Global Warming - What do you think (and tell kids)?

[Trevorum]

Beav,

You are sounding like one of them there Gravitationalists - those radical folks who accept the "Theory of Gravity" as a FACT when we know it's just a THEORY! There are other explanations for falling apples, including Intelligent Falling (IF), but the scientists won't listen.

 

 

[packsaddle]

Hey Gonzo1, someone I admire once said something along the lines, "a bad day on the trail is better than a good day in the office" or something like that. Do you remember how that goes?

Anyway, I enjoyed it thoroughly. (In my best Bogart impersonation) 'It's the stuff that dreams are made of...' I just regret that the weather got in the way of some of the things we wanted to do...oh well, next trip!

 

Fishsqueezer is correct. Science never really proves anything absolutely. Everything that we think is a fact is always open for criticism and reconsideration based on objective evidence, should someone produce such evidence. This is the principal difference between science-based and faith-based 'knowledge'. The good scientist takes pleasure in unmasking falsehoods. Our acceptance of so-called facts is always tentative. Or as a good scientist I knew a long time ago often said, "A fact is something that is not currently under investigation".

 

Beavah, I tend to agree with your characterization of the 'facts not consensus' approach as possibly being untrustworthy. I am willing to allow that some of them are merely undisciplined in critical thinking.

But we are all subject to prejudice and self-deceptions. The beauty of science is that as a community we have a self-correcting mechanism to weed out these deceptions. And we don't have to kill anyone because they don't think like we do. I think it is a superior approach to ideas...anyone disagree?

[Gonzo1]

Packsaddle,

A bad day camping is better than any day at work.

 

 

[BrentAllen]

All this argument is the temperature going up or not, its absurd, Bryson continues. Of course its going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because were coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because were putting more carbon dioxide into the air.

Reid Bryson

http://www.wecnmagazine.com/2007issues/may/may07.html

 

As he says, why is Greenland named that?

 

"Bryson says he looks in the opposite direction, at past climate conditions, for clues to future climate behavior. Trying that approach in the weeks following our interview, Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News soon found six separate papers about Antarctic ice core studies, published in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1999 and 2006. The ice core data allowed researchers to examine multiple climate changes reaching back over the past 650,000 years. All six studies found atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations tracking closely with temperatures, but with CO2 lagging behind changes in temperature, rather than leading them. The time lag between temperatures moving upor downand carbon dioxide following ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand years."

 

Yah, the evidence is pretty strong, eh?

 

This is pure politics and money. Got to have a crisis so you can request money to study it. If AlGore thinks it is going to destroy mankind and the world, then why doesn't he cut his big fat energy bill? Answer - because it isn't, and he knows it!

[GernBlansten]

I get the distinct feeling that those who reject the theory of GW are so vehement because of their disapproval of the messenger. Had the GW movement been backed by someone with the last name like Robertson or Dobson instead of Gore, folks would probably line up on opposite sides of the debate.

You are of course right, it is politics, on both sides of the debate.

[BrentAllen]

Gern,

I was thinking the same thing about the other side, as well. But at the end of the day, I still look at the evidence. And the evidence is that CO2 levels rose AFTER warming in the past, not before it. That kills their theory, plain and simple.

 

There are so many variables to deal with, I just think it laughable that scientist claim with any certainty they know what is causing climate change. After making wild predictions, they had to adjust their models for urban warming. After claiming GW was shrinking the glaciers on Kilimanjoaro, scientists found it was the deforrestation nearby that caused temperature change and melting, not CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Some scientists think there may be volcanic vents below the glaciers, melting them from below.

 

We can't figure out what is happening in this one location, yet we claim to know what has happened for the last thousands of years all over the planet, and what is going to happen in the next several hundred. Hurricane predictions for last year were so far off the mark, it was embarrassing! Their excuse? They didn't know El Nino was going to kick up. What?!?! You can't predict El Nino for the next 12 months, but you know exactly what the temperature is going to be in 100 years???

 

And now it has turned into a political movement, which means objectivity gets thrown out the window. Good theory should stand up to criticism, but anyone who argues against GW is labeled a "denier" and tarred as being a puppet for the energy companies. What a mess.

 

We teach our boys to lead by example. How are Al Gore and Sheryl Crow leading by example, in their conservation of energy use? They aren't, so how can anyone take them seriously?

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

BrentAllen writes:

And the evidence is that CO2 levels rose AFTER warming in the past, not before it. That kills their theory, plain and simple.

 

No, it doesn't. What needs to be shown to kill the theory is that CO2 emissions from human sources will not affect the average global temperature to a significant degree, and the above doesn't come anywhere near that.

[packsaddle]

Brent,

I doubt that Reid Bryson is dismissed as a "denier". At least I don't. He fashions his ideas carefully and then puts them on the table for criticism same as other scientists.

I wish I had lots of students with his skeptical eye in my courses.

But he is subject to the same failings that all of us are and as fun as it is to listen to him debate his critics, the evidence remains. He is not denying the CO2 increases. He is not denying changes in climate. He is merely saying, as I mentioned before, there is some question as to the sources of the CO2 and the predicted effect. Everyone who has ever run a large-scale, complex environmental model knows there is tremendous uncertainty in some of the predictions. No one denies that.

As a scientist he remains susceptible to reason and objective evidence. In fact this is the major reason he isn't dismissed as merely a person with some selfish agenda.

 

I agree with you regarding money and politics. The scientists in the trenches, at least the ones I know, are not in the business for either reason. In fact, we tend to cringe at the thought because politically-motivated funding is notoriously undependable. I have seen this personally. A congressman puts an earmark in some spending bill...a lab ramps up to address a real problem...good people are hired to do good work...and then another political whim kills the project through malice or neglect, often before it has been completed. It is indeed a waste.

However, with regard to global climate change, I suspect that most of the naysayers have their money-driven political agendas as well. Do you disagree? It seems to be the American way.

 

Sorry about the negative vibes, but my personal feeling is that 1) if this IS a global problem, in the end we're going to do nothing about it and 2) Even if we arrogantly tried to do something about it, we'd flub that as well. We're going to be subject to evolutionarly forces and under the wrong conditions THAT can be a real gas! (pun intended)

 

I think that if we live long enough we'll get to see the answer to some of these questions for better or worse. And I, for one, am not optimistic. However, I do rather enjoy the idea of alligators and piranhas and other exotics (maybe even that nasty Candiru fish) in our temperate lakes...and extending the ranges of cottonmouths, malaria, dengue fever, various schistosomes, etc. (Dogs, swimmers, skiers, and children, BEWARE!) It brings new meaning to the exclamation, COOL!

[dave.424]

BrentAllen wrote:

And the evidence is that CO2 levels rose AFTER warming in the past, not before it. That kills their theory, plain and simple.

 

Merlyn_LeRoy wrote:

No, it doesn't. What needs to be shown to kill the theory is that CO2 emissions from human sources will not affect the average global temperature to a significant degree, and the above doesn't come anywhere near that.

 

 

It would seem to me that IF the evidence shows that X precedes Y, then it would follow that Y does not cause X.

[Beavah]

Yah, Greenland was named Greenland because da Norse leaders who were trying to promote immigration came up with a good slogan, just like da tourist departments of each of our states, eh? It was a marketing gig, not a statement about climate.

 

I think that it's interesting that the guys who wrote those ice core studies are proponents of the Global Warming theory. That means a lot more to me than what a commentator says about their data. Far be it from me to agree with Merlyn, but he's got a point, eh?

 

Climate systems are quite complicated overall, to be sure. No good way to predict local conditions. But dat doesn't mean that same heat in, less heat out won't make things generally warmer. It's still possible to make general statements even when yeh can't make specific ones.

 

To kill the theory, you need real evidence that contradicts it. That means in this case you need evidence of something that will create a bigger cooling effect. Nobody's even got a decent hypothesis there, let alone evidence.

 

Just because there's politicians blathering doesn't mean us good citizens shouldn't take the time to really figure out what's goin' on, rather than jerkin' our knees because of the messenger.

 

Beavah

 

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

david.self writes:

It would seem to me that IF the evidence shows that X precedes Y, then it would follow that Y does not cause X.

 

Only in that particular case; BrentAllen is trying to use it in the general case, where *no* Y causes X.

 

If I find a corpse that has been shot in the head, but an autopsy shows that the person died of arsenic poisoning before being shot, this does not allow me to conclude that getting shot in the head does not cause death. It didn't in this case, but I can't generalize it to all gunshot wounds.

[packsaddle]

Heh, heh. OK just for fun:

 

I challenge all members of the forum to read this paper and offer a thoughtful summary and critical analysis. "Go ahead, make my day"...where did I hear that before? http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v412/n6846/full/412523a0.html"

 

If you didn't just gobble that up, here's one that is a little tamer: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/

 

Entitled, "The lag between temperature and CO2. (Gores got it right.)"

 

This paper, written by actual climatologists, explains the real and not-real lags and why this stuff makes sense...and in terms that are a little easier to grasp. However, I caution everyone...if you couldn't digest that first paper, the second one is not cutting edge science but rather an attempt to take cutting edge science and make it accessible to non-scientists. There is a limit to every translation and science is no exception.

 

Bon appetite!

 

[BrentAllen]

packsaddle, the first link can't be opened without a subscription. The second - well, there is that word again - "deniers". There are so many "should's" and "expected's" in there, it is hard to believe anyone would call this scientific fact.

 

When the ice on Mars is retreating the same as it is on Earth, and there aren't any humans on Mars, is seems very plausible to me that the sun is the likely culprit.

 

When ice retreats in the Swiss Alps and we find silver mines and tools, it tells me we have been here before. I see no evidence that this warming is anything other than a natural cycle for the planet or increased sun activity.

 

Beavah - marketing strategy for Greenland? Is that where the GW crowd has to fight their case now? Greenland was farmland for the Norse.

"Little Ice Age? Thats what chased the Vikings out of Greenland after theyd farmed there for a few hundred years during the Mediaeval Warm Period, an earlier run of a few centuries when the planet was very likely warmer than it is now, without any help from industrial activity in making it that way." WECN Interview with Reid Bryson

 

"During the so-called Medieval Warm Period between about 900 and 1300 A.D., for example, the Vikings raised livestock on Greenland and sailed to North America. New cities were built all across Europe, and the continent's population grew from 30 million to 80 million."

Not the End of the World as We Know It

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,481684,00.html

 

Beavah - who was paying for those scientist to be taking ice core samples? Were they there to investigate GW? If so, they better show the evidence is supporting their claims, and needs further investigation, or the money faucet gets turned off. Be very careful of supporting author's conclusions that aren't supported by the evidence. I suggest you look up Michael Bellesiles. While not a scientist, many supported the conclusions in his award winning book until the data (or lack of) proved him a liar. Those awards were later stripped.

[Gonzo1]

Wow,

Merlyn discussing something OTHER than atheism, welcome to the rest of the forum Merlyn!

 

Alright, bazillion years on Earth, 150 + - years of climate records. The atmosphere is an elastic medium (air can be compressed and expanded). Man can cause pollution, man CAN NOT cause the Earth to heat up. Only the big fire ball in the sky can do that.

 

Carbon dioxide is expressed into the atmosphere, plants and trees need carbon dioxide to grow. Trees and plants give off oxygen.

It's part of the cycle.

 

Be good stewards, give a hoot, don't pollute. Let's all take care of what we have here on Earth. Pack it in, pack it out. Don't get crazy about evironmentalism.

 

 

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Gonzo1 writes:

Man can cause pollution, man CAN NOT cause the Earth to heat up. Only the big fire ball in the sky can do that.

 

And by increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, it traps more heat, and the Earth DOES heat up. The heat is still from that big fire ball in the sky. The surface of Venus is hotter than the surface of Mercury because of Venus' atmosphere.