Is Global Warming Unstoppable?

Unfortunately for us, melting ice does not prove anthropogenic causes to global warming. All of the melting ice stuff is pure emotion. It would be happening with or without the evolution of the human species.

 

I just looked back at the group of Vostok graphs .
What you say is true for the last 500 years (which is an insignificant time period)
All the other graphs show many periods with a fast rate of temp increases .
Todays rate of global warming is perfectly normal (and extremely minor) compared to other periods of the same time frame, in the Vostok graphs.



"Quote:
Originally Posted by Alric
Again the rate of change in the past has never been as fast as today's. This rate of change at this magnitude is truly unprecedented in human history as a species."

"This statement is as wrong as saying that true = false."

 

1st of all, clearly I disagree. Even if there was an even chance you right, doesn't prudence dictate that we err on the side of doing as much as we can to reduce emissions as much as possible to mitigate.

I repeat, as a non scientist, I am forced to side with the 97% of climate scientists who disagree with you. The consequences of not acting (especially on such soft contrary evidence) is to great.

 

Show it.

In an editorial there is no reference to data. If his points are the conclusion of a paper based on data I'd be the first one to be interested in it.

 

You cant fool mother nature.
I consider myself to be an environmentalist.
I was shocked watching "An Inconvenient Truth"
But the glaciers are going to melt as they have melted for millions of years.
The polar bears have survived many glacial melts.
Why is it so hard to accept that as a fact?

BTW Im also a leftist .
What makes you think that the oil companies and coal companies are going to be hurt by C&T?
The price of energy will go crazy.
They will produce less and make more.
They will buy gross polluting industries just so they can sell the offsets.
CFC manufacturing plants will be worth gold .Because they can produce CFCs and destroy them to get cash for Carbon offsets.
The oil companies may get paid carbon credits not to build new refineries.
Or not to produce XYZ chemical.
On top of it all Goldman Sachs ,the main lobbyist for Cap and Trade, will make billions by being the middleman.
I surmise that Goldman already owns as many polluting industries as they can afford.So they can capitalize on selling carbon offsets.
BTW Goldman OWNS Obama.

 

What do you disagree with? That we would see ice melting even if humans had never evolved?

 

I have been an advocate of cap and trade,, just for the record.

My point was that Big oil/etc have much to lose with any carbon limit.

 

Are you going to refute any of the points in the article posted by Ufourya, or are you just going to pretend to have defeated it?

 

NevadaPrius wrote

"What do you disagree with? That we would see ice melting even if humans had never evolved?"

I disagree that Humans are not at absolute minimum exacerbating the melting. Whether or not some warming/ice melt would happen naturally is a different conversation. What I am convinced of (as are 97% of climate scientists) is that humans play a part in the problem, they should play a part in the solution. To do nothing, "waiting to see" is insane.

 

Ding-ding-ding! BINGO! Give that man the prize! Excellent summary. And not at all bad for a self-proclaimed "leftist"! ;-)

 

Actually, warming and cooling happening naturally is part of *this* conversation. You dispute that without humans we would still have melting?

You should stop quoting the 97% number. The 97% number is active climatologists, and that was 75 out of 77 surveyed. It is not the 3,000 number that others would have you believe (I know you, specifically, did not say 3,000.)

Waiting to see is not insane. I don't think you get it. You and I both believe that humans are contributing to global warming. But we believe in completely different things beyond that. I've studied my rear end off, and I think the warming we see is *mostly* caused by natural forces, and I think that he warming we see today has occurred many times in the past. You think that our warming is unique, but you also think that global warming is based on repeatable experiments that lead to conclusive proof.

You can't keep calling on "97% of climatologists" as if it makes anything you say correct, as it has been shown conclusively that most of the things you say are incorrect. Please stop spreading misinformation (ie, that AGW is based on repeatable experiments, etc.)

 

Oh really? Then why did the National Research Council's committee on Abrupt Climate Change find the following?

"A review of available Greenland ice-core data is given by Alley (2000). The data were collected by two international teams of investigators from multiple laboratories. The duplication shows the high reliability of the data from the cores over the most recent 110,000 years, and the multiparameter analyses give an exceptionally clear view of the climate system. Briefly, the data indicate that cooling into the Younger Dryas occurred in a few prominent decade(s)-long steps, whereas warming at the end of it occurred primarily in one especially large step (Figure 1.2) of about 8°C in about 10 years"
​

 

These graphs of long term temperature variability are like kryptonite to us global warmers. Yes, they demonstrate that our current warming is nothing unique.

What is unique is that we have recently developed civilization in places that did not have civilizations in the past when temperatures were generally warming (for instance, islands.) Now we face the slowly rising seas, which occur naturally, and these civilizations may face destruction. That sucks for them, but it's part of nature. No amount of human intervention will stop it. (But land may get really cheap )

 

Heres a thought.
20 years ago Enron was the originator of Cap and Trade.
Its a good thing that, that evil company which screwed California for billions of $, is defunct.
It serves them right.
But did the evil just disappear when Ken Lay died?
I have zero proof, but I will take a wild guess and speculate that those original Cap and Traders at Enron, are the very same evil people who then migrated over to Goldman Sachs when Enron disappeared.
I'll bet my left nut.

 

I once saw a bald eagle on Boca Chica Key (Florida Keys) in 1970. It was comfortably perched on a telephone pole, holding down an unfortunate cormorant, tearing it apart and consuming what I must assume were the tastiest morsels. I was directly under the pole and had a great view of the whole event. I'll never forget it. I value the bird agreat deal (I have also enjoyed the company of a parrot or two over the years). The idea that Miss Carson or DDT had anything to do with the great bird, its impending demise or recovery, is one of those enduring myths (much like AGW) that has its source in endless repetition rahter than fact.

As usual, myths constantly repeated for reasons other than identifying the truth outlive reality.

...numerous scientific studies and experiments vindicate DDT.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists fed large doses of DDT to captive bald eagles for 112 days and concluded that “DDT residues encountered by eagles in the environment would not adversely affect eagles or their eggs,” according to a 1966 report published in the “Transcripts of 31st North America Wildlife Conference.”

The USFWS examined every bald eagle found dead in the U.S. between 1961-1977 (266 birds) and reported no adverse effects caused by DDT or its residues.

One of the most notorious DDT “factoids” is that it thinned bird egg shells. But a 1970 study published in Pesticides Monitoring Journal reported that DDT residues in bird egg shells were not correlated with thinning. Numerous other feeding studies on caged birds indicate that DDT isn’t associated with egg shell thinning.

In the few studies claiming to implicate DDT as the cause of thinning, the birds were fed diets that were either low in calcium, included other known egg shell-thinning substances, or that contained levels of DDT far in excess of levels that would be found in the environment – and even then, the massive doses produced much less thinning than what had been found in egg shells in the wild.

So what causes thin bird egg shells? The potential culprits are many. Some that have been reported in the scientific literature include: oil; lead; mercury; stress from noise, fear, excitement or disease; age; bird size (larger birds produce thicker shells); dehydration; temperature; decreased light; human and predator intrusion; restraint and nutrient deficiencies.

Most of this evidence was available to the Environmental Protection Agency administrative judge who presided over the 1971-1972 hearings about whether DDT should be banned. No doubt it’s why he ruled that, “The use of DDT under the regulations involved here does not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife.”

Yet it’s the myths, not the facts that endure. Why? The answer is endless repetition. The environmentalists who wanted DDT banned have constantly repeated the myths over the last 40 years, while most of DDT’s defenders lost interest after the miracle chemical was summarily banned in 1972 by EPA administrator William Ruckleshaus.
FOXNews.com - Bald Eagle-DDT Myth Still Flying High - Opinion

To expand on your basic question, I would still value a human life over that of a bird.

 

I was mistaken to characterize Ruckelshaus as a "busybody". He was a Republican pinhead who ignored the scientific evidence and the ruling of a judge who concluded DDT had no deleterious effects on humans or wildlife.

Icarus and many other 'environmentalists' have indicated that all the earth's ills stem from mankind.

Please see my response to Icarus above, as well.

An aside as to what one finds offensive. I find the concept of a few persons, sitting behind closed doors determining the fate of millions of people who have no power to defend themselves from the policies these few determine to be official.

Main Entry: po·lit·bu·ro
Pronunciation: \ˈpä-lət-ˌbyu̇r-(ˌ)ō, ˈpō-lət-, pə-ˈlit-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Russian politbyuro, from politicheskoe byuro political bureau
Date: 1925
: the principal policy-making and executive committee of a Communist party

Why would you choose this as a screen name?

 

Now that's an interesting point. That is an example of an abrupt change in change that is just as, if not faster than the current warming.

I did write too much when I said: "Again the rate of change in the past has never been as fast as today's. This rate of change at this magnitude is truly unprecedented in human history as a species." The statement is correct if you leave it "human history".

The Younger Dryas also appears to have been a global change, not just in Greenland. But you are in error if you think this is an argument against regulated current human emissions.

1. It is still true that our civilization has not seen abrupt climate change to that extent. The Clovis people did experience the Younger Dryads and it appears to have ended them.

http://filebox.vt.edu/artsci/geology/mclean/Dinosaur_Volcano_Extinction/pages/grhskill.html

Granted our civilization could be more resilient but we would have to adapt at great cost. Much more than a few bucks in taxes now.

2. The mechanism of this an other abrupt changes is at least partly understood and there working hypothesis on why they happened. The consensus of the current climate change is human emissions.

3. That is an excellent reference you provided and they have the following to say about abrupt climate change:

"Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the earth’s atmosphere and causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. It is now the consensus of the science community that the changes observed over the last several decades are most likely in significant part the result of human activities and that human-induced warming is expected to continue (NRC, 2001). As discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, the abrupt climate changes of the past were especially prominent when orbital processes were forcing the climate to change most rapidly during the cooling into and warming out of the ice age, consistent with the results from modeling that forcing of climate increases the possibility of crossing thresholds that trigger abrupt change (e.g., Boxes 3.1 and 4.1). Given our understanding of the climate system and of the mechanisms involved in abrupt climate change, this committee concludes that human activities could trigger abrupt climate change."

Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises

 

And this one is just plain awesome:

 

Ha! I was just thinking it was "polite burrito."

 

Riiiiiiight, we're gonna turn the running of the world's energy policies over to the U.N.

These are the people who booked a 15,000 seat venue for 45,000 delegates.

But I'm sure it will turn out better than expected! Just look at how well the U.N. did in Rawanda and how well they're coping with Sudan! I trust these folks to create a better world!