Yeah, business should be as responsible as possible and not waste and wantonly pollute. Simple standards could be put in place that would do the job. There's no need for extra insanely restrictive laws that are based on some unprovable theory.

There is nothing "insanely restrictive" about emission rights trade. And theory is very provable... it's basic economy. Want me to explain it for you?

Bryant, I found a web site just for you with some facts and explanations ;)

http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/kids/

Aurel

Want more proof ?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1103371325.gif

Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globtemp.html

Change in glaciers length:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1103371552.gif

Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/globalwarming/ipcc18.gif

For the Northern Hemisphere summer temperature, recent decades appear to be the warmest since at least about 1000AD, and the warming since the late 19th century is unprecedented over the last 1000 years. Not 50 years, Bryant...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1103371830.gif
Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/globalwarming/ipcc20.gif

Again, we can discuss if this was caused by human activity or not, but the facts are here and solid.

Aurel

It's a "guvermint"-sponsored page...they probably just lie about this global warmin' stuff to keep honest people from driving SUV's... ;)

I am still waiting for a proof that the sun is not turning around the earth .

SIR944 -- China and India are not "major" countries?

I agree with Aurel -- there have been reputable studies showing that the climate is warming, and the question is -- is mankind behind it. I haven't seen proof of that; but I've seen a lot of bs that assumes that as true.

There is quite a bit of peer-reviewed info out there showing that the Earth was a warmer place than it is now back in the mid 1800's -- well before the industrial revolution could've had any measurable impact. When Mt. St. Helens blew back in the early 80's, it put more CO and CO2 into the air than man has in his entire existence. These things just happen, and its a form of hubris to believe man is causing it; and supreme hubris by those who then claim to champion the environment.

Having said all that, I believe there is merit in reducing emissions and employing the best available technology to be "clean." Which is, more-or-less, the US' position. The US Senate unanimously rejected Kyoto (98-0) under Clinton. This does not, as it's too often snidely presented, mean that the US is pro-emissions or uncaring about the environment. Anybody that's had to deal with a DEC or the EPA can attest to that. However, the approach Kyoto is taking to "solve" what not everybody agrees is susceptible to solution can cripple economies. Given the state of ind. dev. in western Europe, there are disproportionately microscopic oppotunity costs to Europe, opposed to huge costs to the US and other large, growing economies.

Kyoto is flawed; deeply flawed and the US and many knowledgable scientists have recognized this. It is not the be-all solution that Eurocrats would have us believe. Just because the herd (who stands the least to lose, and many developing countries, who are not going to be restricted under Kyoto and stand to benefit by hobbling larger economies) continues to extol Kyoto's hollow virtues doesn't make it so. Jeez, guys, you're bright, skeptical people; how have you swallowed this Kyoto fairytale so easily?

Keep up the skepticism, Serge! :D

JP

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Overpaid Slacker
[B]SIR944 -- China and India are not "major" countries?

I agree with Aurel -- there have been reputable studies showing that the climate is warming, and the question is --

So, Bryant, who`s your daddy ? ;)

Aurel

Yeah -- who'da thunk I'd ever type the words "I agree with Aurel"?!? Especially on a topic such as this? :D

Maybe there is hope for detente..... nah, what fun would that be?

JP

Could someone post a link or articles with pre 1800's high temp data? I've read that about prehistoric temps but don't remember reading anything about temps in the 17th century being unusual.

Regarding the point about Mt St Helen's (or Krakatoa for that matter) most of that material is water vapor and dust which settles relatively rapidly out of the atmosphere (rapidly meaning 2-4 years) thus reducing potential impact. OTOH most current concern is about the long term effect industrial chemicals have on the molecular chains of atmospheric gases. Chemical reactions tend to be cumulative and less predictible when dealing with unknown quantities and unintended combinations.

It's in mans long term economic and biologic health to change paths.

In the free market place of ideas various factions and interests will push and shove for rules, regulations, favors, legislation, and reports that favor themselves. We usually call this "politics". This is not necessarily conspiratorial - it is just pursuing self-interest. We should not fear the free market place we just need to compete in it. A free market is not necessarily a "fair" market - and I'm sure there are instances where the US gained advantage in marketplaces for various reasons - justifiable or not.

Some believe the Kyoto Accords are designed to hobble the US - as if that were really possible considering the size and scope of our economy and intellectual capital. Perhaps we could use a Kyoto Accord as a "market" incentive to reindustrialize our economy, score some goodwill points, maybe help the environment - and move on.

Errr...where did you get that from? Care to list your sources? Or was it Exxon-site again?

mmmkay...so now you're became a climate expert as well? You decided it's not caused by humans, so it must be right, right?

Slacker...you have a right-wing political agenda that you are desperately trying to impose on other people for reasons unknown. Your way of making it sound believable is by pulling "evidence" from dubious sources (or by just making up stuff) just as long it supports your line.

Lack of open-mindeness makes this discussion very tiresome. It's like discussing with a religious fanatic that gladely uses information (indiscriminately and w/o any credibility check) but just as long is it support their line of thinking. If not, information is flagged as fabrication or lies.

I was initially thinking about spending some time and energy to try to explain to you why system of emission rights actually benefits us all....but I don't think it's worth.

You already made up your mind ...

Goodnight.

Overpaid slacker even knows when man first existed, as you would have to to make that comment. Finally an answer is at hand!

Science Has Spoken:
Global Warming Is a Myth
by Arthur B. Robinson and Zachary W. Robinson
Copyright 1997 Dow Jones & Co., Inc.
Reprinted with permission of Dow Jones & Co., Inc.
The Wall Street Journal (December 4, 1997)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Political leaders are gathered in Kyoto, Japan, working away on an international treaty to stop "global warming" by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The debate over how much to cut emissions has at times been heated--but the entire enterprise is futile or worse. For there is not a shred of persuasive evidence that humans have been responsible for increasing global temperatures. What's more, carbon dioxide emissions have actually been a boon for the environment.

The myth of "global warming" starts with an accurate observation: The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising. It is now about 360 parts per million, vs. 290 at the beginning of the 20th century, Reasonable estimates indicate that it may eventually rise as high as 600 parts per million. This rise probably results from human burning of coal, oil and natural gas, although this is not certain. Earth's oceans and land hold some 50 times as much carbon dioxide as is in the atmosphere, and movement between these reservoirs of carbon dioxide is poorly understood. The observed rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide does correspond with the time of human release and equals about half of the amount released.

Carbon dioxide, water, and a few other substances are "greenhouse gases." For reasons predictable from their physics and chemistry, they tend to admit more solar energy into the atmosphere than they allow to escape. Actually, things are not so simple as this, since these substances interact among themselves and with other aspects of the atmosphere in complex ways that are not well understood. Still, it was reasonable to hypothesize that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels might cause atmospheric temperatures to rise. Some people predicted "global warming," which has come to mean extreme greenhouse warming of the atmosphere leading to catastrophic environmental consequences.

Careful Tests

The global-warming hypothesis, however, is no longer tenable. Scientists have been able to test it carefully, and it does not hold up. During the past 50 years, as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen, scientists have made precise measurements of atmospheric temperature. These measurements have definitively shown that major atmospheric greenhouse warming of the atmosphere is not occurring and is unlikely ever to occur.

The temperature of the atmosphere fluctuates over a wide range, the result of solar activity and other influences. During the past 3,000 years, there have been five extended periods when it was distinctly warmer than today. One of the two coldest periods, known as the Little Ice Age, occurred 300 years ago. Atmospheric temperatures have been rising from that low for the past 300 years, but remain below the 3,000-year average.

http://www.junkscience.com/images/robinson.gif

Why are temperatures rising? The first chart nearby shows temperatures during the past 250 years, relative to the mean temperature for 1951-70. The same chart shows the length of the solar magnetic cycle during the same period. Close correlation between these two parameters--the shorter the solar cycle (and hence the more active the sun), the higher the temperature--demonstrates, as do other studies, that the gradual warming since the Little Ice Age and the large fluctuations during that warming have been caused by changes in solar activity.

The highest temperatures during this period occurred in about 1940. During the past 20 years, atmospheric temperatures have actually tended to go down, as shown in the second chart, based on very reliable satellite data, which have been confirmed by measurements from weather balloons.

Consider what this means for the global-warming hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts that global temperatures will rise significantly, indeed catastrophically, if atmospheric carbon dioxide rises. Most of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has occurred during the past 50 years, and the increase has continued during the past 20 years. Yet there has been no significant increase in atmospheric temperature during those 50 years, and during the 20 years with the highest carbon dioxide levels, temperatures have decreased.

In science, the ultimate test is the process of experiment. If a hypothesis fails the experimental test, it must be discarded. Therefore, the scientific method requires that the global warming hypothesis be rejected.

Why, then, is there continuing scientific interest in "global warming"? There is a field of inquiry in which scientists are using computers to try to predict the weather--even global weather over very long periods. But global weather is so complicated that current data and computer methods are insufficient to make such predictions. Although it is reasonable to hope that these methods will eventually become useful, for now computer climate models are very unreliable. The second chart shows predicted temperatures for the past 20 years, based on the computer models. It's not surprising that they should have turned out wrong--after all the weatherman still has difficulty predicting local weather even for a few days. Long-term global predictions are beyond current capabilities.

So we needn't worry about human use of hydrocarbons warming the Earth. We also needn't worry about environmental calamities, even if the current, natural warming trend continues: After all the Earth has been much warmer during the past 3,000 years without ill effects.

But we should worry about the effects of the hydrocarbon rationing being proposed at Kyoto. Hydrocarbon use has major environmental benefits. A great deal of research has shown that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide accelerate the growth rates of plants and also permit plants to grow in drier regions. Animal life, which depends upon plants, also increases.

Standing timber in the United States has already increased by 30% since 1950. There are now 60 tons of timber for every American. Tree-ring studies further confirm this spectacular increase in tree growth rates. It has also been found that mature Amazonian rain forests are increasing in biomass at about two tons per acre per year. A composite of 279 research studies predicts that overall plant growth rates will ultimately double as carbon dioxide increases.

Lush Environment

What mankind is doing is moving hydrocarbons from below ground and turning them into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with twice as much plant and animal life as that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the industrial revolution.

Hydrocarbons are needed to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe. This can eventually allow all human beings to live long, prosperous, healthy, productive lives. No other single technological factor is more important to the increase in the quality, length and quantity of human life than the continued, expanded and unrationed use of the Earth's hydrocarbons, of which we have proven reserves to last more than 1,000 years. Global warming is a myth. The reality is that global poverty and death would be the result of Kyoto's rationing of hydrocarbons.

Arthur Robinson and Zachary Robinson are chemists at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.

1- He has 6 kids and practices homeschooling. Arthur is the father, Zachary is one of his sons. http://www.home-school.com/experts/science/

2- He publishes a non-peer reviewed newsletter called Access to Energy. http://www.oism.org/oism/s32p29.htm
More about it:

This is one of those rare newsletters that does not stop with just publication, but goes into effective action for the causes it espouses._ The latest instance of this is the Petition Project - an anti-global warming petition signed by over 17,000 scientists - which exposes Al Gore's "scientific consensus" on global warming as phony._ This Petition Project was funded by subscriptions and donations from the readers of Access to Energy . See Global Warming Debunking News and Views for more.

3- He lives on a 350 acres farm in southern Oregon.
http://www.independentscientist.com/
Sure, I `d be for coal burning to, if I had 350 acres of forrest around me.

A short distance from the farm house there stand several buildings of steel construction. The largest, with 10,000 square feet of floor space, houses the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, founded by Art Robinson in 1980. Inside there was an electrical hum, but few people. Jane Orient of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, visiting from Tucson, was working alone in the small library. Some of the labs are unused, others contain equipment-vials, bottles, a cryogenic freezer-that was mostly bought at auction. The mass spectrometer cost $150,000 second hand. "It's a miracle in a box," Art says. Mass spectrometers were used at Oak Ridge to help develop the atomic bomb, but this version is many times more powerful. Robinson is using it to work on "molecular clocks" in the body. This could shed light on one of the greatest unsolved problems of biochemistry—aging. "It's not understood at all," he says.

Art has no employees—another triumph of the computer revolution. But his children help out as lab assistants, and recently Noah became a full-fledged co-worker.

Okay, so he has made his own institute where he employs his kids. Weird, but why not...Let us try to find a list of his peer reviewed publications now...well, I am still searching. Let us check the website of his institute: http://www.oism.org/

No publication list there. Under Robinson, it says:

Dr. Robinson conducts research on protein chemistry and on nutrition and predictive and preventive medicine. He also works on civil defense and on development of home schooling techniques and edits the newsletter Access to Energy. Dr. Robinson was a faculty member of the University of California at San Diego and was President and Research Director of the Linus Pauling Institute before founding the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine with his wife Laurelee, who was also a scientist.

Conclusion: Arthur Robinson is an outcast scientist, does not teach in any University, and I have yet to see any peer reviewed paper he has written.

Aurel

More about the Robinsons:

I finally found some papers from them, none of which has anything to do with global warming:



2. Robinson, A. B., McKerrow, J. H. & Cary, P. (1970) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA
66, 753–757.
3. Robinson, A. B., Scotchler, J. W. & McKerrow, J. H. (1973) J. Am. Chem. Soc.
95, 8156–8159.
4. Robinson, A. B. (1974) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 71, 885–888.
5. Scotchler, J. W. & Robinson, A. B. (1974) Anal. Biochem. 59, 319–322.
6. Robinson, A. B. & Rudd, C. (1974) Curr. Top. Cell. Reg. 8, 247–295.
7. Robinson, A. B. & Scotchler, J. W. (1974) Int. J. Pept. Protein Res. 6, 279–282.
8. McKerrow, J. H. & Robinson, A. B. (1971) Anal. Biochem. 42, 565–568.
9. Robinson, A. B. & Robinson, L. R. (1991) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 88,
8880–8884.
10. Robinson, N. E. & Robinson, A. B. (2001) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98,
944–949.
11. Flatmark, T. & Sletten, K. (1968) J. Biol. Chem. 243, 1623–1629.
12. Robinson, A. B., McKerrow, J. H. & Legaz, M. (1974) Int. J. Pept. Protein Res.
6, 31–35.
13. McKerrow, J. H. & Robinson, A. B. (1974) Science 183, 85.
14. Robinson, N. E., Robinson, A. B. & Merrifield, R. B. (2001) J. Peptide Res. 57,
483–493.
15. Robinson, N. E. & Robinson, A. B. (2001) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98,
4367–4372.
16. Robinson, N. E. & Robinson, A. B. (2001) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98,
12409–12413.
17. Robinson, A. B. & Pauling, L. (1974) Clin. Chem. 20, 961–965.

But look at the dates : most of them are more than 20 years old, and the recent ones are cowritten with the son, Noah (N.E.) who works at caltech. It seems that when daddy got the money ($575,000) from the lawsuit with Pauling, he stopped publishing. Hell, why would he have to if he could live off his farm and sell self-teaching cdroms ? If I dig a little more, I may very well find that his institute is receiving monetary donations from big oil companies. Should I dig more ?

Aurel

Ohh Aurel, don't let the facts come in the way of Slackers crusade to teach us that whole world is against US.

It's like explaining Big-Bang to religious fanatic. Facts just don't work...he already decided that he's right and no amount of research an/or evidence will make him change his mind.

Internet allows you to publicate just about everything, and normal process of scientific review doesn't apply. This is gold-mine for fanatics trying to "convert the infidels" beacuse there is a sea of dubious data that can be used as "proof". For a layman, all those articles look like proper scientific articles. If you don't have any menas (or in Slackers case, interest) of researching the background then it will look like "proof of what you always been suspecting".

There is great "info" in internet for every loon and conspiracy freak so most of the times it's just easier to let them play and do their "thang". ;)

Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth

I really like the conclusions :rolleyes:
“Lush Environment
What mankind is doing is moving hydrocarbons from below ground and turning them into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with twice as much plant and animal life as that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the industrial revolution.
Hydrocarbons are needed to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe. This can eventually allow all human beings to live long, prosperous, healthy, productive lives. No other single technological factor is more important to the increase in the quality, length and quantity of human life than the continued, expanded and unrationed use of the Earth's hydrocarbons, of which we have proven reserves to last more than 1,000 years. Global warming is a myth. The reality is that global poverty and death would be the result of Kyoto's rationing of hydrocarbons.”

Are these guys real schientithts??? :eek:
1000 years? Wow that’s a long time. We’ll all be living under big bubbles on the moon by then, so why worry :)



The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) does agree that there is currently no way to distinguish between mankind’s effects on climate change & natural occurrences. That’s about it though. Their data seems to disprove concepts like the ‘little ice age’ that supposedly only happened 300 years ago & the claims that there has not been significant warming over the past 50 years. The Global Warming Myth guys are not too big on sources- I’m assuming the article is a compressed version of a full book, so maybe they do have some somewhere?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1100054405.jpg

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/pdf/WG1_TAR-FRONT.PDF:D

Dude, I feel like you just repeated all I have posted before...Nevermind, I may have just been right :cool:

Aurel

Honestly, Goran, that whole "externality" focus is an awfully antiquated, PIGOVIAN way of analyzing the world. Your understanding of nuisance theory could use an update. Can I suggest a quick read through of Webb v. Spur Industries?

Also, your comments about JP's "agenda" and likening him to a religious fanatic are uncalled for, asinine, and ad hominem. Please try to control yourself.

When Is Global Warming Really a Cooling?

By Roy Spencer Published 05/05/2004

http://www.techcentralstation.com/050504H.html


TCS


http://www.techcentralstation.com/im...504H_large.jpg

Much media attention is focusing on the forthcoming big-budget climate disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow" and how much scrutiny the "science" on which it is based deserves. But there are some developments in the world of serious climate science that certainly deserve greater scrutiny.


A new paper1 appearing today in the journal Nature purports to solve the long standing "problem" of the satellite-based global temperature record not showing much warming over the last 25 years (only +0.085 deg C/decade -- about a third of what is expected from climate models for the troposphere). Instead, all it does is help answer the question: "is the quality of peer review in the popular science journals getting worse?" (The answer is "yes.")



By way of background, the Microwave Sounding Units (MSU) on the NOAA polar orbiting satellites measure deep layers of the atmosphere, with each instrument channel measuring the average temperature of a different layer (see Fig. 1). John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and I discovered in 1990 that these instruments were so stable in their calibration that we have been using them ever since for climate monitoring of tropospheric and lower stratospheric temperatures since the satellite record began in 1978.



The lowest layer (the troposphere) is measured by channel 2, and this is where global warming is supposed to occur. The lower stratospheric layer is measured by MSU channel 4. Christy and I have measured substantial cooling (-0.47 deg. C/decade) in this layer over the same 25 year period.



But because the layers measured by the satellite are so thick, there is a intermingling of the warming and cooling signals. This means that warming in the tropospheric channel would be partly cancelled by stratospheric cooling occurring in the upper portion of this layer. Because of this problem, we devised a lower tropospheric retrieval2 based upon different Earth viewing angles from the MSU tropospheric channel. As can be seen in the accompanying figure, this removes the stratospheric influence and so allows us to monitor the lower and middle troposphere for signs of global warming.


http://www.techcentralstation.com/im...pencerfig1.gif


Fig. 1 Microwave Sounding Unit weighting functions for channels 2 and 4, along with derived weighting functions meant to remove the influence of lower stratospheric cooling on MSU channel 2 by Spencer & Christy (1992, "TLT") and Fu et al. (2004). The Fu et al. weighting function shows substantial negative weight above 100 hPa, a pressure altitude above which strong cooling has been observed by weather balloon data. This leads to a misinterpretation of stratospheric cooling as tropospheric warming.



Enter the new Nature study. The authors, noticing that channel 4 measures the extreme upper portion of the layer that channel 2 measures (see Fig. 1), decided to use the MSU channel 4 to remove the stratospheric influence on MSU channel 2. At first, this sounds like a reasonable approach. We also tried this thirteen years ago. But we quickly realized that in order for two channels to be combined in a physically meaningful way, they must have a large percentage of overlap. As can be seen in Fig. 1, there is very little overlap between these two channels. When a weighted difference is computed between the two channels in an attempt to measure just the tropospheric temperature, an unavoidable problem surfaces: a large amount of negative weight appears in the stratosphere. What this means physically is that any attempt to correct the tropospheric channel in this fashion leads to a misinterpretation of stratospheric cooling as tropospheric warming. It would be possible for their method to work (through serendipity) if the temperature trends from the upper troposphere to the lower stratosphere were constant with height, but they are not. In this instance, the negative (shaded) area for the Fu et al. weighting function in Fig. 1 would be cancelled out by its positive area above about 200 millibars. Unfortunately, weather balloon evidence suggests the trends change from warming to strong cooling over this altitude range.



This kind of mistake would not get published with adequate peer review of manuscripts submitted for publication. But in recent years, a curious thing has happened. The popular science magazines, Science and Nature, have seemingly stopped sending John Christy and me papers whose conclusions differ from our satellite data analysis. This is in spite of the fact that we are (arguably) the most qualified people in the field to review them. This is the second time in nine months that these journals have let papers be published in the satellite temperature monitoring field that had easily identifiable errors in their methodology.



I will admit to being uneasy about airing scientific dirty laundry in an op-ed. But as long as these popular science journals insist on putting news value ahead of science, then I have little choice. The damage has already been done. A paper claiming to falsify our satellite temperature record has been published in the "peer reviewed" literature, and the resulting news reports will never be taken back. This is one reason increasing numbers of scientists regard Science and Nature as "gray" scientific literature.



1. Fu, Q., C.M. Johanson, S.G. Warren, and D.J. Seidel, 2004: Contribution of stratospheric cooling to satellite-inferred tropospheric temperature trends. Nature, 429, 55-58.



2. Spencer, R.W., and J.R. Christy, 1992: Precision and radiosonde validation of satellite gridpoint temperature anomalies, Part II: A tropospheric retrieval and trends during 1979-90. J. Climate, 5, 858-866.