Immense ice shelf breaks off in Canadian Arctic

1) this happened a year and a half ago
2) the ice shelf was only 3,000 years, how old is this planet? about 4,000,000,000. Ice shelves come and they go, pretty arrogant to think YOU did don't you think.
3) The question isn't "is global warming real?" the questions is "are we causing it?" and seeing as the Earth has been MUCH warmer in the past (when no humans were around) I would say not likely. (possibly alterering a cycle of warming yes, but not CAUSING IT!)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Devil's Advocate @ Dec 29 2006, 06:46 PM) [snapback]368457[/snapback]</div>

you might want to check out an inconvenient truth or go to their website: climatecrisis.net

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(mayathystle @ Dec 29 2006, 10:30 PM) [snapback]368469[/snapback]</div>

On a much earlier thread, somebody posted an excellent on-point website. I was too dumb to bookmark it at the time but just found it again via Google, so let me post it here:

http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics

This is a systematic list of all the arguments that skeptics bring bring up against the notion of human-caused global warming, with (what I judge to be) even-handed discussion of why these arguments are wrong.

The really funny thing about this is that, because global warming skeptics keep bringing up the the same incorrect information, you can just reference the specific item on this page that addresses the incorrect information for any particular post. Since finding this website, I have yet to see an anti-global-warming post whose points had not already been considered and dismissed by this analysis.

So, it's a real time-saver. In this case, see items 3a and 3b on the abovementioned website for a reasonably comprehensive dismissal of the "earth has been warmer" and "it's not humans" arguments.

From the tone of the second post, I have to assume the poster isn't actually going to bother to read any contrary opinions, so I'd like to offer my all-time favorite quote from an economist: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?" J.M. Keynes.

 

Its funny when you can predict the resonses of skeptics before they even open their mouth or post. Sadly they do not want to do the research and are very quick to form an opion based off their worldview before taking in data. Same goes for non-researching environmentalists. They suffer from the same problem.

 

Certainly the Earth has been warmer. There is a lot of concensus on that point. However, can a significantly warmer earth support 9-10 billion human beings? That's a question that we don't really have an answer for. As chogan's link points out, it's not a warmer stable climate that's the problem. It's an unstable transition that is worrisome.

 

i guess pointing out the severe weather in the gulf last year, the western US and Australia this year and blaming it on GW is an exercise in futility to a non believer.

sure weather runs in cycles and extremes like Australias (they are in the hottest summer ever with ground temps averaging more than 10ºC or about 20ºF higher than normal in many parts of the country) happens. after all, that is how records are set and thousands are set every year....

now just because tens of thousands of weather extreme records have been set across the western US this winter have happened, the only real thing we can do is watch and wait and see if the weather extremes continue despite a now unanimous opinion by the scientific community that we are accelerating GW onset.

or maybe sitting and watching is simply too much like being a deer caught in the headlights.

as for me, i'd rather not be a deer

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveinOlyWA @ Dec 31 2006, 10:20 AM) [snapback]368950[/snapback]</div>

The miserable drought in Oz is probably a blessing in disguise. It has certainly raised awareness of the issue at hand. They'll probably go nuclear. They have tremendous "reserves" of sunlight too. CSP would work very well for them. Sequestering coal fired CO2 would help too, if it's actually feasible. It seems like it could be but does anyone know of a coal plant that is actually doing this now? FutureGen isn't due to be online for another 5 years.

 

It would be sort of nice if the people running climatecrisis.net
actually had any interest in making the web site work right. It is
run by Paramount, and the person I reached over there to try talking
to about it was like "can we wrap this up? I've got other stuff to
do." i.e. not caring in the slightest that the SITE IS BROKEN.
.
[Before you tell me I'm wrong, turn off that dangerous nonsense in
your browser and try it again]
.
_H*

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(chogan @ Dec 30 2006, 08:42 AM) [snapback]368597[/snapback]</div>

Wow, that's a great site! I have to admit that I vacillate between accepting that driving my Prius actually makes a difference or whether its too late for anything to reverse the warming trend. I'm still skeptical of documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth and other presentations because far too often they seem to indicate there's "consensus" ... which people think means every climatologist agrees ... which is impossible. There's always disagreement, and Grist.org does a good job of explaining it.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Jan 1 2007, 01:00 AM) [snapback]369178[/snapback]</div>

I know the feeling. I simplified my thinking on this with the deathbed test. Suppose the most pessimistic scenario occurs, the world is clearly going to hell from the unanticipated bad impacts of global warming, you're on your deathbed saying goodbye to your children who are completely aware that your generation blew it, and you have the choice of saying 1) I did what I could, given who and where I was, or 2) hey, don't blame me, everybody was car-commuting in Hummers back then. I'll pick 1) even if the net impact is immeasurably small. I realize that's not rational but so what.

I've been categorizing my options, to see what decisions have to be made, and gathering information on them. So that I'll pass my hypothetical deathbed test. I fit my choices into a) costless or cost-saving compared to status quo (drive a Prius, use compact fluorescents, buy local grass-fed beef, use a spin-dryer for clothes drying, replace appliances when they wear out with energy-efficient ones), B) things that appear beneficial but costly (I put photovolatics in that category, in Northern VA, for now, along with retro-fitting wall insulation in my house, possibly a PHEV modification to the Prius), c) "just cutting back" and other lifestyle changes (ie, not flying for vacation, becoming vegan), and d) drastic measures that I'll never do (e.g., give all I have to the poor and live the resulting lifestyle).

Not doing an option in a) once I've found it, is simply stupid. So I nail those as I find them. I'm not yet doing B) and c) items to any extent, which reveals that I don't really take this all that seriously, I guess. Not yet willing to put my money where my mouth is. At this point, I flunk my own test. My excuse so far is that I kept finding ideas in a), but I think that phase is drawing to an end. Given where my family's energy use is, photovoltaics would be the clear next step for me. I just keep waiting to see if cheap photovoltaics will ever make it to market.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Jan 1 2007, 01:00 AM) [snapback]369178[/snapback]</div>

I would fault that movie only for improper use of language. Saying "the preponderance of evidence" or "nearly all peer-reviewed scientific articles" would be more accurate but just wouldn't convey the meaning to a lay audience. But from what I can tell, the gist of what they said is about right. I'll go further to say that, in my limited experience, when I've seen people cite works (here and elsewhere) to argue against manmade global warming, those works have uniformly turned out to be bad -- not science, funded by Exxon, filled with the tricks of argument and incorrect logic, you name it. My take on it is that if there really were a solid case for the contrary viewpoint, I wouldn't see these various half-baked industry-funded research pieces. They wouldn't be necessary.

Having said that, yeah, I thought it was worth bringing that website up again. I just admired the way they stood up the arguments, knocked them down, and took questions afterwards.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(chogan @ Jan 1 2007, 08:11 AM) [snapback]369240[/snapback]</div>

The only good arguments against it that I have seen come from people with PhDs in geology, who speak of earth's mostly-hot history. But that begs the question: how many of us can dance fast enough to live on rivers of molten lava? Most of the time line they look at was before humans inhabited the earth.

The other objections I've seen, that play well with us common folk, is how many times "science" has been wrong. Usually this objection could be better stated as "how many times media coverage of science has overblown dangers that the scientists don't at all agree on." Some of the examples are really from the field of sociology (the over population scare of the 1970's), or proposed by a few prominent "media scientists" without regard to how such things are usually proposed (Carl Sagan's "nuclear winter" scare, first published in Parade Magazine).

Those examples serve to feed the perception that the media like to scare us to sell newspapers and politicians like to scare us to concentrate power and take away our freedoms. The loss of freedom fear runs deep in the American psyche on both the right and the left (the left tends to think that the dangers of terrorism are overstated to consolidate power, while the right tends to think that environmental threats are overstated to consolidate power).