Answer to the global warming skeptics/denier

[kareface]

I'm not sure if you've run into people who swear up and down that it's all bunk, but I have. Luckily among my friends it's not a common belief. One of my close friends however is a global warming skeptic. Every once in a while I run across some publication or lecture that talks about the issue and link him to it in the hopes he will take the time to look it over. Today I was watching a video on the issue and noticed this link:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

It honestly is an incredible resource for countering the misinformation that's widely propagated. The content is sourced and the replies are written simple enough that you don't require a math degree to understand the content of the responses. My friend surprised me when he responded saying he liked one of the explanations given.

[Serif]

Shit is biased

[Gadritan]

Shit is biased

Um. Yeah.

Edit: "Ironic," would be appropriate in this case as well I think.

[Max™]

http://www.skepticalscience.com/imag...e_Spectrum.gif
Spectrum of the greenhouse radiation measured at the surface. Greenhouse effect from water vapor is filtered out, showing the contributions of other greenhouse gases

Hmmm.

Interesting.

Let's see what they say about water vapor.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/wate...nhouse-gas.htm

As water vapour is directly related to temperature, it's also a positive feedback - in fact, the largest positive feedback in the climate system (Soden 2005). As temperature rises, evaporation increases and more water vapour accumulates in the atmosphere. As a greenhouse gas, the water absorbs more heat, further warming the air and causing more evaporation. When CO2 is added to the atmosphere, as a greenhouse gas it has a warming effect. This causes more water to evaporate and warm the air to a higher, stabilized level. So the warming from CO2 has an amplified effect.

Hmmm, call me crazy, but... when something evaporates, doesn't it cool the local environment by storing heat energy in the new vapor state?

How much does water vapour amplify CO2 warming? Without any feedbacks, a doubling of CO2 would warm the globe around 1°C. Taken on its own, water vapour feedback roughly doubles the amount of CO2 warming. When other feedbacks are included (eg - loss of albedo due to melting ice), the total warming from a doubling of CO2 is around 3°C (Held 2000).

Ah, here's the positive feedback stuff they keep talking about... CO2 releases more water, which traps more heat, fucks around more with the CO2, and then uh... what does it do when you get so much water vapor in the atmosphere, it becomes saturated?

Doesn't it like... condense? Doesn't condensation like... give up heat, but then enter into a different energy cycle with weather?

Theory, observations and climate models all show the increase in water vapor is around 6 to 7.5% per degree Celsius warming of the lower atmosphere. The observed changes in temperature, moisture, and atmospheric circulation fit together in an internally and physically consistent way. When skeptics cite water vapour as the most dominant greenhouse gas, they are actually invoking the positive feedback that makes our climate so sensitive to CO2 as well as another line of evidence for anthropogenic global warming.

The increase in water vapor is 6 to 7.5% per degree warming? Wut?

Incidentally, there is at best a negligible increase of human emitted water vapor in the atmosphere.

I'm kinda iffy on this site, they addressed the water vapor, but ehhh.

[Mizango]

Conservatives say its fake, so I believe them.

[Headspace]

I believe global warming is real because all of the douchebags say it isn't etc etc

[Gadritan]

Yeah well, I'm an independent, so I refuse to interpret data.

[Kuya]

I think that both sides have some valid points.

[Meian]

"Climate change" seems to be the non-stigma form of it

[Max™]

Conservatives say its fake, so I believe them.

I say your conservatives are fake, so bluebird waterfall shatterblossom!

[SephYuyX]

Man, it's been pretty hot this past week, must be global warming.

[Drex]

Man, it's been pretty hot this past week, must be global warming.

every time the temperature comes up someone makes a little hehe comment about global warming and how turribul it has gotten

oh god my nostrils are flaring already

[Max™]

Oh shit, a deer just jumped the fence to get to the neighbors trashcan... must be global warming...

...oh wait... or that deer found my pot plants!

BY THE MIGHTY HAMMER OF THOR, I WILL SMITE YOU, DEERBASTARD!

[Hyan]

Well if there's global warming, I'm not complaining.

Cold winters, hot summers.. it's like a paradise right now. Bring it oonnn

[Zeb]

Well if there's global warming, I'm not complaining.

Cold winters, hot summers.. it's like a paradise right now. Bring it oonnn

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that. I want to hook central air up to the entire world. 72-73 degrees at all times please.

[Caiti]

I'm not sure if you've run into people who swear up and down that it's all bunk, but I have. Luckily among my friends it's not a common belief. One of my close friends however is a global warming skeptic. Every once in a while I run across some publication or lecture that talks about the issue and link him to it in the hopes he will take the time to look it over. Today I was watching a video on the issue and noticed this link:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

It honestly is an incredible resource for countering the misinformation that's widely propagated. The content is sourced and the replies are written simple enough that you don't require a math degree to understand the content of the responses. My friend surprised me when he responded saying he liked one of the explanations given.

Even though I am not disagreeing with what you're saying, this site isn't really helping the situation entirely either.

The thing about not needing a "math degree" (or more importantly a degree in climatology?) to understand the data is because conclusions have been drawn for you, or at least implied. The fact of the matter is that the significance of all the real data is on levels that are considered too small to matter by people who don't understand the nature of numbers (even when the small number is hugely important) so sites like this take it upon themselves to draw inevitable conclusions that people can relate to based on the data.

The conclusions drawn on anything but the data alone are subject to bias, opinion, and interpretation, and to an educated denier or middle-of-the-road undecided person, filled with holes that invalidate all of the data and testing associated with the biased conclusions.

The fact that the majority of people aren't smart enough to understand why small changes are so significant (extremely small in terms of number scale changes turned the sahara into a desert from a lush paradise, for example) is not really a good enough reason to assert a biased conclusion as fact. I mean, yeah, they're 100% right, but misrepresenting data, even with the best of intentions, is not the way scientists should be approaching the problem. Sure, it's what the opponents are doing every day and they're smiling while doing it, but sinking to their level doesn't do much except give ammunition to the people holding anti-logic guns at our heads.

[thetruepandagod]

The planet goes through different climate cycles with or without the help of humans and will continue to do so long after we are gone. Unless reports start showing me how we can live through an ice age in underground tunnels like gnomes i doth not care.

[Max™]

I will say this, that site presents it in a bit more honest manner. None of the politics driven "the science is settled, almost certain that the great majority, etc etc" shit.

[Meresgi]

The planet goes through different climate cycles with or without the help of humans and will continue to do so long after we are gone. Unless reports start showing me how we can live through an ice age in underground tunnels like gnomes i doth not care.

^ Bingo

[kareface]

If the current trends are a result of humans why wouldn't you want to change that?