Climate Change: The Way Forward

[Papasito]

Gore was called out time and time again by legitimate scientists, and passed on every one of them, in fact, he would not acknowledge them at all. He was not available for debate. But when Sarah Palin opened her mouth, he knew [[in his mind) he could walk all over her, because everyone else does! That's my point.

As far as the GW deniers go, I've made my point several times on this site.
smashing our economy to shambles and exporting what's left of our dying industry in the name of global wealth redistribution over supposedly cutting Co2 is a BAD idea. Keep industry, and grow it, in the USA under the oversight of our EPA. That's the way to go!

The right is making mistakes by not fighting pollution, and just making themselves look liek conspiracty threorists over GW. We need to call out the worlds REAL polluters, India, China, and give ourselves credit where it's due [[any business owner can tell you that dealing with the State/Fed/Local is a pain in the butt with all the environmental/EPA regulations on the books here right now) because we DO stand up for our environment in the USA where so many other nations do NOT.

AMERICA IS NOT THE ROOT OF ALL THE WORLDS PROBLEMS.
WE DO NOT OWE THE WORLD A FREE RIDE ON OUR BACKS.
OUR NATION IS COLLAPSING BEFORE OUR VERY EYES
AND WE ARE TOO STUPID TO CALL OUR PATHETIC LEADERS OUT FOR IT.

[Diehard]

Gore was called out time and time again by legitimate scientists, and passed on every one of them, in fact, he would not acknowledge them at all. He was not available for debate. But when Sarah Palin opened her mouth, he knew [[in his mind) he could walk all over her, because everyone else does! That's my point.

Oh, snap!!
Politics. Personalities. Why should we care? Why are we turning this into a B-rate reality show? It's much bigger than Al vs. Sarah, or anyone here.

As far as the GW deniers go, I've made my point several times on this site.
smashing our economy to shambles and exporting what's left of our dying industry in the name of global wealth redistribution over supposedly cutting Co2 is a BAD idea. Keep industry, and grow it, in the USA under the oversight of our EPA. That's the way to go!

Wow, you're actually making some sense. If it's all about the U.S. economy, why aren't the GW deniers talking about that instead of Al Gore's house, or the hacked emails, or the fact that it snowed today? Because it's complicated.
This is bigger than the U.S economy. China and India and the rest of the developing world don't give a crap about the environment as long as the people in power are making money. A global agreement, like they're trying to accomplish now in Denmark, is the only way to level the playing field economically while moving toward renewable and clean energy.
I know CCBatson and his ilk don't give a crap about clean air or renewable energy, because the only thing they see is moneymoneymoney for the lucky few, and the scourge of the evil liberals trying to take away their toys [[as preached to them by Glenn Beck - Peace Be Upon Him.) So their solution is to pretend the environment is not worth anyone's concern, and anything that environmentalists say is a huge hoax, and we should go about doing whatever we've been doing to generate money for the lucky few. Screw the environment. Screw science. Anything that gets in the way of capitalists raping the earth is a hoax.
But I'm done trying to talk to them. They don't even read the threads before responding. I know name-calling is forbidden, but I also know those people don't read, so I feel free to call them "willfully ignorant buttheads" worthy of the scorn of reasonable people. So sue me.

The right is making mistakes by not fighting pollution, and just making themselves look liek conspiracty threorists over GW. We need to call out the worlds REAL polluters, India, China, and give ourselves credit where it's due [[any business owner can tell you that dealing with the State/Fed/Local is a pain in the butt with all the environmental/EPA regulations on the books here right now) because we DO stand up for our environment in the USA where so many other nations do NOT.
AMERICA IS NOT THE ROOT OF ALL THE WORLDS PROBLEMS.
WE DO NOT OWE THE WORLD A FREE RIDE ON OUR BACKS.
OUR NATION IS COLLAPSING BEFORE OUR VERY EYES
AND WE ARE TOO STUPID TO CALL OUR PATHETIC LEADERS OUT FOR IT.

YES.
THIS.

[Alfie1a]

When you burn fuel, what do you get? HEAT. If in fact there is global warming, there is the reason why. CO2 has nothing to do with it.

[Diehard]

When you burn fuel, what do you get? HEAT. If in fact there is global warming, there is the reason why. CO2 has nothing to do with it.

Wow, you're smart. So explain this: If heat rises, why is it so much colder at higher elevations? Huh? Huh?

[ccbatson]

Also misguided...don't look to replace the discredited manmade global warming by CO2 myth with another manmade global warming myth...like heat generated by burning fuel.

[Rideron]

Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don't add up




Al Gore's office admitted that the percentage he quoted in his speech was from an old, ballpark figure






Hannah Devlin, Ben Webster, Philippe Naughton in Copenhagen


div#related-article-links p a, div#related-article-links p a:visited {color:#06c;} There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient one yesterday.
The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change “spin” row.
Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.
In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”
Related Links

• 150 arrested as police fire teargas

• Key elements of Copenhagen deal unravel

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.
“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.
The embarrassing error cast another shadow over the conference after the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming.
Mr Gore is not the only titan of the world stage finding Copenhagen to be a tricky deal.
World leaders — with Gordon Brown arriving tonight in the vanguard — are facing the humiliating prospect of having little of substance to sign on Friday, when they are supposed to be clinching an historic deal.
Meanwhile, five hours of negotiating time were lost yesterday when developing countries walked out in protest over the lack of progress on their demand for legally binding emissions targets from rich nations. The move underlined the distrust between rich and poor countries over the proposed legal framework for the deal.
Last night key elements of the proposed deal were unravelling. British officials said they were no longer confident that it would contain specific commitments from individual countries on payments to a global fund to help poor nations to adapt to climate change while the draft text on protecting rainforests has also been weakened.
Even the long-term target of ending net deforestation by 2030 has been placed in square brackets, meaning that the date could be deferred. An international monitoring system to identify illegal logging is now described in the text as optional, where before it was compulsory. Negotiators are also unable to agree on a date for a global peak in greenhouse emissions.
Perhaps Mr Gore had felt the need to gild the lily to buttress resolve. But his speech was roundly criticised by members of the climate science community. “This is an exaggeration that opens the science up to criticism from sceptics,” Professor Jim Overland, a leading oceanographer at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

[johnsmith]

Quote: "BUT. YOU'RE. NOT. SCIENTISTS."

The same ilk that was crying about the coming Ice age just 30 er so years ago? You know, not one of you handwringers have addressed this fact. It is the KO to your argument of credibility in science. They are no final authority or buck stops here reference on anything.

I'm still waiting to see the "Coming Ice Age" issue of the '70s addressed as well. It's convenient to forget that whopper isn't it?

[Stosh]

I'm still waiting to see the "Coming Ice Age" issue of the '70s addressed as well. It's convenient to forget that whopper isn't it?

Here's an article from USA regarding that exact same BS you are spouting.

Study debunks 'global cooling' concern of '70s

By Doyle Rice
USA TODAY
The supposed "global cooling" consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can't make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era.
The '70s was an unusually cold decade. Newsweek, Time, The New York Times and National Geographic published articles at the time speculating on the causes of the unusual cold and about the possibility of a new ice age.
But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.
The study reports, "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.
"A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales."
Peterson was also a contributor to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 report.
Scientific reports in the past decade, most notably the U.N. panel's Nobel Prize-winning efforts, have warned that human activities are warming the planet by increasing the release of heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases into the atmosphere.
Skeptics have argued that climate change is cyclical, not fueled by the burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas. Peterson notes in the study that concerns over the frigid 1970s subsequently became representative of scientific division over global warming.
That was an unusually cold decade, especially the later years, across the Northern Hemisphere. In the USA, the winters of 1977-79 were three of the 11 coldest since the recording of temperatures began in the 1890s, according to climate center data. The winter of 1978-79 remains the coldest on record in the USA.
Some have doubts about the new survey. "The paper does not place the late '70s in its climatic context," says Pat Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
"The temperature records we had at the time showed a very sharp cooling from the mid-'40s to the mid-'70s," Michaels says. "And scientists attempted to explain that as a consequence of the pollution that was preventing solar radiation from reaching the surface.
"At the time, scientists thought the cooling effect of pollution was greater than the warming effect of carbon dioxide," Michaels adds. "They were attempting to explain the dramatic cooling of the '70s."
But Robert Henson, a writer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and author of The Rough Guide to Climate Change, says: "This is an important part of science history, and Peterson and his co-authors have done a great job of excavating it.
"People have long claimed that scientists in the 1970s were convinced a new ice age was imminent. But in fact, many researchers at the time were already more concerned about the long-term risks of global warming."
Along with Peterson, the study was also authored written by William Connolly of the British Antarctic Survey and John Fleck of The Albuquerque Journal. The research will be published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition...ling21.art.htm

[ccbatson]

What??..is Stosh coming over to the correct side of this issue?

[elganned]

Depends on what you consider the "correct" side... He simply posted an article which debunks the popular "they were predicting an Ice Age back in the 70's" myth.

I'd say that indicates he's still on the "correct" side of the issue, which is the side of the overwhelming mass of climatologists that indicate 1) the earth is getting warmer and 2) humans are a major cause of that warming.

[Diehard]

Depends on what you consider the "correct" side... He simply posted an article which debunks the popular "they were predicting an Ice Age back in the 70's" myth.

I'd say that indicates he's still on the "correct" side of the issue, which is the side of the overwhelming mass of climatologists that indicate 1) the earth is getting warmer and 2) humans are a major cause of that warming.

Yup...

The supposed "global cooling" consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can't make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era.

It sounds like it's debunking the popular "but scientists have been wrong before!!!!" argument offered up by the deniers as proof positive that global warming is a hoax.
If anyone's up for some funny, Jon Stewart had a good bit about it Monday night. Basically, the deniers' arguments are that "they're all riding in limos around Copenhagen!," "it's cold in winter!," and "scientists get paid!"
It's right here... watch it if you're not scaaaaared of new ideas.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/115206/the...on-dec-14-2009

[ziggyselbin]

I love Jon Stewart but if he scoff at the skeptics he is wrong.As pointed out countless times there are many legitimate mainstream scientists climate related and otherwise that question the legitimacy of climate change.

The arrogance you all display in your smugness as you are unwilling to even acknowledge any questioning of the issue is an ugly trait.

In the meantime still no explanation of the emails which is scientific fraud_ kinda hard to get by that one. And millions in the world would starve to death because of climate policy.

[johnsmith]

The arrogance you all display in your smugness as you are unwilling to even acknowledge any questioning of the issue is an ugly trait.

It's like the Agent Mulder poster he had in his office: "I Want To Believe"

I am always amazed how people allow themselves to be soft-soaped by politicians.

[elganned]

The arrogance you all display in your smugness as you are unwilling to even acknowledge any questioning of the issue is an ugly trait.

I also am unwilling to acknowledge any questioning that we actually sent men to the moon and that it wasn't filmed on a Hollywood backlot. I guess that makes me arrogant and smug.

*shrug* So be it. Deal.

[rb336]

Also misguided...don't look to replace the discredited manmade global warming by CO2 myth with another manmade global warming myth...like heat generated by burning fuel.

show me science o back up the "discredited" comment -- oh, wait, there is none to back you up.

you lose, bats

[ziggyselbin]

I also am unwilling to acknowledge any questioning that we actually sent men to the moon and that it wasn't filmed on a Hollywood backlot. I guess that makes me arrogant and smug.

*shrug* So be it. Deal.

That is some weak assed shit Elganned

[elganned]

Sorry to have to break it to you like this, but I'm not here to satisfy your expectations.
Carry on.

[Diehard]

AP verdict: Climate emails show science not faked, but not pretty either

http://freep.com/article/20091212/NE...-pretty-either

I just got around to reading this. How could anyone consdier "an exhaustive review" of the 1,073 hacked emails not credible? Oh, right, because they don't support their stubborn and predetermined viewpoint that GW is a hoax. The typical right-wingers' easy way out is to call any conflicting evidence a "pack of lies" and move on.

[ccbatson]

it is the biased and false conclusions...not the review that is in question. Check with an attorney...the emails establish motive and intent as well as a plan...while probably not sufficient in a court of law to convict, more than enough to destroy the delicate credibility of the alarmists.

[ziggyselbin]

Sorry to have to break it to you like this, but I'm not here to satisfy your expectations.
Carry on.

I have zero expectations from you.

[ziggyselbin]

The global shit is already backfiring.The reason is obvious and simple...money. The developing countries want all kinds of money from the developed countries i.e. you and me to combat climate change. How well do you all think that will go over?

And why all the crap about climate anyhow? Why do you all insist on such a rigid position? There is way too much credible evidence that simply does not support such rigidity.

In the meantime many of the climate proposals would effectively keep millions from being fed...........I ask you all if faced with starvation or trying to "change" the climate how do you expect the hungry to respond.

[elganned]

And this would be different from the millions, potentially billions, who will starve due to famine, drought, and displacement from a permanently changed climate?

I expect nothing will be done. The current wrangling in Copenhagen is merely symptomatic of the larger opposition to facing reality which is expressed here by our out resident deniers.

As George Carlin once put it, when commenting on a number of "Save the Planet" t-shirts in his audience, "Save the planet? What bullshit. What unmitigated hubris. The planet will get by just fine; it's people who are fucked!"

The choice is simple, and stark: We face the facts and do something, or refuse to believe and in a few generations the human population of the earth will be decimated. Maybe that's not a bad thing, in the overall scheme; dynamic systems have a way of correcting themselves, and humans have been gumming up the mechanism for a few million years now.

Atlas may finally be about to shrug--not economically, but environmentally.

[rb336]

In the meantime many of the climate proposals would effectively keep millions from being fed

Which proposals and how so?

[Sstashmoo]

Quote: "By Doyle Rice
USA TODAY
The supposed "global cooling" consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can't make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era.""

Oh yes, another retro revisionist engineered piece. I was around then, and like now was very interested and payed attention to when someone was predicting the destruction of the planet. There were more than a few spouting this coming ice age nonsense. "As soon as a 100 years" we could expect a cataclysmic chain of events brought on by a significant drop in temperatures. Sure there isn't much info available about this, when you fuck something up, do you keep it around to show everyone? If you're normal, it hits the nearest trash can, out of sight, out of mind. Like some researcher is going to admit he or she was wrong about it 180 degrees now, especially in a field where credibility comes at such a high cost.

Nobody was talking about global warming back then. They were even talking about the coming ice age in school. Among many other fates, such as oil depletion of course, and one you don't hear about nowadays, water. Yes, we were supposed to run out of water eventually too, because scientists had predicted we were contaminating the earths water table with irremovable heavy metals and other pollutants and there would be no water left to drink. Large scale desalination was our only hope. Science loves to blow the whistle. And as I've said many times to the shriek of some, they aren't always right.

I would lend much more credence to their assertions if the corporate sector, incidentally the same folks who own the press, weren't poised with money bags open waiting to cash in on it, with carbon credits, federally funded alternative energy research , etc. Follow the money.

[rb336]

The supposed "global cooling" consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can't make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era.""

Oh yes, another retro revisionist engineered piece.

So someone went back to 70s literature and doctored it up?

I was around then, and like now was very interested and payed attention to when someone was predicting the destruction of the planet. There were more than a few spouting this coming ice age nonsense.

in the popular press. in the academic writing, an ice age was discussed, mostly in connection with a breakdown in the Atlantic conveyor system. cooling was discussed, and essentially thought to be the result of very sooty air. It is little coincidence that warming has gone up since the US and Europe started filtering the coal furnaces

"As soon as a 100 years" we could expect a cataclysmic chain of events brought on by a significant drop in temperatures.

you make it sound like that is a quote from something. what?

Nobody was talking about global warming back then.

I was around back then, and yes, they were. Almost 30 years ago, promoting an upcoming album, Joe Strummer said that London Calling was inspired by an interview where he heard a guy talk about global warming