want, you can disagree with the theories postulating as to WHY the earth is getting warmer…
[/quote]
You do understand that the core issue is not wether the earth is getting warmer, or not, but if the degree of rise in temperature is significant to be considered dangerous or not? And that in order to form a “band” of mean temperature+std you need measurements back to centuries ago, because otherwise the sample is too limited to infer the significance, or not, of the rise in temperature? The guy you quoted is perfectly right.
I’ll just throw this out there: Global warming is not a Democrats versus Republicans issue. It is true that Democrats are making it public and Republicans are chosing to ignore it.
However, leaving the plitical issue of global warming aside, it is a fact. The Kyoto protocol is not the final solution to the problem, but it’s a place to start at.
Also, while we’re on the topic of pollution, let’s just hear a Republican’s opinion on the issue:
“It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment.It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.”
[quote]Robert P. wrote:
However, leaving the plitical issue of global warming aside, it is a fact. The Kyoto protocol is not the final solution to the problem, but it’s a place to start at.[/quote]
How so? How can you evaluate the validity of any solution if you don’t really understand the problem?
It is a fact that the Earth has been getting warmer these past years. But we don’t know how much responsibility man has (do we contribute 1% or 90%?) nor do we know if we can reverse the trend or even slow it down. Does 100% Kyoto compliance reverse GW? Does it reduce it? If so, by how much? 90% might be worth it, but what if we get 1%. What if the trend continues?
The costs of Kyoto are enormous for modern economies. How do we know if we’re not better off investing those dollars to adapt to a warmer Earth? Or how about a “half and half” solution where we go after the “low hanging fruits” of the Kyoto proposal and use the rest of the cash to adapt to whatever climate we get?
Kyoto might be the final solution to the problem for all we know; but that’s the problem: All we know amounts to very little in regards to Global Warming. The fact that the issue has also become highly politicized doesn’t help either.
[quote]Robert P. wrote:
I’ll just throw this out there: Global warming is not a Democrats versus Republicans issue. It is true that Democrats are making it public and Republicans are chosing to ignore it.
[/quote]
I believe that when there is scientific consensus that global warming is an issue; meaning that it is not a natural warming cycle (i.e. when Greenland was actually green and not ice/snow), then I believe they will address it. But until then there really are more pressing issues at hand to deal with.
Only if it applies to all countries. The problem with the Kyoto protocol is that it lets the developing countries, who also product a crap-load of pollution, off the hook. So either we all play equally or we don’t play at all.
[quote]
Also, while we’re on the topic of pollution, let’s just hear a Republican’s opinion on the issue:
“It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment.It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.” [/quote]
I’m not sure what this means? Natural occurring “impurities” or man made?
My opinion is that pollution is the issue, not whatever scare tactic crisis the left can come up with. I’m all for reducing pollution regardless of global warming. But the Dem’s politically need GW to be true or they will loose votes. As endgamer has demonstrated, they don’t really want to fix pollution if they can’t be seen as the saviors to solve their created crisis of the month.
For those that didn’t live through it;
[i]The 1995 Chicago heat wave led to approximately 600 heat-related deaths over a period of five days. It is now considered to be one of the worst weather-related disasters in American history.
The scale was shocking, although the event itself may not have been that unusual. Eric Klinenberg, author of the 2002 book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, has noted that in the United States, the loss of human life in hot spells in summer exceeds that caused by all other weather events combined, including lightning, rain, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes…
Most of the heat wave victims were the elderly poor living in the heart of the city, who either had no working air conditioning or could not afford to turn it on. Many older citizens were also hesitant to open windows and doors at night for fear of crime. Elderly women, who may have been more socially engaged, were less vulnerable than elderly men. By contrast, during the heat waves of the 1930s, many residents slept outside in the parks or along the shore of Lake Michigan.[/i]
According to the Illinois climatologists office:
http://www.sws.uiuc.edu/atmos/statecli/General/1995Chicago.htm
Unfortunately, Chicago will continue to be vulnerable to heat waves because of the urban heat island and the socio-economic makeup of the urban area (high percentage of lower-income elderly). However, the number of deaths may be reduced by: a) implementing an early-warning system that takes into account the local conditions, b) better define the heat island conditions associated with heat waves to improve forecasts, c) develop a uniform means for classifying heat-related deaths, and d) increase the research on the conditions of heat stress and heat waves.
Oh yeah, and signing the Kyoto protocol. It sounds to me like predicting a heat wave two weeks in advance will save more lives now than (incorrectly) predicting sea level rise over the course of the next century. But endgamer711’s right, we do need to weed out the people who are too poor to afford air conditioning and too stupid to visit a friend, library, cooling center, or other government building for air conditioning.
[quote]lucasa wrote:
But endgamer711’s right, we do need to weed out the people who are too poor to afford air conditioning and too stupid to visit a friend, library, cooling center, or other government building for air conditioning.[/quote]
As if the two policies were mutually exclusive. What bunkum. George Bush figured out how to fight a major war and cut taxes at the same time, so anything is possible, right?
No, all sorts of palliative measures will be taken. They will have to be taken, they will be seen as mandatory for all the reasons you suggest. Kyoto-or-something-like-it always looks optional and low payoff. But it’s the only thing that can buy us time against the onset of a cascade effect.
Halting deforestation of the planet would be a good first step, and maybe not so expensive either. Oh, and don’t have so many children, there’s a good fellow.
I saw a map of the world recently that was color coded as to aggregate temperature increase since 1950. It struck me that one of the few large areas that was coded mainly in white or even pale blue (zero change or slight temperature decrease) covered most of North America up to southern Canada. Most of the rest of the map, especially the areas toward the poles, was blotchy yellow, orange and red for various grades of increase up to about +2 degrees F, I think it was.
I wish I could remember the URL. The battle to save a planet is joined, but here in North America we’re sitting comfortably behind the lines, in more ways than one.
[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
But it’s the only thing that can buy us time against the onset of a cascade effect.[/quote]
Could you clarify your vernacular? Would a ‘cascade effect’ be analogous to the IPCC’s ‘non-linear effect’?
The possibility for rapid and irreversible changes in the climate system exists, but there is a large degree of uncertainty about the mechanisms involved and hence also about the likelihood or time-scales of such transitions. The climate system involves many processes and feedbacks that interact in complex non-linear ways. This interaction can give rise to thresholds in the climate system that can be crossed if the system is perturbed sufficiently. There is evidence from polar ice cores suggesting that atmospheric regimes can change within a few years and that large-scale hemispheric changes can evolve as fast as a few decades. For example, the possibility of a threshold for a rapid transition of the Atlantic THC to a collapsed state has been demonstrated with a hierarchy of models. It is not yet clear what this threshold is and how likely it is that human activity would lead it to being exceeded.
'cause ‘cascade effect’ sounds like ‘bogeyman’ to me.
[quote]lucasa wrote:
Oh yeah, and signing the Kyoto protocol.[/quote]
I’m not sure I understand the point you’re trying to make here. Signing the Kyoto accord will reduce the heat waves in Chicago?
Your country hasn’t ratified it. Our has, but have been unable to meet any of the goals yet. Not only have emissions not been reduced in Canada, they have actually increased.
Once again: Adhering 100% to Kyoto guarantees nothing because their is too much unknown with GW. It might help, but we can’t be sure.
It would probably be a lot more cost-effective to give those elderly air-conditioning units with free electricity to run them. Or to give them free bars for their windows so that they can open them.
Climate is a chaotic system. Predicting 2 weeks in advance accurately is still beyond us.
I’ll let endgamer defend his own views.
I’m just not convinced that Kyoto is worth the cost. How can anyone be, when there’s no way to know what impact it may or may not have on GW?
Maybe you could address that instead of giving me 10 years old weather reports.