Curse

poobert · May 23, 2009, 08:28 PM // 20:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by awesome sauce

Each molecule about a million times greater capacity to absorb light than water.

This is wrong. Water absorbs more (about twice more). CH4 absorbs more, CFC's absorb more. They are all more effective green house gasses per molecule. There is just way more Co2 (not including water which is a variable and responds to rising temperatures... it is added to climate change models as a 2nd order effector a feedback effect)

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It normally takes thousands of years for the earth to warm as much as it has in the last couple hundred.

Not necessarily. Volcanoes can screw around with temperature a lot. Like large igneous provinces. But there have been no super volcanoes recently. Just humans and our large emissions.

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When pollution is first introduced into the atmosphere, it reflects solar radiation, causing the earth to cool. As that pollution is naturally dispersed, all that is left is the CO2, which causes warming.

Not quite true either. Pollution used to be just that. As well as co2 and n2o, there was a lot of soot and sulphides which oxidise to sulphates and then to h2so4, which aggregate to form aerosols. Aerosols increase the earth's albedo (reflect light) among other things which cool the earth. Recently catalytic converters and more efficient burning and lots of restriction have lead to clean emissions. This means the cooling due to aerosols has gone and all that remains is the warming due to co2 etc.

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Global warming has never been an extinction event. The problem for humans is drought, drastic climate shifts and severe storms, flooding of costal regions, and numerous other problems that haven't been identified yet.

Drought, climate shift, storms, more hurricanes are all a result of increasing temperatures and hence global warming.

When it gets hot there is more water in the atmosphere. This creates tonnes of energy when water condenses (latent heat) that causes more storms. Global warming -> more storms.

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I don't really care about climate change and I don't care if humans are more responsible that the environment for it, but you can not deny that the flux of green house gasses from anthropogenic causes has increased, which results in warming. Naturally there are hundreds of feed back mechanisms which minimize the temperature change, but regardless. Humans have had a huge impact! Just look at the ozone hole. Pretty much all of it is man made.

A11Eur0 · May 23, 2009, 09:36 PM // 21:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by awesome sauce

Wrong. The highest ever recorder was around 300 ppm. Currently the air contains about 370 ppm.

There is no such thing as a "fact" in the scientific community. It's all theory. Evolution is a theory. Gravity is explained by theory. A hypothesis becomes a theory after rigorous testing and scrutiny by the scientific community.

"ever recorded" does not mean "ever in history" genius.

CO2 levels during the late Cretaceous were quite a bit higher than today's peaks, almost 5 times higher at 1300-1500 ppm by ice core estimations. You mean to tell me that companies have found a way of transporting their excess emissions 130 million years into the past?

And how does one know how long it takes for global temperature to rise by a SHOCKING 1 DEGREE? Prehistoric temperature changes are nothing more than averages over time, not on-the-dot measurements, unless someone has succeeded in inventing a time machine and has populated the earth since the Cambrian, giving us BILLIONS OF YEARS worth of raw data.

Seriously...100 years of measured ANYTHING have very little backing when we're dealing with an Earth 5 billion years old. Nobody knows how long it took for the earth to increase 1 degree centigrade before humans were around, because HUMANS WEREN'T AROUND. Also, we cannot know the temperature changes before industrialized times even though humans were around, because accurate methods of measuring global temperature and CO2 levels weren't in existence until Industrialization. Capiche? Even if they were, the earth is coming out of an Ice Age, where global temperature is a rather stable LOW point.

Temperature averages over time without raw data are simply that: averages. There's no spot analysis available. There's no way of knowing if during those times of "stability" the earth's temperature fluctuated naturally 1-2 degrees every couple hundred years, because quite simply the only way of measuring it is the ice core record, which is only so accurate and only has so high a resolution.

Seriously...do you people even research these crap "facts" you're spewing? Is there a special class you're taking that teaches you to spin facts and make up numbers out of your asses, taking irrelevant measurements and wording them in such a way that they seem credible and important? STOP DRINKING THE KOOL-AID, stop watching Al Gore speak, stop buying into the BS propaganda. The Environmentalist movement is nothing more than a bunch of anti-big-business people who lost their ability to attack them directly and are now trying an indirect method of taking a bite out of their profits, because we all know Big Business is the #1 polluter of the planet, right?

I'll put the offer out on the table again: any of you HUMANS who think HUMANS are directly and solely responsible for "destroying the earth" should do your cause a favor and end yourselves...enough of you follow through and that'll take a big bite out of the "parasitic infestation" that is the human race.

poobert · May 23, 2009, 09:51 PM // 21:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by A11Eur0

CO2 levels during the late Cretaceous were quite a bit higher than today's peaks, almost 5 times higher at 1300-1500 ppm by ice core estimations.

??? Even in Antarctica, ice cores only go back 800 thousand years. The cretaceous is way before ice core records. Data comes from sediment records. Also it was way hotter back then. Completely different climate to now.

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because accurate methods of measuring global temperature and CO2 levels weren't in existence until Industrialization. Capiche?

Ice cores. They trap co2 and give you tempertaure. Heck you can even get trace gas readings from them as well as temperature.

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because quite simply the only way of measuring it is the ice core record, which is only so accurate and only has so high a resolution.

Annual resolution in some places. That is pretty damn good going back nearly a million years.

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do you people even research these crap "facts" you're spewing?

Honestly, people on both side of the argument are making stuff up. This is the internet. Home of misinformation.

A11Eur0 · May 23, 2009, 09:56 PM // 21:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by poobert

??? Even in Antarctica, ice cores only go back 800 thousand years. The cretaceous is way before ice core records. Data comes from sediment records. Also it was way hotter back then. Completely different climate to now.

Ice cores. They trap co2 and give you tempertaure. Heck you can even get trace gas readings from them as well as temperature.

Annual resolution in some places. That is pretty damn good going back nearly a million years.

Honestly, people on both side of the argument are making stuff up. This is the internet. Home of misinformation.

You don't get annual resolution even from Antarctic ice cores. Sure you don't get readings back to the Cretaceous with just ice cores...but the point is that the resolution is just not there. Sorry, even if you do get annual resolution, there's a ton of error even then, because of outgassing and preferential absorption of heavier gasses into the ice. You also can't get direct temperature from CO2 levels, you can merely infer it, and that adds yet another degree of error.

poobert · May 23, 2009, 10:12 PM // 22:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by A11Eur0

You don't get annual resolution even from Antarctic ice cores. Sure you don't get readings back to the Cretaceous with just ice cores...but the point is that the resolution is just not there. Sorry, even if you do get annual resolution, there's a ton of error even then, because of outgassing and preferential absorption of heavier gasses into the ice. You also can't get direct temperature from CO2 levels, you can merely infer it, and that adds yet another degree of error.

Depends on how much it snows. Temperature is taken from oxygen isotope readings and you can back them up with deep sea sediments. They are direct from the water itself (or foram in sediments). Going back millions of years, the resolution is not good, but it is not bad. Going back a few hundred thousand years and the resolution pretty damn good by climatologists standards. Annual in most places and the error is minimal. 41 thousand years has been verified with greenland, so the temperature changes are accurate.

Greenland ice cores have verified Dansgaar Oeschker events, which are recent and huge temperature changes within a lifetime. A 1k temp change is nothing compared to these. Even if the resolution is slightly more than 1 year, the significant events don't happen at that time scale. Like this they occur over 10 to 50 years.

*edit* I should add that the global antarctic survey guys tell me that they do get annual resolution quite often. They can back it up with the tree ring guys.

A11Eur0 · May 23, 2009, 10:52 PM // 22:52

Look at the error bars in the diagram I posted which only goes back to 200AD...then tell me that error is "minimal" back to hundreds of thousands of years. If you're going to claim a 1 degree change in the past 100 years when the error range in the data before that is 1.5 degrees, your argument is really lacking.

Please, stop regurgitating what your NRM professor told you.

poobert · May 24, 2009, 11:58 AM // 11:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by A11Eur0

Look at the error bars in the diagram I posted which only goes back to 200AD...then tell me that error is "minimal" back to hundreds of thousands of years. If you're going to claim a 1 degree change in the past 100 years when the error range in the data before that is 1.5 degrees, your argument is really lacking.

Please, stop regurgitating what your NRM professor told you.

Other than the fact most of those are local temperature readings, the past 100 years are taken from direct measurements. A 1 degree change is accurate.

Second you are missing the point. History has shown that huge global climate shifts have occurred on the generation timescale. People claim that global warming will never affect them or their children, but that is clearly wrong as it only takes 10-50 years for something to screw up considerably.

The whole point of global warming, which you have to sift away from the political crap that surrounds it, is that current temperature fluctuations are due to anthropogenic emissions. Whether it is going up or down, as feedback effects are large doesn't matter. Humans are directly responsible for screwing up the natural climate by emitting CO2, CFC's and N2O. Climate scientists find out which effects are natural and which are man made, and man made effects are definitely significant. This is what climate change minus politics is about.

Also I don't know what NRM is. I did research with climatologists and so I regurgitate what they say as opposed to teaching staff. It is better than regurgitating Wikipedia like some things I have read here. Where do you regurgitate from?

I like the word regurgitate, I think I will use it more often.

A11Eur0 · May 24, 2009, 06:57 PM // 18:57

Yes the 1 degree short-term change is accurate, but the argument is that the temperatures were stable for thousands of years before the industrial revolution, showing a stark contrast between now and then...but when you factor in error for those thousands of years, the "stark change" isn't so obvious. That 1 degree change may be part of a relatively high-frequency climate fluctuation of 1-2 degrees every 100-200 years. Do the math...that takes you back to the Dark Ages which were rife with plagues, famine, mass agricultural failure...likely caused by "drastic changes" in earth's average temperature. Were those all caused by Humans? Not likely.

Where's your proof that anthropogenic emissions are the sole and direct cause of this climate change? You say yourself that they occur on the generational time scale of 10-50 years but there hasn't been a major climate shift in the 100 years since mass industrialization....and industry is CLEANER NOW than it was 30 years ago! If the shift was going to happen due to human output, it would have happened already. It hasn't happened, obviously, so your entire argument is theoretical, hypothetical, and ultimately false. If Humans have such a strong impact on the environment, the sky should be filled with soot and noxious gas by now. If natural shifts occur less than the period of time that humans have been industrialized, humans should have cut that time down even more if they hold any sway whatsoever.

I'm not regurgitating anything. I did not take any environmental, climatology or related classes at all. I'm using my brain and my knowledge of earth's prehistory, as well as factual numbers (15 degree changes between ice age and "hot periods", as opposed to this "catastrophic" 1 degree change over two of your generational periods) to argue against the doomsayers claiming that humans are destroying the earth. it's simply not true if you can step back and take a look at the big picture and learn to look past VERY short term statistics.

It's like saying all the sand on a white quartz beach is basalt just because you found one or two black grains. 100 years is miniscule. Humans who think that the 30 thousand years they've been on the earth are significant are nothing more than self-righteous arrogant idiots. Here's a FACT you can wrap your second-hand information spewing mind around: All the "greenhouse gas emissions" produced by Humans in total including automobiles, industrial, burning wood, and agricultural sources are overshadowed by merely Volcanic eruptions, naturally-occuring forest fires, and wildlife gas emissions. Even with the rarity of large-scale volcanic eruptions, they still output more garbage in both gas and solid form into the atmosphere than the entire human race on average annually. Food for thought. The Mount Redoubt eruption alone poured more water vapor, CO, CO2, H2S, and ash into the earth's atmosphere than every car, truck, factory, and wood-burning stove operated by Man. Oh and here's another thing: Forest wildfires would be easily prevented if ENVIRONMENTALISTS didn't push for blanket laws that prevented logging companies from even removing treefall, which is the #1 cause of uncontrollable forest wildfires because they dry out and become easily-ignited tinder which in turn fuels the fires which kill living trees, releasing more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere and removing a source of CO2-O2 conversion. Environmentalists do more with their legislation to harm the environment than big business ever can.

I'll repeat what I've said before: Environmentalists are merely anti-big-business who have discovered a new, efficient way of putting roadblocks in the way of technological and entrepreneurial progress. They're upset that a relatively few individuals can control such a large portion of wealth, but they're too stupid to understand that the people in power needed to work for what they have. They don't care about "saving the environment" because they know the environment isn't in trouble. Another option is that they know that stupid people will buy into it and fervently support their cause, even DONATE MONEY to support it, without really understanding the science and facts. They eat up the BS that Al Gore and his compatriots spew at them like candy, and don't even bother to research into it or even give it more than a second of independent rational thought. It's sad that so many people can be duped so easily into believing this garbage, when the math is so easy to obtain and grasp. Laziness is the cause.

wetsparks · May 25, 2009, 04:46 AM // 04:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by A11Eur0

Oh and here's another thing: Forest wildfires would be easily prevented if ENVIRONMENTALISTS didn't push for blanket laws that prevented logging companies from even removing treefall, which is the #1 cause of uncontrollable forest wildfires because they dry out and become easily-ignited tinder which in turn fuels the fires which kill living trees, releasing more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere and removing a source of CO2-O2 conversion. Environmentalists do more with their legislation to harm the environment than big business ever can.

To add slightly to that, environmentalists won't even allow logging companies to go in and use what is left from all the dead trees so they rot putting more CO2 into the air and creates bug problems which when the dead trees are gone spread to living trees and cause more problems.

To the bigger global warming supporters, I want to ask you a question that I always have come to mind when I hear people go crazy about how people are killing the planet etc etc. Find a street with a lot of banks on it. Usually banks have a sign outside telling you the temperature and time. Now drive down that street and look at all the signs and what they say the temperature is. Now go home and look at your thermometer. What is the range difference between them all? Now think to yourself, where does the local weather people get their official temperature readings at? Where did they get it 100 years ago?

I can drive down a street and see three different temperatures from three different banks and then come home and get a fourth temperature. The difference range is always a minimum 4 degrees Fahrenheit from top to bottom, I even saw it at 10 degrees one day. 100 years ago they took official weather readings at the courthouse, now it is at the airport. The courthouse is next to a valley opening where we have a few windmills because of the constant breeze and that will give a slightly lower temperature than the airport where there isn't a tree within a mile and hardly a gust of wind and the two are separated by 5 or 6 miles. Now if the temperature ranges that much from one place to another how can you have an accurate average over 100 years? I know the town I live in isn't the only to move the place where they get official readings. I guess what I am trying to point out is there is a rather large margin of error possible here that people are wanting to throw trillions of dollars at. The point of these two paragraphs I suppose is that the global warming supporters seem to have this arrogance about them (not directed at any one person here) that the last 100 years where we can get any kind of accurate readings had the perfect temperature for every living creature on the earth and anything below or above that is bad for every creature on earth.

Saying that though I don't think people who are pushing this even really care. Obama says he wants cars to go from ~30mpg right now to 40 by 2016, ooh ahh. If people were serious about the oil issue (and I'm talking about the fact that oil has the world economy by the balls) why not build a bunch of nuclear power plants along the coast and use the electricity to make hydrogen from sea water and sell only hydrogen powered cars? Because it would break the status quo is why, and right now the status quo is making the people who make those decisions filthy rich. The technology is easily there right now. Hell, you could even use tidal energy if the environmentalists cause to big of a raucous. I know switching all cars away from oil isn't the biggest thing we could do, but it would be a good first step.

BTW, yes sorry, wall of text.

A11Eur0 · May 26, 2009, 01:56 AM // 01:56

fuel economy for cars has gone steadily downhill....because no matter how fuel efficient you make the cars, the requirements for safety and technology to be standard in vehicles has increased the weight of those cars by quite a bit more. a 1980's VW golf can get 40 mpg easily today, not even the diesel versions. A 2009 Golf with a more efficient 4 cylinder engine can barely peak 30 mpg on the highway because it's so fkn heavy from all the computers and really unnecessary safety equipment that's required to be installed. It's ridiculous. This is the 21st century, why can't we use lightweight steels or aluminum and engineer a safer vehicle, instead of just adding more steel reinforcements to 50 year old designs?

Kumu Honua · May 26, 2009, 03:33 PM // 15:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by A11Eur0

fuel economy for cars has gone steadily downhill....because no matter how fuel efficient you make the cars, the requirements for safety and technology to be standard in vehicles has increased the weight of those cars by quite a bit more. a 1980's VW golf can get 40 mpg easily today, not even the diesel versions. A 2009 Golf with a more efficient 4 cylinder engine can barely peak 30 mpg on the highway because it's so fkn heavy from all the computers and really unnecessary safety equipment that's required to be installed. It's ridiculous. This is the 21st century, why can't we use lightweight steels or aluminum and engineer a safer vehicle, instead of just adding more steel reinforcements to 50 year old designs?

Mostly because of the absolute RETARDS that get licenses.

Idiots who drive down the wrong way of a freeway exit and kill 3 people in a head on collision. Illegal immigrants in Arizona who can't read the English road signs and plow head first into a closed ditch. 95 year old people who believe that their reaction times are just as good as they were 50 years ago.

That's why the cars have to have all the safety crap. Because we aren't allowed to post birth abort those who should be...

Zahr Dalsk · May 26, 2009, 07:27 PM // 19:27

I'm getting tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. I'm tired of f*cking Earth Day, I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. They don't care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.

- George Carlin

awesome sauce · May 27, 2009, 03:38 AM // 03:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by poobert

This is wrong. Water absorbs more (about twice more). CH4 absorbs more, CFC's absorb more. They are all more effective green house gasses per molecule. There is just way more Co2 (not including water which is a variable and responds to rising temperatures... it is added to climate change models as a 2nd order effector a feedback effect)

Nope
http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/155/
Admittedly, I may be wrong on the "millions" figure. It's something that I thought I remembered seeing, and I should have addressed that in my other post.

Quote:

Originally Posted by poobert

Not necessarily. Volcanoes can screw around with temperature a lot. Like large igneous provinces. But there have been no super volcanoes recently. Just humans and our large emissions.

For relatively short periods of time, and even then they have a history of causing extinctions and famine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by poobert

Not quite true either. Pollution used to be just that. As well as co2 and n2o, there was a lot of soot and sulphides which oxidise to sulphates and then to h2so4, which aggregate to form aerosols. Aerosols increase the earth's albedo (reflect light) among other things which cool the earth. Recently catalytic converters and more efficient burning and lots of restriction have lead to clean emissions. This means the cooling due to aerosols has gone and all that remains is the warming due to co2 etc.

How is this different from what I said? It appears that you were just more scientific in your explanation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by poobert

Drought, climate shift, storms, more hurricanes are all a result of increasing temperatures and hence global warming.

When it gets hot there is more water in the atmosphere. This creates tonnes of energy when water condenses (latent heat) that causes more storms. Global warming -> more storms.

You must have misunderstood me. I was trying to say that these things are the climate change effects that we should be concerned about, not human extinction.

With all due respect poobert, I do believe we're on the same team here. Why are you trying to nitpick at my arguments?

awesome sauce · May 27, 2009, 04:14 AM // 04:14

To the rest of you:
I'm not claiming to be a scientist here, but I trust science. When a vast majority of the scientific community is convinced that this is a real event, I'm going to have a tendency to believe them.

Excuse me for not being a conspiracy theorist.

A11Eur0 · May 27, 2009, 04:26 AM // 04:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by awesome sauce

To the rest of you:
I'm not claiming to be a scientist here, but I trust science. When a vast majority of the scientific community is convinced that this is a real event, I'm going to have a tendency to believe them.

Excuse me for not being a conspiracy theorist.

Vast majority? Quoting the vast majority of scientists saying "yes the temperature is increasing" is one thing....quoting them then claiming that it means that humans are the cause, which is not what the "vast majority" have claimed, is called spin doctoring. Not a conspiracy theory, it's common knowledge that environmentalism is a business, damn near an entire Industry supported by gullible idiots. Period.

The "vast majority" of scientists that confirm that the temperature is increasing have stated that either they don't know what is causing it specifically, or that it's very likely merely due to natural shifts in solar activity, earth's orbit and other NATURAL causes. But you can go ahead and ignore all of that since it doesn't suit your purposes.

awesome sauce · May 27, 2009, 04:34 AM // 04:34

Alright, I looked this up.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americ...vey/index.html

82 percent believe in significant involvement. That's a far cry from what you said.

Admittedly, it's also a bit lower than what I had thought, and I'm glad I looked it up.

97% of climatologists is still convincing enough for me though.

MMSDome · May 27, 2009, 07:52 AM // 07:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by awesome sauce

Alright, I looked this up.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americ...vey/index.html

82 percent believe in significant involvement. That's a far cry from what you said.

Admittedly, it's also a bit lower than what I had thought, and I'm glad I looked it up.

97% of climatologists is still convincing enough for me though.

and a while ago 100% of people believed the Earth was flat.

A11Eur0 · May 27, 2009, 05:44 PM // 17:44

75 years ago 99.9% of the scientific community didn't believe in Plate Tectonics.

Draw your own conclusions about what YOU know and research, not about what other people with their professional careers to consider will tell you because it's the "popular idea". There are a lot more than 3 thousand "scientists" in this world who carry any sort of authority in this matter....and all surveys are biased. I don't take mass media surveys seriously at all. People get paid or otherwise coerced to answer a certain way, because honestly if you go against the status quo of the scientific community, your career is in dire jeopardy, especially when it's about something so massively popular as "global warming". Again, it's an industry, lots of money in the environmental movement. Lots of lobbyists, lots of political and professional influence as well. I wouldn't want to publish a paper saying that humans have nothing to do with Global Warming in today's scientific environment, especially if it means losing my job.

Just read that article...it's full of bias reporting and blanket statements:

"The petroleum geologist response is not too surprising..."

"Most members of the public think meteorologists know climate, but most of them actually study very short-term phenomenon."

""They're the ones who study and publish on climate science. So I guess the take-home message is, the more you know about the field of climate science, the more you're likely to believe in global warming and humankind's contribution to it."

I mean come on...petroleum geologists aren't to be taken seriously because their jobs hinge on the ability to continue working, meteorologists don't know much about it, and climatologists who are directly coerced to go with the status quo are the only people who really know anything about it. Pretty much what they did was introduce more bias by directly discarding the opinions of those non-climatologists altogether. That's a load of horseshit. I guess Petroleum geologists are complete morons, eh? Phht. Sorry, but it's much easier to get a job as a climatologist than a Petroleum Geologist, you have to be fawking brilliant to be considered in a field that's so competitive due to the amount of money tied up in it. I'd believe the people with the brains over the people who picked the easy route.

artay · May 28, 2009, 08:51 AM // 08:51

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

Yeah, been there, done that.

MMSDome · May 28, 2009, 05:54 PM // 17:54

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Originally Posted by artay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

Yeah, been there, done that.

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Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s...

I can't wait till the wiki page for global warming says:

Global warming was a conjecture during the 2000s... etc etc