What should be done about global warming??

HarveyH42

Joined Jul 22, 2007
426
So what part did you disagree with? Did you even read any of the articles?
Sorry, but no. There were 10 links, I'm on dial-up, and only 30-40 minutes before work. For each article, one would also need to follow up, by reading the references in the bibliography, and check the author out, and see if he's biased in anyway. Only takes a few minutes to run a search through google, but could take hours to read and check all the points being made.

Are you a contract lawyer or something? Seems burying the truth under a pile, comes quite easily for you. Anyway, I believe in the very first post of this thread, the OP clearly stated 'discussion' not a debate. I don't how credible any of these people are, for who you cite. We have business men, lawyers, and politicians all devoted to this cause, almost as many as scientist who support the hypothesis. It's just a tough one to buy into. The planet has gone through some very radical climate changes in the span of my life time. Even if we could do everything right, as the green team dictates, would a volcano or two kind of offset any efforts we make? I lived in Oregon during Mount St. Helens, and that wasn't even considered a major eruption, like in some parts of the world.

It should be obvious that, even if mankind could stop releasing much of their contribution of CO2, it'll have little effect on a global scale. We don't control the world, only live here. The ice will continue to melt, oceans will rise, lakes and rivers dry up (haven't figured out that one yet). It's natural and normal, whether we take credit for it or not, it'll keep going just the same.
 
I agree with HarveyH42. This happens because its normal. In math, science, engineering nothing is absolute. We are always accepting a little leeway. Stuff fluctuates so why should it be so hard for people to accept that the weather, the earth, the atmosphere whatever can do it also.
 

recca02

Joined Apr 2, 2007
1,212
When you add 27 billion tonnes of CO2 a year there is no fluctuation, there is only a rising trend. In science everything has a reason things don't fluctuate without any reasons, unless we have something which offsets this huge level of emissions there will not be a fluctuation.

I know of a certain pulverized fuel fired power plant living in the vicinity of which was impossible till the greenies placed norms on the exhausts. Life there is much better now.
Just to show these people aren't same as those politicians.

I don't think the role of CO2 in GW is debatable at all.
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
Are you a contract lawyer or something? Seems burying the truth under a pile, comes quite easily for you. Anyway, I believe in the very first post of this thread, the OP clearly stated 'discussion' not a debate. I don't how credible any of these people are, for who you cite. We have business men, lawyers, and politicians all devoted to this cause, almost as many as scientist who support the hypothesis. It's just a tough one to buy into. The planet has gone through some very radical climate changes in the span of my life time. Even if we could do everything right, as the green team dictates, would a volcano or two kind of offset any efforts we make? I lived in Oregon during Mount St. Helens, and that wasn't even considered a major eruption, like in some parts of the world.
I'm just a guy who likes to read, and tries for an open mind. My profile and blog is up for all to see, how about yours? As for the pile, I didn't look hard at all, the data is pretty obvious for those who care to look (just like my profile), but you do have to look. Again, what part did you disagree with, rising sea levels, increased CO2 levels, melting glaciers?

What is it about pointing out obvious but unpopular stuff brings out the personal? We do nothing and are wrong, many people die, perhaps more than half the human race. We do something but not enough, people die but perhaps not as many. If nothing happens we are out money. To me it's a no brainier. Personally I don't think there is an answer short of some truly major scientific breakthroughs that allow us to not burn fossil fuels, which could happen but is pretty low probability. I feel research, no government intervention, is key.

The one sure thing is fossil fuels, all fossil fuels, are a limited finite resource. We are going to have to find new solutions eventually, so with the stakes so high why not sooner?
 
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HarveyH42

Joined Jul 22, 2007
426
How many home owner's insurance policies don't contain a 'Act of God' clause...

Seriously, the Global Warming people seemed to only seem climatic changes associated with warming (melting ice), and just as quick to deny any similar events indicate cooling. The numbers shown on paper, don't seem to accurately fit with what I'm seeing in the real world.

Past couple of weeks, I've been seeing on the news, stories about food shortages and failed crops (drought). What happened to the run off from all that melted ice? Would there be more a flooding problem? Higher seas, would mean more surface area, more evaporation, precipitation, plenty of rain, and some inland flooding. Perhaps, it's to warm these days for the water vapor to condense into water droplets...
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
You also heard about a major cyclone with more than 23000 dead. I also mentioned the lack of water because these glaciers are melting, but you didn't want to read the stories. Pick and choose, the easy way to denial.

Climate change is just that, change. Some areas will flood, some will wither. I also said there would be winners, not many, but some. It's the climate cusps that worry me.
 

HarveyH42

Joined Jul 22, 2007
426
I'm sorry you can't face facts, but the facts are there for anyone to see. I'm just a guy who likes to read, and has an open mind. My profile and blog is up for all to see, how about yours?
I'm a 45 year old warehouse worker. Have a 2 year college degree, which never amounted to much. Had an interest in electronics and tinkering with stuff since childhood. Not much to brag about, just an average joe. I may not have much formal education, but have no trouble teaching myself the skills I need. My house was built in 1946, three more payments, and it's all mine. I've yet to hire anyone to do repairs or upgrades. I've learned enough to do a little plumbing, roof repair, carpentry, ran a 220 for my dryer, couple of dedicated outlets for computers. Replaced my water heater. No prier knowledge or experience. Never taken a car to the repair shop, but will admit I learned the basic from my father, while growing up. Mostly fetching the wrong tools, and holding the flashlight wrong... Blamed everything on the kids. Taught myself microcontrollers past year or so, still much to learn. Been sued, and learned enough about the court system and law, to actually win (might have been dumb luck and a kind judge). But I did have to do a lot of work learning to file motions, and dealing with discoveries...

I don't see any reason why I can't learn what I need to know about Global Warming, and figuring out what's happening. So far the evidence and 'facts', just don't float with what I've learn previously about the 'Scientific Method' taught in school. We are being asked to accept way too much on faith. I'd be better of spending more time in church (been a while).

Not much experience in the environmental sciences
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
Not much experience in the environmental sciences
Neither do I.

As to the faith issue, there is data, it's not being made up. You'll note I keep saying I don't want politicians involved, because they are self serving to a fault and tend to make things worse anytime they get involved. Politics is the only field where you can create a problem and then try to solve it with more legislation (when the answer may be less). They and bureaucrats seem to think problems can be solved by telling people what to do, and enjoy doing it to boot.

We can't go back technology wise, and I find a lot of the Green party ideas repugnant in terms of personal freedoms and restricting thereof.

Nice meeting ya Harvey.
 

Mark44

Joined Nov 26, 2007
628
When you add 27 billion tonnes of CO2 a year there is no fluctuation, there is only a rising trend. In science everything has a reason things don't fluctuate without any reasons, unless we have something which offsets this huge level of emissions there will not be a fluctuation.
When you're talking about very large, complex systems, fluctuation rather than stasis is usually the norm. The systems I'm talking about are temperature oscillations in the oceans that occur periodically to create climate events such as El Nino and La Nina, sunspots on the sun, and so on. Certainly there are reasons for these things happening, but our understanding of things as complicated as weather prevents us from making predictions about them. For example, my newspaper shows weather predictions a week in advance, but you could probably make predictions almost as realistic by flipping a coin. When I see how often the meteorologists are wrong looking only a few days into the future, I really start to doubt predictions 30, 50, or 100 years out. Especially after living in the 80s when the future-seers were predicting Global Cooling.

I know of a certain pulverized fuel fired power plant living in the vicinity of which was impossible till the greenies placed norms on the exhausts. Life there is much better now.
Just to show these people aren't same as those politicians.
I don't think the role of CO2 in GW is debatable at all.
And how much did these controls that were placed on the power plant reduce its output of CO2? I think that and its relationship to global warming was the central point of this thread.
 

Mark44

Joined Nov 26, 2007
628
I'm just a guy who likes to read, and tries for an open mind.
Bill, I'm starting to wonder about that open mind part. When you write things such as shrinking glaciers - check, after I have offered evidence that the largest body of ice in the world is growing in size, and that glaciers are growing on a mountain about 70 miles from where I live, it makes me think that once your mind is made up, that's it.

I too, try to keep an open mind, and I also consider the possibility that the conclusions I have reached are wrong. When I am convinced of that I will need to come to different conclusions.

When it comes to the information we get about GW, there is an awful lot of noise in comparison to signal, and in some cases, the signal doesn't even come through.

We do nothing and are wrong, many people die, perhaps more than half the human race. We do something but not enough, people die but perhaps not as many. If nothing happens we are out money.
I don't think you have exhausted the possibilities here. What about if we do something, and it's wrong, and many people die anyway? Case in point is the shift to biofuels, particularly ethanol, which is supposed to produce less CO2, in addition to not being an imported fuel. The diversion of erstwhile foodstocks to fuel production is just now starting to cause real problems in the poorer nations, and will likely lead to many deaths from starvation unless we rethink this.

We have only a fixed amount of resources to bring to bear on all the problems we face. If we use all our resources on one problem (i.e., attempting to reverse global warming), we will not be able to take action on the other problems, such as disease, malnutrition, clean water, and others.

The one sure thing is fossil fuels, all fossil fuels, are a limited finite resource. We are going to have to find new solutions eventually, so with the stakes so high why not sooner?
Carpenters have a saying, "Measure twice, cut once." So much of what I hear from the GW alarmists is "we have to act now!", "the time for debate is over!", it's as if they want us to do something before anyone has a chance to realize that what they're proposing is a really bad idea.

Mark
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
Just a word for all members taking part in this discussion: Please refrain from discussing each other - discuss the topic. There are several instances in this discussion where comments are being made that are personally directed; the topic is about Global Warming so stick to it. I am not implicating anyone in particular here, but if the cap fits, wear it.

Thank you.

Dave
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
Bill, I'm starting to wonder about that open mind part. When you write things such as shrinking glaciers - check, after I have offered evidence that the largest body of ice in the world is growing in size, and that glaciers are growing on a mountain about 70 miles from where I live, it makes me think that once your mind is made up, that's it.
I've matched your 2 year old article and raised it by 10 or so current ones, some refute yours directly. Four years ago it was a lot more debatable, but the S/N ratio is averaging out, and the evidence is building. So you think all the evidence about the glaciers is bogus, correct?

I don't think you have exhausted the possibilities here. What about if we do something, and it's wrong, and many people die anyway? Case in point is the shift to biofuels, particularly ethanol, which is supposed to produce less CO2, in addition to not being an imported fuel. The diversion of erstwhile foodstocks to fuel production is just now starting to cause real problems in the poorer nations, and will likely lead to many deaths from starvation unless we rethink this.

We have only a fixed amount of resources to bring to bear on all the problems we face. If we use all our resources on one problem (i.e., attempting to reverse global warming), we will not be able to take action on the other problems, such as disease, malnutrition, clean water, and others.
If the worst senarios come through there won't be any resources. The money will have to be spent on energy anyhow, it needs higher priority. The alternative if your wrong? Opps, sorry kids, who knew?

Carpenters have a saying, "Measure twice, cut once." So much of what I hear from the GW alarmists is "we have to act now!", "the time for debate is over!", it's as if they want us to do something before anyone has a chance to realize that what they're proposing is a really bad idea.

Mark

When a train is roaring down on you it might be a good idea to get off the track instead of debating how long you have before you have to move or if it will stop first. Time is a precious commodity in this case.

I'm not too worried about small changes, that only kills a million or so here and there. The people involved may argue the point, but civilization survives. If the global supply of methane is released more or less at same time then civilization is reset, we start from scratch and do it all again. If we're lucky some libraries survive.

What is the bad idea? Finding alternatives to oil and coal? We're going to have to do it anyhow, do we really have to burn every drop and lump before we do it?

Change is inevitable, what isn't is planning for it. We can drift along hoping for the best, but personally I'd rather plan for the worst and be proven wrong.
 
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HarveyH42

Joined Jul 22, 2007
426
I just don't buy into carbon emissions being the number one cause, and only mankind can turn things around, if we act now. The temperature increase is very small, not even one degree, averaged over the entire plant so far. Is this accurate? Far as I can tell corn is the only food crop being used for ethanol production on a large scale, in the US. Is this really the cause of the recent food shortages being report across the world.

I don't deny that the world is a man-made mess, and we need to clean up our home. We need to quit wasting our resource on disposable product, and find less wasteful energy sources, make better use of what we take. These things have been around since at least the 60's (had to crush those no tax paying, unemployed, pot smoking hippies, who were getting by just fine).

Carbon emissions may not be the only cause or explanation for the warming trend. Carbon levels have been high before, rise sharply everytime a volcano blows, and the planet some how recovers, without man's help. Maybe we are in for some rough times in the next one hundred years. We've had bad events in the past, hardly phased us, we survived and flourished, maybe became stronger. The global warming crowd sound more like a cult, the rational scientist to me. Perhaps that is why I resist so strongly. I have a problem with people in a big rush, to gain my faith. To push past my thoughts and reason. I might not know all the facts, but this has the feeling like someone trying to run a scam. The facts and the basis is overly simplified, but the impact and the solution is very large. Just seems like there is a lot missing here. If it were so obvious and simple, there would be nothing to argue. When high level business men and politicians are so strongly attracted to a cause, there has to be huge profit involved for them.

Just my thoughts and opinion, but its gotten me this far in life. I'll continue to trust my instincts on this.
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
No problem there. I even agree with a lot of it. The only thing I would like to push is the R&D budgets, but I have this feeling that if something good and cheap does come out of it it will be supressed until we have to dust it off.

As with autos during the late 70's diversity is a good thing. Detroit started producing crap as standard, and the Japanese took advantage of it. I also don't believe in the 100MPG carborator for the same reason, if it existed it would be in a Japanese car (or someones).

If something does come out and gets repressed it will likely pop up somewhere else. But we have to spend the money and effort to have something to repress first.
 

Mark44

Joined Nov 26, 2007
628
I've matched your 2 year old article and raised it by 10 or so current ones, some refute yours directly. Four years ago it was a lot more debatable, but the S/N ratio is averaging out, and the evidence is building. So you think all the evidence about the glaciers is bogus, correct?
No, I don't, and haven't said that. I included several links, so I'm not sure which one you're referring to, but I'll assume it was the one about the ice in Antarctica.

I looked at all of the links you referred to above. All but one of them was about alpine glaciers, most of which I will concede are shrinking. I'll also put forward the notion that these glaciers have been in retreat since the 1920s or earlier, which I don't believe can be laid at the feet of CO2. Coincidentally (or maybe not), the 30s were a very warm period.

Nothing in the links you provided rebuts the Antarctic information I provided. The Antarctic link you sent talks about the Antarctic Peninsula, the only part of Antarctica (and only 5% at that) that is experiencing glacial melting. The ice in the other 95% seems to be thickening.

Here's some current information about both polar areas:
Southern sea ice extent reaches unparalleled levels (the record-keeping goes back only to 1979) (See http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3066.)

The northern hemisphere sea ice reached an extent of 14 million km^2 this past winter, largest in the last five years. And this in spite of a minimum cover the previous summer that was the smallest recorded since 1979 (the chart goes back only to 1979). (See http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.jpg.)

The extent of the southern hemisphere sea ice this past winter was the greatest since 1979. The minimum extent last summer was greater than that of all but three of the years in this same timespan. (See http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.south.jpg.)

So if CO2 concentration is increasing monotonically, why aren't the global average temperatures following suit (down since 1998, and down a whole degree this last year), and why aren't the polar ice extents following suit?



When a train is roaring down on you it might be a good idea to get off the track instead of debating how long you have before you have to move or if it will stop first. Time is a precious commodity in this case.
Agreed. But if that same train that is roaring down on you is still 100 miles away, there is time to think before you act, which I believe is very applicable to the situation with GW.

I'm not too worried about small changes, that only kills a million or so here and there. The people involved may argue the point, but civilization survives.
What's a million or two between friends?

If the global supply of methane is released more or less at same time then civilization is reset, we start from scratch and do it all again. If we're lucky some libraries survive.
Or maybe we can just make lemonade, so to speak, by capturing it before it melts (I assume you're talking about the semifrozen methane nodules at the seabottom), and using it to power fuel cells.


If I can summarize what I think the debate is, here's what I see:

Humans produce CO2. (1)
CO2 causes an increase in global temperature. (2)
The earth's temperature is increasing. (3)
Therefore, humans should stop producing CO2.

(1) is indisputable. However, there are other agents besides humans that produce CO2.
(2) is debatable. At the very least, it should be pointed out that the relationship between CO2 concentration and temperature is highly nonlinear, so that, for example, doubling the CO2 concentration would in no way cause a doubling of the temperature.

In the temperature and CO2 vs. time graph that Gore used in his book and movie, the temps and CO2 concentrations over the past 650,000 years appear to be highly correlated. If you look at the graphs closely, you'll see that CO2 increases lagged temperature increases, rather than the other way around, as (2) would suggest. Even so, it seems pretty evident to me that there are other factors involved in the global temperature, and any analysis that ignored the other factors would be incomplete, in my view.
(3) seems to be true, at the moment. As I pointed out earlier (and provided a link to) a study from Chinese scientists predicts large temperature drops within 30 years. If there is some other agent besides CO2, and one we have no control over (e.g., the sun), the conclusion is beside the point.

Mark
 

recca02

Joined Apr 2, 2007
1,212
And how much did these controls that were placed on the power plant reduce its output of CO2? I think that and its relationship to global warming was the central point of this thread.
I haven't researched this as such, but I think there are norms for all effluents, even temperature of flue gas. Sure I agree the %age of CO2 might not have come down due to the norms, but it certainly did reduce fly-ash emissions and perhaps some other gases(SOx?).
As far as this being related to topic of discussion is concerned:
It is obvious the OP wants to know ways to stop GW and since industrial effluents seem a reason environmental norms are the answer.
 

Mark44

Joined Nov 26, 2007
628
Recca,
I would be very surprised to find that the controls placed on the power plant did anything at all with CO2. As far as the reductions in fly ash and SOx emissions are concerned, I'm in complete agreement that these are good things, not so much for global warming reasons, but rather to make the air more breathable.
 
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