First of all, Bush is a doofus politician who shouldn’t be making any decisions at all. Of course he has no idea what CO2 is with regards to Global Warming, he is an idiot. So, what he does is follow the advice of the experts, and his experts told him the Kyoto is a bad idea because since the science is uproven, the prediction of dire global weather is in doubt, and therefore the economics of the situation is bad for America. Pretty simple, even for a Yale man.
Secondly, it is EMBRYONIC stem cell research which he made a decision on using his famous Texas fence sitting technique. I really can’t blame the guy for considering the situation so thoroughly since it is basically the same issue as ABORTIONS, for the general public anyway. Now last I checked, the abortion issue was a very hot political topic that has been in debate by the smartest people in the world since it became medically feasible, with no ending in site. I am absolutely sure you are smarter than Bush, so why don’t you start a new thread and settle the abortion issue for the rest of us once and for all.
Grey, given your ability to deduce my age from the ether and then refer to yourself as younger, maybe you should stop making conclusions.
So far, you seem to assert that any theory that humans are causing global warming is really a conspiracy populated by someone named Greeny.
While you’ve been complaining about an IPCC report, I’ve been reading a report by the National Assessment Synthesis Team as found through the link Sua provided. Your much favored Lindzen doesn’t appear as an author if this report.
Reading through it, I find some interesting statements.
at page 21.
at page 22.
So, I can find a report that suggests humans are responsible for global warming. The authors don’t appear to be politicians, I’m not the media, and I didn’t quote from a summary. What’s my prize?
As to we George “oil is the family business” Bush and Dick “oil made me tremendously wealthy” Cheney have agsinst Kyoto I can’t begin to fathom. For all you know, I’m one of the people who told Bush to put Kyoto in the round filing cabinet.
grey, please don’t make any comparisons between us. I fear that simply being compared to you diminishes me. However, if you wish to be a jerk, and your OP has jerk written all over it, please feel free to be a jerk regardless of our respective ages or values as humans.
Geez, GreyMatters, if you are going to lecture us on junk science, why then link to such a wealth of it? Most, if not all of these links are essentially fossil-industry front groups (e.g., the Greening Earth Society is set up by the Western Fuels Association) and libertarian think-tanks (the Marshall one) that have strong economic and political reasons to oppose the emerging consensus on global warming.
Well, if you mean “unpopular” in the scientific community, indeed you have. If you mean “unpopular” among some groups with quite a bit of clout, like the fossil fuel industry (actually, the most reactionary sectors of that industry, since some of the oil companies have now come around to a certain degree on the reality of global warming) and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, then you certainly haven’t.
It’s not clear to me what you are saying here, but if you are comparing predicting tomorrow’s weather locally to predicting global climate, the two are quite different. If you are talking about the extent to which the models are able to reproduce the warming that has occurred, I believe they are doing increasingly well in this regard. Yes, there are still uncertainties and that is why there are also still fairly large uncertainties on the predictions for one hundred years from now.
Actually, it is the summary for policymakers, not the summary by policymakers. It was written by scientists. The NAS report did say that they thought there needed to be more explanation of the uncertainties in these summaries. However, they didn’t think it was a conspiracy on the part of the IPCC but just that it is hard to write science for non-scientists and find the right balance between including details and swamping people.
Richard Lindzen may read the NAS report differently from the other scientists since I think he was the biggest skeptic on warming that was included in the NAS panel. However, it doesn’t change the fact that he signed on to a report that basically said that warming seems to be occurring and that the balance of the evidence is that it is of human origin. (I don’t know the exact wording they agreed upon…and don’t have the time at the moment to find the direct quote.)
Now, if by “consensus”, you mean that every scientist agrees (which is really “unanimity” not consensus), then by that standard, there is not even a consensus on evolution. Yes, there are still uncertainties in the study of global warming. (Hell, I believe the IPCC prediction is something like a 3-10 degree F rise over the next 100 years…that alone shows you there is still considerable uncertainty.) There are still issues that are being fought out. That is what science is all about. However, the scientific community has been able to obtain in these IPCC reports a basic consensus on certain aspects of the science.
The tactic of those who, for political or economic reasons, do not want to believe global warming is real, is to quote those small minority of scientists who most vehemently disagree with this consensus. If they chose to do the same for evolution, they could set up websites convincing you that was in doubt. Again, this is not to negate the fact that real uncertainties that still remain in the science, but just to make it clear where the bulk of the climate science community stands in regards to global warming.
I hope you find this perspective useful, although my impression from your subsequent posts past the first one is that basically your mind is already made up on this issue and you are not really asking us whether or not global warming is real but are instead trying to convince us that it’s not. With so many well-respected climate scientists arrayed on the other side, you have an uphill battle!
I’m not qualified to discuss this yet. I just want to butt in and say thank you to each and every one of you – especially those of you who have provided links. This is great material, and it is helping me a lot. Now I’ll go away! But this really is great.
First, there are natural mechanisms for eliminating CO2. Green plants, algae, and stromatolites (where they still exist) all “eat” carbon dioxide.
Second, we are, in geologic terms, just coming out of an ice age. Nobody is really sure why the ice age occurred, but the latest theories link ice ages (there have been many) to volcanos and asteroid and comet impacts. We theorize that the planet was created through this process (accretion), and it still goes on today.
Third, this accretion causes periodic winter effects. Volcanos, too, can cause a temporary winter. Two major impacts, one near Cancun (the killer of the dinosaurs,) another near the Falkland Islands (much bigger and earlier, 90% extinction world wide), caused climate change on a scale we can hardly imagine. More important, though, is what we could expect from a much smaller event. This is important because there have been thousands of such “small” occurrences. For example, the “small” eruption of Mount Pinatubo is credited with lowering the earth’s temperature as much as one hundred years of “global warming” raises it.
In recent human history, there have been events like the Russian explosion over Tunguska (spell?). Therefore, it seems reasonable to view our paltry “global warming” as little more than a temporary warm spell between deep freezes, that as yet we can do nothing about.
If however, worst case scenario, people do raise the temperature suddenly, it would lead to a rapid rising of the seas of the earth. This is a self-correcting mechanism, as the majority of the earth’s human population lives near water. “Condition Venus” is really just a fantasy cooked up by Mr. Herzog in his 1980s novel “Heat.” The planet can take care of itself.
In other words, it is doubtful that we can “kill the planet” with global warming, if it exists. With toxic chemicals, nuclear weapons, and aerosol sprays which eat the ozone, maybe. It seems like a waste of time and brainpower to worry about a threat which is dwarfed by so many other man made threats. Moreover, as was stated, the next big rock which sends us back into an ice age could be one day away, and nobody would necessarily know.
Don’t worry about us killing the planet, worry about the planet killing us.
With all due respect to you, do you think you are the first person to come up with these issues and that those with PhDs in climate science are blissfully unaware of them? I mean, give these people a bit of credit, please! This field may be relatively young, but it ain’t as much in its infancy as you seem to think.
And, by the way, I don’t think anybody is talking about “killing the planet” with global warming. There is nothing so cataclismic in any of the predictions. However, we are talking about major changes in climate affecting agriculture, sea level rises affecting coastal and low-lying areas, changes in storm patterns, changing in climate affecting disease propagation, etc.
So, there you have it. To be fair to Lindzen, I understand that as a scientist, it is sometimes frustrating to see the media simplifying your messages. And, perhaps the media spin on the report does lose a bit of the nuiance of what was said, but the basic facts are that they agreed with the IPCC assessment, that the agreed that warming is occurring, that it likely due mostly to human activities, and that human-induced warming is expected to continue through the century.
I made a mistake by insulting Sua in my second post. That was uncalled for, and I am sorry. However, since that time I have not insulted anyone, just disagreed with what they wrote. I thought that is what debating is all about. Disagreeing. Just because I don’t agree with you is not reason to become personal. I haven’t called anyone names. [My first post was a silly attempt at being funny.] You don’t see it that way. Name calling seems to be your fall back argument, and I admit it is really effective. Congrats.
I am just trying to have a lively debate.
jshore:
Actually there are two parts to thew IPCC report. The link by Sua was written by the policy makers using the part written by the scientists. Two parts with two sets of authors.
Secondly, this issue does not have a clear majority of scientists on either side. It does have a clear majority in the media though. That is different.
Last thing. I don’t really have a battle at all because no one is going to stop using fossil fuels anytime soon. So, all I have to do is stay alive and laugh at how little reality lines up with the predictions.
PS: I thought “Great Debates” meant debating was going to happen? Of course I have an opinion and am willing to express it. Stating the question was only meant to get the ball rolling as it were.
I hope you’ll forgive me for not being too impressed by that one. It starts by mentioning that predictions have changed over the years as to how fast warming will occur. But the study of climate is not an exact science, predictions are expected to change as more data come in. Secondly, there are no cites in the article. It claims that “a study” shows that a drastic change in temperatures occurred 12,500 years ago, but fails to link to that study. I’d be interested to see where they really got that data, and how they measured the fluctuation in CO2 levels over the last 11,000 years.
Here’s data from the Hadley Institute (a highly respected British research center) global temperatures during the last 120 years. If you follow the link that says “long term temperature changes”, you can see that the current change in temperature is more drastic than the one at the end of the “little ice age”.
Oh, of course, this is a clear decision between either abolishing all fossil fuels or else chugging along without any regulations at all. Any plan to gradually reduce fossil fuel use over time is obviously out of the question. :rolleyes:
I know there are two parts but what makes you so sure the author sets are different? It could be true that a few additional people help out with the summary to be sure it is intelligible to non-scientists, but it is written by scientists. As I noted it is the “summary for policymakers” not the “summary by policymakers”!
To put it mildly, you don’t know what the hell you are talking about here. Just because you can find internet sites where some scientists don’t believe in global warming does not mean that they are not a fairly small minority (at least of those actually in the field of climate science). If you look in refereed journals like Science, Nature, and the more specialized journals in the field of climate science, the reality is quite different. The contrarian scientists can’t even get published in these journals (for the most part) quite simply because their research does not stand up to peer review. That’s why they go off, get funding from the Western Fuels Association and publish their own non-refereed journals like the World Climate Report, one of the piece of junk science that you linked to.
By the way, just to let you know, I saw Patrick Michaels, the one who publishes the World Climate Report, speak here in Rochester and even he is intellectually honest enough to admit that he is in the scientific minority on this issue. Of course, he still thinks he’s right and they are wrong…but at least he is realistic about where he stands with his views in the scientific community.
Well, the point isn’t to stop using fossil fuels overnight but to gradually wean ourselves off of them. One necessary way to do this is to actually have people pay the costs of what they use rather than have it heavily subsidized as it is now. In that way, renewable sources of energy, without (or with much lower) externalities, can compete on an even playing field.
Well, what I was objecting to in part was the way that you came in with a question asked as if you were genuinely undecided and interested in other people’s answers when in fact you just wanted to use it as a lead-in to spout all of this junk science you’ve picked up on the internet. I would find it more honest if you would have come clean on your position in the first post. This is really a minor quibble though…What I mainly object to is that you seem to have your mind made up, you are saying things that are demonstratably wrong, and you haven’t shown much evidence of being amenable to logic and reason.
Actually, it is kind of silly to argue about the technical summary vs. the summary for policymakers, etc. You can just go here: http://www.ipcc.ch/ and download both summaries of the TAR (Third Assessment Report) from each of the 3 IPCC working groups.
IMHO even if GW is caused by burning fossil fuels, the world will never be willing to reduce them to a level far below today’s. In fact, I very much doubt that the world will maintain fossil fuel use at today’s level.
We will have to come up with some other way to reduce the temperature of the earth. I’m conficent that we can do so.
december:IMHO even if GW is caused by burning fossil fuels, the world will never be willing to reduce them to a level far below today’s. In fact, I very much doubt that the world will maintain fossil fuel use at today’s level.
Do you mean, just because we like fossil fuels and are used to them? Or do you mean that you think we will never come up with other strategies of energy generation and use that will allow us to cut back our ff use substantially? The first claim sounds pretty implausible to me; the second is IMHO more believable but by no means certain.
Good point, Kimstu. My comment was pretty imprecise.
I guess what I meant was that the world will never massively reduce ff use through googoo approaches like Kyoto. Nuclear is a plausible energy generation method that doesnn’t use ff’s, but I see no stampeded in that direction. Maybe in a few years we will choose the risk of nuclear, if an urgent need to reduce ff’s becomes more definite.
I do agree with you that it’s conceivable that technology will create a new energy source (fusion?) that makes ff’s obsolete. I don’t know what the likelihood is. Windmills and solar can help a bit, but can’t be the full sources. Unfortunately controlled fusion as a major power source seems distressing remote.
Considering that a stromatolite is the fossilized remains of ancient bacteria, I find it highly unlikely that stromatolites are consuming very much carbon dioxide.
The EPRI E-EPIC report (here’s a link to a slideshow that summarizes it - although I notice that some numbers have changed since Gordon showed it to me - Una) has some interesting notes on effects of changing energy policy that might be of relevance here.
Umm, beg to differ, a stromatolite is a layercake of blue-green algae/bactreia and sediment, usually in a mound-shape. They are a lot more common in the fossil record (e.g. Barberton Mts of SA), but still occur today in at least one place that I know of (Shark Bay, Australia). “Stromatolite” refers to the structure, not the component organism, so what you are thinking of is fossilised stromatolites.
Mr Dibble, holding in his hand a piece of stromatolite he chipped off a road cutting in the Transvaal his own sweet self
I am a bit disappointed at the level of scientific reasoning in this thread. I understand I started the thread with a bit of contempt. If I try another thread in the future I will surely be more respectful. That still does not explain the lack reasoning; it only explains the name-calling and feeble attempts to discredit my point of view by trying to make me into a conspiracist.
Let’s look at some of the facts regarding the case for anthropogenic GW.
1: The Greenhouse effect is real. The Earth’s atmosphere does trap heat and its chemical composition has a varying specific heat. If we change the chemical composition then its specific heat changes which can change the atmosphere’s ability to capture the energy of Earth’s core and the Sun. Exactly what that specific heat is and how much CO2 affects it is unknown at this time. Basically, the thermodynamic problem of what is going on is not solved yet. There is NO debate on this one folks. No one claims to have it solved.
2: The Earth’s temperature has risen in the past hundred years. We do know that over the course of Earth’s life the temperature has risen and fallen many many times WITHOUT the influence of man. Through anecdotal scientific data we hypothesis that the Earth has been several, if not ten or more, degrees, warmer in the past, like during the Jurassic Period, and it has been several degrees cooler, like during the last big Ice Age. None of these fluctuations in temperature were due to man’s influence. We have no direct evidence how fast the temperatures changed or even BEGIN to understand what caused these changes.
3: The models used to examine the atmosphere are ridiculously wrong. These models are trying to predict the patterns of one of the largest, and arguably THE largest chaotic system on the planet. A system that makes Stock exchanges look like simple addition. These models, that are the backbone of the “proof’ that man is affecting the temperature of Earth, are simply wrong. When these models are used to track historical data they fall apart. Every single model FAILS at following the temperature patterns of the last hundred years.
4: The number of variables in this problem are unknown. We don’t even know all the factors influencing Earth’s temperature.
5: The actual records of Earth’s temperature are very contradictory. So, even if the models were a hundred percent accurate in their ability to predict they would surely be wrong because the data being entered has very little integrity. [And, that doesn’t even begin cover the other variables with unknown, estimated values like the Sun.]
Now these are just some of the obvious parts of this problem that are not yet solved. Yet each one of these parts is either used or ignored to PROVE man-made GW is actually happening. Where is the science? It surely is not being used on this issue. Where is the scientific proof of repeatability? Not here. This is pseudo-science at its best.
Now, the fall back argument is the “precautionary principle.” I don’t necessarily disagree with this, but to what degree do we rationally apply it? Since we know little to nothing about the problem, how can we really know what we are doing is going to change the situation to what we want it to be? We don’t.
I certainly believe man has the potential to influence global weather. I do not think we have proven that is happening yet. I think much more study is needed for a variety of beneficial reasons.
To jab1,
Keep up the hysterical juckscience. That article you listed, http://www.junkscience.com/aug01/1257.pdf , is a piece of trash. The “predictions” and “calculations” contained within are so horrible it defies reason. But, I know that is exactly what is missing in your argument, reason.
