What do you think about Global Warming?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Feb, 01:36 PM) [snapback]389730[/snapback]</div>

We did one of these a while back, but it might have been in FHOP.

 

Since Global Warming or climate change is based on evidence and not belief, we should reference the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Don't "believe", read, test and understand.

http://www.ipcc.ch/

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(skruse @ Feb 13 2007, 02:29 PM) [snapback]389777[/snapback]</div>

Understand within the limitations of our knowledge. I voted for real and accelerated by man - but there are also natural causes of climate change we do not fully (or even mildly) understand nor do we completely understand the degree to which man is accelerating climate change against this backdrop of natural causes. Worse, there is very little in the way of serious assessment of the effectiveness of CO2 reduction schemes in reducing the impact of climate change, Kyoto being a prime example. And further, the focus on CO2 reduction (while important) diverts attention from equally detrimental human impacts to climate & environment (particularly on a regional scale), such as land use policies.

 

Even if global warming is a natural occurrence and man has nothing to do with it, the ramifications of such a natural occurrence are still substantial.

Just because something is natural doesn't mean it's going to be a gentle process that civilization as we know it today can just coast through...

Our modern civilization depends on the ecological balance the earth has struck for us for the last few millenia. Even if we aren't at fault, we're still going to have to deal with the consequences of it... The nature we all know and love may have a very different form in a few generations.

The line of argument that "it's real, but it's natural, and we didn't do it" seems not to address the real problem though. It effectively deflects the blame from the hydrocarbon industry as to why it happened in the first place, but what do we do about it, even if it's natural?

The problem that I have with many of the arguments against the overriding consensus of climate change is that those arguments are designed to deflect blame away from mankind and industry, but don't offer any solutions or next steps to take (other than maintain the status quo) to climate change, even if they acknowledge it exists.

To me, that reeks of astroturf.

 

Well, Y2K could have been a serious issue. Fortunately people knew it was going to be an issue and, at the end of the day, it was a pretty simple problem to fix. If people had said that y2K was a myth or that it would wreck the economy to fix it, and then done nothing, there would have been serious repercussions. In some ways AGW is similar, but it's a much more difficult problem to fix and understanding the ramifications of different courses of action is vastly more difficult.

Gore brings up some valid points and has done a good job of bringing the issue into the public's focus. He brings up some scary scenarios, to be sure. Those scenarios have some probability attached to them. We don't really know how likely some of them are (I'm thinking sea level rise here). There's some discrepancy depending upon how you model these systems. But the worst thing that we can do is sit on our hands and do nothing. Waiting until we have a high degree of certainty about the outcomes is pretty foolish.

 

I selected "Global Warming is short-term change in weather being hyped by environmentalists and the media" because of how it is mostly way over hyped by the media, however, it is definitely not a "short-term change" at all. Unfortunately, there was not a selection for "real" or "long-term" combined with media hype.

It's been going on for thousands of years. 10,000 years ago what is now known as Connecticut emerged from a 200 foot ice pack.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tideland Prius @ Feb 14 2007, 12:14 AM) [snapback]390077[/snapback]</div>

You'll get a bunch of info from the Global Dimming movie, slideshow and from the reports on RealClimate.org

The movie link is actually 50min of the movie. Pretty cool there is that much of it on the net. I bought the video.

 

When I hear the "debate" on global warming, it reminds me of the so called debate on the health effects of smoking back in the 50's and 60's. Back then, there were a number of reputable doctors that conducted their own research that found no ill health effects of smoking whatsoever, some even found that smoking was actually good for you. Meanwhile all the true research was showing what we all know that smoking is indeed very very bad for our health and I don't think we'll find anyone that disagrees with that. And we now know that those claiming no ill effects of smoking were mearly pawns of he tobacco companies.

Now the debate is on global warming. On the scientific side, we have climatic data for nearly 400,000 years obtained from ice core samples among others. Of this data, we can see two primary things. First the earth has indeed gone through periods of warming and cooling. Second, every period of warming has been predeeded by higher levels of CO2 in our atmosphere. But there is something else there, at no point has the CO2 level in our atmosphere been as high as it is today and the yearly global average temprature is higher now than ever in the past.

But we do have a group of scientists that are doint their level best to say this isn't so. But if we follow the money trail, much like the smoking debate, we find that it leads back to those whose short term profits will be adversly affected by attempts reduce CO2 emissions.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(AnOldHouse @ Feb 14 2007, 06:17 PM) [snapback]390467[/snapback]</div>

Not like this it hasn't. Population, CO2 concentrations, and temperature are higher now, and rising faster, than they have in 650,000 years. Remember Al's big chart from the movie?

 

On the bright side, we're only a tiny spec in the Earth's geologic life, so we'll come and go in the proverbial blink of Earth's eye. I think even if we're partly or largely responsible for a climate change that some day makes the planet uninhabitable for us, the planet will still balance itself and other life will continue to flourish. Go Earth!

(which is not to say that I think we don't have a responsibility to protect our environment from ourselves)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Feb 16 2007, 12:09 PM) [snapback]391452[/snapback]</div>

That's what I understood from the movie. I recall a very long chart with two squiggly lines and an exponential jump at the end. The lines for CO2 and average global temperatures were closely related, and the present levels are far above any of the previous peaks.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tripp @ Feb 14 2007, 05:49 PM) [snapback]390452[/snapback]</div>

I'm going to have to echo tripp's point here about Y2K. Y2K had a lot of hype surrounding it especially from the media, but behind the scenes, it was a LOT of work for people in IT, and for people who write the software.

When we finally got to 01/01/00, the fact that nothing happened doesn't make it a myth... it means that people worked their butts off because they saw it coming.

Had all of these IT and software people been completely indifferent, or had realized too late that it was going to be an issue, and could not get around to upgrading all critical systems, some of the doomsday scenarios for Y2K would have occurred... but collectively, the whole industry was able to mobilize and upgrade their stuff in time. To the average person, absolutely nothing changed, so it would have been easy to get the impression it was all smoke and mirrors.

People nowadays seem to have a troubling reactionary tendency with regard to media hype. Maybe because we've been through so many "scares" in recent years that we are desensitized to it... but just because there is a lot of hype behind a subject, say Global Warming, doesn't mean that the hype is completely baseless.

Hype is NOT inversely proportional to truth. They are more or less independent.

Even if something is hyped to the bejezzus, if it's true, it's still true.

Kissinger once said, "Even a paranoid has some real enemies."
Well... even someone paranoid that the world is coming to an end because of GW may be right...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ichabod @ Feb 16 2007, 12:19 PM) [snapback]391463[/snapback]</div>

I have faith that life will make whatever corrections are necessary for its survival. It has survived 90% extinction rates before, and it will likely survive humanity. And we thought 'survival of the fittest' meant being the biggest and baddest. Oops.