"I'm always thankful not to be a plankton. But never more than right now."
-Leslie Nielsen
I think it is true, but it is natural.
[QUOTE=SSBMX;32419143]I think it is true, but it is natural.[/QUOTE]
Explain why it started around the Industrial Revolution.
Climate change is supported on one side by scientists and denounced on the other by radio talk show hosts and most of the republican party.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure which side I'm gonna be on.
[QUOTE=sp00ks;32412889]This is just as bad as not believing in evolution.[/QUOTE]
Wow, no, it really isn't as bad as not believing in evolution. That was a retarded comparison and you need the stfu. Climatology is not an exact science and we still don't know many of the details. Fuck dude, in the 80's, they were warning us about "Global Cooling". Oh, did you miss that one? Short memory I guess.
Look sp00ks, you've been making some seriously bad posts and now you're just fucking insulting people. Either focus on the debate or I will start reporting you.
Maybe we need a debate thread on which is worse, denial of Global Warming or denial of evolution.
[QUOTE=Soviet Bread;32419261]Explain why it started around the Industrial Revolution.[/QUOTE]
It didn't.
There's been global heating/cooling cycles for millions of years.
[QUOTE=devcon;32424339]It didn't.
There's been global heating/cooling cycles for millions of years.[/QUOTE]
That's true but I think he meant why was there a huge spike like never before.
[QUOTE=The DooD;32425354]That's true but I think he meant why was there a huge spike like never before.[/QUOTE]
There have been huge spikes (both in the positive and negative temperature direction) in the past: bigger than now, in fact. The debate is over whether or not the current trend can be explained naturally, or if human interaction must be contributing greatly to it.
And, TH89, yes, I do understand what the graph means. It's a damn graph, it's not that hard to understand. The Y-axis is the change in temperature (from an arbitrarily chosen 0 which happens to be the average temperature experienced in our recent history), the X-axis is simply time. Admittedly I have no clue what the red and black lines mean, but other than that it's all pretty straight forward.
Given that the temperature has fluctuated as much as 8 degrees Celsius (both positive and negative) in the past I don't think we need to be freaking out as much about global warming as we currently are.
[QUOTE=FlakAttack;32422976]Wow, no, it really isn't as bad as not believing in evolution. That was a retarded comparison and you need the stfu. Climatology is not an exact science and we still don't know many of the details. [b]Fuck dude, in the 80's, they were warning us about "Global Cooling". Oh, did you miss that one?[/b] Short memory I guess.
Look sp00ks, you've been making some seriously bad posts and now you're just fucking insulting people. Either focus on the debate or I will start reporting you.[/QUOTE]
Please read the page again, particularly post 176.
[editline]22nd September 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=sltungle;32425654]There have been huge spikes (both in the positive and negative temperature direction) in the past: bigger than now, in fact. The debate is over whether or not the current trend can be explained naturally, or if human interaction must be contributing greatly to it.
And, TH89, yes, I do understand what the graph means. It's a damn graph, it's not that hard to understand. The Y-axis is the change in temperature (from an arbitrarily chosen 0 which happens to be the average temperature experienced in our recent history), the X-axis is simply time. Admittedly I have no clue what the red and black lines mean, but other than that it's all pretty straight forward.
[b]Given that the temperature has fluctuated as much as 8 degrees Celsius (both positive and negative) in the past I don't think we need to be freaking out as much about global warming as we currently are.[/b][/QUOTE]
Regardless, it's something we should try to contain. Is there really any harm in producing less CO2? I mean we don't have to do it all this instant, We can gradually stop it over the course of a decade or two. Besides, ocean life is sensitive to pretty much any change in temperature.
[QUOTE=OvB;32425868]Regardless, it's something we should try to contain. Is there really any harm in producing less CO2? I mean we don't have to do it all this instant, We can gradually stop it over the course of a decade or two. Besides, ocean life is sensitive to pretty much any change in temperature.[/QUOTE]
Perhaps. But then again, perhaps not. Something that makes me laugh is the fact that CO2 levels have been decreasing basically since the Cambrian Explosion, and if they keep on decreasing at their current, long term rate in something like half a billion to a billion years the CO2 levels in the atmosphere will be so low that photosynthesis will be impossible. All plant life, and hence, soon after, all animal life will die out.
No matter what happens Earth is kinda fucked in the long run. More CO2 and Earth cooks. Less and all life starves to death. Eventually the universe will find a way to fuck us over regardless of how much we try to stave off the inevitable.
[editline]23rd September 2011[/editline]
Wouldn't the truly noble course of action be to determine what level of CO2 in the atmosphere at current times would permit life on Earth to exist for the longest period of time possible and then alter the atmospheric CO2 concentrations to that level?
Sure, it may cause some short term damage to the environment, but don't spew all of this, "we're doing it to save the Earth!" bullshit if, in reality, you're not really doing it to save the Earth or the environment.
[QUOTE=OvB;32425868]
Regardless, it's something we should try to contain. Is there really any harm in producing less CO2? I mean we don't have to do it all this instant, We can gradually stop it over the course of a decade or two. Besides, ocean life is sensitive to pretty much any change in temperature.[/QUOTE]
This is my problem. I can deny or accept global warming as much as I want, but what can I really do about it. I feel that even if I try to cut down on my own CO2 emissions, there are other people that are still doing nothing and as such I'm not really helping.
I don't think the debate should even be about global warming any more (although since this is the thread about it, it should be). Even without the threats that climate change could bring, we are still drastically changing the Earth by releasing large amounts of CO2 that could potentially end up making the Earth go back to looking like what it might have looked liked in its infancy.
Also I found that article on what the increased CO2 is doing to the ocean very informative. I wonder if it's even possible for sea life to be able to develop/adapt along with the increased acidity in the ocean so that even if not all sea species survived, new ones would be able to thrive.
There is also the threat of running out of fossil fuels. It seems like we're caring too much about stopping CO2 emissions to save the world and not worrying enough about proper alternatives that we can use when we do eventually run out of fossil fuels. I know the two are linked, but even if we cut down on CO2 emissions a lot, I'm sure fuels would still be being used enough that we would run out of them.
Too bad most of the climate scientists are bought and many neglect the sun's increased magnetic activity leading to our increased temperature. And you can see that CO2 can't really be the cause for the heating, because temperature in the past raised independently of the gas.
Source: some German stuff where I can't find a suitable translation :/
[QUOTE=TH89;32415701]That would be a good point, except I never said anything like that. Good job refuting imaginary me, I guess?[/quote]
You haven't mentioned the government, true, but you've repeated some kind of vague "we have to do SOMETHING" chant almost each and every time you post. It's not hard to infer where you're going with it. It's obviously true you think corporations can, hence man-caused climate change.
[QUOTE=TH89;32415701]I hope you're not talking about "global cooling," because unlike the current climate change, that was never supported by the scientific community. There's no comparison.[/quote]
There is so very many others, I wasn't.
[QUOTE=TH89;32415701]Also, scientists are right a lot more often than they are wrong. And as we go on, and models are further developed and refined, they are wrong less and less about less and less significant things. People like to pull the "scientists can be totally wrong!" as if there's another Oh-Shit-The-Earth-Is-Round discovery hiding around the corner. That's not how it works, except maybe in theoretical physics.[/quote]
Actually that's not true, I don't think any scientist will tell you that they're right far more than they're wrong. One out of thousands of hypotheses are proven correct. The proven ones are great, they lend understanding to the world around us. I don't ever expect to change my life fundamentally on something not proven.
[QUOTE=TH89;32415701]You could post as many as you want, and it wouldn't matter, because the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meterological Society, and pretty much every reputable scientific organization [i]on the planet[/i] have all issued statements endorsing the theory of human-caused climate change.[/quote]
There's that fallacy again.
[QUOTE=TH89;32415701]And as much as physicists like to think their field makes them experts on everything, they're really not qualified to ~disprove~ that theory either.[/quote]
Plenty of them have worked directly with climate groups, and they know how the scientific method works, apparently, unlike some people.
[QUOTE=TH89;32415701]I think we've established that your standard for proof is way, way higher than mine (higher even than I would consider remotely reasonable, but that's for people reading this to decide). But humor me for a moment in assuming it's true.[/quote]
My standard of proof is that things be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, your belief in models concocted based on educated guesses is not what I'd call beyond reasonable doubt.
[QUOTE=TH89;32415701]If someone is strongly, strongly suspected of being involved in a terrorist plot to kill hundreds of innocent people, do we let them run around freely until we are able to successfully convict them? Of course not; by the time we do they'll probably have blown up a bunch of buildings and will probably blow up some more before we can catch them. Waiting until we've determined we have absolute proof means waiting until we can no longer do anything substantive. I'm sure you don't expect the people who accept the scientific consensus to go for [i]that[/i].[/quote]
That's actually totally wrong, I don't believe in locking somebody up because they're suspected of committing they haven't even committed. It's totally beside the point and your assumption that I would fall for that is totally wrong.
[QUOTE=TH89;32415701]"Well wait, for one thing," I hear you saying, "jailing a suspected terrorist has no negative repercussions,[/quote]
Actually, it does. Again, beside the point entirely.
[QUOTE=TH89;32415701]whereas, say, legislating against greenhouse gas emissions (oops now I said it) could do serious damage to the economy." And believe me, I'm not trying to dismiss that out of hand. I'm not a pie-in-the-sky liberal who thinks the only reason not to enact more regulations is because ~the corporations control the government maaan~.
BUT the predicted damage to ecosystems we rely on for food and other resources has the potential to destroy entire industries. That's going to be far worse for the economy in the long run, and that's not even getting into the human cost in third-world countries that aren't equipped to deal with floods, droughts, and food shortages.
[url]http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/13/us-europe-oceans-climate-idUSTRE78C5T720110913[/url][/QUOTE]
Except there has been absolutely no proof of any kind of any shifts in the increase in severe weather.
Greenland's caps are melting inconsistently with the data as well.
[url]http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2010JB007789.shtml[/url]
It's not that my burden of proof is too high, it's that I work with models and equations all the time. I do not like inconsistency and I do not like unchecked variables. One false variable in a calculation and you will not achieve the desired result, it can be off by metric fuck ton or it can be roughly accurate, there's no way of knowing unless the variables are checked and until we know as much as we possibly can know with modern technology about the climate. I'd support dumping more money into climate research far before I'd support any gigantic changes in economic conditions.
I don't proclaim statements to be factual because a lot of people agree with it, I don't proclaim theories to be true to life when there is mounting evidence that they are not.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;32415787][video=youtube;EU_AtHkB4M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU_AtHkB4Ms[/video]
If anyone is interested.
huh what happened to media tags
oh it's [video] nevermind[/QUOTE]
This kind of thing is seen so often, with the media picking up on a scientific study and drawing false conclusions from it. Naturally the scientists get the flak for talking bullshit rather than the media outlet for bad reporting. I saw a Hufpo article where an astronomer was talking about how the star Betelgeuse could go supernova any time "soon." (meaning sometime between now and the next few thousand years.) Despite this being all he said, the article jumped to the conclusion it might explode in 2012 and kill us all.
If climate science was reported properly, there wouldn't be so much controversy.
[QUOTE=FlakAttack;32422976]Fuck dude, in the 80's, they were warning us about "Global Cooling". Oh, did you miss that one? Short memory I guess.[/QUOTE]
[b]FUCK[/b] why can't this myth just die out.
There wasn't a scientific consensus about "global cooling", it was a bunch of shit taken out of context then hyped up by Time magazine. See the video I posted earlier.
[QUOTE=FlakAttack;32422976]Wow, no, it really isn't as bad as not believing in evolution. That was a retarded comparison and you need the stfu. Climatology is not an exact science and we still don't know many of the details. Fuck dude, in the 80's, they were warning us about "Global Cooling". Oh, did you miss that one? Short memory I guess.
Look sp00ks, you've been making some seriously bad posts and now you're just fucking insulting people. Either focus on the debate or I will start reporting you.[/QUOTE]
While I agree that evolution is a better supported theory, practically all climatologists in the world accepts that we are causing global climate changes. I don't see how denying one kind of science is any different from denying another.
The post was not intended as a personal attack.
To whoever said climate cannot be modified by humans. Ninja please, haven't you people heard about cloud seeding? On China it's done all the time, most of the rain in Beijing is caused by cloud seeding using silver iodide. It's actually done in America to generate rain on areas experiencing drought. Human weather control, even on it's current prototypical phase, is far from science fiction.
Chlorofluorocarbons were verified by the NASA to be the primary cause ozone layer depletion by mankind. If we would have continued using them, by 2060 we'd be entirely out of an ozone layer, and the damage we have currently caused to the ozone layer by CFC particles is yet unknown, as we are only beginning to see the side effects, which are mostly mitigated by CO2 emissions which increase the thickness of the ozone layer.
Speaking of CO2, based on samples extracted from polar ice caps, we can accurately determine that the CO2 level in the atmosphere since the advent of industrialization has consistently increased. In fact, they are at their highest point in 900,000 years, that means after almost 6 glaciation periods. We ARE currently in an interglacial period, yes, and the Earth does oscillate between glacial and interglacial temperatures (cold and hot respectively), in fact our next glacial period is meant to be in 15000 years, should the atmospheric CO2 levels be around 250 ppm (A relatively normal value).
However our CO2 levels are not around 250 ppm, they're around 400 ppm and rising (No natural process in the last 2 million years can account for that almost 175% increase in CO2 levels except for modern hydrocarbon fuel combustion), and according to Milankovich cycles that would mean our next glaciation should be in 15000 years later, so yes, there IS a natural cycle on the Earth, but humanity is fucking it up. Ice ages are the only moment when the polar ice caps present any sort of growth as opposed to the steady melting it currently is undergoing, and if the ice caps melt, well, you can just see coming just how much will ocean levels increase.
-snip-
[QUOTE=Big Bang;32428622]CO2 emissions which increase the thickness of the ozone layer.[/QUOTE]
not true
CO2 has nothing to do with the ozone layer. The ozone layer is a completely separate problem which thankfully, due to regulation of CFC's, is beginning to improve.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;32428844]not true
CO2 has nothing to do with the ozone layer. The ozone layer is a completely separate problem which thankfully, due to regulation of CFC's, is beginning to improve.[/QUOTE]
CO2 cools up the stratosphere, which increases ozone levels. They're opposite effects, I raised the CFC's merely to show how air pollution CAN affect the Earth's atmosphere.
[QUOTE=Big Bang;32428984]CO2 cools up the stratosphere, which increases ozone levels. They're opposite effects, I raised the CFC's merely to show how air pollution CAN affect the Earth's atmosphere.[/QUOTE]
Fair enough.
There is evidence of earth's temperature rising, that can't be denied.
The real controversy is how much of it is as a result of mankind's actions.
[QUOTE=Big Bang;32428622]To whoever said climate cannot be modified by humans. Ninja please, haven't you people heard about cloud seeding? On China it's done all the time, most of the rain in Beijing is caused by cloud seeding using silver iodide. It's actually done in America to generate rain on areas experiencing drought. Human weather control, even on it's current prototypical phase, is far from science fiction.[/QUOTE]
Okay, weather is different from climate though. It's important to make that distinction or people start assuming that meteorologists are credible experts on climate change when they actually don't know shit usually.
[QUOTE=Venezuelan;32429492]
The real controversy is how much of it is as a result of mankind's actions.[/QUOTE]
There's no controversy. All the scientists agree.
[QUOTE=devcon;32424339]It didn't.
There's been global heating/cooling cycles for millions of years.[/QUOTE]
Not as extreme as it began around the Industrial Revolution.
[QUOTE=FlakAttack;32422976]Climatology is not an exact science and we still don't know many of the details. Fuck dude, in the 80's, they were warning us about "Global Cooling"[/QUOTE] Global cooling actually came from the media not the scientists themselves. They took a claim and exaggerated it to the extreme. Not to mention global warming will cause extreme temperatures on both extremes. Really the climatologists know what they are doing. Its the media thats saying all the stupid stuff.
[QUOTE=The DooD;32426197]There is also the threat of running out of fossil fuels. It seems like we're caring too much about stopping CO2 emissions to save the world and not worrying enough about proper alternatives that we can use when we do eventually run out of fossil fuels. I know the two are linked, but even if we cut down on CO2 emissions a lot, I'm sure fuels would still be being used enough that we would run out of them.[/QUOTE]
The planet is 4.5 billion years old and has seen more shit than a single species can throw at it. The time humans have existed on earth is a mere fraction of a fraction of earths timeline. We are just barely an honorable mention of earthly events as of right now. "Saving the planet" is a stupid thing to call "the cause" that so many Greenpeace hippies follow. The Yellowstone caldera could blow out next Tuesday and make every attempt at "saving the planet" irrelevant in a matter of hours. Or a meteor could hit the pacific ocean and wipe every trace of life off the coast of the pacific rim. Earth is changing, and we can't stop it. If humans are fortunate enough to live on this rock for another couple thousand years we may see a day when New York city is completely scrapped off the planet by a glacier that doesn't even think twice about destroying whatever stands in its way. What I'm trying to say is, we as humans have about as much control on what this planet does as a passenger of a commercial airline hurtling through space. We're really just a long for the ride.
However, what we [i]can[/i] do is make this interstellar Boeing first class quality. With careful regulations we can make the oceans plentiful and healthy, along with other things that we depend on for a healthy happy life. Saving the planet is really, well, silly. Saving and prolonging our own species however, we can do. But that's going to require some cooperation with nature.
Even if global warming is a hoax, many of the practices people suggest to counter it (alternative energies, energy efficiency, reduction of waste) are things we need to do anyways to make good use of our very finite pool of resources here on earth anyways.
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