France Tells U.S. to Sign Climate Pacts or Face Tax

Could someone please explain how this thread pertains to firearms and the 2A?

With the drug war thread we at least had some semblence of causality: drug use leading to criminal activity leading to violence leading to ......

A few degrees of separation, but eventually leading to firearms and LEOs and 2A rights. This thread, not so much.

So a lot of true believers out there think that the consensus of nearly all the world's climatologists, physicists, cosmologistists, and NASA imagery specialists is worthless socialist propaganda. Good for you.

The talking point of the day appears to be that since over 30 years ago some people bought the global dimming theory, and it was wrong, then the current climate models must be wrong. So what. It never achieved the consensus that the human caused global warming theory has achieved.
And the comparative argument is a fallacy anyway. It's like comparing the science of genetics with eugenics, or phrenology.

None of this matters anyway. The matter has been so politicized that people hold strongly to beliefs and dogma instead of weighing the evidence. We may as well be arguing about religion, very few will change their minds or even listen.

So, what the hell does this thread have to do with firearms?

Doubts, And More Doubts...

As I've noted before, climate change advocacy is predicated on attacking the individual making the statements and/or their funding. This is ludicrous!

My concerns regarding the climate change "consensus" are based primarily (although not solely) on the statistical models that are used, their completeness/adequacy, and the accuracy of these projections. The links I provided were dismissed as "shills" for the oil companies -- although the substance of their concerns were never addressed.

Even a cursory examination of the scientific, peer-reviewed publications will indicate uncertainty about the adequacy of the models being used to predict climate out 100 or 200 years. Read on:

-------------

Alpert, P., Niyogi, D., Pielke, R. A., Eastman, J. L., Xue, Y. K., & Raman, S. (2006). Evidence for for carbon dioxide and moisture interactions from the leaf cell up to global scales: Perspective on human caused climate change. Global & Planetary Change, 54, 202-208. To wit:

Three modeling experiments that go from the small/micro scale (leaf scale and soil moisture) to mesoscale (land-use change and CO2 effects ) and to global scale (greenhouse gases and cloudiness) all show that synergies between water and CO2 are essential in predicting carbon assimilation, minimum daily temperature and the global Earth temperature, respectively. The study also highlights the importance of including the physics associated with carbon–water synergy which is mostly unresolved in global climate models suggesting that significant carbon–water interactions are not incorporated or at least well parameterized in current climate models. Hence, there is a need for integrative climate models. As shown in earlier studies, the climate involves physical, chemical and biological processes. To only include a subset of these processes limits the skill of local, regional and global models to simulate the real climate system.


Russell, J. L., Stouffer, R. J., & Dixon, K. W. (2006). Intercomparison of the southern ocean circulations in ipcc coupled model control simulations. Journal of Climate, 19, 4560-4575.

The analyses presented here focus on the Southern Ocean as simulated in a set of global coupled climate model control experiments conducted by several international climate modeling groups. Dominated by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), the vast Southern Ocean can influence large-scale surface climate features on various time scales. Its climatic relevance stems in part from it being the region where most of the transformation of the World Ocean’s water masses occurs. In climate change experiments that simulate greenhouse gas–induced warming, Southern Ocean air–sea heat fluxes and three-dimensional circulation patterns make it a region where much of the future oceanic heat storage takes place, though the magnitude of that heat storage is one of the larger sources of uncertainty associated with the transient climate response in such model projections. Factors such as the Southern Ocean’s wind forcing, heat, and salt budgets are linked to the structure and transport of the ACC in ways that have not been expressed clearly in the literature.


Grimm, A. M., Sahai, A. K., & Ropelewski, C. F. (2006). Interdecadal variations in agcm simulation skills. Journal of Climate, 19, 3406-3419.

Global climate models forced by sea surface temperature are standard tools in seasonal climate prediction and in projection of future climate change caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Assessing the ability of these models to reproduce observed atmospheric circulation given the lower boundary conditions, and thus its ability to predict climate, has been a recurrent concern. Several assessments have shown that the performance of models is seasonally dependent, but there has always been the assumption that, for a given season, the model skill is constant throughout the period being analyzed. Here, it is demonstrated that there are periods when these models perform well and periods when they do not capture observed climate variability. The variations of the model performance have temporal scales and spatial patterns consistent with decadal/interdecadal climate variability. These results suggest that there are unmodeled climate processes that affect seasonal climate prediction as well as scenarios of climate change, particularly regional climate change projections. The reliability of these scenarios may depend on the time slice of the model output being analyzed. Therefore, more comprehensive model assessment should include a verification of the long-term stability of their performance.


Douville, H. (2006). Impact of regional sst anomalies on the indian monsoon response to global warming in the cnrm climate model. Journal of Climate, 19, 2008-2024.

While transient climate change experiments with coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation models undoubtedly represent the most comprehensive tool for studying the climate response to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs), less computationally expensive time-slice experiments with atmospheric GCMs are still useful to test the robustness of the projected climate change. In the present study, three sets of time-slice experiments with prescribed sea surface temperature (SST) are compared to a reference climate scenario obtained with the Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques Coupled Climate Model (CCM). The main objective is to assess the sensitivity of the monsoon response to the magnitude or pattern of SST anomalies in two regions where such anomalies are highly model dependent, namely, the circumpolar Southern Ocean and the tropical Pacific Ocean. On the one hand, it is shown that the regional climate anomalies predicted by the CCM can be reproduced at least qualitatively by a pair of time-slice experiments in which the present-day SST biases of the CCM are removed. On the other hand, the results indicate that the Indian monsoon response to increasing amounts of GHG is sensitive to regional uncertainties in the prescribed SST warming. Increasing the sea surface warming in the southern high latitudes to compensate for the weak sea ice feedback simulated by the CCM around the Antarctic has a significant influence on the regional climate change simulated over India, through a perturbation of the regional Hadley circulation. Prescribing zonal mean rather than El Niño–like SST anomalies in the tropical Pacific has an even stronger impact on the monsoon response, through a modification of the Walker circulation. These results suggest that both deficiencies in simulating present-day climate (even at high latitudes) and uncertainties in the SST patterns caused by enhanced GHG concentrations (especially in the
tropical Pacific) are major obstacles for predicting climate change at the regional scale.

-------------

That was just a cursory overview, and I limited myself solely to 2006 simply because I gotta get back to work.

By the by, in the Grimm, Sahai & Ropelewski (2006) article, note that they admit the models under consideration sometimes perform well and periods when they do not "capture observed climate variability." To put it in plain English, that means that sometimes these models can't accurately predict what is happening right now(!).

I can't wait until someone tells me who all of these scientists are "shilling" for.

Foriegndude,

Did you actually read those articles before you posted them? Somehow, I think not.

From Dr. S (Sethu) Raman (head of the NC State Climate Office, an expert cited by yourself):

""Warmer water means more evaporation from the ocean and more energy for hurricanes," said Sethu Raman, professor of earth and marine sciences. And the ocean's temperature has risen, "about one degree Celsius over the past 50 years..........The ice caps are melting, the water temperature is rising and the water level is rising," Raman said. "And in North Carolina we have a long coast to worry about."

Click to expand...

http://media.www.technicianonline.c...nline.com&MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com]

From another co-author (Roger Pielke, who ironically enough is one of the few actual scientists who opposes the IPCC on factual grounds) of the same paper:

“Humans are significantly altering the global climate, but in a variety of diverse ways beyond the radiative effect of carbon dioxide. The IPCC assessments have been too conservative in recognizing the importance of these human climate forcings as they alter regional and global climate. ”

“Global warming is not equivalent to climate change. Significant, societally important climate change, due to both natural- and human- climate forcings, can occur without any global warming or cooling.”

Click to expand...

http://climatesci.colorado.edu/

it makes me sad

That as gun owners we can't recognize good points that come from the other side of the political isle. If we do not reign in the destruction we are wreaking on this Earth, gun rights are the last the we will have to worry about.

I do not know the details of this particular policy, but I do recognize that so many of my fellow conservatives are quick to flame anyone who seems to care about the environment, and it appears to be ignorance pure and simple.

(and that we'd be out of oil in the mid '90's).

he may not have been that far off. . . . price volatility, resource wars, and strategic influence is not over diamonds, coal, or women. Water, perhaps. . . . . oil, definitely.


ST

Could someone please explain how this thread pertains to firearms and the 2A?

+100

I am willing to stipulate that human-caused global warming is real; however, I am confused as to what that means. The engineer in me wants to understand the output from the sudden warming. Here is what I have learned, and I am sure this is not complete.

1) Sea levels will rise, meaning less habitable land.

2) The warmer water will spawn more extreme storms, meaning more dangerous storms.

3) Mechanisms like the Gulf Stream will no longer function due to the decrease in salinity and the melting ice meaning some localities will see significant weather changes.

Those look to be serious issues. So what do we do to mitigate or reverse the damage?

Getting back to the original topic, I am extremely skeptical about the EU after living through the RoHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances) initiative. This legislation mandated a very low level of use of several substances, like lead, cadmium, and bromides in electronics. So, for example, lead-based solders are no longer acceptable for products sold in the EU. The stated idea is to lower the damage to the environment caused by electronics, especially the disposal of obsolete electronics, using these substances. Sounds good, but many people in industry believe the RoHS initiative was formulated as an anti-competitive measure since businesses would need to focus resources to meet the new requirements. Why? Because things like lead-acid batteries were not covered by the legislation and because another initiative that deals with mandated recycling of consumer electronics in the EU (WEE) is active.

In time, RoHS may be a good thing. However, the data that we are seeing suggests that the reliability of RoHS-compliant product is much less than historical means, including decreased performance under vibration and tin whiskering causing electrical shorts. This means that a fix to an environmental issue may be the cause of an even bigger environmental problem if RoHS-compliant electronics in infrastructure systems fail. Now, proponents will say that critical infrastructure has RoHS-exemptions, and that is true. However, the parts manufacturers are phasing out the older technology because the demand is switching to the RoHS parts. So, in reality, there is no exemption because the older parts are going obsolete.

My point: we need to be careful that a fix to global warming is not any worse than the issue itself.

Foriegndude,

Did you actually read those articles before you posted them? Somehow, I think not.

Click to expand...

No, I really doubt he did. He just did a search for climate change models and uncertainty, and cherry picked a couple quotes. What he's hoping the peanut gallery will miss is that not one of those articles is suggesting that the basic premises of AGW are in any way in doubt, or that a vast, virtually unanimous majority of the field-relevant, qualified scientists agree that AGW is real.

For example, FD highlights:

These results suggest that both deficiencies in simulating present-day climate (even at high latitudes) and uncertainties in the SST patterns caused by enhanced GHG concentrations (especially in the tropical Pacific) are major obstacles for predicting climate change at the regional scale.

Click to expand...

They're basically arguing that the difficulty in simulating sea surface temp patterns for specific areas make it difficult to predict how much warmer or cooler specific regions might be at a given date.

That in NO way suggests that AGW isn't real or that it's in any way in doubt. In fact, just the opposite. The authors are working from the very premise that SST's are heading up, and that studying the effects of that rise in temps on the tropical Pacific is something worth studying.

The "uncertainty" in the models FD hopes you'll mistake for uncertainty about AGW itself; if you read those articles carefully, what the uncertainty is about is just how much we're going to warm the planet in the next couple hundred years.

Agricola and nobodyspecial have pretty well nailed it, but I do feel compelled to once more rain on the "but didn't they use to think global cooling was a problem" myth from a great height.

The links I provided were dismissed as "shills" for the oil companies -- although the substance of their concerns were never addressed.

Click to expand...

Simply not true. We've already shown how your beloved stats analysis fails to change the climatologists predictions or render them unviable, and how the climatologists in question dealt with Wegman's objections rather handily. In short, they ARE taking statistical concerns into account.

This "but the models aren't perfect" carping from you is somewhat tiresome; the plain reality is that the models inherently include natural variability, and predict a range of climate sensitivity that is inherently imprecise. You're misreading that to mean "gee maybe the planet won't get warmer", which is incorrect--the planet WILL get warmer, the only imprecision is whether it'll get quite a bit warmer, or a LOT warmer and in a big hurry. Since we're breaking things down into plain English, you can look at it this way: the planet is either going to stay the same, or get warmer. The denialists like FD would have you think that there's still a good chance that the earth isn't going to get warmer, that variations in climate projections indicate our climate won't precipitously warm in the next 100 years. The problem with that is the physics of climate change are understood quite well. We know the role that CO2 plays in keeping the earth warm (without it, we wouldn't be here). We know that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere warms the planet. We know that we're adding more, a LOT more, every year (about 20bil tons). The natural variability in climate model projections is there, but it does NOT include the possibility that we can infinitely add CO2 to the atmosphere without making the earth a lot warmer.

It's not like the basic physics of this are particularly outlandish, or the conclusions all that hard to reconcile with the facts of the case. What would be outlandish and hard to believe is that we can keep adding to the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere indefinitely without having some net effect.

I like warm.

Can we please talk about guns here?

nobodyspecial said:

Actually, your information here is not correct. Humanity produces the vast majority of the net greenhouse emissions. The CO2 emissions from (for example) the ocean or biosphere (respiration, decomposition, etc.) can generally be neglected because that carbon was already in circulation. The problem is that we're adding a lot of new carbon to what was an otherwise stable and closed system.

Click to expand...

Does that include greenhouse gasses from volcanoes, too?
One source I read claimed human activity was about ninth on the list of greenhouse gas producers. Insects were higher.

nobody special said:

I don't know where your science teacher got his/her information, but it is a fact that the scientific community was not predicting a global cooling trend in the 70's. There were some popular press articles to that effect. It's not
unusual for popular press to sensationalize headlines and jump to incorrect conclusions. That does not mean that scientists were actually predicting an ice age, or even a cooling trend.

Click to expand...

:banghead:
It is a FACT that a global ice age was being predicted back then. I lived through that time. I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT NEWSPAPER HEADLINES!
I suppose you think my high school science teachers were lying. Come to think of it, I had college courses in geology and the professors who taught them back in the way primative 70's expoused the coming ice age theories, too. Were they lying? Misinformed?

nobody special said:

No, there really is little economic self-interest for environmental protection... perhaps a little, but certainly far less than there should be. It's the tragedy of the commons.

Click to expand...

"The tragedy of the commons" referes to community property...ie, "socialism", or "communism." That is not the system we have in the United States.
If I own my car, I will take better care of it than I will if I must use a car that is "community property."
When the Puritans were first here, in America, they set up a residence, and it was based on "communitarian property." They started their own agriculture, and everyone was supposed to be vested with a certain per cent of the total.
Unfortunatly, this system failed ("tragedy of the commons") because individuals had no incentive to go beyond the bare minimum insofar as tending the crops.
The community nearly failed.
When a different paradym was developed for the community -- private property -- the community did much better. The individuals had the chance to make and to keep profits made off their own parcel of land.
So ... who owns the environment? If nobody does, how can you apply the theory?
When I was a kid, the Ohio river was so polluted it caught fire. That degree of pollution has been cleaned up. We are no longer polluting on the level we did 30, 40, 50+ years ago. Sure we can do better.
I see no paucity of demand for environmental cleanliness. We still need to clean up the environment -- and we are.
We can do a better job with regards air pollution, too.
But I refuse to accept that we're heading for some major catastrophe due to "global warming," because to many people who are shouting the loudest about this have a marked political agenda driving it. That's just the truth; deny it if you will.
When the Soviet Union fell, many communists became disenchanted and looked to a different ideology to support them. A good many of them became environmentalists on the extreme left-wing of the movement, because it offers a very good way of allowing a few ppeople to control a lot of people -- which was the only thing communism was ever really good at, in the first place.
So...I guess the only thing I can say is we must agree to disagree ...

Firstly, don't shout. There was some speculation about global cooling in the 1970's, there is a famous Newsweek article that is consistently referred to. However, the standard for scientific papers is passing a peer review in order to be accepted for publication. No one has yet found one peer reviewed scientific paper from the 1970's predicting global cooling.

The problem, as has been previously stated, is that to say that global cooling in the 1970's was wrong ergo global warming in the 90's and on could be wrong (whilst that is possible) is to compare a few newspaper articles and the claims of a few scientists to a vast canon of scientific papers. There isn't a comparision that can be validly made there.

Whilst this thread started as a discussion of political aspects of climate change, and whilst that is a very valid discussion, you'll note that none of us arguing even slightly in favour of AGW are demanding that the US sign up to Kyoto. Personally I try and keep my politics out of scientific-ish conversations such as the majority of this thread has been.

Now, and I'm going to try and be careful about how I phrase this because I'm not trying to be rude, there has to come a point when out of hand rejection of scientific evidence based on political perceptions becomes nothing more than the position of a conspiracy theorist.

Does that include greenhouse gasses from volcanoes, too?
One source I read claimed human activity was about ninth on the list of greenhouse gas producers. Insects were higher.

Click to expand...

Guess you missed this earlier, but that's simply not true. Human emissions are about 150 times what volcanic emissions are.

Insects and other biomass emissions are irrelevant, as they're not emitting new, additional CO2 from under the earth's surface.

As for your continued rants about global cooling, I guess there's no amount of data or discussion from climatologists that's going to make you realize that what you heard in science class in middle school thirty years ago did not represent scientific consensus from climatologists.

Who was making that prediction? Can you source that? Was it alledgedly caused by human activity? Was there an extensive, exhaustive, peer reviewed body of research that documented the physics making it happen?

Did you even bother to read the link I provided explaining how climatologists and related scientists never actually believed a global ice age was coming?

I'm not trying to pick on you, but you've been repeatedly shown that climatologists never believed an ice age was iminent, not then, not now. It was idle speculation from non-climatologists and was not widely accepted as iminent in the scientific community the way warming is.

In short...you're just off base. Sorry.

The better solution is to not allow the entire nation of France to own motor vehicles, air planes or have electricity.

Think of the carbon savings, and the children!

Click to expand...

About 80% of Frances electrical power is derived from Nuclear... Though they continue to decommission existing Nuclear Power plants.

80% of electrical power derived from Nuclear will never happen in the US any time soon, though it is the cleanest and most abundant source of power for the given fuel.

Meanwhile, the record for gall is equalled by Lord Lawson (warning: do not read the following quote and link if you are easily enraged by Toffs):

Lord Lawson said Britain would see "great benefits" from climate change over the next 100 years.

And investing in new technology to deal with climate change and building better flood defences would be a "quicker and easier" way to deal with rising temparatures than cutting emissions.

Click to expand...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6334497.stm

When I speak of the cluelessness of climatologists' prescriptive remedies, here's what I am getting at in my own irresponsible manner. . .

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-emissions5feb05,1,5559466.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=1&cset=true

Everybody in the United States could switch from cars to bicycles.

The Chinese could close all their factories.

Europe could give up electricity and return to the age of the lantern.

But all those steps together would not come close to stopping global warming.

A landmark report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released Friday, warns that there is so much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that even if concentrations held at current levels, the effects of global warming would continue for centuries.

There is still hope. The report notes that a concerted world effort could stave off the direst consequences of global warming, such as widespread flooding, drought and extreme weather.

Ultimately eliminating the global warming threat, however, would require radical action.

To stabilize atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide — the primary contributor to global warming — CO2 emissions would have to drop 70% to 80%, said Richard Somerville, a theoretical meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.

Such a reduction would bring emissions into equilibrium with the planet's ability to absorb carbon dioxide. The last time the planet was in balance was more than 150 years ago, before the widespread use of coal and steam engines.

What would it take to bring that kind of reduction?

"All truck, all trains, all airplanes, cars, motorcycles and boats in the United States — that's 7.3% of global emissions," said Gregg Marland, a fossil fuel pollution expert at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Closing all fossil-fuel-powered electricity plants worldwide and replacing them with windmills, solar panels and nuclear power plants would make a serious dent — a 39% reduction globally, Marland said.

His calculation doesn't include all the fossil fuels that would have to be burned to build the greener facilities, though.

Trees could be planted to absorb more carbon dioxide. But even if every available space in the United States were turned into woodland, Marland said, it would not come close to offsetting U.S. emissions.

"There is not enough land area," he said.

Click to expand...

That's just an excerpt. I'm not going to bother doing anything about GW because nothing realistic can be done about it. Note to the humans of the future: Adapt or die. We had to.

Boats,

For once I am speechless, so I suppose a well-done is in order. Its not that climate scientists are wrong - its that they come up with too appalling a scenario, so we will screw future generations instead?

I did my best to read the posts on this thread, and I very well may have missed something.

Without getting too deep in the "Is global warming fact or fiction" issue, I do want to mention a couple things.


Not too long ago, The History Channel had a VERY interesting show on called "The Little Ice Age." The show explains the numerous periods of heating and cooling the earth has gone through, and in fact we have had a good number of major ice ages and significantly more smaller ice ages in our geologic history.

Obviously, every ice age had to end with a warming period, or we'd still be in it. This in itself is proof that the earth's temperature is in a constant state of flux.

Now, The program pointed out that during the American Revolutionary War, we were still in the ending phase of one of these "little ice ages." This was evidenced in numerous accounts, the best being the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware River. In that painting, you see large chucks of ice all in the river. That has only happened rarely in the period of time since the Revolutionary War--- and this was before we began the mass consumption of fossil fuels.

I don't doubt that we are in a warming period. I DO doubt that the burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause. And I am even willing to say that IF this is part of the natural warming and cooling process of the earth over its geological trends, then anything we do to halt or prevent it IS unnatural.


John

Helmetcase said:

I'm not trying to pick on you, but you've been repeatedly shown that climatologists never believed an ice age was iminent, not then, not now. It was idle speculation from non-climatologists and was not widely accepted as iminent in the scientific community the way warming is.

In short...you're just off base. Sorry

Click to expand...

All right, everything I was taught 35 years ago came out of an episode of The Twilight Zone. It never really happened. Or maybe it was an alternate universe episode of Star Trek.

Helmetcase said:

As for your continued rants about global cooling, I guess there's no amount of data or discussion from climatologists that's going to make you realize that what you heard in science class in middle school thirty years ago did not represent scientific consensus from climatologists.

Click to expand...

Yeah, you're right. No amount of anything is gonna convince me what happened back then didn't happen back then. I was THERE. It happened. Oh, by the way, the Nixon Presidency happened too. You know, the twerpy "I am not a crook" guy who did peace signs with his fingers and bugged the Democrat HQ with the able assisstance of G. Gordon Liddy, et al, and who, upon learning to his utter astonishment that he was actually about to be impeached, scaddadled from orifice???
Yeah, that happened too.
NO ONE IS GONNA GET ME TO BELIEVE SOMETHING I KNOW HAPPENED DIDN'T HAPPEN. You can refer to any dumb article here or there that's trying their damnedest to re-write scientific theory to cover their sorry asses because they were wrong then and discovered they didn't know what the Sam Hell they were talking about and wanna erase it from collective consciousness --- but it happened.

Helmetcase said:

As for your continued rants about global cooling, I guess there's no amount of data or discussion from climatologists that's going to make you realize that what you heard in science class in middle school thirty years ago did not represent scientific consensus from climatologists.

Click to expand...

WHAT "CONTINUED RANTS"????? I was never "rantig" about global cooling. I never had any great faith that theory was any more accurate than global warming. Scientists have told us a LOT of things over history thatturned out to be wrong. Funny thing is, scientists are human, too.

Helmetcase said:

Insects and other biomass emissions are irrelevant, as they're not emitting new, additional CO2 from under the earth's surface.

Click to expand...

Insects are "irrelevant" because they're not emitting "new" CO2? -- even though they're higher up on the list than humans? Than humans must be even more irrelevant, even though they're producing "new CO2" that supposedly didn't exist before, yet it did, it just was ... somewhere else.

Look, pal; I'll tell you something ... you don't like my "continued "rants"????
Okay. Don't bother to respond to this. I'm sure I got all the science wrong anyway, so there's no point in you and all the religious flock of global warmers all riled up about it. I won't be back here anyway.
I'm just a little sick and tired of being told something I lived through didn't happen.
It did.
Sayanora.

Nobody's tellin you your science teacher didn't do a segment on whether global cooling was an issue. I'm sure they did. Nobody's impugning your memory of whether that happened.

We're just pointing out that if he/she did, they weren't reporting on or discussing anything that approached a scientific consensus amongst climatologists. Lots of people have speculated about aliens visiting earth too, that doesn't mean that astronomers believe ET is spying on you right now.

You need to learn to distinguish between what scientists actually believe and what is discussed in the media and magazines. One last time: the scientific consensus has not ever been at any time in the last fifty years that human activity is cooling the planet. No body of climatological work ever supported the idea, nor did any position papers or peer reviewed documents and studies. In short, the "didn't they used to tell us the earth was cooling" argument doesn't hold water. I politely suggest you get over it.

Insects are "irrelevant" because they're not emitting "new" CO2? -- even though they're higher up on the list than humans?

Click to expand...

Yes. Insects don't increase the net CO2 concentration of the atmosphere. Our fossil fuel use does.

I don't doubt that we are in a warming period. I DO doubt that the burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause. And I am even willing to say that IF this is part of the natural warming and cooling process of the earth over its geological trends, then anything we do to halt or prevent it IS unnatural.

Click to expand...

You are correct that the earth heats and cools over the eons, no doubt there. What you're missing is that process takes place over tens of thousands of years, sometimes hundreds of thousands of years. What distinguishes the recent warming trend of the last couple decades is how fast the earth is warming. THAT is what is unprecedented, and worthy of concern and study.

You're welcome to believe fossil fuels related CO2 concentration growth isn't the cause. Heck, you're welcome to believe elephants can fly for all I care. The point is your contention places you squarely at odds with what the relevant scientific community believes; in fact, they've shown you can't explain the recent warming trend without accounting for anthropogenic sources of GHGs.

Tommygunn said:

"The tragedy of the commons" referes to community property...ie, "socialism", or "communism."
[...]
So ... who owns the environment? If nobody does, how can you apply the theory?

Click to expand...

The tragedy of the commons does not only apply to situations as narrow as you suggest. It refers to anything which is "owned" in common by a group (or, possibly, not "owned" by anyone). The environment is a commons. Nobody owns the air or groundwater, but everyone uses it and pretty much anyone can take advantage and pollute it.

Aside from legal mandates and social pressure, there is little incentive for someone to not pollute - especially when activities which produce pollution are extremely lucrative.

When I was a kid, the Ohio river was so polluted it caught fire. That degree of pollution has been cleaned up. We are no longer polluting on the level we did 30, 40, 50+ years ago. Sure we can do better.

Click to expand...

Yes, we can (and should) do better, though this country is much better at controlling pollution than many other places in the world. (Note though that CO2 is generally not considered pollution, and we're terrible about that.) This country has cleaned up a bit because of federal laws such as the clean air act. This is one of the necessary functions of government, otherwise the environment would fall victim to the tragedy of the commons (as it has in the past, and in other countries).

I see no paucity of demand for environmental cleanliness. We still need to clean up the environment -- and we are.
We can do a better job with regards air pollution,

Click to expand...

I agree, but the point is that there is little economic incentive for a clean environment. Companies would be happy to pollute every river in the country in order to boost their balance sheet; the only reason they don't is because the EPA would shut them down. Consumer pressures are really not that significant in comparison to federal regulations.

But I refuse to accept that we're heading for some major catastrophe due to "global warming," because to many people who are shouting the loudest about this have a marked political agenda driving it. That's just the truth; deny it if you will.

Click to expand...

There's a logical fallacy there... (and an incorrect statement). The people "driving" this are scientists working without political motivation. Just because their conclusion happens to support a political viewpoint with which you disagree (and, equivalently, just because people whose politics you disagree with take up that particular cause) does not mean the science is invalid.

One final word about the "global cooling" thing you were taught in high school... high school science teachers aren't scientists. I'm guessing they taught some stuff based on the popular press, which was certainly not an accurate representation of the researchers conclusions. If you want to shout about it, you're not going to gain much sympathy unless you can produce a peer-reviewed journal article to support your case. You're claiming that this was the theory of the time... prove it. If you're right, it shouldn't be difficult.

Insects are "irrelevant" because they're not emitting "new" CO2? -- even though they're higher up on the list than humans? Than humans must be even more irrelevant, even though they're producing "new CO2" that supposedly didn't exist before, yet it did, it just was ... somewhere else.

Click to expand...

Where does the CO2 produced by insects (presumably due to respiration) come from? The insects get carbon from eating plants. Plants get carbon directly from the air via photosynthesis. So any CO2 put into the air by insects is not important, because it came out of the air in the first place. Insects do not add net CO2 to the atmosphere.

CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels did not come from the atmosphere, it comes from oil and coal which was locked up in the ground. The process of burning fossil fuels adds net CO2 to the atmosphere.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LA Times article said:

Everybody in the United States could switch from cars to bicycles.

The Chinese could close all their factories.
[...]
There is still hope. The report notes that a concerted world effort could stave off the direst consequences of global warming, such as widespread flooding, drought and extreme weather.
[...]

To stabilize atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide — the primary contributor to global warming — CO2 emissions would have to drop 70% to 80%, said Richard Somerville, a theoretical meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.

Such a reduction would bring emissions into equilibrium with the planet's ability to absorb carbon dioxide. The last time the planet was in balance was more than 150 years ago, before the widespread use of coal and steam engines.[...]

"All truck, all trains, all airplanes, cars, motorcycles and boats in the United States — that's 7.3% of global emissions," [...]

Closing all fossil-fuel-powered electricity plants worldwide and replacing them with windmills, solar panels and nuclear power plants would make a serious dent — a 39% reduction globally, Marland said.

Click to expand...

This article is a bit misleading, and you're taking advantage of it. First, nobody expects CO2 levels to stabilize anytime soon (unfortunately). Second, it's talking about a required global reduction in CO2 emissions, but trying to meet that demand only local reductions... which is misleading and unrealistic.

Thirdly,

Boats said:

I'm not going to bother doing anything about GW because nothing realistic can be done about it. Note to the humans of the future: Adapt or die. We had to.

Click to expand...

Once again I see a conservative (who is supposedly about personal responsibility) spouting an irresponsible attitude. Just because you can't solve a problem completely doesn't mean you shouldn't try to mitigate it.

You can say "adapt or die" ... but many people don't understand the real danger of climate change. We live in our houses and cities and like to pretend that we don't depend on the ecosystem much, but it's an illusion. And while we can live in our comfortable air-conditioned homes, wildlife can't. If weather becomes more severe and drought becomes more common than it already is (as is predicted), what happens? The world is already undergoing a mass extinction, and that is bad news for whoever is at the top of the food chain.

Adaptation would be working to correct or reduce climate change.

hey I got it!

I know how this relates to guns!!

As worldwide food shortages increase over the next 100 years, lack of available water and increasing evidence of imminent die offs occur, more and more people will begin migrating to more habitable climates in search of hospitable land. The U.S. will lose its economic strength for a variety of reasons and will have to let other nations take advantage of the reasources, until the coastal refugees and superstorms disrupt the infrastructure so severely that even basic economic ties are interupted. Gun owners will protect localized areas temporarily until the mass exodus from unsustainable cities flood out in the countryside - martial law of course will have long since been declared and food hoarders, arsenal keepers and the like will have been rounded up, but those few holdouts will be cleaning cosmoline off their rifles just in time to go down in a blaze of glory against 30,000 to 1 odds. That's before China colonizes the U.S. for its own staggering population.

ST

Mad Chemist said:

Could someone please explain how this thread pertains to firearms and the 2A?

Click to expand...

No.

Well, I can try... many conservatives who are pro-2A also happen to be anti-science. And all the people in this thread probably have firearms.

Helmetcase said:

you're welcome to believe elephants can fly for all I care.

Click to expand...

Hey, I saw "Dumbo"...

Agricola wrote:

Boats,

For once I am speechless, so I suppose a well-done is in order. Its not that climate scientists are wrong - its that they come up with too appalling a scenario, so we will screw future generations instead?

Click to expand...

Screwing future generations is what humans do the best. Those future humans might grumble about the humans of the past, as we might rail against those that almost hunted whales to extinction or those who cut down massive sequoias thousands of years old, but ultimately they will deal with their reality as they find it, not as they wish it to be.

I am merely being realistic. No one is going to deindustrialize, so really, why tinker on the margins? Building dikes and levees is more pragmatic than adopting reading by bottled fireflies, especially since there is no stopping GW if the recent reports are to be believed.

This article is a bit misleading, and you're taking advantage of it. First, nobody expects CO2 levels to stabilize anytime soon (unfortunately). Second, it's talking about a required global reduction in CO2 emissions, but trying to meet that demand only local reductions... which is misleading and unrealistic.

Click to expand...

I got the impression that China, Europe, and the US, was a pretty good global sampling of how useless countermeasures are going to be. All of the wrold's power plants accounted for only 37% of CO2 emissions.

First, in global climate change, as in any change, there will be winners and losers--it won't be an unmitigated disaster for everyone.

Secondly, when even the most radical global economic changes won't do anything to really "blunt" the "disaster" that effort is wasted, so why start?

"I'm sorry. You have exceeded your carbon emissions for today. You will be charged $20 for the exhalation of excess carbon. Below this citation are ways to limit your carbon emission to avoid these fines in the future. Repeat offenders will be prosecuted."


A few years ago, in one of my classes, this topic came up. Either the teacher or some other "expert" brought up the point that roughly speaking, all the cars that have ever existed have produced harmful emissions equivalent to one large, volcanic eruption. I have no idea where that idea came from, nor can I validate its accuracy. But it's an interesting thought.

Add to that the recent research (recently heard anyway) about increased solar activity. Don't forget that we're also directly responsible for the ice caps on mars. Those rovers we sent over are polluting the otherwise pristine environment on Mars, releasing harmful gases which are depleting Mars' ozone layer, resulting in the melting of Mars' ice caps.

Look! the sky! I think it's falling....... again......

A few years ago, in one of my classes, this topic came up. Either the teacher or some other "expert" brought up the point that roughly speaking, all the cars that have ever existed have produced harmful emissions equivalent to one large, volcanic eruption. I have no idea where that idea came from, nor can I validate its accuracy. But it's an interesting thought.

Click to expand...

I propose the next person to posit that volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans be forced to listen to Rosie O'Donnell pontificate for like...a week as punishment.

That might even be true, but the problem with that is that cars are about 5% of our CO2 emissions. It ignores the other 95% of what we're spewing into the troposphere. Thanks for playing, though.

Add to that the recent research (recently heard anyway) about increased solar activity

Click to expand...

Already asked and answered. Solar activity has been shown to NOT be sufficient for explaining the planetary warming we're seeing. Thanks for playing again.

I am merely being realistic. No one is going to deindustrialize, so really, why tinker on the margins? Building dikes and levees is more pragmatic than adopting reading by bottled fireflies, especially since there is no stopping GW if the recent reports are to be believed.

Click to expand...

Which report said GW was unstoppable?

I love how the conservosphere has gone from "GW isn't happening" to "it's happening but not thanks to us" to "well it's our fault but there's nothing we can do about it so buy a canoe and hang on". Funny.

I got the impression that China, Europe, and the US, was a pretty good global sampling of how useless countermeasures are going to be. All of the wrold's power plants accounted for only 37% of CO2 emissions.

Click to expand...

Boats, as I said before I think that article is misleading. First, we don't need to stop all CO2 emissions - we simply need to restore the natural carbon cycle. I don't think that 37% figure is accurate (or rather, it may be accurate but I don't think it's properly defined). It was pointed out earlier that many natural CO2 emissions add no net CO2 to the atmosphere, and I suspect those processes are included in the "total" for the article. If so, that would be naturally misleading, in that the author is suggesting that we need to stop all CO2 emissions.

First, in global climate change, as in any change, there will be winners and losers--it won't be an unmitigated disaster for everyone.

Click to expand...

That is demonstrably untrue. To take an extreme example: if the average temperature increased by 150 degrees, I don't think there would be any winners.

Secondly, when even the most radical global economic changes won't do anything to really "blunt" the "disaster" that effort is wasted, so why start?

Click to expand...

Because it's not wasted effort. Yes, the effort that is needed could have serious economic impact. However there are measures of substantial benefit which would have little, or even positive economic impact... things like using compact fluorescent lighting, or buying cars that get good mileage.

But while high efficiency could help, it must be coupled with some economic incentive to use less fuel overall; otherwise an increase in efficiency only results in more available energy resources, which get put to other uses (and thus the problem is made worse).

Oil is not an infinite resource. Supplies will get scarce, though it'll be a while before prices become truly prohibitive because the oil industry is very good at finding and extracting reserves in ever-more-remote and inaccessible locations. But again, it's a finite resource. It's not a bad idea to start using renewable energy sources.