Global warming?

[classicman]

COPENHAGEN — Ray Weiss looks at the chanting protesters, harried delegates and the 20,000 other people gathered here for a global warming summit and wonders: What's the fuss all about?

Weiss, a geochemist who studies atmospheric pollution at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, says the numbers at the core of the debate in Copenhagen are flawed.

Specifically, he says the cuts that countries including the USA are proposing in greenhouse gas emissions are difficult to measure and highly susceptible to manipulation by government officials and companies.

"I don't see the point in doing all this if the numbers are so far off," Weiss said, shaking his head as he watched conference attendees hurry by Thursday. "When you hear politicians tell you that they can measure these things, just because they passed a deal in Copenhagen, I think you should take that with a few grains of salt."

Most of the summit's attention has focused on exactly how much countries will commit to cutting emissions of gases that data suggest are causing the earth to warm. Yet some scientists, legal experts and delegates say the hardest part of any deal in Copenhagen will be measuring — and then enforcing — whatever politicians decide.

Those two issues are "the iceberg on which the entire conference could founder," says Peter Goldmark, a program director for the Environmental Defense Fund, a non-profit group.

The Obama administration has proposed a 17% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, compared with levels in 2005. Most European countries have offered more ambitious cuts, while China has pushed a target that would allow its carbon dioxide output to continue to grow with its economy, though at a slower pace.

In a study last year, Weiss and colleagues took air samples and found that levels of nitrogen trifluoride, an industrial gas 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide as an atmospheric warming agent, were four times above what industry estimates had suggested.

He says monitoring equipment must be significantly upgraded around the world to prevent similar fudging of data if a deal is reached in Copenhagen.

Todd Stern, a lead negotiator for the U.S. delegation, says he's pushing for a system that, after Copenhagen, "allows countries to look at each other and get confidence that everybody is doing what they said they were doing."

However, governments in India and China — which is the world's biggest carbon emitter — have resisted draft proposals that would allow for international verification of data.

Link

[dar512]

I am starting to think maybe this is a problem that will sort itself out shortly. By shortly I mean in the next 50 years.

The reserves of both oil and coal will have fallen precipitously by then and I expect use will have gone way down. I guess it comes down to how fast we can cook ourselves with the current stock.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by classicman

so........ you are saying that perhaps the data overstated how extensive the warming was but not that there is global warming?

Do you accept that glaciers at both poles are melting at an increased rate?

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by classicman

What is the cause? We have no idea, and these people make their living off trying to tell us the answer.

Yes, it is quite common in the science field for people to make a living off researching what we currently do not know.

Is it possible that this warming which is now admittedly not as extreme as originally thought may be from some natural occurrences?

Yes, but you are oversimplifying it too much. We have proven that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Looking at historical temperature charts it makes logical sense that the Earth should start warming. This means that global warming is most likely caused by natural and human factors. My guess is that the Earth is naturally going into a warming period, and we are speeding up that process, which is not good because it takes time for ecosystems to adapt to new environments.

Do we, the entire human race need to act immediately on an assumption that it is our fault?

Make a pro/con list.

Is it true that some glaciers in other areas are actually growing?

Yes, in New Zealand I believe. But, that is not the norm. The vast majority of glaciers are receding. Remember, global warming is the generalized warming of the entire Earth. That means it is possible there will be areas where it is actually getting colder.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Don't forget global warming has been going on for the last 12 or 15 thousand years... this time. Global Warming is a catch all phrase, that means nothing. Or should I say means something different to everybody I meet. We need more information than that, to make an informed opinion on what we should or shouldn't do, what we can or can't do, or even if we should give a shit or not. But all these people are running around yelling "global warming" like it's the equivalent of "fire".

[piercehawkeye45]

I agree. The largest problem I see is that climate change is extremely difficult to predict because it is all based on probability. Without that insight, it is also nearly impossible to make an informed decision of what we should do.

We need to decide whether we want to make decisions based on what is 50% likely to happen, 90%, worst-case? How we can legitimately prevent or adapt to these changes or consequences?

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

...We need to decide whether we want to make decisions based on what is 50% likely to happen, 90%, worst-case? How we can legitimately prevent or adapt to these changes or consequences?

Or Dick Cheney's 1% doctrine.

If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response.

If there's a 1% chance that man is causing global warming, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response.

Then we should shoot somebody in the face with bird shot.

[xoxoxoBruce]

We don't even know if we can make a significant difference in the grand scheme of things.
Alternative, sustainable, energy sources, is a no brainer to me. Not for climate change, for the self centered, take care of us, fuck them foreigners, national security. If it helps prevent climate change, that's a plus.

All the other stuff, I want to see cost/benefit before I'm onboard. For the people living on an island 2 ft above sea level, its a fuck of a lot cheaper to move them to the penthouse of any Hilton, than some of the proposals I've seen.

[ZenGum]

Then we should shoot somebody in the face with bird shot.

Good gracious, Spexx, do you have any idea how much CO2 a shotgun cartridge releases?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Very satirical, Zen. True, Spexx does invite that sort of thing. I wish he'd learn not to yammer.

Greenland ice core data gathered by the NOAA actually support about a 3 Celsius drop in temperature over the last 3300 years -- the kind of stuff that had them worried about Earth going glacial if that went on. There are blips both up and down of around 0.5 Celsius, though a couple of the down-blips are thrice that and there have not been comparable up-blips.

And that's just recently. Go tens of thousands back and you find temps that are even higher. On the hundred thousand year scale, we see the orbital-variation effect on Earth's average temps.

Convenient assembly of graphs and links right here.

[SamIam]

I didn't find your site very convenient. Is it just that I have a cold and feel like shit, or is the site for tin-foil hatters only?

I know your favorite story is that the emperor wears no clothes, but you need to lighten up some on this one. Temperatures were higher 100,000 or more years ago, but guess what? That climate did not support the life forms we see today.

Greenland had a celsius increase in temperature before 1,000 AD. BTW, it had a farenheit increase, as well. Both are systems used to define temperature. Its amazing what you get out of a 6th grade science book.

Greenland's climate has fluctuated often over the past few thousand years. When doing a study of a pheunomenon, itonly stand to reason to collect as many data as possible. If you see a parrot escaped in downtown Kansas city, it is unlikely that parrots have found a new niche in the Midwest.

Didn't your buddy, Erik von Kühnelt-Leddihn, teach you ANYTHING?

[classicman]

Originally Posted by SamIam

Temperatures were higher 100,000 or more years ago, but guess what? That climate did not support the life forms we see today.

And what makes you think we can change that? If this is all part of a natural phenomenon, then there is possibility that there is nothing we can do.

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

We don't even know if we can make a significant difference in the grand scheme of things.
Alternative, sustainable, energy sources, is a no brainer to me. Not for climate change, for the self centered, take care of us, fuck them foreigners, national security. If it helps prevent climate change, that's a plus.

All the other stuff, I want to see cost/benefit before I'm onboard.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by SamIam

That climate did not support the life forms we see today.

I know you want to chastise UG and I'ma gonna let you do that, but first let me say the resident lifeforms have been changing constantly throughout the history of the planet, and humans have been around a very short blip on that timeline.

[SamIam]

I am in total agreement with that, Bruce. Species come and species go. The interaction of climate, ecology, and speciation is a very complex one. Presumably, we want the human species to be one of the winners.

I freely admit to being pessimistic about this, because the human species is beginning to outstrip its natural carrying capacity.

One of my fav organisms is the Trilobites, a well-known fossil group of extinct marine arthropods. Trilobites first appear in the fossil record during the Early Cambrian period (540 million years ago) and flourished throughout the lower Paleozoic era before beginning a drawn-out decline to extinction when, during the Devonian, all trilobite orders, with the sole exception of Proetida, died out. Trilobites finally disappeared in the mass extinction at the end of the Permian about 250 million years ago.

Now 290 million years is hardly the blink of a human eye. These critters, whose closest descendents resemble the horse shoe crab, were a big contender in the evolutionary sweep stakes. Some say that the rise of sharks
plus changes in climate did them in.

Theoretically we are smarter than trilobites. We might want to take a look at global warming and destruction of habitat to give ourselves a few more thousands years. I grow exhausted by posts such as UG's when he starts "dancing with sharks."

Oh, and please excuse my typo's in my last post. I've got a case of bronchitis that would make an amoeba scream.

[Undertoad]

Don't worry. The human species has multiplied its natural carrying capacity by many times over in the last 100 years.

At the same time, an alarming trend towards overpopulation has slowed, and the curve now says we aren't going to grow infinitely.

(Which is good for AGW proponents who want to hurt man's natural carrying capacity by taxing energy. That includes energy for agriculture...)

Now the hurtful question: will an increase in global temperature increase or decrease the amount of arable land on the planet?

I don't know, but it's a tough one innit? Every climate change will have its positives and its negatives, and it's not fair to the question to just focus on the negatives.