sprunch

While I understand the point you are trying to make, that the ozone layer did not, in fact, fill itself back in. The cause of the growing hole was CFCs (chloroflourocarbons) in things such as aerosol cans. The ozone layer's depletion stopped for a number of reasons: because we found a replacement for CFCs, there was global consensus that it was an eminent threat, and the U.S. and Western European government took a strong hand in forcing things to happen. There were no active disinformation campaigns intentionally made to confuse the public. Also, it only cost 1 billion to eradicate CFCs globally, making it a much easier target to pinpoint than global warming. We could, hopefully, mitigate the damage done with global warming if the U.S. and the E.U. can unite and take charge of the situation. Additionally, in regards to your statement on the oil crisis, I can only guess that you are talking about the scare in the 70s with OPEC, and that was caused by OPEC only putting out a limited amount of oil to artificially hike prices. Maybe I am wrong about what you are referring to, but I cannot think of another time in history where that happened. We are on a path to being out of petroleum right now, but I don't think that's what you're talking about. I respect your skepticism, but I think that it would be better for everyone to be more educated on what they are skeptical about so that when trying to defend why you do not believe in something it is more coherent. Personally, I do not think that global warming is caused by people who are trying to destroy capitalism. Originally when we began polluting obscenely (in the Industrial Revolution), we did not know what we were doing wrong an we cannot blame ourselves for the damage done initially. In contrast, we do now, and we ought to take charge and reverse our course of action, because what we are doing now is irresponsible and will have a lasting impact on our environment and how long the earth can sustain our lifestyles.

I'm confused as to why people are so skeptical of the IPCC's validity. If someone would like to explain why/what they are concerned about, I would appreciate it. The IPCC does not generate new scientific findings, but instead collaborates all recent scientific publishings into a coherent summary. The end result is actually quite conservative (including estimates), due to the amount of oversight there is on their work. The individual parts are written by scientists and get both government and expert reviews and comments. They must respond to ALL comments or questions raised during the review portion of their work.

I'm doing a presentation with a group on scientific evidence that suggests there is no correlation between Katrina (or the increased frequency/strength of hurricanes and tropicals storms) and global climate change for my Economics of the Environment course. If anyone has any scientific sources that have evidence suggesting this, please let me know.

Well, my professor is one of the economists on the IPCC and he is writing the conclusion to the Stern Review. We are definitely defending the losing side, basically, and I'm finding it much more difficult to even find legitimate scientific findings that climate change will cause stronger and more frequent hurricanes and tropical storms. The other presentations covered by students in the class are Scientific findings regarding climate change and hurricanes BEFORE Katrina, scientific findings regarding climate change and hurricanes after, and media portrayal of the global warming/climate change debate. Thanks for the welcome, hopefully this will be a positive learning experience.

Though I seem to be jumping on this thread's boat a bit late, I wanted to point out a few things. 1. Global warming is real. It isn't something that is biased politically, but the media thinks it is, since apparently generalized liberals want to stop it and generalized conservatives don't believe in it. Because of this, they feel the need to portray both sides of the subject "equally," even though approximately 95% of scientists say climate change is real. The new IPCC report that is coming out this year says that there is a 90% chance that climate change is caused by humans. Whoops. 2. Someone (MUCH earlier) tried to make a point about temperature changing? And something about mercury? Regardless, these charts ***** is from the 2001 IPCC report (also used in Al Gore's An Incovenient Truth, if it looks familiar). The second chart shows the average temperatures over about, the last 1000 years. Please note how significant the difference in temperature is in the past few hundred and fifty or so years from the long pattern in the past (this is about when the industrial revolution began). I think if you can read data that you see for yourself the drastic increase in temperature resulting from emissions. (Apparently, I can't post links until I've put up ten posts, at least... which I am not about to do this second. Google "IPCC temperature chart" and click on the first link, the information from Working Group One is there for you to see.)

I am 1/7th of a group presentation in my course "Economics of the Environment" taught by the wonderful and esteemed Gary Yohe. Our group project is on science that refutes the idea that hurricane katrina was caused by climate change (something that roughly only 5% of scientists believe). Wish us luck. -Kara