Global Warming Debate

[rohirrim TR]

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

Gore is going to get an honorary doctorate in climatology ...I guess that means you can quote him on authority now.

I heard about that...it was underwhelming.

[Insidious Rex]

Al Gore invented Climatology!

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Al Gore invented Climatology!

He'll go down as one of the greatest inventors of all time, I'm sure.

[rohirrim TR]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Al Gore invented Climatology!

Along with a few other vehicles of misinformation.

[Nurvingiel]

IRex was kidding you guys, climatology is a branch of science which has been around longer than "An Inconvenient Truth".



Also, editorials do not equal fact.

[rohirrim TR]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

IRex was kidding you guys, climatology is a branch of science which has been around longer than "An Inconvenient Truth".



Also, editorials do not equal fact.

you didn't answer my question. Were you one the throng of screaming female Al Gore fans?

[Nurvingiel]

Originally Posted by rohirrim TR

you didn't answer my question. Were you one the throng of screaming female Al Gore fans?

Hahaha, no I wasn't. Check out my location. Vancouver. It was at the University of Toronto. Guess if I was there.

Edit: My location doesn't actually say Vancovuer, so legit question. But no, I wasn't there.

Had I been at UofT, I would have gone though.

[The Telcontarion]

It cites names and gives websites to check out the info:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb9aA8JL0VI

[Nurvingiel]

The Telcontorian, I'd watch that, but I'm not on a computer with sound at the moment.

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

Gore is going to get an honorary doctorate in climatology ...I guess that means you can quote him on authority now.

No it doesn't. Are you deliberately misunderstanding this entire debate?

[rohirrim TR]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

The Telcontorian, I'd watch that, but I'm not on a computer with sound at the moment.

Thats a bit of a self-refuting statement considering you just posted , or do you use palm to post?

[Nurvingiel]

Originally Posted by rohirrim TR

Thats a bit of a self-refuting statement considering you just posted , or do you use palm to post?

Haha, let's put it down to vague grammar. I was on a computer, but that computer didn't have speakers. So I couldn't watch the video since it's of a radio show.

[The Gaffer]

Yes, I fail to understand this loathing of Al Gore. There seems to be an informal yet orchestrated campaign from the Right to besmirch his reputation (e.g. that story about his house was cooked up by some right-wing "think-tank"; or should that be "knee-jerk-reaction-tank"?)

Talk about shooting the messenger.

[Curubethion]

Eh, maybe he's loathed because he's got double standards. Like using immensely more energy than the average American. Oh, wait-I forgot. He's a politician, so of course he's entitled to use more energy than the average American. We just have to work harder to stop purported Global Warming, that's all.

Another interesting thing to note...the entire Solar System is going through a period of warming. c.f., Mars' icecaps melting, ice on Pluto melting, etc. So...either lots and lots of aliens aren't taking care of their respective planets' climates, or we're not really causing Global Warming after all...

[Earniel]

I still don't see what Gore's energy consumption has to do with the validity of global warming. *shrugs* Maybe it's an American thing?

Originally Posted by Curubethion

Another interesting thing to note...the entire Solar System is going through a period of warming. c.f., Mars' icecaps melting, ice on Pluto melting, etc. So...either lots and lots of aliens aren't taking care of their respective planets' climates, or we're not really causing Global Warming after all...

I can't tell whether you're joking, but anyway. Just because I have a cold and my neighbour has a cold doesn't mean we caught it from the same person. A planetary climate system is a hugely complex thing. Heck, we barely know our own, and we've been here for quite a while! So don't you think it is overly simplistic to say that because some (to my knowledge not all) planets may be experiencing a warming trends, we're cleared about ours?

Planets, I may add, that are sometimes fundamentally different from ours and of which probably only Venus has the right atmosphere for green house effect, so there's hardly any basis to compare. We're only scraping the surface -literally even- of other planets, so we have precious little scientific data to go on. For all we know those planets are warming and cooling every 50 years, before we had eyes up in the sky. Also, there is no reason why their warming can not be totally different from the climate change we're experiencing.

[The Gaffer]

Originally Posted by Curubethion

Eh, maybe he's loathed because he's got double standards. Like using immensely more energy than the average American. Oh, wait-I forgot. He's a politician, so of course he's entitled to use more energy than the average American. We just have to work harder to stop purported Global Warming, that's all.

Another interesting thing to note...the entire Solar System is going through a period of warming. c.f., Mars' icecaps melting, ice on Pluto melting, etc. So...either lots and lots of aliens aren't taking care of their respective planets' climates, or we're not really causing Global Warming after all...

So now the Right cares about energy consumption?

I would guess that it IS appropriate for a politician to use more energy than an average person. Wouldn't you say?

[rohirrim TR]

I don't care which side you're on this is hilarious.

Johnny Cash Parody

Nurv you need speakers for this.

[The Telcontarion]

This documentary on global warming is amazing. First aired on channel 4 in england it gives the history of the global warming debate and the actual reasons why the earth is warming up, ie the sun. Facts, fact, facts.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...arming+Swindle

[The Gaffer]

Nope. Try lies, lies, lies.

It was basically a rehash of the same old discredited nonsense.

So it’s the same old conspiracy theory that we’ve been hearing from the denial industry for the past ten years, and it carries as much scientific weight as the contention that the Twin Towers were brought down by missiles. The programme’s thesis revolves around the deniers’ favourite canard: that the “hockey-stick graph� showing rising global temperatures is based on a statistical mistake made in a paper by the scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes(11). What it will not be showing is that their results have now been repeated several times by other scientists using different statistical methods(12); that the paper claiming to have exposed the mistake has been comprehensively debunked(13) and that the lines of evidence used by Mann, Bradley and Hughes are just a few among hundreds demonstrating that 20th century temperatures were anomalous.

Further, the programme maker has previous:

More damagingly, the only way in which Durkin could sustain his thesis was to deceive the people he interviewed and to edit their answers to change their meaning. Following complaints by his interviewees, the Independent Television Commission found that “the views of the four complainants, as made clear to the interviewer, had been distorted by selective editing�.

Source: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007...ies-of-denial/

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by Eärniel

I still don't see what Gore's energy consumption has to do with the validity of global warming. *shrugs* Maybe it's an American thing?

It has a lot to do with it. Al Gore is the one who has been peddling his movie here and overseas like it was the plague. His movie is considered authorative. His hypocrisy doesn't say that global warming is wrong, but it does say at least that he talks the talk, but doesn't walk the walk. Besides, it's just wrong to expect the everyman to cut down on his carbon footprint, when Al can easily cut his by giving up a few of his homes. Not to mention his Jet.

Hey, I don't really care if he has a huge house that consumes more energy than Godzilla in a mega-mansion; it's that he calls for everyone else to cut down.

Ironically it was recently found that George Bush's Crawford home is very eco-friendly and energy conserving.
http://www.off-grid.net/index.php?p=680

Planets, I may add, that are sometimes fundamentally different from ours and of which probably only Venus has the right atmosphere for green house effect, so there's hardly any basis to compare. We're only scraping the surface -literally even- of other planets, so we have precious little scientific data to go on. For all we know those planets are warming and cooling every 50 years, before we had eyes up in the sky. Also, there is no reason why their warming can not be totally different from the climate change we're experiencing.

Unconscious reasoning?

Let's talk about the models which predict all dire doom: I have heard that these kind of models always exaggerate. If we were going through a particular cooling spell, wouldn't those models predict that we were going to freeze?

Also I'd like to hear more of what the greenhouse gases actually do when they're in the atmosphere.

[The Gaffer]

Ah, if only Al Gore would do the eco-friendly thing: stay at home and keep his mouth shut. Oh, and btw, the "info" about his lifestyle has been shown to be an outright smear by right-wingers.

Earniel's point is completely valid: making an argument by analogy with other planets doesn't hold any water at all.

Computer models are notoriously inaccurate; if they were the only basis upon which the IPCC review was based, I would be extremely sceptical.

However, when you've got lots and lots of different models all saying more or less the same thing, and lots and lots of observational evidence which make the same conclusion, and (increasingly) lots and lots of observational evidence which validate the predictions of the models, then you've got to start taking things seriously.

As for greenhouse gases, Wiki will suffice:

When sunlight reaches the surface of earth, some of it is absorbed and warms the earth. Because the Earth's surface is much cooler than the sun, it radiates energy at much longer wavelengths than the sun (see black body radiation and Wien's displacement law). Some energy in these longer wavelengths is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere before it can be lost to space. The absorption of this longwave radiant energy warms the atmosphere (the atmosphere also is warmed by transfer of sensible and latent heat from the surface). Greenhouse gases also emit longwave radiation both upward to space and downward to the surface. The downward part of this longwave radiation emitted by the atmosphere is the "greenhouse effect."

The main greenhouse gases are water vapour, carbon dioxide CO2, methane CH4 and nitrous oxide, N2O. Nitrogen and oxygen, the main constituents of the atmosphere, are not greenhouse gases.

Most of the man-made greenhouse gases are CO2, which has been observed to correlate with increases in global mean temperature.

Water vapour isn't affected by human activity but, worryingly, an increase in temperature leads to an increase in water vapour, leading to further increases in temperature.