Global Warming?

[Tonington]

For all the sarcasm and cynicism, I have yet to see anyone show how the data is flawed, without a futile tit-for-tat graph war.

Show me how the IPCC data is unreliable. From where I'm sitting a 95% confidence interval beats 25% every time, maybe 1/20 it's wrong. Better than 3/4 it's wrong it's wrong. I'd go all-in with IPCC's hand.

 

[eh1eh]

That is a good vid crit13. I took the time to watch it a couple of weeks ago and posted it in another global warming thread. I can't find, (there are so many), but after watching this I have come to a definate conclusion.
Nobody really knows. So much evidence points in different directions that anyone that says global warming is real, or not, does not have an open enough mind to accept that maybe all the evidence is correct but we don't have the abilty to know what it means or what it will lead to. There has been compelling arguements to both, real, not real. I'm not putting money on either.

 

[thomaska]

"As a believer: · that human-caused global warming is a moral, ethical, and spiritual issue affecting our survival;

· that home energy use is a key component of overall energy use;

· that reducing my fossil fuel-based home energy usage will lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions; and

· that leaders on moral issues should lead by example;

I pledge to consume no more energy for use in my residence than the average American household by March 21, 2008.”

The Goreacle refused to sign this pladge yesterday, during the course of his shrieking before Congress.

Does anyone wonder why some of us aren't really taking the global warming panic too seriously?
​

 

[tamarin]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-gilbert2jul02,0,7539379.story

Worth a read. And maybe the title is less benign than thought. I'm sure Pat Robertson could find a way to link the two.

 

[thomaska]

Read the article, He mentions something about Bush travelling forward in time to 2056, assuming that in 2056, earth will be like the sunside of Mercury during its summer, and coming back with a conviction to stop global warming.

What would happen if he did? Here's what would happen: If Bush did start doing something that could stop us all from bursting into flames spontaneously on Jan 1 2056, the left would just think he was up to no good anyways, and do all in their power to stop him.

But the beauty of GW, is that even if it isn't hot enough in 2056 for the GW crowd, they can always push the deadline back. Its got that whole "coming of the messiah" thing going for it. Impossible to disprove.

 

[Tonington]

And many of the old denial cranks will long since been dead when things trully get messed up. Kinda like that conspiracy rule about setting the date past your life expectancy.

 

[jimmoyer]

That is a good vid crit13. I took the time to watch it a couple of weeks ago and posted it in another global warming thread. I can't find, (there are so many), but after watching this I have come to a definate conclusion.

So much evidence points in different directions that anyone that says global warming is real, or not, does not have an open enough mind to accept that maybe all the evidence is correct but we don't have the abilty to know what it means or what it will lead to. There has been compelling arguements to both, real, not real. I'm not putting money on either.
------------------------------------------------eh1eh---------------------------------------------------------


That sums up my view nicely.

We got some real crusaders on both sides, which tells you once again ideology
is more important than the conflicting facts ---- for both sides.

 

[Curiosity]

Tonington

It isn't the science which is being refuted, it is the politicization of the scientific data - at least with the people in my circle of friends who know way more than I do.

It is being tarted around like some patriotic duty of everyone to agree instead of wanting to discuss
and understand what all these different numbers actually represent.

Or are many of them geared to generate interest with an underlying agenda of rushed fear and not knowledge??? I wonder.

 

[Sparrow]

I agree with you 100%. We must listen too both sides, many like myself have not made a final decision because the information is too politicized and that make me suspicious.

 

[hermanntrude]

I don't think a final decision is necessary. whatever the outcome of the scientific investigations, it's better for everyone if we act as if the whole thing was true and that we should act upon it

 

[Tonington]

But it is the science being refuted Curio, all while the data is being politicized. They're intertwined now, and I can't see anything except them sharing the same fate at this point.

Is it the policy or science which leads the other? Policy has to be based on fact, hence why we have Stats Can. To give a glimpse to our politicians on how the country is organized, trends and change.

If the science isn't in question, then what conclusions can be drawn by our inaction, our inability to organize beyond patriotism, for the good of us all, especially the most vulnerable. Is it that we have short arms and can't reach our pockets?

I've read investigation after investigation. I see it affecting everything, all my courses at school, they are all intertwined with climate. How many relationships must we identify, how many models must we correlate and how many conclusions does it take?

It has become political because there are still those who choose to ignore the flashing light on the dashboard. This infusion of programs like the swindle, from a producer who took things so out of context in a previous documentary that same station had to publish an apology. It's people like that who can make a highly dramatic and convincing piece of propoganda. Then everyone is polarized, "See it's all a scam".

Then scientists are forced yet again to say, "Hold on a minute, this is all wrong, you forgot to carry the maunder coefficient" or "You didn't use a proper bandpass filter". Yah that's about as exciting as watching paint dry compared to the charged works like the Swindle program. These programs allow enough criticism to allow inaction.

We all know we should pollute less, we all know we aren't being responsible and we all know that small changes done in steps rather than leaps will not brake the bank.

The facts remain, we have a large body of evidence now. Yet these relics of climate research are still being used when they are outdated, shown as 'reasonable doubt'. These wouldn't stand the test in a court of Law, but you know how powerful the media can be regardless of truth or not. It's also like the evidence against evolution. As we move forward and accumulate more and more data, the outcome becomes less and less variable and more certain.

If I've been duped and this all turns out to be some grand oversight on our part, I will gladly eat my hat. As it stands right now, I would bet my left nut. Hell I'd bet them both.

Even though I'm a staunch supporter of the movement, I'd like to think I've retained some objectivity. I don't agree with everything the Environmental gurus of the day say. Gore and Suzuki are the big names that jump to mind and I've admitted many times before that they have taken liberties. You won't find me demanding an immediate freeze on emissions. I don't like the fact that we're so dependent on them, but I do realize that when push comes to shove, a corporation will pack it up and move to a more profitable business location. That won't help matters if we have a depression on our hands.

I'm all for discussion on the matter. I don't think the blind denial helps at all. The IPCC which has generated so much controversy is for just that. The first part of the report gives a brief on what the numbers mean and is intended for the policymakers. The real nuts and bolts comes out later in the Fall I believe. I think of it in the same way that Stats Can gives info to our government so they can make informed decisions. We can be as cynical as we want but knowing what things look like now and how they are changing is very important. In order to know these things we have to take into account the past as well.

I've probably bored the hell out of anyone looking in the thread and I've said my piece for now.

 

[Curiosity]

Tonington

Please don't mock your own knowledge and sharing with us. The ultimate bores are the ones who refuse to read information which may give their brains a workout....besides I fulfill the boring department all the time.... you are excitement and news.

I think mankind refuses to knee jerk unless he/she is personally involved or frightened into action.

This has not happened yet - we are discussing the future not the present. Much of humanity thinks
in the present only because it is all they can afford to acknowledge - their world being so out of their personal control.

Those who glimpse into the future are viewed as hysterics or having an agenda and many of them (I hate writing this) are more concerned with their own survival than what the world is up to in terms of catastrophic events in a millenium.... if you don't know what's for dinner.... who gives a rat's rear about eons away....

I guess I have simplified it but we are torn between the scientists who have legitimate concerns and our need for fulfilling our own existence on earth on a daily basis, and along come the speech makers whipping every one up into a frenzy.

If I was viewing this impending epic event from my stoop in Zimbabwe, picking bugs out of the last bit of rotting cast off vegetable I found in someone's garbage - why should I give a rip???

People look to civilized nations to fix it? But but but - it hasn't happened yet. Mankind isn't going to be interested until something happens to him/her personally.

Scientists do not factor in narcissism do they?

 

[darkbeaver]

[SIZE=+2]another Oscar Performance from Al Gore[/SIZE]

[SIZE=+2]Mr. Green Goes to Washington[/SIZE]

[SIZE=+2]By MICHAEL DONNELLY[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+3]W[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]ednesday's Al Gore performances before committees in the House and Senate were witnessed by overflow crowds. Gore sparred with elected representatives of Big Energy and repeatedly sounded this alarm: "Our world faces a true planetary emergency. I know the phrase sounds shrill, and I know it's a challenge to the moral imagination."[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Yeah. I'm one who believes that human-caused climate change is indeed a threat. However, it's not Gore's imagination or his morals, but his well-documented self-promotional instincts that should be looked at here. Aside from the facts that when the supposed author of "Earth in the Balance" was vice-president for eight years, average fuel efficiency on our nation's fleet of vehicles went down, toxic waste burners couldn't be approved quickly enough nor could he and Bill Clinton suspend the laws to facilitate clear-cut logging of our nation's forests, i.e., what Gore now calls "carbon reserves," fast enough; etc,; a very large elephant roams the living room of Global Warming activism.
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Modern Day Indulgences[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Let's start with the considerable living room of Gore himself. His 10,000 square foot mansion (one of three he owns) in Tennessee uses 20 times the energy of the average American household. When the right-wing noise machine gleefully pointed this out, Gore responded by citing his purchase of "carbon off-sets" as somehow absolving him of his huge carbon footprint, much like the wealthy in Medieval times bought indulgences from the church to off-set their sins. This feel-good dodge, in the end, does nothing to reduce the carbon released in the first place.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]When baited by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Big Oil, to sign a Personal Pledge on limiting his energy consumption to just that of the average American household - an average Gore has said is itself unsustainable - Gore simply refused and again cited his carbon indulgences.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]This is the Pledge Gore refused to sign:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=-1]"As a believer:[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]· that human-caused global warming is a moral, ethical, and spiritual issue affecting our survival;[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] · that home energy use is a key component of overall energy use;[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]· that reducing my fossil fuel-based home energy usage will lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions; and[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1] · that leaders on moral issues should lead by example;[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]I pledge to consume no more energy for use in my residence than the average American household by March 21, 2008."[/SIZE]
​

[SIZE=-1]Hmmm? Why wouldn't Gore sign on to something he himself advocates all the rest of us do? To find Dumbo amongst the furniture we need to look into where Gore buys his carbon indulgences to see what is really going on here.
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Major League Green Scammers[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]But first we have to go back to Earth Day 1995 for a little history. Vice-president Gore (three months before Clinton signed the infamous Salvage Rider which suspended all the environmental laws covering public lands logging) went to Fall River, Massachusetts and gave a promotional speech at the HQ of a company called Molten Metal Technology, Inc. (MMTI). MMTI claimed to have invented a process to extract metals from trash.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]MMTI was headed by Clinton/Gore major campaign contributor Canadian Maurice Strong, the former Secretary General of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development * the famed Rio Earth Summit - though Gore left Strong, the former head of Petro Canada's involvement - and the fact that his former top Senate aid Peter Knight was MMTI's registered lobbyist out of his fawning sales pitch.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]MMTI went on to quickly garner over $33 million in Clinton administration Department of Energy (DoE) research and development grants. These tax dollars proved to be the firm's only source of revenue as MMTI never did achieve anything close to commercial production.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Yet MMTI's stock soared to $35 a share mainly on the basis of Gore's glowing support. But by March 1996, DoE officials decided to end the subsidies. Between March and October that year, Strong and eight other officers of MMTI dumped over $15 million in personal shares at $31 per, knowing full well that the government handouts were to end. As soon as Wall Street also figured that out, after MMTI issued an October 20th Sunday press release revealing for the first time the loss of DoE funding, MMTI's stock crashed the next day, eventually plummeting to 13 cents a share, prompting investor lawsuits.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]This was not a first for Strong. In 1981 Strong headed Denver oil promoter AZL Resources. AZL paid $5 million to settle a lawsuit that he had falsely inflated the price of AZL stock, again cashing in. However, in the end, Strong made out like a bandit. AZL also owned a number of western ranches and when AZL merged with the Tosco oil refining company in 1983, Tosco sold Strong the 160,000-acre Baca Ranch in southern Colorado for a pittance. The Baca Ranch, not to be confused with New Mexico's Baca Ranch, after many shifts in ownership and reduction to 97,000 acres, was eventually purchased by the Nature Conservancy for $32 million in 2004, with 27,000 acres deeded to the Great Sand Dunes National Park, with over $13 million in federal Land and Water Conservation funds going to the ranch's owners for water rights that dated back to a Strong proposal to tap the aquifer and sell off the water.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Part of the original ranch is still owned by Strong's Manitou Foundation and is the HQ for a series of religious groups * from a Carmelite Monastery to Tibetan Buddhist retreats.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]These guys make the Big Greens' scamming for foundation grants seem positively minor league.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]
[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]Father Earth and the Ozone Man [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]So, now who do you suppose joins Al Gore as chief evangelists of Carbon Off-sets? None other than Maurice "Father Earth" Strong, now headquartered in China. Strong primarily does this though his chairmanship of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), the world's first trader in greenhouse gas credits. Gore is the founder and chairman of another such entity, Generation Investment Management LLP, which has headquarters in both London and Washington, DC.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Perhaps the biggest pachyderm in the living room is that Al Gore buys his carbon off-sets from himself. No wonder he won't sign the pledge. It would lower the bottom line of his own company. His job, like Strong's, is to cash in on climate change, pimp more feel good indulgences to naïve citizens and use the issue for his third run for president, not to use less energy.
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The Carbon Off-sets Shell Game[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]And just what is a "Carbon Off-set?" Well, it is based primarily on a the theory that trees absorb greenhouse gasses, so companies and individuals that use energy can balance the resulting carbon production by planting trees. There are other such things - Renewable Energy credits and Emissions Trading credits, which Alexander Cockburn rightly dubbed Cancer Bonds, etc. but mostly the indulgence Gore claims is related to tree planting.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Trees do absorb carbon and serve as a carbon sink. They also shade the earth and release moisture that forms clouds that also help cool the planet. However, they also warm the Earth as their dark green color absorbs more sunlight than the sun-reflecting snows many forests shade. Most importantly, the carbon off-set hallelujah choir fails to note that trees eventually die and rot (if they are not cut for lumber) and the carbon stored in them is then released * merely postponing the climate change effects of the energy use they supposedly off-set. (Is there any debt that politicians and industrialists won't pass on to future generations?) It takes planting 900 trees in the tropics to off-set the energy use of the average American household - 18,000 for an Al Gore household. A Lawrence Livermore study shows that there is no net global cooling from planting trees in temperate climates due to much slower growth rates and the shading of snow.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Al Gore summed up his DC performance stating, "The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, `Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.' If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action."[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The crib may very well be on fire. Al Gore's pants certainly are.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]MICHAEL DONNELLY[/SIZE][SIZE=-1] fought diligently against the Clinton/Gore administration's resumption of Old Growth logging on public lands. He continues to fight to keep existing forests standing. He admits his carbon footprint is far too big. He is part of a Land Trust that preserves over three million trees in three states. He can be reached at pahtoo@aol.com[/SIZE]

 

[Zzarchov]

If you believe in global warming will you explain to me why 55 million years ago the Arctic was subtropical and had CO2 of 2-3000 ppm compared to day of 380ppm. Someone is not telling the truth!

This stat you are stating? It kinda complies wit the global warming.

When the air had around 5 times as much carbon in it (380 vs 2000) the arctic was sub tropical..aka, it was about as warm as Georgia or Alabahma. Add carbon..and Nunuvut becomes Alabahma....

That is what that stat you just rhymed off says... it SUPPORTS global warming.

It is as illogical as deciding not to go to work any more because you might have an accident on the way.

Not at all, its as illogical as deciding not to drive to work blindfolded because you could get in an accident. Either plan to go to work and take off the blindfold, or stay home. Don't expect it to magically work for itself.

 

[gc]

Does anyone wonder why some of us aren't really taking the global warming panic too seriously?

Don't judge the messenger, judge the message.