tsig
a carbon based life-form
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So you're not convinced but you don't want to argue you just want to tell the other poster they're wrong.
Sounds more like you just don't want to hear any facts.
Merged Global Warming Discussion II: Heated Conversation
- Thread starter batvette
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So you're not convinced but you don't want to argue you just want to tell the other poster they're wrong.
Sounds more like you just don't want to hear any facts.
aleCcowaN
imperfecto del subjuntivo
Lomiller has put it very clearly in post #6 ** . It depends on your grasp of 'energy in different wavelengths' to ask us to develop that explanation further. People concern with AGW find necessary to move towards a better knowledge on the subject. Deniers move to dialectics.
** (of today 8:40pm GMT, just in case this ends up elsewhere)
We can't change our behaviour and we won't. All creatures presented with abundant food (in our case, fossil fuels) will eat it and reproduce until it is all gone. Humans are not as different from other animals as we might like to think.
aleCcowaN
imperfecto del subjuntivo
Maybe ... but that was like saying that, by their own nature, humans who are presented pot and moonshine -which are indeed food, unlike fossil fuels- are bound to smoke and drink until all of them is gone.
Some of them will do that (or drive a AWD vehicle by a well paved boulevard), but not "the species". So let's be a little less deterministic.
macdoc
Philosopher
We can't change behaviour and won't....pardon my laughter
I took this photo today
It shows the largest single emitter of C02 in North America - now mothballed ( you can see the coal still mounded ).
Framed by the size large windmills that now feed the grid instead.
Ontario is one of the larger economies in the world and went from 25% coal to ZERO in 10 years.
Yes we can change and are....your conjecture is wrong.
I took this photo today
It shows the largest single emitter of C02 in North America - now mothballed ( you can see the coal still mounded ).
Framed by the size large windmills that now feed the grid instead.
Ontario is one of the larger economies in the world and went from 25% coal to ZERO in 10 years.
Yes we can change and are....your conjecture is wrong.
I've been trying to find this out for 10 years now: What is the CO2 footprint of a windmill?
I'm currently helping construct a wind farm. I can assure you, it isn't 0. The number of pieces of heavy construction equipment is astounding, as is the amount of earth being moved. Sure, it's probably not comperable to the CO2 output of a coal power plant, but still.
Secondly, the amount of terrain destroyed in the making of a wind farm is simply stupendous. Global warming is one thing; habitat fragmentation and the proliferation of edge habitat is another, as is the destruction of endangered species due to the construction of new routes into their territory (check out an EIR/EIS of any turbine farm in California for a full discussion).
I'm currently helping construct a wind farm. I can assure you, it isn't 0. The number of pieces of heavy construction equipment is astounding, as is the amount of earth being moved. Sure, it's probably not comperable to the CO2 output of a coal power plant, but still.
Secondly, the amount of terrain destroyed in the making of a wind farm is simply stupendous. Global warming is one thing; habitat fragmentation and the proliferation of edge habitat is another, as is the destruction of endangered species due to the construction of new routes into their territory (check out an EIR/EIS of any turbine farm in California for a full discussion).
This is far from true. The biological reality is that any species will increase in population until it reaches carrying capacity, as determined by the presence of one or more limiting factors. Food is certainly a big one, but it's not the only one. Sea urchins, for example, are in some cases limited by the presence of predators. So ignoring the emotionally charged questions, your argument is wrong from a biological perspective.JihadJane said:
Olowkow
Philosopher
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Someone posted this graphic in another thread, and I thought it was informative. Too bad it only goes back to 1970. The "hockey stick" goes to 1900, I think.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Escalator_2012_1024.gif
And the deniers' arguments: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
Note "skeptics" is in scare quotes, meaning those who doubt global climate change.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Escalator_2012_1024.gif
And the deniers' arguments: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
Note "skeptics" is in scare quotes, meaning those who doubt global climate change.
RandyN
Banned
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I thought they caused a hole in the ozone? Shouldn't we go back to releasing freon and creating a bigger hole to let all this heat escape thru it?
There problem solved. Next?
Aerosols reflect sunlight. Chloroflorocarbons (CFCs) destroy ozone mollecules. As I recall, CFCs were used in aerosol cans for a while--they've got some useful properties, after all.
Olowkow, that graph is objectively wrong. Both views ignore the very real issues involved in the variation. The temperature is bouncing all over the place in that graph. WHY the temperature is bouncing is an important question. Both trends are oversimplifications of a phenomenon that is incredibly complex. It's not, in my mind, sufficient to say that there's a trend. There are obviously trends within the moving average much more complex than simply "The temperature goes up".
Secondly, if we're going to talk graphs, an interesting one to look at is Zachos et al., 2001, Figure 2. It's freely available on Google. There are a number of interesting aspects of it, but the one that strikes me most is that outside of the recent (perhaps current) glacial period the world has long been far warmer than it is now. Yes, transitions tend to suck when you're talking about ecological paradigms. That said, we're not entirely sure what happens when our planet leaves an ice age. Humans may in fact mererly be providing the final push to get our planet back to what is really the normal state for it, temperature-wise.
Note that I'm not saying anything one way or another about whether this is a good idea or not. I am solely basing this speculation on the data in Zachos et al., 2001, and my knowledge of paleoclimatology, and solely discussing THERMAL normality. Ecological normality is an entirely different question, one that requires an entirely different dataset.
Olowkow, that graph is objectively wrong. Both views ignore the very real issues involved in the variation. The temperature is bouncing all over the place in that graph. WHY the temperature is bouncing is an important question. Both trends are oversimplifications of a phenomenon that is incredibly complex. It's not, in my mind, sufficient to say that there's a trend. There are obviously trends within the moving average much more complex than simply "The temperature goes up".
Secondly, if we're going to talk graphs, an interesting one to look at is Zachos et al., 2001, Figure 2. It's freely available on Google. There are a number of interesting aspects of it, but the one that strikes me most is that outside of the recent (perhaps current) glacial period the world has long been far warmer than it is now. Yes, transitions tend to suck when you're talking about ecological paradigms. That said, we're not entirely sure what happens when our planet leaves an ice age. Humans may in fact mererly be providing the final push to get our planet back to what is really the normal state for it, temperature-wise.
Note that I'm not saying anything one way or another about whether this is a good idea or not. I am solely basing this speculation on the data in Zachos et al., 2001, and my knowledge of paleoclimatology, and solely discussing THERMAL normality. Ecological normality is an entirely different question, one that requires an entirely different dataset.
Roger Ramjets
Philosopher
Of course not! But even though we are part of Nature, what we produce with technology is not.
Definition of Man-made:
American Heritage® Dictionary:
Made by humans rather than occurring in nature; synthetic:
Collins English Dictionary:
made or produced by man; artificial
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary:
produced, formed, or made by humans; not resulting from natural processes.
That which is 'man-made' is by definition not natural. If we are producing disruptive climate change then it is up to us to fix it. We cannot get out of our responsibilities by claiming that it is 'natural'.
Yes, that might work - if enough of us die of skin cancer due to the extra UV radiation. Fewer people = less AGW - problem solved!RandyN said:
Indeed, it took a billion years or so for the Earth's surface to cool below the temperature of molten rock. Ah, for the good old days!Dinwar said:
All climate change is natural. However, everything so far indicates that human industrialization has the biggest impact on the climate by far and most studies indicates that if the status quo continues this will make the earth more inhospitable for a lot of people and by extension a lot of other life forms.
"Natural" vs "unnatural" climate change is a retarded red herring.
"Natural" vs "unnatural" climate change is a retarded red herring.
scientific debate or antiscience roadshow?
i'd suggest you find out if your are debating an anti-science denier (someone arguing from the conclusions to the facts) or someone who just hangs on to a few selective facts hoping "it ain't so" but opening to learn what the science implies.
i sometimes find it very hard to tell (as in: i still get it wrong too often).
some things really are uncertain, others are as clear as it gets. if your friend is willing to take a risk management perspective and walk to the end of each argument you can have a good debate; hopefully it will soon focus on the things that really are uncertain... if they demand "certainty before action" and jump from one argument to another, you're likely to find it a style vs substance debate. i find those frustrating; they certainly require a different debating style, both aims and means.
of course if you have an audience to inform...
i'd suggest you find out if your are debating an anti-science denier (someone arguing from the conclusions to the facts) or someone who just hangs on to a few selective facts hoping "it ain't so" but opening to learn what the science implies.
i sometimes find it very hard to tell (as in: i still get it wrong too often).
some things really are uncertain, others are as clear as it gets. if your friend is willing to take a risk management perspective and walk to the end of each argument you can have a good debate; hopefully it will soon focus on the things that really are uncertain... if they demand "certainty before action" and jump from one argument to another, you're likely to find it a style vs substance debate. i find those frustrating; they certainly require a different debating style, both aims and means.
of course if you have an audience to inform...
aggle-rithm
Ardent Formulist
There has been at least one instance of a species poisoning the planet and wiping itself out (anaerobic microorganisms producing too much oxygen), and there are probably other examples as well. However, I'm fairly sure we're the first species that has any insight into the consequences of what we're doing before it happens.
aleCcowaN
imperfecto del subjuntivo
Since you are 19? It's not so difficult to estimate an upper limit and an order of magnitude.
Probably is not an order of magnitude. Stupendous is not a figure.
Why don't you ask the moderators to move your posts to a new thread about "devilish windmills" instead of branching off from actual topic of manmade versus natural global warming? That way I'll be able to answer your questions and refute your arguments.
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a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
In geological and climate terms, the current change is unusually rapid, even though in human terms, it's going to be a few generations and apparently 'slow'.
He might be both. But I'm certain he's an AGW denier.
It's not he I care to persuade; it is the audience. More importantly though I'm attempting to show how people in general and this one in particular ignore and twist for their own position and benefit data they don't like.
Here's a look at one post of his. He himself has never defined the categories listed below yet expects me to. I suspect his plot is this. If I can't explain this red herring he's setup then climate change is not real.
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I'm familiar with this site but I did not remember it. Thanks for the link.
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
What evidence do you have that it is mostly not from burning fossil fuels? The last ten years has seen the melting of permafrost which does release methane, but the increase of CO2 started 150 years before then.
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