Climate change: is the science really settled?

[fastpat]

Originally posted by Jim Richards
Glad I could make a valuable contribution to science.

All you need is faith in a belief.

[jluetjen]

Originally posted by Jim Richards
I'm not so sure about Greenland. After all, Erik the Red and some of his buddies settled on the grass-fringed fjords of Greenland. Maybe a small part of Greenland isn't hollow. I think you should assume somewhere between 5 and 10% is not hollow. Sound good?

It's funny, that whole "Iceland" and "Greenland" naming thing is one of the best examples of marketing that I'm aware of from that era.

1) Iceland has little or no ice on it, but was apparently named that way to discourage other people from going there.

2) Greenland has little if any green on it, and was apparently named that way to encourage people to colonize it.

[Jim Richards]

The Vikings were shucksters. You really had to watch your wallet around Erik the Red.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by Jim Richards
The Vikings were shucksters. You really had to watch your wallet around Erik the Red.

The guy sold real estate in Canada as a summer vacation spot.

[island911]

Originally posted by fastpat
All you need is faith in a belief.

n'no, Pat, this is science. So really what we need is for 90% of us to say we believe. --consensus makes it true.

[Scooter]

Please, someone that is knowledgeable about such things, explain how the decrease in emissions since 1970 affect the current warming trend? See stats from the Environmental Protection Agency here. I am not a scientist, but maybe, just maybe, we are already doing what needs to be done (at least to a greater extent than we are given credit) to correct the harms the previous generations have done?

I don't deny warming, but I also don't think we should implement new strategies at a great cost, just because it is the politically correct thing to do at the moment.

I posted in a similar thread, but this thread is getting more attention, so I wanted to post here as well.

[Aurel]

If you own of Porsche, you ought to disbeleive the impact of emissions on global warming, by solidarity with the marque:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=home&sid=a46FG2hBzreg

Aurel

[JSDSKI]

Scooter -

Things we currently do to decrease emissions (mostly automotive and mostly in US and Europe) positively reduce greenhouse gases.

Those who believe the global warming hypothesis model(s) report that industrial energy use increases global warming because the rate of new industrialization (mostly in China, India and other countries) and the increased fossil fuel use adds more greenhouse gases than current EPA standards can reduce.

Those who do not believe in the global warming model(s) say that it doesn't matter what we do - mankind has no real effect on the global climate or its naturally induced warming or cooling cycles.

[Jim Richards]

Pirates are the answer...

[Moneyguy1]

Move to Pittsburgh? I will make sacrifices, but not that!!

[cmccuist]

Getting back to the population density question - the area of TX is 163, 707 square miles. If there are 6.5 billion people, that works out to a population density of about 40,000/sq mile or 62 people per acre.

Manhattan has a population density of 67,000/sq mile or 104 people per acre.

You can forget about grazing cattle, riding horses, parking your fifth wheel trailor or having a JR Ewing sized spread.

The ROW would be a pretty lonely place with everyone living in the lone star state!

[Jim Richards]

Originally posted by Moneyguy1
Move to Pittsburgh? I will make sacrifices, but not that!!

I was thinking more along the lines of "of the Caribbean."

[Moneyguy1]

I thought the Pirates were in Pittsburgh. You learn something every day!!

[fastpat]

Originally posted by Moneyguy1
I thought the Pirates were in Pittsburgh. You learn something every day!!

We're everywhere.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by Scooter
Please, someone that is knowledgeable about such things, explain how the decrease in emissions since 1970 affect the current warming trend? See stats from the Environmental Protection Agency here. I am not a scientist, but maybe, just maybe, we are already doing what needs to be done (at least to a greater extent than we are given credit) to correct the harms the previous generations have done?

I don't deny warming, but I also don't think we should implement new strategies at a great cost, just because it is the politically correct thing to do at the moment.

I posted in a similar thread, but this thread is getting more attention, so I wanted to post here as well.

Reducing exhaust emissions reduces localized environmental chemical pollution, it has no effect on climate at all.

Not responding to your post specifically, what is happening is that we're probably in a cyclical upswing in temperature, an event that has happened many times over the millenia. Today, the only change is that various groups that have been seeking methods of controlling successful countries and individual freedom for "social justice" purposes, that is to say the same tired, 150 year old socialist nonsense, have grabbed onto Global Warming as a method of acquiring power at a time when their socialist claptrap is being thrown on the dung heap of history where it belongs.

It's a power grab, pure and simple.

[JSDSKI]

Yeah, here's another guy intimately involved in the international "socio-fascist" conspiracy - Steven Hawking - because 65 year old physicists in wheelchairs have that sick power grabbing ego thing going on. They just can't help themselves.

In an ABC News interview in August 2006, Hawking explained, "The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of methane, trapped as hydrates on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so further global warming. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can."

[fastpat]

Originally posted by JSDSKI
Yeah, here's another guy intimately involved in the international "socio-fascist" conspiracy - Steven Hawking - because 65 year old physicists in wheelchairs have that sick power grabbing ego thing going on. They just can't help themselves.

In an ABC News interview in August 2006, Hawking explained, "The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of methane, trapped as hydrates on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so further global warming. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can."

Proving that even an otherwise brilliant physicist can be wrong at the silly level about some things. Good for a laugh, though. Polar ice caps reflecting enery back into the sky, keeping things colder, now that is funny.

[turbocarrera]

I love it, fastpat vs Hawking.

Here's another brilliant physicist for you to castigate.

"The economic anarchy of capitalist society is the real source of the evil. Socialism is mankind's only hope." - Albert Einstein - Monthly Review, New York, May, 1949

[ckissick]

Originally posted by fastpat
Proving that even an otherwise brilliant physicist can be wrong at the silly level about some things. Good for a laugh, though. Polar ice caps reflecting energy back into the sky, keeping things colder, now that is funny.

Actually, Pat, ice does reflect energy back into space, keeping us cooler. But we still came out of the last ice age and many others before, without the help of cars and factories. Also, pollen data show that the Amazon rain forest was doing just fine 14,000 to 30,000 years ago, when it was cooler and drier. Read the quote below from a paper in the October 4, 1996 issue of Science.

"Since the Amazon basin appears to have maintained its rain forest environment in spite of a five- to six-degree C temperature fluctuation during the last Ice Age, Colinvaux believes it probably did so during all previous Ice Ages as well. "If this is true, then the Amazon rain forest has existed for two million years and is an example of an extremely resistant ecosystem," he said."

"Co-authors on the Science paper include P.E. De Oliveira of the Chicago Field Museum, J.E. Moreno and M.C. Miller of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and M.B. Bush of Duke University."

It seems Hawking was not peer reviewed in his statement.

[JSDSKI]

Originally posted by ckissick
"... Colinvaux believes it probably did so during all previous Ice Ages as well. "If this is true, then the Amazon rain forest has existed for two million years and is an example of an extremely resistant ecosystem," he said."

On the other hand, like Hawking, Colinvaux expresses a BELIEF, not a hypothesis and qualifies his BELIEF with an IF statement. I don't know if any data supports his theory regarding rain forests and I don't know if rain forests, complete with flora and fauna, survived the ice ages in the form we know them today. I'd certainly be interested in that info. Links ?

My point was political as well. I am still waiting for the rational explanation of the vast world wide "socio-fascist" conspiracy power grab that is behind current global warming data from the supporters of the aptly named "junk science".