Katrina Should be A Lesson To US on Global Warming

[BEST45CAL]

So, if we reverse our "policy" on "global warming" then the U.S. will never endure another disaster like Katrina.

Well, it must be true if the Germans said it. Right?

German papers say...

Katrina Should be A Lesson To US on Global Warming! (http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372179,00.html)


Hurricane Katrina is big news for German commentators, whatever their ilk. For some, the powerful storm which slammed the Gulf Coast on Monday, is a symbol of the sort of environmental terrors awaiting the world thanks to global warming and proof positive that America needs to quickly reverse its policy of playing down climate change. For the more conservative, it is simply another regrettable natural catastrophe.

[Warlady]

What a bunch of crap. The head scientist for the US who studies hurricanes says this is not unusual at all and we will probably have storm systems like this for the next 30 years due to historical trends. This while it may be one of our worst storms in history isn't surprising to those who study them. And while it may be at the top of the list on monetary loss it isn't as far as loss of life. We lost thousands in the Galveston hurricane in 1900. I think it's criminal what the econazis will do to advance their idiocy.

[UnkHiram]

I guess The Hurricane that almost erased Galveston Texas at the turn of the last century was just Global Warming during the PreSeason. I detest Junk Science.

[MSGT]

posted here (http://www.freeconservatives.com/vb/showthread.php?t=26852)

[DeclinetoState]

We have worse droughts than Africa, worse floods than Asia, accept little or no foreign aid, and make no excuses--and still maintain the highest standard of living the world has ever known.

Others, if they have a high standard of living at all have it because of aid they've received from us in the past, are jealous.

[aaron11]

Using this for political gain is sick/sad. Further proof that the leftist in this world are evil, and have no other religion/belief higher than their political agenda...

As for the "Global warming" Bs, just goes to show you how corrupted scientist and science itself has become...

[Warlady]

Where are the offers of help from our friends? Instead of insults and advice from junk scientists? The bodies aren't even buried yet and they're already preaching to us.

[Federal Farmer]

I think it's criminal what the econazis will do to advance their idiocy.
Where are the offers of help from our friends? Instead of insults and advice from junk scientists? The bodies aren't even buried yet and they're already preaching to us.
Two excellent comments WL. The next time there's a tremendous natural disaster somewhere in the world and we're the first there with the most, we'll just have to remind those who will listen that's it's just another natural hardship we humans must endure. No need to panic and cry, "it's doomsday."

[Kathy29]

According to most meterologists, this is a natural 40 year cycle. So much for global warming.

[Melz]

Two excellent comments WL. The next time there's a tremendous natural disaster somewhere in the world and we're the first there with the most, we'll just have to remind those who will listen that's it's just another natural hardship we humans must endure. No need to panic and cry, "it's doomsday."

This will sound cruel but it would be even more effective if we were not the first ones there to offer support, physically or financially. We should just wait around until other countries (and our liberals of course) have a field day with contempt for America. This will be a nice segway into asking everyone else what moments of compassion are shown during OUR natural disasters!!! Even after 9/11, we had folks saying that we deserved it !

But we won't be able to. We are required to, it is our duty as America.

[Federal Farmer]

I understand what you're saying, but from another perspective it eats some of our enemies up the way we just clean up, rebuild, and move on. Some of the people abroad in the days after 9/11 thought "well, America's down, they've finally been knocked down." Then this country promptly got up, dusted itself off, and went back to work; and included in that work was ridding the Afghans of the Taliban. It gets these people's goat; why some hate America all the more.

[Melz]

I understand what you're saying, but from another perspective it eats some of our enemies up the way we just clean up, rebuild, and move on. Some of the people abroad in the days after 9/11 thought "well, America's down, they've finally been knocked down." Then this country promptly got up, dusted itself off, and went back to work; and included in that work was ridding the Afghans of the Taliban. It gets these people's goat; why some hate America all the more.

Well I would never say that we need to wait for aid from other countries after our own disasters. But I have yet to hear about another country even offering support, needed or not, after our hurricanes and droughts and floods. So the next time some OTHER country has such instances, we could just wait a few minutes longer to offer up our billions of dollars and medical assistance. We would be shunned and hated by our own citizen liberals (much of them hate this country's ways now anyway) and other nations (the nations who say we deserve terrorist attacks and should keep our noses out of other people's business). Logic would dictate that this should be easy to do, almost a cleansing, if you will.

But upon the time to help others in disaster, this nation would be hard put to wait around and do nothing, as people. Not because of what the liberals or the other nations would think, but because we are that sort of people.

[Rink]

In my opinion to those liberal whiney leftists.

EAT my SHorts!!

[RayChuang]

I guess The Hurricane that almost erased Galveston Texas at the turn of the last century was just Global Warming during the PreSeason. I detest Junk Science.

Of course, Galveston back then had no breakwaters to protect the beach areas and when the storm surge hit it literally wiped out the entire downtown of that city with a 15-20 foot wall of water. And from what I've read, it wasn't that big of a hurricane, either.

[Federal Farmer]

But upon the time to help others in disaster, this nation would be hard put to wait around and do nothing, as people. Not because of what the liberals or the other nations would think, but because we are that sort of people.
Yep. We're quick to help others and don't ask for help in return. That's American rugged individualism at work.

[Tumblehome]

I don't claim to know a whole lot about global warming, but I have noticed that democrats seem to support its existence and conservatives seem to deny it. Is this simply Democrats liking the environment and conservatives liking industrial production, or is there more to it than that?

[Federal Farmer]

No. It's about democrats politicizing the weather.

If you think of conservatives as "liking" industrial production then you've not met Russell Kirk.

[Tumblehome]

No. It's about democrats politicizing the weather.

If you think of conservatives as "liking" industrial production then you've not met Russell Kirk.

I don't know what conservatives like, as I'm not one of them. I'm not a liberal either. I'm one of those oddballs who fall in neither camp (I've voted both ways).

[Lazarus]

I guess The Hurricane that almost erased Galveston Texas at the turn of the last century was just Global Warming during the PreSeason. I detest Junk Science.It was the earth reacting to the industrial revolution... It was all the fault of the Robber Barons!!!! Stop Free Enterprise NOW!!! Especially American Free Enterprise... All the other nations of the world can keep on developing their industry...

Its only fair - So says Kyoto...:rolleyes: I hate activists...

[The_RANDy_Corporation]

What complete and utter bullshit. The weather community is in consensus that IF global warming were in play and IF it melted the polar ice caps the resultant cooler water would mean fewer and weaker hurricanes.

This kraut needs a good whippin'!

[Lazarus]

Well I would never say that we need to wait for aid from other countries after our own disasters. But I have yet to hear about another country even offering support, needed or not, after our hurricanes and droughts and floods....Just a little side note that didnt make the national news but might make you feel a little better...

A few years back we had a line of killer tornados rip thru a rural community just southwest of Birmingham, a place called Oak Grove... It was just as devastating as this hurricane, just on a smaller scale... An entire community destroyed - lots of people killed - A child was found alive in the top of a tree - That kind of storm...

This occurred during Emperor Clinton's reign of terror, and his Minister of Insensitive Stupidity, Al Gore, took the opportunity for a photo op which held up search and rescue for several critical hours - which went over like a turd in the punchbowl here in Alabama...

But the important point that came out of the whole situation was that one single foreign country sent financial aide to the community for them to rebuild... And you'll be suprised where it came from (I was)...

Bangladesh..... They sent money to Oak Grove, Alabama, (not much, but what they could afford) with a message saying that "America fed us when we were starving and we have not forgotten"...

Its a rare thing to see in a world where everyone is filled with jealousy and hatred toward America, but there are some decent people still in the world who know the meaning of gratitude... Since the MSM didnt find it necessary to impart this news I thought yall might like to know it...

Credit where credit is due...

[Warlady]

Bangladesh..... They sent money to Oak Grove, Alabama, (not much, but what they could afford) with a message saying that "America fed us when we were starving and we have not forgotten"...

Its a rare thing to see in a world where everyone is filled with jealousy and hatred toward America, but there are some decent people still in the world who know the meaning of gratitude... Since the MSM didnt find it necessary to impart this news I thought yall might like to know it...

Credit where credit is due...

Great story Laz but I HAVE to correct you. Not everyone in the world is filled with jealousy and hatred for America. We have a lot more fans than you think. I used to believe everyone hated us but it's just the foreign media and foreign governments mostly. The people who are just the same as you or I with the exception of the lefties love us, respect us and appreciate us. I realized this after 9/11/01. I was so touched by the outreach and moving memorials from all over the world. I then realized that we were not alone but that we have been deceived by the leftwing media both here and abroad. The media, (ie the BBC) never misses a chance to cover the negative stories. The reason a lot of French citizens don't like us is because their state owned media lies to them about us. But visit Normandy and we are beloved. New European countries that Reagan liberated from the Soviet Union love us. These are just a few examples.

[Beowulf]

I have to laugh. You know, I'm not the most scientifically gifted guy in the world but I do know that for as long as, and before, America existed, hurricanes have always developed off the coast of Africa, gone west, and slammed into the East Coast of our continent and/or the Gulf of Mexico. From the days of wooden ships and colonies to current times of tankers and major coastal cities, it's a weather pattern that has always been there and in all likelyhood, always be.

Boy some of the crap that science spews forth.

[queue]

According to a New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/national/30cycle.html?ei=5065&en=9e0e24b0c5ee1d90&ex=1125979200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print), this is part of a natural cycle.

Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming.

But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught "is very much natural," said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.

[DoctorDoom]

Well, ya see, it's all politics. it's very difficult to blame the president and the US for natural phenomena, so the America-haters and the Bush-bashers have to invent reasons in order to point their bony fingers.

A lot of bullshit has been propogated over the years in the name of science.

[Naturalized-Texan]

Atlantic Tropical Storm Tracking by Year (http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/)
1933 (http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/1933/index.html) - with 21 hurricanes/tropical storms (10 hurricanes) with 3 Category 3 hurricanes and 2 Category 4 hurricanes and the first storm that year was in May, before what we now call hurricane season - was much worse than this year and 1950 (http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/1950/index.html) - with 11 hurricanes, including 5 Category 3 hurricanes, 2 Category 4 hurricanes, and 1 Category 5 hurricane with 160 knot winds (184 mph) - was worse than any of the past 5 years.

According to an expert at the National Hurricane Center, hurricanes run in 40 year cycles and we are in an up cycle after about 40 years of a down cycle.

[Lazarus]

...New European countries that Reagan liberated from the Soviet Union love us. These are just a few examples.You are right of course and I withdraw my broad generalization...

As for Hurricanes and Global Warming, Im sure Mel Fisher is eternally grateful to the Conquistadores for the Global Warming they caused that caused the storm that sent the Atocha to the bottom of the Carribean in 1622...;)

[Joe Spout]

You just have to laugh at how idiotic some people are. Maybe it's just me but I thought there were hurricanes before global warming became a problem. This is just the begining. From now on any weather related disaster is going to be blamed on global warming. In case you didn't know tornados are an effect of global warming as well. I guess everything I learned about how weather works is just wrong. Guess I had better go back to school so I can learn politically correct history and science instead of the truth.

[JNSmith]

Well, one of the kennedy's (one of the "not-good" ones...he's still alive) said that it's (Hurricane Katrina) the governor of Mississippi's fault.

[DoctorDoom]

Welcome to FC, Joe Spout!

From now on any weather related disaster is going to be blamed on global warming.Wait until the winter storms close down cities. The same idiots will be blaming it on global warming. They've done it before.

[DeclinetoState]

That's because it's not "global warming," but "global climate change" that threatens us all.

Climate-change fearmongers are as bad as the pro-abortion crowd in changing the language to suit their needs.

[Warlady]

I have to laugh. You know, I'm not the most scientifically gifted guy in the world but I do know that for as long as, and before, America existed, hurricanes have always developed off the coast of Africa, gone west, and slammed into the East Coast of our continent and/or the Gulf of Mexico. From the days of wooden ships and colonies to current times of tankers and major coastal cities, it's a weather pattern that has always been there and in all likelyhood, always be.

Boy some of the crap that science spews forth.

Beo, what they're spouting isn't science. It's JUNK science to advance their agenda of scaring the hell out of people so they can raise money to line their greedy pockets with. Every damn one of them drives a gas guzzling SUV and flies around in chartered jets.

[Warlady]

Joe, I love your website. Welcome to FC. It's always a great thing to have free thinkers join FC.

[Beowulf]

Beo, what they're spouting isn't science. It's JUNK science to advance their agenda of scaring the hell out of people so they can raise money to line their greedy pockets with. Every damn one of them drives a gas guzzling SUV and flies around in chartered jets.

Oh, I know, Warlady. I just gave my observations of hurricanes. They're pretty consistant as to the path they take.
And I've been kinda quiet about my criticism of SUV's. I got jumped all over before for saying that people drive them (and many have told me this) because they look good in it yet they really don't need it.

[omegatrump]

Katrina, Global Warming? What a Nit Wit. A much more realistic scenario is the correlation between Katrina and Bush's so called "road map to peace". Every time the Globalist demand that Israel give back land to their enemies, we get hammered. You see their GOD has already declared their boundaries. Some moronic individual that thinks peace can be purchased from the Palestinians by giving them Israeli land just sets us up for another round of destruction. We haven't seen the last of this round.

Did any body see the excavators and bull dozer's destroying those Israeli Homes?

Go Figure! The GOD of Israel is not the moon god George worships.

[bannerman]

So, if we reverse our "policy" on "global warming" then the U.S. will never endure another disaster like Katrina.

Well, it must be true if the Germans said it. Right?

German papers say...

Katrina Should be A Lesson To US on Global Warming! (http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372179,00.html)


Hurricane Katrina is big news for German commentators, whatever their ilk. For some, the powerful storm which slammed the Gulf Coast on Monday, is a symbol of the sort of environmental terrors awaiting the world thanks to global warming and proof positive that America needs to quickly reverse its policy of playing down climate change. For the more conservative, it is simply another regrettable natural catastrophe.






------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Kennedy Politicizes Hurricane Katrina
------------------------------------------------------------------------

By CK Rairden
Aug 31, 2005 *

Apparently Robert Kennedy believes he knows how to pimp a natural disaster.* The nephew of Senator Ted Kennedy writes at "The Huffington Post" that this hurricane is President George W. Bush and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's fault.

It's a sad commentary on Kennedy's priorities as the many of the dead are not even recovered, let alone buried and he wishes to politicize the issue.

Here's a bitter taste:

Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and--now--Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children?


ISNT THAT PRECIOUS (http://www.nationalledger.com/scribe/article_2726502.shtml)

[Naturalized-Texan]

When we visited a couple of Mayan ruins in the Yucatan, the guide told us that no one knew for sure what destroyed their cities and their civilization. I think that it's a safe bet that a massive hurricane like Katrina devastated their cities and the Mayan civilization.

[Tazeeyore]

If global warming caused this hurricane then every hurricane worldwide would be enhanced by the same ficticious anomaly. Junk science is just that.....junk!

[Tazeeyore]

Katrina, Global Warming? What a Nit Wit. A much more realistic scenario is the correlation between Katrina and Bush's so called "road map to peace". Every time the Globalist demand that Israel give back land to their enemies, we get hammered. You see their GOD has already declared their boundaries. Some moronic individual that thinks peace can be purchased from the Palestinians by giving them Israeli land just sets us up for another round of destruction. We haven't seen the last of this round.

Did any body see the excavators and bull dozer's destroying those Israeli Homes?

Go Figure! The GOD of Israel is not the moon god George worships.

Idiotic stupid shit! Go somewhere else and babble this insane stupidity moron!@

[Joe Spout]

Welcome to FC, Joe Spout!

Thanks. Glad to be here.

[Joe Spout]

What's really pathetic (but to be expected) is that a politician will take a disaster like this and exploit it to promote an extermist and unproven idea. It amazes me how many people think that the United States is to blame for global warming. The United States has some of the strictest environmental laws in the world. If anyone is going to be blammed for global warming how about blaming the developing nations of the world who do not have restrictions on pollution. Better yet I say we blame China. They may not have as many vehicles but they have more factories and create more pollution than the United States does.

If Kennedy wants to make headlines then talk about how great it is that the American people come together and give so generously in a crisis situation. Then again most liberals don't know how to think positively about the United States.

[brilliantLiberal]

Remember this blast from the past?

http://www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm

FROM
Newsweek
April 28, 1975

The Cooling World

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. "A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale," warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, "because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century."

How does that compare with this?

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/global_warming/index.cfm

global warming

Global warming is real and under way...

The mainstream scientific consensus on global warming is becoming clearer and more compelling every day: changes in our climate are real and are under way. Now. But we can do something about it...

As Earth continues to warm, there is a growing risk that the climate will change in ways that will seriously disrupt our lives. While on average the globe will get warmer and receive more precipitation, individual regions will experience different climatic changes, with different consequences for the local environment. Among the most severe are:



<DIR><DIR>a faster rise in sea level;



more heat waves and droughts, resulting in more and more conflicts over water resources;


more extreme weather events, producing floods and property destruction; and


a greater potential for heat-related illnesses and deaths, as well as the wider spread of infectious diseases carried by insects and rodents into areas previously free from them.


</DIR></DIR>If climatic trends continue unabated, global warming will threaten our health, cities, farms and forests, beaches and wetlands, and other natural habitats.


How about this enlightened article?

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1099102,00.html

Is Global Warming Fueling Katrina?
Warm ocean temperatures are a key ingredient for monster hurricanes, prompting some scientists to believe that global warming is exacerbating our storm troubles

The people of New Orleans are surely not thinking about wind vortices, the coriolis effect or the dampness of the troposphere as they hunker down during hurricane Katrina this morning. They’re mostly thinking about the savage rains and 140 mph winds that have driven them from their homes. But it’s that meteorological arcana that’s made such a mess of the bayou, and to hear a lot of people tell it, we have only ourselves—and our global-warming ways—to blame.

One thing’s for sure: hurricanes were around a long, long time before human beings began chopping down rainforests and fouling the atmosphere. To get such a tempest going, you don’t need much more than ocean temperatures above 80 degrees Fahrenheit; a cool, wet atmosphere above and a warm, wet one near the surface; and a preexisting weather disturbance with a bit of spin to it far enough from the equator (at least 300 miles) so that the rotation of the Earth amplifies the rotation of the storm. The more intense the storm becomes, the more the temperature of its core climbs, accelerating the spin, exacerbating the storm, and leading to the meteorological violence we call a hurricane. And violent it can be: The heat released in an average hurricane can equal the electricity produced by the U.S. in a single year.

These are the same scientists who tell us the the earth is billions of years old, that the flood never happened, and that man is responsible for destroying the world because he drives SUV's. Global cooling? Global warming? Is the world going through menopause?

I don't remember massive famines and worldwide catastrophes in 1985. Did I miss them?

Winds blow. Storms come and go. Hurricanes happen. When seas rise, people who live below sea level die. When tsunami's strike, people on the beach die. When volcanoes erupt, those in the path of destruction die.

What happened was not the act of a vengeful God or the result of any man made climate change. It was a storm. Storms happen. There is nothing man can do to stop them. We pick up, we clean up, we rebuild and we move on. We mourn for those who have died and we pitch in to help those who have lost. We are Americans; the most generous people on the face of the earth. We are not the ones responsible for the disasters of the world. We are, however, the first on the scene to give generously of our assets to those who do not appreciate us. This time it is an American city that has been destroyed. We could use the help of our "friends," not the junk science of idiots.

[markus3622]

Just to add my two cents here.

I don't think anyone with any scientific credibility will say that Global Warming caused Katrina. Now, the majority of scientists in the field agree (I called this a consensus, for the sake of argument, I'll say majority) that

1) The world is getting warmer
2) Greenhouse gas concentrations have increased
3) A significant proportion of the warming is most likely due to manmade emissions.

Now, there is less agreement over what will happen to hurricanes. NT recently quoted a study on the frequency of hurricanes, but Kerry Emmanual of MIT has produced a study on the magnitude of hurricanes. I've highlighted what I feel are the important parts.


Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years

Kerry Emanuel<SUP minmax_bound="true">1 (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nature03906.html#a1)</SUP>

Theory<SUP minmax_bound="true">1</SUP> and modelling<SUP minmax_bound="true">2</SUP> predict that hurricane intensity should increase with increasing global mean temperatures, but work on the detection of trends in hurricane activity has focused mostly on their frequency<SUP minmax_bound="true">3, </SUP><SUP minmax_bound="true">4</SUP> and shows no trend. Here I define an index of the potential destructiveness of hurricanes based on the total dissipation of power, integrated over the lifetime of the cyclone, and show that this index has increased markedly since the mid-1970s. This trend is due to both longer storm lifetimes and greater storm intensities. I find that the record of net hurricane power dissipation is highly correlated with tropical sea surface temperature, reflecting well-documented climate signals, including multi-decadal oscillations in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, and global warming. My results suggest that future warming may lead to an upward trend in tropical cyclone destructive potential, and—taking into account an increasing coastal population—a substantial increase in hurricane-related losses in the twenty-first century.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nature03906.html

Now, there are a lot of ifs and buts in this study, but it brings me around to what could be important.

When it comes to terrorism, quite rightly, most people (since 9/11) are prepared to be safe rather than sorry, and act before the terrorists act. We're seeing right now that natural disasters can kill as many a terrorists can (and possibly more), and cause as much economic damage, but when it comes to acting on a long term scale to reduce the magnitude of hurricanes, floods, droughts and so on, there's a reluctance to act until we're hundred percent sure.

Levees and such structures don't fail incrementally, they fail catastrophically, and that extra 5% of magnitude can make all the difference.

Why is there a disconnect when dealing with terrorism and dealing with climate change? Why with terrorism is it better to be safe than sorry, whereas with the climate, it is better to be sorry than safe?

[brilliantLiberal]

I don't think anyone with any scientific credibility will say that Global Warming caused Katrina. Now, the majority of scientists in the field agree (I called this a consensus, for the sake of argument, I'll say majority) that

1) The world is getting warmer
2) Greenhouse gas concentrations have increased
3) A significant proportion of the warming is most likely due to manmade emissions.

I don't believe the "science" of global warming has any more validity than the "science" of the global cooling predicted 30 years ago.

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

World leaders gathered in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997 to consider a world treaty restricting emissions of ''greenhouse gases,'' chiefly carbon dioxide (CO2), that are thought to cause ''global warming'' severe increases in Earth's atmospheric and surface temperatures, with disastrous environmental consequences. Predictions of global warming are based on computer climate modeling, a branch of science still in its infancy. The empirical evidence actual measurements of Earth's temperature shows no man-made warming trend. Indeed, over the past two decades, when CO2 levels have been at their highest, global average temperatures have actually cooled slightly.



To be sure, CO2 levels have increased substantially since the Industrial Revolution, and are expected to continue doing so. It is reasonable to believe that humans have been responsible for much of this increase. But the effect on the environment is likely to be benign. Greenhouse gases cause plant life, and the animal life that depends upon it, to thrive. What mankind is doing is liberating carbon from beneath the Earth's surface and putting it into the atmosphere, where it is available for conversion into living organisms...



The current increase in carbon dioxide follows a 300-year warming trend: Surface and atmospheric temperatures have been recovering from an unusually cold period known as the Little Ice Age. The observed increases are of a magnitude that can, for example, be explained by oceans giving off gases naturally as temperatures rise. Indeed, recent carbon dioxide rises have shown a tendency to follow rather than lead global temperature increases (6).

There is, however, a widely believed hypothesis that the 3 Gt C per year rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is the result of the 5.5 Gt C per year release of carbon dioxide from human activities. This hypothesis is reasonable, since the magnitudes of human release and atmospheric rise are comparable, and the atmospheric rise has occurred contemporaneously with the increase in production of CO2 from human activities since the Industrial Revolution...

There are no experimental data to support the hypothesis that increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing or can be expected to cause catastrophic changes in global temperatures or weather. To the contrary, during the 20 years with the highest carbon dioxide levels, atmospheric temperatures have decreased.
We also need not worry about environmental calamities, even if the current long-term natural warming trend continues. The Earth has been much warmer during the past 3,000 years without catastrophic effects. Warmer weather extends growing seasons and generally improves the habitability of colder regions. ''Global warming,'' an invalidated hypothesis, provides no reason to limit human production of CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs, and SF6 as has been proposed (29).



The global warming lie is simply another act of terrorism, only in this case it is terrorism not to please a false god but to further a politcal agenda and to appeal for more research dollars. Its proponents want to scare Americans into thinking that it is real. It isn't. Man did not create the word and man cannot destroy it. The earth will continue to exist until the instant God decides that it should pass away, at which time it will cease to exist. Not an instant before.

That doesn't mean that we should not be good stewards of our environment. We should strive to keep our air and water as pure as possible. After all, we have to live wtihin our environment.

[Federal Farmer]

True scientists do not write alarmist headlines for those who seek political ends, which add to the hysteria at any cost to society.

While there is nothing wrong in using those models in an experimental mode, there is a real dilemma when they predict potentially dangerous situations. Should scientists publicize such predictions since the models are almost certainly wrong? Is it proper to not publicize the predictions if the predicted danger is serious? How is the public to respond to such predictions? The difficulty would be diminished if the public understood how poor the models actually are. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to hold in awe anything that emerges from a sufficiently large computer. There is also a reluctance on the part of many modellers to admit to the experimental nature of their models lest public support for their efforts diminish. Nevertheless, with poor and uncertain models in wide use, predictions of ominous situations are virtually inevitable--regardless of reality.

Such weak predictions feed and contribute to what I have already described as a societal instability that can cascade the most questionable suggestions of danger into major political responses with massive economic and social consequences. I have already discussed some of the reasons for this instability: the existence of large cadres of professional planners looking for work, the existence of advocacy groups looking for profitable causes, the existence of agendas in search of saleable rationales, and the ability of many industries to profit from regulation, coupled with an effective neutralization of opposition. It goes almost without saying that the dangers and costs of those economic and social consequences may be far greater than the original environmental danger. That becomes especially true when the benefits of additional knowledge are rejected and when it is forgotten that improved technology and increased societal wealth are what allow society to deal with environmental threats most effectively. The control of societal instability may very well be the real challenge facing us.
More from the author

Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus (http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg15n2g.html)
GLOBAL WARMING: The Press Gets It Wrong (http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=95000606)
Author's full credentials (http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen.htm)

[DoctorDoom]

1) The world is getting warmerAnd the world has been even warmer that it is now, without the lame-ass "argument" that man caused it.

2) Greenhouse gas concentrations have increasedThe most significant contributor is water vapor. By golly, we should immediately restrict the boiling of water, and pass laws limiting the amount of allowable evaporation from ponds, lakes, rivers and oceans.

3) A significant proportion of the warming is most likely due to manmade emissions.Utter bullshit. You're giving man far too much credit. We couldn't alter the world's climate if we set out on a crash program to do it.

Fact: the world has been a lot warmer and a hell of a lot cooler than it is today, and we had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Fact: the sun is the most powerful influence on weather. Its output fluctuates, and that obviously alters the insolation on Earth. Our lawmakers should address this critical environmental issue immediately. The sun's output MUST be stabilized.

Fact: the 26,000-year precession of the equinoxes (http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/time/precession.html) caused by Earth's "wobbling" like a top results in the change in orientation of its axis WRT the sun. The summer solstice for the northern hemisphere now occurs when Earth is farthest from the sun. In 13,000 years it will occur when it is closest to it, as it does now in the southern hemisphere. This will result in significant changes in weather patterns. We should therefore immediately pass legislation to outlaw precession.

There are other less significant natural factors, but I'm sure that an omnibus environmental bill can account for them as well.

In the meantime, a far greater danger faces us that must command the attention of concerned ecozealots. Earth's magnetic field is weakening, and the consequences can be catastrophic.

Earth's Magnetic Field Is Fading (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0909_040909_earthmagfield.html)

The weakening -- if coupled with a subsequently large influx of radiation in the form of protons streaming from the sun -- can also affect the chemistry of the atmosphere, said Charles Jackman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

That can lead to significant but temporary losses of atmospheric ozone, he said.Report: Earth's magnetic field fading (http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/12/12/magnetic.poles.ap/)

What more needs to be said? Obviously, this is absolutely intolerable. We need a world conference on ways to limit and if possible outlaw the changes of the geomagnetic field.

Fortunately, others elsewhere are available to answer our concerns with scientific fact.

Where some scientists state that the Earth's magnetic field has been weakening lately, this is certainly not the case. They misunderstand. The Earth's magnetic field is not weakening, it is changing course or direction, and thus Scattered does not register on their instruments in the same old way. This is an early indicator of the great confusion that the 12th Planet will have on the Earth, soon, during the pole shift. Another way to describe this dispersing is the scientific term - base resonant frequency. This is just another name for magnetic pull, the strength of the pull the Earth's core has on instruments. Instruments, through electricity coursing through wires, create a magnetic field in a core of iron or some other highly susceptible material. The resulting electromagnetic field can be either aligned with the Earth, or set to cross the Earth's magnetic field, or at any partial angle that the scientists desire. Depending on the strength of the Earth's own magnetic field, the field created by the instruments is thus disrupted or weakened. This weakening disruption, noted by scientists, is just another indication of the dispersal of the Earth's internal magnetic field.<img src="http://www.zetatalk.com/icon2.gif" align="middle" /> ZetaTalk: Magnetic Field (http://www.zetatalk.com/science/s05.htm)

[Naturalized-Texan]

Just to add my two cents here.

I don't think anyone with any scientific credibility will say that Global Warming caused Katrina. Now, the majority of scientists in the field agree (I called this a consensus, for the sake of argument, I'll say majority) that

1) The world is getting warmer
2) Greenhouse gas concentrations have increased
3) A significant proportion of the warming is most likely due to manmade emissions.
There is a MUCH greater correlation between 500-year warming and cooling cycles and 500-year solar activity cycles - the lesser the solar activity, the lower the global temperatures (the Little Ice Age of 14th Century AD - late 19th Century AD); the greater the solar activity, the higher the global temperatures (late 19th Century AD - early 21st Century AD and very likely about 400 years beyond).

During the 500 years prior to the 14th Century AD, there was the Medieval Warm period where global temperatures were higher than they are today with no appreciable generation of greenhouse gases. If solar observations had been made during that Medieval Warm period, it's a safe bet that they would show that solar activity was very high.

[markus3622]

I'm not going to argue the science behind all of this. NT and I have discussed this before, and it's not worth going over it again. However, it is just worth pointing out that there were significant flaws in the Oregon Petition Project (in fact the National Academy of Sciences distanced themselves from it), and that despite the warming observed in recent decades, there has been no increase in solar activity since the 1950s. We are left with the facts that I stated above, regarding where the majority of climate scientists stand on this issue.

None of this answers the question I posed. Why are so many prepared to "hope for the best" on climate change whereas it would be anathema to suggest not worrying about Iran's nuclear program until we're absolutely sure?

[Naturalized-Texan]

I'm not going to argue the science behind all of this. NT and I have discussed this before, and it's not worth going over it again. However, it is just worth pointing out that there were significant flaws in the Oregon Petition Project (in fact the National Academy of Sciences distanced themselves from it), and that despite the warming observed in recent decades, there has been no increase in solar activity since the 1950s. We are left with the facts that I stated above, regarding where the majority of climate scientists stand on this issue.
Unfortunately for you, your claims about the Oregon Petition Project were completely demolished by sunsettommy.

The majority of climate scientists state that there are far too many uncertainties to conclude that global warming is being caused by human activities.

[UnkHiram]

I am curious Was the Hurricane that destroyed Galveston in 1900 also caused by Global warming? Or any of the hundreds of Hurricanes before and since 1900?

[Naturalized-Texan]

None of this answers the question I posed. Why are so many prepared to "hope for the best" on climate change whereas it would be anathema to suggest not worrying about Iran's nuclear program until we're absolutely sure?
Since the climate change (in this case, global warming) that we have been experiencing during the past 100+ years (more than half prior to 1940), since the end of the Little Ice Age, is almost certainly part of the Earth's natural warming/cooling cycles, there is absolutely nothing that we can do to stop it. Consequently, it's best that we just sit back and enjoy it.

[DoctorDoom]

I am curious Was the Hurricane that destroyed Galveston in 1900 also caused by Global warming? Or any of the hundreds of Hurricanes before and since 1900?Of course they were. Global warming is so powerful that it even extends backward in time. Are you aware that the retroactive effect of global warming caused by SUVs and barbecue grills was responsible for Noah's flood?

I read it on the Internet, so it MUST be true.

[Rink]

Hey if the Liberals could get away with it, they'd be blaming Bush for the Biblical Noah's flood as well.

[Joe Spout]

Hey if the Liberals could get away with it, they'd be blaming Bush for the Biblical Noah's flood as well.
I thought they did already. ;)

Long before Al Gore discovered global warming scientists knew that the earth went through warming and cooling cycles long before the invention of the internal combustion engine. If the earth is warming and given what we know of the past then it can be safe assume this is just another natural cycle of the earth warming.

[Melz]

Hey if the Liberals could get away with it, they'd be blaming Bush for the Biblical Noah's flood as well.

Ahh but to listen to them, there are no liberal Christians to believe in this Ark issue! Constantly hearing the "Christian right" phrase (heck they should make it one word and replace all the other names they call us with Christianright), leads me to believe no liberal identifies with Christianity. For, if they did, they would no longer be able to insult Christian Right folks. They could argue the right side, but they would have to leave off the Christian side.

Only the Christian right believe in the Ark story, there are no Christian lefties. Apparently.

[Naturalized-Texan]

I'm not going to argue the science behind all of this. NT and I have discussed this before, and it's not worth going over it again.
Of course you won't. At the end of all those discussions you finally ended up agreeing with sunsettommy and me that there are just too many uncertainties to claim that global warming is being caused by human activities.

...despite the warming observed in recent decades, there has been no increase in solar activity since the 1950s.
I have often wondered why the natural recovery in global temperatures following the Little Ice Age slowed significantly after 1940 despite the great industrial expansion and the population explosion that followed WW II. If it is true that there has been no increase in solar activity since the 1950s, and I have no reason to doubt your claim, that would explain why the vast majority of the warming in the past 100+ years occurred before 1940 and why there has been very little warming since. Thanks for providing that explanation and for providing further proof that solar activity is the cause of the Earth's warming/cooling cycles.

FYI, according to both the NAS and the IPCC, global temperatures have increased 0.6 deg. C in the past 100+ years since the end of the Little Ice Age. Between 0.4 deg. C and 0.5 deg. C of that temperature increase occurred prior to 1940 and temperatures increased only between 0.1 deg C and 0.2 deg.C since 1940. You have just explained why that happened.

[Maggie_T]

Global cooling? Global warming? Is the world going through menopause?

ROFLMBO!!!!! Good one, BL.

You should hear the increadible imbecilities that go around Occupied Maine on account of Katrina. Everything is Bush's fault, of course. From the alleged "Global Warming" to the Bush-hates-blacks hate speech.

It's enough to make one go postal.

BL, I bookmarked your post. :)

Incidentally, you have not read Michael Crichton's State of Fear, I strongly advise you to do so. In it, Crichton makes clever fun of environmentalists and provides a lot of (genuine) science-backed infor on the so-called Global Warming. Liberals bloody well hate that book. I was in Ireland when the book came out and I read a review in one of their papers. The "critic" snarled on how "Dubya would love this book." But he provided absolutely ZERO proof that Crichton's assesment of global warming was wrong. It was hilarious.

[Tazeeyore]

Global warming is a lame excuse for getting billions of dollars from the government for research. There is more greenhouse gas produced by rotting forests and cattle flatulence than anything man can contribute. That is a fact that is irrefutable.


:djd:

[DoctorDoom]

Constantly hearing the "Christian right" phrase...They can label me as Christian right or religious right or political right, just as long as they realize that the key word in every case is "right", which I am. So there! PFFFFT!

[markus3622]

At the end of all those discussions you finally ended up agreeing with sunsettommy and me that there are just too many uncertainties to claim that global warming is being caused by human activities.

No we didn't, you ending up agreeing that actually you thought mankind was affecting the climate, but by not as much as suggested by the scientific community. By that, I mean NAS, AAAS, AGU, AMS, etc. At best, your argument is supported by the head of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

I don't deny there are uncertainties, although the weight of scientific opinion is such that it is possible to state that "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."

The reason I don't want to argue the science is because the internet really isn't the place. If you're really interested, there are enough resources for you to read. My point is given the facts (and I'm being rather generous to your case - there is a significant minority of scientists who perhaps aren't convinced), I want to question the attitudes towards taking action against something uncertain.

Here is a direct quote from the 2001 NAS's Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (2001)


Are greenhouse gases causing climate change?

The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue. The stated degree of confidence in the IPCC assessment is higher today than it was 10, or even 5 years ago, but uncertainty remains because of (1) the level of natural variability inherent in the climate system on time scales of decades to centuries, (2) the questionable ability of models to accurately simulate natural variability on those long time scales, and (3) the degree of confidence that can be placed on reconstructions of global mean temperature over the past millennium based on proxy evidence. Despite the uncertainties, there is general agreement that the observed warming is real and particularly strong within the past 20 years. Whether it is consistent with the change that would be expected in response to human activities is dependent upon what assumptions one makes about the time history of atmospheric concentrations of the various forcing agents, particularly aerosols.

http://books.nap.edu/books/0309075742/html/

(I'll point out here that one member on the committee disagreed with this finding, but the other 10 have either not opposed it, or been quiet on the matter. This report is superceded by the 2005 press release anyway)

The fact that no-one is prepared to answer the question is telling. Given the position of the National Academy of Sciences, Association for the Advancement of American Science, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, not to mention a whole number of reputable scientific bodies across the world, and the Pentagon Report stating the potential threat to world stability, all in broad agreement on climate change, why are so many prepared to hope for the best on climate, but play "better safe than sorry" on terrorism?

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1153513,00.html

The simple fact is that the majority position of the world's scientific bodies is that anthropogenic climate change is a real threat. That is fact. Why ignore it?

[dajoga]

So my Hummer helped cause Katrina?? To bad, but I still like the looks I get wheelin' it down the road! Besides, if I sell it, some eco-nut 'rat would probably buy it anyhow.













(actually I don't have a hummer, but if I did, that's how I'd feel) :suv:

[DoctorDoom]

The simple fact is that the majority position of the world's scientific bodies is that anthropogenic climate change is a real threat. That is fact. Why ignore it?Nice try at deception, lad. However, the only fact is that it is the "majority position". That does NOT make it so. It's junk science for the pursuit of a purely political agenda aimed squarely at the USofA.

Until definitive proof is obtained, there is no justification for sinking trillions of dollars on wild goose chases, especially since Kyoto, e.g., exempted 80% of the nations of the world, including China and Mexico, two prodigious polluters. Ever look at the atmosphere in Mexico City? Yes, you can SEE it.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/images/mexico%20city%20pollution.jpg

Why is Mexico exempt from the Kyoto protocols? A: because the leftists don't give a shit about Mexico or global "warming". They are obsessed with forcing the US into an economically crushing expenditure for no demonstrable purpose whatever other than to penalize America for being prosperous, powerful and free.

Their "science" allows them to claim that President Bush caused Katrina. Screw the looneytoons.

[Naturalized-Texan]

(I'll point out here that one member on the committee disagreed with this finding, but the other 10 have either not opposed it, or been quiet on the matter.)
True. Everyone but the leftist chairman agreed that there are far too many uncertainties to determine that global warming is caused by human activities. At the last minute prior to publication the leftist chairman dishonestly inserted an "executive summary" that completely contradicted the conclusions of the 10 other members of the NAS Panel that had been written in Chapter 5 of the report.

The fact that no-one is prepared to answer the question is telling. Given the position of the National Academy of Sciences, Association for the Advancement of American Science, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, not to mention a whole number of reputable scientific bodies across the world, and the Pentagon Report stating the potential threat to world stability, all in broad agreement on climate change, why are so many prepared to hope for the best on climate, but play "better safe than sorry" on terrorism?
Only junk scientists dependent upon grants from leftist environmental-wacko groups and the UN claim that global warming is being caused by human activities. Unbiased real scientists, like 10 of the 11 members of the NAS Panel, believe that there are too many uncertainties to determine the causes of global warming.

BTW, at the very end of our weeks and weeks of discussions, you convinced me that the current global warming is a completely natural recovery from the Little Ice Age and, as such, there is nothing that we humans can do to stop it. I thanked you for pointing me in the right direction.

I don't deny there are uncertainties, although the weight of scientific opinion is such that it is possible to state that "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."
The only person who is making that absurd claim is Michael Mann with his "hockey stick" fraud that has been thoroughly discredited. In actuality, based on the NAS and IPCC reports, global temperatures have only increased by 0.6 deg. C in the past 100+ years. More than 0.4 deg. C of that increase occurred prior to 1940.

[Naturalized-Texan]

Doc: It seems that markus is much too naive to realize that the absurd claims that global warming is being caused by human activities are purely political and have nothing to do with science. The sooner he matures enough to realize that fact, the better off he will be.

[PatrioticAmerican]

The true source of global warming is coming from the steaming mounds of B.S. the libs are crapping out. They generate CO2 everytime they open their mouths.

[Nutrider99]

Am I the only one who remembers that the US Senate voted 92-0 to reject the Kyoto protocols? If Bush HAD signed it, it was DOA in the Senate.

[markus3622]

I take it that no-one is prepared to answer the question. The question has been dodged at least three times now.

DD requires "definitive proof" until he acts on climate, but on terrorism I suspect he would be happier to strike preemptively. Perhaps those killed in hurricanes are less dead than those killed in terrorist strikes.

NT, at the end of our discussion, I was thankful for you for allowing me to investigate a little further, read more of the scientific opinion. The fact that I was referencing scientific journals and major scientific organizations, when you continued to quote "freelance scientists", made it ever so clear that my position had a much firmer basis than yours. I thank you for giving me the opportunity. It became clear that you were an ideologue, putting your preformed beliefs before scientific research. You had clearly made your mind up long before on the topic, and were only prepared to read what confirmed your beliefs.

[brilliantLiberal]

I take it that no-one is prepared to answer the question. The question has been dodged at least three times now.

DD requires "definitive proof" until he acts on climate, but on terrorism I suspect he would be happier to strike preemptively. Perhaps those killed in hurricanes are less dead than those killed in terrorist strikes.
People who believe that greenhouses gasses caused the hurricane fall into one of two catagories: 1. Misinformed, 2. Stupid.

You have yet to answer my question, which was, restated, how can greenhouse gasses simultaneously be responsible for global cooling and global warming? Perhaps you should consider the following:

http://nov55.com/gbwm.html

Global warming. It exists, but not due to greenhouse gases. Oceans are heating due to hot spots rotating in the earth's core.
Everything in the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas including water vapor which is a hundred times more prevalent than carbon dioxide. People don't know this, because promoters of GW do so much lying.

The atmosphere is only 0.04% carbon dioxide, of which only 3% stems from human activity. Therefore, human activity cannot create global warming stemming from carbon dioxide, though natural causes of global warming certainly can exist.

The oceans regulate CO<SUB>2 </SUB>in the atmosphere to the minutest detail, as indicated by an El Nino in the Pacific Ocean, which causes CO2 measurements in the air to increase, and then they renormalize when the El Nino disappears.

The oceans are heating up drastically, and the atmosphere only slightly, as indicated by polar ice caps melting and increased rainfall. This points to a hot spot in the earth's core heating the oceans, not human activity.

Twenty thousand scientists signed a petition saying carbon dioxide is not creating global warming.

I really, really don't understand you members of the "Blame America First" crowd. No matter what happens in the world it always seems to be our fault. Why is that? Did you ever stop consider that poverty and third world nations are the greater culprits of greenhouse gasses?

http://www.countercurrents.org/cc-lean030405.htm

South Asia puts out more soot from its industrial chimneys than anywhere else on Earth, but even this is dwarfed by the smoke from millions of cooking fires. Research at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay has found that more than 40 per cent of the soot in the air comes from cooking, with another 13 per cent from forest fires. It concluded that the warming effect of the soot was 10 times as great as greenhouse gases over the Indian Ocean.
Even before this discovery, the cooking fires of the poor were known to be one of the world's gravest environmental hazards. A cocktail of poisonous chemicals swirling in the smoke from dung or wood fires kills 2.2 million people a year - mainly women cooking on them and their children.

Perhaps, then, industrialization is not the root of all evils, but a more efficient, more environmentally lifestyle than the third world nations we are expected to emulate. The fact is, man is NOT in control of the climate and could do very little to alter it even with a global effort. The movie "The Day After Tomorrow" was science fiction and propaganda, not science. If John Kerry, who also opposed Kyoto, had been elected, the movie would have never been made. Perhaps that would have been one benifit of electing Kerry.

http://www.physorg.com/news3694.html

A new study by two physicists at the University of Rochester suggests there is a mechanism at work in the Earth’s atmosphere that may blunt the influence of global warming, and that this mechanism is not accounted for in the computer models scientists currently use to predict the future of the world’s temperature. The researchers, David H. Douglass and Robert S. Knox, professors of physics, plotted data from satellite measurements of the Earth’s atmosphere in the months and years following the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. The results, published in an upcoming issue of Geophysical Research Letters (and now online), show that global temperatures dropped more and rebounded to normal significantly faster than conventional climate models could have predicted.

The fact is the earth takes pretty good care of itself without the intervention of man. That doesn't mean we should not be good stewards of our environment. That DOES mean that the earth is not going to be destroyed by he hand of man. It will be destroyed, when the time comes, by its Creator.

[kate]

I take it that no-one is prepared to answer the question. The question has been dodged at least three times now.

DD requires "definitive proof" until he acts on climate, but on terrorism I suspect he would be happier to strike preemptively. Perhaps those killed in hurricanes are less dead than those killed in terrorist strikes.


Your missing your own point. If someone hijacks a plane and crashes into a skyscraper attempting to make a glorious political statement it is terrorism. If a storm blows your roof away it is a storm, and not neccessarily an effect of Global Warming.

You are trying to compare apples and bananas there. Maybe some DemRats fall for it but I doubt anyone here is going to do so.

[markus3622]

Kate,

You're correct that we can tell after a terrorist attack that it was so and that after a hurricane, there is no way we can blame it on global warming, but you wouldn't suggest doing anything about terrorism until we can be 100% sure of an attack, i.e. it's happned.

My question, however, is posed to someone thinking about the future, by stopping terrorist attacks before they happen.

What should the US's policy on Iran and nuclear weapons be? What are they likely to do in the future? Much of this is based on uncertain knowledge, but most of us would agree that it would be crazy to let Iran get nuclear technology, in case they want to use it for harm. Here we would argue it is better to be safe than sorry.

This is where the comparison is made. Making decisions about uncertain events, before they happen.

BL

People who believe that greenhouses gasses caused the hurricane fall into one of two catagories: 1. Misinformed, 2. Stupid.
Correct, but no one is this thread is saying that.

You have yet to answer my question, which was, restated, how can greenhouse gasses simultaneously be responsible for global cooling and global warming?

Well, they can't. No one is saying that they are.

The atmosphere is only 0.04% carbon dioxide, of which only 3% stems from human activity. Therefore, human activity cannot create global warming stemming from carbon dioxide, though natural causes of global warming certainly can exist.

But 25% of the greenhouse effect comes from CO2. That is undisputed fact. Water vapor counts for 60%, but we've observed a significant increase in CO2 over the past 50 years.

Twenty thousand scientists signed a petition saying carbon dioxide is not creating global warming.


Oh dear. That petition was rubbished. Really, that isn't a good argument to use

http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosphere-energy/climate-change/ten-myths.html#cc2

Why is that? Did you ever stop consider that poverty and third world nations are the greater culprits of greenhouse gasses?
I'm no member of the blame America crowd. However, the US produces 25% of the world's manmade greenhouse emissions, at twice the rate per head of EU countries.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40415000/gif/_40415961_co2_emissions2_gra416.gif



Global warming. It exists, but not due to greenhouse gases. Oceans are heating due to hot spots rotating in the earth's core.
Everything in the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas including water vapor which is a hundred times more prevalent than carbon dioxide. People don't know this, because promoters of GW do so much lying.
All I can say here is that the experts disagree.

[Naturalized-Texan]

markus: When those weeks and weeks of discussions about global warming began, you were hard over on the-science-is-settled side, claiming that there can be no doubt that global warming is being caused by human activities. You claimed that there was a consensus – unanimity - among scientists to that effect.

After weeks and weeks of facts from Bluemoon, sunsettommy, and me showing that even the NAS Climate Change Panel and the IPCC, among many other reputable scientists and scientific institutes, stated there are far too many uncertainties in the climate data to determine the cause(s) of global warming, you finally came around to our viewpoint. You started to use words like “may” “maybe” “possibly” “probably” “likely” and other similar words to show that you agreed with us that there are such serious uncertainties that the cause(s) of global warming can’t be determined. Unfortunately, in this thread you denied those facts.

You now claim that the majority of scientists (a far cry from consensus – unanimity – that you claimed earlier) state that global warming is caused by human activity. I’ll go along with that claim with a few minor corrections: The majority of politically-motivated, leftist, junk scientists claim that global warming is being caused by human activities. As we showed in those weeks and weeks of discussions, real scientists, with no political axe to grind, state that there are far too many uncertainties in the climate data to make that determination.

In the thread, Hurricanes and Tropical Storms are NOT increasing in frequency or intensity (http://www.freeconservatives.com/vb/showthread.php?t=24631), you denied repeatedly that scientists are claiming that global warming is causing an increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. Yet, in this thread you are siding with the junk scientists and politicians who do claim that global warming is causing an increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes.

It seems to me that at least on the subject of global warming your positions are a model of inconsistency. Is your naivety on this subject allowing you to be let around by your nose by the latest whims of those politically-motivated, leftist, junk scientists? I submit that it is.

[Naturalized-Texan]

The true source of global warming is coming from the steaming mounds of B.S. the libs are crapping out. They generate CO2 everytime they open their mouths.
In that case, those liberals could stop global warming by refusing to exhale. :grin:

[brilliantLiberal]

The simple fact is that about half of the people who have ever lived on this planet are alive today. People exhale carbon dioxide.

However, plants and trees INTAKE carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. So what's the fastest solution to purify the air? LOGGING!!

Specifically, we need to log the old growth forests in the US. That will do two things. It will remove fuel that forest fires need to rage out of control, and it will allow us to cut access roads which could be used to control fires. The net result would be a GREATER number of trees, increased jobs, cleaner air and a more sound resource management strategy.

By the way, being the world's largest producer of MAN MADE greenhouse gasses does not make us the largest producer, as I pointed out earlier.

[Naturalized-Texan]

bl: I think that I read somewhere that because of all the forest land and green spaces in the U.S., the U.S. is a net CO2-sink or at least CO2-neutral, i.e., we absorb as much or more CO2 than we produce. Is this correct?

[markus3622]

markus: When those weeks and weeks of discussions about global warming began, you were hard over on the-science-is-settled side, claiming that there can be no doubt that global warming is being caused by human activities. You claimed that there was a consensus – unanimity - among scientists to that effect.



That's why I won't argue with you on this. When people are agreeing with you, you can say many sensible things. However, it appears that when you disagree you have to distort the position of your opponent. It seems you can't handle complex arguments if you disagree.

In short, I've never claimed that there is unanimity or that there is no doubt. You know full well that "scientific consensus" means "significant majority". In fact, it was you have claimed here that "there is no scientific evidence that that warming was caused by human activities. The warming is merely the natural recovery from that 500-year Little Ice Age."
http://www.freeconservatives.com/vb/showpost.php?p=287344&postcount=7

In the hurricane thread, you've misrepresented my argument (knowingly or not)

Your argument went along the lines that

1) Firm predictions have been made about hurricanes by climate change advocates
2) You present some evidence that hurricanes aren't more frequent
3) Therefore, climate change is junk science

I directed you to the IPCC report that showed 1) was wrong - that the scientific community were not in a position at that time to make firm predictions about hurricanes (frequency or magnitude). I did admit that there were some conflicting studies in the scientific literature talking about the possible changes (e.g. Emmanuel, 2004), but that it was still an open debate.

By the way, being the world's largest producer of MAN MADE greenhouse gasses does not make us the largest producer, as I pointed out earlier

But given that the increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can be directly attributed to manmade activities, it makes sense to concentrate on that sector.

Here's a few links on whether planting trees will stop climate change

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/480339.stm

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn783

Here's a link that suggests that US forests sequester around 50% of North American emissions.

http://www.katoombagroup.org/New%20Folder/Other/resources/pdf/Nature-CO2-99-poster.pdf

[DoctorDoom]

Am I the only one who remembers that the US Senate voted 92-0 to reject the Kyoto protocols? If Bush HAD signed it, it was DOA in the Senate.Actually, it was 95-0, and it was rejected on July 25, 1997, during the reign of XXX-42.

Full info: Question: On the Resolution (s.res.98 ) (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=105&session=1&vote=00205)

[DoctorDoom]

I take it that no-one is prepared to answer the question. The question has been dodged at least three times now.If you'll do a little searching, petulant one, you'll discover that you liberals have been yammering about the global-warming bullshit at FC since I arrived in 2002, and most likely before then. Every damned one of you thinks that he/she is the first person that ever raised the issue, and that we must constantly repeat the same answers that we have used a hundred times before.

Use the search function, kid. We're tired of saying the same things over and over and over every time another clueless lib decides to spout junk science.

DD requires "definitive proof" until he acts on climate, but on terrorism I suspect he would be happier to strike preemptively. Perhaps those killed in hurricanes are less dead than those killed in terrorist strikes.To be exceedingly kind, that's a dumb-ass "argument of the type called a "red herring". Fact time, child:

Terrorism: a fact, with irrefutable proof including a gaping hole in Manhattan where several buildings used to be.
Global warming: pure hypothesis with no evidence, let alone proof.

Terrorism: a demonstrable phenomenon that needs no scientific research to verify its reality.
Global warming: a speculation based on 99 skillion what-ifs and driven by politics.

Terrorism: many thousands of deaths directly and provably caused by it, including 2986 on 9/11/2001.
Global warming: not a shred of evidence that even one death is the result of it.

Tell me, child, why I should be as concerned about gloom & doom global-warming scenarios from people who can't get tomorrow's weather right as I am about murderers who kill people because they enjoy killing.

[DoctorDoom]

The simple fact is that about half of the people who have ever lived on this planet are alive today. People exhale carbon dioxide.The human body produces about one kilogram of CO₂ daily. According to the World PopClock (http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html), the world's population is about 6.46 billion. Ergo that is about 6 billion KG (allowing for kids exhaling less), or about 6,613,800 tons per day. In a year of 365.25 days, human breathing contributes 2,415,690,450 tons of CO₂.

Volcanic activity now releases about 130 to 230 teragrams (145 million to 255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year. Volcanic releases are about 1% of the amount which is released by human activities.Carbon Dioxide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide)

Taking the high value in short tons, 255 million, and multiplying by 100, we get 25.5 billion tons/year from human activity. Assuming that "human activity" doesn't include breathing, our exhalation of CO₂ increases the human-created amount by 9.5%.

But, don't tell liberals about that. They'll find a way to tax us for breathing.

[Nutrider99]

But given that the increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can be directly attributed to manmade activities, it makes sense to concentrate on that sector.

Global warming, to the extent that it does exist, is caused by rising temperatures of the seas, not by greenhouse gasses. The variances in temperature are cause by the dynamics of the earth's core in relation to its crust. Over time the climate warms and cools in cycles. Greenhouse gasses could not effect the core temperatures of the earth because they would by definition have to warm from the crust inward and the warming is demonstrably coming from the core outward. That is why the seas warm more than the external climates.

However, there is nothing man can do about the core of the earth and there is no political gain to be had from it, so we have gone from hysteria of a global freeze to hysteria of a global warming supposedly created by the same greenhouse gasses.

I should write a book. When Small Minds Play With Big Science. I could dedicate it to all of the message board experts who claim as fact that which no scientist with any credentials will. Even the most rabid qualified supporters of the global warming myth admit that it cannot be proven. Yet, here we are inundated with the "facts" of how the world is being destroyed and America is to blame. The facts simply do not support it. It is merely a rallying cry for the America hating lefty lunatics who eschew reason as much as they detest conservatives.

The world is drowning in oil. Enviro-wackos consider oil to be hazardous, so I say let's drill for it everywhere and burn it like there's no tomorrow. If we show callous disregard for our environment where will be 100 years from now? Exactly where we will be if we all turn green tomorrow, become vegetarians, and promote "tolerance" of queers who dance while their neighbors die.

[markus3622]

Global warming, to the extent that it does exist, is caused by rising temperatures of the seas, not by greenhouse gasses. The variances in temperature are cause by the dynamics of the earth's core in relation to its crust. Over time the climate warms and cools in cycles. Greenhouse gasses could not effect the core temperatures of the earth because they would by definition have to warm from the crust inward and the warming is demonstrably coming from the core outward. That is why the seas warm more than the external climates.
Got any peer-reviewed literature supporting that theory?

Terrorism: a fact, with irrefutable proof including a gaping hole in Manhattan where several buildings used to be.
Climate Change: Scientific theory, supported by mass of evidence and backed by majority of leading experts

Terrorism: a demonstrable phenomenon that needs no scientific research to verify its reality.
Climate Change: Based on a demonstrable mechanism, based on fairly basic science and backed by scientific observations.

Terrorism: many thousands of deaths directly and provably caused by it, including 2986 on 9/11/2001.
Climate Change: Plenty of evidence to suggest that potentially many more deaths could be caused by climate change than terrorists could ever dream of killing

Tell me, child, why I should be as concerned about gloom & doom global-warming scenarios from people who can't get tomorrow's weather right as I am about murderers who kill people because they enjoy killing.

If you're interested, there's plenty of literature out there. The IPCC report is a good place to start.

It is impossible to say that any single death is directly caused by climate change, just as any single cancer death is due to smoking, but the fact remains there is a definite link between smoking and cancer. Would you deny that?

[Warlady]

markus what the hell does smoking have to do with terrorism and global warming?????????? You liberals sure do have a hard time staying on topic. Why is that?

[DoctorDoom]

It is impossible to say that any single death is directly caused by climate change...Whereas it is easily proven that X number of deaths are the result of specific terrorist acts. Your comparison is meaningless.

... just as any single cancer death is due to smoking, but the fact remains there is a definite link between smoking and cancer. Would you deny that?Another red herring. Smoking is completely unrelated to the thread topic. IAC, smoking as a leading cause of lung cancer is demonstrable without wild-ass guesses. There is no similar correlation of human activity and global warming.

Your defense of bad science is becoming tedious.

[markus3622]

The point was to show that it is worth taking action against something, even if individually it cannot be proven to cause a bad effect. Smoking was just an example that proved that point.

Now, we disagree over the link between human activities and climate change. Simply put, the majority of climatologists recognise that link, and if that link is shown with some confidence (as it has been), then we would agree it is worth taking action.

[Nutrider99]

Got any peer-reviewed literature supporting that theory?
http://news.techwhack.com/1226/08050501-oceans-heating-not-carbon-dioxide-is-the-cause-of-global-warming

The uniform assumption has been that there could be no other cause of global warming than CO2 and other micro components of the atmosphere. That assumption is totally absurd. Evidence indicates that the cause of oceans heating is a hot spot rotating in the earth’s core. Ice age cycles point to this, because they have been cycling at exactly 100 thousand year intervals for the past million years. Environmental effects would be much more random. A rotating mass in the earth’s core would be cyclic.

http://www.earthsgeomotor.com/PageOne.htm

The force described in the previous section has been acting on the core of the earth for the last 850,000 years or since the last magnetic-field reversal. This force acts on every charged particle within the earth and the result is that the solid core has gained one revolution in the last 400 years. This enormous amount of energy produces heat within the center of the earth. This heat energy escapes through the crust and causes global warming. When the magnetic field of the earth reverses, the force vector also reverses slowing the rate of rotation of the solid core. This action eventually leads to global cooling and could result in an ice age like the ones that have been occurring on Earth for the last 2.2 billion years.

http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1824

Of the second claim, that the cause of global warming is man-made, environmental activists point to the correlation between recent global industrialization and the sweltering summers of 1998 and 1999. A correlation, though, is not proof of cause. If global industrialization were the cause of planetary warming, the satellite and balloon temperature record from 1940 to 1980 -- a period of far greater worldwide industrialization -- would show a marked increase in average global temperatures, which it does not. Indeed, such data show temperatures declining....
If scientific temperature records belie global warming; if scientists conclude that global temperatures are minimally affected by man; where, then, is scientific consensus -- the third claim supporting the notion of global warming? The answer is: there isn't any.

http://www.nationalcenter.org/KyotoQuestionsAnswers.html

There is no serious evidence that man-made global warming is taking place. The computer models used in U.N. studies say the first area to heat under the "greenhouse gas effect" should be the lower atmosphere - known as the troposphere. Highly accurate, carefully checked satellite data have shown absolutely no such tropospheric warming. There has been surface warming of about half a degree Celsius, but this is far below the customary natural swings in surface temperatures.

http://northernlife.senet.com.au/27jun2001.htm

The acid test of all this is the last 22 years of satellite measurements made of the lower layer of air of the Earth. That layer of air should be warming quite rapidly. It's where the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect should be taking place. That layer there has not seen a big warming trend. It's seen ups and downs but there's been no net trend. That layer of air has to warm first according to the models. Then it, in turn, warms the surface. Now we've seen a little bit of warming of the surface, but it can't be caused by that carbon dioxide effect in that atmospheric layer, which shows no warming. You can't bypass the lower layer of air and warm the surface by carbon dioxide effect. So the satellite measurements, which are precise and validated by independent balloon measurements everyday, say that there has been no effect that we can see and, therefore, the future effect is going to be minimal.

No, I make this up because I like to be difficult!!

[DoctorDoom]

The point was to show that it is worth taking action against something, even if individually it cannot be proven to cause a bad effect. Smoking was just an example that proved that point.The point is wasted. It is absolutely absurd to be "taking action" on something for which there is no credible evidence. Committing trillions of dollars to correct a hypothetical problem is pure folly.

Perhaps we should commit to building interplanetary defense networks as a means of "taking action" against potential alien invasions. After all, there is more evidence of aliens than there is of man-caused global warming.

[Naturalized-Texan]

In short, I've never claimed that there is unanimity or that there is no doubt. You know full well that "scientific consensus" means "significant majority".
You can pretend all you want that "scientific consensus" means "significant majority", but as I proved conclusively using various dictionaries, print and online, the fact is that the word "consensus" is a synonym for the word "unanimity". Since there is no unanimity about global warming, there can be no consensus
In fact, it was you have claimed here that "there is no scientific evidence that that warming was caused by human activities. The warming is merely the natural recovery from that 500-year Little Ice Age."
That is absolutely correct, "there IS no scientific evidence that that warming was caused by human activities. The warming is merely the natural recovery from that 500-year Little Ice Age." As we have seen from facts presented in this thread, the effect of human activities on global warming is so minuscule that it is totally insignificant and can be totally ignored.Those who claim differently are not credible.

Since the current global warming IS the natural recovery from the Little Ice Age, it is the height of leftist arrogance to presume that we humans can do anything to cause it or stop it.

The IPCC report is a good place to start.
As sunsettommy showed in another thread, the IPCC report stated that there are too many uncertainties in the climate data to determine whether global warming is being caused by human activities.

But given that the increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can be directly attributed to manmade activities, it makes sense to concentrate on that sector.
If that were true, then most of the warming since end of the Little Ice Age would have occurred after World War II when there was a huge industrial expansion and a huge population explosion. Unfortunately for those who believe that hypothesis, less than two-thirds of the temperature increase since the end of the Little Ice Age occurred after 1940 when CO2 has been the greatest.

[Naturalized-Texan]

The point is wasted. It is absolutely absurd to be "taking action" on something for which there is no credible evidence. Committing trillions of dollars to correct a hypothetical problem is pure folly.
Absolutely! There is no way that we should adopt measures that would cost the American economy trillions of dollars and millions of jobs based on a hypothesis that is supported only by speculation and supposition, This is especially true now that nearly 9 million more Americans are employed than at the deepest point in the Clinton Recession.

Of course, the main reason that the jealous Left wanted the Kyoto Treaty that imposed such draconian costs on the U.S. was to destroy the American economy. It's no wonder that the U.S. Senate unanimously defeated that treaty.

[markus3622]

Got any peer-reviewed literature supporting that theory?

Long answer - five links from such renown scientific journals as "techwack", Capitalism Magazine

Short answer - no

Why is it that there is so much peer-reviewed scientific literature backing up the scientific consensus, yet the nay-sayers prefer to publish in the safety of their own magazines?

You can pretend all you want that "scientific consensus" means "significant majority", but as I proved conclusively using various dictionaries, print and online, the fact is that the word "consensus" is a synonym for the word "unanimity". Since there is no unanimity about global warming, there can be no consensus

This is such a poor argument. I'm sorry but you said you worked in a scientific environment. You should know better than this. I suppose you'll be claiming next that there's no scientific consensus on evolution if 0.1% of scientists disagree.

there IS no scientific evidence that that warming was caused by human activities. The warming is merely the natural recovery from that 500-year Little Ice Age."
I think you're confusing evidence with proof. If you're not, then it is you that is taking such an absolute position, not me.

the IPCC report stated that there are too many uncertainties in the climate data to determine whether global warming is being caused by human activities.

This is just a lie. You know this. Unless, you can point out to me in the IPCC report where it says this. It's available online so you should be able to provide a direct link. I'll help you out. Here's a link to the report

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/

There is no way that we should adopt measures that would cost the American economy trillions of dollars and millions of jobs

Any evidence for such a claim in peer-reviewed economic journals?
I'll start the ball rolling with this article published in the Energy Journal in 2004, that concludes:


Taking all the literature into account the macroeconomic costs of greenhouse gas mitigation of the kind envisaged by the Kyoto commitments is likely to be insignificant in the US, provided that the policies are expected, long-term and well-designed. In this context "well-designed" means that market-based instruments are used, such as auctions of internationally tradable emissions permits, and revenues earned by the government are recycled via reductions in burdensome taxes.

http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/dae/people/barker/pdf/v3ej_k.pdf

It is worth remembering that Kyoto has its flaws and is by no means the only possible solution to solve the problem of climate change.


the main reason that the jealous Left wanted the Kyoto Treaty that imposed such draconian costs on the U.S. was to destroy the American economy.

Any evidence for this conspiracy theory?

[Nutrider99]

Why is it that there is so much peer-reviewed scientific literature backing up the scientific consensus, yet the nay-sayers prefer to publish in the safety of their own magazines?
The business of panicking the public in exchange for massive grants for research is a multi-billion dollar industry. Nobody involved in the industry is going to give credence to those with dissenting opinions, ESPECIALLY if those opinions are well researched and backed by hard facts, which is what was presented to you. For that reason no publication whose coffers are augmented by such funds is going to commit financial suicide by publishing and acknowledging that which would lead to the cancellation of such grants. Either you are not old enough to know this, or you are not smart enough to know this.

Like so many trolls, you ignore everyone who disagrees with you. Unable to either understand or refute the science behind the presentations, you poke fun at the messenger and ignore the message. You might think this makes you look enlightened, but it only makes you look stupid.

I lived through the 70's and remember full well these same "experts" telling us how greenhouse gasses were going to block the rays of the sun and cause another ice age. I remember idiots protesting capitalism in the streets because America was going to cause a global freeze. They were just as adamant then as these same idiots are now that their "science" is the truth. They were boyed then as they are now by ignorant post pubescent America haters who see their nation as the focus of evil in the modern world, and who, given the tune of pseudo science, will dance the jig in front of all who do not avert their eyes.

It's the same old song and dance with but a few changes in lyrics.

By the way, do we still have rain forests? They were supposed to have been completely clear-cut by 1985, plunging the world into another ice age. Remember that one? If not, go ask your mother.

[markus3622]

Do you have any evidence of good research in the field of climatology being suppressed merely because it dissents from the scientific consensus? If not, how can we take the claim seriously.

There is only so far one can go with that line of reasoning. Science depends on peer-review. Scientists have to go by what is in the scientific literature. That's why I like to quote the scientific literature.

All the stuff you write about America Haters is irrelevant. Why not stick to the science?

Do you have any peer-reviewed evidence for your rainforests claim?

[Nutrider99]

Do you have any peer-reviewed evidence for your rainforests claim?
You're kidding, right?

You HAVE heard the cries about deforestation, taking away the "lungs of the earth" and all that, right? Please tell me that you aren't that ignorant.

[markus3622]

Do you have any peer-reviewed evidence for your rainforests claim?

I take that it's a "no" again then. I don't want to go off-topic on this, but do you have any evidence that scientists were claiming that the rainforests were going to have been "completely clear-cut by 1985, plunging the world into another ice age"?

The point you're trying to make is that some scientists in the 1970s warned of an ice-age. However, they were only a small minority, unlike the masses of evidence (see IPCC report) for the current worries over climate change.

http://www.pewclimate.org/state_of_fear.cfm

... in any case, the published literature from scientists during the 1970s does not reflect alarmist predictions of an impeding ice age, and, in fact the research conducted at the time has proven to be robust. The myth of ice age predictions stems largely from the popular press, which extrapolated legitimate scientific findings such as those listed above to arrive at more alarming, but erroneous, conclusions.

There is a legitimate concern that the media like to magnify the claims made by scientists, and I suppose there is a tendency to think "boy crying wolf". There has been some bad reporting on climate change. That's why I'd recommend the IPCC report

[Naturalized-Texan]

markus: Unfortunately, the jungles ("rainforest" is too PC for me) and other old-growth forests are net producers of CO2 because of all the decaying animal and vegetable matter contained therein. Conversly, new-growth forests are huge consumers of CO2 and huge producers of O2. That's why the U.S. consumes as much, or almost as much, CO2 as we produce.

[Nutrider99]

I take that it's a "no" again then. I don't want to go off-topic on this, but do you have any evidence that scientists were claiming that the rainforests were going to have been "completely clear-cut by 1985, plunging the world into another ice age"?
Nope. There wasn't an internet back then, so you won't find anything with a google search. If you didn't live it, you'll have to talk to someone who did.

[markus3622]

You might excuse me then if I retain some skepticism of your claim until I see some evidence.

[MichaelS]

My $.02 without getting bogged down in scientific arguments that either side can refute. After all, we're talking about deep pockets funding researchers on both sides that can come out with just about any theory they want and make it "sound" good.

"Last week in the scientific journal Maybe, scientist John H. Makestuffup published the results of a two-week long study that found greenhouse gases actually trap solar wind which is cooling the planet's atmosphere...."

But, c'mon, just from a common sense perspective here folks, anyone who believes that billions of people can live on a planet and continually and increasingly pour harmful gases into its atmosphere without consequence needs to have his or her head examined.

Will nature compensate? Of course. Will that compensation always be in the best interests of mankind? Of course not.

I know the almighty dollar speaks with a very loud voice, but there comes a point when common sense responsibility should take priority. And it shouldn't necessarily wait until Mother Nature's reaction is definitive enough to have a scientific "consensus".

It's the ole pay me now or pay me later scenario. Sure, you can defer, but it will always be more expensive in the long run.

Of course, this outrageously litigious society in which we live thrives on its ability to displace accountability. Why start accepting any now?

I love this icon. Might as well slap a "Support Our Troops" sticker on the back of the gas-guzzling behemoth and be done with it.

:suv:

[Nutrider99]

You might excuse me then if I retain some skepticism of your claim until I see some evidence.
Excuse me, then, if I simply attribute everything you say to youthful ignorance. If you aren't old enough to remember Sting crying on TV over the rainforests then you simply have no perspective by which to judge this latest lunacy that passes for science. You grew up in a video game world and have no concept of reality as yet.

The fact is, we've heard the song and dance from extremists before. They blame America for all the evils of the world and give us credit for none of the good.

The earth is accustomed to the burning of fossil fuels. The earth is accustomed to oil "contaminating" the soil (after all, that's where it was pumped from). The earth is capable of surviving deforestation and reforestation. The fact regarding the rainforests is that they are 90% intact because much of what has been cut has been reclaimed, and in fact the younger trees do a far better job of absorbing C02 than the old growth trees did. SUV's are NOT going to destroy the earth, and anyone who thinks they are is a moron. The earth is a perfect biosphere created by a perfect God. It is NOT some precariously balanced creation of chance and random mutations. It is perfect because God is perfect. Man can no more destroy the earth than he can destroy God. Get real, get a life, and go out four wheeling. Stop crying about life and go live it!

[Naturalized-Texan]

markus:

I repeat: "there IS no scientific evidence that that warming was caused by human activities. The warming is merely the natural recovery from that 500-year Little Ice Age."

No one, including you, has ever presented credible scientific evidence that global warming is being caused by human activities. Based on the research that you forced me to do in our discussions on global warming, I have concluded that the human effects on global warming are so minuscule as to be insignificant and irrelevant. I thank you again for your leadership in pointing me in the right direction.

Since my research shows that human effects on global warming are insignificant and irrelevant, I was forced to look elsewhere for the cause and the only credible conclusion that I can reach is that the warming since the end of the Little Ice Age is nothing more than the natural recovery from that 500-year cooling period. Then, further research showed me, based on a peer-reviewed article from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0310.html), that prior to the 500-year Little Ice Age there was a 500-year period - the Medieval Warm period - where temperatures were warmer than they are today. That further led me to the fact that the Little Ice Age coincided with a period of low to no sunspot activity - the Maunder Minimum - which was almost certainly the cause of that period of global cooling. We are now in a long period of high sunspot activity which happens to coincide with the warming period since the end of the Little Ice Age. I strongly suspect that if solar observations could have been made during the Medieval Warm period, we would learn that that warming coincided with a period of high sunspot activity.

Based on the above and applying a little common sense, one can only conclude that the current warming trend is entirely natural and that there is absolutely nothing that we can do to stop it short of turning off the Sun.

[markus3622]

And I can repeat again - the IPCC report has consistently shown that there is credible evidence of climate change caused by anthropogenic emissions. I know we've discussed this before and there's little point going over this again.

The debate we had gave me the opportunity to go through the peer-reviewed literature and find that the overwhelming majority of it is in support of the general thesis I've outlined. I thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I don't doubt there are some skeptics. We've discussed some of them in the thread.

Another important thing about peer-review, is that once a claim is made, it is worth waiting to see how the scientific community responds. Science is hopefully a self-correcting process. What happened with the Soon Baliunas paper is that a critique was published in EOS

http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/prrl0319.html

After seeing this critique and the supposed mistakes in the original paper, half of the editorial board of Climate Reseach resigned. In other words, not a pretty picture. A good review of the sorry affair was published in the Higher Education Chronicle. The Baliunas paper was a literature review, and made strange assumptions such as claiming that "warmth in China in 850, drought in Africa in 1000, and wet conditions in England in 1200 all would qualify as part of the Medieval Warm Period, even though they happened centuries apart." We can both agree that it's a pretty stange assumption.

http://w3g.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/storch/CR-problem/Chronicle%20of%20Higher%20Education.030904.pdf

It's clear that the support for the sun-thesis is pretty non-existant. Common sense suggests that increasing the concentration by 50% of the gas that causes 25% of the greenhouse effect is going to affect the climate. That's what the experts say. That's what the scientific literature says. It could be wrong, but as Fred Pearce writes in New Scientist

"The sceptics could be right, and the majority of the world's climate scientists wrong. It would be a lucky break. But how lucky do you feel?"

[markus3622]

Nutrider: Two points

1) I remember some of the scares about the Amazon Rainforest. However, I don't like to get my science from Sting.

2) In a debate on climate change, it is completely irrelevent to introduce theological assumptions about a "perfect God".

[Nutrider99]

In a debate on climate change, it is completely irrelevent to introduce theological assumptions about a "perfect God".
No, it's 100% relevant. Here's why.

The earth isn't some anomalous manifestation that exists by causation extraneous to probability and natural law. It is a perfect biosphere for life which was created by God to accommodate all living creatures. From man’s earliest beginnings the presence and the omnipotence of God has been demonstrated repeatedly. From creation itself, to the great flood, to the cessation of time for a day, to the parting of the Red Sea, to walking on waters, to commanding the elements, to performing miracles in our everyday lives, God has taken an intense interest in that which His hand has created. This is His world, and as such that which concerns the world cannot be intelligently discussed without the inclusion of Him.

It is pure hubris to presume that that which was created by God can be destroyed by man. It is hubris further to pretend that man can affect patterns of climate that date to the origination of the earth itself. This debate is driven by political ideolgy, NOT by science. It is the anti-capitalists along with their useful idiots who promote the nonsense that geological variances in temperature can be caused by carbon dioxide emmissions. These same people have a track record of hysteria based pseudo-science, as we have illustrated. Their "provable science" may come and go, but one thing remains constant- their antipathy toward America and capitalism in general.

[markus3622]

Nutrider,

We are posed with the following questions

1) Is the climate changing?
2) If so, what could cause this?
3) What does science say about the increased concentrations of CO2 and other important greenhouse gases?

If you introduce God (untestable) then it is you who is introducing ideology. Why bother even posting some pseudo-science (as the type you've posted) when your opposition to science is based on theology?

[MichaelS]

It is pure hubris to presume that that which was created by God can be destroyed by man. It is hubris further to pretend that man can affect patterns of climate that date to the origination of the earth itself.

Who said anything about global warming destroying the Earth? It won't. However, it could very well make it a very inhospitable place to live.

As for hubris believing Man can affect climate patterns dating to the origination of the Earth, actually it's naivete to believe billions of people pouring noxious gases into an atmosphere in increasingly greater amounts will not affect such patterns. To believe otherwise is to say, "We can do whatever we want, however we want, whenever we want, to God's creation, and He'll just be OK with it."

[kate]

Look, I have been a member of Greenpeace for several years and I have been thinking about Global Warming similiar to the way you see it but I have been taught that it is not as simple as that. Global Warming is a theory still. It is not 100% proven to be taking place a