Global Warming

[BigRedBuster]

You really do miss about half of what you read don't you.

 

We are the largest consumption market in the world. We should have some power to dictate the conditions our products are made. Amazingly, this is one issue the federal government should be involved in. BUT, instead we make free trade agreements and force more regulations on companies that want to employ Americans. All of that just forces more jobs over seas.

 

Not ONCE have I ever said that the federal government should get completely out of every single issue no matter what. I know your try to over generalize my statements into this nice little package. But, that tends to not work with me how I view the world.

[carlfense]

Not ONCE have I ever said that the federal government should get completely out of every single issue no matter what.

And not ONCE have I ever said that you said that.

[strigori]

If it were a liberal think tank or a liberal environmental lobby group sponsoring a conference, I'd have the same reaction, I guess. I've walked around and seen some of those lobby groups handing out brochures and giving those streetside talks and asking for donations and such, and most of their information struck me as BS as well.

 

The other side here though is academia.

 

Can you always trust academia?

You can't trust anyone 'always' but I would be much more prone to trusting academia rather than big business. Which is really where the two sides line up on in this debate.

[BigRedBuster]

Not ONCE have I ever said that the federal government should get completely out of every single issue no matter what.

And not ONCE have I ever said that you said that.

 

 

But, yet you say this that makes it sound like I believe all government is bad and only unregulated capitalism is the answer.

 

But . . . shouldn't we get government out of the way and let capitalism work it out?

[carlfense]

But, yet you say this that makes it sound like I believe all government is bad and only unregulated capitalism is the answer.

Good point.

[sd'sker]

[huskerXman]

 

 

Well, after seeing this cute little graphic.. everything against man-made global warming must be all lies. Thanks man you graphic changes everything.

[sd'sker]

Well, after seeing this cute little graphic.. everything against man-made global warming must be all lies. Thanks man you graphic changes everything.

would it not be nice if america was actually a free-thinking nation?

NASA scientist James Hansen recently said, "There's a huge gap between what is understood by the scientific community and what is known by the public."

Amid a year of record temperatures and severe drought, Hansen and his colleagues released a statistical analysis suggesting that the odds are too great for many of the past decade's most extreme weather events to have happened by chance. He wrote in the Washington Post, "our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change."

 

The increase in greenhouse gases has also warmed the world's oceans, posing threats to marine life and the food security of island nations. The lead author of a 2012 study on warming oceans, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory climate scientist Peter Gleckler, said, "most of the observed global ocean warming over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities."

[sd'sker]

Environmentalists need to go fix other countries MUCH worse pollution problem. When the rest of the world comes up to our standards then we can start acting like we need tougher environmental regulations in this country.

How would you propose that we encourage/force other countries to pollute less?

 

We can control what we do. We can't control what they do.

 

i did not see this earlier. +1. it is a pascal's wager type of situation. either we buy-in and try to fix the problem, regardless if there is one or not (there is); we either we fix it or find out there was not a problem (there is). or, we ignore whether or not there is a problem (there is); if there is one, then we march towards our inevitable doom, merely to avoid a few minor inconveniences.

[sd'sker]

Richard Muller: 'Humans Are Almost Entirely The Cause' Of Climate Change

 

"Humans are almost entirely the cause" of climate change, according to a scientistwho once doubted that global warming even existed.

Last year, Richard Muller walked backyears of climate change skepticism in light of new research. But Sunday's comments go one step further.

 

Muller wrote in an NYT op-ed that after exhaustive research, he believes that an increase of greenhouse gases can be closely linked to the rise in the earth's temperature. He explains:

Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases

[Ziggy]

Didn't read the whole thread, but just something else to throw out. Has anyone ever really looked at projected Hurricane paths? 5 days out we have 10 to 15 different paths. Not very good projections. How about 10 day weather forecasts, yea they cant even get those right. Its hard to believe a group of people who can't even predict weather 5 days out, so I can see why people have a hard time believing a 5 year, 50 or 500 year projection.

[sd'sker]

Didn't read the whole thread, but just something else to throw out. Has anyone ever really looked at projected Hurricane paths? 5 days out we have 10 to 15 different paths. Not very good projections. How about 10 day weather forecasts, yea they cant even get those right. Its hard to believe a group of people who can't even predict weather 5 days out, so I can see why people have a hard time believing a 5 year, 50 or 500 year projection.

meteorologists on your local network are not the ones doing research in regards to climate change.

[zoogs]

Didn't read the whole thread, but just something else to throw out. Has anyone ever really looked at projected Hurricane paths? 5 days out we have 10 to 15 different paths. Not very good projections. How about 10 day weather forecasts, yea they cant even get those right. Its hard to believe a group of people who can't even predict weather 5 days out, so I can see why people have a hard time believing a 5 year, 50 or 500 year projection.

 

We're talking about two totally different fields here. It's not like climate scientists are predicting your day-to-day temperature and rain forecasts for five hundred years.

[Nebula]

That's a good question that we should all answer. We get into the minutiae of who said this or which scientist did/said what, and while I freely admit I engage in that kind of stuff, it's all beside the larger point of, Is Global Warming/Climate Change Real?

 

Personal opinion - yes, something is going on with the climate. The polar ice melt is a huge indicator that something is happening. We've had an aggregate rise in temps over the past century of what - a degree Celsius? So yeah, something is changing.

 

HOWEVER - what does that mean? We can't answer that because we have barely enough context to grasp what's going on now, let alone what was happening with any kind of specificity 1,000 or 10,000 years ago. I know all about the ice core samples, tree ring analyses, sedimentary analyses, etc, so I'm not saying we're totally blind - it's just that we're not as informed as I think we need to be to make any kind of specific declaration of what's going on, and we certainly don't know why.

 

It could be solar activity, it could be human activity, it could be the natural cycle of the Earth, it could have something to do with our location in orbit around the center of the galaxy, or it could have something to do with something we've never heard or dreamed of. Or it could be nothing at all, just vagaries of weather.

 

My take on what we should do - proceed with caution. We don't know that we're not the cause of Global Warming, and there's some indication that we could be. So what's the harm in curbing our emissions or consuming less energy when we can? To me, the idea that we could be causing this weather change and we're obstinately not doing anything about it is criminal. I'm no tree-hugger, but I am a parent and I'm going to pass this planet on to my descendents. I'd hate to have them curse me in some future dystopia where they're suffering because I was an idiot.

 

tl;dr - The data is unclear, but let's stop polluting wherever we can.

This pretty much encapsulates my entire feeling on this issue, right down to the bolded conclusion. I did read it, though...see a number of my posts for examples of ramblings that are truly too long to read.

[Ziggy]

Didn't read the whole thread, but just something else to throw out. Has anyone ever really looked at projected Hurricane paths? 5 days out we have 10 to 15 different paths. Not very good projections. How about 10 day weather forecasts, yea they cant even get those right. Its hard to believe a group of people who can't even predict weather 5 days out, so I can see why people have a hard time believing a 5 year, 50 or 500 year projection.

 

We're talking about two totally different fields here. It's not like climate scientists are predicting your day-to-day temperature and rain forecasts for five hundred years.

 

I was talking about perception, I didn't say that is what I think. If science at this point can not figure out a weather pattern for something that will happen in 5 days, you can understand why some people are hesitant to believe that science can predict the climate change over a much longer time frame.