Global Warming
 

For years I have just assumed it is true. This is in part due to my natural sympathies to the left, partly due to my general concern that humanity will destroy the Earth (which when you get down to it is really all that matters to us, survival) and partly due to the fact that I hear of many imminent scientists supporting this idea. I have never looked at the proof or disproof of global warming in any detail.

Where, for both sides of the issue, should I start to look?

Re: Global Warming
 

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A random google search is great for getting background information on something but I am more looking for what other people have found especially convincing and meaningful on the subject.

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Here's one site: Junk Science

I don't have a position on this issue except that I'm certain that no single scientist can be sure of anything that projects into the future regarding global climate. Knowing for sure what you do not know is quite valuable.

Re: Global Warming
 

Basically everything can be shrunk down to this. Over the last 300K years the CO2 and average earth temp line up. The Ocean is in danger of mass exctinction thanks to carbonic acid and there is no denying the ice caps are melting. Also the thermohaline belt that keeps europe warm is failing due to the ice caps melting. This might start a mini ice age.

The counter argument is that mars is also experiencing global warming. Solar flares are to blame for this. Many scientists say the suns cycle will change soon and many say they don't expect the ice caps to stop melting.

That is it in a nutshell. Basically do a search on my posts.

Re: Global Warming
 

My feelings on global warming are simple.

If global warming is true then everything in our power should be done to stop it.

If global warming is not true then good. But we still shouldnt polute like mad.

I dont see why anyone would feel differently. Poluting becuase it has no long term effects on the global temperature is stupid, as is all poluting.

Legislation should remain in effect, and for the most part strenghtened, in order to reduce polutants.

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Good point, except for the legislation part.

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Here's one site: Junk Science


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This is the worst website on the planet when it comes to ones that pretend to be scientific. As far as I know there isn't a single top scientist whose given a voice on that website. It is owned and ran by Steven J. Milloy who is a columnist for Fox News and a paid advocate for Phillip Morris, ExxonMobil and other corporations.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...even_J._Milloy

You could not of provided a worse link.

Re: Global Warming
 

try this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming


Just look at the graphs first.

wiki could be better though.

Re: Global Warming
 

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Over the last 300K years the CO2 and average earth temp line up.

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I don't know much about the issue but I'm fairly certain that one of the biggest arguments against the theory in general is that the data is limited to very recent years. There's only data for the last fraction of a percent of that 300k year graph.

Re: Global Warming
 

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Over the last 300K years the CO2 and average earth temp line up.

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I don't know much about the issue but I'm fairly certain that one of the biggest arguments against the theory in general is that the data is limited to very recent years. There's only data for the last fraction of a percent of that 300k year graph.

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We have CO2 samples from the vostok ice core going 1 million years and paleothermometry has temperature data going back 400K years. The CO2 data is solid and undebatable. The paleothermometry data is much more complex.

ugh... done with politics for the day.

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Yeah the temp data is what I meant. The CO2 is easier to get after the fact.

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The problem with the global warming debate is that the science (which I believe is incontrovertible) is used to draw the wrong conclusions. At the end of the wickipedia article there is a fairly good estimate of the cost of the impacts of global warming. But what is not there is an estimate of the cost of "doing something" to try and prevent global warming. Basically what it comes down to is this: significantly reducing greenhouse emissions can only be done by crippling the world economically. While the costs associated with global warming could be trillions of US dollars, the costs associated with the various Kyoto-style plans to reduce greenhouse emissions are in the hundreds of trillions, with no guarantee that they would work.

The number one killer of human beings is not heat, or cold, or tornados, or hurricanes, or droughts, or any other climate-related disaster. It is poverty. And the only cure for poverty is increased productivity that can raise standards of living. The cost of coercively shackling world productivity to reduce emissions will be a drastic increase in world poverty, and poverty brings starvation, disease, misery, and death on unimagineable scales.

Human beings live in every environment on Earth, from the blistering cold to the blistering heat. Some places will get worse, and some places will actually get better. People will have to move. But they will have decades over which to do it. There's already enough poverty in the world. Don't advocate policies that will multiply it ten or a hundred fold.

My $0.02 on global warming.

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"As far as I know there isn't a single top scientist whose given a voice on that website. "

It's all links, no editorials to speak of. This requires one to use critial thought and objectivity, difficult for many on the left. Add in any connection to Fox, the mention of the beast...

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I like Family Guy.

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"As far as I know there isn't a single top scientist whose given a voice on that website. "

It's all links, no editorials to speak of. This requires one to use critial thought and objectivity, difficult for many on the left. Add in any connection to Fox, the mention of the beast...

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Fox News used to be one of my favorite news stations. Their reporting on foreign affairs is normally pretty decent. But that station has gone down the shitter lately. When it comes to scienctific research, they depend on hollywood:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...rue#Post3932931

If you still think it's so good, try and find a link to Richard Smalley or some other leading scientist in the field. Good luck. As far as I know there is only one and he gets a quarter a million a year + all grants paid for from Exxon to cheer for the other side.

Re: Global Warming
 

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While the costs associated with global warming could be trillions of US dollars, the costs associated with the various Kyoto-style plans to reduce greenhouse emissions are in the hundreds of trillions, with no guarantee that they would work.

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Just call them a fraud, cuz that's what they are.


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Basically what it comes down to is this: significantly reducing greenhouse emissions can only be done by crippling the world economically.

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This is complete crap and you know it. We've been over this before. Hell the programs your economists that you link to want would tax the economy 20x more than smalleys 5 cent tax to develop technology. So you are full of crap on this one.


Ok... now I'm done with politics till tomorrow. ugh... no control.

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This is complete crap and you know it.

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Must you be such a douchebag?

Clearly I don't know any such thing.

Can you explain how human greenhouse emissions can be reduced, for example by one half (preferably by one order of magnitude), without crippling the world economically?

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[ QUOTE ]
"As far as I know there isn't a single top scientist whose given a voice on that website. "

It's all links, no editorials to speak of. This requires one to use critial thought and objectivity, difficult for many on the left. Add in any connection to Fox, the mention of the beast...

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this is awesome coming from the guy with an insane paranoia of CBs and even the New York Times.

Journalism 101: Print media = waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than TV media.

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I am completely ignorant on global warming, but one thing i've always believed that i think most people can agree on is that in the long run pollution = -ev (sorry for the cheesy poker reference) and that we should try to keep it to a minimum, this does not mean that we should control the cow population so that nitrogen from their manure doesn't contaminate the local water supply, but try to keep things within reason...
i apologize if this is incoherent I'm coming down with something nasty and i should be asleep...

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Haven't read the whole thread, but wacki knows the topic well. I'd recommend RealClimate for good information, and warn you to consider the political motives of sites/posters who try to try to dismiss climate change. The sites often look legitimate (names like globalwarming.org...), but are nothing but corporate fronts.

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Today's front page links to Doonsbury. No agenda there.

"...and warn you to consider the political motives of sites/posters who try to try to dismiss climate change."

Cuts both ways, don't it? What could possibly motivate someone to promote the idea of man made global warming? I can only think of half a dozen reasons off the top of my head.

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"...in the long run pollution = -ev"

Turn on the brain for ten seconds before you cobble up new slogan 'wisdom'. Avoidng pollution is expensive. The poorest countries are the worst p[olluters. To mitigate pollution in the 3rd world costs lives. You will need to decide th EV of lives. First change your name to God...

Re: Global Warming
 

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"...in the long run pollution = -ev"

Turn on the brain for ten seconds before you cobble up new slogan 'wisdom'. Avoidng pollution is expensive. The poorest countries are the worst p[olluters. To mitigate pollution in the 3rd world costs lives. You will need to decide th EV of lives. First change your name to God...

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You are right my post was quite bad. I wasn't trying to come up with any type of slogan or be earthshattering, i was just expressing my views on pollution as simple and ignorant as they may be, but i felt that i gave ample warning to that and i dont feel your attack was nessesary, it most certainly wasn't appreciated.
Are you trying to assert that you dont think any form of pollution has ANY negative effects on the environment in the long run? Also economists actually can and have calculted the value of a human life, so it is possible to find the ev of lives and i think only a select few economist would actually consider themself any form of god...

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"The poorest countries are the worst p[olluters."
Huh?

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I'm guessing he means per capita?

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"The poorest countries are the worst p[olluters."
Huh?

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Poor nationsuse crappy technology, like coal fired power plants. This makes them the worst emiters of CO2 and other polutents. FIrst world nationsget to polute cool stuff like CFCs and radioactive waste.

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The US generates 50% of its electricity using coal fired plants. It also uses 25% of all oil.
Coal usage
Coal consumption / capita

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There is no doubt that global warming is occuring. The earth is getting warmer and average temperatures are rising.

What is at debate is what is causing the warming. Is is the various cycles the sun goes through, the so called "greenhouse effect", normal earth weather patterns, etc.

Until that is resolved, various proposed solutions are kinda retarded. How can you propose a solution when you don't really know what the problem is?

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"Also economists actually can and have calculted the value of a human life..."

I've got my checkbook out, how much for your life?

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Per unit of economic output, the 1st world is so very much cleaner that the rest of the world.

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ha ha ha, mine probably won't bring much at auction. I will try and give an explaination of how they do this, however i will probably do a poor job. I first heard this from my macroeconomics professor at the University of Florida. Basicly you can find out how much value we put on a human life by looking at certain legislative proposals for safety features and regulations and such and we look at the cost of these measures and weather or not they were inacted. If project A was enacted and it was estimated to save an average of 100 lives a year and it costs $10 million annually then we value a human life at $100,000. Generally i think the actual figures are much lower. Where this type of analysis really becomes interesting is when a project is rejected because it is percieved as being too costly. This is a horribly oversimplified version of this method, but i hope it gets the point across. I know it an incredibly callous analysis of the value of human life but the point is that it can be done and quite accurately at that...

Re: Global Warming
 

"Until that is resolved, various proposed solutions are kinda retarded. How can you propose a solution when you don't really know what the problem is? "

Please spread some of this sanity around, OK?

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What is at debate is what is causing the warming. Is is the various cycles the sun goes through, the so called "greenhouse effect", normal earth weather patterns, etc.

Until that is resolved, various proposed solutions are kinda retarded. How can you propose a solution when you don't really know what the problem is?

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Sun solar cycle is 20 years long (as far as we know)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...cycle-data.png

compare that to CO2

http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/2084/3way8fp.png

http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/pr...k-ice-core.jpg

Re: Global Warming
 

[ QUOTE ]
There is no doubt that global warming is occuring. The earth is getting warmer and average temperatures are rising.

What is at debate is what is causing the warming. Is is the various cycles the sun goes through, the so called "greenhouse effect", normal earth weather patterns, etc.

Until that is resolved, various proposed solutions are kinda retarded. How can you propose a solution when you don't really know what the problem is?

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Source?

From what time period are you considering (that the earth is warming).

Re: Global Warming
 

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The poorest countries are the worst p[olluters.

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I take it as no small coincidence that those who so easily dismiss the prestigious John Feeney's sources also make up facts.

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http://dieoff.org/page8.htm

"The full list includes a majority of the Nobel laureates in the sciences"

Just throwing this out there. I hate to appeal to knowledge based on authority (these guys must know what they're talking about) as it's something that could never possibly convince me.b

Re: Global Warming
 

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Can you explain how human greenhouse emissions can be reduced, for example by one half (preferably by one order of magnitude), without crippling the world economically?

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I've posted links to all of this stuff before so I'm not going to dig them up again. I'd rather make a website so I don't have to repeat myself 20 times a month.

Scientists at berkeley are very close to coming out with an algae that can be used to fuel all of our cars while taking up only a very tiny amount of farm land to grow.

MIT has tons of battery technology coming out.

Algae factory scrubbers perform amazingly well cutting CO2 emissions to a fraction of what it originally was.

If ITER ever comes online (fusion power) that is zero emissions.

All of this is non-profit research btw.

OCES is zero emissions.

I'm becoming more and more confident that we not only can reduce our emissions but we can eventually become a zero emission country through technology. WIth phytoplankton seeding we should be able to become a negative emission country. The only major barrier IMO is developing a fuel cell catalyst. I strongly believe that all the other pieces can be solved with simply time and money. Even the fuel cell catalyst can be avoided if solid state batteries ever come to fruition.

The very economist you link to wants us to tax $1 a gallon and all of these programs would only cost 5 cents a gallon to fund. I really don't see why it isn't being done. Obviously the tax won't hurt the economy and the extra technology will only spur our economic development.

I'm not going to provide a ton of links because I've done them a dozen times before. I'm just going to create a website instead. Il mostro send me your e-mail cuz I know you are a great source of information despite being overly pessimistic IMO.


I'm 99% sure this is my last post for the day.

Re: Global Warming
 

I just started reading this but it is an interesting debate on the subject.

http://edeldoug.blogs.com/thoughts_r...ole_globa.html

Re: Global Warming
 

I studied Industrial Engineering, I know all about it. It's nothing more than limited resources getting proper allocation. The same is done in pollution mitigation.