First off note, I might not be a climate scientists, but I do have an advanced physics degree. I hope that minimally qualifies me to discuss the prevalent scientific consensus as I actually know what scientific consensus is. That said, Ricky doesn't understand what scientific consensus is.
The general argument he and other Republicans have been trying to make for some time now is that climate science is a conspiracy of some sort, and that we should be using science and technology to get more energy resources because its always good. And its always good as it means cheep energy to maintain or grow the standard of living.
The scientific consensus by the super majority who actually study the environment (as opposed to the tiny minority who are paid to pretend they do) is that man made pollutants are increasing global temperatures and are going to lead to long term problems for everyone on the planet.
1) You haven't even stated the position correctly. Global temperatures have increased in the last Century. The global warming theory is that man-made pollution has caused most/all of the rise, not some of the rise [as opposed to natural fluxuations in solar output, or volcanic activity.]
Solar output has varied over the last 50 years on the order of 0.03%. And it hasn't been all up, instead oscillating with the sun's natural 11ish year cycle up and down. There was an increase about double that between the late 1800s and mid last century. On the other hand, over the same period, global temperatures have increased 0.1% (if going with Kelvin temperature scale, 4% if you use Celsius which doesn't really make sense when dealing with absolute numbers), all in a generally positive direction. The sun oscillates at a regular period in how active it is. It should have very long term trends (over tens of millions of years) and has been observed to have some short term phases its gone through. But its not been observed to go through any radically different phase changes in this last century. So the solar output as the primary driver of climate change idea is kind of bunk.
Volcanos... if you believe volcanos are the primary contributor to CO2 levels, as there are a number of active ones on the planet and they do produce CO2 emission, then the amount of CO2 produced by volcanos should be much much higher than that produced by human activity. The problem is, the average yearly volcanic emissions are 0.26 Gigatons per year, while all human technological activity produces on the order of 35 Gigatons per year. And that estimate on the volcanos is the upper limit I could find on the usgs website. Yes from time to time there is a major eruption, but these one off events produce even less than the average yearly volcanic emissions every few years. It would take thousands of Mt. Staint Helens eruptions every year to equal human CO2 emissions. Even if volcanic activity is increasing, its far from catching up with human produced emissions.
On the other hand, if your in the camp that volcanos are good for keeping the planet cool (albedo effect from the ash), and that the planet just naturally heats up with out it, then that would suggest that the number of major volcanic eruptions in the past was higher than it was presently. There is no evidence to suggest this is the case. It would basically mean that most of human history was covered up in effectively low level smog.
This statement kind of flabbergasted me. What's unscientific by basically saying that lots of people are going to be screwed over? If suddenly India can't feed itself due to perpetual drought, that's kind of a bad problem for them yes. And the strains on everyone else's food supply as they try to purchase to make up for it becomes a problem for everyone else. And not to mention mass migrations or wars brought on by desperate people. If all that global warming does is cause a disaster like that in one location, its negative effects can easily become global in scope, drastically altering the global status quo. I'd say that such would be a long term problem for everyone on the planet. Its not a guess or opinion, its a logical conclusion. And perhaps an understatement, as it won't just be one corner of the world being dragged down, but most areas.
Nope, the folks who blame increases in solar output have their data points showing recent increases in solar output. Volcanists have their data points showing natural variations of CO2 levels. Their data points can be confirmed as well.
When solar output starts to wane, yet, temperatures continue to increase,
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Its been dropping the last few years and temperature is up. Its done that before too as I mentioned before. The solar variance is there, but the last 50 years hasn't been an upward trend overall (up and down around an average) while global temperatures continue to increase.
This would require CO2 levels to stop increasing, and given the current state of the world that's not likely to happen for a while.
Short term falls do happen (for instance seasonally) and make sense given the various factors that affect the global temperature. Its the long term trend that's the problem, and we've not seen anything like that in modern observations or studies of long term climate change (using ice cores and the like allowing us to go back hundreds of thousands of years). To hope that this mystical situation suddenly happens for us isn't being scientific, its wishful thinking.
As mentioned above, there's a number of active volcanos across the world that are producing emissions every year. This experiment would require us to shut them off somehow. I suspect it would be cheeper to go 100% nuclear globally than to plug up all of the world's volcanos for long enough time to try that test.
Yes... but some of your tests have either not ever been observed in the long term trend over the last 500 thousand years, wishful thinking, or require things so incredibly impractical that they are silly suggestions from the get go. As is, there is tons of evidence telling us straight up that human begins are the major force for climate change in the modern era. The science is pretty much an open and shut case as is. To simply want more data is all fine and good but to wait longer isn't going to fix the problem that is staring us in the face. I don't plan to be sticking around another 100,000 years to get enough data to satisfy the climate deniers when most of us will be in pretty bad shape in only 100 years if we do nothing.
As for those wanting to see global climate change as an economic problem, tell me this: What profit is there in either halting or getting ready for global climate change in the near term? Don't go all long term on me here, we've seen what kind of 'long term planning' the business world likes these days with that housing bubble and before it the tech bubble and so on. Short term profits are the primary motivating factor in business right now. Where is the profit in the near term? Tell me.
