Obama Announces New Climate Plan

[lynnvinc]

There is simply so much hyperbole and heated debate regarding climate change and its possible causes that the opposition, no matter which side you are on, has served, at the very least, to call your belief, whatever it is, into serious question. Several posts ago I read that NASA has now discovered that carbon dioxide actually has a cooling effect, not a warming one, thereby eliminating the major scientific hypothesis of proponents of MMGW. But if you check the internet you will not find the other side surrendering any ground. So far I have found one “debunking” of the media’s interpretation of the NASA report. If the past holds true, new rebuttals will appear. Also, I did note a new study that it is chlorofluorocarbons, not carbon dioxide, that is causing global warming. phys.org/news/2013-05-global-chlorofluorocarbons-carbon-dioxide.html

As a concerned citizen with no dog in the fight, all I want is a rational plan for correcting any behaviors that most experts agree have a link to seriously damaging the earth, or a refutation of same by most experts. It would be logical to wait until the dust settles on the recent NASA report. I have to go with “most experts” because it’s all I have to go on, unless someone can prove a systemic cause for error in their findings. I think I may be asking for too much. Apparently, we do not live in a rational world.

I looked into the issue. Quite right re the thermosphere (upper atmosphere) – the CO2 actually has a cooling effect above the GH belt, but a warming effect below as it re-radiates inferred heat back to earth.

The issue you mentioned was about a brief period in 2012 of solar flares – see science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/ – and has nothing to do with the GH effect, which has CO2 and other GHGs warming the earth below in the lower atmosphere, land, and seas. But, yes, there is a cooling effect in the thermosphere above, also bec the heat is being trapped below and not as much escapes.

Some years back there was an issue of some studies mixing the higher up thermosphere cooling temps with lower atmosphere warming temps, resulting in bogus findings that GW was not happening, but that was eventually corrected.

So AGW is most certainly happening and showing the beginnings of negative impacts – melting ice, rising seas, increased heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods, extreme precip events, disease spread, more intense storms, etc. We can only expect much worse in the future, so it behooves us to reduce our GHG emissions, at least in ways that do not cost, or actually save us money. And the U.S. for one can reduce this by 75% cost-effectively without lowering living standards or productivity. See: natcap.org

We just have to get busy and do it.

 

[lynnvinc]

Are you kidding me?? Have you seen Southern Illinois elect any rabidly pro-choice and anti-gun candidates? Not to mention, he had virtually no opponent in 2004.

Well, I’m just guessing, since I was not in IL at the time when he was elected to the Senate. But I do remember Paul Simon caving to some coal interests, probably so as not to kill off too many votes from the south. And I remember feeling funny about so pro-coal comments Obama made during his 1st run for prez, which harked back to the Simon thing.

 

[meltzerboy]

Congress is the body responsible for passing legislation, so it is pretty much out of Obama’s hands, except for his bill-signing power. See my previous post on this, and see that these are Congressional (House and Senate) bills…that pretty much don’t have a chance in an anti-environment Congress.

As for Obama, he’s just doing what he can within the executive branch, which isn’t a whole lot, and it does not include the ability to establish a “fee and dividend” law. That has to come from Congress.

Maybe if we all write our Congressmen (reps and senators) to pass such a bill, that might help.

Lynn, do you think if Al Gore were in charge in the executive office, he might have exerted more pressure on Congress, given his strong concern for the environment? I agree with you that none of the recent Presidents, including Obama despite his talk of alternative energy resources, is much of an environmentalist. We need another Teddy Roosevelt perhaps.

 

[Ridgerunner]

And the U.S. for one can reduce this by 75% cost-effectively without lowering living standards or productivity. See: natcap.org

We just have to get busy and do it.

Your citation does not say what you say it does. it’s just an ad for a book.

 

[SamH]

Your citation does not say what you say it does. it’s just an ad for a book.

Fiction?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Fiction?

More likely than not. It appears to be written by some environmentalist outfit. But they want money for it, so naturally I didn’t order it.

 

[RACJ]

I like that the President stated that we don’t have time for the “flat Earth society”.
Maybe later he will include those who think the world is 6000 years old.
Folks may have problems with Obama but it is great to have a leader who acknowledges valid science.

If we seated a 100,000 seat stadium with greenhouse gas molecules, CO2 moleculed would fill 38 sets. If we added one more CO2 molecule to the mythical audience, would the stadium then be in danger of collapsing? THere is a word for Obama’s “science”: “quackery”. :yup: Rob

 

[lynnvinc]

Lynn, do you think if Al Gore were in charge in the executive office, he might have exerted more pressure on Congress, given his strong concern for the environment? I agree with you that none of the recent Presidents, including Obama despite his talk of alternative energy resources, is much of an environmentalist. We need another Teddy Roosevelt perhaps.

Yes, Teddy Roosevelt or Al Gore (whom the anti-environmentalist like to bash to no end…perhap ending themselves up in a place a lot hotter than a globally warmed world for such venom and slander).

Even Nixon was much better than the presidents we’ve had since. He established the EPA by executive order. Carter may have been okay, if there had not been an economic down-turn then…and I think he is the one who put solar panels on the White House , which Reagan took down

 

[lynnvinc]

Your citation does not say what you say it does. it’s just an ad for a book.

You have to read the book, which I’ve done. But I think there are chapters and excerpts on that webpage. You can also check out rmi.org , run by energy efficiency expert Amory Lovins.

Also there is the issue of GHGs (and other harmful pollution) involved in nearly every product, from resource extraction to processing to manufacturing to selling to shopping/consuming/disposing. So it is important not only to reduce one’s direct energy consumption, but also water consumption (which requires energy to pump and heat it), and other activities – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and go on alt energy when feasible. These all help reduce GHGs and other pollution, and helps save resources for future generations.

 

[SamH]

If we seated a 100,000 seat stadium with greenhouse gas molecules, CO2 moleculed would fill 38 sets. If we added one more CO2 molecule to the mythical audience, would the stadium then be in danger of collapsing? THere is a word for Obama’s “science”: “quackery”. :yup: Rob

Agreed. The trace gas remains a trace gas.

 

[SamH]

You have to read the book, which I’ve done. But I think there are chapters and excerpts on that webpage. You can also check out rmi.org , run by energy efficiency expert Amory Lovins.

So its science fiction?

 

[Ridgerunner]

You have to read the book, which I’ve done. But I think there are chapters and excerpts on that webpage. You can also check out rmi.org , run by energy efficiency expert Amory Lovins.

Another fundraising, no-content site.

These people have a good thing going for them. They scare the devil out of vulnerable people by predicting dire consequences. Those people believe and contribute. The organizations support politicians who don’t believe in MMGW, but are willing to oppress people for the sake of the money, and everybody’s happy but the people who are unwillingly paying for it all.

And more probably than not, nobody believes in it other than the people who contribute to the organizations.

 

[Kevin_B]

It’s a conspiracy theory, nothing more.

You have 97% of all the climate scientists in the world claiming that there is indisputable evidence that humans are causing global warming to occur much quicker than it naturally should. You have the other 3% saying it isn’t proven yet. But a large amount of people believe every word out of the mouths of the 3%, while claiming that the other 97% are all corrupt.

That’s a common occurance in any conspiracy theory. People form their opinions beforehand, then only accept those facts which support their opinion, even if those facts are in the extreme minority. Take the terrorist attacks in new York city. Almost every scientist or engineer interviewed said that jet fuel could easily weaken steel enough for a building to fall. But two or three say otherwise, and all of a sudden they’re the only people in the country not paid off by our government.

The best weapon you have in any conspiracy theory is education and patience. Of course, you can’t stand solely on education, because conspiracy theorists again will reject any evidence they don’t already agree with. For instance, they ignore the extraordinarily low probability that 97% of all climate scientists are corrupt, or that the 3% who agree with them have some secret knowledge that the other 97% somehow haven’t considered.

The fact is, if you do any sort of research on the subject at all, you can easily disprove any of their claims. In fact, if you look into their claims, you will notice they are only posted on websites which are already critical of global warming. You’ll never find someone saying “this new evidence disproves everything i thought about global warming”, only “look, this new evidence confirms the things we have been saying all along”.

So whenever someone presents an incorrect claim about global warming, just show them why their claim is incorrect, and have patience. Don’t expect them to change their mind over one piece of evidence. After all, there has been enormous amounts of evidence proving them wrong for decades, one more but isn’t going to change anything

Examples:

Global warming has not stopped in the last 10 years, it just slowed down. It has still been increasing, just more slowly. Similar stalls occurred in the 40s and the 70s, but it picked up again immediately afterwards. No reason to assume it will do anything different now.

On that topic, there never was a scientific consensus on global cooling during this period in the 70s. A very small minority of scientists made this claim, but for some reason it was very popular. If you look at papers published during that period, there were 10 published on global warming for every 1 on global cooling.

Yes, we all know climate change has always occurred. For the last 100,000 years or so, the global temperature has gone up and down about a degree every thousand years, approximately. In the last one hundred years, it has gone up a degree. So saying “it’s always happened” doesn’t explain why it’s happening ten times faster now. Also, NASA has a nice chart showing how the CO2 levels are higher now than any point in the last 650,000 years.

The theory of climate change was not created by Al Gore or anyone else in the last few decades. John Tyndall proved the greenhouse effect experimentally in 1859.

Yes, other planets in our solar system have greenhouse gases in their atmosphere and therefore experience the greenhouse effect. This is not new news, and in no way “proves” that greenhouse gases released into our atmosphere do not cause the greenhouse effect here. In fact, it would seem to confirm that they do.

Yes, we have known for a very long time that greenhouse gases also reflect solar radiation back into space. The fact that the denialist websites just learned about this does not make it new news, nor does it change any predictions of global warming

 

[SamH]

It’s a conspiracy theory, nothing more.

You have 97% of all the climate scientists in the world claiming that there is indisputable evidence that humans are causing global warming to occur much quicker than it naturally should. You have the other 3% saying it isn’t proven yet. But a large amount of people believe every word out of the mouths of the 3%, while claiming that the other 97% are all corrupt.

Global warming has not stopped in the last 10 years, it just slowed down. It has still been increasing, just more slowly. Similar stalls occurred in the 40s and the 70s, but it picked up again immediately afterwards. No reason to assume it will do anything different now.

Source of this 97% number?

Agreed it has not stopped for 10 years - it has stopped for almost 20 years.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Source of this 97% number?

Agreed it has not stopped for 10 years - it has stopped for almost 20 years.

Well, here we go again. First off, he did not say it stopped, so what are you agreeing with? He denied that it has stopped. He said it had just slowed down.

I’m not an advocate of either side, but we seem so quick to get our licks in that we don’t respond to the other’s post. In the interest of advancing knowledge, has it stopped or has it slowed down?

You added another ten years. Has it stopped for twenty years, or has it just slowed down for twenty years?

Is this [stopping or slowing down] typical behavior as Kevin says it is, citing other periods when it slowed down [stopped]?

Why not address the tenfold increase; i.e., one degree in one century? Isn’t that more telling? If you can counter that claim you will go right to the heart of the argument. No?

I don’t mean to be coming at you. I’m just interested in the truth coming out. The two things that grab my attention are the tenfold increase in temperature (already mentioned) and the vast majority of scientists that support the theory of MMGW. You challenged the 97% figure-- good, but it won’t matter if it turns out to be 90% or other lopsided percentage.

Peace.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It’s a conspiracy theory, nothing more.

You have 97% of all the climate scientists in the world claiming that there is indisputable evidence that humans are causing global warming to occur much quicker than it naturally should. You have the other 3% saying it isn’t proven yet. But a large amount of people believe every word out of the mouths of the 3%, while claiming that the other 97% are all corrupt.

You don’t have to hold a conspiracy theory or even know about one to disbelieve something. Nor do those scientists and meteorologists who don’t believe in MMGW have to conspire together to believe what they do. Nor does the overwhelming majority of meteorolgists who believe that even if there is MMGW its effect will not be catastrophic have to believe in conspiracy theories. Nor does Allen Savory need to believe in a conspiracy to believe in MMGW but who changed his mind about the cause and now believes it’s due to manmade desertification and “heat sinks”. At least Savory can experiment to verify or falsify his theory, and has; something none of the computer models can do.

Some of the graphs show higher temperatures much more recently than 650,000 years ago. Actual history demonstrates that Greenland was once much warmer than now and that wine grapes could be grown in England and that grapes proliferated in Newfoundland. Nobody denies that temperatures fell during the “Little Ice Age” or that they have been rising ever since then.

Nobody has to be conspiratorial to doubt MMGW due to CO2. CO2 in the atmosphere has been higher than now as well, and nobody denies it. Some say GW is really because of methane and some blame people for that. Some say it’s because of Ozone depletiion and some blame people for that.

Farmers don’t have to be conspiracy theorists to remember far worse droughts and higher temperatures in the 1950s or 1930s. Nor do they have to think conspiracy to read about the droughts around the turn of the 20th Century, or the winter conditions in the late 19th Century that killed most of the cattle on the great plains. A rancher doesn’t have to believe in conspiracies to know that it’s very hard to kill cattle with cold air and/or snow, and that something far beyond what we experience today had to have happened, and that cold snaps today might not be due to manmade “climate change”.

Yes, against that there are all kinds of data fed into computer programs which, we are told, come up with inescapable proof that MMGW is caused by heating your house or operating your car or whatever. Sometimes we learn that some of that is spun. Sometimes we don’t.

And, of course, we don’t see the political promoters of MMGW remedies acting as if they really believe it at all. One doesn’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder how much CO2 Obama threw into the air on his Africa trip alone. One doesn’t have to think conspiracy to doubt his bona fides in making our electrical bills “skyrocket” while he has round-the-clock jet fighter coverage over his head on a trip he didn’t have to make at all.

What we do know for sure, and without having to be involved in any conspiracy concept at all to know is that if utility bills “skyrocket” which Obama promises, people are going to be hurt by it. Some will undoubtedly die. And we know the most impacted will be the poor and the elderly.

We know jobs will be lost due to the planned government actions, and that the economy will suffer. We know that for sure. Anybody familiar with industry knows many industries require a lot of energy and that if the cost of it greatly increases, they will move overseas where its not as costly. One doesn’t have to believe in conspiracies to think that. One only has to know the industrial output of the U.S. as a percentage of the world total almost exactly matches its percentage of energy use. One only has to believe in numbers. Granted, one can be mightily tempted to suspect, not necessarily a conspiracy, but perhaps only the fecklessness of those who want to cause energy bills to “skyrocket”.

One does not have to believe in conspiracies to wonder why the certitude of human suffering is justified by computer models made by people who want to publish their results and who know how rewarding some kinds of answers will be and how unrewarding the opposite answers will be. They can do that on an individual basis. They don’t even have to know each other.

 

[SamH]

Well, here we go again. First off, he did not say it stopped, so what are you agreeing with? He denied that it has stopped. He said it had just slowed down. .

So he’s even more wrong?

forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/05/26/to-the-horror-of-global-warming-alarmists-global-cooling-is-here/

 

[JamesCaruso]

One does not have to believe in conspiracies to wonder why the certitude of human suffering is justified by computer models made by people who want to publish their results and who know how rewarding some kinds of answers will be and how unrewarding the opposite answers will be. They can do that on an individual basis. They don’t even have to know each other.

But one does have to believe that the scientific community at large is corrupt. That is the pill you are proposing we swallow. How does a discipline that is rooted in logic and strict discipline become sold out so completely on an individual by individual basis? Is that a likely explanation of their consensus? If true, such behavior on the part of scientists shows neither discipline nor logic. I am not saying it is not true, only that, if true, it’s a very sad commentary on the modern age. We have witnessed serious corruption in our political institutions, our news media, our banking industry and in our financial markets, We thought that scientists were the least susceptible to falsifying the data. A big part of me does not want this to be true.

 

[JamesCaruso]

So he’s even more wrong?

forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/05/26/to-the-horror-of-global-warming-alarmists-global-cooling-is-here/

Is he? I’ll wait and see what he has to say.

Your article link supports your contention if it is accurate, but it did not exactly put the issue to rest as the writer would have one believe. The one thing he did convince me of was that he is an avid opponent of MMGW.

 

[Morwenna]

But one does have to believe that the scientific community at large is corrupt. That is the pill you are proposing we swallow. How does a discipline that is rooted in logic and strict discipline become sold out so completely on an individual by individual basis? Is that a likely explanation of their consensus? If true, such behavior on the part of scientists shows neither discipline nor logic. I am not saying it is not true, only that, if true, it’s a very sad commentary on the modern age. We have witnessed serious corruption in our political institutions, our news media, our banking industry and in our financial markets, We thought that scientists were the least susceptible to falsifying the data. A big part of me does not want this to be true.

We live in a fallen world, James. Sadly, even those in the clergy and religious life are not exempt from sin and self-interest, so I’m not sure why we’d expect scientists to do any better.