Global Warming/Climate Change Discussion Thread

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Which of the following statements best reflects your views on Global Warming?

  • Global warming is occurring and human activity is the main cause

    Votes: 159 32.0%

  • Global warming is occurring, but human activity is only playing a minor role

    Votes: 88 17.7%

  • Global warming is occurring, but it is entirely natural

    Votes: 57 11.5%

  • Global warming is occurring, but anthropogenic global warming theory is a fraud

    Votes: 23 4.6%

  • Global warming is occurring, but the causes are not known

    Votes: 32 6.4%

  • Global warming is not occurring at all

    Votes: 17 3.4%

  • Global warming is not occurring at all and anthropogenic global warming theory is a fraud

    Votes: 50 10.1%

  • Global warming is occurring, and human activity plays a significant role (this option was added afte

    Votes: 71 14.3%
  • Total voters
    497
Omnis
Yeah, the news here does this all the time. Sometimes the hurricane center will show 7 paths from 7 different simulations. But then the weathermen give us a "CONE OF UNCERTAINTY AND DEATH" which is like as wide as the gulf of mexico. :rolleyes:
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I can get those from the ice cream van!
 
Here it is gentlemen, the newest plan to prevent global warming via climate control.

cloud_1458130c.jpg


The "cloud ships" are favoured among a series of schemes aimed at altering the climate which have been weighed up by a leading think-tank.

The project, which is being worked on by rival US and UK scientists, would see 1,900 wind-powered ships ply the oceans sucking up seawater and spraying minuscule droplets of it out through tall funnels to create large white clouds.

These clouds, it is predicted, would reflect around one or two per cent of the sunlight that would otherwise warm the ocean, thereby cancelling out the greenhouse effect caused by Carbon Dioxide emissions.

The unmanned ships would be directed by satellite to areas with the best conditions for increasing cloud cover, mainly in the Pacific and far enough away from land so as not to affect normal rainfall patterns.

Other ideas, such as sending mirrors into space by rocket to deflect the sun's rays, and scattering iron powder into the seas to boost CO2-absorbing plankton, have been dismissed as unfeasible or too expensive.

According to The Times, The Royal Society is expected to announce that the decade-old cloud ship plan is one of the most promising.

The Copenhagen Consensus Centre, which advises governments on how to spend aid money, examined the various plans and found the cloud ships to be the most cost-effective.

They would cost $9 billion (£5.3 billion) to test and launch within 25 years, compared to the $250 billion that the world’s leading nations are considering spending each year to cut CO2 emissions, and the $395 trillion it would cost to launch mirrors into space.

At present, British and American teams are seeking funding to launch sea trials. The US team has been boosted by a donation of several hundred thousand dollars by The Carnegie Institute, while the British team, led by John Latham, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Manchester, and Stephen Salter, an engineer at the University of Edinburgh, is working with a Finnish shipping company, Meriaura.

Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen think-tank, is hosting a conference in Washington DC next month at which a panel of Nobel laureates will vote on the most cost-effective solution.

He believes the schemes could prove that there are better ways of addressing climate change than simply reducing CO2 emissions.

“The space sunshade is really just science fiction but cloud whitening ships deserve serious scrutiny,” he told The Times.

“We need to have a debate about all of the options, not just the politically correct one of reducing CO2."

Another scheme considered by the Copenhagen Consensus Centre is one to mimic the effects of volcanic eruptions in shielding the sun's rays with a chemical haze and creating a global cooling effect that can last for over a year.

The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 sent billions of tonnes of sulphur dioxide and other particles into the atmosphere which reduced global average temperature by about 0.5C. The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 saw 1816 become known as the year without summer.

Scientists have proposed various ways of emitting such particles into the atmosphere, including using squadrons of air tanker potentially based in the Arctic to protect the polar ice cap.

However, the scheme would cost $230 billion and could not be reversed, unlike the cloud ships scheme.
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Does anyone else read the various ideas suggested and feel like they are watching the scene in Armageddon where the NASA scientists are proposing everything from giant solar sails to an intense, giant laser?

I am not knocking them for looking for solutions, but some of the stuff that pops up sounds like they wrote down every single random thought in a brainstorming session and then submitted it to higher ups to actually pluck out the one or two decent ones.

I do find it interesting and wonder how they can be sure they won't affect normal patterns on land by altering weather conditions at sea. But I think the biggest question I have is if it works, what is the localized effect around these ships going to be? Are there risks of affecting photosynthesis of ocean lifeforms, like plankton and algae, that are used for food by larger animals and play a very major role in global climate and oxygen production?

I am sure this will face a large amount of scrutiny before they go forward and these kinds of things will be looked at, but I can't help but imagine a Highlander 2 scenario (minus immortals and, ugh, aliens).
 
Until international governments can unanimously agree on a global environmental and emissions policy, one which even the rising industrial giants China and India can even agree to, what is the point in fighting for change with only tens of millions of footprints when such numbers are manifestly inadequate in the global scheme of things? They understand that that to fight this invisible force is damaging an economy they are just beginning to build, thus a reason why they're not adherents to the Kyoto protocol or other environmentalist pact.

Indeed, collective societal change often only occurs through the initial actions of a minority, but when the facts favour not one view but rather support the that of two polar opposite arguments, that humans are and are not the catalysts for catastrophic greenhouse levels, who are the self-professed ‘green’ movement trying to fool? Humans are merely pawns in this ‘demonic’ game of greenhouse production.

The ignorance fed by alarmist media, governments and their feeble-minded adult population to so many of the innocent mind of today’s youth is alarming.

Alas, perhaps that this ‘climate change’ debacle is a by-product of ignorance is better worth wasting our time on.

Prove to me this: that humans, irrespective of the relationship between greenhouse emissions and climate change, are making a SIGNIFICANT contribution to greenhouse gases.

(Note that SIGNIFICANCE implies a comparison, we may turn out many black baloons but such is nothing when one considers the size of those air baloons that emanate from the rears of cows).

 
Of course, emissions from livestock are considered a human contribution to the atmosphere, so a humans vs. cows emission comparison would be a bit pointless!

There is very little doubt, in the mainstream scientific literature anyway, that human activity is strongly implicated in the current rise in GHG concentrations. What is surprising to me is that there are still an awful lot of people who seem to think that no amount of human activity - be it direct addition to the biosphere/atmosphere (i.e. by burning fossil fuels) or by reducing the capacity of carbon sinks (i.e. by land use change/saturation of natural sinks) - can possibly influence the GHG concentration of the atmosphere.

One thing we do know for certain, however, is that something has changed the GHG concentration of our atmosphere to a point unseen in the whole of modern human civilisation. Coincidence? Yes, it could be, but I'm totally unconvinced, especially given the complete lack of evidence to support this view. On the other hand, global GHG emission levels are very well understood nowadays, and we also know alot more about their fate. Although human GHG emissions are obviously not the only factor affecting the climate, human GHG emissions can (and do) atleast explain the current massive and rapid deviation of atmospheric CO2 concentrations from the historical pattern that has seen CO2 levels stay under ~280 ppm for over half a million years. Human activity is the most straightforward, most convincing, and (IMO) the most likely explanation for an otherwise unexplained phenomenon.
 
Touring Mars
What is surprising to me is that there are still an awful lot of people who seem to think that no amount of human activity - be it direct addition to the biosphere/atmosphere (i.e. by burning fossil fuels) or by reducing the capacity of carbon sinks (i.e. by land use change/saturation of natural sinks) - can possibly influence the GHG concentration of the atmosphere.
Click to expand...


...and who would that be? Anyone we know?

They're obviously wrong, whoever they are. Every breath taken by every human on the planet influences the GHG concentration of the atmosphere.
 
Danoff
...and who would that be? Anyone we know?
Click to expand...
Not specifically, no... but take a look at any news article about climate change in any newspaper and read the comments - there are plenty of people who flatly deny that humans have anything to do with increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere. They are indeed wrong, although I wouldn't be so fast to attribute much if any of the increase in CO2 levels to human respiration.
 
Small_Fryz
i wasnt really upto date with global warming and who to believe.. so what do i do? go to good ole GTP and look in the opinions thread, find a post from Famine, TM, Danoff etc and then figure it out for myself..

thanks for the link mate, very helpful to get a quick run down and get the facts straight.
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Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with that guy. I just thought it was an interesting assembly of arguments. I'm still firmly in the "not enough information" camp.
 
I have to admit, I was quite surprised when I saw you posting that link. It is a good place to start though, and helps to clarify many basic misunderstandings. Here's a post I made with some other useful links from both sides of the debate, and while we're at it, here's a summary of my views from earlier this year.

Omnis
I thought this was amusing:

Click to expand...

Interesting that they are calling that film a "documentary", when it's actually a fictional scenario set in the future... that said, it is annoying when Hollywood celebrities can justify flying across the globe constantly in one breath, and expect everyone else to take the bus...
 
Thanks TM that post was another great one to read. Im certainly watching both sides of the arguments and im sure over the next 5 - 10 years we should see a much clearer picture on whats going on.
 
It's clearly manmade. If you don't understand what the cause is, it's virtually impossible to come up with a solution. We know what the cause is. The cause is manmade. That's the only cause.The warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences.

That's why we need solution ASAP!

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed”
 
Danoff
I agree with you, that the alarmist tone isn't entirely justified. But cycles 20 and 23 were the lowest since the 1930s. It is interesting and it does seem to correspond with leveling and even decreasing global average temperatures. Cycle 24 is definitely late though, the cycles are supposed to be 11 years long, and this one is at least 12. That makes 24 a little late. But I agree with the article - the later Cycle 24 is, the more important a result it becomes.

One more point. I'm not sure what years they're counting for Cycle 23. But if 2007 is the last data point on the chart (because 2008 is not finished yet), then 2008 does not look to be bucking the trend (so far). If it finishes as it has started (and assuming '08 isn't on that plot), the current cycle would appear to be a significant outlier.

Regardless, I think 2010 is probably the very earliest that the alarms should sound.
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...but 2010 is coming fast and we're still at solar minimum.

We've basically been at solar minimum for about 5 years now. Solar scientists are predicting the next sun cycle to start up any minute now. But the fact remains that it has been 100 years since we've seen something like this. It doesn't have to last too much longer (another 6 months maybe) and we'll start saying it's been 200 years since we've seen this.
 
Tosh... what's another thousand years or so?

There will eventually be a time when that "Ice Age" becomes permanent... and before that happens, it's our duty as Homo sapiens to stuff the atmosphere with so much greenhouse gas that it will balance out the incoming Ice Age.

We'll just worry about the thawing later... 100,000 years is such a long time... :lol:
 
What say ye all to this:
(from here)
Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental
International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) (May 2009) is the most comprehensive
objective compilation of science on climate change ever published. It offers a
“second opinion” to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2007. Unlike that report, Climate Change
Reconsidered finds global warming is not a crisis, and never was.
Principal findings of the book include the following:
Climate models suffer from numerous deficiencies and shortcomings that
could alter even the very sign (plus or minus, warming or cooling) of
earth’s projected temperature response to rising atmospheric carbon
dioxide (CO2) concentrations.
• The model-derived temperature sensitivity of the earth--especially for a
doubling of the preindustrial CO2 level--is much too large, and feedbacks in
the climate system reduce it to values that are an order of magnitude
smaller than what the IPCC employs.
• Real-world observations do not support the IPCC’s claim that current
trends in climate and weather are “unprecedented” and, therefore, the
result of anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
• The IPCC overlooks or downplays the many benefits to agriculture and
forestry that will be accrued from the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content.
• There is no evidence that CO2-induced increases in air temperature will
cause unprecedented plant and animal extinctions, either on land or in the
world’s oceans.
• There is no evidence that CO2-induced global warming is or will be
responsible for increases in the incidence of human diseases or the number
of lives lost to extreme thermal conditions.​
Climate Change Reconsidered is coauthored by two distinguished scientists:

Dr. S. Fred Singer is one of the most distinguished scientists in the U.S. In the
1960s, he established and served as the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite
Service, now part of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA), and earned a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award for his
technical leadership. In the 1980s, Singer served for five years as vice chairman of
the National Advisory Committee for Oceans and Atmosphere (NACOA) and
became more directly involved in global environmental issues. Since retiring from
the University of Virginia and from his last federal position as chief scientist of the
Department of Transportation, Singer founded and now directs the nonprofit
Science and Environmental Policy Project.

Dr. Craig D. Idso is founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon
Dioxide and Global Change. He received his Ph.D. in geography from Arizona State
University, where he studied as one of a small group of University Graduate
Scholars. He was a faculty researcher in the Office of Climatology at Arizona State
University and has lectured in Meteorology at Arizona State University. Dr. Idso
has published scientific articles on issues related to data quality, the growing
season, the seasonal cycle of atmospheric CO2, world food supplies, coral reefs,
and urban CO2 concentrations.

Climate Change Reconsidered lists 35 contributors and reviewers from 14
countries and presents in an appendix the names of 31,478 American scientists
who have signed a petition saying “there is no convincing scientific evidence that
human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing
or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s
atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”​

Other links:

http://www.sepp.org/

http://www.heartland.org/full/25358/Climate_Change_Reconsidered.html
 
When you need to get your science from The Heartland Institute, you know you have a problem. Thanks, but no thanks.

Here's a quote from the conclusion of the introduction to their 'Summary For Policymakers' titled "Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate"...

Our imperfect understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change means the science is far from settled.
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Let me just repeat that so it sinks in...

In a section titled "Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate"..., they go on to remind us that "the science is far from settled.". One question immediately springs to mind in that case. If "the science is far from settled" (direct quote), then pray tell how they can give the entire document the title "Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate". That sounds pretty much like their opinion is that the science is settled if you ask me, but perhaps I'm reading it wrong...

:dunce:
 
Last edited:
Climate Change Reconsidered lists 35 contributors and reviewers from 14
countries and presents in an appendix the names of 31,478 American scientists
who have signed a petition saying “there is no convincing scientific evidence that
human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing
or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s
atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
Click to expand...

I would say that 31,478 scientists find no problem with them and might disagree with you.
 
Skynyrd1977
I would say that 31,478 scientists find no problem with them and might disagree with you.
Click to expand...

Does it specify whether those are all climatologists, ecologists, geophysicists and the like, or whether they're a hotch-potch of all sorts of different scientists, most of whom know little or nothing about climatic patterns? Like, for example neurologists. Or ergonomicists. Or food scientists. Or linguistic scientists. All clever in their own right, but all groups of people who are likely to know little about global warming in any great detail.

A bunch of signatures on a piece of paper does not necessarily make for an undisputable document. Fifty thousand people in this country signed a petition to make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister. It may be popular but it certainly doesn't make it a good idea.

Especially if thirty-odd thousand scientists are willing to overlook a fallacy like the one Touring Mars highlighted.
 
niky
Tosh... what's another thousand years or so?

There will eventually be a time when that "Ice Age" becomes permanent... and before that happens, it's our duty as Homo sapiens to stuff the atmosphere with so much greenhouse gas that it will balance out the incoming Ice Age.

We'll just worry about the thawing later... 100,000 years is such a long time... :lol:
Click to expand...

Unless it's the greenhouse gases that causes the Ice Age!
 
There actually is indication that that's possible.

Think of it this way.

All that heat causes glacial melting. If enough glacial ice melts, the chemical and thermal composition of the ocean changes... causing a disruption of the thermal conveyor system in the Atlantic. This causes climate change in the area, which in turn, disrupts global weather patterns... boom... Ice Age... Mini-Ice-Age... something... whatever... maybe we'll have North American desert to rival the Sahara...

There was an excellent documentary on this... can't remember where I saw it, though...
 

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