Global Warming/Climate Change Discussion Thread

[mustafur]

I look at this and see an uptrend, the lows are consistently higher from the mid 80s and no data suggests we are going in a cooling period whilst it's still around last year's levels.

 

[Danoff]

I look at this and see an uptrend, the lows are consistently higher from the mid 80s and no data suggests we are going in a cooling period whilst it's still around last year's levels.

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I'm seeing fairly stable temperatures from '79 to about '97 followed by fairly stable temperatures from '98 through today. It looks almost like a step in '98. I think I could pass a decent flat average through those two portions. I could also see passing a single line through this data that has an upward trend. Of course I could also see it being an arc. Or exponential.

I think I can imagine just about any trend I want to in that plot... except down. It doesn't look like a downward trend.

 

[mustafur]

I'm seeing fairly stable temperatures from '79 to about '97 followed by fairly stable temperatures from '98 through today. It looks almost like a step in '98. I think I could pass a decent flat average through those two portions. I could also see passing a single line through this data that has an upward trend. Of course I could also see it being an arc. Or exponential.

I think I can imagine just about any trend I want to in that plot... except down. It doesn't look like a downward trend.

Going by how I have learned forex over the years all you do is look at graphs and this definitely qualifys as a mild uptrend, a strong one is when the highs are consistently higher, the fact is I can draw a line with a Ruler from the Mid 80s and hit the early 90s lowest low whilst staying straight and the line will be going upwards, and even significantly more if I do it from 92/93.

 

[Johnnypenso]

I'm seeing fairly stable temperatures from '79 to about '97 followed by fairly stable temperatures from '98 through today. It looks almost like a step in '98. I think I could pass a decent flat average through those two portions. I could also see passing a single line through this data that has an upward trend. Of course I could also see it being an arc. Or exponential.

I think I can imagine just about any trend I want to in that plot... except down. It doesn't look like a downward trend.

I believe '98 is due to an El Nino.

 

[justin credible]

I tend to think of this as looking at my youth with rose coloured glasses. When I was a kid we never paid any attention to the idiosyncracies of the weather, it was what it was when we woke up. Unlike today when many kids hide inside at the first sign of inclement weather, we used to love playing in the rain and snow, the more the better. We'd ride our bikes full speed through puddles a foot deep and get soaked with dirty water!! Can you imagine kids doing that today? I think as we turn into adults we pay more attention to the weather for various reasons and the ups and downs seem more pronounced than they really are. I can remember getting a foot of snow in April when I was a teenager and I remember a couple of winters in Toronto when there wasn't much snow either. I remember summers that seemed to be hot as heck for 2 months straight and I remember going to the cottage for a couple of weeks another year and the weather was cool and miserable in the middle of July. No different than it is today IMO.

I was completely the other way as a kid I hated the rain I had the view of I wouldn't send my dog out in it I am not going out in it. I enjoyed thick snow for the whole of ten minutes but soon as the fingers started to numb and the wet started to get through the clothes I was back in front of the coal fire in a second.
I remember at school loving football in the sun and getting in to trouble as I refused to play for the school team if it was slating down with rain, I just couldn't find the same drive and will to play in the soggy wet.
I think I am just a warm weather person possibly suffering with SAD syndrome.
I can definitely say that the seasons have changed a lot since my youth and sadly the opposite way to what I would like to wet to cold and not enough sun.
I think I should have been born in Jamaica.
If it is global warming then the future for the UK is I dread only going to get colder wetter and less sunnier maybe a move to sunnier climates should be considered

 

[Dotini]

- Global warming is not occurring at all

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

The above are the only two options available with respect to the opposite of warming, i.e., global cooling, in our OP poll.

I'd like to take this opportunity to submit that, while anthropogenic global warming has seemed evident in the past record, something new is happening now which necessitates another choice in our poll. The sun is entering a grand solar minimum, total solar irradiance is going down, sunspots are going down to almost nothing, and in short, solar activity is reducing to the point where a confidant prediction can be made that we are on the verge of a mini ice age, or Maunder Minimum, a 30 year cold spell where global food production is imperiled.

 

[Neomone]

Where's the option for "I'm not entirely sold that anyone is able to predict how the climate is going to behave with any reasonable accuracy over long time scales"?

 

[Danoff]

I'd like to take this opportunity to submit that, while anthropogenic global warming has seemed evident in the past record, something new is happening now which necessitates another choice in our poll. The sun is entering a grand solar minimum, total solar irradiance is going down, sunspots are going down to almost nothing, and in short, solar activity is reducing to the point where a confidant prediction can be made that we are on the verge of a mini ice age, or Maunder Minimum, a 30 year cold spell where global food production is imperiled.

Looks fairly consistent with some of the numbers from the early 1900s.

 

[fumunaplz]

Where's the option for "I'm not entirely sold that anyone is able to predict how the climate is going to behave with any reasonable accuracy over long time scales"?

All of those so called reports and charts are of a very small clip of time considering the life of the earth. To me it is laughable, oh you know we are the super bad inhabitants LOL.

The earth will be here well after we have died off, perhaps we should blame climate change on the cockroaches.

 

[mustafur]

All of those so called reports and charts are of a very small clip of time considering the life of the earth. To me it is laughable, oh you know we are the super bad inhabitants LOL.

The earth will be here well after we have died off, perhaps we should blame climate change on the cockroaches.

Bejing

New Dehli

and Mexico City say Hello

 

[fumunaplz]

I'm not seeing the point?

 

[mustafur]

I'm not seeing the point?

We might be the Super bad inhabitants, is what it's obviously implying.

 

[fumunaplz]

We might be the Super bad inhabitants, is what it's obviously implying.

We might succeed in killing ourselves off but we will never be able to kill the earth. Why are we so arrogant to begin with? I submit to you that that notion has nothing more to do than the very fact of control.

Kill the earth? how old is the earth, how long have we been here?

 

[Danoff]

We might succeed in killing ourselves off but we will never be able to kill the earth. Why are we so arrogant to begin with? I submit to you that that notion has nothing more to do than the very fact of control.

Kill the earth? how old is the earth, how long have we been here?

Far be it from me to jump in on the side of the alarmists but... that's a strawman. Who said we could kill the earth?

 

[mustafur]

We might succeed in killing ourselves off but we will never be able to kill the earth. Why are we so arrogant to begin with? I submit to you that that notion has nothing more to do than the very fact of control.

Kill the earth? how old is the earth, how long have we been here?

I think a Nuclear Sub says otherwise.

 

[fumunaplz]

I'm not sure who said we could kill the earth, I find the idea absurd of course. If there is a complaint to be made I would like that complaint to be that we are endangering ourselves rather than assuming we are endangering the earth. My belief is that neither are occurring.

Chicken little has been proven wrong time and time again.

 

[TenEightyOne]

I'm not sure who said we could kill the earth, I find the idea absurd of course.

That's because nobody said it. The first obvious rejoinder is that the Earth isn't alive.

 

[fumunaplz]

The earth is alive, is that in question?

Tell me how old it is, tell me how long we have been here, convince me that we are destroying it in any substantial long term way?

 

[Dotini]

NASA and other solar physicists are currently seeing a nearly blank sun, this at a time of solar maximum which should be teeming with sunspots. The forecast is flatlining of sunspots for many years to come, a mini ice age. Should we all still be here by next summer, we'll be able to see how right the forecasts are.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/30/the-sun-is-blank-as-solar-activity-comes-to-a-standstill/
http://nypost.com/2016/06/29/why-the-sun-going-blank-means-a-game-of-thrones-like-winter-is-coming/

 

[Danoff]

NASA and other solar physicists are currently seeing a nearly blank sun, this at a time of solar maximum which should be teeming with sunspots. The forecast is flatlining of sunspots for many years to come, a mini ice age. Should we all still be here by next summer, we'll be able to see how right the forecasts are.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/30/the-sun-is-blank-as-solar-activity-comes-to-a-standstill/
http://nypost.com/2016/06/29/why-the-sun-going-blank-means-a-game-of-thrones-like-winter-is-coming/

You may recall a while back I posted this:

We're predicted to get intense solar activity in 2012? We're still near solar minimum. Her's the current prediction:

The predict just keeps going down.

I posted that in 2010, and it turned out to be an overprediction still even then.

 

[Touring Mars]

The earth is alive, is that in question?

Tell me how old it is, tell me how long we have been here, convince me that we are destroying it in any substantial long term way?

For me the debate is not about the future of the planet, but about the future of human society. Life on Earth will continue long after we have gone, and regardless of what we may do while we are here - hence it is something of an irrelevance to frame the debate about climate change in terms of 'how does it affect the planet?'. More pertinently, the question should be 'how will past/present human activity affect society in the future?' Obviously that is a double-edged sword, and one needs to weigh up the potential and actual benefits and costs of our collective activity. But in order to do that, we need information (as well as informed opinion) that takes into consideration both the benefits and costs.

With this in mind, your question could be rephrased as 'Is our current way of life sustainable and will it influence our future prosperity in any substantial long term way?'... my view has always been that we need to give proper consideration to all the available evidence before forming an opinion either way, but that far too many people either don't view environmental or climate science as either legitimate and worthy of consideration or they actively promote the idea that climate science is fraudulent and a leftist conspiracy of some description.

What is clear is that there is no (and likely never will be) one single piece of evidence that will prove decisive either way in this debate, but rather that the planet will respond to whatever we throw at it in different ways - some predictable and others not. Being both predictable and unpredictable at the same time sounds like a contradiction in terms, but that is the nature of the beast... the fact is that no-one really knows what happens when you release a trillion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere (amongst other things of course), hence it would be somewhat foolish to think otherwise. This applies to those alarmists who believe that past and present human activity is going to be disastrous for the future of human society, but it applies just as strongly to those who somehow appear to know for certain that nothing humans can ever do will ever affect the climate system in such a way as to put future human prosperity at risk.

 

[Danoff]

the fact is that no-one really knows what happens when you release a trillion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere (amongst other things of course), hence it would be somewhat foolish to think otherwise. This applies to those alarmists who believe that past and present human activity is going to be disastrous for the future of human society, but it applies just as strongly to those who somehow appear to know for certain that nothing humans can ever do will ever affect the climate system in such a way as to put future human prosperity at risk.

I predict global cooling because hell just froze over. You and I agree on climate change? When did that happen?

 

[fumunaplz]

For me the debate is not about the future of the planet, but about the future of human society.

With this in mind, your question could be rephrased as 'Is our current way of life sustainable and will it influence our future prosperity in any substantial long term way?'...

What is clear is that there is no (and likely never will be) one single piece of evidence that will prove decisive either way in this debate, but rather that the planet will respond to whatever we throw at it in different ways -

I'm glad you pointed these things out as I happen to agree. To keep it as simple as possible I need to ask how it is so that one small group of people should be able to dictate to the rest what is the right thing to do.

I also agree with something another said about splitting atoms, I don't think that is a very good idea just as I don't think things such as gmo are so great.

I was pointing out the arrogance of mankind in general and I will always think that. Some of us are too big for our britches.

I did say this after all did I not?

I'm not sure who said we could kill the earth, I find the idea absurd of course. If there is a complaint to be made I would like that complaint to be that we are endangering ourselves rather than assuming we are endangering the earth. My belief is that neither are occurring.

Chicken little has been proven wrong time and time again.

I've been told the sky is falling my entire life but yet, there it remains flying high.

 

[FoolKiller]

Bejing

New Dehli

and Mexico City

say Hello

Howdy.

I see you guys are still in a developing stage while having very large population centers. Don't worry, the industrial, developing stages of the US and Europe didn't look much better in our large cities either.

 

[mustafur]

Howdy.

I see you guys are still in a developing stage while having very large population centers. Don't worry, the industrial, developing stages of the US and Europe didn't look much better in our large cities either.

Considering New Delhi probably has the population of what every city in US and Europe had in the industrial age combined I would say it's very different.

It's also not in New Delhi(the Taj Mahal) and has a emission zone around it to restrict pollution to prevent acid rain.

Anyone who watched the Indian GP can recall how bad the pollution is.

 

[fumunaplz]

I see you guys are still in a developing stage while having very large population centers. Don't worry, the industrial, developing stages of the US and Europe didn't look much better in our large cities either.

It was very nasty in the U.S., no need for pictures I hope.

 

[FoolKiller]

Considering New Delhi probably has the population of what every city in US and Europe had in the industrial age combined I would say it's very different.

The point being that human progress has a development stage where local pollution gets bad. It is unfortunate that it is still happening now that the population has grown as large as it has, but your choice is to set back developing countries, causing many, many deaths over time that stretch out far longer than their current development period, or you can let them grow fast and deal with their own localized pollution.

It's also not in New Delhi(the Taj Mahal) and has a emission zone around it to restrict pollution to prevent acid rain.

Anyone who watched the Indian GP can recall how bad the pollution is.

You ignored that there were three cities there and if I must I can get one of New Delhi's skyline on a clear day. My point being that selecting a single second in time, or even a day where there is a race, from one location is no evidence of a global climate issue. Even a different selective time of the exact location can be vastly different. I did the exact same thing you did, but I didn't search for pollution in my image search.

Your pointing out the geographical issue about the Taj Mahal (it's listed as a tourist stop for New Delhi, so my bad) reinforces the geographical point. New Delhi, and many cities in India, may rank in the top 100 most polluted in the world, but the Taj Mahal doesn't deal with it in the same way because it isn't located within a narrowly selected area.

 

[LM7325]

Industrial revolution is never pretty at first. It is easy to point out faults when you were there 75 years ago, speaking for US industrial capacity here.

Even if it looks bad, I really can't call the kettle black.

If anything it shows me how hard it is to industrialize, growing pains because nobody wants to pass the good stuff to the kids table. Let them go it alone laughs the fully mature industrialized finger pointers... maybe that is not how it is, sure seems that way though.

 

[fumunaplz]

If anything it shows me how hard it is to industrialize, growing pains because nobody wants to pass the good stuff to the kids table. Let them go it alone laughs the fully mature industrialized finger pointers... maybe that is not how it is, sure seems that way though.

There is no need to apologize as you are spot on in not only mine but many other's book 👍

It reminds me of a parent who might say "do as I say not as I do"

 

[FoolKiller]

There is no need to apologize as you are spot on in not only mine but many other's book 👍

It reminds me of a parent who might say "do as I say not as I do"

It reminds me a lot of, "Get a job if you want a car. No, I won't drive you to your job."