People sometimes make fun of some non-Western nations, but it´s remarkable that an US president has to defend science in his State of the Union speech:
For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change.
Yes, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense.
We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence.
Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.
Signed: President of the United States Obama in his speech last night. #Politics
It is indeed sad that a president of the U.S. has to plead for an acceptance of science. In a country once a leader in scientific research, we are now in danger of following the pattern of Middle Eastern Islamic countries. Countries that gave us astronomy and mathematics are now totalitarian theocracies.
If I am reading the graph correctly – we have roughly 0.25°C in 70 years and virtually no change in the last 12 years. Do we actually have to act on this and burn piles of money fighting the climate change?
We have only to change to cheaper clean energy.
Photovoltaic is already cheap, Electric cars and buffer batteries for day / night balancing will be the next what becomes cheap by mass production.
If we would habe done this earlier, no debt crisis, no economic crisis. Read the book
http://calculation-error.org/
But G W Bush always said, "The jury is out on the science" He was a very wise man. Yale after all…. So I believe him and not this communist maoist socialist President of ours. Did I miss any 'ist Maybe ANTICHRIST. Just to introduce myself to all of you. I am so far right I would consider Adolf Hitler a Communist.
Just kidding….
I just recently read, A World Without Us by Alan Weisman. He talks about the carbon released by humans taking a millennium to be reabsorbed naturally if humans were to disappear. There's no magic bullet to curve greenhouse gas emissions, and the damage is already done, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to become carbon neutral and work carbon sequestration technologies.
I'm still amazed that politicians will blatantly deny the obvious. I guess; it's just the nature of the beast.
We are "burning piles of money" today, on fossil fuel subsidies, tax cuts and externalities. Fuel-free energy is far more economical. There is no penalty associated with ditching the old energy, except for big oil and big coal.
If the fire alarm goes off you get out of the house, call 911 and try to put out the fire, you don't argue about what may or may not be the cause of the fire, and above all you don't tell people "it's just a small fire anyway, don't get out, go back to sleep and see if it doesn't sort itself out".
Here's a question for the author of the graph above. Did they use more data points the last 12 years than say, 1880? I guess it doesn't matter what the temp was in Africa or Russia in the 1890's because they weren't 'really' important? Or maybe it was the sat data we had then that makes this a fair analysis
Is that not what Scientist’s do !. To try and disprove a hypothesis, and in the cause of testing the propositions, make new discoveries, and if not disproved strengthen the hypothesis ?.
That's what WE were taught they did… Now they write grant proposals so they can get money. You must always keep the goal within sight.
+Josef Průša and +Alan Wilkerson – no!!! This chart is inaccurate, from the perspective that they should have included the last 150,000 years – the trend is much more illustrative from that frame of reference.
Now if we had time travel we could put those sensors in place +Stephen Boyd
lmao!!!!!!! Nice one, +Max Huijgen ! I already have the plans, amplifier designs, coils, etc. I really just need the funding…and yes, I'm completely serious. I've been working on the problem for 6.5 years…
there is some rough extrapolation about climate we can make by looking at the sediment layers… there are long 1,000, 10,000, 15,000, 45000, 150,000 year and other length cycles of temperature swings causing ice ages or extreme hot ages… so I agree with +Stephen Boyd with needing to look at the much bigger picture of thousands of years of temperature swings
I believe the climate is changing, but I attribute it more to the sun than anthropological causes. The earth has been much warmer than this eons ago, before civilization.
+Gaines Johnson – your assertion is false. There are no data to back up your point.
It's worth noting that the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is approaching 400 ppm. And it's also worth noting that in the past 650,000 years earth has not seen [CO2] above 300 ppm naturally. Anthropogenic climate change is happening! 😀
measure isotopic data of 13C, (in addition to many many others, so as to fix a metric), relative to 12C and 14C. Then, account for the stupid humans making a preponderance of 14C for the nuclear shit from ~1946…on to about 1994…you'll see the change, as f([CO2])…
While we turn food farms into solar and wind farms the price of food rises, as we strips forests to plant bio fuels even more people starve, food prices rising 100%…
There are food riots, people having to act in extreme (What we call terrorism) just to keep their children alive and massive rates of starvation… not to mention the masses of pollutants pumped into the water, decimating yet more food stocks.. (What we call carbon offsetting – deporting out unsightly waste overseas)
All this while we pontificate over a modest 0.7 degree rise in temperature (At its peak), a historically and boringly average fluctuation in temperature…
Read more here
http://todayin2013.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/a-truth-little-too-inconvenient.html
+Mathieu Leclerc – totally agreed – see my isotopic reference above…
If scientific consensus, cannot be found. Then the reputation of Scientists will suffer !
The issues of Poverty, and the ability to pay, may become the deceive factor, outside the United States of America !. It is hard to see, how people who are finding it hard to live day by day, can or will, have the luxury of looking years into the future ?
+Ben Thomas – that's false for two reasons 1) there IS scientific consensus on this topic, in fact with a C.I. of 95% 2) Science moves forward by wresting data from noise, so it is a slow and self-reductive process. Consensus comes, but only after inexorable analysis.
Good point +Stephen Boyd – You have to wonder if the 2000+ nuclear bomb tests played any role into the slight atmospheric 'blip'. Easy to blame the average person with their car than a despot nuclear power playing with its powerful toys….
only 4% of all co2 is made made… Termites pump out more carbon than us !
+Stephen Boyd It’s a question of belief !. Scientist may be believed, or not !. The lead of this thread, and other threads, gives question to that !. But in any case, Poverty and The Ability to Pay, are likely to carry more weight, for many ?.
+Ben Thomas – your statement false – categorically so. Your statement immediately tells me you are not a scientist. Belief has exactly zero to do with data, OR the interpretation therein. This is because scientists (like me) know that the Universe is built on constants: c, h, hbar, alpha, mu, epsilon, et al…
Belief is for the bible, fairy tales, rainbows and unicorns…
When you look at the temperature cycles over 400 thousand years, the pattern of climate change becomes a bit clearer…
Evidence like this, which is extracted by analysis of core samples is often discredited in favour of computer simulations.
That being, simulations that start off with assumptions and spit out assumptions
.
The raw data is clear to see.
http://todayin2013.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/a-truth-little-too-inconvenient.html
+Max Huijgen I couldn't agree more with you.
+Jorge Roberts – the adjective "big" refers to the monolithic nature of the industries and the inordinate and near-complete sway they have over the gutter sluts of Congress. Your point is well-taken, howver…
+Stephen Boyd I will leave the scope of the Climate issue to others. The issue as far as I am concern is the one POTUS is addressing, and how the priorities can be achieved !
Do you have more info or a link for that last sentence about the license +Jorge Roberts?
as +Per Siden mentioned, >"burning piles of money" today, on fossil fuel subsidies, tax cuts and externalities"<< Yes, the oil(y) subsidies in the many many million$ go to the Exxons & others who have billion$ in profits–pure profits–yearly. Welfare, eh? What a scam due to lack of serious news media here in the US. Or Faux News pushes emotional buttons & thus, we get mush & uninspired citizenry. We are fighting a
sort of proxy-idiot-game against ANY science that people "don't like" i.e., if Boeing or M.Marietta/defense industry makes money yet agrees on climate change, the close-minded-Fundamentalits would suddenly freak. It's just another way for them to feel "well, WE still control SOME debate" basically.
+Jorge Roberts – again, baseless assertion. Given that I got paid from the NSF, DoE and DoD during my PhD work and now for my post-doctoral work, I can quite certainly tell you your assertion is false. "Belief", as I said before, is for myths like the bible, fairy tales and unicorns.
+Jorge Roberts i don't want to take sides here, but i have to say, similar to my comments above, that those who don't like the evidence for climate change seem to have no problem w/ any of the other millions of science facts & theories that make life both better & worse on Earth. What happended–[and i will provide a link in a minute] is that oil-money based Repub. strategists saw that climate change was an issue they could use politically–NO one outside of geeks/scientists spoke of it much b4 then (80s & 90s), yet after they used it politically, we suddenly see this ONE area of science being treated as "not reality" whereas the same scientists do work on all sorts of other science every day–so why don't we have anti-climate-change folks saying any other recent things (nanotech, biotech, etc) are "not real?" It's because they want to "win" a politically-charged-issue, which is just SELFISH. period.
EVERYONE needs to see the evidence in this discussion/presentation of Republican strategists to make a GAME of climate denial: Naomi Oreskes researched the 30 year history of Climate Science scenarios : uctv.tv/shows/The-American-Denial-of-Global-Warming-Perspectives-on-Ocean-Science-13459
_"describes her investigation into the reasons for such widespread mistrust and misunderstanding of scientific consensus and probes the history of organized campaigns designed to create public doubt and confusion about science"_
she works with SCRIPPS Oceanic : click to Scripp's history page here & click their timeline history to 1940s & READ how Scripps Ocean Inst. worked WITH our NAVY on SONAR & SUBMARINE WARFARE; Proves they are not & never were "liberal hippie 60s ecologists RATHER SCRIPPS & climate science they FULLY BACK is ROOTED in good ole US hardware & science & DEFENSE work:
http://sio.ucsd.edu/img/timeline/
for a full report on climate change look here..
http://www.climatecooling.org/
(99% of people wont read it properly, but hopefully, as were commenting on a science thread, we are the 1% that does)
Whether a scientist is funded by the tax system of through private enterprise is irrelevant, as this is a circular argument that gets nowhere.. its the same as, my dad is bigger than your dad statement…
There are 30,000 + independent scientists who now state that climate change is not cause by 'man'
+Mark McIntyre well i tried to see just who was funding or working with your website/link, gee it was hard not to miss this exact text right at top of that page in bold: "Alternative Energy – BP
bp.com –See how BP's advanced technologies are expanding energy production." "Global Climate Cooling Facts" –once again, who profits from keeping fossil fuels eating up our money: BP & all the fossil fuel giants, so ur page is a little problematic, yeah?
in case u think i'm pulling ur leg, here's a screen grab w/ time-stamp on the bottom left (yes my Windows toodbar is on left not underneath the browser like everyone else;-) : http://twitpic.com/proxy/web11/img/731809728-a9dc03482e6b7d1f531a20cb75e92502.511d02f8-scaled.png
+rob M. Thus my statement about circular arguments… All of the pro man made clime scientists are tax payer funded, as is the entire eco machine… (I did state that above, but never mind)
But lets disregard that and get on topic.
How about providing absolute proof that co2 levels at 365 parts per million is a bad thing when life evolved on earth when co2 was at 6000 parts per million.
In addition, oxygen is just as poisonous in high enough doses as co2 is to man..
In addition, 1000 years ago global temperature and co2 levels were much higher, were the vikings producing all that co2 ?
Also, as the Arctic shrinks, the Antarctic expands… just before we hear the ice sheet arguments…
So… lets pretend for a moment that the funding of the research is neutral all round and look at the facts of the matter..
ok, i'll be as fair as i can: ur page does, in microscopic print btw, show this guy as the author: http://www.climatecooling.org/AboutUs.html ; he seems good to me, i will not lampoon him just cause i want to win some debate/chat. I will checkout more of his links–but the one that stands out–the HUGE CIA quote (i checked the link, does look like a CIA book as it says) is from that book/study in 1974….uh, like back when we didn't have the tons of sensory apparatus & satellites & decades of study that we now have, so that's a bit dissuasive.
+Mark McIntyre Mark the problem for me is that if indeed we go thru a list of all the issues, the actual details, it would be way beyond the scope of this discussion, so i follow & appreciate ur listing some of them (comment just above mine), yes it's a definite start, but again, i really trust Scripps–again, they were steeped in Navy/early submarine war/Sonar strategy & work, not hippie ecologists–so did u see my link to N. Oreskas' hour video for Scripps & her clear history of the Republicans using climate-talking-points over recent years–and how she traces climate science farther back than the guy/author of the ClimateCooling.org site?
You have to keep reading…. it's boring i know, but you will find that data upto 2011 is covered..
bare in mind that the earth is 4.5 billion years old with life taking its first shot some 2.5 billion years ago when the earth was about as welcoming as a vegetarian BBQ, so what's 2 years between friends eh !
Here is my most deeply held conviction on the biggest-issue here: ALL of us can agree that, "lets say even IF fossil-fuel-exhaust/greenhouse effect is not the cause Climate Change" : wouldn't we STILL be responsible for fossil-fuel pollution ruining the sacred Creation/Earth?? And to top it off, almost all the folks I know personally who are "anti-climate-change" tend to be religious yet they miss the point–so trashing the planet w/ polluting fossil-fuels—when alternatives are now possible, is against the Biblical teaching to be good by any interpretation: it's irresponsible & selfish.
Firstly, science is based on heartless, faithless, cold hard fact which is always up for debate.. it is up to the science to prove a point with evidence beyond any reasonable doubt. The findings of science effect everyone regardless of opinion.. ie, gravity is not optional, neither is the fact of the earth being a slightly squished spherical shape etc.
Religion is entirely faith based, yes, the bible can be considered evidence, as can some of the biblical tales of the floods etc, but the choice of god is a personal one and based on faith which in the main stems from where you're born… religion is personal and effects you on that basis… if you worship Thor or Jesus or any of the other 2700 gods then that's personal choice, and perfectly fine.
but back to the horrible science bit:
We should of course try everything to minimise pollution and there are many things most people can do to achieve this.
* Dont upgrade your phone this year
* Keep your car for one more year
* Eat less fast junk food
* Buy products with minimal packaging
* Energy saving lighbulbs contain mercury – avoid them
* Petition against chemical dumping in the water supplies
* Bio-fuels are contributing to deforestation
* Overfishing is causing marine biodiversity challenges
* Recycle and find out where your recycle waste actually goes
* Plutonium based ammunition – petition for it to stop
* Nuclear bomb testing, all nuclear states still do it – petition
* Fly less and drive less if co2 concerns you
* Have fewer children, thus fewer consumers
* Plant a tree, seed a lawn and scrap the concrete patio
* Unnecessary cruelty to humans and starvation – what's worse, 100's millions dying every year or a 0.7 dec C increase of temperature over 30 years follows by a 0.2 deg C drop over 10 years?
* Wind farms are not carbon free, infact they don't produce enough green energy to even cover their own installation
* Solar farms instead of trees? again, they don't cover their own cost
* The more battery powered stuff you have the more pollution is shipped to India and Africa for the locals to suffer from severe local pollution. (This is what carbon offsetting pays for)
Basically, think about the evironmental impact of what you buy, co2 is a very small if significant factor in an adverse environment.
So, while i'm not religious, but I do live by my points above.
Having a opposing view to co2 does not automatically mean that someone is in favour of the real harms that we ARE doing to the earth… Paying a tax might absolve the guilt a little, i guess being individually proactive and taking personal responsibility in the choices we make can be tougher
Well, the problem, for me, is that the few things on ur list that you say aren't any good just happen to be the very things that will keep polluting-fossil-fuels in place, i.e. the use of wind turbines & solar.
And as far as facts on those, i've been reading about them for decades. (i'm a total geek so whether it's this or that fuel or tech, i always like it in a "hey that machine has some potential" perspective).
So, i've seen many NOAA & wind-scientists speak clearly about the good ole Tornado Alley, ok more accurately, the stretch from N Great Plains thru Texas Panhandle: if most of the windiest areas in that region were deployed
with wind/turbines, we'd see enough energy output to change the game–like a 5th or 4th of US needs.
Solar? It's in it's infancy & better all the time–it's rate of growth in comparison to fossil fuels is like digital speed device curve compared to analog calculating mech.
Again, like the website w/ the huge-Ad atop the page for British Petroleum—-u seem to just happen to have alot of healthy-smart-efficient things u support yet the few you claim are basically a wash, wind & solar, totally change the game & thus keep fossil guys like BP in power, so i cannot help but ask about your bias? I mean, non of the other things u mention (all good no doubt) make a dent if we stay w/ fossil–we'll endup in wars & polluting the planet at horrid rates–because wind & solar aren't "perfect"? by that logic, we'd give up on most clean & successful tech.
Okay here is the crunch…
If co2 was the mass murdering planet destroying entity that you believe to be the case due to it being stored which then re-radiates solar energy back to earth then how are we here?
i think that's a bit ambiguous, so…
Which has pumped more co2 into the air.
4.5 billion years of volcanic activity which pumps more co2 plus Sulphur into the air in one blast than a coal fired station produces in a lifetime, with that process being repeated thousands of times + 2.5 billion years of co2 emitting lifeforms from the most basic single cell through to dinosaurs, fluffy bunnies, people, cows, dolphins and the incalculably vast range of life, over which period, the global temperature soared and plummeted, fire and ice ages, yet we are thrived to the point of 7 billion people.
or
130 years of modern mankind ?
the Earth & those 2 scenarios are in completely different context now in the modern/post mod. period of industrialized carbon/pollutant emissions. Just think about the end of the Dino's era via meteor/asteroid collision near Yucatan, another game changer. Look, an old pal of mine is a physicist AND totally skeptic to everything, energy or fossil emissions or how to do quantum-level research, he's always the skeptic. So i asked him about the basics of the c02 & pollutant-filled atmosphere & greenhouse scenario & he basically said it was this simple: more energy & activity & things pumped-into the atmosphere/particulates/etc, means more heat; he reminded me of basic physics of "things colliding & particles filling-up an area & bumping around more n more (cumulatively too) is what heat is.
Here, i have to go get some work done, checkout an interesting development on solar: http://www.renewableenergyfocus.com/view/30695/crystalsol-receives-8m-funding-to-develop-flexible-pv/
It really isn't out of context.
The premiss is that co2 is the key
Based on that premiss the question stands
As for meteor or comet impacts, doesn't that make you wonder how much near absolute destruction the earth went through yet still bounced back…
So, the question above stands.
co2 makes up 0.033% of the atmosphere
Oxygen 20.947%
Nitrogen 78.084%
(other gases filling the gap)
Incidentally, of all the water on earth, 4% of it is in the air as water vapour. (we are essentially a water planet)
Water vapour is a proven element to effect global climate, think heat exchange, heat is collected, whipped away, replaced with cool air to push the heat away and so on, in fact this is what forms the weather patterns, the formation of clouds which reflect heat both in and out and with
Oxygen, as too much of it kills plants and people, fewer greenery increases co2.. oh hang on, but then that extra co2 makes the plants grow bigger… .hmmmm
co2, which i've just covered, that being, plants have thrived on this for billions of years
Nitrogen…. can you recall any studies into whether nitrogen was responsible for anything concerning climate?
So, out of all that, with co2 being a vital food source and only 0.033%, you still think that's responsible for man made climate change?
As for Crystolsol , they have been granted EU funding for work on their solar tech
http://www.crystalsol.at/company/funding.html
As part of the EU drive to increase energy from renueables , paid in part by the taxpayer, it is thought that domestic energy costs will rise by 54% by 2020. So we all pay twice !
If the wealthy western population is struggling with current energy prices, how on earth will the developing countries ever get out of poverty considering they will have to abide by the same energy to trade…
The whole system is unfair and further exacerbates the global poverty.. that being about 4 billion out of 7 billion who are, right now, unable to feed..
So, back to my original question…
4 billion people starving to death due to be priced out of the food market due to the craze in eco energy which strips forests, farms and grazing areas in favour of solr and wind farms plus bio fuel plantations, or see climate change as a natural phenomina..
4 Billion lives are at stake, today…
all for a 0.5 deg increase in temperature over 130 years
Next it could be your family on the poverty line, starving to death due to food and energy priced only for the super rich.
+Mark McIntyre Sorry took so long to get back to this thread, busy w/ things – also apology for my long-winded-style-here: I actually suffer from OCD,
thus you just have to bear with my writing-mode when reading my response – The OCD helps when reading/searching scientific, large-market or sociopolitical issues,
yet very harsh on my need-to-edit-down my thoughts afterward.
Yes, a real pain in the era of Twitter, a DISCLAIMER i've felt like designing for my social media avatar.
[Can u tell my career has been 3d modeling/CG visualization? Whew, u rarely find animators that are not obsessive to large degree.]
So, I can cut thru alot of this by agreeing w/ you on the waste inherent in countless forms via global markets re: your points involving billions of people going hungry in food-scenarios, suffering via heavy-handed systems that they never voted for, etc.
The crusher for food markets is that the current "gold rush" to genetic food solutions is what is destroying more land & throwing markets into turmoil than any land for Wind or Solar.
My point: when u mentioned issue of most of Earth's billions of people starved-out-of-food markets,
I don't follow how this correlates to wind/solar compared to countless studies over the last decade that
show ways in which global market forces were already squeezing out the poor in favor of growing crops like Coca in S.America for their drug lords or
the soy-growing-bonanza in US and Central & S.America that's eating up land;
that has been happening for years, there was no Solar or Wind planned-for, NOR deployed.
Example:
_http://youtu.be/cl1FJBMt8f8_
NASA scientists [see image in video from astronaut Sally Ride in the in the 1st 10 minutes or so of this science education-presentation @ that link, made a few yrs b4 she died; It shows huge cloud-cover over Latin American regions due to burning/clear-cutting thanks
to
market-lunacy over volatile and/or foolish crop-popularity like soy & related inefficient waste now worry tomorrow attitude
– NONE of that for Wind/Solar.
Oil & fossil profits + their pollution are critically tied to trucking-in fuel & food adds to
the overhead on fuel for pesticide use – and the oil/plastic based packaging, thus we get ChaChing$$$ for
oil-industry that needs outdated, 18th
century smokestack mentality. _The following is
a clear case of the methods of fossil-industry as related to your own point on subsidizing + taxes, seen here in straight-forward no games/gimmicks numbers
from a presentation_
by a well-known lifelong geologist:
William Freudenburg, (Dehlsen Professor of Environment and Society at UC Santa Barbara)
Just click-to the 51-minute-mark of this 1 hour-video,
[this is Univ. Calif website but I can give ya the uTube
link if necessary:
http://www.uctv.tv/shows/Learning-Lessons-from-Disaster-The-BP-Oil-Spill-and-the-Future-of-Energy-in-America-20642 ]
– Why do "we taxpayers" subsidize in billions, the same oil-companies whose own profits are in TENS of billions?
How do u find that "not bad compared to research-subsidies for wind/solar?
I cannot follow that logic.
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