If you’re looking for someone that doesn’t believe that man can’t change the order of the world about him, that someone is not me. I believe that we can do damage: we can make really ugly messes: we spill oil, we create smog, we cause erotion, and we affect the food chain. We can make animals extinct or at least challenge their populations through excessive hunting and building hydroelectric dams.
And I do believe the Earth has warmed in the last century. A sad misconception that largely results from the media reporting is that AGW = GW. Global warming and cooling happens naturally, and to believe that man has caused it is a serious scientific question that needs to be validated, otherwise we’re a bunch of knee-jerk ignoramuses. If you look at the actual hard science, there is more evidence against AGW than for it.
What really drives me crazy is that people who support reduction in CO2 emissions don’t help out convincing me with science. They think painting (making-up in most cases) disaster scenarios is sufficient science to convince me. Please, stop it with the “if you don’t stop X, Y will happen”, because I’ve heard it throughly, and start spending more time proving that X causes Y.
sd_csr said “Methane is hugely more influential in climate than CO2.” True, volume-for-volume, it is. (See http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html), but according to IPCC itself, the concentration has not changed in the last 420,000 years (but does say that humans activity is part of its recent variation). I’ve never heard anyone say that methane is a more serious problem than CO2, but it is interesting to read about.
That same site summarizes:” The Kyoto Protocol calls for mandatory carbon dioxide reductions of 30% from developed countries like the U.S. Reducing man-made CO2 emissions this much would have an undetectable effect on climate while having a devastating effect on the U.S. economy. Can you drive your car 30% less, reduce your winter heating 30%? Pay 20-50% more for everything from automobiles to zippers? And that is just a down payment, with more sacrifices to come later. Such drastic measures, even if imposed equally on all countries around the world, would reduce total human greenhouse contributions from CO2 by about 0.035%.”
There is no true consensus of the greenhouse effect of CO2. But lets be outrageously generous for the sake of demonstrating mathematical absurdity: lets say CO2 is the *sole* reason for earth temperature variation (throw out solar variation, changes in earth’s inclination and orbit, etc etc). This is to say that the doubling of CO2 this past century is solely responsible +0.6C in temperature. 0.6 C / 200% = 0.003 C rise in temp per percentage rise (Cper%) in CO2. With Kyoto reducing CO2 by 0.035%, we can work the math: 0.035% times 0.003 Cper% = 0.000105 C. A ten-thousandths of a degree Celsius decrease as a result of full compliance of Kyoto!
sdnativeson linked me to a useful site earlier in this thread. For those who believe in anthropogentic global warming, but at the same time aren’t militant and are patient enough to read opposing viewpoints, I’d strongly suggest a read of: http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/index.html
(The Take-Home Messages at the end give a convenient summary).
But the optimist in me says that this “craze” (which is exactly what it is) will wear off. Good science usually prevails.
Well I’m exhausted. 🙂 Have a great weekend, everyone!
