global warming denial

[Kodiak]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming denial

There has never been stasis. Changes in environment and the ever changing "arms race" (some species of ants rule some species of trees today, those species of trees rule the ants tomorrow) ensures that there will never be a pure state of equilibrium. It has never been in the cards. However humans can have a dramatic impact on change and we can and should work to mitigate that impact.

Exactly. Of course.

 

[RandFan]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming denial

Well, someone doesn't quite grasp the difference between a dynamic equilibrium and a system crash...

There have been many such anthropological "system crashes" in the history of plants and animals. The question is, are we going through one now and what real effect will this have on the human race.

Stating that "we are" and that it will be significant is insufficient. Can you supply the evidence?

 

[shanek]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming denial

Well, aside from shooting ourselves in our collective foot (the value of healthy ecosystems just in their ability to maintain basic "life support" is beyond calculation), there's always the wacky idea that life has worth beyond mere human evaluation...

What does ANY of that have to do with the comment of yours I was responding to?

This is a joke, right?

No, it's not. These things are real, and have been studied and documented. The fact that you dismiss them outright shows your obvious and incredible bias.

If you're not even familiar with the evidence of the massive loss of biodiversity presently taking place, what should cause us to think that your opinion on global warming has any value?

If you're not even willing to do even the slightest amount of effort to provide evidence either for your claims for GW or your claims about the extinction of species, what should cause us to think your opinion has any value?

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming denial

I'm familiar with the "claim" of the current "massive die-off", but no one has ever actually supplied evidence to back up the numbers that are thrown about.

Can you provide them?

In what way are you uncertain regarding the numbers people have given you? The rate of rainforest destruction alone is relatively easy to verify, and I see no reason to discard our estimates of new species/ unit area derived from studies of those ecosystems.

Worldwide, habitats are being destroyed to make room for human habitation. The large sea mammals are shadows of what they once were, many fishstocks are becoming seriously depleted, algal blooms from fertilizer runoff cause serious disruption of aquatic ecosystems... c'mon, it's not difficult to determine that things are going downhill fast.

I suppose all of the animals we can no longer find in the wild are just part of a massive conspiracy against democracy and industry, eh?

 

[Sundog]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming denial

Thank you for proving you are not being at all skeptical on this subject. You now officially rank with the other GW advocates on this board who refuse to answer direct questions. Congratulations.

Go back and read what you wrote and see if you honestly think it deserves an answer.

Now that I'm back I'd like to stay a while. The only way I can do that, I think, is to converse with people who at least understand what I'm saying and don't play silly games, and ignore the others. You are invited to be in the first group.

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming denial

No, it's not. These things are real, and have been studied and documented. The fact that you dismiss them outright shows your obvious and incredible bias.

No, it just shows that I know a bit more about ecology than you do. The fact that you dismiss the negative consequences of carbon dioxide saturation outright shows your obvious and incredible bias.

If you're not even willing to do even the slightest amount of effort to provide evidence either for your claims for GW or your claims about the extinction of species, what should cause us to think your opinion has any value?

I'm mostly just mocking your own claims, which seem to be mostly uneducated. We can't tell for certain what the effects of dumping millions of tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere will be, but there's no reason to think it'll be particularly beneficial.

 

[shanek]

Well, it looks like Tim Slagle's words still ring true:

"I think the people who warn us about Global Warming are the intellectual descendents of the people who told us that, unless we threw virgins into the volcano, a giant sea monster would come around and eat us. And then, sooner or later, there'd be an eclipse, and these people would say, 'See? We told you this would happen!' 'No, you said we'd be eaten by a giant sea monster.' 'Well, whaddya think's blocking out the sun?' "Oh! Well, we'd better throw in some virgins, then! Sure hope we can find a couple...'"

 

[shanek]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming denial

Go back and read what you wrote and see if you honestly think it deserves an answer.

Okay:

Originally posted by me
Except that the best science DOESN'T show that. Every real scientist I've cornered on the subject, as well as an answer given by one at TAM2 in the panel by a participant (not me), has said that the conclusions are: 1) The Earth is getting warmer (for certain definitions of "warmer," meaning global average surface temperatures, but not in other aspects like maximum temperature or troposphere temperatures), and 2) Humans may be contrubuting to it.

That's a LONG was from the gloom-and-doom scenario of the GW politicos. All other objections aside, there is one aspect that the politicos completely neglect: that while there are arguably negative aspects to GW, there are positive aspects as well: foliation growing more densely, foliation growing in places where it hasn't for centuries (both of which have a counteracting effect on CO₂ concentrations), greater productivity (several scientists have pointed out the correlation between warmer periods and the more productive periods such as the Renaissance and the Greek civilization), on and on and on. So, the first question is, are we better of on the balance? Once we ask that question, if it turns out we aren't, then the next question is, is the net detrimental effects of GW greater than the clearly detrimental effects of "solutions" such as Kyoto, which will have a devastating effect on the global economy?

Yes, I think that is very much a rational, well-thought out post that deserves an honest answer.

Now that I'm back I'd like to stay a while. The only way I can do that, I think, is to converse with people who at least understand what I'm saying and don't play silly games, and ignore the others. You are invited to be in the first group.

Since you're the one who is instantly applying labels such as "left-wing" to anything he doesn't agree with, it seems to me you're placing yourself in the second group.

 

[Kodiak]

Originally posted by Kodiak
I'm familiar with the "claim" of the current "massive die-off", but no one has ever actually supplied evidence to back up the numbers that are thrown about.

Can you provide them?

Originally posted by Wrath of the Swarm
In what way are you uncertain regarding the numbers people have given you? The rate of rainforest destruction alone is relatively easy to verify, and I see no reason to discard our estimates of new species/ unit area derived from studies of those ecosystems.

Worldwide, habitats are being destroyed to make room for human habitation. The large sea mammals are shadows of what they once were, many fishstocks are becoming seriously depleted, algal blooms from fertilizer runoff cause serious disruption of aquatic ecosystems... c'mon, it's not difficult to determine that things are going downhill fast.

I suppose all of the animals we can no longer find in the wild are just part of a massive conspiracy against democracy and industry, eh?

Is that a "NO" then?

 

[RandFan]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming denial

Worldwide, habitats are being destroyed to make room for human habitation. The large sea mammals are shadows of what they once were, many fishstocks are becoming seriously depleted, algal blooms from fertilizer runoff cause serious disruption of aquatic ecosystems... c'mon, it's not difficult to determine that things are going downhill fast.

Oh really? Going downhill fast?

This sounds allot like what Paul Ehrlich said.

The Club of Rome had just released its primal scream, Limits to Growth, which reported that the earth was rapidly running out of everything. The most famous declinist of the era, biologist Paul Ehrlich, had appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to fill Americans with fear of impending world famine and make gloomy prognostications, such as, "If I were a gambler, I would bet even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

Funny, 2000 has come and gone and England still exists.

It also sounds like the Carter administration

The Carter administration published in 1980 its multiagency assessment of the earth’s future, titled Global 2000. Its famous doom-and-gloom forecast that "the world in 2000 will be more crowded, more polluted, less stable ecologically. . . . and the world’s people will be poorer in many ways than they are today" received headlines across the nation. Malthusianism was now the official position of the U.S. government.

Didn't quite come to pass. Not even the Y2K bug could bring us down.

The ultimate embarrassment for the Malthusians was when Paul Ehrlich bet Simon $1,000 in 1980 that five resources (of Ehrlich’s choosing) would be more expensive in 10 years. Ehrlich lost: 10 years later every one of the resources had declined in price by an average of 40 percent.

Evidence Swarm, where is your data? Why do you keep making claims without backing them up with real hard data?

Edited to provide source:

Julian Simon Remembered:

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

Well, for an obvious example: Ecological Damage from Invasive Species

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

This page should be simple enough for you to understand, and it has a nice bibliography:

Ecology of Overfishing

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

Here's another elementary example:

Hawaii: an Ecological Catastrophe

 

[RandFan]

How do your links prove that we are going down hill fast?

 

[shanek]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming denial

No, it just shows that I know a bit more about ecology than you do. The fact that you dismiss the negative consequences of carbon dioxide saturation outright shows your obvious and incredible bias.

Yeah, right. A study done at Duke University (actually just up the road from me) tested the effect of CO₂ concentrations of over 500ppm on loblolly pines. They found that the pines grew taller, had more leaves, produced more seeds, a greater percentage of the seeds germinated, grew more densely, etc. Not only is this beneficial for the trees (and should be considered a good thing by anyone whining about "deforestation"), but the additional trees also tend to absorb the excess CO₂ and reduce the effect on warming.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1999-05/DUMC-RHCD-140599.php
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1998-03/GCaT-CTBH-100398.php
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2000-08/DU-Dssc-0708100.php
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-11/dnl-trl112003.php

This experiment has been repeated in Florida, Canada, and (if memory serves) Denmark with similar results. And that's just one example.

And yet you claim to know more about it than I do? How could all of these studies have passed you by, then, O great purveyor of supreme ecological knowledge?

We can't tell for certain what the effects of dumping millions of tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere will be, but there's no reason to think it'll be particularly beneficial.

And there's no reason to think it'll be particularly detrimental, either. All we know right now is that there are some beneficial consequences and some detrimental consequences. What no one seems to want to do is figure out which one outweighs the other. You yourself are just doing the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and humming really loud.

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

A good article discussing the implications of rapid warming:

Insect and Leaf Fossils

 

[varwoche]

Someone please explain to me how it is not being skeptical to side with the VAST majority of worldwide scientific opinion?

Exactly Sundog. That's because (presumably) none of us are climatologists; all we can do is rely on expert opinion. As for the deniers:

We could debate "vast" I suppose. Fine, let's just say majority. Does it bother you that a majority of scientific thought considers there to be a reasonable possibility that global disaster will occur? What odds do you need before you are concerned?

Someone suggested that lessening dependence on foriegn oil is off topic. This happens to be a convergence of arguably THE two great challenges facing humanity. The imperative is compounded.

varwoche

 

[shanek]

A good article discussing the implications of rapid warming:

Insect and Leaf Fossils

Hmmm...it seems as if this article is supporting MY point:

"The early Eocene 52 million years ago was the warmest the Earth has been in the last 100 million years, and that warming lasted for 2 million years," says Dr. Peter Wilf, assistant professor of geosciences at Penn State. "There is strong evidence for high diversity when temperatures were warm," Wilf told attendees at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Feb. 16 in Denver.

Of course, he then drops into some fear-mongering, while nothing (at least nothing mentioned in the article) is put forth to really support it. And it shouldn't take someone with twelve PhDs to tell you how much our current situation is different from the K-T boundary. The only "evidence" he seems to produce is that it was a rapid change. Therefore, apparently, making the assumption that all rapid changes are alike and therefore have the same consequences. Rubbish! Wasn't the K-T event an event of cooling, not warming?

As I pointed out in another thread and produced evidence for (which was either ignored or misrepresented by the GW side), the current rate of warming is hardly unprecedented, even in human history. In fact, there's evidence that this kind of warming at this rate occurs every 1500 years. But, I guess we can just do without all that pesky evidence that contradicts what we've already included, right?

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming denial

Yeah, right. A study done at Duke University (actually just up the road from me) tested the effect of CO₂ concentrations of over 500ppm on loblolly pines. They found that the pines grew taller, had more leaves, produced more seeds, a greater percentage of the seeds germinated, grew more densely, etc. Not only is this beneficial for the trees (and should be considered a good thing by anyone whining about "deforestation"), but the additional trees also tend to absorb the excess CO₂ and reduce the effect on warming.

So what makes you think that's a good thing? Would you conclude that algal blooms created by fertilizers must be a good thing, as it involves the rapid growth of plant matter?

Grasses are highly evolved to use carbon dioxide efficiently. Ecological balances between grasses and other plants will be destroyed if the grasses' advantage is diminished. What are the consequences for existing ecologies if temperatures increase and access to carbon dioxide is also increased?

How can you be stupid enough to believe that you've made a viable point?

 

[Sundog]

Surely we can communicate better than this. I have work to do but let me try to honestly lay out my thoughts.

1. The default position of a skeptic should be to accept what the scientific community as a whole has decided is true for now. Certainly this consensus is proven wrong sometimes. That's the scientific process.

I don't see how you can argue with this and still call yourself a skeptic. If you have a beef with this, you have a beef with science itself. If you disagree, you will suddenly find Interesting Ian congratulating you for having the courage to challenge all the scientific charlatans.

This is not argument from authority. I don't think even Bill would call it that. The consensus of a group of people on a subject they above all others have an informed opinion on is not argument from authority.

If we can't agree on at least this, we really can't talk.

2. The consensus of the world's scientists seems to be in favor of the global warming theory. I realize that this is the most contentious point of all. Can we agree that, if this becomes clearly so even to you, that you will change your position? If not, how can you justify this if you agree with point 1 above?

3. I am honestly bewildered by people who assume our politics enter into this. Folks, I see a consensus of the world's scientists very, very worried about this. I see the US making contingency security plans based on "what if it's true". When someone asserts that I have come to my conclusions because I'm simply anti-Bush, or because I have some sort of general tree-hugger attitude, I am honestly astonished. If you have snide comments to make about this, keep them to yourself.

On the other hand, every time I have seen a "scientist" arguing against the theory, it's been some obvious blustering right-wing type on Fox or something similar. Maybe I just haven't seen all the respected scientists who don't accept the theory.

4. I am not a scientist. I am not entitled to an opinion. You are not a scientist. You are not entitled to an opinion! All we CAN do is try to follow the arguments of those who actually know what they're talking about, and to rely on point 1 above.

5. This is the most confusing thing of all to me: Why do conservatives as a block reject global warming? What possible reason can there be except political motivation? I and many others just don't get it. It seems clear to me that what unifies you is simply an overwhelming, unreasoning, blind hatred of the dreaded Environmentalists and the Left in general and anything they agree with.

Pretend we are discussing ESP instead of global warming. Really, go through the arguments. What would you call a person who used your arguments as defense of ESP?

I think you know.

Good day to you all, I probably won't have much time the rest of the day.