Thank you for that deeply thoughtful, carefully crafted and well-researched, authoritative statement of fact, Kalvin. I'll be sure to pass on your sentiments to the folks whose scholarly work your above post clearly subdue - those "envirowhacko" mathematicians, climatologists and physicists from Oxford, Yale and other institutions, indeed, to Dr. Kossin himself, improperly used by Tbarr to make his point, in error though it was., who clearly state the menace of global warming I'm not sure why a bad should be considered something other than bad. If global warming has a clear link to macro-climatic changes that auger massively destructive global changes, it's, uh, bad. If pollution causes our lungs to fill with crap, and contributes to the greenhouse gases leading to the aforesaid warming, it's uh, bad as well. So is cancer, theft, child abuse, and I oppose all of these things. You know, something I've never understood. From a Christian perspective, believing God gave the Earth to man as something to be cherished, over which Man was to be a responsible steward, why is that so many folks from the religious right, claiming a belief in Christ, seem to me to be so often the very ones name-calling environmentalists as "whackos?" I ask this in sincerity.
c'mon we still have about 30 years to live quietly before the face of the Earth is fully covered with water ..
The point of my post is that whether or not global warming is correct is irrelavent. 10 years ago scientists were going on about global cooling. People are focusing on the wrong problem. I fail to see how wanting to decrease pollution is not taking care of the planet. Since pollution is in fact a problem and the same things that cause pollution are alledged to cause global warming why not just focus on pollution? Same end but you don't come off sounding like a modern day chicken little. Few people actually believe that global warming is going to destroy us all. Few people don't believe that pollution is a problem. So why not focus on something we can all agree on? People are a lot more willing to help clean up the air than they are to try to change the world's temperature a fraction of a degree when the temperate fluctuates dozens of degrees every day. People buy alternate fuel/hybrids to save money on gas and help fight pollution. Only the wackos do it to try to stop global warming. You have sensible people doing it to solve an immediate local problem. Crazy people do it to try to change the planet. In the end the sensible people accomplish the goal of changing the planet by arguing using local immediate problems which does a good job of convincing other people while the crazy people don't convince anyone of anything. Nobody is going to buy a hybrid to try to save the polar bears. Crazy people think that saving the polar bears is a good argument for alternate fuel/hybrid vehicals.
Pollution cools the planet, doesnt it? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4171591.stm http://www.spokesmanreview.com/voices/story.asp?ID=161396 And suggesting adding more sulfur to the atmosphere to help stop it: http://www.livescience.com/environment/060727_inject_sulfur.html Does anyone see how ludicruous (too lazy to look up spelling) global warming is? Mars is warming too, ya know? Anyone think that, just possibly, there is something else going on? I put up a story a few months back on this too. Ah well. Same ole, same ole. As I always ask: "What temperature would you like it to be?"
Just as a note, I want a hybrid for my next vehicle. My reason for wanting a hybrid is to decrease fuel cost and consumption and decrease reliance on foreign oil. I didn't even consider global warming in this estimation. Also, I have seen a few snipits on TV where scientists say that they have had funding revoked because their initial findings, which they needed to study more in depth disagreed with the main stay of other scientific opinions on the subject. To have scientific research backing a conclusion well, scientists have to be able to investigate the phenomenon without bias due to a fear of their funding being revoked. I don't trust research funded by tobacco companies that says smoking is good for you. Why should I trust research funded by a government out to prove that global warming exists? Although, even if global warming isn't a man made problem, but part of a natural cycle, a hole in the ozone layer does allow larger amounts of radiation to permeate the atmosphere. THAT is definitely a problem.
Actually, just like clouds can warm or cool the planet depending on the type of cloud (thickness, how dense, how high or low in the atmosphere) there are likely some kinds of pollution that cool, and others that warm.
Well now I don't feel so bad about owning a 30mpg 2004 Civic and a 2006 Outlander that gets 20mpg. I'll just have to check the weather to see which car I should drive.
hybrid people ARE the problem. The slower we use existing oil supplies; the longer it'll take to get something better on the market Drive SUVs!
Well.... what about a hybrid SUV? Seriously though. We've already seen advances in technology. The more people buy hybrid, in my opinion, the more vehicle companies will see people wanting to save on gas, and reduce their consumption, and the more likely they are to fund research into alternate fuels like E85, hydrogen, ect. Also, the less gas/oil we use, the less power the oil and gas companies will have over the government, and the easier it will be to get funding for alternative fuel sources. Even if it's not a 'radical shift', it's progress, and some progress is better than none.
I'm not a big fan of this argument. I don't like oil/gas people getting corporate welfare. I certainly don't want to see it happen again with "alternative fuels" - if something cannot exist in a marketplace without government support, then it doesn't deserve to exist. Either people want it or they don't.
I'm sorry I was unclear. I did not mean government subsidies of the production of the fuel it's self (though ethanol already has this) I meant research into the technology behind the utilization and production of it. Just as there is government funding for many different kids of technology... like medical technology...
Yeah. I'm not kean on that either. When the govt funds a new medicine and XXX company discovers it. That company benefits from it, taxpayers are just paying for their profits from it. If the company thinks that a new medicine should be researched do it. ROI.
I'm not a fan of governments sponsoring research by corporations in general. However I am a fan of governments sponsoring university research.
I really do not think anyone denies the existence of GC. What people, myself included deny is that man has any positive or negative affect on GC. GC has always existed.... What I would like to know is if GC existed before man, who the hell was causing it then? There is nothing we can do to either prevent or cause GC. Man this subject has just been beat to death.
The primary point I would make is here is that you should test all things and hold onto what is true. Some here claim to work 12 hours a day but somehow manage to post on this forum at all hours of the day and somehow becomes an expert on global climate change to the point that he will berate anyone who questions it, even those with multiple degrees in engineering and quatitative sciences (don't tell me how hot it is, tell me the second and third order derivative of the temperature over time and then you might impress me). Question anything that people like this tell you not to question. One of the things that makes me question it is how things are spun in the media. They mention that the average temperature has risen 0.2 C over so many decades and then they show ice melting in some polar region. So an area that is 20 to 30 C below zero rise 0.2 and it starts melting. When they shift into attack mode, they attack America and its SUV's. American vehicles have had well over 90% of it's pollutants eliminated over the last 30 years. Almost all emissions are now consumable by the local flora. If you want to deal with pollution, go to the developing countries and get on their case. Also note how they roll out the stories on hot days or in a bad hurricane season and are decidely quiet during less extreme times.
KalvinB, I think we are missing each other: I said pollution is bad. So is global warming. Both have been shown, from what I have looked at, to have disastrous consequences. I don't see the point in saying "I only like to work on one kind of bad." TBarr: Not sure if you are directing your post to me. If so, I certainly don't intend to "berate" you - I am simply asking you to truthfully support what you are claiming. Your first told someone to "feel free to do their own research..." -and then merely posted a link to an article which wholly got wrong the work it uses to support its position, purporting to debunk the commonly accepted notion of global warming as espoused by the majority of scientists on the issue. I went to the work of the scientist your article used - and it didn't say what either you or the article you linked to said it did. I posted that scientist's work. These are his words, not mine. That you have bristled and felt the need to mention your "dual degrees" doesn't really answer the facts brought forward, does it? Perhaps you were confusing the work of the scientists quoted with my words; I don't know. Jeremy, actually, this is the very heart of it. From what I have read, including the work that Tbarr refers to, man very much has a strong hand in warming; and that warming has been shown to be responsible for a good many macro changes. This is my read of the available science.
Pollution IS bad. And we can control that. Global Warming is NATURE, and we cannot control that. Trying to is what is going to have "disastrous consequences". No, man has no more affect on GC than the dinosaurs did. Explain the previous ice ages and mini ice ages? Explain the changing climate and extreme weather that occurred before man started recording weather just about 100 years ago. Hmmmm if the earth really is 4.5 billion years old, 100 years of weather recording to come to this conclusion seems to me to be a little skewed. Man can no more affect GC than the dinosaurs could. What caused it then?
Did it ever occour to you that the weather change now could have other causes than the previous ones ? Why does it have to be the same causes all the time ? When man do new things, new things start to happen. Its a logic in that also.
Because again, man has only been recording weather for around 100 years. In the overall scheme of things, I really do not think that enough data has been collected to make an accurate hypothesis here.