The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I made a video of me impersonating a Global Warming denialist. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taADqbEVM4M (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taADqbEVM4M)

Tell me what you think. :)

I think you might have a little too much time on your hands.. ;) And to be honest, it seemed like there might be drugs involved? Your two arguments that you used over and over in the video didn't even make sense to me. Is the video a mockery? (mockumentary) or are you trying to fool others into thinking you are a denialist? I'm guessing the former, but it seems more of a back-fire making you the mockery in that instance.

I'm trying to mock GW denialists. It's not very good, so I'm going to redo it.

Do you have a spare computer/laptop somewhere?
Put this video on it while recording, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nemIsKJ25j0
Place the computer/laptop in the direction of the camera. I hope that enables you to actually look into the camera, your eyes are all over the place! :D.

Secondly, there is a very easy experiment that you can do at home to simulate the effect of global warming on the oceans. Just take a bottle of cola or any carbonated drink that you want. Pour it in a pan, and start heating it.
Notice the bubbles rising up from the cola? It's up to you to explain what is it that happens.
After you've done that, compare the results to the graphs of CO2 levels that Al Gore has been showing in 'an inconvenient truth'. Do you also get the feeling that we have a 'chicken or the egg' story going on here? :)

See, that's called a 'positive feedback loop'. In this case, that's really bad

I guess we'll see the truth 10 years from now :).

I'm all for making fun of people, global warming pro folks and anti-GW people included. It might help to read up a bit on the subject in order to poke better fun at them. Frankly, people who claim to believe completely in either side give me the chills (pardon the pun).

One thing that keeps confusing the issue (sorry, I'm going a wee bit off-topic here) is that the global warming question is actually made up of two parts.
1. Is the planet getting warmer?
2. Are humans the cause of the planet getting warmer?

The thing that scares me is the people who do not believe the planet is getting warmer AND use that to justify trashing the environment. Personally, I'm not convinced the planet is warming, but I would encourage anyone to lower their environmental foot print just the same.


As for whether we'll see the truth in 10 years, maybe, but chances are we'll have forgotten most of this. Does anyone here remember the Global Cooling panic of the 1970s? Anyone?
Also, for people interested in the debate, I'd recommend watching both An Inconvenient Truth and The Great Global Warming Swindle. There's a bit of food for thought in both videos.

I think you're misinformed. Both of those videos are not very good. Instead, I would suggest a video called How It All Ends on YouTube, which also has an expansion pack (starting with How It All Ends: Index) with a lot of information.

The global cooling thing is one thing many denialists use. The truth is, the scientist that initially made this observation soon said he was wrong, but the media kept acting like it was still true.

The truth is, there really isn't a debate. Big oil companies like Exxon are just making small finds (that are usually incorrect) seem bigger by promoting them. And several denialists are falling into the death trap.

For me, it's the other way around. I do believe that the earth is warming up, but that the influence that we have on this is so minimal that our efforts will hardly have an effect. This is because the world's population is not willing to take the harsh measures that are neccesary for us to reduce our carbon footprint.
It's not just the inefficient cars we drive, the polluting power plants that we have or the massive deforesting that's going on. The main problem is that when you get children those children will drive cars that will pollute the atmosphere with CO2, those children will build houses that use wood in it causing massive deforestation and those children will use electrical equipment that uses power generated by polluting power plants.

So, if you really want to reduce your carbon footprint, make sure your heritage dies with you. Don't have any children.
Also, when someone in your family is terminally ill don't treat him/her so he/she lives for another 20 years and continues to contribute to humanity's carbon footprint for another 20 years.

Concluding, there is only one way to thorougly reduce the carbon footprint of humankind, and that's to reduce the population to the levels of before global warming started.

The general consensus is that following the second world war we started to pollute our atmosphere greatly, so let's take 1950 as the target.
In 1950, the world's population was 2,519 million people. Right now, it's 6,707 million people.
So if we somehow get rid of 4,188 million people we should be fine for the foreseeable future. That's about 3 out of 5 people that are currently living, need to somehow die and not reproduce.

But, well, as I said, people aren't prepared to make such sacrifices, so I guess we're stuck with global warming as it is.

What we need is different forms of energy, and for that to happen we need denialists to stop trying to prevent that from happening.

I have disabled ratings and comments for the video. I'm going to make another video, this time using a more direct approach than before.

You're giving denialists too much credit, they don't have such power.
Besides that, no new form of energy can consume CO2 in such a way that a tree can ;).

The idea isn't to consume CO2, it's to stop releasing CO2.

That's impossible! It needs to be combined with replanting forests etc.. AND a lot of people need to die, because when the population doubles their CO2 footprint will never be halved.

Let me restate that. We need to stop burning fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, using grown biofuels instead of fossil fuels will warm up the earth for centuries to come, so I think you need to restate it again.
Right now, there is no way to diminish the carbon footprint except going back to horse and carriage for transport, or having strict birth control rules (ie. 1 child per family)

Even with one child per family rules (assuming most people live) it would take hundreds of years to get the population back down to where it was in the 1800s. And, when you consider how wasteful our society is, it's possible to greatly reduce our foot print (including carbon output) without lowering the population. I don't think it's likely to happen, but it's possible in theory.

One big problem with the current debate (aside from the zealotry) is that there's so little accurate information on temperature through our history. Don't believe me? Try to find out what the temperature was in your home town on June 16, 1953. (I just picked a date at random, there's nothing important about that day.) I checked recently and most of the cities in my country do not have reliable temperature records going back more than thirty years. The ones that do have temperature records for that long do not show any upward trend.

So it amuses me when people claim that the Earth's global average temperature is changing by 0.1 degrees. In my opinion, we don't have accurate data on which to base that statement.

I agree with Zeep. The models they have for predicting the temperature risings are so far pretty bogus. I'm sure pollution causes environmental problems, and if I can help it I like to reduce my time driving uselessly, but to make a good scientific claim on something like global warming you have to have a model that is repeatable with time and they don't have that.

Aside from that, I have a hard time putting my trust in something "scientific" purposed by Al Gore, or anyone with an agenda for that matter.

You're wrong. If for example we reduce our carbon footprint by 20% right now, in 2025 we'll have the same carbon footprint again. Why? Because then the population of the world will have risen by 20% again. Add to that that third world countries will be more developed by then (and all have cars, electricity etc) and you've got the whole carbon footprint issue all over again. The only way to lower our carbon footprint is to reduce the world population, or to maintain the current world population but emit less CO2. Increasing the population is not an option.
Then again, it remains to be proven that CO2 is causing the global warming. Why not something else that we haven't been able to prove yet?


True, before the last ice age we had a huge spike in temperatures. Higher than we're currently experiencing.

... or using electrical cars powered through nuclear, wind, and solar.

And I'm still not clear how using grown fuels will continue to raise CO2 levels, unless the effect is to promote deforestation.

If CO2 emission is coming from fossil fuel burning, then you use a lot of fossil fuel operating the harvesters when you crop the corn for something like ethanol, for example.

Nuclear is the only option in that case. The production of solar cells and windmills is likely to produce more CO2 that can be saved in the lifetime of the solar cell or windmill.


The problem is that when converting land into biofuel-growing land, a lot of CO2 is actually generated. In the worst case, which happened in indonesia, researchers estimated that creating palm oil fields for biodiesel production has generated so much CO2 that the fields need to be used for 423 years to pay back the difference in CO2 emission.
See below link for more info on this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/08/scienceofclimatechange.biofuels

A solution to this could be biofuel generated from algae farms in the oceans and seas (because it doesn't require converting of land), but that technology is not available right now.

OK, listen, you dorks: You are NOT top scientists, much less climatologists, and you do NOT know everything! Before you question what every climatologist is saying about the climate, become a climatologist yourself.


OK, stop being a smart ass. You know exactly what I mean. We need to switch over to clean energies instead of oil and coal.


The tempurature in a single city is not a good representation of GLOBAL climate change.

Also, scientists have reliable ways to find the approximate temperature from 10,000 years ago. Sure, they can't find the exact temperature on any one particular day, but that data is unimportant. Climatologists have researched it for at least 50 years, and they have so far concluded that up until the 20th century, temperatures have remained steady, and then in the 20th century temperatures all of a sudden shot up. Climatologists are almost certain (there isn't a such thing as "certain" in science) that Earth is getting warmer, the warming is due to CO2, and it's gonna be bad if we don't do something about it.


What are you talking about? As long as we are not using fossil fuels to help produce the materials, production of these things doesn't contribute in the slightest to the amount of CO2 in the air.


Again, thinking in the short term. The goal is to switch entirely to alternative energies, not only partly.

Jay, you obviously didn't read my post. I said I checked the temperature records for most of the cities in the country, not a single town. We're talking around a two dozen cities covering an area of several million square kilometers.

Second, one does not have to be a top scientist to look at data and point out giant gaping holes in it.

Third, the GAT records show temperature going down for the past four years. This is why many buzz-word panic-inducing sales people use the term climate change, rather than global warming  these days.


And, Angelfish, you're not thinking in the fourth dimension. If we put in the one child per family rule and reduce the environmental foot print of each person, our affect on the environment will go down over the long term. I'm not talking a short-term plan here, it would have to take place over multiple generations. Also, you're over-looking the possibility that people could reduce their foot print by 20% over twenty years, have a kid and *continue* to reduce their foot print (per person) another 20% over the next twenty years. The amount of impact a person makes on the environment does not have to be a constant. Nor does population growth.

This is still a local area and in no way represents whether GLOBAL warming exists.

I may be looking through Gene Roddenberry's rose colored glasses, but I think technology will save the day when it comes to global warming. No need to pull a China and start legislating family sizes. Techs such as hydrogen fuel cell and electric vehicles will make a huge impact as the technology evolves and improves. With genetic engineering we may be able to grow CO2 "scrubbers", designer bacteria grown for specific purposes.

With the expotential growth of technology, the early 21st century technology may look like the horse and wagon days within 50 to 75 years.


Speaking of zealotry, my Father, a creationist fundie, claims the earth is following cyclic tempertaue change. Since he lives in the pacific northwest (USA) ,he loves to report just how much snow they're getting each year. Apparently, the last several years have seen record setting snowpacks and for him, evidence that global warming is hogwash. I'd argue that more moisture in the air from warmer ocean climates might do that.

So what, in your mind, would be evidence of global warming or lack of? I haven't heard any evidence presented in this thread on the "pro" side yet.

Agriculture is expanding in Greenland (http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,434356,00.html), glaciers are receding and we've just seen our worst bushfires ever (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires). I actually do science (published (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/bib_query?2008AJ....136..358S)) and love data, but that's enough for me. That said, hard evidence (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter3.pdf) isn't at all difficult to come by.

Also, I basically agree with Angelfish. Population growth is the root cause of all these problems.

The GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPURATURE increasing on a sizable timeframe (i.e. 20 years). Which it is.

Zeracles, that's more of the kind of thing I was hoping someone would dig up. Thank you.

Jaychant, as I pointed out (twice now) not only is the GAT unreliable, but it's also been dropping the last several years, making it poor proof of global warming.

No, the tempurature hasn't been dropping. There was a single record year in the past that was an outlier, but other than that one year the trend has stayed the same.

Yeah, me too. Fusion power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power) should provide limitless CO₂-free electricity in a few decades. Combine that with electric vehicles and machinery and we've ourselves a solution. Auto makers are already hard at work on zero-emission cars (using fuel cells (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle) or just plain old batteries).

I also think we should start using bamboo extensively, not only for traditional wood products, but also as a replacement for other materials like plastic (where possible). So what if bamboo isn't as shiny and so what if it gets old with time, we dispose of old things anyway.

With the above solutions, it's not an absolute necessity to reduce the world population, but that would certainly help. In any case, we must at least stop its growth at some point. 6.8 billion of us dorks is quite enough.

How do you figure that? Consider a 300 kilowatt average windmill (yeah, a big one, but they exist). It'll last, say, 20 years, to be conservative. That means it'll produce 20 * 3*10^7 * 3*10^5 joules of energy over its lifetime. That's around 2*10^14 joules, or roughly the output from a large nuclear power plant for a year. So, you're saying that it would take a large nuclear plant a full year of dedicated power to build and maintain a large windmill? Extraction, processing, assembly, and even maintenance once built.

Answer: absolutely not. Sure, I'm sure that the first one, the prototype, could be pushing it in that regard. But that's because prototypes are worked on many many times harder than the production models.

Solar, so long as it's well-placed, also comes out way ahead in the energy balance. Even more so for non-silicon-based, which don't require high temperature processing.

And really, it should be extremely obvious that this is the case. Maybe they won't make up the difference in one year. Maybe it'll even take three years. But both of these things can last for a long time.

Maybe you're assuming that all our other electricity comes from nuclear power, so that energy savings don't translate in the least to carbon dioxide savings? That's totally disingenuous.

Resh aleph:
Most fusion designs create a lot of radioactive waste. And it's not like this waste is low-grade, or just shielding. It's the electronics. That's just stupid. As brilliant as it is, it's still stupid. You need to replace all the expensive stuff periodically. I'd only be interested in a fusion process that did not give off neutrons, weakening the reactor and incidentally producing copious high-level waste. Such designs exist, such as one fusing, IIRC Lithium into Beryllium. And it's not even an unusual isotope of lithium, either. What comes out? Alpha and gamma rays, and beryllium. No neutrons.

Still, Fusion has been twenty years off for so long, I think we'll get good solar and wind first.

Maybe this argument would be easier if you showed us the graph and data you're talking about.

http://www.grist.org/article/global-warming-stopped-in-1998/ (http://www.grist.org/article/global-warming-stopped-in-1998/)

I think that to reach a viable conclusion about this, that graph needs to go back further than what is it.. 1880? Earth's temperature has been far from constant in its history, who says that 5000 years ago the temperature wasn't higher than it is now?
And to prevent you from calling me a smartass again, let me say to you the following:
In order to be believable to anyone and everyone, you need to present all data and all arguments and all cons to a standing point, even data that could contradict your statement, but then you need to explain how this doesn't actually contradict your statement.
Don't post something and allow people to shoot bullet holes into it, make it bulletproof from the start.

Wasn't the ability to use something as ubiquitous as hydrogen the whole point behind fusion? Besides, Wikipedia says the waste would only be harmful for a century or so. I think it's worth it (until we come up with something better).


Well, last I heard, non-nuclear methods were completely impractical for the task of replacing all/most combustion plants. So I see them as a temporary partial solution, sort of like hybrid cars. Except hybrid cars might die in five years, whereas it will probably be some 40 years before mass adoption of fusion power.

I don't know how you expect climatologists to make accurate extrapolations based on data like that. Yeah, there's an upward trend, but look at all the dips and peaks prior to 1950. And we're only talking about degree changes less than 1 celcius.

You're talking about switching all coal power in the world to green power. If we tried that in the US right now, we wouldn't have enough of a civilization to save by the time we were finished. When any sort of reasonable extrapolation based on their model, even within a 5 year time period, can be made I might be more trusting. You need to make damn sure that you know what's going to happen to the world before you make irrational decisions that cost billions of tax-payer dollars. And you also need to understand whether going green won't do more harm than good.

When it's politicians, not scientists, who are on the forefront of the global warming campaign I start to worry.

Why is it that so many people don't think of the long-term?

Sure, the switch would cost a bit, but overall it would help the economy. Even though coal isn't yet as scarce, it is still non-renewable and so we are going to have to switch eventually anyway. And is it really worth risking the end of life as we know it, just because you don't want to pay a couple extra dollars in tax money?

A) The idea behind fusion is to get in on the hot action at the steep downward slope of the low end of the curve of binding energy. Lithium is still up on that curve.
B) Lithium is sufficiently common for this to work.
C) As I said, it isn't so much that you're generating waste as that you have to replace all the really delicate reactor parts frequently because they're being bombarded with neutrons, which causes them to change what elements they are. Electronics hate that.



Well, last I heard, non-nuclear methods were completely impractical for the task of replacing all/most combustion plants.[/quote]

The problem that keeps wind and solar out of prime time is that they are not reliable over regions as large as a European country (or a western state of the US). Over regions substantially larger than that - in particular, regions with unrelated weather, they do much better. So you'll need one or more of the following solutions:

1) only use these to help bear the heaviest loads, which mainly occur in daytime when the weather is sunny and everyone's running the AC.
That would still be a big help, but we can do better than that...
2) Have a very large grid with efficient long-distance transport of electrical power, e.g. a high voltage DC line -- it's not cloudy and still everywhere.
3) fly your turbines on kites. There's always a wind at altitude. Similarly, put the solar cells in space.
4) long-term energy storage using, say, water elevation (available in some places only), or enormous flow-cell vat batteries.



If it only costs billions, it's not going to sink the country. Seriously. A hundred billion dollars is $300 for each person in the country. That's noticeable in the pocketbook, but you've gone deep into hyperbole and no one needs to take the statement seriously.

Maybe you're looking at powering the full power consumption of the US with cells bought at the current rates for residential installations. That'd be 15 trillion dollars. Sure, that'd be a colossal bill... but even if we did that, it wouldn't cost that much. Not close.
1) that figure includes all forms of power consumption, including vehicular, not just electric. Of course, as we wean ourselves off of gasoline the figure will approach that, but in the mean time we have a lower target.
2) ubiquitous PV would minimize the average distance the electricity needs to travel, reducing line losses. Considering how much of our power is lost in that fashion, we're going to save substantially in the usual case (not so much in Oregon).
3) large-scale solar installations are far cheaper than residential due to reductions in the relevance of conversion overhead, and truly utility-scale installations are cheaper still, being thermal (field of mirrors + steam turbine). If you are factoring in pollution due to the production of semiconductors, thermal completely avoids this problem.
4) just deciding to do it would cause improvements in the economies of scale, reducing costs further. A LOT further in many cases, as the current market for PV is so small that the factories are often basically workshops.

Well, remember we currently have no fusion power at all, so the current comparisons are made against fission. And here you have a couple of other crucial advantages: the ubiquitousness of hydrogen, and the fact its radioactive waste (reactor parts) has a short half-life.

If lithium fusion doesn't have any major drawback, I'm sure it will be the next step (though I'd rather see hydrogen fusion perfected, for the sheer elegance of it).

Re wind/solar power: I watched this documentary about fusion power, where an alternative-power expert made some rough calculations regarding non-nuclear methods. He concluded that there is simply no way these methods could be enough to support all/most of the ever-growing power demand. Not that he doesn't support these methods (they are his area of expertise after all), he simply argues that they can't be an ultimate solution.

First off, I misstated. It uses boron fuel, not lithium.


Comparisons should be made between all options, not two arbitrarily selected options.


Dealing with radioactive waste is easy. Replacing the entire electronics kit of the fusion plant every few months is not. It renders it totally uneconomical.



There is debate on this subject. They absolutely can supply a respectable fraction of the power, and if the infrastructure is modernized they can supply quite a lot. If, say, Europe can have its power sent from the Sahara, how often do you think they'll have cloudy day outages? Consider it won't be one point in the Sahara, but an area around as large as Europe itself.

The technology to make that real exists already. it would be expensive, to be sure, but not ruinously so - and if we were actually going to do it we'd have a lot more engineers on it and perhaps an even better solution could be devised.

That also has the disadvantage that we'd be relying on the folks who control the Sahara, but that was a tertiary objective anyway.

??? It's only the largest drawback to nuclear fission. Half lives extend for millenia. The Yucca Mountain depository is supposed to be the nuclear waste storage/disposal solution for the entire U.S. and a lightning rod of criticisim. Nobody wants it stored in their back yard and hauled by rail and truck though their cities. If dealing with radioactive waste was "easy" there would be little need for alternatives.

Context. Aleph did say that it was short-lived. I didn't mean ALL radioactive waste.

Though really, if we were serious about that we could bombard it with neutrons to encourage it to decay quicker. We find it cheaper to take all those risks, though... (sigh)

Yes ,Aleph was talking about fusion waste with a short-lived half life. This is news to me as I thought one of the selling points of fusion was that it didn't have any radio-active waste. Thus making fusion a superior alternative to current fission reactors.

Look, I'm not saying that global warming necessarily cannot happen and I think maybe it's true that it's happening to some extent now. What I'm saying is that leading scientists are not campaigning to take drastic measures against it. The politically based claim is that within a certain amount of years there will be widespread destruction based on the weak model that scientists have for temperature rising. I think under certain ideal circumstances scientists can create a decent model for what will happen during a "perfect storm" global warming system, but right now they don't have a firm grasp on why the global temperature fluctuates by .1 degrees every 50 years.

I favor the idea of a liberal agenda more than the idea that we're globally in a lot of danger right now. It's a perfect way to increase government size and spending for the "good of the World".

You clearly don't get it. This isn't a political issue. This is a scientific issue. The only scientists who think GCC isn't real are a small collection of individual, inexperienced scientists who don't even specialize in climatology. Most of them are geologists.

And for your information, most major scientific groups (i.e. NAS) agree that if Earth continues to warm, the results will be catastrophic; sea levels rising, increased number of storms, droughts, pretty much everything you've heard.

And by the way, the global tempurature doesn't "fluctuate" 0.1 degrees every 50 years. For at least the past 10,000 years, the global temperature has remained close to steady, with slight random fluctuation due to the random nature of the world. A global increase of 0.1 degrees is actually a major change in temperature.

Thing is, this is a real issue. Chances are, if we don't take action, we won't go extinct; we're too advanced for that. But it will cause drastic changes. I mean a large number of civilizations crumbling (if not all civilizations crumbling), many major cities underwater, increased famine (even in developed countries), and above all world chaos. Imagine having to hold someone at gunpoint or even killing them so your son/daughter can eat. That is the type of world I'm talking about.

You clearly didn't read my post. I never said that scientists don't think global warming is real, I'm sure they do firmly believe that and for good reason.

If you think this isn't a political issue, you're just being naive. Who do you think is behind this global going green idea, and who do you think decides when and how the drastic steps are to be taken? That's the big issue here, we all know that global warming is a scientific possibility, but you need to understand that a nation can't just drop everything coal-powered and switch over to green. In a lot of ways green energy isn't saving anything. I'm talking about the action that we're taking to prevent global warming and whether it's viable, not whether global warming can or does exist, as I said in the first line of my post directed at Death 999.

The graph you showed us had temperature rising and dropping over periods of ~50 years, hence the temperature during those times was fluctuating. I don't know how you can possibly make an accurate claim about temperature readings over the past 10,000 years, since the idea of accurately measuring temperature has only been around for less than 1,000. I also don't know why a rise in temperature of .1 degrees is a major change.

First of all, look at this page (http://www.grist.org/article/one-hundred-years-is-not-enough/) if you think you have an argument against what I'm saying. It goes into much more detail.

First, I guess I was wrong about tempurature not fluctuating. However it's important to know that the average temperature has never been as high as it is now.

Second, let me restate my wording: it is reasonable to assume that it is warmer now than it has ever been for the past 100,000 years. See this graph:

(http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/images/fig2-22.gif)

As for how they find the tempurature, I don't know exactly, but it has to do with looking at stuff that was around at that time and determining what the climate must have been like. Point is, they have methods that they use to measure the approximate temperature from thousands of years ago. The article I linked to goes into more depth.

The temperature has definately not been nearly steady before the past 100 years. Europe was in a mini-iceage about 400 years ago. A thousand years ago, England was warm enough to grow vineyards. Greenland used to be green pasture. And the sea level wasn't much different then than it is now. Anyone living in or near a very old coastal town knows that.

Jaychant, going 100000 years back is still not enough to determine whether we have caused this global warming. Because ice ages happened before that, and periods of warmth happened between those ice ages.
I believe that the earth is warming up right now, but I don't think that we have caused it or that we can do anything about it, and even if we could, we're stupid enough to increase our population to its breaking point anyway, so the earth can't keep up with us.

Okay, see, scientists for the most part don't do policy. It's not their job. They make recommendations, and then politicians do policy.

The IPCC made this report, remember? They sent it to politicians and said, basically, 'this is real bad. Do something.' And that was, at least for that moment, the end of it.

So saying 'policies aren't coming from scientists' is a load of bullcrap. Whether or not it's true (and it isn't), it'd be irrelevant. It's like saying that you can't stop your car because your headlights are broken.

Wait, I don't follow. You seem to contradict yourself when you say "They make recommendations, and then politicians do policy" and "'policies aren't coming from scientists' is a load of bullcrap."

I also don't understand why it's irrelevant, the whole point of my argument is the often irrational bills that politicians pass in favor of the scientists' suggestions. I know that scientists first discovered the upward trend in temperature and left it to the politicians to decide on policy. My point is the policy itself, not who is doing the deciding.

To clarify my earlier post, I know that scientists first discovered the upward trend and made a decent model based on ideal circumstances. And I also know that global warming policy first grew from this problem, but that's where it ends. It wasn't up to scientists to decide on how we should combat this problem at the moment, and that's where I have a problem with this.

There isn't a big enough FACEPALM image to go with this.

Greenland was never "green". As a matter of fact, underneath the glaciers is basically just rock, so plants couldn't grow there even if it was warm enough.

When the outcasted Viking explorer Eric the Red found Greenland, he named it Greenland to get people to come to the place.

This is really one of the stupidest points denialists make. You can't say what something is like because of a name.


I would have EXPLODED if we were talking in person!

That time scale I gave you is the entire history of our species! How far back do I need to go before you believe we should at least try to stop GCC?!

You are seriously undermining the issue. If this warming trend continues, we will soon see the destruction of civilization, or in other words, the end of life as we know it! If GCC turns out to not be so bad but we take action, all that will happen is a possible small dip in our economy!

Do you realize that much of the "evidence" you see that GCC is a hoax is supported by Exxon, the biggest oil company in the US? They're worried about losing their business and so they're trying to make it look like there's still debate going on about the issue. This is exactly like when it was discovered that smoking is bad for you, and tobacco companies tried to hide it.

Only difference is, we're not just talking about some stupid people dying because they continue to make bad choices. We're talking about chaos on a worldwide scale. If you denialists keep slowing down our efforts too much, you will create such a world.


How about you stop arguing something that doesn't even matter. I don't see how it matters if the scientists of politicians make policies. The way I see it, you are using this little argument to steer clear of the real issue: you for some reason think it isn't a good idea to switch to green technology.

TO ALL GLOBAL WARMING DENIALISTS HERE:

Watch this video on YouTube along with its expansion pack. After you've watched it all, then if you're still not convinced come back here and post your arguments.
 NOTE: The expansion pack is in the playlist.
video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg)
playlist (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=92EE5DBE2987982F&search_query=how+it+all+ends)

EDIT: There was a book written based on these videos. Here is the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e10ZNpogv4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e10ZNpogv4)

To be precise, to the 1st ice age before the last ice age. This global warming and ice age cycle might be a 'natural cycle of the earth or its sun'. Something with the core heating up again or the sun burning hotter again. Besides that, you're wrong about the existance of our species. The Homo Sapiens has existed from 200000 years ago.


Why? Sea level is projected to rise 2 meters per century, we have more than enough time to act but we need to act now.. but all our budget needs to go to improving the dykes around our country, and perhaps on moving people and cities to other higher regions! This is the most important because if we spend all our budget on CO2 reduction and new energy tech, and in the end it turns out that it was just the sun or the earth causing these temperature rises, all our lands will be flooded anyway. You see, trying to stop GCC costs a lot of money and resources, money and resources that could've went into making sure that GCC doesn't have a huge effect on humanity. For example we could start relocating people to higher regions, build bigger dykes, perhaps even terraform mars but all we do is make electric cars, build windmills and try to make cleaner power plants, plants, cars, and windmills which will all be flooded if the GCC turns out to be something else than just CO2 being exhumed in to the athmosphere.


Do you have any proof of these allegations? Besides that, we're not living in a country that is as corrupt  as the USA. Exxonmobil has no political influence here!


I think that it might very well be that because of CO2 reduction addicts the whole world drives with electric cars, power is 100% clean, the air is clean and everyone can sit back and relax.. until we realise that GCC is continuing anyway and we're too late evacuating our cities, and a lot of people will die because of the fact that because of you people the world seems to think that we're fine aslong as we're reducing our CO2 emission to 0.
As you may have noticed, I'm not a GCC denialist but I think that our resources could be spent better than just to focus all out on CO2 reduction.
Start abandoning coastal cities in the coming 25 years. Evacuate valleys that might flood. Start researching how to live in space or on mars or the moon. So that when GCC isn't stopped by our attempts to reduce CO2, we won't all die.

You're entirely missing the point. Global Warming won't just cause a little rise in sea levels. GCC will cause a much larger number of storms, an increased number of droughts, many crops failing, previously fertile soil that could be farmed before becoming unfarmable, all leading to intense amount of famine and chaos.

Like I've said before, I don't think GCC will cause the end of humanity. But it will cause a lot of us to die, and for those of us who survive, it will leave a permanent mark on human history. Somehow, just like after the European medieval period, the survivors of the crisis will come together and rebuild civilization. But think of yourself for once: Do you seriously want to risk your life, your children's life, all to prevent a slight dip in the economy?

Furthermore, no one has suggested we stop every other aspect of production and advancement to stop GCC. Free countries can't force people to move from their homes; if they want to move, that's their choice.  But a bit of flooding is just not the big issue here. Before you argue any more, watch that video. That guy does a great job explaining why we should try to fight GCC.

And on TOP of that, the main thing we need to do to stop GCC is to cut back on fossil fuel usage -- something we're going to have to do pretty soon anyway because we're running out!

Isn't there a mycon deep child secretly hidden in our earth's crust?

I don't find your joke amusing.

As someone who has actually studied Norse history, I think you should check your facts. The Norse who settled in Greenland farmed, grew wheat and fruit crops and raised cows in their pastures. One of the (several) factors which lead to the Norse dying out on Greenland was a shift to cooler temperature and shorter growing seasons. So, yes, much of southern (and west) Greenland was in fact green. Your argument is based on ignorance.

This is where you are wrong. Greenland is mostly a wasteland, with a small foresty southern tip. The norsemen living on Greenland found it incredibly difficult to find food, so they needed to maintain a delicate balance between maintaining their population levels and finding enough food and materials to survive. It was never a "green pasture" at all.

The reason their settlement failed was because of an artificial alteration of the landscape that hurt them, most of their alliances dying out, and an increase in sea-ice, as well as violence between them and the Inuit. Most importantly, however, they proved to be unable to adapt to their surroundings.

So no, Greenland was never a green pasture.

Furthermore, let me remind you that there is a major difference between the local climate of Greenland and the global climate of the entire world. A slight change in temperature 500 years ago in a local area is irrelevent to global climate change.

Of course, how silly of me not to realize that the vast amount of research done for "A Brief History Of The Vikings" (Jonathan Clements) and "Westviking: The Ancient Norse in Greenland and North America" (Farley Mowat) and the "History of Greenland" (Wikipedia) were all just revisionist propaganda for the global warming denialists. It's foolish of me to belief their accounts of climate and Norse lifestyle over the enlightened posts here.
It's clear now that the climate in Greenland has always been one of snow and ice and it's never changed at all, until now. Thanks for clearing that up.
 

The same thing happened in siberia by the way. There was research done that concluded that a lake in siberia was way hotter 800000 years ago than it is now.

PS: It would appear that a new movement has arisen, that of the Mycon Deep Child denialists! Juffo-Wup fills my fibers, and I grow turgid....

I don't like your sarcasm.

I looked it up on the exact same Wikipedia article you referenced, and yes, it was more warm there when the Vikings first arrived. This was due to the medieval warm period, which, might I remind you, was nothing on the global scale compared to the current climate change trend.

And, as I pointed out already, the local climate in an area is not a valid representation of the GLOBAL climate! This is like saying that because your house is clean, all the houses in your neighborhood must be clean.

Actually, currently people are doing more research into the Medieval warm period.
See it here: http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
One of its goals is to prove that the medieval warm period was a global warm period, not just a north atlantic warm period.
Previously this was assumed the case, mainly because not enough data was available from the southern hemisphere.
I suggest adding this page to your favorites, jaychant, so you can look back to it every once and a while. I personally think such research is tremendously important because once we determine the cause of global warming better and determine how long it will last and possibly how bad it will become, we'll be able to react better to it.

Jay,

You're right, I shouldn't use sarcasm, it's impolite. I'm sorry and I'll try to be more civil from here on.

In return, would you mind terribly not using comments like "facepalm" and printing in large bold letters when trying to get a point across? I'd appreciate it if you would.


I think Angelfish brings up a good point. One big problem we face is not having enough data about what was (and is) going on all over the world. Let's say the planet has become slightly warmer between 1950 and 2005. We know that in some regions the temperature has varied a lot in the past. Areas such as Europe and north Africa have experience long periods of warming or cooling. What we don't know, in many cases, is it this was reflected on a global scale or more localized. This makes it harder to tell if trends we see today are linear or cyclic.

Look at seasons, for example. In the north, it's coming on to winter. Most days are cooler than the days before them. On a small scale (and silly), I could take the temperature for a month and predict that in twenty years we'd hit absolute zero. Of course, I know spring will come around and reverse the current trend. I wonder how our view on climate would differ if we had more knowledge on Earth's heating and cooling trends and what causes them.

So you're saying, you will never support the idea of trying to reduce CO2 emissions until they have evidence of what causes them? There is no such thing as certainty in science, and there is a good chunk of evidence pointing to Carbon Dioxide as the cause for the current warming predicament. And thing is, we can only choose to take action if we do it soon enough. If we're too late, we won't have that choice anymore, and we'll have to take what's coming to us.

Ofcourse it's a good idea to try and reduce CO2 emissions, but keep in mind that most people from by your standpoint foreign countries don't really buy into the doom and gloom bullcrap that Al Gore and US newspapers have been introducing.
There needs to be solid evidence, everything needs to be researched, to determine the proper course of action. Because, as I already said, it takes a lot of resources to reduce CO2 emissions to prevent global warming... but if CO2 doesn't turn out to be the actual cause GW will still happen, and then we'd have spent lots of research on the wrong things (CO2 neutral vehicles, efficient energy useage). While those resources could have gone to the more basic things like building dykes and relocating people to higher regions. But ofcourse, this'd only be the case if the doom and gloom bullcrap is correct, which I highly doubt.
Also, proper research will have the effect that everyone around the world will believe that CO2 is causing global warming, not just the western countries, because what's the use in reducing CO2 in the USA when China just doubles their CO2 output because they don't believe in GCC!?

One other important thing is - even if CO2 doesn't contribute to Global Warming AT ALL...

CO2 is still making the oceans more acidic.

This is dissolving the reefs.

I trust you do not have to have explained to you how bad that would be.

You're entirely right, CO2 makes the oceans more acidic.

It is even used for lowering the pH value (and thus increasing the acidity) of swimming pools.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#pH_control

But as far as I understand, global warming will enable the oceans to take in less CO2 when they get warmer, right? (try the warming up cola test with a pH testing set to see this). So that would neutralise the effect.

Or am I mistaken and is there a hidden factor that still makes the oceans more acid even though they have become warmer?

Why do you keep arguing that we shouldn't reduce our CO2 emissions? Before you say anything more, please think about why you are discouraging efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. What is your purpose?

If you can't think of a good reason, then you should stop arguing, because it does you no good. Switching over to alternative fuel sources is something we're going to need to do soon anyway (as Death 999 already stated), so there is no reason why we shouldn't switch over to alternative energy sources now.

Furthermore, I would like to point out that it would be stupid for us to "wait until they know exactly what causes Global Warming", because scientists will never know ANYTHING for certain. There is already enough evidence to reasonably believe that Global Warming is caused by our emissions of CO2.

Does my purpose matter? I'm trying to get to the bottom of this issue, provide arguments and all you do is question my motives, and blame things on exxon instead of providing actual arguments to your cause? I was hoping that you could actuallly teach me something but everything you say is so easily refuted, and then you go on to different methods like you are doing now, while you could've just provided me with scientific data that disproved what I just said.

Ofcourse we should! I know that we will run out of oil in time. But that's an entirely different discussion. To be honest, I believe that if mankind is so greedy to take all earth's fossil fuels, then it should learn to live without them once they run out.

Then I would like to see that evidence posted in this thread so we can comment on it. And you are entirely right about not waiting to do anything. That's why I said that between now and 25 years, people need to start to be located to higher regions, dykes need to be built etc etc.

Yes, it matters because you seem from my point of view that you are just debating because you don't want to be wrong.

Also, let me set this straight right now: I can teach you absolutely NOTHING. I am not a teacher, and I am not trying to teach you. If you want to learn, I suggest you do some research yourself. I am just a 16-year-old aspiring emcee who is trying to convince you that we should do something to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.


It's not a different discussion at all. The fact that we are about to run out of oil to burn is another reason we should stop depending on burning it.


You are still on the assumption that the main effect of Global Warming will be a rise in sea level, and that's just not the case. Have you watched How It All Ends (the video posted earlier) and its expansion pack? Be sure to watch How It All Ends: Scare Tactics.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. In fact, if you go back and re-read earlier parts of this thread, you'll see that I stated we (humans) should reduce our environmental foot print, regardless of whether we're causing global warming. I think the human race should focus on reducing our population, reducing out impact on the environment and find renewable sources of energy as much as possible, regardless of whether the planet's temperature is changing.

The same processes that create CO2 are often also the same processes that put lots of other unhealthy garbage in the air.

What I was saying in my previous post was that we're missing large chunks of data and perspective that would be helpful in figuring out
A) What our planet's past climates have been like.
B) If current trends are likely part of a big pattern or a new experience.
C) What the current trends really are (or aren't).

Now I'm beginning to feel like an idiot... :-[

If you agree that we should reduce CO₂ emissions, I shouldn't be arguing. Sorry.

By the way, I have great news! This will likely be the last post I ever make on this forum. Since I have been moving into music, I have also been moving out of the internet. So yeah... Bye bye!

Unless, of course, it's bad news, in which case, I'm sorry, but I've just lost interest.

Don't worry. You'll be back :D.
Just like me ;). It just took me 9 years or something :D.

Being saturated with CO2, even at a reduced capacity, would still be very very bad.

It would seem that Christmas came early for Shiver this year... ::) ;)

Australia is doin' it rite!

http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/rising-sea-levels-will-threaten-homes-20091027-hhij.html

Instead of spending all their efforts in trying to drive the sea back, they are planning on relocating people to higher areas and banning development at the risky areas.

Apparently, Climatologists are withholding data (http://www.examiner.com/x-25061-Climate-Change-Examiner~y2009m11d20-ClimateGate--Climate-centers-server-hacked-revealing-documents-and-emails) that could disprove the whole global warming theory.

They've withheld some data for some reason. But if there were a global warming conspiracy, don't you think that would have figured a lot more prominently in their email? Alternately, if they were being organized about it, wouldn't they keep their email scrupulously clean of any hints of it?

Anyway, looking down the list, the first six quotes are nothing. Really nothing at all, for various reasons. After that there are a few things that look bad to me - their attempts to protect themselves from vicious hacks by somewhat underhanded means. I don't do anything like that, but I'm not under assault.

For example, in the last one before the update at 3:45, the real critical phrase here is 'end effects', in which a LOESS or related fit at the end weights the ending points more heavily than any other points get weighted. If you're in the middle of a spike, it can manufacture a trend where there isn't one. That's not dishonest.

Doesn't a "conspiracy" group generally have some kind of goal to further their own agenda or to gain advantage over others?  Exactly what is supposed to be the great benefit to the scientific community (or at least the leaders of it) by perpetrating a massive global warming hoax?  I don't think it's going to lead to some kind of scientific community takeover.  Unless they all have stock in some alternative energy company (and really suck at manipulating markets), I have a hard time seeing what they would expect to gain from it...

Protecting the status quo, on the other hand, has some really clear benefits to those who are already rich and powerful and want to keep it that way...

Thoughts?

Upon discovering more about the avoidance of FOIA requests, I see that there's not really much there either.

You see, their data was of two types:

1) publicly available for free on their website
2) proprietary data sets they had purchased the use of from various national weather services, contractually bound not to be released to the public.

Meanwhile, they're getting repeated FOIA requests designed to to waste their time by making them deal with paperwork, annoy them, put them off balance, and perhaps get them to do something they could be nailed on -- anything but letting them do their jobs.

I think that the scientists in that research group have political motives instead of scientific ones, and likely they get paid/funded if their results point in a certain way. A former classmate of mine, who now works as a lobbyist for a dutch political party, once told me that it's common practice to actively fund research that helps political parties achieve certain political goals.
Then again, I don't really care what their motives are. If they admit that they are doctoring their own results to look a certain way, their credibility has dropped to zero and everything they have published is questionable.

Damn straight, that screws with ocean chemistry, and oceans cover most of the planet.

Bring on the high seas! I live a few blocks from the coast so this should work out well ;D

We're also finding any excuse we can to turn away asylum seekers coming to our country who might sink our continent.

On a more serious note, last friday night in Sydney it was 32 degrees C - at f*ing midnight. On sunday we got up to 42 degrees C. It isn't even summer here yet.

I don't see anything unprofessional in here. A bit of frustration with anal referees (hack my inbox and you'll find some of that!), a bunch of offhand remarks that probably have innocent explanations. I'm sure you could quote me out of context and associate me with some conspiracy too. Even if this group has been bought, who's buying the rest of the scientific community? And why withhold research funds to make them eco-radical? For the conspiracy theory to be internally consistent, someone needs to be profiting somehow.

People don't seem to understand what ``scientific consensus" means. It means that an idea has been through a collective review process, been passed around a community of fairly intelligent people, had some cranks do their best to discredit it and fail, and survive years of data collection, statistical games and remodeling.

This is what I love about this place. There are people here who actually do science and understand that it scientists are people too.

I'm in no way, shape or form in opposition to the general sentiment of the thread, but I poked through some of those leaked e-mails and what the heck...?




That appears highly suspect. Some of the e-mails like this one may need to be addressed in an official capacity.

What is the general sentiment of this thread? I guess if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere are bad. What's really happening in the world, or what we think we should do about it are questions that most of us disagree on.

To the general 'joe in the street', and to an ever growing group of people after they read this news, there appears to be no scientific consensus on global warming.
The public opinion on this issue has been severely hurt by these publications. How will they regain the public opinion? Perhaps going back to being quiet about this issue, and waiting ten years and then coming with new data that proves or disproves global warming and its causes?

That one can easily be explained if one knows what the data set is.

It's a bunch of tree ring specimens. Under normal conditions, the growth of the trees is based on temperature reasonably tightly - enough that if you average a bunch of them it's a worthwhile measure of temperature.

Now, some but not all tree ring samples, after holding tightly to the thermometer-based record for a long time, suddenly diverged in a downward direction in the 60's. There are no solid explanations for this, though I would suspect aquifer depletion, fallout from nuclear tests, or some other artifact of human interference that only started at that time. Some of these folks are looking into it, but at any rate, it's pretty easy to tell when a consistent number is coming out from the trees and when they're all over the place. In the latter case, they aren't trusted - some other factor besides temperature is clearly the limiting factor on growth.

Since we know what the temperatures were during that time period - we have had thermometers for a time span exceeding 50 years - the proposal was, in a graph, to have one of the data sets in a graph not be 'tree ring temperatures', but 'tree ring temperatures prior to 1960, thermometer measurements after 1960'.

That was the 'trick' used in the paper mentioned, and when used in that paper, it was explained at the time so no one was under a false impression.

All in all, what was being hidden was misleading non-data, and the fact that this was being hidden was not going to be hidden.

That's amazing that you know exactly what the e-mail was referring to. Thanks for taking the time to explain it.

Well, I did have to look it up.

On a very related note:
Phil jones, the guy who wrote the email that was just discussed, has resigned from the CRU as the director.
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRUupdate
"Where there's smoke, there's fire"

The word ``resign" misrepresents what's happened and isn't used once in that page you just linked.

They're not hiding anything. If you think there's something wrong with their analysis, why not look at the raw data yourself (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/)*?

*EDIT: Looks like the CRU server is down. A lot of their data is also available here (http://hadobs.metoffice.com/).

I'd expect a resignation to be permanent, which this isn't.

Yo Death 999, I'm really happy for you, I'm gonna let you finish but the Climate Skeptic has one of the most facinating blogs of all time
http://www.climate-skeptic.com/.

I mean personally, if you really want to know how Global Warming skeptics think, this man and his few months old lecture can do it. I recommand people interesred in Global Warming to see it just for the sake of knowing both sides.

Scientific journal Nature finds nothing notable in CRU leak (http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/12/05/137203/Scientific-Journal-Nature-Finds-Nothing-Notable-In-CRU-Leak?art_pos=3)

Also, it's probably in the best interest of both the CRU and Phil Jones to resign, no matter if they actually deliberately fudged data (with the intent of crafting some 'conspiracy' thing) or not.

???

Are you casting yourself as an officially recognized jackass?

Sorry, it was on a dutch newssite and apparently they misunderstood/mistranslated the message too ;)

As a matter of fact, no. I just woke up that day and though that I had never used West refrence before. If that made you sad then I apologize :-[.

But seriusly, Climate Skeptic has some good points.

All I see is `the warming might be all natural'.

Firstly, if nature's causing it, that doesn't make it a good thing which we should encourage by pumping more shit into the atmosphere.

Secondly, even if natural warming events occasionally produce the sort of trend seen over the past fifty years, the probability of such a natural warming coinciding with humanity's population explosion is too small to be taken as a serious excuse not to act.

If the CRU is put in the clear, I don't see why skeptics should then be encouraged to hack into other climate research institutions and publish private emails, just to see if they can get any other researchers to squirm through an investigation and be cleared, only to then resign.

Actually, I did see one argument that wasn't that, there. It made me think pretty hard.

The direct CO2 forcing is weak. Most of our gains are via changes in water vapor. That is, if you force it  little, the change that results is much larger. The water cycle acts as an amplifier.

Now, this is not a strictly speaking unstable arrangement (though he presents it as such), but it is close to it. It seems odd to me that if the gain in the system is so large that it has never led to an upward runaway from this temperature before. Of course, it has led to downward runaways, which are the ice ages, and upward runaways out of these ice ages again.

But the existence of those large swings indicates to me that yes, there is a substantial amount of amplification going on, and we have a bi-(or more) stable system here. We had better hope it's only bistable, because then we'll relax back to where we were rather than settling into some other climate.

In other news, here's a view into  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6736517/Copenhagen-climate-summit-1200-limos-140-private-planes-and-caviar-wedges.html) the massive luxury that politicians, journalists and climatologists live in when they attend the Copenhagen Climate summit.

Luckily, the guy who wrote that email we just discussed will not attend due to his temporary step-down, so that's one less private jet  to worry about.

Ironic that a conference on global warming should have such a huge carbon footprint. Then again, maybe it's not; isn't politics about 90% hypocrisy?

The article was interesting and pretty infuriating. 
The comments below the article were nothing but ignorant drivel.
It gets pretty tiring hearing about this massive "conspiracy" to use Global Warming to become rich and powerful.  I don't doubt for a minute that there are people that will undoubtedly try to use the concept to their own advantage, but there are people who do that in any situation, and plenty of them do it exceeding well in our current paradigm.  Many people are just concerned for the future of our world...and they don't deserve such spiteful responses just because some of what they're suggesting might make things a bit less convenient for us all.  Global warming aside, if people don't think resource scarcity combined with increasing human population and infinite growth are a fool's recipe for disaster, then either they don't care or they're morons, or both. 

99% percent of earth's politicians are morons, and 100% the general population are morons and don't care.
By letting our loved ones live longer than they normally would, and by bringing children into this world, we will make sure that our grandchildren will have to wage world wars for food.

Well, I tend to agree with you, except that you probably gave politicians too much credit...  ;)

You know what annoys me the most? Those commercials that say "Let's make the world a better place for our children". Fucking hypocrites. If you want to make the world a better place... Don't have them!

While I don't really feel strongly enough about this to debate global warming, I am curious as to wether you're calling yourself a moron or if you're not part of the general population. Is there a non-general part somewhere that one can join? :)

Jokes aside, I'd be careful with the disdain for the common man. That kind of thinking can lead you astray pretty quickly. Before you know it, you're cursing the sheeple.

Apparently criticism is not allowed during pressconferences (http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/738301/04b0870a/klimaathoaxer_intimideert_kritische_journalist_bij_klimaatconferentie_in_copenhagen.html) during the Copenhagen conference.

Note that the actual guy in charge DID let the questions continue. It was underlings who were trying to cut him off.

Everything is falling to pieces in Copenhagen and we are doomed. Discuss.

Anyone got a high country available to move to?

Northern India?

Denver, CO?

So we had record snowfall a few days back. I thought "The climate change deniers are going to be all over this one..." but if any said anything, they're quiet now - all the snow's gone and it's sweater weather.

The finns made a documentary about the climategate.
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unKZhr3JMhA
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clpmt5_8MBg
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVDHbOu7Sq8
I'm not sure if it's really interesting or even good, because I stopped listening, couldn't stand the finnish narrator's voice. But perhaps it's of interest to you guys :).

The wintry apocalypse is upon us, temperatures are down to -10 and the snow is literally settling. The entire country will grind to a halt by Tuesday...

wait...

SHIT.

Eat that global warming supporters.

This is true. And if humanity manages to keep growing without wrecking the planet, it'll only be because life is made more and more miserable as we get crammed into smaller dwellings and pay a fortune for energy efficiency. In a morbid way, I think it's interesting that the cost of living (measured in hours of work) could be forced back up by all this.

Ah, I'm not touching that, conclusions drawn from observations with negligible statistical weight can be bad for your health!

As I'm sure Dabir knows, it's unfortunate that both sides fallaciously point at short-term events like this. Skeptics do it because they have little else, and greenies do it because the general public loses interest unless you have something tangible to show them.

In Australia, 2009 was our second warmest year on record (and it did actually feel that way), and the ten years just ended was the warmest decade. Over the past 70 years, each decade was warmer than the one that went before. These are the figures for an entire continent for most of a century, and they only point one way.

Valid points, but you're overlooking one important thing: Food.
There's room enough for all of us to live on this planet, but not enough room to feed us all. After we pass the border of 9 to 12 billion people * there won't be enough food to feed us all. Can you imagine it? hundreds of thousands of people in the USA or Europe, starving for food? Can you imagine wars being fought over it? This is what will happen if population is not controlled from now on.

* depending on where population is increased, concerning food consumption Americans are using up way more hectares per person than for example, people from India).

Here's an idea - giant floating cattle ranches out at sea

That'll solve the food problem

I remember an old donald duck cartoon about that, where they had floating ranches and beaches that they towed around so that it was always sunny. then someone sabotaged the radio and gave them false weather forecasts so they got stuck in storms and sharks and stuff. Scrooge is such a lovable character.

How are you going to feed the cattle.
And how are you going to get clean drinkin water to them?
And how are you going to grow the food of the cattle?
And how are you going to irrigate the food of the cattle?

Fish and algae. Although I think Scrooge McDuck also had farms and stuff on his rafts. Darn those Beagle Boys and their standing in the way of development!


We'll go where it rains every now and then and have some barrels put out.


Even if we bring no soil with us, by the time the cattle have been fed fish for a month we'l have a nice layer of dung to plant our ecological crops in. And there is no risk of varmints either!


Again, we'll go where it rains. And cows urinate, don't they?

That's why millions in africa are starving, because they haven't yet thought of your brilliant floating cattle ideas! :D

That, and Africa mostly has sand, not water. it's hard to sail on sand. Oh,  and pirates, which is bad for cattle rafts. ;)

Well, this thread took a turn for the wacky.  ;D

Well, the problem is going to be about hectarage in the end. Cattle consume way more hectares of land per calorie of food than just about anything else.

Sadly it looks like the only way to satiate the West's (and soon China's) appetite for meat will be to replace all the rain-forests with cattle ranches (which brings us back on topic!)

The impact of land scarcity will lead firstly to a dramatic cost increase for meat. It will be a bit like peak oil - but we can call it peak-meat. If we devoted the world's arable resource to maize we could probably feed a population of 30 billion.

But back to floating cattle ranches. Reclaming real estate from the sea will be an option a hundred years down the line, and instead of actually filling in parts of ocean it might be cheaper to create floating landmasses

As far as land use goes for these floating farms, I guess you could make floating broccoli fields too. As Lukipela said, it rains out at sea too so water supply shouldnt e a problem wit a well-placed cattle floater.

How do you build a floating cattle ranch? Well! We can start a new thread on that one

According to a bloke called Mark Lynas, who was there, Copenhagen's failure was entirely down to the Chinese. Depressing and predictable. No wonder they're being cast as the villains by all western newspapers. That and the communism.

thanks for ruining the thread, lukipela.

If we want to pursue a sub-line of discussion where we want to discuss the viability of deploying cattle-rafts in a frivolous manner, we should be allowed to do as such. Eventually the thread will return to its normal course, or not. But it doesn't matter. It's how conversations happen normally between people. Apparently you seem to be under the impression that a community board like this needs to be adhere to the topic at hand as if it were some kind of debating forum with fixed agendas. It's not. It's a community board, it's about fun and freedom, about enjoying each other's company without limiting each other's freedoms.

So back off and let us discuss ;)


Eh, we're all doomed and life as we know it is ending. but that's nor reason to not enjoy ourselves at times.


This sort of also branches into an ethical problem. First off, if we stop keeping all the wasteful livestock we have now, what's going to happen to them? Chickens aint made to survive in the wild, they'll be extinct in a matter of years. Others will upset the ecological balance. So do we wipe those out ourselves, down to the last succulent pork chop? As for the ones we keep, how do we treat them? It's more efficient and less straining to use methods are are far less ethical. Are we really saving the planet if we're making animal life worse than it already is?


Our current lifestyle will have to change. But try telling that to people who are just climbing out of the lower classes and finally get to enjoy all those things they've been working hard to get.


So at some point, buying and freezing meat might become a profitable venture... "I bought these delicious steaks two years ago and now I'm selling them with a 200% profit!"


The thing is though, we never do anything in moderation. Once we can build floating farms, we'll build lots. We'll blot out the sun to all the creatures who live in the sea- And once the plankton start dying, well...

Bah. Through wonderful advances in science, meat will be grown in a petri dish and farmlands will be used to make fuels to feed the world's ever growing energy demands.

We can solve meat demand problem and overpopulation in one move - some tribes in Africa and New Zealand are doing it already!

But will petri dish meat be as nice? The flavour and texture is important, and I'm not sure it's worth saving the world if i have to spend the rest of my life eating inferior meat.


They have abstinence programs and have made the move to a healthy vegetarian diet?

Good question. I suppose the science will be perfected. For me the issue wouldn't be so much about perfect taste, but instead, the psychological aspect of eating artifically grown meat. There is just somthing creepy about it to me.

Clone a chicken, it will "taste just like chicken".

that made me think about something: why do things always taste like cheap old chicken? why not the most expensive steak money can buy?

Science isn't the solution to everything, we just need to limit fornication!

Nature is uncreative. Or alternatively, the prehistoric chicken is the common ancestor of about 90% of the animals we've tried to eat.

Sure, but we don't need more chickens. Grow chicken meat in a petri dish, how will that taste?


Science can help limit fornication though. As can increased standards of living and a pension system/healthcare system/ whatnot


I thought the prehistoric chicken was a pterodactyl or something?

It would be easier to name all the animals we can't eat than the ones we can. We can eat pretty much any animal other than the highly toxic / posionous types. And the prehistoric chicken is the common ancestor to about 90% of those edible animals? Ya gotta explain that one...because to me, that's ridiculous.

I was thinking more in the lines of forced sterilisation :).

I thought you guys were pretty good at picking up on sarcastic humor? I guess not as good as I thought.

It's just jokes, people.

Well, if we sidestep that pesky question of human rights neatly, I guess the question is if you want them for everybody or just for part of the population. In either case, I'm sure you could lead by example ;)


I can't speak for RTyp06, but I was trying to be glib and silly. Guess i failed :(

Would you rather have your grandchildren fight over food because you were one of the lot that had too many?

Well, if we all get sterilised then I wont have any grandchildren. If we don't, then I'd love to know how you're going to determine who get it and who doesn't...

Oooops. Usually I can spot sarcasm in a glance..

Oh and I'd think petri dish meat could be grown and then cooked in the same container. Factories will be able to churn hamburgers out with dizzying speed onto conveyor belts that load boxcars destined for global ports. Then with advanced genetic tinkering of the meat cells,  they would have a shelf life lasting into the decades.

All this with no farms and methane gasses. No meat packing plants and butcheries. No slaughtering of innocent animals. No more rainforest removal for pennies on the lbs. / kilos of beef. And we all hold hands around the fire and live happily ever after...;)

The only problem  is petri dishes incubation needs heat, to achieve wich there will be need for energy and therefore fuels, producing CO2 instead  of the methane. Though I have no idea as to how the amounts and effects of the two compare.

It could be the indirect solution to everything. Science makes us immortal, gives us robots to explore the universe, no need for more people. Sterilise everyone, population growth halts, fornicate till the end of time.

Problems solved! 8)

Clean, renewable, electricity handles the petri dish heating. Wind, solar, hdryo, hydro thermal. Even nuclear is clean and cheap (other than the half lives of spent fuel). Electricity of the future will have zero CO2 emissions.

See, science and technology have an answer for everything.

And as people commit suicide, die in accident or something else, population begins falling. In the end, our race vanishes from the world. Still, it does solve the Earths problems.

You make it sound as if saving the Earth is an altruistic act. It's just as selfish as everything else we do, really. :P

Also, if the population gets too small, we could always create a new wave of children, which would be a fun adventure for us million-year-olds. :D

Also, I don't see why science couldn't fix suicide and accidents some day. It's magic.

Hello, just wondering if any of you have encountered this movement before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement

I actually know one or two people who've signed on to this.

Discuss...

Humans could quite possibly spread the life of this planet to the many dead worlds out there. If the idea is to ensure the survival of life, long term, then humans could arguably offer a rare chance to do that. We could build seed ships (like in Songs of a distant Earth). We can also blow up dangerous asteroids with our giant moon laser / brave self-sacrificing astronauts.

We humans have only been on this earth for around 100k years or so. This is an Infinitesimal amount of time in the vast history of the earth. I'm sure she's seen far worse than us humans. Her delicate eco systems have been upset many, many times before us. And she'll be there long after we're gone.

Speaking of extreme climates, I saw a Science channel show on snowball earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth)

After a few asteroids, megavolcanic eruptions, and the like, I doubt humanity's going to be more than a blip in the charts.

The sun is getting larger and hotter. Some speculate that land life emerged only some 1 billion years ago because it was too cold before. In another one billion years it will be much too hot. So we landlubbers really only have a 2 billion year window, if things go their 'natural' course. Of course, in the far future the outer planets in the solar system will be hotter and maybe terraform-able.

I don't think the Earth has seen anything like us humans before. We a potential unlike that of any other creature of the past. We could arguably evolve into a form which enables us to go Type III and milk the stars for energy/matter for countless billions of years. This makes us more than a blip on an insignificant planet. It makes us a slightly larger galactic blip in mindbogglingly vast universe.

We also have the potential to completely sterilize the Earth with technomagic like grey goo.

It's very difficult to even try and predict 100 years into our future. That says something about our potential. A moth was still a moth 100 years ago. We learned to fly, sent a man to the moon, invented wireless global communication, and sucked up half of the world's oil deposits.

Survival of the risk-averse. In a few decades the outdoors will be the new wilderness. Can't say the sort of misery that drives people to suicide will have gone, but there'll be robots who won't let us do it.

Nothing a nuclear winter won't fix ;D

Man, who cares about global warming? That's a seriously scary scenario. We'd be unable to die and forcibly kept alive by the very tools we created. Every time we try to end the curse our prolonged existence had become, there's be a friendly robot there to stop us and strap us back in our safe and comfy chairs. An eternity of being safe and totally unharmed is a Spathi dream come true, but it sure isn't mine.

. . . says the leader of the suicide squad.

... are you accusing me of being biased? Me? The leader of the Carebear squad? How dare you sir I'm going to have to give you a hug.

It's all covered under my... THE master plan.

Apparently the IPCC isn't too concerned about representing actual facts in its reports.

From: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch12s12-2-3.html

This is bullshit. Actually, about 1/5th of the Netherlands is below sea level and about 19% of the GNP is produced there.

Maybe the are using the height of another sea, lets say Lake Titicaca?

It seems that someone had too much free time...

http://climatequotes.com/scientists/the-ipccs-questionable-citations/

Sorry to resurrect this ancient topic. The Starbase Cafe isn't exactly bustling anymore, so I figured that the admins and posters wouldn't mind that much if I reposted on it. Anyway, I found this short paper that's somewhat interesting written by a physics professor at Washington if anyone is interested in reading.

http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/climate.html

Translates roughly as `we don't understand how the system works, but let's keep screwing with it anyway.' Dangerous thinking.

Wrong. The investigations only raised questions about transparency.

I don't know about that. He isn't exactly telling us to "keep screwing with it". He acknowledged that global warming is happening and it is very likely due to mostly  non-natural emissions, but that drastic carbon emission reducing changes aren't realistic.

As well as saying it can't be stopped, he says it will probably be good for humanity. Sounds like tacit encouragement to me. Which is stupid because whatever the benefits, it could entail the dislocation of coastal cities, the destruction of fragile ecosystems and the reorganisation of national agricultural efforts.

He is right, though, that the developing countries probably won't help much, because I don't think they should. They have every right to be as dirty as developed countries were during similar periods of their industrialisation, and have every right  to recklessly ignore the warnings for as long as the West did. The first world should stop pointing fingers at the likes of China and start taking responsibility for the example they themselves have set, because evidence for global warming isn't new, nor should it ever have been doubted; it's only the consequences that have now come in from the distant horizon.

Oh OK, I see what you mean.


What? It almost sounds like you're contradicting yourself here. The developed countries have every right to ignore the warnings, yet the warnings should never have been doubted--as in in the past by developed countries? So according to that logic, the developing countries should not doubt that global warming exists, yet they have every right to pretend as if it isn't there. Or, they should be cognizant of what they're doing, since certainly they must be aware of the evidence, but feel free to continue industrializing using old, carbon-producing techniques? That sounds like a bad double-standard. Maybe I'm interpreting what you're saying wrong.

He's saying that developed countries (i.e. USA, UK, Germany, USSR, Japan) in the past have set a bad example for developing countries (and still do), so they (we) shouldn't be pointing the finger of blame on developing countries.

Especially the USA is fucking us all up. They don't give a damn about the environment. So why should we?

I don't know why there is even a debate. Even if the science claims were bunk, there is no reason to stick with 19th and 20th century technology here in the 21st.

imo Geothermal is the "silver bullet" for green electircal production. Best of all these wells can be built anywhere on earth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15xQ82LwDok

And all electric and hydrogen are the "silver bullet" for the transport system.

Imagine going to a majory city and NOT seeing that thick layer of smog.. Or not reading about oil spills, water that burns or a new mountain top leveled. Perhaps not in my life time but someday hopefully.

I  want to minimize being contentious any further about this topic since it really won't do any good for anyone, but I'm curious what you're basing this on? Do you have anything specific, or is this just a general feeling you get?
That isn't really what he said. He not only told westerners to not point the finger of blame (which they probably shouldn't yet), but that further carbon emission producing industrialization in developing countries is justified, even though they're aware of what they're doing.

look at china!

Indeed, they emiss 4.6 metric tonnes per person per year :D. We do 11.6 metric tonnes per person per year, and the USA fucks the world up by doing 19.1 :P.

@Angelfish - are these numbers a result of country-wide direct emissions divided by population or derivatives of consumption products production requirements ?

Well, if the developed world was allowed to pump so much shit into the atmospshere for so long, allowing rapid industrialisation with no thought for the consequences, why shouldn't the developing countries be allowed the same privilege? The warnings have been quite clear for both parties. If developing countries don't do this bad thing, they should be compensated for being so gracious, which I think was a sticking point at Copenhagen.

Also, internet to the rescue! Soon, who'll need to travel anymore?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

I'm glad we're a close second!

Of course, though, when you account for China's massive population vs. the U.S.'s relatively smaller population, you find that the US actually emits more carbon per person.

China: 4.884434 metric tons per person
US: 18.817886462 metruc tons per person

That's almost 4x what China emits per person.

(Note: This is only based on what Wikipedia says for 2007 emissions and 2010 population.)

This has already been pointed out by Angelfish a few posts ago.

I haven't found any consumption based emissions, meaning the sum of emissions needed to produce and transport all the goods an average representative of a country will use in a year,

If you've worked in logistics like I have, then you'll realize that that is an impossibility to predict ;). Too many variables :D.

but how much of chinas population are farmers with zero emissions? 1/2? 3/4?

Farmers don't emit zero emissions. There's no reason for modern farmers to not use such technology as cars (for transportation), tractors, and whatever other equipment farmers use.

Are you suggesting that poor farmers in china use tractors?