Re: The sky is falling

This misses the whole point. Its not so much about whether or not warming a) is or isn't happening, or b) is or isn't a result of human CO2 emissions.

My beef with the environmental industry (and it IS a big business with just as much at stake as Exxon-Mobil) is that it so often encourages the wrong, or at least far from best response. Not my writing, but I agree with every word, and everyone who claims to be an environmentalist should think long and hard about issues like these:

We are not worried about the environmentalist, Most of us ARE environmentalist in that we do not want to $#it were we "eat." Dealing with the $#it has not proven to be a problem.

It is the environuts that we must worry about. They do not want us to "eat" so we do not need to deal with the $#it LOL

I'll point out once again, theories are hardly facts. There is no proof that increased CO2 in the atmostphere can cause the temperature to rise. There IS prove that the CO2 level goes up after the temperature goes up. You can choose to believe the former, if you wish however.

And pyrometer will measure heat but it does not PROVE the source of the heat. Please explain your answer, who did that research to prove increased CO2 in the atmosphere caused the earth temperature to rise? ALL of the reports I've read contain a lost of words like "Could, May, Likely," nothing more. The fact is the average earth temperature has not gone up, in nearly ten years

As to taking action "in case we are right," what if we had taken the action suggest in the sixties and seventies to dump carbon black on the glaciers and the Russian idea to send a large mirror into space directed at Siberia, to speed up melting to prevent us from slipping into an "ice age" because pollution was blocking the sun and cooling the earth? ;)

Wrong. Ever hear of Venus? That *hot* planet in orbit between the Earth and the sun? It is so hot because of its green house effect.

Correlation is not the same as causation. The graphs to which you refer show that at sometimes the CO2 levels rise after the temp. goes up, but at others, the CO2 levels rose before.

I prefer to believe verifiable facts.

Jeff

I know that 100% of doctors told me 25 years ago that nothing could be done for my back and that I would be in a wheel chair starting about 15 years ago. I didn't believe it and I go to work every day without use of wheel chair or cane, and I work on my own cars, etc. because of the use of herbs and chiropractic treatment that they pooh-poohed and still pooh-pooh. Funny how the placebo effect can overcome the laws of physics. :)

Also funny how you insist that our beliefs should be the result of what a critical mass of people believe rather than a study of the facts. Science is *NOT* basing your belief on what percentages of people believe, scientists or not. Science is based on honest analysis of the facts. Besides, it's not 1 or 2% of scientists in their right minds and without personal gain to be made in perpetuating a myth.

Let's see. Ummm - Increased solar activity? (which you will refuse to acknowledge). Funny how man's activities have caused the sun to increase its output in recent years and other planets to also increase their temperatures. Want to explain that one?

(He'll deny that the sun's output has increased.)

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

I thought even the most rabid had given up THAT sad old argument. "The earth is balanced on a knife edge, a little too far one way and we'll freeze like Mars, a little too far the other and we'll boil like Venus."

Feh.

If the Earth's environment were *that* inherently unstable, it would have run off to one extreme or the other a few hundred million years ago. There are obviously very powerful and very effective stabilizing factors in play, because the atmosphere has withstood far higher and lower carbon concentrations in the past than in the present. It has also withstood violent vulcanism and large swings in solar radiation without falling off the cusp, too. The obvious conclusion is that the system is stable about its current point, or at the very least that there is a local stability point that it would take a HUGE excursion to get out of.

That CO2 traps heat is a fact, not a theory. You might as well say "it's a theory that gravity makes you fall."

Yes there is. There's a whole science of spectroscopy, and one of thermodynamics.

CO2 traps heat. Fact.

And you can believe evil spirits cause disease if you wish. Or that the earth is 6000 years old. You know what? Science doesn't depend on the acceptance of fools to work.

CO2 traps heat. That is a fact.

And that is simply false. Tell you what, you tell me what scientific sources you've read. National Academy of Sciences? American Geophysical Union? Royal Society? IPCC? Come on, tell us.

Another falsehood. No scientists, no scientific journals predicted an ice age. Geez, if all you're going to do is parrot right-wing lies, why not just go to one of the right-wing groups where you'll find all your fellow ditto-heads?

A theory is an accepted explanation -- note the word "accepted." Science does work by consensus.

Actually it is. But you tell me, what scientific sources have you consulted?

No increase in the sun's output in the past 50 years.

Yes. You're making that up.

Gee, I guess next I'll deny electricity works by magic.

Check out:

Arrgh. No "science" doesn't work by consensus. Consensus is entirely independent of science. Yes, consensus exists (and also fails to exist at times) within scientific communities, but the stronger rigorous proof becomes the less important consensus becomes. That's why such a huge number of theories that were held to be true by consensus over the centuries have been disproven. IOW, the minority that didn't join the consensus turned out to be correct.

If you think its any different today, then you just said the equivalent of "no one would ever need more than 640k of memory."

And higher atmospheric water content (from trapped heat) increases cloud cover which increases albedo, which decreases heating due to solar radiation.

That is also a fact.

Which effect (or thousands of other similar effects) dominates?

When did global climate change become a political debate? Geez, if all you're going to do is parrot left-wing theories, keep searching only left-wing groups where you'll find all your fellow environuts. LOL

That may be your opinion but our profs were teaching us that pollution was warming the world and leading us into another ice age, when I was earning my engineering degree, in the late forties

If you believe no scientist were predicting an ice age, I would suggest you do a search of the plan to spread carbon black on the glaciers and the Russia plan to send a mirror into space over Siberia to reflect sun light on the glacier at night to speed melting and reverse the cooling trend.

Your arguments keep going around in circles but you are not convincing anybody, albeit those on the left or right or middle, that man is causing, or even capable of causing global climate change

How was warming the world leading you into an ice age?

The only place that I think is getting cold is the space between your ears.

Jeff

I see you a "picking again' to be "heard again." Since you have been following the thread you should know what I meant buy what a said, about pollution blocking the sun, previously

You have to remember that in the liberal/Lloyd mind, you're only allowed to discuss/consider things that support your argument, never allowed to consider anything that would moderate the effect you're pushing on a given day.

IOW, there's no such thing as buffers, or balance in naturally competing effects (or in your thinking for that matter). IOW, because you, as a devout liberal, have decided to believe in GW, you can only acknowledge things that push the earth's temperature - pardon me - Mother Earth's temperature - hotter. Any competing mechanism that moderates or counteracts that cannot be true - otherwise there can be no hysteria and no need for liberals and government to save us from ourselves.

Wrap several layers of duct tape around your head and learn to think like a liberal.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

No, I didn't know what you meant. If you want to be understood, start proofreading your words before pressing send.

Jeff

You just made my case.

In your mind, science is what men say at any given moment. In my mind, science is reality based on facts, laws of physics, etc. (and at this very moment you are probably still thinking they are the same thing). The two can be, and often are, very different (for many different reasons - some of them political and/or for gain). That's your whole problem - you can't admit that except when it suits your purposes.

Same is true on religion. I avoid believing what man says about God (man-made religion). I try to get to the truth of what God says about himself. Nothing to do with the discussion, but it always spins liberals up when you talk in a positive manner about God, therefore it's worth bringing up. :) But actually the problems in dealing with science and religion are the same in a given mind. Funny how that works, ain't it. Something about difficulty dealing with reality vs. what one wishes were reality.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Tell us how you figure out whether global warming is real. The science is extremely complicated, and involves information from many different fields of science, like biology, chemistry and atmospheric science and information from many different sources, like experiments, different types of observations (ground observations, satalite observations and meterological observations) and several different complicated models. How does one person arrive at the truth? There's way to much information for one person to gather and analyze. And more information is coming in. I could go and buy the fastest computers, but I would still not be able to do all the simulations myself.

How do you do this?

And what is wrong with liberals? And why do you think that liberals don' think about God in a positive manner?

Science involves testing hypotheses. Because religion is faith based, there are not hypotheses to test. Stephen Jay Gould wrote a great book on this, called _Rock_of_Ages_. I recommend it. He also talked about this in other books.