<50% of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory

[CDNBear]

If you listen to serious scientists, they do not say it is all our fault. They say that in the realms of probability, based on available data, it is most likely that at least half of the observed warming is our fault. Not a concrete statement by any means, there is much science left to discover, but at this point, we know we are the largest single contributor. There is no new science coming out which can dispute that. You're right that I have disputed the solar argument, because total measured irradiance does not fit. If a major groundbreaking study were to be released with solid evidence that proves otherwise to the anthropogenic argument, I'll humbly sing a different tune. Until that time, if indeed such a time exists, I have to throw my support to the multiple streams of data which currently point the finger at us.

What I support is less corporate handouts to dirty technology. Coal is only cheap due to subsidies. To lock into new plants for 40-60 years when renewables will be cost competitive on a $/MW basis within the next decades is fool hearty. The coal industry has yet to demonstrate that the carbon can be sequestered reliably, most definitely not cheaply. Once electrical production is made renewable, efficient and clean, it will be much easier to drag the transport industry along. I'm happy to say that wind is already growing by leaps and bounds, without much help from government. If the government were willing to work with renewables like they do with the dirty energy producers, well that would be peachy.

Ton, if you look at all my posts on this, I do not challenge serious scientists...I challenge that of people like Gore and Suzuki, both of which have shown less then a lack luster display of debatable intellectual consistancy.

I do agree that we are not blameless, but like I said, we need less hyperbole and more real science and even more realistic answers.

 

[Tonington]

Gore and Suzuki are some of the heavy hitters for sure, and I would lump them into the same category as fellas like Chrichton. Speaks volumes about this age we live in when editorializing masquerades as the truth doesn't it?

There are realistic answers, though there's a mountain of lobbyists to climb over first.

 

[#juan]

:lol:Actually, it's more like the kind of film a grade 8 student would make. Gore was wrong on almost all the so called science he used. Like those two huge graphs he used to show how CO2 preceded temperature increase over the last 400,000 years or so. But he didn't superimpose them, something that is invariably done when you want to make such comparisons. I wonder why. Actually I don't wonder. I know why. They would show the opposite, that global warming precedes CO2 increases every time. If he'd done that, he wouldn't have been able to make the movie.

Here's what it would have looked like:

One thing that chart shows that is obviously clear, and that is that global temperatures and CO2 concentrations are definitely related. That direct relationship is really all the chart shows at this scale. It would be stupid to suggest that rising global temperatures somehow caused man to dump eight trillion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. Could it be that all that carbon caused the rise in temperature? Oh no, that would be evil.

 

[Extrafire]

One thing that chart shows that is obviously clear, and that is that global temperatures and CO2 concentrations are definitely related.

Yup. Undeniable.

That direct relationship is really all the chart shows at this scale.

Nope. Although on this forum the scale is quite small, it clearly shows temperatures preceding CO2 every time.

It would be stupid to suggest that rising global temperatures somehow caused man to dump eight trillion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.

Yes, that would be stupid, but then, no-one has ever made such a ridiculous suggestion, have they?

Could it be that all that carbon caused the rise in temperature?

Obviously not. Since nature dumps immensely more CO2 into the atmosphere, and has in the past, and it didn't cause any global warming then, so why would mankind's puny contribution make a difference now?

Oh no, that would be evil.

What would be evil??? Dumping CO2 into the air? No that wouldn't be evil. Suggesting that human CO2 causes global warming? No, I wouldn't call that evil either, although it would be dishonest.

 

[#juan]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]CO2 is building up in our air
[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Graphic Source: A Primer on Climate Change (from Environment Canada) [/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]There has been a rise of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) concentration in the earth's atmosphere of around 20% since the beginning of global industrialization.

The rise in concentration is directly related to the rate of CO2 emissions. Anything you can do to reduce CO2 emissions will directly effect the concentration of this gas, albeit in a small way.

CO2 is a naturally occuring gas. Plants need it to live and grow. But over billions of years, plants have used and trapped a large portion of the CO2 in the earth's atmosphere. As the plants turned into oil and coal, the CO2 was trapped underground.

Humans evolved in the last few million years, in an environment with reduced CO2 concentration. Modern use of oil, coal, natural gas, etc. is releasing this trapped CO2 back into the atmosphere, undoing millions of years of nature's work every year.

I know, there's the old hockey stick again. Eight trillion tons of CO2 is not insignificant.



[/FONT]

 

[Extrafire]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]CO2 is building up in our air
[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Graphic Source: A Primer on Climate Change (from Environment Canada) [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]There has been a rise of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) concentration in the earth's atmosphere of around 20% since the beginning of global industrialization.

The rise in concentration is directly related to the rate of CO2 emissions. Anything you can do to reduce CO2 emissions will directly effect the concentration of this gas, albeit in a small way.

CO2 is a naturally occuring gas. Plants need it to live and grow. But over billions of years, plants have used and trapped a large portion of the CO2 in the earth's atmosphere. As the plants turned into oil and coal, the CO2 was trapped underground.

Humans evolved in the last few million years, in an environment with reduced CO2 concentration. Modern use of oil, coal, natural gas, etc. is releasing this trapped CO2 back into the atmosphere, undoing millions of years of nature's work every year.

I know, there's the old hockey stick again. Eight trillion tons of CO2 is not insignificant.
[/FONT]

It is when it's a tiny fraction of the total. If you'd superimpose a temperature graph on top of that you'd see that temperatures don't follow CO2 concentrations. Instead, as we've already discussed, CO2 increases follow temperature increases by +-800 years, and 800 years before that big upswing in CO2 was, you guessed it, the medieval warm period.

 

[s243a]

I would hope not, because then most of our modern science is wrong.

If putting a greenhouse gas in the air, doesn't increase temperatures, then many of our high tech heating and cooling systems must surely be running on pure liquid magic,

And who know's how long our magic reserves will last.


Why is this science verifiabley true until it results in someone having to change their own lazy behaviour? Then despite working examples in use, it is false.

"Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true."
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7915

 

[Extrafire]

If you listen to serious scientists, they do not say it is all our fault. They say that in the realms of probability, based on available data, it is most likely that at least half of the observed warming is our fault.

Actually serious scientists say human contribution is insignificant. But I'm glad that you've accepted the natural variations of nature somewhat.

Not a concrete statement by any means, there is much science left to discover, but at this point, we know we are the largest single contributor. There is no new science coming out which can dispute that. You're right that I have disputed the solar argument, because total measured irradiance does not fit. If a major groundbreaking study were to be released with solid evidence that proves otherwise to the anthropogenic argument, I'll humbly sing a different tune.

No you won't. The evidence for natural causes is overwhelming. Why would more supporting evidence change your mind?

What I support is less corporate handouts to dirty technology. Coal is only cheap due to subsidies.

Coal is subsidized? That's a new one. It was subsidized in socialist countries (like Britain until Maggie Thatcher ended that) and eastern Europe, but not here.

To lock into new plants for 40-60 years when renewables will be cost competitive on a $/MW basis within the next decades is fool hearty. The coal industry has yet to demonstrate that the carbon can be sequestered reliably, most definitely not cheaply.

It's actually being done quite effectively and cost effectively too. And now there's a scientist in the US who's developed a system for scrubbing everything out of the emissions, not just the CO2 but the harmful stuff too, like radon. (I can't remember where that article was so I can't link to it, sorry.)

Once electrical production is made renewable, efficient and clean, it will be much easier to drag the transport industry along. I'm happy to say that wind is already growing by leaps and bounds, without much help from government. If the government were willing to work with renewables like they do with the dirty energy producers, well that would be peachy.

Renewables are heavily subsidized, including research, but they aren't the answer. The future lies with nuclear, and electric cars like the Tesla

and hopefully in the future, something like cold fusion will make unlimited energy available world wide. Until then, we're stuck with fossil fuels.

 

[karrie]

If putting a greenhouse gas in the air, doesn't increase temperatures, then many of our high tech heating and cooling systems must surely be running on pure liquid magic,

And who know's how long our magic reserves will last.

Zzarchov, do me a fave, and make that your signature would you? That was pure genius.

 

[s243a]

Zzarchov, do me a fave, and make that your signature would you? That was pure genius.

It's a strawman.

 

[karrie]

Oh, I could care less how it plays into the debate. It was a hilarious remark, and wonderfully written.

It had a Douglas Adams sort of air to it. A dry, technical remark that bowls you over at the end.

I positively loved it.

 

[Extrafire]

Actually it makes no sense so I ignored it. How does putting greenhouse gasses into the air have anything at all to do with now heating and cooling technology works?

 

[#juan]

What we know for a fact, is that the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere has gone up by twenty percent since the industrial revolution started in the late seventeen hundreds. The big increases have been in the last fifty years or so. Temperatures are also going up. Ten of the hottest years on record have been in the last fourteen years. I know this is all old hat but do we want to just leave it for our children and grandchildren to deal with? If the CO2 levels and temperatures climb as much in the next thirty years as they have in the last thirty years, we might wish to hell that we had started doing something about it a long time ago.

 

[CDNBear]

Gore and Suzuki are some of the heavy hitters for sure, and I would lump them into the same category as fellas like Chrichton. Speaks volumes about this age we live in when editorializing masquerades as the truth doesn't it?

Pretty much...hence my aggressive stance Ton...

There are realistic answers, though there's a mountain of lobbyists to climb over first.

Trying to debate them with people who follow the doctrine of said snake oile salesmen...Is...well...near impossible.

What we know for a fact, is that the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere has gone up by twenty percent since the industrial revolution started in the late seventeen hundreds. The big increases have been in the last fifty years or so. Temperatures are also going up. Ten of the hottest years on record have been in the last fourteen years. I know this is all old hat but do we want to just leave it for our children and grandchildren to deal with? If the CO2 levels and temperatures climb as much in the next thirty years as they have in the last thirty years, we might wish to hell that we had started doing something about it a long time ago.

And I totally agree, we should be doing something on a grand scale to reduce our impact on the environment...But the schemes and freakish sideshows touted by the pompous wind bags of suedo science...(read AlBore...Suzuki and so on), would leave our kids and grandkids with a crumbling economy and a depression that would make the last one look like a simple market fluxuation.

Bit by all means, lets clean things up...everything for taht matter...from lakes and rivers to the ground and skies...

Nothing wrong with that thinking juan.

 

[#juan]

The Tesla car outfit has made all kinds of wild statements about performance that are just not achievable with current technology. They are looking for investors and these numbers are a hoax. You might be able to build an electric car that will accelerate to 60 miles an hour in 4 seconds.and you might conceivably build an electric car that will go 250 miles on a charge, but they won't be the same car.

 

[Zzarchov]

Actually it makes no sense so I ignored it. How does putting greenhouse gasses into the air have anything at all to do with now heating and cooling technology works?

Because there are heating and cooling technologies that use the same concepts in practical applications. The fact that some substances absorb short wave and long wave radiation at different rates is used in many applications for temperature control. Greenhouse gas in the atmosphere will make the temperature rise, thats why Venus is warmer than Mercury (which is closer to the sun).

Whether or not human activity is the main cause is kinda silly. Thats like saying that you shouldn't put out a fire in your kitchen, because your not sure if THATS the fire thats making the smoke detector go off.

Either put out the fire, or if you really think its useless, change your environment (ie leave the burning house).


So if the earth is warming, we can either lay off Greenhouse gas emission and hope that works, or dismantle our coastal and low lying cities and begin prep work to irrigate large tracts of arctic land because you believe the warming is out of our hands.

But sitting around doing the status quo is stupid. If what your doing now is slowly failing, continuing to do it longer won't make it magically work.

 

[Walter]

. Ten of the hottest years on record have been in the last fourteen years.

You missed this.


Steve McIntyre, of Toronto operates www.climateaudit.org and began to investigate the data and the methods used to arrive at the results that were graphed by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).
What he discovered was truly amazing. Since NASA does not fully publish the computer source code and formulae used to calculate the trends in the graph, nor the correction used to arrive at the "corrected" data. He had to reverse engineer the process by comparing the raw data and the processed data..
Here is one of his first posts where he begins to understand what is happening. "This imparts an upward discontinuity of a deg C in wintertime and 0.8 deg C annually. I checked the monthly data and determined that the discontinuity occurred on January 2000 - and, to that extent, appears to be a Y2K problem. I presume that this is a programming error."
He further refines his argument showing the distribution of the error, and the problems with the USHCN temperature data. He also sends an email to NASA GISS advising of the problem.
He finally publishes it here, stating that NASA made a correction not only on their own web page, attributing the discovery to McIntyre, but NASA also issued a corrected set of temperature anomaly data which you can see here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt
Steve McIntyre posted this data from NASA's newly published data set from Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) These numbers represent deviation from the mean temperature calculated from temperature measurement stations throughout the USA.
According to the new data published by NASA, 1998 is no longer the hottest year ever. 1934 is.
Four of the top 10 years of US CONUS high temperature deviations are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900. (World rankings of temperature are calculated separately.)

 

[Tonington]

So now the continental US temperature record switches the top places, with 1934 at 1.25 degrees above mean, and 1998 1.23 above mean. Long term means are unchanged in rankings. 2002-2006 is still warmer at 0.66 compared to 1930-1934 at 0.63.

Also for the umpteenth time, this is continental US temperatures, not global averages, in which case 2005 is warmest.

 

[#juan]

This argument is getting downright foolish. Anyone who still thinks that humans can't negatively affect the world are in sad need of help. Mean global temperatures are published every year. There is more than enough information to show the relationship between the concentration of CO2 and global temperatures. Man has almost destroyed the world fishing industry. Man-made acid rain is destroying forests in the east. Global warming is giving the Pine Beetle more and more access to our forests every year as well as destroying the habitat of seals and Polar bears. I would say it is time to take this global warming thing seriously.

 

[Walter]

Anyone who still thinks that humans can't negatively affect the world are in sad need of help.

Ad hominem attacks don't help your arguement.