GENIUS FORUMS

This just came out on DVD a few days ago and I think it's really good. Global warming is something that needs to be addressed right away. The SCOTUS will soon decide whether or not the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide emissions:

An Inconvenient Case for Supreme Court

An Inconvenient Case for Supreme Court
By JESS BRAVIN
November 25, 2006; Page A2

WASHINGTON -- Things are bound to heat up at the Supreme Court Wednesday, when justices weigh whether the Clean Air Act requires the Bush administration to do something about global warming.

In the late 1990s, the Clinton administration determined that greenhouse gasses -- such as auto emissions, which contribute to global climate change -- fell under the Environmental Protection Agency's jurisdiction. Challenged by then-Rep. Tom DeLay (R., Texas) at a 1998 congressional hearing, the EPA produced a legal opinion concluding that carbon dioxide could be regulated if the agency determined it contributed to "adverse effects on public health, welfare or the environment."

Environmental groups asked the EPA to act. But the agency, moving at its glacial pace, didn't respond until 2003, when a different regulatory climate prevailed in Washington. The Bush administration rejected the petition, along with the Clinton EPA's legal opinion. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses aren't "air pollutants" as defined by the Clean Air Act and, even if they were, Congress hadn't authorized the EPA to do anything about them, the administration concluded.

What's ridiculous to me is how the EPA took five years to decide something that's been studied since the 1950's. Is it time to clean up the EPA or what? How the hell do those people get in there in the first place? We should think about forming an APA - Agency Protection Agency - to protect our agencies from malign forces.

I think everyone should see "An Inconvenient Truth". It makes a compelling case. I only wish it went more into how rapid the rate of change is as systems fall out of balance. They're so rapid that the effects are totally unpredictable. If an environmental system is destabilized, scientists can no longer use the stability to make accurate predictions. And that's kind of a euphemization of the issue--the real issue is that our models aren't complete and environmental conditions are changing faster than we can comprehend the changes and update our models.

For example, there was a huge ice shelf in the Antarctic that scientists knew was melting and they made a prediction about how fast it would melt, but what they didn't realize is how much the pools of melt water on the surface of the ice would accelerate the melting of the shelf, as well as other unforeseen factors, and it wound up disappearing much, much faster than they predicted. These environmental systems we're trying to understand are just too complex for us to fully predict.

Not that we should care about predicting it. I mean, we know global warming is happening and is going to cause huge problems, so how much more information do we need? People just don't want to deal with it and they're using the limitations of science as an excuse to do nothing. But the limitations of science aren't useful, so why do we give credence to those who want to use them? What we should be using is science's strengths, and the strengths of science say that global warming is happening and the consequences will happen soon. The limitations prevent us from knowing exactly when they will happen, but the strengths tell us that they will happen and happen pretty soon. That's more than enough information.

Anyway, I just think it's sad how few people are paying attention to this. Hopefully this video will increase public awareness and concern for the long-term consequences of our actions.

Man made global warming is a lie that will be used to justify the decimation of human economies, and subsequently, humans. It's perfect ruse for you nihilists on here. DEATH MEME!

millipodium wrote:Man made global warming is a lie that will be used to justify the decimation of human economies, and subsequently, humans. It's perfect ruse for you nihilists on here. DEATH MEME!

While I accept that global warming is happening, and is very likely to cause catastophic changes, I'm not entirely convinced that it is caused by humans, or at least that there aren't other significant factors - huge climatic shifts happened before humans were around.

I haven't yet seen An Inconvenient Truth. Does it address that question?

Yeah. What they did was take core samples of ice at the Antarctica and they can figure out how cold it was and how much carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere at the time the layer of ice was created by the snowfall freezing and thawing or whatever, and what they found is that the two levels are closely correlated through the last 650,000 years. He had some graphs of this data and the way it fluctuated and spiked up in the last 100 years far higher than it's ever been makes it pretty clear that something is definitely different.

Here's their website: http://www.climatecrisis.net

Matt Gregory wrote:Yeah. What they did was take core samples of ice at the Antarctica and they can figure out how cold it was and how much carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere at the time the layer of ice was created by the snowfall freezing and thawing or whatever, and what they found is that the two levels are closely correlated through the last 650,000 years. He had some graphs of this data and the way it fluctuated and spiked up in the last 100 years far higher than it's ever been makes it pretty clear that something is definitely different.

Here's their website: http://www.climatecrisis.net

What two levels are correlated? and what does it mean to be "correlated through" a number of years, 650,000 in this case? And what is the significance of 650,000 years?

millipodium wrote:What two levels are correlated? and what does it mean to be "correlated through" a number of years,

They graphed the amount of carbon dioxide and the temperature over a period of 650,000 years and the two curves were very similar. There's a graph of it at http://www.theclimateproject.org Click on "Fact & Figures" and click twice to bring up the third graph where it says "Click screen to continue".

650,000 in this case? And what is the significance of 650,000 years?

It's the amount of time that was on the graph. Beyond that I'm not sure. It could be a reflection of the depth of the ice or a limitation of their measuring techniques or something.

DHodges wrote:

millipodium wrote:Man made global warming is a lie that will be used to justify the decimation of human economies, and subsequently, humans. It's perfect ruse for you nihilists on here. DEATH MEME!

While I accept that global warming is happening, and is very likely to cause catastophic changes, I'm not entirely convinced that it is caused by humans, or at least that there aren't other significant factors - huge climatic shifts happened before humans were around.

I haven't yet seen An Inconvenient Truth. Does it address that question?

Well, climactic change has always taken place - as we can prove through ice core samples or diatom samples from the ocean floor. The problem with "has always happened" is that we can look at different factors that have historically been correlated with climate change: the exact angle of the planet's tilt being the one I can remember right off the top of my head. When we look at these factors it turns out the Earth should be in a significant cooling period.

And yet it's heating up. Why?

Greenhouse gasses are one possible answer, but they are correlated doesn't mean one causes the other or that the causation is in the direction we think.

-Rory

No, but the fact that scientists are unanimous about greenhouse gases being the cause is a pretty good indicator. They haven't proven that tobacco causes lung cancer either beyond the correlative evidence. Really, correlation is all science has to work with as Hume pointed out.

Rory wrote:

DHodges wrote:While I accept that global warming is happening, and is very likely to cause catastophic changes, I'm not entirely convinced that it is caused by humans, or at least that there aren't other significant factors - huge climatic shifts happened before humans were around.

I haven't yet seen An Inconvenient Truth. Does it address that question?

Well, climactic change has always taken place - as we can prove through ice core samples or diatom samples from the ocean floor. The problem with "has always happened" is that we can look at different factors that have historically been correlated with climate change: the exact angle of the planet's tilt being the one I can remember right off the top of my head. When we look at these factors it turns out the Earth should be in a significant cooling period.

And yet it's heating up. Why?

Greenhouse gasses are one possible answer, but they are correlated doesn't mean one causes the other or that the causation is in the direction we think.

-Rory

I didn't really understand either until I saw the movie. Now I'm pretty convinced we did this, but in addition to the suggestions highlighted by the movie, I see some more areas where we could help.

According to the movie, about 30% of the world CO2 emissions are from wildfires - and it showed how there are so many of them in Africa that they can be seen from space. Instead of spending all this money on wars, can't we chip in to put out the wildfires?

The movie talked about the fresh water shortages and soil drying, but if we put up enough desalination plants and irrigated the areas that are drying (and restored the fauna and flora) that would both bring enough water to the people and help reduce the greenhouse gasses through the new plant growth.

The sane disposition to adopt, and indeed the properly scientific one, is to work on the assumption human activity is the cause. It's too significant a thing for us not to adopt that posture, plus if we change our behaviour we can then look for positive effects of that change and more solidly assume correlation.

The real problem is that we have too many superstitious and religious twats in the world who have no interest in taking a sane or scientific stance.

Iolaus wrote:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/debate/singer.html

This guy sounds distinctly like a 7-day creationist. Bad or outdated science, conveniently ignoring facts, and building up strawmen. Nonetheless I'm bored.

Climate change is a natural phenomenon. Climate keeps changing all the time. The fact that climate changes is not in itself a threat, because, obviously, in the past human beings have adapted to all kinds of climate changes.

Well, yes, human beings can adapt to climate change much more easily than other animals, and especially plants can. We can put on clothes, burn more fossel fuels (leading to a cycle), and theoretically invent some new technology to keep our houses more insulated.

On the other hand, trees cannot do so. Have you ever climbed a large mountain? I'm talking like one of the 14ers in the Rockies or something? When you do, there are solid lines - you can see which species of tree exists at which point with almost no overlap between the zones. When you actually get to the line where the trees meet, you find a lot of dead trees. Ring dating shows us that the deaths of these trees is very closely correlated to times of temperature change at that specific locaion.

Warm it up enough, and the trees at the top of the mountain go extinct. "Well, that's OK, really, because on a mountain they have no where to go. But the ground level we really have Canada!" Sure. And there have been times when the fossil record of pollenation has shown that tree species now only found in Canada were in the US and times when those found only in the US were in Canada.

I guess the other argument you could make is "so what? It's just some trees." In which case I would point out that the corn and wheat grown in the interior of the US is all just plants, too. What happened last time the interior stopped being able to grow food? Oh, yeah, I think that was a little thing called the Great Depression.

Well, there's no question in my mind that humanity is able to affect climate on a local scale. We all know that cities are warmer than the suburbs or surrounding countryside. So there's clear indication that human beings, in producing energy, in just living, generate heat. We're not going to go back to living without energy.

Whether or not human beings can produce a global climate change is an important question. This question is not at all settled. It can only be settled by actual measurements, data.

OK, so, what he's trying to tell us here is that we are going to affect the climate when we build cities, and when cities grow, but these changes might not effect change in the global climate. However, we know, if nothing else, that humans like to move to cities. City sizes are growing, and expanding constantly. Which means that local temperatures are going to continue to go up, and they are going to continue to go up in more places. Sounds like he just proved his opponents' point.

For example, the data show that the climate warmed between 1900 and 1940, long before humanity used much energy.

What? You mean the climate warmed in the decades following the industrial revolution? You have a bizzare definition of "much" here. Humanity was using much more than it ever had before, even if it wasn't "much" by our standards. So, more industrailization, more polluiton, more warming. A lot more warming, actually. Just like a creationist, really, babbling about something and hoping no one will think about what was just said

But then the climate cooled between 1940 and 1975.

Ah, what's this? The entire world goes into The Great Depression. Factories all over Europe and America start shutting down or dramatically cutting production. And the climate cools. Who knew? :) (and, yes, there is some delay between cause and effect)

But counterbalancing this is the fact that more water will evaporate from the ocean because it's now warmer. And this will come down as rain all over the earth. And some of the rain will come down over the Antarctic, where it will turn into ice and accumulate.

Except that the Antarctic glaciers are also melting. So the amount that gets added to the top of them has to counterbalance their melting, the mountain glaciers melting, etc. An awful hard thing for them to accomplish given the relatively small amount of preciptiation that makes it over the antarctic - indeed, most of Antarctica is a desert.

But just for a minute, let's pretend that we did manage to decrease the size of the ocean instead of increasing it. Is this actually any better? See, here's the problem - the amount of salt in the ocean remains constant. So if we suddenly had less water, the salinity of the ocean would increase. Many species, especially of coral are extremely sensitive to salinity changes. What happens to the bottom of the food chain eventually reaches the top. :)

You can see that if you only calculate temperature, winds, and so on at intervals of 200 miles, then you cannot depict clouds, or even cloud systems, which are much smaller. So until the models have a good enough resolution to be capable of depicting clouds, it's very difficult to put much faith in them.

Evolution is false, too, because there is a "Missing Link!"

They're tweaked. I think that's a polite way of putting it. They're adjusted, or tweaked, until they produce the present climate and the present short-term variation.

So first he has a problem because the models don't match current conditions. Then he has a problem when people change the models to find a way that they do match current conditions. That is simply called technological advancement. Did your program work? No? OK why not? Go back and fix it.

Why do some models predict a warming for a doubling of CO2, of, let's say, five degrees Centigrade--which is eight degrees Fahrenheit)--and why do other models predict something like one degree?

And why in your argument do you post stuff that contradicts yourself? First you were telling me everything is OK because you predict a cooling, and now you are telling me that actually everyone is predicting a warming.

OK Actually, I'm bored now, so I'll just finish up with his last quote

Let's face it. People like warmer climates. There's a good reason why much of the U.S. population is moving into the Sun Belt, and not just people who are retiring

Oh. Well then. Destroy the planet for better beach weather. :) [/i]

Who can judge or predict the political nature of science? Thank God for maveriks.

But the real question, which we have yet to come to terms with - is not not what science can do for us, but what we can do with science.

Matt Gregory wrote:No, but the fact that scientists are unanimous about greenhouse gases being the cause is a pretty good indicator.

Warning: iconoclastic statement ahead!
Assuming all the above is true, who is to say global warming is such a bad thing? There are going to be winners and losers for sure, for example the Far North will become more hospitable (ever look at how much of the earth's landmass is in Siberia, Alaska & Canada?) Overall the system will tend to self-correct: more CO2 in the atmosphere means a better growing envoronment for plants, higher earth heat index will mean more cloud cover, etc. Ice Ages are what really suck. Besides, we'll hit the wall of fossil fuel consumption (the primary contributor to the greenhouse effect) economically as well as socially before the climactic stuff becomes a determinant factor.

reedsch wrote:Assuming all the above is true, who is to say global warming is such a bad thing? There are going to be winners and losers for sure

The losing areas - from a human perspective - are likely to be the areas that are currently doing the best, and those losses could be catastrophic. Winning areas, conversely, will likely improve slowly, and will probably be areas that are currently uninhabited or lightly settled.

Also, the medium-term effect of global warming is increased instability, not a uniform warming. This is particularly bad for agriculture, which does best when there is a predictable pattern of weather over a year - for instance, a regular amount of rain, versus floods and droughts.

DHodges wrote: The losing areas - from a human perspective - are likely to be the areas that are currently doing the best, and those losses could be catastrophic.

I could stay on the Contrarian track for awhile, but that would become predictable and therefore boring. As would coming off as an apologist for the status quo: the cure for excess CO2 emissions is $5 a gallon gas. Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a rough ride!

And I stand by the statment that most of the really dangerous global climate stuff (as opposed to localized negativa i.e. droughts and floods) has been associated with cooling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

Climatic stability is a bit of an oxymoron anyway

I find it interesting how global warming started increasing significantly right around the time humans started testing nuclear weapons. I wonder how much nuclear weapons testing and the accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island contributed to global warming. I'm not convinced that anyone has fully looked into the full global implications (not sure if they are even really able to), including the long term environmental consequences, of these matters, although there have been some studies..

I do see though that Chernobyl could yet produce a second disaster, and I'm wondering how much the holes in the containment structure are also contributing to the global warming problem.

I don't have any science to back up my above suspicions; it is just curiosity based on common sense.

Cory,

You don't appear to have actually read the article so there's not much to say. But the unexamined life is not worth living.

Matt, you mentioned a consensus. What this man has to say on the consensus is quite damning:

(This is the interviewer) because there are a lot of scientists who feel very passionately there is an issue here. What do you think has been going on? Because there's a tremendous amount of people involved in modeling, an activity which you think is fairly limited in terms of what it's delivered so far. How are they getting away with it?

Well, when you start talking about the question of scientific consensus, I think one should be very careful to say, first of all, that science is not decided by vote. I don't take a poll and then determine what is the correct answer. Science is decided by observations that either confirm or deny a theory, a hypothesis. And if they confirm the theory, you go on to the next set of observations and see whether it still holds. And if it works against the hypothesis, you try to develop a new hypothesis.

That's how science makes progress.

And, in fact, historically, every bit of scientific progress has come about because the observations or the experimental facts did not support the current theory. And, usually, these new experiments were done by a small group, or the new theory was proposed by a single individual, even...
In the climate business, the situation is more complicated because there are also political factors involved, and frankly, there's also money involved. This is an unusual situation. There's no politics attached to the theory of relativity, for example. But there is to climate science. There are no large sums of money attached to relativity, but there are to climate science.

The federal government pumps about $2 billion a year into climate research. Now, this money has to be spent by someone. It supports a lot of jobs. It supports a lot of people. And inevitably, many of these people begin to feel that what they're doing is tremendously important and vital. Otherwise, they couldn't really live with themselves. They've talked themselves into the fact that the work they're doing is somehow helping humanity deal with some kind of a problem.

You're not saying they're dishonest, are you?

I'm not saying that they're dishonest at all. No. No one has been caught falsifying data. No one has been caught falsifying calculations. But inevitably, when you have a particular point of view--(and this works both ways--you tend to suppress facts or data that disagree with your point of view, and you tend to favor data, observations that support your point of view. You become selective in the way you present your observations.

Take an example. Take the UN Science Advisory Group, the IPCC. In their report--which is a very good report, by the way...which is close to 600 pages without an index, so no one really reads it except dedicated people like me--there's a five-page summary of the report that everyone reads, including politicians and the media. And if you look through the summary, you will find no mention of the fact that the weather satellite observations of the last twenty years show no global warming. In fact, a slight cooling. In fact, you will not even find satellites mentioned in the summary.

Now, why is that? These are the only global observations we have. These are the best observations we have. They cover the whole globe. The surface observations don't cover the whole globe. They leave out large chunks of the globe. They don't cover the oceans very well, which is 70 percent of the globe. So you see, the summary uses data selectively, or at least it suppresses data that are inconvenient, that disagree with the paradigm, with what they're trying to prove. This happens often, unfortunately.
+++++++++++++++

So they leave out the most important faact from the 600-page report, and pretend to a consensus which isn't correct. The media falsely report and twist things. I think you'd be in good shape if you have a policy of believing 180 degrees differently than the mainstream media says. In addition to the money motive, there are two more. One, political clout toward repression and totalitarianism. For instance, terrorism is being used to reduce freedom and disable the constitution and bill of rights. Second, there is a tremendous tendency toward fear and negativity in the collective psyche. Apocalyptic fears are deeply embedded in the western mind.

If you google Global Warming Scam, you'll find many more articles showing that there is no consensus, as well as many more good arguments against this particular worry.

You people talk about the herd mentality. What I'm seeing here is pure herd mentality.

1. Most scientists do not believe human activities threaten to disrupt the Earth’s climate. More than 17,000 scientists have signed a petition circulated by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine saying, in part, “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” (Go to http://www.oism.org for the complete petition and names of signers.) Surveys of climatologists show similar skepticism.

On a less negative note...

http://www.josephnewman.com/

But we don't want to be less negative, now do we?

Iolaus wrote: And, in fact, historically, every bit of scientific progress has come about because the observations or the experimental facts did not support the current theory.

That's because confirming our theories wouldn't be newsmaking progress. But it is what happens most frequently. :)

If you google Global Warming Scam, you'll find many more articles showing that there is no consensus, as well as many more good arguments against this particular worry.

Oh, well if google says so... Please, that's even worse than using Wikipedia in an academic debate. Any idiot can make a website and get it on google. At least Wiki has started asking for references!

Iolaus wrote: And if you look through the summary, you will find no mention of the fact that the weather satellite observations of the last twenty years show no global warming. In fact, a slight cooling.

OK. 20 years of cooling. So, 1985 or so, right? Let's see, what happened in 1985 that could account for global cooling... Oh! Wait! I know! We suddenly became conscientious of the fact that we were heating our planet too quickly, and so we started implementing new laws and encouraging people to save fossel fuels! We start asking people not to use aerosol bugsprays. We start requiring emissions checks of vehicles in large cities. We started to fix the things that cause global warming, and suddenly we cool off a bit. You confirm the scientific consensus even in your attempts to fight it. :)

Iolaus wrote:Matt, you mentioned a consensus. What this man has to say on the consensus is quite damning:

[snip]

You people talk about the herd mentality. What I'm seeing here is pure herd mentality.

Well, you don't know what herd mentality is then. It's not herd mentality going with the only source of information available to you. I'm not a climate scientist and can't do the experiments.

And anyway, I never said it was beyond question. But I will say I haven't seen any scientific arguments against it until you showed up with the satellite data. I mean, maybe. I'm sure if it's true everybody will realize it and start saying global warming isn't true.

I'm still for conservation, against deforestation and against pollution.

Rory wrote: Please, that's even worse than using Wikipedia in an academic debate.

Ouch, an unkind cut! Forgive me I didn't know this was an academic debate so I would have to defer to the experts...except as has been noted we're talking as much about politics and economics as raw science so I suppose that leaves the door open a crack so I can toss in my pithy observations and otherwise aspire to witty reparte.

It is hard to get away though from the conclusion that there are other considerations involved. I stand by the assertion that other more pressing bills will come due before the climate issue finally makes its impact felt. And to get back on the contrarian track for a moment, as wars so gloriously prove that destruction is good for the economy, relocating Miami about 50 miles inland would certainly boost the employment statistics. Not that this is somthing we should aspire to, rather make lemonade from lemons, as it were.

Hi Matt-

Well, you don't know what herd mentality is then. It's not herd mentality going with the only source of information available to you.

Yes, it is.

But I will say I haven't seen any scientific arguments against it until you showed up with the satellite data. I mean, maybe. I'm sure if it's true everybody will realize it and start saying global warming isn't true.

Like I said, there's more. For example, during the warming time in the middle ages, it was fully 2 degrees warmer than now, and it was a great boon to the world. Personally, I hope we get a little global warming. I'm hoping it will increase rainfall throughout the dry regions of Africa and Asia.

Overturning the global warming gambit won't be that easy. Why do you think truth and justice always wins? It may eventually, but first we must have the hysteria. Matt, the lies are EVERYWHERE. Medicine, politics, you name it.

I'm still for conservation, against deforestation and against pollution.

Sure, I think my own views on the above are at the far end of the spectrum.