The Great Global Warming Swindell?
Always annoying to have a debate when both sides don't have enough facts to prove anything, like global warming:
Slick anti-GW video at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXc9H5JSyow
SURE, we don't know everything. The future will be what it will, whatever we believe. Facts are open to analysis, and we're not in a position to predict the future. Man-made CO2 (burning fossil fuels, and biomass), is only a fraction of the carbon cycle. Past CO2 was high (millions of years ago). We are in an interglacial period of an ice age, in one of the coldest periods of the history of the earth. Atmospheric CO2 has risen from a preindustrial level of 280ppm to over 390 ppm now, whatever long term effect this has.
I suppose the main lesson to learn from slick videos is to admit they exist on both sides of a debate.
Oh, it is really annoying for a society fully DEPENDENT upon ever increasing levels of energy consumption to claim the "Global warming" movement is a "jobs swindell" because people who support the theory are dependent upon careers that need problems to get funding. Just annoying to suggest. Ultimately it's just name calling, as everyone can claim self-interest.
What's Al Gore's game? Does he hope to get rich selling GW?
It's crazy to me since whatever happens, our future must exist without burning fossil fuels, and so whether climate change or dependence upon energy we won't have in the future, energy that gets harder to get, and dirtier to extract.
What does the "precautionary principle" suggested? Do we continue our "uncontrolled experiment" in climate change or do we work for a future that is more sustainable.
I guess the doubters suggest that even if GW exists now, it is NOT driven by human activity, and its part of a natural cycle, and that it'll turn back around in the future.
Well, I'm a skeptic too, prefer to wait for evident to come in, but when I say "wait", I don't mean do nothing, I mean keep gathering evidence AS we do what we can.
I admit my caution says predictions are dangerous. If temps go up, and you call it GW, and then temps go down for a while, even if you can account for it by models of other variables, its still a dangerous thing to overstate the evidence. Even if GW is human caused, natural cycles exist and can hide this effect.
I'm still annoyed by suggestions that because solar variations can dominate variations on temperature, doesn't mean human effects will not drive the patterns differently, BEYOND the natural cycles.
On the other side I fully accept past correlations of temp and CO2 doesn't mean anything since we've never had man-made CO2 input before.
The graphs they show on solar radition correlating with temperature for the past. Rather than subtracting the curves, they say "Sun has always dominated", so that's all there is.
Perhaps we need not worry. Perhaps in 2017 we'll start cooling again, glaciers will start rebuilding again. Certainly another 10 years of data is nice to have.
By 2017 we can say CO2 will rise above 405ppm, pretty clear prediction. We will have another solar cycle to contrast the relations. Perhaps the artic ice will return rather than continue to diminish. We can keep watching.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png
On the depressing side, besides peak-oil, I don't have any hope world CO2 production will decrease any time soon, so the experiment is on whatever we do.
Now about about the claims we need to reduce CO2 production by 80% by 2050, is this a goal we really need to fight for?
I sort of think about a couple of lovers. One is uncertain about marriage, and the other is sure that's what he wants. So he spends everything he has to convince his lover that she should accept. Well, in this fight, he's going to ignore all his uncertainty, project his fears onto her. So if she suddenly switches side and wants to rush to marriage, suddenly he has to re-evaluate and question his own fears that he neglected in his wooing.
Similarly when a debate comes out and people are afraid of losing something, both sides can exaggerate the virtues of their side, neglect the failings. Scientists ultimately ought not to enter into politics, at least Science, when it has no political implications, is easier to be done rationally. And if it takes 500 years to reach the end, then that's what science can do.
In short, science can't do well when it enters politics when there's high stakes in the truth which is not known. So mainly this means to me that decisions in evaluating risk can't be done by knowns, but best guesses.
Some perhaps think atmospheric CO2 can rise from 280ppm to 600 ppm without any effect on global warming. BUT might have other effects we didn't predict, like acidifying the oceans and harming life there.
If we consider humans as part of nature, then everything we do is "natural", and its up to individual animals and species to compete as they can or perish, and if they perish, the stronger will survive and new adaptations will fill the voids.
The failure of that argument is the speed of the effects. Evolution requires time, so generally it suggests extinctions must grow until a new equilibrium is reached and it could take millions of years for life to expand to the diversity we've had in the recent past.
Anyway, in my skepticism, I lean to surrender. Fine, we're screwed or not. Let's keep going and see what happens. But if things turn out badly I can't say "I told you so" since I really didn't know, but that seems a big responsibility for you to too easily just say we're not changing the world in a bad way.
I must softly support that ALL sides have propaganda. All respectable scientists should leave the political realm and stop bothering people.
I just don't like rejection of fears because we don't know. There's no downside to setting limits to human activity while we're dependent upon unsustainable use of resources.
I don't know if GW is a priority issue, but I think the solutions to it pretty well agree with the solutions we need in other problems. There's no long term downside to learning to use resources our descendants will still have in 100 years.
Slick anti-GW video at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXc9H5JSyow
SURE, we don't know everything. The future will be what it will, whatever we believe. Facts are open to analysis, and we're not in a position to predict the future. Man-made CO2 (burning fossil fuels, and biomass), is only a fraction of the carbon cycle. Past CO2 was high (millions of years ago). We are in an interglacial period of an ice age, in one of the coldest periods of the history of the earth. Atmospheric CO2 has risen from a preindustrial level of 280ppm to over 390 ppm now, whatever long term effect this has.
I suppose the main lesson to learn from slick videos is to admit they exist on both sides of a debate.
Oh, it is really annoying for a society fully DEPENDENT upon ever increasing levels of energy consumption to claim the "Global warming" movement is a "jobs swindell" because people who support the theory are dependent upon careers that need problems to get funding. Just annoying to suggest. Ultimately it's just name calling, as everyone can claim self-interest.
What's Al Gore's game? Does he hope to get rich selling GW?
It's crazy to me since whatever happens, our future must exist without burning fossil fuels, and so whether climate change or dependence upon energy we won't have in the future, energy that gets harder to get, and dirtier to extract.
What does the "precautionary principle" suggested? Do we continue our "uncontrolled experiment" in climate change or do we work for a future that is more sustainable.
I guess the doubters suggest that even if GW exists now, it is NOT driven by human activity, and its part of a natural cycle, and that it'll turn back around in the future.
Well, I'm a skeptic too, prefer to wait for evident to come in, but when I say "wait", I don't mean do nothing, I mean keep gathering evidence AS we do what we can.
I admit my caution says predictions are dangerous. If temps go up, and you call it GW, and then temps go down for a while, even if you can account for it by models of other variables, its still a dangerous thing to overstate the evidence. Even if GW is human caused, natural cycles exist and can hide this effect.
I'm still annoyed by suggestions that because solar variations can dominate variations on temperature, doesn't mean human effects will not drive the patterns differently, BEYOND the natural cycles.
On the other side I fully accept past correlations of temp and CO2 doesn't mean anything since we've never had man-made CO2 input before.
The graphs they show on solar radition correlating with temperature for the past. Rather than subtracting the curves, they say "Sun has always dominated", so that's all there is.
Perhaps we need not worry. Perhaps in 2017 we'll start cooling again, glaciers will start rebuilding again. Certainly another 10 years of data is nice to have.
By 2017 we can say CO2 will rise above 405ppm, pretty clear prediction. We will have another solar cycle to contrast the relations. Perhaps the artic ice will return rather than continue to diminish. We can keep watching.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png
On the depressing side, besides peak-oil, I don't have any hope world CO2 production will decrease any time soon, so the experiment is on whatever we do.
Now about about the claims we need to reduce CO2 production by 80% by 2050, is this a goal we really need to fight for?
I sort of think about a couple of lovers. One is uncertain about marriage, and the other is sure that's what he wants. So he spends everything he has to convince his lover that she should accept. Well, in this fight, he's going to ignore all his uncertainty, project his fears onto her. So if she suddenly switches side and wants to rush to marriage, suddenly he has to re-evaluate and question his own fears that he neglected in his wooing.
Similarly when a debate comes out and people are afraid of losing something, both sides can exaggerate the virtues of their side, neglect the failings. Scientists ultimately ought not to enter into politics, at least Science, when it has no political implications, is easier to be done rationally. And if it takes 500 years to reach the end, then that's what science can do.
In short, science can't do well when it enters politics when there's high stakes in the truth which is not known. So mainly this means to me that decisions in evaluating risk can't be done by knowns, but best guesses.
Some perhaps think atmospheric CO2 can rise from 280ppm to 600 ppm without any effect on global warming. BUT might have other effects we didn't predict, like acidifying the oceans and harming life there.
If we consider humans as part of nature, then everything we do is "natural", and its up to individual animals and species to compete as they can or perish, and if they perish, the stronger will survive and new adaptations will fill the voids.
The failure of that argument is the speed of the effects. Evolution requires time, so generally it suggests extinctions must grow until a new equilibrium is reached and it could take millions of years for life to expand to the diversity we've had in the recent past.
Anyway, in my skepticism, I lean to surrender. Fine, we're screwed or not. Let's keep going and see what happens. But if things turn out badly I can't say "I told you so" since I really didn't know, but that seems a big responsibility for you to too easily just say we're not changing the world in a bad way.
I must softly support that ALL sides have propaganda. All respectable scientists should leave the political realm and stop bothering people.
I just don't like rejection of fears because we don't know. There's no downside to setting limits to human activity while we're dependent upon unsustainable use of resources.
I don't know if GW is a priority issue, but I think the solutions to it pretty well agree with the solutions we need in other problems. There's no long term downside to learning to use resources our descendants will still have in 100 years.
posted by Ares Olympus at 5:46 PM
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