Global Warming?

[N80]

Harry, Harry, Harry. Of course it can be denied. Where you been, boy? Denial is alive and well and prospering. The oil will last forever. Even if we've managed to polute major parts of the water of the Earth, our impact on the atmosphere is obviously trivial. Those contrails up there that seem to turn into clouds are nothing at all. Acid rain is fiction. The passenger pigeon needs company wherever it is we sent him. All those eggheads with degrees are just scrambling their yolks because they are too stupid to do real work. Relax. Don't worry. Social Security will take care of you.

Kind of ironic, all that. By your tone, you're obviously convinced that your eggheads are somehow beyond reproach, beyond skepticism. I'd have also guessed by your tone that you were one of the 'buck everything', anti-establishment sorts. Which makes it more ironic. Who do you think the 'establishment' is? Some political party? Please. But that's fine. If those of us who don't believe in human caused global warming are in denial, what state does that put you in? It puts you in a state of believing everything you hear and read, especially if it suits some preconcieved notion or idealogy. And even worse, most of it isn't even bad science, its stuff people pick up on CBS and in Time magazine.

And it almost sounds like a redneck mantra but really, I mean really, if we are making such a mess of things, why do the greenies drive cars, use plastic and breath? I have a lot more respect for the person who can say 'yep, we're going to heck in a hand basket and I'm fine with it' than someone whining about how everyone else is behaving but doesn't have the real guts, commitment or faith to change their own, equally destructive behavior and even WORSE, that very same person who uses recycled paper once in a while and drives a 4 door sedan but NOT an SUV and ASSUMES that they are are somehow 'doing their part.'

But back to my challenge. Let's once again assume Al Gore is 100% right (I can't believe I put those last 5 words in the same sentance) as a scientist (we'll keep politics out of this). No one can tell me how things will improve. No one can tell me the good things about global warming. If you want to get to the heart, the real meat of the issue, just ask that question and watch the chicken littles fade into the woodwork. Why? Because they have a point to make, not a fact to prove. Delineating the positives of global warming does not hurt the fact, but it ruins the point.

And lets go back to your point about the oil lasting forever. We know that it won't. but you know what? From about 1974 on, the American public has been bombarded with the propaganda that its going to run out any minute now. I was in grade school during that time and the public school system pumped us full of so much bull hockey and paranoia about oil resources that it was criminal. Total, unabashed, bald faced lies. And they came from the best eggheads in the business. The truth is that from right now there is enough accessible oil to last another 40 years, and here's the kicker, at the current rate of increasing demand! Well, pit that figure against those crying wolf and see who looks like they got their heads in the sand...or whereever.

[N80]

How can we burn 80 million+ barrels of oil per day worldwide along with the coal and NOT have an effect on the atmosphere?

Because people, and many scientists, don't understand big numbers. Do you know how big the ocean is? Do you know how big the atmosphere is? Have you ever heard the phrase, drop in a bucket?

But sure, humans can have an impact. As someone mentioned above, there are things that are real. The passenger pigeon is gone. There is acid rain. It is sorting out the fact and the fiction that causes the problem.

(And why do we have acid rain? Anyone? Because the greenie no nukes kept us from getting nuclear power. So we rely on coal. The windmills and solar panels and everyone walking to work just didn't pan out, did it? Way to go guys. Nice move. With friends like that, mother nature needs no enemies.)

[Egon]

[Do you know how big the ocean is?

I think water covers about 75% of the earths surface. Of this 75% we probably know less than we do about the moons surface!

[NewToy]

Because people, and many scientists, don't understand big numbers. Do you know how big the ocean is? Do you know how big the atmosphere is? Have you ever heard the phrase, drop in a bucket?

But sure, humans can have an impact. As someone mentioned above, there are things that are real. The passenger pigeon is gone. There is acid rain. It is sorting out the fact and the fiction that causes the problem.

(And why do we have acid rain? Anyone? Because the greenie no nukes kept us from getting nuclear power. So we rely on coal. The windmills and solar panels and everyone walking to work just didn't pan out, did it? Way to go guys. Nice move. With friends like that, mother nature needs no enemies.)

I think that's why people are so easy to dismiss the fact that we are changing things. While the ocean is vast it is finite. There is a cumalative affect that adds up. Put a drop of oil in a bucket of water and you have fouled your bucket of water.
John

[midlf]

I have no concerns about global warming. I have no kids. I have had to be involved in the solution to situations set up by my forebearers and their contemporaries. I don't think we should deprive future generations of a situation for them to creatively solve. Also I don't quite see the flooding of NY city and Miami as a loss.

OBTW - <grin>

[frank_f15]

The main problem here is that the last Ice Age was only 10,000 years ago when all of the MidWest was under a 2 mile thick solid sheet of ice and then it began to recede and left us with the flatlands and the Great Lakes.

Unfortunately, at that time, Al Gore's ancestors were all huddled in a cave somewhere freezing to death and had not yet invented human language, speech, or writing to record the last Global Warming event, but they all sure could grunt real good......it would be another ten milleniums until Al was able to invent the internet and warn everyone.

WHAT IS THE INTERNET

[tallyho8]

Greenland use to be Green. Its turning Green again. Archeologist have studied the settlements in Greenland and they can see the change in diet from land based animals to marine ones that was caused by Greenland turning into a bigger Iceland. The settlers did not adjust to living off the ocean so the died off and/or left.

Actually, Iceland has a much better climate than Greenland and is much warmer with all it's geothermal springs. In fact, the capital city of Reykjavik is typically warmer that New York City in the winter. When the Vikings discovered Iceland and settled there, they decided to name it Iceland to keep all the other riff raff out. Then they named the island with the cold, hostile climate Greenland as a public relations method to get people to go there instead. The geothermal springs in Iceland could easily make enough electricity to supply all of Europe with no oil used if they could refine the delivery process. Iceland is a very civilized country with 100% literacy, one of the longest life spans and the 5th highest standard of living.

[_RaT_]

Actually, Iceland has a much better climate than Greenland and is much warmer with all it's geothermal springs. In fact, the capital city of Reykjavik is typically warmer that New York City in the winter. When the Vikings discovered Iceland and settled there, they decided to name it Iceland to keep all the other riff raff out. Then they named the island with the cold, hostile climate Greenland as a public relations method to get people to go there instead. The geothermal springs in Iceland could easily make enough electricity to supply all of Europe with no oil used if they could refine the delivery process. Iceland is a very civilized country with 100% literacy, one of the longest life spans and the 5th highest standard of living.

Interesting, I always thought it was a icy waste land. Their gimmick worked on me. The cold icey part not the riff raff part.

[dmccarty]

Actually, Iceland has a much better climate than Greenland and is much warmer with all it's geothermal springs. In fact, the capital city of Reykjavik is typically warmer that New York City in the winter. When the Vikings discovered Iceland and settled there, they decided to name it Iceland to keep all the other riff raff out. Then they named the island with the cold, hostile climate Greenland as a public relations method to get people to go there instead. The geothermal springs in Iceland could easily make enough electricity to supply all of Europe with no oil used if they could refine the delivery process. Iceland is a very civilized country with 100% literacy, one of the longest life spans and the 5th highest standard of living.

Iceland was green when the Vikings "discovered" it. The bones showed land animals with the Viking settlements. Then over time the bones from land animals gradually reduced in number and where overtaken by marine animal bones. Present day Greenlanders are very happy with Global Warming since they can now farm and raise land animals again.

Later,
Dan

[CRJCaptain]

I'm not going to take the time, but anyone who is interested can find information (and you other "old-timers" probably recall) that in the 60s the then-equivalent of the whatever-pseudonym-you-prefer for those who seem to always have something they need to stop mankind from doing were telling us that by 2000 the world would be overpopulated to levels that would leave us with mass starvation and disease. Later in the 60s and early 70s we were facing another imminent ice age from the nuclear winter that was going to occur when we rained down atomic havoc on the globe. No nuclear winter, and the only starvation we have is politically induced (i.e., food is withheld or prevented from getting to a region). Plenty of food around the globe (again...I acknowledge distribution of it to be an issue, but that is from political influences in the places where people are starving), and no nuclear winter.

How does any scientist know what the blazes things were like thousands of years ago? A thousand years ago "science" insisted the earth was flat. "Science" said leeches would cure disease. "Science" has been repeatedly and routinely trumped by new information, which makes what was "science" now just bad information..not just old information, but often wrong.

Wow...that pretty much leaves me speechless.

Nuclear winter? I don't think that's currently a problem since mankind figured out that it wasn't a great idea to detonate large quantities of thermonuclear devices above ground...North Korea not withstanding.

As for the question "How does a scientist know anything?"

Let's just for the sake of argument look at one discipline, physics.

There was Ptolemy, then Galileo and Newton, then Einstein. Each improved on the other's theories. Like Einstein said, he stood on the shoulders of giants, each improving on the other's theories. Were any of these scientists "wrong"? (Is anyone ever right?)

Do you drive a car or ride in an airplane? Do you believe man went to the moon? Do you own an air conditioner? See a physician on a regular basis? Are you on the Internet right now?! Well you must have some faith in the veracity of the fields of aerodynamics, classical Newtonian mechanics, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics and the list goes on...

Back to global warming...who of us knows the effects of releasing several million years worth of stored up carbon into the atmosphere in the span of a hundred years? Well, I've read a lot of posts on the subject of global warming here, and I suspect none of you have ever been published in any peer-reviewed journals like Nature or Science or the International Journal of Modern Physics.

I think the last people that I would believe to be qualified to talk about atmospheric science and climatology would be James Inhofe or Michael Crichton or Al Gore or Al Franken or, sorry, anybody on TBN.

So, can't we just go back to talking about tractors and the weather?