[1jrp1]

ucodegen wrote:

realclimate.org does not footnote or show references for the underpinnings of its statements. On the other hand, junkscience.com has a considerable number of references as its underlying work. As far as how scientific papers are really written, junkscience.com is doing it right and realclimate.org is doing it wrong. It has to do with strength of evidence.

Neither site is equivalent to a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Furthermore, the Realclimate.org posts tend to be short and to the point wth appropriate references to the scientific literature. Junkscience.com, on the other hand, seems to subscribe to the more is more philosphy, throwing all the spaghetti at the wall, hoping some of it sticks. That’s just how I see it. But people can judge for themselves: go to

Index

To FutureSDoilguy:

Here’s a personal attack: I think you are a cynical and dishonest debater. Several people (especially DrChaos) have respectfully tried to educate you on the state of climate science, have answered all of your questions, have rebutted your inane arguments, have forgiven your unsubstantiated personal attacks on the integrity of thousands of working scientists whom you have never met (and you accuse them of propaganda, fearmongering, data manipulation). And then you have the gall to imply that DrChaos is trying to overwhelm (read intimidate) his audience? His explanations have been textbook examples of clear, concise writing. Your arguments, on the other hand, are weak, ever shifting, and now the best you can come up with is some vague feeling that the mechanism for AGW is extra-terrestrial in origin (BTW, I think you are extra-terrestial in origin). People in this forum have spent a lot of time trying to respond in the clearest possible way to your dishonest questions, and … poof … it takes you 30 seconds to grab another insubstantial, inane “argument” off the web, all so that you can keep your little game going.

You are not interested in the truth. You will never acknowledge the evidence that AGW is occuring, no matter how overwhelming the evidence. The only thing I can’t figure out is if you actually work for the oil industry, or if you are just one of those “smart” people who is more interested in the ego-trip of arguing than the truth. It is vital to acknowledge the validity of several decades of scientific effort and conclusions, so that we can actually start addressing AGW. But you would rather treat it all as some high-school debate. You should feel ashamed. You are acting like a spoiled teenager. (You aren’t a teenager are you?)

Anyway, I’m done responding to you directly. Anytime you post something especially misleading from now on, I’ll probably just post some automated boilerplate that readers should know that you are insincere and that they should read the entirety of this thread to see just how obtuse you actually are.

[1jrp1]

Boy, you are just hittin them out of the park tonight.

Let’s think this through:

If there were no sun, Venus would be much much colder. Atmospheric pressure by itself has nothing to do with it. Instead, Venus is hot because it has lots and lots of CO2 which just love to absorb the sun’s energy.

And BTW:

An increase in CO2 can easily trigger another ice age … if the increased freshening of the north atlantic caused by meltwater runnoff shuts down the thermohaline circulation (“the gulfstream”). No concept could be simpler, but extremely difficult to predict precisely. The point is that we are whacking our life support system (e.g. climate system) with a sledgehammer. There are a lot of things that could go seriously wrong. Generally, climate scientists try to focus on quantifying the most predictable outcome (steady CO2 rise leads to steady temperature rise). But there are many extreme positive and negative feedbacks that could be triggered if we reach a tipping point. We could trigger an ice age, or if the large permafrost carbon resevoirs of the permafrost and the methane hydrates are released we could be back in dino-climate (crocodiles in greenland).

When you don’t understand the consequences of your actions, it is best to slow down and be cautious. But heck, let’s just burn up all that coal and oil anyhow.

[1jrp1]

Thanks ucodegen. I think 1jrp1 is being quite arrogant, with so-called “Facts” (CO2 and temperature are not tightly correlative, notably in the past 50 years, e.g. 1945 to 1975 cooling period). His “Facts” are case of crying wolf. And I sense so much fear in him, of me, and of independent thought.

Yeah. I’m afraid of your independent (read regurgitated) thought. I’m afraid of it because you try to falsely convey there is no consensus within the scientific community that AGW is real and getting worse.

Edit after research. Here’s the fantastically tight correlation between CO2 and temperature:

1880-1945: +.4 C
1945-1975: -.1 C
1971-present: +.3 C
total warming since 1880: +.6 C

If man starting spewing out most of the CO2 after World War II, why is most of the warming prior to it? Why did it get colder after World War II?

See kewp’s response about short term fluctuations. More generally, the correlation over the last 650K years is very, very solid. Stock traders would sell their grandmother to have that kind of predictive power.

The asteroid analogy is weak. The trajectory of an asteroid is easily computed using Newtonian physics. There will be error, but that error is quantifiable based on measurement error, and not based on assumptions (i.e. plugging in unknown variables). We know positions of satellites billions of miles away to the meter. The current state of climate science is that the ability to know future climate is very very weak–do we know what the temperature will be 50 years from now? Hell no.

The point of the analogy is that you, without any training or education in the field, are second guessing thousands of trained scientists, and thus misleading even more ignorant people than yourself (is that even possible?) that AGW is just a hoax, that we should just ignore the problem despite the alarm bells.

I may not be a climate scientist, but I do have analytical thinking skills and I apply them when I read. And you are an arrogant twit. Why do i say this? Because you claim to know the truth better than me, and resort to insults when someone disagrees with you. I doubt you have read both sides like I have–I know the Kool Aid you’re drinking, trust me.

If you were to say: “A majority of professionally trained people, many of whom are smarter than me by a country mile, are telling us that we are risking a climate catastrophe if we continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere. But, instead, I prefer to believe a vanishingly small handful of “skeptics” and a small army of paid industry lobbyists that there is nothing to worry about” then I wouldn’t try to argue with you. But in fact you don’t even allow for the possibility that you are completely and utterly wrong, and that your righteous fight against the AGW hoax is confusing the issue and wasting precious time. Whose the arrogant twit? Mmmm…Kool Aid tastes good, don’t it?

I know I’m beating a dead horse here, but darnit, you just won’t stay down.

[1jrp1]

First off: The scientific method does not mean continually repeating something as fact, and then coming up with a disaster scenario for emphasis (to get people motivated without thinking it through). Scientific method entails forming a hypothesis and then testing it.

Thanks for the education. Indeed, only one of the points that I labeled fact was a hypothesis (the explanation why CO2 typically lags temperature in natural ice-age cycle), the others are all extremely well supported by evidence. Which fact do you not agree with?

Second: The use of the term disbelivers/naysayers is highly loaded. It presupposes that the supposition is true without proving it. It also attempts to shut down all discussion (in violation of the scientific method). This is the reason I personally call the groups “pro” and either “anti or con”, and I get specific to “man made CO2 induced global warming”, as opposed to “global warming”.

A very large majority of climate scientists believe “man made CO2 induced global warming” is occurring. Because the majority of skeptics who don’t believe in “man made CO2 induced global warming” don’t have any formal training or experience in climate science, and prefer to believe that climate scientists are engaged in a vast conspiracy to hide the truth, and tend to uncritically repeat bogus information they read on junkscience.com, I call them naysayers. I think calling them skeptics gives them too much credibility. But if you prefer I’ll call them skeptics … I’ll also start calling people who believe the Earth is flat “Spherical Earth Skeptics” too. Seriously, there are still big uncertainties, but to state that AGW is a hoax, or that thousands of climate scientists don’t know what they are talking about, but you do is retarded.

Ok, now to the more major points: Lets take on the Vostok-ice-core: Take a look at the graph indicated, remember that it reads right to left (not left to right in time.. see scale on bottom).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
There was a real rise in CO2 before temperature occurred 350K years ago (remember right to left). The interesting part is the temperature correlation to particulate matter (dust). It is stated higher dust levels are believed to be caused by cold dry periods, but this in part is already known to be false. Higher particulate levels are already known to reduce global temperature (see temperature results after volcanic eruptions – global dimming). One of the biggest problems is discerning the temperature of the earth over the same period. Most methods have been proven to be horribly inaccurate. I would like to know how they came up with the temperatures.

How is it known to be false? First of all, colder worlds are drier worlds, hence dust is less likely to be washed out of the atmosphere. Secondly, since sea level drops during cold periods, there is more newly exposed land to provide dust to the atmosphere. Also, dust (and aerosols) can be either warming or cooling depending on their composition, their residence time in the atmosphere, and how high they are in the atmosphere. Finally, stable oxygen isotopes are a good measure of paleo-temperature. What is your definition and your reference for stating that it is horribly inaccurate?

Forth: I, personally, find it insulting that those who disagree with the forced consensus that man made CO2 is the cause of current global warming are immediately labeled as ‘industry puppets’. This again, is the use of inflammatory words to try to prove ones case by default. Since people brought up the issue of $10,000 offering by the oil industry, I would also like to counter with the Heinz award going to James Hansen for work on global warming..(Hansen is very strong advocate for humans as being the cause).. Heinz awards are unrestricted cash amounts up to $250,000.
http://www.heinzawards.net/recipients.asp?action=detail&recipientID=9

Whoopdeedo. Hansen was offered the award based on a lifetime of scientific, peer-reviewed work. Nobody offered him $250k upfront to refute the “science” of the oil companies. And the award is not specifically targeted at global warming research. I wonder why Exxon didn’t offer anybody that deal: 1) work for 30+ years in obscurity, 2) while being bullied by political bosses, and 3) then maybe, just maybe, we will give you $250,000 (or $8300 per year!).

I also throw into the mix, Branson (Virgin Airlines) throwing some $25Million for solutions to sequestering C02.

So what? Branson is offering money for a specific engineering task, not for undermining the poor Exxon scientists.

To the unproven claims that Bush is suppressing pro human caused global warming statements, I again bring up Hansen who works for NOAA (a governmental body). I also bring up as counter:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14924286/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,99627,00.html

What does this have to do with the fact that Bush political appointees edited EPA, NOAA and NASA documents to remove references to Anthrogenic Global Warming (http://tinyurl.com/dulcq). Or that political managers have attempted to muzzle US government scientists at climate conferences? The fact that California sues car-makers or a federal agency has nothing to do with the fact that Bush has tried hard to suppress the science. California knows how much it has to lose if snowpack in the sierras decreases. I’d sue, too, out of economic self-interest.

Lawsuits are the opposite of giving money (they take money away from someone.. even just to defend oneself and come out even). Point summary: The pro global warming camp have proven themselves to be more aggressive financially than the con, the pro camp likes to hold out the simple 10K.. but compared to the awards and lawsuits being brought about.. and the scale of these.. the pro human cause global warming camp have proven the opposite to be true. Just leave the scientists alone and let them do their work in peace, whether they are pro or con. They know how to debate science, politicians and flamboyant CEOs don’t.

Sure. And almost all of the scientists are telling you that AGW is a real and growing problem. So you prove my point.

Fifth; Since people have brought up the IPCC.. I will now point to where they are going to ‘re-write’ science:
http://www.ipcc.ch/about/app-a.pdf
search on grammatical (should end up being on page 4 of 15). Quoted:

“Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter.”

Is that how we conduct science? If the research is not consistent with the intended summary, change the research papers to put them in line? This is not exactly the behavior of a responsible scientific body. Summaries should always be derived from the underlying research, not the other way around.

Misleading. Working Group 1 (which reviewed the scientific basis for climate cange) included 600 co-authors, over 600 expert reviewers, government reviewers. The fact that they came to a consensus is in itself remarkable. The fact that rules were put in place such that the conclusions in working group 1’s report was not open to further debate is obvious. After five years of work, it needed to be published. New data and new conclusions will be discussed ad nausium for the next report (5 years hence). AGW skeptics can, do and will make their voice heard. There have been four assessment reports. The scientific case and consensus have only gotten stronger through time.

Sixth: of 1jrp1 analogy, that is just plain ridiculous; What about the actual happening with respect the MTBE? We now have a carcinogen in our water supply because of the eco mandate for oxygenated fuel. This stuff does not go away, and is not going to break down for a considerable amount of time. Don’t even try to say that it was forced by the oil companies. It wasn’t. They don’t like the stuff. It is a ether, and a super solvent. That means that it dissolves the seals in the fuel processing plants (driving up the oil companies costs and causing plant fires), and you know they don’t like things that drive up their costs. Summary: doing something, just to prevent what is perceived as a problem, may be much worse than doing nothing at all until the full/real truth is figured out

Agreed some solutions are worse than the problems, this is not one of those situations.

Of the 186 billion tons of CO2 that enter earth’s atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth’s oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants.

CO2 that goes into the atmosphere does not stay there but is continually recycled by terrestrial plant life and earth’s oceans.

Yes, CO2 is recycled (on a time scale of 100s of years). Yes. The natural fluxes of CO2 are much larger than the anthropogenic fluxes. However, the natural input was almost exactly balanced with the natural output – before the industrial revolution the net flux to the atmosphere was very close to zero. Now, we are adding 6 billion tons a year from fossil fuels, of which 3 billion tons is being taken up by the natural world, and 3 billion tons is remaining in the atmosphere. We know that man is too blame for the current rise because; 1) CO2 is rising 50-fold faster than at any time previously in the last 650k years, and 2) the age of the radiocarbon in the atmosphere indicates that there is a large amount of very old carbon entering the atmosphere (fossil fuels).

CO2 is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen as a waste product. Humans and animals breathe oxygen and emit CO2 as a waste product. Carbon dioxide is a nutrient to plant life, and is an essential gas not a pollutant. All life on earth is carbon-based and CO2 is an essential ingredient. When plant-growers want to stimulate plant growth, they introduce more carbon dioxide (to the greenhouse).

Wow. You sure know a lot of neat stuff! Still has nothing to do whether the CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere is raising the temperature. Oh, BTW, terrestial plants in natural ecosystems are mostly nitrogen limited, so increasing CO2 won’t increase carbon uptake. That greening of the earth argument does not hold water.

At 360+/- parts per million CO2 is a minor constituent of earth’s atmosphere, less than 4/100ths of 1% of all gases present. (This is why kewp’s experiment at http://www.chemsoc.org/networks/LearnNet/jesei/co2green/home.htm is a flawed example (the sample of C02 gas was 1,000,000ppm not 360ppm). In addition, the setup is flawed (lamp output is not guaranteed to be the same(should use same lamp with an apparatis setup forcing same distance, same type of glass). I also have problems with the ‘typical results. From time sample 2 to time sample 3, air shows a rapid drop in temperature.. even under continuous IR input?? somethings goofy here!! and also contradicts kewp’s earlier assertion that CO2 reflects.. kewp, it absorbs and then re-emits.. and it is very band (wavelength) specific. In addition, light transitioning phase changes refracts, not reflects.. big difference) Absorption is done in many ways: energies of ionization (moving an electron to an outer orbit), translational/rotational/vibration between chemical bonds of carbon and oxygen atoms as well as translational (brownian motion) of the whole.

Gobbedlygook. What’s your point exactly? Seems like you are admitting that CO2 absorbs IR, which supports the idea that extra CO2 would lead to increased warming.

And now the link:
http://freenet-homepage.de/klima/indexe.htm
This paper does not detail the effect of evaporation and condensation of water. When water evaporates, it takes 1000 Calories to accomplish this (vs 1 Calorie to heat one degree Celcius). To condense, that heat has to be given up. Gaseous water has a very light atomic weight (approx 10) compared to oxygen gass(02 = 16) nitrogen (N2 = 14) Carbon Dioxide (C02 = 22). This means that when condensation occurs, it will likely be in the upper atmosphere (troposphere?). When gaseous water condenses to a vapor, its global warming feedback goes from a postive feedback to a negative feedback. It is also a very strong heat/thermal energy transport mechanism.

Hmmm. Let’s say lots of words! The gist of the linked rambling is that “Backradiation of the heat radiation outgoing from the earth’s surface would only be possible by reflection, similarly to the effect of aluminium foil under roof insulation,” and because hot air rises thermal transfer is only one direction. Well, shoot, I guess I’m not too smart, but I’m pretty sure that IR can be absorbed and then re-emitted by CO2 molecules in a random direction (half of which is towards the ground). Also, by this logic, the temperature structure of the atmosphere is impossible. It should be -50C at the surface and +25C at the tropopause. Let me get my parka. Duh. Of course there is convection and mixing going on all the time (if there weren’t, Earth’s surface would be much hotter), but because of gravity (disclaimer: gravity is just a theory!) there is a higher gas density at the surface than at altitude. Local heating due to absorption of incoming solar radiation and outgoing IR is much higher at the surface. Because the timescale of absorption and emission is so much faster than the mixing rate (e.g. convection), much of the heat is slowed in its transfer out of the atmosphere, which is why we don’t freeze to death, which is the basis of the greenhouse effect.

[1jrp1]

You are just flat wrong.

Fact: CO2 is higher than at any point in the last 650,000 years

Fact: Most of the rise from the 280 ppm pre-industrials to the current 380ppm has come in the last 70 years, and unambigulously is due to human activities (as proved by the radiocarbon signature of atmospheric CO2). This rise can in no way be called natural variation.

Fact: CO2 is being dumped into the atmosphere at an accelerating rate (now ~2.8 ppm per year).

Fact: The correlation between temperature and CO2 is incredibly tight.

Fact: Before modern man, CO2 lagged temperature rises by several thousand years because the ice-age cycle was driven by orbital mechanics. However, once orbital mechanics primed the system, increasing CO2 took over as the main driver of temperature increase during the interglacial periods. With the advent of modern man and industrialization, CO2 has preceeded temperature rise. Without man’s activities, we would probably be entering another ice age. However, we are now we are dumping so much CO2 that we are actually raising the temperature very quickly, even when it should be starting to gradually decline (because we are past the inter-glacial maximum). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png

Future SDguy, you are doing a great disservice to climate scientists, and to your fellow human beings.

Call up the external relations departments of the best climate research programs in this country such as Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Columbia University, University of Washington, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Ask them if the IPCC accurately reflects their respective institution’s best understanding of climate change. Ask the lead scientists of the climate research programs at NOAA and NASA (despite Bush’s best efforts to silence them). You take the word of a handful oil industry puppets over literally thousands of scientists whose strongest desire is to do good science, stay out of the limelight, and further our understanding of the climate system.

The IPCC does not represent fringe environmental organizations. If anything it has been critisized as being too cautious, too conservative. And your supposition that the media is giving one side of the story side is simple-minded. Of the 15 or so people I know or personally have heard speak who are actively involved in climate change research, not one has said the the IPCC overreaches.

Your understanding of climate science and basic physics and chemistry is deeply flawed, or else your representation of it is deliberately deceitful.

I give you the following analogy. Imagine that 95% of the world astronomers made an anouncement that their models showed that the earth might be hit by an asteroid in 100 years time, and that this asteroid would wipe out half the life on earth. It would cost $300 Billion to stop this from happening. The models gave a 50% probability that this would happen. The window for launching a rocket that would stop the asteroid was only 20 years. You, and others like you, complain that the models were too uncertain, the economic cost too high to justify the program, more study was needed. After 10 years, the astronomers come back and say the models are now saying that the asteroid will hit with 90% probability. Now you say, “Your models are based on assumptions. Besides these experts over here (spotlight on a tiny handful of naysayers) disagree. All the rest of the scientists are just trying to scare us into giving them more funding. We need another 10 years study.” Another 10 years pass, the astronomers, even the naysayers, return and report that there is a 99.9% probability that asteroid will hit, but …. ooops, too late to do anything.

Again, I say that your bullheaded refusal to take the word of thousands of scientists, and instead regurgitate the propaganda of oil companies and the heritage foundation is putting the rest of us in danger. There is real consensus among the vast majority of professional scientists who have spent their entire professional lives studying climate. Climate change is coming, and there will be big consequences.

[1jrp1]

The IPCC report is thousands of pages long, represents 5+years of work and represents the combined knowledge of thousands of cited climate scientists as collated and distilled by the 20+ lead coordinators of the report. It represents tens of thousands of man-hours of debate and correspondance between the climate community as a whole.

The open letter you cite is a one page document by 60 individuals, many of whom are no longer active (emeritus), and many of whom aren’t climate scientists, and many of whom aren’t even scientists (economists).

You pretend to know more about climate and atmospheric physics than the vast majority of climate professionals who are telling you there is a problem. These are professionals who back up their theories with data. Instead you quote “facts” from sources that are obviously biased, who clearly misrepresent even the most rudimentary scientific evidence (junkscience.com). You imply that there is an inherent tendency among climate scientists to misrepresent or fake data to protect their funding sources (despite the fact that academic scientists are sumarilly fired, lose their careers when it is shown that they have faked or misrepresented data). Industry-funded “science,” on the other hand, has a long track record of faking and misrepresenting data, resulting in significant harm to society. Tobacco Science (nuff said). (BTW, I think Tobacco execs should be charged with murder.)

I am not trying to convince you. Giving you an education in climate science would take me weeks, and I’m not convinced you are sincere in your desire to know the truth. I am just trying to counter the misinformation you are putting out. What you are doing is putting the rest of us in danger, by continually repeating the misrepresentations and falsehoods of corporations trying to protect their profits at all costs. Climate change is happening, humans are almost certainly to blame, and there almost certainly will be hard consequences if we don’t start dealing with it soon. While you twiddle and try to convince others that the tide is not coming in, the tide is coming in nonetheless.

[1jrp1]

few quick points, and then hopefully I’m done with this subject (in this forum):

1) climate prediction does not equal weather prediction. They are completely different. Climate seeks to define the average weather for different regions on the earth in different seasons in the future. The phrase “April showers bring May flowers” is essentially a climate prediction, as is a farmer’s crop planting schedule. Climate prediction is possible because we can infer the effects on the mean weather given our knowledge of various parameters: solar insolation + albedo + greenhouse gas concentrations + topography = mean weather. Of course, that is a simplification and there are uncertainties, but climate scientists go to great lengths to define those uncertainties and put conservative estimates on those uncertainties. So, take home message: stop confusing weather prediction with climate prediction.

2) Yes, the yearly fluxes of anthropogenic CO2 are small compared with the natural fluxes, but natural fluxes are remarkably well balanced (CO2 output = CO2 input). In otherwords, the latest longterm rise in CO2 (to levels not seen for many hundreds of thousands of years) is not due to natural fluctuations. We know this with near absolute certainty because of the radiocarbon signature of atmospheric CO2. This is not a subject for debate among real scientists.

3) The real pupose of Kyoto is not to reduce the CO2 that we have already put into the atmosphere, it is to prevent the uncontrolled additional input of CO2. That being said, Kyoto does not go far enough. The 0.6C rise has already damaged our planet because the actual warming has been much greater in the Arctic (remember 0.6 is an average). Leave out for the moment that the arctic ice cap has thinned 40%, and that polar bears are going extinct as a consequence. And forget that the greenland ice sheet melting is accelerating every year. The big danger is that the decreased albedo and the warming of the permafrost can trigger a runaway greenhouse effect that is about to dump a whole lot more carbon into the atmosphere. We need to stop adding fuel to the fire by continually increasing our CO2 emissions every year. It is foolhardy.

4) The junkscience.com site you reference is aptly named. There are too many misrepresentaions and inaccuracies for me to rebut them all for now. For example consider:

Greenhouse gases, therefore, do not “trap heat,” but could be fairly described as delaying the energy transfer from Earth to space. “Trapping heat” implies that the energy is stuck in the system forever — this is a false notion. Greenhouse gases do not emit energy in the same bandwidth that they absorb energy, and thus emissions from carbon dioxide are not absorbed by carbon dioxide. While energy may be delayed on its inevitable journey back to space, it will eventually be emitted regardless of the number of intervening stages.

[Of course greenhouse gases don’t trap heat forever and ever. Just like a blanket doesn’t trap heat forever and ever. If you put a hot rock under a blanket it will eventually cool to the same temperature as the surrounding environment. The heat loss is slowed by the blanket, not stopped. The reason we stay warm under a blanket is that the heat added to the system by our body is slowed in leaving the system because of the blanket. The earth’s atmosphere does the same thing.]

Do greenhouse gases ‘reradiate’ the infrared radiation they absorb?

This is an unfortunate expression that is all too common. Absorbed radiation is transformed to either kinetic or potential energy and, as such, no longer exists in its original form — hence, it cannot be “reradiated.” When molecules absorb infrared radiation they are said to become excited (“hot”). Such molecules can release energy usually in one of three ways: by chemical reaction (uncommon, since greenhouse gases are pretty stable and non-reactive); quenching (transferring energy to cooler molecules, increasing their temperature) and; emission (usually at lower energy [longer wavelength] radiation than the energy previously absorbed). Once more, since the absorbed energy has been transformed it cannot be said to be “reradiated”.

[The third method of energy release he mentions (“emission”) is the definition of re-radiation. Yes, CO2 molecules emit IR radiation at less energy than the IR that was absorbed (second law of thermodynamics), but it does still re-radiate IR energy back into the system. This is why your blanket works.]

And it goes on and on. Instead of rebuting each of his points, which would take days, let me just say that this site is quite possibly funded by oil money (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy). The guy sounds like a real low-life to me.

Why are you so eager to dismiss the opinion of 2000+ hard working climate scientists whose scientific reputations are on the line, and rather spout the pseudo-science of a registered lobbyist for the oil industry? And, in general, isn’t it interesting that the same people who claim that AGW is a hoax are largely the same people that claimed that smoking didn’t cause cancer, that DDT was not a problem, that asbestos did not cause cancer, that we would be greeted with flowers in Iraq and the war would pay for itself, etc etc? My supposition is that there are two kinds of people who continually flog the corportist line that is spouted by AEI, Heritage Foundation, etc. There are the misguided that don’t realize they are being played for fools to protect the profits of truly immoral corporations, and there are the cynics who realize they are misrepresenting the facts, but believe it is in their own economic self-interest to distort the issues, consequences to the planet be damned. Think about it.

Again, the very strong consensus of professional climate scientists is that we are facing a major crisis. Why would you try to dismiss that or downplay that?

[1jrp1]

sdnativeson (and other naysayers),

“No human can change the earths life cycle.” Sorry, but that’s just wrong. Naysayers said we could never pollute or overfish the oceans, they said we could never damage the ozone layer, they said we didn’t have to worry about lead or mercury in our environment, etc etc. The fact is that we have already drastically changed the “earths life cycle.” Up till now, however, we humans haven’t paid the price for our foolishness. But like a zero-down ARM, the time will come when we realize that we were seriously living beyond our means. If our croplands once again turn into a giant dustbowl, if we lose much of Florida to rising seas, if a category 5 huricaine devastates New York City, if the Sierras can no longer supply water to Los Angeles, if our forests dry out and burn up, if the Gulf Stream shuts down and the Northeast, Canada and Europe drop 10 degrees C in the winter, then I’d say we’d feel that maybe this global warming stuff was kind of important. Whether this will happen in 25 years, 50 years or 100 years is somewhat irrelevant. The consequences for this country and the world are potentially very, very dire.

Global Warming is not a “craze,” it is real problem. It is not some canard that scientists are making up because they are bored, or looking for funding. I can tell you for a fact that most scientists truly disdain politics and sensationalism, even amongst themselves. They do not wish to be tainted by it. For the sake of your children and your children’s children, you should be concerned. Very serious and conservative scientists are telling you there is a real problem. If you choose to listen instead to oil lobbyist propaganda or kooks like Sean Hannity, then shame on you for not using your brain.

Okay, that’s it for me. Thanks.

[1jrp1]

To all the climate change doubters:

I find it disheartening that otherwise intelligent people would buy into the “climate change is just a hoax” idea.

Fact: Most of the rise in CO2 during the last century has been tied to fossil fuel burning.

Fact: Extra CO2 in the atmosphere will warm the planet

Fact: Extra CO2 in the atmosphere will change the chemistry of the ocean.

Fact: The vast majority of climate scientists are telling you we have a major problem with human-induced climate change. I personally know several climate scientists and know them to be meticulous, honest people.

Facts that will affect housing:

Fact: Global warming will raise sea-levels.

Fact: Global warming will change precipitation patterns. Many experts think the water situation for California and the Southwest is likely to be severe.

Fact: Global warming is very likely to increase the frequency and severity of major hurricaines hitting the US.

Fact: My parents’ home insurance in Long Island was recently not renewed by their insurance company “because they live within 2 miles of the ocean.”

Now, you can ignore what the climate scientists are telling you. You can ignore what the insurance companies are telling you. You can ignore the potential staggering enviromental and economic costs that will wrack this country. But climate change doesn’t care what you think. It will happen anyway.

[Author]

Posts