We just watched "An Inconvenient Truth" - thoughts?

Cafe Society
21

[QUOTE=Tuckerfan]
But how does the Martian global warming compare to that on Earth? Is it going up by a similar amount? Larger? Significantly smaller? Is it in any way related to the fact that Mars was closer to the sun a few years ago than it has been in thousands of years? Is it possible that there’s some sort of biological or geological activity responsible for it? Are our measurements of the temperature on Mars really all that accurate? We’ve got data on Earthly temps going back hundreds of years (that was collected by humans) as well as estimates taken from ice and soil samples that date back hundreds of thousands of years. We can’t say the same for Mars. Perhaps our initial detailed observations of the planet took place during a time when the planet was unusually cold.
[/QUOTE]

Mars and Earth undergo similar cycles in their climates. For Earth the Milenkovitch cycle caused by the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit has an effect. Mars has a similar cycle.

The orange yellow dwarf star we refer to as “Sol” Solstation is a variable star to an extent, but those variances can have a significant impact on all planets in our system.

As for the answers to the specific questions you raised regarding Mars, you will have to do your own research, I’m afraid. :slight_smile:

22

[QUOTE=jjimm]
“Those clowns” is actually one staff writer and blogger for a magazine that bills itself as “gloom and doom with a sense of humor”. I agree what he wrote is absurd in its hyperbole. I think you - and the Senator - are exaggerating his importance. I’ll email him nonetheless.
[/QUOTE]

I shouldn’t have picked the top of the list.

I rephrased the query. Here’s another:
Link

23

Some graphs:

Solar irradiance
Average global temperature of the Earth over the same time period
CO[sub]2[/sub] in the atmosphere over the same period (and the temperature again) Note that this picture comes from those hippies at the EPA

Now going from Solar irradiance and relating it to the temperature, we should have experienced global warming around 1600 and 1800. But looking at the actual temperature, we’ve got a high point around 1000, and 1600 and 1800 are smack in the middle of a cool period.

24

As I usually do, I recommend going to RealClimate and read up on what real scientists with real actual knowledge of things think. Aquila Be, go there and study up on things you are ignorant of. I’m assuming you are not a climatologist. So you have to either believe the experts, or become an expert yourself and draw your own conclusions. Clinging on to one misinterpreted piece of knowledge and basing your opinion on that is not valid.

As far as answering the OP, they think Al Gore’s movie is quite accurate.

25

Sorry that last one wasn’t the same time period, but it works.

26

I believe in global warming but I don’t think Al Gore does. Not really. Not sincerely. I live in the UK and not long ago Al was doing the rounds of all the news and talk shows. How did he get to my country? Flew in a plane. How did he get around all the TV shows? In cars. Where did he stay? In a hotel where they use up a lot of energy and resources keeping wealthy people feeing comfortable. So it’s okay for him to use up a lot of energy and resources, and to do things that contribute to the problem. If he really believed his own verbiage, maybe he would have given the interviews via a videoconferencing facility, from his eco-friendly tent in his back yard. And that’s just recently. How many resources did he use up on the campaign trail, or as VP?

Same for him as for self-evident hypocrites like Bono. It’s not as if U2 albums emerge from some tiny cottage industry. How much energy does it take to put on a U2 tour? How much carbon gets dumped into the air just so that Bono can attend an awards ceremony? Hey Bono, if you really want to make a contribution, how about not flying on planes any more. Think about it, does the world really need another U2 album or tour more than it needs to be saved from the perils of greenhouse gases? Show that you believe in what you say… quit your job and save the energy. Get your record company to work out what they were going to spend printing and distributing your next album, and tell them to give it sustainable energy research instead.

27

[QUOTE=featherlou]
I thought his point was okay - that global warming is causing an increase in the severity of storms like hurricanes, not that Katrina was caused by global warming, per se.
[/QUOTE]

A bad point, I thought. There have been category five storms throughtout history. That year was a record setter in terms of hurricanes but the pattern did not continue in 2006. It was a very mild hurricane year.

28

[QUOTE=Tuckerfan]
Well, there’s the book The Population Bomb which makes the claim that 2 billion is the maximum sustainable population for the Earth (I don’t necessarily buy that, BTW).
[/QUOTE]

For 99.9% of human history, the population of people has been well below 1 billion people. To me, that’s a good arguement that the earth can only support that number of people.

29

[QUOTE=ianzin]
I believe in global warming but I don’t think Al Gore does. Not really. Not sincerely. I live in the UK and not long ago Al was doing the rounds of all the news and talk shows. How did he get to my country? Flew in a plane. How did he get around all the TV shows? In cars. Where did he stay? In a hotel where they use up a lot of energy and resources keeping wealthy people feeing comfortable. So it’s okay for him to use up a lot of energy and resources, and to do things that contribute to the problem. If he really believed his own verbiage, maybe he would have given the interviews via a videoconferencing facility, from his eco-friendly tent in his back yard. And that’s just recently. How many resources did he use up on the campaign trail, or as VP?
[/QUOTE]
I see where you’re coming from, but I still call bullshit on this. Yes, he could talk to everyone via video conferencing. If he didn’t want to do that, he could also handwrite all of his messages in charcoal on ecopaper and have someone hand-deliver them by bicycle or rowboat. Where does it end? At what point does grabbing the attention of millions of people and alerting them to this problem cancel out the fossil fuels that he is using to do it?

I think he’d agree with you that it’s not the best thing in the world to take cars and airplanes all around - but that the reason he’s doing it (to get everyone to stop and pay attention to the problem) is a good that far outweighs the bad. When people hear that Al Gore is going to be giving a speech in person, they’re going to be far more likely to show up than “Al Gore will be talking to us live! From his living room on a tv screen!”

30

[QUOTE=solkoe]
For 99.9% of human history, the population of people has been well below 1 billion people. To me, that’s a good arguement that the earth can only support that number of people.
[/QUOTE]

Not sure I follow this logic.

For 99.9+% of human history, there has never been a movie about global warming. Is that a good argument for never having a movie about global warming?

31

[QUOTE=Tuckerfan]
AOne thing that I’m not sure if he missed or if he left out deliberately (though he slightly alluded to it) is that when the Earth’s population hits 9 billion, we’re pretty much screwed, even if we get global warming under control. There’s simply no way the planet can sustain that level of people unless all of our technologies get so efficient that there’s no waste. Just the amount of fecal matter from humans that will have to be processed is staggering, then when you add in the amount generated by food animals it becomes overwhelming.
[/QUOTE]

There’s 6.5 billion people in the world now. Is it actually true that our ability to handle human fecal matter can only grow by another 38% and then we run out of room for poop? That seems unlikely.

Global warming really concerns me. Building more sewers is an easy problem to solve; you build more sewers. Sewers are easily constructed, but planets are hard to come by.

32

[QUOTE=solkoe]
For 99.9% of human history, the population of people has been well below 1 billion people. To me, that’s a good arguement that the earth can only support that number of people.
[/QUOTE]
A logical fallacy. It may be a good argument that the Earth can support up to 1 billion, but it says absolutely nothing about more than that.

Unless you can show some kind of trend towards poorer living conditions, lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, reduced food supply, increasing disease, etc. – a trend which, if continued, would affect the Earth’s human maximum capacity. That doesn’t appear to be the situation as I know it.

33

Six years of data is not an example of anything but a temporary trend to any scientist. Anyone who uses this as an arguement on global warming trends is seriously stretching to justify their position.

The concentration of carbon dioxide has sharply risen since pre-idustrial times. Where did this carbon dioxide come from if not from combustion? The coincidence of this rise with the advent of industrialization is quite remarkable.

I too was pretty bored with “An Inconveinient Truth”. I didn’t learn anything new, and am less convinced than ever that we can successfully fight the conservative oil lobby. By the time significant environmental distress has become irrefutable, CO2 levels will be out of control. The earth will contiue to warm even if we completely halt the current increase in CO2 concentration.

34

[QUOTE=Musicat]
<snip>Unless you can show some kind of trend towards poorer living conditions, lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, reduced food supply, increasing disease, etc. – a trend which, if continued, would affect the Earth’s human maximum capacity. That doesn’t appear to be the situation as I know it.
[/QUOTE]

That would be kind of circular arguments - factors contributing to over-population are higher life expectancies, lower infant mortalities, and decreased disease.

I hate to muddy the waters of a global warming discussion with population issues, but discussing global warming without discussing over-population is like discussing a hand without allowing discussion of fingers.

I have a biology background, and some things strike me as virtually self-evident - biological systems operate within strict parameters. When a human body gets out of its temperature range (due to hypothermia or fever), the body gets sick and may even die. It is extremely important to me that the temperature ranges for the whole planet are incredibly small.

Regarding population, humans don’t multiply quite like bacterial cultures, but close enough for government work - check out these simple population graphs:
Human exponential population growth.
Here’s a nice graph showing bacterial exponential growth.

Unfortunately, these graphs don’t show the most important part of the picture; the decline or die-off phase. You can put me down in the over-population is absolutely a real, terrifying issue camp. The question to me is which finishes the human race off first; our overbreeding or our overconsuming.

Christopher, you found the documentary boring, but I don’t think it was aimed at people who are well-versed in global warming science. I think the intention was to make a crystal-clear, easily digested story of what is going on in the world, that people who have a steady diet of reality tv have a chance of understanding.

35

[QUOTE=featherlou]
That would be kind of circular arguments - factors contributing to over-population are higher life expectancies, lower infant mortalities, and decreased disease.
[/quote]
I was discussing the statement by solkoe:

I’m only saying that, logically speaking, the fact that Earth supports 1bil now doesn’t mean 1bil is the max it can ever support. One fact does not lead to the other conclusion.

I am willing to bend that logic a bit for practical reasons if someone could show me that a trend suggested that things were reaching a limit just above the existing population. I don’t see that trend.

I also don’t see any phenomenon that “kicks in” when the Earth’s pop approaches a specific number, like every time we reach 1bil, a serious plague starts and the number is never breached. If there were such, it might support the postulate that there is a max of 1bil or so.

Therefore, I see no reason to believe that 1bil is the max the Earth can support, as solkoe said.

36

[QUOTE=flex727]
Not sure I follow this logic.

For 99.9+% of human history, there has never been a movie about global warming. Is that a good argument for never having a movie about global warming?
[/QUOTE]

It’s sort of a sidebar in response to the comment that the Earth can only support a certain population of humans. There is no way to determine this number. Many credible scientists claim we have already exceeded or carrying capacity. Others claim 9 billion or 15 billion.
I was only presenting the arguement that the true carrying capacity may be much less than we ever imagined. It wasn’t until the 1700’s that we crossed the billion mark. As other posters have noted, the effect of population growth will not be immediate.
Perhaps we can all agree that the
Earth has not yet responded fully to the impact of humankind.

37

[QUOTE=Musicat]
A logical fallacy. It may be a good argument that the Earth can support up to 1 billion, but it says absolutely nothing about more than that.

Unless you can show some kind of trend towards poorer living conditions, lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, reduced food supply, increasing disease, etc. – a trend which, if continued, would affect the Earth’s human maximum capacity. That doesn’t appear to be the situation as I know it.
[/QUOTE]

I hope you’re right because I like my warm house and nice clothes. I like using my computer to communicate.
One point I will make is that no complex civilization in history has been sustainable. If you get a chance read A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright. His point is that every civilization burns itself out. This time we will have nowhere to rebuild from.

38

[QUOTE=solkoe]
This time we will have nowhere to rebuild from.
[/QUOTE]

:confused: Why?

39

[QUOTE=interface2x]
I think he’d agree with you that it’s not the best thing in the world to take cars and airplanes all around - but that the reason he’s doing it (to get everyone to stop and pay attention to the problem) is a good that far outweighs the bad.
[/QUOTE]
You’re right… I know that what I wrote before does not constitute a watertight case. One can always argue the merits/demerits of something where ‘the ends justify the means’, and any such argument will come down in part to personal opinion and gut feeling.

In my own opinion, I just happen to get very twitchy around ‘preachy’ people who are ostensibly embracing a worthy cause but whose own actions and behaviour could be considered hypocritical. I am very sensitive to statements or pontifications that sound to me like ‘This is a bad thing but it’s okay when I do it’ or ‘It’s not justified when you do it, but it is when I do it’. And there seems to be an awful lot of this around when it comes to climate change and global warming.

The British government is currently exhorting us all to take this issue seriously. Someone wrote to John Prescott’s office (Deputy Prime Minister) and asked why he still got driven around in a big limousine when he could switch to something more eco-friendly. The official reply was simply along the lines of, ‘A senior minister of Mr. Prescott’s status merits the best possible car’. So, do they want us to take the issue seriously, or not?

As for Al Gore, it’s really not that hard to sh0w what a hypocrite he is. For one thing, he’s chosen to have four children. If he’s that concerned about global resources, he would have limited himself to two. My ‘green’ credentials are much greater than his - I have chosen not to have any children at all. So really, he should be listening to me about our responsibilities to the environment, not the other way around. Unless he wants to suggest that using up the earth’s resources is a bad thing… except when his four children are doing it? Let him get his own house in order before he lectures the rest of us.

40

Thoughts? Politics as usual. Come on people. Think for yourself.