Global Warming a fake?

[C1ay]

It's been warming since the end of the last ice age is a claim I'll stand by.

 

That, I agree with. Now the question is, "How much of that warming is natural and how much is accelerated from anthropogenic forcing?" If we are unsure of the answer to that, then to what extent should we err on the side of caution?

[BrianG]

An error on the side of caution is still a mistake. Why don't we wait, and get it right. Climate change mitigation by CO2 emission restrictions is an untried, untested prototype. We are dealing with the biggest system on Earth. If we want to experiment, let's try it somewhere else, Mars and Venus really need climate mitigation, if we want to live there.

[C1ay]

An error on the side of caution is still a mistake. Why don't we wait, and get it right. Climate change mitigation by CO2 emission restrictions is an untried, untested prototype. We are dealing with the biggest system on Earth. If we want to experiment, let's try it somewhere else, Mars and Venus really need climate mitigation, if we want to live there.

 

Let's see. We gamble that high CO2 emissions are bad, we reduce them just in case and we're wrong and we simply end up with a slightly cleaner environment with no other benefit...vs...we gamble that CO2 emissions are not bad so we don't reduce emissions and we're wrong and we shorten the lifespan of the human race by reducing the habitability of the planet? Please explain how erring on the side of caution is a mistake. What consequences does it have compared to the option of reducing the habitability of the planet?

[BrianG]

... We gamble that high CO2 emissions are bad, .... What consequences does it have compared to the option of reducing the habitability of the planet?

 

Can you back up the claim high CO2 emissions reduce the habitability of the planet? If you look at population records, higher [ce]CO2[/ce] levels correlate with more people.

[REASON]

An error on the side of caution is still a mistake. Why don't we wait, and get it right. Climate change mitigation by CO2 emission restrictions is an untried, untested prototype. We are dealing with the biggest system on Earth. If we want to experiment, let's try it somewhere else, Mars and Venus really need climate mitigation, if we want to live there.

 

Are you an Exxon employee? Or maybe you are just on their payroll. :phones: You act as if there are no other alternatives than to burn fossil fuels and pump CO2 into the atmosphere. Why don't you just admit that you simply don't fear climate change as much as government.

 

I have a friend who is both a Libertarian and an environmentalist. He thinks energy cost should go up because that will be the only motivator in a free market system to encourage the development of alternative sources of energy and a voluntary reduction of wasteful consumption. He believes keeping energy costs low will do nothing but perpetuate the status quo and the price we pay down the road will be far greater.

 

He may be right in both instances.

[BrianG]

Are you an Exxon employee? Or maybe you are just on their payroll. :phones: You act as if there are no other alternatives than to burn fossil fuels and pump CO2 into the atmosphere. Why don't you just admit that you simply don't fear climate change as much as government...

 

Why are you questioning me about where I work? It's not a question of fear, this is about the science.

 

I'm not employed by Exxon, I work for a retail and services company, one of our division is retail filling stations. I buy or use fossil fuel products every single day. I like fossil fuel, it gives me good value for price. I want to see more widespread use, more production and lower prices.

 

I was in Kuwait during the first Gulf War. I saw fields of flaming oil geysers, they roared like a train from a mile off. They darkened the sky with smoke and the aerosols cooled the land beneath. What they didn't do was burn off by themselves. I keep hearing about peak oil, but more oil is produced each year.

 

I want a clean environment. Oil is energy dense, it seems like a perfect fuel for transportation, to me. About 30% of the electricity here in Germany is from coal, the plants seem clean, the smoke is white, they use low sulfur coal and efficient emission filters. I remember driving through Harvey Illinois as a kid, smelling the stink of the smoke stacks. The environment is cleaner now. The best way to get a clean environment is prosperity, the third world is known for open sewers.

 

Government don't achieve technological progress, the markets do. Governments commit genocide, man made global warming hasn't.

[Essay]

from: temperature

 

It is the usual pattern that the abrupt (1-3 thousand years) and intense warming, that signals the end of a glaciation, is followed by a gradual decline in tempertures until the next glaciation begins. I think you'll see how, for the past 7 thousand years civilization has been unsuccessfully fighting that trend. The graph does not show how we have recently had great success in fighting that natural trend.

 

But BrianG, to say that it's "been warming since the end of the last ice age" shows a couple of holes in your understanding of how climate works. First there is the confusion between "ice ages" and glaciations, but I assume you meant "the last glaciation," and then there are the facts about how temperature has changed since civilization began after the last big warming that ended "the last ice age."

Governments commit genocide, man made global warming hasn't.

 

I probably should have included how you don't seem to understand that climate can also commit "genocide" ...as you referred to it.

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

Yes

 

~ :confused:

 

p.s. ...any comment on my critique of the graph above?

Dangit! There's a saying about statistics being able to prove anything a fella wants em to...seems appropriate...shame I can't remember the who and how it went....but your comment seems to me to point in that general direction.....any idea as to what the heck I'm talking bout (I hope...perhaps you know the quote and who said it:shrug:)

[Essay]

Dangit! There's a saying about statistics being able to prove anything a fella wants em to...seems appropriate...shame I can't remember the who and how it went....but your comment seems to me to point in that general direction.....any idea as to what the heck I'm talking bout (I hope...perhaps you know the quote and who said it:shrug:)

 

My Dad said that alot ...about statistics: "You can prove anything you want with statistics, except the truth," but I don't know who it is attributed to. Fortunately I wasn't trying to prove anything specific by talking about the graph (except the source was not scientific); just to point out in general that mixing stats from different data sets will lead to unscientific, often misleading conclusions.

===

 

Statistics Quotes and Sayings

"Statistics can be made to prove anything - even the truth." ~Author Unknown

 

I liked this quote as a good example of what happens if you mix data sets:

The average human has one breast and one testicle. ~Des McHale :)

 

...and this sentiment explains why scientist ...cain't get no respect....

Satan delights equally in statistics and in quoting scripture.... ~H.G. Wells, The Undying Fire

:confused: ...no wonder those Jehovah's Witnesses won't return my calls!

 

~ ;)

 

p.s. To be clear, DD, you're quoting my post (critique of 3-line graph from chrisrich, post #157/160)

uncitable graph, post #157, from page 15,

not quoting about the p.16 graph I repeated immediately "above" your post here, right?

[lemit]

Homer Simpson: "Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that."

 

Source: The Simpsons Guide, an excellent repository, which I will use in the future to verify my Simpsons quotes.

 

--lemit

[C1ay]

Can you back up the claim high CO2 emissions reduce the habitability of the planet? If you look at population records, higher [ce]CO2[/ce] levels correlate with more people.

 

There's no claim. I simply asked, "what if...". We don't know how bad they are or aren't. Do we take a chance that they're not and find out later that it's to late to undo the damage dome or should we act like it's possible that they could be bad and clean up our act just in case? Do keep in mind that there are lots of pollutants going into the air we that CO2, visible components of smog. Should we just assume that stuff's OK, that it won't hurt us in the long run? Why take that gamble?

[BrianG]

... Why take that gamble?

 

That's not how science works; we need to measure the risks, costs and benefits before we decide on a policy. We do risk management everyday and the precautionary principle, preventing the worst case risk without regard for probability, isn't how it's done. We wear seatbelts in our car because car accidents are a significant possibility, they aren't installed on our sofas and chairs to prevent injury from earthquakes.

[C1ay]

That's not how science works; we need to measure the risks, costs and benefits before we decide on a policy.

 

Well if that's how it works let's just build little nuclear plants in everyone's neighborhood to power their homes and worry about nuclear policy later. We certainly can't measure the risk until we take it huh? Sound OK to you? A melt down here and a melt down there couldn't be to much to risk could it?

[BrianG]

How many meltdowns have we seen versus how many man made catastrophic warmings? That's how we calculate probabilities.

[Essay]

....how many man made catastrophic warmings?

 

BrianG, earlier you said, "If you look at population records, higher CO2 levels correlate with more people."

 

Do you have a citation for that? I've been trying to find that information ...to see if we have (as you suggest) run this experiment (man-made catastrophic warmings) a few times before, in civilization's varied history, and caused CO2 levels to rise and fall as the civilizations did so. I can think of a specific, population-related cause, for the fall in CO2 levels at the beginning of the Little Ice Age; can you?

 

~ :)

[BrianG]

No citation, this is just a trend I've noticed, [ce]CO2[/ce] has been increasing, especially since industrialization as has population. I don't imply causality, [ce]CO2[/ce] increase does not appear to cause a population decrease.

 

http://www.chem.hope.edu/~polik/warming/IceCore/carbon.gif

 

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:iuJySsZ85kzZmM:http://wilderdom.com/images/WorldPopulationGraph.jpg

[BrianG]

You have any links or solid evidence to back up your claims?

 

Our single biggest oil supplier is Canada and the next biggest is Mexico.

 

Crude Oil and Total Petroleum Imports Top 15 Countries

 

You want cheaper oil, bring it up with our neighbors north and south of the border.

 

I've shown that increased supply results in lower price, which relieves hardship on the poor. Are you satisfied with that argument?

 

Instead of begging our neighbors for more oil, wouldn't it be better to get it for ourselves? Before they drink our milkshake? If we increase oil production, there would be more supply. That will bring down prices. Is that claim satisfactory?

 

How much does fossil fuel CO2 cause climate change? I don't know the answer to this question. I tend to doubt it's a very big problem, because I haven't seen a global warming catastrophe in my lifetime, and I've never heard of a man made climate catastrophe in history. Do you have any information to the contrary?

 

I want to discuss the question, "Global Warming a fake?" Is anyone else willing to present any arguments or information?