Kyoto - global warming hype

EDIT: Well you know where I stand because I can't change the title of the thread, but anyways. :(


Most of us here operate based on facts and evidence. If the numbers don't line up then we don't go for it. That's just the nature of computer programmers.

So I'm interested to hear opinions about 'global warming'. I'm an avid storm chaser (when I'm not fighting with o'l Bill in MFC) and I love the weather. I depend on several sites and other weather-related agencies to bring me accurate information. This global warming stuff popped up on my front page news items and I did some research on it. It amazed me what I found to be 'scientific' and what was simply 'opinion' and hype. It seems this debate is not so 'concrete' as some show it to be.

I won't direct this any further and I'd like to hear some educated comments. BTW if it came from any mainstream news source it's probably biased one way or the other. Try to keep this scientific in nature. I don't care about your political views or if you are a little green man from Mars. So keep it factual.

Anti (climate change is more than just one thing)
http://www.intellicast.com/Local/Get...obal%20Warming

Pro-global warming
http://www.ucsusa.org/

There are other sites as well. Here is a google for ya.
http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...global+warming

The earth has always experienced change in climate such as iceages. It would seam reasonable that we are going to experience warm periods as part of a natural cycle.

I for one welcome global warming and look foreward to improved British weather :)

This thread is going to amusing and heartbreaking.

I stand on the same sides of the scales, Bubba. I don't know if this has been clear on previous posts of mine, but whatever. I'm gonna answer this question less regarding my opinions on global warming, because I'm sure they're pretty clear, but I'm gonna answer this regarding the Kyoto Protocol.

If anyone has had time to sit and read the proposed documentation on reduction of polution, they would have laughed. The percentages of pollution reduction and the amount of time to do it was by no means possible for a country of our size. The document was proposed and written up by and for small countries with low pollution problems.

I would love for there to be less pollution. If not for Global Warming then for the health of the people who inhabit the planet, but what was suggested would have resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the effort of trying to clean up factories and transportation smog. It just wasn't feasible.

> hundreds of thousands of jobs in the effort of trying to clean up factories and transportation smog.

How so?

With any luck our planet will be dead within ~1000 years anyway - we're the disgusting race. If not we'll plague this planet and move on to colonising & destroying Mars.

Sadly the people that try and help (recyclers etc) are a minority and besides it's too late; there's pretty much no hope to reverse the effects.

If we have another ice age the survivors won't learn anything from it - humans never do.

Nutshell: I hate us and it's about time a "reset button" was pushed, if you will.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Govtcheez

How so?

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I'm speaking in that, with the goals being so unreachable, it would require drastic cuts in the dirty industry in the country. This was recognized in '97 when we voted against the protocol, and it's pretty much recognized everywhere, now, since Japan and other countries who have made an effort have been unable to meet their 2005 expectations.


...and ahluka, sorry to disappoint you, but this planet will be around a long, long time after humans. The planet has survived meteors and ice ages. We could have a nuclear war and kill each other and it wouldn't be a speck on the history of this planet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

I'm speaking in that, with the goals being so unreachable, it would require drastic cuts in the dirty industry in the country. This was recognized in '97 when we voted against the protocol, and it's pretty much recognized everywhere, now, since Japan and other countries who have made an effort have been unable to meet their 2005 expectations.


...and ahluka, sorry to disappoint you, but this planet will be around a long, long time after humans. The planet has survived meteors and ice ages. We could have a nuclear war and kill each other and it wouldn't be a speck on the history of this planet.

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I'd like to see some solid numbers on the "hundreds of thousands" claims. It may cost jobs in dirty industry, but it should make more jobs in cleaner high tech industries. I'm not saying I think we should have signed the Kyoto treaty, but to the best of my knowledge there is not much of a debate about global warming among climatologists.

I'm reminded of proponents of Intelligent Design who say there is a huge debate in the scietific community, when it's actually just a few crackpots who refuse to let go of their beliefs in the face of more and more evidence against them.

Do yourself a favor and just ignore ahluka. :)

Hundreds of thousands is just a number I'm pulling out based on other statistics. There is what, let's say four million dirty industry jobs in the US (that may or may not be an overestimate)? The Kyoto Treaty wanted the US to reduce our pollution 7% by 2012. Seven percent of 4 mil is 280,000. That's where I was getting that number. Yes, there would be more clean industry jobs, but not as many as you would think.

When you factor in retirements, people moving around, and migration to tech jobs, I'm sure that's much much smaller. It's not like they'd just let all the people go because they're reducing pollution; they still need them to build things. Extrapolating hundreds of thousands of lost jobs using that method is extremely faulty.

Besides, I never said I thought we should sign it. I don't know enough about it to make that statement. In fact, I implied that I thought we shouldn't in my previous post. I just said we should make steps to reduce our emissions.

Having a quality debate on the science of climate change in a forum such as this is impossible. The science is complex and a scientific debate typically degenerates into each side trying to baffle the other side with jargon, out-of-context quotes, and so many references that the other side gives up trying to refute each of them. However, for virtually all science, we (as in the general public) do not rely on analysing the scientific details or even experimentation, we take our scientific understanding from the scientific consensus.

In that vain, here are some undisputed facts:

• Nearly all the peer-reviewed research published about climate change in the last couple of decades has supported the hypothesis of human induced climate change.
• Nearly all scientists working in the area of climate and related disciplines (climatology, meteorology, atmospheric physics, etc), being familiar with the science, accept the hypothesis of human induced climate change.
• Just about every reputable scientific body in the world, having reviewed the science, accepts the hypothesis of human induced climate change.
• Nearly every government in the world (including the US), having reviewed the science, accepts the hypothesis of human induced climate change.
• Most large corporations, having reviewed the science, accept the hypothesis of human induced climate change. This includes corporations that would be expected, for reasons or self interest, to be skeptical about climate change such as oil companies BP and Shell. Most concerned are large insurance companies which stand to lose from increased severe weather events expected as an effect of climate change.

Most of the so called climate change skeptics are not scientists. They generally oppose the hypothesis of human induced climate change because of political, religous or ideological beliefs or because of economic interest.

It is clear, that the average person, if basing their knowledge on scientific consensus rather than political, religous, ideological or economic beliefs, should accept that the hypothesis of human induced climate change is almost certainly correct.

Of course it is science, and in science nothing is 100% certain. So should we act with less than 100% certainty? Well I ask the question: If politicians had knowledge that there was a 95%+ chance of a nuclear attack on your city, would you expect them to act, or to say that anything less than 100% certainty is not worth the cost of an evacuation?

Quote:

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I just said we should make steps to reduce our emissions.

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I agree. So do both parties of our government, it's just all the same garbage, they can't agree on how to do it.

Personally I think we should give subsidies to any oil, gas, dirty industry willing to spend it in efforts to create a cleaner, more efficient gas.

...and to Anonytmouse, today's debate on Global Warming is less of a "Does it exist or not" debate and more of a "Is it really happening at a rate to be so concerned" I'd say. This is why I argued the validity of the Kyoto Protocol and not the validity of Global Warming.

Well I would have no problems accepting the global warming if they didn't result to scare tactics to prove their point. So far none of the predictions of global warming and/or the crazy science films of what the earth would look like in 2005 have come true. So perhaps a more balanced approach might actually get something constructive done rather than just cause more arguments. It's apparent most of us agree the Kyoto treaty/accord or whatever is nearly impossible to latch onto as of yet.

My main problem with the global warming issue is that we really don't have a whole lot of scientific data as it relates to long-span climate changes. This is simply because our technology hasn't been to the point that we could analyze the climate correctly for a very long time. So we are attempting to base our decisions on what we've found 'now' when we really don't have much data from the 'past'. That's like opening a book in the middle of it or at the end of it and expecting to understand all of it. Not gonna happen.

So far in the polar regions they have noticed a 1 degree drop in temperature and not a rise. The ice melting in one place and thickening in another is probably a result of a natural cycle rather than the global warming. I'm not saying that it's not happening at all, but I do think the claims are 'pushed' and exaggerated a bit for political gain one way or another. So my conclusion is that based on the publicly available information:

• Global warming is probably happening, but not at the alarming rate they say it is.
• To deny human's can change the environment is just as ludicrous as the exaggerated claims of warming
• Reducing harmful emissions indeed cannot hurt anything, so it's a valid pursuit regardless of whether or not it's destroying the earth
• We all need to begin moving towards a new energy source and a new energy system
• The earth climate is a very complex system and even though we can forecast the weather, those forecasts are only extremely accurate in small-short time spans of 2 hours or less. Therefore, we probably don't really have enough knowledge or lifespan with our technology as of yet to determine the earth's climate cycle. We are talking about a very long time span as opposed to the recent 50 or even 100 years we have been actively analyzing the weather. Even if this goes as far back as the 1700s, that's only 300 years in the timespan of the Earth. Not much really.
• More long-term data is needed, but we should still make efforts to reduce harmful emissions if for no other reason except that we know they are indeed harmful.

So I'm kind of middle of the road. I don't go for hype and wacko predictions but I also don't go for completely denying the existence of harmful emissions causing problems.

[satire]
About 25% of world oil reserves are in rocks covered in arctic or antarctic ice - global warming is simply the most cost effective way of removing that ice in a safe, controlled and timely manner to ensure those remaining reserves are available for commercial exploitation when they are most likely to yield the highest profit at the point of maximum demand.

*strokes white persian cat*[/satire]

That's an interesting way of looking at it. :)

Ok back on track now.

Many of the positions presented in this thread are dubious. Reporting and asking for the removal of one of them which contradicts your own is not going to get you anywhere in a free thinking international forum.

I'm suprised you tried.

It was supposed to be the persian cat one. I don't want this to turn into an off-topic thread like most of the GD one's end up being.

I don't care about the viewpoint, just that it stays on track and doesn't end up just being one sarcastic comment after the other. The satire is fine, but if it's all satire this thread will degenerate into nothing.

It will anyways but for today I'd like to see the comments. That's why I asked, so this thread doesn't just become random jokes. If you had a question you could have PMed me instead of publicly posting. I didn't quite think the persian cat thing was a serious post and it's not that it wasn't funny, but it just begs for more satire.

Your viewpoints don't bother me but please don't derail the thread until at least 24 hours. Then you can trash it. :)

i) The US is one of the largest polluters on the planet.
ii) The US absolves itself of it's international responsibility by refusing to sign Kyoto/Montreal

What more is there to say?

I have merged my 'persian cat' comment with my original satirical comment and encapsulated it within 'satire' tags to make it utterly clear for those who may be 'comprehension disadvantaged' that it is intended as an ironic observation on the folly of narrow minded people who choose to blind themselves, for largely unconscionable economic reasons, to the mountainous weight of incontrovertible scientific evidence for human-induced global warming.

I really think it worked a lot better the first time round, though. :rolleyes:

If global warming is caused by pollution isn't really the point from my view. Pollution is bad. I don't think anyone will oppose that view. There is a treaty based on UN convention. The list of countries that did not sign or ratify the treaty consist of Iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia, Syria, and some African states that are probably so poor that they are happy to have half the amount of food needed to feed their people. Not the best company if you ask me. Oh, and the US of A of course.

Signing a treaty and then not ratifying it on purpose is a diplomatic no-no. Apart from starting a war based on false accusations without UN support ( oh, wait... ) it's probably the easiest way of painting "FU, I don't care for the rest of the world" on your back.

Most of the time, I'm pretty much pro-US, but as always, the US has a way of delivering their decisions with the finesse of a 5 year old on steroids.

I think what the US really needs to do about war on terror is not killing anybody. Thats a nice try, but far off. Get a decent PR manager and you will find that most people like you. Yes, even the French. The US is the victim of much hate, but I can only wonder what would happen, if they'd stop to compete for target of the year. Lose that FU attitude, or go with it and invade the rest of the world already. Anything in between will probably fail.

The day you get a guy who can actually see that image extends beyond the US borders and is something that cannot be bought or killed for, you will find that a lot of people would like to like you.