Somebody please try to sell me on Global "Warming"

Great Debates
61

sentient, I’ll spell it out if needed, but I trust you can figure out what I mean when I refer to humans producing CO2 and the population difference of India+China versus the US. Is it a non-factor? I don’t know. I’ve seen a few posts stating CO2 may be a factor in global warming. Maybe too many people? I’ll try to be safe by alluding to diseases. (hey, we want to save the earth, right?) No, I’m still not “sold” on global warming. Is the earth maybe increasing in average temperature? YES! But I still say it’s because we’re in the tail end of the Ice Age recession. Sexy? No. Reason to get more grants to study it? Yes.

I just can’t get my head around the idea that man has caused 1 degree change every 100 years for the last 10 centuries, at least. Where I live we now have what is a lake bed from the glaciers melting. I grew up in Wisconsin and have been on field trips to Kettle Morraine Park (all cut by glaciers during the IA). Anyone in WI, MI or MN may have remembered grade school geology that explained the topography of the area formed during the Ice Age. It’s a cycle. It’s a cycle that doesn’t give a shit that humans average 80 years on this rock.

I’m just amazed that people think we’re so important that we can totally screw up an entire planet on our own.

There is no “Mother Earth”. We live on a wondorous orb that circles the Sun. Any attempt to save the planet is nothing but a euphamism to save the 5th generation we may or may not beget.

Nothing wrong with that, and I can see getting behind Earth Day. I just want people to be honest and say they’re doing it because they want to stay alive, not because they want to save the planet.

If we fuck it up, nature will say “see ya” and start over. Never thought I’d quote a movie for an argument, but “Wargames” had a good one with the line about Earth and life beginning again.

62

Wow, a spellchecker! Yup, you’re contributing to the debate!

63

Are you suggesting that the vast quantities CO2 emitted by the US burning of fossil fuels might somehow be comparable to China and India breathing out? You are almost laughably mistaken.

Well, too many people burning fossil fuels, yes.

And the correlation with a massive push off CO2 equilibrium (and other anthropogenic forcing) is a highly, highly unlikely coincidence?

It’s a cycle that, until the industrial revolution, was moderated naturally.

So myopic, selfish and ignorant that we can do so, yes.

64

Duffer, don’t call people “putzes” in Great Debates.

Desmostylus, you also need to cool it.

65

Sorry, got a little carried away.

66

Oh man. Do you not see where I’m going with the CO2? Are you saying burning coal gives off the same CO2 as that of respirating humans? I have a feeling I’m gonna hang my ass to the mercy of the mods on this, but can you tell me the difference of CO2 from burning coal and CO2 from breathing humans?

67

I am saying that human respiration produces insignificant CO2 emissions compared to fossil fuel consumption. What are you saying?

68

People who hate Thatcher mostly.

Do you have any numbers on that? I always wondered. My WAG is that a 10 minute car ride releases about the same quantity of CO2 as one person in a year. Am I close?

69

prepares ass for hard-smack

The first step should be to cease all medical help to India, China, and Africa. If the sick should die off there would be less CO2. In addition, there would be fewer people using fossil fuels belching out CO2. Insensitive? Hell yeah. But if we’re that worried about CO2, let’s go for the 2 birds with one stone rule. Not only do we have less people polluting the earth with thier breathing, it’s that much less resources used to heat/cool/feed/clothe, etc them.

Personally, I’d rather take the chance of coastal recession over a few hundred years to give everyone a fair shot at living comfortably.

Maybe I’m wrong. I’m just a sap for wanting people to live a decent life

70

The amount of CO2 emitted by humans is infinitesimal compared to the amount emitted by fossil fuels, besides which, since we don’t come from a storage of carbon locked away in the earth’s crust (as fossil fuels are), we are merely recycling out the carbon that is put into us.

Well, you are not sold on it because you are ignorant on the subject. I don’t mean that as an insult but simply as a fact that you are not up on the science. As I said, ignorance is not a bad thing necessarily. You can intelligently do one of two things:

(1) choose to believe what the scientific community tells you.

(2) invest a lot of time to learn more about it so you are more capable of making informed judgements (although to be honest, I have invested quite a bit of time plus have a PhD in physics --which gives me some background to wade through the literature-- and even I don’t really feel like I am capable to make judgements independent of what the experts in the field say).

You can also choose the third option you seem to be choosing of spouting off ideas that are not accepted by the scientific community because they have not been supported by the evidence. However, I don’t see this as a very intelligent option.

I feel like I am getting old when I say this but I am afraid that people have taken the sort of nice egalitarian notion that everybody’s opinion is as valid as everyone else’s too far. The fact is that when we are dealing with science, all opinions are not equal. An opinion by someone who is educated and informed in the field carries much, much greater weight than the opinion of random people on the street. That is why, although we have a democracy in terms of voting for people to implement government policies, these people still rely on professional scientific advice and information.

Where do you get these notions? Noone is saying that. In fact, although there were small variations in temperature over the last 10 centuries, there was no pronounced warming trend until the 20th century, as a graph linked to by cheddarsnax showed. It is only in the last 40 years or so of the 20th century is there a marked warming trend that is believed to be a detectable signature of human-caused greenhouse gas warming. And, if you look at the graphs of CO2 concentration that I showed you, this makes sense since there was only a slow rise in CO2 between 1750 and 1900 and it has been accelerating since then.

We think this because scientists have studied it and now understand why this is the case. James Hansen has an explanation how a seemingly small effect can end up making a large difference in his extended Scientific American article available here. (Warning: 1.4 MB PDF file.)

Okay, this is no doubt true (and noone even claims that all life will disappear because of global warming). But, personally, given the choice of driving a big hunkin’ gas-guzzling SUV now vs. a very nice hybrid (and researching emissions-free solutions for the future) when one path possibly leads to major climate changes having lots of ecologically, economically, and socialogically bad effects, I would choose the latter solution. Maybe you feel differently and you can go around trying to sell your “fuck future generations, let’s just enjoy what we’ve got!” philosophy. God knows, it already seems to have enough adherents.

71

Humans exhale about 1kg per day of CO2, roughly the same as that released from running a 60W bulb for the same period (citation). I don’t know about the car journey - an entire lifetime’s exhalation in one 30 minute journey would be my guess.

72

duffer, before we open the death camps, what’s wrong with a little efficiency in developed countries? The UK has lowered emissions without any apparent economic harm, thus negating the exhalatory effects of literally trillions of humans.

Are you taking this thread seriously anymore. Are you ‘sold’ yet given the IPCC data?

73

Welcome to the carbon cycle. The link and subsequent pages are a brief introduction only to the phenomenon, but it’s a good starting point to understanding the paths that carbon travels in the environment.

Now, as to the difference between CO2 from coal and CO2 from breathing humans:

When humans expel CO2, they are only returning to the biosphere part of the carbon that they have consumed by eating organic matter. This is part of the short-term biological carbon cycle. Carbon is redistributed among various sources and sinks on the Earth’s surface; for all intents and purposes, on human timescales, there is no addition to the total amount of carbon available. Think of pouring water from one glass into the next - you aren’t changing the overall amount of water (assuming you spill nothing, of course).

When humans burn coal, they are taking carbon from a source (buried rock) that would normally not play a role in the short-term biological carbon cycle, and injecting it into the atmosphere where it subsequently has a significant impact on the biological carbon cycle (through greenhouse warming). This would be like taking a gallon jug of water and pouring it into the glass - the glass is eventually going to overflow, unless you do something to stop the flow of water from the jug.

Does that simple picture help at all?

74

An interesting article on the Kyoto Protocol: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-murray091703.asp

75

Dog80, I would choose your sources rather more carefully than that. Rarely have I seen a more skewed and misinformed summary of the miner’s strike - as you yourself could verify by asking around in Trefforest and Pontypridd.

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sunfish re:post 73. Thanks for “dumbing” it down. I appreciate you have a phD, but in defense I know phD’s that couldn’t change the oil in their car to save a seal. Anyway, that post is much easier to comprehend. I’m a smart guy, just not in that area. You really did make it more clear.

Now another question. You seem to have a grasp on this, so tell me me if this is full of shit. Based on the fossil fuels (tempted to but won’t get into the latest stuff about oil not being dino-juice), how is it that earth can comsume/produce carbon fuels and suffer? Isn’t the carbon a constant? What I mean is, the carbon was always here, correct? Was it always in the form of coal/oil/Krypton/whatever? Ecologically, was it meant to stay buried? I would assume, in my layman’s view, that it was always around in some form over the 5 billion years the earth has been hurtling through space. (See? Even a Catholic can concede geophysical timelines).

If we burn, say, lignite coal to name one, wouldn’t it somehow work it’s way back into the earth and become coal again? Or did coal form once and then that’s it?

This started as an OP looking for simple answers, but I’ve seen it’s much deeper than I thought. Hurry and answer so I can get back to my X-Box. :wink:

77

The article’s source is far from reputable. But how about France producing 70% of electricity from nuclear factories? I think that this is an objective fact.

78

I guess we can consume anything that lies on the surface of the planet, but we are not supposed to dig soumething out.

79

Sorry, not sure what that means. Can you clarify?

80

Just a question about the thread topic, I tried Googling & found plenty of total emmissions data. What constitutes the majority of CO2 emmissions in the US? Industrial output, Transportation(Cars, Buses, etc) or something else?