And sadly Australia is ill prepared for this. We finally have someone running the country that actually wants to believe/listen in it (unlike our previous leader who would not even listen). What would be interesting a LONG way down the future is when the Ice caps (obviously “If” they were to melt) what would happen. I always though Australia was so baron because of the Antarctic winds (winds blowing from Antarctica sucking moisture from the continent. Season have most certainly been odd here though, or inconsistent, I’ll give it that much.
Just an update: Sorry about the delay in the essay - life sort of keeps getting in the way, and I'm waiting for another library book which was in Repairs so I can't actually check it out until tomorrow. I have the general essay structure worked out - I'll probably do it just this way, but if anyone can think of ways to improve it a little, I'll certainly take your comments (preferably via PM so as to avoid having several random pages added to the thread) into consideration. *** Draft Essay Structure *** Section 1: Purpose of the essay - Clarifying own position, for myself and for others - Challenging my own reasoning - To determine whether I'm dismissing information that I should look at - General outline Section 2: What I think global warming is and does and entails. This bit is written without consulting sources. (Sorry, but someone implied that I don't understand the problem, and my pride and ego are working together to demand that I refute this. Also, I have a pet peeve against saying "You obviously don't know what the basic problem is - if you did, you'd agree with me" in a debate.) Section 3: Corrections to the above, made after basic research. Sections 4 - ? (May add more) - Reliability of predictions / models / proxy data - Are we facing doom in 20 years - Historical warming / cooling trends / causes etc. - Whose opinion counts? Only those with education? (Subset - Al Gore, Hansen, Mann, McKitrick, Ordinary folk, my own friends and peers) - Own Identity, and all the reasons I have for not saying who I am or where I'm from - Response to gigantes's comments - What I've learned from this - Glossary (heck, I only have a vague idea myself about what "forcing gas" means, and I know a lot of folks don't know about solar cycles or greenhouse gases or anthropogenic versus 'natural' global temperature changes.) - Sources ** End Draft Essay Structure *** Thoughts?
fantastic, heinlein. it's very rarely that those who dispute AGW are willing to make a comprehensive effort to understand the situation and to sketch out their reasoning, so hats off to you. regardless of what you come up with it will help advance the issue. because one of the most important things that people working on AGW can do is to understand why others choose not to recognise it. this particularly applies to economists, conservatives and the apathetic, but also critical thinkers such as yourself who disagree for your own reasons. thank you. EDIT: if you don't mind me answering about what a "forcing gas" is- i am not a chemist and don't know all the possible other definitions, but in terms of the greenhouse effect, a forcing gas is one which 1) is changing concentrations, causing differences in the amount of solar radiation trapped in the earth's atmosphere; 2) is relatively permanent in the earth's atmosphere, particularly compared to water vapor.
The term "forcing gas" gives it a certain amount of weight, don't you think? The definition given by gigantes is essentially correct; however, it only considers the effect of that gas in isolation from other factors. Labelling it a forcing gas imples that this is a more significant factor than others, whether or not that implication is really justified. But atmospheric science is extremely complex, with all manner of interactions that aren't always well understood. A forcing factor that does not depend on atmospheric gas balances is variations in the sun's energy output. It's one that is always waved away by the global warming activists for two reasons: it cannot be blamed on human activity, and we have no control over it anyway. Should we do what we can to reduce our impact on all apects of the planet's ecology? Sure. But with 6 billion plus humans populating the planet, we have to be realistic about it. Not all of it can be avoided. Nor is human activity the sole, or even necessarily dominant source of shifts in atmospheric constitution. Vulcanism and forest fires, for example, release huge quantities of gases, and particulates as well, into the atmosphere, causing sharp changes in ecology over a wide, even global, area. These processes would occur with or without the human presence. Climatic shifts are a very complex process, and the activists are trying to portray it otherwise. I'm not a chemist either - not any more. I was a research chemist at one time, however. Even though my specialty was not atmospheric science, I have had enough exposure to the subject to appreciate that there is nothing simple about it.
that is why AGW is a theory- one that has scientific consensus behind it, but still a theory. no scientist can say with 100% certainty that the theory is correct, mainly because that's not how the scientific method works (even the earth being considered round is still a 'theory') and pragmatically because AGW is an interdisciplinary issue (a meta-issue), and no one scientist is trained in all the factors involved. but the body of scientists have looked at the complexities of the issue and all the known factors involved and come up with something like this in terms of causal and forcing agents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png the issue of the sun was obviously one of the first factors that was considered by scientists. they certainly did not wave away the issue, nor do activists who are familiar with the situation. again, i am certainly not an expert in this area, but my understanding is that the best gauges of solar radiation are satellites, and that satellites have shown no significant increase in solar radiation for about 60-70 years. PMOD of the world radiation center says so: http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant the max planck institute says so: http://www.mps.mpg.de/en/projekte/sun-climate/ real climate also has more articles on this issue with more links to scientific data. here's one: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/the-lure-of-solar-forcing/ but i see no reason there why we shouldn't try. actually in terms of people who are hopeless and chronic contributors to the problem- it's us. we americans are the per-population primary contributors of greenhouse gases and the USA is the last major nation not to subscribe to the kyoto protocol at any level. so we don't need to look at some 'backwater', third-world country and get annoyed that they won't come around- we can simply start with ourselves and make a huge difference immediately. saying that volcanoes are a culprit in GW is like saying that lighting a book of matches is helping to heat your house on a cold winter night. the yearly volcanic output of CO2 is .15 gt c/yr output (NASA data) compared to around 7gt c/yr for humans, ie volcanic output is a tiny fraction of human output. neither emissions in volcanic CO2 nor emissions in associated particulate matter (which has an atmospherically cooling effect) have made any real impression on average global temperature. the most dramatic volcanic event would have some influence on CO2 and temp levels for a limited timeframe, but it quickly averages out. even if you had an emission that represented ten times the yearly average it would still only represent about a fifth of man's average output. evidence: the CO2 record during the last 50 years, as i posted before, has shown noteworthy reliability. it's not full of dips and peaks as you might expect if volcanoes were really as dramatic as some poeple would have you believe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png similarly, the global temperature record has averaged a steady climb for the least 60 years. more full of dips and peaks as you would expect since multiple factors are in play, but with a clear upward trend that shows no lasting impact from volcanic emissions. indeed of all the potential factors shown earlier, it's CO2 which seems to have the most direct causality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png re: forest fires, i don't have exact figures at the moment but the known net effect of plant biomass, including forest fires, is to provide a carbon sink. this helps to offset our own carbon output, of course, but is dwindling because humans keep reducing the global tree population every year and burning much of it. i can get you NASA and other links from scientific bodies if you're interested. only the knee-jerk ones (granted that may be many). but in this case any AGW activist has a very powerful tool at their disposal if they care to use it- that being the scientific community. ie, i may not be an expert on any of these issues, but i know the conclusions the experts have made and are making. the myth that climate skeptics, conservatives, economists and the apathetic would have you believe is this- that there is still significant debate within the scientific community about global warming (there's not). taking action on global warming is inconvenient, may be economically costly, and is unprofitable and unpalatable to the world's richest corporation (exxonmobile) and conservative govts and as you'd expect, those are the types who drive the propaganda campaign against global warming. examples being the dishonest articles a couple people earlier posted in the thread. i don't blame people for not being able to sort out that crap because such articles have the air of authenticity to them- that's the whole point.
I have indeed seen all of that. It's really not that special. It's natural. Australia, and central australia particularly (where im from) has droughts regularly just as bad as the one we're having now. The difference? In the 50's, 60's and 70's no one cared because every one recognised it as being natural, and part of life living in a desert. You want rainfall, go to Darwin. But again you miss the point. The world's temperatures are fluctuating up and down. Do you honestly believe it is possible for the 200 approximate years of rapid industrialization of mankind for to have the adverse affect on a cycle of global temperatures which we really don't understand much about, but know takes MILLIONS of years to go through? It's simply silly to believe that. It just means that ok, the world's heating up. We're running out of oil. Good, there are problems here that need addressing, but we're busy debating the existance of other problems. It's stupid.
i don't know that much about oz specifically, but if you feel like helping on this issue then search the site for the highest scientific body in your country, the AAS, and find out if they've issued any conclusions about draught patterns. thanks in advance. http://www.science.org.au/ no- no they're not. there is a steady distinct rise in average global temperature that is highly unusual. generally it takes thousand(s) of years for global temperature to change a single degree celcius. instead what we're seeing is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png do you think you could rephrase that, because i have no idea what you're talking about. how about two birds with one stone? alt-fuels can both solve the problem of oil and help solve the problem of AGW. hydrogen-fueled cars are now being used on the US west coast and many other alt fuels are in development, including a water-fueled car that one japanese company (genepax) just introduced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-fuelled_car
Argh. Life has interfered again - I'm still recovering from a viral infection that has lingered for more than two weeks now. And summer is over, so time is much more limited. Basically, I still intend to write that essay. But I also have other things to do, and no time for the next five months or so. Hopefully I'll get to it in January, or just do a dramatically abbreviated "short" essay with only a few paragraphs in each section. 'Pologies for the recurrant delays. *sad look, goes and reads more science articles*
I like you more every day, Cogito. The way I see it, whether gw is real or not, we need to do things for the environment anyway. GW is just a good motivator for people who don't see the other things issues with pollution as a big enough problem. Do parents see the irony of driving their asthamtic child to the ER in an SUV? Can smokers picture just how much all the cigarette butts add up when they keep tossing them on the ground? It's harder to scare people into action when you talk about these things, and sometimes scaring people is the only way. When it comes to this sort of issue, does it really matter if they are doing it because they think it's cool, they're scared or because they know it's right? The thing that matters is that they are taking action. Every little bit counts.
