Climate change?

[zack1234]

Climate change is a myth

[nrshida]

I won't address everything because I'm too good looking to get caught up in an argument ad nauseam.  

There is not even a clear agreement on 1.

You are right, those who feel threatened by the implications of point 1 do tend to disagree.

The "CO2" answer is highly debated because there is not serious calculation that shows it without another to contradict it.

Alas no, not highly. It is a simple game, to match a finding with unsubstantiated alternate possibilities. The CO2 content over time is a matter of international record.

This is completely incorrect and 90% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Indeed? Well you can find out for yourself easily if you want to. All of the information you need is freely available. A good start might be to distinguish between science and propaganda, but that would take some measure of objectivity.

So it runs out. Why shouldn't we exploit it to the last drop?

Because it is unintelligent to completely expend an irreplaceable resource which might be more useful for something else later on? How incredibly shortsighted to assume it is yours to exploit.

We will kill ourselves and the planet through other means before we run out of fossil fuel.

I do not believe the human race can kill the planet before the planet can kill the human race. Only human arrogance would give that idea. The Earth can handle the human race like an unwanted forest fire. In three thousand years there would barely be a trace left.

Hybrid cars are not a solution to anything.

Well I don't believe I said that they were, I mentioned them to illustrate a point which your lack of vision and imagination and especially your speedy response to that idea has further illustrated. I thank you.

You are kidding right? I am embracing the change in global weather, you on the other hand resist it.

Do you really think the weather would simply become more commodious to leisure activities as time goes by?

If you really want to make this world a better place for your children, kill half the world population and try to stabilize the new number on about 3 Billions.

Well now, you know you really should stick to being sceptical and leaving the problem solving to more imaginative people if this is the best you can do. I agree the human population is a contributory problem, but killing people is a distasteful suggestion, even as a joke.



I really don't expect to convert those who are putting their whole value system and culture behind this so called dispute. It is enough to point out that your culture is now rapidly becoming the odd one out on this issue. The reasons for this are abundantly plain to everyone who lives beyond your scope of indoctrination. If I and people like me are talking absolute crap, then it shouldn't really be causing so much discomfort should it?


No one has yet resorted to the hypocrisy implication or personal insult yet. I am rather surprised / impressed. I'd have thought the emphasis would have already shifted to shutting me up at any cost.  

[nrshida]

Nice well written post. You do not have to patronize though...

Yes I apologise Kilo2, I thought we were way past this point & I get frustrated.  

[CAP1]

Climate change is a myth

 noooo....climate change is not a myth. the cause of climate change is a myth. 

[zack1234]

yes volcanoes are the reason for climate change not V6's or population growth.

Third world people dont have V6s they have huts and VCR's

[Skuzzy]

By the way nrshida, my "gas guzzler" will use less gas a year than a daily driven Prius.

My "gas guzzler" will do less damage to the environment than the process required to make and salvage the batteries for a Prius.

Not offended by the term "gas guzzler".  It will be a guzzler, for sure and I will grin from ear to ear every time I turn the key to start it.  It being a fair weather car, and located in North Texas where there are about 20 days a year of good top down driving weather, it will not register as a spec in any environmental impact study.

I dare say the 200, or so, Cobras in the state of Texas, collectively are pretty harmless to the environment given how little they are driven.

Would it be even better if it had a 1.6L 4 cylinder engine that sipped gas at 50MPG?  Sure, but what would be the point of it then?

The Cobra is a raucous, skittish, noisy, gas guzzling, ill handling car, and an affront to anything 'green'.  It will wear you out when pushed to the limits, for any time at all.  It is a physiological and psychological nightmare stressing every sense and fiber of your being.  It will bake you in the Sun causing you to sweat so much the steering wheel will be hard to hold.  The seating position gives chiropractors reason to smile.  As the car is tossing you in one direction, the wind will blow you in another turning what little brain you might have had into mush.  It will award the good driver with slingshot speeds and rail like handling just as fast as it will kill you from thinking you actually have control of it. There is nothing else like it, and, thankfully, never will be again.  I love it.

[icepac]

Strange how the "carbon counters" never even attempt to address any other form of heating other than thier emissions based poster child.

This removes enough credibilty that I stopped listening to them over a decade ago.

[bozon]

nrshida,

I was being sarcastic on most points, but the arguments stand.

The CO2 content change over time is close to irrelevant. A correlation does not mean causality. Atmospheric radiation transfer codes that are used for climate are something that the profanity filter here will not let me describe properly. They use many "shortcuts" that are good as long as parameters do not change too much. New calculations that fully resolve the vertical atmospheric structure and handle individual molecular lines in full details find minor effect, especially at ground level even if CO2 content is increased by factors of 10 or 50.

There is a great concern in the scientific community that this bubble is going to blow up in our faces. Too many standards are being broken and marginal results that should barely (if at all) get to scientific publication are immediately grabbed by political players and thrown at the public as "scientists say that". Scientists themselves are often human and have political views and agendas. The situation now is that people that go against the climate change zeitgeist find it difficult to reach publication or get grants and are effectively silenced.

Other branches of science look at the situation very grimly. If climatologists cause a global political and economic change for the sake of reducing CO2 for the slim chance that CO2 is actually responsible and humans are actually relevant to its accumulation, but climate keep changing, the damage to science will be enormous. It will be impossible to tell the public then "sorry, it was a 1.2 sigma result that turned out to be a fluke. Please ditch the stupid hybrids and go back to your V6s". People come up with insane ideas to put stuff in space or spread in the atmosphere in order to cool the planet. What if someone goes along with these plans? What will you tell to the developing countries that were held back because of CO2 quotas and crap. One simply cannot initiate such huge global processes on the basis of very marginal evidence and put the label "approved by science" on it. There is a good chance that the result will be complete loss of confidence in science by the public.

By the way, most of the scientists that object the "man made global something" hysteria are extremely "green" in their views. Most will be happy if the burning of fossil fuel is reduced for the the purpose of reducing actual pollution (as opposed to CO2). They are not happy with the lowering of the standards of research and over publicity of the scientific process - "it for the greater good" is not an acceptable argument.

p.s.
We do not need to actively kill people, they tend to die by themselves. However, they tend to bring children more than they tend to die.

[Shuffler]

A proof by contradiction only holds when there is a 'for all' case, consequently providing alternative examples of climatic aberration does not dismiss the human role in the present one. Stop paying attention to the actual temperatures, they are up and down like a fiddler's elbow anyway, this 'noise' is normal.

I know it must give some of you a great sense of relief to read well-written articles which apparently confirm you can just carry on in the lifestyle to which you have become accustomed. However you should know that this kind of denial has now been marginalised into the popular press only and is largely an American movement.

I know this will come as a shock but I'm sorry to tell you there is no longer any dispute whatsoever in the scientific community that we are experiencing an climatic aberration and it is presently about 90% certain that it is caused directly by mankind's activities since the Industrial Revolution.

And before you try it, no, the scientific community is not a self-serving special interest faction who's opinion can be accepted or rejected in accordance with your cultural values. Think it through.

On a basic common sense level it does rather make sense does it not? This whole phase of human development, the Industrial Revolution, the external and internal combustion engine, mass production, flight, electronics, computers, cyclical consumption, economic growth, world trade, the information age, all of it, has essentially been achieved through the exploitation of fossil fuels, firstly coal and next oil and natural gas. The direct consequence of burning those is the release of large amounts of CO2 (and methane and other things) into the atmosphere that have formerly been stored safely away beneath the surface of the earth. We already know what Earth's atmosphere is like as you increase the CO2 content because it was this way in the beginning, before life began. It was shocking, believe me.

Let's even go one step further, I'll play complete scientific denier here for you: even if there is NO ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCE WHATSOEVER to burning fossil fuels, it doesn't matter anyway, because surely no one disputes, even the most entrenched sceptic, that this is a finite and nonrenewable resource. Thus it is ALL going to run out.

It's rather sad seeing you all grasping at straws and frightened that you'll have to hand in your beloved large displacement V8s for Toyota Prius and the subsequent emasculation your culture associates with that. Frankly I don't know why you are all so panicky. Skuzzy should still have just enough time to finish his gas-guzzling Cobra and enjoy it (if he gets a move on), there will be no loss of freedom, no reduction in lifestyle, necessarily.

Your children will have less opportunity to celebrate the 'high points of your cultural values' in this way and their children will look back on this generation as you do to the steam age, but again, it does not mean they won't have happy and interesting, fruitful, productive, mobile and free lives. Socially the paradigms and values will simply shift in accordance with progress, as it always has done.

The human race is now entering a transitionary phase, do not fight it, embrace it, these are exciting times and life will be better in the future, not worse.

oh and like I say, get a bloody passport and get out more and you won't get culturally left behind so badly.  

Your opinion is not backed by scientific facts. Lots of wind............

[zack1234]

Those with the highest birth rates are third world countries with uneducated agricultural societies.

This Dogma about population growth has been prevelent in western societies for the 100 years.

This childish grasping at others who have little impact on world consumption is frankly hilarious.

killing off half the worlds population is going to achieve absolutly nothing except reduce the markets for products produced by the advanced nations.

Maybe hi heel shoes are also a contribution to world events such as Climate.

By the way Shida has just bought a new car

 

[RTHolmes]

Your opinion is not backed by scientific facts. Lots of wind............

and this reply is?

[CAP1]

By the way nrshida, my "gas guzzler" will use less gas a year than a daily driven Prius.

My "gas guzzler" will do less damage to the environment than the process required to make and salvage the batteries for a Prius.

Not offended by the term "gas guzzler".  It will be a guzzler, for sure and I will grin from ear to ear every time I turn the key to start it.  It being a fair weather car, and located in North Texas where there are about 20 days a year of good top down driving weather, it will not register as a spec in any environmental impact study.

I dare say the 200, or so, Cobras in the state of Texas, collectively are pretty harmless to the environment given how little they are driven.

Would it be even better if it had a 1.6L 4 cylinder engine that sipped gas at 50MPG?  Sure, but what would be the point of it then?

The Cobra is a raucous, skittish, noisy, gas guzzling, ill handling car, and an affront to anything 'green'.  It will wear you out when pushed to the limits, for any time at all.  It is a physiological and psychological nightmare stressing every sense and fiber of your being.  It will bake you in the Sun causing you to sweat so much the steering wheel will be hard to hold.  The seating position gives chiropractors reason to smile.  As the car is tossing you in one direction, the wind will blow you in another turning what little brain you might have had into mush.  It will award the good driver with slingshot speeds and rail like handling just as fast as it will kill you from thinking you actually have control of it. There is nothing else like it, and, thankfully, never will be again.  I love it.

 that bolded part up there? it always strikes me as funny that everyone seems to forget about that. and then when you remind them of that, they want proof.........

[Jappa52]

oh and like I say, get a bloody passport and get out more and you won't get culturally left behind so badly. 

I'll agree with kilo that it was a well written post BUT one written by the typical poor old soul that bases his "facts" off of junk science, rumors and emotion. I would say that perhaps YOU should get out more and stretch the boundaries of your little world but meh, you obviously think your poop doesn't smell as bad as everyone else s. So enjoy the dark days my friend and I'm sure your psychotherapist can prescribe something to put a smile on your face.

[Shuffler]

and this reply is?

Simple fact.... you want to believe it then walk to work and buy your footprint passes. 

Those attempting to feed you the scare tactics are making millions.

[RTHolmes]

Simple fact.... you want to believe it then walk to work and buy your footprint passes.  

I dont really understand the rest but the bolded bit is why discussing this is almost pointless. this is not a black and white, one side of the fence or the other deal. theres a bunch of issues around this and dividing the world into 2 camps is simplistic and pointless.

When it comes to climate change I'd be very surprised if I didnt agree with everyone in this thread. and disagree with everyone in this thread ...