Sceptic agrees global warming real.

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by Trippy, Oct 30, 2011.

  1. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    It is even easier to make a rational decision when you can keep your job by being rational. Or, as Upton Sinclair put it:

    "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding."

    Which makes it very hard for an employee of a coal or oil company to understand climate change.
     
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  3. wellwisher Banned Banned

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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    That's a quote from the Inhofe EPW Press Blog.

    Who's that? Here's a quick summary of his positions with respect to climate change:

    ===========
    In a 2006 interview with the Tulsa World newspaper, Inhofe said regarding the environmentalist movement, "It kind of reminds... I could use the Third Reich, the Big Lie... You say something over and over and over and over again, and people will believe it, and that's their [the environmentalists'] strategy... . .

    Inhofe had previously compared the United States Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo[24] and he compared EPA Administrator Carol Browner to Tokyo Rose.[25] Inhofe had previously stated that Global Warming is "the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state."[26]
    ===========

    Comparing environmentalists to Nazis? The EPA to the Gestapo? The EPA administrator to a wartime Japanese propaganist?

    Looks like someone's trying to make sure people are living in fear - and it ain't the environmentalists.
     
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  7. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    Probably true, because that was about when hunting of Polar Bears was severely cut back.

     
  8. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    That had occurred to me, but if that was going to be the case WW would have been wrecking his own argument.

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  9. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    Well it's all about cause and effect.

    The severe restrictions on hunting have allowed the polar bear populations to climb.

    The thinning summer ice now is having negative pressure on these expanded populations.

    I think the polar bear is mildly threatened by global warming, but making the argument that because the population has increased since the 50s it's not an issue, without mentioning the huge effect the bans on hunting had on the population is not being particularly honest.
     
  10. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    The data says polar bears increased during a 50 year period where there was global warming. There is no fear attached this statement, so it is easier to be rational and attribute this to secondary things like protection from hunting. With global warming, we forget secondary factors easier, like natural earth cycles from the last ice age, due to less bandwidth via fear.

    I could include fear, locally, saying more polar bears means we should expect more human deaths by polar bears in the coming years. Global warming is expected to kill more people via the rise in polar bear populations. Fear is fun and profitable, therefore we need to hunt more. I am not a hunter nor would I kill anything (except bugs), but thats the game.
     
  11. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    But hunting is not a secondary thing.
    Polar bears don't reproduce that rapidly and hunting was getting well over 1,000 bears a year.

    Not that likely because Polar bears and people don't live in close proximity and interact very often.

    But yeah, we may indeed see more deaths from polar bears as they search for off ice prey.

    Arthur
     
  12. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    The point I was making is global warming appears to be occurring. But extrapolation beyond that to the doom and gloom is not true by default. One does not follow from the other since the future is not as certain as the past.

    I suggested looking at global warming doom and gloom predictions from 10-20 years ago to see what has materialized amd what did not, to figure the batting average. This will tell us if global warming implies all the doom and gloom or is this extrapolation mostly fear based hype to get research dollars and assistance to special interests.
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Characterization of a very real environmental problem as doom and gloom is just a way for you to ignore and ridicule it. The predictions of the past do not apply to the present, as scientific advancement is progressive.
     
  14. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Agreed. Conversely, predictions that we will change the temperature of the planet and absolutely nothing bad will happen are also unsupportable.
     
  15. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    Well have you done so?

    I mean your whole post implies that you already know the results of this.
     
  16. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Still no one has told me exactly how to stop Global warming. I think people only like to talk about it now, so they can get into an argument (and a completely fucking useless one at that).

    I was trying to get someone...anyone to ejaculate a real solution to this problem (proven or not proven - you see that DOESN'T MATTER, if the problem is unsolvable).

    Btw a carbon tax is bullshit and won't work. REAL SOLUTION not a bullshit one. How are we going to reverse it? I will even settle for how are we going to be able to reduce C02 and have no one starve, be slaughtered, or make war to do it.
     
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Solutions are easy, in theory. Stop all burning of fossil fuels. Replace transportation fuels with cellulosic ethanol, methane, battery and hydrogen. Replace fixed energy sources with solar, wind, hydro and nuclear, with biomethane for peaker plants.

    There are a lot of specific solutions. Here's one from SciAm:

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

    Sure it will. Make it a high enough tax and it will absolutely reduce CO2 emissions. It will then take a few decades to stop the warming from the CO2 we have already emitted.

    Can't be done. People are starving right now; no matter what you do tomorrow, or next year, or in a decade, people will still starve.

    Drastically reducing CO2 emissions will cause more starvation in the short term, less in the long term. Doing absolutely noting will cause less starvation in the short term, more starvation in the long term.

    Which do you prefer?
     
  18. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Ok Let us assume those solutions will all work. Who is to pay for their implementation? Do not try to tell me the market will direct humanity to them.

    I require more explanation on how a carbon tax, a jack off someone's check, reduces CO2.

    Last point, I need to know how you are going to cause the misfortune of this conversion without force?
     
  19. The Esotericist Getting the message to Garcia Valued Senior Member

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    As I posted in post #4, the temperature and CO2 levels of the planet will rise and fall independent of what we do. It is arrogance on our part to assume that we could make a significant impact in the temperature or atmospheric make up of the planet simply by our activities.

    I have my suspicious that our meddling with the biosphere will have more impact on weather conditions than just our industry. We are on a larger cycle, one that has nothing to do with the development of our industry. Although global warming may have been proven, and might be an accepted fact, there is nothing which proves that it is not a natural cycle. AGW is not a fact, and therefor, these solutions which you pose are just that, hypothetical, and provide no credible evidence that they would effect this grander cyclical nature of CO2 and temperature fluctuations.

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    The grand arrogance that our activities affect the temperature of the planet more than the larger cycles of the cosmos?

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  20. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    We will, of course.

    Let's say you are short of money and you need a car - and the cheapest electric car available is a Nissan Leaf for $27,000; the cheapest gas car is a Hyundai Accent for $40,000. Which one will you buy?

    See above.
     
  21. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Where is your evidence that we cannot make a significant impact on the atmospheric makeup?

    As I posted in post #13 your assertion about the relative impact of volcanoes is not correct.
     
  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Simple math proves you wrong.

    Agreed. We should screw with it as little as possible.

    It is, actually. We have proven these three facts:

    1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and when its concentration in an atmosphere increases, average temperatures go up.

    2) We have increased the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere by about 50%.

    3) The temperature is indeed rising as we increase CO2 levels.
     
  23. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    You guys are asking for money - YOU prove it.
     

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