Global Climate Change Poll: Do you Believe It Is Happening?
Offline Okay, so there are a lot of differing opinions out there on this topic. I do not profess to be anything close to an expert on this, but from the evidence on both sides, I currently side with the side that says humans are adding to the Greenhouse effect in a negative way. Here are the questions:
1. Do you believe anthropogenic CO2 is responsible for the current warming of Earth's climate?
2. If you don't believe so, what is the main reason for your position?
For myself my response is:
1. 1 Yes 0 no
2. n/a
Here are a few opposing articles from the upcoming Skeptic Magazine that is focused on this issue
This focuses mainly on the unreliability of General Circulation Models and the CO2 /temperature increase correlation does not imply causation.
This says climate models are not empirical, based on correlations in such records, but incorporate our best understanding of the physical, chemical, and biological processes being modeled. Hence, evidence that temperature changes precede changes in carbon dioxide concentrations in some climate changes on the timescales of ice ages, for example, only shows that temperature changes can affect the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, which in turn feed back on temperature changes. Such evidence does not invalidate the laws of thermodynamics and radiative transfer, or the conclusion that the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the past decades is human induced.
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda
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No.
Temperature cycles the earth naturally goes through. The earth has been shown to be in a warming stage anyway which I, from what evidence and studies I've seen, believe to be the cause. That said, I also agree that CO2 is making things worse. I don't believe it to be "the cause", but it rather it is just one of the many affects of human overpopulation (deforestation, farming practices, artificial landscaping through cities and roads etc etc) which are making things heat up faster than it normally would through the cycle that was already started. There is evidence of heating phases (plural) much worse and faster than this in the geological history which don't have evidence for causes, but with the amount of CO2 and other changes we have made to the earth I find it hard to believe the affect would be immeasurable given the right control data.
If anyone wants to start a debate with me over this, don't bother. I've already said I agree there's a measurable affect I just don't think the warming is purely due to humans. My "no" is purely a fault of the wording of the first question. I agree with all the changes global warming activists want, at the very least I'd like to see them to reduce how quickly we're raping the finite resources of our planet. I would love it if we could get to a stage where EVERYTHING is re-usable and/or renewable. Other than my power usage from my computer I'm doing my small part to reduce my footprint.
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1. Yes.
2. The effects of greenhouse gas on a closed environment's temperature is well documented. The Earth's mean temperature increase is, likewise, well documented. The destructive effects are also starting to pop their heads up to sneer at us (in varying ways across the planet. In Canada, we're looking at absolutely devastating deforestation as a variety of tree-killing insects that are only held back by sufficiently cold winters are no longer being held back, and are literally killing forests so quickly it would make most forestry companies blush.
Those articles are the sort of thing that would piss me off, except that global warming is so widely recognized in my neck of the wood that they're largely laughed at. Of course, that doesn't stop anyone from going, "Ah, who gives a shit," and cashing-in on the oil and gas industry.
They attack the climate models. They attack the fact that there are unknown factors.
Sound like a familiar line of 'argument'? It should, given that it's the same sort of argument from ignorance fallacy YECs spout to 'disprove' evolution.
Do they bother looking at the actual temperature records? No. Do they bother addressing the actual physical evidence for climate change? No. Do they so much as bother looking at the actual science behind greenhouse gasses and why the cause temperature variation? Of course not.
Our knowledge is not absolutely complete, and it's just a 'theory' anyway, ergo global warming is bunk.
Get fucked.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Thingy has a good point (read the point, don't get stuck on the "no"
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"Do you believe anthropogenic CO2 is responsible for the current warming of Earth's climate?"
Is it wholely responsible, maybe not. But the greenhouse effect caused by CO2 is real, and we are pumping CO2 into the atmosphere that has been locked away underground while deforesting the planet so that less CO2 is being locked away by plants. This will definately be accelerating the effect.
We're installing solar panels soon (just waiting on the final quote so we can do our maths). We are hoping that the savings on our energy bill will cover most of the loan. I don't care about making money from it (apparently should pay itself off in 10 years). I don;t care if it costs me a bit extra (as long as I don't lose my house, that would be pointless).
Zen-atheist wielding Occam's katana.
Jesus said, "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division." - Luke 12:51
I'm not any kind of expert, but I say Yes.
Even if it isn't, I think the whole thing is at least a good excuse to get people to stop raping the earth silly.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
I saw George W. Bullshit giving a speech the other day about how he wants to speed up oil production in order to lower the price. I mean I can certainly see his argument, the price of fuel is going up alarmingly and there is a massive economic crisis at the moment. But I think it is becoming clear that alternative energy (but not biofuel!!) has to be researched, or we face a global catastrophe greater than this economic downturn. Hydrogen fuel seems promising, its only emission is water, the only problem is that to get the hydrogen they have to get it from hydrocarbons, meaning you have to pollute in order to get the fuel.
Much of the power in Britain comes from fossil fuel. The problem is that we have an abundance of wind in this country, we could quite easily run our houses of it, but the government targets for renewable energy are so stupidly low. I think large scale windfarms can cause disruption to migrating birds etc, but we don't even need them, a small turbine on the roof of every house would do the trick. They're fairly simple machines, a few blades attached to a generator or dynamo, I could probably make one myself, and I'm not exactly the practical hands-on type.
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No informed person is saying that warming is purely due to human activities, but the evidence that CO2 released from burning fossil fuel is causing a major increase in global warming. The trend over the last few thousand years was in fact a slight cooling, suddenly swinging sharply up after fossil fuel burning activities became significant somewhere around the 18th/19th century.
The isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2 indicates that a significant component of it has come from fossil fuel rather than variations in the active carbon cycle of current life.
The earth has been warmer in the past, the problem now is that we are clearly adding to natural processes and increasing the RATE of warming above what would otherwise occur naturally, which will make it much harder for life to adapt.
There is some uncertainty in the data, of course, but we are no longer talking about barely measurable effects.
The worrying thing is that there are indications that the IPCC predictions may very well have been too conservative, especially with regard to polar warming and glaciers slipping into the ocean, due to warm ocean and rain and melt water getting into where the ice rests on the underlying rock, and allowing it to slide much faster. Once ice has slid off the land into the ocean, its effects on sea-level will have occurred, it does not need the ice to melt.
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We know that the Earth has gone through cycles, and we know that human carbon emissions affect the climate as well as the clearing of forests and jungles. I really don't know to what degree we are changing the environment or how it will affect most of the life on the planet. A climate change will benefit some and condemn others. Polar bears for example are looking pretty much screwed where their future is concerned. I haven't really researched the issue enough to have a realistic ideal of what to expect.
"I've yet to witness circumstance successfully manipulated through the babbling of ritualistic nonsense to an imaginary deity." -- me (josh)
If god can do anything, can he make a hot dog so big even he can't eat all of it?
Of course. Nothing has just one cause. The people who say it isn't happening are either as deluded as creationists or lying because they have a financial interest in continuing as we have. The you have idiots who bring up nonsense about sunspots or that "scientists in the 70s thought Earth was cooling" - bullshit.
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The thing with oil production is that it's going to become more expensive for the refineries exponentially, because fossil fuels are not easily replaced--it takes millions of years, as we all know. So I don't think it's going to make any different in the long run if oil production is sped up. If anything, it seems like it would make it more expensive. Not only do they have to refine it faster, but they have to work with less and less ideal crude oil, they have to go deeper and deeper to find it, they have to expend more effort/resources refining it, etc.
I really think that hydrogen and solar power are going to be the ways to go (at least for automobiles) in the future.
Solar power would make the car very very hot. Unless it could also power an air conditioning system in the car. Hydrogen power hasn't been developed to a CO2 neutral level yet, because it relies on hydrocarbons. However, if scientists find a way of getting hydrogen from water, it would be the perfect solution.
I have a big problem with biofuel. It seems that in order to make it, either vast areas of rainforest has to go, lessening the ability of the Earth to soak up CO2, or we cut into our food crop production thus leading to shortages and inflation of food prices. This is happening now and quite simply has to stop, it isn't actually green.
The film 'The Day After Tomorrow' for all its overblown conclusions and probably not very good science (?) has an important message: the planet is more important the the economy.
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I don't think it's possible to speed up oil production in order to lower prices at all. Most of America's oil already comes from Canada as well as oil bi-products. The problem with oil prices is not in production, which keeps going up for the most part, it is with the way oil is traded globally and a great deal of the problem is with OPEC and the fact that oil companies stand to make record profit after record profit off of the increase in oil prices. There is little incentive there for oil prices to lower and it's compounded by the fact that there isn't going to be an actual shortage (you know, when we start to run out of oil) anytime soon, but rather a shortage caused by problems in or with OPEC nations as in the 'shortages' in the 70's which cause the markets to be unstable.
On topic - I agree with the statements of most of the people here. Humans make an impact on the environment but cannot be the only factor affecting climate change. The aspirations of environmentalists are nevertheless important and need to be made real or we'll kill our planet and that would, assuredly, suck.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Perhaps my question wasn't phrased as it well as it could have been. I know the earth goes through series of warmings then ice ages(at least in the last 650000 years we can see in the ice measurements). It is also true that we are in a natural warming period, but the question should be...
Is anthropogenic CO2 adding to the rate of temperature increase(on top of the natural warming pattern) in a way that will make it harder for humans(most living things as well) to adapt to those added changes and incur consequences?
Kevin-Those articles espouse opposing viewpoints, the second one would say yes to this poll.
Ronin-I take your opinion to be Yes from your statements(let me know if I am wrong)
Jacob-I think you are leaning to yes(let me know if I am wrong)
Bob Spence-Yes
hazindu-undecided
Thomathy-I think you are leaning to yes(let me know if I am wrong)
jmm-I think you are leaning to yes(let me know if I am wrong)
So to wrap up, that is
YES-9
NO-1
Undecided-1
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda
Guess my opinion doesn't count
EDIT-my bad.Thought you were writing everyone who had voted..anyway.Moving on
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
I don't doubt that it's happening. I was admitting that I don't really know the details.
"I've yet to witness circumstance successfully manipulated through the babbling of ritualistic nonsense to an imaginary deity." -- me (josh)
If god can do anything, can he make a hot dog so big even he can't eat all of it?
We know with pretty reasonable accuracy just how much CO2 we're putting into the atmosphere. We know with mathematical precision what effect an increase in CO2 has in a small scale "atmosphere." We know with precision what the makeup of the earth's atmosphere is.
The only thing we don't know is how many unknown variables there are and what effect they will have.
All that to say that it seems undeniable that we're having some effect. Personally, I think it's big enough to represent a real problem, but not as bad as all the doomsday predictions.
If you ask me, I think we aren't going to need global warming to fuck up our planet. Between all the non-biodegradable single use plastic wrappers, utensils, to-go boxes, cd cases, all the pollutants from manufacturing, overconsumption of aquatic resources, the destruction of the coral reefs, not to mention all the roads that are fucking up mating patterns for snakes (one of my friends did her PhD on this topic... fucked up stuff!) and other crawly things, to the rash of bees dying off...
(INHALE)
And then, you've got detergent going into washing machines all over the place and getting into the groundwater, and you've got the expansion of deserts, and even with the "natural" warming of the globe, most of the arable land in Asia will be underwater at some point, not to mention Florida, New York City, and Holland. And just to make things really bad, the rainforests really are disappearing, and even though the U.S. population is stabilizing somewhat, the world as a whole is just getting more and more crowded, and pretty soon all of those people are going to want individually plastic wrapped disposable single use everything...
...
..
I think I got a little off topic... sorry.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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Hamby..."I think I got a little off topic... sorry."
Oh you'll pay....you'll pay!
Loc, I was just tallying those who didn't formally state yes, no, undecided as you realized, not minimizing your contribution.
EDIT-didn't see Hazindu's second post till after I posted this
Yes-11
No-1
Undecided-0
As far as not being done in by Global Warming effects, I concur. Even if Global Warming is not a result of fossil fuel consumption from human beings, the pollution and political strife caused as a result of it source of primary, rapidly depleting energy is a net negative. As there are a million ways to skin a cat, so too are there equal ways to fuck the earth. I was just focusing on this one, which implies very real, very extreme lifestyle changes on a global scale in the immediate future, if we heed the task of counteracting the threat imposed.
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda
I guess this means we need to get the scientists working on reusable condoms right away...lol
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda
I was thinking of saying something about condoms being the only good disposable thing on earth, but I figured I'd already derailed your thread enough.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
The Bee issue is actually what frightens me more than anything else - and that's a mighty pile to get on top of.
The honeybee is, right now, more or less totally fucked. The worst part?
Humans had very little to do with it.
There's this damn super-parasite that's killing them off all over the place, and stopping the spread is a monolithic task. On top of that, there's CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder), which nobody can even fucking figure-out the cause of, and is ruining beekeeping operations across the globe. The honeybee is now completely dependent on human intervention to survive as a species.
If the honeybee kicks the bucket? We have a matter of months to survive ourselves. No industrial-scale pollination will result in an agricultural failure of horrifying scale.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940