Global warming

[mhaze]

That would be devastating among the honest warmers.
Other will just say that :

a) More scientists are being paid by Exxon
or
b) You can't trust the study because is being paid by Exxon.

You would have a point but we have already debunked the "Exxon conspiracy theory", noted that they have put $100M into climate research via Stanford (to use with as it wishes), noted that they had a right to lobby anti-Kyoto as anyone with a brain would have and still should; in summary, "Exxon was and is the good guys".

If you still have a point and we have to deal with (a) or (b) it's about time to call those believers, maybe "AGW truthers"

 

[BeAChooser]

Most of the change in ice-mass takes place over a few thousand years

Are you sure? This link has a animated videoclip prepared by NASA of the retreat of the ice in Antarctica over the last 20,000 years. It doesn't seem to show what you claim, assuming the time scale is evenly distributed throughout the video clip.

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9902/03/antarctic.ice.sheet/

Here's something else of interest from NASA:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast27dec_1.htm "Recent work, however, leads Bindschadler to conclude that the ice sheet experienced a rapid retreat phase some 7,000 years ago that was preceded and followed by a slower retreat that continues today."

Was mankind responsible for that rapid retreat 7,000 years ago? And it certainly didn't happen at the glacial maximum. So who or what was responsible?

That last link also has a curve of sea level rise at Battery TIde Gauge in New York since 1920. The odd thing is that sea level has been rising quite steadily since 1920. Surely man's activities weren't yet causing global warming back in 1930 - 1940? And notice how straight the line is fit to the data. Are you sure CO2 is responsible?

I could reduce my 0.3mm per annum estimate to 0.25

But that's not representative of the actual uncertainty in the mean. Try a 2-sigma delta and tell us it's insignificant.

Quote:
A second even more recent study that I referenced claims satellite data shows an overall loss of ice so small that it would take 3800 years to raise the sea level even one foot. If true, is that something to get excited about and pass draconian tax legislation crippling our economy RIGHT NOW???

I'd drop the capitals if I were you, it smacks of alarmism.

Actually, demanding "right now", as Gore and walarmists insist, is what's really alarmist. And I noticed you didn't address the point I was making. A second study shows the rise in sea level due to antarctica ice mass loss will be so slow that it would take 3800 years to rise one foot? Are you really worried about that sort of change in the near term?

Quote:
And finally, will you apologize for Al Gore and the global walarmists who had claimed antarctic ice was decreasing even at a time when study after study said the opposite?

Well, we had to finish with Al Gore and the invented word to make you feel "cool" with the "in-group".

I take it you're not going to apologize?

 

[BeAChooser]

I think most people see Gore as irrelevant to the science.

But he is not irrelevant to most people's perception of the science. And that makes him relevant to what public action will be taken in response to the science.

I haven't seen scientists on the global warming side of the issue make any attempt to correct the misinformation Gore has been promoting to the public. And he has been misrepresenting the facts for some time.

And I also notice you didn't even attempt to address the questions I asked you about why there is such urgency in dealing with the problem ... a perception Gore has given the public. Why not?

 

[mhaze]

But he is not irrelevant to most people's perception of the science. And that makes him relevant to what public action will be taken in response to the science.

I haven't seen scientists on the global warming side of the issue make any attempt to correct the misinformation Gore has been promoting to the public. And he has been misrepresenting the facts for some time.

And I also notice you didn't even attempt to address the questions I asked you about why there is such urgency in dealing with the problem ... a perception Gore has given the public. Why not?

Yes, indeed. Why not? As far as I am concerned, you are either with Gore or against him, and if you are harboring him and not denying him, you are with him.

Leaving aside the fact that Gore is viewed skeptically mostly only in the USA; in other parts of the world everything he says is believed as fact. Hundreds if not thousands of popular media pieces trot his line, here is just one.

Yes, this is the kind of drivel that's being pumped into magazines for popular consumption. And until honest scientists and people are not cowed by the likes of Gore and other shills for Big Money Ecology Lobbies, this is not going to stop.

Global Warming Could Spell Disaster for Blacks

Quoting from the article at BET.COM -

If you thought Hurricane Katrina was a once-in-a-lifetime fluke, think again. Concerned environmentalists say that unless the United States gets real about the threat of global warming...



African Americans and other people of color can expect a repeat of disasters like Katrina.

"it's undisputable that the sea levels are rising"

"You're going to have intense flooding like we have never seen before"

"By mid-century, we're looking at the entire Antarctic ice shelf melting,"
​

Just a few points the writer makes -

• If global warming gets worse, many African-American communities will be more vulnerable to breathing ailments, insect-carried diseases and heat-related illness and death.
• Relatively, Blacks are environmental Good Samaritans. Per capita, we emit approximately 20 percent less carbon dioxide than Whites – well below 2020 targets set by the U.S. Climate Stewardship Act. Not only do we use more energy-conserving public transportation, we spend considerably less per capita on energy-intensive material goods. (translation by mhaze....he is actually saying being poor is good??)

This priceless exercise in racial baiting through logical fallacies is outwitted by the outraged reader comments. Just a few...

• you sir are an idiot. you quote false facts. question is, are there no white people in metropolitan areas?
• i am from new orleans and i am mixed. i suffered the same fate as many of all colors. just to read the topic of this spells ignorance.
• are white people and people of asian decent not effected by global warming? is there skin not dark enough to absorb the warmth?
• blacks create less co2? and how could global warming be worse for "blacks and other people of color" than whites?
• its one thing to have an axe to grind against whites, but to manufacture a story about global warming having different effects for blacks is just irresponsible journalism.
• hurricane katrina is an equal oppotunity destroyer !!!!!

 

[bonkey]

Leaving aside the fact that Gore is viewed skeptically mostly only in the USA; in other parts of the world everything he says is believed as fact. Hundreds if not thousands of popular media pieces trot his line, here is just one.

Ummm...forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but bet.com (the source you link to) is American. USAian, if you will.

How does providing a link to an American site show anything about how Gore is viewed outside the US?

If anything, you're showing how he's not viewed skeptically by certain segments of the US, but you're not offering anything about how us non-USAians are viewing what he says at all.

 

[mhaze]

Ummm...forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but bet.com (the source you link to) is American. USAian, if you will.

How does providing a link to an American site show anything about how Gore is viewed outside the US?

If anything, you're showing how he's not viewed skeptically by certain segments of the US, but you're not offering anything about how us non-USAians are viewing what he says at all.

You are correct. I should have made clearly that two different subjects or two different posts.

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Even the most extreme environmentalists don't know what to think about Al Gore...
http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press1426.htm

We would like to think that Al Gore has not been informed of how his visit to Chile is being financed. We trust enough in him to think that he would not willingly lend his participation in this image-laundering operation, appearing on behalf of a corporation such as Barrick Gold.

 

[a_unique_person]

No, with all due respect. the myths are recycled by Pro AGW who want Kyoto and to tax and penalize C02. I don't hear any talk about taxng Albedo. Neither do I hear a word about how we must change our land use or sea labels will rise and Florida will be flooded.

Gore must be some kind of fetish object not for Deniers but for AGW since his "documentary" is shown in science classes in public school here in the US.

Because Albedo is a feedback, of course.

 

[a_unique_person]

Even the most extreme environmentalists don't know what to think about Al Gore...
http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press1426.htm

I don't care what anyone thinks of Al Gore. It's like asking what people think of Newton. He was in many ways a complete nutter. It's interesting from a historical/political perspective, but is completely irrelevant to the science.

 

[a_unique_person]

But he is not irrelevant to most people's perception of the science. And that makes him relevant to what public action will be taken in response to the science.

I haven't seen scientists on the global warming side of the issue make any attempt to correct the misinformation Gore has been promoting to the public. And he has been misrepresenting the facts for some time.

And I also notice you didn't even attempt to address the questions I asked you about why there is such urgency in dealing with the problem ... a perception Gore has given the public. Why not?

Gore is a politician and publicist. What he is saying is based on possibilities, (which is what we have to deal with). When you are into risk management (as I am), you have to say "what if". What if the Data Centre burnt down? It probably won't. In fact, I am 99.9% sure it won't. But we still have to act as if it will, and we spend a lot of money accordingly. That's the nature of risk management. Gore is telling people what is possible, even if it won't necessarily happen, and he is doing it in a way that is no different to the 'WOT' or 'WOD'. That's the level of public debate, unfortunately.

Now, if you want to discuss if everything he says will happen, I doubt it will. If you want to say everything he says it won't happen, I can't say it won't, and that we would be mad to act as if it won't. That is too big a risk for something that will affect us globally. Will AGW affect the world to a significant effect, I have no doubt it will. The rising water levels, for example, will affect all ports, globally, at the same time, for example, causing a massive disruption to trade. The modern economy couldn't exist without trade. What is the cost of that? We recently had a massive economic shake up with the Asian melt down, but the rest of the world was stable and things were OK. We had 9/11, which caused massive disruption, but the rest of the world went on, and things were OK. We have massive disruption globally at the same time, things are going to be very risky. If you ignore that risk, you are being stupid.

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

I couldn't agree more.

I don't care what anyone thinks of Al Gore. It's like asking what people think of Newton. He was in many ways a complete nutter. It's interesting from a historical/political perspective, but is completely irrelevant to the science.

 

[mhaze]

I don't care what anyone thinks of Al Gore. It's like asking what people think of Newton. He was in many ways a complete nutter. It's interesting from a historical/political perspective, but is completely irrelevant to the science.

No, this is not comparable.

The issue is the representation of science by Gore, and Newton's book on calculus is brilliant. I have read most of it, and I have read Gore's books.

We need not state the differences. Gore has chosen to personify a fringe alarmist view. The documentary was basically Hansen spin, but it became Gore's religion; objectivity was lost, and there has been a disturbing inability to adapt or change on his part.

Personality or political afiliation etc is not relevant.

 

[a_unique_person]

Are you sure? This link has a animated videoclip prepared by NASA of the retreat of the ice in Antarctica over the last 20,000 years. It doesn't seem to show what you claim, assuming the time scale is evenly distributed throughout the video clip.

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9902/03/antarctic.ice.sheet/

The clip doesn't show the rapid changes in the past few years, and the projected complete disappearance in the next 20/30 years. That clip covers 20,000 years. For it to disappear in the time span it is projected to, would see the changes in the recent record appear to be as if someone had just lifted the ice out of the water in a flash. That is, and always has been, the issue, and why scientists are acting the way they are. In geological terms, we are causing change at what is normally an unheard of rate. Rapid change = massive disorganisation.

 

[a_unique_person]

Here is an animation of existing records and projections.

http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/arctic.shtml

In geological terms, this will happen in the blink of an eye.

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

And what about this?

4. Conclusions
We show that 72% of the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining 27[qimg]http://public.metapress.com/clients/roysoc/html/entlib/plus/special/plusmn/black/med/base/glyph.gif[/qimg]29Gtyr-1, a sink of ocean mass sufficient to lower global sea levels by 0.08mmyr-1. The IPCC third assessment (Church & Gregory 2001) partially offset an ongoing sea-level rise due to Antarctic retreat since the last glacial maximum (0.0-0.5mmyr-1) with a twentieth century fall due to increased snowfall (-0.2-0.0mmyr-1). But that assessment relied solely on models that neither captured ice streams nor the Peninsula warming, and the data show both have dominated at least the late twentieth century ice sheet. Even allowing a [qimg]http://public.metapress.com/clients/roysoc/html/entlib/plus/special/plusmn/black/med/base/glyph.gif[/qimg]30Gtyr-1 fluctuation in unsurveyed areas, they provide a range of -35-+115Gtyr-1. This range equates to a sea level contribution of -0.3-+0.1mmyr-1 and so Antarctica has provided, at most, a negligible component of observed sea-level rise. In consequence, the data places a further burden on accounting (Munk 2003) for the twentieth century rise of 1.5-2mmyr-1. What is clear, from the data, is that fluctuations in some coastal regions reflect long-term losses of ice mass, whereas fluctuations elsewhere appear to be short-term changes in snowfall. While the latter are bound to fluctuate about the long-term MAR, the former are not, and so the contribution of retreating glaciers will govern the twenty-first century mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet.

How does it reconcile with the "animation"?

 

[BeAChooser]

Gore is a politician and publicist. What he is saying is based on possibilities, (which is what we have to deal with).

What Gore has been doing is misrepresenting the facts. But you are correct, he is politician and the reason he has been misrepresenting the facts is political in nature.

When you are into risk management (as I am), you have to say "what if". What if the Data Centre burnt down? It probably won't. In fact, I am 99.9% sure it won't. But we still have to act as if it will, and we spend a lot of money accordingly.

But you still consider the economics in what you do and you don't do things that could easily make the situation much worse. That is the problem with the Walarmists. They insist we must act NOW and disregard all possible negative effects of their proposed actions. World society is a highly complicated beast (perhaps more complicated than the climate) and what they are doing is suggesting we throw sand in the mechanism without understanding what the consequences of doing so would be. But then economics and the effects of economic decisions on society has always been the weak point in liberal (walarmist) thinking.

That is too big a risk for something that will affect us globally.

Lots of things will affect us globally. A 50 cent tax on gas in the US will have global consequences. Destroy America's economy and lots of people around the world will suffer. And the timescale over which those effects will occur matters. A 50 cent tax on gas will have impacts now. Ice melting in antarctica at current rates will take 100's of years to matter significantly. So caution is advised to avoid overreacting.

The rising water levels, for example, will affect all ports, globally, at the same time, for example, causing a massive disruption to trade.

No it won't. The timescale for changes in water level are so slow that ports will just adapt to those changes. But if you destroy the economy through foolish measures you really will disrupt trade.

If you ignore that risk, you are being stupid.

If you overreact and pour money into things that are not the real cause, you are being stupid too.

 

[BeAChooser]

In geological terms, we are causing change at what is normally an unheard of rate.

That's not true. As has been pointed out, most of the change in ice mass occurred in a few thousand years at a time when humans were certainly not responsible. And again 7000 years ago saw dramatic changes when man was not responsible. And sea level has been rising steadily (i.e., linearly) since 1920 which again suggest the mechanism you folks point to for rising sea levels is bogus. I linked you to a recent study which indicates a change in sea levels do to melting antarctic ice that is so slow it would take 3800 years to raise sea levels one foot. The reality is we still do not understand what is causing most of the change well enough to be remotely certain it is human intervention. We certainly don't understand it well enough nor is the rate of change so urgent that we need to dive headfirst into the sort of economic folly that Gore and his crowd advocate.

 

[a_unique_person]

What Gore has been doing is misrepresenting the facts. But you are correct, he is politician and the reason he has been misrepresenting the facts is political in nature.

No, he presenting the possibilities. That the THC could stop or not is very unlikely, so I see him as wrong on that. Most of what he says is correct.

But you still consider the economics in what you do and you don't do things that could easily make the situation much worse. That is the problem with the Walarmists. They insist we must act NOW and disregard all possible negative effects of their proposed actions. World society is a highly complicated beast (perhaps more complicated than the climate) and what they are doing is suggesting we throw sand in the mechanism without understanding what the consequences of doing so would be. But then economics and the effects of economic decisions on society has always been the weak point in liberal (walarmist) thinking.

We have to act now to change hyrdocarbon usage. It's use is so widespread, it's going to be like turning an aircraft carrier around. We have to act now since it is going to take us 20 or 30 years to get some real changes made. Already we have lost 20 years.

Lots of things will affect us globally. A 50 cent tax on gas in the US will have global consequences. Destroy America's economy and lots of people around the world will suffer. And the timescale over which those effects will occur matters. A 50 cent tax on gas will have impacts now. Ice melting in antarctica at current rates will take 100's of years to matter significantly. So caution is advised to avoid overreacting.

People said we could never survive a moderate rise in taxes to fund the use of alternate fuels, yet fuel prices have pretty well doubled over the past four years, and the world's economies have barely blinked.

The situation in Antarctica could change well before expected time, just as the Arctic has. Risk management. I don't expect the Data Centre to burn down, but if I don't ensure the company could survive such an event, it's my responsibility.

No it won't. The timescale for changes in water level are so slow that ports will just adapt to those changes. But if you destroy the economy through foolish measures you really will disrupt trade.

Risk management. And when it does happen, it will happen to all ports at the same time.

 

[Pipirr]

{snip}But then economics and the effects of economic decisions on society has always been the weak point in liberal (walarmist) thinking.

god, this is tedious. I trust you aren't implying that AGW is a liberals-only position.

It ain't.

 

[articulett]

god, this is tedious. I trust you aren't implying that AGW is a liberals-only position.

It ain't.

To deniers it is. No evidence will convince them otherwise. They are on par with creationists. They pat themselves on the back while pretending to have a clue. It's embarrassing. The U.S. has a swath of embarrassment running through it it red states. And it shows.

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

Note the most religious states are the most dysfunctional...they are also red (conservative) states... scientific ignorance breeds delusion. It isn't amenable to reason...