Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Trakar]

Earth's Hot Past: Prologue to Future Climate?National Science Foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=118363&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click

excerpt:

View a video interview with Jeff Kiehl of UCAR.

The magnitude of climate change during Earth's deep past suggests that future temperatures may eventually rise far more than projected if society continues its pace of emitting greenhouse gases, a new analysis concludes.

The study, by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Jeffrey Kiehl, will appear as a "Perspectives" article in this week's issue of the journal Science.

The work was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), NCAR's sponsor.

Building on recent research, the study examines the relationship between global temperatures and high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere tens of millions of years ago.

It warns that, if carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current rate through the end of this century, atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas will reach levels that existed about 30 million to 100 million years ago.

Global temperatures then averaged about 29 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels...

 

[FattyCatty]

This article in The New York Times talks about some of the effects of AGW, now and in the future.

Over the next 100 years, many scientists predict, 20 percent to 30 percent of species could be lost if the temperature rises 3.6 degrees to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. If the most extreme warming predictions are realized, the loss could be over 50 percent, according to the United Nations climate change panel.

Polar bears have become the icons of this climate threat. But scientists say that tens of thousands of smaller species that live in the tropics or on or near mountaintops are equally, if not more, vulnerable. These species, in habitats from the high plateaus of Africa to the jungles of Australia to the Sierra Nevada in the United States, are already experiencing climate pressures, and will be the bulk of the animals that disappear.

How can anyone deny AGW in the face of the evidence in many different areas (changes in the oceans, in animal habitats, in severe weather, etc.)?

 

[Warmer1]

"How can anyone deny AGW in the face of the evidence in many different areas (changes in the oceans, in animal habitats, in severe weather, etc.)?"

The fact that one of the two political parties in this country lies about it shows how corrupt politics has become. How much did that cost? How many lobbyists did it take?

 

[Warmer1]

I should back up my claims.

Get the anti-science bent out of politics
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/07/AR2010100705484_pf.html


Scientists decry political assaults on climate researchers
from
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/may/climate-051210.html

"Statements by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), accusing climate scientists of fraud and calling 17 of them – including Schneider – potential “criminals”, helped provoke the response, Schneider said. "I have never seen my staid colleagues so angry," he said."



From the Cancun Climate conference.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/en...ncun-Climate-Change-Conference-the-Diary.html

Saturday, December 4
• The sceptics have arrived in town and they are 'having a tea party'. Americans For Prosperity have been holding meetings and talks around the resort.
The group say they want to draw attention to the 'bureaucrats gone mad' who threaten to impose taxes on the world to pay for the 'myth' of climate change.
Jim Inhofe, a Republican Senator from Oklahoma and 'top watchdog of the Obama Administration’s global warming agenda' addressed around 60 delegates via video link. He pledged to stop the march of big government and 'restore the Americandream'.
[snip]
However compared to the thousands of non-governmental organisations and delegates all discussing the threat of global warming and the possible solutions, it is a relatively small voice.



There were comments at the conference that the Republican Party was dishonest but I couldn't find the link.

 

[Furcifer]

Good news? Bad news? I don't know, all I know is the IPCC got it wrong.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1107174.ece

"In fact, the contribution of decreasing cosmic ray activity to climate change is almost 40 per cent, argues Dr. Rao in a paper which has been accepted for publication in Current Science, the preeminent Indian science journal. The IPCC model, on the other hand, says that the contribution of carbon emissions is over 90 per cent. "

More evidence of how much the science is lacking when it comes to climate change.

 

[Stray Cat]

I spent a lot of years actively involved in politics, and this is how it works on any controversial subject. You don't like it, you need to have a dictatorship.

You're not the only one who has been actively involved in politics.
It was my interest/involvement in politics that informed me of their dishonesty.
To suggest a dictatorship is just ridiculous, they are always even more dishonest than a democracies.

It was Churchill (not the cartoon dog that sells insurance) that said:
"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried"

For you to say "This is how it works" is defeatist and it makes you just as corrupt as they are for condoning it. Your assertion that politicians need to fly half way round the world regularly in vast numbers seems to suggest that they couldn't possibly make any secret deals without doing so. Which is incorrect.

 

[Stray Cat]

If this is accurate, then where do these statements of yours come from:...[sniped for brevity]...

So are you denying natural climate change? (as a reality notwithstanding that humans have added drastically to it over the last 100 years)
If not, how is what I have said wrong?

It discourages the use of plastic carrier bags and encourages people to find alternatives. Of course the best approach would probably just involve an out right banning of such uses, but I've no real objection to employing market strategies to encourage people to do the right thing rather than simply narrowing thier choices and options.

Again you miss the point. Something positive could be done without "narrowing people's choices". But to introduce a small charge for a carrier bag that is the same pollutant is not the best way forward from an environmental PoV. As the environment is cited as the reason for introducing the charge, and we are all agreed that the environmental issue is of paramount importance, why not take direct action to combat the problem instead of simply finding a way to make more money? Money that then disappears into the system (because it's not ring fenced) and for all we know is being used to bail banks out or fly politicians half way round the world to climate change conferences!

Again, you seem repleat with many confusions and misunderstandings on this topic, I have offered you information and tried to explain why your statements are inaccurate but you reject these seemingly without consideration. Please feel free to present references which support your contentions as in accord with mainstream science and understandings.

I'm sure you have a need to somehow be clever than me and to show that you know more than me. But the best way of doing that would be to first acknowledge my actual PoV instead of trying to misrepresent it. You had me painted as an AGW denier from the get go and you've been trying to prove it ever since. Sadly you're wrong in your assumption so while you continue to tilt at windmills your vast scientific knowledge is rather pointless.

 

[CapelDodger]

What I take exception to is the way politicians are handling the subject ...

Don't we all, particularly right-wing politicans, who have tried to politicise the science from the get-go, and concentrate their fire on the scientists involved. The shade of McCarthy is abroad in the halls of the US Congress again.

But you should take it to the Politics Forum.

 

[CapelDodger]

This article in The New York Times talks about some of the effects of AGW, now and in the future.
How can anyone deny AGW in the face of the evidence in many different areas (changes in the oceans, in animal habitats, in severe weather, etc.)?

How can people still believe in the Hollow Earth? But some do. Naturally, for them the truth is being hidden by some Grand Expanding Conspiracy.

AGW denial is firmly on the same path, but the cult will have a long tail-off, and the conspiracy will expand asymptotically towards the point where everybody's in it. The solipsistic singularity.

 

[CapelDodger]

Ah, so if they disagree or deny they are "corrupt fossil fuel people with lots of money".... right, I got it now.

That, of course, is not what was said. You surely won't deny that professional liers are working for fossil-fuel money on a very high-profile campaign to paint climate science as doubtful and climate scientists as corrupt? Look no further than Morano. And when Smokin' Fred Singer turns up on a case you know there's a real problem, and the industry involved knows it from their own scientists. You don't call on Singer if the science is actually wrong.

Singer was in on the denialist lie-machine before most people had even heard of AGW. Fossil-fuel interests knew full well that this wasn't going to go away and they mobilised early.

Of course no-one claims it's just fossil-money that's corrupting the subject. There's the Murdoch press as well, for a start, and no end of emeritus professors who denied AGW would happen decades ago and will take their belief in themselves to their graves. As it's said, funeral by funeral science progresses. Lindzen and Spener stick to their low sensitivity hypotheses even as the real, higher sensitivity is demonstrated all around them.

And who are they actually corrupting with their agendas and lots of money?
Oh the honest, poverty stricken politicians who whisper in corners plotting against them at climate change conferences (after flying halfway round the world in jet airplanes to get there).

No, they've corrupted (or outright taken over) the US Republican Party as just one example.

You don't see the problem here? What you are saying is on the verge of, if not complete Conspiracy Theory.

A Grand Conspiracy is ever-expanding and ever-hidden. The propaganda and pol-purchasing/terrorising efforts of the Murdoch Press and the Koch family's astro-turf organisations are not even barely concealed, and the conspiracy doesn't need to expand. The politicians you should look at are in control of the US House of Representatives now, and have an arm-lock on the Senate.

That's just the US, of course. In the UK we have Murdoch press, but also the Daily Mail, the Express, and the Torygraph titles pushing the same lies. Fortunately only UKIP and the BNP are denier parties, and they are thoroughly marginal. I hear it's worse in Canada and Australia.

Best we stick to the science, I think. And since you agree on that, what more's to be said here? Plenty in Politics, of course, but nothing here.

 

[Stray Cat]

Don't we all, particularly right-wing politicans, who have tried to politicise the science from the get-go, and concentrate their fire on the scientists involved. The shade of McCarthy is abroad in the halls of the US Congress again.

But you should take it to the Politics Forum.

No set of politicians (either denier cranks nor AGW proponents) are handling the subject in a sensible manner.
The end result put forward should be a concise, accurate message that leaves no doubt in people's minds about it's reality and informs people correctly about what needs to be done.

At the moment, this message is confused and too easily wrapped up in a fog of confusion that does it no favours.

But yes you're right, it is probably better in the politics forum (where I rarely venture).
In fact I didn't originally post in the science forum but as the OP in the thread I replied to was only moved to here after I had responded to it, I was kinda dragged here.

 

[Trakar]

So are you denying natural climate change? (as a reality notwithstanding that humans have added drastically to it over the last 100 years)
If not, how is what I have said wrong?

I have already explained what was wrong and given linked sources to the detailed explanations and cites. As you have stated that you are uninterested in learning that which you apparently do not understand, I am having a hard time taking your protestations as anything more than a disingenuous affectations.

 

[Trakar]

Good news? Bad news? I don't know, all I know is the IPCC got it wrong.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1107174.ece

"In fact, the contribution of decreasing cosmic ray activity to climate change is almost 40 per cent, argues Dr. Rao in a paper which has been accepted for publication in Current Science, the preeminent Indian science journal. The IPCC model, on the other hand, says that the contribution of carbon emissions is over 90 per cent. "

More evidence of how much the science is lacking when it comes to climate change.

opening line of the email to the editor opinion piece cited:

A key belief of climate science theology — that a reduction in carbon emissions will take care of the bulk of global warming — has been questioned in a scientific paper released by the Environment Ministry on Monday...

"Climate science theology"!?!?

Really!?

The standards of what passes for science in some societies is truely amazing, but given some of the arguments and tantrums witnessed in this very thread, probably shouldn't be considered inordinately peculiar.

 

[Furcifer]

A Grand Conspiracy is ever-expanding and ever-hidden. The propaganda and pol-purchasing/terrorising efforts of the Murdoch Press and the Koch family's astro-turf organisations are not even barely concealed, and the conspiracy doesn't need to expand. The politicians you should look at are in control of the US House of Representatives now, and have an arm-lock on the Senate.

lol, the money spent on "denialist propaganda" isn't enough to keep fresh cut flowers in the reception rooms at the institutes and foundations making money off of AGW hysteria.
Carbon is poised to become the single largest traded commodity in the world. A single days trading in 10 years could net the broker $23 million. $23 million may sound like a lot of money, but in this game it isn't even peanuts. It probably cost closer to $100 million for the last climate conference in Mexico.

 

[Furcifer]

"Climate science theology"!?!?

Really!?

The standards of what passes for science in some societies is truely amazing, but given some of the arguments and tantrums witnessed in this very thread, probably shouldn't be considered inordinately peculiar.

You'll probably find more and more people referring to it as a theology. The vocal AGW proponents are cult like in the sense that they only seem to care about making people "believe". And much like with religion, the threat of not believing is damnation. Not eternally mind you, but certainly a living hell on Earth.

 

[zooterkin]

lol, the money spent on "denialist propaganda" isn't enough to keep fresh cut flowers in the reception rooms at the institutes and foundations making money off of AGW hysteria.

Argumentum ad floristum?

 

[BenBurch]

The minute you start calling scientific consensus a "theology" you have lost any claim to be making a scientific argument, because that is an Ad hominem.

 

[Furcifer]

Calling the AGW doctrine a "theology" is ad hom, but calling people who disagree "denialists" isn't?

I'm not sure calling AGW a theology is technically an ad hominem, it's not directed at a person. Calling a Christian garbage is an ad hominem but calling Christianity garbage isn't.

Given the fact that AGW is based in the faith that predictions of biblical proportions (sea levels rising) in a book (AR4) by an unseen force (CO2), calling it a theology is technically correct. "Green" is the new god. We pay alms to "Green" in the form of taxes, we are told to go to "Green" and make "Green" a part of our daily lives to make the world a nicer place.

The number of similarities to religion are certainly enough to warrant calling AGW a theology.

 

[Trakar]

You'll probably find more and more people referring to it as a theology. The vocal AGW proponents are cult like in the sense that they only seem to care about making people "believe". And much like with religion, the threat of not believing is damnation. Not eternally mind you, but certainly a living hell on Earth.

Like with most pseudoscience flapdoodlery, belief is largely irrelevent to the reality represented by climate change science and understanding. Most polls indicate that a majority of people believe in alien visitation and abductions, this has little to do with the reality of the situation. I care not whether you believe in the dangers your "considerations" and opinions represent to humanity, in fact it will be much easier for the rest of us to survive and accomplish what we must, as these meet the fate their beliefs have led them to.

 

[Trakar]

The minute you start calling scientific consensus a "theology" you have lost any claim to be making a scientific argument, because that is an Ad hominem.

Actually, its probably closer to "poisoning the well," but the main issue is that it is quite simply and demonstrably wrong.