global warming

[TCO]

My general impression is that there may be something to the claims of GW. I don't work in that field, so I can't really make a firm statement. I do watch it though.

I do get the impression that the public advocacy of GW is much more ardent than what scientists say. Also that even in science there is some push to spin things in the proper light to get grant funding.* I have a Ph.D. in chemistry so I have a general feel for quality of research and "how the game is played".

*I'm not accusing anybody of lying about experiments. It's more subtle than that. How you discuss your findings in the conclusion and the introduction, where scientist often make statements about the policy implications of their work. As an example, saw a very good paper on subject of global ice breakoff from Antarctica. Overall take of the paper was that this danger was not very high...even if temps rise a fair amount more. But the author felt the need to down play this and to mention other dangers from global warming. If the results had gone the other way, he would not have including an opposite set of caveats...

[Straybow]

All your pollution are belong to us

Well said, GP.

SG[1], ablative armor helps a bit, too.

Campo, debeest, If gw is really so dreadfully important, getting ¾ of the world's pollutants is better than none, right? So why haven't the world's second, third, fourth, etc largest polluters signed on, and then use political pressure on USA by means of Euro-tariffs?

They don't want to "give the U.S. yet another one-sided economic advantage," but that's precisely the reason why the both conservatives and moderates in the Senate won't ratify. It appears that China is entirely exempt and India nearly so. Given the size of their populations, even small per capita increases in emmissions can quickly dwarf any of the horribly expensive decreases in emmissions imposed upon the U.S. and other industrialized nations.

If it is OK for the Europeans to hold out on economic grounds, why isn't it OK for the U.S. to hold out on economic grounds?

Campo, I call Al "I invented the internet" Gore a doofus because he is one. Either he knows that El Niño is unconnected to gw and is using Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt to manipulate the public, or he doesn't know because he doesn't want to know. I'd say something worse about him, except that his outrageous claims of accomplishments have made him somewhat of a laughing stock.

"Isn't this one of those issues where it's wise to err on the safe side?" No, it's one of those issues where it's wise not to assume hundreds of billions of dollars of "solutions" that Kyoto thinks may delay the effects by six years after 100 years of work. That assumes gw is primarily caused by emmissions, and if emmissions account for a smaller net effect then Kyoto's effectiveness will be even less.

"Even if global warming weren't an issue, isn't it inherently better to reduce pollution?" Classifying CO2 emmissions as "pollution" stems entirely form the manufactured threat of anthropogenic global warming. It can't be compared to asbestos dust breathed directly in the lungs of workers. In the '50s there were football players who didn't wear helmets, too. In either case, individual attitudes ("it won't happen to me") were more responsible than lack of scientific understanding.

How in Civ2 could a Kyoto-like treaty be implemented? "You must dismantle your polluting power plants and construct non-polluting hydro or solar facitities." Of course, only some of your cities are eligible for hydro, and you haven't invented solar yet. "Too, bad, then you'll have to do without power plants until then."

Only in real life gw can't change anything as quickly as Civ2 gw. We know that in the Little Optimum marginal lands around Greenland were prosperous. Yet nobody has found evidence that three centuries of warmer weather around Greenland lead to shrinking of the Greenland ice cap.

If three centuries of distinctly warmer weather (many °C, warm enough for rich dairy pastures and grain farming) didn't negatively effect the Greenland cap there isn't any correlation.

[debeest]

GP, your last post perfectly exemplifies the one-sided attitude. You say "I do get the impression that the public advocacy of GW is much more ardent than what scientists say." You're completely ignoring the massive campaign mounted by a broad range of corporate interests that insists "there's no such thing as global warming, and if there was, it couldn't be caused by humans, and certainly not by business pollutants, and anyway it wouldn't really be a problem." Greenpeace is an advocacy group, and their job is advocacy. The Chemical Manufacturers' Association (recently renamed the American Chemistry Council, or something like that that's less pejoratively viewed by the public) is also an advocacy group (nothing else) and their job is advocacy.

If you want to see which advocacy group is more successful on a particular issue, all you have to do is look at what the world is doing. Have we agreed to strong limits on greenhouse gases? No. Then the Chemical Manufacturers are the dominant advocacy group. Have we agreed to study world climate change? Yes. Then Greenpeace is the dominant advocacy group. One's own biases determine one's interpretation of that particular data. Can you maybe just consider that on any difficult issue there will be advocates (arguably extremists) on both sides, and a resultant position somewhere in between?

Straybow, your last post perfectly exemplifies the one-sided attitude. You say "If three centuries of distinctly warmer weather (many °C, warm enough for rich dairy pastures and grain farming) didn't negatively effect the Greenland cap there isn't any correlation." Haven't you repeatedly claimed that your mind is open and you're open to the data? I suggest that your mind was made up long ago, based on relatively little information, and you're not susceptible to information that conflicts with your politically based opinion.

Your discussion in this thread shows that you're at least halfway informed on this topic and at least fairly smart, yet you rely heavily on arguments that you yourself must realize are laughable. Why haven't the Europeans ratified Kyoto on their own in order to put pressure on the U.S.? Obviously, it's because European governments are just as susceptible to corporate pressure and short-term selfish economic interests as the U.S. government (and most others). No one here has argued that it's OK for the Europeans to hold out on economic grounds; you raised that straw man suggestion. When you ask that question, are you just blind to the obvious answer? Or are you cynically hoping that the reader will be blind to the answer?

Or that argument you made early on, comparing the energy production of human activities to the energy input from the sun. I don't believe you're ignorant enough to have thought that the concern with regard to anthropogenic global warming is human energy production, rather than greenhouse gases; were you being disingenuous?

I can raise the same kind of anecdotal and irrelevant arguments that you have, and look just about as intelligent and well informed. For instance, this week in India, over 2000 people died because of a heat wave with temperatures of 120 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees C). Roughly seven of the ten hottest years, worldwide, in recorded history have been during the last ten or so years. Think that's a coincidence?

The consensus of current scientific opinion on the topic of global warming (after many years of research, not just based on older anecdotal studies you refer to) is that global warming is happening, at a rate probably drastically faster than it typically has in the past, and that human activities including greenhouse gas production and deforestation are likely to be significant factors.

The scientific consensus is that climate change is likely to alter the worldwide distribution of precipitation, turning prime farmland into deserts and generally failing to turn deserts into prime farmland (that ain't easy), and wiping out a host of species as a result of change too fast for them to adapt to (you do believe in evolution, don't you?).

The concern about rising ocean levels is still very real.

And certainly, the advocacy groups who argue that global warming poses no threat are not credible. I work in the field of workplace health and safety. Asbestos companies and the government of Canada are still successfully fighting restrictions on the production, sale, export, import, and use of asbestos, a hundred years after the first warnings of its extremely high carcinogenic potency were issued. Tobacco companies still get government subsidies to grow tobacco and export cigarettes, even though tobacco is the leading cause of death in the developed world and it's now known that tobacco executives and scientists have participated in at least a 50-year-long campaign of outright lies and distortion and suppression of even their own scientific research. Do you think corporations lie to the public? Of course they do.

Have I convinced you, with this collection of well-informed information and authoritative-sounding claims, that global warming might realistically pose a serious threat to human well-being? I suspect that the answer depends on the opinion you rode in on.

[debeest]

And I'm sure, if you are as well informed as you seem, that you already know that Al Gore didn't claim to "invent" the Internet; rather, he stated, entirely accurately, that way back in the early 80s, he was a strong Senate supporter of technological research that contributed to the rapid development of the networks that then existed into the Internet that now exists. Any particular reason you would want to misrepresent that information?

[Scouse Gits]

Ooooh - getting mighty hot in here

SG[1]

do flame wars contribute to GW ?

[La Fayette]

I guess that Ming reads this thread for breakfast and finds it so OT and so attractive that he doesn't move it (thank you Ming: this allows me to acquire better knowledge of GW, since I never read OT ).

[Campo]

debeest,

You go, guy! I was off for the weekend but you responded admirably to Straybow's last post.

Stray, the ball is in your court. My sense is that it's deeply imbedded in your court, but I've no doubt you'll dig it out and send it bouncing back the other way.

I'm sure there's a lot left to say about this topic, but I doubt that anyone's mind is changing.

[Scouse Gits]

Some of these idea(l)s are so deeply imprinted upon us by our everyday environment that despite the benefits of high intelligence and good education we simply fail to see that (on these issues - and often these issues alone) the other guy has a point to make or a leg to stand on.
It is really quite sobering when you observe that it is not only the other guy that has these blind spots. But even once they have been recognised that is only the first of many steps towards actually eradicating them from ones psyche so deeply are they incised ...

So endeth todays psychobabble instruction period

SG[1]

[Straybow]

OOuch, me eyes, me eyes!
Paragraphs, debeest, paragraphs!

[copies post to text file so it can be read without eyestrain…]

[debeest]

Yeah, sorry 'bout that. It all looked OK to me as I was typing it in....

[TCO]

Debeest,

1. Be more concise and organised when you present ideas. It hurt me to read your post. Use paragraphs. Respond to different arguments from seperate posters in seperate posts.

2. I disagree with any advocacy group overstating their case. Even in "retaliation". FYI: I take statements from ACC with a grain of salt. However, it is not merely the strength of the parties which determines which group "wins". The logic of their arguements has SOME bearing.

3. You overstate the scientific consensus around human-caused GW. I will grant you some reasonable level of concern. But even among the pro-GW advocates they are divided into the strong beleivers and the "play it safe in case it's true" bunch. And there are some serious scientists who have dissenting opinions.* (The one in Alabama comes to mind.)

*And no, I'm not talking about anti-GW website maintainers. I know a serious scientist, when I see one.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Straybow
OOuch, me eyes, me eyes!
Paragraphs, debeest, paragraphs!

[copies post to text file so it can be read without eyestrain…]

Wish I thought of that. I had to try about 4 times before I made it through.

[debeest]

Gosh, everybody, I thought the flow of my ideas had been so natural, so seamless, so perfect, that paragraphs would just be interruptive. OK, mea culpa, mea culpa, I've edited my post into paragraphs to make it less vertiginous for future readers.

GP, once again you've demonstrated my point. Look at your own language about "public advocacy of global warming." Two paragraphs berating the believers, and not a word about the disbelievers. Until I pointed out your bias, where was your criticism of the PR flacks at the Chemistry Council, who are "overstating their case" at least as much as the believers, and doing it for probably more selfish and disingenuous reasons, to boot? What do you say about the other side? "I take statements from ACC with a grain of salt." Nice to see you get all heated up about the dishonesty of the advocates whose politics you support, dude.

I don't doubt that I slightly overstated the scientific consensus. I was, after all, trying to demonstrate that I could produce the same sort of authoritative-sounding but not completely well-founded argumentation that I'd been seeing. I don't want anyone to accept my statements as gospel; my point was that Straybow's seemingly authoritative pronouncements aren't well founded either.

I myself am not gung ho about the issue of global warming. There's plenty of evidence to support a concern, and thus I think we should be studying it and taking some preventive steps. There's plenty of uncertainty, too. I'm not sure how extensive our proactive steps should be. I too am a scientist (a toxicologist), and I know enough to know that I'm in no position to make the expert judgments outside of my field.

What really got me going, way back near the beginning of this thread, was Straybow's casual dismissal of the issue as "PC."

First, that implicitly says that the scientific question is already decided, that there's no scientific basis for concern about global warming, that it's purely a political issue. Since that's decidedly not true, I found it irritating.

Second, the use of the term "PC" itself as a derogative only for liberal thought and not for conservative thought always irritates me. The right wing has successfully taken a communist label and applied it to the left wing. The right wing has successfully pretended that the right wing does not have a rabid, insistent, mindless political correctness fully comparably to that of the left. Moreover, the right wingers who complain about political correctness have been far more successful than the left wing (in the developed western northern countries) at imposing their political correctness, and especially political THOUGHT correctness, on others. Which wing developed the loyalty oaths that were required not only of officials but of college professors in the 1950s? Which wing created the blacklist that secretly prevented entertainers from working if they expressed even a peacenik orientation (a la the author of Johnny Got His Gun), much less a vague sympathy toward the sort of socialist government now popular throughout much of the best-off portions of Europe? Which wing is largely responsible for the brutal military subjugation of much of South America by U.S. puppet governments for much of the last century, and the mass murders of a substantial fraction of union members in those countries? On the other hand, which wing sent a significant number of volunteers to fight and be killed in the Spanish Civil War, while the right wing derided them as "premature anti-fascists?"

To be honest, I just don't see the paltry left-wing "PC" thought police as having been very significant compared to the right-wing "PC" thought police. The right wing has pretty much always called the shots and defined the terms. The irony I can't stand is that they've now developed a way to define the left wing as the ones who call the shots and define the terms.

Call me liberal if you want, but don't dismiss my ideas as slavish devotion to some code of thought developed by party leaders unless you want me to dismiss your ideas the same way.

[Straybow]

I was born a poor black child…

debeest, I'll let GP answer for himself, but I will point out that GP was speaking of bias in the form of sucking up to PCness in academia in general. The difference is critical. I will mention that academia is far, far more liberal and PC than the general population, and leave it to you to reconcile that to evidence, worldview, etc.

I suggest that your mind was made up long ago, based on relatively little information, and you're not susceptible to information that conflicts with your politically based opinion. Your discussion in this thread shows that you're at least halfway informed on this topic and at least fairly smart, yet you rely heavily on arguments that you yourself must realize are laughable.

Thank you for the compliments… I think. Everyone who has participated here would similarly qualify as at least "halfway informed [and] fairly smart." On the "fairly smart" aspect, I wouldn't bother otherwise. On the "halfway informed" part, it is the other half which bothers me. See reference to "evidence, worldview, etc." above.

Prepare for lengthy response of a slightly personal nature: how I arrived at some beliefs. I grew up in a very apolitical household. Until I was old enough to vote I did not even know what party(s) my parents were registered as. They had expressed opinions about Carter's opposition to nuclear power (my Dad's job) before the '76 election, and that was the extent of "indoctrination" from them.

It was the first time I saw a straightforward technical matter highjacked by Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. It was an ugly thing to behold, and I learned to watch carefully for the technique. I see the same team at work wherever political correctness dominates. They are step-brothers of the horsemen of the Apocolypse, who threaten war and famine and pestilence but have no power to bring it upon us.

My mind was "made up" about gw long ago by compelling evidence, for example, of historical climate swings that overshadow anything seen to date. I can't recall a precise date, but I first heard of the Little Ice Age long ago (high school?), and of warmer Medieval weather about the same time (but didn't hear the term Little Optimum until later). The roles of these as factors in Viking explorations and other Medieval, Renaissance, and pre-Industrial events were (and are still) fascinating to me.

For other reasons I have kept a sharp eye on ice layer studies, starting around '84. Correlative baselines and prehistoric interpretations comprise the two legs upon which I base many things I've said. In order to interpret the ice layers researchers had to correlate the yearly layers with everything from tree rings to peat and varve layers, as well as Alpine and Nordic glacial ice cores.

One of the first things discovered in ice core research is that periodic fluctuations in annual weather (relatively hot and cold years, wet and dry years) have little correlation to icecap accumulation. The primary indicators of weather are storm activity and resulting dust inclusions. Long term climate swings like LO and LIA correlate more closely to icecap layers, but not as expected. Warm periods show slight statistical increase in layer thicknesses.

Yes, on the southern coasts of Greenland there is increased melting in warm climate swings, but continued or increased accumulation over the 800,000 mi² interior renders losses at the edges insignificant in terms of sequestered mass. The Antarctic cap doesn't really melt on the margins. Calving of terminal glaciers and splitting of ice shelves does not appear to be dependent on weather or climate. Movement depends almost entirely on mass and accumlation rates, and Antarctic accumulation is measured only at a few points. The conclusion reached by the experts is that ice cap formation and duration are driven by factors that seem unrelated to either weather or climate swings, as they are presently understood.

Arguments about ancient continental ice sheets are often derived from temperature indications from interred plant specimens, reflecting assumptions that are as yet unproven (and some would say unsupported). Correlations between temperature and ice coverage are artifacts of those methods. Other evidence from Tiaga peat and Siberian permafrost show that sometimes climate in those regions was warmer than at present, regardless of stage of ice coverage. Changes in rainfall appear to be regional, and tied to climate fluctuations independent of ice sheet movements.

The current speculation (IIRC, based on N2/O2 isotopes and other data) is that solar output fluctuations on the order of 1% drive ice advances and retreats. Even stranger, the correlation seems to be nonlinear. Increases may trigger advances if ice coverage is already present. Thus we are currently in a metastable climactic state, persisting for hundreds of millennia. On this the archeological record is indisputable. The issue is whether that state shall continue indefinitely despite anthropgenic factors.

Thermal regulation provided by sequestered ice and oceanic mass is very, very poorly understood except in one point: it is very, very stable. If it weren't so, the Earth would long ago have boiled off its oceans and gone the way of Venus, or frozen into an ice-covered lump of rock with occasional massive volcanic activity showing through. I raised the issue of measured recent solar output increases in comparison to the magnitude of all human activity to show the insignificance of human activity in that energy balance. I believe I have mentioned that before.

I don't think for a moment that CO2 levels are anywhere near static, expecially over geological Eras, for the simple reason that nothing else is static. The assumption that the anthropogenic boost to CO2 is somehow unusual is void of support. I am not aware of any means of tracking CO2 levels beyond ice-entrained gasses (10,000 years or so). We don't know how far they have fluctuated in the distant past. We don't know if massive levels of plant growth (now sequestered in coals) during the Mesozoic Era represent a result of higher CO2 levels. Too many questions without answers or any way to find answers.

The consensus of current scientific opinion on the topic of global warming…

Please, debeest, stop right there. My point has been that such a "consensus" is a fiction. Gw is fact. Speculation on effects in the future is not fact. There is only a consensus of opinion on causation among scientists who are vocal in their beliefs about the causes; and so for effects. See reference to academia above. If you do not understand the difference I might as well stop here. See reference to "evidence, worldview, etc." above.

Do you think corporations lie to the public? Of course they do. Have I convinced you, with this collection of well-informed information and authoritative-sounding claims, that global warming might realistically pose a serious threat to human well-being? I suspect that the answer depends on the opinion you rode in on.

If eeeevil corporations lie they all lie, all the time, and then those whom they oppose don't ignore evidence, lie, exaggerate, or jump to unwarranted conclusions for ideological or political reasons? Ah, rhetoric; how refreshing.

"Authoritative-sounding" is indeed the operative phrase. These are the same ideologues (liberal academicians and politicians of the Malthusian slant) who predicted thirty years ago that we'd have already run out of food, oil, and nuclear-contaminant-free living space by now. Their projections were nothing but reflections of their initial assumptions. Garbage in, garbage out. The air of authority derived from their degrees and titles has more substance than the rest put together.

The Internation Panel on Climate Change presented at least six models of global warming projections to the Kyoto conference, and not one of them was anything but a reflection of the assumptions made. So I prefer to address the assumptions directly, and on that point they all fail. The assumptions simply are not based on scientific knowledge of cause and effect, period.

The concern about rising ocean levels is still very real.

That concern is based primarily on Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. FUD is the primary weapon of emotional argument. Wherever I see appeals to FUD I ask myself what this person expects from the hearers in terms of reaction. The expectation is that we will turn to the FUDmonger for the answer. "Save us, at whatever cost!" That is the response given by media mouthpieces, with hopes that the uninformed will climb on the bandwagon.

I believe that the solutions presented are dead ends, quixotic tilting at windmills. But to address the issue of sea levels, I suggest we take a lesson from the Dutch about living below sea level. Evidently it isn't so bad, and costs far less than trying to stop CO2 emissions. And to bring the discussion on topic, I remember in Civ the random events used to bring flooding, fires, etc. The construction of city walls helped eliminate flood damage. If Sid, Brian, et al., wanted a cost associated with gw, make flooding of crops take sheaves from the "food bin." Make flooding in the city proper kill a citizen or destroy a structure. It can all be done without invoking absurd terrain changes.

[debeest]

Glad I got my disclaimer in before you pointed out my most flagrant foul (consensus). :smile: