Truth About Global Warming

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
41

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
…

So to all those who dislike global warming, why do you care so much? Do you like pollution? Are you just upset that something you think is wrong is being touted as right? Are you still FOR environmental protection and legislation?

I am a chemical engineer and have worked in the environmental field for over 12 years.

We should be spending our money minimizing heavy metals emitted when we burn coal.

We should be spending our money cleaning our waterways. We have a handle on the basic organic stuff but there is a lot of work to be done on phosphorus and nitrogen based
“nutrients”.

We should minimize and eventually eliminate the trading of sulfur credits. It was a good idea at the time but it’s time is long over.

Worrying about CO2 when we are emitting these poisons is counter-productive.

I can respect that. But the people who are usually spouting that GW is BS also usually give the impression that that means all environmental legislation is stupid.
It’s not like anti-GW activist go around saying what we should be doing for OTHER problems.

I just feel like most of the people who denounce Global Warming are those who either feel like being contrary, or don’t want to stop using SUVs.

I’d like to direct a question at HeadHunter:

What environmental legislation do you approve of? Obviously you don’t give a shit about CO2 levels, but what do you think SHOULD be done by the government to protect the environment.

None, excepting where someone violates someone else’s property rights, such as dumping waste on someone else’s property.

Now a question for Beowolf: Why do you trust government so much? Like…with Katrina? You expect bureaucrats to protect you? LOL! They have no interest in protecting you.

How about giving freedom and free markets a chance instead?

[/quote]

Katrina shows a disturbing amount of incompetence within our government. I’d like that changed.

I am a supporter of free markets, and I consider myself much more conservative than the average democrat.

So you want NYC to look like Beijing? We should just dump our shit in public rivers? No more beaches? No more mountains and forests? No more national park protection? Maybe we should start fishing whales to extinction again?

I believe in a free market, but no limitations, especially in the environmental field, is just ridiculous.

Look up the book “Jennifer Government”. It’s representative of a capitalistic society gone to far.

Do you really think the business owners give more of a shit about you than the bureaucrats? Of course they don’t. They ARE the government, for the most part.

I’m all for a laissez faire type of government, but sometimes social and environmental protections are necessary, to a point.

That answer your question?

42

[quote]J.Boogie wrote:
…

exactly, while there is scientific evidence much of it is flawed and inconsistant, while i do believe that reducing emissions is a good idea, it is very naive to think of it in such black and white terms, the green has as much invested in the promotion of global warming as do the corporations who oppose it. heres a good article, although i havent read the rest of the series.

[/quote]

Bruce,

Here is the link. Read them all but especially the one on hurricanes.

The red cross article you posted is a money raising effort from a relief group, not science.

I think this issue should focus on the science.

43

[quote]brucevangeorge wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
None, excepting where someone violates someone else’s property rights, such as dumping waste on someone else’s property.

Okay. Now lets take that a step further.

Suppose a cheap car manufacturing plant opens up in your town. Think ford or something chinese brand.

Then they start producing the product but the fuckers don?t install filters in their smokestacks and all that shit that comes out of the factory basically covers the town and starts to pollute the freshwater supply.

Now what? What the fuck do YOU do?[/quote]

I don’t buy their product, and I urge everyone I know to NOT buy their product. Get people involved and not let bureaucratic bumblers pass some bullshit law. If enough people refuse to buy the product because of the waste, they will change.

Its called ‘freedom’ and ‘free markets’. Quit letting government be your nanny.

44

[quote]Beowolf wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
…

So to all those who dislike global warming, why do you care so much? Do you like pollution? Are you just upset that something you think is wrong is being touted as right? Are you still FOR environmental protection and legislation?

I am a chemical engineer and have worked in the environmental field for over 12 years.

We should be spending our money minimizing heavy metals emitted when we burn coal.

We should be spending our money cleaning our waterways. We have a handle on the basic organic stuff but there is a lot of work to be done on phosphorus and nitrogen based
“nutrients”.

We should minimize and eventually eliminate the trading of sulfur credits. It was a good idea at the time but it’s time is long over.

Worrying about CO2 when we are emitting these poisons is counter-productive.

I can respect that. But the people who are usually spouting that GW is BS also usually give the impression that that means all environmental legislation is stupid.
It’s not like anti-GW activist go around saying what we should be doing for OTHER problems.

I just feel like most of the people who denounce Global Warming are those who either feel like being contrary, or don’t want to stop using SUVs.

I’d like to direct a question at HeadHunter:

What environmental legislation do you approve of? Obviously you don’t give a shit about CO2 levels, but what do you think SHOULD be done by the government to protect the environment.

None, excepting where someone violates someone else’s property rights, such as dumping waste on someone else’s property.

Now a question for Beowolf: Why do you trust government so much? Like…with Katrina? You expect bureaucrats to protect you? LOL! They have no interest in protecting you.

How about giving freedom and free markets a chance instead?

Katrina shows a disturbing amount of incompetence within our government. I’d like that changed.

I am a supporter of free markets, and I consider myself much more conservative than the average democrat.

So you want NYC to look like Beijing? We should just dump our shit in public rivers? No more beaches? No more mountains and forests? No more national park protection? Maybe we should start fishing whales to extinction again?

I believe in a free market, but no limitations, especially in the environmental field, is just ridiculous.

Look up the book “Jennifer Government”. It’s representative of a capitalistic society gone to far.

Do you really think the business owners give more of a shit about you than the bureaucrats? Of course they don’t. They ARE the government, for the most part.

I’m all for a laissez faire type of government, but sometimes social and environmental protections are necessary, to a point.

That answer your question?[/quote]

Hmmm…if giving more power to governments is the answer, then I’d say: the government of China has far more power than does ours. Yet their cities ARE filthy (been there, seen that). If governments have power, wealthy people influence them and you have a MORE filthy place. Wow, what a good plan!!!

You are relying on government to solve your problems. As always, except for war, it can’t. Look at Social Security, for ex. If you had been allowed to invest YOUR money for 40 years, you’d be rich and could leave a fortune to your children. Now, you get a $1000 a month and are dependent on …government.

Are we men, or are we ‘wards of the state’?

“Build your homes on the slopes of Vesuvius!” — Nietzsche

45

Good point taken and noted, Looking back at that I kind of wonder why I used that to reply to your post lol. However I still disagree with one part. The trend in CO2 concentration and temperature in the atmosphere is enough to suggest at least some correlation between the levels, and suggest that abnormally rising CO2 levels due to displacement of surface carbon to the air using combustion DOES contribute to global warming.

http://weizsaecker.bawue.spd.de/download/images/CO2%20and%20temperature.gif

46

[quote]Shoebolt wrote:
Good point taken and noted, Looking back at that I kind of wonder why I used that to reply to your post lol. However I still disagree with one part. The trend in CO2 concentration and temperature in the atmosphere is enough to suggest at least some correlation between the levels, and suggest that abnormally rising CO2 levels due to displacement of surface carbon to the air using combustion DOES contribute to global warming.

http://weizsaecker.bawue.spd.de/download/images/CO2%20and%20temperature.gif
[/quote]

It certainly is plausible. Last year Congress commissioned a huge study on the subject and their conclusion was it was plausible that CO2 levels can be tied to global temperature increases.

The media took the claim that it was plausible and claimed the report stated it was a slam dunk case. Quite infuriating.

47

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
I think this issue should focus on the science.[/quote]

Very well. Google scholar it is then.

48

The graphs look almost identical.

Can anyone explain how you do NOT see a correlation between CO2 levels and Temperature?

The graphs look almost identical to me.

Therefore it would be safe to assume that the Concentration of CO2 does increase the global Temperature almost proportionally given this limited data.

If anyone can find differing data, I’d like to see it.

49

[quote]brucevangeorge wrote:
The graphs look almost identical.

Can anyone explain how you do NOT see a correlation between CO2 levels and Temperature?

The graphs look almost identical to me.

Therefore it would be safe to assume that the Concentration of CO2 does increase the global Temperature almost proportionally given this limited data.
[/quote]

Yes, there IS a correlation, but your method of reaching a conclusion is…wrong, wrong, wrong!

A basic rule of “science” is that correlation does NOT equal causation.

Read that again.

Just because things follow similar, or even identical, trends does not mean one causes the other.

Using the same “logic” and data, you could just as easily say that the rising temperatures cause an increase in CO2.

There is probably a correlation between the use of running shoes and ankle injuries, but that doesn’t mean running shoes actually cause ankle injuries. It’s more likely that both are caused by an increase in health consciousness and running.

All that correlation tells you is that you need to look deeper for real cause/effect relationships. It might very well be there is a direct cause/effect relationship between the two, but correlation alone is not scientific proof of cause/effect. It is nothing more than a big red flag that you need more data.

In this case, a VERY big red flag.

Don’t get me wrong, I tend to believe in human caused global warming. I only object to the abuse of science to support it.

50

[quote]brucevangeorge wrote:
The graphs look almost identical.

Can anyone explain how you do NOT see a correlation between CO2 levels and Temperature?

The graphs look almost identical to me.

Therefore it would be safe to assume that the Concentration of CO2 does increase the global Temperature almost proportionally given this limited data.

If anyone can find differing data, I’d like to see it.[/quote]

Assuming the graphs are correct (ignoring the various issues with actually determining temperatures and CO2 levels long ago), it makes me wonder something.

Since CO2 is both a building block and a byproduct of life is it the warm temperatures that stimulate life and CO2 or is the buildup of CO2 that stimulates warm temperatures?

I am not sure where the CO2 comes from and where it goes in all those peaks and valleys in the graph.

I do know that many outside forces such as peaks and valleys in solar radiation have a HUGE effect on the Earths temperature.

The more I think about it the more it seems that CO2 is either the primary driving force of global warming throughout the planets history or that it is an indicator of global warming.

Because I suspect the sun is the primary driving force I think CO2 may be an indicator.

You will notice that some of the CO2 peaks and valleys lead the temperature change and some trail the temperature change. I assume this is due to inherent error in collect the data.

51

[quote]brucevangeorge wrote:
The graphs look almost identical.

Can anyone explain how you do NOT see a correlation between CO2 levels and Temperature?

The graphs look almost identical to me.

Therefore it would be safe to assume that the Concentration of CO2 does increase the global Temperature almost proportionally given this limited data.

If anyone can find differing data, I’d like to see it.[/quote]

Correlational data is circumstancial at best, becuase there are no controls. In other words, you have no idea what is causing the fluctuation in CO2 and temp. Perhaps the same factor that controls one, controls the other; so that one is actually not causing the other. The problem of causation is mine main beef with this “science”.

There are literally thousands of factors that make changes to climate. Climate is not a stable thing in the first place. We do not know all the things that change climate so we cannot possibly “know” the effect we have on it.

We also cannot know if temperature and climate shifts happening in sudden spurts are anything unnatural. Geologists used to think mountain growth was a slow continual process, but now they know mountains make sudden growth spurts accounting for most of thier height.

Why, by the same token, can’t temperature also make sudden shifts in just a few years?
Agian, I am not saying that humans have not contributed global temp increases, but the state of science today cannot prove it.

If it could they should be able to predict the weather over the next hundred years, and they can’t get it right over a period of 10 days. That also means that these retroactive meteoralogical models they are using are highly inaccurate. 160 years of surface temp data is not a large enough sample to draw conclusions on. Not when the earth is 4.5 billion years old.

Agian, I ain’t saying gloabl warming ain’t happening and we caused it. I am just say we can’t know for sure. Also, we will never find out the truth on an issue that is so politicized now. Everybody is seeking evidence to prove what they believe, not to find out the truth.
In the end it’s agood thing 'cause I hate the fuck out of winter.:slight_smile:

52

If CO2 is the problem, isn’t the best solution simply to grow more plants? Plants consume CO2 and generate oxygen.

We should make it illegal to tear down forests for development in one spot without planting trees in another spot.

Better yet, let’s give tax breaks to developers who can develop land without reducing the net photosynthesis in the area by more than 85%. Then the developer can choose the economic benefits of the tax breaks vs. reduced costs of development by razing the land.

For that matter, why don’t the environmentalists all ban together and buy up the rain forests and call it oxygen generation farms? Then the Brazilians can make a profit simply by having and caring for the rain forest.

53

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/newsroom/pressreleases/20031208a.html

Mars may be going through a period of climate change, new findings from NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter suggest.

Odyssey has been mapping the distribution of materials on and near Mars’ surface since early 2002, nearly a full annual cycle on Mars. Besides tracking seasonal changes, such as the advance and retreat of polar dry ice, the orbiter is returning evidence useful for learning about longer-term dynamics.

The amount of frozen water near the surface in some relatively warm low-latitude regions on both sides of Mars’ equator appears too great to be in equilibrium with the atmosphere under current climatic conditions, said Dr. William Feldman of Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M. He is the lead scientist for an Odyssey instrument that assesses water content indirectly through measurements of neutron emissions.

“One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age,” Feldman said. “In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated. In others, that process is slower and hasn’t reached an equilibrium yet. Those areas are like the patches of snow you sometimes see persisting in protected spots long after the last snowfall of the winter.”

Frozen water makes up as much as 10 percent of the top meter (three feet) of surface material in some regions close to the equator. Dust deposits may be covering and insulating the lingering ice, Feldman said. He and other Odyssey scientists described their recent findings today at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

“Odyssey is giving us indications of recent global climate change in Mars,” said Dr. Jeffrey Plaut, project scientist for the mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

High latitude regions of Mars have layers with differing ice content within the top half meter (20 inches) or so of the surface, researchers conclude from mapping of hydrogen abundance based on gamma-ray emissions.

“A model that fits the data has three layers near the surface,” said Dr. William Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, team leader for the gamma-ray spectrometer instrument on Odyssey. “The very top layer would be dry, with no ice. The next layer would contain ice in the pore spaces between grains of soil. Beneath that would be a very ice-rich layer, 60 to nearly 100 percent water ice.”

Boynton interprets the iciest layer as a deposit of snow or frost, mixed with a little windblown dust, from a cold-climate era. The middle layer could be the result of changes brought in a warmer era: The ice down to a certain depth dissipates into the atmosphere. The dust left behind collapses into a soil layer with limited pore space for returning ice.

Information from the gamma-ray spectrometer alone is not enough to tell how recently the climate changed from colder to warmer, but an estimated range might come from collaborations with climate modelers, Boynton said.

Other Odyssey instruments are providing other pieces of the puzzle. Images from the orbiter’s camera system have been combined into the highest resolution complete map ever made of Mars’ south polar region. “We can now accurately count craters in the layered materials of the polar regions to get an idea how old they are,” said Dr. Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe, principal investigator for the camera system.

Temperature information from the camera system’s infrared imaging has produced a surprise about dark patches that dot bright expanses of seasonal carbon-dioxide ice. “Those dark features look like places where the ice has gone away, but thermal infrared maps show that even the dark areas have temperatures so low they must be carbon-dioxide ice.” Christensen said. “One possibility is that the ice is clear in these areas and we’re seeing down through the ice to features underneath.”

Odyssey’s high-energy neutron detector continues to monitor seasonal changes in the amount of carbon-dioxide ice deposited in polar regions, allowing tests of atmosphere-circulation models, said Dr. Igor Mitrofanov of the Institute for Space Research, Moscow, Russia.

Measurements by an instrument for monitoring the radiation environment at Mars show the level of radiation hazard that Mars-bound astronauts might face, including levels during a period of unusually intense solar activity, said Dr. Cary Zeitlin of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, Houston.

JPL manages Mars Odyssey for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington. Investigators at Arizona State University, Tempe; University of Arizona, Tucson; NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston; the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, Moscow; and Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, N.M., built and operate Odyssey science instruments. Information about the mission is available on the Internet at: Mars Odyssey Orbiter - NASA Mars.

54

The problem with a lot of this science and data is that it assumes that events in the past and present can predict the future. It can’t. It can only speculate based on the knowledge level we have at the present time. We don’t pollute nearly as much as we did in the past and we produce a lot more. These trends need to be figured on for such a far reaching theory to make sense. Imagine a forecast made in 1900 about society and the weather, based on what they knew then. Think it would be different?

If this were purely an academic discussion it would be fascinating. It’s not however. Economies that drive prosperity around the world are being told they must take a large step back, while developing nations reap the benefits, in an effort to make climate more hospitable. The developing nations are notr being asked to sacrafice. No matter what the US does, China and India will undo it. That’s what really makes Kyoto a foolish proposition.

The issue should be studied. Dissent shouldn’t be mocked. It’s dishonorable for the scientists to try and crush debate about the issue. Broad predictions like Global Warming rarely if ever come to pass. That’s why people discount it. Back in the 70’s, based on the best available data and scientific thinking, we were supposed to be entering an ice age in early 2000’s. Remember that?

55

[quote]pat36 wrote:
This is another case where politics are so deeply ingrained in the issue, I don’t know if we’ll ever find out the truth.
I definately don’t trust the climatologists and shit. They cannot predict the weather 10 days in advance, how the fuck can they use these same models to tell us what happened 100, 200, 300,…1000 year ago. They should be able to tell us the weather over the next couple of years with some accuracy, but I still find the Farmer’s Almanac more accurate for long term weahter and climate info. Remember the violent huricane season “they” predicted last year? Yea, never happened. These people don’t know what they are talking about.
Is it possible man made the earth warmer? Sure. Is it provable? Fuck no.[/quote]

Actually they can tell CO2 levels millions of years ago. See when a snowstorm happens, air gets trapped. And since in the polar area’s, ice SHOULD not melt, they can drill say 1000M down and see what the C02 levels were then. They had something about it in AN inconvenient truth, but I was tired and fell asleep.

56

[quote]yorik wrote:
If CO2 is the problem, isn’t the best solution simply to grow more plants? Plants consume CO2 and generate oxygen.[/quote]

It’s not that simple, vegetation converts more of the radiant energy into thermal energy than does bare ground. Additionally, vegetation in some cases generates more water vapor which is the dominant greenhouse gas. Also, depending on the trees and vegetation, it’s a temporary fix as forest fires and swampland decompose trees back into their substituent parts. On top of that, as impossible as global warming is to legislate, the number of plants we’d need to correct it is even more so.

[quote]We should make it illegal to tear down forests for development in one spot without planting trees in another spot.

Better yet, let’s give tax breaks to developers who can develop land without reducing the net photosynthesis in the area by more than 85%. Then the developer can choose the economic benefits of the tax breaks vs. reduced costs of development by razing the land.

For that matter, why don’t the environmentalists all ban together and buy up the rain forests and call it oxygen generation farms? Then the Brazilians can make a profit simply by having and caring for the rain forest.[/quote]

The number one source of deforestation is slash-and-burn farming. Given the wild abundance of oxygen and the relatively benign nature of CO2, you’ll have a hard time convincing people in Ethiopia or Brazil to quit farming in order to keep the planet from getting too warm.

As far as taxing based on net photosynthetic capacity (assuming it’s not the nightmare to measure that it already is). If the city wants to build a homeless shelter on an overgrown/unused city park, who pays the taxes? No one because governments are exempt? The poor because they’ll actually use the shelter? The community because it’s their government? And if it doesn’t fix or only has a minimal effect on GW (most likely)? All of this work and energy expended (producing more CO2) in order to make people feel better?

57

[quote]SeanT wrote:

Actually they can tell CO2 levels millions of years ago. See when a snowstorm happens, air gets trapped. And since in the polar area’s, ice SHOULD not melt, they can drill say 1000M down and see what the C02 levels were then. They had something about it in AN inconvenient truth, but I was tired and fell asleep.[/quote]

  1. Anytime water freezes CO2 gets trapped in ice, not just during storms.

  2. The ice caps should melt. They grow and recede repeatedly throughout history. That’s the main reason ice cores don’t go back more than about 5M yrs. Debatably, they have vanished several times since the “Cambrian explosion” 542M yrs. ago.

  3. If you look strictly at those ice cores, the earth has been warming for the last 5M years at wildly varying rates of speed (much greater than what we’re currently seeing). That, or the data is too noisy to interpret properly, your choice.

  4. The ice cores from various sources don’t always agree with each other as well as other methods of CO2 measurement. Given phenomenon like the current thinning arctic vs. thickening antarctic leave the answer as more of a suggestion of what happened in the past and still don’t establish causality.

58

[quote]SeanT wrote:
pat36 wrote:
Actually they can tell CO2 levels millions of years ago. See when a snowstorm happens, air gets trapped. And since in the polar area’s, ice SHOULD not melt, they can drill say 1000M down and see what the C02 levels were then. They had something about it in AN inconvenient truth, but I was tired and fell asleep.
[/quote]

Yes, they can extract this info from amber as well. That is how they know that the earth’s atmosphere was about 20% oxygen and hence were able to sustain much larger animals then we can now at 8%. They cannot correlate temperature those times either, they can guess, but they also used to think dinosaurs were largly cold-blooded creatures.
The real innconvenient truth, is that the earth is ever changing and to measure man’s influence, versus natural changes is a daunting task indeed.

59

Hey hippies!!!

Just wanted to remind you that al gore is giving a global warming speech today in Chicago!!!

Check the temps!!!

Record lows!!!

Thought you might laugh.

As I always say, global warming is like religion, I don’t know and neither do you.

JeffR

60

[quote]lucasa wrote:
yorik wrote:
If CO2 is the problem, isn’t the best solution simply to grow more plants? Plants consume CO2 and generate oxygen.

It’s not that simple, vegetation converts more of the radiant energy into thermal energy than does bare ground. Additionally, vegetation in some cases generates more water vapor which is the dominant greenhouse gas. Also, depending on the trees and vegetation, it’s a temporary fix as forest fires and swampland decompose trees back into their substituent parts. On top of that, as impossible as global warming is to legislate, the number of plants we’d need to correct it is even more so.[/quote]

I thought that thousands of years ago we didn’t have global warming, and there were a lot more plants then than now.

[quote]We should make it illegal to tear down forests for development in one spot without planting trees in another spot.

Better yet, let’s give tax breaks to developers who can develop land without reducing the net photosynthesis in the area by more than 85%. Then the developer can choose the economic benefits of the tax breaks vs. reduced costs of development by razing the land.

For that matter, why don’t the environmentalists all ban together and buy up the rain forests and call it oxygen generation farms? Then the Brazilians can make a profit simply by having and caring for the rain forest.

The number one source of deforestation is slash-and-burn farming. Given the wild abundance of oxygen and the relatively benign nature of CO2, you’ll have a hard time convincing people in Ethiopia or Brazil to quit farming in order to keep the planet from getting too warm.[/quote]

But doesn’t farming simply replace one set of plants with another? Net change in photosynthesis should be nearly zero then.

[quote]As far as taxing based on net photosynthetic capacity (assuming it’s not the nightmare to measure that it already is). If the city wants to build a homeless shelter on an overgrown/unused city park, who pays the taxes? No one because governments are exempt? The poor because they’ll actually use the shelter? The community because it’s their government? And if it doesn’t fix or only has a minimal effect on GW (most likely)? All of this work and energy expended (producing more CO2) in order to make people feel better?
[/quote]

Hey, no idea is perfect the first time around.

But let’s not examine the idea too closely. I wasn’t being all that serious with it anyway.