Global Warming and Second Opinions

[Person Man]

It's one thing to ask how you feel about the issue, its another to ask if you have changed your mind.

[fezzyfestoon]

The first.  It's politically trendy like Darfur.

[JSojourner]

Four.  I believed then, and believe now, it is a significant concern.  I am not sure, however, that it outweighs or overshadows other environmental concerns like pollution. 

[dead0man]

The last one.  I still think it's 96% hype.

[Person Man]

Me? Something is bound to happen when you change the composition of the atmosphere even by .03%.

However, we don't know what it will be. Either way, I really don't care about Global Warming as much as I care about ending Corporate Welfare for fossil fuel companies and spend our taxpayers' dollars on things that will permanently solve our energy crisis. Sure, Artic Drilling isn't as bad as people say it is, but that will just divert money from longer term solutions.

[Mechaman]

Considering how in 2005 I was really liberal (cuz it's trendy), yes my views on Global Warming have changed quite a bit. I still believe the world is getting warmer, but I don't believe it's going to get majorly warm and all the ice caps will melt and humanity will die out due to worldwide flooding. This is merely part of the cycle to be followed by a cooling period. Calm down kids.

Yes I agree with Foamy's views on ending Corporate Welfare for fossil fuel companies and funding alternative fuel resources. However, I doubt this situation will turn into "Oh my gawd! The Earth is warming up! We're all going to die!"

[Person Man]

So, maybe we should just focus on rebuilding our economy instead of trying to save the world. We need to be honest about what we want to accomplish.

[Mint]

First option. There are other much more serious environmental concerns like the depletion of the oceans, bee die offs, desertification/water shortages, etc. All of those things could easily kill millions or even billions of people if we don't get them under control. Global Warming even if it was real would be a lot more gradual than most people realize, it would take several generations to actually threaten us.

[dead0man]

Depletion of the oceans?

[Mint]

Depletion of the oceans?

Over fishing. Besides harming the biomass it's also destroying coastal economies. They lose around 50 billion each year now because the catching process is so poorly managed. It's only now that we're seeing any improvement and that's because world governments have finally started to catch onto this leading to mass starvation in the long run.

[dead0man]

Ahhh, fishing.  I thought you meant the oceans themselves were going away

[Tetro Kornbluth]

First option. There are other much more serious environmental concerns like the depletion of the oceans, bee die offs, desertification/water shortages, etc. All of those things could easily kill millions or even billions of people if we don't get them under control. Global Warming even if it was real would be a lot more gradual than most people realize, it would take several generations to actually threaten us.

This.

But I will note that no-one's position on this issue (regardless of what their position actually is) seems to be determined by actual science.

(Also should have mentioned the increasing industrialization of Agriculture in that list).

[fezzyfestoon]

So, maybe we should just focus on rebuilding our economy instead of trying to save the world. We need to be honest about what we want to accomplish.

And we need to be realistic about how influential over the world humans really are.  It's getting to a point where we're actually under the impression that every small decision the US makes will vastly affect the survival of the planet.  Really?  It's about time we got over ourselves...

[Person Man]

I'm pretty skeptical of both the claims of whether we are a major factor in the environment or not. I mean, much smaller organisms have changed the planet in ways in which the planet was never the same. Cyanobacteria and algae gave us air to breathe.

[Frodo]

My view has always been that climate change is primarily driven by natural forces (like the sun, oceanic currents, etc.), but that we are taking an increasingly active role in it.  How much exactly is up to debate, but however much we do contribute to climate change is too much.  So I support a policy of 'bending the curve' on greenhouse gas emissions.  In light of uncertainties, I would rather be safe than sorry -I do not want to wake up one day and find Earth turning into Venus with a runaway greenhouse effect because we failed to act when we had the chance.   

[fezzyfestoon]

I'm pretty skeptical of both the claims of whether we are a major factor in the environment or not. I mean, much smaller organisms have changed the planet in ways in which the planet was never the same. Cyanobacteria and algae gave us air to breathe.

I agree to an extent, but I personally tend to favor the belief that forces of nature such as those behind the presence of massive quantities of cyanobacteria are far stronger than any force we could exert on nature.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Option 1 by far.

I've gone from extreme skeptic to full on "OMG THE GLACIERS ARE MELTING AND YOUR HOUSE IS GONNA FLOOD!!##$K" to a more moderate skeptical position where both sides in this highly politicized, non-scientific, partisan debate annoy the hell out of me.

A new study just came out that puts to rest the debate on what actually caused the ice ages.  The theory that was "proven" is 50 years old and suggests that slight wobbles in the earth's orbit cause changes in the amount of solar radiation that reaches earth and thus forces the earth's climate to oscillate between full blown ice age conditions and relatively warm interglacial periods.

This puts to rest the idea among many recent scientists and politicians like Al Gore, who have suggested that the ice ages were caused by changes in Carbon Dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

Currently we have crossed the half way point and are beginning the long slide back towards ice age conditions.  Whether or not greenhouse warming or other unknown variables prevent the cold from actually coming back is still up for debate, but the heat is slowly being turned down.  Putting the cover on the kettle will only keep it hot for so long.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I should also point out, however, that I am very much a tree hugger.

But I believe there are more important environmental issues that need to be looked at.  Habitat destruction, pollution, and unsustainable farming/forestry practices are all top priority issues for me.  Climate science is also very important, but more from the research side and not the political side.

[SPC]

I've been a skeptic for as long as I can remember. And that seems to have paid off.

[Rowan]

So the world warms up a bit, just turn on the AC, it's not that big of a deal.

[k-onmmunist]

Yes. I now believe human activity has no effect on the climate cycle whatsoever.

[Person Man]

Yes. I now believe human activity has no effect on the climate cycle whatsoever.

Oh. It probably does....but it probably won't have much affect on the economy. However, we need to get our asses of of drilling because it just creates corruption and controversy as well as less economic competition.

[Ban my account ffs!]

http://www.viewzone.com/magnetic.weather.html

It's a good article about new research published on the effect of our magnetic field, cosmic rays, and climate change.

A relatively new theory that is gaining ground among climate scientists is that while solar variation itself doesn't affect earth's climate much at all (being such a minute change between active and inactive periods), that the effect that the minute changes in solar intensity can have much larger effects on our magnetic field.

When the sun is weaker, more cosmic rays are allowed to enter our atmosphere.  Cosmic rays are nuclei that have been stripped of all their electrons that are hurling through space at speeds near the speed of light.  When they enter our atmosphere, they create ions, which attract water molecules to clump together and induce the formation of clouds.

With more cloudcover, less solar radiation makes it to the surface of earth as more of it is reflected back into space, thus causing the planet to cool.

Luckily, with our negative feedback loops, as the planet cools, cloudcover is decreased as water vapor tends to fall out of the atmosphere in a colder climate and then more solar radiation can reach the earth... thus creating a kind of cycle within a cycle.

The scientists ahve found that the sun has been stronger in the past 70 years than at any time in the past 1000 years.  A stronger sun prevents cosmic rays from impacting earth because the solar wind and magnetic field around the sun expands and pushes them away before they can reach earth.

This would cause a reduction in cloudcover on earth since water vapor has less of a tendency to form into clouds.  As the planet warms, the atmosphere's ability to hold water vapor without forming into clouds and falling back to the surface as rain increases.  As it increases, the humidity level goes up, which further increases the temperature by reducing radiative cooling at night.

The greenhouse theory proposes that if CO2 is the main cause of climate warming, then daytime and nighttime temperatures should rise evenly.  This is strongly NOT the case.  In almost all cases, night time temperatures have risen at a much higher rate, sometimes comprising of all the warming that has taken place in a given location.  This indicates that water vapor, or also urbanization, not CO2, is the main source behind the warming.

A recent study indicated that the reason Europe has warmed faster than the world as a whole over the past century was not due to CO2, but because of increased humidity over the region.

It is also the reason that places like Phoenix, Arizona have incredible warming trends while places that were already humid and didn't have much more of an ability to hold water int he atmosphere have actually cooled (the icnreased water vapor has only increased rainfall, thus cooling the atmosphere slightly.. like the cooling trend in the southeastern U.S. in the past 50 years.)

[Ban my account ffs!]

Here are a few updates about what ahs been going on in the climate world:

Steve McIntyre, a known Anthropocentric Global Warming skeptic, has been trying for years to access temperature records data from the U.K. Met office and Hadley Center for climate prediction and research through the Freedom of Information act.  He has been denied every time for increasingly suspect reasons.

At first it was because he was not an academic.  He then stated he wanted the data for academic reasons, because he wanted to do research on it.  They then told him it would go against agreements they had with other countries to keep the data a secret.  That's a load of bull if I've ever heard it.

So, after getting the run around, an actual academic applied for the data, and was turned away because, get this:

They lost the data.  The raw data that they use to compute the global temperature has been discarded!!!!  They basically input the data into the algorithm and then the data went missing!

So if HADCRU ever finds that the algorithm they were using was wrong or they need to redo the calculations or add new data or subtract bad data, they won't be able to.  Essentially when they go on about global warming and throw out their chart of global temperatures, they are saying "trust us"... because they apparently no longer have the data.

Well, then came the mole.  Somebody got Mr. McIntyre a good amount of raw data from many stations around the world.  The Met office freaked out and began deleting all of their public FTP sites with temperature data, because some of the data had been leaked out.


What is it they're so afraid of?  Why is it that all these scientists conducting research have methods that are full of holes?

For example, the Mann et al hockeystick temperature diagram put out in 1998 (and since discredited many times, but is still widely used in the media) was given intense scrutiny by skeptics.. but when other scientists asked for his methodology in order to analyze the data for themselves and see what their conclusions were, he "lost" it.  In other words, nobody could recreate his research because his methods were lost and forgotten.

But no worries.

More recently, a study done in 2006 studied ice cores from glaciers on Svalbard in the far north Atlantic ocean, going back to about 1130 A.D.  They found that washout data, which indicates the amount of melt on the glacier for any given year, was much higher from 1130-1200 A.D. than it ever has been since and that while melt has been strong in the past 100 years, there were periods of higher melting rates during the 14th century as well.

A new study that sought sea ice extent in the Arctic used the same ice cores studied in the 2006 study.  Curiously, they omitted all data from 1130-1200 when melt was the highest (and much higher than today) and began at the year 1200 A.D.  Of course they then loudly claimed that sea ice extent has been much lower in the 20th century than at any time in the past.

Why leave out the first 7 decades of data if it is readily available?  Several cross examinations of the methods used in the study have found that there was absolutely no reason they couldn't include the date from 1130-1200 A.D. in the study, other than to make the 20th century look more "unusual" in comparison.

It also fits nicely with the official position by the IPCC that there was no Medieval Warm Period.. a period in European history where temperatures were higher than they are today that led to the successful colonization of Greenland.

The more I learn about climate change, the more skeptical I become.

[Platypus]

Option 4