I think the problem with the uneducated (uninformed) people forming opinions on this is that they don't know what Climate actually is. People think "It was a cold winter, so global warming doesn't exist" or "It's a hot summer, so global warming is real." The whole argument cannot be based on one season. It's looking at 50 years of data and understanding that the Earth's cycles have gone up and down. In the 90's, temps were rising, since 98, average global temps have dropped every year. So, with that data in mind, does global warming exist? No, it doesn't. These arguments are just made based on what has happened in the previous 5-10 years. Please notice how "Global Warming" has changed to "Climate Change".
An informative statement to the US Senate by Dr. William Gray, one of the nation's premier meteorologist and the pioneer of seasonal hurricane forecasting, on the subject of man-made global warming and its relation to the formation and intensity of hurricanes I have had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Gray speak in person, and my stance pretty much falls in line with his. I also hold the belief that the subject is rife with huge political undertones which have corrupted a vast majority of the research and reporting on the subject, but this is not the place for that discussion.
My big thing is how politicized this has become, and that if you are skeptical of some of the claims you are labeled a "denier", like a Holocaust denier. Here is my big thing. Maybe I am just really misanthropic, but I don't give a crap if the ice caps melt and if the world is ruined by global warming. I will be dead, and fuck the people of the future. Humans haven't been on this planet for a long time, and society as we know it for even less time, which in the geological span of the Earth is nothing. We aren't as important as we would like to think we are, and eventually humanity will come to an end, and Earth and other ecosystems go on, animals and plants and insects will rise and fall, and new species will evolve until the Sun gobbles up the Earth. It should be a non issue, perhaps a study of our effect on the planet, but trying to bully countries into economically non-viable and industry killing programs is fucking retarded.
I'm not heavily researched into this so I can't address some of the stuff posted, but I try to keep a grasp of where the issues is at. There are legitimate scientific objections to Anthropogenic GW, but the objectors are the minority of the scientists working in the field. Most climate scientists are convinced by the evidence that global warming is occurring and human activity is a significant factor. In the public it's a politicized issue with a lot of people taking both sides for ideological positions. Green, big business distrusting lefties jumping on the Pro side and righties opposed to any government action on economic issues taking the Anti, neither doing it based on the evidence. A quick test I've found to see if someone is reasonably honest and informed as a skeptic of AGW is whether they cite "no warming over the last 11 years". 11 is a weird number, why 11? Because 1998 is the hottest year on record and the peak of the most recent El Niño/La Niña cycle. Beyond being able to spot an obvious bit of cherry picking that's too common, I just lean on the side of the majority of scientists in that field. They could be wrong, but I think that's less likely than a conspiracy or that the minority are right.
Alt Focus: I'm in Australia at the moment, and I live in rural Melbourne. Usually at this time of year we're getting ready to prepare for bushfires for the comming summer and we should be sweating it out at an average 30 something degrees leading up to Christmas. As it is, we've had one hot day this December and an unusual amount of rain. Seriously. Rain. When we're supposed to be blanketed in smoke from nearby fires. I don't know much about climate change, but this is strange. I can't speak for the rest of the country, and rain is good (and desperately needed), but it'll ruin our Xmas day bbq. I'm not trying to suggest that this is evidence of yes/no to climate change, but I'm just putting it out there. I like the idea of blaming aliens.
China is a newly industrialized country that relies on mostly coal for power. I think they have every right to tell us to eat a dick when we ask them to cut down on carbon emissions. There are about 150 million people in China who are living on less than $1.25 a day. How can we expect them to give a shit about global warming (which is most likely a huge exaggeration, anyway)?
Count me in for the extremely skeptical about man caused global warming group. I just don't think that 30 or 40 years of warming is a long enough period to draw any definitive conclusions from, other than that the Earth is warming. Especially considering that in the 70's it was cold enough to warrant cries of an oncoming ice age. Haven't we been pumping terrible gasses into the atmosphere since the mid 1800's? Why did the effects not occur until the late 1970's? And why did the warming effects suddenly stop in the 2000's without drastic reductions in admissions? Also, the extreme environmentalists seem to use global climate change to reach political and social ends, not well-being of the Earth ends. Fuck them. I'll do my part to destroy this planet out of spite if I have to. I find this list to be indicative of how out of control the scare tactics have gotten. That being said, I think that we need to get away from fossil fuels and use a lot more renewable energy sources in a big fucking hurry. Not because I'm concerned about warming the planet, but because the people we get our oil from are fucking crazy. Any dependence on nations in that part of the world is a bad thing because of how unstable the region can be.
Ben Goldacre had a good column on this subject: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.badscience.net/2009/12/copenhagen-climate-change-blah-blah/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.badscience.net/2009/12/copen ... blah-blah/</a> The links to the refuted arguments are here: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462</a> <a class="postlink" href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/index/#Responses" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... #Responses</a> <a class="postlink" href="http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to_a_sceptic.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2 ... ceptic.php</a> <a class="postlink" href="http://scholarsandrogues.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/anti-global-heating-claims-a-reasonably-thorough-debunking/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://scholarsandrogues.wordpress.com/ ... debunking/</a>
You're using the infamous "exponential growth/hockey stick graph". It has been debunked and shown to be false for several years now. Even the original authors, passionate global warming advocates, have since amended it. But even beyond that, the whole thing violates basic common sense. CO2 production is experiencing exponential growth? That's nonsense. We're actually burning as many or fewer fossil fuels than we ever have in the past century. Energy production was far "dirtier" and less alternative-based during the early 1900s than it is now in industrialized countries like the US, especially with the establishment of the EPA. CO2 production may have indeed gone up in developing countries, but all such measures show it is nowhere close to being exponential in growth. In fact, you know what the greatest increase of CO2 during the 20th century was? From 1945 to 1975. The graph is also nonsense because it doesn't show a decrease in global temperature between 1950 and 1975, which every other graph I've ever seen, even those in support of human-caused global warming, does. That's not even mentioning that correlation does not imply causation, and Henry's Law can explain that result from simple increase of solar radiation. Dude, there was a Time cover story about an impending Ice Age. My parents were in college at the time, and "global cooling" was the dominant academic theory being taught and espoused by atmospheric scientists. Beyond the fact that "New Scientist" has been considered sensationalist garbage for the past 10 years (their January 2009 issue was titled "Darwin was wrong"), I just have a hard time believing that in 15 YEARS, there were a mere 71 ARTICLES ON CLIMATE CHANGE. Does that make any sense to you? Were they just looking at a single magazine publication? In the last 10 years, for instance, there have easily been hundreds, if not a few THOUSAND ARTICLES on climate change. And it was an equally popular subject in the 60s and 70s. As for you asking me for sources, a lot of what I wrote came from being in a room during a private conversation or lecture. The rest is culled from reading English books, Russian books, English websites, and Russian websites. If you feel something is wrong, feel free to challenge it with either arguments or sources. After all, man-caused global warming advocates should be the one who have to prove THEIR position, not the other way around. But I'm not writing a fucking research paper, with citations and notes beside every significant statement. That's ridiculous. This is a message board, not an online science journal. Edit- Another excellent article. Apparently, the head of the UN's council on climate change and the man behind the Copenhagen talks made millions of dollars from carbon trading companies. I, for one, am positively shocked...
Whether the Earth is actually getting hotter or not, wouldn't it be wise to become energy independent regardless? Economically it reduces our trade deficit and reduces transportation and manufacturing costs. Foreign policy wise, it takes all the clout the Middle East once held over the US. Granted the infrastructure would be expensive, but it would more than pay off over time.
But wait a minute guys. If we don't utterly destroy and use up everything we have on Earth, the eggheads at NASA are never going to get off their lazy asses and build those fucking sweet dome houses on the moon. And if everything works out the way we planned, shouldn't the nuclear winter just cancel it out anyway? Joking aside though, anyone care about the actual economics surrounding the issue? Cap-and-trade passed in the House last June and could very likely pass through the Senate and Obama by next year. If it goes through, we have an effective new tax on energy consumption in the U.S. and even more volatility in the energy markets. It will raise energy costs for U.S. businesses, shift more manufacturing business overseas, and raise the cost of living for the average U.S. household. Ben Leiberman estimated that the bill will reduce GDP by an average of $393 billion annually from 2012 to 2035. A cap-and-trade system is kind of like a Monet painting or a girl you meet at a poorly-lit bar - it might look good from afar, but it's a completely different story once you get up close. A cap-and-trade system basically means that the government sets how much carbon may be emitted while the market sorts out who earns the right to produce them. In effect, the market is allocating the scarce right to emit carbon based on its most valued use. Because of its flexibility and market based approach to the problem, cap-and-trade doesn't seem like such a bad idea initially. But a quantity constraint on a product always impacts its price. Depending upon the carbon level set by the government, the price of carbon emissions could skyrocket or plummet, causing significant volatility in energy input prices. And despite the chalkboard examples, supply and demand curves are also not known to policymakers when they establish the initial limits, further compounding price volatility. This additional risk raises energy costs for everyone. A much more tenable solution would be Al Gore's proposal to offset a carbon tax dollar-for-dollar with either an income or payroll tax reduction. Carbon emissions would be reduced and the economy doesn't take a hit as payroll taxes typically do more damage than a carbon tax anyway.
I don't disagree with you that Cap and Trade probably isn't a great idea, but $393 billion figure is pure bullshit. The Heritage Foundation is one of, if not the most, conservative think tank out there. Anything the Democrats and/or Obama does, they call socialism. They openly admit to supporting supply side economics even though everyone, including the guy who came up with it, Laffer, says it doesn't work in practice.
Dude, read the links I posted. If you have any interest in honest debate, the idea that the hockey stick is false and debunked is itself false and debunked. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... key-stick/</a>
I would, except every time I respond to you on a technical level, your reply is nowhere to be found. I listed common sense reasons why the hockey stick graph is nonsense. Surprise surprise, neither you nor your litany of mostly science-free links address any of those. Also, I've read Mann's paper. I've read McIntyre/McKitrick's rebuttal. I've read the rebuttal to that. My conclusion is that the hockey stick graph is based on dishonest/incorrect, and screwed up GCM (global climate model) assumptions. Listen, if you want to debate this issue yourself, that's fine. If you DON'T want to debate it yourself, but simply want to put up links that support these models with actual science, that's fine, too. I'll happily respond to either one. However, it's a complete waste of time when you put up links with no science, which are various forms of "some scientists said so, and that's THAT! We're right, the doubters are wrong!". One can't even respond to these (which is the whole point), because they're so cloak-and-dagger, and never explicitly mention their assumptions, data models, or any actual science. Just another example of how a scientific issue goes from discussing the actual theory to a bunch of he-said, she-said political bullshit.
I'm going to, for an experimental change of pace, try and make this post short. So far all of my professors have been very much in the camp of "Global warming is a real threat to humans and the contemporary ecology of the planet" so up to this point I've been under the impression that the idea was pretty damn solid, and there wasn't much question about it's integrity. However, I'm more than willing to consider opposing arguments. Here's me hashing out the argument in my head as of this moment. Point Against Carbon dioxide, like water, Nitrogen, and most other materials on the planet, exists in various sinks throughout the planet and these sinks are continually giving and taking from each other in equilibrium. It is true that humans are now acting as a new, large, carbon source, and are therefore upsetting this balance, but the Carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere is not static. It does not simply stay up in the atmosphere, instead it joins this cycle, so what you find is not simply a net increase in Carbon in the atmosphere, but a net increase in carbon everywhere and the flow of carbon out of the atmosphere equilibrates with the new flow in, so the net amount of Carbon in the atmosphere at any given time is not greatly changed and instead the amount of Carbon in the atmosphere at any given time depends on the rate of addition, and, should human addition of Carbon Dioxide stop, the levels of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere would return to normal. Counter-point For The fact that it changes at all means that there is a difference, and "not greatly changed" does not mean "not changed". It is true that the sinks of Carbon are in equilibrium with each other, but to assume that the level of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is determined only by the relative rates of exchange assumes that our Carbon source for our emmissions is conservative. If we were burning trees directly from the forest then you'd have a valid point, but we aren't. Our source of Carbon is non-conservative, specifically ancient sequestered Carbon in coal, natural gas, and oil which are all outside of the normal cycle. Oil was a major carbon sink of approximately permanent sequestration for hundreds of millions of years. Bacteria were as yet incapable of breaking down the polysaccharides in cellulose, and because of this dead plant matter never released the Carbon it obtained from the atmosphere. This long-dead vegetable matter became buried oil deposits. Because humans are now burning these oil deposits and releasing the long stored Carbon, we have the potential, if we burn through every oil deposit, of restoring net Carbon dioxide levels to those of pre-plant-life Earth, which was considerably hotter and less hospitable than present-day earth. Counter-point Against This increased Carbon dioxide will be taken up by increased plant growth and increased phytoplankton growth across the earth as the higher levels of Carbon dioxide will facilitate more primary production. The system will equilibrate, and the effects on the atmosphere will be dampened. Also the Carbon dioxide levels wouldn't reach those of pre-plant-life Earth, since we have plants, so the environment would not be the same. Counter-point For All right, the total Carbon in the cycle would be that of pre-plant-life earth, and the presence of plants would act as a sink, but the resulting environment would still be drastically different from what we have now by the sheer volume of those deposits. However, the amount of primary producers in our ecosystem would not be able to increase to meet the needs of such a new carbon load to keep Carbon in plant matter. The idea of increased Carbon dioxide being taken up by existing plants would be true if plants and phytoplankton were limited in growth by lack of Carbon, unfortunately innumerable studies show that plants are limited mainly by water, and phytoplankton is limited by Nitrogen in the ocean, and Phosphorous in freshwater. Carbon is already a ubiquitous resource to both primary producers and the fertilization effect of Carbon increases is extremely small. However you are right that increasing inflow into the atmosphere will result in increasing outflow into other sinks of the planet. One major sink, "major" meaning "half the Carbon dioxide we pump into the atmosphere goes here instead" is the ocean. One major side effect of this increasing Carbon dioxide in the ocean is the increasing acidification of the ocean by the subsequent increase in carbonic acid, bicabonate, and carbonate that result from dissolution of Carbon dioxide into the ocean. It is also far easier for the gas to dissolve into solution than for it to be removed, especially once it has become carbonic acid or either of the other two derivatives. The increase in ocean acidity is especially alarming because it increases the maximum amount of calcium carbonate that can be dissolved in solution. In other words, calcium carbonate, the building block of marine organism bones, coral, and plankton and invertebrate shells becomes harder to pull out of the water, and in some cases causes the animal material to dissolve back into the water. The single largest extinction event in the history of this planet, the Permian-Triassic extinction event, which resulted in over 90% of all species going extinct, is theorized to have resulted from climate change and ocean acidification, among other factors. Ocean acidification is therefore quite possibly a far more serious concern to life as we know it than just the atmospheric effects of increased Carbon dioxide. These are my thoughts as of this second. Well, I tried to make it short.
I'd really love to know what your scientific background is. I bet you anything you haven't read the actual "research article" by Mann (and I use that term very loosely) and subsequent rebuttal at all. I think this is the case because outside of the media, virtually no one, not even most of the atmospheric scientists supporting man-caused global warming, believe in such absurd exponential growth, or even think it's possible. In science, it's seen as absurd as someone telling you, in full seriousness, that it will rain 300 days in a row in Los Angeles. It's completely out of the realm of anything observed in atmospheric science, and supported by HORRIBLE math and disproven, contrived data sets. The hockey puck graph is on the same level as intelligent design. And there's nothing to "accept"; I've read both sides of this question, and made up my mind. You more than likely haven't. Well, either that or Mann is your research adviser. One of the two. The UN rejecting the graph, and Mann HIMSELF "amending" it should clue one in on its fundamental absurdity. What are you talking about? I'm noting that the increase in CO2 has slowed down a lot in the last 30-35 years, so if we accept that increased CO2 levels are responsible for the global warming of the past 30 years, what the hell happened in 1950-1975, when the Earth cooled far more than anyone predicted? And why is it a more considerable effect in the past 30 years when the rate of increase of CO2 is smaller? And you don't even address all the other gaping holes in that graph that I noted, such as the lack of cooling for that twenty five year period after WW2. You should have read a few paragraphs further down in the Wikipedia entry, dude. Henry's Law is directly proportional to the heat, and (this is what I wrote incorrectly in my first post, and no one called me out on) the absorbance of CO2 by the ocean decreases when temperature goes up. In other words, when solar radiation increases, the Earth becomes warmer, as well as the oceans absorbing less CO2. Thus, there is more CO2 in the atmosphere. Thus, one gets a positive correlation between CO2 and mean global temperature, even though one didn't cause the other, they were both the result of greater solar radiation. The part in bold was my entire point, and the main reason why the 70's Global Cooling Theory is brought up. Because it WAS the popular consensus then, just like Global Warming is the popular consensus now. And in both cases, I certainly agree that it doesn't mean shit. You're absolutely welcome to not believe, question, or attempt to verify anything I've written. That doesn't change what or how I got that information. Besides which, talking to professors is a great way to learn more about a scientific topic.