Global Overheating

[SpidermanTuba]

It is, in fact, an anti-human conspiracy.

The idea that we should protect the place we live is about as anti-human as you can get. If we screw up this Earth we can just buy a new one at Wal-Mart.

 

[Hobbit]

Forest fires and volcanic eruptions have done more to the atmosphere and the environment than we could hope to give off. Think about it. The fallout from Mt. St. Helens was visible for years after that eruption. I remember a forest fire in Mexico that gave off so much smoke that it severely limited visibility where I lived in the mountains of northwest Arkansas. If man hadn't been there to fight it, it could have taken out half that damn country. Then there's the constant eruptions in Hawaii that cloud their skies, the sky-darkening explosions of Mt. Vesuvius, and the constant emissions from naturally caused forest fires and animal flatulance. The environment is not fragile. If you think it is, try going out and breaking it sometime. It's not easy, and more likely than not, you'll end up dead. The Earth has survived greater disasters than you or I have ever seen, and it will survive many more.

In the end, this whole environmental issue is another liberal control issue. Just like the liberals think they can control the terrorists by appeasing them, they think they can control the climate of the entire planet with emmissions. It's bullcrap.

Oh, and as far as the Gulf Stream goes, do you really think it's always been there? Rivers and ocean currents shift greatly over time. In fact, it's a miracle of modern engineering that the Mississippi, which feeds the Gulf Stream, still follows its current path, and there's evidence that both have shifted many times before. The environment is ever changing, and no matter what you think, we cannot stop the world from changing just by signing the Kyoto treaty.

 

[SpidermanTuba]

Think about it.

Alright.

Atmospheric levels of CO are higher than they've ever been in history.

Human CO2 emmisions are higher than they've ever been in history.


But if I just "think about it" - those two facts are one big fat coincidence!


But why "think about it" when we could just consult the facts? In the graph of atmospheric CO2 vs time - the eruption of Mt. St. Helens is clearly distinguishable as a distinct feature in the chart in the early 80's! I don't know how these so-called "scientists" could miss a feature that big! Anyone who just "thought about it" - long enough - and perhaps stared long enough, would clearly see a big jump in CO2 when St Helens erupted that deviates from the curve of the rest of the graph!

Its painfully obvious that this graph has jumps and skips in it that correspond with random natural disasters - instead of a smooth curve upwards + (seasonal differences) that might correspond with the same smooth curve upward of industrialization!











Do you have any actual science to back your case or is it just you saying its true and it becomes true? (HINT: pointing out that their are large natural disasters which release CO2 is a qualitative argument which does nothing to help your case except show that there is POSSIBLY a way to help your case - use a quantitative argument. How MUCH Co2 did Mt St Helens release, and WHY doesn't it appear as a distinct feature on the above graph???)

 

[Mariner]

President Bush has stopped saying that global warming isn't real. Time to catch up with your man!

The guy he had editing the combined scientific findings of 13 government agencies, to make global warming seem less real, is also gone.

Bush still believes we don't have to do anything about it--but he's going to become irrelevant as the actual fact of warming begins to catch up with us. The sad thing is that we may have passed a tipping point past which it becomes impossible to reverse the process. People like dmp might not care if we unleash mass extinctions, freeze Europe, expand the deserts, and bring malaria to Canada, but I do.

The atmosphere is very thin--5 miles up, you can't breathe. Think about that. Then think about pulling out burning a trillion tons of coal and a trillion gallons of oil (roughly speaking). It's easy enough to prove that the excess CO2 on the atmosphere is due to the burning of these ancient forest materials, and vastly exceeds natural emissions during the time of the Industrial revolution. The levels were recently shown to be higher than any in the past 650,000 years.

We've increased a major gas in the atmosphere by 30%. This is the gas which tells us when to breathe (we don't breathe to get more oxygen; we breathe to expel CO2). How can we think that making such an enormous change in one of the major components of the atmosphere will not have major consequences?

And the consequences are piling up faster than anyone predicted. Nearly every issue of the major science journal "Science" and "Nature" has a global-warming-related article--and almost all the news is bad. Most recently, permafrost in Siberia is now thawing, releasing methane, which is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. Soil microbes examined in Britain are showing increased activity due to the longer growing season (11 days) there, releasing more CO2. If we've set off a chain of dominoes, we could be in huge trouble. Sane, insurance-company estimates of the potential damages from serious global warming measure in the trillions of dollars. State and local governments, and private industry are being forced to take the lead--a haphazard, uncoordinated approach which would be much less effective than coordinated Federal action.

I think that rather than sticking our heads in the sand, we should be aiming to be the world leaders in sustainable industry and energy. We throw away the chance and Honda and Toyota will grab it. Why Bush doesn't get this, when the vast majority of the world's climate scientists do, is beyond me. Also, since we're the world's largest per capita gas emitters, isn't there an ethical reason to lead?

And if you're a skeptic, shouldn't you be a careful skeptic, and hedge your bets--maybe make a few moves, such as tightening car emission standards, or convening a Presidental panel to impartially examine the evidence, just in case you're wrong?

Mariner.

 

[Hobbit]

President Bush has stopped saying that global warming isn't real. Time to catch up with your man!

The guy he had editing the combined scientific findings of 13 government agencies, to make global warming seem less real, is also gone.

Bush still believes we don't have to do anything about it--but he's going to become irrelevant as the actual fact of warming begins to catch up with us. The sad thing is that we may have passed a tipping point past which it becomes impossible to reverse the process. People like dmp might not care if we unleash mass extinctions, freeze Europe, expand the deserts, and bring malaria to Canada, but I do.

The atmosphere is very thin--5 miles up, you can't breathe. Think about that. Then think about pulling out burning a trillion tons of coal and a trillion gallons of oil (roughly speaking). It's easy enough to prove that the excess CO2 on the atmosphere is due to the burning of these ancient forest materials, and vastly exceeds natural emissions during the time of the Industrial revolution. The levels were recently shown to be higher than any in the past 650,000 years.

We've increased a major gas in the atmosphere by 30%. This is the gas which tells us when to breathe (we don't breathe to get more oxygen; we breathe to expel CO2). How can we think that making such an enormous change in one of the major components of the atmosphere will not have major consequences?

And the consequences are piling up faster than anyone predicted. Nearly every issue of the major science journal "Science" and "Nature" has a global-warming-related article--and almost all the news is bad. Most recently, permafrost in Siberia is now thawing, releasing methane, which is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. Soil microbes examined in Britain are showing increased activity due to the longer growing season (11 days) there, releasing more CO2. If we've set off a chain of dominoes, we could be in huge trouble. Sane, insurance-company estimates of the potential damages from serious global warming measure in the trillions of dollars. State and local governments, and private industry are being forced to take the lead--a haphazard, uncoordinated approach which would be much less effective than coordinated Federal action.

I think that rather than sticking our heads in the sand, we should be aiming to be the world leaders in sustainable industry and energy. We throw away the chance and Honda and Toyota will grab it. Why Bush doesn't get this, when the vast majority of the world's climate scientists do, is beyond me. Also, since we're the world's largest per capita gas emitters, isn't there an ethical reason to lead?

And if you're a skeptic, shouldn't you be a careful skeptic, and hedge your bets--maybe make a few moves, such as tightening car emission standards, or convening a Presidental panel to impartially examine the evidence, just in case you're wrong?

Mariner.

Once again, it's all doomsaying. Much of the stuff being thawed consumes CO2 as well, and most of the ice caps are expanding, not shrinking, but just lik you never hear victories in Iraq, you'll never hear anything about the expanding ice shelves. The Earth has also been far warmer than it is now, and we're still just fine. We've also observed many natural warming and cooling cycles on Mars, a planet devoid of anything but wind, ice, and rocks, where the ice caps truly are shrinking.

I also happen to know a bit about research scientists, as I've worked with many of them. They tend to skew their results a bit to get more grant money. Do you really think that any scientists, trying to make ends meet with what they have, are going to report that everything's fine? Of course not. Now, they won't lie, but they'll only mention the bad stuff so that they can get enough money to "fix the problem." And even if there is any good news reported (usually by scientists whose pay is independant of their findings), it's not going to be carried by the New York Times, CNN, CBS, or most of the other major news outlets whose editors want to see us sign the Kyoto Treaty. The Earth is fine, tends to heal itself, and will continue to be fine for many eons, barring a disaster of a scale unseen on this planet. In fact, we've found impact craters so large that whatever made them would throw enough dust into the atmosphere to cause catastrophic weather changes, but you know what? We're still here and doing fine, because the Earth isn't this fragile, fine china vase you seem to think it is. It's actually quite durable, and as a living planet, it heals itself.

Lastly, I'd like to point out the argument about bacteria becoming active in cold regions. The bacteria was there, meaning that the region was once warm enough to support it, and the whole planet didn't burn up then.

 

[theHawk]

My main problem with liberals complaining about "global warming" is that they never offer any viable solution to the problem. I believe that the Earth is getting warmer, yes. I believe that our burning of fossile fuels for over 100 years is only making the problem worse. But what are you really suggesting be done about it? The only way to put a dent into it would be for us to basically shut down our economy. Bush is not going to stop america from burning as much gasoline as it does. You liberals bitch about his wiretapping of terrorist as 'spying on the public' yet you want him to take away our right to put fuel in our cars? Signing the Kyoto? Please, its already been shown that it would had done nothing, as other nations that signed it failed miserably at their "goals". We had 8 years of Bill Clinton and he didn't build us a new infrastructure for alternative fuels. If liberal organizations really cared that much about this issue they would had put their money were their mouths are and invested millions in making alternative fuels easier for Americans to have access to, instead of spending it on trying to get Bush removed from office.

 

[Hobbit]

Well, I've done some reading, and I've found some very interesting things. The measurements that say that there is global warming have all been taken by people on the surface in temperate to tropical zones. Many of these have been taken in or near cities, which skews the results, as cities are natural heat sources. Most of the rest have been taken in third world countries amidst adverse conditions with inferior equipment. However, professionally taken measurements tell an entirely different story.

Try searching the internet to find polar temperature measurements, which are taken with state-of-the-art equipment (as it takes quite a bit just to get there) and are free of 'city heating,' or sattellite measurements of the troposphere, which are far more accurate than surface readings. Neither of these show any signs of global warming since the measurments have begun over 20 years ago. According to global warming models, the poles should be the first and fastest places to heat up, yet all measurement at the poles indicates no change whatsoever. In fact, in light of these measurements, the idea of man-made global warming is less accepted among the scientific community than Intelligent Design, an idea that most liberals dismiss as either "junk science" or religious fanaticism masquerading as science.

 

[Mariner]

huh? The arctic ice was 20% below normal this year. Greenland glaciers are melting at 2-3 times the rate of just two decades ago, and Antarctica has had massive calving of its glaciers. Glaciers everywhere are melting. Mount Kilimanjaro will have no more snow in 20-30 yeas, and Glacier National Park will need a new name by 2050. The ski industry in NH is spooked, as is the wine industry in California. Energy swirls around the earth in different patterns. Just because every single spot on earth isn't heating doesn't mean that the whole globe isn't.

Sure the temperature at the very tip of the poles remains cold, but it's only a matter of time. Ocean temperatures are rising, as are temperatures around the globe--5 of the ten hottest years in recorded history occurred in the past decade. How much more evidence do people need than that, when we have a perfectly reasonable cause and effect explanation right in front of us? It takes almost wilful effort to press your head into the sand to aviod the evidence. Recall that Bush has given up this effort, and now concedes that warming is real.

Hawk, there is SO MUCH we can do about this. Maintaining our economy while reduce fossil fuel emissions to half their current levels is probably achievable with an Apollo-style assault on the problem. And it's the future of the world economy to deal with this, so why shouldn't we be the leaders? Individuals can make an enormous difference-- run your car on biodiesel like I do, eat vegetarian as much as you can (beef, in particular, uses vast water and gasoline resources, 5500 gallons of water per pound, for example, all pumped by gas-driven pumps), insulate your house properly, buy EnergyStar appliances, and you've instantly cut your global gas emission rate in half. With consumers accounting for 70% of U.S. economic activity and transportation accounting for 2/3 of gas emissions, the control of emissions from cars is the simplest and most obvious step, which our President simply refuses to take. He'd rather drill the Arctic for more oil. How about a "global warming tax" on Hummers and Tahoes? Simplicity itself, but Bush would rather maintain the separation between cars and light trucks, because the auto industry likes it. Throwing up your hands and saying "what can we do anyway?" is a passive, cowardly reaction to what is humanity's greatest global challenge since we risked annihilating ourselves during the Cold War.

Today's NY Times Science section (page D2) contained an interview with one of the few respectable scientists who had remained cautious about global warming. Kerry Emmanuel is at MIT, and is one of the world's experts in hurricanes. He has officially changed his position based on his analysis of the recent hurricane season, and now agrees that global warming is making hurricanes more severe. He notes that he predicted a long time ago that a one degree Centigrade increase in ocean temperatures would increase wind speeds in a hurricane by 5%. Instead, we've seen a half-degree increase cause a 10% increase in windspeeds. Most global warming models are predicting 5-10 degree increases in global temperature. That would presumably translate into categories of hurricanes that haven't yet been invented, with windspeeds over 200 mph and massive destructive force. Hurricanes that would make Katrina look small.

We're not talking "doomsday." That kind of catastrophic thinking is another way of throwing up your hands in defeat. We're talking about severe, expensive alterations in the ocean levels, climate, disease, storm severity and frequency, etc. We're talking about avoidable mass extinctions likely to be the largest since the meteor struck the Gulf of Mexico and killed off the dinosaurs, making way for the emergence of mammals, including us. And we're talking about having to live with the moral consequences when our grandchildren look back and say, "Grandpa, why didn't you save the polar bears when you had the chance?" Remember, many models are predicting the oceans will rise several feet in the next century. That will put entire countries like Bangladesh and states like Louisana and Florida underwater. Is it going to be cheap to move and house all those people? Wouldn't it be better to avoid the problem in the first place? We can pay a little now, and make modest lifestyle changes that reduce our impact on the earth, or we can pay a lot later, and accept huge changes in our lifestyles.

As the scientist from MIT puts it, "It's always struck me as odd that this country hasn't put far more resources into research on alternative energy... It almost offends my pride as a U.S. scientist that we've fallen down so badly in this competition." If that's a skeptic talking, could some of the hysteria is justified?

Mariner.

 

[MtnBiker]

Did Bush make the sun hotter?

The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame
By Michael Leidig and Roya Nikkhah

Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.

A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes.

Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.

"The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years."

Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.

..........................continues

"The Sun's radiance may well have an impact on climate change but it needs to be looked at in conjunction with other factors such as greenhouse gases, sulphate aerosols and volcano activity," he said. The research adds weight to the views of David Bellamy, the conservationist. "Global warming - at least the modern nightmare version - is a myth," he said. "I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy-makers are not.

"Instead, they have an unshakeable faith in what has, unfortunately, become one of the central credos of the environmental movement: humans burn fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide - the principal so-called greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat up. They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html

 

[Hobbit]

Did Bush make the sun hotter?


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html

This would explain why the Martian ice caps are shrinking...

 

[SpidermanTuba]

But what are you really suggesting be done about it?

My personal idea - which would not only reduce greenhouse emissions, but virtualy eliminate them - would be to drop a couple trillion dollars inte thermonuclear power research and battery research. But the oil companies (who pay lobbyists to write your laws) will never agree to it.

Thermonuclear power would be A) completely clean - the ONLY byproduct, other than energy, is helium. Lots of balloons for the kids. B) virtually limitless

And once we have batteries that are good enough, that can produce the same amount of power as an internal combustion engine and that can hold a charges for about the same length as a tank of gas - we can just plug our cars into power that comes from clean, virtually limitless, thermonuclear energy plants.

 

[SpidermanTuba]

Well, I've done some reading, and I've found some very interesting things. The measurements that say that there is global warming have all been taken by people on the surface in temperate to tropical zones.

Where have you been? Atmospheric measurements come to the same conclusions.

http://www.mng.org.uk/green_house/threat/threat6.htm

 

[SpidermanTuba]

Did Bush make the sun hotter?


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html

MtnBiker - if you read the actual abstract of the paper this research was published in, you'd see that it does nothing to conclude that global warming is caused mainly by the sun.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/n...ype=HTML&format=&high=43c4e3eee012104

S. K. Solanki, I. G. Usoskin, B. Kromer, M. Schüssler and J. Beer
Nature 431, 1084-1087

Direct observations of sunspot numbers are available for the past four centuries, but longer time series are required, for example, for the identification of a possible solar influence on climate and for testing models of the solar dynamo. Here we report a reconstruction of the sunspot number covering the past 11,400 years, based on dendrochronologically dated radiocarbon concentrations. We combine physics-based models for each of the processes connecting the radiocarbon concentration with sunspot number. According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode. Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades


Its funny how right wing leaning journalists can take a scientists work, and use to to come to the complete opposite conclusion the scientists did, isn't it?

 

[SpidermanTuba]

This would explain why the Martian ice caps are shrinking...

Hey Hobit - you're the one that claimed that catastrophic natural events were more to blame for increased levels of Co2 in the atmosphere than man made Co2, and I produced a graph of atmospheric Co2 levels vs. Time, and asked you to point out which features in the graph corresponded to which catastrophic natural events.


I'm still waiting. What's the problem?

I apologize, but as a student of science, "think about it" will not cut it for me.

 

[Mariner]

scientific sources are publishing new research confirming global overheating's reality, and its deleterious effects. Here's one from Nature. Out of 110+ species of a certain type of frog, 65 have gone completely extinct. Worldwide, amphibians, which are absolutely key players in the food chain, are under assault, and no one knew why--now, global warming is being identified as the likely culprit.


Warming Tied To Extinction Of Frog Species
By Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 12, 2006; A01

Rising temperatures are responsible for pushing dozens of frog species over the brink of extinction in the past three decades, according to findings being reported today by a team of Latin American and U.S. scientists.

The study, published in the journal Nature, provides compelling evidence that climate change has already helped wipe out a slew of species and could spur more extinctions and the spread of diseases worldwide. It also helps solve the international mystery of why amphibians around the globe have been vanishing from their usual habitats over the past quarter-century -- as many as 112 species have disappeared since 1980.

Scientists have speculated that rising temperatures and changing weather patterns could endanger the survival of many species, but the new study documents for the first time a direct correlation between global warming and the disappearance of around 65 amphibian species in Central and South America.

The fate of amphibians -- whose permeable skin makes them sensitive to environmental changes -- is seen by scientists as a possible harbinger of global warming's effects. Rising temperatures are threatening the survival of flora and fauna worldwide, including coral reefs in the Caribbean, which serve as critical fish nurseries, and South African rhododendrons, which cannot move to a cooler climate.

[article continues]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/11/AR2006011102121_pf.html

 

[archangel]

scientific sources are publishing new research confirming global overheating's reality, and its deleterious effects. Here's one from Nature. Out of 110+ species of a certain type of frog, 65 have gone completely extinct. Worldwide, amphibians, which are absolutely key players in the food chain, are under assault, and no one knew why--now, global warming is being identified as the likely culprit.


Warming Tied To Extinction Of Frog Species
By Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 12, 2006; A01

Rising temperatures are responsible for pushing dozens of frog species over the brink of extinction in the past three decades, according to findings being reported today by a team of Latin American and U.S. scientists.

The study, published in the journal Nature, provides compelling evidence that climate change has already helped wipe out a slew of species and could spur more extinctions and the spread of diseases worldwide. It also helps solve the international mystery of why amphibians around the globe have been vanishing from their usual habitats over the past quarter-century -- as many as 112 species have disappeared since 1980.

Scientists have speculated that rising temperatures and changing weather patterns could endanger the survival of many species, but the new study documents for the first time a direct correlation between global warming and the disappearance of around 65 amphibian species in Central and South America.

The fate of amphibians -- whose permeable skin makes them sensitive to environmental changes -- is seen by scientists as a possible harbinger of global warming's effects. Rising temperatures are threatening the survival of flora and fauna worldwide, including coral reefs in the Caribbean, which serve as critical fish nurseries, and South African rhododendrons, which cannot move to a cooler climate.

[article continues]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/11/AR2006011102121_pf.html

Yah...global heating and cooling has been going on for millions of years...what is your point...To blame it on fossil fuels? Not a very good argument when you take into consideration...volcanic action,natural forrest fires,and the suns cooling down and overheating...

 

[JohnStOnge]

Cause and effect is not proven, or even necessarily inferred, by correlation. My problem with the global warming stuff is that they are over reaching. The nature of this beast is such that it's not possible to truely infer cause and effect. If you had an infinite number of Earths and could conduct an experiment by randomly assigning some to the "greenhouse gases" treatment while leaving the others as controls in an experiment of treatment effects you could do it. But that's obviously not the case.

Another thing is prediction of the long term future. To truely validate a model you have to make predictions for the conditions of interest, go out under those conditions and make measurements, then compare the measurements to the predictions. Obviously, there's no way climate models can be validated in that way for conditions that are going to be prevalent 20, 50, or 100 years from now.

There are even problems with estimating the average surface temperature. Say you want to compare the average temperature of the Earth's surface 100 years ago to what it is now. In both cases, the locations of the thermometers would have to be valid probability samples of the population "points on the Earth's surface." I doubt they have that now...and they certainly didn't have it 100 years ago. Without it you have biased estimates. You also have invalide confidence intervals.

Worse is the thing about making confident statements about mean temperatures from long ago before there were thermometers...estimating it from tree rings, corals, and ice caps. The discussion involves a total range of mean values of about 1.4 C over 1000 years in one case. I'm sorry, but I just don't buy the idea that they've got sufficient precision and accuracy from trying to indirectly infer temperature to really be able to do that in a way we should all have absolute confidence in. I know the range is fairly large as compared to what we think we see in terms of variation in mean temperatures, but they don't even know if the calibrations they've done during current conditions hold for conditions 500 or 1000 years ago. Again, it's not something they can validate until they get a time machine. There's also that probability sample thing when it comes from things like tree rings. The trees represent points in that population of all the Earth's surface points that would have to be represented through a legitimate probability sample. Sampling bias again.

Bottom line, to me, is that they're losing their discipline. I've seen statements like one comparing the global warming thing to the germ theory of disease. That's just nuts. They'd have more credibility if they'd admit the limitations they have to deal with and that the nature of this beast is that there's a limit to the confidence one can develop.

 

[archangel]

Cause and effect is not proven, or even necessarily inferred, by correlation. My problem with the global warming stuff is that they are over reaching. The nature of this beast is such that it's not possible to truely infer cause and effect. If you had an infinite number of Earths and could conduct an experiment by randomly assigning some to the "greenhouse gases" treatment while leaving the others as controls in an experiment of treatment effects you could do it. But that's obviously not the case.

Another thing is prediction of the long term future. To truely validate a model you have to make predictions for the conditions of interest, go out under those conditions and make measurements, then compare the measurements to the predictions. Obviously, there's no way climate models can be validated in that way for conditions that are going to be prevalent 20, 50, or 100 years from now.


The only thing we know for sure is that the sun is a nuclear reactor...and will one day run out of fuel..the rest is just pure speculation and political fodder!

 

[Mariner]

you wrote:

"Yah...global heating and cooling has been going on for millions of years...what is your point...To blame it on fossil fuels? Not a very good argument when you take into consideration...volcanic action,natural forrest fires,and the suns cooling down and overheating... "

Volcanic action and forest fires are easily measured sources of greenhouse gases--and they don't begin to compare to the output (10 tons of carbon per American per year if I remember right) from our current industrial society. Solar changes have also been taken into account. On another thread here, both those things were adequately debunked.

Of course there's no way to "prove" what's going on, and no way to do a proper experiment, but there are lots of types of science, and one is inductive. Astrophysicists, for example, make all sorts of reliable conclusions about the universe without having to do experiments. The important thing is that their theories make predictions that then uncover new facts.

In this case we have a theory that predicts that we could be at a "tipping point" in the chaotic system of world climate. Modern civilization rose in the past 10,000 years, since the retreat of the glaciers in the last ice age. Humans have been around a lot longer than that--perhaps 20 times that long. Current theory is that they never had a climate stable enough to develop civilization. If we tip the earth into a new pattern, we could end the current period of climate stability which has made modern civilization possible.

Scientists are very smart about making estimates and developing theories and models about things of this sort. None will claim that they "know" what's happening, but the vast majority of the world's climate scientists agree that it's highly likely that the industrial revolution, via burning of trillions of pounds of ancient carbon deposits into our very thin atmosphere, is what's causing the observed heating. Bush has received letters signed by dozens of Nobel Prize winners urging him to tackle this as humanity's greatest crisis in the current new century.

Up until the Bush administration, there wasn't much of a conservative/liberal problem with this. Who really cares about it is the energy industry. Bush and Cheney are energy industry people through and through. It's now been adequately demonstrated that they sought to squash and twist the science on global warming. They've had industry experts writing the regulations for their own industries. Cheney's closed-door energy sessions merited the same derision from the public that Hillary Clinton's closed-door insurance sessions did--but somehow we gave them a pass.

So, Bush presented the oil industry line on global warming theory--"it's all bunk," and many Republicans (especially in the ultra politically correct climate here at USMB, where no one of any longevity EVER criticizes Bush) simply believed him. In the meantime, he's fired the guy he had altering energy science reports (Philip Cooney, former energy executive), and he's stopped saying global warming isn't real. In other words, Bush himself has finally been convinced by the evidence--though he's not quite ready to act seriously (he did let the U.S. negotiate a small climate treaty in Asia recently).

The extinction of 65 species of frogs in just one part of the world is not a small thing. Amphibians are crucial elements of ecosystems worldwide. The bleaching of coral reefs--where fish we eat congregate to spawn--could threaten our food supply. If a feedback cycle starts--permafrost melts, releasing carbon, which increases heating, which melts more permafrost, we could be in for some seriously expensive consequences. Just from an economic point of view it makes sense for us to alter course away from burning ancient carbon deposits.

I worry that from the 22nd century perspective--that of our great grandchildren--we're going to be seen as the generation that was too lazy and selfish to save the earth from a radical, expensive, and damaging change.

Sure the earth has gone through it before--99.99++% of all species ever alive are extinct. Do we really want to be the next biggest cause of extinctions since the asteroid that struck the Gulf of Mexico and killed off the dinosaurs ~70 million years ago?

It's not just Democrats or liberals saying this either. Conservation has a long history in the Republican Party--our first national parks were created by Teddy Roosevelt. There's a groundswell of Christian "stewardship" support for taking the problem seriously, for example. Climate scientists aren't ringing alarm bells for political ends--they're worried what we're doing to our world. If we're smart, we'll listen to them.

When you say "What's your point," ask yourself if you like the idea of Northern America covered with a mile-thick sheet of ice. That was the case just 10,000 years ago, and we might be able to cause an equally radical change within just a couple of hundred years. Even if human activities were just a contributor to a major change, I'd think we'd be smart to try to reverse these processes rather than throwing up our hands and saying, "Oh it's just natural."

The science is piling up day by day, year by year. I'll keep posting new convincing articles when I see them. I do agree that people have a right to their skepticism: the knowledgeable-but-still-skeptical kind, not the head-in-the-sand kind. For the past several years, the data has pretty much gone in one direction--that the problem is all too real, and happening faster than first predicted.

Mariner.

 

[Stephanie]

Did Bush make the sun hotter?


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html

I do believe he DID! I mean he's being blamed for everything under the sun, so why not blame him for making it hotter.