Al Gore a fraud and Carbon Credits a scam!?

Good lord. Are we going to have to do this every few weeks for eternity? These are winger talking points that won"t die no matter how many times you blow their heads off.

 

thanks, I was reading some blog and someone claimed he had a phd in meteorology, which I didn't think so but I didn't want to disputed his credentials in this thread or the previous thread that mentioned him. His wiki profile doesn't list his degree which was suspicious

 

Can we get these guys on the global warming issue?



I can guarantee they would get to the bottom of it.

 

Seconded. I know I'm bored with it.

 

yes and yes.

 

"Global Warming has to do with the correlation of Menthos and Diet Coke. Let's go shoot some guns and blow things up..."

 

fair point, but al gore is using info backed by the majority of scientist on this subject. I understand john coleman is knowlegdable on weather and founded the weather channel, but as someone else stated, he's from a time when they used to let bimbos in short skirts to do weather.

but yes, i understand he also has scientists backing up his claims

 

(edited: crash, fair point)
I believe it is just as impossible to prove that mankind is not causing global warm as it is to prove is positively.

I actually don't have a preconceived notion. I love to read data, and I've read a ton of it. And yes, I was uncomfortable with Al Gore going around talking science. He used maudlin photographs in an emotional, non-scientific way, for instance, and that made me cringe. To a strikingly large degree, however, he stuck to the data. You can argue with his conclusions and his extrapolation, and I think that is healthy. Please argue away. But most of the data is taken right from the research literature.

I don't think you read my post. What is very established is the effect that certain molecules have on the thermal cycle of the atmosphere. "Greenhouse gases" interact with solar radiation in a way that absorbs a lot more energy than non-greenhouse gases. Fundamental chemistry. What is also very well established is that global temperatures and sea levels have risen in recent history, while global ice coverage shrinks, and the earth's albedo (reflectivity) declines. There is consensus on those. We do not know for certain the cause (and you do not know for certain that we can rule out certain causes you don't like, sorry).

So yes, you can argue about solar variability (though that data over the last 200 years doesn't look like a promising correlation, within the error bars, to the majority of scientists), or natural earth cycles, and you could be completely correct, but you cannot prove those as sole causes unless you build twenty earths, age them appropriately, and run parallel controlled experiments on them.

In the end, here is a nice analogy for you.

You are 55 years old, let's say. Your doctor says you are 70 pounds over weight and that studies show you are increasing your risk for heart disease. He notes that your cholesterol has risen over the last ten years, from 195 to 245. Not a crisis, but he suggests you watch what you eat. He wants to put you on a statin, like lipator or whatever.

You say, and you cite lots of articles on this, that genetics is a huge factor in heart disease. You say your father, grandfather, and two uncles died of heart disease, and you think there's not much you can do about it. "Doc, this is just a natural cause, and anyway, I found on the web that there are a couple of doctors who doubt that cholesterol is a problem anyway." You also say, "I don't want to take statins because they increase your risk of liver and pancreas damage." And sure enough, you are correct: there are some established doctors who publish papers doubting the cholesterol link (i.e. scientists saying humans aren't affecting global warming). There are also some studies that show an increased risk of liver and pancreas damage (i.e. economists worrying that we'll hurt our economy by changing our fuel use patterns.)

The doctor says, well, okay, but here's what we know: (1) low-fat diets are correlated to reduced risk of heart disease; (2) obesity is definitely correlated to increase risk of heart disease, and much higher incidence of deadly heart attacks; and (3) use of statin drugs decreases cholesterol and statistically decreases your chance of heart disease, in all studies.

And you say, "Doc, you go with your data, but I believe mine." And you go outside into the sunshine, smile, and get yourself another couple of quarter pounders with cheese.

How will this turn out? We don't honestly know. Genetics are an enormous factor in heart disease. We only have statistics and probability. You could turn out just fine. You may have a heart attack whether you eat well and lose weight, or whether you blimp out further. But you are loading the dice to increase your risks.

That's my last post on the topic in this thread (edit: whoops). We probably just have to agree to disagree.

But for the analogy, I have to emphasize that we know what carbon dioxide does in the atmosphere to a much more proven degree than we know what cholesterol does in your arteries. We know that global climate is changing to a better degree than we can correlate obesity to heart disease. That is statistically true, to the best of my knowledge. So, do we keep eating burgers all day? Do we lose weight? It's tough, because we have to make these decisions as a global group, ultimately. Very, very tough.

Best wishes.

 

You are still going to use this list of 400 when there are thousands of climate scientists who agree that GW is real? And I mean thousands of people who are actually studying the climate now, not thousands of economists, tv weathermen, retired scientists, and scientists who don't even study the climate which is what nearly half of what your list of 400 looks like. Not to mention that nearly a quarter of the scientist on that list of 400 are funded by oil companies.

The overwhelming majority of the scientific community is not on your side.

 

B-Bob,

The more I read, the more that I disagree with both the Global Warming deniers and Al Gore and the Global Warming alarmists. (I believe in global warming, think we're causing it, but don't buy the disaster predictions and question how much we can do about it.)

That being said, what do you think of the claim that since the Troposphere is cooling, that we will see Surface Temperatures cool over the next few years?

 

I'm just curious, what kind of scientist are you B-Bob?

 

weslinder,
I think we agree on a lot of things. I have been reading that troposphere data also, and a number of solid people keep pointing out that this does not fit well with the worst-case model forecasts at all. In my (not an expert! see below) view, the trop. datum is not a red herring and is worth watching.

Steve_Francis_rules, I'm sorry about your handle there. Anyway, I am NOT a climate person. I am a relatively minor physicist who was trained in superconductivity. Then I do some biophysics sometimes.

overall, I am skeptical of great confidence, so I agree that both the alarmists and the full deniers are probably missing something. I guess my point is that, as with the heart disease analogy, we should minimize our risk. And clean energy will have myriad benefits beyond just the greenhouse effect worries.

 

exactly. you would think this is just plain common sense...

 

Great post B-bob and love the analogy.

I agree that climate modelling and predicting still is fraught with uncertainty. There certainly is a possiblity that man-made global warming is wrong. The problem though is what does that mean for policy?

As B-Bob stated we're throwing the dice and basically running an unregulated experiment on the global environment. For people who deny man made global warming have you considered what might be the implications if you are wrong and the supporters are correct?

By the time we actually figure it out it might be too late to do anything about it.

My own view is given the large amount of evidence supporting man-made global warming why take the risk. At the same time there are huge side benefits to taking steps to reduce global warming. Shifting towards renewables and non-emitting power sources will do a lot for energy independence and whether all those emissions are warming the environment or not they still are pollutants with other negative consequences to human health. Finally a shift towards conservation and renewable energy sources will be a long term economic benefit given that there is a finite source of fossil fuels and extraction of them is getting more expensive and has other negative consequences.

So even without addressing the global warming directly it is still a good thing to deal with the potential causes of it.

 

I agree. It makes good business sense, and conservation even moreso.* If you can get energy out of the sun or wind or a fuel that lasts 100 years, it makes sense. But when we make policy decisions off the alarmists' predictions, and call for moonshot (although it's 100's of times more investment than going to the moon) plans like going to 100% renewable energy in 10 years, it's even more dangerous than doing nothing.

* - When I worked at ExxonMobil, there was a corporation-wide push to reduce all internal energy consumption by 10%. It was such a focus that if there were competing projects with (for example) $100,000 investment, and one saved $200,000/year in energy, and the other increased product value by $500,000/year, they would choose the energy-saving project. I left and went to CITGO who did a really poor job in accounting for energy. It didn't make much sense then, but when the price of natural gas tripled, ExxonMobil began making 30% more on its investments than all of its competitors.