Mr. Gore and Global Warming

StrongRad · **Posted:** Sun May 13, 2007 4:09 pm

sam3611 wrote:

Ethanol is not a good alternative fuel. Ethanol comes from Corn. You have to grow Corn. The more Corn we use, the more places we need to plant it in. Thus leading to an even greater destruction of the rainforest.

Eh. I don't see it as rainforest destructive, but it won't help much (if at all) in terms of Green House Gases. You still have to grow the corn (which requires equipment that emits CO2). You still have to make the ethanol (releases more CO2). Then, when you burn it, guess what you release. That's right, more CO2. I'm wanting to think that, gallon for gallon, it might release about as much CO2 as gasoline, but I think the overall "life-cycle" of the fuel releases less. Either way, ethanol is not meant to save the planet so much as it is to pull us away from foreign oil. I don't think a planet friendly fuel is as easy to create as a planet friendly way of burning that fuel. Hybrids are a step in the right direction*. Of course, try telling that to the "I drive an SUV that seats 12" soccer mom crowd.

*Hybrids don't get substantially better mileage in "highway" situations, so for someone that drives 100 miles/day on the interstate, they don't offer much benefit (some non-hybrid cars can get better "highway" mileage than some hybrids). The benefit comes in "city" driving. That's where the regenerative braking and other "energy recovery" systems shine. It's why Hybrids, counter-intuitively, get better "City" mileage than "Highway" mileage.

Edit: In my "more planet friendly way" thing, I somehow forgot mass transit. Seriously, THAT is one heck of a way to help the planet. Transportation plans that include mass transit can REALLY cut down on emissions. Think about it, if 500 people, that would have otherwise each driven a car, ride a bus or train, that's 500 cars worth of emissions not going into the air (and 500 fewer cars to clog up the road). Granted, there's the emissions from the transportation method used, but that's generally far less than would be emitted from the 500 cars.

Using the same "logic" of the "If you support the war in Iraq, you should be over there fighting!" crowd, I propose that everyone who thinks we should adopt an alarmist approach to Global Warming should take public transportation.

Linz · **Posted:** Mon May 14, 2007 6:12 am

Really, this can be put simply.
The earth's temperature is increasing.
The earth's temperature has ALWAYS been shifting.
Everything changes, get used to it.
But we should still avoid too much emission. It does cause problems, even if it doesn't have much of an effect on global warming. Really, who wants to pee in the pool they drink from, anyway? (Metaphor

)

It's got nothing to do with greenhouse gasses.

It's funny when you hear people saying that we will cause a new ice age somehow with global warming, and all that. The only way man can REALLY alter the Earth's climate is with nuclear bombs. The US has enough to obliterate the world five times over.

but that's off topic..

We can't cause a new ice age, and we can't make the entire earth hotter. It just doesn't work.

And Al Gore is a liar by even saying we're responsible, so what is there to make him a hypocrite if it's not a real issue?

Liars, hypocrites, just as bad though..

Amorican · **Joined:** Thu Jan 26, 2006 10:24 am **Posts:** 132

Mass transit: Where I live it's slow, smelly, you're stuck in the same stupid traffic as everybody else (except the buses can't go as fast as your car because of the constant stops), and the drivers scare the crap out of everybody with their quick lane changes and sudden stops. It's inconvenient. Nobody wants to wait at the bus stop for 20 minutes. And while sitting on a bus, if I realize I forgot something at home, I have to get off the bus, walk across the street, wait another twenty minutes for a bus, get stuck in that traffic again and wait for the guy in the wheelchair to get on the bus, and oops he forgot his bus-pass. Forget that.

The subways don't go anywhere that people actually want to go, so for most people that's not an option. If the subways went where I need to go, I would ride them. But that's life in Los Angeles. I used to ride the T in Boston all the time.
Thus, I bought a Corolla and the gas milage I get makes it affordable and convenient for me.

CaptainPastHisPrime · **Posted:** Tue May 15, 2007 7:39 am

Linz wrote:

And Al Gore is a liar by even saying we're responsible, so what is there to make him a hypocrite if it's not a real issue?

Liars, hypocrites, just as bad though..

Don't forget rabble-rousers, whom Gore evidently is also.

StrongRad · **Posted:** Mon Oct 29, 2007 10:25 pm

Digging up an old topic, I know, but yeah.

Some of my former colleagues and classmates discuss the recent CNN special "Planet in Peril".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5umFWkzWP3g

Ignore Hannity's babble and listen to the students and Dr. Christy.
This is not Fox News cherry picking things the students said, either*. The general feeling in the classroom was almost identical to the one that's presented.

These students are pretty smart, too. I'd say the "dumbest" one in the room will probably have at least 5 or 6 publications before they finish their thesis.

*EDIT: It turns out that a couple of the students in the room were not happy with what Fox News did. Apparently, their comments were mangled to Fox's own goals. However, this is not to say that they don't agree with the tone of the piece; only that Hannity seems SO opposed to anything global warming that he would cut out there "BUT" statement.

Stev0 · **Posted:** Tue Oct 30, 2007 7:19 pm

Check out This site. Not believing in gravity won't help you if you jump off a skyscraper.

Didymus · **Posted:** Tue Oct 30, 2007 7:43 pm

I'll let StrongRad tackle this one. Climate and weather are his fields of expertise, not mine.

Also, I would suggest you read not just that article's responses, but the discussions below them. Those, to me, are much more interesting than the responses.

I particularly liked this answer to one of the responses:

Quote:

Sad debate

I am concerned about the environment,especially locally here in Japan and China, however I have to say I`m very concerned about the state of debate on global warming.

Statements like the one above do little to actually prove anything:
"It is a little ironic that the same people who distrust the surface record so happily embrace this even-more-convoluted exercise in data processing!"

This is basically admitting that in fact all of the data is too complex for anyine to interpret with certainty, and therefore undermines the whole argument behind the crisis theory.

As a skeptic about everything, and former philosophy major, i see basic flaws not in the science, as I am no scientist, but the way of arguing that global warming is a crisis.

The problem is that the onus is on the global warming crisis side to prove their point, not the skeptical side.

Science draws on philosophy for its fundamental proof methodology. In philosophy, the argument that god exists because i can think of him does not wash because it is unprovable. the global warming crisis argument loses out because of this same problem.

Double standards like the following just will not wash in convincing reasonable skeptics like myself:

1. Data that crisis proponents point to is complicated but reliable, whereas data that skeptics point to is complicated and therefore unreliable.

2. There are always regional fluctuations in global temperature, and the ones that support our argument are reliable evidence, whereas the ones that undermine it are just exceptions that prove the rule.

3. There is consensus in the scientific community on global warming. All of the scientists, no matter how many, who disagree with the consensus somehow, do not undermine the consensus argument, but rather are quacks or paid by the oil companies. This is regardless of the fact that global warming crisis proponents have billions of dollars in research grants.

The last point bears further comment. Studies that support the crisis theory will get more money, and be published more often than studies that show conflicting evidence or nothing at all.

And finally, the mere premise of this series, "how to talk to a skeptic" shows how dogmatic the crisis proponent argument has become. Proponents of the crisis view, possessing less than smoking -gun evidence have to resort to converting the skeptical unwashed.

The whole situation is starting to resemble the pre-Iraq invasion rhetoric spouted by the White House. Dissenters are traitors. With us, or against us.

Again, I applaud any efforts to clean up the environment and make it better for our children, but I fear that this particular issue has been hijacked, not by true humanist environmentalists, but rather hard-core anti-capitalists of the luddite kind, which is fine if that`s truly what they want. But then they shouldn`t try to pretend their goal is saving the environment.

StrongRad · **Posted:** Tue Oct 30, 2007 11:00 pm

Stev0 wrote:

Check out This site. Not believing in gravity won't help you if you jump off a skyscraper.

I once asked Dr Christy about something very similar to one of the points made there (that it can't be natural because there's no mechanism identified). His answer was something like "Hundreds of years ago, people couldn't identify why we got sick. Does that mean people didn't get sick?"

I'm willing to bet that none of the people on that blog have actually studied actual climatology or meteorology (and no, undergraduate classes do not count, neither does An Inconvenient Truth).

The very fact that they're are saying, "without a doubt, this is our fault" should tell you they're wrong. If there was some way to definitively prove we're behind everything that's happening, then there'd be no debate, and Dr. Christy and company wouldn't be getting millions of dollars in research grants to try to figure out what's going on.

Stev0 · **Posted:** Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:49 am

StrongRad wrote:

Stev0 wrote:

Check out
I'm willing to bet that none of the people on that blog have actually studied actual climatology or meteorology (and no, undergraduate classes do not count, neither does An Inconvenient Truth).

No, they didn't. But they're quoting people who did, which is good enough for me.

Quote:

The very fact that they're are saying, "without a doubt, this is our fault" should tell you they're wrong. If there was some way to definitively prove we're behind everything that's happening, then there'd be no debate, and Dr. Christy and company wouldn't be getting millions of dollars in research grants to try to figure out what's going on.

So I guess there's no proof that smoking cigarettes cause cancer? If there was a way to prove it, there'd be no debate, but scientists backed by Philip Morris are still debating that.

Which brings up the second part of your post - the old "Those folks in Acedemia who are just rolling in money vs. those poor, poor researchers who are only backed by multi-billion dollar multinational corporations with a vested interest in keeping business as usual."

StrongRad · **Posted:** Wed Oct 31, 2007 4:01 am

Stev0 wrote:

Quote:

The very fact that they're are saying, "without a doubt, this is our fault" should tell you they're wrong. If there was some way to definitively prove we're behind everything that's happening, then there'd be no debate, and Dr. Christy and company wouldn't be getting millions of dollars in research grants to try to figure out what's going on.

So I guess there's no proof that smoking cigarettes cause cancer? If there was a way to prove it, there'd be no debate, but scientists backed by Philip Morris are still debating that.

That's not what I'm saying.
Those people are being paid to say something.
That's different from a researcher at a rather prestigious university getting money to find out what's going on.

Quote:

Which brings up the second part of your post - the old "Those folks in Acedemia who are just rolling in money vs. those poor, poor researchers who are only backed by multi-billion dollar multinational corporations with a vested interest in keeping business as usual."

I lol'd.

Didymus · **Posted:** Wed Oct 31, 2007 4:02 am

Stev0, I notice that you only responded to the section I quoted, which pretty much rips apart any credibility that your web site had, pointing out all the huge gaping holes in their "scientific" approach. In particular, I'd love to see you answer his take on their methodology:

Quote:

Double standards like the following just will not wash in convincing reasonable skeptics like myself:

1. Data that crisis proponents point to is complicated but reliable, whereas data that skeptics point to is complicated and therefore unreliable.

2. There are always regional fluctuations in global temperature, and the ones that support our argument are reliable evidence, whereas the ones that undermine it are just exceptions that prove the rule.

3. There is consensus in the scientific community on global warming. All of the scientists, no matter how many, who disagree with the consensus somehow, do not undermine the consensus argument, but rather are quacks or paid by the oil companies. This is regardless of the fact that global warming crisis proponents have billions of dollars in research grants.

The issue here is that these proponents of this theory are imposing a double standard on how the data is to be interpreted. Basically, if it supports their position, they accept it as completely reliable; but if it doesn't, they hold it highly suspect. In other words, they get to set the rules regarding what is and what isn't considered reliable data, and expect the rest of us to simply accept their standard without question.

As I said before, one would do well not simply reading this web site's answers, but also read all the responses to those answers, examine the full discussion, and not just the one side.

Stev0 · **Posted:** Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:12 pm

Oh, yes. Attacking the messenger will always make the message go away.

Didymus · **Posted:** Wed Oct 31, 2007 5:03 pm

Who's attacking the messenger? The person I quoted simply pointed out inconsistencies in the message. It's only fair that these inconsistencies be addressed. Now are you going to address them? Or are you going to dismiss them with more snide remarks and expect me to blindly accept everything this web site is trying to tell me without question?

StrongRad · **Posted:** Wed Oct 31, 2007 10:39 pm

Didymus wrote:

Who's attacking the messenger? The person I quoted simply pointed out inconsistencies in the message. It's only fair that these inconsistencies be addressed. Now are you going to address them? Or are you going to dismiss them with more snide remarks and expect me to blindly accept everything this web site is trying to tell me without question?

That's just the problem with (at least the uninformed part of) this type of argument.

Too many people on both sides have made up their minds about the subject before actually taking time to go beyond the talking heads and "Weatherwise Magazine*" type articles and get into actual hard data.

Then, when presented with something that doesn't support their idea, they dismiss it as biased, wrong, or just plain made up. Far too many people are doing this.

Steve, nobody is attacking the messenger here. If anything, that site you posted is doing the attacking. Unintelligently belittling those who refuse to blindly march off of the cliff of "An Inconvenient Truth" does little to sway someone, possibly even hardening their resolve. The same goes for the hardcore uninformed people like Hannity that choose to insult rather than inform.

Sorry if I came off as a bit of an intellectual elitist here, but I put myself through a lot of really tough classes and study to get to where I am.

I attack the "Inconvenient" crowd a lot more than people like Hannity, simply because I hear them screaming louder.

*Not knocking Weatherwise, it's a really good publication (just not a true "Journal") and you should all look into it. In fact, you should all have subscriptions to it and National Geographic. Don't send the AMS after me. GRAH!!!

CaptainPastHisPrime · **Posted:** Thu Nov 22, 2007 3:28 am

In CA where I live, last winter, there was little rain/snow at all. And it looks like things are going to deja vu all over again this year or worse... unless we get some kinda miracle (fat chance). Is this lack of wet weather one of the results of global warming? I think it is, but do you know?

Ju Ju Master · **Joined:** Wed Jul 06, 2005 1:01 am **Posts:** 6245

Doesn't make sense, that's not how storms work. Rain doesn't just randomly fall when it's cold outside, a storm occurs due to "collisions" of warm and cold air in the atmosphere (at least from what I remember - I haven't studied storms for a long time)

Rusty · **Posted:** Thu Nov 22, 2007 5:45 am

I love how people just call it a lie like they actually know. Not that he knows or anything, but you're stating it as fact.

Be open minded. Anything's possible. That's all I can say here.

Acekirby · **Posted:** Thu Nov 22, 2007 5:59 am

CaptainPastHisPrime wrote:

Is this lack of wet weather one of the results of global warming? I think it is, but do you know?

I think for California, it's more a matter of climate. California never gets a lot of rain/snow. It doesn't rain in a desert either, but that's not because of global warming.

StrongRad wrote:

I attack the "Inconvenient" crowd a lot more than people like Hannity, simply because I hear them screaming louder.

Not sure where you're living, or if that has any effect on it, but from my standpoint, the people using the argument "GLOBAL WARMING IS A TOTAL MYTH!!!" seem to be the ones "screaming louder".

lahimatoa · **Posted:** Thu Nov 22, 2007 6:25 am

We had some very warm (relatively) weather up until Tuesday here in Rexburg.

It was nice. Usually we've got snow the second week of October.

I'm thinking about sending Al Gore a nice cheese and fruit basket.

Global warming rules!

Beyond the Grave · **Posted:** Fri Nov 23, 2007 3:14 pm

lahimatoa wrote:

We had some very warm (relatively) weather up until Tuesday here in Rexburg.

It was nice. Usually we've got snow the second week of October.

I'm thinking about sending Al Gore a nice cheese and fruit basket.

Global warming rules!

*Sarcastic Laugh*

It wasn't all peaches and cream, jerky. I got snow.

StrongRad · **Posted:** Sun Nov 25, 2007 8:44 pm

Acekirby wrote:

CaptainPastHisPrime wrote:

Is this lack of wet weather one of the results of global warming? I think it is, but do you know?

I think for California, it's more a matter of climate. California never gets a lot of rain/snow. It doesn't rain in a desert either, but that's not because of global warming.

StrongRad wrote:

I attack the "Inconvenient" crowd a lot more than people like Hannity, simply because I hear them screaming louder.

Not sure where you're living, or if that has any effect on it, but from my standpoint, the people using the argument "GLOBAL WARMING IS A TOTAL MYTH!!!" seem to be the ones "screaming louder".

Wow. I'd love to trade places with you.
Seriously, here it's all "the power plants are going to cause us all to die and if you don't believe that, you believe in a flat earth!".

I hate that.

CaptainPastHisPrime · **Posted:** Sun Nov 25, 2007 10:24 pm

StrongRad wrote:

Seriously, here it's all "the power plants are going to cause us all to die and if you don't believe that, you believe in a flat earth!".

I hate that.

I don't believe in a flat earth, especially when Columbus himself PROVED the world was round.

I believe a VERY hilarious man named Allan Sherman kinda made fun of the earth being round or flat in the last stanza of his song, "Good Advice":

Christopher Columbus was a seaman second class
When I told him that the Indies could be found.
By sailing to the West instead of sailing to the East,
I advised him that I thought the world was round.
(I really thought so.)
And then I sent him down to ask good Queen Isabella
To pawn her jewels for all their worth.
Next day, he set sail, and as everyone knows,
He fell off the edge of the earth.

Well, that was... bad advice, bad advice.
Bad advice is just the same as good advice.
Everybody makes occasional mistakes
And that was bad... ad... vice!

HHFOV · **Posted:** Sun Nov 25, 2007 11:25 pm

That's a commonly accepted misconception. Scientists were already aware Earth was round before Columbus.

Didymus · **Posted:** Sun Nov 25, 2007 11:25 pm

Quote:

I don't believe in a flat earth, especially when Columbus himself PROVED the world was round.

1. Actually, no, Christopher Columbus DIDN'T prove the earth was round. He didn't actually circumnavigate the earth, but only made it as far as the Americas (which really didn't prove anything).

2. 16 centuries before Columbus, it was already proven that the earth was round.

3. Contrary to popular belief, people before Columbus' time did NOT believe the earth was flat. In fact, Aquinas, Dante, and other writers refer to their belief in a round earth in their writings. In fact, the cosmological debates of Columbus' age were not Flat Earth vs. Round Earth, but rather Ptolemy's geocentric theoryvs. Copernicus' heliocentric theory.

The legend of Christopher Columbus setting out to prove the world was round is a myth. In reality, Columbus set off on his voyage because he disagreed with Ptolemy's calculations, and thought the world was much smaller than it actually was. So, far from being a pioneer in cosmology, Columbus made his voyage based on a severe mathematical miscalculation on his part. I suspect the Flat Earth legends were concocted to discredit medieval philosophy and science.

furrykef · **Posted:** Mon Nov 26, 2007 1:03 am

Didymus wrote:

I suspect the Flat Earth legends were concocted to discredit medieval philosophy and science.

Which often did need discrediting. But since that stuff discredits itself, it doesn't need gross misrepresentation to do that. :mrgreen:

StrongRad · **Posted:** Mon Nov 26, 2007 2:01 am

I suppose the thing that kills me the most is that both sides grossly misrepresent science. The data are inconclusive at best.

There's evidence that the planet is getting warmer. It tends to do that in a fairly cyclical fashion.

The only question is "are we responsible". There's where things get very muddy.
It's just not possible to say we're causing a majority of the warming. Oh, it'd be nice if there were (or it there were evidence that said we weren't), but it's just not there. We don't have a "control" group to compare this to.

AbuGrape45 · **Posted:** Mon Nov 26, 2007 2:04 am

Here's my take on Global Warming. And please keep the facepalms and headdesks to a minimum: It is nothing to worry about. The earth cycles, it warms up, it cools down, and so on:

A very important thing to mention: one night I was listening to the news and heard about something in the 70's apparently called, "Global Cooling", unless I misheard. If I heard correctly, then it only proves that we are going through an extreme warming period to make up for an extreme cooling period.

And you cannot blame it directly on humans. I don't even need to explain why we're not to blame.

Didymus · **Posted:** Mon Nov 26, 2007 2:18 am

furrykef wrote:

Didymus wrote:

I suspect the Flat Earth legends were concocted to discredit medieval philosophy and science.

Which often did need discrediting. But since that stuff discredits itself, it doesn't need gross misrepresentation to do that. :mrgreen:

Yeah, but such misrepresentations promote ignorance, not truth. We now have Columbus falsely credited with something he did not accomplish, and for supposedly proving something people had already known for 1600 years.

EDIT: Upon further research, I find that belief in a round earth goes all the way back the Pythagoras (c. 500 BC). It probably gained more widespread acceptance under Plato and Aristotle, both of whom taught it (and both of whom are foundational to medieval cosmology). So, in essence, people believed in a round earth some 2000 years before Columbus.

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