Global warming debunked

[vern_humphrey]

I know! I know! A wonderful Fuel efficient Mini like this one:
http://photos2.flickr.com/3639226_56366eb5d1.jpg

In Neon Pink

If it had a trolling motor, it might make a bass boat.

 

[goofyjim]

I grow weary of these forums. Far too often members gang up aginst someone who makes legitimate points as though there is only one correct way. Not everything is dictated by the Church folks. We have to have some freedom of conscience in some areas. I for one see God as leaving us stewards of creation. To laugh and say we don’t have to worry about its demise is going against that.

 

[LJN21]

I grow weary of these forums. Far too often members gang up aginst someone who makes legitimate points as though there is only one correct way. Not everything is dictated by the Church folks. We have to have some freedom of conscience in some areas. I for one see God as leaving us stewards of creation. To laugh and say we don’t have to worry about its demise is going against that.

I don’t see anyone saying that at all. Actually I see a lot of people saying we do need to be good stewards, but they don’t think Al Gores new religion is the answer to good stewardship.

 

[vern_humphrey]

I don’t see anyone saying that at all. Actually I see a lot of people saying we do need to be good stewards, but they don’t think Al Gores new religion is the answer to good stewardship.

You’re absolutely right.

I mentioned elsewhere that about 30 years ago, the viewers-with-alarm told us a new Ice Age was coming – and wanted to cover the polar ice caps with lamp black to change the planet’s albedo and raise the temperature.

Imagine where we’d be today if we’d panicked and done what they wanted!!

 

[estesbob]

You’re absolutely right.

I mentioned elsewhere that about 30 years ago, the viewers-with-alarm told us a new Ice Age was coming – and wanted to cover the polar ice caps with lamp black to change the planet’s albedo and raise the temperature.

Imagine where we’d be today if we’d panicked and done what they wanted!!

Leonardo DeCaprio just made his own documentary about how we are doomed if the great unwashed(note this does not apply to him and the rest of the Hollywood crowd). do not change our ways. His documentary consisted of interviewing 7 famous people to scare the heck out of us. i looked at his list and it inlcuded such luminaries as Stephen Hawkins and Michael Gobochev. Funny thing about his interviewees-not one of them had any expericne in climatology. Now Gorbachev may have been great at eliminating foes in his KGB days and hawkins is a stellar physiscist(well his Black Hole theories have been dbunked)-but they have no more experience in climatology than you or i do.

 

[CarolAnnSFO]

Leonardo DeCaprio just made his own documentary about how we are doomed if the great unwashed(note this does not apply to him and the rest of the Hollywood crowd). do not change our ways.

These celebrity-guys practice a funny kind of science. It seems that only the SUVs driven and electricity used by the unwashed masses will ruin the climate and destroy the planet. SUVs driven and electricity used by actors, other celebrities, and Al Gore will have no effect at all.

Interesting, these days, that the ability to finance a documentary makes one an expert on the climate.

And when we don’t wish to worship Baal-ywood, we’re accused of not wanting to be good stewards of the envirionment.

Mudgie-in-training and freelance sparkle/coffee grinds sprinkler.

 

[estesbob]

These celebrity-guys practice a funny kind of science. It seems that only the SUVs driven and electricity used by the unwashed masses will ruin the climate and destroy the planet. SUVs driven and electricity used by actors, other celebrities, and Al Gore will have no effect at all.

Interesting, these days, that the ability to finance a documentary makes one an expert on the climate.

And when we don’t wish to worship Baal-ywood, we’re accused of not wanting to be good stewards of the envirionment.

Mudgie-in-training and freelance sparkle/coffee grinds sprinkler.

When Decaprio was questioned about his use of private jets and Gores huge house he got angry and said the reporters were trying to shoot the messenger. He also said he uses commercial flights as much as possible. Lets think about that for a moment. when would it not be possible to use a commercial jet?

After seeing the Departed i came to the conclusion he is a great actor. i just wish he would shut up about things he knows nothing about

 

[CarolAnnSFO]

When Decaprio was questioned about his use of private jets and Gores huge house he got angry and said the reporters were trying to shoot the messenger. He also said he uses commercial flights as much as possible. Lets think about that for a moment. when would it not be possible to use a commercial jet?

Nah, we don’t want to shoot the messenger – we just want him to live in high-density housing and ride a bicycle to work, the way he probably wants us to!

When would it not be possible to use commercial jets? When one needs to fly in an out of tiny little two-bit airports not served by commercial aviation – a situation that sometimes applies to traveling businesspeople, but would rarely, I imagine, apply to a famous actor.

After seeing the Departed i came to the conclusion he is a great actor. i just wish he would shut up about things he knows nothing about

Amen to that!

Mudgie-in-training and freelance sparkle/coffee grinds sprinkler

 

[manualman]

While I partially agree with vern and bob, I think we can become a bit too, umm, Hannityized in some of our responses. Such rhetoric isn’t any better than Algore’s.

Eponymic actually made a great point, but failed to follow up on it. The status of human science is simply too immature to say yet how much influence humans have on the climate versus how much of any oberved change is natural. Human science rarely gets a 10 day weather forecast right and yet we are thinking hard about making major policy changes based on computer projections of weather hundreds of years in the future!?! So props for seeing that the science of global warming is not all that the activists would have you to believe.

Now that you are this far, consider this. ANY human endeavor takes energy and resources. If we devote energy and resources to “lowering our carbon footprint” then we necessarily are NOT doing something else that could be done. That’s called opportunity cost. Vern and Bob, rather than merely denigrating the warm-alarmists, I suggest that you’d have better luck with guys like eponymic by pointing out that spending limited energy and attention on poorly understood processes like CO2 global warming distracts from other WELL understood and harmful problems like construction site erosion, topsoil loss, urban heat islands, and poor floodplain development policies (i.e. New Orleans), and many more. These kinds of environmental issues ARE better understood by science and there is a better chance of getting real benefits from efforts expended.

 

[Robert_Bay]

Warning

Please try to stay on topic and not make discourteous remarks about other people.

Thanks!

 

[Eddy]

I am convinced, as I said on a similar thread 3-4 months ago, with very similar arguments being put forward, that global warming is happening. And that we have a moral imperative to change our lifestyles accordingly.

I am also convinced that many people here do not believe that, and so I’m not trying to start that argument.

HOWEVER

There do seem to be plenty of good reasons to adopt a more environmentally responsible lifestyle, even if you are not convinced by global warming:

1. The world’s resources are limited. We are consuming them at a faster rate. The waste that we produce is filling more and more landfills. We save green land from becoming landfill if we reduce the waste we produce. We also make ourselves less dependent on limited resources when we use those resources wisely.
2. The increased dependency on cars creates many problems. While not knocking SUV for rural dwellers (my uncle, a farmer, has one, with barbed wire and bailing twine in the back!) far too many urban and suburban dwellers drive them, and far too many urban and suburban dwellers are dependent on cars in the first place:

• increased pedestrians and public transport use makes city streets safer - the best way to beat urban crime is to get people using urban space.
• there has been a marked increase in asthma, particularly among children, directly linked to car fumes in urban areas (and other pollutants).
• fewer people walking and cycling has had an impact on our waistlines and our health - less car use and more walking would improve our health.
• the lack of good public transport impacts most on the most vulnerable, and those who cannot afford a car. Declining public transport increases the gap between the haves and the have nots. If more people used it, it would become more financially viable, and therefore better. Public transport can also be a real community builder and reduce social isolation, particularly for older people.
• a child hit by a SUV in a traffic accident has a much higher chance of fatality/serious injury than a child hit by a smaller car. Also, a particular problem of ‘school run’ SUVs is that it is more difficult for the driver to see smaller children. They’re safer for the kids inside the car, but much more dangerous for the kids outside the car.

1. I wonder about what an increasingly ‘throw away society’ says to our children? The idea of using something until it’s done, of making most use of our resources, of not having a new everything, does not help them value other parts of life. Fixing a fridge/television/jumper rather than buying a new one helps the environment AND helps us live lives of Christian simplicity.

These are just some reasons - there are others - but they’re something to at least consider.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Eponymic actually made a great point, but failed to follow up on it. The status of human science is simply too immature to say yet how much influence humans have on the climate versus how much of any oberved change is natural.

Nor can it tell us how long the observed “trend” will last.

As I pointed out, there was the Medieval Warm, followed by the Little Ice Age, and as recently as 30 years ago or so, there were those telling us another Ice Age was coming and urging us to fly missions over the polar ice caps spreading lamp black.

Aren’t you glad we didn’t listen to those guys?

 

[John_Lavelle]

When I was a kid, they used to catch mackerel and wahoo near the Caribbeans, Florida, and up to the Carolinas. When I last looked into it we were catching these warm water fish off New Jersey. The temperature and current patternes of the ocean have changed at the migration patterns of these fish is affected as a result. Did human activity cause it? There is a wide scientific consensus and a reasonable theoretical basis that the tons of Carbon we are pumping into the environment have contributed to the the changes in the climate that have been observed and measured. Is proof possible in science? Data can be collected and assessed. In the meantime hypotheses are formed and either supported or not on the basis of observation and measurement and given sufficient observational support, theories are formulated and these extend our understanding of cause and effect in the world.

Ad hominem attacks against people whose conclusions differ from ours do not belong in science. When a hundred German scientists signed a document refuting Einstein’s theory of relativity primarily because he was a Jew, his reply was essentially that if his theory is wrong only one person would be needed to refute it. The growth of knowledge is demanding. If increased atmospheric Carbon is causally related to climate change, it is the work of science. Ridiculing others on the basis of disagreement, selecting data to support hypotheses rather than developing hypotheses from reasonable interpretation of data, and clinging to potentially incorrect views in the face of overwhelming contradictory data is something other than science.

 

[manualman]

John, I agree with your sentiment that ad hominem has no place in scientific discussion! I disagree that there is broad scientific consensus on this issue!! Look closer at what is going on and you will see a disquieting pattern. A large percentage of credentialed scientists who QUESTION the idea of CO2-driven global warming are those who are in positions of TRUE academic freedom (long tenured professors, some Nobel laureates, emeritus professors, etc). But almost ALL of those in more vulnerable positions in the scientific community (Phd candidates, non-tenured professors, politically appointed government researchers) toe the line and repeat what Al Gore says.

There is a disturbing influence of activists and politicians on academia on this issue (Google the controversy on the mod 90’s IPCC report that was changed by staff pukes AFTER the scientists had all signed off and went home). I recently heard a lecture by the Illinois State Water Survey chief (a phd climatologist) who implied that an unofficial blacklist is out that and that anybody who challenges tenets of CO2-driven global warming will not receive grants, will not receive tenure, will not be invited to join faculties or symposia, etc. His opinion was what shaped mine: science simply is not yet mature enough to know if our CO2 discharges have ANY impact on global or local weather.

So MY concern and the concern of many scientists is that our culture is being driven by activists, lawyers and politicians to take massive action to reduce CO2 output when that might not be even close to our biggest problem! Wouldn’t you feel stupid on judgement day if you found out that those fish migrated north out of their historic range not because of ‘global warming’, but because of sediment pollution and ecessive nutrient pollution in their historic range? If we spend all our public advocacy efforts on CO2 reduction, there is that much LESS time and public attention for other, possibly more pressing envrionmental problems. Maybe even ones we understand and can DO something real about!

 

[John_Lavelle]

Reef eutrophication occurs and is apparently causally related to nitrogen discharge by humans and also to increases in water temperature and increased UV radiation *a la *the depletion of the polar O3 layer. . It may also be influential on migration of these fish. I don’t know.

We seem to have the Northwest Passage Henry Hudson fruitlessly died looking for. There are are multiple phenomena related to apparent increases in the temperature of the planet and huma beings since the onset of the industrial revolution and the explosion in the use of Carbonogenic (not a real word, I know) fossil fuels. There are politics involved in the interpretation of scientific evidence. There is also outright fraud and simple out right errors in measurement and interpretation by both well-meaning “pukes” and responsible and otherwise careful scientists.

I’d be unwilling to go to judgement day looking at the coast off Philadelphia over the drowned states of New Jersey and Delaware and find out in the final revelation that we could have developed and incorporated alternate nonpolluting technology like was done at the end of the horse age when mountains of manure surrounded the cities and the people railed against the madness of the horseless carriage and the hubris and impossibility of heavier than air flight. “I don’t know” is the prerequisite statement to finding the truth in the facts.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Reef eutrophication occurs and is apparently causally related to nitrogen discharge by humans and also to increases in water temperature and increased UV radiation *a la *the depletion of the polar O3 layer. . It may also be influential on migration of these fish. I don’t know.

We seem to have the Northwest Passage Henry Hudson fruitlessly died looking for. There are are multiple phenomena related to apparent increases in the temperature of the planet and huma beings since the onset of the industrial revolution and the explosion in the use of Carbonogenic (not a real word, I know) fossil fuels. There are politics involved in the interpretation of scientific evidence. There is also outright fraud and simple out right errors in measurement and interpretation by both well-meaning “pukes” and responsible and otherwise careful scientists.

I’d be unwilling to go to judgement day looking at the coast off Philadelphia over the drowned states of New Jersey and Delaware and find out in the final revelation that we could have developed and incorporated alternate nonpolluting technology like was done at the end of the horse age when mountains of manure surrounded the cities and the people railed against the madness of the horseless carriage and the hubris and impossibility of heavier than air flight. “I don’t know” is the prerequisite statement to finding the truth in the facts.

Take heart – even if the worst predictions come true, New Jersey will not be flooded.

 

[manualman]

John,

Then why not agree to tackle issues we understand well and merely fund additional research (preferably blind studies) on ones we don’t until they fall into the former category?

I don’t understand the headlong rush to assign massive resources to CO2 reduction when science does NOT yet know clearly if it is a genuine threat. Rather different than your piles of horse manures, no? No need for a degree in poopology to see the reality of THAT problem…

Interesting that you bring up the Northwest Passage. Perhaps the adventurers who searched so long had good reason to look after all. Maybe it DID exist during the Medieval Warming Period and verbal tales of it survived among indigenous peoples… Perhaps it was Mammoth flatulance??? But no number of alarming anecdotes proves that any warming we are seeing is CAUSED by CO2 levels. That needs to be proved out in science first and it just hasn’t yet!

 

[vern_humphrey]

John,

Then why not agree to tackle issues we understand well and merely fund additional research (preferably blind studies) on ones we don’t until they fall into the former category?

I don’t understand the headlong rush to assign massive resources to CO2 reduction when science does NOT yet know clearly if it is a genuine threat. Rather different than your piles of horse manures, no? No need for a degree in poopology to see the reality of THAT problem…

Interesting that you bring up the Northwest Passage. Perhaps the adventurers who searched so long had good reason to look after all. Maybe it DID exist during the Medieval Warming Period and verbal tales of it survived among indigenous peoples… Perhaps it was Mammoth flatulance??? But no number of alarming anecdotes proves that any warming we are seeing is CAUSED by CO2 levels. That needs to be proved out in science first and it just hasn’t yet!

Your idea makes so much sense that there** has** to be a flaw.

Lemee think now . . . hmmm . . , oh, yeah! If we adopt your approach, then the rich and famous won’t be able to sneer and look down on the rest of us while living in huge, energy-consuming and jetting around the planet in huge fuel-gulping jets.

And their self-esteem will suffer.

 

[John_Lavelle]

I just don’t have the data basis to have a founded opinion on global warming and CO2 efflugence caused by humans other than to say that that proposed models seem to make more sense as an explanation than mammoth flatulence, for example.

We are living inescapably in the lab in which we are performing the experiment and may pay dearly (and fatally) if our assumptions are incorrect. There is no absolute proof that smoking causes cancer or that snake venom will kill me but I am unwilling to experiment with either on my own body in presumption of a negative finding.

Developing technology to mitigate the massive CO2 emissions currently being produced seems to me from my limited perspective not without merit.

 

[LJN21]

I just don’t have the data basis to have a founded opinion on global warming and CO2 efflugence caused by humans other than to say that that proposed models seem to make more sense as an explanation than mammoth flatulence, for example.

We are living inescapably in the lab in which we are performing the experiment and may pay dearly (and fatally) if our assumptions are incorrect. There is no absolute proof that smoking causes cancer or that snake venom will kill me but I am unwilling to experiment with either on my own body in presumption of a negative finding.

Developing technology to mitigate the massive CO2 emissions currently being produced seems to me from my limited perspective not without merit.

That doesn’t really make any sense. You want to make national policy based on computer models that were build using very possible bad information?

You know there are many scientist out there that think that CO2 rises follow tempture rise. In which case we can’t do anything about it. CO2 will continue to go up reguardless because the tempture is going up.