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Forums - General Discussion - Anybody who believed global warming was man made are having questions now?

tombi123 said:
sguy78 said:
tombi123 said:
@Sqrl

The increase in intensity is negligible at the moment. But remember that even if we stopped increasing our CO2 emissions tomorrow, ocean temperatures would rise for the next 30-40 years releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere which then increases land surface temp etc. leading to increasing hurricane intensity.

5-10% increase doesn't sound like a lot, but it would cost more lives and money, especially in low lying developing countries.

We shouldn't be throwing exorbitant amounts of the people's money on what ifs. I could tell you that Skittles cause cancer, and you could possibly die a horrible death as a result of eating them with no proof whatsoever. Would you give me millions of dollars with no discernable proof to force people to stop eating them?

Increasing hurricane intensity due to increasing land surface temperature (relative to ocean surface temperature) isn't a what if. It is a fact. 

Just so you know, my position on Climate Change is in between the advocates and sceptics. I believe we are contributing to global warming because carbon has been shown to absorb/trap heat, and we emit carbon. But I think we need more data to get a clearer idea of how much we are contributing to global warming.  

Its not a fact, its an unproven theory that many climate scientists believe ...

Climatology is a science that is in its infancy, and we don’t know nearly enough about the complex interactions within the system to make accurate predictions about how the influence of one variable will impact the system.



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HappySqurriel said:
tombi123 said:
sguy78 said:
tombi123 said:
@Sqrl

The increase in intensity is negligible at the moment. But remember that even if we stopped increasing our CO2 emissions tomorrow, ocean temperatures would rise for the next 30-40 years releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere which then increases land surface temp etc. leading to increasing hurricane intensity.

5-10% increase doesn't sound like a lot, but it would cost more lives and money, especially in low lying developing countries.

We shouldn't be throwing exorbitant amounts of the people's money on what ifs. I could tell you that Skittles cause cancer, and you could possibly die a horrible death as a result of eating them with no proof whatsoever. Would you give me millions of dollars with no discernable proof to force people to stop eating them?

Increasing hurricane intensity due to increasing land surface temperature (relative to ocean surface temperature) isn't a what if. It is a fact. 

Just so you know, my position on Climate Change is in between the advocates and sceptics. I believe we are contributing to global warming because carbon has been shown to absorb/trap heat, and we emit carbon. But I think we need more data to get a clearer idea of how much we are contributing to global warming.  

Its not a fact, its an unproven theory that many climate scientists believe ...

Climatology is a science that is in its infancy, and we don’t know nearly enough about the complex interactions within the system to make accurate predictions about how the influence of one variable will impact the system.

There is plenty of evidence and it is well understood that generally a higher temperature gradient leads to a more intense storm.



tombi123 said:

Increasing hurricane intensity due to increasing land surface temperature (relative to ocean surface temperature) isn't a what if. It is a fact.

There is zero evidence to support this claim.  In fact, if you look at the evidence posted earlier in this thread, it shows the exact opposite: with increasing temperatures there has been no change at all in hurricane intensity.  In fact, worldwide, cyclone strength is at its lowest level in 30 years, according to recent studies.

One would think that global warming, which postulates that the poles will warm the fastest and thus decrease the temperature variation between them and the tropics, would decrease the occurence and intensity of hurricanes, not increase them.  Sadly, that isn't alarming enough to make the papers or TV. 

It's a similar phenomenon to sea ice extent.  Most everyone knows that 2007 had the lowest amount of sea ice in the Arctic that has been measured (only since 1979 however), although it has recovered to 2002 levels more or less in 2009.  Nobody knows that while the Arctic had record low recorded sea ice levels, the Antarctic had record high levels in 2007.  Why do facts like that not show up in The New York Times or on network TV news, but you can find a zillion articles about the 2007 Arctic sea ice?  Consider the answer advice on how skeptical you should be of doomsaying claims, such as Al Gore laughably saying the Arctic would be "ice free" by 2013.



In Memoriam RVW Jr.

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tombi123 said:
HappySqurriel said:
tombi123 said:
sguy78 said:
tombi123 said:
@Sqrl

The increase in intensity is negligible at the moment. But remember that even if we stopped increasing our CO2 emissions tomorrow, ocean temperatures would rise for the next 30-40 years releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere which then increases land surface temp etc. leading to increasing hurricane intensity.

5-10% increase doesn't sound like a lot, but it would cost more lives and money, especially in low lying developing countries.

We shouldn't be throwing exorbitant amounts of the people's money on what ifs. I could tell you that Skittles cause cancer, and you could possibly die a horrible death as a result of eating them with no proof whatsoever. Would you give me millions of dollars with no discernable proof to force people to stop eating them?

Increasing hurricane intensity due to increasing land surface temperature (relative to ocean surface temperature) isn't a what if. It is a fact. 

Just so you know, my position on Climate Change is in between the advocates and sceptics. I believe we are contributing to global warming because carbon has been shown to absorb/trap heat, and we emit carbon. But I think we need more data to get a clearer idea of how much we are contributing to global warming.  

Its not a fact, its an unproven theory that many climate scientists believe ...

Climatology is a science that is in its infancy, and we don’t know nearly enough about the complex interactions within the system to make accurate predictions about how the influence of one variable will impact the system.

There is plenty of evidence and it is well understood that generally a higher temperature gradient leads to a more intense storm.

Having a an idea of something is not fact.



Never believed in GW to start with. And i just love how they all say the world will flood. That takes the cake.



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megaman79 said:
Sqrl said:
vlad321 said:
Kasz216 said:

I understand what your saying... but there isn't anything that supports this. As such i'm going to have to go with the "null" until actual research is shown otherwise.

On the other hand we don't really know that it doesn't affect anything in a way that could tip something irreversible. We just don't know enough to say either way. For instance, just because no one knew of calculus and gravity before Newton, doesn't mean those laws didn't exist beforehand. There has always been a cost/risk with many decisions, and I wager that the risk here far outweighs several trillion dollars in potential damages.

Except that people in third world countries are dying because of environmental policies meant to fight global warming.  Without access to their country's coal to raise themselves out of poverty, like the developed world was able to do, they are living a life where survival is constantly in doubt. 

In short, to the extent that there are things we can do that genuinely do not have downsides (such as conservation, advancing research in Fusion power, etc...) we should absolutely do whatever we can because those things have other upsides typically as well.  But that line has to be drawn at policies which do have a cost measured in human lives and yes even monetary costs that threaten economic stability.

Link that for me please.

I know of two major effects on the third world, severe and extended droughts and also food pricing due to biofuel production, but i have never heard that coal is restricted in these countries at all, and further more that is our fault for causing it.

A lot of this issue was hashed out after AR2 (the first IPCC report to officially attribute GW to man), at the time I believed the AGW theory and it is what initially got me interested to study the matter.  As a result of the timing most of this is archived info, but I dug up an article from the period as an example of what I was referring to:

Link - This is an archived NYT article from 1997 (AR2 was released around 1995 iirc).

....

"Very many of us are struggling to attain a decent standard of living for our peoples," he said, "and yet we are constantly told that we must share in the effort to reduce emissions so that industrialized countries can continue to enjoy the benefits of their wasteful life style."

The issue is more complicated -- and possibly less intractable -- than it might seem on the surface. The arguments conceal factors believed by many, including Mwandosya, to contain elements of a constructive approach.

One good sign, the Third World countries say, is that they have already lessened the rates at which their emissions are increasing. A recent study by the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based research organization, found that many key Third World countries, have cut or eliminated energy subsidies and as a result are emitting less carbon dioxide than they otherwise would have.

Cutting the subsidies has raised energy costs and thereby discouraged the burning of coal and oil. The pricing changes were undertaken for economic reasons, not environmental ones, the report said, but the effect on carbon emissions was the same.

....

I doubt you will take my word for it, but the stuff about "economic" reasons was political BS from the time.  A fact that should make quite a bit of sense to anyone who is familiar with the process of economic development.  Coal and oil were and are crucial to developing industrialized economies* that can help sustain (and improve the quality of life for) the populations of an already stressed third world country, there are no real economic reasons for third world governments to discourage it in that situation**, but there are plenty of environmental reasons (the specter of global warming chief among them). 

*A quote from the paper, the bracket notes are added by me for context: "The principal findings are that energy used per unit of economic output has declined [industrialized nations], but that this is to a  large extent due to a shift in energy use from direct use of fossil fuels such as coal to the use of higher quality fuels, and especially electricity. When this shift in the  composition  of  final  energy  use  is  accounted  for,  energy  use  and  the  level  of  economic activity are found  to remain fairly tightly coupled."

**(I'm sure there might be specific countries with an odd set of circumstances but by in large this is true)

This whole debate at the time really brought a lot of third world countries to the table in the hopes that they could draw money out of industrialized nations.  This is what shaped the current debate into a discussion of wealth transfers like some of those discussed at Copenhagen recently.  In a lot of ways it has lampooned the efforts for any serious progress on the matter, but that is really a whole other topic. 

The bottom line is global warming policies do advocate that third world countries stop using or at least limit the use of hydrocarbons while the use of those hydrocarbons is linked to the economic growth that would quite literally save lives the same way our own economic development has helped the industrialized world live longer and healthier lives. Let me know if you disagree with this.



To Each Man, Responsibility
tombi123 said:
@Sqrl

The increase in intensity is negligible at the moment. But remember that even if we stopped increasing our CO2 emissions tomorrow, ocean temperatures would rise for the next 30-40 years releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere which then increases land surface temp etc. leading to increasing hurricane intensity.

5-10% increase doesn't sound like a lot, but it would cost more lives and money, especially in low lying developing countries.

I'm not sure you followed my point (this may be my fault).  Allow me to rephrase.

If I take it under consideration that the models indicate a 5-10% increase in hurricane activity over a doubling of C02 then my first thought is that we are talking about something we can analyze with empirical data.  In this instance we are talking about a basic logarithmic relationship in which each unit of additional increase in atmospheric C02 has an exponentially smaller impact on the increase in hurricane intensity (in the form of some unspecified measurement). 

The important thing to note here however, and I want to stress this, is that when someone tells me "Models predict 5-10% increase from a doubling of C02." I take away the fact that they've identified a logarithmic trend and then I consult the emprical evidence for the details of the impact of that logarithmic trend.  A model is, as I said, not science by itself but merely a hypothesis which is of course just a very early step in the scientific process.  The crucial step of gathering and testing data comes after that step.  The models, like a hypothesis, are a research guide telling us where to look in the vast sea of emperical data, they are not a substitute for actually looking at that data.

In short, I take the model as meaning I should look for a logarithmic relationship between atmospheric C02 and hurricane intensity.  When I look at the emperical data I find that there is no evident trend during decades where annual mean temperatures increased or decreased.  I then analyze this discovery in the light of the decreasing efficacy of logarithmic relationships leading me to the conclusion that if the relationship does exist it is negligible.

Please advise me of where I've gone wrong in this analysis.



To Each Man, Responsibility
tombi123 said:
sguy78 said:
tombi123 said:
@Sqrl

The increase in intensity is negligible at the moment. But remember that even if we stopped increasing our CO2 emissions tomorrow, ocean temperatures would rise for the next 30-40 years releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere which then increases land surface temp etc. leading to increasing hurricane intensity.

5-10% increase doesn't sound like a lot, but it would cost more lives and money, especially in low lying developing countries.

We shouldn't be throwing exorbitant amounts of the people's money on what ifs. I could tell you that Skittles cause cancer, and you could possibly die a horrible death as a result of eating them with no proof whatsoever. Would you give me millions of dollars with no discernable proof to force people to stop eating them?

Increasing hurricane intensity due to increasing land surface temperature (relative to ocean surface temperature) isn't a what if. It is a fact. 

Just so you know, my position on Climate Change is in between the advocates and sceptics. I believe we are contributing to global warming because carbon has been shown to absorb/trap heat, and we emit carbon. But I think we need more data to get a clearer idea of how much we are contributing to global warming.  

With respect, I believe it is possible your information might actually be out of date in certain respects: 

"Hurricane Expert Reassesses Link to Warming" (News Article) - (Research Paper[2008]). 

"The models are telling us something quite different from what nature seems to be telling us. There are various interpretations possible, e.g. a) The big increase in hurricane power over the past 30 years or so may not have much to do with global warming, or b) The models are simply not faithfully reproducing what nature is doing. Hard to know which to believe yet."

It is fair to point out that Dr Emanuel is an AGW proponent so the point of my linking him is not to claim he supports everything I say, but merely to exhibit that credentialed experts in the field of hurricane activity have in fact "hedged their bets".



To Each Man, Responsibility
FootballFan said:
finalrpgfantasy said:
i believe in Global warning, the evidence:
-the rise in CO2, with more CO2 more temperature.
-the polar ice caps are smaller compare to decades ago
- terrible hurricane seasons.
- the temperature on earth surface and sea has risen( this is what defined global warning)


Why is it Britain has had the coldest Janurary in 50 years?

Evidence to suggest otherwise previously in this thread.

Also maybe its not fair to measure temperature increase by a single month, however, Britian's peek in temperature was the 1920's. If Global warming is true then why hasn't that temperature been exceeded in any decade since?

because britain is close to the arthic, GW doesn't mean that snow and cold will dissapear. Is like that heat wave in 2003 in europe, northern europe was not effect that much compare to the center.



sguy78 said:
tombi123 said:
HappySqurriel said:
tombi123 said:
sguy78 said:
tombi123 said:
@Sqrl

The increase in intensity is negligible at the moment. But remember that even if we stopped increasing our CO2 emissions tomorrow, ocean temperatures would rise for the next 30-40 years releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere which then increases land surface temp etc. leading to increasing hurricane intensity.

5-10% increase doesn't sound like a lot, but it would cost more lives and money, especially in low lying developing countries.

We shouldn't be throwing exorbitant amounts of the people's money on what ifs. I could tell you that Skittles cause cancer, and you could possibly die a horrible death as a result of eating them with no proof whatsoever. Would you give me millions of dollars with no discernable proof to force people to stop eating them?

Increasing hurricane intensity due to increasing land surface temperature (relative to ocean surface temperature) isn't a what if. It is a fact. 

Just so you know, my position on Climate Change is in between the advocates and sceptics. I believe we are contributing to global warming because carbon has been shown to absorb/trap heat, and we emit carbon. But I think we need more data to get a clearer idea of how much we are contributing to global warming.  

Its not a fact, its an unproven theory that many climate scientists believe ...

Climatology is a science that is in its infancy, and we don’t know nearly enough about the complex interactions within the system to make accurate predictions about how the influence of one variable will impact the system.

There is plenty of evidence and it is well understood that generally a higher temperature gradient leads to a more intense storm.

Having a an idea of something is not fact.

There is no point discussing climate change with you because you have already shown in this thread that you are closed minded and irrational.