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global warming denial

Back and forth, bach and forth... ARGHHHHH!HH!

The debate is NOT whether the earth is getting warmer or colder

It's about what effect if any that mankind has on the earth getting warmer or colder!!!!


What is required is evidence of mechanisms of how mankind would be interfering to such an extent as to cause large scale climate change.

NOT 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' reasoning of everything that has happened in the last 200 years!
 
bignickel said:
Back and forth, bach and forth... ARGHHHHH!HH!

The debate is NOT whether the earth is getting warmer or colder

It's about what effect if any that mankind has on the earth getting warmer or colder!!!!

What is required is evidence of mechanisms of how mankind would be interfering to such an extent as to cause large scale climate change.

NOT 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' reasoning of everything that has happened in the last 200 years!
Click to expand...

I do not know if this is directed at me, but I will reply none the less.

I've been very careful with my terns. I do not question global warming, but human caused global warming and its effect (if any) on climate and ecology. Other things I question are modern environmentalism's socialist cant, fear mongering, and worst-case prognostication, as well as the HCGW advocates selective skepticism.

The "back and forth" is sadly necessary to ensure my points and others are not warped and twisted as DSM and a_u_p have attempted in this very thread.
 
It seems quite unlikely that we could dump so much CO<sub>2</sub> into the atmosphere and not have some kind of an effect on the global ecosystem. (It's theoretically possible that the world could be structured in just the right way that doing this would have no effect, but it's grossly implausible.)

And we agree that the global climate seems to be changing in certain ways, although the ultimate nature of those changes is in debate at the moment.

It is therefore a reasonable position to conclude that human activity is responsible for the changes.
 
Wrath of the Swarm said:
It seems quite unlikely that we could dump so much CO<sub>2</sub> into the atmosphere and not have some kind of an effect on the global ecosystem. (It's theoretically possible that the world could be structured in just the right way that doing this would have no effect, but it's grossly implausible.)

And we agree that the global climate seems to be changing in certain ways, although the ultimate nature of those changes is in debate at the moment.

It is therefore a reasonable position to conclude that human activity is responsible for the changes.
Click to expand...

"unlikely"
+
"theoretically possible"
+
"grossly implausible"
=
"reasonable to conclude"


Well, I'm glad you posted that on this forum.

After all this is "an educational resource on the pseudoscientific"...

Ever hear of the term "counter-intuitive"?
 
Kodiak said:

I do not know if this is directed at me, but I will reply none the less.
Click to expand...

I briefly considered that you might think think this was directed at you, but then I re-read my part about 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' and thought, Nah! He'll know what I'm referring to!

:)

Of course, if I explain the latin, then you'll say 'Hey! I know what the phrase means! Who do you think I am?' And if I don't then you'll say 'Hey! Not all of us took 5 useless years of Latin, you know!'

Help, I'm being mauled by a grizzly! arhhhhhhhhhh!

(I was sure that global warming was happening when I came to this board 2 years ago. A few of these threads later, and I realized that whether GW was happening or not was immaterial to whether man was causing it. If mankind is causing it: then the Kyoto Accord people have to start presenting the evidence, instead of tree rings. My own personal opinion: jeez, I have no idea what's going on weatherwise. What am I, a climatologist or something?)
 
bignickel said:


I briefly considered that you might think think this was directed at you, but then I re-read my part about 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' and thought, Nah! He'll know what I'm referring to!

:)

Of course, if I explain the latin, then you'll say 'Hey! I know what the phrase means! Who do you think I am?' And if I don't then you'll say 'Hey! Not all of us took 5 useless years of Latin, you know!'

Help, I'm being mauled by a grizzly! arhhhhhhhhhh!

(I was sure that global warming was happening when I came to this board 2 years ago. A few of these threads later, and I realized that whether GW was happening or not was immaterial to whether man was causing it. If mankind is causing it: then the Kyoto Accord people have to start presenting the evidence, instead of tree rings. My own personal opinion: jeez, I have no idea what's going on weatherwise. What am I, a climatologist or something?)
Click to expand...

"Hey! I know what the phrase means! Who do you think I am?"

Grrrrrrr...
 
bignickel said:
The debate is NOT whether the earth is getting warmer or colder

It's about what effect if any that mankind has on the earth getting warmer or colder!!!!
Click to expand...

It isn't even about that, really. It's really about: is this, on the whole, a good thing or a bad thing, and if it's a bad thing, what can/should be done to reverse the trend?

The GW people in this thread and elsewhere simply present their case for the first two questions and leave it at that, as if the rest were a foregone conclusion.
 
Kodiak said:


What is reckless is when modern environmentalism sets up the debate so that regardless of what actually happens, the fear mongering "doom and gloomers" will be right.

For example:

Global Warming Might Override Ice Age

Global Warming Might Trigger Ice Age


:nope:
Click to expand...

Kodiak,

This problem is inevitable. The climate of Planet Earth is a chaotic system which usually gravitates around a stable state. When certain conditions are met (usually CO2 concentration) the entire system will flip into a new stable state. Recently it has flip-flopped between two stable states, but current conditions are completely new because this time it is humans who have caused the stable state to become unstable. The problem for the climatologists is that they are now quite certain that we have pumped more than enough CO2 into the atmosphere to make the current stable state unstable but because the system is chaotic and in a novel condition they are in no position to give a firm prediction as to what new stable state it will find. Therefore it is quite valid to say : "We have screwed up the climate and we can expect rapid and irreversible climate change which is certain to cause the human race very severe survival problems, but we cannot tell you precisely what is going to happen." In fact, the only people who are definately wrong are the ones who think nothing is going to happen regarding climate change. Any of those people who are still alive in 30 years have got some nasty surprises coming their way. But then as in most areas of life - perhaps you are better off not knowing..... ;)
 
There is a scary tendency among most of western people to say "People have always been predicting the end of the world, and it never comes, and its not coming this time." The problem with this is that if we look at the earth as a closed system and humans as any other species, it is utterly inevitable that the system will eventually cause a re-balancing involving a massive reduction in the overpopulated human race. Sooner or later humanity will pay for its unsustainable behaviour, and it looks to me like it is going to be sooner rather than later. But there is always going to be a majority who do not see it coming because they reason "it has never happened before" rather than "it is inevitable". Of course, it has happened before, just not on the scale that it is about to happen on.
 
JustGeoff said:
This problem is inevitable. The climate of Planet Earth is a chaotic system which usually gravitates around a stable state. When certain conditions are met (usually CO2 concentration) the entire system will flip into a new stable state. Recently it has flip-flopped between two stable states, but current conditions are completely new because this time it is humans who have caused the stable state to become unstable. The problem for the climatologists is that they are now quite certain that we have pumped more than enough CO2 into the atmosphere to make the current stable state unstable but because the system is chaotic and in a novel condition they are in no position to give a firm prediction as to what new stable state it will find. Therefore it is quite valid to say : "We have screwed up the climate and we can expect rapid and irreversible climate change which is certain to cause the human race very severe survival problems, but we cannot tell you precisely what is going to happen."
Click to expand...

I'm impressed. No sarcasm now. Really. You're quite right. I hope you don't get called a Nazi.

Except for the minor point that "gravitate" is not quite the right word. "Attracted to" is better, because the roughly stable states in chaotic systems are called "attractors."

In fact, the only people who are definately wrong are the ones who think nothing is going to happen regarding climate change.
Click to expand...

They're not definitely wrong, because equilibrium is a special case of chaos. Put in engineering terms, just knowing that there is feedback doesn't tell you whether it's positive or negative feedback. But they probably are.

The possibilities go all over the map. We might all die. We might all thrive and see the rainforests take over. We might be able to grow grapes in Chester again. We might not be able to grow grapes north of Costa Rica. Something's going to change.

All I can say so far is that in Tallahassee we're getting convective thunderstorms of the kind that used to be common in South Florida, and the big cockroaches are moving in during the summertime. So the line distinguishing the two different climates in Florida has moves about 30 miles to the North over the past 20 years.

The people who are definitely wrong are the people who are so convinced they know what to do to make it all better.

Let's not forget Mark Twain's observation:

Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and
`let on' to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had
occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in
the far future by what has occurred in late years, what an
opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact
data to argue from! Nor `development of species', either! Glacial
epochs are great things, but they are vague--vague. Please observe.
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower
Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles.
This is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year.
Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see
that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago
next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million
three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of
Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see
that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower
Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo
and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be
plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board
of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets
such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling
investment of fact.
Click to expand...
 
Kodiak, may I?

JustGeoff said:

Recently it has flip-flopped between two stable states, but current conditions are completely new because this time it is humans who have caused the stable state to become unstable. The problem for the climatologists is that they are now quite certain that we have pumped more than enough CO2 into the atmosphere to make the current stable state unstable...
Click to expand...

Evidence, please.

Not tree rings. Or CO2 amounts. Or gas bubbles in rocks.

Evidence that Humans caused this.

For all I know, we very well might have. BUT, someone needs to do the actual lab work to support the theory. Not directed at JustGeoff per se, but going on and on about things getting hotter is not getting the actual evidence of mechanisms of human-caused global warming.
 
bignickel said:
Evidence that Humans caused this.
Click to expand...

You're right, too, but I think it was a minor bit in a fairly decent paragraph by JustGeoff.[/B][/QUOTE]
 
bignickel said:
Kodiak, may I?



Evidence, please.

Not tree rings. Or CO2 amounts. Or gas bubbles in rocks.

Evidence that Humans caused this.

For all I know, we very well might have. BUT, someone needs to do the actual lab work to support the theory. Not directed at JustGeoff per se, but going on and on about things getting hotter is not getting the actual evidence of mechanisms of human-caused global warming.
Click to expand...

Again, these two links are ppt presentations from the IPCC. They cover just about every question raised here.

A Powerpoint presentation from the IPCC.

http://www.ipcc.ch/present/cop7/part2.ppt

Interesting. It points out that inertia is an important part of natural systems. That is, by the time half the change is apparent, it may be too late to prevent the rest of the change from happening.

http://www.ipcc.ch/present/cop7/part3.ppt


These two links again. For example.

One of them has a chart of where the expected temperature variations will be. Shanek has accused proGW of cherry picking. That is exactly what you are doing. Except in this case, you have one measurement you think invalidates a whole, broad spectrum of research.
 
Actually, no. I haven't got around to it. I've been busy with the gay marriage thread. And busy at work.

But I'll get around to it.
 
I just read the 2 presentations.

Waste of 10 minutes of my life, and I want those minutes back AUP!!!

Aw forget it, I'd just waste em again.


Both of those powerpoint presentations can be summed up in one sentense "POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC"

Once again, I've ASKED you for evidence that mankind is responsible for global warming.

And you've given us 2 links that show things are getting warmer. NO SH#T! Really?

I'm not ASKING for info that things are getting hotter. I'm ASKING for info that MANKIND is changing the weather. Give me all the damn CO2 emissions charts you want - IT DOESN'T MATTER.

If you see me pouring a canister of salt in the sea, and then taste the saltwater, and yell at me for causing the sea to become saltier... what am I to think?

What annoys me to no end is that you may be right, and we may be screwing up the environment. BUT you're not bringing me any PROOF! Grrrr...
 
Man is doing this man is doing that.. blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda


They can't even show that global warming is 'bad' let alone that man is causing it.

Blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda
 
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