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Non Gaming Discussions => Off-Topic => Topic started by: GigaShadow on June 13, 2008, 04:58:42 PM
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I have never bought into the all the global warming hype and this letter by the founder of The Weather Channel pretty much sums up how I feel about the topic. Until someone can positively link the amount of CO2 in the air to the rise in temperatures I am not buying it.
Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas
by John Coleman
You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas. It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam.
The future of our civilization lies in the balance.
That’s the battle cry of the High Priest of Global Warming Al Gore and his fellow, agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming. According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees. Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable. He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands. He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences. The future of our civilization is in the balance.
With a preacher’s zeal, Mr. Gore sets out to strike terror into us and our children and make us feel we are all complicit in the potential demise of the planet.
Here is my rebuttal.
There is no significant man made global warming. There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future. The climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.
Through all history, Earth has shifted between two basic climate regimes: ice ages and what paleoclimatologists call “Interglacial periods”. For the past 10 thousand years the Earth has been in an interglacial period. That might well be called nature’s global warming because what happens during an interglacial period is the Earth warms up, the glaciers melt and life flourishes. Clearly from our point of view, an interglacial period is greatly preferred to the deadly rigors of an ice age. Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented, out of control warming.
Well, it is simply not happening. Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming?
The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns. Oh, really. We are supposed to be in a panic about man-made global warming and the whole thing takes a ten year break because of the lack of Sun spots. If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.
Now allow me to talk a little about the science behind the global warming frenzy. I have dug through thousands of pages of research papers, including the voluminous documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I have worked my way through complicated math and complex theories. Here’s the bottom line: the entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. They don’t have any other issue. Carbon Dioxide, that’s it.
Hello Al Gore; Hello UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Your science is flawed; your hypothesis is wrong; your data is manipulated. And, may I add, your scare tactics are deplorable. The Earth does not have a fever. Carbon dioxide does not cause significant global warming.
The focus on atmospheric carbon dioxide grew out a study by Roger Revelle who was an esteemed scientist at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. He took his research with him when he moved to Harvard and allowed his students to help him process the data for his paper. One of those students was Al Gore. That is where Gore got caught up in this global warming frenzy. Revelle’s paper linked the increases in carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere with warming. It labeled CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
Charles Keeling, another researcher at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, set up a system to make continuous CO2 measurements. His graph of these increases has now become known as the Keeling Curve. When Charles Keeling died in 2005, his son David, also at Scripps, took over the measurements. Here is what the Keeling curve shows: an increase in CO2 from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 385 parts per million today, an increase of 70 parts per million or about 20 percent.
All the computer models, all of the other findings, all of the other angles of study, all come back to and are based on CO2 as a significant greenhouse gas. It is not.
Here is the deal about CO2, carbon dioxide. It is a natural component of our atmosphere. It has been there since time began. It is absorbed and emitted by the oceans. It is used by every living plant to trigger photosynthesis. Nothing would be green without it. And we humans; we create it. Every time we breathe out, we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is not a pollutant. It is not smog. It is a naturally occurring invisible gas.
Let me illustrate. I estimate that this square in front of my face contains 100,000 molecules of atmosphere. Of those 100,000 only 38 are CO2; 38 out of a hundred thousand. That makes it a trace component. Let me ask a key question: how can this tiny trace upset the entire balance of the climate of Earth? It can’t. That’s all there is to it; it can’t.
The UN IPCC has attracted billions of dollars for the research to try to make the case that CO2 is the culprit of run-away, man-made global warming. The scientists have come up with very complex creative theories and done elaborate calculations and run computer models they say prove those theories. They present us with a concept they call radiative forcing. The research organizations and scientists who are making a career out of this theory, keep cranking out the research papers. Then the IPCC puts on big conferences at exotic places, such as the recent conference in Bali. The scientists endorse each other’s papers, they are summarized and voted on, and viola, we are told global warming is going to kill us all unless we stop burning fossil fuels.
May I stop here for a few historical notes? First, the internal combustion engine and gasoline were awful polluters when they were first invented. And, both gasoline and automobile engines continued to leave a layer of smog behind right up through the 1960’s. Then science and engineering came to the environmental rescue. Better exhaust and ignition systems, catalytic converters, fuel injectors, better engineering throughout the engine and reformulated gasoline have all contributed to a huge reduction in the exhaust emissions from today’s cars. Their goal then was to only exhaust carbon dioxide and water vapor, two gases widely accepted as natural and totally harmless. Anyone old enough to remember the pall of smog that used to hang over all our cities knows how much improvement there has been. So the environmentalists, in their battle against fossil fuels and automobiles had a very good point forty years ago, but now they have to focus almost entirely on the once harmless carbon dioxide. And, that is the rub. Carbon dioxide is not an environmental problem; they just want you now to think it is.
Numerous independent research projects have been done about the greenhouse impact from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. These studies have proven to my total satisfaction that CO2 is not creating a major greenhouse effect and is not causing an increase in temperatures. By the way, before his death, Roger Revelle coauthored a paper cautioning that CO2 and its greenhouse effect did not warrant extreme countermeasures.
So now it has come down to an intense campaign, orchestrated by environmentalists claiming that the burning of fossil fuels dooms the planet to run-away global warming. Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a myth.
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/19842304.html
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global warming is overrated.
the media hype and the paranoia it creates is even worse.
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its definitly not as dire as some people are making it. the main problem is theres a lot of money being made with it so its shoved down our throats.
But its definitly not nothing. Theres an equilirium between Co2 and other gasses in the atmosphere and the oceans. Without that equilibrium we would get a runaway greenhouse effect like venus where the water production cant keep up. And its obvious how much CO2 gas in the atmosphere has gone up since the industrial revolution. So i cant say i disagree with trying to help the atmosphere and what-not
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global warming is overrated.
the media hype and the paranoia it creates is even worse.
I\'ve always been skeptical of the argument....as much gases that are released into the atmosphere, over time the atmosphere eventually repairs itself, and like the article stated, cars today run cleaner than ever before,..add to the fact that some folks are driving hybirds and electric cars, and that overall pollution number falls even more.
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We are altering the climate but it was going to happen anyway. We are just accelerating it. It isn\'t going to doom our planet or anything. This planet goes through climate shifts all the time and this is just one. We just made it come faster, that\'s all. No biggie. Its good to change our habits and bring to light that we are impacting the planet but the media is hyping it up like it is a fucking dooms day scenerio. Good example: a year ago i was watching a History Channel special on things that will doom our planet. They had some awesome things like comets and solar storms and stuff. I shut off the tv when they came to number 1 and said global warming was going to destroy the planet and everyone on it.
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Well I am not sure. It is not just the gas emissions or a simple matter of temperature change. Forests are disappearing or decreasing in size and the ecosystem is being destroyed. The problem regarding the destruction of the amazon which is the "lung" of the planet has not been addressed yet either.
We seem to cause destruction at a faster rate than the earth can heal from. Pollution may be kind of more constrained compared to the past in terms of gas emissions but it is still there, and pollution is uncontrollable in other areas.
The impact extends from peculiar weather phenomenons, to food and water supply problems
I promised myself that I wont buy a new car until a complete hydrogen or energy alternative solution is available.
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most oxygen production is thought to come from ocean plankton, no?
however, clear cutting the rain forests for pastures or more crop land is an atrocity. i blame bio-fuels.
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Hmm. Cant comment on that since I dont know much about the ocean plankton or to what extend does it minimize the consequences of the destruction of the amazon and other forests.
Thats something I ll have to check out.
But I ve heard about the contribution of the corals to the sea\'s ecosystem which are also in great danger, and I assume they might affect the ocean plankton as well.
edit: In an effort to find something about the ocean plankton I accidentally came across this article
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0119-01.htm
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well, warmer seas might knock out some portion of plankton but the others that are tolerant will adapt and thrive.
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^^^yea...i was watching the discovery channel and i think the series was called deep blue?..not sure..but there was one segment where they showed the blue whales that come up to a certain part of the ocean to feed on plankton,..and what was said in the documentary was that they practically eat close to a ton of plankton in a single serving,..so i guess there is some type of balance going on in nature in general,...for whales to eat close to a ton of those things, there must be at least a trillion of those animals in the ocean...thus the high tolerant level...
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well, warmer seas might knock out some portion of plankton but the others that are tolerant will adapt and thrive.
Hopefully. That can happen if we assume that the adaptation rate matches the rate of environmental change.
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Global warming is just the new "it" thing for people to latch on to like its a real cause. Just like the national deficit, or AIDS or whatever is the next big new thing thats going to kill all of us.
All I know is we were having 40 degree days up untill June this year, so "global warming" can kiss my ass.
That article was right on... Earth\'s climate has changed in the past, and will change again, and there is no proof its caused by man at all, despite how many books al gore sold.
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Hopefully. That can happen if we assume that the adaptation rate matches the rate of environmental change.
if life survived and thrived after the meteors that caused mass extinctions, i think the plankton will be able to keep up with the 1 degree changes every however many years
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if life survived and thrived after the meteors that caused mass extinctions, i think the plankton will be able to keep up with the 1 degree changes every however many years
Well lets not forget the animals that went extinct until life reached a balance ;)
edit: in general lets not underestimate some possibilities just because some people like complaining like it is the new "fashion"
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I fall under not caring. Global Warming won\'t kill me. Cancer may. Not global warming.
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The Earth just ended the mini-Ice Age that started in the 1300s and ended in the 1900s.
So fuck yeah it\'s getting warmer.
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I fall under not caring. Global Warming won\'t kill me. Cancer may. Not global warming.
Skin cancer? :p
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The Earth just ended the mini-Ice Age that started in the 1300s and ended in the 1900s.
So fuck yeah it\'s getting warmer.
Are you sure? You may want to check those dates. The mini-Ice Age I believe ended soon after the American Revolution.
EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
I\'m not concerned about plankton. There are periods when a big volcanic eruption would raise the temperature of the earth at a similar faster rate than now and life adapted fine.
Hell, read that article and click on the Medieval Warming Period. They compare the warmth during that period to that of Global Warming. This period of warmth also helped to end the dark ages because people were able to grow a surplus of crops.
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Are you sure? You may want to check those dates. The mini-Ice Age I believe ended soon after the American Revolution.
EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
I\'m not concerned about plankton. There are periods when a big volcanic eruption would raise the temperature of the earth at a similar faster rate than now and life adapted fine.
Hell, read that article and click on the Medieval Warming Period. They compare the warmth during that period to that of Global Warming. This period of warmth also helped to end the dark ages because people were able to grow a surplus of crops.
Wiki? :laughing:
I think the early 1900s had some freakish winter storms. I also remember the 70s being a white winter. That\'s rare these days.
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Thanks Giga, nice to read something from the other side of the coin.
If we\'d just invest in Global Air Conditioning, this would all go away.
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I really don\'t know what to think. I do believe that this world is due for some huge major change. The way we eat away at all our natural resources. There going to be some major fallout soon. I don\'t think it will happen in mylife time. At least I hope it doesn\'t.
I just think that with all that goes on there has to be some sort of repercussion for all that we take for granted.
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Regardless of whether the point being made is true, I don\'t hold much value to that article, because the author fails to back up any of the points he made.
Now allow me to talk a little about the science behind the global warming frenzy. I have dug through thousands of pages of research papers, including the voluminous documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I have worked my way through complicated math and complex theories. Here’s the bottom line: the entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels.
Were are those theories and math? Anyone can claim this....
Let me illustrate. I estimate that this square in front of my face contains 100,000 molecules of atmosphere. Of those 100,000 only 38 are CO2; 38 out of a hundred thousand. That makes it a trace component. Let me ask a key question: how can this tiny trace upset the entire balance of the climate of Earth? It can’t. That’s all there is to it; it can’t.
This means nothing without evidence, there are lots of components that are very dangerous even with low concentration, for instance hydrogen cyanide (http://www.brooksidepress.org/Products/OperationalMedicine/DATA/operationalmed/Manuals/RedHandbook/005Cyanide.htm) is lethal at about 50 units per million.
Numerous independent research projects have been done about the greenhouse impact from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. These studies have proven to my total satisfaction that CO2 is not creating a major greenhouse effect and is not causing an increase in temperatures.
Again, name those research projects, anyone can make this claim about anything.
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^^^yea...i was watching the discovery channel and i think the series was called deep blue?..not sure..but there was one segment where they showed the blue whales that come up to a certain part of the ocean to feed on plankton,..and what was said in the documentary was that they practically eat close to a ton of plankton in a single serving,..so i guess there is some type of balance going on in nature in general,...for whales to eat close to a ton of those things, there must be at least a trillion of those animals in the ocean...thus the high tolerant level...
this is a bit silly in reasoning if I read it right...
The only thing that matters is the percentage of plankton that would die from "global warming". Big numbers don\'t make a species tolerant to extinction, it is the success of adapting to changing circumstances.
the point mm made about "natural" selection could be true, but there is no guarantee this is enough to save the planet. If losses are too high we may run out of sufficient oxygen levels. This is pure speculation from my part though...
btw. clips, you do realize that 1. a ton of plankton is a means of weight, not numbers (there are probably millions and millions of plankton in a ton) and 2. The percentage of plankton eaten by whales is close to zero?
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WE\'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!
This picture was taken from space, only 2 minutes ago
(https://psx5central.com/community/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmpinkeyes.files.wordpress.com%2F2008%2F04%2Fglobal-warming2.jpg&hash=06056e08f63007fd528cb27c7fa16f2d36fd0128)
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Meh, where I live is not on fire or remotely burnt.
That\'s how you beat global warming. Live where the legend lives.
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try living where I live, it\'s been pissing down all summer, and it\'s rarely got into the high 20\'s
probably one of the coldest summers I can remember.
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I really don\'t know what to think. I do believe that this world is due for some huge major change. The way we eat away at all our natural resources. There going to be some major fallout soon. I don\'t think it will happen in mylife time. At least I hope it doesn\'t.
I just think that with all that goes on there has to be some sort of repercussion for all that we take for granted.
I dont\' think it will happen in my lifetime either. However, it is our generation that can possibly stop the repercussions from getting worse. Back in the day they didn\'t care about pollution. Could have been ignorance of what they were doing or just plain indifference. Either way, things have happened and some generation has to take responsibility and try to make the impact of the past less painful for the future generations through changes. I\'m not sure about global warming if its really as big of a deal as they say. I\'m leaning more towards natural climate shift expedited by humans through things like pollution and deforestation. But are we the cause of this climate shift? No. It was going to happen just like other climate shifts through the ages. We just sped it up and many people I have talked to about this agree. It seems like to me the people with the biggest mouths are getting the attention (like Gore for global warming and some conservatives saying its not).
It is impossible though to ignore the CO2 levels in recent years. They are growing. However, what people don\'t know is that carbon levels vary from region to region. In many areas, the CO2 levels have remained constant whereas in an area like NYC, they have grown substantially. This questions the validity IMO of the global warming in regards to the green house effect. It seems if the levels are higher in one place, then you will see the warming effect. But what about a place that is completely devoid of human life like Greenland or Alaska? Wouldn\'t they not see any greenhouse effects? Maybe I\'m wrong. Just throwing out a theory.
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http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/weather/06/27/north.pole.melting/index.html
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btw. clips, you do realize that 1. a ton of plankton is a means of weight, not numbers (there are probably millions and millions of plankton in a ton) and 2. The percentage of plankton eaten by whales is close to zero?
I realize it is weight, but that\'s still alot of plankton....what i wasn\'t aware of was that the percentage eaten by whales was actually close to zero percent...
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/weathe...ing/index.html
I saw this today on cnn....interesting article but scientists have been sayin\' that the polar caps are going to melt and cause mass floods for years...*shrugs*....i do feel that maybe there are little hot spots of so called global warming,..sort of in the way that titan mentioned...mostly in cities and high volume urban area\'s were you have alot of traffic and concrete pavements...
If you ever notice when watching your local weather, the area\'s that are almost always hotter are the city and urban area\'s...why?..because of the traffic and intense heat the blacktop pavements and buildings which reflect alot of heat and gases into the immediate surrounding atomosphere....while the suburbs are mostly cooler, because of that area having more trees and shade to actually suppress some of the heat and gases...it also helps that trees & most shrubs help to clean the air slightly in these areas.
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I saw this today on cnn....interesting article but scientists have been sayin\' that the polar caps are going to melt and cause mass floods for years...*shrugs*....i do feel that maybe there are little hot spots of so called global warming,..sort of in the way that titan mentioned...mostly in cities and high volume urban area\'s were you have alot of traffic and concrete pavements...
Did they say when? What I remember was that they said that the polar caps will melt "soon" due to global warming. They didnt say when. And quite frankly I ve heard that they melt faster than they initially thought.
If you ever notice when watching your local weather, the area\'s that are almost always hotter are the city and urban area\'s...why?..because of the traffic and intense heat the blacktop pavements and buildings which reflect alot of heat and gases into the immediate surrounding atomosphere....while the suburbs are mostly cooler, because of that area having more trees and shade to actually suppress some of the heat and gases...it also helps that trees & most shrubs help to clean the air slightly in these areas.
If its hotter in urban areas doesnt mean that the problem is less worse.
1) The fact that urban areas increase heat are a problem
2) If the urban areas are hotter than other areas that doesnt equal that the temperature increases arent high enough to be worrisome in other areas. For example some forest areas in Russia (was it near Siberia? cant remember) that were known for their low temperature and moisture, had fire for the first time because now they are drier and hotter.
Forests are shrinking, and the biota in these areas is being destroyed