I hate to rekindle old arguments...

[Beckwin]

My zany liberal professor was more concerned about ozone depletion rather than global warming from emissions. There's not as much research being done about ozone depletion, but when you think about what ozone does (filters a ton of radiation), losing it starts to get scary.

Don't even need environmental reasons to get off petroleum. Alt-fuel = not depending on the middle east for the majority of our oil.

[Atlasion]

My zany liberal professor was more concerned about ozone depletion rather than global warming from emissions. There's not as much research being done about ozone depletion, but when you think about what ozone does (filters a ton of radiation), losing it starts to get scary.

Don't even need environmental reasons to get off petroleum. Alt-fuel = not depending on the middle east for the majority of our oil.

I think the Ozone Hole is meant to be getting smaller now. Read somewhere that its now replenishing itself due to less CFCs being emitted. I think this was on the BBC news site. I can't remember and I don't like the search function on that site.


And yeh, even if you deny global warming theres still a bunch of reasons to find alternative energy sources and reduce car dependancy. Smogy cities are bad for our health, congestion sucks, depending on other countries for oil and stuff is not very good politically (undermining human rights movements by continuing to be all happy with Saudi Arabia, Russia turning off gas etc) and just sustainable development in general.

[Grievear]

How about the argument that Mt. St. Helens gave off more CO2 and greenhouse gases when it erupted than all of humanity in all of history? Sure we're contributing but sometimes I think they overestimate our impact. Like everything else the climate has gone through cycles before.

I bet you watched the great global warming swindle, didn't you?
http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man.html
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/Wh...as/volgas.html
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2006/06_10_26.html
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...olcano01m.html
That shit about Mt. St. Helens is just bullshit pulled out of thin air.

Thanks for linking those sources. I only brought it up because my Ethics professor brought it up in a lecture about pollution outsourcing. I'll have to call him out on his bullshit next class.

[CMMeast]

I don't think you read anything at all. Nobody is trying to say global warming isn't happening - the earth is warming. Just the rate and which it is and the causes / effects of it are HUGELY exaggerated. He also points out that most of the graphs and charts put out by the IPCC and the like organizations are debunked very quickly once people actually look at them, as they are full of faulty science. Read the article. I'm not saying it is or is not true, but nothing he says is out-right wrong and he does a lot of research to show why what he thinks is right.

As far as global temperatures go, I'll send you my balls in the mail of the temperature rises 5 degrees celcius in the next 100 years. You also forgot the whole estimation. Whenever climate panels make estimates, they always include a low and a high end. I remember when first learning about this stuff over a year ago they said T would increase between .1 and 5 degrees in the next 50 years. Really? You mean the earth is having a warming period after the little ice age?

Oh, and there has still never been any connection between CO2 and T

Do you know what a negative feedback loop is? Let's say the IPCC's analysis is flawed (and it just may well be), we still can't predict how bad the environmental effects of human pollution are going to be. Temperatures are going to rise at a faster and faster rate, not only because of CO2 in the atmosphere, but because of a host of other factors influenced by humans (sup ocean, deforestation destroying ecosystem balance leading to larger regional environmental effects).

Proving CO2 causes global warming will always be a nebulous affair because there are always people like you who point to lack of conclusive evidence or scientists who give up their soul for grant money who are unable to publish a paper without bias. Basic chemistry and physics can predict and confirm the effects of an increase of ppm (parts per million) in atmospheric CO2. Basically, it causes heat to be retained. And if it's not CO2, where is your proven data saying this is just the warming at the tail end of a small ice age. That's just a theory.

[Tristam]

What's the data saying the IPCC is flawed? Which of the many models don't you like? What parameter? It's kinda wrong to say that IPCC data is flawed when the IPCC only exists to assess the many models and data that exist. It's not like it's one lab that's sitting there as the only group working on climate change, it's many labs, many countries, many models, virtually tons of data (all of which showing the earth is getting warmer), hence the need for an IPCC (and also hence the OVERWHELMING evidence of the human impact on climate change).

Personally, I'd like to see Gore get sued, just so the lawsuit can get squashed so people can see just how silly and on the fringes global warming denialism really is. Unless someone changes the known chemical properties of CO2 and other green house gases there will ALWAYS be a causal link to atmospheric CO2 and global temperature.

edit: Alarming data can be notoriously bad for scientists who present them. Case in point: Univ. of Minnesota just got millions of dollars of grants suspended due to research from their school that suggested increasing production of biofuels would actually be bad for the environment due to the immense space needed for biofuel crops. Clair Patterson was denied funding and access to scientific meetings due to his campaign to show people how bad lead poisoning was.

double edit: If I can pick out two stupid arguments in that paper among the many while I'm at work, they'd start like this.
1. CO2 isn't as important as water for global warming: Yeah, except humans don't have much of an effect on atmospheric H2O and also the absorbance spectra of H2O is NOT THE SAME as CO2 or other greenhouse gases.

2. "The Mann Hockey Stick is Broken": Wicked old, current models are a conglomerate of multiple estimations, and even the models making the corrections that Macintyre suggested in his commentary show warming trends, nitpicking about science and models is not the same as doing science.

[Ramor]

http://culturecampaign.blogspot.com/200 ... movie.html
^for starters, as well there's quite a bit of discontent with the IPCC because it was (apparently, I have no idea since I had no hand in it) one of the worst examples of the peer-review process in the scientific community in recent years

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monck ... rrors.html

also the OISM's petition against Global Warming
http://itssd.blogspot.com/2007/11/he-pe ... 19000.html

of course there's a lot of flaws with 19,000 signatures being correct, but I've seen in multiple places that a third party group said about 95% of the PhD signatures on that paricular petition were legit, not going to argue over specifics but I'd say there would have been at least 5,000 reasonably intelligent, legit signatures.

[Tristam]

http://culturecampaign.blogspot.com/2007/10/uk-high-court-declares-al-gores-movie.html
^for starters, as well there's quite a bit of discontent with the IPCC because it was (apparently, I have no idea since I had no hand in it) one of the worst examples of the peer-review process in the scientific community in recent years

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monck ... rrors.html

also the OISM's petition against Global Warming
http://itssd.blogspot.com/2007/11/he-pe ... 19000.html

of course there's a lot of flaws with 19,000 signatures being correct, but I've seen in multiple places that a third party group said about 95% of the PhD signatures on that paricular petition were legit, not going to argue over specifics but I'd say there would have been at least 5,000 reasonably intelligent, legit signatures.

There was no regular peer-review, the IPCC report was an effort by many scientists to summarize a gigantic amount of data. It is not a traditional review article and was not published in its entirety in an edited journal. It is a summary of the current science of climate change by a large group of climate scientists done by request. It was done free of charge, with no compensation to any of the members of the panel (by comparison, McIntyre of climateaudit worked for an oil and gas exploration company...conflict of interest much?) Anyone who would be a reviewer was ON the panel.

The 19,000 signatures only needed a BS to sign, and I couldn't access the list, also having a Ph.D or any degree does not in and of itself qualify one to be a climate scientist or expert in any field other than the one that person got a Ph.D in. It's a total non-argument with about as much credibility as anything posted on BG. There are plenty of crap Ph.D's out there. And most people with "legit" Ph.D's don't know a damn thing about climate science (and some are even reasonable enough to admit that they don't). Why would someone choose to believe one of those signatures over, you know, actual research by actual climate scientists? This is the same tactic used by evolution-deniers, and people who don't think HIV causes AIDS. Instead of visiting obviously biased websites, maybe people could actually, you know, look at raw data?

One of the links you provided was a commentary by a judge who agreed with the basic premise of the movie but thinks some of the claims are exaggerated. That's fine, some of what Gore claimed was probably exaggerated, I personally didn't see the movie. But there's plenty of actual research to go on, and it's plenty convincing. A couple blogs nitpicking a movie doesn't change anything. Nobody is saying the movie is the most accurate representation of the science. But the science outside of the movie is the most accurate description of climate change we have.