Global Warming. A SCAM!

Remember Mark Twain's three levels of falsehoods: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.

 

i would start by asking yourself "why would the energy industry fund scientists to oppose GW?" and "why would some environmental orgs fund scientists to recognise GW?" (not that the environmental orgs have nearly the level of money that the energy industry does, so it's not really an equal situation)

other than that, absolutely. why listen to individual scientists when you can listen to the science orgs themselves?

 

Um, gigantes and CDRW?

CO2 isn't a pollutant, guys. I mean - unless you have a really weird definition of "pollutant". We breathe it out all the time, it's clear, it doesn't cause death or illness - heck, CO2 is actually the gas that our bodies use to signal ourselves to breathe. It's a natural product of combustion reactions, along with water and CO. And CO is far more dangerous to our health, while H2O is a worse greenhouse gas.

If you're calling it a pollutant because we have more of it than we want, then you're changing the definition. That's fine, as long as you're aware that you'll confuse a lot of people by using that word in that fashion.

Also, if you want other people (scientists, etc) who are more cautious about global warming, look here:

http://climateaudit.org/ Which co-won the 2007 Best Science Blog Award. More information can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Audit
Also, http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/ has links to other sites. You can see pictures of the ice caps here: http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/07/13/satellite-imagery-shows-artic-ice-still-unmelted/

As for temperature data, even the IPCC - the International Panel on Climate Change - recently acknowledged that the global average temperature hasn't changed since 1998.

 

Scam or not, pollution is a problem. Case in point would be the smog over large cities, and increased acidic rain.

 

first off, heinlein fan, i notice you didn't follow up with my replies to your last post.

i'd like to hear your comments on those, please.

CO2 as a pollutant is a perfectly valid definition in the dictionary sense. from dictionary.com:

2. any substance, as certain chemicals or waste products, that renders the air, soil, water, or other natural resource harmful or unsuitable for a specific purpose.

examples- if you are in a small enclosed area for a period of time then CO2 becomes a pollutant- it will render the local air mix unsuitable for breathing. and the case at hand: too much CO2 in the atmosphere renders the planet unsuitable for living- it will, via the greenhouse effect, cause temperatures to rise with lethal consequences to result.

i'm not quite sure what you think you are proving here. steven mcintyre is a guy with a BS in math who has some economics background and takes funding from the energy industry via the george c. marshall institute.

mcintyre's only real expertise is to say that the temp data and temp proxy data should be held to certain controls, which is certainly a legit argument for any data-gathering situation. but as far as GW, he can say whatever he feels like saying and people can award him whatever awards they want to, but that doesn't mean that his opinion is any more valid than any other layman's.

*facepalm*

the guy who wrote that seems to be completely unaware that:

1) arctic sea ice recedes and regenerates with the seasons. presenting a satcam foto of the ice at it's peak proves no more than me having a lot of extra spending money in my bank account just before i pay my rent means i really have a bunch of extra spending money.

2) arctic sea ice really is shrinking, meaning the regenerative periods do not entirely make up for the recession periods, meaning that overall, ice mass is lost (remember the polar bear situation?). head on over to wikipedia and feel free to read up on it.

that's a well-known misleading statement based on the spike in 1998, which was itself based largely on the el nino event IIRC. after all, any time you have a spike on a graph you can point to the period afterwards and say that levels went down and make this or that conclusion. that's why we look at averages, and the averages for global temperature keep going up even though we have a very slight dip right now.

just step back from your monitor and look at the overall trend. it's pretty easy to see, no?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

now since you mention the IPCC, let's look at the summary from their last assessment report (2007):

what i'd like you to do, heinleinfan, is to stop googling around here and there for info on the subject and just sit down and read a comprehensive analysis of GW. doesn't matter if it's pro or con, just so you get a picture from beginning to end and can then evaluate the individual points on their merits.

you won't be doing me a favor so much as you'll be doing yourself a favor. because as you say, you're an intelligent guy and deserve comprehensive information, not the half-baked info you've been googling up so far.

you might try "how stuff works":
http://science.howstuffworks.com/global-warming.htm

...or your local science teacher:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg

...or wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

...or whatever someone like bill o'reilly might recommend, as long as it's thorough.

 

Just poking my nose in.
I'm just going to add that i read an article the other night that a research team from russia has been evacuated from the arctic a fair bit ahead of schedule due to the ice under their station reducing in thickness.
Here's the actual story: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/15/2303869.htm

And I personally see no donwside to "green" energy. With fossil fuels running out, and petrol prices steadily getting higher, why not? Most prove to be reliable, and safe.

 

*sigh*

Sorry about missing your reply to my initial post. I was checking through the writingforum.org threads quickly, saw the "pollutant" thing and got distracted.

It will take me a few days to generate a proper and thorough response, gigantes. Hopefully that will be to your satisfaction - in the sense that, while you may convince me or I may convince you, it is probably more likely that we will have to agree to disagree.

Apologies for the delay. I'm tracking down the information you sent me (the jpg from Wikipedia, which led to a study on temperature by Brohan et al) and it'll take me some time to read through their study and to draw conclusions. Meanwhile I'm tracking down the various sources I've looked at to find their source material.

I suspect that no matter what I do, we will disagree as to what factors are most important. For one thing, I have never said that global warming was a myth or that it doesn't exist. I have said that many scientists disagree over how much effect it will have, which I hope to show with evidence in the next few days. We'll also probably disagree on which references are better informed about the issue - I've already thrown my support in for the mathematician McIntyre over at climateaudit.org whose intent it is to double-check the global warming data, and I'm still slightly mystified as to how his opinion is worth only as much as the guy's at the bus stop who hasn't been keeping track of global warming information for five or more years. I suppose that's what happens when multiple smart people get to debating, though. Ain't it fun?

Which is really what it seems to be boiling down to: we have multiple smart folks using different background information and setting different weights to different factors.

Which reminds me - Cogito? Um, how long is an entry allowed to be?

Anyhow, I should get some sleep.

Edit: Ah, and thanks for the sources. I can take notes on 'em if you want - it'll tell me what the general population thinks - but I should certainly hope I already know what global warming is.

 

@heinlein fan,
sounds like a plan. if you can correct my thinking on any point then i will consider the debate time well-spent.


re: mcintyre,
both he and the guy at the bus stop are amateurs, well-meaning or not. while it's possible that mcyintire can use his B.S. in math to argue for the data undergoing more quality control, he's not a scientist nor does he have any known background in climatology or other science related to the meta-issue of GW. he also takes money from a lobby (the exxonmobile group) that has been running a disinformation campaign on GW for many years... not exactly a good sign.


re: your knowledge of GW,
i'm not saying you don't have a basic concept of GW, but most of your arguments show a lack of understanding on the constituent points, from the role of water vapor to the polar bear and arctic ice situation.

 

I was going to avoid this thread but I just read this story. You might be interested in the myth of a scientific consensus.

http://www.dailytech.com/Myth+of+Consensus+Explodes+APS+Opens+Global+Warming+Debate/article12403.htm
Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate

"Considerable presence" of skeptics

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"

In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, "I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC's 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central 'climate sensitivity' question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method."

According to Monckton, there is substantial support for his results, "in the peer-reviewed literature, most articles on climate sensitivity conclude, as I have done, that climate sensitivity must be harmlessly low."

Monckton, who was the science advisor to Britain's Thatcher administration, says natural variability is the cause of most of the Earth's recent warming. "In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years ... Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth."

 

thanks for submitting that. and i note that:

- the latest issue of "physics & society" is featuring a debate between pro and con members on anthropogenic global warming.
- the editor of the magazine points out that many scientists disagree with AGW, something which we already know and by the tenets of the scientific method is an indication of healthy scientific debate.
- nowhere at aps.org do i see an official announcement that the APS has reversed their stance on AGW.
- nowhere do i see on michael asher's blog direct evidence that the APS has reversed their stance on AGW.

where is the missing piece of the puzzle? can anyone here point me to any major science org's website and show me where they say that their official stance is that they doubt the theory of AGW?

EDIT: i mean major science orgs such as the NAS, AAAS, etc... not the little institutes who take funding from the energy industry.

 

Everyone posting here is going to be dead before the environment kills humanity so don't worry about it.

I'm horrible, I know.

 

The problem with this demand is that 99% of science organizations get some funding from the energy industry. Its a tax rebate and good publicity for the energy industry to give money to scientists. And for scientists its a way to fund their research.
David Suzuki a prominent Global Warming supporter in Canada (the best known and top GW scientist in Canada) says that global warming deniers should be thrown in jail along with oil executives. His organization gets several hundred thousands of dollars from Canadian energy producers, and oil companies.
With the way funding for science works its almost impossible to not get money from energy companies if the organization works through a university or government funded organization.

 

your view represents the overall thinking of scientists from a decade or two ago.

many, if not most of those, who've been studying this issue since then now say that changes are happening much faster than they originally thought. the changes are happening right here, right now, all over the world. what kind of natural disaster might end your personal life, i have no idea, but i can give you armloads of articles about the changes going on if you'd like evidence.

fair enough. let's examine this more closely. do you know the donation numbers his org (i assume davidsuzuki.org?) are getting and which companies they're coming from exactly?

also, do you know anything about how the donation levels to pro-AGW orgs compare to the donation levels for con-AGW orgs?

re: the APS issue,
again, do you know where the official statement is that the APS has changed its stance on AGW?

 

I think that global warming will be inevitable, what with all the pissing and moaning about it - A complete overload of carbon dioxide into the air.

Should we blame the dinosaurs for the ice age, for not being industrious enough?

Seriously, if it's going to happen, it's going to happen. Can't stop it now. Of course our impact is a tattoo on this place - We're the primary beings with the most influence. Are we to be blamed fully for all this ****? No. Did we play a part? Of course.

I don't see the big deal. The only idiocy I see, is in supposed conspiracies.

"Conspiracy theories represent a known glitch in human reasoning. For some reason, sometimes when people think they've uncovered a lie, they cut context away from facts and arguments and assemble them into reassuring litanies." - I forgot who. Not me (I couldn't put it into better words...Well....These are my words from memory of whoevers, I think....But not my platform - You dig?).

So, in short - Global warming - Not a scam. A thought. An educated theory. With bar graphs, pie charts, and Al Gores.

 

why do you think it's inevitable? (forgive me if this sounds argumentative or confrontational, but i don't see beating around the bush doing any good in this particular debate)

according to the orgs (like NASA) which collect and review the atmospheric carbon data from global measurement sites, humans put about seven gigatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, four of which are removed by the earth's carbon sinks and three of which stay up there. we have so far raised the atmospheric levels to 385 parts per million and have increased global temps about .5 degrees celsius, something which doesn't sound like much but is the main culprit for all kinds of things like this, this and this. furthermore, it only takes a small drop or rise in global temperature to create an ice age or an earth too hot to live on (due to many resultant consequences).

so if we're able to live relatively comfortably with the global temperature where it is right now, why shouldn't we try to go carbon neutral in the coming years to maintain this? even if we can eliminate that extra three Gt/yr of carbon we emit then the planet can tread water for awhile (not get any worse) while we work to improve our carbon sink technologies.

why shouldn't we be taking full responsibility for global warming? it wasn't until the industrial age via the mass burning of coal and oil that the atmospheric carbon started to get out of control. it sure wasn't volcano eruptions, because the average carbon output per year is only .15 gigatonnes. it wasn't plants that we know of and it wasn't animals, unless it was the masses of animals that we bred in herds.

basically, who else is there to blame?

 

By inevitable, I meant exactly what the definition for the word is? Anyway, that line was in serious humour, ie, a joke.

And to put an end to all this;

There's so many pacts and organizations now, and the UN has issued guidelines to developed countries, and thus far, the UK alone has cut off 30 odd percent of it's emission ratings. But it's all futile. And, more importantly, talking about it does nothing, and just gives people something to worry about incessently. (Which what was my first line in my first post was ratting on about).

Simply put - We can't control the weather, and we certainly can't take back what we've done. All we can do is piss and moan about what we have done, and understand what the effects are going to be. So all in all, all the scientists have done is described how ineffectual we are in excrutiating detail, analysing the ways we've 'screwed up'.

Moral of the story? Don't lose sleep over it. Why care for something for which you have no input?

 

twigstar, i think your pessimism is perfectly understandable and at times i've shared it, but there's two big problems with it:

1) science has indeed established that civilisation will crash via catastrophic climate changes brought on by global warming if the situation doesn't change. but no scientific, economic, sociological or other body that i know of has established that it's impossible to make the necessary changes. as far as we know we have a chance, right here, right now, to do something before the situation gets a lot worse- perhaps about 5-10 years at most.

2) it's debilitating and unethical. it's debilitating because feeling hopeless about a major world issue can't make you feel very good. altho maybe you already feel hopeless about life in general and this just reinforces your overall mindset. as for it being unethical, it's that way because we as a species are the ones who created this problem for the earth and we as individuals (ie you and i) are the ones who are exacerbating it through our daily activities. the responsibility is therefore on us to do something.

and yes, if you choose to, you can certainly help on this issue. you can learn about ways to reduce your own carbon footprint and you can help tackle a widespread propaganda campaign that much of the general public has fallen prey to- that science has reached no consensus about the greenhouse effect and about global warming and that all the little signs going on around us can be lightly explained away. simply responding with the facts to people who have bought into this nonsense, as i have tried to do, can be useful. the idea is to get them educated and help show them the difference between propaganda and fact. you as a single person could help and make an impact with this, be it in your daily life or online or where ever. you can put as little or as much effort into it, whenever you feel like doing so. the reason for making this effort is because it's people putting pressure on politicians that create the needed legislative changes. because when governments are left to their own devices, they generally aren't proactive about impending issues, especially ones that will involve challenges and economic hardships to their voting blocs.

last thought: ask yourself a question- how many people learned about global warming through concerted study and how many people learned by following the vagaries of media articles? and how many of those who learned by the media articles researched which of them were factual and which were propaganda? if you took a poll, what do you think the numbers would be?

 

speaking of whether it's the environmentalists or the scientists who are claiming that man is creating global warming-

i've mentioned several times that the world's major scientific bodies officially support the theory of global warming and support the idea that man created it. that means that however many individual scientists (and typically, lots of non-scientists) disagree about this and sign petitions or write articles on the subject, it's clearly not enough to swing the overall thinking of their peers or their organisations.

i've mentioned the two most prestigious orgs in the world, the national academy of science (NAS) and the american association for the advancement of science (AAAS) as well as the national aeronautics and space administration (NASA) and a couple others.

so now i'm going to work on compiling a big, complete list, starting with entries compiled from logical science's listing (logicalscience.com). below are the initial drafts.

don't take my word on it, of course. feel free to look up the orgs yourself and find their stances on global warming. (if desired, i can help you find appropriate links)

industry is weighing in, too. ironically, several of the energy industry players that were originally taking part in the propaganda campaign have now reversed their stance and are calling for action of global warming:

 

i just found the final nail in the coffin against what michael asher claimed in his blog. the propaganda in the blog and the original newsletter that the APS had changed their stance on global warming apparantly became so well-distributed and widely-believed that the APS emphatically debunked the notion on the front page of their site (aps.org). sublink is:
http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm

 

Saying it's death to the human race is just large a misjudgement.

Global climate shifts are a natural part of living. Whether humans made something that takes millions of years 0.000001 per cent worse as a result of 200 years of industrialisation is a question that doesnt really even matter.

The real question is as Cog said - whether we'll adapt. Every one spends to long arguing the point, when really, it'll make everything so much more effecient if we start worrying about looking after the world and living in tune with it.

 

frost, have you heard what your country's science orgs and political leaders are saying?

 

Love the term "hot".

Last summer sydney had 5 days out of a total of 91 days in usmmer over 30 defrees C - and now where getting battered with one of the coldest winters in the past 10.

There is most cetainly an issue with "dry" years - it rained for a week a few months ago and it felt so darn Alien (as a kid i can remember it raining all the time).

Its the whole frog in a tub of water isue (you know where it slowly boils, and the frog cooks to death. In my lifetime i wont see hardly ANY difference, but doesnt mean we dont have to NOT do anything now.

 

Hey--I'm jumping in a little late here, but oh well..
What I was taught in my bio course last semester was that it's not the earth's warming that's the problem, it's the rate of the warming. The earth is going through a natural warming period right now; however, it's warming at an alarming rate that can be traced back to humans and their use of the earth's carbon sinks.
And there's a lot most people can do to reduce their carbon footprint--and usually, it results in saving money as well.

 

one of the reasons "global warming" was always a poor term is because most people take it to mean that the entire planet will heat up evenly. the actual theory is that various areas of the planet will heat up unevenly and some of them will even get colder... as the evidence has so far shown.

more accurate terms for what's happening now are "global climate change" or "global climate destabilisation" or even "catastrophic climate change", because what is on track to cause civilisation's collapse are storms, rampant disease outbreaks, loss of the world's breadbasket regions, wars over resources and other niceties before pure heat does most us in... except australia. you guys are kind of on the front line in this situation.