(AGW = human caused global warming)
Al Gore! Al Gore!
A solution is at hand. Halleluja!
Just Google “Atmospheric Effects of Limited Nuclear Exchange” – What a wealth of info!
All we have to do is just piss off one of the smaller “runt” nuclear nations (Nuke North Korea! For the Polar Bears!), and lob a few Minuteman III W80’s in there. I’ll be skiing again in no time!
I mean seriously, if the problem is as bad as you say it is – we’re all going to die anyway…
Allow me to reiterate – I do not believe in the Inconvenient Truth, especially when Inconvenient facts didn’t make it into the PowerPoint. I for one am much more interested in fact.
A quick primer for all the proponents and evangelists of the Anthropogenic Global Warming religion:
Science = search for fact
Philosophy / religion / ideology = search for truth
Philosophy / religion / ideology = based on consensus
Science = not based on consensus, based on verifiable experimentation and peer review (99.9999 of the scientists in the world could say that something was true and one could say that they were wrong, and that one would be right, if he could back up arguments with demonstrable evidence)
Also – just a real quick one: why is there evidence of ice cap melting on Mars? Secret bases set up by Halliburton at the behest of our evil commander in chief to choke out the peace loving, communally living, socialist Martians? Or is the sun putting out maybe just a little more energy. Or is it something else all together?
I don’t claim to know, and I doubt there is anyone out there that can claim that they do and be able to prove (beyond doubt) it.
I think pollution is bad. The Crazed American drives a certified "low emission vehicle". So does Mrs. Crazed American. I recycle aluminum, glass and plastic. I am the guy who will pick up litter in a park, or while hiking in the woods. I am all for trying to live in harmony with nature. I am a conservationist. Hell, I have literally hugged trees before. I love the outdoors and get really mad when I see people messing with Mother Nature.
The Global Warming / Climate Change issue is not going to be decided by a symposium, or a conference or by a collection of scientists and politicians. I really doubt that there is going to be any real change in human behavior, if - and it is a BIG if, human behavior is affecting the global climate. The descision is going to be made by scientists who can prove to other scientists and the rest of the population that there is an issue...
Al Gore, what if it is the sun putting out more energy than it used to? Stars funtion in cycles, especially main sequence G-Types like the one we spend out time spinning around. What if the sun's going through a hot flash? Global carbon taxes, and other nanny state, socialist efforts seem pretty silly when it comes to the power of a star.
How little we know and how fu—ing arrogant we can be.
Rant over, out.
6 comments:
I'm not sure what level of proof you're looking for. I can give it to you to the smoking-gun level. If you want the Pope, Billy Graham, and the disembodied voice of Moses all to declare it at once, then I don't know what to tell you.
Here's the proof. The planet is warming up; that's verified by consistent measurements. There are only two major suspects: solar activity and artificial CO2 emissions. Solar activity peaked in 1980 and has gone down since 1990. Global average temperature and CO2 concentrations have kept going up. Nothing else explains the warmup. Smoking gun.
I've assembled the most reliable data I could find on a web page called Global Warming: A Guide for the Perplexed. I hope it helps.
Dear RobC,
When weathermen / climatologists can accurately predict what the weather is going to be in a day, month, week, year, then I'll believe the hype.
Last year some were breathless with the statement that the Earth hadn't been this hot since Mr. Jesus H. Christ was walking 'round. 2000 years ago it was hot - can someone tell me how the Roman Administration took care of carbon sequestration or emission controls? They must have been pretty g-dd--mn effective, since they plunged the world into the Dark Ages, and then a thousand years later into the "Mini-Ice Age".
Also, why the evidence of warming on Mars at the same time when AGW proponents prophesize gloom and doom?
Also, how do you realistically propose to reduce carbon emissions when a) the population of the world is continually growing b) the economies of India and China are growing at exponential rates = more $$, more people with cars and c)there is no realistic way world governments are going to be able to stop economic development without reducing the population drastically, or taxing the bejeezus out of everyone - on a global level? Sure, global taxes and population control / culling won’t cause wars – I guarantee burning cities and tanks worldwide will put a lot more CO2 into the atmosphere than my LEV Honda ever will.
My point is that for every website supports AGW, I can find one that has evidence against it.
I have a problem with people claiming irrefutable certainty in a matter of science, when there is evidence that casts even the slightest doubt. All I ask is that there be full, open and thorough dialogue on this subject before any "pronouncements of consensus" are made. It's a matter of science that is now being used as a tool of politics. 'Cause let's face it, if drastic steps are taken int he crushing global taxes / population reduction arena due to this, I want to know who gets to play G-d with the future of the lives or standard of living of EVERY should on the planet.
BTW - "Nothing else explains the warm-up." Are you a climatologist? Astrophysicist? That is a rather high level of certainty. Perhaps if you rephrased "Nothing else explains the warm-up - to me." That'd be a little more accurate, because I am the first to admit that I (and the larger WE of humanity) are still in out intellectual infancy and still have a lot to learn about the mysteries of the universe, our solar system, ourselves. Any scientist or person who claims that “Nothing else explains…” automatically makes me question, not only my own opinions, but the opinions of the people who have made the claim.
Dialogue is all that I ask – and a thorough examination of the problem through the scientific method. No hype or politics. So, I'm keeping an open and skeptical mind on this and a variety of other topics. I do however believe that the Earth is not flat and revolves around a star called Sol.
Thank you very much for your comment! It is greatly appreciated!
Sincerely,
The Crazed American
Good points all. I'll respond to them as well as I'm able.
1. The reality of global warming doesn't depend on predictions. We're not good at predicting anything. For example, no one can predict next year's performance of the stock market. But anyone can look at the stock-market record and see whether the present level is high or low and headed higher or lower. That's about where we are on global warming. It's an inescapable fact of physics that greenhouse gases cause the world to be warmer than it otherwise would be. The level of CO2 now is higher than it's been in hundreds of thousands of years and that increase explains all of the recent temperature rise.
2. Our knowledge of temperature conditions before 1850 is sketchy at best, since records weren't kept. And, really, I'm not responsible for what other people say. But what we can say safely is that solar activity has had a major influence on Earth's climate and, when CO2 concentration was lower and essentially constant, solar activity was likely (or certainly?) the main influence.
3. I don't know anything about Mars's climate. I suppose it also is affected by solar activity. But a planet's climate is also affected by perturbations in its orbit. This is only idle speculation on my part. The reality is that Mars is so much different from Earth that trying to investigate Earth by studying Mars is like studying dogs to understand salamanders.
4. Here's how I propose to deal with the problem of reducing CO2. You should know that my stature in politics is about as high as an average jackrabbit's. Anyway, the simplest way to deal with it would be to ban outright the installation of fossil-fired power plants. All new or replacement capacity should be met by renewable or nuclear power plants, or obviated through conservation. In particular, here's what nuclear gets us:
(a) An electricity source that doesn’t depend on wind or sunlight or the limited amount of energy storage available, and emits virtually no greenhouse gases. It could reduce CO2 emissions by 40%.
(b) An energy-efficient way to produce hydrogen, which could be used directly in automobiles and trucks or, more likely, could be added to biofuels to make their production higher by a factor of three. Presently, transportation accounts for about 33% of greenhouse gases; all of that could be eliminated through conservation, electrification, and alternate fuels.
(c) A huge reduction in air pollution, lowered trade deficits, and freedom from the demands of foreign kings.
5. Yep, it's true. The web shows every possible viewpoint on every possible issue. It's clear from this exchange that you're able to sort through them and pick out the pertinent facts.
6. Agnosticism is a healthy thing to have. But there always are some things you can deal with practically. For example, if your car won't start, you expect the problem to be that you're missing one of three things: fuel, air, or spark. You don't have to have an advanced degree to figure it out. Similarly, there are a limited number of factors that can affect the climate. To be more precise, there are a limited number of factors that have been suggested. So you really only have to check them out. Of all the things that have been suggested as causes of global warming, CO2 is the only one that fits and it fits perfectly. I pursue this issue in detail in the web page I suggested before.
7. Please be careful of terms. "Scientific method" means experimenting with a planet like Earth to see what happens. That won't happen. In any event, we also have to consider the precautionary principle. The CO2 level is 35% higher than it's been in hundreds of thousands of years and it's headed higher. To go beyond healthy skepticism and watch inertly as we tamper irreversibly with the world's climate cannot be considered prudent.
Fine response!
I am all in favor of number Four a) b) and c). I agree completely. Do have to play Devil's Advocate on outlawing the installation of additional powerplants: How do we get the Chinese to stop their installation of an average of 2000 new coal fired plants (I believe I read they were bringing 2000 plants on line within the next decade).
Law (international or otherwise) only works when there is an implicit threat of force. What if a nation will not stop bringing hydrocarbon plants on line, or they refuse to implement controls on the ones they have? Economic sanctions against a nuclear power with the largest land army in history? Or do we use military force on them, whne they could strangle the global economy witht e wave of a hand? Again we go to the "carbon footprint" of burning cities and tanks again...
If we could come up with an effective method of producing cheap, non-polluting energy (fusion, matter/anti-matter, zero-point/vacuum for example ) you'd get no better proponent than me - I'd have some reservations about it when every country on the planet started building them (the more energy a plant can produce is proportial to more energy that they CAN produce - I'd hate to be near a fusion or M/AM plant that had an "incident") and I have an issue with waste heat - but more on that later.
It's dialogue like this that I am hoping the politicians and scientist all undertake. I happen to think that nuclear plants are great until we can have a practical method of fusion. I agree that a hydrocarbon based economy is a generally bad thing.
I am all for a greener way of living. I practice what I preach. I encourage people I know to do the same - "Save a Planet - drive a Honda". My biggest concern is that some people appear to be ready to use this latest "threat to the planet" as some sort of reasoning to effect some kind of political change. Some peole want to get most people whipped up into such a frenzy about impending doom that they will do anything that they are told to prevent that doom. (insert generic anti-government Bush/Clinton/Regan/Carter/Roosevelt/Lincoln/et al. rant here).
I just dont't want to see an edict come down from on high that says - "you must now live and work a certain way because a cabal of people have decided it be so." And then find out after the strife and pain of change that that cabal was wrong in their beliefs or, more likey, corrupt. We humans tend to resist change - frequently violently.
Jaques Cirac said it: "Kyoto [Accords are] the first step to global governance."
Call me a neanderthal nationalist, if you will, but I have an understanding of the way certain international systems and institutions work, and I do not want any sort of global government set up that would control where we live, how we travel and what we eat (all factors of carbon emission). To quote Despair.com
"One of us is not nearly as dumb as all of us."
Back to the topic - apologies for the anti-globalism rant there - Let's say we get rid of the CO2 released into the atmosphere. The Science Fiction author Larry Niven in his book _Ringworld_ brought up the possibility that a civilization might just be doing too much - that it is not the "greenhouse" (isn't water vapor the most effective of greenhouse gasses? We can't limit that...) gasses that we are releasing into the atmosphere, but the heat we generate (Delta V into a system). Every machine we have created puts some form of heat into our ecosystem - how efficeint is our planet at getting rid of or wast heat? We humans generate a LOT of heat. Could that be a factor in global warming - I say it might, but then what do I know? I'll be the first to say that there is more that I do not know than I do know and that there is DAMN LITTLE I know with certainty.
A question I have, for the sake of the discussion - before European colonization - I have heard from sources that there were continent spanning forest fires in North America. How much CO2 would that release? Really?
Also isn't there an inverse relationship between CO2 increases and temperature rises - hasn't it been noticed by some scientists that the CO2 level has lagged behind temperature increases in some instances of global heating? I am honestly asking, cause that's something I don't understand. Also what about the temperature level at the time of Christ?
If we could experiment on a "M-Type" Earth Like planet - I don't think we'd need to! I'm sure the finest scientific minds could efintlry come up a way to "experiment" through modeling or someother way with out actively "experimenting" with the biosphere.
My compliments on the strength of your arguments and your passion on the subject. Global Warming: A Guide for the Perplexed - that's an impressive collection of work and well organized - again my compliments.
I promise to keep my mind as I would a T-10 parachute - it only works when it's open.
You've hit on the key question. Everybody else talks about the other part. Obviously, we as a nation or we as a community of nations can't make the Chinese or any other country's nationals do anything. Our only leverage comes from working out the practicalities and offering what we learn to them. We're better able to do that because we have the financial and intellectual resources. For sure, if we do nothing we won't be able to persuade them to solve the problem. We could probably make some money from this. A big part of conservation is high-tech. The controls on industrial equipment, for example, can better than pay their own way; controls manufacturers can make good profits because their customers save so much on energy. We probably can't sell them insulation, but we can sell them the machinery to make the insulation. There's always specialized equipment needed for solar, wind, or nuclear sources. We can make some money, they can get the technology cheaper than they can create it themselves.
People who've talked with Chinese leaders say they're aware of the problem and are open to practical solutions.
Yep, we'd all like to have silver bullets. There are the radicals who think any easy energy source is evil because people will waste it on extravagances. I kind of agree with them, but fighting against energy supply is like swimming upstream. The Simpler Living movement has a better chance of succeeding. Stuff doesn't make people happy. More and better sports gear doesn't make sports more fun, either. Think of $5000 bicycles. I don't think it will take totalitarian government or global government to deal with the problem, just clear thinking.
Yes, water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, mainly because there is so much of it. But it rains out rapidly and it's always in a kind of semi-equilibrium with surface water. I think waste heat is just something we're going to have to deal with later on. I'm not sure how to quantify its effect: besides radiation from the earth's surface, there's latent-heat transport to the upper atmosphere. I think the computer models IPCC is working on will be able to answer the question, since no prediction is required, just analysis. It's certainly something to keep in mind, and a good argument for conservation and renewable energy sources.
I wouldn't think fires would have a long-term effect because the forests would re-grow and re-absorb the carbon. I dunno which would be more important: the warming effect of the CO2 or the cooling effect of the smoke.
Yeah, I've seen the same charts you have. Well, it makes sense. CO2 couldn't have been driving temperatures unless there was a source of CO2. Okay, maybe forest fires, but the temperature cycles are highly regular, suggesting maybe something to do with the sun, something like orbit perturbations. Anyway, you'd expect temperature changes to cause CO2 changes because of the CO2 being dissolved in the ocean. Now it's different, of course, because we're taking carbon out of the ground and burning it. Who knows what conditions were like in 1AD? Nobody had thermometers, and written records are very sketchy.
Modeling? Oh, heck, that's a big part of the fuss. Nobody believes they can prove anything. If I don't like your model's results, I can just say your model is wrong. Prove it's right. Besides, which scientists have the finest minds? My scientists are altruistic geniuses. Yours are corrupt fools.
No, I think you have to look at the data yourself. And, it's clear enough for what we have to understand. Eventually, what we'll do has to be a political decision and we the people have to understand it in order to decide.
Ok, guys, you've put a lot more thought into this than I have, and I was the damned hippy.
My biggest complaint about Tallahassee has always been that there's no beach...well, as the sea level increases, I have less and less to complain about.
I'm only half kidding.
I have seen some pretty convincing statistics that show a positive and substantive correlation between the amount of CO2 humans have been pumping into the atmosphere and the rise of global average temperatures.
That having been said, if you look at the Earth from a macroscopic perspective, it's mostly a closed system. Everything balances out. If half the north american continent caught fire, all of those trees will release almost every bit of carbon they soaked up to use during photosynthesis, but the smoke is going to blockout some of the sunlight, and once everything burns out, the plants come right back to repopulate and clean the air all over again. Volcanoes are another natural producer of CO2, but again, the lava turns into some of the most nutrient rich soil for speedy plant growth and cleansing the air. Almost anytime you find something that we deem "bad" in nature, the antithesis of it can be found next to it. Sunny climates are where you'll find aloes. Dry, arid regions, you'll find water retaining plants. The fundamental problem is we've facilitated something "bad", whether you're talking about global warming, acid rain or smog, buring fossil fuels releases more nasty crap into the air, without creating an offset.
So how do we correct it? I don't think we do. If you think of global warming as a car driving to the edge of a cliff, the best thing we can do right now, is to stop the bloody car. That's a great start!
Then we should actually start using the taxes the government is gathering on gas, for development of alternatives. Registering your car, fund public transportation. Buy gas, taxes go to researching alternative energy. Everything is a matter of balance. But god forbid logic should enter into the polical aspect of this. Let's scream from the rafters that the Earth is warming...and then force the auto industry to change fuel efficiency standards by 2030? Wow, that's pretty pathetic. What about saying, the first three auto companies to surpass 100 mpg in a mass produced model, pays half the going income tax rate for the next three years? After that, any car manufacturer that can make half their fleet zero emission gets another three years.
Check out tesla motors, to see what can be done. It's awesome!
Having said all of that, let me bring something really important up. I get random drug tested at work, if I test positive, I lose my job. But while I work, I get paid and I pay my taxes. My tax money then gets partitioned out to various things, including social services. The government takes my money, and gives it to someone else, who doesn't have to work, much less take a drug test. Why don't we drug test people using social services? This is something my boss brought up yesterday, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head...
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