Is global warming all that bad?

[Magis]

I have ceased awarding gold stickers, but I do give you +i points on your next lab grade for effort.

By the way, "MT" in this case is probably "metric tonnes", not "megatonnes".

According to Lord Wiki, carbon dioxide emissions per capita in the United States are 19.1 metric tonnes per year. Therefore, the mass of carbon alone is 0.27 metric tonnes per capita per year.

Cheers.

No, that's wrong. Because carbon makes up 12/(12+16+16) ~= 27% of a carbon dioxide molecule by mass- burn 270 kg of carbon and get one (metric) ton of CO2. So the 'mass of carbon alone' ought to be more like, oh... five tons of carbon per capita per year, though that's an eyeball number.

Yes. Somehow I forgot to multiply the fraction of C:CO2 (27%) by the base amount of 19.1 tonnes.

[BlackAdder]

Wow, I can see I missed quite a bit.

Seeing as this has turned into a debate about manmade global warming, which for those who clearly didn't read what I wrote, is not the subject of the thread, I am going to rephrase my idea.

We can all agree(probably) that the climate is changing.
Now, it is either going to get warmer on average, or colder on average. I am asking, Which Is Worse?
(The idea behind the title was that I was hoping someone would come to a similar conclusion, but...)
I'm not saying it will be better than how the climate is now. I'm putting the idea forward that it wouldn't be as bad as the alternatives.

[PeZook]

Wow, I can see I missed quite a bit.

Seeing as this has turned into a debate about manmade global warming, which for those who clearly didn't read what I wrote, is not the subject of the thread, I am going to rephrase my idea.

If it actually turns into a debate, rather than a drive-by post by some guy who can't be bothered to argue his point, I will split out the relevant posts.

But I'm not holding my breath

[Napoleon the Clown]

Wow, I can see I missed quite a bit.

Seeing as this has turned into a debate about manmade global warming, which for those who clearly didn't read what I wrote, is not the subject of the thread, I am going to rephrase my idea.

We can all agree(probably) that the climate is changing.
Now, it is either going to get warmer on average, or colder on average. I am asking, Which Is Worse?
(The idea behind the title was that I was hoping someone would come to a similar conclusion, but...)
I'm not saying it will be better than how the climate is now. I'm putting the idea forward that it wouldn't be as bad as the alternatives.

Any rapid climate change is harmful. Do you like having grains? Merry Christmas, we now have to import all of our wheat because the places that grew it before are no longer able to grow that particular crop at a rate close to sufficient for demand. Like grapes and the stuff made from them? California won't be supplying that anymore, it doesn't offer the right climate.

Like fish? Congrats, the oceans have been buggered up too fast for them to adapt and they're too close to extinct. You're now paying even more for anything related to creatures that come from the sea.

And so on...


As to which direction is worse: To what degree are we talking? Ice caps melting is what causes all the problems with the oceans. Either will change weather patterns. Warming will be more prone to running out of control in a hurry, since there's stuff trapped in perma-frost and ice that is really good at the greenhouse effect.

[madd0ct0r]

As to which direction is worse: To what degree are we talking? Ice caps melting is what causes all the problems with the oceans. Either will change weather patterns. Warming will be more prone to running out of control in a hurry, since there's stuff trapped in perma-frost and ice that is really good at the greenhouse effect.

There's quite a few feedback effects that run the other way too, reducing albedo being the most obvious. It's not for nothing we were scared about 'snowball earth' a few decades ago. In fact, I'm pretty sure we're meant to be entering a period of global cooling. Irony cuts both ways here. I'd also note the arctic seas are actually more productive then the equator ones.

As Blackadder (being based in the UK) cooling IS probably worse then rising temps. which is his point. If we imagine 'bands of climates' running around the earth, the UK is a lot more threatened by the 'tundra' one moving downwards then the Mediterranean one moving up. The rest of the world? Who cares, I'm british.
It's not like I need to import my food or rely on other countries to supply resources or expertise. not at all.

[Eagle1Division]

Wow, I can see I missed quite a bit.

Seeing as this has turned into a debate about manmade global warming, which for those who clearly didn't read what I wrote, is not the subject of the thread, I am going to rephrase my idea.

If it actually turns into a debate, rather than a drive-by post by some guy who can't be bothered to argue his point, I will split out the relevant posts.

But I'm not holding my breath

I've been rather sick these last few days and getting online and fighting an uphill battle like this isn't really something I look forward to under such conditions.

I've gotten in enough debates about this before. I'm really not interested in another. There's a million and one organizations out there selling global warming, so a single google search will get you tens of hits. But I'm left in a position where I'd be forced to do my own research, and I'm not so arrogant to say I'm a climatologist, so it's a very difficult position to defend.

But here's the reasons I hold it: Climate scientists make big bucks for it, it's a very popular way for politicians to get votes and become popular, it's essentially a Hollywood religion, it's sometimes another part of naturist/mother-earth worship (I don't even want to start on how we're not drilling Alaska) and time and time again they've been shown to fudge their data, that part hasn't even been refuted.

Ok. but you need to give me some numbers to use. Discrediting the source is all well and good but where is your data to show that things are not happening? Or if CO2 is going up it doesn't affect anything because of XYZ compensation cycles?

Just saying 'their numbers are fudged' is not a counter observation. I need your numbers to compare the difference in effects. Just saying 'their models are flawed' does not show your prediction is more valid.

True, it doesn't show my position is valid, what it does show is some serious discredibility among the opposing position, in other words, it seriously damages the validity of your position.

The wall we come up against is that neither of us are climate scientists. I've played around with some simple homeostasis models, but as you said, the earth's climate is hugely complex and all that can really be done is build a model and compare it's predictions to observations.

Which is another reason it took me so long to reply. That darn wall.

You may not believe it, but engineering is as much assumption and modeling as climates. Take three engineers and you'll have four opinions. But I've not heard anyone claiming we're shills for the construction industry recently.

In Engineering you're building the thing. You know it inside and out, you're designing it. I'm sure you know a lot about engineering, I realize a lot more than I do, but I doubt it's as much assumption as climate modeling. We've built vehicles with over 2,000,000 moving parts that orbit the Earth (or, in a few days, did, sadly), so even as a layman I get the impression we do know a fair bit about engineering. Maybe there's a lot of different opinions over what the best orbital vehicle would be, or how the dynamics work out, but the fact is we can build and test it to find out.
But we haven't built an ecosystem, or a climate. All we can do is look and measure, and build models which seem to match observation. That's very, very different from when you can actually build the thing you're studying.

You know a lot more about engineering than I do, but to make that claim with unquestionable authority, you'd need to know about both fields to really compare them, and come from an objective position. No offense, but you probably haven't spent the same number of years studying climate science.

I could also mention that there are significant institutions and corporations in place that require widespread fossil fuel use to survive. Shell as an example. Much like the the university phd could be biased because he needs funding, don't these behemoths have their own research departments? What are the results coming out of them?

What would it take for you to trust a climate scientist?

Those are some good questions I'd like to take a look at. What results are coming out of their research departments, assuming they have them?

All this said, though, I'd like to continue to highlight that I don't really deny global warming. What I doubt is that humans have such a major impact, and the huge reactions that people are demanding to prevent it are necessary, and would even effect it significantly. What I've heard is that college professors, yes, even climatologists who teach, understand that it's just scam, and they say the Earth follows patterns and what we're experiencing, assuming the data's not being fudged in the first place, is just part of the natural cycle that has little to do with human presence. We're still coming out of a miniature ice age that peaked some time in the middle ages (not ice age so much as "cool period"), IIRC. So we can only expect that the Earth would be getting warmer as part of the natural process that's been happening for millions of years and will continue to happen for millions of years.
What I so dislike is the drastic measures people want to take in response to this that would utterly cripple, and have already damaged, our economy, since we're probably not the cause of it anyways. (A fine example is the rolling blackouts in California, and California's grid-negative power consumption where they buy power from other states. The reason? Environmental politics.)

What's more, is that I'm not stubbornly opposed to being green or green energy. I hate how all kinds of trash and tires somehow wind up so far into the woods, here in Alabama. And I'm totally for green power, whenever it's not rediculously un-economic (i.e. windfarms).
I would like to see continued research in solar, what particularly gets my curiosity is why they're not focused on IR or UV wavelengths that penetrate cloud cover. (Hmm. I do know the Ozone layer blocks some-odd 99% of UV light, though.)

[BlackAdder]

Before industrialization, the global climate was in equilibrium. During industrialization, we dump a whole bunch of sequestered carbon back into the climate. Now the climate is headed toward a new equilibrium. *sigh* Is it really so hard to understand?

If we didn't have billionaires with all their money sunk into Big Oil and Big Lobbying, it wouldn't be. I'm wondering how many shares of BP Bladder is holding onto, because the only people who argue this hard (and stupidly) against Climate Change tend to have a financial dog in the fight.

I know someone already said this, but I'm going to repeat it anyway. Oil does not equal evil. If we stopped using oil, there'd be chaos, as we're so dependent on it. Also, we have no realistic alternative at the moment, do we? Windfarms are pointless (and are also argued against for being an eyesore[of all things]), nuclear is almost as bad as oil as far as some are concerned, and solar isn't used widely enough and isn't as efficient. Geothermal energy might work, but you never hear about it much for some reason.

Also, I'm not a climatologist, but if I had come out with "hi, I'm a climatologist and I say this and that", not one person would have believed me, so. Plus, you could argue(and again someone's said this) that most promoters of manmade warming would have a financial intrest in doing so, and so are just as suspect as those who are "sunk into Big Oil".

[madd0ct0r]

Also, I'm not a climatologist, but if I had come out with "hi, I'm a climatologist and I say this and that", not one person would have believed me, so. Plus, you could argue(and again someone's said this) that most promoters of manmade warming would have a financial intrest in doing so, and so are just as suspect as those who are "sunk into Big Oil".

If you'd come out and said that we'd have tested your knowledge of related subjects. there's plenty of scientists on this board.
So. I've been ignoring E1D's claims of fudged data since neither of us are remotely equipped to argue about them. Likewise Blackadder makes a reasonable point that claims of financial base bias could be pointed both ways. Additionally, there will be people on both sides who hold their position despite it costing them. people are like that.

The world must take action to halve CO2 emissions by 2050 in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change. This action needs to be reconciled with a rising population and economic growth, which together will result in energy demand doubling by 2050. Energy underpins the way we live today and supports the hope of a better future for many. Shell stands in the front line of the challenge to supply more energy in a way that recognises the need to reduce CO2 emissions.

Rising greenhouse-gas emissions pose significant risks to society and ecosystems. Since most of these emissions are energy-related, any integrated approach to meeting the world’s growing energy needs over the coming decades must incorporate strategies to address the risk of climate change. This section provides an overview of recent findings, with a focus on studies of international policy aimed at controlling long-term climate risks. Implementing climate policies such as these would have a dramatic effect on energy investment – and energy costs – over the coming decades.

In 2002, ExxonMobil made a long-term research commitment by becoming a founding sponsor of the Global Climate and Energy Project1 (GCEP) at Stanford University in California. We have since contributed more than half of our $100 million commitment to the program. This pioneering research program is focused on identifying breakthrough energy technologies that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions2 and that could be developed on a large scale within a 10- to 50-year time frame. GCEP has sponsored more than 66 research programs at 27 institutions in Australia, Europe, Japan, and the United States.

that took less then 120 seconds.

[Simon_Jester]

I know someone already said this, but I'm going to repeat it anyway. Oil does not equal evil. If we stopped using oil, there'd be chaos, as we're so dependent on it. Also, we have no realistic alternative at the moment, do we? Windfarms are pointless (and are also argued against for being an eyesore[of all things]), nuclear is almost as bad as oil as far as some are concerned, and solar isn't used widely enough and isn't as efficient. Geothermal energy might work, but you never hear about it much for some reason.

Windfarms are not pointless; solar isn't used widely because it's more expensive than oil or coal now- which doesn't mean it can't be scaled up.

One problem is that if we sit here doing nothing about our dependency on oil we're fucked regardless because we are rapidly approaching peak oil if we're not already there. When (not if, when) the supply starts to contract, price goes up very fast because of the way markets work- when a commodity is scarce and demand exceeds supply, you get bidding wars that escalate until the lowest bidders are priced out of the market; that's just common sense.

Which means sharp increases in the price of oil, that can only be temporarily and partially fixed, because the basic problem (shrinking supply) will not go away. Every one of those sharp increases has the potential to touch off an economic crisis and reshape the world economy in chaotic and nasty ways. It's something a sensible person would want their civilization to brace itself for ahead of time, the way a man might brace for any other kind of trouble he could see coming.

Common sense tells us that we ought to be emphasizing fuel economy, designing cities with an eye to minimizing the amount of hydrocarbon fuel consumed in moving about the area, and pushing research into alternatives that reduce our dependency so that when (again, not if, when) oil prices spike and don't come back down, we're prepared.

At the same time, we're not in such danger of hitting peak coal, so that at least wouldn't be a looming crisis... if only global warming weren't a scientific fact nailed down by numerous lines of investigation around the world including bloody obvious ones like "take a bloody picture of the north polar icecap in summer and watch it rot out over time."

But it is, and we have to deal with that. Again, it's common sense to brace yourself for a crisis any fool can see coming.

Also, I'm not a climatologist, but if I had come out with "hi, I'm a climatologist and I say this and that", not one person would have believed me, so.

Yeah, because it would be a lot like you coming out with "hi, I'm an astronomer and I say the Sun orbits the Earth." You'd be going against so many people we know are specialists in the field that your ability to say it with a straight face would hurt your credibility.

Plus, you could argue(and again someone's said this) that most promoters of manmade warming would have a financial intrest in doing so, and so are just as suspect as those who are "sunk into Big Oil".

You could, but would you be talking nonsense? I'd love to see a citation of it- who in this world has anywhere near the financial stake in non-fossil fuel that the oil and coal industries do in muddying the waters about the issue?

Global warming started as science decades ago, when a lot of this was a non-issue; people have been looking at this since Arrhenius, in 1895, for crying out loud. He got a lot of stuff wrong back in the day, but he was seriously investigating this, well over half a century before anyone even began trying to build large-scale solar power, or wind power, or before fuel conservation was on the table.

Who could possibly invent such a massive, complex, interlocking array of scientific observations and results? Where are the conspirators who have this kind of resources, and what do they get out of it?

[PeZook]

I've been rather sick these last few days and getting online and fighting an uphill battle like this isn't really something I look forward to under such conditions.

I've gotten in enough debates about this before. I'm really not interested in another. There's a million and one organizations out there selling global warming, so a single google search will get you tens of hits. But I'm left in a position where I'd be forced to do my own research, and I'm not so arrogant to say I'm a climatologist, so it's a very difficult position to defend.

Look, if you make a contentious claim here, and people challenge it, it is demanded by board rules that you either present evidence for your opinion, or shut up and concede.

madd0ct0r has presented calculations that showed the proportion of human-emitted CO2 is significant: all you ever did to counter this point was to babble that the IEA is biased and is thus not a good data source because golly gee whiz they might have a finacial incentive in selling man-made global warming!

That's not good enough. I could poke holes and accuse any institution of bias - what counts is their actual integrity, not possible financial incentives. Mealy-mouthed bullshit about not really being interested in debate will also not fly here. You do not have to argue the entire board, I will make sure of that, but you're not getting out of it by saying that man, this shit is hard and you will have to do research. If it takes you a week to compose an answer, fine. But I want it to have some actual quality that befits this board.

It's especially grating if you cliam you're not interested in debate, and then drop this gem:

But here's the reasons I hold it: Climate scientists make big bucks for it, it's a very popular way for politicians to get votes and become popular, it's essentially a Hollywood religion, it's sometimes another part of naturist/mother-earth worship (I don't even want to start on how we're not drilling Alaska) and time and time again they've been shown to fudge their data, that part hasn't even been refuted.

LOL I'm not really debating, but I'm gonna have the last word anyways, with more unsubstantiated bullshit!

True, it doesn't show my position is valid, what it does show is some serious discredibility among the opposing position, in other words, it seriously damages the validity of your position.

That's not good enough to be able to say "global warming is not man made", as you asserted in no uncertain terms in your opening post, and which was the point under challenge.

All this said, though, I'd like to continue to highlight that I don't really deny global warming. What I doubt is that humans have such a major impact, and the huge reactions that people are demanding to prevent it are necessary, and would even effect it significantly. What I've heard is that college professors, yes, even climatologists who teach, understand that it's just scam, and they say the Earth follows patterns and what we're experiencing, assuming the data's not being fudged in the first place, is just part of the natural cycle that has little to do with human presence. We're still coming out of a miniature ice age that peaked some time in the middle ages (not ice age so much as "cool period"), IIRC. So we can only expect that the Earth would be getting warmer as part of the natural process that's been happening for millions of years and will continue to happen for millions of years.

Oh no you don't. You don't get to say "some climinatologists say..."

Present evidence, links to scientific papers or at least some fucking names. You claim to hold a rational position: if that's so, then argue rationally. If you're not an expert, then presumably you refer to expert sources for your opinions. Cite them.

Your claim that data was probably fudged went unrefuted because there was nothing to refute: you said there was proof in the form of hacked e-mails, yet you did not actually present any proof.

I could say space alien lizards live on the Moon and NASA covered it up, too, and say some astronomers agree with me, and it would hold about as much water.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Ok, I for one want to stay out of this debate... I am no good at "facts and figures" and try not to do debates, but I have ONE question.

How the hell do "Climate scientists make Big bucks" ?
Is this simply an assertion that they are being paid by "special interests" to fudge global warming? Would they not make MORE money by fudging numbers in Favor of big oil and big polluters? What money is there in trying to cut down on such things?

It is like those groups that claim that Abortion is some sort of huge multi billion dollar industry, and go on about "Big Abortion" and the "Abortion Lobby" when in fact most abortion clinics barely get by on donations from private groups and make little to no actual profits.

Is there one shred of proof that Climate scientists make "Big Money" or is just another attempt to paint them and their findings as contemptible and without merit?

[madd0ct0r]

Well, the larger environmental charities could count - Greenpeace, FOE ect
They're certainly large enough (although pretty small compared to the oil companies), are very effective at lobbying and have been known to react more hysterically then scientifically in other cases (nuclear power).

There's also the various institutions (branches of the UN, branches of the IEA, branches of Exxon Mobil (hang on..) that are dependent on the study of the climate for continued finance.
Right the way down to the lowly phd student, the continuation of tenure can depend on results.
But why the hell am I doing E1D's homework for him?

But yes, you're right.
IF man made global warming is all a scam and IF the oil companies weren't helping THEN a scientist might earn more working for OilCorp then for a university.
Since the oil companies are ALSO funding climate labs that are finding similar results, then one of the assumptions above isn't true. Either the oil corps think there is more profit in global warming propaganda then business as usual, or man made global warming is fact.

[BlackAdder]

I know someone already said this, but I'm going to repeat it anyway. Oil does not equal evil. If we stopped using oil, there'd be chaos, as we're so dependent on it. Also, we have no realistic alternative at the moment, do we? Windfarms are pointless (and are also argued against for being an eyesore[of all things]), nuclear is almost as bad as oil as far as some are concerned, and solar isn't used widely enough and isn't as efficient. Geothermal energy might work, but you never hear about it much for some reason.

Windfarms are not pointless; solar isn't used widely because it's more expensive than oil or coal now- which doesn't mean it can't be scaled up.

Windfarms are basically guillotines for birds - many environmentalists already hate them for that reason. They are too expensive in relation to the small amount of electricity they produce, and we'd need to cover most of Britain with them in order to actually get anything done.

One problem is that if we sit here doing nothing about our dependency on oil we're fucked regardless because we are rapidly approaching peak oil if we're not already there. When (not if, when) the supply starts to contract, price goes up very fast because of the way markets work- when a commodity is scarce and demand exceeds supply, you get bidding wars that escalate until the lowest bidders are priced out of the market; that's just common sense.

Our dependency is so massive that we'd probably need Sufficiently Advanced Aliens to step in at this rate. My point still stands, we don't have an alternative to oil at the moment that will actually work.

At the same time, we're not in such danger of hitting peak coal, so that at least wouldn't be a looming crisis... if only global warming weren't a scientific fact nailed down by numerous lines of investigation around the world including bloody obvious ones like "take a bloody picture of the north polar icecap in summer and watch it rot out over time."

How is dependency on coal any better than dependency on oil? They're both going to run out sooner or later, and all that'll do is:
a) Put off the inevitable fuel shortage
b) Cause a lot of pollution and damage the environment further.
Also, as regards the ice caps, there is this thing called an Ice Age that shows up every now and then and in between Ice Ages sea levels tend to rise and the ice caps shrink. And 90% of the world's ice and 70% of the world's fresh water is in Antartica anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica

But it is, and we have to deal with that. Again, it's common sense to brace yourself for a crisis any fool can see coming.

Also, I'm not a climatologist, but if I had come out with "hi, I'm a climatologist and I say this and that", not one person would have believed me, so.

Yeah, because it would be a lot like you coming out with "hi, I'm an astronomer and I say the Sun orbits the Earth." You'd be going against so many people we know are specialists in the field that your ability to say it with a straight face would hurt your credibility.

Yes, but no matter what Al Gore and Co. say, there isn't a scientific consensus on this. Not every scientist agrees, and those that don't are labelled "deniers" and are ousted for "questioning" it.

Plus, you could argue(and again someone's said this) that most promoters of manmade warming would have a financial intrest in doing so, and so are just as suspect as those who are "sunk into Big Oil".

You could, but would you be talking nonsense? I'd love to see a citation of it- who in this world has anywhere near the financial stake in non-fossil fuel that the oil and coal industries do in muddying the waters about the issue?

Global warming started as science decades ago, when a lot of this was a non-issue; people have been looking at this since Arrhenius, in 1895, for crying out loud. He got a lot of stuff wrong back in the day, but he was seriously investigating this, well over half a century before anyone even began trying to build large-scale solar power, or wind power, or before fuel conservation was on the table.

Who could possibly invent such a massive, complex, interlocking array of scientific observations and results? Where are the conspirators who have this kind of resources, and what do they get out of it?

Al Gore? He made millions from his movie, and the backbone of it, the Hockey Stick, has been proven to be completely inaccurate.

[Simon_Jester]

Windfarms are basically guillotines for birds - many environmentalists already hate them for that reason. They are too expensive in relation to the small amount of electricity they produce, and we'd need to cover most of Britain with them in order to actually get anything done.

This does not make them pointless- it makes them a bad idea in certain specific times and places. There is no such thing as a cost-free source of energy.

It is always a matter of balancing cost against payoff. The costs of coal and oil are much higher than they appear, because of pollution, including CO2 pollution. And because of the long-term consequences of running out of the stuff.

This makes it sensible to look for other sources of energy, first to replace some coal and oil, then ultimately to replace more and more of it as the economic costs of the stuff increase further.

I don't see why you have such a problem with this.

One problem is that if we sit here doing nothing about our dependency on oil we're fucked regardless because we are rapidly approaching peak oil if we're not already there. When (not if, when) the supply starts to contract, price goes up very fast because of the way markets work- when a commodity is scarce and demand exceeds supply, you get bidding wars that escalate until the lowest bidders are priced out of the market; that's just common sense.

Our dependency is so massive that we'd probably need Sufficiently Advanced Aliens to step in at this rate. My point still stands, we don't have an alternative to oil at the moment that will actually work.

So, what, we're supposed to just sit around with our thumbs up our asses until the price of oil hits five hundred dollars a barrel or something similarly ridiculous?

I mean, from the sound of it you're saying "oh no, the problem is hard, we might not be able to solve it with a single silver bullet solution! Therefore, anything that tells us we need to worry about the consequences of burning fuel must be a big lie!"

Bullshit.

How is dependency on coal any better than dependency on oil? They're both going to run out sooner or later, and all that'll do is:
a) Put off the inevitable fuel shortage
b) Cause a lot of pollution and damage the environment further.
Also, as regards the ice caps, there is this thing called an Ice Age that shows up every now and then and in between Ice Ages sea levels tend to rise and the ice caps shrink. And 90% of the world's ice and 70% of the world's fresh water is in Antartica anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica

So what? In case you didn't notice the lack of you being crushed flat by a huge glacier, the last Ice Age ended ten thousand years ago. A sudden burst of extra warming-up, accompanied by the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere going up by a factor of two or so, is not normal.

Yes, but no matter what Al Gore and Co. say, there isn't a scientific consensus on this. Not every scientist agrees, and those that don't are labelled "deniers" and are ousted for "questioning" it.

Bullshit.

Show me the numbers. Come on. Show me. Show me the large numbers of otherwise credible, published, competent scientists who think, based on professional judgment and study of the data, that global warming is a hoax. Where are they?

No, all you're going to do is say that Al Gore is making it all up because he's a meanie, and that carefully unspecified scientists are ousted from carefully unspecified positions by carefully unspecified people for disagreeing.

Exactly what percentage of the scientific community are you talking about here? Half? A quarter? A tenth?

What if it's more like 1%? Does that mean that the people who don't acknowledge global warming are being persecuted, or does it just mean they're full of shit, the way they would be if they said the Sun orbits the Earth?

Al Gore? He made millions from his movie, and the backbone of it, the Hockey Stick, has been proven to be completely inaccurate.

And yet there was a scientific consensus on this issue long before Al Gore became a global warming activist. If you tell me Al Gore invented global warming, I'm going to fucking laugh. He didn't play any more role in discovering and revealing global warming than he did in inventing the Internet. Indeed, he probably deserves more of the credit for 'inventing' the Internet (damned little) than he does for global warming; all he did on the issue of global warming is tell people what the scientifically literate world already knew.

The fact that you name Gore as Head Conspirator in the Cabal of Global Warming reveals that you have no interest in the facts of the case. You're simply grabbing the only name you've ever heard of connected to the problem, and declaring that he must have invented it. Because surely, it can't be right- where would we be then if it were true? It must be a lie, in which case it must have been made up by... oh, I know! The guy who made a movie about it!

It's not like he might actually be trying to tell you an inconvenient truth. That would be so... inconvenient.

As to the 'hockey stick,' this is bigger than one graph. This is the fucking Northwest Passage- ever heard of that? You know how explorers kept looking for it and finding walls of pack ice, or freezing to death in the attempt to sail around the north end of North America? On account of it's permanently icebound and has been for centuries, since the time of Hudson?

Well now it isn't. The Northwest Passage is open for business in the summer these past few years.

So you can take your hockey stick graph and your carefully assembled argument for why it can't be right, and shove it. Look at the damn Northwest Passage. Look at the north polar cap in general. Look at the snowpacks on mountains all over the world, that used to be permanently snowbound and now are not. Look at the measured levels of CO2 in the atmosphere over the past century. Use your damn eyes. Don't just sit on your ass dreaming up bullshit reasons why everyone who actually bothered to get a degree in this stuff is lying to you.

Do you think that cigarettes causing cancer is all a hoax too?

[BlackAdder]

How is dependency on coal any better than dependency on oil? They're both going to run out sooner or later, and all that'll do is:
a) Put off the inevitable fuel shortage
b) Cause a lot of pollution and damage the environment further.
Also, as regards the ice caps, there is this thing called an Ice Age that shows up every now and then and in between Ice Ages sea levels tend to rise and the ice caps shrink. And 90% of the world's ice and 70% of the world's fresh water is in Antartica anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica

So what? In case you didn't notice the lack of you being crushed flat by a huge glacier, the last Ice Age ended ten thousand years ago. A sudden burst of extra warming-up, accompanied by the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere going up by a factor of two or so, is not normal.

Firstly, we don't actually know if this is unnatural or not. This burst of extra warming up just happens to coincide with the collapse of the USSR, I note. Anyway we don't know what is normal for an interglacial period.

So, what, we're supposed to just sit around with our thumbs up our asses until the price of oil hits five hundred dollars a barrel or something similarly ridiculous?

I mean, from the sound of it you're saying "oh no, the problem is hard, we might not be able to solve it with a single silver bullet solution! Therefore, anything that tells us we need to worry about the consequences of burning fuel must be a big lie!"

Bullshit.

No, but we need to look for other solutions beyond the three main Green ideas. Nuclear, for one, which is actually very environmentally sound but is spat upon because of the two or three recorded incidents involving a nuclear reactor. Also, for some reason no-one has come up with the idea of reforestation, which would help to solve a lot of problems.

Al Gore? He made millions from his movie, and the backbone of it, the Hockey Stick, has been proven to be completely inaccurate.

And yet there was a scientific consensus on this issue long before Al Gore became a global warming activist. If you tell me Al Gore invented global warming, I'm going to fucking laugh. He didn't play any more role in discovering and revealing global warming than he did in inventing the Internet. Indeed, he probably deserves more of the credit for 'inventing' the Internet (damned little) than he does for global warming; all he did on the issue of global warming is tell people what the scientifically literate world already knew.

The fact that you name Gore as Head Conspirator in the Cabal of Global Warming reveals that you have no interest in the facts of the case. You're simply grabbing the only name you've ever heard of connected to the problem, and declaring that he must have invented it. Because surely, it can't be right- where would we be then if it were true? It must be a lie, in which case it must have been made up by... oh, I know! The guy who made a movie about it!

It's not like he might actually be trying to tell you an inconvenient truth. That would be so... inconvenient.

You mean the guy who turned a theory into a full-fledged panic scenario? Nope, completely innocent. Also, I didn't say he invented it. I just said that he made money out of it. And I'm sure that there was a scientific "consensus" for global warming when everybody was trying to avoid a "snowball Earth" event - arguably much worse and the complete opposite of what is now being said.

As to the 'hockey stick,' this is bigger than one graph. This is the fucking Northwest Passage- ever heard of that? You know how explorers kept looking for it and finding walls of pack ice, or freezing to death in the attempt to sail around the north end of North America? On account of it's permanently icebound and has been for centuries, since the time of Hudson

The Northwest Passage I've addressed above. IIRC, Inconvinient Truth was based on that graph. Plus, centuries is pretty insignificant in climate and geological terms.

Your subtle-as-a-brick attempts to justify it by comparing it to other,proven things looks pretty desperate from where I am.

[Simon_Jester]

Firstly, we don't actually know if this is unnatural or not. This burst of extra warming up just happens to coincide with the collapse of the USSR, I note. Anyway we don't know what is normal for an interglacial period.

No, it doesn't coincide with the collapse of the USSR. It coincides with a smooth upward curve in the amount of shit we've been setting on fire for the past two hundred years. You only just noticed it after the collapse of the USSR, but that's because you're a damn fool who isn't paying attention. People who pay attention knew about it at a time when everyone expected the USSR to last much, much longer.

No, but we need to look for other solutions beyond the three main Green ideas. Nuclear, for one, which is actually very environmentally sound but is spat upon because of the two or three recorded incidents involving a nuclear reactor. Also, for some reason no-one has come up with the idea of reforestation, which would help to solve a lot of problems.

You seem to have this mental model of a solid bloc of Greens who always want the same short list of things. Reality isn't like that. Not every person who thinks global warming is a problem matches your idea of what a "Green" is. If you gathered the SDN forum membership together in one place you could throw a rock and it'd bounce off three people who want to solve global warming with nuclear power before it hit the ground.

Global warming is not something "Greens" made up. It is a scientific fact. The nature of the problem is well-established. Solving it, or at least limiting the damage, requires us to do well understood things like not set so much stuff on fire. How we get by with setting less stuff on fire is something we can look at in many ways, with many potential solutions. But it's unrelated to the question of whether global warming is real, or whether it's a bad thing.

It's just too bad that at this point we can't avoid the problem without suffering major inconveniences, because we ignored it too long. People have been talking about this for a long time; you just didn't notice, and now all the solutions are more drastic than they would have been back in 1990. I mean, I for one think reforestation sounds great... but why the fuck are you willing to spring for ten million square miles of land to replant the trees on, when you're not willing to agree to a carbon tax?

Moreover, I don't get how you keep arguing from consequences- artificial global warming must be a myth because what if it wasn't? Then we'd have to quit burning so much oil! Unacceptable! Or we'd have to build nuclear power plants and we all know Greens hate that! So it must be a myth!

Take a step back. Does that kind of argument make any damn sense?

You mean the guy who turned a theory into a full-fledged panic scenario? Nope, completely innocent.

What panic? Nobody's panicking. People think it's a problem we'd better do something about. But I don't see screaming hordes waving torches and demanding we stop burning fuel. Do you? It's no more a "full-fledged panic scenario" than, say, earthquake planning in California.

One thing I don't get: why do you fixate on this one movie as if it was the be-all and end-all of global warming?

People were worrying about global warming long before that movie came out; the movie didn't really change much except to take an issue the scientifically literate public was already aware of and publicize it. Some of that information had bugs in it. The rest is still there and still adds up to the same conclusion- my finding one error in your math does not mean two plus two has suddenly stopped adding up to four.

And even if you could prove that An Inconvenient Truth was a pure hack job, it wouldn't prove a damn thing about global warming. Al Gore is not some evil overlord that you can just defeat and have global warming suddenly go away. He's just a guy; he has no more power over the forces of nature than anyone else. The only difference is that he manned up and said "yeah, this is gonna be a problem" when a lot of other people were trying to pretend there wasn't a problem. Even if he outright made up every thing in that movie, it wouldn't change the north polar icepack, it wouldn't change the glaciers in Alaska or the temperature of boreal forests in Siberia, it wouldn't stop the eastern seaboard of the US from getting one "hottest summer on record" after another in rapid succession. It wouldn't change a damn thing.

Also, I didn't say he invented it. I just said that he made money out of it. And I'm sure that there was a scientific "consensus" for global warming when everybody was trying to avoid a "snowball Earth" event - arguably much worse and the complete opposite of what is now being said.

There were never more than a handful of people worried about global cooling, back in the 1970s. There was never much evidence to support the idea. Instead, we now have mountains of evidence that global warming has been happening, continues to happen, and will happen in the future, based on a massive number of different, converging lines of evidence up to and including the fucking Northwest Passage opening up for the first time since Hudson. No, this is not the only line of evidence. It's just one of many. Which if you bothered to read a book, you would know about.

As to the 'hockey stick,' this is bigger than one graph. This is the fucking Northwest Passage- ever heard of that? You know how explorers kept looking for it and finding walls of pack ice, or freezing to death in the attempt to sail around the north end of North America? On account of it's permanently icebound and has been for centuries, since the time of Hudson

The Northwest Passage I've addressed above. IIRC, Inconvinient Truth was based on that graph. Plus, centuries is pretty insignificant in climate and geological terms.

Centuries is 'insignificant' as long as nothing happens. When you suddenly double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by burning carbon that was stored away over a period of a hundred million years in the planet's past, centuries become very fucking significant in climate terms.

I still don't get your fixation on An Inconvenient Truth.

Your subtle-as-a-brick attempts to justify it by comparing it to other,proven things looks pretty desperate from where I am.

No, it's not. Ask real scientists. No, seriously. Go down to the nearest university that researches atmospheric physics or climate. Ask random members of that department about all this. Don't sneer and snicker and assume they must be fudging the data. Just ask.

I'm not desperate to convince you of anything, because I can believe quite well that you will continue to insist that Hy-Brasil isn't sinking until well after your head is under the water. But on the off chance that you actually pay attention to facts, instead of just being another one of those lunatic conspiracy theorists who won't believe man walked on the moon even when someone hauls him off and hits him over the head with a moon rock... well. Just go down to the nearest university and ask people who spent decades studying this. Don't take my word for it.

[madd0ct0r]

[quote="BlackAdder, addressin Simon Jester"
The Northwest Passage I've addressed above. IIRC, Inconvinient Truth was based on that graph. Plus, centuries is pretty insignificant in climate and geological terms.

Your subtle-as-a-brick attempts to justify it by comparing it to other,proven things looks pretty desperate from where I am.[/quote]

um, what proven things are these? was it this section?

Look at the damn Northwest Passage. Look at the north polar cap in general. Look at the snowpacks on mountains all over the world, that used to be permanently snowbound and now are not. Look at the measured levels of CO2 in the atmosphere over the past century. Use your damn eyes. Don't just sit on your ass dreaming up bullshit reasons why everyone who actually bothered to get a degree in this stuff is lying to you.

I'm just slightly confused. Do you think these are proven then? if you do, why are you still blathering on about GW being a conspiracy? Eagle1Div thought the world was warming, but not becuase of humans. You don't seem to think anything is happening at all.

incidentally
also, China has embarked on a huge program of reforestation (mostly to deal with soil erosion). Saudia Arabia is currently investigating how to green the desert for when the oil runs out ect ect ect.
do some fucking research. please.

[PeZook]

Simon did actually use the cigarette-cancer link in the argument, which is a fallacy.

However, Blackadder ignored Simon's call to present evidence of a large number of climate scientists who deny global warming, which is a much bigger fallacy.

[Simon_Jester]

Simon did actually use the cigarette-cancer link in the argument, which is a fallacy.

I'd call it a rhetorical flourish, not a fallacy- I am not making the argument "cigarettes cause cancer, therefore global warming is real."

My point, though, is that the mindset he's using is basically the same as would be needed to deny that cigarettes cause cancer (or the moon landings, or the theory of evolution, or the earth being round).

He's waving away a large body of interlocking evidence, including both subtle and complicated studies and bluntly obvious, crude physical facts. And he's doing this on the basis of... what, exactly? That he dislikes a movie about the subject? That carefully unspecified scientists doubt it?

All that's changing from one example to the next is the degree of handwaving and blatant refusal to pay attention to the evidence- it takes a higher order of delusion to ignore the Earth being round than it does to ignore global warming. But it doesn't take a fundamentally different kind of mindset, not at this point.

So what I'm criticizing there is his bad reasoning and refusal to pay attention to either obvious evidence (the Northwest Passage, the north polar cap, the snowpacks on mountains) or the complex and highly detailed worldwide climate studies and models done by the professionals. And for that, summing the gross flaw in the attitude as "Do you think that cigarettes causing cancer is all a hoax too?" doesn't seem so unreasonable to me.

[madd0ct0r]

ahh. I assumed you were drawing parallels to the misinformation spread and results suppressed by the tobacco companies.

At least Eagle1div went looking for evidence to support his claim, even if he couldn't find any. I'm not interested in grinding these guy's faces into the dirt. I want to know why they are thinking like this, and what is needed to change their mind.

[Simon_Jester]

ahh. I assumed you were drawing parallels to the misinformation spread and results suppressed by the tobacco companies.

I think there's an element of that too- but really, it's the... sheer dogged refusal to contemplate the issue that tips me off.

"My mind is made up. Don't confuse me with the facts!"

[JointStrikeFighter]

But here's the reasons I hold it: Climate scientists make big bucks for it, it's a very popular way for politicians to get votes and become popular, it's essentially a Hollywood religion, it's sometimes another part of naturist/mother-earth worship (I don't even want to start on how we're not drilling Alaska) and time and time again they've been shown to fudge their data, that part hasn't even been refuted.

How much do you think climate scientists get paid?

PS the answer is 'no more than any other scientist"

PS that means like...100K ish

OMG THE BIG BUX