DescentBB

Here is some very interesting info.

umm...
can you please summarise that? It's much too long to read.

Read it your self. Or not. Your choice.

it's not THAT long.

It IS a summary. Good read, and from a kid in high school.

What a pile of crap.
A high school kid \"refutes\" the \"myth\" of global warming. I invite this child to come for a flight from Vancouver B.C. to Prince George B.C. on a clear day and see the millions of acres of dead pine trees who's demise is caused by the Mountain Pine Beetle. This insect has been a natural part of the area for thousands of years, kept in check by weather that in winter dropped below -40 F or at least a week. Guess what has not happened in the last decade.
Maybe the flight should continue to the Canadian Arctic where he can visit communities of Inuit who's families have lived in the area for thousands of years and who now cannot follow the same way of life because the ice melts in the summer where it never has before and who communities are washing into the ocean as the perma-frost melts beneath them.

You don't need a weather station located near a tennis court to see that something significant is happening. You just need to take your head out of whatever dark place you have it and look around.

You may disagree as to the cause of global warming be it greenhouse gases, sunspot activity or glacial calving but it is ignorance of a colossal degree to deny that it exists.

Did you even look at the link Ford?

It is crap.

One example, because I don't have time for more. In his attempt to smear Hansen, the guy writes:

Hansen continues to make extreme claims. One such claim that contradicts even AGW scientists is that sea level is and will remain rising one meter per 20 years, as was stated by Hansen in an interview with Der Spiegel in April of 2007.

Of course, Hansen never said such a thing. In the article he was talking about the sea level rise in the last melting period, when ice shelf disappeared (very quickly) --- not about the current warming period. See for yourself, the link is here. The relevant section is here:

Hansen wrote:We know pretty well from the history of the earth that when ice sheets have disintegrated in the past, they have disintegrated very rapidly. During the last melting period, the sea level went up 20 meters in 400 years, which is one meter every 20 years.

Have to admit I got bored with the crap half way through.

There is not one sentence in her paper that says there is no global warming. She only refutes the political posturing and blame game. She's explaining the trends of global warming and cooling over thousamnds of years, and how it's just the same cycle over and over, and we're in an upward trend. We haven't done much, and actually, most of our pollution is more likely to have a cooling affect on the planet rather than a warming.

But wait, there's more!

Copied from the linked article:

\"Q. There's a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What's the right mix?

A. I think the answer to that depends on where your audience's head is. In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.\"

soo.. stating absolute facts isn't good enough anymore? I'm not comfortable with that. Tell me WHY I should believe this guy after a statement like that.

Glad we have folks like this in power to steer us in the right direction.

So Vulcan, and those that don't buy into it, what do you think happens to the billions of tons of chemicals that are pumped into the air each year?

Humans may not be the sole cause of it but we certainly help by spewing this crap into the air. This is your earth, makes no sense to not give a crap...then again, humans are lazy. Much easier to just deny it so you don't have to do anything...

we are only a small contributor compared to other \"natural\" sources. And really. there hasn't been that much warming over the last 50 years. ... less than one degree. Also, until the early 70's, everyone was convinced that we were on the verge of the next ice age. I remember being taught that in school.

I also doubt that \"billions of tons\" is accurate. No one can get a census right, I seriously doubt anyone can quantify a real number accurately as to how much pollutants are released each year.

What is being brought out here, as well as the other thread, is that there is WAYY too much politics involved to be an \"objective scientific topic\".

Did you read the essay Zuruck? Please don't tell me it was to long unless you have the attention span of a fly.

Get science from the scientists, not the politicians.

...I am aware the public is generally too stupid to notice anything without frightening them, but I'm not sure exaggerating the facts is a good policy regardless.

Oh, and white Arial on a blue background is not my idea of \"readability\".

Shame on her.

Thankfully it works fine if you turn the style off!

Get science from the scientists, not the politicians.

Excellent advice.

Take what you read here with a large chunk of salt as well.

we are only a small contributor compared to other \"natural\" sources. And really. there hasn't been that much warming over the last 50 years. ... less than one degree.

The actual amount of change since 1910 is 0.6 degree Celsius which is less than one degree F. That represents an enormous change for such a short period of time. Calling it \"not that much\" is exposing a complete misunderstanding of climate change.

it's less than one degree. That's hardly skyrocketing global, icecap melting, ocean boiling away warming. and it's over the last century. The earth has been warmer before. We will be fine.

Granted. Pollution needs to be dealt with and I'm all for alternative energy methods that are viable. If nothing else than to rid ourselves of the horrid toxins that we can not see. People wonder why cancer and other things are going through the roof? Read the quarterly air report some time that each state publishes. You will get an eye opener as to what we breath on a daily basis.

Duper, do you know in general how cycles and feedback systems work in nature? (If not, see the carbon cycle and water cycle, for starters.) It's all a question of balance. Within certain constraints, if there's a change in the system, the planet notes said change and adjusts accordingly to balance it out. However, when you start creating changes too significant for the system to accommodate, the system may be forced to move outside of its normal operating parameters; push it too far, and it may break down entirely. To an average human, a difference of two or three degrees from one day to the next is barely noticeable. To Earth, a difference of one or two degrees over the course of a century is potentially huge. Yes, the planet has been warmer than its current state at various points during its past...but did the coastlines of the continents look the same then as they do now? Were there some 6.5 billion human beings living on said planet who are affected by the weather every day of their lives? Were there millions of people in this country alone living within a few miles of a beach who would be made homeless by a sea level rise of only a few feet? No, no, and no. This isn't a question of the planet being utterly destroyed or completely uninhabitable to human life. It isn't about the seas boiling away. It's about the climate changing just enough that billions of people will be facing some very serious problems.

You mentioned the general status of pollution in the Earth's atmosphere (and from everything I know, this country has made enormous strides over the past few decades in cleaning up our air), but the compound in question in the whole global warming issue isn't a neurotoxin or carcinogen. It's the same gas that you exhale with every breath. It's the same gas in that cycle I linked to above. It's the same gas that humanity produces in massive quantities to generate the energy that modern society needs to function. And that's the real crux of an issue. If this were a matter of installing a few chemical scrubbers on smokestacks to remove some exotic compound, global warming would be a complete non-issue. As it stands, it's a massive logistical problem. Now, you may claim that humanity doesn't produce all that much carbon dioxide in the grand scheme of the carbon cycle, and in a sense you're right. But remember what I said about feedback? We don't need to spew out 25% worth of that cycle to create large-scale climate changes. We just need to generate that 1% that pushes the cycle out of its balance. While I may not know all of the details about the various predictions that modern science has made regarding the amount of forecast warming, I do know enough of the science to realize that this isn't some pie-in-the-sky affair, no matter what some random Internet personage with an abysmally-designed website may say. It's an issue that humanity has to look at right now and start to figure out, lest we wind up with some near-insurmountable problems shortly down the road.

The sun has also been progressively getting hotter...

Nirvana wrote:The sun has also been progressively getting hotter...

Wait, it has? I don't suppose you have any proof of that?

You were supposed to read the OP article...

TIGERassault wrote:

Nirvana wrote:The sun has also been progressively getting hotter...

Wait, it has? I don't suppose you have any proof of that?

Not that I came up with no. Which is probably about the same amount (or more!) of personal proof that you have that the ozone is disappearing

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040718 ... -6334r.htm

FTR, here is one article (I just googled it). I don't remember the original article I saw a while back...

a hotter sun would be a reasonable explanation for more El Nino's. Just like boiling water in a pot.

Nirvana wrote:The sun has also been progressively getting hotter...

And Leon's getting Laaaarger!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... wsun18.xml

As for the scientists, I try to keep in touch with Real Climate and with Roger Pielke's Climate Science blog. The entries on his blog for the most recent solar forcing studies are here and here.

Interesting work here.

http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscor ... 21966.html

and

http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscor ... 38421.html

interesting really?

what did those links say that hasn't already been debunked in every debunking of \"the great global warming swindle\"?

I hear you've got a rock star taking care of things now Roidi...no more burning beds huh?

yep
he's been shadow environmental minister for a while, now since they won the election he'll be the actual environmental minister.

Hmmmmm.

Stopped reading the artice when I got to here:

Environmental extremist, notable politicians among them then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild \"scientific\" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda.

I am sure that the \"activist scientists\" are trying to scam us out of our... wait? What exactly is this suppossed to scam us out of?

Dakatsu wrote:Stopped reading the artice when I got to here:

Environmental extremist, notable politicians among them then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild "scientific" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda.

I am sure that the "activist scientists" are trying to scam us out of our... wait? What exactly is this suppossed to scam us out of?

Oh, freedom comes to mind among other things.

VonVulcan wrote:Oh, freedom comes to mind among other things.

Do you honestly believe the DAG GUM LIBRUL SCIENTISTS IS AFTER US FREEDUM? Are you really that deluded?

I can think of at least one person who's quite obviously far more determined to take that away.

And you think I am deluded.

VonVulcan wrote:And you think I am deluded.

not deluded, probably just ignorant.