Thread: Calculate your contribution to destroying The Earth

I finally got around to reading this entire thread (seems familiar -- wasn't there a similar thread 6-months ago?) and eventually I thought gee, this sounds like the old "the earth is flat"/"the earth is round" argument that occurred a 1000 years or so ago -- and only took 500 years or so to resolve. As I recall noted scientists of the day were absolutely sure they were right.

As to global warming, it seems to me that:

1. There's valid empirical evidence that the concentration of greenhouse gasses are increasing and the ozone layer is reducing.
2. There's little doubt that man is contributing significantly to the addition of certain of the gasses.
3. There's convincing evidence that the earth is going through one of it's cyclical warming periods.
4. As to whether man's contribution is significantly affecting the warming cycle, some are choosing to believe that it's overwhelmingly significant, others reject the significance, and still others don't give a rat's ass either way.

I care about the environment and do what I can (my footprint calculation was half of the average, although that was a sad excuse for a "test"). But I refuse to become obsessed with the global warming debate because personally,

I believe that the "follow the money" statements are true in that many many people (and nations) will be looking to see how they can make a buck out of this. This distorts the true factual picture.

Since all nations compete between one another, global warming is being used to manipulate and discredit the more powerful nations to give the lessers a leg up in their world standing. Such actions affect the balance of trade and world opinion between nations, all of which can become financially rewarding to some and discredit others. It becomes a very powerful diversion if a nation can be goaded into taking costly extraordinary measures to reduce their GHG contribution. That, in turn, can easily be capitalized upon by the lessors. I don't believe for a moment that the world's nations would hesitate to play such a card to gain advantage. It's very hard to discern who is being manipulative and who isn't, so again the factual picture gets obscured in some ways.

I've read many of the pro/con arguments and remain unconvinced either way as to how much effect man's contribution is having in the overall global warming phenomenon. There's lots of theories and hypothesis and seemingly logical arguments supporting both sides. There's very little hard evidence that remains untainted by bias and omission of facts which distract from the intended conclusion. We only have factual weather records for 200 years, give or take. Everything else is derived by implication based on things like ice-core samples, fossils, rock strata, and conclusions that some meteor impact or sun spot activity or other cosmic event that occurred sometime in the same time period (give or take a 1000-years) -- ie, they're not necessarily facts.

The earth's environment is a very complex system that is being modeled by scientists... mostly by conjecture, not fact. Since the input variables cannot be controlled (you can't control sun spots, meteor hits, pine bark beetles that destroy forests, etc.) refinement of the model is slow because it has to be recursed based on observed random input changes instead of controlled input changes. There are so many variables that it is hard to determine how many have changed at once. And there's a huge amount of inertia in the system, so cause/effect often can only be measured over hundreds of years, not minutes or days. Since man's impact has mostly occurred only in the past 100 years, I'm a little skeptical of drawing hard conclusions, aren't you.

And that takes me back to the earth is flat idea. Did the ship not return from it's voyage because it fell of the edge of the earth? Or did it sink? Or did the crew simply mutiny and are now living in Tahiti? It's only hundreds of years later that we knew for sure it didn't fall off the edge. If we find the wreck we will know it sank. We may never know about Tahiti.

I suspect hundreds of years from now we'll know more facts about global warming. Until then, xman and others who feel strongly about your position -- are you on the earth is flat or round side of the global warming debate?

YMMV

Hooper - if you're going to boil it down to a flat earth / round earth question, then why bother putting forth an argument? You can't convince a flatlander that the earth is round, and asking someone to look at themselves from a perspective they don't want to take is folly

folly I say

Touche! I guess I was trying to look at it logically and was ignoring that everyone has an agenda -- even me, I guess.

Originally Posted by Brother Jeeter

This will give you a place to start:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sh...nvenient-truth

Wow. Well, that is what happens when you have a bunch of attorneys fumbling around with science.

From the article, point by point on its 11 inaccuracies:

The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government's expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.

There is a strong precipitation component to Kilimanjaro's loss of ice (less of it), which is unique. The last I read on the subject, the role Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) relative to other direct causes was inconclusive at that location. AGW has significantly altered precipitation patterns in some areas, but this is new study. Gore's choice of famous mountains probably could have been better.

The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.

Alrightie then. These guys know nothing about the lead-lag relationships of temperature and CO2. In the past, orbital forcings and solar output drove temperatures higher, which caused the natural release of CO2. CO2 lagged temperature. This time, CO2 leads temperature because CO2 is the driver, not the sun or Earth's orbit (I capitalize Earth according to planetary science practice; it is a propoer noun. I do not worship the Earth.)

The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that it was "not possible" to attribute one-off events to global warming.

You cannot attribute individual weather events to AGW. Tempting, but false. The whole hurricane intensity/frequency thing is still unsettled in science. More to it than that, but that is the short version.

The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that this was not the case.

Sorry, I don't remember much about that lake, and I don't have time right now to look it up (working).

The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.

So, what are they saying? Northern sea ice is not melting? The polar bears' habitat is virtually evaporating before our eyes.

The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant's evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.

I don't remember Gore ever making such a rediculous claim in the movie. Northern Europe would cool a lot of the north Atlantic's circulation patterns slow down really fast, but I don't recall any reputable source ever making such a claim about an ice age.

The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.

A lot of research is being done now on ocean acidification. Regardless of any past bleaching due to bacteria or other tangential causes, profound changes in marine ecosystems have started to become observable, due to AGW. If you go down the "corals are not affected" road trying to refute AGW, be advised that is a very dead end.

The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.

I don't remember Gore saying catastrophic inundation will be decades away [edit: or whatever short term timeline]. Thermal expansion is the most immediate cause of sea level rise, but that will take centuries to complete. Thermal expansion is a threat, but the really big problem is Greenland. The Greenland ice has mobilized more rapidly than scientists had previously thought possible. The real problem is, once that starts, it probably will be irreversible. It will take a long time, but nobody knows for sure how long. Just think how intinsely we will be hated in 500 years or so.

Even slight sea level rises are a big deal. Go to www.asce.org (American Society of Civil Engineers) to read about their fears for infrastructure in the forseeable future.

The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.

The short version is that Antarctica is not expected to warm [soon] in AGW. [edit: There is the ozone hole and some other reasons why it stays cool.]But there have been, and will continue to be, specatcular collapses of ice sheets that are attributable to AGW.

The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.

I think we have a discrepancy of timelines here. Anyone forecasting 7 m in 100 years is a little . . . underinformed. I do not remember Gore saying it would happen on that timeline.

The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

Does the film really say that? I don't remember it. It would be false though. [edit: Oops, I think it would be false. I have this vague recollection of some super-low islands already having problems.]

Gore is just a politician. He did take a few liberties with his film, but generally it was well received. Remember too that science has advanced since then. Some of the more speculative things that were in the literature then have turned out somewhat different. Here is a review of Gore's film by a climate scientist:
RealClimate

Scott

Beezaur I'm not trying to critisize you to much here but....

You said in your refutation that "I don't remember that" in response to five of the points from the article. While it may not be true, I would expect that if the courts found that the movie actually said something that it did, I mean they could watch it over and over at taxpayer expense just to get their opinions correct.

As to it being well received..... so was Harry Potter but I don't expect the world is in any danger from a evil warlock who has barely preservd himself from the grave and is trying to kill one little boy all the time. Of course I'm a muggle so

If he took any liberties the courts were correct in that his movie should not be used as a factual representation as was happening in the school system.

I really don't think those claims were made in the movie. It could be that I was kidnapped by aliens during those parts, and had parts of my memory altered to cover up the episode, but I honestly have no recollection of anything so absurd.

Don't be so sure a court would get anything scientific right. From the sounds of the article it would seem that neither side's attorneys understood the whole CO2 lead-lag thing. That alone tells me they were dealing with something they did not understand.

In fairness, the lead-lag thing is fairly technical. Here is a link explaining [part of] it.
RealClimate

This rings very strongly of the debates that have been repeated so many times of parents insisting that creationism is taught in schools.

By "well received" I meant by scientists. Gore had a few errors, and a few embellishments, but in general he got the science right. His errors are really not very significant.

I don't have a problem with the rejection of Gore's film, but what will they show kids instead or in addition? Material from Singer and Avery's Unstoppable Global Warming? That stuff is comes totally unravelled on inspection. In a perfect world the schools would get material from the American Geophysical Union, or some other primary source. Leave the mass media and activists out of education.

Here is my favorite quote about standards applied to AGW side versus the denier side:

Originally Posted by www.skepticalscience.com

Scientific skepticism is a healthy thing. Scientists should always challenge themselves to expand their knowledge, improve their understanding and refine their theories. Yet this isn't what happens in global warming skepticism. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports anthropogenic global warming and yet eagerly, even blindly embrace any argument, op-ed piece, blog or study that refutes global warming.

Scott

Originally Posted by beezaur

By "well received" I meant by scientists. Gore had a few errors, and a few embellishments, but in general he got the science right. His errors are really not very significant.

I don't have a problem with the rejection of Gore's film, but what will they show kids instead or in addition? Material from Singer and Avery's Unstoppable Global Warming? That stuff is comes totally unravelled on inspection. In a perfect world the schools would get material from the American Geophysical Union, or some other primary source. Leave the mass media and activists out of education.

Here is my favorite quote about standards applied to AGW side versus the denier side:


Scott

His errors weren't important "scientifically" but then scientists as a group are known for missing the subtleties of politics.

As for what they should show kids? Nothing. You don't need major motion pictures to teach science.

As for that quote I can very well understand it. Being a skeptic, especially about global warming, is kind of like being the black guy at a KKK rally you'll grasp at any spar that comes along.