Two meter sea level rise unstoppable: experts
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There's an interview in the Globe today with Richard Dawkin (sorry can't link to it, globe site is down), about his experiences trying to get people to understand evolution. Yes, evolution is also a theory, he says but the people who won't look at the evidence are either blatantly or willfully ignorant. A recent survey says 40% of American's don't believe in evolution.
Climate change is the same way. Yes there are questions they are still understanding, yes the models are still a work in progress, but no, there is no doubt that anthropogenic climate change is under way. The IPCC represents the sumation of the work of reputable scientists around the world. They have argued and cross checked and confirmed the results. So the question for me that remains is that those who deny the sumation of modern science is are you blatantly or willfully ignorant. That is, are you just too stupid to understand, or are intentionally trying to not understand in order to justify the continuation of your ways?
Climate change is the same way. Yes there are questions they are still understanding, yes the models are still a work in progress, but no, there is no doubt that anthropogenic climate change is under way. The IPCC represents the sumation of the work of reputable scientists around the world. They have argued and cross checked and confirmed the results. So the question for me that remains is that those who deny the sumation of modern science is are you blatantly or willfully ignorant. That is, are you just too stupid to understand, or are intentionally trying to not understand in order to justify the continuation of your ways?
The IPCC does not actually represent the work of scientist arounnd the globe, it represents the work of a group of scientists, some of whom had their names appended to teh report without their knowledge.
The issue has by no means been sttled except by groups on both sides that want to further their own agendas.
Global warming is a big dollar business and the people pushing it need it going full stream ahead so that it creates its own critical mass and by the time there are some actual answers that can be replicated and actually include all the variables that the modeling needs there will be no way to stop the forward momentum.
If global warming is such a catasrophy in the making why have none of the treaties to try and contain or reduce it included the largest producers of greenhouse gasses?
China, India , Russia are all in the top 5 producers but the treaties specifically exclude them, the USA refused to sign on because Kyoto would have destroyed their economy ( they apparantly did not want any help destroying it ).
The treaty was aimed at North America specifically to transfere money from north america to the rest of the world.
The global climate has been constantly changing since there has been weather. The temperature vs Time graph over history sort of resembles a sine wave going above and below a " zero" line . The concept of the global warming group is that the temperature will continue to rise. The people who support that theory have taken a portion of that graph and extrapolated that the rise will continue. there is no evidence of that.
Until such time as the local weather man can predict next weeks weather with something close to reliablity please don't ask me to believe that they can predict the weather decades out with confidence.
Second provide me with a model that accounts for at the very least input energy and water vapour in the atmosphere that can actually predict last years results this year.
As soon as that happens I will be more than happy to look at the science.
I already touched on that 'sin curve' aspect of the argument. It's the rapidness and the expected extreme result that is viewed as alarming. The point of no return is not that far away for man. Not one of us will be around to say 'I guess you were right', when the temperature reaches it's 'anticipated' critical point. The only living things will be lower down the food chain and they won't care about us.
Just for fun someday, read the Farmers Almanac and read their weather forecasts for the YEAR. I've used them as often as the government run agencies for long term results and have ever been surprised. I wish I could put my finger on a copy of the comparison done maybe 25 years ago between the two records and the results might surprise you.
It's because of the extremes that are happening that cause the concern, but even when you do tell the right people, they don't always want to listen. remember the advance warning for New Orleans and the hurricane Pam exercise. The government was told and in no time it came true. Ooooops! Sorry N'Orleans, we didn't know, but they did know and chose not to listen.
It's because of the extremes that are happening that cause the concern, but even when you do tell the right people, they don't always want to listen. remember the advance warning for New Orleans and the hurricane Pam exercise. The government was told and in no time it came true. Ooooops! Sorry N'Orleans, we didn't know, but they did know and chose not to listen.
Ready to withstand the charge of repeating myself with a couple of appropriate change, I'll simply say read this posted once before;
Please note, that when you say proof/evidence/science, consider these 4 rules;
1) Nothing that was recorded by instruments such as weather-stations, ocean buoys or satellite data. Since all instruments are subject to error, we cannot use them to measure climate.
2) Nothing that has been corrected to account for the error of recording instruments. Any corrected data is a fudge. You must use only the raw data, which is previously disqualified under rule #1. Got that? OK, moving along…
3) Nothing that was produced by a computer model. We all know that you can’t trust computer models, and they have a terrible track record in any industrial, architectural, engineering, astronomical or medical context.
4) Nothing that was researched or published by a scientist. Such appeals to authority are invalid. We all know that scientists are just writing these papers to keep their grant money.
I'm guessing you are perfectly open to being convinced by real evidence — you know, the kind that doesn’t rely on scientific instruments, or corrected data, or computers, or results recorded by other scientists. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I’m sure you’d agree that any evidence which meets this criteria would be extraordinary indeed.
And before you accuse me of hypocrisy, I apply all these rules to myself. On a related note, how can you predict the climate next decade when you can’t predict the weather next week?
Before I go, here are some corollaries that devolve from the above 4 rules:
A) Any previous errors in climate science are automatic proof that new data is also wrong. For example, if you produce results which show a reduction in ice coverage, or a warming of ocean temperatures, all I have to do is shout ‘Hockey Stick!’ and the new data is instantly dispelled.
B) So, before I will accept your new data, it must retrospectively correct any errors in past data, and erase them from the space-time continuum as though they never occurred. Furthermore, if you do manage to perform this feat, your data will be invalid because corrected data is disqualified under rule #2.
C) Al Gore is a big fat hypocrite and a liar and a fraud who jets around the world and has a big house and eats puppies for breakfast.
D) Will somebody, please, somewhere, anywhere, address the science in Ian Plimer’s book? I mean, surely that’s not too much to ask? By the way, anybody who addresses the science in Ian Plimer’s book is just a nit-picker who hasn’t addressed the main issue.
E) Please, spare me your conspiracy theories. It’s not my fault that AGW is a giant hoax perpetrated by Big Green to take over the world in a socialist plot. I’m just trying to uncover the truth here, with the assistance of a lot of commentators, media personalities, corporate executives and hired scientists who just happen to share similar political views to my own.
F) Your position is based on religious faith, not on the science. I can tell because you pay attention to the scientific instruments, the corrected data, the computer models and the writings of published scientists, instead of what I know, deep in my heart to be the truth: that AGW is a giant hoax and a fraud.
G) If you ever refuse to debate this, that is proof that your position is untenable, you’re frightened of the truth and you don’t have the evidence.
But the short response could simply be if you don't believe the science, you can't except the truth and no proof is possible.
Which is a theory. A theory about theoretical science. So your problem is not with theory. So it must be with science. But then all science is theoretical. If it wasn't, it would be no different to a 5 year old with his butterfly catcher, who constantly says "heh, look at this totally new entity I just discovered". So, for you folks packing a dim bulb, I'm saying the above reasoning is akin to that of a 5 year old. As I've suggested before, it's fine to object, just do so with an argment at least semi-reasonable.
No
A theory is an unproven fact. Prove the fact and I will look at it. Or show validity in the theory beyond reproach.
From LS;
"If global warming is such a catasrophy in the making why have none of the treaties to try and contain or reduce it included the largest producers of greenhouse gasses?"
... because you're dealing with politicians, who someone might say are the worst polluters in the world.
So don't blame the science.
Who is the largest polluters, the Chinese or the Americans, it's neck and neck, although the average Chinese person produces way less pollution than the average American, there are 3.5 billion of them. It all depends on who doing the math.
"If global warming is such a catasrophy in the making why have none of the treaties to try and contain or reduce it included the largest producers of greenhouse gasses?"
... because you're dealing with politicians, who someone might say are the worst polluters in the world.
So don't blame the science.
Who is the largest polluters, the Chinese or the Americans, it's neck and neck, although the average Chinese person produces way less pollution than the average American, there are 3.5 billion of them. It all depends on who doing the math.
We really could care less if you want to look at scientific data or not. Surely
it would be an impossible task to prove anything scientific to you.
No, a theory is NOT an unproven fact. A theory is a set of statements, meant to provide an account - kind of a like a set of covering laws - of phenomena. That phenomena can sometimes be observed, sometimes not, sometimes detected, sometimes not, and in mnay instances, only known from its effects and not directly. Gravity is a theory, for instance. It is a theory about why a particular range of regularities in the world occur. Apples fall down if you drop them, they are observable in the act of falling, and Gravity is a theory of why this happens. Gravity sometimes does not apply, as when you want to keep a satellite in orbit - you need Relativity theory for that. So, in a sense, things like observable events need theories to make sense of why they happen.
Thus, theories are NOT unproven facts. The are accounts of things. As such, the gold standard of theories is not actually validity beyond reproach, which assumes theories are deductions from events and processes. Because theories are inferences, meant to cover as much stuff as feasible, the standard for evaluating them is closer to being consistency and fruitfulness. Anthropogenic causes of global warming, as a theory, is pretty consistent with known results. Natural cycles is closer to a theological answer because, just like people used to respond to fossils in geological strata by saying God must have put them there, now people just say the wind has always blown. Yeah, real science there.
Again, I am all for real debate. But bad arguments are just bad arguments, and when 'climate change deniers' keep using bad argments, well the rest of us wonder if they're really thinking things through or not.
Are you asking that question seriously? Same answer as why the tobacco industry continued selling tobacco even after they knew for a fact it was harmful.
The big producers know damn well that global warming is real and that they are the biggest contributors, but they care even more about making a buck.
Problems with the treaty don't undemrine the validity of the science. It is a fact that our current best supported science predicts that our carbon emissions will warm the planet.
You are flat wrong. There is ample evidence. It is unproved only to the same extent that the cancerous nature of tobacco is unproved. There remain a few rogue scientists who challenge the mainstream view, but global warming is the mainstream review because it is in fact well supported by the data.
You are doing something highly dishonest. You are writing about how the problem is complicated by local weather shifts and PRETENDING that this is something that has not already been accounted for in the studies on the topic.
That is dishonest, shame on you.
Apologies in advance for saying this, but if that is what you really think, you are an absolute moron.
If I put a pot on the stove I know it will boil. That does not mean I can predict the exact way in which the water in the pot will swirl.
Same thing with global warming. It is quite simple to predict the effects of some things on global temperature: If the sun gets hotter, earth will get hotter. That is a simple fact--but I still can't predict the weather.
In fact it is EXACTLY the same thing: Local weather is complicated for the exact same chaotic thermal interactions as the boiling pot is: You know it'll get hot, but you don't know which way the fluid will swirl.
The complexity in predicting local weather arises out of fluid dynamics, but those fluid dynamics are in the longer run irrelevant and that complexity goes away for the macro prediction: The pot will boil, the planet will warm, etc.
Equally, our current best science says that as the amount of carbon in the atmosphere rises the planet will warm. That has the same status as fact as "smoking causes cancer" does. Unproven, but highly likely to be true.
Either you already know this and you are being intellectually dishonest, trying to make this sound less settled than it is by throwing up sand--or you are ignorant of the subject entirely, and worse, talking as though you know something about a subject on which you know nothing.
So which is it? Dishonest? Or ignorant?
