Thread: More global warming shown to be false!

I find it amazing how the political leaders have us swine fighting for the slop, concerning the issue of global warming. Both sides of the parties have a vested interest in man/non-man global warming. Until we can get past "who to blame", U.S. taxpayers are going to get screwed. I find no problem in changing my habits to pollute less, as along as it doesn't require the government forcing it down my throat. Forced options are not real options. That said, I'm going to go smoke a cigar.

Originally Posted by kerryman71

Well, unfortunately like many other things it has become
politicized by both sides. There really aren't many things
nowadays that you can really call bipartisan. If it came
down to supporting poor little orphan children somehow
or other it would become a political situation where people
would take sides.

John

Well ....

The liberal position on little orphan children is that the rich should be taxed so the government can create a department to investigate the problem and propose a new agency to think about addressing the feasibility of doing a study to see if a solution to the problem has been tried in a socialist country somewhere.

The conservative position is that we should have work houses where we can put those children to useful purpose making inferior goods sold in mega stores for consumption by the working poor giving huge profit of the corporations that conspire to really run the world.

Is it any wonder we can't agree on anything.

Well put Wildtim, although it isn't that WE can't agree on anything, it's
that THEY, the people who are in power and making decisions for
us can't agree on anything. If only things could be run gentleman like
as this forum and this discussion in particular has been, a lot could
get done. It' okay to dream, isn't it?

John

What I have come to be amazed at, and what I should not be suprised by. Is that SO many people cannot seem to think for themselves. They believe they are, but they are just repeating the retoric that the political party they have bonded to is passing out that week. We as a group have become so blinded by what "they" say that we don't go look and find the answers for ourselves. I wonder what they would be...I bet they are not the same answers though....

Originally Posted by DSailing

Actually the sky isn't blue, just like the ocean isn't blue. It is all a matter of perspective.

Ah, a skeptic

I tend to trust the scientists that have devoted their lives to studying these things over any politician who's buddy's stand to make a buck if we do or don't do something, or some overly skeptical internet persona who often seems more interested in starting and winning a fight than trying to understand. The vast majority of climate scientists not only agree that global warming is occurring, but that human activity is a significant contributor to it.

That said, if you want to understand what global warming means, you have to understand what these scientists mean when they say things like "warming." They're not using this word in the sense you might commonly think it means. It doesn't mean the whole world is getting hotter in the sense that your summers will be warmer and your winters milder, or that spring will arrive earlier and fall later. Those things might happen where you live, they they also might not. What they mean is that the entire atmosphere of our planet is retaining more energy than it has in the past. What does this mean? In part, it means that whatever local weather you typically experience will be more intense. Seasonal storms will be stronger, and seasonal droughts will be more severe. It also means that your local climate might change. This might mean desertification, as is currently occurring in the Western Plains states, and it might mean your locale will experience greater yearly rainfall, as is occurring in the Midwest. Since weather and climate patterns are changing, this means that some areas will indeed get warmer, but it also means that some areas will get much colder. In fact, these climate changes are exactly what is predicted by climate scientists using global warming as a theory to make predictions.

The mechanism that explains this occurrence is the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, an increase that is well documented. We know what the effects of an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide are in terms of its ability to retain heat, and the increase in average global temperatures (which is only a measure of the global energy of the atmosphere, not weather or local climate) matches the effects that we would expect the increase in the carbon dioxide levels should show fairly well.

We also know the source of this increase in carbon dioxide, humans digging up buried carbon and burning it, putting that carbon in the air as carbon dioxide. Furthermore, we know why the effects of carbon dioxide in terms of warming have been so delayed and are now accelerating faster than recent history would suggest. It's because for most of the time we were burning this carbon, we weren't just putting carbon dioxide in the air, but a lot of particulate stuff too. This particulate stuff made it easier for clouds to form, and clouds tend to reflect a great deal of energy back out into space. The particles themselves were also reflective, and helped keep us cool. In effect, they acted like a sunscreen. But since we started cleaning up our emissions, and stopped putting all these particles in the air (without stopping putting carbon dioxide in the air) we've essentially let this sunscreen wear off. Now, we're dealing with the warming effects of all the carbon dioxide we emitted in the 40's 50's and 60's, as well as all the carbon dioxide we're emitting today. So not only has the warming been delayed, but it's coming up much faster than many anticipated.

It's not perfect because no theory perfectly predicts reality. The real world is messy, with lots of stuff happening, and theory is pure, considering only a few things at a time. The key is to have a decent enough understanding of what else is going on that we can give a range of predictions to the theory, a margin of error, so that we can say that if what actually occurs is too different from what our theory predicts, then we can say we've falsified the theory, or that the theory is wrong. The theory of global warming, when used as a predictive tool, gives answers that fall well within the range of this margin of error, while a static state model or a cooling model does not. For example, of the hottest 10 years that have occurred in the last 100 years, 8 of them have been in the last 10 years.

interesting thought I have. Take it or leave it! More carbon dioxide available, the more healthier and productive plants will be! the more warming also will be healthy for the plants! The more warming, the more melting of ice, the better for the plants! Plants give oxygen and food for us and the melting of the ice gives more fresh water to us, not to mention that the heat will cause water to evaporate. turn into clouds and rain, which of course cools and provides fresh water! Although there will be some problematic side effects with this it seems that most of the effects will be beneficial to life on this planet! It seems that anything beyond this is purely conjecture, no matter how pretty you make it sound.

. . . http://channel.nationalgeographic.co...8418817&ngc=58

. . . but I think solar events (including the gravity of the sun), volcanic burbs and massive dust/sand storms have a much more devastating impact on our daily existance (and earthly temperature) than anything else.

Still, I believe "pack it in, pack it out" (or give a hoot, don't polute).

RalphS

Originally Posted by JMS

I'm not certain I trust any news source! That being said you have to pick from what meshes with your own common sense and other known facts as opposed to just basing everything on emotion as it seems many of the global warming advocates would have us do!

wait...you mean the news is slanted?

While it's true that some of the effects of global warming may be beneficial to life, many of its effects are not. The simple fact is that a generally warming global environment means that local climates nearly everywhere will change. Life, including humans, doesn't like change. It evolves adaptations that serve it in its particular environment, and if that environment changes, it runs a significant risk of no longer being able to cope. Whenever the environment changes, whether what we ultimately end up with is "better" or not, this change goes hand in hand with massive extinction events, and overall biodiversity decreases until the environment stabilizes.

Furthermore, there are several other effects of global warming that are definitely not beneficial to life, and archaeological evidence that strongly suggests that your supposition that it would be an overall benefit is not true. First of all, an increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere also means that greater levels of CO2 is dissolved in the oceans. Dissolved CO2 dissociates into carbonic acid, effectively raising the acidity of the oceans. As anyone who has attempted to keep a large fish tank can tell you, if you let the pH of your fish tank get too low, the fish, and many of the other life forms will die off. The sorts of creatures that can survive a more acid environment also tend to suck the oxygen out of the water, which in turn sucks the oxygen out of the air. An interesting paleontological fact is when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, and mammals were little more than shrew and rat-like critters, oxygen concentration was under 10%. That archaeological evidence I spoke of above is about the differences in average global temperature. Climate scientists predict that the average global temperature will rise by about 6 degrees centigrade. The last time Earth's average global temperatures were that high was during the Permian extinction event, when over 90 percent of Earth's species died off.

As for mankind's survival, I'm not that worried. Human beings are literally the most adaptable species ever to have evolved on the fact of this planet, thanks to our ability to understand the world and devise technology to help us cope. But it's not gonna be fun. Most of the world's population lives close to the ocean, and as sea levels rise, they will be forced to migrate elsewhere. Current agricultural areas will become unsuitable for the traditional practices of that area. All this change will be expensive, not only in terms of money, but in terms of blood, sweat, tears and human lives. And while I tend to think we'll come through the other side better off (for a variety of reasons) it is arrogant folly to presume that the transition will not be a genuine, bloody, messy trial.