Author Topic: For all you rabid environmentalists (Read 4374 times)

Nashwan · « **Reply #30 on:** June 06, 2007, 02:51:32 AM »

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Of the "greenhouse gases" which is the most abundant?

Hint... it's not CO2.

No, but CO2 is a greenhouse gas, no one seriously disputes that. And man is releasing truly vast amounts of it into the atmosphere. No one seriously disputes that either.

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Incorrect analogy.

A closed window blocks convection.

Co2 does not block convection.

No, it reduces radiation of heat back out into space. The end result is the same, it gets hotter.

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My local weatherman struggles to get it right 3 days from now. The atmosphere is an extremely complex system, for any one side to claim to truly know anything seems arrogant.

Well, it's much easier to make predictions about trends than it is about daily fluctuations. It's easy to predict that winter will be colder than summer, for example.

There's a couple of things we know about CO2. It retains heat in the atmosphere. Man is releasing very large amounts of it into the atmosphere. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising.

clerick · « **Reply #31 on:** June 06, 2007, 03:00:27 AM »

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Originally posted by Nashwan

Well, it's much easier to make predictions about trends than it is about daily fluctuations. It's easy to predict that winter will be colder than summer, for example.

I was being a bit simplistic, what i was trying to point out was that there doesnt seem to be much agreement as to the degree of mankinds contribution to "global warming". Some scientists and pseudo-scientists will glom onto the most dire predictions no matter how unlikely and cry "The sky is falling!" while others will down play it and say that the affects are minor. Who is right? Dunno. What we seem to know is that there is a warming of the Earth, but how much is mankind REALLY contributing? Looking at history it would seem that mans impact hasnt become significant until the start of the industrial revolution, and we still dont know that it is all THAT significant compared to what mother nature does to herself.

I remain skeptical as a matter of scientific impartiality and will await more definitive data.

Dadano · « **Reply #32 on:** June 06, 2007, 03:20:30 AM »

Two things we do know: The earth is warming, and we are a filthy race. If anything this global warming gig is a great excuse to be a bit more conscious of our environment. Scared of the government using your money to fund R&D? Or companies charging more for their product to pay for more environmentally friendly production? Tough. The world does not revolve around you. It revolves around us.

john9001 · « **Reply #33 on:** June 06, 2007, 06:06:10 AM »

it is summer, in pittsburgh this morning it is eight degrees above freezing.

indy007 · « **Reply #34 on:** June 06, 2007, 07:57:59 AM »

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Originally posted by Nashwan
No, it reduces radiation of heat back out into space. The end result is the same, it gets hotter.

Yes, but not anything remotely close to approximating your scenario of a closed window. To even suggest that our atmosphere works like a greenhouse is false representation. A greenhouse is based on convection containment. Water vapor & clouds have more to do with heating than co2 does. Co2 is one of the smallest components and only absorbs a relatively narrow band of radiation (all of which overlaps with the absorbtion properties of water).

I'm not saying lets dump as much co2 as possible into the environment, and we have no effect at all. That's just silly. Co2 has an effect, but it's a very, very small one compared to how Al Gore markets it.

want to buy some Carbon Credits?

Angus · « **Reply #35 on:** June 06, 2007, 08:09:54 AM »

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Originally posted by indy007
Yes, but not anything remotely close to approximating your scenario of a closed window. To even suggest that our atmosphere works like a greenhouse is false representation. A greenhouse is based on convection containment. Water vapor & clouds have more to do with heating than co2 does. Co2 is one of the smallest components and only absorbs a relatively narrow band of radiation (all of which overlaps with the absorbtion properties of water).

I'm not saying lets dump as much co2 as possible into the environment, and we have no effect at all. That's just silly. Co2 has an effect, but it's a very, very small one compared to how Al Gore markets it.

want to buy some Carbon Credits?

To say this:
"To even suggest that our atmosphere works like a greenhouse is false representation"
Is nothing but boulderdash, for WITHOUT some greenhouse effect our atmosphere would be...ehmm...somewhat Siberian. _18 deg Celcius global average?

The carbon is IMHO overrated, but not to be discarded. Methane is also something to worry about. The melting of Ice is seriously something to worry about, for Ice radiates most (80%+) of the solar energy back out to space, while seawater has the numbers inversed.
So, it's a bit of all, really. Ice has a cooling effect, Forests have a cooling effect, Charbon in general has a warming effect, warming has a tendency to accelerate untill something naughty happens, Volcanoes cool, but may in the long run warm the atmosphere (depending on their chemistry), the Sea helps dealing with the carbon if kept ok, etc etc.
Anyway, the biggest IMPACT at the moment is mankind, with both emissions and deforestation on a very impressive scale. And since the sun is actually warming Mars, it is something to worry MORE about, for it means that we have an adding effect...

lazs2 · « **Reply #36 on:** June 06, 2007, 08:16:04 AM »

LOL... you can't have it both ways... if co2 is causing the global warming we are seeing then... who put the extra co2 in mars atmosphere lately? Oh wait... it is a tilt or something that is causing mars heating... it is just coincidence that the suns activity mirrors the heating and cooling of both planets right?

We have small heating and cooling cylcles that are caused by suns activity that last about 30-40 years... we had a cooling cycle in the 40's (the height of the industrial revolution by the way) and it lasted until the late 70's

Like todays warming trend...it was mild but... it caused the new religion of man made global climate at the time declare that we would all be under a glacier by the year 2000...

Hundreds of scientists met and declared that man was creating an ice age with his filthy ways and demanded that they be given the money and power to do something about it.. Unfortuantely for the cause.... it started to get warmer as the sun went into a higher activity cycle..

The same will happen again.... if they don't get their way...if they ask for too much... people will tell em to suck eggs and they won't get a good power grab going... the suns activity will lessen in the next few years and the earth will start to cool... The church of man made global climate change will have to wait a few decades and then declare the horror of man made global cooling and the impending doom of a man made ice age and then.... on and on..

In the end tho...

ITS THE SUN STUPID

yep... the sun is as tedbr says... pretty darn stable... it only heats or cools the planet unevenly every 30 or 40 years and then only a tiny amount.. a fraction of a degree (we are talking a fraction of a degree here) Hell... your home thermostat is not that kind or efficient.

more and more tho... people are saying "nice theory" as they should. How many will be up in arms to "do something" if it means doubling the price of gas say? what is that? none..

How bout a big tax on pickups or how bout your utility rate doubling?

Ah... so now you need a little more proof of man made global warming eh?

The your-0-peeeans are already suffering under gas prices 3 time higher than they should be... they are angry that we are not... so long as "doing something" means only punnishing the U.S. then they are all for it..

double their utiility bills or gas prices and watch the new "hoax" documentaries come out of england.

For those of you in the U.S. that think we ought to let the your-0-peeans and the UN guide us on this.... why don't you just wear a hair shirt and self flaggulate and leave the rest of us alone?

lazs

-tronski- · « **Reply #37 on:** June 06, 2007, 08:50:41 AM »

It won't matter when the oil runs out in 10 years....

Tronsky

lazs2 · « **Reply #38 on:** June 06, 2007, 08:56:29 AM »

nope.. and it hasn't... I recall when the scientists in the 70's told us we only had 20 years worth left. us being out of oil now hasn't mattered a bit... the ice age of the 90's didn't hurt us much either and...

how bout that butter thing.... good for us this year or bad? I can never keep up.

Fool me once... shame on you... fool me a couple of dozen times a year... shame on me.

lazs

indy007 · « **Reply #39 on:** June 06, 2007, 09:09:51 AM »

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Originally posted by Angus
To say this:
"To even suggest that our atmosphere works like a greenhouse is false representation"
Is nothing but boulderdash, for WITHOUT some greenhouse effect our atmosphere would be...ehmm...somewhat Siberian. _18 deg Celcius global average?

Not at all. I don't care if you make up another word for it, but it's not a greenhouse effect. A greenhouse doesn't work without blocking convection. "greenhouse gasses" do not block convection.

It's a misnomer. It's like calling a Democrat a liberal, when they're really socialist. Just because the mainstream decided to use the term does not make it correct.

Angus · « **Reply #40 on:** June 06, 2007, 09:57:28 AM »

LOL, so there is no such thing as a "greenhouse effect"?

Funny. After all, it is being measured and applied in some cases.

And Lazs, - I actually thought that the height of the industrial revolution, - emissionwise, would be in our days. Now for instance?

As for the Carbon, I think it's overrated on it's own, and that, getting into politics and agendas and such, is IMHO a rather bad thing. The whole impact of mankind is very much bigger in other fields.
All are rather bad.

indy007 · « **Reply #41 on:** June 06, 2007, 10:06:14 AM »

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Originally posted by Angus
LOL, so there is no such thing as a "greenhouse effect"?

I didn't say there was no warming effect.
I said calling it a "greenhouse effect" is incorrect.

Unfortunately it's used as part of the political sales pitch and leads to false impressions of how the atmosphere actually works. That's my problem with it.

Shuckins · « **Reply #42 on:** June 06, 2007, 10:19:10 AM »

One could look at the data from a number of perspectives: Is the glass half-empty or is it half-full.

The Vostok Ice-Core data is often cited as indicative of a correlation between rising global temperatures and levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Yet the same data over the last 500 thousand years also seems to indicate that the world should already be sliding into another major ice age, and yet has not. Global warming may, in effect, be preventing an even greater catastrophe.

So, which would you rather have, global warming with rising sea levels and regional droughts leading to famine in the developing nations.....or continental glaciers thousands of feet thick covering the major food producing nations of the northern hemisphere?

It may be possible to compensate for the effects of global warming....but how does one compensate for two-thirds of a continent being covered by ice?

I just love the way scientists who are demanding that the world's governments take steps to rein in CO2 levels that are leading us toward "disaster" hedge their bets by claiming that global warming could possibly lead to a new ice age. An "Even if we're wrong we're right" sort of debating point.

By the by, according to one source I've read (which I have not been able to verify), the World Meteorological Organization's data of average world-wide temperatures since 2001 have shown a steady decline. Except for 2002, each succeeding year has been slightly cooler than the year before.

Does anyone have an actual graph or source for these figures?

Also, I have seen data that indicates that the rising temperatures for the U.S. during the 1990s, the decade when such rises were first cited as proof of global warming, have not yet achieved the high temperature levels of the 1930s "Dust Bowl" decade.

Regards, Shuckins

lazs2 · « **Reply #43 on:** June 06, 2007, 02:42:54 PM »

nashwan points out that the "scientists" can't predict what the weather will be in 3 days but... claims that it is much more difficult (and easy to disprove) to make an accurate short term prediction than a long term one...

Now.. this is pretty nutty on the face of it unless he means that it is easier to guess at a trend than do an actual prediction... hotter in 10 years or colder? Heck... ya got a 50/50 chance but...

Lets examine his claim... When have they ever been right on a long term prediction? they claimed we would be under a glacier by now..

They are wrong on the short term and so far.... wrong on the long term.

a watch with a dead battery is more accurate... it is right at least twice a day.

I think that we are at an end to the global warming cycle and that the suns activity will lessen in it's normal 30-40 year period and we will see some global cooling starting (if it hasn't already) in the next few years.

I just don't want these a holes to get credit for it.

lazs

AKIron · « **Reply #44 on:** June 06, 2007, 06:36:01 PM »

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Originally posted by Ferndale
Well LOL! Coming from someone who, in an earlier thread, dismissed the existence of global warming out of hand because his town had had the coldest winter he could remember in 20 years!

What I dismiss is those crying the "sky is falling", not global warming. I'm also not ready to believe it is man made and will be the end of civilization.

It has been very mild here this summer so far.