On July 27 2012 22:31 darkscream wrote: Too bad the poll only has three "I agree" options. Why not an option which says something like,
"The financial implosion let banks consolidate a lot of resources and power, and going cold turkey would allow the energy industry to do the same", or,
"The effects of carbon on the climate are widely exaggerated/debated, And we won't reach a temperature that the earth hasn't seen before for hundreds/thousands of years"?
This post makes a lot of assumptions about what's correct and suggests there's only one real course of action. We could go steady on the path we're on, as long as we end up with some new technology that lets us go mostly solar or go to space. In spite of the doomsayers, the world is not going to end in less than a hundred years. Climate scientists have said similar things for the last 50 years; in fact some claimed that by the year 2000 we would already have catastrophe.
No one is saying the world is going to end in a few decades. Christ, why is it that close to every one of you denialists feel the need to use this ridiculous hyperbole? It's possible something may cause daunting problems without our species going extinct much less ending the world.
On July 27 2012 22:31 darkscream wrote: Unfortunately, there's a lot of money tied up in directing scientists what/how to research, and a lot of corruption too (as we saw with 'climategate', where the largest supporters of these ideas were shown to be faking data). I think one of the worst solutions is government intervention with some sort of carbon tax/tracking system. Sadly, if any solutions comes, I feel like that's exactly what we'll get. Which won't help at all, since financial penalties don't affect the population uniformly. Just see China's 'one child policy' for an example: the rich simply ignore it.
They were shown to not be faking data in the multiple investigations that followed. Surprise surprise.
For once in my life I'd like to have a global warming discussion where we just accept the scientific facts and the opinions of the professionals as legitimate, you know the way we typically would in any other scenario when there isn't some political conviction forcing us to shut our eyes and disputing tons upon tons of published, peer reviewed science with literally anything but scientific research.
On July 27 2012 02:59 Perdac Curall wrote: Your entire article is premised on the argument that burning all those fossil fuels will cause a 6 degree rise in temperature. This is false, and thus your whole argument is moot. There is no Scylla and Charybdis that we are between. This is a false dichotomy that has been created because of believing these so-called "scientists" who make this claim. The fact is that CO2 plays a very minor role in the overall greenhouse effect on the planet. 90% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor. The other greenhouse gases all compete to play a role in the other 10%. Climate is mostly determined by solar and cosmic radiation. Whether the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes up 0.025% or 0.037% is of little consequence.
Why do you even post when you have no idea what you're talking about?
If not the people who actually study this field, the climatologists (and for your information, there is no dispute in this field that global warming exists and is manmade), then who do you trust? Random anti global warming blogs on the internet? Politicians? Your neighbors?
Here you go good sir, I will never deny someone some sources for further research if they ask for them.
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical...The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC4 Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time.” - Solar physicist Dr. Pal Brekke, senior advisor to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo. Brekke has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the sun and solar interaction with the Earth.
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“Nature's regulatory instrument is water vapor: more carbon dioxide leads to less moisture in the air, keeping the overall GHG content in accord with the necessary balance conditions.” – Prominent Hungarian Physicist and environmental researcher Dr. Miklós Zágoni reversed his view of man-made warming and is now a skeptic. Zágoni was once Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol.
Go ahead and read it all that is only a very small sample, there are dozens more quotes from scientists all around the world. I would also suggest you check out the work of Henrik Svensmark and the CERN CLOUD experiments.
On July 27 2012 02:59 Perdac Curall wrote: Your entire article is premised on the argument that burning all those fossil fuels will cause a 6 degree rise in temperature. This is false, and thus your whole argument is moot. There is no Scylla and Charybdis that we are between. This is a false dichotomy that has been created because of believing these so-called "scientists" who make this claim. The fact is that CO2 plays a very minor role in the overall greenhouse effect on the planet. 90% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor. The other greenhouse gases all compete to play a role in the other 10%. Climate is mostly determined by solar and cosmic radiation. Whether the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes up 0.025% or 0.037% is of little consequence.
Why do you even post when you have no idea what you're talking about?
If not the people who actually study this field, the climatologists (and for your information, there is no dispute in this field that global warming exists and is manmade), then who do you trust? Random anti global warming blogs on the internet? Politicians? Your neighbors?
Here you go good sir, I will never deny someone some sources for further research if they ask for them.
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical...The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC4 Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time.” - Solar physicist Dr. Pal Brekke, senior advisor to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo. Brekke has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the sun and solar interaction with the Earth.
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“Nature's regulatory instrument is water vapor: more carbon dioxide leads to less moisture in the air, keeping the overall GHG content in accord with the necessary balance conditions.” – Prominent Hungarian Physicist and environmental researcher Dr. Miklós Zágoni reversed his view of man-made warming and is now a skeptic. Zágoni was once Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol.
Go ahead and read it all that is only a very small sample, there are dozens more quotes from scientists all around the world. I would also suggest you check out the work of Henrik Svensmark and the CERN CLOUD experiments.
There are also scientists that don't believe in evolution. Taking little excerpts from people who have become skeptics doesn't really mean anything. We believe in evolution because a substantial amount of scientists believe in it too, we don't believe the minority on that one, so why should we do anything different for climate change?
How many scientists out of the entire global population do not believe in AGW? About the same amount of scientists that believe that religion can create miracles on demand.
Everyone I have talked to who doesn't believe in AGW actually just doesn't look at the science. They take little excerpts from blogs and random people and just believe what they say.
This site has some raw data that you can use to make your own judgement, although I will point you to the charts first. There is no "computer modelling", its just raw historical data represented on a graph. If we look at human advancements in technology, and the exponential rate at which people use cars and electricity and match that each year of CO2, I think its pretty obvious what is really happening.
wouldn't you think that industrial age + modern age only coincides by accident with global temperature change? I mean that environmental studies are not as precise as physics. You cant calculate direct correlations between our polluting emissions and change in temperature. Environmentalists cannot prove, they can only guess.
I imagine if Earth would look like home planet of house Harkonnen then it would be polluted. But now we are totally not overdoing it. And studies of enviroment are quite new, only when tons of research will be done we could take their word for granted. I am not a believer I need hard data.
On July 28 2012 20:29 M4nkind wrote: wouldn't you think that industrial age + modern age only coincides by accident with global temperature change? I mean that environmental studies are not as precise as physics. You cant calculate direct correlations between our polluting emissions and change in temperature. Environmentalists cannot prove, they can only guess.
I imagine if Earth would look like home planet of house Harkonnen then it would be polluted. But now we are totally not overdoing it. And studies of enviroment are quite new, only when tons of research will be done we could take their word for granted. I am not a believer I need hard data.
You say this as if it would have been a dude writing an essay over the weekend, but it is not. It was decades of daily full-time work over the physics involved, and global warming is the predicted result. If you are not satisfied with the data that was produced by working on the computer models, you will never get anything that you like better. We will all be dead and will not see what the world will look like in the next few centuries.
Perhaps there is something in biology being overlooked and it will turn out alright, plants thriving and a jungle enveloping all of the continents, perhaps with the help of new technologies. But the experts say it will probably suck, deserts will get bigger, etc.
Arguing about it all is beside the point, I feel. There are shitty debate techniques used to try to "win" arguments, while reality does not change through arguments. It is wasted effort that should rather be put into trying to engineer an economy that works without excessive pollution and CO2 emissions, without people flipping their shit because of missing current luxuries.
Personally, I could live on a planet like the home planet of House Harkonnen, if they have medicine against feeling shitty and getting cancer from the pollution, enough food and Internet.
On July 28 2012 20:29 M4nkind wrote: wouldn't you think that industrial age + modern age only coincides by accident with global temperature change? I mean that environmental studies are not as precise as physics. You cant calculate direct correlations between our polluting emissions and change in temperature. Environmentalists cannot prove, they can only guess.
I imagine if Earth would look like home planet of house Harkonnen then it would be polluted. But now we are totally not overdoing it. And studies of enviroment are quite new, only when tons of research will be done we could take their word for granted. I am not a believer I need hard data.
Problem is, by the time that research comes out we may already be past the point of no return 5 times over. At the moment, we should be investing WAY more in the search for alternative energy sources, and cleaner energy. IMO we're in the ff7 world right now, and that we're sucking way to much out of the earth and its going to get fucked. However the big companies don't want to invest inother sources because oil is still making an insane ammount of money, and in their eyes that is all that matters. But if the planet was to die....we're gone. Thats why we need to sort this out. We can't hedge all our bets that everything is ok...we need to prepare for the worst at all times....If we don't then we're fucked.
I don't care if we eventually find that its all bullshit, the world will be a MUCH better place if we were to find ways around using fossil fuels. We're already facing a fresh water shortage, imagine if the temp is to keep going up. That would mean even LESS water. We're already struggling with food.....should we not try and find a way that we can keep up food production too without resulting to using even more energy.
Is there evidence that this theorem is true? Shall we make a poll about it?
If something is proven its true, doesnt matter what people think about it. I agree that direct polution such as oil tank leaks and such are terrible, where as global pollution is speculative.
Oil spills are a really good way of showing how oil companies will do absolutely anything to avoid responsibility for damaging the earth and even pay lots of money to hide the evidence (such as with the masses of canvas/grass to cover the oil). Once they start doing that, you can pretty much assume they have the same attitude towards everything.
Enbridge doesn't seem to have a great track record either. It might be due to massive cost cutting on pipe material or engineering, that's pure speculation though.
The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic By RICHARD A. MULLER
Published: July 30, 2012
Berkeley, Calif.
CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.
My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth's land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. In its 2007 report, the I.P.C.C. concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before 1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural.
Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophisticated statistical methods developed largely by our lead scientist, Robert Rohde, which allowed us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions.
The historic temperature pattern we observed has abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions; the particulates from such events reflect sunlight, make for beautiful sunsets and cool the earth's surface for a few years. There are small, rapid variations attributable to El Niño and other ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream; because of such oscillations, the "flattening" of the recent temperature rise that some people claim is not, in our view, statistically significant. What has caused the gradual but systematic rise of two and a half degrees? We tried fitting the shape to simple math functions (exponentials, polynomials), to solar activity and even to rising functions like world population. By far the best match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice.
Just as important, our record is long enough that we could search for the fingerprint of solar variability, based on the historical record of sunspots. That fingerprint is absent. Although the I.P.C.C. allowed for the possibility that variations in sunlight could have ended the "Little Ice Age," a period of cooling from the 14th century to about 1850, our data argues strongly that the temperature rise of the past 250 years cannot be attributed to solar changes. This conclusion is, in retrospect, not too surprising; we've learned from satellite measurements that solar activity changes the brightness of the sun very little.
How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we've tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect - extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don't prove causality and they shouldn't end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does. Adding methane, a second greenhouse gas, to our analysis doesn't change the results. Moreover, our analysis does not depend on large, complex global climate models, the huge computer programs that are notorious for their hidden assumptions and adjustable parameters. Our result is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.
It's a scientist's duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I've analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn't changed.
Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren't dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren't going to melt by 2035. And it's possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the "Medieval Warm Period" or "Medieval Optimum," an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to "global" warming is weaker than tenuous.
The careful analysis by our team is laid out in five scientific papers now online at BerkeleyEarth.org. That site also shows our chart of temperature from 1753 to the present, with its clear fingerprint of volcanoes and carbon dioxide, but containing no component that matches solar activity. Four of our papers have undergone extensive scrutiny by the scientific community, and the newest, a paper with the analysis of the human component, is now posted, along with the data and computer programs used. Such transparency is the heart of the scientific method; if you find our conclusions implausible, tell us of any errors of data or analysis.
What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years.
Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted. I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done.
Richard A. Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former MacArthur Foundation fellow, is the author, most recently, of "Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines."
On a strangely somewhat laterally relevant side-note:
On July 29 2012 04:23 M4nkind wrote: I found this one a bit funny (sorry for that)
Is there evidence that this theorem is true? Shall we make a poll about it?
If something is proven its true, doesnt matter what people think about it. I agree that direct polution such as oil tank leaks and such are terrible, where as global pollution is speculative.
It's not an evidence problem, it's a political problem. Opinion polls are relevant in that sense. Don't be facetious... or are you making some other point that is not apparent?
global pollution speculative? No, it's evidence driven. stock markets and matters of faith are speculative. Science tries to avoid that.
On July 30 2012 15:53 RowdierBob wrote: So all we need to do is convince the nations of the world to shitcan the global economy?
Good luck!
Are there any solutions that are practicable in the real world?
I dunno, renewable energy seems pretty fucking good for the Chinese and German economy.
and how the hell does leaving it in the ground do anything bad for the economy? Oh, dear me, profits for big oil go down. They're hoarding money as it is. Money spent elsewhere is good for the economy.
And global warming under worst-case scenario, you can bet your ass, will do orders of magnitude more damage to this revered economy of yours.
The global warming debate only occurs in the USA or does it happen in other countries? In France there is no more real debate, GW is considered as a fact.
On July 30 2012 15:56 nojok wrote: The global warming debate only occurs in the USA or does it happen in other countries? In France there is no more real debate, GW is considered as a fact.
Well, it happens where big oil has a PR wing, which is primarily in the US, but also Canada, UK, etc. To a lesser extent elsewhere, but when there are vital civil societies that aren't being plundered/cut to ribbons by neoliberal governments, there's a pretty good buffer against the misinformation, whether through publicly available evidence, or regulations against some of the more blatant abuses and non factual claims made, influence peddling etc.
Also, PR is less effective (in terms of an investment, it's all about the bottom line to these people) in countries where there isn't large reserves-- PR misinformation is generally employed when there are oil/gas/coal/etc-related proposals for public land use, or high-impact projects (i.e. the whole disgusting 'ethical oil' campaign etc), which is to the detriment of the public interest, where the public is in a position to actually stymie development.
You don't see the same massive misinformation campaigns in petro state dictatorships because they can just shoot people. (Though really, we aren't as far off in NA as we like to tell ourselves). Though even there, the coverups are pretty prolific and disgusting (though still well documented in some cases). Can't have the international media reporting on abuses and sullying the shiny brands can we....
Oil spills are a really good way of showing how oil companies will do absolutely anything to avoid responsibility for damaging the earth and even pay lots of money to hide the evidence (such as with the masses of canvas/grass to cover the oil). Once they start doing that, you can pretty much assume they have the same attitude towards everything.
Enbridge doesn't seem to have a great track record either. It might be due to massive cost cutting on pipe material or engineering, that's pure speculation though.
honestly it makes me physically ill. Though the fact that the 'violations' sections takes up half the wikipedia page, shows in some ways how you can only swim against the tide of reality for so far in an information driven society. An interesting thing, although the Marshall, Michigan spill in 2010 is on the violations section, the coverup (in the above video) isn't mentioned. I might put it into the page if I get a few hours at some point and some good 'reliable' (ala wikipedia's guidelines) sources.
EPT
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