|
Global Warming Debate (pg. 2)
|
View this Thread in Original format
| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
You've taken the whole conspiracy thing too far, my friend. 9/11 has nothing to do with global warming, seriously. People who believe in global warming are generally NOT lunatics or 9/11 conspiracy supporters. This is not about comparing if the government is involved in global warming, but if its mainly human or nature driven - thats the debate. Global warming (or climate change, as I like to put it), has many credible points - the main one being the significant melting of ice in the polar regions. And thats no conspiracy, its a fact. But despite that, I still question this whole "global warming" thing myself, and though humans do play a factor, it is mainly driven by non-human factors, such as the sun. Thats my belief. |
imo if youre not a climate scientist (or similar) you really shouldn't have a strong opinion on the subject at all.
and the tactics and science of 911 has everything to do with global warming denialists' tactics and science. as do creationists' tactics and science.
they are all part of one big pot of junk science. |
|
|
| atbell |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
imo if youre not a climate scientist (or similar) you really shouldn't have a strong opinion on the subject at all.
and the tactics and science of 911 has everything to do with global warming denialists' tactics and science. as do creationists' tactics and science.
they are all part of one big pot of junk science. |
+1
I've done a fair amount of research on the subject including calculations and getting professionals to scrutinize what I've done.
So far I'm very convinced that the world is warming at an alarming rate.
I'm also very convinced that man is the major cause of the changed equilibrium (equilibirum being an important term).
I'm not convinced carbon dioxide is the source of the warming but until I get a chance to do more research I can't really say otherwise.
I'm also convinced that the rise in global temperatures seems to be closely related to the industrial revolution. |
|
|
| Magnetonium |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
imo if youre not a climate scientist (or similar) you really shouldn't have a strong opinion on the subject at all.
and the tactics and science of 911 has everything to do with global warming denialists' tactics and science. as do creationists' tactics and science.
they are all part of one big pot of junk science. |
I am afraid that ALL of us arent climate scientists. So therefore we shouldn't even be talking about this? We shouldn't be talking about ANYTHING since we arent "professional" experts in most of these discussions. Right? I have an opinion and I have done my research, and I am confident of it. Global warming and ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION & POLLUTION are two VERY different things. Maybe you're confusing something?
I am afraid you're missing the point here.
And, despite your best attempts, you have failed to link all these denialist traits together. You see, I dont deny climate change, I deny global warming. Global warming is meant to scare people, like governments like to do when they wish to push something. Besides - plenty of people making money of this global warming thing - I remember you mentioned Alex Jones making money off conspiracies - how about your friends making money off global warming? Huh? Care to comment on that? :D |
|
|
| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
I am afraid that ALL of us arent climate scientists. So therefore we shouldn't even be talking about this? We shouldn't be talking about ANYTHING since we arent "professional" experts in most of these discussions. Right? I have an opinion and I have done my research, and I am confident of it. |
well, with all due respect. some of your researching skills have been lacking in the past :p in any case, of course you can discuss whatever you wish and i encourage people to do so. however, i am reluctant to pay much heed to non-experts in the context of such a scientfically complicated debate. in the face of unanimous scientific opinion, anyone going against that opinion, should (imo) themselves be a recognised expert in a relevant field.
when you go to the hospital, do you get operated on by the guy who spent 6+ years at university, or the janitor who watches medical shows on the discovery channel?
i believe in man-made climate change simply because im not arrogant enough to dismiss such an assortment of scientific opinion.
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
And, despite your best attempts, you have failed to link all these denialist traits together. |
to be honest, i wasn't trying to link them together. to me its just obvious. same argument styles; poking holes in accepted knowledge without providing anything nearly as robust to replace it. same rhetorical devices.
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
Global warming is meant to scare people, like governments like to do when they wish to push something. Besides - plenty of people making money of this global warming thing - I remember you mentioned Alex Jones making money off conspiracies - how about your friends making money off global warming? Huh? Care to comment on that? :D |
so, for what ends are the governments "scaring" people re global warming? given that man-made global warming goes against any and every goal any government has ever had. or virtually any business interest. what is the government's agenda? if not scientists, who is pushing the agenda? if scientists, why do you believe their opinion is anything other than a reflection of the best evidence we have at the time? do you have cause to doubt the veracity of ALL the work conducted by those trained in the field?
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
Besides - plenty of people making money of this global warming thing - I remember you mentioned Alex Jones making money off conspiracies - how about your friends making money off global warming? Huh? Care to comment on that? :D |
i understand youre teasing me, but its still a juvenile question. in reference to alex- can you find me the individual scientist who is selling mugs and tshirts pushing their global warming agenda? are you really going to argue that scientific consensus on the evidence, documented over several decades around the world is somehow tied to scientists' personal goals of making money from global warming theories? if you are, present your facts otherwise youre just another denialist pissing into the wind. |
|
|
| Magnetonium |
I'll be frank with you. The most important factor in climate change - the sun. The sun fluctuates in temperatures. Temperature fluctuations in the sun play a critical role on Earth. Here's an analogy - I suppose humans have caused global warming on other planets, too? You do the math. CO2 emissions alone dont explain the rise of temperatures. While human-driven destruction of forests around the world does (which releases CO2, btw).
Its that simple. Of course there's more to it, and humans ARE contributing to the climate change, BUT the effects are minimal. Humans are primarily damaging and destroying the environment, if thats what you're implying - thats correct.
A volnanic eruption does more to offset climate change than a full year of human-caused emissions, for Christ's sake. |
|
|
| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
I'll be frank with you. The most important factor in climate change - the sun. The sun fluctuates in temperatures. Temperature fluctuations in the sun play a critical role on Earth. Here's an analogy - I suppose humans have caused global warming on other planets, too? You do the math. CO2 emissions alone dont explain the rise of temperatures. While human-driven destruction of forests around the world does (which releases CO2, btw).
Its that simple. Of course there's more to it, and humans ARE contributing to the climate change, BUT the effects are minimal. Humans are primarily damaging and destroying the environment, if thats what you're implying - thats correct.
A volnanic eruption does more to offset climate change than a full year of human-caused emissions, for Christ's sake. |
like i already said, im gonna take the word of climate scientists over members of an online dance music community :p |
|
|
| Magnetonium |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
like i already said, im gonna take the word of climate scientists over members of an online dance music community :p |
Hey, I didnt actually come up with my own ideas on this one. Environmental damage aside, I support Habibullo Abdussamatov's view on this issue - and he's one of the experts on the issue.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17582152/
| quote: |
Earth is heating up lately, but so are Mars, Pluto and other worlds in our solar system, leading some scientists to speculate that a change in the sun’s activity is the common thread linking all these baking events.
Others argue that such claims are misleading and create the false impression that rapid global warming, as Earth is experiencing, is a natural phenomenon.
While evidence suggests fluctuations in solar activity can affect climate on Earth, and that it has done so in the past, the majority of climate scientists and astrophysicists agree that the sun is not to blame for the current and historically sudden uptick in global temperatures on Earth, which seems to be mostly a mess created by our own species.
Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, recently linked the attenuation of ice caps on Mars to fluctuations in the sun's output. Abdussamatov also blamed solar fluctuations for Earth’s current global warming trend. His initial comments were published online by National Geographic News.
“Man-made greenhouse warming has [made a] small contribution [to] the warming on Earth in recent years, but [it] cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance,” Abdussamatov told LiveScience in an email interview last week. “The considerable heating and cooling on the Earth and on Mars always will be practically parallel."
But Abdussamatov’s critics say the Red Planet’s recent thawing is more likely due to natural variations in the planet’s orbit and tilt. On Earth, these wobbles, known as Milankovitch cycles, are thought to contribute to the onset and disappearance ice ages.
“It’s believed that what drives climate change on Mars are orbital variations,” said Jeffrey Plaut, a project scientist for NASA’s Mars Odyssey mission. “The Earth also goes through orbital variations similar to that of Mars.”
As for Abdussamatov’s claim that solar fluctuations are causing Earth’s current global warming, Charles Long, a climate physicist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in Washington, says the idea is nonsense.
“That’s nuts,” Long said in a telephone interview. “It doesn’t make physical sense that that’s the case.”
In 2005, Long’s team published a study in the journal Science showing that Earth experienced a period of “solar global dimming” from 1960 to 1990, during which time solar radiation hitting our planet’s surface decreased. Then from the mid-1990’s onward, the trend reversed and Earth experienced a “solar brightening.”
These changes were not likely driven by fluctuations in the output of the Sun, Long explained, but rather increases in atmospheric clouds or aerosols that reflected solar radiation back into space.
Other warming worlds
Others have pointed out anomalous warming on other worlds in our solar system.
Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University who monitors studies and news reports of asteroids, global warming and other potentially apocalyptic topics, recently quoted in his daily electronic newsletter the following from a blog called Strata-Sphere:
“Global warming on Neptune's moon Triton as well as Jupiter and Pluto, and now Mars has some [scientists] scratching their heads over what could possibly be in common with the warming of all these planets … Could there be something in common with all the planets in our solar system that might cause them all to warm at the same time?”
Peiser included quotes from recent news articles that take up other aspects of the idea.
“I think it is an intriguing coincidence that warming trends have been observed on a number of very diverse planetary bodies in our solar system,” Peiser said in an email interview. “Perhaps this is just a fluke.”
In fact, scientists have alternative explanations for the anomalous warming on each of these other planetary bodies.
The warming on Triton, for example, could be the result of an extreme southern summer on the moon, a season that occurs every few hundred years, as well as possible changes in the makeup of surface ice that caused it to absorb more of the Sun’s heat.
Researchers credited Pluto’s warming to possible eruptive activity and a delayed thawing from its last close approach to the Sun in 1989.
And the recent storm activity on Jupiter is being blamed on a recurring climatic cycle that churns up material from the gas giant’s interior and lofts it to the surface, where it is heated by the Sun.
Sun does vary
The radiation output of the Sun does fluctuate over the course of its 11-year solar cycle. But the change is only about one-tenth of 1 percent — not substantial enough to affect Earth’s climate in dramatic ways, and certainly not enough to be the sole culprit of our planet’s current warming trend, scientists say.
“The small measured changes in solar output and variations from one decade to the next are only on the order of a fraction of a percent, and if you do the calculations not even large enough to really provide a detectable signal in the surface temperature record,” said Penn State meteorologist Michael Mann.
The link between solar activity and global warming is just another scapegoat for human-caused warming, Mann told LiveScience.
“Solar activity continues to be one of the last bastions of contrarians,” Mann said. “People who don’t accept the existence of anthropogenic climate change still try to point to solar activity.”
The Maunder Minimum
This is not to say that solar fluctuations never influence Earth’s climate in substantial ways. During a 75-year period beginning in 1645, astronomers detected almost no sunspot activity on the Sun. Called the “Maunder Minimum,” this event coincided with the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, a 350-year cold spell that gripped much of Europe and North America.
Recent studies have cast doubt on this relationship, however. New estimates of the total change in the brightness of the Sun during the Maunder Minimum suggest it was only fractions of a percent, and perhaps not enough to create the global cooling commonly attributed to it.
“The situation is pretty ambiguous,” said David Rind, a senior climate researcher at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has modeled the Maunder Minimum.
Based on current estimates, even if another Maunder Minimum were to occur, it might result in an average temperature decrease of about 2 degrees Fahrenheit, Rind said.
This would still not be enough to counteract warming of between 2 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit from greenhouse gases by 2100, as predicted by the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
|
|
|
|
| Magnetonium |
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.h...359a5c7f723&k=0
| quote: |
Look to Mars for the truth on global warming
Climate change is a much, much bigger issue than the public, politicians, and even the most alarmed environmentalists realize. Global warming extends to Mars, where the polar ice cap is shrinking, where deep gullies in the landscape are now laid bare, and where the climate is the warmest it has been in decades or centuries.
"One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age," NASA scientist William Feldman speculated after the agency's Mars Odyssey completed its first Martian year of data collection. "In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated." With each passing year more and more evidence arises of the dramatic changes occurring on the only planet on the solar system, apart from Earth, to give up its climate secrets.
NASA's findings in space come as no surprise to Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov at Saint Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory. Pulkovo -- at the pinnacle of Russia's space-oriented scientific establishment -- is one of the world's best equipped observatories and has been since its founding in 1839. Heading Pulkovo's space research laboratory is Dr. Abdussamatov, one of the world's chief critics of the theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions create a greenhouse effect, leading to global warming.
"Mars has global warming, but without a greenhouse and without the participation of Martians," he told me. "These parallel global warmings -- observed simultaneously on Mars and on Earth -- can only be a straightline consequence of the effect of the one same factor: a long-time change in solar irradiance."
The sun's increased irradiance over the last century, not C02 emissions, is responsible for the global warming we're seeing, says the celebrated scientist, and this solar irradiance also explains the great volume of C02 emissions.
"It is no secret that increased solar irradiance warms Earth's oceans, which then triggers the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations."
Dr. Abdussamatov goes further, debunking the very notion of a greenhouse effect. "Ascribing 'greenhouse' effect properties to the Earth's atmosphere is not scientifically substantiated," he maintains. "Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away."
The real news from Saint Petersburg -- demonstrated by cooling that is occurring on the upper layers of the world's oceans -- is that Earth has hit its temperature ceiling. Solar irradiance has begun to fall, ushering in a protracted cooling period beginning in 2012 to 2015. The depth of the decline in solar irradiance reaching Earth will occur around 2040, and "will inevitably lead to a deep freeze around 2055-60" lasting some 50 years, after which temperatures will go up again.
Because of the scientific significance of this period of global cooling that we're about to enter, the Russian and Ukrainian space agencies, under Dr. Abdussamatov's leadership, have launched a joint project to determine the time and extent of the global cooling at mid-century. The project, dubbed Astrometry and given priority space-experiment status on the Russian portion of the International Space Station, will marshal the resources of spacecraft manufacturer Energia, several Russian research and production centers, and the main observatory of Ukraine's Academy of Sciences. By late next year, scientific equipment will have been installed in a space-station module and by early 2009, Dr. Abdussamatov's space team will be conducting a regular survey of the sun.
With the data, the project will help mankind cope with a century of falling temperatures, during which we will enter a mini ice age.
"There is no need for the Kyoto Protocol now. It does not have to come into force until at least 100 years from no w," Dr. Abdussamatov concluded. "A global freeze will come about regardless of whether or not industrialized countries put a cap on their greenhouse- gas emissions."
|
|
|
|
| Clovis |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
well, carbon? what kind of carbon are you talking about?
i think you mean CO2. i don't completely buy into it, but it's something i don't completely understand either. i know man and his machines release CO2 artificially so to speak, but CO2 and other greenhouse gases come from many many other sources naturally in much more abundance. like, by magnitudes i think. |
You think?
Read about it buddy.
Anyone who thinks that man's continuous extraction of carbon from the earth to place it back into the atmosphere and ocean since the late 1800s is not having a significant effect on the earth is simply delusional.
Climate change is a secondary issue to the amount and rate at which we pump this carbon back into circulation. No matter whether "global warming" even exists, we need to do something NOW to reverse this immense cycle of growing pollution and emissions. |
|
|
| DJ Shibby |
| quote: | Originally posted by Clovis
You think?
Read about it buddy.
Anyone who thinks that man's continuous extraction of carbon from the earth to place it back into the atmosphere and ocean since the late 1800s is not having a significant effect on the earth is simply delusional.
Climate change is a secondary issue to the amount and rate at which we pump this carbon back into circulation. No matter whether "global warming" even exists, we need to do something NOW to reverse this immense cycle of growing pollution and emissions. |
Yeah.
Plus more people on the planet means more people exhaling CO2, more cars, more products that need built. It's not just hydrocarbons that are the bad guy here: we are reaching our own inevitable limit ceiling, and we have two choices:
- Overcome it through ingenuity
- Continue to rush headfirst into it, and allow the Earth to re-organize our population density
In my opinion, education and communication are the key factors to the solution. It's happening right now, this very moment. We don't have Einsteins any more, but with enough people thinking about a problem, eventually some will come up with ideas.
That's not to say that there even is a solution; we just HOPE there is. :)
Personally, I believe the business boom of the near future will be in Green. Since our existence and reliance seem to function off the fulcrum of economics, what will make or break us is the transition from the hydrocarbon to cleaner, cheaper combustion methods. |
|
|
| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by Clovis
You think?
Read about it buddy.
Anyone who thinks that man's continuous extraction of carbon from the earth to place it back into the atmosphere and ocean since the late 1800s is not having a significant effect on the earth is simply delusional.
Climate change is a secondary issue to the amount and rate at which we pump this carbon back into circulation. No matter whether "global warming" even exists, we need to do something NOW to reverse this immense cycle of growing pollution and emissions. |
look, just because i'm not alarmed by it like you are doesn't make me delusional. |
|
|
| Clovis |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
look, just because i'm not alarmed by it like you are doesn't make me delusional. |
Yes, actually it does, because if you truly understand the scope of the problem, you should be very ing alarmed. |
|
|
|
|
