Global Warming...the true facts ?

[DonShock]

Bill: I looked up the warming period in Greenland from 800 to 1200. You are right, it was warmer and people could easily grow crops, until the Little Ice Age. Greenland appears to be very responsive to changes in global climate. Erik the Red settled in Greenland in about 982 after being expelled from Iceland. But there was not a lot of "green" land, and the Vikings settled where people are settled today. Greenland is warming fastest along the edges, where the glaciers are melting fast. Some of the interior glaciers are actually getting thicker because of increased moisture caused by global warming, according to scientists.

In just the last 30 years, the growing season on Greenland has increased by 120 days. I can't yet find any reason for the Medieval Warming Period in Greenland and northern Europe, but some scientists speculate that it was due to sun cycles or volcanic activity. Global warming is expected to cause a rise in tempertures twice as high in Greenland as in Europe.

I don't get it:

Global Warming is the cause when glaciers are melting AND when they are getting thicker?

So solar activity caused the Medieval Warming Period IN THE PAST, but the the current increase in solar activity isn't the cause of Global Warming NOW?

I must be stupid.

 

[hank]

No, it's really complicated.

People with an agenda will feed you only part of the known info, and handwave away what's still being studied. Certainty is one clue that you're talking to an advocate instead of a scientist (grin).

Who told you about "the current increase in solar activity" for example? Did they point to the numbers on the Y-axis? It's an increase of about 3 in 1300 --- measurable, but known to be tiny compared to the other also measured forcings.

# Total radiative forcing from the sum of all human activities is a warming force of about +1.6 watts/m2
# Radiative forcing from an increase of solar intensity since 1750 is about +0.12 watts/m2

So, did they give you the full info? Or did you get only an arguing point without the numbers?

None of us is stupid. All of us are easy to fool. That's why comparing notes and checking for real footnotes, then checking the footnotes, is important.

Especially when what the science turns up conflicts with what we really _want_ to believe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report

is worth reading; and check the history of changes, of course, as always with Wikipedia.
Open info, lots of eyes to find the bugs in what's presented.

 

[DonShock]

Man, I really need to work on getting my sarcasm through in my posts better!

It's not complicated, it's twisting your argument to get the conclusion you want. GW cannot be the cause of of glaciers getting both bigger and smaller. Yes, there is a certain logic you can propose to get to one conclusion or the other. But if the science and logic is correct, it will produce that result consistently. Not sometimes produce one one result and sometimes the exact opposite. Following that logic, I guess if GW continues we can expect snowstorms in July here in Texas eventually.

And again, if there was enough variability in solar activity in the past to produce enough GW that it made Greenland into GREEN land, then it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that it may be the cause of the current observed GW. And your numbers argument has a big flaw. You state:

# Total radiative forcing from the sum of all human activities is a warming force of about +1.6 watts/m2
# Radiative forcing from an increase of solar intensity since 1750 is about +0.12 watts/m2

So, did they give you the full info? .......

But you are comparing a Total number to a change. I suspect if you put the Total watts/m2 from the Sun, you would see just how puny our Total human watts/m2 is in comparison. Or looked at the other way, if you are going to look at the change in the Sun's force; you should be looking at the change in the Human's force also, not the total.

This kind of thing is why I look at how the sides argue and how they respond to criticism to sway my decision. Any side can snow you under with numbers, create logic chains that seem reasonable, and tell you it's just too complicated for normal people to understand. But those are just ways to deflect criticism, not answer it. I don't remember where I heard it, but a phrase has always stuck in my mind:
There is no idea so complicated that it's principles cannot be explained on a single cocktail napkin with a crayon.

EDIT: I decided to see if I could locate the TOTAL solar flux info myself.
Several sources all had around the same value and here's a quote from one in plain english:

"Thus, only about 70% of the incoming solar flux, that is, about 239 W/m2, is absorbed within the Earth-atmosphere system."

That sure makes us human's 1.6 W/m2 that was mentioned seem pretty insignificant (0.67%).

 

[jayflash]

It couldn't hurt to keep an open mind.

 

[Josey]

DonShock:

Obviously you are a skeptic of global warming science, and it doesn't appear from what I see that you are going to change your mind.

So here's an honest question:

How should we respond, given that the vast majority of climate scientists -- with a consensus that continues to grow stronger and stronger after decades of peer-reviewed study -- say we must act IMMEDIATELY to reduce mankind's CO2 emissions if we are to have any chance of avoiding potentially massive destruction to our civilization, to the future of our children and grandchildren and to most higher life forms on this planet?

 

[DonShock]

The problem is that I am old enough to remember a time when similar doom and gloom predictions were being made. Back in the late 70's when I was a teenager living outside Buffalo NY, there had just been one of the worst winters on record and a crippling gas crisis. We had gas rationing, only being able to get gas on odd/even day rotation, predictions that we were running out of oil, and that we were starting to enter another ice age. The President was on TV telling us how our way of life needed to change: cut back, learn to live a simpler life, drive slower, start wearing coats and sweaters indoors. There was a flurry of government regulations, price controls, etc. We did all that the "experts" recommended and it didn't make things any better.

As it turned out, once the government got out of the way, people found their own solutions. Gas prices rose temporarily, making it profitable to find and produce oil in areas and by means previously thought impractical. In the end, instead of running out of oil, we had more sources than ever before and prices were even lower. Instead of wearing sweaters and standing in line for gas, we started making our homes, vehicles, and industry more energy efficient. And after few bad winters, things got better. And as technology improved, the air and water got cleaner.

I lived in Niagara Falls at the time the Love Canal story exploded. It was a local story before it went national. And it was the same thing, the potential consequences are so dire that we can't wait to act. By the time we have scientific proof, it will be too late and widespread death will occur. We spent millions, if not billions, digging up contaminated dirt from one spot, trucking it to another spot, and reburying it. I remember asking my mother at the time as I noticed the orange dirt splashed up on the snowbanks along the routes the trucks took: "Isn't this just spreading everything around?" In the end, once all the proper scientific studies had been conducted, all the hype about Love Canal being a "hotspot of disease" where people were dropping like flies was shown to be false. People living there had no higher likelyhood of any particular disease than anywhere else in the country. But it was too late, the money was spent, peoples lives were ruined, and the public already "knew the truth". And no amount of science produced after the fact was going to change their minds.

I guess I was at just the right age for this experience to have been a real influence. Because of my love of science, I followed the story even after leaving the Falls and after the story stopped getting national headlines. And it got me questioning the media, the government, and the experts. Now, I try to look behind the hype and find the facts.

So what do we do about Global Warming now? Just what we've been doing! We study it further, try to nail down exactly what are the causes, find and fix the errors in the science. We continue to develop less polluting technologies and refine them until they become practical for widespread use. For example, when I built my home, I tried using the early compact fluorescent bulbs in all my fixtures, but they were impractical because they kept turning my TV on and off and changing the channels because they interferred with the remote signals. But as the technology got better, I was able to install them in more places without the unintended bad consequences. We keep trying to help the third world develop their own economies so that they can raise their standard of living to our own more productive one. As they do so, they will be able to afford to replace their current high pollution ways of living with more efficient, low pollution, modern ways of life.

What we don't do is cripple ourselves. You don't implement the Kyoto protocols which penalize the developed nations, who are already generating the least pollution per unit of production than anyone else, while allowing the less developed nations to pollute unchecked. This will just cause production to shift from nations which have controls on pollution to nations which have no controls. That might make sense if your goal is transfer of wealth, but not if your goal is to stop Global Warming.
We also don't impliment arbitrary regulations like CAFE standards. You can't just make up numbers for industry to meet if the technology isn't there to support the goals. Just look at how bad toilets performed after the 1.6 gallon fush limit was started. Only recently have they begun to approach the reliability of the older toilets.

Personally, I am suspicious when I am being told that I have to act NOW, there's not time to think about the issue or check things out. That applies whether it's a car salesman telling me that the price is good for today only, or if it's the President telling me Texas will be uninhabitable in 1000 years if we don't act now. That technique has been used to hide the truth many, many times more often than it has been shown to BE the truth. I'm suspicious, that's all. I don't reject the idea of Global Warming, I just want more information before I agree to take drastic action. If the only response I get to my questions is continued insistance that there's not time to answer them, the more convinced I am that my suspicions are correct and that the salesman is trying to sell me a lemon. But if more detailed and convincing information comes along, I'll gladly check it out and change my mind if it's warranted. After all, it's hot enough here in Texas already!

DonShock:

Obviously you are a skeptic of global warming science, and it doesn't appear from what I see that you are going to change your mind.

So here's an honest question:

How should we respond, given that the vast majority of climate scientists -- with a consensus that continues to grow stronger and stronger after decades of peer-reviewed study -- say we must act IMMEDIATELY to reduce mankind's CO2 emissions if we are to have any chance of avoiding potentially massive destruction to our civilization, to the future of our children and grandchildren and to most higher life forms on this planet?

 

[MarNav1]

Al Gore recently said the earth (his mother) had a fever and needed a doctor. So I
said Al, give her 2 aspirin and have her call you in the morning.

 

[Pellidon]

I am old enough to remember the alarms in the 60's and 70's too about the coming Ice Age. The Glaicier will return to Indiana, "they" claimed. When the events did not match the doom and gloom, they shifted to the earth is boiling/melting. This has followed a 30 year cycle of freeze/fry predictions back to at least 1900.

Presently "Global Warming" has nothing to do anymore about climate changes. It has become a religion. As stated recently by many of the "rogue" experts who decry the mania. One viewpoint is mentioned here. An official from one of the Baltic nations also likened "Global Warming" to having replaced communism, hiding under every stone to be feared and vilified.

There is global warming. There can also be global cooling. Ignoring cool year cycles (most of the 1990's) to make things look hotter on average is not good science. It is political and monetary pandering. Ignoring that we don't have credible data beyond 40 years, let alone thousands is also bad and irresponsible science. There are too many historical variables we will never know that may have influenced the past and may influence the future.

What was the tilt of the earth's axis relative to the sun? What was the polarity of the poles? Where were the pole's centered at? What was the core temperature? What was the local space atmosphere's composition ten thousand years ago? One thousand? Did we pass through a cloud of hydrogen? or are we in one now compared to then? Space is a near vacuum, not an absolute one. What was the core temperature of the sun? How stable is our orbit? Was the asteroid belt between us and the sun once, only to spread to it's current orbit? Where-when-how did the Moon appear in our skies? How did it get blasted with all those craters? What climate effect would that pounding have done to us then? Where is the Indiana Glaicier now? When did it receede and why? Has it finished that cycle of recession?

There are more things in Heaven and Earth than in a "Global Warming" alarmist's philosophy. To misquote the Bard.

Should we recycle? Yes. Should we seek out better fuel systems for cars and such? Of course. Not for the hole in the ozone but for our pocketbooks. Actually I don't prefer to recycle. That just masks the problem. I take the plastic packaging that things love to be wrapped in back to the stores where they were purchased from. If everyone took that junk back to wally world and such to make them pay for it's disposal then the mass quantities of trash packaging material would dissapear and we would not have to recycle it. It would not get made in the first place. Recycling merely passes the consumption buck to a user that is an unwitting stooge to it's needless production, IMO.

For "Global Warming", not to be confused with the real climate warming/cooling cycles, follow the money. If tons of cash were not to be made off the sky is falling mania it would not be such an industry. The money side has blinded the money grubbers to keep it afloat at all costs. This mania has the potential to bankrupt more things than a dozen Enrons could ever hope too.

I have said my $0.02 now to quote Johnny Storm: "Flame ON"

P.S. Most of the "peer reviewed" reviews are not done by those outside the cult of Global Warming. Many names on the list of endorsing scientists have also noted their names were added without their consent/permission. Sometimes after they requested they not be included. They are now cast out as heretics and unbelievers. Shunned and scorned because they took 2+2 and got 4, not 5.

 

[ringzero]

How should we respond, given that the vast majority of climate scientists -- with a consensus that continues to grow stronger and stronger after decades of peer-reviewed study -- say we must act IMMEDIATELY to reduce mankind's CO2 emissions if we are to have any chance of avoiding potentially massive destruction to our civilization, to the future of our children and grandchildren and to most higher life forms on this planet?

We should respond by demanding that scientists funded by public money produce HONEST science.

Jump-on-the-bandwagon, get-with-the-consensus 'science' isn't science - it is the prostitution of science.

It is designed to pander to politicians and attract research money. At its very core, it is dishonest and fraudulent.

Scientists caught using phoney data sets and cooking their results, like Mann, should lose public funding, be removed from their jobs, and be exposed to widespread ridicule as the cheap prostitutes they are.


.

 

[Casual Flashlight User]

Good post ringzero...I see global warming as a new religion, any who argue against man-made climate change are rounded on and accused of wanting to kill the planet or being in the pocket of oil companies and such-like.

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

Pellidon, I remember there was a BBC documentry called "the weather machine" that was aired in the late 70's...it promised us "a new ice age" and lots of other cold-*** gloom and doom...


CFU

 

[Josey]

Wow! What a chorus of people who think that the vast majority of scientists are dishonest crooks and that large coal and oil corporations and the politicians they hire are the only people we should listen to. However, the fact remains that the global warming skeptics on this thread have no credible evidence of their own. Instead of refuting the actual evidence, the only consistent argument the skeptics make is that scientists have formed some kind of conspiracy for various conflicting reasons.

The Love Canal thing really got to me. Love Canal was an incomplete canal, a long deep trench, that was used by industry and governments to dump tens of thousands of tons of toxic chemicals and pesticides. The local school district thought it would make a wonderful place to build a school, and developers thought it would make a wonderful place to build houses. Really cheap land. The politicians got the land to build the school, plus a lot more, for just $1. Then all these toxic chemicals began to seep into homes and schools. People became sick. Babies were born with defects. Cancers rose. The victims had to fight industry, crooked local politicians and other residents who took the side of industry and tried to deny the victims the right to redress. The EPA took blood samples of the residents and found chromosome damage. Tests proved that people were being exposed to multiple carcinogens, including benzene. Occidental Petroleum was forced to pay $129 million. Most of those chemicals remain in place, sealed by the EPA. But to you skeptics, it was just a case of a few whiners taking advantage of honest chemical companies and politicians who said that heavy exposure to carcinogins is no problem at all. And all those toxic chemicals were not "spread around," but instead sealed in place. The chemicals that were moved to other sealed landfills were chemicals that had escaped from the original comtamination site. Do you guys actually read the evidence?

Everytime I investigate the arguments of the global warming skeptics, all I find is evidence to the contrary and the the skeptics are misleading the public.

People are tribal first, rational second. Breathing and ingesting carcinogens doesn't cause cancer? Yeah, right. Global warming is a hoax? Yeah, right.

 

[BUZ]

Wow! What a chorus of people who think that the vast majority of scientists are dishonest crooks and that large coal and oil corporations and the politicians they hire are the only people we should listen to. However, the fact remains that the global warming skeptics on this thread have no credible evidence of their own. Instead of refuting the actual evidence, the only consistent argument the skeptics make is that scientists have formed some kind of conspiracy for various conflicting reasons.

Please posts your so called undisputable facts for all of us to see!

The mainstream media would have us believe that the science of global warming is now settled by the latest IPCC report.

Why should we be leery of the IPCC's report -- or the summary of the report? Well, because the report is the end product of a political agenda, and it is the political agenda of both the extreme environmentalists who of course think we are destroying the world. But it's also the political agenda of a group of people ... who believe that industrialization and development and capitalism and the Western way is a terrible system and they want to bring it down. They couldn't do it by attacking energy because they know that would get the public's back up very quickly. ... The vehicle they chose was CO2, because that's the byproduct of industry and fossil-fuel burning, which of course drives the whole thing. They think, "If we can show that that is destroying the planet, then it allows us to control." Unfortunately, you've got a bunch of scientists who have this political agenda as well, and they have effectively controlled the IPCC process.


As soon as people start saying something's settled, it's usually that they don't want to talk about it anymore. They don't want anybody to dig any deeper. It's very, very far from settled.


Everytime I investigate the arguments of the global warming skeptics, all I find is evidence to the contrary and the the skeptics are misleading the public.

Well I think some are so blindly bent on the ideas they have in their head that even the most rational of explanations wouldn't make sense to them!

People are tribal first, rational second. Breathing and ingesting carcinogens doesn't cause cancer? Yeah, right. Global warming is a hoax? Yeah, right.

That's were your wrong, most people have sound minds and rational thinking however in the eyes of a socialist we cannot make decisions for ourself and need big brother make our decisions for us (Bull $*IT)!
Are you on the boat with al gore, do you really think we have only 10 years to make these so called changes before the planet self destructs ( meanwhile ol' al uses twenty + times the energy the avg. American uses) and that SOB is preaching to us about change (good grief)!

MY replies are in bold text BUZ!

...

 

[Josey]

Buz:

Would you please correct your post so it doesn't look as though I use foul language and to separate your point of view from mine. Thanks.

Josey

 

[Pellidon]

I am not a member of the GW cult. I don't know the answers to my questions that i posed above. Neither do any of the so called high priests of the cult have the answers. I do know that as a doubting Thomas I can postulate valid questions that poke holes in their wailing wall. My questions are not just mine, others have posed them to the high priests as well. We are castigated and called heretics by them and are accused of being shrill and uncaring.

Academic science and science in general is less about science and more about fund raising. It was so when I was in college and probably more so today. I knew professors who were fired for wanting to teach rather than do the song and dance to pull more money into the school system via research grants. This cult has the potential to be more devastating due to the huge dollar amounts being bandied about like golden carrots.

If you really want to stop the pollution that is running amok on the planet then do what I have done. Stop eating meat. The resources to produce the quarter pounder with cheese are stunning. Sixteen pounds of feed to make a pound of ground beef. Do you know how many meals that 16 pounds of grains and veggies make? I have a spread sheet somewhere where I figured it out. 2500 gallons of water. Waste that dwarfs that of humans by a ratio of 2:1 or more. Unregulated waste, full of antibiotics, growth hormones and resistant strains of super E-Coli. Plus the fuel to plant the grain, apply the toxic chemicals, harvest, process it into animal feed, get it back to the animals. Then you have to haul Bessie to the stockyards and have her hauled out to the processing plant. Packed in petroleum based packaging and trucked back to your supermarket. We won't get into the bits that don't either go into your belly or around it as a belt. I drove by a genetic research field the other day, next to a big agri business producer of that "safe" mutant food. Don't know if it was the manure or the mutant seeds but the ground had an unearthly glow. It did not look like healthy good earth like we used to have on the farms here.

Basically I am not the stereotype that the GW cult paints skeptics as. I am not an uncaring capitalist big oil ultra right conservative. I am a moderate to slightly right wing conservative, I don't trust any politician on either extreme of the scale. Far left kooks less so. I tried to understand the cult of GW but in all my years of looking at the claims and data I just can't see any real "there" there. I have seen ten year planetary destruction dates come and go with clockwork. Even Mr. Gore has moved his ten year to Armageddon start date so many times he must have it penciled in on a dry erase board by now.

There is one good benefit of the bickering congress is doing about GW. It keeps them from messing with the Second Amendment.

Plus this big ol planet has been adapting for millions of years now. She will adjust if things get too out of balance. I have not read her manual so I don't know her design parameters.

Another thing to consider that implies that this is not a new or short term development. Once upon a time, the Sphinx was now known to be in a green zone that had regular floods. It has a water ring around the base. Now considered to be 2500 years older than it was postulated because of that evidence. The region has been going into desertification ever since. They know it has been growing steadily over the centuries. That to me implies long term global warming (small letters not the cult) that is natural and cyclic in nature. just as a good planet should do.

 

[BUZ]

Buz:

Would you please correct your post so it doesn't look as though I use foul language and to separate your point of view from mine. Thanks.

Josey

Foul language give me a break! If people cannot tell that my answers are in bold text well they need help!

BTW can you post your actual evidence?

 

[Empath]

Re: Global Warming...the true facts.

This is a good topic... worthy of discussion. BUT!... it has the potential to get nasty. Keep it civil guys... attack the post... not the poster... and we'll keep it open. Anyone deliberately trying to get it closed will have their post removed and they will be banned. Yes... that's a warning.

I haven't noted anything I'd call "deliberate" attempts to get it closed, but the philosophy of "attack the post... not the poster" has long been abandoned. The discussion can continue if you like in the Underground. It's closed here.