Global warming - beyond debate?

[Damien]

Originally Posted by nomadking

The Earth has been a lot warmer than it is now and later cooled, it also has been cooler than it is now and then got warmer, all this without Man being involved.

Yes. So people keep saying. That is missing out that in addition to the CO2 produced in warming periods we are adding bucket loads of our own and serious deforestation has reduced the planets natural coping mechanism.

And lets not forget the evidence that the current upward trend in temperatures, is causing the permafrost to retreat all across the northern hemisphere. As the permafrost retreats, more and more previously frozen dead plant matter gets the chance to rot and all the resultant methane (21 times more efficient a greenhouse gas than CO2) into the atmosphere.

[injuneer]

The trouble is a lot of these problems are ony manifesting themselves in remote areas & people don't make or are unwilling to believe the connection & that it will ultimately affect us. Most Westerners are lucky to live in a temperate climate where we rarely see extremes but it is still part of the global weather "engine". Like I said, we're short term thinkers & cannot envisage a different future. I think I read somewhere that denial is part of our psyche.

[Damien]

I think it's part of a tendency for anti-Establishment and the sceptics have successfully painted Global Warming as the tool of the government, organisations and the rather fanciful 'big science' to make money. They ignore the mass amount of money energy companies stand to lose from alternative fuels. It would appear the economic gain is all one-sided and there is never a better way to undermine a opposing viewpoint than assigning it an economic motive.

Many groups have been harping on about Global Warming for years including all those pesky, no-nothing, 'scientists' who have been researching this for more than 30 years when there was no real funding to do so. Counter to the argument some have made that the scientists only follow the money.

Of course Science in most cases, UEA aside, is a process which is self-evaluating. It is not a dogmatic insistence on any one theory or ideology and there is no annual meeting where all scientists gather and decide what to believe this year. The sceptics are encouraged to do science, they can do research and publish papers and if the evidence against man-made global warming is good or the evidence for is proved to be unreliable or wrong then the scientific consensus will switch.

The problem is the sceptics don't come up with that,they can up with disingenuous arguments. They cite natural warming periods without the surrounding context (time those periods last, the consequences to life on the planet during those moments, and the differing variables this time around i.e deforestation and pollution). They will confuse climate and weather (zomg! it's cold! so much for Global Warming) or they will just attack the motive of the people doing the research.

Until they have more reasoned arguments I cannot take them seriously.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Damien

Yes. So people keep saying. That is missing out that in addition to the CO2 produced in warming periods we are adding bucket loads of our own and serious deforestation has reduced the planets natural coping mechanism.

It is the oceans that remove the most amount of CO2.

What gets rid of CO2 more, 100m2 of Rainforest or 100m2 of crops???????????

---------- Post added at 12:03 ---------- Previous post was at 12:02 ----------

Originally Posted by Earl of Bronze

And lets not forget the evidence that the current upward trend in temperatures, is causing the permafrost to retreat all across the northern hemisphere. As the permafrost retreats, more and more previously frozen dead plant matter gets the chance to rot and all the resultant methane (21 times more efficient a greenhouse gas than CO2) into the atmosphere.

Or you could argue that it frees up previously frozen ground to ground where plants can now grow thereby reducing CO2?

---------- Post added at 12:12 ---------- Previous post was at 12:03 ----------

The thing is now, is that it has grown beyond science into a psuedo-religion. Were you are branded either a "believer" or "non-believer".

As I have always maintained, reducing CO2 is good thing. But are we responsible for Global Warming or Climate Change???? show me compelling irrefutible evidence and will consider it, but there is none.

Certainly our actions here in the UK are neglible on the global issue, yet we will be taxed to the 'nth degree.

We will be slowed down on motorways,

we will have to use light bulbs that cost 36 times more than the old ones (and whose manufacturing costs, processess and future environmental issues appear to have been swept away)

the list is exhaustive.

[Slybacon]

"Well I think he's talking about what nomadking said, the very fact that historically it has changed without human intervention."

Well yes - but so what? All climate scientists know that there are natural events that affect the climate (the 11 year sun spot cycle and major volcanic eruptions are two examples). What climate scientists are doing is subtracting out the known causes of variation to see what is left. When that is done you get an underlying warming trend, which correlates strongly with an increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As far as I am aware there is no other plausible explanation for the currently observed global warming trend.

[Taf]

Agriculture causes more greenhouse emmisions than any other source, and agriculture must increase output to cope with growing populations.

We're stuffed.

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by Slybacon

"there is also a lot of evidence that it occures naturaly"

Would you like to supply a reference or link to this evidence? I'm not holding my breath on this one - I have asked several times for evidence for the claims of global warming deniers (on various blogs) but no one ever comes up with any. This probably tells you all you need to know about the arguments against global warming - all the evidence that stands up to analysis points in one direction.

Errr, you're joking right?

The evidence is in the data that the climate change commission push forward as evidence for warming.

That being the evidence from the fossil record, ice caps, trees.

The ice age, the little ice age, the medieval warm period, ALL show that "global warming" occurs naturally, if it didn't we'd STILL be in an ice age, as you know, there'd be no global warming to take us out of it.

If all global warming was man made temperatures would have been constant until we started messing with it, they didn't, ergo, global warming exists naturally.

Now that's not saying that we're not causing any warming happening now, it's just saying that saying it doesn't occur naturally is 100% incorrect. Climate cycles are as natural as the sun rising.

[nomadking]

Not all of the previous periods of a cooler or warmer climate just happened overnight and lasted just a year or so. There would have been an underlying and sustained trend in those instances.

[danielf]

Originally Posted by Taf

Agriculture causes more greenhouse emmisions than any other source, and agriculture must increase output to cope with growing populations.

We're stuffed.

Really? A quick google suggests otherwise. A whopping 8.2% of US emissions in 2005.

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agd.../TakApr08.html

[Slybacon]

"Well I think he's talking about what nomadking said, the very fact that historically it has changed without human intervention."

Well yes - but so what? All climate scientists know that there are natural events that affect the climate (the 11 year sun spot cycle and major volcanic eruptions are two examples). What climate scientists are doing is subtracting out the known causes of variation to see what is left. When that is done you get an underlying warming trend, which correlates strongly with an increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As far as I am aware there is no other plausible explanation for the currently observed global warming trend.

[Hugh]

What is more credible - peer reviewed science (which also highlights the discrepancies in Climate Change theories), or an article by a philosopher?

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by Slybacon

"Well I think he's talking about what nomadking said, the very fact that historically it has changed without human intervention."

Well yes - but so what? All climate scientists know that there are natural events that affect the climate (the 11 year sun spot cycle and major volcanic eruptions are two examples). What climate scientists are doing is subtracting out the known causes of variation to see what is left. When that is done you get an underlying warming trend, which correlates strongly with an increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As far as I am aware there is no other plausible explanation for the currently observed global warming trend.

That's assumes that there is no longer lasting affect of any 'cause of variation'. If there wasn't a longer lasting affect, the changes in climate would be abrupt and frequent. We would also still have the Ice Age, but with occasional warmer years. The affect of any natural source of warming might even gone as far as melting all the ice, but once the affect of the warming event was over, the ice would return. An equivalent thing would happen for a cooling event.

[Anonymouse]

One thing that is beyond debate is: something is happening.

One factor that generally makes sceptics of people is that the observed changes have taken place over what might be seen as too short a time as to be attributable to us (ignoring the fact that we didn't actually start paying attention until Lorenz came along in the sixties). However, this is because very few people have the math background to understand exactly how sensitive to change the weather system is. As with any chaotic system, it is exquisitely sensitive. Any influence we have, however slight, makes a difference - in chaos systems, even the smallest change is magnified by the iterative nature of the system. Doubling a given influence does not produce double the effect; the relationship is nonlinear. There are also catastrophe effects (a Horizon documentary I saw once defined catastrophe theory as the study of what happens when, just as you're sure 2 + 2 = 4, one of the 2's gets in a huff and goes home).

(I've lost a few people already, haven't I? Sorry; this is what happens when you base your degree dissertation on chaos theory! )

It's been happening since the start of the Industrial Revolution, and the effect has been increasing - due both to increased output of greenhouse gases and to natural variations which would have occurred even if we had never evolved in the first place. Certainly climate changes have happened before, as shown by deep core ice samples dating back to before we even came down from the trees, and seem to be cyclical. It's just bad luck that we started contributing at a time when the Earth had already started warming of its own accord.

The only real question is: how bad is it going to be, and what - if anything - can we do about it? As an earlier poster pointed out, any remedy will not take place immediately - even if we found a way to undo what's already been done, the correcting influence would likely take as long to have an effect as the damage did, by the same chaos principle...but it is impossible to undo it altogether. A chaos system can never return to a previous state - you'd have to reproduce every influence, exactly, to an infinite degree of precision. Since we don't even know what all the effects are, we don't fully understand the ones we do know about, and we have no idea of what the initial conditions were, this is clearly impossible. We'll have to adjust to a different, likely warmer, climate, whatever happens from hereon.

As an aside, if one more person expresses scepticism to me about the whole idea based on the fact that we've just had the worst winter weather for years, I will very likely bop them on the head. "Global warming" refers to an average increase in temperature over the entire planet. That does not mean that everywhere will become warmer, nor that our weather will be any nicer. Rather, warm places will become warmer - in some cases, probably unlivable - and cold places will become colder. Especially here, I suspect. But forget any notions of sunbathing in the winter (UV issues notwithstanding) - our weather will only get worse. Extreme weather effects which already exist, e.g. hurricanes, will be worse because of the increased energy of the system - more heat energy is driving the system because less of it is being reflected back into space by the icecaps. This is because they're melting. This is caused by the increase in temperature...and so on. Hence my earlier use of the word "iteration" - that's why small effects are magnified, because they iterate through the system.

This is not to say we're doomed. But we are in trouble.

[Taf]

Originally Posted by danielf

Really? A quick google suggests otherwise. A whopping 8.2% of US emissions in 2005.

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agd.../TakApr08.html

A quote from a "reliable source" from the recent TV series about world food production with that guy Jimmy (mate of Jamie Oliver ?). It must be right, it was on the tele