The biggest reason why global warming is doubted amoung the populace is the death of investigative journalism. Think about it; when is the last time you turned on CBS or NBC or ABC and saw information they had discovered on their own, information which was more than just a restated press release? The rise of the internet is making big news companies wallets hurt in a big way. They just cannot afford to investigate any of the information spoon fed to them any longer, they only report it as it is handed to them.

If I remember correctly, about a year or two ago the ppm (parts per million) of CO2 in the air had doubled since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Since then it has only gone up higher. If we have managed to double the amount of any substance in the atmosphere, that should send up some red flags that we can and are affecting the climate, and in a very big way. Fossil fuels will also never run out. Cheap oil may run out soon, but as mentioned above there is plenty of oil shale to make a mess with. Coal is also essentially inexhaustable as far as global warming is concerned. My guess is we won't significantly slow down global warming. Not because we are not able to, but because of lobbiests and special interest groups. People who, rather than trying to bail out this sinking ship, light up another stick of dynamite and throw it into the hold...

This thread has seemed to settle down a bit.

All the frustrated Global Warming deniers might want to take a look at the AP is another Global Warming Alarmist  thread over on the Joe User site.

The tone of the title pretty much sums up the discussion and you’ll find plenty of folks that feel exactly the same as you do. What the thread needs is some poor sap willing to be the sole Global Warming supporter in a sea of deniers. Just be prepared to be ignored, intentionally misconstrued and just plain ridiculed.

Yep. Ain't it the truth?

Not there. Every other thread is pretty much the same. Of course most of them are about politics which has many of the elements of a religion. It's preaching to the choir at its best where people are judged on their ability to conform to the group standard. And yet if you actually attempted to try to make a few rational points it is you that have been brainwashed by the media, It really is an exercise in newspeak where up means down, right means wrong, ...

I did try for a couple of weeks but I got tired of beating my head against a wall. I still go over every once in awhile and read through a few threads just to see how the other half lives although I no longer feel any motivation whatsoever to respond. They had a great time with the "controversy" over Obama's birth certificate. For all I know it’s still ongoing.

I assume they were hoping against hope that it could somehow be determined that he was not a native US citizen and so therefore couldn't be President. It was hilarious. It has all the fascination of a train wreck.

Yeah, unless your a scientist, we believe what we please. But if you have time to think, try always to not be fooled by "official report" stuff.  To the good or bad, they always try to fool us. UN is not an exception. Don't think humans in general are motivated by fraternity. This is constant survival of fittest(with most information/trick at hand).

Its same old trick.

ttp://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/

 

 

I must have missed it, where on that graph are the six days of creation listed?  If you can find a more accurate display of the last five thousand years, go for it.

 

I don't give a rats ass who they are.  I could make a timeline showing temperatures matched with known circumstances and do it myself, but it's a lot of work.  It's an excellent display of certain events in conjunction with the temperature record.  It's also a much more expanded time frame than the other link gives, which you dodged, naturally.  They always dodge the geological records.

 

The information is relatively accurate, you linked a post showing an agreeing graph for the last century, so perhaps you didn't look past their formal education anymore than the poster did?  Look at the content, compare it to other sources, and conclude on the evidence, as opposed to the presenter.  Feel free to poke fun at them afterwards.

 

Then look into the ice core data.

Luckily scientists do more than looking at charts like that. I can give you a few charts that show similar things, with accurate numbers. It's true, a temperature rise of 2 degrees that we are talking about has happened before.

Let me tell you, this does nothing to the current knowledge about in global warming and nothing about the consequences. The speed at which the temperature currently rises has never seen before and it won't take too long before (a few decades) we have exceeded normal historic temperature variations.

Now I shall give you a few links:

http://www.knmi.nl/klimaatscenarios/knmi06/WR23mei2006.pdf

http://www.ukcip.org.uk/images/stories/Pub_pdfs/UKCIP02_tech.pdf

http://secours-meteo-fr.axime.com/FR/climat/livre_blanc_escrime.pdf

http://www.ccsn.ca/Reports_and_Publications/Climate_Variability_and_Change_en.pdf

If you find a reasining error in there, tell me and we'll talk. Or at least post some link that has done any research on the topic that disagrees with global warming.

What do I care about their prediction?  You do see the temperatures right?

 

We've had the last x number of hottest years on record, blah blah blah!  Since we started recording them.

 

It would be like saying I'm about to die because I feel tired.  Of course I feel tired, normal people are asleep right now.  I could be about to die, but looking at the last few hours of my life and measuring my energy as it runs down is irrelevant.  It ignores that I did the exact same thing yesterday, and damn near every day of my life outside of a few exceptions that either included Claritin(really good shit, the first time I took it I couldn't sleep for three days) or massive sugar doses.

 

The ice core data, that's relevant.  The last seventy years of incorrect data?  Not so relevant.  Yes, it's incorrect, the monitoring stations are severely abused, we know jack shit before the satellites, and they even adjusted the satellites numbers to fit the ground stations for a while, go figure.

 

The ice core data does say that for the last 400k years the CO2 has been really low, but what else does it say?  Along with saying that CO2 has been at record low levels recently, it says the Earth has been a walk in freezer for most of that time as well.  It also says that CO2 has dick to do with the rising temperatures between the ice ages, and that desertification occurs not when the Earth warms up, but when it cools.

 

You can't cherry pick information like this and come to anything resembling an intelligent conclusion.  We're only at record high CO2 levels going as far back as before the period where the Ice planet has been a ball of earth.  We're only at record temperatures because some retard forgot to count anything at all beyond their own existence.  If we actually look just a wee bit further back in time, cutting CO2 production is more likely somewhere between suicide and comedy than saving the planet.  The next ice age isn't something to work toward.

 

I wear shorts and walk around town in an unlined leather jacket when it's 20 below zero, do the rest of you?

 

I know, I'm a freak of nature.

 

Edit: Mumble, if you're too lazy to educate yourself on a subject, why are you posting nonsense to mislead other people?  If you already know what the ice core data says, you shouldn't have to look at it.  If you don't, why would you want take my word for it with that suspicious mind you have?

 

Besides, the only thing more dishonest than a politician or trial lawyer is a scientist being paid by one.  If you're so worried about the integrity of a couple bible thumpers giving weather forecasts, I don't know how you can even bother reading anything the UN puts out.

Extremly relevant. They are our primary means of data about the composition of the atmosphere before we could measure it. That does by the way not mean they are more reliable than actual measurements.

Yeah right. I refer to Mumblefratz' final words:

By making random claims, without backing them up, you really give us nothing to discuss. So, we don't talk.

Because you're lazy.  Here, I'll be nice one more time.  http://www.surfacestations.org/

 

Did you know it's the first thing that comes up if you google search for surface stations?  Weird huh? Yes, only three percent of the surface stations they've surveyed so far have been up to standard.  Yes, it's sad.  Yes, NASA is indeed run by the same quality of idiots as the rest of the world.  Yes, they did doctor the satellite numbers to match those same surface stations.  This made the national news by the way, or do you not keep abreast of events either?

 

Did you read the report put out by the UN?  Did you check their claims against their findings?  What the evidence they gave said and what they said it said?  I spend more than enough time posting walls of text without spending several hours combing through data I've already bothered to make myself aware of just so I can do your homework for you while you argue blindly.

 

The news came out and said the UN found that global warming was caused by man and we were all going to die.  The UN came out and said that global warming was partially caused by man and would kill a lot of us.  The scientists came out and said that global warming might be occurring and could possibly be caused in part by man and might be harmful, might even be beneficial.  The data says that it's irrelevant because global warming has no evidence to show that it's a bad thing in the first place and probably doesn't exist.  This wont sell ad space on MSNBC though.  Just because you don't know that's what it says, doesn't mean I have to link it all just so you can ignore it, like the links I've already given.

 

 

Would this be the same wall you're beating your head against with that post, or a different one?  If you can't see why this is amusing, that's just more reason to be amused on my end.

 

Edit:  Yes, you're lazy.  If you can't look at the ice core data and venture a guess at why record high CO2 levels leading to global warming isn't a big problem when the future at those record low CO2 levels is, wait for it, yet another ice age, yes, you're lazy for telling me to back it up.  I'm not asked to prove gravity when telling someone that dropping their computer is a bad idea, am I?

Thank you.

Nice try buddy, but you'll have to try a little harder. First of all the article you linked mentioned nothing about ozone, so I had to go find the connection myself. And surprise surprise, look what I found!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11456-solar-superflare-shredded-earths-ozone.html

So yes, a massive solar flare 150 years ago temporarily reduced the amount of atmospheric ozone by ~5%, and the effect lasted for about 4 years. Then the ozone levels recovered as the nitrogen oxides responsible for it rained out of the sky. But 70 years later, the human race started pouring CFCs and other chemicals into the atmosphere (chemicals which have lifetimes between 50-1170 years). The result? A long-term 3% depletion of atmospheric ozone levels, 100% caused by yours truly - people. So here you have an example where the human effort managed to achieve over half the magnitude of ozone depletion lasting for a vastly longer period of time as a major natural event thought to happen once in 500 years managed.

In other words: obviously natural cycles and events have major effects on the atmosphere. But in the last century, humanity has started to become a real contender.

---

At the risk of redundancy I'm going to repeat some of what TheBigOne, dmantione and Mumblefratz have already said. It's important, and you have categorically ignored it so far. People have changed the rules of the game. According to ice core data, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has never risen above 300 ppmv in the last 400,000 years. If you go back millions, tens of millions of years you can find periods with higher CO2 levels - and lo and behold, there were also significantly higher temperatures! However, the current levels of CO2 are up to 380 ppmv, and it is accruing faster than expected based on historical data. Today's situation has never before been observed in nature, so we cannot use historical data alone to predict the results.

I'll give you a simple example. Take a simple string pendulum. It's just a weight tied to a rod that's fixed at the other end. If you study the motion of the pendulum weight that results from minor displacements from the equilibrium position, you'll find that it's just simple harmonic motion. You might expect that your findings will still apply for large displacements, as well, but you would be wrong. In fact, the general equation of motion for a pendulum are non-linear, and don't have a closed-form solution - all we can do is find approximate solutions, whether analytically or numerically.

To deny that humans have dramatically altered the natural levels of CO2 is denial at its worst. I have no patience for it. For the past century humanity has spewed a constant, thick stream of the stuff into the atmosphere - where do you think it all went, outer space?! Arguing that increased levels of CO2 isn't affecting, or isn't going to affect the earth's climate, on the other hand, is perfectly fine. Nobody knows for sure what will happen, that is the nature of science and its predictions. On the other hand, if you argue that current levels of CO2, and even higher future levels will have no impact on the climate based solely on observing historical data that contain no analogous situation, then you are being dishonest - intentionally or not.

We have one and only one way of really predicting large-scale atmospheric and climate changes based on an atmospheric state that has never before been observed. Computer models. The atmosphere and climate are extraordinarily complex, non-linear systems, meaning that analytical comparative methods are individually worthless. The non-linearity of the systems has one extraordinarily important consequence: minute variances in the initial state can result in completely different results (this is called the butterfly effect, and it is relevant in all non-linear systems). Intuitive predictions based on past data of incomparable solutions are only going to get us so far. We need to run (and we are, and have run) thorough simulations that take into account as many factors as we can. Not all simulations that have been run so far have predicted doom and gloom scenarios, but most have predicted some pretty bad effects - effects that don't occur if you run the same simulations with normal CO2 levels. The only reasonable conclusion to make, then, is that there is a chance that human activity has effected a chain of events that will end badly. It is not a foregone conclusion; it is a risk.

And in my opinion, anyone who understands the risk but prefers to do nothing about it has got to be selfish and somewhere in the middle of your life or beyond, or dangerously short-sighted.

Do you mean that you don't care about their predictions because some of their short-term predictions haven't held up? That's somewhat sensible, but also somewhat unreasonable. Global climate change is a long-term prediction. There can be large statistical varations along the way, things can even seemingly going in the opposite direction of the prediction at times, but still end up right where they're expected to. That's how pretty much every evolutionary theory works (and I'm not talking about the evolution of life). For example, we've got lots of theories that accurately describe the long-term evolution of stars, but they don't tell us what to expect on a year-by-year basis, and thus yearly events are irrelevent - only the cummulation of thousands, millions, even billions of years are relevant for those theories. To compliment them, we have separate theories that describe smaller timescales fairly well, too - but they require more detailed information than long-term theories do in order to be useful. This is because stars, like the atmosphere and climate, are non-linear.

In other words, it isn't surprising that short-term predictions made using the theory of global climate change are often incorrect. Climate change has a relevant time-scale - on the order of a decade - and any predictions that are made using a shorter time scale than that should be taken with a large grain of salt. And more importantly, anybody who makes such a prediction with any sort of confidence is either ignorant or irresponsible. From my reading, I get the distinct impression that most of the confidence behind these types of predictions is instilled by the media, not the scientists who make them; and the media is a dangerous mix of both ignorance and irresponsibility, so that isn't surprising.

No. Here's a much closer analogy. Every night you take a sleeping pill before going to bed (maybe you have insomnia or something). But tonight, you take two sleeping pills, and you get tired much faster than normal. That's not necessarily bad, it makes sense. But recently, a pharmacologist researching the sleeping pills you take has just done a new study that suggests that the dosage of two pills might be dangerous in a fairly high percentage of cases. The company issues a warning. Before retiring to bed, you happen upon that warning (maybe you get a newsletter). The warning says that taking two pills will make you tired much quicker, but that in 15% of people it can induce a coma once asleep. Do you go to sleep hoping everything will be alright and you'll wake up in the morning? Or do you call the doctor or an ambulance?

Yeah, I pretty much agree with you there. Nonetheless, measurements today indicate levels of CO2 and other pollutants are significantly higher than what we've seen in ice cores - except if you go back so far that there are other very major differences as well, and simulations indicate that such high levels could mean bad things for our future.



I'll say it again. Due to the non-linearity of the system, historical data alone isn't going to give us an accurate picture of what will occur in the future based on the current atmospheric state, considering that we've never observed a situation like it. Analysis for historical analysis must be combined with simulations, mostly by helping us to determine relevant factors and interaction mechanisms to put into the simulations. It's not flawless, but it's the only method we have.

And nobody is suggesting that we reduce CO2 levels to ice age levels. That would not only be retarded, but also close to impossible unless you're talking about centuries of effort.

Yeah, if we halve the CO2 levels from current levels that would probably not be so good. Extremes are never good ideas.

But, this quote of yours is extremely telling. You're willing to accept that small CO2 levels might bring along an ice age, but you're unwilling to accept that extraordinarily high CO2 levels like what we see now (let alone what it'll be in a few decades) are capable of changing anything. I really don't see the logic.

To go into technicalities I'd argue that scientists being paid by politicians or lawyers are only as dishonest as their funders. Thankfully, there are plenty of scientists out there who are not in the employ of either.

While I think the UN is largely obsolete in its current implementation and wholely ineffectual, I'm more inclined to put some trust into a team of scientists put together by them than into a guy who uses the bible to predict the weather and is looking forward to the Tribulation period and the extreme period of global warming it will bring with it...