Why worry about global warming?

True they would be good jobs in the $ 20,000 - $ 40,000 range. Chalnoth you never answered the most important question the one I was really wanting to hear from you your answer. "What is the biggest culprit in AGW......" Is it our agraculture ,or perhaps factories ?

Greatcloud said:

GW Its definitely not caused by man at all its all natural its the planets cooling and warming cycle that has been going on for millenniums.

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The irony of this statement is that the reason we have a good idea that humanity is likely causing the bulk of the current global climate change is because of the analyses based on the geologic history of the earth!

The claims that since the earth has had different climates in the past ergo it couldn't be humanity is a logic fallacy.

1. Gunshots to the head often lead to death.
2. Bob is dead.
3. Ergo Bob was shot in the head.

Not necessarily so, obviously.

The amount of stuff we know about why the earth's climate changes helps us understand the drivers, the forcings which affect the climate. And we know that the usual "natural forcings" that have affected the climate in the past appear to pail in comparison to what humanity is currently doing.

1. We know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Due to the nature of its chemcial bonds it absorbs in the IR region. We've known this since the middle 1800's.

2. We know we are pumping billions of tons of excess carbon into the atmosphere at a rate many, many many times faster than the carbon was initially sequestered from natural cycles. Much of this carbon hasn't been in the natural carbon cycles for millions of years

3. Starting in the middle-19th century, about the time we started pumping masses of fossil and vegetal fuels into the air during rapid industrialization, the isotopic signature of the atmospheric C in CO2 started to shift to lighter stable carbon isotopes just as you would predict from the dumping of huge amounts of fossil fuels and vegetal fuels derived carbon into the atmosphere from it's combustion.

Right now there are almost no professional climatologists who don't believe that human-induced climate change is real. By a couple different estimates about 97% of professionals in this field feel it is real.

That's pretty amazing when you think about it. The science is pretty solid and the fact that more than 90% of the worlds professionals in a field actually seem to agree (not an easy task to get scientists to agree unless the science is pretty solid) would seem to say a LOT.

And the science "makes sense", passes the "sniff test" to non-climatologists like myself. I'm an earth scientist by training and degree but I'm not a climatologist. The science makes sense and seems reasonable to me.

I see no reason to make such strong statements as yoursm Greatcloud. If you wish to hold the opinion you hold of the science, you should be careful to note that use of words like "definitely" don't necessarily apply since you are aligned with only about 3% of the professionals in the associated fields.

Going up against 97% of the scientists would not seem to be the safest of bets in this day. (and note: this isn't the 1600's so bringing up folks like Gallileo won't work either because in this case the world's scientists have been doing real science, not just taking accepted wisdom. They've been studying this.)

About 80 % of Meterologists don't believe in AGW but believe GW is natural.

Maybe Meterologists know more then we do.

Cloudy Condition - News - Pittsburgh City Paper

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcvpdt_global-warming-climatologists-vs-me_tech

Greatcloud said:

About 80 % of Meterologists don't believe in AGW but believe GW is natural.

Maybe Meterologists know more then we do.

Cloudy Condition - News - Pittsburgh City Paper

Dailymotion - Global Warming: Climatologists vs. Meteorologists - a Tech & Science video

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Excellent. So when I read things like:

"Researchers at George Mason University and the University of Texas found that only about half of the 571 television weathercasters surveyed believed that the Earth is warming."

You can bet I'm interested. As opposed to peer reviewed and published researchers on climate.

Like the PNAS article HERE
or the EOS article HERE

BTW, I really like fun-fun cartoon figures on the first link you provided! If only scientific articles and studies had fun-fun cartoon figures with enlarged heads and funny bodies!

Maybe the science wouldn't be so hard to get through.

But sadly the science says what the science says. We are pumping a known greenhouse gas into the atmosphere at a rate far in excess of the speed with which it was sequestered out of natural systems and we've already put enough in the atmosphere to change the isotopic composition of the atmospheric CO2.

I think I'll stick with actual scientific publications as opposed to fun-fun cartoony stuff like this:

From your first link:


Gee, why don't legitimate scientific publications use more fun-fun illustrations like that?

Greatcloud said:

True they would be good jobs in the $ 20,000 - $ 40,000 range. Chalnoth you never answered the most important question the one I was really wanting to hear from you your answer. "What is the biggest culprit in AGW......" Is it our agraculture ,or perhaps factories ?

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I don't honestly know. I'd have to look it up. But in any event, getting rid of the subsidies for fossil fuels and imposing some sort of carbon tax or cap-and-trade system would shift the entire market away from fossil fuels, no matter where they are used.

A lightning strike starts a fire. You come across someone dumping gasoline on the fire. He pleads, "I didn't start the fire." It doesn't matter at this point. Whatever started the fire, it is counter-productive to dump gasoline on it. We know from the study of chaotic systems that very small changes can have disasterous effects.

And we do know that the rate of climate change that we are experiencing now is greater by orders of magnitude than it has ever been in the past. We know that we are releasing greenhouse gasses far faster than the environment can sequester them. We know that the fossil fuel industries have a financial interest in squeezing every possible bit of profit from their cartels and multinationals while they can, and that they are also the ones most responsible for opposing the overwhelming numbers of climatologists who say that climate change is happening and is probably anthropogenic.

Someone once said, "You can't serve God and money." But you can if money is your god. And if your priority is to live as high on the hog, or to garner as much power as you can without regard for the welfare or survival of future generations, you are going to extract and sell every bit of fossil fuel you can to maximize your own wealth in your own lifetime without regard to how that will affect future generations.

Assume that climate had reached some dynamic equilibrium. Any change, even a small one is going to affect that equilibrium, perhaps, if you are already near a tipping point, catastrophically. Admittedly, the models are based on differential equations whose variables are complexly interelated, and whose simplifiying constants all too often turn out to be variables. As we have refined and corrected these equations, however, the predictions have become worse.

At this point, it doesn't matter how it started. It is happening, and the longer we wait to address the problem, and the more watered-down our efforts, the worse it is going to be for the human race and the biome in general.

We can argue about how the house caught fire later. Right now we have to keep it from burning down. We don't have anywhere else to live, so if it burns down, we won't.

Chalnoth said:

We should also stop subsidizing oil and coal.

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There is enough energy in a pound of coal to supply all of the power needs of New York City for a year. We need to get with the program and quit wasting so much energy. Actually we need to go to hydrogen fuel.

Chalnoth said:

simply couldn't use electric motors.

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Electric motors have been around as long as the combustion motor. The problem has been the battery. Now we have the lithium batter, but the government is worried about an explosion, so they are putting limits on lithium batteries. For example they limit how big of a lithium battery you can put on a airplane in the cargo.

Jazer said:

There is enough energy in a pound of coal to supply all of the power needs of New York City for a year. We need to get with the program and quit wasting so much energy. Actually we need to go to hydrogen fuel.

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Um, I don't think that's even remotely true. Where did you get that idea from?

Jazer said:

There is enough energy in a pound of coal to supply all of the power needs of New York City for a year. We need to get with the program and quit wasting so much energy. Actually we need to go to hydrogen fuel.

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I too would be interested in where this claim comes from.

2.2lb (1kg) of coal when burned produces about 22-28MJ of energy which works out to about 22400000BTU/short ton (SOURCE)

According to THIS site in 2009 NYC consumed 3,818 trillion BTU's of energy

In order to provide 3,818,000,000,000,000 BTU's it would then require 170,446,429 short tons of coal to meet the energy needs of NYC.

This is assuming I interpreted the data correctly.

Now, if you mean that 0.5kg of coal in mass if the mass were completely converted to energy (a la E=mc^2) then the statement is probably true. But otherwise I'm skeptical of the claim.

Can someone correct any mistakes I made here?

Thanks

thaumaturgy said:

I think I'll stick with actual scientific publications as opposed to fun-fun cartoony stuff like this:

From your first link:

Gee, why don't legitimate scientific publications use more fun-fun illustrations like that?

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Julie Bologna used to work here in Dallas. Here's her qualifications.
Julie Bologna - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Bologna was born in Center Township, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Penn State University in 1994 with a degree in journalism and received her broadcast meteorology certificate from Mississippi State University."

She sounds like a wonderful lady. I like her smile.




CO2

Greatcloud said:

She sounds like a wonderful lady. I like her smile.




CO2

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Just so long as you understand that human-caused global warming is an idea generally accepted by more than 90% of professionals who study global climate and there are virtually no scientific organizations who don't think it is real and there is almost no developed nation whose national scientific academies who don't think it is true but you like her smile and your one source is about 20% cartoon then I guess we understand how robust your "stance" is.

C'ome mother nature is the culprit here just say it you will feel so much better about yourself. My stand is firm and as for robust that comes with time.




CO2

Greatcloud said:

C'ome mother nature is the culprit here just say it you will feel so much better about yourself. My stand is firm and as for robust that comes with time.

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You really could stand to proof read a bit.

But regardless, simply asserting your point of view is correct over and over again is hardly convincing. The evidence is absolutely clear: the Earth is warming, and humans are causing it.

Greatcloud said:

C'ome mother nature is the culprit here just say it you will feel so much better about yourself. My stand is firm and as for robust that comes with time.




CO2

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Well, if it weren't for my doctorate in earth science and my reading of the science of global climate change I'm sure I could feel as good as you do, Greatcloud.

Sadly sometimes there is an "inconvenient truth" to be faced.

Where ignorance is bliss, I guess it truly is folly to be wise.

.

thaumaturgy said:

Well, if it weren't for my doctorate in earth science and my reading of the science of global climate change I'm sure I could feel as good as you do, Greatcloud.

Sadly sometimes there is an "inconvenient truth" to be faced.

Where ignorance is bliss, I guess it truly is folly to be wise.

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One truth we can face is that the global warming nonsense of Gore and others is a fraud. No one needs eco freaks to dictate to us where we need to save power or anything else! Their historical basis is a lie ( anything presuming a present state old age past). They are a modern equivalent of druids and godless idol worshipers, and fearmongering hypocrites, best I can tell.

dad said:

They are a modern equivalent of druids and godless idol worshipers, and fearmongering hypocrites, best I can tell.

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Except for the niggling little fact that they're right.

dad said:

One truth we can face is that the global warming nonsense of Gore and others is a fraud. No one needs eco freaks to dictate to us where we need to save power or anything else! Their historical basis is a lie ( anything presuming a present state old age past). They are a modern equivalent of druids and godless idol worshipers, and fearmongering hypocrites, best I can tell.

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