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What's Really Warming the World?

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Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#101

Post by jjoonathan »

bunderbunder wrote: post #95
vivekd wrote: post #4

What makes me mad about these kinds of data based climate change arguments is that they don't engage with the data in an honest way. The huge problem is 1880 was one of the coldest years in history. That cold period was caused by volcanism, several volcanos erupted causing a cold period that lasted from the 1600s to the late 1800s. This period is known as the little ice age. The worst of this period was in 1816 which…

You're criticizing what you consider to be an oversimplification, and your criticism is itself based on an oversimplification. It seems you're implying that the argument being presented is basically just, "The world is getting warmer, aaaa!!!" There's much more to it than that. In fact, even the article you're criticizing provides a more nuanced justification than that, which opens you up to criticism for constructin…

You'll see someone like this in every global warming discussion that happens with an educated audience. They'll put on all the plumage of reasonable dissent: "I don't think that the argument for AGW takes into account ." In an audience of non-experts, they will go unanswered, and appear to have a point, until you spend an hour or two digging through the relevant IPCC reports and discover that not only has been investigated, it has been extensively investigated by dozens of labs across hundreds of studies using methodologies you never dreamed possible, along with 3 or 4 variants of the argument, all of which were quite thoroughly put to rest.

If you confront them with this evidence, citing all the reports and papers, they'll just switch from to , possibly after firing off a final riposte defending that makes it abundantly clear they couldn't even be bothered to read the links you dug up, forcing you to ask yourself if you really want to do all that homework again.

Fake-reasonable arguments are easy. Countering them is hard. If you don't discard them as a matter of policy (peer review or STFU), they will dominate the decision making process with 100% certainty.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#102

Post by scatters »

kuldeepk wrote: post #65

Correct me if i'm wrong but this data seem to put deforestation as benign. Wouldn't continued trend of deforestation make effect of GHS emissions worse? More that temperature changes shouldn't we worried about oxygen health of the planet?

I think they're just including the albedo effect of deforestation in that graph, not the GHG effect of burning and decaying trees. (Cropland is usually lighter coloured than forest, so reflects more light and heat, giving a cooling effect.)

Oxygen is not a worry in any realistic scenario. Crops still photosynthesize, and in any case most of our oxygen comes from marine phytoplankton. CO2 is measured in parts per million (currently around 400ppm), oxygen is around 20%, so CO2 would reach toxic levels (1%) long before any oxygen shortage became a problem.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#103

Post by id122015 »

The sheep.

Really. There was a documentary on TV claiming that when sheep digest food they eliminate some substances that make the world warmer and they invented a device to catch that gas they eliminate through their mouths.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#104

Post by conistonwater »

RyanZAG wrote: post #99
euyyn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about a pile of papers that have been accepted at Nature and Science over a span of decades, not a paper about how Agile is the best programming methodology.

While that's true, there is another issue here. If global warming went away tomorrow -- as in, it were to be completely proven to not exist -- every single climate change scientist would be out of a job. They'd literally have to start over their entire professional career from scratch with almost zero chance of getting any kind of funding. This includes everyone who peer reviews the papers too. Meanwhile if Agile is…

Wait a second: with that kind of logic, how would you distinguish "economic reasons" from "scientific reasons"? What, to your mind, distinguishes genuine scientific discoveries from "stuff people believe because they want a job"? Every successful scientific discovery ever got/kept someone a job, and sometimes even a Nobel prize. I can't help but notice that your logic works on every single scientific field, without exception, which tells me it's likely to be flawed, or am I wrong?

In the end, the only proper way to do this is with arguments based on merit, rather than perceived motivations of other people, because those perceptions are much more likely to be flawed than arguments based on merit.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#106

Post by command_codes »

Regrettably at the moment cannot parse through this entire thread but surely proponents are aware that global temperature seems to have fluctuated within historical record, and not just the Little Ice Age

Extending further, we know that paleoclimates could be radically different and have oscillated. I knew this even in elementary school

Is Earth's climate changing? Of course; and that is because of course it will. Should we tax ourselves to feel good about it? I think a dubious prospect, in light that climate already changes in absence of anthropogenic activity, therefore there must be certainty; furthermore, a tax won't even help, as massive noncompliant countries such as China industrialize

Then there is always curiously left out the consideration, now forgotten depending on your birthyear, that scientists of a recent generation were up in arms about global cooling instead

I think there is danger of a curious autism and naivete re: the trustworthiness of certain scientists - remember they are people - coupled with a kind of religious fanaticism

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#107

Post by command_codes »

Regrettably cannot at the moment parse through this entire thread but surely proponents are aware that global temperature seems to have fluctuated within historical record, and not just the Little Ice Age

Extending further, we know that paleoclimates could be radically different and have oscillated

Is Earth's climate changing? Of course. Should we tax ourselves to feel good about it? I think a dubious prospect, in light that climate already changes in absence of anthropogenic activity, therefore there must be certainty; furthermore, a tax won't even help, as noncompliant countries such as China industrialize

Then there is always curiously left out the consideration, now forgotten depending on your birthyear, that scientists of a recent generation were up in arms about global cooling instead

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#108

Post by grzm »

id122015 wrote: post #103

The sheep. Really. There was a documentary on TV claiming that when sheep digest food they eliminate some substances that make the world warmer and they invented a device to catch that gas they eliminate through their mouths.

Cattle as well: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/04/11/301794415/gas...

There's even been action to reduce global warming from dairy cattle in California:

https://phys.org/news/2016-11-california-dairy-cows-combat-g...

According to that last article:

Livestock are responsible for 14.5 percent of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, with beef and dairy production accounting for the bulk of it, according to a 2013 United Nations report.

To imply that it's only livestock (or only sheep, for that matter), is not accurate.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#109

Post by kuldeepk »

scatters wrote: post #102
kuldeepk wrote: post #65

Correct me if i'm wrong but this data seem to put deforestation as benign. Wouldn't continued trend of deforestation make effect of GHS emissions worse? More that temperature changes shouldn't we worried about oxygen health of the planet?

I think they're just including the albedo effect of deforestation in that graph, not the GHG effect of burning and decaying trees. (Cropland is usually lighter coloured than forest, so reflects more light and heat, giving a cooling effect.) Oxygen is not a worry in any realistic scenario. Crops still photosynthesize, and in any case most of our oxygen comes from marine phytoplankton. CO2 is measured in parts per mill…

ha! thanks for clarifying, then I presume they are also not counting the decrease in CO2 absorption due to deforestation. I think that that bit of their section is dangerous by labeling it "is it deforestation? No!". Interpretation for avg readers: Let's continue with it!

Taking this from - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/business/energy-environme...

> Forest loss is detrimental to the earth’s climate. The clearing of woodlands and the fires that accompany it generate one-tenth of all global warming emissions, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, making the loss of forests one of the biggest single contributors to climate change.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#110

Post by conistonwater »

command_codes wrote: post #106

Regrettably at the moment cannot parse through this entire thread but surely proponents are aware that global temperature seems to have fluctuated within historical record, and not just the Little Ice Age Extending further, we know that paleoclimates could be radically different and have oscillated. I knew this even in elementary school Is Earth's climate changing? Of course; and that is because of course it will. Sh…

> Should we tax ourselves to feel good about it?

Respectfully, I think you might be entirely missing the point of why people want to do something about climate change.

> Then there is always curiously left out the consideration, now forgotten depending on your birthyear, that scientists of a recent generation were up in arms about global cooling instead

It is not forgotten, but it is untrue: see for example the discussion in The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus (http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1).

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