Global Warming debate is over.

[Harper_is_Bush]

Global Warming debate is over.
Monday, 29 May 2006
scientists very recently compiled data from ice cores that provide atmospheric gas levels for the last million years, and the evidence shows what we’re seeing today has never been seen before. With this evidence the consensus on global warming and it’s causes is complete.

http://allpoliticsnow.com/content/view/19/1/

Is this true? Did they dig up ice-cores that shut down once and for all the oil-paid "skeptics"?

[donco6]

1. Uh, there's a lot of people who still believe .. .

God created the world in six days.

I'd say the debate over global warming will continue until well after New York is submerged.

[DesertRat]

25. ... and that the moon landing was staged in a studio

And that the Holocaust never happened.

[endarkenment]

2. You cannot shut up paid skeptics with evidence.

Reality does not alter their relationship to their employers.

[stepnw1f]

3. We the People SHould Sue Them

for intentionally fudging data to suit their corporate agenda.

[endarkenment]

4. There is no case there.

The first amendment protects bullshit artists too.

[JHH]

5. Studies Portray Tropical Arctic in Distant Past

NY times today

"something extra happens when you push the world into a warmer world, and we just don't understand what it is,"

"The temperatures recorded in the samples, right through the peak of warming 55 million years ago, were consistently about 18 degrees higher than those projected by computer models trying to "backcast" what the Arctic was like at the time, according to one of the papers."


I am not a payed right wing nut but to say the debate is over is missing the point, what is causing climate change has not been confirmed. Do not forget that every breath that you exhale contains CO2

I just feel that what is causing Global warming is probably more complicated than just CO2 emissions from oil. The earth has seen vast changes in the past and to think that what we are experiencing today is justed caused by man is as ego centered as believing that man can control nature

[endarkenment]

6. Strawman: "just CO2 emissions from oil".

That is an argument you have invented in order to bolster your case and is a classic rhetorical dodge. Nice try though.

[JHH]

7. Thinking that the debate is over is the rhetorical dodge

I am saying that there is more to climent change than JUST HUMAN activity and to think that anyone has the answer right now is fooling them self. This is not to say that we do need to start taking taking responsibility for the part that we play on this planet and change our ways it is just that there will be no magic bullet to "fix the weather"

[endarkenment]

9. The debate is over in the sense that the debate over evolution

is over. There is general consensus in the scientific community that the evidence to support the theory that global warming is human society related is overwhelming and that there is no good evidence refuting the theory. For example:

"Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, "As went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change" (1). Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.

The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" ."
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

Or try this fact on:

"There is no debate among credible sceintists about whether global warming exists. Science magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published between 1993 and 2003. Not a single one challenged the scientific consensus the earth’s temperature is rising due to human activity."
http://thinkprogress.org/?tag=Global%20Warming

As with the bogus 'Intelligent Design vs Evolution Debate', you can cite sources to back up your position, you just can't cite credible peer reviewed sources from the scientific community, as your position is irrational. What you can cite are the missives of disinformation from the paid skeptics working for exxonmobile and friends.

[JHH]

14. I only used information from the New York Times

Article that I thought was referred to in the beginning of this thread.

My point is not that human activity is not involved in climate change just that unlike CFC and the Ozone Hole I have yet to see any definitive proof that CO2 is the cause and not other human activity like urban sprawl, over population, damning rivers in the Canadian north, particulate pollution, Jet Contrails increasing cloud cover which traps heat in at night like a blanket or many other human and corporate activities messing up our planet

[seasat]

19. First of all we know that the CO2 is anthropogenic.

When you add up the sources and sinks you get a direct input from human activities to the atmosphere. The second evidence is that sources from fossil fuels have a different isotopic ratio than atmospheric CO2 due to their origin from ancient plant material. (Details at RealClimate)

It has been well established (since first proposed in the mid 1800s) that the atmosphere has a greenhouse effect. http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm">(History of greenhouse gas theory) Without this effect, the average global temperature would be about -18° C. You easily can test the greenhouse effect of the various gasses in a laboratory. You can even do simple experiments in a high school lab to estimate the insulating potential of a gas.

The only thing left is to do the modeling of how large an effect this would have on global temperatures. Those have been rigorously applied and the result continues to be the same. We are increasing greenhouse gasses and they are trapping more heat near the surface of the earth.

Some skeptics try to blame other sources, mainly increases in solar irradiance. However, they can't explain the observations that the lower troposphere is heating while the upper part of the atmosphere is cooling. If you have an increase in solar radiation, you'd expect it to affect the upper atmosphere some. With increased insulation, it is expected that the lower troposphere would warm while the upper atmosphere cools. There are also observations, based on satellites and albedo of the moon, that the infrared radiation leaving the earth has declined. It is possible that there has been some increase in solar irradiance but the models and solar measurements indicate that, at maximum, it may account for 30% of the warming.

It should also be noted that the estimated changes in solar irradiance are so infinitesimal that some studies have indicated that solar irradiance has actually declined. A recent study concluded that solar irradiance had declined due to increased reflective pollutants in the atmosphere.

There is pretty good evidence that solar irradiance increases during higher sunspot activity but 2005, the second warmest year on record, was near the low in sunspot activity for the current cycle. Sunspot activity does not correlate with the current warming trend.

Therefore, it is the consensus of the vast majority of scientists that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are the primary source of the increased global temperatures. No other theory fits.

[ktlyon]

20. It is time to start planning

Just like I buy insurance to protect myself I would like to see some planning just in case:
1)move to high ground- flooding will be a problem if sea levels rise
2)design crops that withstand more extremes, pests and disease
3)move to reduce human impact on the planet - clean air, clean power, population control
4)Disaster preparedness
5)sure there are others that I did not think of

[DesertRat]

24. NO ONE is saying that it's just due to human activity

Throughout "An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gore repeatedly says that there are many factors involved in global warming. Everyone needs to see this movie.

[Harper_is_Bush]

27. What else is there to climate change than human activity?

[jdlh8894]

8. CO2 ?

The same stuff that's sold in tanks to every restaurant,convenience store ,sidewalk vendor,or any place else that sells fountain drinks? Or did you mean CO (carbon monoxide)?

[endarkenment]

10. Yeah well it is not like the poster actually has an argument. nt.

[Igel]

11. CO2. n/t

[JHH]

15. Yes the very same CO2

is what many believe is the main cause of global warming

[Harper_is_Bush]

28. What do you think is causing global warming?

[Harper_is_Bush]

16. You just "feel" that do you? Well, isn't that special.

You go with your feeling, I'll go with the scientific consensus.

Like the link says, the ice cores put to rest what's causing it, and it doesn't take a genious to it's us creating the bulk of the C02

[wizdum]

12. We the people should revoke their corporate charters and take over...

...their business and give the profits to the country, where they belong. Not in the pockets of evil CEO's.

[Igel]

13. Which skeptics?

The debate has long since shifted from whether there's global warming; the skeptics that say that average temperatures haven't increased over the last 50 years have no case. The question is how much is human-related. It's a simple claim to same 'global warming is human-related', because that doesn't quantify it: 1% or 99%? Even 'most in the last 50 years' is a reasonably trivial amount.

Various reports vary; some are funded by environmental organizations, some by industry; some are relatively neutral, but establishing their neutrality is difficult. Neutrality is important because it's a vexed problem.

Take the problem of when to start measuring: reporting for one side invariably reports start at times of low global temperatures: 50 years ago there was a dip in global temperatures; start measuring 20 years before that and I suspect the increase would be smaller; similarly, most longer measurements start at low-temperature points in the 1800s. Because the goal of such measurements is to show not the increase, but how large the increase is. The other side picks years with warmer temperatures, to show how small the increase is. Some play the same game using much longer periods--going back hundreds of years (either starting with the warm period when Vikings could grow barley in Greeland, or the cold spell that followed). Others go back thousands of years, using the same metric for deciding what period to pick (to show how large or small the increase is). Neither is incredibly ethical. A better way, but still uncertain, is to use averages. There's still an increase, but it's not as large or small as advocates say.

That some warming is human-related is pretty much beyond doubt; some models have shown that some global warming is attributable to human activity going back to the start of the agricultural revolution. But that really doesn't answer the question, which is, for many people, not "What do we do?"--the question environmentalists asked and answered back in the '80s, with pretty much the same answer given for different questions from the '60s and '50s--but, "Is there something we can do?" The answer depends on how you quantify the amount of global warming related to human activity.

BTW, I suspect that the report being referred to (in absentia) is one showing that the spike in temperatures observed in the last 50 years has no (clear?) parallel in the ice-core samples. Since such a spike never occurred in that location in the million years (or however many years) before human activities began, the reasoning goes, something we've done in the last 50 years must be responsible.

[Harper_is_Bush]

31. Good question.

The levels of green-house gases in the atmosphere are higher than they've been in over 500,000 years.

[phantom power]

17. There has been "enough" data for years. The skeptics....

are paid to be skeptical, regardless of what the data say, and so that's exactly what they'll do.

[Harper_is_Bush]

18. There has been consensus for years, but these ice cores dating

back 1 million years just got dug up....and apparently they seal the deal.

[seasat]

22. The problem is that they want "Proof"

This is not directed at you, phantom power, but I thought it needed to be posted based on some comments in this thread.

Anyone with half a background in science knows that proof for a scienctific theorem is ridiculous. You do not prove theories using the scientific method, you test them by trying to disprove them. Science is constantly evolving and should always be open to new ideas. The reason is obvious in the science forum (LINK).

There are always alternative theories, no matter how outlandish, to any theory. We simply test each hypothesis and accept the one that cannot be disproven and best explains the phenomenon. With further testing, the hypothesis is refined and recieves greater acceptance by the scientific community. It then becomes a theory.

The "skeptics" use a lack of knowledge about the scientific method to create doubt by demanding proof of the greenhouse gas theory of global warming. They then throw out sun spots, cosmic radiation, and other wild theories to try and weaken public acceptance this theory. Everyone of these alternatives have been tested and disproven as the cause for the current warming trend but they use them to sow doubt. The general public doesn't realize the volume of research that supports this theorem not how the scientific method works so it is partially effective.

[Harper_is_Bush]

30. Hopefully Gores movie will counter that. n/t

[Blue_Tires]

21. ttt !!

[DesertRat]

23. Everyone should see An Inconvenient Truth

There is no debate among the scientific community. This is all in the movie.

[Harper_is_Bush]

26. Check the OP link, they added a "LIAR ALERT" on one of the google ads!

The "cooler heads coalition" is advertising that global warming is a fraud! Too funny.

[silvershadow]

29. yeah, we "debated" so long that global warming won. n/t