Chumpsky, very well put, thank you. And thanks again to you as well, jshore, for your insight. I wish that you didn’t have to keep repeating the same things over and over, in every new global warming thread, but I’m very glad you do, because need to hear what you have to say.
Best,
TGD
Untrue. You haven’t seen data from the 70’s. In almost every respect the modern world is far cleaner and safer. There are problems, but toxic chemical production is lower, dumps have been cleaned up, water quality is improving, air quality is usually better, and so forth. I might decide to cite if you do. 
Apparently, by Chumpsky’s claims, we’ve all run out of natural resources, every nation on earth is starving, we’re in the middle of an ice age, and the ozone is gone. Unless there was another way to interpret his claim that we’re worse off than the most dire predictions of a few decades ago? Come on, there’s an interesting debate to be had here, without resorting to ludicrous hyperbole.
Jeff
Well, I’m going shopping because Tuesday is Soylent Green Day.
unfortunately i think this is one of those questions you can never get a straight answer to. people with biases on both sides exaggerate everything. i’ve been in the computer industry for years, you have to be an expert to figure out what the experts are hiding.
my personal opinion is very bad.
i stopped going to auto shows in 1966. no matter what anybody says. THE LAWS OF PHYSICS DON’T CHANGE STYLE.
how much unnecessary pollution is created by unnecessary manufacturing. even if the planet could handle it, why do it?
seen that commercial for a car where the Harrier jet lands and the pilot leaves the bagles in the jet. did you wonder how old the Harrier jet is? 1966 technology. why give a damn about the car?
What ARE my views on Global warming? Since you are so very sure they are “ludicrous” and lacking knowledge, you must know what they are.
What I have said- and this is agreed upon by pro-global warming scientists & pundits- is that the human contibution to TOTAL global warming gasses is around 1%. Is this wrong? Care to refute it with a cite?
Next- Go Alien & I have pointed out that Greenhouse gasses do not only include CO2, that other vapour, including water vapour are a significant portion of the complete greenhouse picture. Do you dispute THAT?
Thus, it is my opinion that when an article or source, such as the Australian Academy of Science does not bother to mention water vapour in their total of “greenhouse gasses” (they have CO2 being 73% and Methane being 23% for 96%, which since there is some 100 times as much water vapour in the atmosphere as either, means they are leaving it out) they are “lying” by selectively defining their data & terms. Not because “they don’t agree with (me)”- but becuase they are clearly leaving out a significant item. If they used the “full disclosure” figures (something like H2O=90%, CO2=7%, etc) they would be far less scary. “Not telling the full truth”= “lying” in my book.
Now, I did also say that “global warming may be a hobgoblin”. I am not enough of an expert (but neither is jshore, by his own statement) to say whether Global Warming is a valid threat or not. BUT- many of the experts disagree on whether or not it is a threat (to be fair, most say it is one), how much of a threat it is (here they differ widely) or how much the human contibution to it effects it and what effect efforts to reduce some small portion of one small element of greenhouse gasses will have (and here, no two experts agree).
Thus, as I said “Global Warming MAY be a…”(blown out of proportion danger)’’…hobgoblin". Note the word “may”. Go ahead, tell me that 100% of the experts in the field are in total agreement of the dangers of Global warming, and what we can do about it. If you do- you’ll be lying.
But, there is a good reason not to count water vapor as a greenhouse gas in this sense because it doesn’t accumulate in the atmosphere to cause warming. Why should they mention irrelevant things?
In your original post, you used the fact that water vapor has a greenhouse effect to try to argue that the human contribution of CO2 in the atmopsphere is likely to be insignificant. This view is clearly wrong. I mean, it may be pretty small on the scale of the total greenhouse effect on our planet…i.e., without an atmosphere containing any of these gases, we would probably be a hell of a lot colder…not just 2.5-10 deg F…but that is besides the point.
The inventory of emissions is meant to catalogue the contribution that is being made to the current “forcing” of the climate. That forcing is brought about by the additional accumulation of gases that have a greenhouse effect and that actually accumulate.
This misrepresents the state of the understanding somewhat (although certainly a lot less than you were doing before!) There is a general consensus around the following points:
(1) That CO2 and some other greenhouse gases are building up in the atmosphere due to human emissions and other anthrogenic effects (such as land use).
(2) That this build up of CO2 will lead to an increase in the global mean temperatures (and to other related effects), although there is a fair degree of uncertainty on how much, say, a doubling of CO2 concentrations increases the temperature (hence the range in the IPCC reports). To the extent that they know how much an increase to expect, they have a pretty good understanding of how much this increase should be reduced by reducing the buildup.
(3) That there has been a warming of about 0.6 C [~1 deg F] or so of surface temperatures over the last century.
(4) That most of the warming over the last ~40 years or so (which is pretty close to the net warming for the last century) is likely attributable to human causes. [I.e., that we are already seeing the effects that the climate models are predicting to occur.]
There is not 100% agreement on anything in the world. You can find PhD biologists out there who don’t believe in evolution. However, there is a strong consensus in the refereed literature that global warming is a serious threat even if there is still uncertainty about how serious it could turn out to be. Since scientists don’t always feel comfortable advocating policy, there may be less agreement on what to do although there seems to be a general consensus that the threat is serious enough that some measures need to be taken to get us on a safer track.
Global warming could turn out to be less serious than the mean predictions but it could also turn out to be more serious…especially, for example, if the climate forcing from the buildup of greenhouse gases causes a sudden shift in climate as some scientists are beginning to believe could happen.
Well, since you didn’t ask- here is my non-expert opinion on Global warming:
A bit too many guesses & “to what extent, we don’t know”'s to make me comfortable with making major policy changes based upon it.
But here is my big point. The pro-GW faction know that the public does not react well to things like: “Well, there is a likely threat, which could be serious. And so if there is an increase in gas milage, that would reduce CO2 by an amount. Now we suspect that that decrease alone will probably have no significant effect on GW, but combined with other future cuts, we hope the overall decrease in human contribution will be signifcant. Besides, it couldn’t hurt, and you shouldn’t be driving those nasty gas-guzzling SUV’s anyway”. The public will not buy anything with so many “maybes” and qualifiers.
So, instead they say things like “This will reduce CO2 emissions by so many thousands of tons”- knowing that the public thinks that “heck, a TON is a lot, gee whiz, this is significant”. But a ton- even thousands of tons- is completely insignificant when you are considering the weight of the atmosphere, or even all greenhouse gasses in that atmosphere. OR- even the human contribution to the greenhouse gasses.
Or, they will try things like “This will reduce CO2 emissions from passenger vehicles by 20%”. Which sounds like a lot, until you realize that: 1. Passenger vehicles are a small % of the overall motor vehicle emissions. 2. ALL Motor vehicles are a small source of human caused C02. 3. Humans cause an extremely small portion of overall CO2 generated. 4. CO2 is a small portion of overall greenhouse gasses. Thus a small portion of a small%, of a small part, of an extremely small part, of a small part= completely insignificant.
Of course, if you pin them down- they will admit that the one suggested cut “won’t likely do anything by itself- but only as a part of a complete program”.
But they still spout the reduction in so many tons, or of a % of a % as if it is meaningful.
What I am opposed to is the lack of “full disclosure”, which is a form of “lying”.
So now Jesus is a liar because he didn’t bother telling us exactly what heaven’s like, or when he’s coming back ? Dick Cheney with his energy plan ? Bush, Ashcroft and all the rest with their tales of “credible threats” They’re ALL liars just because they know stuff that they haven’t bothered to tell us peons? :eek:
Well then it’s a good thing that you aren’t a researcher or policy maker then. No one but a moron is comfortable making major policy decisions on the basis of incomplete information, but sometimes that’s the only responsible thing to do. When those times come, it’s often more useful to consider the opinions of experts who are a) familiar with the problem and b) trained to deal effectively with uncertainties, than it is to consult Joe six-pack about what he’s “comfortable” with. Of course YMMV, but how many times have you done the experiment ?
DrDeth—
A few points:
(1) I am confused by your use of the term “pro-GW faction” since you seem to be using this term to refer, for example, to the Australian Academy of Science. And, since the discussion of greenhouse emissions and CO2-equivalents is dominant throughout the scientific literature, you also seem to be talking by extension about the IPCC, NAS, the EPA in its reports even under the Bush administration, the authors of nearly all of the papers on the subject that appear in Science, Nature, etc. In other word, your “pro-GW” label loses meaning because it appears to refer to all but a few scientists publishing extremely little in the refereed literature and a cadre of industry spokespeople (among the dwindling number of companies who are still trying to spread disinformation about global warming). You seem to want scientists to talk in oodles of detail, often about totally irrelevant points, just to make you feel better.
(2) It is strange that you find lots of out-of-context statistics being used by the “pro-GW faction”. I mean, sure, I bet there are some cases of this. But, for the most part those who believe GW is a serious threat have put statistics in way more context than those who don’t (or pretend that they do but really don’t want to do anything about it). Bush’s policy on GW announced last year was a classic case of obfuscation. He defined a new term of “greenhouse gas intensity” (greenhouse gas emissions / GDP) so that he could tout a goal of reducing it by something 18% in the next 10 years which obscurred the fact that this amounts to basically the rate it has been falling over the last 30 or so years. He touted a reduction of greenhouse emissions expressed in tons that this would save over the business-as-usual scenario without putting it in much context or even noting that the savings depended strongly on which years you used in extrapolating to get the business-as-usual scenario (since his savings were pretty much in the noise).
(3) As I have noted in other threads on the subject, Kyoto is not an end in itself but is a means. It is a means of getting us on a new track in which emissions are stabilized rather than continuing to go up. It is a means of getting the market to recognize that there are potentially great costs to spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere so that the market can respond with innovation. [Rather than just saying “let the market decide” while ignoring the fact that the market is not being given any cues to make a decision if we don’t force it to recognize these hidden costs.]
(4) If you want talk out to wazoo on various emissions scenarios and scenarios for various levels at which we might stabilize CO2 in the atmosphere, I suggest that you read the IPCC report or various papers on the subject that have appeared in journals like Science and Nature. They provide the sort of details that you seem to be craving but that are simply impractical to discuss ever time you mention how much greenhouse emissions there are and what percentage you are planning to reduce them by.
One more point on this (ignoring the fact that you continue to discuss basically irrelevant things like the amount of greenhouse gases in total in the atmosphere and that passenger vehicle emissions are not that small a percentage of total vehicle emissions): Since GW is a global problem and one over a long time scale, almost anything any one country does in any one sector at any one time is likely to have a fairly small effect. However, the point is that the cumulative effect of having many people do this over many energy sectors over many years is not insignificant.
If we just always obsessively focus on the fact that any one thing we do is unlikely to have much of an impact, we will never do anything and if you take this and multiply it back up by everyone else, you get big problems. [I think economists would call this a sort of “free rider” problem.]
Having said that, I agree with you that people should not try to oversell any solutions and should emphasize the fact that this is a problem that is huge in scope … Nonetheless, we shouldn’t just throw up our hands and give up.
I propose a really silly idea: before we make radical changes that may or may not be of any real value in solving a problem that we don’t know enough about- we find out more about it.
From reading this thread and many other things, I’ve come to the conclusion that a large percentage of humans would be happy living in a future “Trantor-earth” (or Coruscant, for the Asimov illiterate)…all the other species and non-human ecosystems be damned. It seems that if it’s not parkland it will be exploited, and even if it is parkland, it probably will be. Do you really want to live in a world like this? If so, why? And if not, where to draw the line, especially since the most successful economic systems to date on this planet seem to require constant growth to remain healthy, and there is lots and lots of money to be made exploiting everything the earth has to offer?
Well:
(1) I think we are at the point that there is general scientific consensus that reducing emissions will have real value.
(2) If we wait longer before taking some common sense steps to start getting our emissions under control, we may lose the window of opportunity to do these things, or at least to do so without more massive economic hardship. Scientists have pointed out that stabilizing CO2 at a certain value becomes much more difficult the longer we wait. We don’t wait until our house has burned down before we consider buying homeowner’s insurance. Decisions often have to be made in light of incomplete information. Demanding ever and ever higher degrees of certainty is a very good delaying tactic to avoid doing anything.
(3) The changes proposed at this point are not particularly “radical”. If we had more certainty that warming in the upper half of the IPCC predicted range was going to happen, we would probably want to be taking stronger steps than Kyoto. What is perhaps more radical is (to cite just one example) to allow people to continue buying Ford Monstrosities while they foist many of the environmental and other costs onto the rest of us for these purchasing decisions.
By the way, here is an interesting article about British Petroleum from the NY Times Magazine. I haven’t read all of it yet, but I think the interesting point is this quote on climate change from Lord John Browne, the CEO:
And, this gives a little history of Browne and BP’s evolution on the global warming issue:
Oh, what the hell…Let’s throw in some more quotes from that article on the “costs” to BP of cutting their emissions even more steeply than the Kyoto Protocol and what Browne thinks of Bush’s attitude toward Kyoto:
Well, rapidly running out of them, anyway.
A substantial fraction of world population is actively starving; much more are in relatively poor shape.
Umm, we are in the middle of an ice age. Good look up the technical definition.
It’s gone over the Antarctic, and is thinning significantly in several other places in the world (including North America).
This year the hole picked up a node at the pole. Rather than being circular, it now resembles a bi-lobed p-orbital. There’ll be lots of UV alerts in South America.
Actually, the good news on the ozone layer is that with the ban of CFCs we have turned the corner on that. The concentration of Cl atoms in the upper atmosphere has peaked (at least, I think this is the quantity that has peaked) and is just starting to go down. It will be another 50 or so years though before the ozone layer has substantially recovered. (I think that timescale reflects the time for the CFCs and/or Cl atoms to clear out of the upper atmosphere…In the absence of the Cl atoms, the ozone replenishes rapidly. It is just getting rid of that damn Cl that is the problem.)
Our rescue of the ozone layer by international treaty is often the example that is cited of what can be done and must be done in regards to global warming. This time though, it is admittedly more complicated than just getting rid of emissions of a small class of substances.
jshore: *(1) I think we are at the point that there is general scientific consensus that reducing emissions will have real value.
(2) If we wait longer before taking some common sense steps to start getting our emissions under control, we may lose the window of opportunity to do these things, or at least to do so without more massive economic hardship. […]
(3) The changes proposed at this point are not particularly “radical”. […]*
(4) A number of the proposed changes involve measures (e.g., reducing dependence on fossil fuels, slowing deforestation, improving energy efficiency) which are advantageous not just for reducing GW but for other environmental and/or economic reasons.