What do you think of global warming?

DanCar, I kind of understand where you're coming from. Certain folks in the GW/CC debate tend to over-dramatize the data because they want to grab people's attention. "Global Warming" has become an easy to use handle in the media to help raise awareness. The downside of this is the "chicken little" / "boy who cried wolf" effect.

However, the "other side" of the debate is just as guilty of obfuscation when they ignore the fact that the vast majority of climate scientists think that the climate will become warmer and will have an adverse affect on our environment.

Now, if all that was reported was the somber scientists saying that they predict a Y degree rise in X years. Then the story would be buried and we most likely wouldn't be having this conversation. So, on the whole I support the dramatizing of this because the balance of the climate scientists seem to think we need to make some changes to avoid future problems.

Personally, I can't debate GW/CC - but this guy can: Dr. James Hansen - he's one of the chief scientists at NASA and political appointees to NASA (i.e appointed due to favorable links with the Bush administration) have spent the last 8 years trying to censor him and his colleagues. Good to see our tax dollars at work, eh?

If I understand correctly you want me to find a better reference for #4? This is the reference that says GW is not contributing to increased hurricane strength?

Hurricanes and Global Warming: Interview with Meteorologist Dr. William Gray

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4403

how do you explain the little ice age? They blamed that on 50 years of the Sun not doing what you say it should do (according to your 25 years of observing), you know, follow the 11 year cycle it is supposed to follow.

Who blames the little ice age on the sun not doing what it should (Maunder Minimum)? If that logic was true, and you say we're 2 years behind schedule (still sitting at the low point of a solar cycle), shouldn't we be experiencing a lower average annual temperature? Since no/little sunspot activity should produce colder weather like during the little ice age, why are we breaking heat records for the past ten years?

Reference 4 says at least 30 scientific organizations endorse global warming. There is no valid reference for this. If you try to track down the references they talk about climate change.

If you click on "thirty organizations" it is a link that takes you to this article that lists the organizations and summarizes their positions. I spot checked a handful and they use the phrases "global warming" and "climate change" interchangeably. This seems a little sloppy to me, but maybe something was lost in translation. For example the abstract for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report says

"It is unequivocal that the climate is changing, and
it is very likely that this is predominantly caused
by the increasing human interference with the
atmosphere. These changes will transform the
environmental conditions on Earth unless
counter-measures are taken."

later on, however, they say:

"The problem is not yet insoluble, but becomes more
difficult with each passing day. A goal of confining global
warming to an average of 2 centigrade degrees above
pre-industrial levels would be very challenging, and even
this amount of warming would be likely to have some
severe impacts."

No, I'm not asking you to do anything.

I understand this, but you seemed to be genuinely inquisitive and have an open mind. Many people have their minds made up one way or another largely based on political ideology which is sad. For anyone who is willing to read and understand there is plenty of good evidence out there; it can just be a little tricky to track down the primary sources.

Hurricanes and Global Warming: Interview with Meteorologist Dr. William Gray

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4403

Is this the same Dr. Gray whose hurricane prediction models, which are based solely on historical data because he does not accept global warming, have been horribly wrong in recent years? Is this the same Dr. Gray who made headlines with his "proof" that "global cooling" is actually happening and that would be reflected in ocean measurements by 2008-2010; who had to modify that prediction in 2008 to "within the next ten years"?

NSF continues to fund Dr. Gray's hurricane research, in spite of the fact that his recent work has received very poor peer reviews. The scientific community benefits from wrong hypotheses as much as from right hypotheses - and in that sense Dr. Gray is making an important contribution.

NSF continues to fund Dr. Gray's hurricane research, in spite of the fact that his recent work has received very poor peer reviews.

I find hurricane prediction vastly amusing, and I can't see why the NSF keeps funding it. The predictions are always off, usually far off, and even if the data is right there is nothing that can be done with it. An Atlantic hurricane may hit Venezuela or might hit Maine. Unless you know which, in advance, the information is useless. I am a firm believer in the scientific method, but not all scientists.

I find hurricane prediction vastly amusing, .... The predictions are always off, usually far off, and even if the data is right there is nothing that can be done with it....

Actually no one is getting the pridictions right for the last few years, something to do with (I think I read) high altitude winds blowing the tops off the thunderstorms, so fewer can build to hurricanes.
The season preidctions are like the predictions for winter in the North. Allows you to make an informed decision on how much beforehand prep to do.
BTW not the best (or only source) but the oceans did get cooler
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14944138
There are other sources, although I can not find the original papers.

The same scientist that claim GW is occuring.

Yes the GW increase has been flat for the past five years, with this last year showing a one degree drop reversing the the trend upward.

Deron.

I thought the IPCC was "Hey, let's get all the best scientists from around the world to look at it." Call it whatever -- they said it is "very likely" happening and it is "very likely" we are causing it.

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf

It's like I lit a match, threw it into my house and shut the door. How long should I stand there wondering whether it will burn my house down? I'm putting that sucker out!

Dear Davew, I love you, man! (and that's not just the beer talkin!) You actually ARE the change I wish to become.

I think Al Gore is a WHORE!, and if its any consolation, I ALSO think GW Bush is a WHORE!

Mt St Helens spewed out more Carbon Monoxide than ALL the cars ever produced, and thats not even considering Pinatubo, Krakatoa, or Pompeii.

I was suprised when I first started hearing about GW, and nobody was talking about how a one degree rise in the ocean temp results in more moisture in the upper atmosphere, which then results in more hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes.

I'm just polishing the brass on the Titanic, but what I think everyone should do for the next few years is become part of a website that discusses the viable options available, and promote affordable EV's, like E-Bikes (Hey, wait a minute!...)

After some thought, parts of my previous post were un-called for, and I apologize. My personal opinion of Mr Gore is not pertinent to the important GW/CC debate.

Davew, Reikiman, and Chas maintain a valuable resource in this website, and I thank you. I also appreciate your support of free speech when I have stated opinions that are occasionally contrary to the views of the majority of long-time community members.

I think both sides are spinning report releases, and cherry-picking data to bolster their arguments and promote their agendas.

The only evidenciary data that I have found so far that the environment was in any way substancially different during the age of the giant dinosaurs is from amber voids. They consistently show the oxygen content was about 30%, instead of the current 21%.

When enormous herds of mammoths roamed what is now frozen Siberia, that place was a lush forest, with plenty for them to eat. I'm sure they died out from any one of several documented mega-asteroid strikes. But why didn't the warm lush forests return after a few decades?

During Elizabethan times, the Thames river (London) would freeze solid on occasion, allowing a winter festival.

One of the (many) influences that had an effect on the Viking expansion was an unusually warm climate change that made previously unfarmable and fertile land tillable, leading to much more food, leading to a baby boom.

I'm not in favor of "polluting for fun and profit", city air quality improvements alone have been worth many of the (admittedly forced) industrial improvements.

I read somewhere that the antartic ice cap is growing, while the the northern cap is shrinking, don't know if it's true. I'm just too tired to chase down every single claim anymore, and I don't know what to believe after I've caught both sides in lies and hypocracies.

I posted this here: http://visforvoltage.org/forum/3740-gw-hype-and-environmentalist-costing-us
.....but I think it bears relevance:

Getting people to admit that climate change is real is not difficult.

Getting them to accept responsibility for it is.

Claiming that Global Climate change is Completely Man Made is somewhat overzealous in my opinion. It exposes you to the Ice Age/Interglacial Period argument...i.e. that Global climate change is a natural cycle that has been happening forever and will continue to happen regardless of whether we measly humans are here or not. This rebuttal bears weight, but the indulgent conclusion that our actions have no significance to the larger picture is extremely dangerous, and one that a comfort driven mind can easily jump to.

We need to look at human born carbon emissions as just one piece to the puzzle. In this larger picture the Natural world does have its own cycles. However, we are also a part of them. Continuing our emisison rates unchecked could create a resonance pattern with other atmospheric conditions that will destabalize and amplify a periodic cyclical phenomenon into a arger cataclysmic event.

If you follow the Precautionary Principle you can't loose:

If there is nothing we can do about climate change then let's not waste our time trying.

However, if we do nothing only to discover that there was something we could have done after it is too late....wouldn't it have been better had we anticipated the worst and acted accordingly?

Isn't that why we went to Iraq in the first place...to prevent a worst case future scenario from happening here?

If our security is that important to us, why not invest even a quarter of those $ hundreds of billions $ in renewable energy and stop wasting our time chasing oil pipe dreams?

If you follow the Precautionary Principle you can't loose:

I agree, but don't think you even need the precautionary principle. There are plenty of excellent reasons to move away from fossil fuels to more sustainable sources:
1) The oil won't last forever. Do you think a baby born today will see our society using the energy sources even remotely like what we see today? Peak Oil is either here, or very close. Our entire society is grossly dependent on fossil fuels. We should find energy sources that can last for hundreds if not thousands of years.
2) The use of fossil fuels, particularly oil, contribute greatly to geopolitical instability.
3) Even without Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), there are plenty of negative environmental effects from the use of fossil fuels.

I have spent a lot of time studying the AGW theories, and I think they stand on shaky ground. I've always been reluctant to bring it up on this forum, but maybe I will jump in a little here since it seems like there is a possibility that some real discussion can take place. I'm not interested in holy wars.

One point made above is that there is a strong correlation between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature. There is a very impressive graph of this correlation shown in "An Inconvenient Truth". Also pointed out above is that correlation does not always mean cause.

Although it is not their primary cause, atmospheric carbon dioxide also plays an important rold in the ice ages. Antarctic ice core data show that CO2 concentration is low in the cold glacial times (~190 ppm), and high in the interglacials (~280 ppm); atmospheric CO2 follows temperature changes in Antarctica with a lag of some hundreds of years.

Data correlation and model simulations indicate that solar variability and volcanic activity are likely to be the leading reasons for climate variations during the past millennium, before the start of the industrial era.

Both of the above quotes are from the IPCCs 2007 Working Group 1 report. Please note that the historical CO2 level rise was AFTER the temperature rise, and therefore was not the cause. My conclusion is that not even the IPCC scientists believe that any past warming periods were CAUSED by CO2 levels. Yet somehow the current warming periods is supposed to be the cause. It's never happened before, but this time is different . . . Does that sound like a solid scientific footing?

I agree that the climate has been warming, and it's clear that atmospheric CO2 has been going up at an exponential rate. I also agree that human activity has been the major factor behind the rise in CO2 level. But the temperature changes don't seem to correlate very well with the exponential rise in CO2. Take the period from about 1940 to 1975 where the global average temperature was cooling. CO2 was still rising exponentially, but the temperature was dropping. The rise in temperature since the little ice age also preceded any significant CO2 level changes.

So why do the IPCC scientists think that CO2 is causing the current temperature rise? Because their climate models can only account for the recent rise in temperature if they put in a significant greenhouse effect due to CO2 and other GHGs. So we have assumptions in the climate models based on limited understanding of a very complex system, and then use those models to determine the causality of the temperature rise. Does that sound like a solid scientific footing?

Do you know what the most potent Greenhouse gas is? Water Vapor. In fact, it is 10 to 20 times more effective at trapping the sun's heat. Clouds also reflect heat back out into space, so the net effect is complicated. Take a look at the factors in the IPCCs report. Do you see water vapor? No? I'm guessing that is because it's just too complicated to model.

The AGW debate has become very political, with people taking entrenched positions on either side. This is very troubling to me, as these holy wars never produce anything except conflict. It may or may not be true that a majority of scientists think that humans are the main cause of global warming, but I'm quite sure that the environmnent will not be considering human opinions as a factor in deciding to get warmer or cooler. Time will eventually resolve this debate even if the holy wars continue.

Check out this web site which shows current global temperatures (I like the montly charts). Most recent data is May, 2008. It is my hope (but not yet belief), that we have passed the temperature maximum and are now starting a cooling trend. To my eye, the rate of temperature rise is about the same or greater in the 1910 - 1940 time period as it is in the 1975 - 2005 time period. So are we really in a runaway greenhouse effect? Is there really no reason to have doubts?

As pointed out in the beginning of this post, nothing here means I think we should "do nothing", given that there are so many other good reasons to work toward a more sustainable energy future. Do we really want to let the entire reason to stop using fossil fuels be AGW? It's the 10,000 pound gorilla, but it could be proven wrong, and then where would we be?