The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame

I don't believe this article gives us anything we haven't been given before. It's more of the "Chicken Little" that you said it wasn't.

I believe the Earth is getting warmer.
I believe that humans are partially to blame.
I believe that it is in our best interests to reduce the amount of warming we are contributing.

I don't believe the warming is due solely to human activities.
I believe the amount of warmth that humans have contributed has been consistently exaggerated.
I don't believe this article does anything to prove the point of view that it is an immediate problem.

 

Funny how pretty much all of the top scientists (including the guy who is considered THE top) disagree with you, eh? Other than the "due solely" which nobody believes.

 

Not to pile on, but if you have anything more than a "feeling" like some evidence which would prove your point, I'd be glad to hear it.

Also to be fair most scientists believe that there is a normal cycle of climate change and that tempratures fluxuate due to natural causes. They also believe that most of the effects of global warming come after the threshold point has been reached, so it is a bit disengenuous to say that global warming from human emissions was the cause of Katrina.

Having listened to MSNBC a bit I am amazed that they still have on that guy who always prefaces global warming with "the myth of". I can understand how someone who doesn't get news from primary sources on science might be of your opinion. That having been said, I think you are dangerously wrong. If you provide evidence otherwise I will rethink that.

 

There was a recent study that showed that the "Hockey Stick" graph that many use to defend global warming can be replicated with random data points.

Like I've said, I believe humans are contributing but I don't believe it's anywhere near the point that others have said. If you guys feel better by telling me that I'm burying my head in the sand, that's cool, too. I might feel the same way if I were in y'alls position.

I just feel that the global warming as an imminent threat argument is an example of groupthink. I think the data collected is generally accurate. I also think that the conclusions drawn from the data are determined ahead of time and intended to further the doomsday agenda.

That being said, I am not opposed to reasonable legislation to attempt to curb certain aspects of global warming contributed to by humans.

Another question we aren't asking ourselves is how bad is global warming? By that, I mean we know some of the possible negative aspects but what about some of the possible positive aspects?

Climate change doesn't mean all climates become worse. It means exactly what it says: Climate CHANGE. I think the possible positive aspects of global warming have been ignored because of the hysteria surrounding the possible negative aspects of global warming.

My opinion: Even if global warming is happening and is 95% human caused, I feel the possible negative aspects have been exaggerated to further the idea that it must be stopped.

Edit: I thank those of you willing to discuss this in respectful terms.

 

The problem with that thinking halfbreed is that if/when it happens, we won't be in a position to stop it... no matter how much money, man power or technology we put into it.

Also, the sky won't fall. The earth will live on, but we and the other 6.5 billion people of the world will have to deal with life changing events.

So it's very relevant to discuss the possible scenarios. If you haven't read it, this 2 yr old article has a PDF of what the Pentagon expects would happen should climate change turn for the worse. http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2004/02/25/pentagoners/

 

I agree with what you're saying and I think it's important to consider what could possibly happen if I'm wrong and it IS as bad as some of these people say it is. I just think we're also overlooking some possible positives that could come out of this because it's not PC to think of global warming as anything but negative.

I think that global warming is nothing that we currently cannot handle so all of the doomsday predictions like that in the original article are taking the attention off of other issues we could be discussing.

 

I am aquainted with this guy (he's the husband of a friend of my sister's) and he's a scientist who studies the effects of the sun on the earth's climate. He told me that he has to be very careful about what he says with regard to his research because the whole global warming debate is so politically charged. He implied that if he published anything that showed, for example, that changes in the sun might be a leading contributor to global warming and he didn't have rock-solid proof his job may be in danger.

Like halfbreed I'm open to the idea that human's are causing the Earth to get warmer. I also open to the idea that human's are the MAIN cause of the earth getting warmer. I'm also for reducing emissions (i.e. pollution) in the atmosphere regardless of whether they are a cause of global warming. However, I'm also open to the idea that the climate is much more complex than we currently know and that there may be other causes or contributers to global warming.

What's amazing is that so many of you are buying into it as if it were religion. How many scientific theories have gone down in smoke? Weren't we warned about global cooling in the '70's?

If you are really concerned about global warming dont' wait for any government to do anything real about it - it's too damaging to economies and economies are what get leaders elected - do something yourself. Quit driving your car! Start riding a bike to work. Live closer to where you work! Don't use your air-conditioning. Period. And don't tell me that it won't make an impact. Just like every vote counts every single person's action counts so don't complain unless you are part of the solution and not the problem.

 

It's funny that 111chase111 likens the belief as a religion: Men are flawed...the end is near...

I think there's many many things still unknown about the earth and its geology that can't allow the optimism that this can be fixed by technology or habit, when it does happen. I don't think we're there yet.

Sure more areas in the US could have Texas or California weather, but no one would definitely know where it would happen. Since there's a balance, somewhere else would become deserts or get a lot of rain.

If we had a billion people, it'd be no big deal. Mankind has found all the land there is to grow food on, and if there's a shift that destroys parts of it, it won't be recovered.

With the world becoming more connected economically, these shifts will be felt. Sure people make the best of what they have, but world security hasn't been very stable lately. It might not be the environment that everyone is feeling.

I never saw it as a doomsday, but something that'd rip a lot of people from their way of life.

 

It's okay people.

It's God's will.

 

You should look into ROXRAN's missile defense thread. A chunk of it has turned into a discussion of abrupt climate change, (due to me, I suppose) which is a very real possibility, has happened in the past, and was caused by the stalling of the Gulf Stream, due to a decrease in the salinity of the North Atlantic. This isn't some fantasy. There is evidence that it may be beginning already. The last time it occured, it happened over a period of three years, and produced a frigid period lasting for a thousand. The consequences, should it occur, are catastrophic.

Perhaps that part of ROX's thread could be moved here, if an administrator could be so kind.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

Well, if everyone can agree, at least, that the problem exists - why isn't anyone doing anything about it?

Because industry votes are bigger than people votes.

 

I agree Cheetah. It is very worrisome. Even if large scale pollutant reform were to take place (chances of that almost nil), would it be too late? I've seen visible changes for the worse in the global weather patterns just in my lifetime. It's troubling.

 

Don't worry people- we're running out of oil in 20 years, and we'll have nothing to pollute with anymore.

 

No problem. Here's a report that questions but doesn't necessarily disprove the "Hockey Stick" evidence. (Disclaimer: I've hosted the images so you don't have to go to the link to find them. If you want to make sure the link is posted as well).
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http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5309

Global Warming "Evidence" Questioned
March 8th, 2006

The scientific argument that humans have caused global warming – a major underpinning of the “Kyoto Protocols” – suffered a major blow last week, with the publication of a new study. The implications have not yet spread very far beyond the rarified circles of specialists, but the gospel of “anthropogenic” – human-caused – global warming has lost one of its intellectual foundations.

At the root of the argument for Kyoto are a series of reconstructions that claim to model what earth’s temperature probably was before human activity caused the burning of massive quantities of fossil fuels. But these reconstructions of “paleoclimate” by Mann, Bradley and Hughes [MBH98], and various confirmatory studies, such as Briffa et al [Briffa01]. all depend on “proxies” – various observable things believed to correlate with temperature, like the width of tree rings. These proxies are needed because our ancestors foolishly didn’t invent the thermometer until around 1600, and didn’t start keeping good temperature records until much later.

These reconstructions then depend on mathematical or statistical models to convert the real data, say tree ring widths, into proxy temperature data. Combined with the much smaller collection of real temperature data, the assumption is that we can reconstruct the ancient climate and give an approximate graph of the Earth’s temperature.

Briffa et al constructed one example, using six sets of tree ring data, and using the MBH methodology. They got a resulting graph like this:



What’s most important to look at is the black line at the right hand end. It shows the characteristic “hockey stick” shape: a sharp increase during the 20th century, one that is much larger than in previous centuries. This is the supposed evidence of global warming, and one reasonable hypothesis of the cause is that it’s anthropogenic, caused by the accumulation of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

While I’m not a climate scientist, I am a computer scientist, and did my graduate work in simulation of complex and non-linear systems – which describes both the physiological systems in which I worked, and also weather and climate systems. One of the things that every modeler learns, and one caution that everyone in simulation needs to keep in mind, is that it is very easy to bias your simulation to give the expected results.

The problem is doubly difficult when dealing with statistical data.

Most non-specialists assume you just plug a set of numbers into a computer and get a nice graph. But real statistical data is “dirty” and needs to be cleaned or “conditioned” in order to analyze it. Outlying data, measurement errors, and equipment failures, all have to be dealt with.

The problem is that this process of conditioning can have the effect of throwing away any data that doesn’t fit the original hypothesis. The study which casts doubt on the hockey stick graphs has tested the conditioning practices of one of the major studies

Recently David Stockwell used a large collection of proxy data, and applied the methods of MBH88 and Briffa, and got the following results:



Once again, we see the dramatic “hockey stick” in the 20th century.

There’s only one problem. The “proxy” data Stockwell used were a collection of random numbers generated to have similar bulk properties (technically, “red noise”) to those of the tree ring data. In other words, purely random numbers, when conditioned by the methods of MBH98, still result in a hockey stick.

The inevitable conclusion is that the hockey stick of Mann and others may be an artifact of their statistical methods.

Now, notice that I don’t say “is inevitably an artifact.” We can’t say that. There still may be dramatic global warming. Absence of proof is not the same as disproof. But some of the best evidence that this global warming is caused by the actions of humanity is revealed to be highly questionable. Stockwell’s demonstration calls the whole structure of anthropogenic global warming into question.

Charlie Martin (who blogs at YARGB under the cognomen “Seneca the Younger”) is a writer and system architect in Superior, Colorado.

 

Actually, it happened in 3 days, but thankfully Dennis Quaid was able to go walk from Philly to New York and save his science-geek son, and some other unfortunates living in the library.

 

Interestingly, warming will cause cooling in some places - like the North Atlantic. If the NA current shuts down then Europe will experience an ice age as a result of global warming. Crazy.