Is Gobal Cooling a Continuing Threat?

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Why is it you only post from one source?

There are more un-answered questions than hard evidence. Only a fool believes we fully understand the mechanisms of our complex climate.

This article explains that due to pressure from within the Royal Society they have been forced to wind their necks in on the blatent alarmism. Its just like crying wolf. They have used up all their alarms and now are compromised.

There are a number of persisting scientific fallacies in our current mainstream. They will all be busted in the next 5-10 years.

You can prove the earth has warmed. Give me your best piece of conclusive evidence that c02 produced by man is the main driving factor please.

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

Why is it you only post from one source?

Because that source completely documents all of their sources, has done a very thorough job of gathering every bit of data out there and addressing every pertinent claim, and shows arguments from all sides.

It even includes e-mail exchanges with prominent deniers such as Lord Monkton.

The articles are not written by reporters or political pundits.

I read every article I see by both sides... It just happens that all of the science (rhetoric free) has been neatly gathered, and there is no real need for anyone who has questions to look any farther for complete verifiable answers with fully document sources.

 

[sac beh]

Why is it you only post from one source?

This is research skills 101. The site H3ad has posted resources from is not a political blog nor opinion site. In each of its pages and arguments it provides sources for claims and encourages the reader to check those sources and judge both sides. This is what separates research from politics and opinions.

In fact, search the site for Royal Society and you'll see that it does something very important that your article does not do. It links to the Royal Society's position paper (which your article sites) and compares the two to show that the claims in your article grossly exaggerate and sometimes falsify the actual claims and public position of the Royal Society.

Consider it an investment in your future as an informed citizen and independent thinker to learn these research skills, which start with learning to discern third-party opinion pieces from original sources, and both from scientific consensus.

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

You can prove the earth has warmed. Give me your best piece of conclusive evidence that c02 produced by man is the main driving factor please.

go back and read my posts.

It is not a single piece of evidence.
It is multiple independent lines of evidence.
It is based on information which was demonstrated over a century ago.
CO2 definitely beyond all doubt absorbs and re-radiates long wave radiation, thus retaining heat in the atmosphere.


Once more... I'll repost something which I've given you ample opportunity to read, but you chose to ignore instead.

Please read it this time.

10 key climate indicators all point to the same finding: global warming is unmistakable

A common theme expressed at Skeptical Science is that to understand climate, you need to look at the full body of evidence. To help people assess the evidence, NOAA have just published State of the Climate 2009. The report defines 10 measurable planet-wide features used to gauge global temperature changes. All of these indicators are moving in the direction of a warming planet.

Seven indicators are rising: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, air temperature over oceans, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface. Three indicators are declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere. Jane Lubchenco sums it up well:

"For the first time, and in a single compelling comparison, the analysis brings together multiple observational records from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean. The records come from many institutions worldwide. They use data collected from diverse sources, including satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, ships, buoys and field surveys. These independently produced lines of evidence all point to the same conclusion: our planet is warming."

10 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change

The NOAA State of the Climate 2009 report is an excellent summary of the many lines of evidence that global warming is happening. Acknowledging the fact that the planet is warming leads to the all important question - what's causing global warming? To answer this, here is a summary of the empirical evidence that answer this question. Many different observations find a distinct human fingerprint on climate change:


1.Humans are currently emitting around 30 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (CDIAC). Of course, it could be coincidence that CO2 levels are rising so sharply at the same time so let's look at more evidence that we're responsible for the rise in CO2 levels.

2.When we measure the type of carbon accumulating in the atmosphere, we observe more of the type of carbon that comes from fossil fuels (Manning 2006).

3.This is corroborated by measurements of oxygen in the atmosphere. Oxygen levels are falling in line with the amount of carbon dioxide rising, just as you'd expect from fossil fuel burning which takes oxygen out of the air to create carbon dioxide (Manning 2006).

4.Further independent evidence that humans are raising CO2 levels comes from measurements of carbon found in coral records going back several centuries. These find a recent sharp rise in the type of carbon that comes from fossil fuels (Pelejero 2005).

5.So we know humans are raising CO2 levels. What's the effect? Satellites measure less heat escaping out to space, at the particular wavelengths that CO2 absorbs heat, thus finding "direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth's greenhouse effect". (Harries 2001, Griggs 2004, Chen 2007).

6.If less heat is escaping to space, where is it going? Back to the Earth's surface. Surface measurements confirm this, observing more downward infrared radiation (Philipona 2004, Wang 2009). A closer look at the downward radiation finds more heat returning at CO2 wavelengths, leading to the conclusion that "this experimental data should effectively end the argument by skeptics that no experimental evidence exists for the connection between greenhouse gas increases in the atmosphere and global warming." (Evans 2006).

7.If an increased greenhouse effect is causing global warming, we should see certain patterns in the
warming. For example, the planet should warm faster at night than during the day. This is indeed being observed (Braganza 2004, Alexander 2006).

8.Another distinctive pattern of greenhouse warming is cooling in the upper atmosphere, otherwise known as the stratosphere. This is exactly what's happening (Jones 2003).

9.With the lower atmosphere (the troposphere) warming and the upper atmosphere (the stratophere) cooling, another consequence is the boundary between the troposphere and stratophere, otherwise known as the tropopause, should rise as a consequence of greenhouse warming. This has been observed (Santer 2003).

10.An even higher layer of the atmosphere, the ionosphere, is expected to cool and contract in response to greenhouse warming. This has been observed by satellites (Laštovi?ka 2006).


Science isn't a house of cards, ready to topple if you remove one line of evidence. Instead, it's like a jigsaw puzzle. As the body of evidence builds, we get a clearer picture of what's driving our climate. We now have many lines of evidence all pointing to a single, consistent answer - the main driver of global warming is rising carbon dioxide levels from our fossil fuel burning.

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

There are more un-answered questions than hard evidence. Only a fool believes we fully understand the mechanisms of our complex climate.

There are some unanswered questions.
They have nothing to do with whether or not it is warming, or whether or not mankind's CO2 emissions are a major driver of the warming.

No scientist, and no person posting here who is pro-science, has ever implied that we fully understand the mechanisms of our complex climate... Just that we have enough of an understanding about enough aspects of our climate, and enough evidence, to be sure beyond any reasonable doubt that CO2 driven AGW is in deed occurring.

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

I asked for one but i understand you can only copy and paste

I dont really trust NASA but will give them the benefit of the doubt here. This is a point i made many moons ago. C02 makes plants grow faster. Funny that

Heres mine:

A new NASA computer modeling effort has found that additional growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would create a new negative feedback – a cooling effect – in the Earth's climate system that could work to reduce future global warming.

The cooling effect would be -0.3 degrees Celsius (C) (-0.5 Fahrenheit (F)) globally and -0.6 degrees C (-1.1 F) over land, compared to simulations where the feedback was not included, said Lahouari Bounoua, of Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Bounoua is lead author on a paper detailing the results that will be published Dec. 7 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Without the negative feedback included, the model found a warming of 1.94 degrees C globally when carbon dioxide was doubled.

Bounoua stressed that while the model's results showed a negative feedback, it is not a strong enough response to alter the global warming trend that is expected. In fact, the present work is an example of how, over time, scientists will create more sophisticated models that will chip away at the uncertainty range of climate change and allow more accurate projections of future climate.

"This feedback slows but does not alleviate the projected warming," Bounoua said.

To date, only some models that predict how the planet would respond to a doubling of carbon dioxide have allowed for vegetation to grow as a response to higher carbon dioxide levels and associated increases in temperatures and precipitation.

Still from animation showing seasonal vegetation changes on Earth in 2004.› View animation
This animation shows seasonal vegetation changes on Earth in 2004, created using NASA satellite data. It is an animation of what is called the Normalized Vegetation Difference Index, which provides an indication of the health of plant life on Earth. Source: Scientific Visualization Studio, Goddard Space Flight Center Of those that have attempted to model this feedback, this new effort differs in that it incorporates a specific response in plants to higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. When there is more carbon dioxide available, plants are able to use less water yet maintain previous levels of photosynthesis. The process is called "down-regulation." This more efficient use of water and nutrients has been observed in experimental studies and can ultimately lead to increased leaf growth. The ability to increase leaf growth due to changes in photosynthetic activity was also included in the model. The authors postulate that the greater leaf growth would increase evapotranspiration on a global scale and create an additional cooling effect.

"This is what is completely new," said Bounoua, referring to the incorporation of down-regulation and changed leaf growth into the model. "What we did is improve plants' physiological response in the model by including down-regulation. The end result is a stronger feedback than previously thought."

The modeling approach also investigated how stimulation of plant growth in a world with doubled carbon dioxide levels would be fueled by warmer temperatures, increased precipitation in some regions and plants' more efficient use of water due to carbon dioxide being more readily available in the atmosphere. Previous climate models have included these aspects but not down-regulation. The models without down-regulation projected little to no cooling from vegetative growth.

Scientists agree that in a world where carbon dioxide has doubled – a standard basis for many global warming modeling simulations – temperature would increase from 2 to 4.5 degrees C (3.5 to 8.0 F). (The model used in this study found warming – without incorporating the plant feedback – on the low end of this range.) The uncertainty in that range is mostly due to uncertainty about "feedbacks" – how different aspects of the Earth system will react to a warming world, and then how those changes will either amplify (positive feedback) or dampen (negative feedback) the overall warming.

An example of a positive feedback would be if warming temperatures caused forests to grow in the place of Arctic tundra. The darker surface of a forest canopy would absorb more solar radiation than the snowy tundra, which reflects more solar radiation. The greater absorption would amplify warming. The vegetative feedback modeled in this research, in which increased plant growth would exert a cooling effect, is an example of a negative feedback. The feedback quantified in this study is a result of an interaction between all these aspects: carbon dioxide enrichment, a warming and moistening climate, plants' more efficient use of water, down-regulation and the ability for leaf growth.

This new paper is one of many steps toward gradually improving overall future climate projections, a process that involves better modeling of both warming and cooling feedbacks.

"As we learn more about how these systems react, we can learn more about how the climate will change," said co-author Forrest Hall, of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County and Goddard Space Flight Center. "Each year we get better and better. It's important to get these things right just as it's important to get the track of a hurricane right. We've got to get these models right, and improve our projections, so we'll know where to most effectively concentrate mitigation efforts."

The results presented here indicate that changes in the state of vegetation may already be playing a role in the continental water, energy and carbon budgets as atmospheric carbon dioxide increases, said Piers Sellers, a co-author from NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas.

"We're learning more and more about how our planet really works," Sellers said. "We have suspected for some time that the connection between vegetation photosynthesis and the surface energy balance could be a significant player in future climate. This study gives us an indication of the strength and sign of one of these biosphere-atmosphere feedbacks."

Patrick Lynch
NASA's Earth Science News Team


http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/cooling-plant-growth.html

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

and I explained that there is not just one (big picture, not myopic nitpickery)... and the pointed you at the information, which someone has already gone to the trouble to type in... and since I'm too smart to keep reinventing the wheel, cutting and pasting ONLY makes sense.

but I understand haters gotta hate, and any chink in the armor you can nitpick and hate on you're gonna.

when am I gonna realize you're not interested in learning anything, and are just trolling your unsupported rhetoric?

Yes... CO2 makes plants grow faster (science can demonstrate it to be so, just like agw)... Unfortunately the draughts and floods (i.e. Russia and pakastan) that will result from AGW kills plants and animals. Big Picture... anything that nitpicks instead of looking at the whole picture is an epic fail.

Here is the answer to the "but is it bad?" question.

Here’s a list of cause and effect relationships, showing that most climate change impacts will confer few or no benefits, but may do great harm at considerable cost.

Agriculture
While CO2 is essential for plant growth, all agriculture depends also on steady water supplies, and climate change is likely to disrupt those supplies through floods and droughts. It has been suggested that higher latitudes – Siberia, for example – may become productive due to global warming, but the soil in Arctic and bordering territories is very poor, and the amount of sunlight reaching the ground in summer will not change because it is governed by the tilt of the earth. Agriculture can also be disrupted by wildfires and changes in seasonal periodicity, which is already taking place, and changes to grasslands and water supplies could impact grazing and welfare of domestic livestock. Increased warming may also have a greater effect on countries whose climate is already near or at a temperature limit over which yields reduce or crops fail – in the tropics or sub-Sahara, for example.

Health
Warmer winters would mean fewer deaths, particularly among vulnerable groups like the aged. However, the same groups are also vulnerable to additional heat, and deaths attributable to heatwaves are expected to be approximately five times as great as winter deaths prevented. It is widely believed that warmer climes will encourage migration of disease-bearing insects like mosquitoes and malaria is already appearing in places it hasn’t been seen before.

Polar Melting
While the opening of a year-round ice free Arctic passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans would confer some commercial benefits, these are considerably outweighed by the negatives. Detrimental effects include loss of polar bear habitat and increased mobile ice hazards to shipping. The loss of ice albedo (the reflection of heat), causing the ocean to absorb more heat, is also a positive feedback; the warming waters increase glacier and Greenland ice cap melt, as well as raising the temperature of Arctic tundra, which then releases methane, a very potent greenhouse gas (methane is also released from the sea-bed, where it is trapped in ice-crystals called clathrates). Melting of the Antarctic ice shelves is predicted to add further to sea-level rise with no benefits accruing.

Ocean Acidification
A cause for considerable concern, there appear to be no benefits to the change in pH of the oceans. This process is caused by additional CO2 being absorbed in the water, and may have severe destabilising effects on the entire oceanic food-chain.

Melting Glaciers
The effects of glaciers melting are largely detrimental, the principle impact being that many millions of people (one-sixth of the world’s population) depend on fresh water supplied each year by natural spring melt and regrowth cycles and those water supplies – drinking water, agriculture – may fail.

Sea Level Rise
Many parts of the world are low-lying and will be severely affected by modest sea rises. Rice paddies are being inundated with salt water, which destroys the crops. Seawater is contaminating rivers as it mixes with fresh water further upstream, and aquifers are becoming polluted. Given that the IPCC did not include melt-water from the Greenland and Antarctic ice-caps due to uncertainties at that time, estimates of sea-level rise are feared to considerably underestimate the scale of the problem. There are no proposed benefits to sea-level rise.

Environmental
Positive effects of climate change may include greener rainforests and enhanced plant growth in the Amazon, increased vegitation in northern latitudes and possible increases in plankton biomass in some parts of the ocean. Negative responses may include further growth of oxygen poor ocean zones, contamination or exhaustion of fresh water, increased incidence of natural fires, extensive vegetation die-off due to droughts, increased risk of coral extinction, decline in global photoplankton, changes in migration patterns of birds and animals, changes in seasonal periodicity, disruption to food chains and species loss.

Economic
The economic impacts of climate change may be catastrophic, while there have been very few benefits projected at all. The Stern report made clear the overall pattern of economic distress, and while the specific numbers may be contested, the costs of climate change were far in excess of the costs of preventing it. Certain scenarios projected in the IPCC AR4 report would witness massive migration as low-lying countries were flooded. Disruptions to global trade, transport, energy supplies and labour markets, banking and finance, investment and insurance, would all wreak havoc on the stability of both developed and developing nations. Markets would endure increased volatility and institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies would experience considerable difficulty.

Developing countries, some of which are already embroiled in military conflict, may be drawn into larger and more protracted disputes over water, energy supplies or food, all of which may disrupt economic growth at a time when developing countries are beset by more egregious manifestations of climate change. It is widely accepted that the detrimental effects of climate change will be visited largely on the countries least equipped to adapt, socially or economically.

and here is the more detailed version:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

I thought it was pertinant to the thread title. The feedback is changing the models that the alarmism is based on. Like i said you can prove we have raised c02 by a fraction of 1% and you can prove the earth has warmed by a fraction of 1degree Celsius. Its the scare-mongering i have issue with.

The projections of doom and gloom are based on computer models.
The Royal Society admits the science isnt settled.
There are still record low temps being set.
The next 5-10 years will see the matter resolved.
As Carl Sagan says in your sig the religion that is climate change based on c02 is not gonna give up the ghost overnight.

I dont expect an apology when some real disaster looms large.

 

[Ben Tokin]

OK, so there we have it. The science, or lack of, simply shows us that you can argue for or against global cooling. My greatest fear is that as the climate becomes colder and we slip into another ice age, the politicians will completely ignore common sense. They will probably still stop basic energy development and still raise taxes to compensate for the levels of water vapor in the air caused by more people peeing outside because they can't afford water to flush their toilets.

Will we ever get to the point where we can just concentrate on improving technology and building wealth, instead of raising the paranoia levels to cause mass hysteria?

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

We've increased CO2 concentration by well over 25%... Saying that it was a fraction of a percent is completely and utterly misinformation.


Do deniers think we can't do math?

The current atmospheric concentration of CO2 is 388ppm.
The most widely accepted of such studies come from a variety of Antarctic cores and indicate that atmospheric CO2 levels were about 260 – 280 ppmv immediately before industrial emissions began and did not vary much from this level during the preceding 10,000 years

388 - 280 = 108

What percentage of the total concentration (388) was the increase (108)?

27.8%


less than 1% my ass.


All computer models aside... AGW is still verifiably happening.
CO2 emissions are verifiably to blame.
Keep your head in the sand if ignorance makes you blissful,
but stop acting like you know something... You Don't.

Everything you've posted is either irrelevant or mistaken or lies... and to boot, you've refused to look at the compilation of knowledge on the subject I've pointed you toward repeatedly. Since they invite dissenting opinion and even post up their back and forth emails with Monkton and the like you can't pretend it is one sided or political... you just stubbornly refuse to look... Like you're scared of knowledge.

 

[Blueshark]

There is plenty of 'evidence' that can be claimed by both sides of the so-called Global Warming argument. It is stunning to me that people on both sides actually think they can change the environment on a global scale.... and point to their 'facts' as proof.

If people think we can change the climate and that it is happening now is arrogance beyond belief. There are far greater forces at work here on the planet that make what we pitiful humans do miniscule at best. Perhaps we should outlaw the eruptions of volcanos or fires due to lightning strikes. We could certainly reduce Co2 and Sulfer pollutants to a greater degree than we measly humans are creating/spewing into the atmosphere.

I'm not even going to get into the implications of ocean currents changing due to plate techtonics that would drastically change the weather patterns of the planet .

This topic is SIMPLE.... And the answer is something we do not control....

Climate and weather has been changing for eons and it will continue to change for the good or worse NO MATTER WHAT WE TINY INSIGNIFICANT HUMANS WILL DO...

The fact that both sides will try to use this to political and/or monetary advantage is the only certainty we face that we CAN change. I get that people are passionate about this. But to let it get to this level of debate is not only pointless, but a waste of great minds on both sides...

I would sooner see these minds working in concert to find ways to take advantage of the changes in our climate/weather than trying to fight it. ADAPT!!

If we fail at adaptation, then all humanity will cease to exist... Dinosaurs anyone??

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

Anyone who has ever seen pictures of earth from space will LOL at the "insignificant humans can't affect the planet" delusion.

 

[Blueshark]

Its just unfortunate that we do not have pictures from space that date from the Ice Age and the Mezozoic Era for comparison. I would guess they would differ drastically as well..

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

Its just unfortunate that we do not have pictures from space that date from the Ice Age and the Mezozoic Era for comparison. I would guess they would differ drastically as well..

Yeah... The earth would be a pristine untouched wilderness, or hidden from view under glaciers.


Anyone pushing the 'insignificant humans' argument must have never heard of the dust bowl.

 

[Blueshark]

Yeah... The earth would be a pristine untouched wilderness.


Yes, pristine wilderness covered in ICE... And pristine wilderness covered in lush jungle growth.

Have you ever asked yourself what caused the 'warming' for the jungle growth that formed all of our fossil fuels?

Have you ever asked yourself what caused the 'cooling' for the ice age?

Or were humans to blame for that as well? If so, then my argument is wrong. Would you agree that it might be a good idea to at least look at how we may adapt to preserve ourselves in the future? I am not saying anyone on either side is 'right' or 'wrong'. Isn't it logical to think that we need to adapt to preserve our species? Just trying to find alternatives to perishing from the planet altogether. Peace..

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

it is pretty simplistic to think that just because man's CO2 emissions are responsible for this warming, then CO2 must be the only thing that can cause warming or cooling... and purely silly to imagine it means humans are needed for warming to occur.

Sometimes forest fires occur naturally.
Man caused this specific forest fire, as indicated by the torch and fuel cans.

See the difference? You cannot ignore the evidence that man started the fire simply because lightning starts some fires.

I understand you having questions... but instead of continuing to object on such shaky grounds, why not just spend a couple of hours reading around here : http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php and have your questions answered instead of patronized?

everything is well documented and verifiable.

Here's a teaser to get you started...

A common skeptic argument is that climate has changed naturally in the past, long before SUVs and coal-fired power plants, so therefore humans cannot be causing global warming now. Interestingly, the peer-reviewed research into past climate change comes to the opposite conclusion. To understand this, first you have to ask why climate has changed in the past. It doesn't happen by magic. Climate changes when it’s forced to change. When our planet suffers an energy imbalance and gains or loses heat, global temperature changes.

There are a number of different forces which can influence the Earth’s climate. When the sun gets brighter, the planet receives more energy and warms. When volcanoes erupt, they emit particles into the atmosphere which reflect sunlight, and the planet cools. When there are more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the planet warms. These effects are referred to as external forcings because by changing the planet's energy balance, they force climate to change.

It is obviously true that past climate change was caused by natural forcings. However, to argue that this means we can’t cause climate change is like arguing that humans can’t start bushfires because in the past they’ve happened naturally. Greenhouse gas increases have caused climate change many times in Earth’s history, and we are now adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere at a increasingly rapid rate.
Looking at the past gives us insight into how our climate responds to external forcings. Using ice cores, for instance, we can work out the degree of past temperature change, the level of solar activity, and the amount of greenhouse gases and volcanic dust in the atmosphere. From this, we can determine how temperature has changed due to past energy imbalances. What we have found, looking at many different periods and timescales in Earth's history, is that when the Earth gains heat, positive feedbacks amplify the warming. This is why we've experienced such dramatic changes in temperature in the past. Our climate is highly sensitive to changes in heat. We can even quantify this: when you include positive feedbacks, a doubling of CO2 causes a warming of around 3°C.

What does that mean for today? Rising greenhouse gas levels are an external forcing, which has caused climate changes many times in Earth's history. They're causing an energy imbalance and the planet is building up heat. From Earth's history, we know that positive feedbacks will amplify the greenhouse warming. So past climate change doesn't tell us that humans can't influence climate; on the contrary, it tells us that climate is highly sensitive to the greenhouse warming we're now causing.

 

[Blueshark]

it is pretty simplistic to think that just because man's CO2 emissions are responsible for this warming, then CO2 must be the only thing that can cause warming or cooling... and purely silly to imagine it means humans are needed for warming to occur.

Sometimes forest fires occur naturally.
Man caused this specific forest fire, as indicated by the torch and fuel cans.

See the difference? You cannot ignore the evidence that man started the fire simply because lightning starts some fires.

I understand you having questions... but instead of continuing to object on such shaky grounds, why not just spend a couple of hours reading around here : http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php and have your questions answered instead of patronized?

everything is well documented and verifiable.

Here's a teaser to get you started...

By your underlined statement you kinda make my point for me. Man can contribute to the problem, but to be the cause on such a large scale? What makes you, or the scientists you say have evidence, think that this current situation IS only caused by mans pollution? We only hear about what humanity is 'doing' to the planet/climate. I would submit that it is a combination of reasons for what is going on right now. 30 years ago nobody ever heard of El Nino or La Nina as causing temporary weather changes via Pacific ocean currents. Opinions change as we learn more.

I suppose we will have to agree to disagree on this point. It has been good debating you on this. Part of why I love this site so much. Peace..

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

By your underlined statement you kinda make my point for me. Man can contribute to the problem, but to be the cause on such a large scale? What makes you, or the scientists you say have evidence, think that this current situation IS only caused by mans pollution? We only hear about what humanity is 'doing' to the planet/climate. I would submit that it is a combination of reasons for what is going on right now. 30 years ago nobody ever heard of El Nino or La Nina as causing temporary weather changes via Pacific ocean currents. Opinions change as we learn more.

I suppose we will have to agree to disagree on this point. It has been good debating you on this. Part of why I love this site so much. Peace..

The underlined is underlined so because it is a hyperlinklink to information unmaking your point. I assumed anyone using the internet is familiar with hotlinked text... sorry for not telling you it was a link.
Your point is in error.



Mankind is definitely provably not globally insignificant.
Only by ignoring the available information is man able to fool himself into thinking so.
Look into how mankind caused the dustbowl.... and that's fairly small scale compared to what man is capable of. Please stop grasping at the metaphorical straws that comfort you and take advantage of the completely verifiable information presented to you.


It is really simple to get: Natural climate change in the past proves that climate is sensitive to an energy imbalance. If the planet accumulates heat, global temperatures will go up. Currently, CO2 is imposing an energy imbalance due to the enhanced greenhouse effect. Past climate change actually provides evidence for our climate's sensitivity to CO2.

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

Funny thing... back during the Clinton White House years, I used to be as staunch a global warming skeptic as anyone. I even set out once to gather up and present all of the information proving the AGW was a liberal hoax (I was also a conservative back then... or at least fiscally, socially I was still fairly middle of the road)... Thing is the evidence gathering slowly but surely forced me to change my mind... The more I knew, the harder it was to maintain my position that AGW was hoax... Eventually a tipping point was reached.

So much more information is available now... more than it took to make me lean toward belief... Unfortunately there is also much more disinformation available... I guess I was lucky to have dealt with learning about things back when the denial argument was still trying to be fact based... There is so much outright disinformation being pumped out by the energy company funded think tanks, I really should be more tolerant of some people's confusion on the issue.

All I can do is try to remain unfrustrated and civil, and keep pointing at the single best knowledge base on the topic, and hoping that people will be genuinely curious enough to educate themselves completely, and to subject the claims they hear made by both sides to rigid tests of refutability and accuracy.

 

[Ben Tokin]

Common sense is gradually sinking in:

Cancun Climate Summit Ridiculed in World Press

Written by Alex Newman
Monday, 06 December 2010 00:00

While United Nations global-warming dignitaries were invoking ancient Maya goddesses for help in hammering out a wealth-redistribution “climate” treaty, prominent columnists and publications around the world were heaping scorn and ridicule on the whole COP16 extravaganza currently underway in Cancun — even heralding the end of the whole “scam.”

From the United States and Canada to the United Kingdom, the amount of negative press for the climate hysterics — and their whole expensive confab in Mexico — is growing daily. And as UN leaders and climate negotiators ramp up the fear mongering and propose ever-more ridiculous scams and taxes, the barrage of ridicule will likely continue.

“Scams die hard, but eventually they die, and when they do, nobody wants to get close to the corpse,” noted Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden in an opinion piece released last week. “The global-warming caravan has moved on, bound for a destination in oblivion.”

And that’s why D.C. bigwigs, who flew into Copenhagen on government jets by the dozens for last year’s global-warming conference, have stayed home this year. “Nobody wants to get the smell of the corpse on their clothes,” explained Pruden, citing the notable absence of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other global-warming alarmists in Congress — most of them far less enthusiastic about the crusade than at this time last year.

“When the thrill is gone, the thrill is gone, as star-crossed lovers have learned through the ages, and when a scam collapses, it stays collapsed,” he concluded. “The thought is enough to warm hearts all across the globe.”

In Canada, newspapers and columnists were equally harsh. “This global-warming/climate-change stuff is a great racket,” wrote Rex Murphy in a piece entitled “Cancun sun speeds decay of global warming charade” for the National Post. He then takes aim at “the class of professional alarmists who’ve been banging on about global warming for close on two decades now” as they hold their extravaganza in a sunny resort city where tourists flock to enjoy the warm weather.

“Perhaps they know that this show of theirs is on its last legs, the jig is up, the great game is over. After the unsuccessful 2009 Copenhagen conference, they had to have realized that even Al Gore and all Al Gore's grim little men would never be able to put the whole rickety, tendentious machine back together again,” Murphy explained. “After Copenhagen, and especially after Climategate, even the true believers must have lost heart.”

But will Cancun be the last global-warming summit ever? “It’s possible,” Murphy suggested. “And with Japan having walked away from the whole idea of Kyoto, it’s hard to see how they’ll work up the steam for another holiday next year.”

And even in England — where the political class seems obsessed by global warming and carbon taxes even as the snow-covered nation suffers its fourth abnormally cold winter in a row and millions of families have trouble heating their homes — the press has been brutal to the warmists. Columnists for the Telegraph and reporters for the Daily Mail, two of the U.K.’s largest papers, have put the climate crusade to shame.

“The global warming scare may have been fun for the children while it lasted. But the time has come for the joke to be declared well and truly over,” opined Christopher Booker in a column entitled “Cancun climate conference: the warmists' last Mexican wave” appearing in the Telegraph.

“What we are seeing here is one of the greatest collective flights from reality in the history of the human race,” he noted. “As western Europe shivers to a halt and our energy bills soar through the roof, the time has come when we should all start to get seriously angry with our politicians for being carried away by all this claptrap.”

In a separate piece for the Telegraph published before the COP16, Booker called on Ministers of Parliament to face the cold, hard truth. After blasting British and European politicians for groveling over the discredited theories, he puts a price tag on some of the more outrageous programs. “Not a single MP of any party has yet found the courage to mount a properly briefed challenge to all this lunacy. So what do we pay them for?” he wondered in the column, entitled “The climate change scare is dying, but do our MPs notice?”

The Daily Mail, another prominent British newspaper, also revealed a massive hole in the warmists’ arguments as the Cancun conference was becoming increasingly shrill about the supposed warming. "For the past 15 years, global warming has stopped,” noted the report, calling this fact an “inconvenient” truth in honor of alarmist-in-chief Al Gore. “This isn't meant to be happening. Climate science orthodoxy, as promulgated by bodies such as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU), says that temperatures have risen and will continue to rise.”

“Little by little,” explained the article, “the supposedly settled scientific 'consensus' that the temperature rise is unprecedented, that it is set to continue to disastrous levels, and that it is all the fault of human beings, is starting to fray.” Next, it cited former climate luminaries — most of whom have since fallen in disgrace — admitting there was indeed a medieval warm period and that “there has been no statistically significant warming” since 1995, in the words of the now-discredited Climategate “scientist” Phil Jones.

“The question now emerging for climate scientists and policymakers alike is very simple,” the article concluded. “Just how long does a pause have to be before the thesis that the world is getting hotter because of human activity starts to collapse?”

Of course, there are still numerous establishment organs pushing alarmist man-made global-warming theories in the United States — the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and the New York Times among the more prominent. Around the world, the situation is similar.

But the number of writers and publications taking a firm stand against the alarmists is steadily growing. Human Events and Canada Free Press have both published scathing pieces about the alarmists and their claims. And around the world, more and more media are risking the ire of bureaucrats and officials to expose the fraudulent warmist hypotheses.

The New American magazine predicted the slow death of the global-warming crusade in an article earlier this year as politicians who supported the hysteria began dropping like flies and the warmists were still licking their wounds from Copenhagen and a devastating series of scandals. But with so much invested in the scam, it will definitely not go down quietly or without a fight. For now, the embattled parade is scheduled to limp on in Durban, South Africa, next year.