i think he is saying that he is running around in circles and screaming and shouting about how there's nothing to fear, sort of pulling the wool over his eyes in the face of danger.
I guess this is the thread that was alluded to by MojoMan earlier today One thing though that you should note in the link you provide. [rquoter]NASA has confirmed that a developing natural climate pattern will likely result in much colder temperatures, according to Marc Shepherd, writing in the April 30 American Thinker. He adds that NASA was also quick to point out that such natural phenomena should not confuse the issue of manmade greenhouse gas induced global warming which apparently will be going on behind the scenes while our teeth are chattering from a decade and a half long cold spell. [/rquoter] So if you are using that to support an argument that man made global warming isn't occuring the article contradicts that point.
I noticed you raised this issue before and you are right that there is no correct climatic condition for the Earth. What you are missing though is that our civilization has developed under a specific climate condition so any major change to that will be disastrous to us. As George Carlin noted at the start of this thread, "the Planet is fine its the humans that are F^(ked."
I am not making that point. Here is a post from page one of this thread that I have re-posted several times before explaining my position on this: It is important to differentiate between "global warming" and "antromopomorhic global warming" (or AGW for short). Anthropomorphic global warming is the man-made part. That is really the only part that is disputed, and rightfully so. As far as "global warming" goes, the Earth has been warming and the Arctic ice sheets have been melting since the last ice age. Here is a depiction of what the Earth may have looked like around 12,000 years ago: Clearly, the Earth was colder then, and it is warmer now. The observation that the Arctic ice cap is melting is an observation that goes back around 12,000 years. Nearly all of the melting that has occurred, occurred prior to the industrial age (which goes back less than 200 years). All of the melting that occurred prior to the beginning of the industrial age is obviously not "anthropomorphic global warming". And now, over the last 10+ years, the Earth has actually cooled a bit. We are not at all time highs even within our lifetimes. Here is an article from the BBC on the topic: What happened to global warming? If the effect of CO2 that has been and is being pumped into the atmosphere is as compelling and dangerous as the AGW alarmists suggest, then how is it possible that the Earth has actually cooled over the last decade? If you take the predictive climate models used by Al Gore and his associates at the United Nations seriously, then we are in a state of crisis, the situation is dire, the need for corrective action is urgent and their is no time for delay. But truth be told, none of these predictive climate models used by Al Gore and the UN predicted the cooling period that we are now entering. But here it is anyway. What are we to make of that? What these people have been preaching to us is not real science. It is agenda-driven propaganda. Once again, the Earth has certainly warmed. But the so-called science surrounding the claims of the AGW alarmists is weak and not sufficiently substantiated to warrant betting our economic futures on. There needs to be a lot more work done on this.
You can ask other posters here that 2 years ago I was in the I am skeptical about Global warming. What convinced me? I saw the data that global warming scientists predicted that if global warming was indeed occuring, there would be two key observations. These observations indeed have been made in scientific studies. So I am now convinced. The two are: That the temperature increase would occur in night-time temperatures and that certain layers of the atmosphere would warm fast than others. Both of these have occurred and are congruent with a model in which warming is due to the greenhouse effect.
As I stated in the very post that you quoted, I am not refuting the basic idea of global warming. You guys keep repeating that, and so I keep reposting my original post where I refuted that assertion. The Earth has warmed.... For more, see the post that you quoted above.
And you keep refusing to discuss posts which showed why your original data wasn't as accurate as other data that shows art least part of global warming is man made.
The posts that suggest that the world was not colder during the last ice age than it is now, and that it has not entered a shorter term cooling trend over the last 10 years are clearly BS. Obviously, the AGW alarmist crowd has gone all-in with this theory. So it is essential that they continue to come up with rebuttals for everything that contradicts their theory. Which is getting to be kind of a lot. People will need to use their own brains and make their own determinations about whether those explanations hold water or not. You know where I stand. If you disagree, that is OK. You have a right to your opinion, just like everyone else. How much is man's contribution and how much is not man made? This is a critical question that no one has a definitive answer to. I have no problem with the suggestion that man may have contributed something towards a warmer Earth. But how much? The models used by the AGW crowd have proven to be sufficiently unreliable that I am not prepared to blindly defer to the assessments of that crowd. Many of these scientists do not clearly appear to be approaching this question in a truly unbiased, and therefore truly scientific manner. There is a lot of money on the table for scientists who support this agenda. Anyone who believes the scientists that are involved in this process are completely immune to being influenced by that are very naive indeed. The money will go to the scientists that provide support for the theory And then there is the question of the solution. Nothing so far proposed that is at all feasible and credible even claims to be able to actually alter the climate to any appreciable degree. The so-called fixes do nothing to accomplish the stated goals. And the total economic cost is projected in the trillions. We are supposed to spend trillions of dollars just to demonstrate our good intentions? I do not think so.
I think the question you posed (well, you didn't pose it, you attempted to answer it) is valid. Sure, the planet has been warming consistently for a long time now, but have humans accelerated the warming to the point where it is more critical? If I read what you've repeatedly posted about 34287 times now, you say no, humans have not really accelerated this warming period the Earth is going through. Is this a correct assumption of your theory (at a very high level, of course)? I'm not a scientist (well, I have a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Science, but that's not relevant for all this junk and I would hardly call it traditional "science"). I haven't really ever seen both sides of the argument for and against human-incurred global warming. I watched about 10-15 minutes of "An Inconvenient Truth" and just assumed Al Gore was telling the truth. That said, whether he was or not wouldn't affect how I live -- I'll try to reduce my carbon footprint if I can (recycling, use less paper and energy, etc.), but I'm not going to go out of my way to do it (e.g., buying a hybrid car). I like to think most Americans are like me: willing to assist, but not rabid about it. So I've gone through this thread a bit. I've tried to understand your argument (see my simplistic assessment above), and tried to see the counterpoint presented by other posters. My thoughts is short: I prefer the counterpoint to your argument. Let me piece my thoughts together by re-examining the two posts that "got me": (1) Post by GladiatoRowdy This is great data. To me, data drives everything (see above: computer science degree), so this has more clout to me immediately that a hypothetical picture of the earth 12,000 years ago. Clearly, from about 1850 to 1910, the air temperature was about a flat line. This obviously doesn't go back 12,000 years, but the graph goes from 1850 to 2009, so this 60 year period starting at 1850 is about 37% of the data. That's a pretty good sample, relative to the rest. Also clear is that at 1910 (industrial revolution), the global air temperature started increasing rapidly. That would appear to indicate that the industrial revolution increased the rate at which the Earth is warming. Of course, this 160 year period is only a mere fraction of the last 12,000 years as you indicated. In addition, according to it, there was no warming from 1940 to 1980 on average. (2) Post by B-Bob An article from Nature. Nature is a huge scientific publication (it's my girlfriend's dream of being published in there), so I have much trust in it. They indicate that the majority of the last 12,000 years (9,000 years of it), the ice sheets have been stable. There was a 3,000 year warming period, and then the warming began again with the industrial revolution. I see two possibilities for the recent warming trend if it was stable the last 6,000 years: (a) coincidence, it was going to warm anyway, or (b) industrialization is at fault. Since I despise coincidence, I am definitely more in favor of (b). So, overall, the combination of air temperatures and ice sheet melting, both of which have accelerated over the last 100 years, indicates to me that industrialization has had an impact. With the accelerated warming, we could very well be in danger. While politicians do exaggerate a bit, I think it's important to invest in renewable resources and things that can and will reduce our carbon footprint. However, politicians aren't pushing for this spending because they want to save humanity (though it is a delightful idea); they push for it because not only will these renewable resources create jobs (construction, maintenance, science, etc.), but it will also reduce our dependence on foreign resources and focus more locally. Those are tangible things, and things I think even conservatives can appreciate. Oof, long-winded. Sorry. I might just get a reply that is just a quote of your original post, but eh, I wanted to put my thoughts down on paper-- err, computer.
You are refuting that the cause of that warming is CO2. The evidence is overwhelming - such that every science academy of every major industrialized nation agrees on this. The debate is over, it's time to set ideology aside and we have to deal with reality. Now, you can say - hey the best approach is learn to deal with warming, or that we should just ignore it because who cares...but to deny the science at this stage of the game is not a river in Egypt.
There is no where close to enough evidence to support the AGW alarmist position, which they tend to present with absolute confidence as "proven" science. There is way too much information that raises doubts about the reliability of their conclusions. Much more work needs to be done. As I have said several times, I do not reject the suggestion that man has made some sort of contribution to the current climatic conditions of the Earth. However, as far as I can see, that contribution is probably not very much. The single most significant source of global warming is the sun. The second is heat from the Earth's core. Then come a number of factors such as water vapor (clouds), which is also a greenhouse gas that happens to have a much more powerful warming coefficient than CO2 does, and which is much more prevalent in the atmosphere than CO2. Also there is the contribution from the oceans, natural methane emissions (another greenhouse gas) from the Earth and from animals across the Earth and so forth. After all of that and more, what is man's contribution? Probably not very much. And what about CO2's contribution? Let's look at a chart of CO2 as a percent of the atmosphere: As you can see, CO2 as a percent of the atmosphere is tiny. Man's contribution is a tiny percent of that. But some people believe that contribution is tipping the balance, as it were. Is it really just a coincidence that this particular greenhouse gas, which is not the only greenhouse gas by any means, just happens to be emitted by all the energy companies over which the left leaning powers of the Earth have almost no control? I do not think so. How do you know this data is right - meaning how do you know it tells us what they claim that it does? You may have heard the phrase popularized by Mark Twain: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Statistics can be massaged to support an incredibly diverse range of conclusions, even contradictory conclusions. Just because someone presents some numbers to support their conclusions, it should not automatically be assumed that (1) the numbers are right, or (2) the interpretation of the data is correct. The second premise is especially worthy of being approached with a healthy skepticism. I have typed enough on this for now. Gotta go. I'm out.
And does science really expect us to believe that milligrams of cholesterol, mixed in kilograms of blood can really effect our arteries? Absurd. The amount of supposedly "bad" ( ) LDL cholesterol would make a verrrrrry tiny little square when compared to the amount of your blood drawn as a larger square! Another bacon double cheeseburger please, ... with ranch dressing!
Except that it's been shown their method was more scientifically sound. You seem to just discount it, because you like your data and results better.
Woah woah woah. No one is disputing cholesterol's effect on the body. Even the egg lobby accepts this! Before we make headway into this contentious discussion, we need to distinguish between anthropogenically ingested cholesterol and naturally generated cholesterol. Using polysyllables clearly demonstrates that I know what I'm talking about!
That really doesn't address the fact that the article you cited from NASA doesn't support your point. You can keep reposting that but it isn't making your argument any stronger and is off base in regard to the narrow context that my post was addressing.
On the contrary there is lots of money on the side to disprove Global Warming. Consider for instance how much is money is made by the energy industry and all the other industries and infrastructure dependent on energy sources and practices that emit greenhouse gases. In fact your very argument that efforts to address global warming have severe economic impacts show that there is a lot of money in debunking global warming.
judoka already covered this a bit, but from where is all of this money coming to fund biased scientists? Also, you love to mention how you refuse to follow the "liberal politically correct" line of thinking ("politically correct" is such a funny term, by the way, because it can be used on all sides to insult the others and means everything and nothing). But what is politically correct about saying that there is a need for policy change with regards to warming, the environment, etc.? Politically, it is suicidal to make a big to do about warming when in office. Look at Gore - huge about warming pre-1992, 9 years of relative quiet, and then suddenly he is huge into it again? I wonder why? The politically correct thing is to mildly acknowledge it (like Clinton, Bush, and Obama) and then do nothing.
From the U.S. government primarily. There was a huge chunk of money for this kind of stuff in the so-called 'stimulus' bill.
