An Inconvenient Truth

[chcr]

That's why the scientists use 650,000 years of data. .

No they don't. They use 650,000 years of inferred extrapolation. Even then their error margins run in the tens of thousands of years. There are observations for around 1500 years, reliable ones for on the order of 200 years. In other words, they don't know what will really happen. Again, over the past 1.8 million or so years the earth has endured periods of intense glaciation and intergalcial periods, during some of which the polar ice caps may have disappeared completely. Now what makes more sense? That we are destroying the earth or that the earth's climate is continuing to change as it has in the past. One of those answers seems more than a little arrogant, doesn't it.

Here's a synopsis from a climatologist from Science magazine (that would be not part of the popular press)

ATMOSPHERE:
Ecological Versus Climatic Thresholds
Mark Maslin

How will the terrestrial vegetation respond to future climate change? In his Perspective, Maslin argues that studies of past climates can help to answer this question. He highlights the report by Jennerjahn et al., who show that ecological or vegetation responses to climatic changes may be delayed if an ecological threshold has to be crossed. In another study, Tzedakis et al. show that once such a threshold is crossed, the vegetation may not necessarily recover with a return to the original climatic conditions. Thus, both the time scale and the reversibility of future ecological changes as a result of global warming remain unclear.

Thus, both the time scale and the reversibility of future ecological changes as a result of global warming remain unclear.

Hey, believe what they tell you on the tee-vee. Most everyone else does so it must be true.

 

[Luis G]

That we are destroying the earth or that the earth's climate is continuing to change as it has in the past. One of those answers seems more than a little arrogant, doesn't it.

We are destroying it for sure. Producing huge ammounts of pollution must have an impact on it. Wether it causes climate change or not that's another subject, personally, I think it does to certain extent. Much like pushing a little the gas pedal when you're going downhill.

 

[Gonz]

huge ammounts of pollution

On a gloabal scale, we've produced next to nothing. Fires & volcanoes put vast amounts of pollutants in the air & nature cleans it up. They system works.

What ever happned to the ozone hole? Weren't we all gonna die from that too?

 

[chcr]

We are destroying it for sure. Producing huge ammounts of pollution must have an impact on it. Wether it causes climate change or not that's another subject, personally, I think it does to certain extent. Much like pushing a little the gas pedal when you're going downhill.

Sorry, Luis. Sure, we make it a bit harder for the frailest 10% to breathe in metropolitan areas, and we make a portion of the water less drinkable and all this is deplorable behavior. As long as it's profitable it will never stop. On a global scale, it's not as bad as the doomsayers would have you believe. The data is filtered to show extreme worst case scenarios (science fiction, in other words). I thought that you, of all people would be skeptical. A couple of points to ponder:

From 1970 to the early 1990s, world fossil fuel-related emissions of CO2 grew by 50 percent, about as much as population, so that per capita emissions have remained level. Meticulous measurements document a worldwide rise in atmospheric CO2 of about 10 percent in the same period, and concentrations will continue to rise even if emissions flatten, because of the time required for the land and sea to absorb carbon. In some countries, including France and the U.S., per capita emissions decreased due to improved energy efficiency and shifts to lighter fuels.

Source
The US is still the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, but it goes down, not up each year. They don't mention that shit, do they?

Scientists are working to understand why the lower atmosphere isn't heating up as fast as some global warming models predict.

Link

The alarminsts don't even agree. The eighties were hotter than the seventies and the nineties, which shows just exactly nothing.

 

[spike]

Actually, any honest scientist will tell you that they're not even sure about the 650,000 figures either. There's no way to be certain that those data haven't been corrupted over time, or that the dating is even close. They're testing local samples ... but the atmosphere's layered. What were the amounts at altitudes that matter? They've no idea. We're in the middle of a magnetic pole flip. How does that effect the atmosphere? Noone knows. Continental drift is effecting the Atlantic conveyor. The atlantic is widening, and the Pacific shrinking. Noone's factoring in that anywhere. How about those undetected undersea volcanos? Huge piles of frozen methane on the ocean floor that gets disturbed every time there's an undersea earthquake, volcano, or landslide.

When all the sciences get together and model in all the factors. until then ... it's just more dark matter. Created wholecloth to cover something they don't have the knowledge to explain ... and are too embarrassed to admit it.

This ice-core analysis has provided many of the most eloquent and extensive data sets on climate change. It was research from Antarctic ice cores, for instance, published in Nature last year, which proved that concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane were far higher now than at any time in the past 650,000 years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1758852,00.html

 

[spike]

No they don't. They use 650,000 years of inferred extrapolation. Even then their error margins run in the tens of thousands of years. There are observations for around 1500 years, reliable ones for on the order of 200 years. In other words, they don't know what will really happen. Again, over the past 1.8 million or so years the earth has endured periods of intense glaciation and intergalcial periods, during some of which the polar ice caps may have disappeared completely. Now what makes more sense? That we are destroying the earth or that the earth's climate is continuing to change as it has in the past. One of those answers seems more than a little arrogant, doesn't it.

Here's a synopsis from a climatologist from Science magazine (that would be not part of the popular press)

If polar ice caps dissappear areas where 100's of millions of people live will be underwater regardless of why. BOTH your conclusions are correct. The earth's climate continues to change AND we are having a massive effect on it.

Completely dismissing the evidence and assuming that a few billion people burning fossil fuels and pumping pollution into the air has no effect on the atmosphere seems a little foolhardy.

Hey, believe what they tell you on the tee-vee. Most everyone else does so it must be true.

It aint just on TV it's the vast majority of the scientific community. I suppose if you find one scientist that tells you the earth is flat you'll ignore all the other ones that say it's round?

 

[spike]

On a gloabal scale, we've produced next to nothing. Fires & volcanoes put vast amounts of pollutants in the air & nature cleans it up. They system works.

What ever happned to the ozone hole? Weren't we all gonna die from that too?

Do you have any figures that say that on a global scale we've produced next to no effect on the amount of CO2?

The ozone hole is a different topic. I think the ban on ozone destroying pollutants helped that matter. Pretty much beside the point though.

If there's a tornado warning in your area and you don't get hit by it will you ignore firemen the next year if they tell you your house is in flames?

 

[chcr]

If polar ice caps dissappear areas where 100's of millions of people live will be underwater regardless of why. BOTH your conclusions are correct. The earth's climate continues to change AND we are having a massive effect on it.

Completely dismissing the evidence and assuming that a few billion people burning fossil fuels and pumping pollution into the air has no effect on the atmosphere seems a little foolhardy.



It aint just on TV it's the vast majority of the scientific community. I suppose if you find one scientist that tells you the earth is flat you'll ignore all the other ones that say it's round?

The vast majority of scientists suggest that this might be happening. The media knows that uncertainty is not saleable. It's a theory. You're familiar with the concept. I do not dismiss the data I merely suggest that some of it is being misinterpreted and it's largely being overracted to. In fact, there are a lot of scientists who dispute or offer competing theories. The various theories that support your position don't even agree on the effect or the imminence.

You seem to completely miss the point that the last time the ice caps disappeared there was no civilization. No fossil fuels being burned, no industry, in fact no humanity.

Oh, and you're wrong about the ozone layer. the ozone hole returns each year, larger than the last (and though it's a separate issue, it also contributes to global warming). In fact, now there's one over the arctic. It's just no longer the cause célèbre. This is what I mean about the media. They got bored with it because the horrifying stuff didn't start happening soon enough. The same thing will happen with global warming. Sooner or later there will be a new "the sky is falling" subject to scream about.

BTW, accepting this stuff at face value without doing at least the reading to familiarize yourself with the data and the various theories makes you much closer to the flat earthers than I. But then I could have told you the earth was round from simple observation. Everybody who bothered to look around them has known it since prehistory. That's all I'm doing, looking around me and drawing my own conclusions.

 

[Professur]

And quoting the Guardian is about as impressive as quoting the National Inquirer. About the only one less reliable is the Onion.

 

[Luis G]

Sorry, Luis. Sure, we make it a bit harder for the frailest 10% to breathe in metropolitan areas, and we make a portion of the water less drinkable and all this is deplorable behavior. As long as it's profitable it will never stop. On a global scale, it's not as bad as the doomsayers would have you believe. The data is filtered to show extreme worst case scenarios (science fiction, in other words). I thought that you, of all people would be skeptical. A couple of points to ponder:

For me the biggest concern is pollution, of every kind. In the case of greenhouse gasses, you could argue that on a global scale is not extreme and you might be right, what bugs me is that believing that makes people not worry the slightiest on the pollution issue. Greenhouse gasses that we produce are related to global warming, I won't argue wether they are decisive factors or not because I don't know, but they are factors nevertheless.

Gonz, I'd like to see nature vanishing some tires, batteries, diapers and nuclear waste.

 

[chcr]

For me the biggest concern is pollution, of every kind. In the case of greenhouse gasses, you could argue that on a global scale is not extreme and you might be right, what bugs me is that believing that makes people not worry the slightiest on the pollution issue. Greenhouse gasses that we produce are related to global warming, I won't argue wether they are decisive factors because I don't know, but they are factor nevertheless.

Gonz, I'd like to see nature vanishing some tires, batteries, diapers and nuclear waste.

I do worry about pollution. It's incredible the amount of garbage we produce. I recognize, however, that until recycling becomes commercially viable it will never be widely accepted. Again, US regulations address a lot of pollution problems with air and water quality standards but they could be stronger. If you financially handcuff your industry with too many regulations too quickly you will adversely affect your economy though.

BTW, we recycle tires where I work. We also pay a tire disposal fee on every new tire we sell even though we retread or recycle them ourselves.

 

[Luis G]

BTW, we recycle tires where I work. We also pay a tire disposal fee on every new tire we sell even though we retread or recycle them ourselves.

Really? I thought those were not-recyclabe. What do they do with them?

 

[chcr]

Really? I thought those were not-recyclabe. What do they do with them?

We retread truck and equipment tires. There are strict guidlines on what may or may not be retreaded. Passenger tires and non-retreadable truck and equipment tires are sent to another plant (we pay another company to haul them off) where they are ground to bits and used in asphalt. I know of another place that burns old tires for energy to run a concrete plant. The use the resultant ash as a component of there concrete. Their furnaces are 95% efficient at removing particulate air pollution too. This is one of the few instances where recycling pays.

 

[SouthernN'Proud]

OK, that makes it official.

54 comments on this movie now on here. That's more attention than it has gotten anywhere else on the planet. Congratulations.

 

[chcr]

OK, that makes it official.

54 comments on this movie now on here. That's more attention than it has gotten anywhere else on the planet. Congratulations.

It's okay, I'm not going to see it.

 

[spike]

The vast majority of scientists suggest that this might be happening. The media knows that uncertainty is not saleable. It's a theory.

Wrong. You're being tricked.

"The strategy of people with a political agenda to avoid this issue is to say there is so much to study way upstream here that we can’t even being to discuss impacts and response strategies," says Piltz. "There’s too much uncertainty. It's not the climate scientists that are saying that, its lawyers and politicians."

You seem to completely miss the point that the last time the ice caps disappeared there was no civilization. No fossil fuels being burned, no industry, in fact no humanity.

Right! and CO2 levels then were far below what they are now.

Oh, and you're wrong about the ozone layer.

We didn't ban ozone depleting pollutants?

BTW, accepting this stuff at face value without doing at least the reading to familiarize yourself with the data and the various theories makes you much closer to the flat earthers than I. But then I could have told you the earth was round from simple observation. Everybody who bothered to look around them has known it since prehistory. That's all I'm doing, looking around me and drawing my own conclusions.

I'm been fairly familiar with the data for awhile. You're right though why bother listening to the people doing ice core analysis and all these crazy scientists when I can just look around my house and make an assumption that everything will be fine.

Screw paying attention to tornado warnings, blizzard advisories, the weather man, weather.com, etc.

"We have to, in the next 10 years, get off this exponential curve and begin to decrease the rate of growth of CO2 emissions," Hansen explains. "And then flatten it out. And before we get to the middle of the century, we’ve got to be on a declining curve.

"If that doesn't happen in 10 years, then I don’t think we can keep global warming under one degree Celsius and that means we’re going to, that there’s a great danger of passing some of these tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can’t tie a rope around the ice sheet. You can’t build a wall around the ice sheets. It will be a situation that is out of our control."

But that's not a situation you'll find in one federal report submitted for review. Government scientists wanted to tell you about the ice sheets, but before a draft of the report left the White House, the paragraph on glacial melt and flooding was crossed out and this was added: "straying from research strategy into speculative findings and musings here."

Hansen says his words were edited once during a presentation when a top official scolded him for using the word danger.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985_page3.shtml

 

[Professur]

Right! and CO2 levels then were far below what they are now.

Must be a real bitch to get ice cores from that period, eh?

Insert kneejerk. Just out of curiosity, Spike, what do you think happens when you reduce the co2 in the atmosphere? O2 goes up. Know what happens when O2 goes up? Rampant forest fires (and yup, they've scientific proof that that's happened in the past too). Guess what happens then? Co2 levels rise again.

Don't get me wrong. I'm the first to suggest cleaning up, and banning SUVs. But not because some egghead with a bit of paper says so.

 

[spike]

OK, that makes it official.

54 comments on this movie now on here. That's more attention than it has gotten anywhere else on the planet. Congratulations.

A lot of misinformation here:

4th ranked Documnetary by Box Office Gross
Total US Gross $19,408,000

How did you come to that conclusion? Looking around?

 

[spike]

And quoting the Guardian is about as impressive as quoting the National Inquirer. About the only one less reliable is the Onion.

I was replying to your discussion on testing with a description of the ice core analysis. Do think because ice core analysis was discussed in the guardian they must do it a different way?

 

[Inkara1]

I drive a Honda Accord, an old Trek mountain bike, and occasionally an old Vision skateboard. What do you drive?

Dodge Neon