Assume humans didn't cause it, what's your 2nd guess as to the cause? Or 3rd guess? Does that giant fireball in the sky just get a pass? There have been many mass extinctions on planet earth and I don't think CO2 is going to cause the next one.
We've gone through these cycles for millions of years like clockwork so I'm guessing it has something to do with other stars, cosmic rays, etc. as our solar system orbits around the galaxy. If it works like that.
There's no one cause. We are a contributing factor, as well as natural geothermal cycles. Unless you want to dismiss greenhouse gases as a threat, than who cares where else it is coming from or what else may kill us? Why not invest in more efficient cleaner energies and recycling? We are living like pigs; sleeping in our own shit.
Humans do contribute to the terrible conditions, but not as much as we may think. We do a lot of damage to mother nature, but so does mother nature herself. We have smokestacks? So does mother nature. Volcanoes emit a RIDICULOUS amount of greenhouse gases. There are more than a dozen volcanoes going off RIGHT NOW. Volcanoes constantly release these gases, but I think mother nature can handle it just fine. This is only one example. What we really need to worry out comes from outside of mother nature's control. The last frontier, Outer Space. Our entire solar system is experiencing a detectable change, all the way to pluto. We can deduce that if other planets in our solar system are experiencing change, then the change must not be from earth herself. The reason? Your guess is as good as mine. Note: The form of energy we need to pursue isn't wind, fossil fuel, nor solar energy. It's so inefficient and costly. We should really be focusing on Unlimited Energy. Free Energy for all. There are a couple things out there that are getting close, although Nikola Tesla seemed to have the right idea with electromagnetism. If you want to know more about free energy research, try and look up the E-Cat as well as Vortex Mathematics.
Thank you for your reasoned posts... Aaronman, MJU, etc., no one's denying that cyclical climate change is a feature of our planet; it most definitely is. A shift in climactic conditions at any given time is therefore, obviously, not automatically attributable to human activity. However, given that since the industrial revolution we (humans) have been supplementing one side of the carbon equation with increased emissions by burning fossil fuels, and detracting from the other side of the equation by wiping away carbon sinks (deforestation), is it not logical that a new equilibrium would come to pass? Is it not logical that humanity is skewing the natural balance of our planet? What do you think occurs in an ecosystem that has become accustomed over millions of years to a certain input of certain chemicals when one of these inputs grows at an exorbitant rate? If you think "more of the same" then you, my friend, are a lunatic! Accepting this premise is not equivalent to giving the government the go-ahead to gut us with taxes and use the revenue in whatever ways they see fit, no accountability necessary. It is simply an acknowledgement that there is an urgent problem that humanity needs to address; choosing the route merits copious discussion, but unfortunately, we haven't even gotten to that step yet because so many insist on burying their heads in the sand, denying that there's a problem to begin with.
Part of the problem is the fact that government pretty much does whatever the fuck they want with what we give them currently. So while admitting something needs to be done does not neccesarily give the government free pass, its a scary notion trusting them at all. So far all solutions and supported technologies have turned out to be bad ideas, i think this is something private sector can handle much better than legislation. Companies are already jumping on the green bandwagon and doing little bits. I think the answer is to give the private sector unregulated access to the energy market, and allow them the room at takes to develop viable solutions that make a solid impact. Not only in the interest of the environment but also in the interest of the consumer. If you have another idea, id love to discuss it.
Wow after going through this thread it seems that climate change is a polemic issue, who knew? Still rather than lay out why YOU should believe in climate change I'll lay out why I believe. Climate change aside, what has science ever done for us? Well quite a bit, noted there are some horrible mistakes out there, no one is suggesting that it has all the answers in fact generally science works because it doesn't have all the answers. The basic premise is that everything in science is actually not yet proven, all of what science says can not be proven 100%, this is why generally the standard of evidence that required by some on Climate change "show me the single piece of evidence" will never be delivered. Sorry we can't, we can't show you the single piece of evidence that says gravity keeps us glued to the planet, nor that keeps us moving around the stars. Instead there is a body of evidence that allows us to predict under the theory of gravity what will happen to bodies with mass. you make your reputation in science by disproving something, not a lot of people took Einstein seriously at first, the answer to why Venus wasn't in the places that Newton’s laws suggested it would be was that there was another hidden plant in direct opposition affecting its obit, the idea that light, time, and gravity were all tied together under relativity was just science gone mad. So the method of science of coming up with an idea, trying to find ways to disprove it has worked for all the medical and technology benefits you enjoy today, it's funny how many refer to medical and peer review to back up the claims that weed is not harmful and is in fact beneficial lose objectivity when assessing climate change science. There are several published peer reviewed papers that give support to the greenhouse effect, give support that CO2 changes drives temperatures and that there is a link to human activity. Is it all a hoax? ummm could be, why not, collusion and conspiracy exists in our society across all levels. I look at the size of the hoax that would need to be promoted. As a rule of thumb the more complex and the more people that are involved the less chance you have to continue the collusion. For it to be a hoax then people being educated in universities would have to buy into it, people that work in admin, science and engineering would have to agree to change data sets on a massive level. NASA would be changing data, every science academy in the world would have to meet to change data sets, you would have to buy the silence of the people that were going to spill the beans. Yes before you point out the climategate emails, even if that wasn't people with agendas taking single statements out of context, because that has never happened right? It doesn't explain how governments of countries that are close to being outright enemies agree on the science, you could ignore the people behind climategate take all their evidence out of the equation and still find a sufficient body of evidence that points towards human climate change. For me a hoax doesn't work, and peer review is generally robust, it is working for cancer drugs and lots of other science disciplines why has it suddenly stopped for science related to climate change? And we are doing for the funding? Give me a break I write proposals for projects that focus on reduction of CO2 in transport, the last one I won had 400 submissions and 30 were funded, most research calls in the EU at least have a 10% funding chance, not exactly the flood of money people make out. The body of evidence; Greenhouse gases, this is pretty straight forward stuff and the fact that some gases retain heat is over 150 years old, and is supported by over century of evidence. In fact many scientists will state that the theory of the greenhouse effect is as strong as the theory of gravity. Even the military has to account for the heat retention properties of CO2 when designing infra red tracking missiles. CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere. And is at the highest for millennia, this is shown by direct measurements from ice-cores and the atmosphere. Levels of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide have also risen markedly over the same period. Humans are producing the extra CO2. I think we can agree on that but if you can’t check out this link, and this link. The fact that it is a trace gas in the atmosphere so has no effect is a poor argument, and easy one to make. But let’s look at that, for one it suggests that small things can’t have an effect on bigger things, lucky that doesn’t work other wise I’d have to take a headache pill the size of a house! 800 ppm of Carbon Monoxide will kill you within 2 hours. If you then say it’s too small to have an effect in our atmosphere, then the question becomes why is the greenhouse gas science now wrong? The average global temperature is rising. Again a big one for the people that say it isn’t but multiple lines of evidence shows a warming world, apart from the temperature stations (even removing the urban heat island effect), we have satellite observations for the upper atmosphere as well as rising temperature of the oceans, rising humidity, rising sea level and melting sea ice - from many different sources also indicate that the world is warming. Even if all this data was manipulated and hundreds of people coerced in falsifying data. Someone forgot to tell nature this, with things like spring time arriving earlier, glaciers melting globally, species changing their habitants etc. For a complete review of the evidence see the excellent report from NOAA. In the past climate has changed because something caused it to change, cause and effect is well known, we can show that climate has changed due to obit wobbles, dimmer sun, greenhouse gases, dust and impacts etc. We can discount all of them, yes even the Sun which has been going in the opposite direction for the past couple of decades to the temperature. There are lots of unknowns, such as what the maximum temperature rise could be, what the feedback loops could be, what the scale of the impact will be, but the recommendation that humans are now driving the climate is 90% confidence level, that’s better than most cancer drugs that we are reliant on. I’m willing to take the risk that it is not a wide ranging conspiracy, and that the methods of science have not suddenly changed in this one area, and that the potential impacts are worth spending a tiny proportion of GDP to mitigate some of the impacts for future generations then that is ok by me. Because we will hit 2 degrees global average rise without any doubt, I will lay money on that, and probably more, and we are now the largest forcing agent in the climate, there will be no more global ice ages while we are still on the planet. In reality I think that we won’t do something until some very big changes have happened and it is obvious, in the end the planet will recover it will take a few hundred thousand years, but it will recover, and we will get that a finite planet can’t keep producing more and more. Don’t believe that next time you fill up your gas tank, every trip use 3% more than you did last time and try never to run out of petrol. That’s what you are asking the planet to do.
You hardly differentiate between AGW and GW in your post, so just to be clear: Climate change is occuring, but man's responsibility is what's in question. David Evans, who spent 10 years working for the Australian Department of Climate Change, wrote this article recently: Climate models go cold | FP Comment | Financial Post I honestly don't see how anybody could support crippling economies on this shitty theory. Maybe focus on preparing for climate change, and not pretending you can control the weather?
I'll come back to your post, and offer a rebuttal once I have had time to read and digest it all. One stand out though, measuring tempreture. Numerous studies into the effect of urban heat island effect and microsite influences find they have negligible effect on long-term trends, particularly when averaged over large regions. \thttp://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-intermediate.htm Are surface temperature records reliable? The skeptic argument... Temp record is unreliable U.S. weather stations have been located next to exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. 89 percent of the stations fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 metres away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source. (Watts 2009) \t\t Numerous studies into the effect of urban heat island effect and microsite influences find they have negligible effect on long-term trends, particularly when averaged over large regions. The goal of improving temperature data is something we can all agree on and on this point, the efforts of Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre are laudable. However, their presupposition that improving temperature records will remove or significantly lower the global warming trend is erroneous. Adjusting for urban heat island effect When compiling temperature records, NASA's GISS goes to great pains to remove any possible influence from urban heat island effect. They compare urban long-term trends to nearby rural trends. They then adjust the urban trend so it matches the rural trend. The process is described in detail on the NASA website (Hansen 2001). They found in most cases, urban warming was small and fell within uncertainty ranges. Surprisingly, 42% of city trends are cooler relative to their country surroundings as weather stations are often sited in cool islands (a park within the city). The point is they're aware of UHI and rigorously adjust for it when analyzing temperature records. More on urban heat island... Climate Audit and NASA's "Y2K" glitch Steve McIntyre's discovery of a glitch in the GISS temperature data is an impressive achievement. Make no mistake, it's an embarrassing error on the part of NASA. But what is the significance? Figure 1 compares the global temperature trend from before and after adjustments. Before the error was discovered, the trend was 0.185C/decade. After corrections were made, the trend was still 0.185C/decade. The change to the global mean was less than one thousandth of a degree. More on NASA's Y2K glitch... GISS temperature before and after Y2K adjustment Figure 1: Global temperature anomaly before (red squares) and after (black diamonds) NASA's "Y2K" corrections (Open Mind). Other lines of evidence for rising temperatures The surface temperature trends are also confirmed from multiple, independent sources: Surface temperature analysis by NASA GISS finds strong agreement with two independent analyses by CRU's Global Temperature Record and NCDC. Weather balloon measurements have found from 1975 through 2005, the global mean, near-surface air temperature warmed by approximately 0.23C/decade. Satellite measurements of lower atmosphere temperatures show temperature rises between 0.16C and 0.24C/decade since 1982. Ice core reconstructions found the 20th century to be the warmest of the past five centuries, confirming the results of earlier proxy reconstructions. Sea surface temperatures, borehole reconstructions and ocean temperatures all show long-term warming trends.
So for anyone who doesn't know, the Mid-Atlantic and New England areas of the US have been seeing unprecedented flooding. NJ, NY and Vermont. It's raining again, and it looks like there's more rain on the way. We could start seeing freezing temps in Northern VT any day now. What effect would all that extra water in the ground have if it froze? Oh yeah, these guys think we're in for a snowy winter. USA Long Range Forecast
what is the origin of man, ape? proof? its called a theory last time I checked. because there is a missing link? thoughts?
there is no water coming to the house, however there is still some left in the toilet for a flush or two...
You misuse the word Theory in a scientific sense, which is used to denote that all things may be overturned, but at this present moment this body of scientific works contains the best knowledge and accepted wisdom on the subject, which can be shown through evidence and experimentation to be a testable truth. There are multiple lines of evidence for Evolution that it is mind bogglingly huge. We see it in our genetic data and can trace it back, we see it in other animal lines, we can reproduce the effect of evolution in the lab with short living fruit flies. To say then that because we have not yet found a predecessor for an organism, after we have whole banks of fossil data showing the concept to be to be proven with a high regard of certainty, we then declare the whole house of cards unsafe is intellectually bankrupt.