Is global warming real?

Nathan · **Posted:** Mon Sep 25, 2006 3:02 pm

Hi bdk,

I think even a blind man could see that our world is changing. Our local(NEPA) weather has been very strange. Our winter storms don't really amount to anything anymore. On average we will get 3 to 4 inches of snow compared to 3 feet which was the norm from 1950's to the early 1990's. Also our creeks do not ice up anymore. I used to go ice skatting on our creek, but the last time I was able to do that was 1993. Since then the weather has not been cold enough for any sustainable time.

One cause for global warming is from the increase of car/vehicle traffic. Traffic has been increasing by dramatic amounts. Even in our small town I live in the last couple of years the traffic has just been murder and has been getting worse.
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Sorry, I got cut off there short. I will try and finish.

I always felt that we(humans) should take care of our world. It will not last forever, but I feel we can do something to prevent humans from being a part of that destruction. As in cities were there is a high rate of pollution, I would suggest planting more trees. Use friendly sorces of energy and become a cleaner world. It's not an impossible task. Just that people need to be aware of reality and not give up. I don't quit understand why some people think that global warming is a made up thing. My only guess to that ignorance is that people are afriad and they don't want to realise that something wrong is going on with our planet and that people could die from it. Like one song put it...."Nature points up the faults of man".

Tally ho,
Nathan

bdk · **Joined:** Sun May 02, 2004 1:16 am **Posts:** 11324

Nathan,

The world does change. The question is what effect does the human race have on the climate?

Despite the vast increase in vehicular traffic, Southern California where I live has far less smog than ever. It was actually far worse in the 1950s. Apparently we didn't have global warming then?!

If anything, the third world contributes far more pollutants that ever as they begin to industrialize. If you've ever been to Mainland China you will see that they still have many two cycle motorbikes running around. Those haven't been available in Western countries for some time now. Within a day in Beijing or Shanghao my eyes burn and my chest starts hurting. I haven't had a smoggy day in Southern California do that to me in many years.

Unfortunately the "friendly" sources of energy you mention are not economically viable otherwise they would be in common use. Nuclear power is very clean compared to other methods, yet a powerplant hasn't been built in the US for many years due to nuclear fear-mongering (giant ants, three headed children, Chernobyl-phobia and such).

Al Gore wants everyone to drive an electric car, yet he conveniently ignores that fossil fuels are used to generate electricity (see the previous paragraph) and typically 50% of the power is lost in transmission over power lines. The result is pollution occurs away from the point of use, but is higher overall.

Hybrid cars are a great advance, but they are not yet comparable in life cycle cost to a conventional gasoline powered car. They cost a lot more to buy but don't save enough fuel to make it worthwhile- you just don't save money owning one of these.

In my opinion the world is far more resiliant than many people give it credit for. Natural events such as volcanic eruptions and forest fires have much more of an effect than humans could ever have. The climate has been constantly changing for milleniums, in and out of ice ages. Look at the historical charts I posted at the beginning of this thread.

You speak of people being ignorant that don't subscribe to your view. I suggest that someone has been filling your head with mush and that you should do a little research on your own, not just believe what the media and the politicians tell you. Think about what their motives may be. They need to create a crisis so we will watch them and vote for them. Then they can tell the ignorant masses what to do and save us from ourselves. If global warming doesn't exist, then what do we need them for?

Nathan · **Posted:** Fri Oct 20, 2006 8:21 am

Hi bdk,

Quote:

You speak of people being ignorant that don't subscribe to your view. I suggest that someone has been filling your head with mush and that you should do a little research on your own, not just believe what the media and the politicians tell you.

No ones been messing with my head and I am not surely listening to politisions or the media. I research on my own to come up with my own conclusions. I see several small things that can be done to prevent Global Warming. I won't bother to name them.

Quote:

Natural events such as volcanic eruptions and forest fires have much more of an effect than humans could ever have.

A good percentage of forest fires today are started by man. Both in accidantel to deliberate accounts.

Cancer has been on the rise the last several years(I should know because my 14 year old sister just died from cancer). No one has ever found out why she got it. But more kids are gitting it today. And since my sister died, there has been 8 more deaths from cancer in our local area. Most of those were kids and teens. Could these cancers been caused by pollution?

-Nate

bdk · **Joined:** Sun May 02, 2004 1:16 am **Posts:** 11324

Nathan wrote:

A good percentage of forest fires today are started by man. Both in accidantel to deliberate accounts.

Cancer has been on the rise the last several years(I should know because my 14 year old sister just died from cancer)....Could these cancers been caused by pollution?

Some say that forest fires are created by our forest management policies. By putting out smaller fires, we prevent the undergrowth from being burned off naturally. This creates a situation where the undergrowth builds up to dangerous levels where a small spark can turn into a raging inferno. How did the forest survive before we got here to control the fires? Some varieties of trees also need periodic fires in the undergrowth to prepare their seeds for the next generation. Most forest fires are started by lightning. Now the forests are dying off here in the US because of the bark beetle. They must thrive as a result of "Global Warming."

Sorry to hear about your sister. No question that pollutants can have an affect, but genetics clearly can play a large part in these things too. How about the foods we eat (or our parents ate when we were in the womb)? Reportedly pollution causes "Global Warming," but does "Global Warming" cause cancer? I seriously doubt it. I think you will also find that pollution is on the decrease in the US and on the increase in the 3rd world. By the way, who in the 3rd world signed up to the Kyoto Treaty?

bdk · **Joined:** Sun May 02, 2004 1:16 am **Posts:** 11324

Trying to keep the debate open, here is more on global warming and the possible motives behind the "solutions" often recommended...

Quote:

Finally, on the ultimate excuse for draconian technocratic controls, the threat of global warming, [Milton] Friedman was skeptical of climate models. In an interview published in Inside the Economist's Mind, by Paul A. Samuelson and William A. Barnett, Friedman drew a comparison between climate models and the sorts of large macroeconomic models that were discredited three decades ago.

The one place where you seem to be having that kind of modeling now is in the debate about global warming. And those models seem to be very unreliable and inaccurate. But if you think of physics, they usually have models with only a few equations. In any event, if you have a lot of equations, you ought to be able to draw implications from them that are capable of being understood. You should not present the model and say, now it's up to you to test. I think the person who produces the model has some obligation to state what evidence would contradict it.

A general rule is that the amount of data that you need in order to confirm a model rises exponentially with its complexity. In the case of climate modeling, the processes involved are highly complex. Yet there are really only three data points -- a slow rise in global temperatures between 1900 and 1940, a leveling off between 1940 and 1970, and a somewhat faster rise since then. Three data points are not enough to validate a model with one equation and one explanatory variable, much less the sort of multi-equation, multivariate models that are used to speculate about the causes and future behavior of global temperature movements.

Using such models, global warming "hawks" argue that technocrats must be given control over the economy, for our collective good. But these tend to be people who have never trusted individual freedom and have always supplied rationales for expanded government power. It leads one to wonder whether technocratic control of the economy is a means to address a strong desire to address global warming, or whether global warming is a means to address a strong desire to exert technocratic control.

Overall, the historical record shows that individual choice works well. Government expansion, whether justified by paternalism, regulatory protection, or the collective good, consistently is over-promised in terms of theoretical benefits and delivers adverse unintended consequences in practice.

Bill Greenwood · **Posted:** Wed Nov 29, 2006 1:00 pm

Here in Colo we just recdeived about 2 feet of snow in the last 2 days and it is still coming down lightly, so global warming wasn't on my mind. I have not studied it, but have read that the majority of scientists agree that warming is a real problem. It seems logical that in somewhere like Phoenix where there is so much growth with vacant land being converted into blacktop parking lots and buildings, the temps have risen significantly, average 5 degrees over the last few decades. What they have found is that the daytime heat is held in and does cool down as much at night. When I am emperor we will get rid of the big ugly diesel airports and have all beautiful grass runways. It would seem that science probably takes natural cycles into acount in research. If exhaust and polution had no effect and it was all cycles, then a remote area would warm as fast as L. A. I doubt if it does.

k5083 · **Posted:** Wed Nov 29, 2006 1:28 pm

Whoever wrote what bdk quoted does not know what a "data point" is. A "rise" is never a data point; it is a comparison of two or more -- often many more -- data points. If you take a temperature reading once a day, that's 365 data points per year. Do it over 100 years, that's 36,500 data points. Do it in 1,000 places on the earth, that's 36,500,000 data points.

His real problem seems to be that the time series is not long enough, but there is data (albeit of lower resolution) going back thousands of years prior to 1900. But since the writer seems unable to articulate his problem with climate models intelligibly, his criticisms are impossible to respond to.

His musings about technocracy and individual choice are, of course, nothing but ideology. Nobody suggests that technocrats (whatever they are) should take over the economy; there is no evidence that individual choice "overall" works well, especially for managing the environment; and his comments about the expansion of government would lead one to conclude that the United States is currently a worse place to live than at any time in its history, whereas the opposite is likely true.

August

bdk · **Joined:** Sun May 02, 2004 1:16 am **Posts:** 11324

k5083 wrote:

his comments about the expansion of government would lead one to conclude that the United States is currently a worse place to live than at any time in its history, whereas the opposite is likely true.

Not a worse place to live than at any time in its history, but that it could have been so much better. If my crystal ball wasn't in the shop right now I could tell you exactly how much better.

Regulations tend to result in unintended consequences, yet a government's response is to create further layers of regulation to solve the problems it created in the first place.

I think his point really is that there are so many variables that you can make the data say whatever you wish depending on your assumptions. Also, if you publish a paper that says global warming doesn't exist and then it turns out it does, you look foolish because it is clear the "warning signs were there." But if you publish a paper that says it is a big problem but it never comes to be, everyone forgives you because they are relieved- and you still get credit for pointing out the problem so it could be "prevented." What is the down side for a scientist to say global warming is a disaster in the making? Maybe that way your institute can get a juicy grant to study it?

Politicians do the same "sky is falling" routine all the time. If everything is copacetic, why do you need them to ride in on their white horse to save the day?

k5083 · **Posted:** Thu Nov 30, 2006 10:24 am

bdk wrote:

I think his point really is that there are so many variables that you can make the data say whatever you wish depending on your assumptions.

I don't think so. I think he is trying, but failing, to address climate models on their own terms and make a technical criticism. Your interpretation is just what people always say about science when they don't like its conclusions.

bdk wrote:

What is the down side for a scientist to say global warming is a disaster in the making? Maybe that way your institute can get a juicy grant to study it?

There are plenty of juicy grants available for scientists who say that global warming is not a problem, just as there always used to be plenty of money available for cancer researchers who were willing to find no link between tobacco and cancer. However, it is clear that your view of science is as cynical as your view of government.

You don't need a crystal ball to see what life is like when government doesn't regulate emissions and leaves it up to individual choice. Just visit Mexico City or, better yet, Shanghai (ironically still a centralized economy in most other ways). Don't forget to pack your gas mask. Or, since your crystal ball is on the fritz, pull out your time machine and go back to L.A. 50 years ago, before your home state became the U.S. leader in environmental protection.

August

bdk · **Joined:** Sun May 02, 2004 1:16 am **Posts:** 11324

Actually, I spent two weeks in Shanghai. My chest hurt for weeks after returning home. Beijing was actually worse I think. I don't see your point for comparing them though. China does not have an effective representative form of government. It is nearly possible for the people to effect change without getting run over by tanks.

Yes, he is making a general criticism of both climate and economic models.

Why does California lead the nation in air pollution laws? Obviously they didn't need federal regulation, their laws were already stricter.

I give up! Might as well have one world government to tell us what to do. We'll make Al Gore king since he invented the internet and wrote "Earth in the Balance." Then we wouldn't have to think so much.

The latest news is that it is all the fault of the Aborigines anyhow. In fact I'll bet they are glad they don't have wombats bigger than cars down there!

Quote:

Climate change killed Australia pre-historic animals By Rob Taylor
Thu Nov 30, 12:11 AM ET

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Giant kangaroos and wombats bigger than cars which once roamed Australia were killed by climate change and not human hunters, Australian scientists said on Thursday.

The report comes as the country struggles with what could be its worst drought in 1,000 years, affecting more than half its farmlands.

Known as megafauna, the huge animals were driven into extinction by a steady warming of Australia's climate, which in turn saw a once-lush outback region turn to red desert and grasslands.

"For about the last half-million years it's been consistently getting drier in Australia," Dr Gregory Webb told Reuters after studying fossil-rich areas of south-east Queensland state.

"The apparent progressive megafaunal extinction on the Darling Downs does not support the sudden blitzkrieg model resulting from human hunting," Webb's report said.

The megafauna -- kangaroos 2.5 meters (8 feet) tall, wombats as big as cars and cattle, giant Ostrich-like Emus and lizards -- were common in vast areas of Australia 40,000 years ago before gradually disappearing.

Most theories on their vanishing center on the arrival in Australia around the same time of Aboriginal people, who were believed to have hunted the animals out of existence.

But Webb, from Queensland University of Technology, said a study done with colleague Dr Gilbert Price had found many animals were probably drought-stressed when they died.

If humans had been responsible, he said, the fossil evidence would show the vulnerable and easily-hunted animals dying out around the same period rather than over thousands of years.

"Whole habitats changed, from forests which required a lot of rainfall to grasslands, and now it has become much more open and scrubbier," Webb said.

"Of course the organisms that required more enclosed lush, green habitat simply had nowhere to live."

Scientists have said that Australia must brace itself for long-term climate change and water shortages due to the accelerating pace of global warming.

Don Martin · **Posted:** Thu Nov 30, 2006 3:21 pm

The end results of every period of global warming is the next ice age(I got this from an internationally renown glaciologist). We are at the tail end of the last ice age now. We may accelerate or decelerate the rate of change, but, to stop it from happening will be impossible(Kind of like death and taxes!). Of course, I am looking forward to my land being ocean-front property(40mi away right now) right up until it turns into a permenant skating arena. :shock:

bdk · **Joined:** Sun May 02, 2004 1:16 am **Posts:** 11324

Thank goodness someone is keeping their sense of humor with this thread!

Don Martin · **Posted:** Fri Dec 01, 2006 8:59 pm

Oh, and by the way, did I mention how much Maine is trying to be like Kalefornia and adopting a lot of their vehicle emissions requirements(imposing them on older vehicles didn't work here though, because nobody drives a new car!) Of course, we don't put that much pollution in the air, just the prevailing winds(Jet Stream) sweeps all of the bad air from the rest of the country(Ohio in particular for some reason) and dumps it here before going on to Canada and the Atlantic(You don't hear the Canadians or the Atlantians complaining so it must be all dumping here :roll:

) But, I do my part. I keep nothing but clean, fresh, new oil in my old oil-burning truck so as to not put all the nasy crud from the bottom of my oil pan into the sky! :shock:

bdk · **Joined:** Sun May 02, 2004 1:16 am **Posts:** 11324

Don Martin wrote:

But, I do my part. I keep nothing but clean, fresh, new oil in my old oil-burning truck so as to not put all the nasy crud from the bottom of my oil pan into the sky! :shock:

You are a true environmentalist! :wink:

Bill Greenwood · **Posted:** Tue Dec 05, 2006 6:55 pm

I am just watching an Al Gore interview. To summarize, scientists can measure temperature variations and carbon dioxide concentrations back for hundreds of thousands of years. The recent warming and CO2 buildup is much more more severe than normal variations, so things are getting quite a bit worse, and the culprit is CO2. There are things like planting trees, using setback thermostats, and florescent lights that help. I present this for discussion with no guarantee. Somehow the prospect of flying an electric fighter is not to thrilling.

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