Kasz216 said:
HappySqurriel said:
scottie said:
I'm from Australia, I finish my Bachelor of Science (Physics) and Engineering (Renewable Energy) in June. Currently working for an environmental consulting firm in the holidays.
I'm still trying to understand what you believe. Putting aside the issue of cause for a minute. Consider the graph below. Note that in very recent times, there is an increase in temperature of around 5 degrees, in such a short time as the line appears vertical. The current point on this graph, is approximately 6.5 degrees celsius warmer than the warmest (pre industrial revolution) temperature on record. as I said, ignore the chemistry behind it. Do you think that this vertical section of the graph is
a) The result of human activity
b) Faked. Those who gathered ice core data simply drew the graph, and discarded all of their data.
c) A co-incidence.
graph is from Petit et al. - Nature, 1999
So I'm going to assume you picked a), the other two are both indefensible points so I won't bother addressing them. Now, as we have established that it is humans causing this warming, we must do two things. The first is determine what we are doing to cause the warming, and the 2nd is to stop it. This is of course a much more complex process, so I'll pause here to make sure you agree with this post.
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First off, you need to go back to school because you obviously don't understand that correlation does not imply causation ...
If something else is driving global temperature change (say that big ball of fire in the sky) there would be a high level of correlation between global temperatures and any other measurable variable that was impacted by either the driver of temperature change or from the temperature change itself.
Consider (for example) that Sunspot activity impacts the formation of clouds and leads to higher global temperatures, higher global temperatures (over time) leads to higher temperatures in the ocean, and higher temperatures in the ocean reduces the amount of CO2 that can be sequestered in the water leading to the release of CO2. What you would expect to see from this is a temperature increase occuring before an increase in CO2, and then CO2 increasing rapidly and then plateauing as most sequestered CO2 has been released that will be released through increased temperatures; basically, the exact graph you have provided.
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That's really a problem with a lot of places. They don't properly teach Scientific Methods anymore.
If you actually talk to credible researchers, you find one very interesting thing.
They pretty much NEVER talk in absolutes... even in expierments they've run themselves.
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Not only that, the huge problem (to me) is the course of action desired by the AGW scientists and their pressure groups. They want massive amounts of power, subsidies, and economic shift in the economy to their methods. Its hard to take such people seriously when they have a huge (and I mean huge to the sum of trillions of dollars) impetus to correlate Co2 to global warming.
I mean, in Scottie's case, it directly impacts his future career. Do you think he's going to see it objectively? I don't think so.
When it comes down to the issue of global warming, the following arguments must be made, then dealt with in the proper sequence:
- Can we directly observe that the earth is undergoing an increase in temperatures?
- Can we observe that this increase is outside the norm for our planet?
- Can we know with certainty what is causing this increase, and can offer significant proofs?
- How then can we institute solutions to achieve a positive result if in fact the situation warrants it?
The problem is that we can likely state #1 with certainty, but the scientific community is really grasping for things on the next three points. That reeks of bias, which is a shame for the scientific community and all of the honorable men and women who work hard in their respective fields.
