JAD_333

The globe has been getting warmer for some time now.

As it happens, the warming parallels a sustained period of growth of industrial activity and fossil fuel consumption.

People are correct to suspect a cause and effect link between these two concurrent phenomena.

However, the suspicion has not been fully substantiated. Science has yet to
determined without a doubt that CO2 emissions from human activity is the primary cause of global warmng.

__________________
To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education. (Plato)

ArmchairGeneral

How 'bout :

The globe has been getting warmer for some time now.

As it happens, the warming roughly parallels a sustained period of growth of industrial activity and fossil fuel consumption.

Some people suspect a cause and effect link between these two concurrent phenomena.

However, the suspicion has not been fully substantiated. Science has yet to
determine without a doubt (and never will) that CO2 emissions from human activity are the primary cause (or even a major cause) of global warming.

__________________
"Apocalyptic thought is curiously pleasurable."
-Theodore Dalrymple

dalem

You're wrong. When a skeptic (i.e. a normal person who doesn't buy into your religion) says "the Sun", then you have to explain how increased Solar activity over the last few centuries has not put more photons "than normal" into the planet's atmosphere, or, failing that, explain how those photons either did not contribute to the total energy absorbed by the atmosphere at all, or did not contribute enough. To show that they did not contribute enough, however, you'd need a solid understanding of how they contribute in the first place, and our understanding there is incomplete. Also, as weird as it seems, we don't have good quantitative data on Solar output going back more than a few decades. We have decent relative data going back further, and interesting correlative data going back quite far, but it's not enough.

What we DO have is the Sun known to be more active and different planets believed to be experiencing warming.

We don't have anything to really counter that, what with the major public datasets and interpretations showing errors (Hockey Stick, Hansen/NASA).

So is the Sun enough? Mmmm, maybe, maybe not. But it's sure as shinola a far more known variable than CO2.

-dale

Edited to add link to JunkScience article that parallels (but with far more numbers and squiggly graphy things) what I've said.

LinkyDink.

Keep in mind that it's from 2006 so it doesn't take into account the recently-acknowledged problems with the Hansen/NASA data.

dalem

Righto. I've met enough scientists to know that their opinions are no more valuable than mine. What I am interested in for topics like this are their data and their numbers.

-dale

dalem

When the intro paragraph reads

I answer - "How about my ruddy bum?"

-dale

Parihaka

Lol. How about, the globe has been getting warmer for some considerable time, since the 1650's in fact.

Recently, a study was done that compared the long term running mean of average temperatures over the northern hemisphere with specific data taken primarily from north American temperature recordings over IIRC 70 years(?) and grafted those precise (sic) readings onto that long term running average over 1000 years. Because there was variance between the averaged long term data and the precise (sic) short term data, the IPCC used the report (Mann et al) to state that the globe was heating up faster than the natural background warming occuring.

To back up that statement, they used a number of computer models. See Dale if you want an analysis of those models, suffice it to say that they're no longer trotted out as 'truth' as their predictions since 1997 have failed to reflect reality. Hence my post on this thread recently

KEVIN Trenberth is head of the large US National Centre for Atmospheric Research and one of the advisory high priests of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).


Despite Mann's methodology and data both being under question, and none of the predictive models as Trenberth stated " corresponds even remotely to the current observed climate" the IPCC report (you'll note it's the only report Tanq et al can trot out as actual evidence) was used as a basis for the great human induced global warming myth, Al Gore et al, where every report of a cyclone, every glacial calving, every extraordinary weather event was put down to those nasty carbon emitters.
Darfur as an example? The UN, sponsors of the IPCC, assert Darfur is a global warming event. Truly.

So, to the CO2 produced by humans having an effect. Sum total of human produced greenhouse gases? Somewhere between 0.035% to 0.09% of the total produced by the planet. Science that proves this amount has an effect on the global climate? Supposition only.
Now wait for the pretty little power point demonstrations about how something so small as to be statistically irrelevant really can be the cause of all our ills, if only you'd have faith.

__________________
In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

JAD_333

Well, never say never, but if science hasn't got it nailed down by now with all its fancy instruments and big funding, it may never.

Ramo

I see your point, Dale, and I respect your position.

There has been much doubt cast upon the integrity of climate-doomers, scientists or not, and in this day and age with the access to information we have, we all have the opportunity to decide for ourselves.

Tang_tonic, forgive me for being abrupt, but you are wrong.

The very first scenario I postulated was that scientists did indeed prove the theory:

I can now assume that you merely misread my post, and that you are very much capable of the reason I hinted you lack, and I apologize.


Parihaka, from your lack of reply to my last post can I conclude that you may grudgingly admit that my post was an innocent and objective proposition, as I intended it to be?
Or are the dark inconclusive storms of forum debate gathering as I type...

Officer of Engineers

I'm not a scientist but I am an engineer. Show me the equations. Thus far, none works.

__________________
Chimo

Ramo

Did ya check if your GC is on radians?

Officer of Engineers

No but I will be happy to check your calculations with the last 200 years of data.

Parihaka

Ramo, my previous post wasn't intended as a personal put down or to demean what you were saying. I'm a moderator on what is more often than not an extremely combative forum. It's not a democracy, you can't automatically say what you like, and we do not support total freedom of speech.
The basic prerequiste is that to survive here, you need to demonstrate you have been touched by the light of reason.

As such, I often have to moderate forums on which my knowledge is limited, such as this one, but which I have a basic knowledge to get by with and a desire to learn.
What allows me to moderate this forum and other even more robust ones is my ability to sort wheat from chaff linguistically. That and a big stick.

I know when someone is making statements without factual backup, I know the techniques for obfuscation and deceit, it is my job to test the temper of new members, and my only meaning in my comment about your hypotheticals is that if they are all you have to bring to the table, those with a black belt in this subject from both sides of the argument will soon eat you for breakfast.

I am happy to be proven wrong, but I've taken you as a kitten ambling innocently into a dojo, and my previous post was an internet version of the sound of a finely crafted kauri taiaha passing precisely 1/8 of an inch above your scalp.
Again, this is not meant as a personal put down.

JAD_333

That works. I hope it's not a distraction to say, "yes, and the globe was even warmer long before 1650," by which I mean to say it heats up and cools down over the course of many years. I say this because I sense that a lot of the furor today is the result of people not being aware of the fact that they are not on the same scale of time as the earth.

(The scales are measured by lifetimes with humans clocking on average less than a 100 years and the earth unknown millions or billions. Thus, we humans might notice all the events of a day, while to the earth it's a blur. The same happens on our scale with all the electrons in us living for extreme brief times.)

Anyway, it seems to me this unawareness of scale causes people to judge events unfolding on the earth's scale according to their own. They get worked up over an average rise in atmospheric temperature of 1-2 degress F taking place over 50 years when to the earth it may be up and down in just seconds on its scale of time.

It's all a temptest in a teapot. IMHO, we ought to skip over the whole debate and just focus on what the effects of global warming will be on us and how we should prepare for it. Like, OK, the planet is getting warmer; what do we do now short of turning off our ignitions permanently and receding back to a nomadic life in a tepee?

I hope you didn't take anything I said as a lecture. It's just my crude way. For some reason I am sure you are aware of time scales, etc.

Parihaka

I think that puts it in a nutshell

Reo690

Tang STILL hasn't answered this question.

__________________
"I am not gay ... but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night."
-- Senator Larry Craig, Boise, Idaho