The Al Gore discussion, split from GOP/DEM

[BigSqwert]

We gotta start this discussion back up. Never enough bashing on Gore for me.

 

This article pretty much sums up my view of the whole global warming thing. Yes there is a problem that needs to be addressed. But it's not happening tomorrow. He's a fear mongeror, just like Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield were to the left a few years ago.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/science/...and&emc=rss

So statements like the one below are supposed to dissuade me?

 

Yet this past Atlantic season produced fewer hurricanes than forecasters predicted (five versus nine), and none that hit the United States.

 

He's comparing one summer to the next. What a joke.

Edited March 13, 2007 by BigSqwert

[southsider2k5]

The question is...does Mr. Gore purchase enough carbon offsets to also cover his own flatulence?

 

My personal favorite was PETA chiming in that Gore couldn't be a real "enviornmentalist" while eating meat. Yes this has gotten way past ridiculous.

 

So statements like the one below are supposed to dissuade me?

He's comparing one summer to the next. What a joke.

 

The high number of hurricanes in 2005 was sited as proof of global warming, was that supposed to convince me?

[BigSqwert]

My personal favorite was PETA chiming in that Gore couldn't be a real "enviornmentalist" while eating meat.

I agree.

 

The high number of hurricanes in 2005 was sited as proof of global warming, was that supposed to convince me?

There are always going to be fluctuations but a comparison from 1 year to the next isn't considered a good sample size. You know that. Just look at the DJIA over the past 30 years. The trend is that it is rising but there are years here and there that are down.

[southsider2k5]

I agree.

There are always going to be fluctuations but a comparison from 1 year to the next isn't considered a good sample size. You know that. Just look at the DJIA over the past 30 years. The trend is that it is rising but there are years here and there that are down.

 

I understand that pretty well. I have just heard stuff like that held up as evidence when it fits agendas, and dismissed when it doesn't. Heck I heard Katrina mentioned as proof of global warming, as if we had never had a category 3 hurricane hit the US before. As long as the system is consistant, I don't mind.

[BigSqwert]

I understand that pretty well. I have just heard stuff like that held up as evidence when it fits agendas, and dismissed when it doesn't. Heck I heard Katrina mentioned as proof of global warming, as if we had never had a category 3 hurricane hit the US before. As long as the system is consistant, I don't mind.

Now if in the year 2015 there were about 20 hurricanes per season then I think we can agree that there is an upward trend.

[southsider2k5]

Now if in the year 2015 there were about 20 hurricanes per season then I think we can agree that there is an upward trend.

 

The problem with anything to do with Hurricanes is reliable data barely dates back to the 60's. Its hard to make an accurate historical trend with about 50 years worth of information. I think we can gather more based on things like tempature trends from around the world, and things where we can get more lengthy information.

[Balta1701]

The problem with anything to do with Hurricanes is reliable data barely dates back to the 60's. Its hard to make an accurate historical trend with about 50 years worth of information. I think we can gather more based on things like tempature trends from around the world, and things where we can get more lengthy information.

More than that, almost none of the models actually predict that there will be an increase in the total number of hurricanes due to anthropogenic climate change. What the models do predict is that if you do get hurricanes...because of the warmer surface waters which store more energy, they will be able to gather more strength and therefore hit with greater force. Having, for example, the 2 strongest hurricanes in recorded history appear within 1 year would fit well with that trend. Doesn't prove it of course.

 

And 2006 shows the nastiness of trying to tie single events to global climate change; 2006 was a year with a very small number of Atlantic hurricanes. Why? Because 2006 was an El Nino year, and the ENSO pattern tends to drive strong winds over the Central Atlantic that serve to shear and break up hurricanes, preventing them from forming.

 

We gotta start this discussion back up. Never enough bashing on Gore for me.

 

This article pretty much sums up my view of the whole global warming thing. Yes there is a problem that needs to be addressed. But it's not happening tomorrow. He's a fear mongeror, just like Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield were to the left a few years ago.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/science/...and&emc=rss

You are right in that it isn't something that's going to destroy the world tomorrow (or ever, for that matter). But here's the other side of the token; the more time we take before taking strong action, the less time we have to actually figure out a solution.

 

Making genuine cuts in CO2 emissions now is a defense mechanism. We're not going to stop the earth from warming at least another degree C, and we can't really get back the Degree C or so that we've already done, but beyond that, nothing else is guaranteed. If we take strong steps to slow down our emissions, then we can buy ourselves some time to come up with an actual solution to prevent the situation from becoming quite disasterous.

 

There's a reason that no real sane person is calling for us to totally give up using Fossil Fuels tomorrow; that is a solution that is more damaging than the problem. But when you weigh the cost of making some small shifts in our behavoir versus the extra 10 or 20 years that those changes could buy us, I think the cost/benefit analysis turns around the other way.

Edited March 13, 2007 by Balta1701

[Controlled Chaos]

My only thing with regard to this topic is there are a lot of scientitsts that disagree with Gore's views on global warming. I'm not talking about Joe Quack. I'm talking about people that have been in the field for years. Clearly there is disagreement among many regarding the facts. I'd just like to hear both sides get some equal play and let people make they're own decision on the facts provided. This has been a one sided debate since it began.

[Balta1701]

My only thing with regard to this topic is there are a lot of scientitsts that disagree with Gore's views on global warming. I'm not talking about Joe Quack. I'm talking about people that have been in the field for years. Clearly there is disagreement among many regarding the facts. I'd just like to hear both sides get some equal play and let people make they're own decision on the facts provided. This has been a one sided debate since it began.

Whether they disagree with some bits of how Mr. Gore phrases things, I'd like to once again stress that within the scientific community, there is virtually no debate left over climate change being caused by CO2 emissions related to burning of fossil fuels. It's the classic 2500 scientists in the IPCC versus about 3 or 4 other guys. In the scientific community, the debate has been one sided because there's no debate left about the cause, only about the consequences. Pretty much everyone at this point agrees on the how and the why, and that's not because they're forced to by some orthodoxy; that's what every scrap of data people come up with is saying.

[FlaSoxxJim]

My only thing with regard to this topic is there are a lot of scientitsts that disagree with Gore's views on global warming. I'm not talking about Joe Quack. I'm talking about people that have been in the field for years. Clearly there is disagreement among many regarding the facts. I'd just like to hear both sides get some equal play and let people make they're own decision on the facts provided. This has been a one sided debate since it began.

 

Here's an honest, sincere, request. Provide the names of a couple of the dissenting scientists so that I can read what they have to say and make an objective decision as to the merits of their position.

 

There are people like Frederick Seitz and S. Fred Singer (who have been discussed here before) that on paper look like they should be able to speak with some authority on controversial science issues, but have been revealed to be nothing but well-compensated pro-tobacco and pro-Big Oil shills who represent the worst of sham science.

 

Then there are intelligent, well-intentioned scientists on BOTH sides of the anthropogenic climate change debate whose findings have not held up entirely under scrutiny. Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann of U Mass is probably the best known example from our climate change "alarmists" camp. On the dissent side on the other hand, there is a well-respected climatologist (his name escapes em but we've also talked about him here) who had maybe 15 years' worth of solid data suggesting that the alarmists' findings were overblown. In the end, it turns out his data were flawed from two honest but fatal flaws, one involving a computational error and the other involving a temporal measurement error in which his instruments were recording nighttime temperatures but reporting them as daytime temps.

 

As Balta says, it's a disservice to represent the anthopogenic climate change debate as being between two more or less equal-sized groups of scientists on either side of the issue. A few thousand "alarmists" have added data, insights, and studies supporting their views while a handful of respected legitimate scientists continue to doubt the findings or the conclusions.

[Controlled Chaos]

Here's an honest, sincere, request. Provide the names of a couple of the dissenting scientists so that I can read what they have to say and make an objective decision as to the merits of their position.

 

There are people like Frederick Seitz and S. Fred Singer (who have been discussed here before) that on paper look like they should be able to speak with some authority on controversial science issues, but have been revealed to be nothing but well-compensated pro-tobacco and pro-Big Oil shills who represent the worst of sham science.

 

Then there are intelligent, well-intentioned scientists on BOTH sides of the anthropogenic climate change debate whose findings have not held up entirely under scrutiny. Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann of U Mass is probably the best known example from our climate change "alarmists" camp. On the dissent side on the other hand, there is a well-respected climatologist (his name escapes em but we've also talked about him here) who had maybe 15 years' worth of solid data suggesting that the alarmists' findings were overblown. In the end, it turns out his data were flawed from two honest but fatal flaws, one involving a computational error and the other involving a temporal measurement error in which his instruments were recording nighttime temperatures but reporting them as daytime temps.

 

As Balta says, it's a disservice to represent the anthopogenic climate change debate as being between two more or less equal-sized groups of scientists on either side of the issue. A few thousand "alarmists" have added data, insights, and studies supporting their views while a handful of respected legitimate scientists continue to doubt the findings or the conclusions.

 

That's just it. I don't know if it's a handful....I have to dig to finad out anything. I don't have time to dig. I like to get my info from the news.

 

Here's a couple articles I found. Take it for what it is worth. I don't know if it's right. I don't know the fricken scientists and I don't want to take the time to research them. I want someone else to do the work. Tell me this side. Tell me if there's more that believe this same thing and how many.

 

 

February 15, 2007

Scientific consensus - except for those other scientists

J.R. Dunn

 

"Scientific consensus!" chants the mainstream media in America when it comes to global warming. Not so long ago, that would have been the end of the story for nearly everyone.

 

 

 

One of the pleasures of the Internet is coming across first-class publications - newspapers, magazines, and the like - that might never have been available to ordinary people in the pre-wired world. Newspapers like The Scotsman and the Sydney Morning Herald, far superior to their equivalents here in the U.S., open windows to other points of view and often contain information impossible to find in the domestic media. The Hindustan Times is not quite on that level. But here too we have a source of information that - to put it kindly - we might never otherwise have come across

 

 

"Experts Question Theory on Global Warming" from the February 11th edition may not be the most gracefully written or edited piece you'll ever read (e.g., the use of "cosmatic", which is not a word in standard English and which I believe is supposed to be "cosmetic"), but it's essential reading all the same, focusing as it does on the Indian scientific community's attitude toward climate change.

 

 

Dr. V.K. Raina is a leading Indian glaciologist, a scientist who has devoted half a century to the glaciers of the Himalayas, the man to see concerning South Asian glacier studies. Which raises the question of why no one has come around to see him.

 

 

Dr. Raina undercuts contentions by the UN's International Panel on Climate Change that Himalayan glaciers have retreated due to global warming.

 

"Claims of global warming causing glacial melt in the Himalayas are based on wrong assumptions," he says.

These include the fact that American and European glaciers are situated at much lower altitudes, and are less dusty, which, if my truncated scientific education isn't leading me wrong, suggests that they would melt much less quickly than Himalayan glaciers. Raina's statements imply that observations at only a handful of sites are being applied worldwide without any kind of local confirmation, a serious lapse of scientific procedure, if true.

 

 

Like any scientist anywhere, Raina spends much of the interview bemoaning levels of funding. But he has a point - of the 9,575 glaciers in India, only fifty, or a little over half of one percent, are currently under study. One somehow expects more, particularly considering all the rhetoric about glaciers being a key element in the case for global warming.

 

 

Dr. Raina is backed up by at least two other glaciologists, Dr. R.K. Ganjoo, director of a glacial study center, and geologist M.N. Koul. Neither sees any evidence of glacial retreat in any of the sites they've studied.

 

 

It's difficult to tell exactly what the IPCC's sources are for their glacial data. The recent "report" - actually only a twenty-one page summary - is a little sparse when it comes to citations. Presumably these will be included when the full report is at last published. But the Hindustan Times makes it clear that they did not talk to the leading Indian glaciologists, a country with a billion people, notable for scientific accomplishments, and bordering the mightiest mountains on earth. To whom did they talk?

 

 

What's that? The debate's over, you say? It seems to depend on which scientists you talk to. It's easy to achieve "consensus" if you only consult people who agree with you.

 

 

********************************************************************************

 

UK News

'Global Warming Is Lies' Claims Documentary

Sunday, 4th March 2007, 11:04

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Accepted theories about man causing global warming are "lies" claims a controversial new TV documentary.

 

'The Great Global Warming Swindle' - backed by eminent scientists - is set to rock the accepted consensus that climate change is being driven by humans.

 

The programme, to be screened on Channel 4 on Thursday March 8, will see a series of respected scientists attack the "propaganda" that they claim is killing the world's poor.

 

Even the co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, is shown, claiming African countries should be encouraged to burn more CO2.

 

Nobody in the documentary defends the greenhouse effect theory, as it claims that climate change is natural, has been occurring for years, and ice falling from glaciers is just the spring break-up and as normal as leaves falling in autumn.

 

A source at Channel 4 said: "It is essentially a polemic and we are expecting it to cause trouble, but this is the controversial programming that Channel 4 is renowned for."

 

Controversial director Martin Durkin said: "You can see the problems with the science of global warming, but people just don't believe you - it's taken 10 years to get this commissioned.

 

"I think it will go down in history as the first chapter in a new era of the relationship between scientists and society. Legitimate scientists - people with qualifications - are the bad guys.

 

"It is a big story that is going to cause controversy.

 

"It's very rare that a film changes history, but I think this is a turning point and in five years the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen as total bollocks.

 

"Al Gore might have won an Oscar for 'An Inconvenient Truth', but the film is very misleading and he has got the relationship between CO2 and climate change the wrong way round."

 

One major piece of evidence of CO2 causing global warming are ice core samples from Antarctica, which show that for hundreds of years, global warming has been accompanied by higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

 

In 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' Al Gore is shown claiming this proves the theory, but paleoclimatologist Professor Ian Clark claims in the documentary that it actually shows the opposite.

 

He has evidence showing that warmer spells in the Earth's history actually came an average of 800 years before the rise in CO2 levels.

 

While Prof Clark fully acknowledges that recent increases in atmospheric CO2 are anthropogenic, he just doesn't see any evidence that the man-made increases of CO2 are driving temperature change.

 

Scientists in the programme also raise another discrepancy with the official line, showing that most of the recent global warming occurred before 1940, when global temperatures then fell for four decades.

 

It was only in the late 1970s that the current trend of rising temperatures began.

 

This, claim the sceptics, is a flaw in the CO2 theory, because the post-war economic boom produced more CO2 and should, according to the consensus, have meant a rise in global temperatures.

 

The programme claims there appears to be a consensus across science that CO2 is responsible for global warming, but Professor Paul Reiter is shown to disagree.

 

He said the influential United Nations report on Climate change, that claimed humans were responsible, was a sham.

 

It claimed to be the opinion of 2,500 leading scientists, but Prof Reiter said it included names of scientists who disagreed with the findings and resigned from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and said the report was finalised by Government appointees.

 

The CO2 theory is further undermined by claims that billions of pounds is being provided by governments to fund greenhouse effect research, so thousands of scientists know their job depends on the theory continuing to be seen as fact.

 

The programme claims efforts to reduce CO2 are killing Africans, who have to burn fires inside their home, causing cancer and lung damage, because their Governments are being encouraged to use wind and solar panels that are not capable of supplying the continent with electricity, instead of coal and oil-burning power stations that could.

 

Nigel Calder, a former editor of New Scientist, is featured in the programme, and has just released a book claiming that clouds are the real reason behind climate change.

 

'The Chilling Stars' was written with Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark who published a scientific paper, claiming cosmic rays cause clouds to

form, reducing the global temperature. The theory is shown in the programme.

 

Mr Calder said: "Henrik Svensmark saw that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars - when there are more cosmic rays, there are more clouds.

 

"However, solar winds bat away many of the cosmic rays and the sun is currently in its most active phase, which would be an explanation for global warming.

 

"I am a science journalist and in my career I have been told by eminent scientists that black holes do not exist and it is impossible that continents move, but in science the experts are usually wrong.

 

"For me this is a cracking science story - I don't come from any political position and I'm certainly not funded by the multinationals, although my bank manager would like me to be.

 

"I talk to scientists and come up with one story, and Al Gore talks to another set of scientists and comes up with a different story.

 

"So knowing which scientists to talk to is part of the skill. Some, who appear to be disinterested, are themselves getting billions of dollars of research money from the Government.

 

"The few millions of dollars of research money from multinationals can't compare to government funding, so you find the American scientific establishment is all for man-made global warming.

 

"We have the same situation in Britain The government's chief scientific advisor Sir David King is supposed to be the representative of all that is good in British science, so it is disturbing he and the Government are ignoring a raft of evidence against the greenhouse effect being the main driver against climate change."

 

The programme shows how the global warming research drive began when Margaret Thatcher gave money to scientists to 'prove' burning coal and oil was harmful, as part of her drive for nuclear power.

 

Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London who also features in the film, warned the issue was too complex to be down to one single factor, whether CO2 or clouds.

 

He said: "The greenhouse effect theory worried me from the start because you can't say that just one factor can have this effect.

 

"The system is too complex to say exactly what the effect of cutting back on CO2 production would be, or indeed of continuing to produce CO2.

 

"It's ridiculous to see politicians arguing over whether they will allow the global temperature to rise by 2C or 3C."

 

Mr Stott said the film could mark the point where scientists advocating the greenhouse effect theory, began to lose the argument.

 

He continued: "It is a brave programme at the moment to give excluded voices their say, and maybe it is just the beginning.

 

"At the moment, there is almost a McCarthyism movement in science where the greenhouse effect is like a puritanical religion and this is dangerous."

 

In the programme Mr Calder said: "The greenhouse effect is seen as a religion and if you don't agree, you are a heretic."

 

He added: "However, I think this programme will help further debate and scientists not directly involved in global warming studies may begin to study what is being said, become more open-minded and more questioning, but this will happen slowly."

[Jenksismyhero]

More than that, almost none of the models actually predict that there will be an increase in the total number of hurricanes due to anthropogenic climate change. What the models do predict is that if you do get hurricanes...because of the warmer surface waters which store more energy, they will be able to gather more strength and therefore hit with greater force. Having, for example, the 2 strongest hurricanes in recorded history appear within 1 year would fit well with that trend. Doesn't prove it of course.

 

And 2006 shows the nastiness of trying to tie single events to global climate change; 2006 was a year with a very small number of Atlantic hurricanes. Why? Because 2006 was an El Nino year, and the ENSO pattern tends to drive strong winds over the Central Atlantic that serve to shear and break up hurricanes, preventing them from forming.

You are right in that it isn't something that's going to destroy the world tomorrow (or ever, for that matter). But here's the other side of the token; the more time we take before taking strong action, the less time we have to actually figure out a solution.

 

Making genuine cuts in CO2 emissions now is a defense mechanism. We're not going to stop the earth from warming at least another degree C, and we can't really get back the Degree C or so that we've already done, but beyond that, nothing else is guaranteed. If we take strong steps to slow down our emissions, then we can buy ourselves some time to come up with an actual solution to prevent the situation from becoming quite disasterous.

 

There's a reason that no real sane person is calling for us to totally give up using Fossil Fuels tomorrow; that is a solution that is more damaging than the problem. But when you weigh the cost of making some small shifts in our behavoir versus the extra 10 or 20 years that those changes could buy us, I think the cost/benefit analysis turns around the other way.

 

 

Hey we're in total agreement there. I'm fine with Gore promoting environmental programs. However his movie, book and speeches often delve into hypothetical’s of future catastrophes. Could they happen? Sure, they could. But it's doubtful that New York will be under 20 ft of water, or that we'll have 20 billion displaced people around the world because of rising waters. Or 'Katrina was just the beginning' - my favorite tag line. It's the psychological effect he has on people that don't actually talk about the issue or do a little research on their own. They see a movie, promoted by a popular liberal, and they take it as truth (an inconvenient one at that). They equate global warming with the apocalypse. It's something the left accepts as a perfectly legitimate means to 'expose' the problem.

 

Now lets think of the reaction if Bush had 'sold' the Iraq war by creating a movie showing Al Qaeda shooting in the streets of New York, or Al Qaeda planting bombs, or hijacking plans, etc etc. The guy makes a few speeches about the ties (albeit remote) between Iraq and Al Qaeda and he's accused of fear mongering. He talks in generalities about the 'evil doers' wanting to attack us on our own shores and he's labeled a bloody thirsty tyrant.

 

Tell me how Gore is any different and why he's such a saint for doing it. I'm not an ubber-Bush supporter either. I just see the ridiculous double standard that's in play with this entire issue and how politicians are able to promote their answers to our country’s problems.

[Balta1701]

The folks over at Realclimate chime in on the NYT Gore piece. Unsurprisingly, the qualifications of a lot of the people quoted in the article seem to leave a lot to be desired, which for some reason seems par for the course in those sort of articles.

 

Here's an alternate commentary with some other good details, albiet from a less distingushed source. Link.

[southsider2k5]

The folks over at Realclimate chime in on the NYT Gore piece. Unsurprisingly, the qualifications of a lot of the people quoted in the article seem to leave a lot to be desired, which for some reason seems par for the course in those sort of articles.

 

Here's an alternate commentary with some other good details, albiet from a less distingushed source. Link.

 

I thought credentials didn't matter in the climate debate and it was all about the message? Damn I am so confused.

[kapkomet]

I know! It only fits when there is an agenda to be followed, duh.

[mr_genius]

within the scientific community, there is virtually no debate left over climate change being caused by CO2 emissions related to burning of fossil fuels.

 

The entire scientific community is very large. Your statement is not accurate.

[FlaSoxxJim]

The entire scientific community is very large. Your statement is not accurate.

 

True enough that a 100% consensus is not achievable in science. But I'm a firm believer in the peer review process and in the ability of science to incrementally advance the state of knowledge to the point where we achieve a sound working knowledge of the physical and biological systems that surround us.

 

The overwhelming majority of peer-reviewed climate science is painting a picture of a planet whose large-scale climate systems can be affected and are being affected by human activity.

 

I believe these statements are wholly accurate.

[kapkomet]

True enough that a 100% consensus is not achievable in science. But I'm a firm believer in the peer review process and in the ability of science to incrementally advance the state of knowledge to the point where we achieve a sound working knowledge of the physical and biological systems that surround us.

 

The overwhelming majority of peer-reviewed climate science is painting a picture of a planet whose large-scale climate systems can be affected and are being affected by human activity.

 

I believe these statements are wholly accurate.

If you poop in your back yard, does it effect your environment? Why, yes! It gets stinky!

 

I think it goes without saying that humans are effecting the environment - and to some extent, the climate. The question is, how much, and does the earth "correct" things on its own, so to speak? Only generations of studies will be able to prove that, not just our generation.

[FlaSoxxJim]

If you poop in your back yard, does it effect your environment? Why, yes! It gets stinky!

 

I think it goes without saying that humans are effecting the environment - and to some extent, the climate. The question is, how much, and does the earth "correct" things on its own, so to speak? Only generations of studies will be able to prove that, not just our generation.

 

PNR. If we are almost there, we don't have the luxury of a couple more generations of passive data collection and analysis.

[Balta1701]

If you poop in your back yard, does it effect your environment? Why, yes! It gets stinky!

 

I think it goes without saying that humans are effecting the environment - and to some extent, the climate. The question is, how much, and does the earth "correct" things on its own, so to speak? Only generations of studies will be able to prove that, not just our generation.

But we do have the ability to examine generations of data on the climate. We have at this point many different proxies that tell us what sort of CO2 and temperature changes have been seen in the geologic record, what sort of changes we've had in the Pleistocene, what sort of changes we've had in the recent, and so on. We have plenty of ability to study what happens to the climate when there are large shifts in the atmosphere. And beyond that, we have a pretty good understanding of how the atmosphere reacts to different inputs.

 

To my eyes, what you're doing here is just giving the argument of ignorance...saying that we can't know anything for certain until we wait and see what happens every single time, and that's simply not a valid way of making an argument. We have plenty of ways to get information on things you're saying we can't know.

[kapkomet]

PNR. If we are almost there, we don't have the luxury of a couple more generations of passive data collection and analysis.

 

 

But we do have the ability to examine generations of data on the climate. We have at this point many different proxies that tell us what sort of CO2 and temperature changes have been seen in the geologic record, what sort of changes we've had in the Pleistocene, what sort of changes we've had in the recent, and so on. We have plenty of ability to study what happens to the climate when there are large shifts in the atmosphere. And beyond that, we have a pretty good understanding of how the atmosphere reacts to different inputs.

 

To my eyes, what you're doing here is just giving the argument of ignorance...saying that we can't know anything for certain until we wait and see what happens every single time, and that's simply not a valid way of making an argument. We have plenty of ways to get information on things you're saying we can't know.

 

OMG! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! NOW! 100 YEARS FROM NOW!! 1,000 YEARS FROM NOW!!! !!!! !!!!!

 

Anyway, I think there are strong correlations that says "mankind" is doing some harm to the environment. I'm not denying that. What gets me is, 30 years ago, we were experiencing "global colding" ( ) according to some of the same (now bandwagon) "global warming" scientists. So, which is it? I wonder if the funding was strong in the 1970's for the "global colding" crowd, you know, the impending ice age and all of that?

 

I think that it's naive to think we don't have an impact. I can also respect both you and Flaxx, because you're from the "scientific" type of field, which I am not a part of. Having said that, though, there's enough evidence from the other side, IMO, to at least question how much of an impact we are having. After all, earth has been through a "global warming" cycle before, otherwise, we'd still be in the ice age.

[Balta1701]

I think that it's naive to think we don't have an impact. I can also respect both you and Flaxx, because you're from the "scientific" type of field, which I am not a part of. Having said that, though, there's enough evidence from the other side, IMO, to at least question how much of an impact we are having. After all, earth has been through a "global warming" cycle before, otherwise, we'd still be in the ice age.

That is in fact where the debate in the scientific community actually does sit these days; how much and how rapid the climatic shifts will be from the unprecedented-in-the-last-million-years rapid increase in CO2. (The rate is the unprecedented part; we're probably increasing CO2 a factor of 10 times more rapidly than has done any time since we've had good records). So, there will be some modelers who produce a 5 degree C temperature increase, others who produce a 2-3 degree temp increase, depending on how things are set.

 

The other thing that is being focused on now is the effects of the warming we've already seen. To give a great example; according to all of the current models for ice sheets, they should be relatively stable with respect to the warming we've seen thus far. But, over the last 5 years, we've seen dramatic increases in the rate of flow of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica which are much faster than what the older models would have predicted. So that is the sort of thing being researched now; how big the impact of what we are doing is, and so forth. (Interestingly, it's worth noting that in the 2001 IPCC report, an estimate of the total sea level change was given, in the 2007 version, they gave an estimate of the sea level change excluding ice-cap melting, because no one understands yet why they're breaking up as fast as they are)

 

And finally...yes, the earth has been through many, many global warming cycles before, and probably even more global cooling cycles before. But the point I want to stress is this one; the Earth and the biosphere and humanity will survive whatever we do to the Earth barring nuclear war (at least from the things developed so far). But humanity has adapted its civilization to the climate system. We're used to certain amounts of water in certain areas. We're used to being able to grow certain crops at certain latitudes. Having, for example, the wheat-growing areas of the world shift from teh U.S. to Canada would be a profound change. Humanity has adapted to what is in geologic terms a very stable climate overall for the last 10k years or so. Changes in that will not destroy the earth, but changes in that can make things very unpleasant for a lot of humans.

[Controlled Chaos]

Nobody responded to the articles I posted? Are those scientists totally full of s***? Are they paid by oil companies? Do their findings hold water at all? Is there any room for discussion? Now I don't have the knowledge in this field to know or not know if what they are reporting is true, but some of you here do and haven't addressed it.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Nobody responded to the articles I posted? Are those scientists totally full of s***? Are they paid by oil companies? Do their findings hold water at all? Is there any room for discussion? Now I don't have the knowledge in this field to know or not know if what they are reporting is true, but some of you here do and haven't addressed it.

 

J.R. Dunn, author of the first piece you presented, is not a scientist. He's an author/contributing editor for American thinker, and a former editor for the International Military Encyclopedia. He does as pretty good job of scouring the academic fringes looking for the climate change dissenters though, and his most recent American Thinker piece (LINK) actually mentions Svensmark and Calder from your second piece. I'm intrigued by the cosmic ray/albedo theory, by the way, but Dunn gets it right when he notes that the work is still entirely speculative. The Brit documentary appears as if it's going to pass it off as fact.

 

Dunn also points to Roy W. Spencer as presenting serious scientific challenges to mainstream climate change views. Spencer is the guy I couldn't remember by name before - a respected scientist who for a long time was also a respected climate change dissenter, but who had major holes punched in his key findings when it was discovered that his math was wrong and he was remote-recording nighttime temperatures and thinking they were daytime temperatures ('Warming, what warming?? Nice and cool here.'). Spencer hasn't given up the ghost, and he feels he's been blacklisted by funding agencies for being a contrarian. I don't personally buy the blacklist claim but I won't get into it. He's greatly tempered his early rhetoric about no perceptible change, and now accepts there is change and says the true question is how much and how fast? Of course, mainstream science concurs those are the real questions.

 

The problem is that Spencer seems now to be going down a similar road as Seitz and Sanger. He might not be getting rich off of Big Oil and Big Tobacco like those guys, but he is letting his personal beliefs cloud his scientific judgement. As the Scientific Advisor to the Interfaith Stewarship Alliance he followed his own long-time muse by recommending that, even if climate change is occurring, we shouldn't try to fix things but instead we should adapt (And Big Oil apparently didn't even need to pay him). And now he is moving away from the climate stuff somewhat – the field where he is a recognized authority – and is pimping for the Intelligent Design Folks and taking on evolution - a field where he is an educated layman at best.

 

I'm not up to speed on the claims of Reiter and Clark beyond what is in the documentary story you posted. I'll have to get back to you on what I make of them.

 

Cutting to the chase, if even holdouts like Roy and Spencer and the oil companies are conceding that climate change is occurring and that humans are responsible for some portion of that change and the questions are 'how much' and 'how fast,' then how much real dissent with mainstream science really exists? Those are the same questions other scientists are grappling with. Although if the body of evidents starts to look like the answers are 'quit a bit' and 'faster than the planet has ever experienced,' I hope the response will be to address some root causes and not just to deal with it like Roy Spencer has suggested.

[Texsox]

OMG! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! NOW! 100 YEARS FROM NOW!! 1,000 YEARS FROM NOW!!! !!!! !!!!!

 

Anyway, I think there are strong correlations that says "mankind" is doing some harm to the environment. I'm not denying that. What gets me is, 30 years ago, we were experiencing "global colding" ( ) according to some of the same (now bandwagon) "global warming" scientists. So, which is it? I wonder if the funding was strong in the 1970's for the "global colding" crowd, you know, the impending ice age and all of that?

 

I think that it's naive to think we don't have an impact. I can also respect both you and Flaxx, because you're from the "scientific" type of field, which I am not a part of. Having said that, though, there's enough evidence from the other side, IMO, to at least question how much of an impact we are having. After all, earth has been through a "global warming" cycle before, otherwise, we'd still be in the ice age.

 

So we reversed a climate freeze and not only stopped that, but now are projecting a warming. And humans and CO2 doesn't have an effect.