Global Warming? are humans to blame?

Yeah Mychael but what about all the people that want to go out Saturday afternoon and buy a solar panel. Couldn't could they? Then they would have to use fossil fuel until Monday morning.

Didin't think of that did you?

Poida

 

hm...

 

Have to agree with Jack, Alan, you're absolutely full of it. Couldn't defend your position, so suddenly you "have no position". I guess you might call your strategy "the art of debating without debating" (apologies to Bruce).

 

Well, let's see. Anthropogenic CO2 ~ 3.2% of what's up there, give or take. All the measures you suggest might cut consumption 25% which would take us back to about 2.6% of the total. In engineering, an 'impurity' or offending component generally need to be reduced by AT LEAST an order of magnitude (~90%) to fade into unimportance in a 'system'. So a ~25% cut, while extremely costly, would not be effective at reducing CO2 in any significant way-this is of course assuming that if the anthropogenic portion of atmospheric CO2 were eliminated COMPLETELY, then atmospheric CO2 levels would fall (and the global temperatures would follow).

Given that the atmospheric CO2 level was rising BEFORE the beginning of anthropogenic releases, then this seems highly unlikely.

Short answer: "NO!"

Jimbo

 

Stonebreaker, you have not shown where I claimed my position. A debate takes into account what claims were made.
My "position" is not opposite to yours, which is why you miss it. It hasn't changed one iota since I began. You are blessed with a whole string of my comments to quote me in order to prove what I've said so that you can show how I have been inconsistent. Your not doing that indicates you only respond emotionally. It makes sense that you would, as that was my prediction. I predicted you would respond the way you are based on your being so sure of yourself. It is impossible to be so sure about such a thing unless one constantly filters out information that challenges it.
None of what I write now is for you, Stonebreaker. It's only for those who have eyes to see. Your fear of being wrong is really a fear of not having a strong position, so much so that you project a position onto me in order to validate your own.
Neutrality bothers you, which is why you voted for Bush------- probably twice. You see neutrality and open-mindedness as a weakness.
Yet you are an exceedingly polite person. A part of you knows what I've said is true, and so you have treated me with some respect. I admire that.

Alan

 

You are doing great alan white! Watch out every one, Master Baiter in the house.

 

There were a couple of your comments, SB, about faith, and your assumption was that if I couldn't back up what I said, which is that I don't trust data from either side of the issue, but lean towards the larger group because they are more likely to be correct based on sheer numbers, then we are debating without debating.
If this were religion debate, my "leaning towards" the existence of God would be considered to be the opposite of faith. One can have a strong position, i.e., 'There IS no God!", or "There is absolutely a God!", and those, in my vies, would be faith-based statements. The one who doesn't claim any absolute position on the issue is certainly not given to deciding the issue based on faith.
My point, my "position", is clear. You fellows can batter each other with statistics and data, none of which you have personally compiled. Others made the graphs, wrote the articles, presented, in most cases, their "slant".
If anything's been fudged, you couldn't know it. You could only present an opposite view you also couldn't know was fudged.
Square one.
So even if you can't trust your data, there is something of value in asking, "Given that I myself haven't produced this data, is there some benefit in talking about the issue? Is there something I personally can do, knowing so little?"
I mentioned that a study of the Earth's climate would reveal the effects of pollution regardless of pollution caused global warming, or if there even was Global warming. You could call that a position, but I'd prefer to call it an attitude.
Also, in realizing that pollution exists from my own personal experience, I can do things (which I do!) to attempt to reverse the trend.
I have found that people have a difficult time doing anything at all if they are polarized to one side or the other. They see things as black or white, but rarely see the obvious things right in front of their noses. They drive their giant 455 cu in 4x4 one ton rear dualie truck to the mall and comfort themselves in the notion that they know all the data and man's contribution to climate change is an utterly absurd proposition.
Not yet, anyway.
But it is not nothing. It accumulates. Like sand in an hourglass, it inexorably
adds up.
In thinking it's all man's fault, and the earth is getting hotter, they say, "Jeez! What tiny impact will I make when the problem's so huge?
In thinking it's a natural trend, they say, "Golly! All this is going to do is cost jobs! People are such alarmists! Liberals are taking over! I suppose they expect me to give up my nice truck! For what? Their angst?

The value of the debate, then, may be in the neutral position, which involves cancelling out (like in algebra) the opposites and asking what remains.
It is this: If you are polluting, you can do something instead of talking about it. Period.

Alan

 

"Stand on a busy street corner crowded with vehicular traffic,and have a good sniff. A deep lung full. It is poison you smell.
You might think that considering the size of the planet, that little bit of poison could puff away, and it would not harm any thing. That poison has been manufactured on earth and is not going any where. It is staying on earth. Every day more poison for the planet."---- Rayk

Exactly. Exactly.

 

Interesting point. I don't have the data although I am sure some do.. How much energy is expended and polluting by-products produced in the making of a solar panel??
Then there is the accumulators(batteries) that need to store charge in the night time and we all know how nasty batteries are to the environment.

Mychael

 

Mychael --your thinking too much, this extra energy is making heat.

Has any one considered that our global warming might be from heat.

All the heat generated from burning fossil fuels, engines, planes, ships--everything makes heat --not to mention the steam coming from the New york streets. London is rarely under 0 degrees when the rest of the country is much lower.

Thers must be billions of BTU's thrown into the atmosphere every day.

I really dont know much about it, but maybe Alan could give us a psycological analisis of my post and the general situation of the interaction of man and global destruction combined with the utilisation of industrial and domestic thermal waste.

Wow! Does that makes me sound like I know what I am talking about?

 

I'm impressed. I did not understand it but I'm impressed... lol.

Mychael

 

I can't do much with that, Jack. Maybe there's a nutritionist on the forum who can analyze what you just said.
Alan

 

Alan,
I think a small point you may have missed along the way is that this debate is not really about this or that particular data set which may or may not be trustworthy depending upon its sources and the various underlying motivations of those sources. In fact, the very same data sets are used by both sides, so the raw data is not in dispute, only the conclusions drawn from them. Most of the data sets come from fairly trustworthy academic sources such as NASA, NOAA and the like.

In the film for which I posted the link, the narrator uses the very same chart of past warming and CO2 levels that Al Gore uses in support of his position to prove that this position CANNOT explain past warming trends (or the present one) because rising temperatures always LEAD rising CO2 levels by several hundred years. Of course Mr. Gore does not point this out to his audience, but the lines on the chart do tell their story and cannot be denied.

Jimbo

 

Jack,

If you start considering it as a heat engineering problem, the heat released by burning fossil fuels is truly insignificant compared to just direct solar radiation, which is accepted as 240 Watts per square meter over the entire globe.

I remember many years ago one of the proponents of solar energy stating that if we harnessed all, that is 100%, of the solar energy radiating on one single square mile of the earth's surface at the equator, the energy could power the entire US. Jack, there are a LOT of square miles out there

Jimbo

 

What amuses me with global warming is how simple it is to sort out...

For instance, power stations can be run on trees, not coal, from managed forests. Cars, boats, lorrys, aircraft etc. can run on a variety of bio-fuels, and a little wind or wave power never hurt the environment. For those after an even cleaner life (particularly who use gas for cooking/heating) Bio-mass is a good way to produce methane, and what could be more ecologically friendly than rotting waste and collecting the gas before depositing it.

All we need is someone with a little less gas (cough, oil) between their ears, and maybe someone else with some balls.

Tim B.