Why global warming is not caused by man, but by the sun

[Draconishinobi]

Alright, but you have not argued for a connection between human activity and global warming. I know that global warming is cause for concern ... but I don't think that humans are to blame (at least for the majority of it). Really it's not even possible to argue that humans have any significant impact on global warming, the data just don't allow it. I would have thought it impossible for anyone to argue against it ... especially with no data in your favor

[mobrien_12]

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20061114

[American Bastard]

I'm not sure the emmissions of any kinds of gasses are the real problem. As I see it, and I may well be wrong, the real threat is deforestation and mans invasion and inevitable destruction of natural resources and habitats. Combine that with the "normal" output of those gasses, and you have a recipe for disaster...Maybe.

[Draconishinobi]

True. I don't like them cutting down forests and concomitantly releasing large amounts of pollution into the air. But, I don't think that this is the cause of global warming at this time. They simply aren't doing enough to cause it.

[American Bastard]

The rain forest of Brazil provide most of the oxygen we breath, they have been significantly reduced in the last 100 years. My main concern about deforestation is the release of long dormant bacterias and viruses by the deep digging of soils.

[worker201]

The rainforest is also a huge CO2 sink - the environment's natural ability to suck up C02 is being diminished.

[beosmrx]

Also remember that with the steady decline in the earth's magnetism correlates directly with more solar wind, which in turn correlates with increased Co2 . Problem idontified

[Aloone_Jonez]

The rain forest of Brazil provide most of the oxygen we breath, they have been significantly reduced in the last 100 years. My main concern about deforestation is the release of long dormant bacterias and viruses by the deep digging of soils.

That's bullshit, most of the oxygen we breath is released from tiny phytoplankton that live in the ocean which is also the world's largest carbon sink.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... nkton.html

Hell you could probably chop down the entire rainforest and there'll still be enough oxygen to breath.

It just goes to show how influential the bullshit propaganda spouted by some environmental campaigners is.

I agree that the rainforest needs saving but people need to get their facts straight.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I have read that article awhile ago and I do admit that I initially jumped on the sceptic bandwagon.

Some of the figures look suspicious and I have been unable to find an alternative source.

I also don't see how computer simulations can prove that climate change is anthropogenic and neither can ice core samples which only go back 100,000 years

How can we trust computers that can't predict what the weather is going to be like next week?

I know the difference between climate and weather but the forecasts seem to get less accurate the further ahead they look. For example the met office didn't predict the unusually cold winter or the cool and wet summer we had this year so how the hell can they predict climate change over the next century and be almost certain that it's our fault?

Scientists say that the earth is 4.5 billion years old and yet they can make predictions on the future climate based on only 100,000 year's worth of ice core samples?

Then scientists say that because there's a lack of evidence to support the speed of climate change, that given the simulations and ice core samples we must conclude it's human caused; sorry but that doesn't make any sense.

I'm now worried that we're locked into the theory, especially given schemes such as carbon trading, what happens if I buy £1000 of carbon credits, then climate change is either solved or proven to be natural? I'd be pretty pissed off!

[worker201]

How can we trust computers that can't predict what the weather is going to be like next week?

There's a difference between climate and weather.  Weather is a discrete event; climate is measured over time.  Check it out online, there's records for someplace close to your house going back well over 200 years.  Over that kind of time, patterns can be detected, and trends can be modeled.  And the potential accuracy of these models is huge, because the climate of a place is incredibly stable.

Then scientists say that because there's a lack of evidence to support the speed of climate change, that given the simulations and ice core samples we must conclude it's human caused; sorry but that doesn't make any sense.

Sure it does.  Calculus.  Looking at all sources of information, they can look at the magnitude of the change, the direction of the change, and the velocity of the change.  Changes of this magnitude have obviously been seen before - the ice ages were real.  And changes in this direction have also occurred - the ice ages ended.  But in all the data that is available, the velocity of change has never been as high as it has in the last 100 years.  There is quite obviously a correlation between human fuel consumption and global temperature.  And no other explanations can be found to account for the magnitude, direction, and velocity that we are experiencing.

It's a simple math problem.

[Aloone_Jonez]

There's a difference between climate and weather.  Weather is a discrete event; climate is measured over time.  

You didn't read my post thoroughly enough: I acknowledged the difference between climate and weather.

Predicting climate change isn't that much different to a very long term weather forecast.

Long term weather forecasts do not try to predict the weather on a day by day basis but just the general climate over the coming months or year.

They both use the same models. The prediction that this summer was going to be long and hot with potentially record breaking temperatures was based on the what's happened in the past, given similar conditions: sea surface temperature, ocean currents, conditions in the upper atmosphere etc. This is totally different method to predicting what the weather is going to be like next week and more similar to how future climate is predicted.

Check it out online, there's records for someplace close to your house going back well over 200 years.  Over that kind of time, patterns can be detected, and trends can be modeled.  And the potential accuracy of these models is huge, because the climate of a place is incredibly stable.

The climate over western Europe has never been stable, the gulf stream is continuously changing its course and is very unpredictable.

The climate in this area is pretty unique - there's nowhere else on the earth that have winters this mild and are so far away from the equator: in some places, hardiness zone 10 (average minimum winter temperature of >30ºF, 1.1ºC) can be found as far north as 50º.

The trouble is when the gulf stream changes it gets colder which has happened fairly recently.

Changes of this magnitude have obviously been seen before - the ice ages were real.  And changes in this direction have also occurred - the ice ages ended.  

Certainly true, the climate has changed significantly here in the UK, over the last 200 years.

A couple of centuries ago it was much colder - the river Thames used to freeze over; last time this happened was in 1814..

A couple of centuries before then it was much milder: the medieval warm period.

But in all the data that is available, the velocity of change has never been as high as it has in the last 100 years.

The last 100 years is nothing on a geological time-scale, it's only 1/45 millionth of the estimated age of the earth.

To put it into perspective, if you live for 80 years, it's only 56.1 seconds of your life.

It defies logic, that the future can be predicted based on measurements and patterns monitored over such a short period of time.

[worker201]

The climate over western Europe has never been stable, the gulf stream is continuously changing its course and is very unpredictable.

You're still not getting it.  Instability can be stable.  Even fractals have patterns and self-similarity.  The fact that you can't predict it doesn't mean it isn't predictable, if that makes any sense.

If you don't believe me, work it out yourself.  Find the average daily temperature for the month of July for this year.  Find the average daily temperature for July for the past 10 years.  Figure out the average daily temperature for the whole decade.  Then plot a graph showing the variance.  There will be some outliers, because weather does change, but overall, it will be like a bell curve, with the average being by far the most common temperature.  If your graph results in a bell curve, that means temperature is stable.

If you look at the bell curves for 2000-2009, 1990-1999, 1980-1989, 1970-1979, etc, going back 50 or 100 years, you will see that the median value is trending upward.  This is scientific fact.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I do understand that - I know that the climate is changing over a long period of time.

My point is that the climate over western Europe can change very rapidly. If you plotted a graph of the July temperature from 1066 to 1076 then compared it to a plot of the average July temperature it will be a hell of a lot warmer than the same plot from from 1706 to 1716.

The rate of change of temperature rise from the year 1800 to 2000 may be greater than that indicated by ice core samples taken showing the climate over the 100,000 years but that's such a short period of time. How do we know that a similar increase in temperature has not occurred before then?

Another thing is: so what if the temperature increases by a couple of degrees? What about the next glacial period? We won't stop it, it'll just get delayed by a couple of centuries and by then we'll long for global warming.

What of all the crackpot geoengineering schemes to cool the climate? If we cause the next glacial stage to occur sooner then we're even more fucked than we would be due to sea level rises.

[Calum]

while i think that only an idiot would concern themselves with trying to prove we are or aren't responsible for climate change, because only an idiot would deny climate change exists and only an idiot would claim that we therefore need to do nothing about it, i still have to go slightly off topic and answer this little comment:

A couple of centuries ago it was much colder - the river Thames used to freeze over; last time this happened was in 1814..

This example is often used to indicate climate change, however it had much to do with the replacement of London Bridge. London Bridge today has three rather large arches, which do not impede the flow of the Thames that much, and the London Bridge before it, decommissioned in 1967 (and built in 1824, note the significance of the date?), had five large arches. The London Bridge in place at the time that you cite, however, had nineteen small arches (ie: the arches were smaller than the supports) due to the large amount of buildings and businesses on the bridge itself. In addition to this, two of the arches at either end (so, four in total) had millwheels in them. All of this impeded the flow of the Thames greatly and made it much more prone to freezing over. I have no doubt at all that temperatures in the Thames today would make it freeze over in similar fashion if a bridge of similar design was in place.

Greenland's another great example (of climate change doing what it likes). Colonists from Iceland colonised Greenland during the 10th century CE, then in the 15th century CE (not long before Columbus "discovered" America, using maps which had Norse place names on them as it happens) the ice, as well as the native Americans (called Scraelings by the Norse) started moving South and the Norse were forced to abandon Greenland before their harbours froze up for good. Whether this was the ice returning after a warm spell, or whether this indicates Greenland cooling down is irrelevant really (because there's no real "normal" condition for the climate).

Note that in that story (which is historically accurate) people had to actually abandon an entire country due to climate change. Whether they caused it or not (the obvious choice is "not"), it affected them greatly. If they could have done something about it they would have.

Ironically, on the first colonial voyage from Iceland to Greenland, only 14 of the 25 ships actually made it to Greenland safely, why? because of an unfortunate undersea volcanic eruption off the coast of Iceland which happened coincidentally beneath the passing ships! (this is from memory, the internet doesn't seem to want to confirm or deny this, i will need to look it up sometime at home).

[kintaro]

If there is really made made global warming, and even if it is as bad as Gore and has special interests in the li-ion battery industry, car industry, are really right about how bad it is - we would really just need to offset the warming by discharging lots of sulpher dioxide from volcanos.

See, despite the fact Volcanos emit more CO2 than you and me - they also put sulpher dioxide which tends to negate the greenhouse effect a little. Actually, this is probably what causes ice ages. I think this is what bothers me even more than the pointless Government intervention. The relationship between geological and tectonic activity and climate isn't empirically understood yet these fools pretend they can make accurate computer models without even understanding the determining factors outside empirically... and it evades the most basic lesson in computer science: garbage goes in, and garbage comes out.

Yet when I see an average temperature graph between now and the 20th century, and if I treated this a bit like timing on a stock market index I would have to say that the "underlying trend of the market is up." For 30-50 years the graph climbs, and then it seems to loose momentum and come back down again for about 10 years. This cooling trend occured twice in the 20th century, and it is well happening now. On the past two, it wasn't enough to offset the underlying trend.

I have every reason to think the "up" trend will come back and I think eventually it could become hazard. One thing is understood empirically and that is the greenhouse effect in general (not what is causing it fully). Without knowing the cause proceeding is pretty dangerous - its like flying into space not knowing about relativity and killing yourself because you think the radio isn't working when really there is just a delay and speed of light.

I don't think we need to cut back on carbon emmisions, realistically we need to make coal plants a little more like volcanoes so they emit things that reverse the effects as well. I am a terrible engineer and am inept with the physical sciences but I think this is what MacGyver would do to stop global warming. There is a technological solution these anti-human idiots are ignoring because what they really damn is progress and abundance. Communists thought they could create abundance, and when the 20th century proved to them that all violence does is destroy (and when they say some people have a 'proletarian' nature and some have a 'bourgeoise' and that we must coerce the bourgeois while simultaneously saying "we need moar unity." Obviously much isn't going to get done, a lot will be destroyed.

So in the 60s when the communists realized they can't achieve material abundance they decide to damn the material world altogether. Instead of claiming that they would make industry more power than ever, etc, they simply decided to say that human existence is wrong and that industry must be destroyed. Al Gore was one of these fucking stoned desmond faggots. I believe that there will be a viable technological solution to the problems of global warming. I'll admit, that is just objectivist idealism, but its either we do that or all start having sex with eachother in a panic that the end is nigh.