Gobal Warming: nonsense?

[_wenglund]

Even though I am somewhat disinclined to devote much time and energy to this topic (not just because it is off-topic for this forum, but also for reasons to be explained in a bit), some of the good folks here have challenged my off-hand comment about "global warming nonsense".

Perhaps I should first explain what there is about the global warming issue that I find nonsensical.

Do I think it nonsensical to believe that the earth is warming? No, of course not. I fully accept and believe the scientific claims that for millions or even billions of years the earth has experienced multiple cycles of cooling and heating (vacillating between temperate epochs and glacial epochs or "ice ages". See: "Past Climate Cycles: Ice Age Speculations)")

Do I think it nonsensical for people to believe we are currently in a period of global warming? Not really. I accept the prevailing view that over the last several decades the global temperature has increased a bit. And, while there is still debate whether we have reached the end of the current temperate epoch and are heading into the next ice age or whether the end of the temperate epoch is still thousands of years away (it may interest some to learn that rather than global warming being the scare up until the 1980's, it was global cooling), the seesaw pattern of climatic cycles allows for either theory even given the recent perceived rise in the earth's temperature.

Do I think it nonsensical to believe that humans may contribute to climatic change? Again, no, of course not. I accept the scientific claims that greenhouse gases amplify the climatic effect of the earth's orbital cycles, and since humans produce greenhouse gases, they have and will contribute to climatic changes.

Do I think it nonsensical for people to advocate that we humans move away from fossil fuels and towards more earth-friendly alternatives? Not at all. In fact, as one who suffers from lung issues, I am pleased with the progress made in cleaning the air in major U.S. metro areas. And, as an avid hiker, mountain biker, kayaker, and backcountry skier, I am partial to certain environmental issue, and even prefer the absence of motorized vehicles in the wild. Also, as one who is cognizant of the safety of his country, I favor lower U.S. dependency on foreign oil, particularly oil produced by those regions that are prone to war and which may lend support to global terror.

So, what then do I find nonsensical about global warming? In short, it is the extent to which it has been politicized (like when President Bush is absuredly accused of causing hurricanes like Katrena) and the manner in which it has been propagandized (many of the claims in Al Gore's movie have been either debunked or demonstrated to be misleading), but even more so, the way in which it has been elevated as one of the most important, if not THE most important, issue of our time, above issue I see as not only far more critical and proximate, but issues that we humans may have significantly greater capacity to influence for better (the war on terror, the tragedies in Africa, serious social ills in my own country, etc.). That, more than anything else, is why I even hesitate spending much time discussing it. I want our time and energies devoted to things of lasting change (even were we to diminish the amplifying affects of greenhouse gases, the earth will still continue its cycle of heating and cooling, just as it has done for millions of years), and I don't think it good to contribute to fear-mongering and hysteria.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_Tarski]

So, what then do I find nonsensical about global warming? In short, it is the extent to which it has been politicized (like when President Bush is absuredly accused of causing hurricanes like Katrena) and the manner in which it has been propagandized (many of the claims in Al Gore's movie have been either debunked or demonstrated to be misleading), but even more so, the way in which it has been elevated as one of the most important, if not THE most important, issue of our time, above issue I see as not only far more critical and proximate, but issues that we humans may have significantly greater capacity to influence for better (the war on terror, the tragedies in Africa, serious social ills in my own country, etc.). That, more than anything else, is why I even hesitate spending much time discussing it. I want our time and energies devoted to things of lasting change (even were we to diminish the amplifying affects of greenhouse gases, the earth will still continue its cycle of heating and cooling, just as it has done for millions of years), and I don't think it good to contribute to fear-mongering and hysteria.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Funny. I haven't seen the slightest bit of "hysteria". In fact, somewhat less "panic" is occurring than perhaps should be (there is no panic at all). No one is running screaming in the streets. Nobody is claiming that Bush caused Katrina (he did however, cause a useless war where 50,000-100,000 have died).

I personally know a couple of climate scientists that agree with my assessment on the other thread. Neither of them is showing signs of panic and none wish any to be frightened. They just wish policy changes could be made and they wish the nut jobs, non-experts and the right leaning media would quite lying about the scientific facts.

As for mistakes in Gore's movie, well the number of mistakes is less than most documentaries and orders of magnitude less that the corporate right wing anti-science sites that seek to flat out deny that global warming has a significant anthropogenic component.

[_wenglund]

So, what then do I find nonsensical about global warming? In short, it is the extent to which it has been politicized (like when President Bush is absuredly accused of causing hurricanes like Katrena) and the manner in which it has been propagandized (many of the claims in Al Gore's movie have been either debunked or demonstrated to be misleading), but even more so, the way in which it has been elevated as one of the most important, if not THE most important, issue of our time, above issue I see as not only far more critical and proximate, but issues that we humans may have significantly greater capacity to influence for better (the war on terror, the tragedies in Africa, serious social ills in my own country, etc.). That, more than anything else, is why I even hesitate spending much time discussing it. I want our time and energies devoted to things of lasting change (even were we to diminish the amplifying affects of greenhouse gases, the earth will still continue its cycle of heating and cooling, just as it has done for millions of years), and I don't think it good to contribute to fear-mongering and hysteria.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Funny. I haven't seen the slightest bit of "hysteria". In fact, somewhat less "panic" is occurring than perhaps should be (there is no panic at all). No one is running screaming in the streets. Nobody is claiming that Bush caused Katrina (he did however, cause a useless war where 50,000-100,000 have died).

I personally know a couple of climate scientists that agree with my assessment on the other thread. Neither of them is show signs of panic and none wish any to be frightened. They just wish policy changed could be made and they wish the nut jobs, non-experts and the right leaning media would quite lying about the scientific facts.

As for mistakes in Gore's movie, well the number of mistakes is less than most documentaries and orders of magnitude less that the corporate right wing anti-science sites that seek to flat out deny that global warming has a significant anthropogenic component.

I suppose that "hysteria" is a matter of biased opinion, just as is the "uselessness" of certain wars, as well as who may or may not be "nut jobs" and "lying". However, claims that Bush caused Katrina, are a historical fact.

Be that as it may, what policy changes do you advocate, and what gaurantees can you give that global warming will, in fact be diminished by those policy changes, and changed in such a way and to such a a degree that there will be a positive cost/benefit to human-kind?

More particularly, what are you personally doing to diminish global warming? Have you stopped produce such greenhouse gases as methane? ;-)

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_Tarski]

So, what then do I find nonsensical about global warming? In short, it is the extent to which it has been politicized (like when President Bush is absuredly accused of causing hurricanes like Katrena) and the manner in which it has been propagandized (many of the claims in Al Gore's movie have been either debunked or demonstrated to be misleading), but even more so, the way in which it has been elevated as one of the most important, if not THE most important, issue of our time, above issue I see as not only far more critical and proximate, but issues that we humans may have significantly greater capacity to influence for better (the war on terror, the tragedies in Africa, serious social ills in my own country, etc.). That, more than anything else, is why I even hesitate spending much time discussing it. I want our time and energies devoted to things of lasting change (even were we to diminish the amplifying affects of greenhouse gases, the earth will still continue its cycle of heating and cooling, just as it has done for millions of years), and I don't think it good to contribute to fear-mongering and hysteria.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Funny. I haven't seen the slightest bit of "hysteria". In fact, somewhat less "panic" is occurring than perhaps should be (there is no panic at all). No one is running screaming in the streets. Nobody is claiming that Bush caused Katrina (he did however, cause a useless war where 50,000-100,000 have died).

I personally know a couple of climate scientists that agree with my assessment on the other thread. Neither of them is show signs of panic and none wish any to be frightened. They just wish policy changed could be made and they wish the nut jobs, non-experts and the right leaning media would quite lying about the scientific facts.

As for mistakes in Gore's movie, well the number of mistakes is less than most documentaries and orders of magnitude less that the corporate right wing anti-science sites that seek to flat out deny that global warming has a significant anthropogenic component.

I suppose that "hysteria" is a matter of biased opinion, just as is the "uselessness" of certain wars, as well as who may or may not be "nut jobs" and "lying". However, claims that Bush caused Katrina, are a historical fact.

Scientists are not saying Bushed caused Katrina. Neither is Gore. You can find nuts that say just about anything including that God lives near a planet Kolob.

The policy changes needed are suggested to help prevent eventual global catastrophes. I'd say that Exxon making a few less bucks is worth lowering such risks. And, what a cost that we should have to drive smaller cars instead of SUVs etc.
You see we really honestly do need the ozone layer and polar melting really can cause large scale destruction.
We really do need the rain forests to live in a breathable atmosphere.
Of course, you and I will be OK, but how selfish does one have to be to not care about the world our grandchildren and their children will face?
What we do now will make the difference and Jesus isn't coming to clean up our mess. If we behave responsibly there will be humans living on this earth 1000 hears from now (and still no apocalypse unless man made).

[_Coggins7]

Let me just point out a few things here while I agree with Wade but with some reservations.

1. There is no empirical evidence, as of yet, that CO2 drives climate change. It must have some effect, of course, but that effect is clearly quite small, as CO2 is less than one percent of all greenhouse gases and we know that, over the last several million years, when major warmings have occurred, the warming always precedes the rise of C02 levels. C02 always lags behind actual warming by roughly 800 years or so, give or take.

2. The present warming (a little over half a degree centigrade in a century), is modest, normal, and well withing natural variability. There have been a number of periods in geologic time in which C02 levels have been much higher than today, and global mean temperatures have not necessarily been higher in all of these cases.

3. There is no human "footprint" yet known in empirical climate science. The entire AGW edifice has been constructed purely out of computer simulations (which are not the same thing as empirical climate science) and highly circumstantial evidence of dubious plausibility.

4. Tarski probably doesn't recognize the hysteria and fanaticism because, as a leftist, these mental states are a normative condition for him (as his Iraq war quip clearly demonstrates). The hysteria has been steadily growing since the 90s, and has reached fantastic (and societally dangerous) proportions at the present time. We now have journalists and even some true believing climate scientists calling for the firing, professional and social ostracizing, and even the prosecution and corporeal punishment (for "crimes against humanity) of other scientists, no matter how qualified, who dissent from the orthodox dogmas of the form of militant fundamentalist pantheism known as environmentalism. We have pro AGW, government funded climate scientists fudging evidence, hiding their data from peer scrutiny, and media hounding their most extreme scenarios.

5. Modern environmentalism, when it is not of the militant pantheist "deep ecology" cast, is little more than the present halfway house for the West's hardcore, inveterate Left; that international community of Communists, neo-Communists, Marxists, Cultural Marxists, and other assorted and related utopian collectivists who lost their Great White Hope when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. In the early nineties, there was a mass exodus out of overt support for naked Marxist economic and social theory (except in the academy, where even the most vacuous ideas still hold out against reality) and into a theoretical framework in which the old socialist dreams could be persued surreptitiously in the name of another popular movement. That movement was environmentalism. Environmentalism had already become dominated by the Left, of course, but the massive influx of a displaced radical Left into the movement galvanized and energized it, not only in North America, but across the world. Gorbachev wasn't out of office too long before he started Green Cross International and underwrote the Earth Charter.

AGW, more than any other issue, has been the environmental movement's ace in the hole with regard to the ultimate destruction of capitalism, republican self government, democratic institutions, and the Judeo/Christian moral and social fabric they so despise. For the anti-modern, anti-technology, neo-primitivist deep ecologists, even if not communists per se, this kind of ideology and its policy prescriptions fits quite nicely with their equally fervent hatred of economic liberty, individualism, and Judeo/Christian social structure.

5. AGW is the greatest pseudo-scientific, ideologically driven hoax of the entire last century and has continued on into the present. The only two situations I can think of that approach it in both intellectual dishonesty, emotional hyperventilation, and dearth of scientific justification is the DDT and general anti-chemical hysteria of the sixties, sparked by Rachael Carson, and the intellectual depredations of Lysenko in The Soviet Union in the field of biology.

6. Gore's propaganda dog and pony show has been shredded repeatedly by serious critics. If anyone wants the links to some excellent critiques, just let me know.

[_Coggins7]

Scientists are not saying Bushed caused Katrina. Neither is Gore. You can find nuts that say just about anything including that God lives near a planet Kolob.

No, they're saying that AGW is causing larger, more powerful, and more frequent storms, none of which has the slightest particle of scientific evidence to support it. Indeed, the opposite is true, storm intensity and frequency has been on the wane since the 1930s. We've experienced a few years of strong, intense storms. Meanwhile, last year's hurricane season was a big let down for the environmentalist watermelons.

The policy changes needed are suggested to help prevent eventual global catastrophes. I'd say that Exxon making a few less bucks is worth lowering such risks. And, what a cost that we should have to drive smaller cars instead of SUVs etc.

Thank you. This is a textbook example of global warming hysteria. This is precisely and exactly the kind of mentality and claims that people like me point to when we speak of "hysteria" and "fanaticism".

Frankly, given what we actually know about climate change, and about the change that has occurred over the last century, this kind of gross anti-intellectualism and selling out of intellectual rigor and honesty to ideology is quite inexcusable, to my mind.

You see we really honestly do need the ozone layer and polar melting really can cause large scale destruction.

There is no such thing as melting polar ice caps. For heaven's sake Tarski, do some homework. Some limited parts-around the periphery in some areas-of the south Arctic are melting. The vast bulk of the continent has stable ice mass and in many places has been both gaining mass and cooling somewhat over the last several decades.

We really do need the rain forests to live in a breathable atmosphere.

The Amazon rain forest is still approximately 90% untouched. Some deforestation has occured in some parts of the world, but this can be stopped and reversed. The answer to that Tarski is CAPITALISM. Tress and forests are a crop. They grow and can be harvested. They can also be planted, in large quantities, so they will grow again...and again, and again, and again. We do that here, and have been for a very long time.

Of course, you and I will be OK, but how selfish does one have to be to not care about the world our grandchildren and their children will face?
What we do now will make the difference and Jesus isn't coming to clean up our mess. If we behave responsibly there will be humans living on this earth 1000 hears from now (and still no apocalypse unless man made).

Sentimental leftist gibberish. This man has a degree in a scientific discipline? As we can see, having an advanced degree in one specialized niche doesn't necessarily qualify one even to vote, let alone opine on truly serious subjects.

[_Tarski]

Let me just point out a few things here while I agree with Wade but with some reservations.

1. There is no empirical evidence, as of yet, that CO2 drives climate change. It must have some effect, of course, but that effect is clearly quite small, as CO2 is less than one percent of all greenhouse gases and we know that, over the last several million years, when major warmings have occurred, the warming always precedes the rise of C02 levels. C02 always lags behind actual warming by roughly 800 years or so, give or take.

2. The present warming (a little over half a degree centigrade in a century), is modest, normal, and well withing natural variability. There have been a number of periods in geologic time in which C02 levels have been much higher than today, and global mean temperatures have not necessarily been higher in all of these cases.

3. There is no human "footprint" yet known in empirical climate science. The entire AGW edifice has been constructed purely out of computer simulations (which are not the same thing as empirical climate science) and highly circumstantial evidence of dubious plausibility.

4. Tarski probably doesn't recognize the hysteria and fanaticism because, as a leftist, these mental states are a normative condition for him (as his Iraq war quip clearly demonstrates). The hysteria has been steadily growing since the 90s, and has reached fantastic (and societally dangerous) proportions at the present time. We now have journalists and even some true believing climate scientists calling for the firing, professional and social ostracizing, and even the prosecution and corporeal punishment (for "crimes against humanity) of other scientists, no matter how qualified, who dissent from the orthodox dogmas of the form of militant fundamentalist pantheism known as environmentalism. We have pro AGW, government funded climate scientists fudging evidence, hiding their data from peer scrutiny, and media hounding their most extreme scenarios.

5. Modern environmentalism, when it is not of the militant pantheist "deep ecology" cast, is little more than the present halfway house for the West's hardcore, inveterate Left; that international community of Communists, neo-Communists, Marxists, Cultural Marxists, and other assorted and related utopian collectivists who lost their Great White Hope when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. In the early nineties, there was a mass exodus out of overt support for naked Marxist economic and social theory (except in the academy, where even the most vacuous ideas still hold out against reality) and into a theoretical framework in which the old socialist dreams could be persued surreptitiously in the name of another popular movement. That movement was environmentalism. Environmentalism had already become dominated by the Left, of course, but the massive influx of a displaced radical Left into the movement galvanized and energized it, not only in North America, but across the world. Gorbachev wasn't out of office too long before he started Green Cross International and underwrote the Earth Charter.

AGW, more than any other issue, has been the environmental movement's ace in the hole with regard to the ultimate destruction of capitalism, republican self government, democratic institutions, and the Judeo/Christian moral and social fabric they so despise. For the anti-modern, anti-technology, neo-primitivist deep ecologists, even if not communists per se, this kind of ideology and its policy prescriptions fits quite nicely with their equally fervent hatred of economic liberty, individualism, and Judeo/Christian social structure.

5. AGW is the greatest pseudo-scientific, ideologically driven hoax of the entire last century and has continued on into the present. The only two situations I can think of that approach it in both intellectual dishonesty, emotional hyperventilation, and dearth of scientific justification is the DDT and general anti-chemical hysteria of the sixties, sparked by Rachael Carson, and the intellectual depredations of Lysenko in The Soviet Union in the field of biology.

6. Gore's propaganda dog and pony show has been shredded repeatedly by serious critics. If anyone wants the links to some excellent critiques, just let me know.

I have never seen anyone more ill informed and deluded by the right's propaganda machine than Coggin's.
He just makes false assertions (above) that contradict the considered scientific opinion of experts in the very field in question.

If Coggin's cannot show how the expert responses to the skeptics made by actual climate scientists on the following web site are wrong, and do so scientifically, then he is blowing so much smoke that is should be considered nothing less than immoral.
http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics

[_Mister Scratch]

I hereby predict that Coggins's response will not be to actually confront the science in the date you've linked to, Tarski. Instead, I predict that he will:
A) Say that you are not intellectually/philosophically serious.
B) Say that your mind is clouded b/c you are a leftist.
C) Say that the data is tainted b/c it is coming from the Left
D) All of the above.

[_wenglund]

The policy changes needed are suggested to help prevent eventual global catastrophes. I'd say that Exxon making a few less bucks is worth lowering such risks. And, what a cost that we should have to drive smaller cars instead of SUVs etc.

Coggins is evidently right in suggesting that at least in your case the "global warming" bruhaha is but a shill for anti-capitalism.

Please explain, though, what "global catastrophes" you have in mind (preferrably those that supposedly are a direct consequence of "global warming"--sinse that is the topic of discussion), and be so kind as to demonstrate how lowering Exxon's profit margins and our driving smaller cars will somehow lower the risk, let alone prevent, those global warming-related "global catastrophes". And, since Scratch is so keen on citations (though highly selective in who he chooses to call for citations), please back up your claims with authoritative documentation.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_wenglund]

I hereby predict that Coggins's response will not be to actually confront the science in the date you've linked to, Tarski. Instead, I predict that he will:
A) Say that you are not intellectually/philosophically serious.
B) Say that your mind is clouded b/c you are a leftist.
C) Say that the data is tainted b/c it is coming from the Left
D) All of the above.

So, essentially you are predicting that Coggins will copy Tarski's MO? We'll see.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-