Global Warming Science vs. Socialist Group Think

[mountainclmbr]

When the solution to a problem is socialism on a global scale, a healthy dose of scepticism is in order.

The UN claims of global warming are based on computer models paid for by the UN. In fact, the UN awarded to the contract to the software developer that generated a model showing the greatest impact due to carbon dioxide.

The debate on global warming rarely mentions that the strongest greenhouse gas is water vapor and that carbon dioxide is a relatively weak greenhouse gas. The global warming debate also fails to mention that the atmospheric measurements made by Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites do not show warming in the upper atmosphere where you would expect carbon dioxide to have an impact that is not obscured by surface conditions like absence of forests in urban areas, water vapor, fluctuations in ocean currents (like the el Nino events), etc. The following link shows satellite measurements of average atmospheric temperatures that are updated monthly.

The global warming debate also fails to mention that the earth is currently in the middle of a temperature cycle called the Interglacial Warming Period which is a warming cycle that typically lasts 20 thousand years between ice ages and the pattern goes back millions of years, therefore not caused by man.

No reasoning with socialists I guess.

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/essd06oct97_1.htm

[m1911owner]

Not to mention that measured insolation has been increasing by 0.05% per decade for the last three decades, and solar observations strongly suggest that that increase has been going on for at least the last century.

Oh, and by the way...  The polar caps are melting.

On Mars.


Looking at this from another direction:  Suppose the Global Warming folks are actually serious about this.  Then, why aren't they actually doing something reasonable to eliminate CO2 emissions?  There is exactly one proven technology that can reasonably provide for the world's energy needs that's also CO2 free--nuclear power.  So, reasonably, they should be in panic mode building nuclear power plants.  But they're not.  So exactly what is their real agenda?

[Tallpine]

Oh, and by the way...  The polar caps are melting.  On Mars.

I'm sure it has something to do with all the probes that we have sent up there 

[El Tejon]

Why not?  Because it is about controlling the population, not saving the planet.

I can only wish that the polar ice caps will melt and destroy New York City, Boston, L.A. and the like.  I get my freedom back!  Freedom!  No more East Coast Eloi Congresspersons telling me how I must live and demanding my money in tribute.

The thought of living free and keeping my money is an earthly paradise.  Come on and melt already!

[brimic]

I can only wish that the polar ice caps will melt and destroy New York City, Boston, L.A. and the like.  I get my freedom back!  Freedom!  No more East Coast Eloi Congresspersons telling me how I must live and demanding my money in tribute.

Not to mention that the value of real estate in the central portion of the country will increase dramatically
Oh, and no more UN headquarters

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

And since most of the pollution-causing population lives in the big coastal cities, the problem of global warming would disappear.  The problem is its own solution. 

 

[Sindawe]

Time will tell if its the tree-hugging, dirt-munching, CO2-phobic druids who are correct, or if the head in the sand open a beer and step on the gas blissninnies are correct.

Me, I'll keep watching the glaciers retreat, the armadillos move north and the oceanic currents slow down.  Maybe we're doing this, and maybe we ain't.  But either way, SOMETHING looks to be up.

[MechAg94]

My boss was just talking to me about a technology to recover CO2 from the exhaust gas of our plant.  I work at a steam methane reformer.  We make CO.  There is a company we came across that can pull the exhaust gas in and blow it through an amine absorber and essentially recover the CO2 from the exhaust stack gases. 

The problem is what to do with the CO2?  We can try to reprocess it to make more CO, but power plants wouldn't have that option.  I would say people need to drink more Coke, but that doesn't really get rid of the CO2.  The market price of CO2 isn't high enough to justify the price in this area at least.

[Ron]

Whether we are responsible for a portion of the warming or not we need to start focusing on adapting.

We are never going to get the whole planet on board with any meaningful action. So we need to prepare and plan for what appears to be a serious warming of the planet.

As a plan "B" we need to also plan for an ice age if the global currents stop due to melting ice.

All right! Don't just stand there! Get moving!

[MechAg94]

Yes, and the wonderful and beneficient UN will happily guide us through that change. 

Let the free market handle it. 

[brimic]

I got it! I got it!

How about gigantic coal fired air conditioners placed around glaciers to keep them from melting.

[richyoung]

Time will tell if its the tree-hugging, dirt-munching, CO2-phobic druids who are correct, or if the head in the sand open a beer and step on the gas blissninnies are correct.

Me, I'll keep watching the glaciers retreat, the armadillos move north and the oceanic currents slow down.  Maybe we're doing this, and maybe we ain't.  But either way, SOMETHING looks to be up.

Perhaps.  However, the very THOUGHT that "mankind" is responsible is as absurd as the rooster thinking his crowing makes the sun come up.  Correlation DOES NOT equal causation.

[cosine]

Hey, it's obvious. Anybody with a skull full of grey matter can easily see that global warming is hard at work here in Southeastern WI. For the last month (it is suppose to be winter) we've had lovely weather, with temps in the 40s and even up into the 50s! 

Hey brimic! How 'bout sending those air conditioners over this way?

[El Tejon]

I want Global Warming and I want it now!

[mountainclmbr]

Here in Colorado we have had big snow storms for the last three Fridays in a row and another scheduled for this coming Friday. The last three storms dumped 3 ft, 3ft and 2 ft of snow at my house.

I read the report of a non-PC climatologist who was studying 100 randomly selected glaciers. He reported that about half were shrinking and half were growing. It would be easy to cherry pick to show the desired results if you had a desired outcome.

I recently saw a National Geographic show on the study of deep ice core samples in Greenland that showed that climate changes were common and often happened very rapidly. They concluded that the current climate is unusually stable compared to patterns in the past. These ice cores were from deep samples so are probably over 100,000 years old. I don't recall the range of time that was covered by the samples anymore.

[Sindawe]

For us here in Colorado, I think that the snow is linked to El Nino.  2006/2007 is another El Nino year. http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/

I recall noting just this type of pattern (weekly snow storms) in 1977-78, which was the first El Nino year I'd experienced since moving here in 1975.  Looking back over the record http://ggweather.com/enso/years.htm I can correlate the years with big storms with El Ninos.

[MechAg94]

Look at all the tundra in Canada that might become habitable if things warmed up a bit. 

[Waitone]

If you want to see just how big a howling joke global warming is, do a simple analysis.

Figure out the total solar energy that impinges on the surface of earth.

Figure out all the energy generated by humans planet wide

Compare the two and you'll see man's contribution is merely round off error to what the sun delivers.

Now to the science.  Read The Skeptical Environmentalist.  It is a hard nosed scientific analysis of what passes for global warming science.  The author is a former member of World Wildlife Federation.  Dry but informative.

[Iain]

Waitone - what on earth does man's production of energy have to do with global warming? We could start producing 100's of times the amount we do and, if global warming scientists are correct, the critical factor would still be how many greenhouse gases are produced in doing so.

The last time we got on this not-so-merry go-round I posted a lot of links to this website - www.realclimate.org - now it seems to me that this website would at least begin to inform and shoot down a lot of the so pat, so simple 'theories' that abound. I'm not saying that it has all the right answers (remember, I'm an agnostic on this issue as I stated oh-so many times) but it at least begins to tackle some of these 'theories' that seem so popular.

I challenge you to read a tenth of it and then come back and tell me that the answers are so clear as posts 1,2 and 18 imply. Take for instance the Mars issue - http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/10/global-warming-on-mars/

[MechAg94]

Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has been observed on Mars (e.g. here). These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars (e.g. here and here). But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data.

From that last link.  This is the same thing I see many global warming advocates do all the time.  I thought the Mars thing was a joke to poke at global warming believers. 

I thought I had seen someone show some data that said that solar energy getting to the earth had seen an increase lately that tends to explain much of what global warming advocates are looking at. 

Either way, I got suspicious when the detailed articles talked about all the models run to get the "scare tactic" data.  Most of the models run with normal parameters showed no change.  They had to manipulate the models and fix or exaggerate variables to get really bad results so they could then publish a press release saying how bad global warming could be. 

[Iain]

It's not a joke, it ties in exactly with the idea that it is an external process that may be causing this warming we may or may not be experiencing.

This has been beaten to death, I only really wanted to get that website out there. I'm guessing from the conversations that have been had that there aren't a lot of climate scientists on here. The website clearly has an agenda (although the credentials of the contributors should be noted) but no less than near all of the websites espousing alternative theories that I've seen.

[Desertdog]

One fairly large company is willing to do something about the CO2 emmissions, with your money, of course.
If trees are all it takes, why arn't there more concerned groups planting trees.

Dell announces 'carbon neutral' plan for PC buyers
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/01/09/070109214119.wey8mmsf.html

Computer giant Dell unveiled an initiative allowing customers to donate to a tree-planting program to offset the carbon impact of electricity required to power their systems.
The so-called "carbon neutral" initiative announced by company founder Michael Dell would include voluntary contributions by customers to a program aimed at offsetting the impact of so-called greenhouse gases.

Dell said funds would go to The Conservation Fund and the Carbonfund.org, non-profit organizations that will plant trees in managed forests, absorbing carbon dioxide released in the atmosphere from generated electricity.

"Essentially what we're doing is partnering with our customers to help make the operation of their computers carbon neutral," said Dell, who was attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. "We hope to encourage others to do the same."

A customer donation of two dollars for a notebook and six dollars for a desktop will go toward the planting of trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, offsetting the equivalent emissions resulting from electricity used during the average three-year use of a computer.

The program is available now to Dell's US customers and will be available to global consumers in April.

"We applaud Dell's leadership for its commitment to offset the carbon footprint of its computers," said Larry Selzer, president of The Conservation Fund.

"Climate change has emerged as one of the dominant environmental issues of our time, and Dell's industry-leading efforts to address this challenge, and its invitation to its customers to join in this initiative, serve as a model for corporate environmental stewardship in the 21st century," he said

[brimic]

Sweet, now foppish urban enviroweenies can don't have to feel guilty about firing up their laptop while sipping their overpriced coffee made by people with a social conscience.

Meh, I've planted more trees for selfish purposes on 'evil' ground on golf courses and in suburban yards with a shovel and the sweat off my brow than I can count.

[MechAg94]

Back in the 90's when Texas A&M still had its bonfire every year, there was also a Re-Plant event in the spring where a bunch of people would go out and plant trees.  They got to some pretty high numbers when I was there.  I am not sure if they still do that project. 

That RealClimate website seems good.  At least he is saying that global warming "might" or "may" be having an effect, instead of saying anything is proven.  The reader comments seem worth reading also. 

[zahc]

Figure out all the energy generated by humans planet wide

Humans don't 'generate' any energy at all. All our energy comes from the sun. We just recprocess it.