Arguing that Global Warming exists

[ray gower]

Is it really that we positively know more, or just that we think we know different?

In the case of climate change the computer models are more sophisticated and they have another forty years of statistics to build predictions upon. But predictions are based upon current trends.
Perhaps because they suggest certain doom, they are popular amongst a vocal group of fatalists, who think that because we are involved in it, we might be able to do something about it.

But there are other groups who are rather less certain of the eventual outcome. They are watching the ocean currents that give us our weather, change their path. Climate change obviously has an effect on these, but so do a lot of other things to a greater or lesser extent, from magnetic poles to the reproduction habits of plankton.
Their prediction is that some of these currents will reverse. That, according to the sixties theory, is what will cause a new ice age. At which point the sh1 really hits the spinning object and those 'Know nothings' from the sixties polish their glasses with not inconsiderable doses of 'Nah-Nah- Told you so!".
What they haven't worked out is how much the temperature will drop or how far the currents must change direction before the great switch over, only that the rate of change is increasing.

A lot of exceedingly clever people agree there are dark clouds just around the corner, including me (No claims to being exceedingly clever, but thought I'd mention it ). What they don't necessarily agree on is what colour the lining is.

 

[HardScienceFan]

well methane hydates have been discovered since the sixties,for one.
Paleoceanographic proxies are now better constrained.
El Nino is better understood,and NAO,and Julian-Madden oscillations,and iron fertilization,there's been TOPEX,and a host of others,remote sensing has progressed immensely,and you know what

Analog modelling is comming back too

hey ho

 

[Curt Chiarelli]

And you know, it would all be hilarious if the right-wing media whores bought off by the oil corporations didn't have such pervasive control of the airways to disseminate this drivel which endangers us even further:

Think Progress » Right Wing Launches Dishonest, Misinformed Attacks Against Live Earth

 

[Rosemary]

If it's not Global Warming which is melting the glaciers in the Himalaya and the Arctic, what is?

 

[Curt Chiarelli]

If it's not Global Warming which is melting the glaciers in the Himalaya and the Arctic, what is?

The hot air blowing from Washington and Whitehall.

 

[dustinzgirl]

which only goes to show the dialectics of science.
and its progress.
we now know more than in the sixties

Yeah, but if we had their drugs...lol!

I don't really understand how anyone can argue global warming. I think we need to start examining the crap we put into the environment and find better ways to do it. There are better ways, many of them, but industry and corporate will not use them because they are expensive, so the EPA lets them get away with substandard environmental protection, but the real problem is in nations like China with lots of factories and no environmental laws. They should totally host the 2008 Olympics with a "Green Beijing" theme. Just wear a chemical mask.

 

[paperclipchevy]

Scientists all agree its happening and humans have a major impact. Do not believe anything you hear or read saying otherwise, period. The fact of the matter is that there is a conspiracy of science and information that is preventing a unified scientific collaboration. Hell most still think the earth had one big island and that all religions derive from completely different sources.

Some things to consider;

deep ice core drilling "inconvienient truth displayed this very well" shows based on past history of the Earth's natural cycles we should expect the earth to heat up and then drop into another ice age. Many theories believe this is due to the earth's and Sun's natural cycle in our solar system. The earth is believed to be soon entering that cycle when the wobble in it's rotation balances, the poles may flip, and its magnetic field diminishes significantly. It is also supposedly a time of intense solar storms from the sun and transit of Venus aswell.

A catch 22- Green house gasses might actually be protecting the earth from the sun's increasingly intense solar winds passing through our diminishing magnetic sheild, but at the same time trapping heat.

HAARP- Based on theory, today we should literally be able to use the HAARP device to poke a hole in the magnetic sheild and release greenhouse gasses in massive quantities, or beam tuned electromagnetic waves to reinforce it.

Terraforming- We can easily create atmosphere by releasing certain metallic chemicals from planes at high altitudes. Is it already going on to reduce sun's effects on global warming?

Energy Sources- There are thousands of viable alternatives to produce energy, some from 100s of years ago that could be easily implemented to stop pollution at any time.


My personal theory is that we are at war with ourselves, and our psychotic needs of possesion and feelings of fear are destroying our nations and slowing down the real battle which is the battle of the human race's survival. If we created a demand in the market for non-polluting energy making it extremely profitable we would create the largest market in history, and all corrupt corporations would jump on our band wagon, reguardless if they wanted to kill the earth for fun. The war needs be fought in the schools, where unfortunately America is losing. Science and education are being destroyed in the name of profit and control for those who are truly insane and want nothing more than pleasure for their lifetime for they know they will not have to face the hardships the future generations will be forced to deal with. Also a psychotic mindset that a centralized, controlled machine of an elite microcivilization would be able to endure these hardships like noah's ark are false. If more people had an elevated education such as the rich, we would have a larger force, a massive global brain connected through our modern information technology that would be able to prevent any imaginable global catastrophe through science. Those people throughout history who were the giants of discovery and history all received this education reserved for only the extremely wealthy. With the computer/information age upon us this should be available to all for free, as well as free energy. We need a nation of Edisons and Franklin's, not a nation of Britney Spears and gansta rappas.

 

[chrispenycate]

Oh, dear. Not all scientists agree that the planet is warming, let alone that it is mankind that is responsible. Actually you'd be hard put to find anything that all scientists agree on. I know some that are creationists, and I'm willing to bet I could find a couple of flat earthers if you gave me the research buget. Not accepting "known truths" is a very large part of what science is about. However, global warming is fashionable, so those in favour (and a few antis) are newsworthy.
Which doesn't mean I don't think it's a darn good idea to stop pumping various gasses into the atmosphere; even if they're not responsible for the overheating, we've evolved without them, so we don't need them, and in all probability are better off without them.

Poking a hole through the Earth's magnetic field would not release the greenhouse gasses; they're held down by gravity, not magnetism. Anyway, since most of the effective gasses are heavier than air, (not methane, admittedly) the oxygen would go first, which would be inconvenient.

A catch 22- Green house gasses might actually be protecting the earth from the sun's increasingly intense solar winds passing through our diminishing magnetic sheild, but at the same time trapping heat.

I would like to know why greenhouse gasses should be any better at stopping the charged particles emmitted by the sun than any other gas molecules. It seems to me, fast moving charged particle hits gas molecule, we're still short of an electron in the total, total momentum is maintained, and either slow moving charged particle goes on, or slow moving hydrogen atom continues, slightl charged air molecule is pushed slightly down. Misses, hits planet (probable traversing biological entity between) Certainly, the magnetic field maintaining the Van Allen belts is useful (not to say crucial), but it is unaffected by greenhouse (or almost any other) gasses.

We can easily create atmosphere by releasing certain metallic chemicals from planes at high altitudes.

I don't get this one at all; it sounds like the idea for thinning Venus' atmosphere by reacting its active components with metals, so the heavy salts would fall down. What's this "create atmosphere"? Lots of mercury vapour (if so, I'd like to emigrate to another planet, please)

There are thousands of viable alternatives to produce energy, some from 100s of years ago that could be easily implemented to stop pollution at any time.

There are very few established means of producing energy which are not being experimented with. The reason they didn't give problems a few centuries ago was frequently that there were fewer people, and each one used less power. It's the population size, plus people having got a taste for luxury, that is killing us. Even geothermal is producing side effects, hydroelectric is close to it's limits, wind? for a few places. No, the problem is not as trivial as you are attempting to make out. It has to be solved, though.

All of which doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see scientists better paid than lawyers (which seems logical to me, but as most politicians are lawyers...) or advertising executives, to attempt to draw a reasonable percentage of the available brainpower into the fold) but don't ever believe it's going to be easy, or cheap in terms of lifestyle. But it's going to be necessary remarkably soon (though I doubt if I'll see it), and global warming is a good argument to accelerate the research.
Even if it isn't truly there the problem.

 

[dustinzgirl]

If it's not Global Warming which is melting the glaciers in the Himalaya and the Arctic, what is?

They are not melting, Rick Moranis is shrinking them

 

[Overread]

Well I might have missed this in all the talk, but the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th report FEb 2007 identified (amung other things) three key points concerning global warming:
1) they are more certain the ever that the recent changes in global warming is due to humans and not natural phenomina

2) there are no longer any discrepancies in the scientific measurement of global warming

3) it will take a significant reductin in greenhouse gas emissions to limit projecteed changes in climate.


Further, the US is now starting to think about terraforming the Earth to combat global warming. Now this scares me, I remember when they thought they could stop hurricanes by dropping ice into thier paths, it moved the hurricanes general direction right onto a group of islands. There is no way we can predict the effect of trying to change the environment because we do not know even half of the facts that we need to, and when things get taken up to the global scale many models break.

examples of proposals for climate changing are: giant reflective satalites to reflect the suns energy away from the earth; clound seeding; adding salt to the oceans

 

[Dave]

...examples of proposals for climate changing are: giant reflective satellites to reflect the suns energy away from the earth; cloud seeding; adding salt to the oceans

The reflective satellites was my idea in another thread here. Can I get royalties?

But they also proposed something more interesting: Pumping water from the deep ocean low in dissolved CO2 up to the surface to dissolve more CO2 from the atmosphere.

I really hope they throughly investigate all the possible consequences of doing that first, otherwise it may cause more harm than good.

 

[Overread]

To be honest there is no way of telling what will happen - and chances are that what ever they try will backfire badly. The system is already broken because of us, I see no reason why we should tamper further to try and fix it, let the system solve the problems itself.

However I think the pressing concern that is present which will force governments to try mad ideas is not that humanity could not survive an ice age (we did it with sticks and stones) but that our current global population would not be sustainable during those times (Ok its not even sustainable now).

 

[Dave]

I find it interesting that if you read old future predictions from the 1950's and 1960's of things people though possible one day they often have Weather Control among them. Putting a man on the Moon was way down the list. I don't think we are ever going to successfully tame nature the way we once believed that we had.

 

[Overread]

True but it seems that part of being human is trying to obtain a "stable" environemnt to live in, which is completly against the natural system which (whilst moderatly balanced in the long term) is in a constant state of change. Even if we managed to control an aspect of the weather for a short time, another shift would take the matters right out of our hands.

 

[Rosemary]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Overread
...examples of proposals for climate changing are: giant reflective satellites to reflect the suns energy away from the earth; cloud seeding; adding salt to the oceans

Well I still can't undertand why they just can't blow the hot air out through the hole in the ozone layer!

 

[NickB]

A few responses to Ray from a climate scientist who also works in the field of archaeology. I'm not going to get into arguments over the science - frankly I'm just about past caring and am reasonably happy to accept that a 2 degree rise in global temperature by 2050 and a 3 degree rise by 2100 are really, really, likely, if we're "lucky" (if we're unlucky, it will be more, approaching the magnitude of warming between the peak of an ice age and where we are now). When I say "happy" I don't mean I think this will be anything other than bad, just that I'm now used to the idea and have normalised it into my worldview. Now to specific issues.

The real problem is that the scientists have teamed up with environmentalists.

I'd challenge you to substantiate that sweeping generalisation. Just yesterday I was talking to a colleague about the hoo-ha in the UK press over the move to Ban Al Gore's film from schools and the intention by those who tried to ban it to distribute copies of "The Great Global Warming Swindle" to the same schools. We were talking about whether either film should be shown in schools and under what circumstances. My colleague wanted to keep them both out on the grounds that "they are both ****" (apologies for the language if this is deemed inappropriate, but it's a quote, and is informative). I have broad sympathy with this view. Most of my colleagues get really frustrated with environmentalists exaggerating climate change (frankly, it's bad enough without needing to exaggerate it) - this is counter productive, and reflects badly on scientists because people wrongly lump us together with environmentalists - something about us apparently being on the same side, hmm. This doesn't stop us loathing the people at the other extreme who are bent on perverting the science for ideological or economic reasons. Frankly the statement that we've teamed up with environmentalists is verging on slander as far as I'm concerned.

Between them they are not offering me a practical alternative beyond going to bed when the sun goes down, hunting with a stone club, eating ferocious maneating squirrels and generally living the stone-age equivalent of the good life.

There is no archaeological evidence that our prehistoric predecessors ever used stone clubs for hunting, or for anything else for that matter. There are a few "anarcho-primitivists" that advocate a return to a stone-age lifestyle, but this would be impossible in a world of over 6 billion people, and to claim that anyone suggesting we need to address climate change is advocating such a "solution" is just nonsense. Even if they were, there wouldn't be any stone clubs involved....

So don't tell me there is a problem. Tell me what I can do about it?

I agree that the government is wrong in trying to push the responsibility for tackling climate change onto the individual when they are doing very little apart from talking about the need to address it. Most governments that acknowledge a problem with climate change are self-righteous, lazy, hypocritical and cowardly when it comes to tackling it. I can tell you there's a problem, as I've spent the last 12 years studying climate change and its impacts on human societies in various forms. I can tell you some of the things you CAN do about it, but frankly this isn't my area of expertise. There are plenty of things we can do to try and tackle climate change, but these need to be negotiated and go way beyond individual action (which won't be anywhere near enough to solve the problem). I can't outline a course of action for you as an individual that will magically make everything alright, and my own lifestyle also contributes to climate change by because I operate within the system that's driving the problem.

Are you saying that I should keep quiet about the problem because I don't have "the solution"? Even if I thought I did have the solution (and there is no single or easy solution that I can offer to you on a plate) I certainly wouldn't tell you what you SHOULD do about it. That's because I'm a scientist, not an environmentalist. My duty is to share what I know about climate change insofar as it can help people decide how to respond, not to evangelise for this or that course of action. As a scientist, not an environmentalist, I'm not going to campaign to "save the planet" - rather I'm going to help us understand what the problems are and what we might do to about them. Whether you or anyone else wants to take up the challenge of doing anything is up to you. Most people aren't prepared to do what it will take to keep climate change to a manageable level, and I don't believe we'll get away with it. We will have a period of crisis and transition, and then things will settle down again (maybe after a century or two, maybe longer) as humanity recovers from the impacts of climate change. Of course it doesn't have to be like this, but it's not up to me - it's up to individuals and governments to act together to do what they think is appropriate, and this is a really big challenge. If humanity collectively think it's appropriate to carry on as we are and pay the price later, then fine with me. Many smokers choose to carry on smoking regardless of the risks, and that's their choice. Collectively we're in the same position, although of course we're talking about groups of people indulging themselves with affluent fossil-fuel intensive lifestyles at the expense of others who are poor and more exposed and vulnerable to the impacts of climate change - there is actually no such thing as a collective decision when we're talking about humanity as a whole.

In an ideal world governments would support solutions that provided a social and economic context in which people could live as they wanted without causing problems such as manmade climate change. Then individuals wouldn't have to don the metaphorical hair shirt. As things stand we probably need a combination of both individual and government action, which will reinforce each other. If we do nothing it's not the end of the world, but it may be the end of the global economy, of many societies across the globe, of many existing ecosystems and species, and of what little peace and security there is in much of the world. But perhaps that's a price worth paying for a brief flurry of fossil-fuel led affluence. Shame though, if we could enjoy rich and fulfilling lives while not screwing the environment up for ourselves. I guess we'll never know whether the latter would have been possible. At least I'll be able to write lots of papers about how climate change negatively impacts societies, and test my ideas that have developed out of studying past episodes of severe climate change. On one level it will be fascinating. Perhaps I should be thankful, as a scientist, for the wonderful laboratory of idiocy that my fellow human beings are laying at my feet.

 

[Overread]

Thank you Nick (I think I am in three or four GW debates, and I usually wind up on my own - nice to also see someone who is in the profession - I hope you stick around chronicles)

 

[Nik]

Slightly off=topic...

Um, seems some scientists are taking advantage of the current *remarkable* ice-minimal conditions in NorthWest Passage to do some serious sediment sampling.

Hopefully this will provide data on what *really* has been going on there for last thousand years, settle the 'anecdotal' arguments.

Hope is the data will show if current 'Open Passage' is a recurring feature, a statistical whatsit like a 'Century Storm', or last seen during anomalous 'Medieval Warm Period' when Eric The Red started the ill-fated Greenland colony...

IMHO, there's also a possibility that isotope analysis at those high latitudes may show strong correllations with solar activity...

IIRC, the opposite swing aka 'Little Ice Age' may have been more 'European' than global, and the trade-mark 'Few SunSpots' only applied to part of the time...

Curioser & Curioser...

 

[NickB]

There is certainly evidence that solar activity is associated with changes in climate on long timescales - for examples there seem to be correlations between solar activity and African lake levels. Also, a small component of observed global warming in the early twentieth century may have been due to solar variation. However, solar variability is included in many global climate models (although many contrarians will tell you that it isn't, along with volcanic activity - they are wrong), and it cannot explain recent increases in global mean surface temperature.

Examining ocean sediments in the Arctic may give us some interesting data, but this will still be a local record, and cannot tell us whether the medieval warm period was regional or global in extent. In fact when we get back past about 500 years the geographical coverage of proxy climate records is pretty limited, so it is difficult to say how widespread warming or cooling signals were. The view among climate scientists is more in favour of the medieval warm period being a regional event. But we cannot be absolutely certain - our confidence in reconstructions of global temperature variations on timescales of decades to centuries (and longer) declines the further back in time we go, at least for the period since the end of the last ice age some 10,000 years ago. However, it seems likely that global mean surface temperature (which is what we're talking about) hasn't varied by more than about half a degree or so over the past 5000 years or more. Local changes have been much greater, due to changes in the distribution (not total amount) of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface. All this is written up in Chapter 6 of Working Group I of the latest IPCC report, if you want to Google it - unfortunately I can't post links here.

The climate has certainly varied dramatically in the past at the regional and local level (and at the global level if we go back the end of the last ice age and earlier), and when it has it has had some severe impacts on human populations (and some positive ones too). Studying past climate change adds to our understanding of how the climate system works. However, the extent to which climate has changed in the past is somewhat of a moot point when we're trying to establish what the impacts of climate change may be in the near future. The fact that climate changed in the past doesn't mean that changes in the future would be a good or neutral thing - in some senses we are less able to adapt than our predecessors did in the distant past, when smaller populations tended to respond to environmental changes by migrating. Not too much chance of that happening without much fuss today.

Increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels, and agriculture and changes in land use, remain the only decent explanation of what we are seeing today, once we've examined (and discounted) other possible explanations such as solar variation (which is of the wrong sign to be associated with recent warming). Maybe there are other factors that are important, but this is pure speculation at present, and the "manmade global warming" model works pretty damn well in explaining observed change. Until we have evidence that something else is going on, it behoves us to stick to the evidence we have. Some people may have changed this into a dogma - that's their problem. The fact that this is so doesn't undermine the science.

 

[NickB]

Thank you Nick (I think I am in three or four GW debates, and I usually wind up on my own - nice to also see someone who is in the profession - I hope you stick around chronicles)

Oh, it's so easy to get sucked into these when you accidentally stumble across them! I try and avoid it as a rule - I could spend all my time debating this on the web. But I have a soft spot for SF forums and this seems to be a pretty intelligent one by and large. And as an SF fan myself I know the SF constituency is generally pretty smart and worth engaging with.

Anyway, the appreciation is, well, appreciated.

Cheers

Nick