Global Warming | Fact or Fiction?

[Trey of Diamonds]

That is why I stick to reading what scientists have to say on the subject.

The insistence of deniers and agnostics that I take the opinions of each "side" of any factual question to be equally valuable is tiresome. If a fact exists, science is the way to find it. If we want to know what science has found, scientists are the people to ask.

Not economists, for the love of God. Why would anyone ask an economist, or a statistician, or a petroleum geologist, or any of the other well-funded non-experts who aggressively chase down airtime to deny climate science, what climate science shows?

Totally agree. One of the problems with Global Warming is that we don't have all the facts, there are lots of holes in the science and the extremists on each side try to fill those holes with their own assumptions and pass them off as facts. I understand the frustration people have with the science of climate change but my frustration comes from weeding through all the pseudofacts.

 

[painted wolf]

Your post gave me the warm fuzzies.
With obvious common ground about benefits, even the most vociferous GW deniers can get on board with many good solutions.

I would love to believe that... and I think it can work on the local level because I've seen and participated in it.

But at the national level, there seems to be a general dismissal of these things at, in order to prevent "the other team from scoring any points". We are in a position where we can't even agree that we need to seriously work toward fixing our economy. The party that founded the EPA now wants it destroyed because the other party likes it to much.

I'd love to be an optimist... but politicians just won't let me.

wa:do

 

[Revoltingest]

I would love to believe that... and I think it can work on the local level because I've seen and participated in it.
But at the national level, there seems to be a general dismissal of these things at, in order to prevent "the other team from scoring any points". We are in a position where we can't even agree that we need to seriously work toward fixing our economy. The party that founded the EPA now wants it destroyed because the other party likes it to much.
I'd love to be an optimist... but politicians just won't let me.
wa:do

Alas, they all vex me too.
We'll have to find solace in solving the world's problems hypothetically.
The real world will ignore us & do as it pleases.
(Btw, The EPA is one function which I think is useful from libertarian & constitutional originalist perspectives, since clean air & water are important interstate matters.)

 

[cablescavenger]

Personally, I don't think Humanity is as much to blame for Global Warming as the natural cycle of the climate itself. Sure, we have an impact and possibly we have increased the speed at which the climate is warming but it would still change without our being here. A also think that working to reverse global warming has a great deal of dangerous consequences that shouldn't be overlooked. I'm not talking about recycling and conservation or trying to reduce pollution, those things should of course continue. But if you are considering trying to force an ecosystem to never change you will destroy it. Change is constant in nature.

I think more effort should be put towards studying what the world will be like as it changes and what those changes will mean to our society. If the southern parts of the world become desert and the northern tundra becomes farm land, you can expect a very different world. Canada and Siberia will become the bread baskets of the world. Americans will be sneaking across the Canadian boarder to help pick crops. Oh, the irony of it all.

We are still leaving the ice age, perfectly natural I say.

 

[cablescavenger]

Surprisingly, many of the solutions proposed for AGW are also just good policy:
- Cutting fossil fuel usage
- Preserving greenspace
- Limiting population
- Eating bacon (It helps us deal with the emotional stress.)

The primary problem I see in GW is that resources & assets will be redistributed by our uncaring planet.
Some countries will win, & others will lose big time. Political & economic turmoil will reign.
It would be good to mitigate & plan for this.

Forestation too. Eat those carbons nom nom :drool:

 

[painted wolf]

Alas, they all vex me too.
We'll have to find solace in solving the world's problems hypothetically.
The real world will ignore us & do as it pleases.

Or at least locally dealing with them as much as we can and ignoring Washington.

(Btw, The EPA is one function which I think is useful from libertarian & constitutional originalist perspectives, since clean air & water are important interstate matters.)

Absolutely. The coal power plants in the Southern US directly harm the timber, maple and tourism industries of New England.
Pollution isn't simply a local issue.

wa:do

 

[cablescavenger]

Are you saying that there is no Global Warming at all? I think rising sea levels is grossly exaggerated but sea levels do change. I doubt the arctic melting would raise them much but Antarctica, that could cause some flooding. Of course it would also give us some real estate.

I believe Global warming is quite natural, so I am not a proponent of scaremongering, but sea levels should be affected by Global warming. Not because ice melts and adds to the sea, but simply because if you heat a liquid it will expand.

So how high will they go?

Not sure, but a good start would be to try and establish what the earth looked like 1,000 years ago, when there was another warm period, and there were no ice sheets on Greenland, I don't suppose anyone was blaming pollution, car fumes and industrialisation back then.

Perhaps local clansmen banned campfires:
:camp:


I do not work in the field, but from what I have seen and read over the years, my view is that the level of permafrost is reducing because we are withdrawing from an ice age, and this releases carbon (methane) from the soil in huge volumes. Nothing to worry about, it can only release so much, and then if history is anything to go by, the earth should cool, and it will flip back the other way.

The problem with my view is that leaves the Governments very little room to extort money out of you for their other pet projects.

I see the governments using green money to prepare for fossil fuels dying out, building wind farms, utilising geothermal energy, using solar energy etc, but I don't see anyone creating forests, or building 20ft high walls around coastlines in order to combat the Global warming, do you?

 

[Revoltingest]

I believe Global warming is quite natural, so I am not a proponent of scaremongering, but sea levels should be affected by Global warming. Not because ice melts and adds to the sea, but simply because if you heat a liquid it will expand.

Actually, melting will be the culprit behind rising sea levels.
Just look at the size & thickness of ice sheets covering Greenland & Antarctica.
Volume increase due to thermal expansion of liquid water looks insignificant.

 

[Alceste]

I believe Global warming is quite natural, so I am not a proponent of scaremongering, but sea levels should be affected by Global warming. Not because ice melts and adds to the sea, but simply because if you heat a liquid it will expand.

So how high will they go?

Not sure, but a good start would be to try and establish what the earth looked like 1,000 years ago, when there was another warm period, and there were no ice sheets on Greenland, I don't suppose anyone was blaming pollution, car fumes and industrialisation back then.

Perhaps local clansmen banned campfires:
:camp:


I do not work in the field, but from what I have seen and read over the years, my view is that the level of permafrost is reducing because we are withdrawing from an ice age, and this releases carbon (methane) from the soil in huge volumes. Nothing to worry about, it can only release so much, and then if history is anything to go by, the earth should cool, and it will flip back the other way.

The problem with my view is that leaves the Governments very little room to extort money out of you for their other pet projects.

I see the governments using green money to prepare for fossil fuels dying out, building wind farms, utilising geothermal energy, using solar energy etc, but I don't see anyone creating forests, or building 20ft high walls around coastlines in order to combat the Global warming, do you?

Hypothetically speaking, even if your guess that the effects of the current, global, rapid warming will be identical to a local, gradual warm period you heard happened 1000 years ago is correct, our situation has dramatically changed. We still had some elbow room 1000 years ago in terms of undeveloped, arable land and a surplus of resources. Our habitations were generally small and constructed of local materials - IOW, easily reconstructed after a disaster like a flood, a war, etc. Our livelihoods may have been modest but we were generally capable of independent survival (hunting, fishing, gathering, farming, building, etc). Nevertheless, even with such a wealth of resources and so much elbow room we were still subject to frequent famines, outbreaks of deadly disease and resource wars.

Do you think our current population of 7 billion primarily urban dwellers can handle disruptions in our global supply chain and public infrastructure more easily than the 0.4 billion hungry, agrarian mouths that the first millenium AD failed to consistently feed? If so, why?

 

[cablescavenger]

Actually, melting will be the culprit behind rising sea levels.
Just look at the size & thickness of ice sheets covering Greenland & Antarctica.
Volume increase due to thermal expansion of liquid water looks insignificant.

Hello Revoltingest, love your work on this forum, keep it coming.

Back to your post here, I don't doubt that the ice caps would have some impact, but my research found that it was not as significant as we are led to believe. I think the media skews the reality by going on about melting ice caps every 5 minutes, but warm water expands more than melting ice does, and we have a 70% water covering.


I am not poo pooing you, as I am only going by what I found out a few years back, and things may well have changed, and I would be happy to concede otherwise if I read up on it all again and found different.

By all accounts a lot of this science is just hazy, in essence scientists are struggling to build robust models to understand the physics involved, and the likely impacts, and warmer seas just feed back into the weather system too.

Anyway, I found a couple of nice links, that I hope you will appreciate.
They do the topic more justice than I can. I am just an interested layman. Earth sciences float my boat.

Climate Institute

melting or expansion?

Thermal expansion

 

[Revoltingest]

I'll check out the links....thanx!

 

[Two-bit guru]

I wish the poll had a slot for Global warming is happening but we aren't sure why.

 

[work in progress]

20 years ago, we where told we where headed for an ice age.

Thank you for climate myth #29: They predicted global cooling in the 1970's

A survey of the scientific literature has found that between 1965 and 1979, 44 scientific papers predicted warming, 20 were neutral and just 7 predicted cooling. So while predictions of cooling got more media attention, the majority of scientists were predicting warming even then.
​

New Scientist notes that global average temperatures declined slightly from about 1940 to 1970, so it's not surprising if some analysts thought the cooling trend might continue during the 70's.

At the time, I was in high school, and I clearly remember in my chemistry class, we had some discussion about what effect rising CO2 levels would have on the Earth's climate. We were well aware of CO2's greenhouse effect, but there is also CO2's contribution to cloud formation that had to be taken into consideration. Would the greenhouse effect be stronger and raise temperatures? Or would global dimming from cloud formation cause cooling? Or were both effects of CO2 roughly equal and likely to cancel each other out? Well, now we know the answer is no.1, so the ice age story is a myth!

The last eight years, the planet has not got warmer, or at least that is how I view the graph.

Hold that thought! In my rss feed, I found this new post from Jeff Masters, of the Weather Underground: October 2011 the globe's 8th warmest on record

October 2011 was the globe's 8th warmest October on record, according to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies also rated October the 8th warmest on record. The top ten warmest Octobers since record keeping began in 1871 have all occurred since 1997. October 2011 global land temperatures were the 2nd warmest on record, and ocean temperatures were the 11th warmest on record. Global satellite-measured temperatures for the lowest 8 km of the atmosphere near average, the 19th or 12th warmest in the 34-year record, according to Remote Sensing Systems and the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH).
​

I would say that if the ten warmest Octobers have all occured since 1997, that's a clear sign of global warming. And the October results certainly fit with data analysis at NOAA: NOAA: 2010 Tied For Warmest Year on Record
And guess what year 2010 tied for warmest year of all time? Answer: 2005. Anyone see a pattern here?

When all the nations gathered for meeting last year, it snowed that day where they had not had snow for decades.

Never mind 'exception doesn't prove a rule,' wherever that meeting was, they were likely to have had a snowstorm this past winter -- but not because of sudden global cooling....in fact it's the exact opposite! Part of the reason is identical to the reason why there is an increase in the volume of rain falling the rest of the year -- an atmosphere which is warmer by 1 degree C is able to hold 7% more water vapour. Also, the melting of Arctic ice cap and the increase of open water up north is weakening the Polar Vortex -- the swirling weather system that used to surround the Arctic Ocean, and keep most of the cold air up there....at least up until the last few years! A weaker polar vortex means more cold air breaking through the jet stream and pushing further south. But that means Arctic temperatures in the winter which are much warmer than normal...which lessens the amount of ice volume built up during the winter...and increases the volume of sea ice melted during the summers. The effect is not much different than leaving your fridge door open! Sure, your kitchen will be colder than normal, but everything in fridge has to be thrown out.

I'm not in denial nor am I self deluded. I love green technology. I was planting trees before it was all the rage.

What I am saying is, one locality cannot "save the planet". The whole planet has to act as group or it will accomplish nothing.

And we cannot act as a group without an international governing system that can apply penalties to ALL nations for non-compliance with carbon reduction targets.

Global warming is a religion, not true science.

No, neoliberal economic theory and libertarian notions of ending government's capacity to regulate business, product safety, pollution etc. is the religious cult we have been suffering through thanks to Reagan and Thatcher's adoption of Friedmanomics!

I am a global warming agnostic. I have yet to see any proof positive.

Which means you're not looking!

I believe science is looking for supporting data and disregarding anything to the contrary.

So, you would rather believe that climatologists working in public research facilities, who earn what is typical of tenured professors, are conspiring to push the case for global warming; but for some reason, the small handful of scientists (few of which are actual climatologists) who are richly rewarded for running the denial and disinformation campaigns, on behalf of their oil and coal industry-funded sponsors, are the ones who are honest researchers! The evidence regarding both says otherwise.

 

[cablescavenger]

Hypothetically speaking, even if your guess that the effects of the current, global, rapid warming will be identical to a local, gradual warm period you heard happened 1000 years ago is correct, our situation has dramatically changed. We still had some elbow room 1000 years ago in terms of undeveloped, arable land and a surplus of resources. Our habitations were generally small and constructed of local materials - IOW, easily reconstructed after a disaster like a flood, a war, etc. Our livelihoods may have been modest but we were generally capable of independent survival (hunting, fishing, gathering, farming, building, etc). Nevertheless, even with such a wealth of resources and so much elbow room we were still subject to frequent famines, outbreaks of deadly disease and resource wars.

Do you think our current population of 7 billion primarily urban dwellers can handle disruptions in our global supply chain and public infrastructure more easily than the 0.4 billion hungry, agrarian mouths that the first millenium AD failed to consistently feed? If so, why?

I have no difficulty agreeing with this. I think the answer to your question on whether the planet can cope with the disturbance is probably :no:.

I do not know what the impact of global warming will be, but whatever it is I would hope any humanitarian effort required would be met.

 

[work in progress]

One thing that you need to understand is that there is a great deal of propaganda and misinformation coming from the more militant environmentalists out there as well as from those with their heads stuck in the sand. All the doom sayers who flood the internet with made up data and exaggerated consequences do more harm than good because they make the moderates who would like to see real data hesitant to accept anything at face value. This is why I really hate hear the phrase "We're killing the planet". We aren't, we can't. The planet will be just fine no matter what we do. It is ourselves we are endangering, not the planet.

From my own experience with a local Unitarian church in my town, I'm getting the feeling that Unitarians down south are a lot different than the ones I am familiar with!
Militant environmentalists...that's the problem...seriously...we are in the midst of a mass extinction, caused by man-made changes to the biosphere, and if present trends aren't altered, it will be on the scale of the five major extinctions that occurred previously in Earth's history; if that's not killing the planet, what is?

 

[Reverend Rick]

Maybe you aren't deluded - maybe you have an honest difficulty distinguishing between scientific research and opinion and that has made the issue too confusing for you to be able to take an informed position.

Perhaps both side are deluded and the truth is somewhere in between.

Are there lies in Inconvenient Truth

 

[Trey of Diamonds]

I do not know what the impact of global warming will be, but whatever it is I would hope any humanitarian effort required would be met.

Kind of like the humanitarian effort required in east Africa is being met?

 

[Trey of Diamonds]

From my own experience with a local Unitarian church in my town, I'm getting the feeling that Unitarians down south are a lot different than the ones I am familiar with!
Militant environmentalists...that's the problem...seriously...we are in the midst of a mass extinction, caused by man-made changes to the biosphere, and if present trends aren't altered, it will be on the scale of the five major extinctions that occurred previously in Earth's history; if that's not killing the planet, what is?

Didn't the planet survive those mass extinctions? Didn't life return to normal? Killing the planet means ALL life is gone. I did not say that militant environmentalists are the problem, I said they confuse the issue by exaggerating the problems with pseudofacts and out right lies. This makes them no better than the head stuck in the sand types who ignore the good science just because some fanatic was caught in a lie. My point is keep a cool head and stick to the real facts. In other words, Moderates Rule! heh heh.

 

[Alceste]

Perhaps both side are deluded and the truth is somewhere in between.

Are there lies in Inconvenient Truth

Sure, and the earth is only half - round, and half of that dome was created 6000 years ago while the other half evolved over billions of years, and only half the Apollo mission landed on the moon.

I prefer educating myself on the facts to trying to position myself in the middle ground between fact and fantasy. It's not that hard. You do need to trust that the scientific method is able to illuminate the facts. After that it's just quiet evenings by the woodstove with a book and a glass of beaujolais.

 

[Reverend Rick]

Sure, and the earth is only half - round, and half of that dome was created 6000 years ago while the other half evolved over billions of years, and only half the Apollo mission landed on the moon.

Your moving the goal posts here. I am playing nice. Do I really deserve this much sarcasm?

I prefer educating myself on the facts to trying to position myself in the middle ground between fact and fantasy. It's not that hard. You do need to trust that the scientific method is able to illuminate the facts. After that it's just quiet evenings by the woodstove with a book and a glass of beaujolais.

You make it so inviting Alceste as long as it is wine and not kool-aid.

In real life, I could see us becoming good friends.

Here is the thing, our area runs on coal. Our jobs and electricity depend on cheap energy. Factories that might be tempted to move rely on this cheap resource.

Yes, I know coal is poison, but what does it matter if we burn it or China does?

Do you really want me to stop eating beef and raising my cows that fart?