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.

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.

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.

Ofcourse we should! I know that we will run out of oil in time. But that's an entirely different discussion.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[the local climate in an area is not a valid representation of the GLOBAL climate!]

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.
 

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.

Greenland used to be green pasture.

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.

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.

It took me quite long to figure out that with "poster" you meant  "a person who posts" rather than a picture hanging on a wall.

Same here.

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

I don't find your joke amusing.

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.

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.

[TO ALL GLOBAL WARMING DENIALISTS HERE:]

Greenland used to be green pasture.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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
playlist

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

[the average temperature has never been as high as it is now]

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 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:



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.

Sadly (or maybe it's a good thing), I won't be able to attend. I'm at my mom's house next weekend. Plus, I am starting to drop my interest in UQM and even game design in favor of being an MC (rapper), so I probably wouldn't attend anyways.

[10,000 years]

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

You clearly weren't at the march meeting of the APS, where a special session featured scientists explaining the physics of air and sea convection currents as they related to GW, and assessments of various mitigation strategies. Every speaker treated GW as real and anthropogenic; while the mitigation part of the session did not justify those claims at great length, the earlier part did.
It's highly disingenuous to suggest that this is a politically based claim just because some politicians have claimed it.

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.

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.

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/

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?

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.

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/