The Global Warming Thread

[The Rabbi]

I agree with you, and when Britain comes to decide how our power for the next few decades is to be generated, as we will shortly, I'll be arguing in favour of nuclear over fossil fuels or any insanely expensive attempt at massive investment in renewables. For some reason the greens still don't like me.

My point is that the truly sceptical position on the global warming argument is to question the strident voices on either side, not to only question the dominant voice as so many seem to do (generally, not just in this thread.)

Which brings another point.  Why does Britain have to decide anything?  Why not leave this to the marketplace to price and provide power to people?

[The Rabbi]

In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims.
During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in
centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may
well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from
uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the
American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest
winters within anyone's recollection.
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing
number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological
fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from
place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe
they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend
shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive,
for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.
Telltale signs are everywhere from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the
waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the
Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is
at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of
Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite
weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had
suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in
the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.
Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable
expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds the so-called circumpolar vortexthat
sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of
cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa's drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds
and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other droughtridden
areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the
same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the
winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air
masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent stormsthe Midwest's recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.
Sunspot Cycle. The changing weather is apparently connected with differences in the amount of energy that the earth's surface receives from the sun. Changes in the earth's tilt and distance from the sun
could, for instance, significantly increase or decrease the amount of solar radiation falling on either hemispherethereby altering the earth's climate. Some observers have tried to connect the eleven-year
sunspot cycle with climate patterns, but have so far been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of
how the cycle might be involved.
Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a
result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.
Climatic Balance. Some scientists like Donald Oilman, chief of the National Weather Service's longrange-prediction group, think that the cooling trend may be only temporary. But all agree that vastly more information is needed about the major influences on the earth's climate. Indeed, it is to gain such
knowledge that 38 ships and 13 aircraft, carrying scientists from almost 70 nations, are now assembling in the Atlantic and elsewhere for a massive 100-day study of the effects of the tropical seas and
atmosphere on worldwide weather. The study itself is only part of an international scientific effort known acronymically as GARP (for Global Atmospheric Research Program).
Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip
the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age
within only a few hundred years.
The earth's current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as
high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one
or more of the three major grain-exporting countriesthe U.S., Canada and Australia global food
stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president
of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe
that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."

[Iain]

Which brings another point.  Why does Britain have to decide anything?  Why not leave this to the marketplace to price and provide power to people?

Well yes, but wherever in the world you are planning permission for such things as nuclear power stations, and even vast windfarms, is going to become a political question. Somewhat OT though.

[SADShooter]

It's not off-topic at all, unfortunately. If popular opinion dictates political action, then perception becomes as powerful a decision factor as the scientific reality, whatever it is.

[gunsmith]

the same people who tell me man is causing global warming are the same people who lie to me about the 2nd amendment.

[gunsmith]

China, the biggest polluter out there, wasn't included in the Kyoto protocols.
Thank God GW didn't sign that nonsense.

[brimic]

I know you're kidding

Actually, I'm not.    

[stevelyn]

I'm with GoRon on this one. I think that whatever is happening is part of a natural cycle and there is nothing we did or can do to influence it.

I'm not picking on you here, it's just my questioning of a seemingly widely held opinion - how do you know this? I don't know that it is mans actions, and I don't know that it isn't. It just seems that scientific opinion, and again I'm not a scientist, seems to be pointing toward human involvement.

Now, of course there is a certain agenda to some claims that human beings are destroying the planet. Whether it's anti-big business or some new Luddite movement I don't know. The thing I am cautious of though is discarding babies with bathwater and throwing out potentially valid scientific argument because there are a few loopy adherents to it.

And of course the 'global warming is all nonsense' crowd have their loopy adherents too.

As for a global warming trend.........you couldn't prove that by this past winter and it still isn't over yet.

This winter had been colder here too, daffodils have come out much later than last year. We're not talking about trends that can be spotted year on year though, we're talking about how much earlier spring may or may not be compared to thirty, fifty, one hundred years ago.

It's common sense. Science has proven that the earth has gone through several climatic cycles through the eons with the last major ice age about 10,000 years ago and a mini ice age a couple hundred or so years ago IIRC.
The difference between then and now.............someone's figured out how to make a buck off it and is attempting to manipulate public policy to do so.

[publius]

Political questions related to infrastructure requirements for various energy plans are not OT.

Sincerely,
The Topic Starter

Thanks to all for a good discussion so far. Sorry I have not had time to join in more. FWIW, I think that the global warming scare is a Luddite thing, like lots of modern enviro causes. In my area, the war on the internal combustion engine has taken the form of protecting the manatees. Nationally and internationally, it has taken the form of fighting global warming.

Is global warming debate getting overheated?

April 2, 2006

http://www.suntimes.com/output/will/cst-edt-geo02.html#

BY GEORGE WILL

So, ''the debate is over.'' Time magazine says so. Last week's cover story exhorted readers to ''Be Worried. Be Very Worried,'' and ABC News concurred in several stories. So did Montana's governor, speaking on ABC. And there was polling about global warming, gathered by Time and ABC in collaboration.

Eighty-five percent of Americans say warming is probably happening, and 62 percent say it threatens them personally. The National Academy of Sciences says the rise in the Earth's surface temperature has been about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the last century. Did 85 percent of Americans notice? Of course not. They got their anxiety from journalism calculated to produce it. Never mind that 1 degree might be the margin of error when measuring the planet's temperature. To take a person's temperature, you put a thermometer in an orifice, or under an arm. Taking the temperature of our churning planet, with its tectonic plates sliding around over a molten core, involves limited precision.

Why have Americans been dilatory about becoming as worried -- as very worried -- as Time and ABC think proper? An article on ABC's Web site wonders ominously, ''Was Confusion Over Global Warming a Con Job?'' It suggests there has been a misinformation campaign implying that scientists might not be unanimous, a campaign by big oil. And the coal industry. But speaking of coal . . .

Recently, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer flew with ABC's George Stephanopoulos over Glacier National Park's receding glaciers. But Schweitzer offered hope: Everyone, buy Montana coal. New technologies can, he said, burn it while removing carbon causes of global warming.

Stephanopoulos noted that such technologies are at least four years away and ''all the scientists'' say something must be done ''right now.''

While worrying about Montana's receding glaciers, Schweitzer, who is 50, should also worry about the fact that when he was 20 he was told to be worried, very worried, about global cooling. Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of ''extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.'' Science Digest (February 1973) reported that ''the world's climatologists are agreed'' that we must ''prepare for the next ice age.'' The Christian Science Monitor (''Warning: Earth's Climate is Changing Faster than Even Experts Expect,'' Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers ''have begun to advance,'' ''growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter'' and ''the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool.'' Newsweek agreed (''The Cooling World,'' April 28, 1975) that meteorologists ''are almost unanimous'' that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that the New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said ''may mark the return to another ice age.''

In fact, the earth is always experiencing either warming or cooling. But suppose the scientists and their journalistic conduits, who today say they were so spectacularly wrong so recently, are now correct. Suppose the earth is warming and suppose the warming is caused by human activity. Are we sure there will be proportionate benefits from whatever climate change can be purchased at the cost of slowing economic growth and spending trillions? Are we sure the consequences of climate change -- remember, a thick sheet of ice once covered the Middle West -- must be bad? Or has the science-journalism complex decided that debate about these questions, too, is ''over''?

About the mystery that vexes ABC -- Why have Americans been slow to get in lock step concerning global warming? -- perhaps the ''problem'' is not big oil or big coal, both of which have discovered there is big money to be made from tax breaks and other subsidies justified in the name of combating carbon. Perhaps the problem is big crusading journalism.

[RocketMan]

A few years ago I read an interesting article in one of the popular laymans science publications.  Unfortunately I don't remember which one.
Its premise was that the earth undergoes a short period, forty to fifty years or so, of increasing natural CO2 levels and global warming, just prior to global temperatures falling off a cliff and an ice age beginning.  The evidence was taken from ice core samples and other sources IIRC.
I wish I could find the article.  It was very persuasive.

[m1911owner]

I don't see what all the fuss is about.  I think global warming is a really great idea.  I hate the cold.

I especially have great trouble trying to understand why the Russians and Canadians are trying to stop global warming.  Global Warming seems like a huge win for them.

[Art Eatman]

If the public at large really believed that global warming is happening, ocean-front property would be a helluva lot cheaper.  People would be leaving Venice, Italy; Miami, NYC and a host of other places.  After all, we're told the polar ice caps are melting, and sea level will rise somewhere between 20 and 50 feet.

Warming would increase the growing season in many grain-producing regions.  What worries climatologists is the possibility of weather pattern changes that could reduce average rainfall--and reduce crop production.  Another great unknown...

If we went nuke for electricity, we'd cut air pollution particulate matter (SO2, e.g.) and reduce CO2 much more than changing to dual-fuel hybrid cars ever would--or getting out of SUVs and into Honda Civics.  Part of the US problem is that people think the movie "The China Syndrome" is a documentary...

Art

[brimic]

I especially have great trouble trying to understand why the Russians and Canadians are trying to stop global warming.  Global Warming seems like a huge win for them.

Or they could use scare tactics related to global warming to leverage their socialistic controls on the United States to try to bring us down to their level. Whether or not global warming is a fact or a farce (I lean heavily towards farce myself if not outright fraud), noone alive right now will be effected by it in any significant way during the span of their lifetimes.

[Waitone]

Human being are an arrogant lot.  Environmentalists are goldplated in their arrogance.  The magnitude of physical forces we are dealing with are beyond human appreciation.  I will cite one example.

How much solar energy is intercepted by the earth in one 24 hour period?  How does that number compare to the total energy used by humanity in a comparable period of time.  

http://home.iprimus.com.au/nielsens/solrad.html

Using the Solar Constant we can calculate (see the formula below) that the total solar energy intercepted by the Earth in one year is 5.5 million exajoules [EJ/y]. To appreciate this figure we have to compare it with the global energy consumption in 2005, which was only 463 EJ/y(poster's comment--0.00842% of the total). Thus, even though the Sun is so far from us, we still receive huge amounts of energy from this immensely powerful source.

Using information contained in The Little Green Handbook you can also calculate that our current global annual consumption of energy is equal to the average solar energy reaching the Earth's surface over a period of only one hour and 16 minutes. Add to it an extra 30 minutes and you'll have enough energy for the annual global consumption in 2020.

Let me repeat for emphasis, The amount of solar energy reaching the earth in 1 hour and 16 minutes is equal to humanity energy production for an entire year.  I cite solar statistics because it is the most diffused form of energy and because we can visualize the quantities.  I just wonder what is the comparable energy availability from a nice quiet volcano eruption.

My point is quite simpleminded.  Global warming MAY be taking place, but humans ain't the cause and they sure ain't gonna do anything about it.  Some things are far bigger than the human ego.  Our environmental buddies should learn a lesson.

[Iain]

I'm sorry, that just makes no sense. The sun is like uber powerful, like totally more than anything else, ever, and this means that human beings can have precisely no impact on the earth at all?

[Waitone]

My point is simply this.  Natural forces are overwhelming in size compared to human contribution.  The only way to blame human contribution is hypothesize the earth is a precariously balanced eco system and the least little contribution of heat (from humans) will destabilize it causing runaway heat increases.

Environmental chicken-littles say the earth is precariously balanced.

I say the earth is a closed loop servo system.

Major difference between the two.

[Iain]

You might call them chicken littles. They'd call you an ostrich.

I'd say you both might have a point.

[publius]

Climate of Fear
Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.

BY RICHARD LINDZEN
Wednesday, April 12, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?

The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.

But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.

To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues. First, let's start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. In fact, those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually demonstrating skepticism of the very science they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming.

If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that the ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity, not less--hardly a case for more storminess with global warming.

So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about this junk science? It's my belief that many scientists have been cowed not merely by money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year, Texas Rep. Joe Barton issued letters to paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and some of his co-authors seeking the details behind a taxpayer-funded analysis that claimed the 1990s were likely the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the last millennium. Mr. Barton's concern was based on the fact that the IPCC had singled out Mr. Mann's work as a means to encourage policy makers to take action. And they did so before his work could be replicated and tested--a task made difficult because Mr. Mann, a key IPCC author, had refused to release the details for analysis. The scientific community's defense of Mr. Mann was, nonetheless, immediate and harsh. The president of the National Academy of Sciences--as well as the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union--formally protested, saying that Rep. Barton's singling out of a scientist's work smacked of intimidation.

All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the scientific community when anti-alarmists were in the crosshairs of then-Sen. Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry.

Sadly, this is only the tip of a non-melting iceberg. In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.

And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen.

Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers.

 Mr. Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

[richyoung]

I'm with GoRon on this one. I think that whatever is happening is part of a natural cycle and there is nothing we did or can do to influence it.

I'm not picking on you here, it's just my questioning of a seemingly widely held opinion - how do you know this?

Because the last Ice Age ended - and it wasn't because Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal Man were driving Suburbans and Explorers to their jobs at the coal-fired electric plant.

I don't know that it is mans actions, and I don't know that it isn't.

Perhaps some research is in order.  Start with this - how do you even APPROXIMATE taking the temperature of the whole Earth - from core to the tip of the atmosphere, including all levels of the ocean.  How long has mankind had the ability to do that?  What is the primary greenhouse gas on Earth?  Is increasing CO2 level a LEADING, or TRAILING indicator of global warming?

It just seems that scientific opinion, and again I'm not a scientist, seems to be pointing toward human involvement.

At one time, scientific opinion was that life spontaneously generated from non-living matter, radio waves traveled through a substance called "ether", and no vehicle could exceed 60 MPH because no one would be able to breath.... science is unfortunately a substitute for religion for many of its practicioneers, and like any religion, it has an orthodoxy that is defended from heresy.  Please note that the "ozone hole" that was going to kill us all has gone away, despite the fact that the third world is making, and releasing as many florocarbons now as ever.

Now, of course there is a certain agenda to some claims that human beings are destroying the planet. Whether it's anti-big business or some new Luddite movement I don't know.

I would submit you DO know - you just listed them...

[richyoung]

I agree with you, and when Britain comes to decide how our power for the next few decades is to be generated, as we will shortly, I'll be arguing in favour of nuclear over fossil fuels or any insanely expensive attempt at massive investment in renewables. For some reason the greens still don't like me.

My point is that the truly sceptical position on the global warming argument is to question the strident voices on either side, not to only question the dominant voice as so many seem to do (generally, not just in this thread.)

Which brings another point.  Why does Britain have to decide anything?  Why not leave this to the marketplace to price and provide power to people?

+1...Go  Rabbi!

[richyoung]

I especially have great trouble trying to understand why the Russians and Canadians are trying to stop global warming.  Global Warming seems like a huge win for them.

Russia wants to sell nuiclear reactors and fuel to people the West won't, now that they have a bunch of nuclear physicists and uranium that aren't being used for warheads any more.  Canada has huge excess supplies of hydroelectric power that they want to sell to the Yankess down south, instead of having them burn theor own fossi lfuels to make it.  Before "global waming", "acid rain" was the bandwagon they were riding to that end, until the wheels fell off of that one..

[Iain]

Because the last Ice Age ended - and it wasn't because Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal Man were driving Suburbans and Explorers to their jobs at the coal-fired electric plant.

Rich, the last Ice Age ended without human action. That doesn't prove that the next one won't be delayed or accelerated by human action.

I don't know that it is mans actions, and I don't know that it isn't.

Perhaps some research is in order.  Start with this - how do you even APPROXIMATE taking the temperature of the whole Earth - from core to the tip of the atmosphere, including all levels of the ocean.  How long has mankind had the ability to do that?  What is the primary greenhouse gas on Earth?  Is increasing CO2 level a LEADING, or TRAILING indicator of global warming?

You tell me. Point is that I'm not a scientist. I don't know whether CO2 is a trailing or leading indicator of global warming. I'll submit that a lot of people that believe in global warming haven't the faintest either. And vice versa. And there are those who choose to believe one over the other. My whole point is that the strident voices are arguing for two as yet unproven cases - that we are causing it, and that we aren't.

It just seems that scientific opinion, and again I'm not a scientist, seems to be pointing toward human involvement.

At one time, scientific opinion was that life spontaneously generated from non-living matter, radio waves traveled through a substance called "ether", and no vehicle could exceed 60 MPH because no one would be able to breath.... science is unfortunately a substitute for religion for many of its practicioneers, and like any religion, it has an orthodoxy that is defended from heresy.  Please note that the "ozone hole" that was going to kill us all has gone away, despite the fact that the third world is making, and releasing as many florocarbons now as ever.

Yep. So? Scientists have been wrong before ergo they are wrong now because I don't like their conclusions? Essentially that is what it seems to boil down to. Again I'm not saying they are right, and I agree that science as religion is present and unpleasant.

Now, of course there is a certain agenda to some claims that human beings are destroying the planet. Whether it's anti-big business or some new Luddite movement I don't know.

I would submit you DO know - you just listed them...

Well there you are. You choose to believe that a large number of scientists are charlatans, and I don't. I'm willing to accept that they may be absolutely utterly and totally wrong and I certainly do accept that their case is not rock solid.

When I list these agendas as being the ones behind 'human action causes global warming' I of course omitted a potential list for the 'human beings can never cause global warmings' argument.

[richyoung]

Rich, the last Ice Age ended without human action. That doesn't prove that the next one won't be delayed or accelerated by human action.

Cyclically speaking, we are OVERDUE for an ice age.  Please explain to me how DELAYING one, by human action, would be a BAD thing.  Please explain how Global WARMING can cause enough Global COOLING to cause an ice age.

I don't know that it is mans actions, and I don't know that it isn't.

Because the last Ice Age ended - and it wasn't because Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal Man were driving Suburbans and Explorers to their jobs at the coal-fired electric plant.

Perhaps some research is in order.  Start with this - how do you even APPROXIMATE taking the temperature of the whole Earth - from core to the tip of the atmosphere, including all levels of the ocean.  How long has mankind had the ability to do that?  What is the primary greenhouse gas on Earth?  Is increasing CO2 level a LEADING, or TRAILING indicator of global warming?

You tell me.

OK - you asked for it!    The ONLY way you can APPROXIMATE whether the Earth is cooling, or heating up, is to measure the amount of energy supplied by the Sun, by the decay of radiocative elements in the Earth's crust,  and by tidal friction in crust, make your BEST GUESS about how much of that solar energy is absorbed by the Earth, measure by satellite the amount of infrared energy radiated by the earth, make your BEST GUESS as to how much to adjust the radiation figures for things like sensor error or satellite orbit decay over time, or satellite skew angle not being constant, (or even known for certain at all times).  Subtract the radiated total from the sum of all the heat produced by all sources, and see if it balances out, or which way it doesn't.  Ground measurments are biased, in that they tend to take place where people either are, or can easily get to - (i.e. not on top of Mt. Everest, at the bottom of the ocean, or deep in the Earth's crust.  Balloon data agree with corrected satellite data (scientists are still arguing over how to correct the satellite observations), and the computer models that predict "global warming" (similar to the flawed models that falsely predicted "nuclear winter" cannot, when fed CURRENT data, replicate CURRENT conditions.  Short version - we only have 30 years of data where we can even ATTEMP to calculate a net energy loss or gain for the earth - only 10-15 years of really good data, (that the scientists are still arguing about) and even in THAT data global warming stopped in 1998 - even tho we kept right on burning fossil fuels.  Global warming a hoax - a scare tactic to get research funding and control over businesses and people that otherwise could not happen.

Point is that I'm not a scientist.

...but you are reasonably intelligent, AND have the Internet.  Of cource, I have the advantage of having been through many of these "Chicken Little" scams in my life - I'm 44, and lived through:

1.  The "Unsafe at any speed" scam.
2.  The 'Silent Spring"/DDT scam
3.  The "Mercury in the Fish" scam.
4.  The "Population Bomb"/famine scam.
5.  Alar.
6.  Tris.
7.  Asbestoes.
8.  The "Exploding GMC/Chevy Pickup Scam".
9.  The Coming Ice Age.
10.  "Nuclear Winter"
11.  The "Hole In The Ozone"/ Freon's gonna kill us! scam.
12.  Phosphates in detergent.
13.  The "Great Lakes are dead" scam.
14.  Heterosexual AIDS epidemic.
15.  Swine flu panic.
16.  "Cell phones cause brain cancer" scam.
17.  "Power lines cause cancer" scam.
& a host that I'm overlooking, I'm sure.  Guess why I tend to demand HARD PROOF before I panic now....

I don't know whether CO2 is a trailing or leading indicator of global warming.

Don't you think thats an important question to answer, in the process of deciding if anthropomorphic global warming is evn possible, much less actually occuring?  And for your info, CO2 is a TRAILING indicator of global warming - one of the major carbon sinks in Earths chemistry is the ocean, in the form of dissolved CO2.  When the water gets warmer, (just like your soda pop left open, or the water you boil to cook eggs...) it can't hold as much dissolved gas - so co2, along with other gases, are released.  This results in a net increase in CO2 in the air, as more if it is dissolved, so more releases.  This is verified by polar ice core samples.

I'll submit that a lot of people that believe in global warming haven't the faintest either. And vice versa. And there are those who choose to believe one over the other. My whole point is that the strident voices are arguing for two as yet unproven cases - that we are causing it, and that we aren't.

There used to be strident voices in the '70s saying that Mankind, with his colored tiolet paper & other industrial uses, was putting so much mercury in the environment that tuna, marlin, swordfish were becoming unsafe to eat.  Then acheologists found the remains of a 10,000 year old settlement - including remains of fish that they were eating.  They tested the mercury levels, and found them IDENTICAL to the current ones.  At the time, (early 70s) ALL the mercury EVR used by man from the dawn of time would have fit into 14 railraod boxcars.  The idea that 14 railroad cars of ANYTHING could noticiblay effect the level of a mineral in the ocean that is constantly being eroded and deposited naturally from the same mineral sources mankind obtains it from is ESACTLY the same kind of hoo-haw that the global warming blissninnies push.

Yep. So? Scientists have been wrong before ergo they are wrong now because I don't like their conclusions?

Their conclusions don't MAKE SENSE - if the Big Light in the Sky brightens, or dims - (and it does periodically) - whether I drive a Corvette to work or ride the bus - whether we ALL drive a Corvette to work or ride the buss - makes no difference.

Well there you are. You choose to believe that a large number of scientists are charlatans, and I don't.

...you do KNOW that almost 20,000 scientist signed a letter urging the US not to ratify the Kyoto accords because:
1.  They felt that global warming was not proven, and...
2.  They felt that even if it existed, there was no proof that man caused it, and
3.  Even if it existed and Man caused it, it was minor and had beneficial effects in terms of longer growing seasons, higher crop yields, more arable land, delayed Ice Age, etc.

[publius]

richyoung,

You need to work on your ability to stampede in a panic.

[Iain]

Only reasonably intelligent eh? I can live with that. Interestingly enough seven years ago I was studying my ass off for the hardest exam that I have yet taken, my chemistry A-level*. All that study, and all that time, has taught me one thing that is pertinent to this conversation - you know more about this than I do.

Which is great. I read your posts and I find them interesting and informative, and full of useful potential ammunition when having this discussion and playing my same role but with those who firmly do believe in global warming. And then one day I'll come across a guy who knows more than I do and his thoughts will be interesting and informative, and in favour of global warming, and then I'll be extra confused. Even more so than I am already.

I could spend the next ten years of my life studying a few hours a day and hope to call myself an amateur climatologist at the end of it. I'm not going to - and here is my point, neither has the vast majority of the proponents of either cause. Sure the guys at the top are experts, but I can't trust them because I don't understand them, and worse, they know that. Worse still, the vast majority of stuff I will hear about global warming will be filtered in some way by a media that doesn't understand, and knows that I don't either.

Ultimately every time someone comes along and throws knowledgable posts like yours at me I respect them for it, even if the angle is clear. And everytime someone comes along and says 'global warming has always happened and it's arrogant to assume that man has caused it', or conversely 'global warming is going to freaking kill us all dude', and that is the substance - I don't respect it.

So there we go, that is the sum total of my participation in this thread - how is it that everyone is so sure? One side tells me that every 'reputable' scientist believes in it, and the other tells me that every 'reputable' scientist don't. I hardly think that my position is stampeding with the herd.

* - I'm not saying that exams I took later weren't hard. I was just never cut out to be a chemist.