Global warming done for now?

[SIKSKIER]

It's all the typical Liberal media driven "the earth is falling and if you don't believe what I say your the enemy" mentality.You are not allowed to think or make arguments against the current fashionable manmade global warming blitz cuz if you do, like any other people that disagree with a liberal agenda,you are chastized.Let's open up our closed brains and think for ourselves once in a while instead of letting other people tell us what is fact.The biggest argument heard here makes climate comparisons of "all time" and"the warmest ever.Can you hear yourselfs?Ever and all time?These numbers refer to measurments we have made in the last 120 years or so out of 1 billion years the earth has been here.We know the earth has warm and cooled untold times and surely for 100's of million years we might never know about.How can you believe we know it all right now?Earths temp is far more sensitve to it's own functions such as volcanoes and to solar activity in our very very very miniscule solar system,which in turn is just a grain of sand in the universe.How the heck people can think we control the earths climate far more than these forces is beyond me.The more we learn,the more we find out how much we don't know.All I'm saying is I'll never be one to go along with a concept that's agenda driven just because some people say it's fact and there is no argument.There is so much more to be learned to say this is not open to discussion anymore and that all the facts are in is to try and silence anyone that disagrees.OK,flame away but this is how this guy feels.

 

[dmc]

Liberal checking in... And not responding.. Due to respect to the admins... and potential lawsuits generated by disagreeing with EdDrum...

 

[Glenn]

These type of remarks really make me cringe.
Too little knowledge is a dangerous thing, isn't it Glenn?

Sounds like you'd like a definitive answer to a very complex problem without doing the research. Confronted with seemingly opposite observations (hot - cold), it's easier to just resort to name calling - "global warming alarmists" and be dismissive, rather than to put some effort into trying to understand the facts of the issue.
I'll agree that trying to use any short term obeservations (hot or cold) to support the validity of the global warming is just wrong because the phenomenon is a long time trend.

These are the same people that told us in the 1970's :"By the mid 1980's, we won't have any trees left due to acid rain!" Then in the 1980's "Due to the hole in the ozone layer, the early will become a big microwave and we'll all cook like microwave popcorn by the mid 1990's!"

So yeah, I'm a little skeptical of the latest "Environmental Crisis De Jour". :grin:

*Edit: More snow on the way tonight!

 

[tcharron]

These are the same people that told us in the 1970's :"By the mid 1980's, we won't have any trees left due to acid rain!" Then in the 1980's "Due to the hole in the ozone layer, the early will become a big microwave and we'll all cook like microwave popcorn by the mid 1990's!"

So yeah, I'm a little skeptical of the latest "Environmental Crisis De Jour". :grin:

*Edit: More snow on the way tonight!

Acid rain stopped becoming a common occurance becouse of changes that where made. The hole in the ozone layer led change. You can't really say something was BS becouse it was fixed. :-D By that sort of logic, I don't need brakes, becouse I have never ONCE had the car not stop.

 

[tcharron]

It's all the typical Liberal media driven "the earth is falling and if you don't believe what I say your the enemy" mentality.You are not allowed to think or make arguments against the current fashionable manmade global warming blitz cuz if you do, like any other people that disagree with a liberal agenda,you are chastized.Let's open up our closed brains and think for ourselves once in a while instead of letting other people tell us what is fact.The biggest argument heard here makes climate comparisons of "all time" and"the warmest ever.Can you hear yourselfs?Ever and all time?These numbers refer to measurments we have made in the last 120 years or so out of 1 billion years the earth has been here.We know the earth has warm and cooled untold times and surely for 100's of million years we might never know about.How can you believe we know it all right now?Earths temp is far more sensitve to it's own functions such as volcanoes and to solar activity in our very very very miniscule solar system,which in turn is just a grain of sand in the universe.How the heck people can think we control the earths climate far more than these forces is beyond me.The more we learn,the more we find out how much we don't know.All I'm saying is I'll never be one to go along with a concept that's agenda driven just because some people say it's fact and there is no argument.There is so much more to be learned to say this is not open to discussion anymore and that all the facts are in is to try and silence anyone that disagrees.OK,flame away but this is how this guy feels.

Your point is totally valid. However, *we* haven't been alive all that time. Do we want the tempuratures to rise or fall? Newp. Can we prevent what part of it *we* cause? Yup. Should we start plluting like mad to warm us up IF an ice age begins? There's the sticky point. If anyone says 'no' to that, but 'yes' to should we do something about our potential impact on global warming is really saying we hug trees, but not people.

There are really 4 answers:

Yes, Yes) Let's not shite in our own house, we live here. And maybe we have to change it to make it a nice house...
Yes, No) The ice age has begun! Warm up things ASAP! I don't want to freeze!
No, Yes) We don't deserve to LIIIVE!
No, No) We don't deserve to LIIIIVE! Lets kill ourselves ASAP!

 

[mondeo]

i look at it more like we are simply TRASHING this planet, which is a beautiful gift that I (and most skiers/riders/nature enthusiasts) truly appreciate. It's puking snow right outside my window right now, the catskills and the river look beautiful and I can't imagine living without them or with them in a decayed state. Thats enough of a reason for me to try living more responsibly as an individual. I don't get into the GW, CC debates. Respect our habitat.

The more about this topic I learn the more I realize that basically all conclusions are premature. The general theory of CO2 increase = warming seems fairly solid. But all of the tipping points and what affect these will have are unpredictable. Further, there are so many variables such as ocean currents, space weather, events such as volcanoes, etc etc that have large shorter term effects.
1998 was an extreme anomaly.. At the time to AGW people it seemed that by 2009 global temps would be continuing to increase.. That did not happen. Now every denier uses 1998 as a starting point to claim that temps have been falling.
Question all sources including "good" ones like National Geographic, IPCC, NY Times. There is a ton of bad info

Two points that basically sum up my position. I don't believe anyone actually knows what's going on. Sunspots? Maybe. CO2? Maybe. But given that we can't even model airflow around a car or aircraft properly, what chance do we have at understanding a system as complex as the atmosphere? And when it really comes down to it, we only actually have a few decades of data - all surface temperature readings are errant one direction or another due to heat island effects. Only thing I believe is satelite data.

Incidentally, corporations fund some studies, environmentalists fund others. Everyone has an agenda. Oh, and without a crisis, the climatologists paid to do the studies are out of a job. Believe no one.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything. From a purely economic basis, it makes sense to move away from oil; once the current selloff of oil ends and prices return to where they should be, some persistent sources of energy become economical, and as demand further increases with flat or diminishing supply and mass production reaches other energy sources, it will no longer make sense from cost perspective to use fossil fuels. Personally, I think economics will drive adoption of "clean" energy (which doesn't really exist) more than environmental concerns. But beyond that, caution should dictate that if there is a chance that we could flood the major population centers of the world due to CO2 production, we should stop producing CO2. Trade-offs need to be considered, though; we could stop CO2 production immediately by just returning to an agrarian lifestyle, but that would have major ramifications to world health, peace, etc. of its own. The path forward needs to be balanced.

 

[ed-drum]

Hooray! This what this country (and the planet) needs. People talking to one another. And LISTENING. Sorry folks, after being in the Air Force, I realized things are not what they seem in this country. The US government lies to us everyday. Pretty soon they will try to tax the air we breathe. They are banning incandescent light bulbs in the UK to replace them with mercury filled fluorescents, which really don't save energy. So, we can fill up our land fills with Mercury which will leech into the drinking water. GREAT!

 

[ERJ-145CA]

Actually flourescents use 1/4 of the electricity of incandescents for an equivalent amount of light. If they're disposed of properly instead of thrown in the garbage then the mercury problem is covered. Maybe we can use the "chemtrails" from the planes I fly to alter the climate. (Note: the chemtrails comment was a joke.)

 

[180]

You sir, are on crack. Seriously. Everything you've quoted is VERY general statements from non renowned news sites. As an example, here is the actual map of loss of ice in the last 10 years.

I'd be glad to talk about it off-line. However, if all you wish to do is quote sites which wish to 'deny it's happening at all', and can't quote one.. single.. third party.. I mean dude.. You're seriously going to argue with pictures of it, while when someone puts up a graph, OMG! LOOKIE!

Oh I see, your map is a picture so it must be right. I don't even know who drew it. The colors are pretty, though. In 20 years this will all play out.

 

[snoseek]

Special interest that benefits from debunking global warming seems greater than special interest benefits from studies pointing towards climate changs. What interest would the government have in flawed studies?

I will say I'm no expert as is anyone else on Alpinezone I presume.

 

[mondeo]

Maybe we can use the "chemtrails" from the planes I fly to alter the climate. (Note: the chemtrails comment was a joke.)

You joke, but at this point aviation is thought to have a cooling impact, as the reflection from the clouds planes seed has outweighed the CO2 impact. I'm not sure why everyone is going after planes so heavily (ok, just the EU.) Let's see another industry where every generation of technology brings a 20% decrease in energy usage.

Special interest that benefits from debunking global warming seems greater than special interest benefits from studies pointing towards climate changs. What interest would the government have in flawed studies?

I will say I'm no expert as is anyone else on Alpinezone I presume.

Um, every part of government is driven by funding. Government as a whole doesn't have interest in flawed studies, but NOAA and the like get more funding if the climate is a bigger issue. And seeing as how science advisers that try to eliminate speculation and the like from supposedly scientific reports get publicly skewered, they're pretty much free to write what they want to. If there is no dramatic climate change going on, then who needs climatologists? No one, not really. Who's writing the reports that are saying climate change is an issue? The same people that lose their jobs if it isn't an issue.

Again, not taking a side on this, I think both sides are equally guilty. Remember, everyone has an agenda except me.

If you want to see how overboard this thing has gotten, look at the reaction to State of Fear, by Michael Crichton. If you read the scientific community's reaction to it, you'd expect that the book claimed that there was no such thing as global warming, the scientists are all wrong, etc. If you actually read the book, on the other hand, you'd see that what was actually calling for was the return of the scientific method and healthy skepticism. Not that we want any of that around here...

 

[Bumpsis]

I'm quite convinced that the people who have a hard time accepting that global warming is really happening may as well form a new version of the flat earth society.

What may be somewhat debatable is what's really causing it, although the current evidence strongly points at human activity (excessive CO2 levels). This conclusion may change as more data becomes available. That's the nature of science.

Objective anlysis, aka - truth, has been, is and always will be a slippery and elusive subject. But there is one way of coming close to glimpsing it and that's by applying scientific method to the task.
For those of you who don't have a working definition of this concept, look it up, you'll learn something useful.
Just about every modern convenience or invention, from life saving medical advances to modern electronics and everything in between, has been arrived at by the application good science.

So, if I'm told that the overwhelming majority of the scientific body (academies of sciences throughout the world) thinks that global warming is real and human activity is pushing it forward, who am I going to believe, them or people who sound like a replay of Rush Limabaugh?

 

[mondeo]

Objective anlysis, aka - truth, has been, is and always will be a slippery and elusive subject. But there is one way of coming close to glimpsing it and that's by applying scientific method to the task. For those of you who don't have a working definition of this concept, look it up, you'll learn something useful. Just about every modern convenience or invention, from life saving medical advances to modern electronics and everything in between, has been arrived at by the application good science.

So, if I'm told that the overwhelming majority of the scientific body (academies of sciences throughout the world) thinks that global warming is real and human activity is pushing it forward, who am I going to believe, them or people who sound like a replay of Rush Limabaugh?

The scientific body's jobs depend on it. The demagogues will just find something else to complain about. Who has more at stake?

Yes, good science is helpful. The current state of climatology, however is not good science. Not necessarily wrong because of it, just not good. You shouldn't believe the scientists or the people who sound like Limbaugh, you should believe the data. And the data doesn't say that CO2 is causing warming, it just says that global warming is happening and CO2 levels are rising. Association does not imply causation. Except for the last 30 years or so, the rising temperatures are based on measurements of temperatures for population centers. It is well known that as population centers develop, the local temperatures increase from warmth created by heating and cooling buildings and the fact that things like roads absorb more light than grass and trees. So it is not hard to see how the development of cities simultaneously would increase CO2 and increase the measured global temperatures without CO2 necessarily being causative in relation to temperatures. Basically, I would suggest you throw out surface temperature data from consideration.

Oh, and scientific consensus isn't worth crap. Aristarchus promoted the heliocentric solar system around 300 BC, but the Ptolemaic model stood as scientific consensus for almost two thousand years. The flat earth model was widely accepted until Magellan proved otherwise. Eugenics were widely promoted until the Nazi concentration camps were discovered. History is littered with examples of faulty scientific consensus.

 

[Creakyknees]

Will the glaciers at Glacier National Park ever return? I want to see what your views are. :idea:


http://www.sierraclub.org/energy/articles/glacier.asp

 

[Glenn]

 

[billski]

I don't know if GW is done, but I'm done with GW!

 

[Marc]

But given that we can't even model airflow around a car or aircraft properly, what chance do we have at understanding a system as complex as the atmosphere?

Hahaha... spoken like a true engineer who has never made peace with Navier-Stokes.

 

[Big Game]

Global warming hype peaked like 10 months ago. We got better things to worry about now. Like killer asteroids shaped like giant hemorrhoids.

 

[mondeo]

Global warming hype peaked like 10 months ago. We got better things to worry about now. Like killer asteroids shaped like giant hemorrhoids.

I thought it was evil aliens flying spaceships that look like DC-8s?

 

[billski]

Global warming hype peaked like 10 months ago. We got better things to worry about now. Like killer asteroids shaped like giant hemorrhoids.

True dat. I'm more worried about getting whacked by puckerbrush when woods skiing or hardline taking me into drainage ditches!