They invariably get it wrong. This time they’ve noticed it’s cold outside, and they see an news report about colder temperatures in the Antarctic, so they leap to the conclusion that global warming is bunk. Or rather, they always held that conclusion (on faith, no doubt), and are overjoyed to see any scrap of out-of-context evidence that they can play up to bolster their confidence.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The most common misconception that is being further spread and supported by anti-science numbnuts in America is the idea that Climate = Weather. It’s amazing to see even university students unable to understand that weather and climate are totally different things.
There is a good reason why right-wing bloggers rarely allow comments on their blogs. They can continue to indulge their own delusions of intelligence and sense.
They don’t want to be confronted with any sort of truthiness.
No, you mean facts. They give out “truthiness” like candy.
I’m guessing the little guy in the corner outside the ring is supposed to be Al Gore, thus an attempt at pushing the wingnut laugh button harder. Their humor and satire is as lacking as their thought processes.
For a group of politicos that also identify with the rapture-right, it’s odd and ironically counter-intuitive that they have such a fetish for cold weather. I thought we were all going to burn in hell, not freeze. That is, unless I’ve stumbled upon an undercurrent in their midst we in the land of brains are not usually privy to…
I used to know someone who would deride competitors as performing “cartoon science.” In other words he accused them of starting with an assertion and finding some evidence to support that assertion–similar to how “science” is portrayed in cartoons. This is literally “cartoon science” at its finest.
The Powerline idiot bases his argument on the ozone hole scenario, but that is a non-starter right out of the gate. It *USED* to be one concentrated hole. Anyone who looks at it now knows it has dissipated and, while still hanging over Antarctica, is much less of an opening and is more accurately described as a thinning of the ozone.
These guys don’t waste a nanosecond on processing anything. It’s an either/or situation 24/7/365 for them. How does anyone live like that? Seriously?
Since I’m not knowledgeable in the field, would you like to direct me to a good place to learn that sort of thing, Zohn? I’ve been relying on (hopefully legitimate) arguments from authorities, and it’d be nice to get a bit closer to the data and theories.
For once, I don’t think this is exclusively a rightwing thing. I’ve seen plenty of good liberals say that unseasonably warm weather suggests global warming.
I think people simply don’t understand the notion of climate
Since I’m not knowledgeable in the field, would you like to direct me to a good place to learn that sort of thing
If you like a good dose of snark with your science, I direct you to Deltoid, also on scienceblogs. Go to the left sidebar and the category “Global Warming”.
For more thorough dealings, try RealClimate, for background hit “Highlights” on their right hand sidebar.
Hope those help.
from http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,250980,00.html gah! sorry, its fox news.
BronzeDog, Here are two sites to get you started:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/climateweather.html and http://www.eo.ucar.edu/basics/index.html.
Rohrbacher was essentially saying… “That’s not the answer I intended to hear. You’re lying. The Oil/Auto Lobby told me something different.”
` Oh for muck’s sake….
So since Rohrabacher can’t subtract 90 from 100 in his head and get 10, the answer was dishonest? Either that or any number that doesn’t match the one he has in mind must be a lie.
Listen, just because you are a politician, you don’t have to be dishonest.
You know, it’s a scientifically proven fact that every time anyone reads Powerline, their IQ drops 3 points. PZ can probably spare a few, but I’m running low already.
This is the same tired bottle of whine as Paul Harvey’s “Eggs are good for you? Last year those stupid scientists said eggs were bad for you!”
Mr. Assrocket likes to pretend that his demonstration of how complex systems continue to defy his simplistic conceptions of them brilliantly debunks the underlying science.
If that report of Rohrabacher’s comments was accurate, then in fact he’s asking a clever question. While Susan Soloman saw that and tried to restate it, Rohrbacher was right that she wasn’t answering his question: she was answering a much more relevant question.
In fact, most greenhouse gasses are produced naturally. However, it’s not the total number of greenhouse gasses produced that is important. It’s the difference between what is produced and what is absorbed. Since the amount produced has been increasing, and the amount absorbed has not been increasing as fast (I don’t actually know if that is going up or down), the amount left sitting in the atmosphere is going up. It is that increase that is currently being dominated by human produced CO2.
Note: when I said that Rohrbacher’s question was clever, I meant that it was politically clever, even if scientifically misleading.
Zohn: “The most common misconception that is being further spread and supported by anti-science numbnuts in America is the idea that Climate = Weather.”
As it happens, Rush Limbaugh was making exactly the opposite point a couple weeks ago, back when much of the US was having unseasonably warm weather. Limbaugh made the same observation as D, above, that many people wrongly attribute warm weather to a warming climate.
The funny thing is that Limbaugh made his point by citing a counter-anecdote, a news story about excessive snowfall in Anchorage, AK. He correctly, for a change, observed that the weather is not the climate. The reason this is funny is that, the day he mentioned this, it was over 50 degrees F in Anchorage. (Though that doesn’t mean much, either; we always get a warm spell this time of year.)
People are termially stupid about global climate change. And I mean TERMINALLY stupid. But then the majority of people in the world don’t understand that when it is winter in the northern hemisphere, that it is summer in the southern hemisphere. So I don’t expect many of them to come to grips intellectually with climate change.
I once had someone from the northern hemisphere (the country will remain unnamed to protect the innocent), who couldn’t understand and refused to accept that in Australia it is summer at christmas time. He couldn’t fathom that December could be any other season except winter.
So, we expect people to understand the theory of biological evolution, or global climate change and its possible ramifications? Tell ’em they’re dreamin’.
Sh*t. I wish I had spelled “terminally” correctly the first time. Haha
How is the question misleading? It is very important to know what percentage of C02 is natural. If it is 99% or 1% our response would be completely different.
The politician was right. And those of you who are castigating him for being stupid and only seeing (or hearing) what he wanted to perceive failed to perceive that – because you’re only seeing and hearing what you want to perceive.
It’s a good thing irony overdose isn’t lethal, or these forums would have killed me years ago.
Kruger-Dunning Effect run rampant.
MYOB’
.
Heinlein had it right with “climate is what you expect, weather is what you get”.
I’m noticing that the deniers I run across are at least admitting there may be a possibility of global climate change, but “of course there’s no proof it’s human caused. It’s all part of natural cycles”. I also have trouble getting them to believe that we’re actually talking global climate CHANGE (not necessarily global warming world-wide), and some places may get colder, not warmer. Or drier, or wetter, or we just don’t know yet where it might all lead.
It is very important to know what percentage of C02 is natural.
All of it. Humans are, after all, natural, and I’ve never hreard of “artificial” CO2.
Which is why the ecosystem collapse is going to really suck for us.
Anyways, the question is meaningless, as a lot of things have to be clarified before the answer means anything. How about the raw, rough, numbers:
Current CO2: 380 ppm. Amount of that due to human activity since 1750…. 100 ppm. Amount of that due to human activity since 1973… 50 ppm. I leave the math as an excercise for the reader.
Well, it all depends what you call a greenhouse gas, and what you mean by ‘natural’. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas; it blocks almost all of the thermal radiation below 400 wavenumbers. So if you include water vapor in the list and measure just bulk quantities, you come up with the number that > 95% of greenhouse gases are ‘natural’. Of course, this is weaseling. Water vapor pressure, while it mostly comes from ‘natural evaporation’, is affected by CO2 emission (though nobody really knows exactly to what extent).
The real key is that the earth’s lower atmosphere has an IR transmission window between about 750 and about 1300 wavenumbers, through which most of the heat is lost to space. The lower edge of that window is the upper edge of the CO2 bend vibration band(mostly from vibrationally and rotationally excited states of the CO2 bend vibration). When you increase CO2 concentration, you shut down that absorbtion edge a little more. Not by much, but it doesn’t take much to increase the average temperature by 1 C. CFCs and some other trace gases also absorb in that window.
When people ask how we can predict climate, when we can’t predict weather, I say I can’t predict the next spin of the roulette wheel, but I know that in the end the casino’s going to make money.
How is the question misleading? It is very important to know what percentage of C02 is natural. If it is 99% or 1% our response would be completely different.
CO2 has increased by 40% since the industrial revolution, iirc. But wouldn’t the magnitude of expected effects be important instead of the percentages?
They are both important. Why didn’t the question that was asked get answered? Why do people immidiatly assume he was wrong? The question he asked was a good question and he got a misleading answer.
Because the scientist didn’t want to give an answer that could be perceived by those looking to ignore global warming as a minimization of our effects.
She was being dishonest, of course.
They are both important. Why didn’t the question that was asked get answered? Why do people immidiatly assume he was wrong?
He wasn’t wrong about the numbers, and he made a clever quip about the scientist’s statement. However, I don’t think the chairwoman of the IPCC would try to cover up the fact that 5-10% of the total amount of greenhouse gases are made by humans, that would be very silly of her. This amount seems perfectly adequate to cause global warming.
The question he asked was a good question
It was a meaningless question. That’s why he asked it.
Without some kind o frame of reference the answer would mean nothing, so the question would mean nothing.
They are both important. Why didn’t the question that was asked get answered? Why do people immidiatly assume he was wrong? The question he asked was a good question and he got a misleading answer.
They are not equally important. In fact, the question was not a ‘good question’. Percentage by what measure? Percentage by mass? volume? relative absorbtivity?
She wanted him to ask a slightly different question because it has a more dramatic number and is a better quantifying question when you have a better understanding of the science. But why is she afraid of the numbers? why didn’t she tell the truth?
In reality he asked a valid question and she gave him a PR answer. In a hearing he has a right to ask that question and get it answered.
The point is if the science is so sound why doesn’t the scientist just tell the truth. In fact she is proving him right by having a preconceived agenda and answering the questions by trying to show the urgency that she is obviously feeling.
The problem I see with his question is that it isn’t clear; it could be taken several different ways. It could be asking for the “directly caused by humans” part, or the “all human activities part”, or it could be asking for the percentage of the delta in either of those.
That’s the whole problem I see here: asking such a question open to various interpretations is obviously going to be problematic for a witness, and it’s perfectly fair for them to clarify, as part of the answer, which question they think they’re answering. You can call that dishonest if you like, but I really don’t think so. If the witness clarifies in their answer what they think they’re answering, it leaves open to the questioner the opportunity to clarify what it was they really wanted to know in a follow-up question. It’s not like they can’t take as long as they want.
So why was he pissed? Is it because he couldn’t get the answer, or because he couldn’t get it while asking a question open to subsequent reinterpretation?
Here’s a link I found:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1.html
I’m not sure if someone has posted that site before. Figure 2 and the paragraph preceding it seem to point to what Mr. Rohrabacher is looking for. Basically it is stating that since humans are adding a positive increase over nature’s typical balance, there is a cumulative effect year to year that has been building, and this is the cause.
The numbers aren’t dramatic (they seem generally to be in the single digits, with partial points attached), so maybe this is why Ms. Solomon was stressing the anthropogenic aspect, rather than using hard figures. Figures sell well, and if people hear anything under say 15%, then the focus will be just on that number and not on the bigger picture. The point is that the effect has been building over time, not that a few percentage points within the last few years is the issue.
I’m just speculating though. I have no idea what Ms. Solomon did or did not know or what her intentions may have been. I will say that Rohrabacher loves to harp on specific details, rather than the total picture. That Fox story quoted him bringing up the volcano point again, which is one of the anti-GW hallmark “arguments”.
Q: What percentage of greenhouse gases are caused naturally rather than by human beings?
It is a pretty simple question the only unsure aspects are time frame and exactly what is meant by greenhouse gas. It is pretty obvious they meant CO2 as the general greenhouse gas because that is what is usually meant by the general public and she jumped to that conclusion as well.
For the time frame, If I asked:
“What percent of America is athiest rather then religious?”
and you answered that over the last 257 years over 90% of the increase in athiesm is from christian deniers. Does that answer the question that was asked?
The subsequent interpretation that she applied was to answer only about the increase over a random period of time.
Why would she jump to that strange interpretation?
She knew those numbers were very impressive and she was determined to make sure they were heard.
When someone asks a question without a timeframe included it always means currently, doesn’t it?
Now you’re dodging the question, John W. What percentage? Percentage by mass? Percentage by volume? Percentage by relative absorbtivity?
Look, she was able to give a percentage without clarifying it wasn’t she? She only said 90%, what was she talking about? probably ppm just like almost everybody does when they speak of percents and AGW. She didn’t even clarify if that 90% included any CO2 released by feedbacks or directly from humans. She just threw out a big number because it sounds good or actually it sounds really really bad (scary).
John W.,
what is the upper bound of percentage increase of absolute temperature that is predicted within the next 100 years?
And, is that number bad?
And, if I asked that same question, leaving out the word “absolute”, would it change the answer, and would it leave the result open to subsequent misinterpretation?
If you go with the upper limit of 6.4C I get about ~98% increase for absolute temperature and ~143% increase for temperature over the next 100 years.
They mean the same thing just different units and of course they are interpreted differently which is the point I am trying to make also.
Her answer was a selected number that leads to an obvious conclusion. I feel like that is what this whole ‘debate’ has broken down to simply the use of uncontexted numbers to scare or calm people. The issue is so polarized now that no side is trying to be fair about the numbers.
It supposed to be science. Is the number good or bad I don’t know but you asked that question to show how easy it is to bias numbers, which is what I have been trying to point out.
She was being dishonest, of course.
Since her statement was true, she was not being dishonest, idiot.
I feel like that is what this whole ‘debate’ has broken down to simply the use of uncontexted numbers to scare or calm people. The issue is so polarized now that no side is trying to be fair about the numbers.
People who think there is a real controversy over global warming are the stupidest people on the planet, even more stupid than those who think there is a real controversy over evolution.
Personally I think that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Comparing Climate and Evolution isn’t even close to apples and oranges.
FYI, I was pointed over here from the GIFS (God is for suckers) blog. My personal leanings, I’m not a republican, not a democrat, complete atheist, but I think the science is NOT settled when it comes to global warming, or climate change if you prefer.
Are there stupid people on both sides of the argument? Certainly. Does that make a dissenting view invalid? No, nor does it make the “mainstream” view valid or invalid. I think we don’t know enough to take ANY action. I AM convinced that CO2 just can’t do what’s being attributed to it. It’s warming capability is absolutely trivial as compared to Water Vapor and Methane.
The computer models which come up with these predictions rely on CO2 warming triggering Water Vapor warming as an unmitigated positive feedback, and into a “runaway” greenhouse effect. If that were possible, it would have happened any time ANY warming had occurred (meaning warming is warming, there is nothing special about CO2 warming that it is the only thing which would cause water vapor warming). This also means it would happen in either hemisphere during the normal seasonal changes in temperature (which are TOTALLY driven off the angle of the sun hitting the earth).
I think a lot of important research is coming to light regarding cloud cover and how it is created and how it is influenced by solar irradiance and cosmic ray flux.
Another thing which throws grave doubt on the models, is the recent ocean cooling. They didn’t predict that.
A question I also would like an answer to is: If climate models can only account for recent warming via increased CO2 and Water Vapor feedback, how would they account for previous warm periods such as the early part of the 20th century, the Medieval Warm Period, etc, where CO2 levels were more “normal”?
I’m willing to believe, folks, but all we have is circumstantial evidence. We get reports such as “Glaciers are melting = man-made warming”. That’s a tremendous logical leap to make.
Early warm periods were due to a mixture of factors such as solar output and orbital changes of the earth. But these have not been found to be operating just now to change the climate.
Fascinating to see there are still some super-hardcore denialists carrying on even after Exxon Mobil, fer chrissakes, has given up the game. Guess they haven’t gotten the memo yet that the recalcitrant industries whose propaganda they parrot have shifted tactics from denial to lobbying for the future carbon emission regulations, whose advent they now recognize to be inevitable, to treat them as favorably as possible.
We had orbital changes during the early-mid 20th century? I believe solar irradiance is higher than it has been in a long time, and graphs I’ve seen from peer-reviewed journals show that solar irradiance tracks extremely well with our best guess at global mean temperature. Better than CO2, especially during the 20th century where we had a cooling during the 50s 60s and 70s even though CO2 was still rising the entire time.
Fascinating to see there are still some super-hardcore denialists carrying on even after Exxon Mobil, fer chrissakes, has given up the game. Guess they haven’t gotten the memo yet that the recalcitrant industries whose propaganda they parrot have shifted tactics from denial to lobbying for the future carbon emission regulations, whose advent they now recognize to be inevitable, to treat them as favorably as possible.
What does any of that have to do with science? ExxonMobil and many other companies are simply bowing to gestapo-like pressure, much like the above statement.
That’s hilarious! If the response was true it wasn’t dishonesty. Simply brilliant!
Remind me to call you on this the next time Bush responds to a question with a true non sequitur.
I see. You stand for truth and justice, whereas the actual experts from all over the world who serve on the IPCC are the Gestapo. Oooookey dokey. You know, there are medications that can help with such disorders.
Because I don’t want you to give GIFS or atheists a bad name, I gotta shoot you down:
You apparently base your lack of belief in global warming on what you see as defective computer modeling. I highly doubt you can make such claims as to their unreliability, unless you are an actual climatologist writing said models. I have actually worked on models that took into account all of the effects you cite and many, many more effects, in vastly complicated feedback and interaction scenarios, and do not rely on “triggering Water Vapor warming as an unmitigated positive feedback.” And the ones I worked one were just a side show for the real modeling work. Are the global working climatological models a prefect reflection of reality? No. Are they the cumulative sum of the most advanced experts and knowledge in their respective fields and the best understanding of mankind? Yes, absolutely. Does all this, as well as the “circumstantial” evidence weigh in on the decision to believe? Yes. Failure to believe in CO2 induced global warming is either lack of acknowledgment of the evidence at hand, or unreasonably high demands of the hypothesis’ probability of truth. I wont hold the latter against you, but the former is just plain ignorant.
This may seem like a silly idea, but…
Whether global climate change is happening or not, and whether it’s caused by human activity or not, is largely irrelevent.
If global climate change is happening, and is related to the increase in CO2, let’s find ways to decrease the emissions of CO2.
If global climate change is not happening, CO2 emissions are still pollution and something we should be concerned about elimiating.
It’s, to some extent, a framing problem. If we call pollution a ‘greenhouse gas’ we can argue for decades about it’s long term effects on the environment. If we call pollution ‘pollution’, there will be support to reduce it.
Show people the immediate benefits of reducing pollution through cleaner air and water and get the side benefit of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions.
Let talking heads argue over the results of large-scale climate models, and the polluters are going to continue to pollute.
I AM convinced that CO2 just can’t do what’s being attributed to it. It’s warming capability is absolutely trivial as compared to Water Vapor and Methane.
Then you need to unconvince yourself. In the crucial upper part of the window for terrestrial black-body radiation, which is where the earth loses most heat to space, neither water vapor nor methane have substantial absorbtion. All three water vapor vibration modes are well above the main energy band of earth’s thermal radiation, and water vapor’s rotational absorbtion is much lower in energy and absorbtively saturated. The same goes for methane, with the additional caveat that methane’s concentration is much lower.
Sheesh, guy, you think atmospheric physicists haven’t thought this through? Or that your two-bit opinion is likely to be better than the work of someone who’s spent a lifetime researching it? This is where the comparison with creationists is valid, IMO. It’s the same ‘hoo hoo hoo, here’s something those stupid scientists haven’t thought of’ attitude.
I have no response to revenant’s comments–I’m not a climate scientist–but I do have one for John. In discussions like this, I lose respect for someone who uses certain rhetorical games as you have done here, in particular “playing dumb” as you have. John, you know why Rohrbacher asked the specific question he did, and you know why Solomon gave the answer she did.
You accuse Solomon of seizing an opportunity to throw out a “scary number” thus inappropriately lobbying her side of the debate. I would argue that this is precisely what Rohrbacher was doing; that he sought to embarass the scientist by forcing her to state a less-relevant and “non-scary” number. I would further argue that Solomon’s “trick” was much less dishonest than Rohrbacher’s, and was largely defensive, having sensed what Rohrbacher was angling for.
You certainly may (as I think Revenant might) argue that the causes of the increase are not as Solomon claims, or that they are largely irrelevant because CO2 is not the bugbear most of us think it to be. As I said, I’m not a climate scientist (though I trust them at present). And I apologize if you truly don’t see the trick I’m accusing you of. Nevertheless, I see it, and I have a very hard time believing you don’t.
I see. You stand for truth and justice, whereas the actual experts from all over the world who serve on the IPCC are the Gestapo. Oooookey dokey. You know, there are medications that can help with such disorders.
I suppose i stand for truth and justice, but not subjective truth.
So, you think that all the scientists who too part in examining data for the IPCC agree with the Summary for Policymakers? That would be a grave mistake. There are many who have spoken out agains it. Those 2500+ scientists do not get to take part in the SPM, that’s only a handful of scientists and bureaucrats. You’re being spoon fed and you’re accepting it. Haven’t you noticed that the IPCC estimates have gotten less and less catastrophic data-wise, but not in wording? Why is that?
Sorry MLE, but I believe it’s ignorant to think the science is settled, as it was thought in the 70s for global cooling. Just ask Schneider. I have no experience in modeling, so I can’t answer any of those questions. I only know what I hear from scientists, some of which are modelers. The best estimates I hear are that we know about 10% of what there is to know about global climate, the rest is hypothetical guesswork. We don’t even have an accurate measurement of global mean temperature. The margin of error is greater than the warming we’ve seen in the last 150 years. Am I wrong? Could be. I just think that solar activity better explains the warming we’ve seen than CO2 increase. Does that mean CO2 doesn’t have an impact? No, it does. But it is not a primary driver of climate or temperature, there is simply no evidence of that.
And FYI, I do not deny climate change. I KNOW the climate is changing. If for some reason it STOPS changing, then we have something to be alarmed about.
Flex. It is a dangerous thing to call CO2 a pollutant, it is most definitely not.
The politician was almost certainly setting a trap – and by doing the obvious thing and trying to avoid it, the scientist fell right in it.
Being dishonest only gave him ammunition and an opening, whereas answering the question accurately would have led to the scientist being able to explain why the relative percentage of greenhouse gases isn’t as important.
Funny how you fail to provide any arguments beyond bashing their religious faith (as you see it) and simple contradiction to counter Power Line, PZ. Yep. No need to actually prove why very cold weather here in the States and the Antarctic getting colder are actually proof of global warming.
Gerard wrote: Sheesh, guy, you think atmospheric physicists haven’t thought this through? Or that your two-bit opinion is likely to be better than the work of someone who’s spent a lifetime researching it? This is where the comparison with creationists is valid, IMO. It’s the same ‘hoo hoo hoo, here’s something those stupid scientists haven’t thought of’ attitude.
I’m not stating my two-bit opinion, but research from climate scientists. Hasn’t Richard Lindzen of MIT been researching this his whole life? How about Philip Stott? I know, you’ll find a strawman or ad hominem to knock them down somehow, but that doesn’t dimimish legitimate scientific research. I suppose those guys are just fringe lunatics.
That’s fine, though, I expected to be attacked instead of having a reasonable debate. The comparison of creationism is just a cheap shot, trying to lump me in with religious morons. Won’t work.
DSM wrote: Funny how you fail to provide any arguments beyond bashing their religious faith (as you see it) and simple contradiction to counter Power Line, PZ. Yep. No need to actually prove why very cold weather here in the States and the Antarctic getting colder are actually proof of global warming.
The funny thing is, I have no religious faith to bash! lol!
Caledonian- this is indeed exactly the kind of trap defense attorneys try to set for expert witnesses and that naive or inexperienced witnesses may fall into. What you do in such a case is 1) answer the actual question asked, forthrightly (in court, the judge will insist on this); 2) sneak into your answer as much as you can get away with (which quite often is none) of context explaining why the question is misleading; 3) for the rest, rely on your prosecutor to bring out that context on redirect (if they’re not competent enough to do so, too bad for them, not my problem.) In Congressional testimony it’s the non-denialist members of the committee who should play the latter role.
Can’t really blame Solomon too much, she’s unlikely to have had much experience of this sort of game.
Lindzen’s views are in the extreme minority in the climate science community. You’ll practically never find 100% of the relevant scientists agreeing on almost anything. Dissent is a good thing- the consensus always could be wrong. But the reality is, that’s a very rare occurrence, indeed vanishingly rare when the consensus is as strong and broad as it is on climate change. You’ll lose not only your shirt but your whole wardrobe betting against those odds.
I second the suggestion made above that you spend some time on realclimate.org, including raising your questions on relevant comment threads there.
Gerard Harbison: “Sheesh, guy, you think atmospheric physicists haven’t thought this through? Or that your two-bit opinion is likely to be better than the work of someone who’s spent a lifetime researching it? This is where the comparison with creationists is valid, IMO. It’s the same ‘hoo hoo hoo, here’s something those stupid scientists haven’t thought of’ attitude.”
I couldn’t have said it better. It drives me insane when non-scientists of any political stripe start asking questions that they think immediately unravel the theories and works of thousands of scientists worldwide. I don’t visit the local brain surgeon weekly and incessantly probe him or her with a thousand “oh ya? what about this?!” questions in an attempt to uncover some sort of alleged and conspiratorial malpractice in their job.
We can keep bringing up such questions within the scope of these blogs and bicker back and forth about one fact or another, but the simple truth is almost none of us here really have anything close to a clue because we *are not doing the actual work*. Personally I’m inclined to trust people who work in the field every day, and work on the issues in an attempt to get them solved. I do not find it productive to spend my time researching a counter-argument just for the sake of doing so. Are there scientists that disagree with the GW stance? Of course. There are dissenters of all stripes on even the most conclusively proven things in our world. It doesn’t mean they deserve instant credibility because they ARE dissenting.
And this gets to one of the serious, underlying psychoses of the conservative movement that I find most distressing: open distrust of everything and everyone that is not of the same reasoning. Seeing everything and everyone as a possible conspirator in a plot against your life is a very unhealthy way to live, and it sickens me that the right has been so successful at pushing this sort of reality-phobic mindset.
I don’t think Lindzen’s views are in as small a minority as you suggest. Especially since he has witnessed grant fund dry up for those who don’t toe the alarmist line, and scientists who are afraid to speak up for the same reason, and fear of losing their jobs. No, you find it’s the old stodgy ones who have nothing to lose who speak out, the youg guys tend to be more conservative in their approach. And many I would say are simply afraid of being ridiculed.
I think we can both agree that carbon taxes, credit trading schemes, etc will not do a thing to prevent global warming.
You may not think that, but you’d be wrong.
Wow, sure glad you know everything, Steve. Try spending some time at places OTHER than RealClimate and maybe you’d have a more balanced view.
Second Gerard Harbison and BlueIndependent! Revenant, if you want to continue to deny CO2 causes global warming, you need to go out and write your own climate model (including the never before thought of “angle of the sun hitting the earth” or the warming capability of water vapor) and show different results. But since you seem to think 90% of the models are guesswork anyways, indicating you don’t understand how they are designed and validated and often run under a probabilistic, realization basis, I doubt you have the capacity. And make sure you include some never-done-before statistical analysis of the importance and sensitivity of the model parameterization against solar irradiance data so you can show us the “true” cause of global warming.
Revenant wrote, “Flex. It is a dangerous thing to call CO2 a pollutant, it is most definitely not.”
From Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary;
Pollutant, n. Something that pollutes; especially a harmful chemical or waste material discharged into the water or atmosphere.
Or, for the meaning impaired;
Pollutant, … a … waste material discharged into the water or atmosphere.
Don’t assume that I mean harmful when I don’t. Harmful or not, I would rather not have waste materials discharged into the water or atmosphere. And I don’t think I’m alone in that feeling. Urine is not a particularly harmful liquid, but if I pissed into your soup I would be polluting and I would expect you to be upset with me.
Irrespective of any of the comments above, I agree with the post. Powderline (misspelling intentional) is a political blog authored by lawyers who obviously have no education in science, and they are incompetent to opine on matters scientific.
Way up at comment 44 we see a reference to ocean cooling, which has been popping up recently in GW skeptic argumentation. Revenant says it throws “grave doubt” on models of climate change. One thing it certainly does is introduce uncertainty into models of ocean temperature change. However, the cooling observed since 2003 is (so far) just a fraction of the overall warming observed over the last 50 years. On top of that, a short cooling period was observed in the early ’80s. It lasted a few years. Interesting? Yes. Enough to cast grave doubts on the current view of climate change? Hardly.
I’m not stating my two-bit opinion, but research from climate scientists. Hasn’t Richard Lindzen of MIT been researching this his whole life
Lindzen is pretty careful about how he couches his criticism. His principal scorn is for the extreme models; he doesn’t deny that AGW is occurring. Or at least he hasn’t been denying it recently.
The difference is, Lindzen really is a skeptic; he can be convinced by evidence.
Anytime you want to discuss the scientific points I made, I’m ready to do so. By the way, I am a political conservative, who was a global warming skeptic for a long time. I maintain I still am, in the sense that I can be swayed by legitimate new data. But what I can’t be swayed by is the kind of superficial, un-thought-through arguments dished up here.
This is untrue. The water vapor feedback is not a runaway feedback in any modern climate simulator. Furthermore, there is no modern model that produces runaway greenhouse warming due to any plausible emissions scenario; even in 8x preindustrial (2240 ppm) CO2 simulations (which would require a total conflagration of nearly all known fossil fuels, including the exotics, like methane clathrates, oil shale, tar sands, etc), runaway greenhouse warming does not occur; the modeled climate system stabilizes about about 12 C warmer. Note that none of the IPCC AR4 projections reach 12 C, as they are all based on lower emission scenarios. A1FI, the highest emission scenario used by the IPCC, is projected to result in 4.0 C (likely range is 2.4 C to 6.4 C). warming from the 1980-1999 average (about 3.0 C to 7.0 C warming from preindustrial.)
The popularity of ideas like runaway greenhouse warming and ‘methane fireballs’ is driven by propagandists who seek to misrepresent scientific findings, and by clueless reporters who think every news article must include silly action movie elements. It serves only distract people from genuine dangers of global warming, such as precipitation changes, sea level rise, and, most importantly, the movement of crop regimes, which will force farmers to change crop varietals every few years, and will result in famine where appropriate crop varietals are not available.
Ok folks, It’s apparent all your minds are made up. I’ve already said I’m open to contrary evidence, which I see all the time on both sides, so which am I to believe?
I just can’t help but feel we’re being sold a bogus bill of goods. I mean, I have nothing to gain by denying AGW, nothing at all. But the alarmists have everything to gain by pushing this agenda. Is that a strawman? Perhaps, but I think it bears serious consideration.
I will check out some of the information above, specifically with respect to models and forcings. Thanks for that information.
From Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary;
Pollutant, n. Something that pollutes; especially a harmful chemical or waste material discharged into the water or atmosphere.
Or, for the meaning impaired;
Pollutant, … a … waste material discharged into the water or atmosphere.
Don’t assume that I mean harmful when I don’t. Harmful or not, I would rather not have waste materials discharged into the water or atmosphere. And I don’t think I’m alone in that feeling. Urine is not a particularly harmful liquid, but if I pissed into your soup I would be polluting and I would expect you to be upset with me.
Well, in that case we’d better ban oxygen… “Waste material” is a relative term. Waste to us is food for some other form of life. If we classify CO2 as a pollutant, then it becomes illegal to breathe.
“But the alarmists have everything to gain by pushing this agenda.”
That may have some grain of truth to it, but think of how much more money there is in climate change denial.
The author to the article obviously does not understand basic science, let alone the advanced conepts involved with Global Warming. Global Warming will not turn the Earth into another Venus. It will make the weather patterns change as the Earth’s ecosystem makes adjustments to attempt to compensate for changes in the Earth’s atmosphere. So the prevailing scientific view (as I understand it) is that cold places will get colder, dry places will get drier, and wet places will get wetter. Seasons and weather will become more extreme, which includes extreme cold. It also includes extreme summers, which is when the icecaps melt. The concern is that more ice is melting in the summer than is being replaced in the winter. The process is accelerating as less and less heat energy is being reflected back to the Earth. I’d also like to remind the author that south of the equator, winter comes during Jun-Aug, just in case they think that it’s the same south as it is north…Wait! You guys already know this…maybe I should teach a remedial class on global warming and invite the author to attend as my special guest…
Just a note about funding for climate change science. It’s very hard right now for extreme climate change skeptics to get funding from the standard funding sources–for the perfectly good reason that they can’t convince other scientists of their claims. However, they can get huge amounts of grants from ExxonMobil and other industry sources. Examples include Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, who have a hard time getting published in peer-reviewed journals or earning NSF funds, but have no problem getting energy-industry money.
Just in case no one has mentioned it yet, colder stratospheric Antarctic temperatures, the ones that exacerbate ozone depletion, are caused by global warming. One of the predictions of increasing GHG concentrations is that the stratosphere will cool, thanks to more heat being retained by the troposphere.
Revenant wrote, “If we classify CO2 as a pollutant, then it becomes illegal to breathe.”
Talk about alarmists with a poor understanding of society….
Since when did something being a pollutant mean that it’s illegal?
Yes, human waste products include CO2, water, urea, and even heat. For the most part in the western world we try to isolate much of the solid and liquid waste we produce. We isolate it, process it into a usable form, and it becomes an input into another system, maybe even ourselves.
When we order a steak to sate our hunger, from our perspective the entire rest of the cow is waste. It existed simply to provide us that steak. Expand the perspective a bit further to include all diners and you may find that all skeletal meat is desirable and the organs, and bones are the only waste. Expand your perspective further, and you find that the organs are used in other ways, as are the bones.
If you are so familiar with scientific models, you can look at it from a thermodynamics viewpoint. Where you draw the boundries determines what are inputs, what are outputs and what is waste.
Draw your boundries around your standard automobile. The inputs are gasolene, oil, oxygen. The desired outputs are transportation, entertainment, and at times heat. The waste products are CO2, water vapor, other trace compounds, and heat. (This is not an inclusive list, but an example leaving out things like sound, tire dust, etc.)
Automobiles have gotten better at generating lower levels of waste than in the past. But we can design things which meet the same transportation and entertainment needs while generating less waste. So maybe we should.
Economically speaking, waste products indicate a reduced efficiency of a process. Any undesired heat generated by an automobile means there is less energy available to move the automobile forward. The generation of CO2 by an automobile means that not all the energy available from breaking the chemical bonds of gasolene was used in moving the automobile forward.
Generating waste is not illegal. The people who really annoy me by throwing their cigarette butts out a car window are not doing anything illegal by smoking. They are doing something illegal by not disposing of their cigarette butts in a responsible manner. Because we generally agree that looking at waste diminishes our pleasure, we have made it illegal to litter.
The power plants which generate our electricity and generate waste from doing so are not doing anything illegal by generating electricity and waste. They are doing something illegal if they don’t handle the waste in a responsible manner.
I myself am a bit wary of the global warming computer models. I’ve done enough analog feedback design to know just how sensitive models are to minor changes in the feedback model.
However, the data appears to support the idea that climate change is occuring. A reasonable hypothesis is that human activities had some effect on this change. Rather than test this hypothesis by continuing to add pollutants to our ecosystem, how about we test it by removing pollutants from our ecosystem?
If the hypothesis is right, then we’ve corrected the problem. If the hypothesis is wrong, then we’ve still stopped flooding the ecosystem with our waste products. It’s a win-win scenario.
Oh, I’m sorry, individuals, corporations, and governments will have to use some resources to make it happen. Reducing the level of resources available to prosecute wars, sell un-necessary products, and you won’t be allowed to drain the oil from your car into the storm sewer. (Well, most places don’t let you do that last one even today.)
It is to our benefit; it is to our children’s benefit (yours maybe, I don’t have any); it is to our country’s benefit; it is to our planet’s benefit to handle our waste products responsibly.
One thing’s for sure; there needs to be a lot more metaphorical face-stabbing at right-wing hack-schlobs. Frakin’ double standards make me puke.
Oops. Sorry. That was a little longer than I expected. The curse of a Friday lunch hour. :)
Revanent: “…If we classify CO2 as a pollutant, then it becomes illegal to breathe.”
Whoa, dial back the right-wing channeling. I thought I was reading Townhall or Redstate for a second…
Revenant:
I believe it’s ignorant to think the science is settled, as it was thought in the 70s for global cooling
The scientific community was not concerned with global cooling as a threat to society in the 1970s. This is an undying zombie claim of the denialists, little different from the creationists saying Darwin took it all back on his deathbed.
I challenge you to cite two peer-reivewed articles from science journals, in the 1970s or any other period in time, that reveal the consensus of mainstream scientists to have been as alarmed about imminent anthropogenic global COOLING as is the case for global warming now. Real scientific sources only please, not Time or Newsweek in the issues where they aren’t talking about the Da Vinci code or cloning dinosaurs.
Either there was a flip-flop in the scientific community, or there wasn’t. I, and others who actually work in this field, know that there wasn’t. You too will see that there wasn’t, if you devote a few minutes to hunting for sources for this urban legend that “everybody knows.”
TTT
a little late by now, but…
John W. replied:
Umm, John, I think you may want to check the math. If a 6.4 degree C temperature increase constitutes a rise of 98% in absolute temperature, it would make the planet awfully frackin’ cold right now.
My point was not about units, it was about shifting the baseline. The question posed in the hearings was apparently wanting to know a percentage relative to a baseline of zero. Why is that a valid or useful answer?
Your answer seems to indicate that you were comfortable with a non-zero baseline to calculate a percentage. My point was that if you’re talking percentages, you’d better be careful about which baseline you pick.
Where to begin…
Maybe with the cooling of the 70s and 80s. The sun may have helped, but an important factor was pollution (real pollution this time): sulfur dioxide emissions producing sulfuric acid droplets (remember acid rain) which reflect light and heat from the sun. This masked the effects of the ongoing rise of CO2. When legislation against such emissions was passed in the Western world, the warming recommenced.
———
The rate of CO2 uptake is going up: the ocean is becoming dangerously acidic, and the rainforests are becoming denser. It’s just not fast enough to keep up with the CO2 emissions. Besides… do you want a horror scenario? I can give you one. Tropical rainforests are, as you can guess, not adapted to dry seasons; they catch fire easily and, unlike (say) Yellowstone where fire is normal, they suffer terribly from it. A large-scale wildfire in a tropical rainforest would put the CO2 uptake of several years back into the atmosphere, at once. Here comes the bad news: around the Amazon short dry seasons are appearing, respectively increasing in duration in the “paratropical rainforests” (which have a dry month).
———
What Solomon should have said? She should have spent the next 5 minutes asking counter-questions, such as why Rohrabacher believed his question was relevant.
———
I’ve never heard of Stott; I have heard of Lindzen, and his papers are quite unconvincing. I suppose that’s the reason why he’s almost alone (or perhaps actually alone by now, I haven’t checked for years).
———
Soon and Baliunas have done some good-looking work on the changes in solar irradiance over time and its correlation to the global average surface temperature. This and other work has led to the increased consideration of the sun in the IPCC climate model. However, Soon and Baliunas can’t explain everything that way. Right now, for example, irradiance is decreasing — but the temperature keeps going up. How come?
———
Normally, CO2 doesn’t drive climate changes, but just acts as a feedback. This time, however, everything else stays practically constant, only CO2 goes up, up, up. We haven’t had that situation since the last flood basalt eruptions (around 65 million years ago). What does the temperature do? As predicted: it goes up, up, up. Going by (pre)historical precedent (and glossing over the complexities of the West African monsoon), the Sahara should become green any century, if not decade, now, though probably not before Bangladesh goes under.
———
In sum: The problem I have with Revenant is not his ignorance. He may not have time to spend two days in Google. However, his assumptions that everyone is as ignorant as him and has no more imagination than he has are stupid. As in “The stupid! It burns!”.
Where to begin…
Maybe with the cooling of the 70s and 80s. The sun may have helped, but an important factor was pollution (real pollution this time): sulfur dioxide emissions producing sulfuric acid droplets (remember acid rain) which reflect light and heat from the sun. This masked the effects of the ongoing rise of CO2. When legislation against such emissions was passed in the Western world, the warming recommenced.
———
The rate of CO2 uptake is going up: the ocean is becoming dangerously acidic, and the rainforests are becoming denser. It’s just not fast enough to keep up with the CO2 emissions. Besides… do you want a horror scenario? I can give you one. Tropical rainforests are, as you can guess, not adapted to dry seasons; they catch fire easily and, unlike (say) Yellowstone where fire is normal, they suffer terribly from it. A large-scale wildfire in a tropical rainforest would put the CO2 uptake of several years back into the atmosphere, at once. Here comes the bad news: around the Amazon short dry seasons are appearing, respectively increasing in duration in the “paratropical rainforests” (which have a dry month).
———
What Solomon should have said? She should have spent the next 5 minutes asking counter-questions, such as why Rohrabacher believed his question was relevant.
———
I’ve never heard of Stott; I have heard of Lindzen, and his papers are quite unconvincing. I suppose that’s the reason why he’s almost alone (or perhaps actually alone by now, I haven’t checked for years).
———
Soon and Baliunas have done some good-looking work on the changes in solar irradiance over time and its correlation to the global average surface temperature. This and other work has led to the increased consideration of the sun in the IPCC climate model. However, Soon and Baliunas can’t explain everything that way. Right now, for example, irradiance is decreasing — but the temperature keeps going up. How come?
———
Normally, CO2 doesn’t drive climate changes, but just acts as a feedback. This time, however, everything else stays practically constant, only CO2 goes up, up, up. We haven’t had that situation since the last flood basalt eruptions (around 65 million years ago). What does the temperature do? As predicted: it goes up, up, up. Going by (pre)historical precedent (and glossing over the complexities of the West African monsoon), the Sahara should become green any century, if not decade, now, though probably not before Bangladesh goes under.
———
In sum: The problem I have with Revenant is not his ignorance. He may not have time to spend two days in Google. However, his assumptions that everyone is as ignorant as him and has no more imagination than he has are stupid. As in “The stupid! It burns!”.
I just wrote:
Well, we’ve had the opposite situation: The uplifting of the Tibetan plateau above the treeline is thought to have contributed to the Miocene cooling which made Greenland freeze over and lastly enabled the ice ages. That’s because when calcium silicates weather, they turn into carbonates by taking up CO2.
Which reminds me: Last time Greenland was ice-free was the extreme interglacial a bit over 400,000 years ago. The sea level was 22 m higher than today. If everything keeps going as currently predicted (that excludes methane clathrate belch scenarios), Greenland will be ice-free in a few centuries.
I just wrote:
Well, we’ve had the opposite situation: The uplifting of the Tibetan plateau above the treeline is thought to have contributed to the Miocene cooling which made Greenland freeze over and lastly enabled the ice ages. That’s because when calcium silicates weather, they turn into carbonates by taking up CO2.
Which reminds me: Last time Greenland was ice-free was the extreme interglacial a bit over 400,000 years ago. The sea level was 22 m higher than today. If everything keeps going as currently predicted (that excludes methane clathrate belch scenarios), Greenland will be ice-free in a few centuries.
Remarkable, Mr. LaBonne – it seems we agree on virtually everything, excepting only that I think Solomon ought to be blamed quite a bit.
In terms of calculating a non-zero baseline percent, I am not comfortable with it, but mathematicaly -258K x 0.98 = -252K if there is a better way to do it thats cool man.
Did you know there are 10 different kinds of people in the world, those who think in binary and those who don’t.
She could have played any mathmatical trick (like the one above) that she wanted and yes changing the baseline is a math gimick.
What I am saying is that she knew the answer to the question he asked and I guarantee that she understood exactly what he was asking but she chose to answer differently hence her answering dishonestly. She shouldn’t have felt pressured to answer with some dramatic number. She should have felt confident with the science and what the numbers mean.
So Rohrbacher didn’t have his own dishonest agenda with his question and its more-irrelevant answer, John? And Solomon wasn’t reacting to that perceived agenda in formulating her response?
You don’t get it. Which faction the people involved align themselves with has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
Solomon screwed up, both tactically and ethically. The fact that she’s on the side of the angels does not excuse her actions, no more than being on the side of the demons makes the questioner’s stance on her answers incorrect.
Caledonian: What if Susan Solomon had said:
Human activities have increased CO2 by 35% of preindustrial levels, and methane by 248% of preindustrial levels.
Err, I intended:
Caledonian: What if Susan Solomon had said:
“Human activities have increased CO2 by 35% of preindustrial levels, and methane by 148% of preindustrial levels.”
Clearly I shouldn’t engage in public debate …
My comments aren’t intended to point out the factions and claim them as justification, Caledonian. They’re meant to encourage John to admit Rohrbacher’s bias, something his comments seem to avoid by their focus on Solomon. Which, in turn, gives the impression that he wants to cast Solomon as the villain in this exchange.
I recognize the point you’ve been arguing. When I suggest that one player was more of a bad actor in this, I’m not arguing that on the basis of which side they’ve chosen, but by what I believe each person was attempting to achieve with their questions and responses.
http://arborday.org/media/mapchanges.cfm
Rohrbacher’s behavior does not excuse Solomon’s. Sorry for villianising only her. Though I did previously say:
“The issue is so polarized now that no side is trying to be fair about the numbers. It supposed to be science.”
I just expect a certain almost cold profesionalism from scientists because of the amount of validity placed in what they say. I do not have that same standard for lawyers etc.
I still don’t understand why the question he asked is invalid.
Is it just because the answer is not large enough?
The question he asked is pointless for several reasons, including:
1) Not all greenhouse gases are equivalent
2) The most important factor is not how much greenhouse gas is being released, but what the difference between the absorption and release rates is, and
3) Our global climate may be just below a chaotic threshold that even a small perturbation in the right direction could push us over
It’s a little bit like asking how many people die each year from various causes during a discussion of Jeffrey Dahmer’s reign of terror.
1) Not all greenhouse gases are equivalent.
-Yes, he should have said CO2 but in todays lingo Greenhouse gases is as synonomous to CO2 as AGW is to Global Warming.
2) The most important factor is not how much greenhouse gas is being released, but what the difference between the absorption and release rates is.
-If nature keeps a pretty constant cycle (which it does)the answer to his question “what percentage of greenhouse gases are caused naturally rather than by human beings?” should make it clear that ~25% (I think) of the CO2 out there shouldn’t be out there because it is not apart of the natural cycle.
3) Our global climate may be just below a chaotic threshold that even a small perturbation in the right direction could push us over.
-Yea, welcome to life, eh.
Revenant said,
I don’t think Lindzen’s views are in as small a minority as you suggest. Especially since he has witnessed grant fund dry up for those who don’t toe the alarmist line, and scientists who are afraid to speak up for the same reason, and fear of losing their jobs….
Well, here is an excerpt of a Lindzen-authored Op/ed piece published in the WSJ a few months ago (link http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220 ):
Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that the ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity, not less–hardly a case for more storminess with global warming.
Now, Revenant, is Dr. Lindzen talking about relative or specific humidity here? Or can you tell? And do you know the difference between relative and specific humidity? Do you know why the distinction is important?
Forget the CO2 boys and girls. Its the Carbon Monoxide that you REALLY have to worry about. For those of you who like to rant about what is really climate change against the more hyped up global warming, this is far worse. Warming is a NATURAL fact and has happened about 50 times in the last 50,000 years. Some say Milankovitch cycles, some say its humans. It doesnt matter because humans and their ancestors survived that. Didnt see cavemen enduring global cooling without SUV’s. It happens and with a damnable regularity. We just might be getting to see a peak in a cycle. The fall down to the bottom on that is global cooling.
Now back to C. monoxide. Few of you are likely aware as to WHY the US didnt sign the Kyoto Accords. The Accords would have brought sanity to the pollutants we put into the air. CO2 isnt a pollutant gas, its a naturally occuring one just as C. monoxide is. On the other hand, we generate both but cows, termites, ants and rotting wood generate a crap load and far more than we do. For the US to comply we would have seen our jobs and our manufacturing sector move to China as they didnt have to comply for 40 years under the accords. Again, our lovely US government sucking up. Clinton was preparing to sign it when the business leaders met with him and told him that unemployment would go to 25% in under a year. I dont know about a year, but certainly within five.
Now for you folks who like to say this and that about global warming and this is from the vast Republican conspiracy, the climate is warming. On the other hand with the above in mind you need to be advised that a satellite under MODIS/MOPITT if you want to look it up was conceived under Reagan, prototyped under Bush 1, fielded under Clintons second term and the first available images came under Bush 2. Time dealy cause it takes a year to get the data processed. Why? Because under Reagan with all of the environmentalists going ape shit every 15 minutes about the air and how our population growth had slowed, implementation of the Clean Air Act it still showed an INCREDIBLE amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. So this llittle satellite went round and round and suddenly it came to light who was screwing up the air. China and so much in fact that the program manager at NASA told me that we could turn off everything in the US and the EU and places like LA, Alaska and Honolulu would still have trouble meeting the clean air act. Huh? Are you kidding me? No, I most certainly am not. Feel free to email me at memphisservices@bellsouth.net and I will forward the picture to you. Nearly all greenhouse gases follow the same patterns so the measuring was done on the worst, that being C. monoxide. I can tell you that living in China is a death sentence from heart and respiratory problems if you see this picture. C. Africa during the second season slash and burn is right behind them.
C. monoxide will really hurt you. Carbon Dioxide for you weight watchers is the gas they use in those cola’s to give it a fizzy. Lots of generation there that could be cut. I read about 100 tons a day are generated in the US by popping the top. Beer drinkers you are on notice, they are coming to get you. This other stuff is hype about global warming and it plays into possibly a Manchurian Candidate in Al Gore. Sign Kyoto and we will be out of jobs here fast. It wont clean up the air, it wont do anything but wreck our economy and he will just get richer. Start small Al and quit tearing around in that G1. Did I ever tell you about his relationship with Standard Oil who was whisking his daddy around in the corporate jet to and from Tennessee? Credibility is everything.
I for one want only pure provable science being used and its amazing that the UN had the body of the IPCC report done before all of the comments were in. Smacks of a conclusion before the bell has rung. Dont worry about the air. If the environmentalists are right, then we will die off by the millions and maybe billions from something soon. You can cut, cut, cut emissions but with another 2.3 billion people on the planet by 2040 give or take a few those emissions cuts will be replaced by over all load on the system by those new warm little bodies.
Cattle are bred by and for humans, so their emissions are our emissions.
I stopped reading after that.
Global climate change is happening. Deal with it. If you live on a small coral attol in the middle of the Pacific or Indian oceans – move.
If you live in a major industrialized city where all the “essential services” (running water, electricity, gas, transportation of food products) are centralized – consider moving or gun ownership. (This shouldn’t be a problem for the majority of americans who probably already have their own personal arsenals.)
If you still haven’t pulled your head out of your ass by 2020, you will probably be one of the species of dinosaur which nature will cull.
The natural world doesn’t alarm me, I just take its messages more seriously than the messages from our conservative, scientifically illiterate, political pundits who probably all own concrete bunkers in the Rocky Mountains.
And I don’t mind being considered an environmental whacko. This environmental whacko lives over 1000ft above sea level. The rest of you might consider buying a boat. ;)
that’s an increase of 98% how… and by the way, what does negative Kelvin mean anyway?
Rep. Rohrabacher: Global Warming May Have Been Caused By ‘Dinosaur Flatulence
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/10/dino-flatulence/
the way I would have stated the answer would have been something like: “Our current understanding of climate models makes d[CO2]/dt much more important than [CO2]. Subsequently …
(I think this gets it right.)