Just pay attention to the news... there is easily a new study or finding supporting the idea of climate change that comes out every few days...
Why were a lot of these people focusing on Global Cooling in the 1970's because temperatures fell from the 1940's to the 1970's. Now temperatures have been increasing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling Its just a question of whether this is man-made or larger, global shifts that have happened for millions of years. The question is whether correlation equals causation. I snap my finger and have two cups of coffee and the stock market has done well all those days. Does that mean that it will happen in the future?? I just think the time frame that is being super analyzed to determine that people cause global warming is so tiny compared to the history of the world that its insufficient evidence to propose a causation effect.
As always occurs with this subject, you entirely misconstrue what happened. One Newsweek article and a couple of people saying it might be a possibility is very different than what is happening now. It usually helps if you actually read and think critically about the article you are linking. Of course, I have no doubt that in the next thread on this issue you or someone else will continue to repeat this nonsense. I said the same thing in the last thread on this issue and you have proven me prescient.
Maybe you should read the article you cite. Here are a few highlights you missed... This hypothesis never had significant scientific support, but gained temporary popular attention due to press reports following a better understanding of ice age cycles and a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s. and... Concern peaked in the early 1970s, partly because of the cooling trend then apparent (a cooling period began in 1945, and two decades of a cooling trend suggested a trough had been reached after several decades of warming), and partly because much less was then known about world climate and causes of ice ages. Although there was a cooling trend then, it should be realised that climate scientists were perfectly well aware that predictions based on this trend were not possible - because the trend was poorly studied and not understood (for example see reference[5]). However in the popular press the possibility of cooling was reported generally without the caveats present in the scientific reports. and... n 1972 Emiliani warned "Man's activity may either precipitate this new ice age or lead to substantial or even total melting of the ice caps".[7] By 1972 a group of glacial-epoch experts at a conference agreed that "the natural end of our warm epoch is undoubtedly near";[8] but the volume of Quaternary Research reporting on the meeting said that "the basic conclusion to be drawn from the discussions in this section is that the knowledge necessary for understanding the mechanism of climate change is still lamentably inadequate". Unless there were impacts from future human activity, they thought that serious cooling "must be expected within the next few millennia or even centuries"; but many other scientists doubted these conclusions.[9][10] Here's more from another source...
Seems like this Gray character has had it in for Gore for a while now. Even comparing him to Hitler in 2006.
It's a given that the anti-GW lobby will trot out the same old war-horses time and time again. The difference is of course that they have to bring out the same few dwindling denialists and nits to pick while the evidence on the other side simply continues to mount and gain support - hell even the petroleum companies have signed on to the reality of manmade climate change at this point. However polticial orthodoxy from the right wing machine will not allow it to switch over,not because of science but because the right wing has invested too much emotional capital in it, having to admit that they were wrong (and that al gore was right, lol, see today's nyt op ed page) is simply too mmuch for them to bear.
The insurance industry will be Dem before you know it. You can bet their risk guys understand the science.
There is supporting evidence that indeed the warming is related to greenhouse gases. Most namely the way the atmosphere has warmed is consistent with the greenhouse effect - most notable that it's nighttime temperatures that are rising. Also, the layers in the atmosphere where the warming is occurring. The question is the source of the greenhouse gases and to what extent we can control them. This is my issue with the movement that it seems to sweep under the rug for the likely reason that opening the discussion on them may weaken their alarmist approach.
Yeah, from what I understand, volcanoes are the biggest culprit for greenhouse gases... and there isn't much we can do about volcanoes.
Because global weather patterns don't uniformly rise. There are parts of the world that have seen record cold temperatures during this phase. Global warming will lead to climate changes in all sorts of directions. No competent scientist measures warming by surface temperatures. Those are too variable and dependent on so many variables that it's impossible to draw conclusions. On the other hand, ocean temperatures have increased consistently and even during that global cooling period, temperatures in the oceans rose. Also, as pointed out earlier, it makes more sense to err on the side of caution.
Nobody is proposing that we do anything about volcanoes. The earth can support greenhouse gases that volcanoes produce - in fact life on earth needs a lot of those greenhouse gases. It is the marginal greenhouse gases being added on top of that us that is contributing to climate change that is under discussion. Arguments like this are a real red herring. EDIT: I should also say it appears to be a lie. http://volcanology.geol.ucsb.edu/gas.htm
but there's another side here - and that's the cost to the developing world. I don't think it's fair to India and China to ask people to suffer while others live a standard of living. Poverty must be addressed in the context of global warming solutions as well. This has not been done. Who's erring on their side of caution?
So if Co2 comes from a volcano, it's good CO2 and the earth can support it. But if it's man-made, the earth can not support it. How does the earth tell the difference?
i don't think india and china have a problem with allowing people to suffer. the majority of impoverished people live in those two countries right?
Imagine you have a dam. The lake behind the dam holds 100 million gallons. every year rains add 10 million gallons to the lake reservoir and the sluices let out 10 million gallons down stream. Because you add and remove roughly the same amount the lake behind the dam stays constant. Now imagine the sluices become slightly blocked so that the lake only lets out 9.5 million gallons. Then, you divert a river adding an additional 1 million gallons so that it flows into the lake. So now, year over year, you are adding 1.5 million gallons more than you take out. The change is a minor fraction of the total volume of the lake year over year, and is much smaller than the total amount of water naturally being added to the lake. But that doesn't matter, because you are adding more water without the ability to take it away. So over 100 years, you've added 150 million gallons of water to the lake that has no mechanism for removal. When your 100 million gallon dam breaks because there are 250 million gallons of water behind it, are you seriously going to claim that the diversion of the river and the failure to clean the sluices had nothing to do with the failure? I mean, after all, 1.5 million additional gallons is nothing relative to the 10 million gallons of water which originally flowed into the reservoir lake annually and is only a miniscule fraction of the 100 million gallons. 1.5 million measley gallons couldn't have any effect on a system so large, obviously. But somehow you ended up with 250 million gallions behind a dam rated for 100 million...
Pretend - and I know you are good at pretending - like I am eating a curry that is medium spicy in a restaurant. Now I pour 10x more chili into it. Now it is too spicy. Is it that difficult concept?
Not only that, but for greenhouse gasses like methane and nitrous oxide, emissions from human activity meet or even exceed the levels emitted by natural processes.
Who cares what % of carbon is from natural sources ... if it was the right amount to maintain some form of equilibrium that would work well for humans and coastal population concentrations? And many relationships are not linear. Kind of like... how much of a glacier melts at 12 degrees vs 22 degrees vs 32 degrees vs 33 degrees?
