Global Warming? are humans to blame?

Discussion in 'All Things Boats & Boating' started by hansp77, Sep 11, 2006.

?

Do you believe

  1. Global Warming is occuring as a direct result of Human Activity.

    106 vote(s)
    51.7%
  2. IF Gloabal Warming is occurring it is as a result of Non-Human or Natural Processes.

    99 vote(s)
    48.3%
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  1. resurrected
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    resurrected Junior Member

    I haven't really heard what I'm looking for. When and at what elevation do I buy land to take advantage of the rising ocean levels? Just thinking about a profitable retirement plan.:D :D
     
  2. BillyDoc
    Joined: May 2005
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    BillyDoc Senior Member

    The politics of global warming

    Journal: Agency blocked hurricane report

    By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Tue Sep 26, 6:54 PM ET

    WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday.

    Read the rest here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060926...12k.Sqs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3OTB1amhuBHNlYwNtdHM-
     
  3. stonebreaker
    Joined: May 2006
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    stonebreaker Senior Member

    Why don't you just put on your tinfoil hat and be done with it?
     
  4. bananabender
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    bananabender Junior Member

    Points to Ponder

    Having recently had a trip to the higher northern latitudes, I must agree that the glaciers are mostly in retreat, as evidenced by their terminal moraines. The lovely U-shaped glacial valleys are mostly bereft of ice, especially in areas like Norway. The point that intrigues me is the scientifically accepted fact that as little as 10-12,000 years ago these areas were under up to three to five MILES thickness of ice, with only a few Inuits and their seal fat lamps to make it melt. So who were the "guilty" parties in those pre-fossil-fuel days? And why could these prehistoric causes not still be active? To get to where we are today requires on average about a foot depth of ice melting every year... is it any faster than that now?
    Like it or not, the only constant in the Earth's history is change ... life adapts to change or dies and this underlies evolution. Unfortunately we all wish things would stay like they were when we were young.... and we can forget that the human race is only really important to us!:?:
     
  5. safewalrus
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    safewalrus Ancient Marriner

    Totally agree bananabender - there is some sense spoken in Queensland after all! :p
     
  6. SteamFreak
    Joined: Jun 2006
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    SteamFreak USMM

    Yep... and this season was a real gut-buster...

    Read this, not for the author's comments but for the history material one previous warm and cool periods...
    http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg15n2g.html

    another article, just to show that there is no such thing as consensus among scientists about the issue
    http://cagle.msnbc.com/news/GlobalWarmingSteigerwald/main.asp
    ^Especially interesting considering the person their interviewing and plays a part in my intense desire to see some serious honesty from the scientific community about the means of data collection and sorting and statistical rejection of data outside the "norm" curve.

    You know Greenland was green at some point in time... hence the name... funny how its all covered in snow and ice..


    Ultimately, I draw a section of my comments elsewhere to finish this post.

    "You want honest dialogue? Look at every scientists' statements, separate out the "facts" they state and compare them all together... Look at the "studies" and lets see how they were conducted, what were the raw results and what analysis was applied to these results.... This is all simple stuff we all should have learned in high school. Nobody has to be a climatologist to read and discern if the methods applied to the gathering, sorting, and analyzation of facts was sound, objective and reasonable scientific method and holds true to accepted statistics preceps..

    And in the end, we may just have to accept that 20 or 30 years of serious measurement isn't enough for a climate system which has year, decade, century, and millenia cycles..."
     
  7. Jimbo1490
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    Jimbo1490 Senior Member

    Whose data to believe

    Much of this really does depend on whose data you trust. We really have been in a warming trend for several thousand years as the history of glacial ice clearly shows:

    Ice Ages.gif

    MedWarm.gif

    http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/last_glacial_max.html

    http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/present_interglacial.html


    Unless of course you believe that glaciation is not associated with cooler temps, in which case one wonders why you would worry about the retreat of glacial ice now :confused:

    Another thing that is bothersome about the GHG theory of climate change (really the CO2 theory of climate change) is that atmospheric CO2 content tracks fairly poorly with historic surface temps using reliable proxy data. Atmospheric CO2 has been much higher than it is now, and not necessarily associated with warmer temps. This suggests that there does NOT exist a cause/effect reationship between CO2 content and global temps.

    Another troublesome detail is that CO2 content has been rising for a long time also, long before the industrial age:


    image277.gif

    It's actually far more scientifically honest to assume that whatever caused past warming trends is likley causing this one too. Of course that assumption carries no political implications with attendant calls for adoption of draconian 'eco-socialism'. Since socialism has proven to be pretty much unsustainable economically over the long term, it should come as no shock that true believers in that system (and you all know who you are :D) have really latched on to the CO2/global warming theory since it validates/re-energizes what amounts to their pet socio-economic system, a system that has largely been abandoned by the world.

    Above charts and data all came from:

    http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

    a site both 'believers' and skeptics should peruse.

    Jimbo
     
  8. harlemriverman
    Joined: Oct 2005
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    harlemriverman Senior Member

    Well let me tell you lads what happens, and its not a pretty sight. Not a pretty sight at all! The first thing that happens is all us fat Americans that started this mess take off all our clothes. Opra too! And if that doesn't turn you into a pillar of salt, everyone migrates to the Jersey shore to drink globally warmed, British beer!!! Horrible!!!
     
  9. Raggi_Thor
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    Raggi_Thor Nav.arch/Designer/Builder

    I think it's like this:
    CO2 is a "climate gas", it absorbs energy of certain wavelengths,
    BUT a certain amount of CO2 is able to absorb all the energy of this wavelength, we are now above this level and adding more CO2 doesn't mean more absorption.

    This is my understanding of an explanation given by a professor in physics. He also adds that most of the "climate scientists" know very little of physics, thermodynamics and other "hard" subjects.
     
  10. Vega
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    Vega Senior Member

    Yes, concluding, Climatologists are just dumb asses and don’t know what they are talking about.

    On the post38 of this thread I have posted some quotations from an article written by James E. Hansen and published in the American Scientific.

    James E. Hansen is one of the world’s leading climatologists, he is the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which is a division of the NASA and a unit of the Columbia University Earth Institute located on the Columbia campus in New York City. Dr. Hansen was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (USA) in 1995.

    Dr Hansen primary research for the past 25 years has been on studies and
    computer simulations of the Earth's climate, for the purpose of understanding the human impact on global climate.

    Dr Hansen has a Ph.D. in Physics, and other formal qualifications in “HARD SUBJECTS”, like a B.A. in Mathematics and a M.S. in Astronomy.

    I guess that explains why “"climate scientists" know very little of physics, thermodynamics and other "hard" subjects.”


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen

    Reading the content of this thread one would assume that most of the people in this forum think that Global warming has nothing to do with the increasing levels of CO2 that result from human industrialization.

    But of course, that is not true. The pool results show that the vast majority thinks that human industrialization and the resulting increase in CO2 emissions is to blame.

    Then, why are there so few posts defending this point of view?

    I guess that the majority have understood that this is a much more complicated subject than boatbuilding and that the knowledge and the data needed to understand the whole issue is too vast to be meaningfully discussed by amateurs.

    The majority has chosen to rely on the dedicated professionals that have studied the subject for a long time, and are specialized in it, the Climatologists. Those are the ones who know what they are talking about, in what refers global warming and climate change.

    They are almost unanimously in saying that human activity and CO2 production is contributing alarmingly to the “Global Warming”.



    PS. If the vast majority of cardiologists say that you need an urgent heart surgery, would you rely on their opinion or in the opinion of some other no specialized doctors that say that it is useless, or on some others that say that you are going to die anyway?

    Would you put your life on the line and try to find for yourself (with the rudimentary knowledge that you would have on the subject) who is right?
    :eek:




    Cheers
     
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  11. Raggi_Thor
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    Raggi_Thor Nav.arch/Designer/Builder

    I don't say that it's this way or the other.
    No need to be ironic, many scientists in physics think that the climate models are questionable :)

    Who are the climate scientists?
    Take a look at Cicero, the Norwegian center for Climate research,
    http://www.cicero.uio.no/employees/index.asp?lang=en

    The director has a phd in biology.
    Then you have 5 persons in the information department,
    6 persons in administration
    and 13 scientific emplyees:
    Dr. scient. (Ph. D) in atmospheric chemistry
    Ph.D. in political science
    Cand. Scient in meteorology
    Ph.D. student, Cand.polit, Interest groups, lobbyism
    - Cand. polit. (political science) , Dr.philos, professor in political science
    Cand. Real in meteorology, Dr. Philos
    Journalist? (no education mentioned)
    PhD student, Cand. Scient. (MSc.) degree in Geography
    Dr. Scient. in physical chemistry
    Master's degree in meteorology
    Dr.polit degree in political science
    PhD student , Politics of CO2 capture and storage technology
    Master's degree in political science
     
  12. SteamFreak
    Joined: Jun 2006
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    SteamFreak USMM

    Because, amazingly, there are those with the same qualifications as those who raise the banner of global warming who say the models are error ridden, the studies slanted, and so on... This is the vaunted "PEER REVIEW"... so why do you dismiss the peers? Here are just a few people among that group who disagree

    These are petitions signed by various experts protesting or calling for more serious study of the supposed Global Warming, they constitute a large number of scientists from a wide variety of fields.

    Oregon Petition (1998)
    http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm

    Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming (1992)
    http://www.sepp.org/statment.html

    Heidelberg Appeal (1992)
    http://www.sepp.org/heidelberg_appeal.html
    numerous nobel prize winners signed this one

    The Leipzig Declaration (1997)
    http://www.sovereignty.net/p/clim/leipzig97.htm
    http://www.sepp.org/LDsigs.html



    And just so there's no confusion, yes I am an amateur engineer. Part time, I work with a yacht service repairing electrical and mechanical systems as well as installing new electrical components. I've had the engineer's Physics courses in college (the US Merchant Marine Academy) as well as chemistry and meteorology. I am not a climatologist or physicist. But I'm not stupid either... the only thing that separates me from every climatologist out there is education. There is not some mythical IQ number to understand what man currently knows about climate mechanics. It might take a high IQ to puzzle out new knowledge, but even the average college mathematician can prove E=mc^2....

    So when someone spouts some facts, alittle analysis, and a conclusion at me, I don't just nod my head. Logic is logic is logic. If there's a progression of facts which prove causation, not association, then its not hard to understand. But when things don't add up or the facts only show that two events are related, but not one the result of the the other, I don't shrug my shoulders and say "hey, he's the expert." I question how they came to such a conclusion based on facts which don't seem to prove their result. Its like being a juror... I don't have to know how the DNA person went to school for 4 years to be able to put drops of blood in a test tube, I just need to know how one sample compares to the other and the logical steps in between that say "these are the same".

    So, I favor the non-global warming side simply because the data which both sides say is true, namely that there's been warming and cooling periods before and that they seem to form a cycle, seems to suggest it might happen again. And since CO2 is blamed as one of the problems, I find it curious that not one global warming expert seems to deny that the rise began well before the industrial age. Certainly, I've read and seen graphs where they show an increase in the rate of CO2 rise in tune with the revolution but that data has been called into question. And when the cry of "the glaciers are melting!" rings out, I look to the other side of the debate and their reply is "so? its happened a dozen times before" and when I look back to the warming side, nobody has an answer why this time should be any different.

    So instead, Vega, of going along with the crowd, who the loudest experts with the most news time say are correct, I much prefer to look and decide for myself, using the intelligence that allows me to do my part time job successfully without ever taking an electrical engineering course taught by some "expert". I simply read books and educated myself.
     
  13. harlemriverman
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    harlemriverman Senior Member


    I applaud your study of contemporary science but note for the record that it was not so long ago that your faith, or what you describe as the faith of some silent majority, would have been placed in a community that devoutly proclaimed the world to be flat while a small band of humble and, apparently in your opinion, feeble minded boat builders quietly proved them unequivocally wrong. PS they were quite drunk when they did it!
     
  14. Vega
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    Vega Senior Member


    Sorry about the Ironie, I mean it (after reading your post).

    About the staff composition of "Cicero, the Norwegian center for Climate research" I have to agree with you. Those Phds in political science have no business there. But that's a Norwegian problem:p

    That’s about the opposite perspective of looking at climatology, comparing with Dr Hansen. He looks at the problem from a global perspective and from an interdisciplinary way were physics and astrophysics are the center.


    “As a college student in Iowa, I was attracted to science and research by James Van Allen's space science program in the physics and astronomy department. Since then, it only took me a decade or so to realize that the most exciting planetary research involves trying to understand the climate change on Earth that will result from anthropogenic changes of the atmospheric composition.

    One of my research interests is radiative transfer in planetary atmospheres, especially interpreting remote sounding of the Earth's atmosphere and surface from satellites. Such data, appropriately analyzed, may provide one of our most effective ways to monitor and study global change on the Earth. The hardest part is trying to influence the nature of the measurements obtained, so that the key information can be obtained.

    I am also interested in the development and application of global numerical models for the purpose of understanding current climate trends and projecting humans' potential impacts on climate. The scientific excitement in comparing theory with data, and developing some understanding of global changes that are occurring, is what makes all the other stuff worth it. “


    http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/

    This is the leading man, not “Cicero”, and for him, Climatology obviously is centered in Physics.
     

  15. Vega
    Joined: Apr 2005
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    Vega Senior Member

    Nah! Fact is that normal people (the ones you call "feeble minded" people) insisted that the world was flat, while scientists had said, many many time before ( + thousand years) that Earth was round.


    “The first person known to have advocated a spherical shape of the Earth is Pythagoras (6th century BC).

    By the time of Pliny the Elder (1st century) at the latest, however, the Earth's spherical shape was generally acknowledged among the learned in the western world.

    At that time Ptolemy derived his maps from a curved globe and developed the system of latitude and longitude (see clime). His writings remained the basis of European astronomy throughout the Middle Ages, although Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ca. 3rd to 7th centuries) saw occasional arguments in favour of a flat Earth. “

    The modern misconception that people of the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat first entered the popular imagination in the nineteenth century”.


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth

    Fact is that some of those that you have called “feeble minded people” still insist that the Earth is flat.:rolleyes:

    http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm
     
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