Global Warming? are humans to blame?

Thank you for your considered and experienced posts Kagraham.
You are dealing with this issue with a level of care and patience that I (and a few others) long since gave up upon (if I ever had it ).

I don't mean to throw around aspersions,
but I have been rather fascinated by the way the poll results have been changing this last month or so.
The ratio has been been rather quickly changing (towards the sceptical side), after what appeared to be a relatively stable growth in a ratio (around 65%-35%) from the beginning, which then lead into a sustained drop off in anyone voting. This now seems to have changed, and either a lot of people who chose not to vote for months have now voted, or maybe a influx of 'new members' are adding their votes.
Maybe (or I should say probably) I am just being suspicious or paranoid- or some may even say I am simply annoyed that things 'are not going as much in the way as I would like them to' (as no doubt I could be critiscised of). I don't believe this is the case. I was, and am, very interested in the breakdown of the numbers out there how ever they go down.

I have a few regrets about creating this thread.
Mainly that I didn't make it clear from the get-go something along the lines of what Matt had to say soon after on the matter.

I think that if I had made this clear from the beggining, along with a request that anyone posting here is to avoid simplistic and steroetypical insults, name calling and and general pointless squabbling, then this could have been a much better and more productive thread.

Having already raised my 'fascination' at the turn of the tide in votes, I have also recently wondered if making this poll a silent one was the best idea.
In spite of my doubt and suspicion that it may be being abused, I still think a silent poll was the best idea.
I wanted to encourage people to vote on their personal opinions, feelings and beliefs on the matter, rather than on their desire to identify themselves with one side of the debate, and the political implications of such.

So if anyone thinks I am accusing them of something... I am sorry.
This is not my intention.
I have long since given up fighting this battle here, and I do not wish to insult or fight with anyone.
I am simply sharing a sneaking suspicion that I have had- which I freely admit is probably just that- a paranoid suspicion...


(In the spirit of Matts request, (as is visable in my personal profile) I should say that I am not a scientist, but rather my areas of ongoing study are 'Development Studies', and 'History and Philosophy of Science'- where I aim to better understand the social, economic, political and scientific interactions of such things as poverty, underdevelopment, climate change, etc, etc, and hopefully some of their possible solutions.)

Thanks
Hans.

 

Try living here in Australia.
Stage 3 water restrictions. Hottest driest spring since records began. Severe ozone warnings. (These are part of our weather forecasts) Sun burn on a cloudy day is now no problem. New Zealand has got it even worse. Fire index through the roof. Its going to be a crap summer. God knows how many hectares are going to burn with houses and probably people too. Last week we had 200 fires in the state of Victoria in ONE DAY ! We are still months away from our hottest time of year. Alarmist ? No just the plain crappy facts. Just heard on the radio that they are bringing in yet another skycrane water bomber (at several million a season) If this is a "normal natural cycle" then it must have a bloody long frequency. The people in the pacific islands are going to have to come and shack up with us as their islands go under. Cant recall the last time that happened. But its happeneing now. Go to www.bom.vic.gov.au and have a look at the climate outlooks. l know its fun for some, to play mind games over the net .(Great to be just another bit of typing ,without having to have a face to it. ) Yes we here in Australia will cop it first (and already are) but catch up will happen pretty fast. Weather and long term predictions are important to serious boat lovers. Its a shame that we have done so little so late. And l am ashamed to say that my government wont even ratify kyoto.

l hope it rains soon.
Martin.

 

This is just a subjective observation. As a kid going to school (Closer to 50 then 40yrs old now). So quite a long time ago. I can remember that quite frequently in the winter months it would be cold enough that all the puddles in the playground would be frozen over and there would be little icicles hanging off the fencing wire where the dew had frozen overnight.
I cannot honestly recall (it's not alzheimers) the last time I saw that sort of thing. Certainly very rare occurence from what I remember 40 something years ago.
Make of it what you will. I know I seem to burn in the sun a lot easier then I did years ago.

Mychael

 

For anyone interested.
'The Stern review on the economics of climate change'
no doubt you have heard it on the news etc.
A fairly big read, its gonna take me a few months.

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/indep...nomics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm

 

If i understand you correctly, yes, naturaly geological cycles are quite long relative to our lifetimes. Geological time covers billions of years, and most of these cycles have been happening for slightly less time than that. So yes, for these cycles to just be starting now, and lasting several thousands of years is quite insignificant in relative terms. However, in perspective of your and my lives, it is quite hard to consider insignificant! Just hang on, because its only going to keep changing, in either direction. Fortunately though, b/c this cycle is made up of trends so spread out, it may be really hot and dry one year, but moderate the next.

Hansp77, thanks for your compliments. Whether good or bad, i did not bother to read the 13 something pages of posts. I just wanted to give some informative insight so that people, who wish to know, may understand how these accusations and models are derived. I hope it helps those of you who wish to understand, and if it hasn't and you still want to know, let me know, I'd love to potentially broaden(sp) my understanding to help you out!
-karl

 

toot: "So, spending is good (economically speaking). And spending is exactly what will happen when people are poor and need goods to support a given comfort level, and the poorer they are, the MORE of their paycheck they will spend in order to be more comfortable (Maslow's Hierarchy of needs). What does this have to do with national defense?

Well, Military Spending is one of the few areas where nearly ALL of the money is spent within the United States. We don't buy foreign aircraft, we don't buy foreign guns, or foreign missiles. Every dollar spent in the United States is pumped into the United States' economy. In other words, the large military spending sounds extreme, but in actuality, it isn't that bad because it helps spur economic growth. In other words, our overall economic health is increased by spending the money in a way which supports American workers and American business. It's not as good as hiring unskilled laborers who need a roof over their head, but hiring extra blue-collar production workers and engineers nevertheless does have a dramatic income on GDP.

I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's a wise use of resources. However, I will say that, as I see it, defense spending is a lot like "public works projects" from an economics standpoint."

After reading some more pages, i dont know how it got to this topic but I am interested in it as well. After the Great Depression, Governments around the world have been influenced by this keynesian thought, That to increase economic growth, we must spend. The basis of what Keynes tells us is that in order to reach equilebrium level in the GDP, or when GDP equals total expenditure, we must have an active government sector. The only factor of total expenditure (rather simplified) is governtment expenditure. This " somewhat comprehensive program of socializatoin of investmant" is fully explained in Keynes "General Theory" on page 378.h Investment depends largely on the market expectancy of capital (MEC), interest rates can raise this and therefore investment expenditure, but is often inadequate to close the gap in GDP equ. or to solve unemployment.
Obviously, as pointed out by some members from other countries, our countries fiscal policy makers DO NOT consider GDP when making spending decisions. Therefore, government expenditure is in no way dependant upon GDP. As you expalined, due to what is often called the multiplier process, A government expenditure may increase total GDP by say 4 times as much as the original expenditure, when the marginal propensity to save is say 75%, meaning out of every dollar we earn, we save 75 cents.

So...I agree, much of the reason for our expenditure of national defense and war is due to the fact that is all spent "in house". But, what is the difference between this expenditure, and say more expenditure in other welfare programs, research towards renewable energy, infrastructure, e.t.c. instead of research and developments towards the 747 that employs 4-6 super powered lasers that can target and burn up a rocket/missle in a matter of 10 secs that i watched a show about on the history channel, althought i realize this may actually be deamed necessary... Anyways you get my point. Is there a difference between this spending in house towards war and spending on other welfare programs?

Maybe this should be a different thread altogether, but its been brought up once.... oh well
-karl

 

Hum... considering the absurd and ridiculous political importance that this subject has in the USA, perhaps Jeff can take a look at the ones that have voted in this pool recently, to see if we don’t have any "ghosts" among us.

 

Interesting, maybe its just that the discussion has revealed the truth to more people so the voting has changed. ....You think?

 

Jimisbell,
I will say this very clearly.
I think it is more than just a possibility that the voting is changing legitimately.
I think it is a high probability.


I raised my fascination at the results, as I have simply watched enough voting trends (like when I loose on election nights) to be surprised by sudden turnarounds. What surprised me also was a pick up in the voting again after it seemed most who where interested in voting had already done so. Hence the thought about new members, or 'new' members .

Either way, extrapolating trends out of a pool of 45 voters by me is unwise in the extreme- (the law of small numbers).
Just had some thoughts, and shared them...

On revealing the truth from the discussion in this thread?
The majority of the arguments posed here against anthropic warming are IMHO simply of the recylced and recylced internet-type- mostly not issues that actually engage or concern the scientific community.

Check out this site, it's a bit of fun,
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-to-talk-to-global-warming-sceptic.html
Most of the arguments raised here are dealt with there, you may be familiar with a few, you may also find the reasons why some of the ones you haven't found or thought of yet are also wrong (check out the conversations under the topics not just the topics- its a big site).

If you find A few things ill considered too light-weight- it is linked to a much heavier site
realclimate.org/
Also interesting, but getting pretty deep into the real particular and technical scientific stuff rather than the more simplistic big picture models and ideas (that I personally find a lot easier to get my head around).

No insults intended.

Hans.

 

Well, in a pool you can not change your vote and there are 46 votes on this pool. The total number of different posters in this thread is 29. The last posters seem to have voted on “Global Warming is occuring as a direct result of Human Activity”.

I am not saying that there is a fraud here, but I would like to have it checked.

 

First, I thought the trend was toward "humans NOT causing global warming"???

If that were the case I can see this discussion causing an up trend in that answer.

Second, can not someone vote without posting to this list, i.e. is it required to post to get access to the poll?

 

Opened up the computer this morning and before heading straight to the forum I usually check out the BBC World page. Well this morning was 'No more fish in 50 years'.

Probably not much to do with global warming ( or is it?) but what a headline. The point is that this is definately a human encouraged situation.

 

Should start fish farming now..

 

This line in your post trivializes objections to the arguments posed by some scientists that suggest humans are causing the curent bout of climate change. I know that is how you feel, but feelings do not create truth.

The truth is that the arguments against anthropogenic CO2 causing climate change are not at all trivial, and not addressed by 'believers'. Scientists can be believers, too; science does not happen in a vacuum!

The most current thinking on the matter is that the sun's cycles are the most likely cause of climate cycles. This seems rather simple, but it is not. The sun throws a wide range of radiative and energetic particle emissions at us, each with it's own interaction with our atmosphere. It's not simple at all.

Even believers have acknowledge now that the sun's impact on climate change is the dominant one, and that it is far greater than all the greenhouse gases, of which CO2 is nearly the least important anyway, comprising only <.04% of the atmosphere. Nevertheless they cling to the idea that somehow CO2 must be dreadfully bad since we (humans) make a bit of it, and can stop making some of that which we now make, if we choose, though this will be very costly. This has clearly devolved to a philosophical argument, not a scientific one.

There is good evidence that the minor greenhouse gases, of which CO2 is one, are NOT the regulators of the earth's temperature. If CO2 were a regulator, the system would have gone off equillibrium long ago, never returning. The natural variations in CO2 swamp out our tiny contribution, making the entire argument unplausible. At something around 360 PPM presently, the earth is now CO2 starved, sice it has been over 6000PPM in the geologic past. This period was NOT associated with catastrophic temperature increases using accepted reliable proxy data.

The fact that the rise in CO2 began thousands of years ago, long before the beginning of large-scale human releases of CO2, should further cause you to reconsider the plausibility of the argument. No spike in CO2 levels is noted in the geologic record coinciding with the beginning of 'signicant' anthropogenic releases.

The 'believers' are left in the position of postulating ever more complex and convoluted mechanisms by which this minor gas could somehow leverage the whole heat content of the earth's atmosphere rather than accept the demise of their pet theory.

Are you a believer, Hans?

Jimbo

 

Jimbo,
I wonder if you even read my posts?

I would of thought my position was pretty clear.

You want a direct answer I suppose.
Though I find your question a little loaded, I will give it to you anyway.

YES.

I believe the best explanation that science has to offer at the present time is that anthropic GHG emissions are largely responsible for for the current and rapid rise in temperatures/climate change.

Do you believe that you don't have 'feelings' on this matter, or that you don't have 'beliefs'?

You bring up the solar thing again.
Within your own thread (http://boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=14205&highlight=is the environment) I had this to say on the matter.

Now this hardly resolves that issue.
Please note that I made the point that Solar influence "is actually one of the stronger areas where future advances in science could very potentially challenge the theory of anthropic climate change."

As a student of the 'History and Philosophy of Science', I am well aware of the social (or political if you prefer) inner workings of Science and its generation of 'facts'. The cannons of HPS literature (Khun, Latour, etc, etc), and the discourses they have generated, have for a long time been percieved as a threat to what scientists attempt to construe as 'certainty', and regarded by many scientists as 'anti-science'.

Quite simply though, it would take a great deal more sceptisism than I can muster (and on my own part- arogance as well) for me to dis-believe what is by and large scientific consensus.

There are of course scientists, like you claim, who do precisely this.
I freely admit that these individuals are more qualified and justified in making these judgments than I am.
However, if you cannot recognise that they are in a dwindling minority (who's cause itself is not helped by some rather questionable actions, funding and academic standards by some of the louder members) then you really need to investigate a little deeper, and do some serious reading within serious scientific and academic journals.
---
It is quarter to two in the morning.
I am going to be up all weekend writing papers.
In other words I have better things to do.

I will repeat this again, as I have said a few times before.

I scincerely hope that you are right and I am wrong.

Hans.