Yet more Politics using scare tactics for Global Warming

[silvrsvt]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6257327.stm

 

This what kills me:

 

Commissioner Dimas told BBC News that people should start talking about climate change as a war.

 

It could lead to the death of millions of people, and it could transform the world economy into a war economy, where every sector was involved in the fight against climate change.

 

As a result, he said rising emissions from transport were a problem that had to be tackled.

 

The truth of the matter is that we aren't sure what is causing Global Warming (hell they where growing crops in Greenland 400 years ago), but I think blunt attack on transport alone isn't going to solve the potential problem.

[LSFan00]

This what kills me:

The truth of the matter is that we aren't sure what is causing Global Warming (hell they where growing crops in Greenland 400 years ago), but I think blunt attack on transport alone isn't going to solve the potential problem.

 

This is just garbage talk, from a typical Euro-political elitist. All of the leftist-socialist crap they put out about helping the poor/job-security/universal health yet they are pretty quick to make the working-class euro pay over $30K for a 1.5 litre death trap, while they all drive S-class Benz's to the EU parliament/administrative meetings. One of the only upshots of the EU being in bed with their growing population of muslim barbarists is that they won't actually do anything to destroy their auto industry. The middle east lobby will preclude that, but they will keep making outrageous/ridiculous pronouncements like this.

[LSFan00]

PS: besides being a lousy fuel which among other things you can't run through a pipeline, ethanol, one of the environmental-fruitcake hopes to replace oil, is starving Mexican children, now that it's massive impact on the corn market is spreading to impact things like food; tortillas. Way to go lefties/Californians/Euros.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2544525,00.html

 

Fair use quote;

Mrs Ysidro said she paid 25 pesos - about a sixth of her household's combined daily income - for enough tortillas to feed her family of six.

 

"If I don't have that much, I'll have to buy less," she said. "If it goes higher, what am I going to give my children?"

[BlackHorse]

Additionally, none of these so called "experts" in the area of global warming seem to be able to explain why the polar ice caps on Mars are melting just as rapidly as ours are. Could it be all those little martians are driving SUV's? The climate goes through changes, that is natural, our affect on it is minimal. The fact that the ice caps on Mars are melting can only be attributed to increased solar output. Gee, don't you think maybe that would make things warmer here too? On the one hand I fully support the notion of finding alternative sources of transportation like electrics or Hydrogen powered cars if for no other reason then they are healthier for our local living conditions and have the added advantage of we don't send our money to states that then turn some of it over to wacko terrorists. On the other hand, I'm not so fooolish as to believe that everyone who drives a Ford Expedition his helping to kill the planet. It's nonsense. Nevermind the fact that privately owned automobiles account for 11% of the daily consumption of petroleum based products. Fully 2/3rds of it is used by commercial vehicles and most of those are diesel. They always conveniently ignore that fact and blame the problem on John Q Citizen who's just trying to get to and from work.

[mustang_sallad]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6257327.stm

 

This what kills me:

The truth of the matter is that we aren't sure what is causing Global Warming (hell they where growing crops in Greenland 400 years ago), but I think blunt attack on transport alone isn't going to solve the potential problem.

 

yo! the idea that we're not sure about the Global Warming and the role humans play in this is bullshit! There is VAST concensus in the scientific community that Global Warming is happening right now and that human activity is largely to blame for the effects we're seeing. There is absolutely NO DOUBT amongst scientists that the amount of oil we burn is affecting the climate (is it really that hard to believe? The atmosphere is only so big, how much oil can we burn before we start to notice an effect?).

Here's something from an article that ran in the New Yorker last year:

 

"In legitimate scientific circles, it is virtually impossible to find evidence of disagreement over the fundamentals of global warming. This fact was neatly demonstrated last year by Naomi Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at the University of California at San Diego. Oreskes conducted a study of the more than 900 articles on climate change published in refereed journals between 1993 and 2003 and subsequently made available on a leading research database. Of these, she found that 75% endorsed the view that anthropogenic emissions were responsible for at least some of the observed warming of the past fifty years. The remaining twenty-five percent, which dealt with questions of methodology or climate history, took no position on current conditions. Not a signle article disputed the premise that anthropogenic warming is under way."

 

The article goes on further to talk about this dude Frank Luntz, who prepared a strategy memo for Republican members of Congress, "coaching them on how to deal with a variety of environmental issues. Under the heading 'Winning the Global Warming Debate,' Luntz wrote, "The scientific debate is closing (against us) but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science. Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming in the scientific community (....) The most important principle in any discussion of global warming is your commitment to sound science.' "

 

So basically, this guy is telling republican politicians... "yeah we lost this battle, but the public thinks that these issues are still up for debate, so make use of that uncertainty."

 

That was an old article (May '05), and it seems like now some of the loudest voices are agreeing that humans are having a serious impact on the climate.

 

Please! Do your kids a favour and recognize that our habbits are actually going to affect the planet.

 

I am not an alarmist. I am a mechanical engineer who actually gives a shit for the sake of his kids and who's seen more than enough evidence to get off his ass and actually do something about it.

[mustang_sallad]

Additionally, none of these so called "experts" in the area of global warming seem to be able to explain why the polar ice caps on Mars are melting just as rapidly as ours are. Could it be all those little martians are driving SUV's? The climate goes through changes, that is natural, our affect on it is minimal. The fact that the ice caps on Mars are melting can only be attributed to increased solar output. Gee, don't you think maybe that would make things warmer here too? On the one hand I fully support the notion of finding alternative sources of transportation like electrics or Hydrogen powered cars if for no other reason then they are healthier for our local living conditions and have the added advantage of we don't send our money to states that then turn some of it over to wacko terrorists. On the other hand, I'm not so fooolish as to believe that everyone who drives a Ford Expedition his helping to kill the planet. It's nonsense. Nevermind the fact that privately owned automobiles account for 11% of the daily consumption of petroleum based products. Fully 2/3rds of it is used by commercial vehicles and most of those are diesel. They always conveniently ignore that fact and blame the problem on John Q Citizen who's just trying to get to and from work.

 

 

Yet another victim of companies like Tech Central Station, one of who's main sponsors is ExxonMobil (actually that was until Friday when apparently Exxon came to its senses and has severed its ties to G.W. skeptics. link). This company is (or apparently was) sponsored by companies suchas Exxon and GM to spread skepticism about global warming, through books like "The Satanic Gases" and "Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths". One group, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, even claims that rising CO2 levels are a good thing. "Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combusion are beneficial to life on earth." Wow! Plants breath CO2!, don't worry they use it for photosynthesis! Wow! What Bullshit!!! That's a serious lack of understanding, a serious underestimation of how delicate a balance this planet has been in for so many millenia.

 

Yes, certainly, human production of CO2 is a small fraction of the total production of CO2 on the planet, between animals exhaling and forest fires and volcanoes. But the planet has been doing that for millions of years in an excellent balance. David Suzuki had an awesome analogy to this. People have an excellent fluid balance... Every ounce of water we consume gets either pissed, exhaled or transpired out. If we were to for some reason start to consume a table spoon extra of water every day that we did not get rid of somehow, we'd be pretty fucked after a couple weeks, we'd be pretty damn bloated.

 

You can't possibly think that whatever's going on on a completely different planet has ANYTHING to do with what's going on over here. Its so much easier to claim that the sun's just getting hotter than to actually change anything about your lifestyle isn't it.

 

 

Please just accept the fact that a lot has to be changed about the way we live our lives, if we want our children and grandchildren to lead decent lives, assuming it isn't already too late. And lets applaud a company like Ford, who is in such a dire financial situation, but who still sees the importance of technologies like hybrid vehicles and hydrogen power.

 

And please, if you still don't buy it, promise to remember this time of your life when your grandchildren come to you asking why it took you so long to realize you were fucking up a lot of shit for them.

[LSFan00]

No, the planet has not been in blissful equilibrium for billions of years; please note the vast changes in temperature that have occurred since, say, the messazoic period. Secondly, we don't all need to make major changes in how we live, because my 20 MPG car is not heating the planet, please refer to the 11% consumption of all oil resources by personal transportation. Third, I don't care what 75% of the sem-socialist educator/scientist community has put out; refute the argument. Fourth, what a Republican advisor said in 2005 is completely irrelevant. Fifth, Ford doesn't have to be commended for spending millions to develop ethanol powerplants. I think this is stupid, expensive, unlikely to succeed as a major fuel source, and that like all R&D it shouldn't just be lumped into an "environmentally friendly intent; therefore wonderful" analysis, along with Hydrogen powered vehicles. Ethanol is a lousy fuel; and it's impact in our regional economy is that it is driving corn prices up, as the agricultural lobby that has promoted it had intended. One side effect is that poor Mexican families suffer. Another is that I have to fill up more often in the winter.

[mustang_sallad]

No, the planet has not been in blissful equilibrium for billions of years; please note the vast changes in temperature that have occurred since, say, the messazoic period. Secondly, we don't all need to make major changes in how we live, because my 20 MPG car is not heating the planet, please refer to the 11% consumption of all oil resources by personal transportation. Third, I don't care what 75% of the sem-socialist educator/scientist community has put out; refute the argument. Fourth, what a Republican advisor said in 2005 is completely irrelevant. Fifth, Ford doesn't have to be commended for spending millions to develop ethanol powerplants. I think this is stupid, expensive, unlikely to succeed as a major fuel source, and that like all R&D it shouldn't just be lumped into an "environmentally friendly intent; therefore wonderful" analysis, along with Hydrogen powered vehicles. Ethanol is a lousy fuel; and it's impact in our regional economy is that it is driving corn prices up, as the agricultural lobby that has promoted it had intended. One side effect is that poor Mexican families suffer. Another is that I have to fill up more often in the winter.

 

 

Just cause the climate changes over thousands of years doesn't mean we don't have to worry about upsetting a balance. Temperature goes up and down in a period of 24 hours, temperature has gone up and down in a period of hundreds of thousands of years, cyclic behaviour like that can still be considered a balance. Right now we're looking at potentially self amplifying effects of warming. The more CO2 goes into the air, the hotter it gets, the hotter it gets, the more CO2 is released from thawing permafrost... The hotter it gets, the more snow cover melts into water, water has the about the lowest albedo of all terrains on the planet, while snow has the highest, meaning that as the ice caps are melting and the oceans are growing, less sun let is reflected back to space.

Its a positive feedback situation, it amplifies itself.

The best analogy i've heard is like... imagine a big boulder, you start rocking it back and forth... yeah that's cool, it can rock back and forth, cyclic behaviour just like our climate. But what happens when you push it past a certain point? It starts rolling, and its really hard to stop it.

 

Keep believing what you want to believe... Let me know how you're feeling 50 years from now when you realize how ignorant we've all been. How can you possibly think our activities have no adverse affects?? The planet is not that big, and 6 billion people is a lot of people.

 

I'm not trying to say the car is the single most polluting thing on the planet, my ranting is for the sake of convincing people that the global warming is a real problem and that we are to blame. Transportation is just one of the top sources of pollution, but what? are we supposed to not care? We have a lot of progress to make, and it is SO easy to reduce pollution coming from cars. The changes in habbits are by far the easiest way to reduce pollution from transportation, and the technology to make the cars more efficient is already in our hands too.

[Bluecon]

yo! the idea that we're not sure about the Global Warming and the role humans play in this is bullshit! There is VAST concensus in the scientific community that Global Warming is happening right now and that human activity is largely to blame for the effects we're seeing. There is absolutely NO DOUBT amongst scientists that the amount of oil we burn is affecting the climate (is it really that hard to believe? The atmosphere is only so big, how much oil can we burn before we start to notice an effect?).

If you can answer some questions I will convert into a anthroprogenic global warming believer.

 

How was it possible for the Vikings to farm in Greenland and northern Newfoundland 1,000 years ago?

What caused the Little Ice Age(LIA) that froze the Vikings out of Newfoundland?

If the number one greenhouse gas is H2O and CO2 is an insignificant (particulaly from the vehicles in the USA) greenhouse gas why is CO2 such a target?

Why was the Kyoto treaty backdated to 1990?

 

And all scientists do not agree that humans are causing global warming. And if you look at the history of science time after time the majority of scientists have been wrong.

Edited January 14, 2007 by Bluecon

[LSFan00]

OK, that's more reasonable. I am just glad global cooling isn't killing hundreds of thousands any more.

 

http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialrep.../fireandice.asp

 

The claims of global catastrophe were remarkably similar to what the media deliver now about global warming.

 

“The cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in poor nations,” wrote Lowell Ponte in his 1976 book “The Cooling.”

 

If the proper measures weren’t taken, he cautioned, then the cooling would lead to “world famine, world chaos, and probably world war, and this could all come by the year 2000.”

 

There were more warnings. The Nov. 15, 1969, “Science News” quoted meteorologist Dr. J. Murray Mitchell Jr. about global cooling worries. “How long the current cooling trend continues is one of the most important problems of our civilization,” he said.

 

If the cooling continued for 200 to 300 years, the earth could be plunged into an ice age, Mitchell continued.

 

Six years later, the periodical reported “the cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.”

 

A city in a snow globe illustrated that March 1, 1975, article, while the cover showed an ice age obliterating an unfortunate city.

 

In 1975, cooling went from “one of the most important problems” to a first-place tie for “death and misery.” “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind,” said Nigel Calder, a former editor of “New Scientist.”

 

He claimed it was not his disposition to be a “doomsday man.” His analysis came from “the facts [that] have emerged” about past ice ages, according to the July/August International Wildlife Magazine.

 

The idea of a worldwide deep freeze snowballed.

 

Naturally, science fiction authors embraced the topic. Writer John Christopher delivered a book on the coming ice age in 1962 called “The World in Winter.”

 

In Christopher’s novel, England and other “rich countries of the north” broke down under the icy onslaught.

 

“The machines stopped, the land was dead and the people went south,” he explained.

 

James Follett took a slightly different tack. His book “Ice” was about “a rogue Antarctic iceberg” that “becomes a major world menace.” Follett in his book conceived “the teeth chattering possibility of how Nature can punish those who foolishly believe they have mastered her.”

[mustang_sallad]

If you can answer some questions I will convert into a anthroprogenic global warming believer.

 

How was it possible for the Vikings to farm in Greenland and northern Newfoundland 1,000 years ago?

What caused the Little Ice Age(LIA) that froze the Vikings out of Newfoundland?

If the number one greenhouse gas is H2O and CO2 is an insignificant (particulaly from the vehicles in the USA) greenhouse gas why is CO2 such a target?

Why was the Kyoto treaty backdated to 1990?

 

And all scientists do not agree that humans are causing global warming. And if you look at the history of science time after time the majority of scientists have been wrong.

 

 

Look, i'm not gonna pretend to know absolutely everything there is to know about the history of global climate. I'm sure there are endless examples of weather and climate anomalies that will never be understood. The global climate is an infinitely complex system, we could never hope to fully predict every little fluctuation in ocean currents, air currents, weather patterns and so on... But we have seen plenty of evidence that global average temperatures are rising faster now than they ever have in the past 2 million years. If you wanna believe that that's just coincidentally timed with our relatively sudden tendency to burn a lot of shit, and treat the atmosphere as an infinite waste field, well be my guest, i suppose.

 

The water vapor issue is something i've wondered about myself, especially with the supposedly impending hydrogen age. It is a very strong GHG, indeed. But the key with H2O is that the atmosphere is really quick to balance itself out in terms of humidity. The more humidity in the air, the less evaporation will occur. If the air is really dry on the other hand, water evaporates more to balance it out again.

Here's a really good read that addresses the role of H2O as a GHG:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142

That's written by Gavin Schmidt who is a climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

 

As for this notion that "not all scientists agree....", yes you are right, there are some scientists out there who believe that we have nothing to do with global warming. Guys like James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who gave a speech on the Senate floor entitled "An Update on the Science of Climate Change." He calls GW "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." In his speech, he repeatedly cited none other than an old favourite author of mine, Michael Crichton. Okay, maybe there are some scientists who disagree with anthropogenic global warming, but if he's quoting a science fiction writer, I think that list of scientists must be pretty short. Here's a great article on how ExxonMobil funds several separate groups that help circulate the works of a relatively small group of 'climate change contrarians', making almost an echo chamber to make it seem like there's actually a large scientific backing to this view point.

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/E...ng-tobacco.html

 

ExxonMobil-funded organizations consist of an overlapping collection of individuals serving as staff, board members, and scientific advisors that publish and re-publish the works of a small group of climate change contrarians. The George C. Marshall Institute, for instance, which has received $630,000 from ExxonMobil, recently touted a book edited by Patrick Michaels, a long-time climate change contrarian who is affiliated with at least 11 organizations funded by ExxonMobil. Similarly, ExxonMobil funds a number of lesser-known groups such as the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy and Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. Both groups promote the work of several climate change contrarians, including Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist who is affiliated with at least nine ExxonMobil-funded groups.

 

Baliunas is best known for a 2003 paper alleging the climate had not changed significantly in the past millennia that was rebutted by 13 scientists who stated she had misrepresented their work in her paper. This renunciation did not stop ExxonMobil-funded groups from continuing to promote the paper. Through methods such as these, ExxonMobil has been able to amplify and prop up work that has been discredited by reputable climate scientists.

This tiny minority of questionable science is picked up by companies like Exxon and amplified to give the impression that there is still a lot of debate going on, when the vast majority of people who have actually spent years studying the issues at hand are all in agreement.

 

 

The notion that there does NOT exist scientific consensus towards anthropogenic global warming is stealthily being supported by large companies that rely on GHG producing processes to support their bottom line. Are you gonna believe companies who have everything to gain or lose? Or will you get through the deliberate cloud of misinformation these companies have set up, and actually listen to people who have spent half their life studying climate. Look at the two parties involved. What do oil companies have to gain by convincing people not to worry and to continue business as usual? And what does the retard like me have to gain by wasting my Sunday, trying to convince people over the internet that we should be concerned?

 

And if you look at the history of science time after time the majority of scientists have been wrong.

This is an absurd comment. Ya no shit, there have been a lot of high-profile fuck ups. NASA crashed a probe into Mars cause they couldn't keep their units straight. Apparently over the past hundred years or so, claims of climate change have flipped from from Global Freezing to Global Warming several times. But this isn't one guy at his desk who got confused between miles and km. This isn't one meteorologist in '69 writing for "Science News." This is thousands and thousands of Scientists all around the world. This is coming from observations in Alaska, Iceland, Greenland, Canada, Norway, Antarctica....

 

Look, i'm sorry for going on about this, and i hate sounding like i'm sounding right now, like a preaching hippie. But there's just so much misinformation about this topic that has been intentionally spread for the sake of a very few very rich people at the top of companies that have a lot to lose if global warming is finally accepted as at least partially a result of human activity. But hey! Here's some good news:

Exxon Cutting Ties to Global Warming Skeptics Conveniently timed after that USC report exposing their covert misinformation tactics, but good new nonetheless.

[mustang_sallad]

ps i started posting in this thread when i got home real drunk last night. Some people call ex-girlfriends....

[Bluecon]

Look, i'm not gonna pretend to know absolutely everything there is to know about the history of global climate. I'm sure there are endless examples of weather and climate anomalies that will never be understood. It was much warmer than it is now 1,000 years ago. That is an anomoly? The LIA lasted 500 years and that is an anomoly? The temperature of the earth has always been warming and cooling. The global climate is an infinitely complex system, we could never hope to fully predict every little fluctuation in ocean currents, air currents, weather patterns and so on... But we have seen plenty of evidence that global average temperatures are rising faster now than they ever have in the past 2 million years. You know the exact temperatures for the last 2,000,000 years? LOL If you wanna believe that that's just coincidentally timed with our relatively sudden tendency to burn a lot of shit, and treat the atmosphere as an infinite waste field, well be my guest, i suppose. Then what caused the last major Ice Age? That ended only about 10,000 years ago.

The Vikings were froze out of Greenland by the LIA. Then after the LIA things warmed up again. The warming of the weather is nothing new or unusal. Why do you not consider the present warming an anomoly? It has been a warming trend for at least 100 years. It did not just start.

 

Read this. It has not just been lonely individuals making the repeated predictions of global warming and cooling.

 

http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialrep.../fireandice.asp

Edited January 14, 2007 by Bluecon

[SysEng]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6257327.stm

 

This what kills me:

The truth of the matter is that we aren't sure what is causing Global Warming (hell they where growing crops in Greenland 400 years ago), but I think blunt attack on transport alone isn't going to solve the potential problem.

 

ROFL

 

I have to agree, I find a few things about this pretty funny.

 

First, I have absolutely no doubt that something BIG is going on! And more than just "climate" is definitely involved.

 

But on to "human triggered" global warming. Allow me to point out to all those losers out there who apparently failed highschool chemistry, that methane ( of cattle fart and burp based global warming ) and carbon dioxide ( as per my SUV based global warming ) are heavier than air gases. Thats right, they fall to the ground. Damned difficult to have a green house with the "glass" scattered all over the ground. I might also point out that I haven't seen any low to the ground types keel over from breathing any of this stuff, because at ground ( and ocean surface ) levels, absoprtion works pretty well. If it didn't you wouldn't be alive right now to read my electrons.

 

If you really beleive that there is a crisis which required immediate human action, there is exactly one sure fire remedy. After 9/11 all stratospheric passenger jet travel was grounded. Within three ( 3! ) days, weather patterns were reverting to something like what some would have us beleive is normal. So instead of picking on what obviosuly can't; be the problem, I suggest these dimwits ground all passenger jet operation. Maybe, ( and I do mean "maybe" ) weather will revert to the mean within 30 days. Afterall, CO2 at 35,000feet has a bit to fall don't you think????

 

There you have it, a ready made quick solution with the SysEng mark of approval. :rolleyes: Go for it suckers... :bowdown:

 

Now while these euroweenies and other ecofreaks are bowing to my obvious genius allow me to point out that if it works at all its gonna be pretty short lived, because as has been noted, there is some pretty wierd weather and other things going on throughout our solar system noted on every planet we have been monitoring. Now, I forget the details, but I believe, our solar system is now exiting a galactic cloud at the edge of one of our galaxies arms. And I seem to recall, that between the natural variations ( about 3% ) of solar output, and clearer space, we are reverting to the mean in this sector, which means our poles are going to be melting come hell or high water and animals will roam the arctic just like the dinosaurs did. Who knows, atmospheric oxygen content may increase as well as it was higher 100 million years ago. More giant mosquitoes for you...

[BlackHorse]

Try to imagine yourself somewhere in one of the places we now call, California, Arizona, Washington, Oregon and the like, only the time frame is say 800 years ago. Now 800 years ago, the climate was pretty much as it is today, that meaning we still had spring, summer, fall and winter. We still had dry periods and wet periods and the santa anna winds still blew. But guess what, there's almost nobody around, I mean it's desolate. Now, lets say it's a moderately dry summer in ancient southern Cali, the winds are blowing like hell and boom, a lighting strike starts a forrest fire.

 

Who puts it out?

 

In our modern age, even with hundreds of firefighters working a large wildland fire they can still burn hundreds of thousands of acres of wildland. But 800 years ago? How much land you think that rascal would scorch before it stopped? What, 3 million, 4 million acres maybe. How much carbon and soot does that crank into the atmosphere? This was the state of the world for millions of years before we got advanced enough to do something about wildland fires.

 

Now fast forward a couple centuries and you find yourself amidst a growing and spreading human population around both Europe and Asia. Keep in mind that central heat and air conditioning didn't come along until about 50 years ago. How did all of these people cook food and stay warm? That's right they burned trees and coal in stoves. And guess what, none of the output off of those fires was filtered like it is on your modern day automobile. Millions of people burning little heating and cooking fires, everyday, releasing the ash of burned wood and coal into the atmosphere. This went on for centuries.

 

The ash given off by one volcanic eruption is 10 times the amount of polutant generated by all of the gas burning automibles that have ever existed.

 

Now some joker is going to come along and tell you that your Ford Fusion or Honda Accord that is equipped with a catilytic converter to reduce the polution it puts out is far worse then all of those centuries of even worse methods of polution that have gone on. Yeah right.

Edited January 14, 2007 by BlackHorse

[mustang_sallad]

The Vikings were froze out of Greenland by the LIA. Then after the LIA things warmed up again. The warming of the weather is nothing new or unusal. Why do you not consider the present warming an anomoly? It has been a warming trend for at least 100 years. It did not just start.

 

Read this. It has not just been lonely individuals making the repeated predictions of global warming and cooling.

 

http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialrep.../fireandice.asp

 

 

There are numerous ways to track historical temperatures or CO2 levels, anywhere from ice core samples in antarctica to plankton fossils.

 

Peace out homies. Don't change a thing, everything'll be alright.

[Roadrunner]

PS: besides being a lousy fuel which among other things you can't run through a pipeline, ethanol, one of the environmental-fruitcake hopes to replace oil, is starving Mexican children, now that it's massive impact on the corn market is spreading to impact things like food; tortillas. Way to go lefties/Californians/Euros.

 

By using corn, it helps get us off of our foreign oil dependency.

[LSFan00]

By using corn, it helps get us off of our foreign oil dependency.

 

Yes, and it starves Mexican children! What happened to the whole "No Blood for Oil" rationale? Shouldn't the new one be "No starving kids for corn farmers?" or "No lousy, polluting fuels for expensive federal-government-subsidized lobbies?"

 

Gasoline is less than 30% of US crude oil consumption. Ethanol, like hybrids, is a feel-good PR campaign.

[marc-o]

Try to imagine yourself somewhere in one of the places we now call, California, Arizona, Washington, Oregon and the like, only the time frame is say 800 years ago. Now 800 years ago, the climate was pretty much as it is today, that meaning we still had spring, summer, fall and winter. We still had dry periods and wet periods and the santa anna winds still blew. But guess what, there's almost nobody around, I mean it's desolate. Now, lets say it's a moderately dry summer in ancient southern Cali, the winds are blowing like hell and boom, a lighting strike starts a forrest fire.

 

Who puts it out?

 

In our modern age, even with hundreds of firefighters working a large wildland fire they can still burn hundreds of thousands of acres of wildland. But 800 years ago? How much land you think that rascal would scorch before it stopped? What, 3 million, 4 million acres maybe. How much carbon and soot does that crank into the atmosphere? This was the state of the world for millions of years before we got advanced enough to do something about wildland fires.

 

Now fast forward a couple centuries and you find yourself amidst a growing and spreading human population around both Europe and Asia. Keep in mind that central heat and air conditioning didn't come along until about 50 years ago. How did all of these people cook food and stay warm? That's right they burned trees and coal in stoves. And guess what, none of the output off of those fires was filtered like it is on your modern day automobile. Millions of people burning little heating and cooking fires, everyday, releasing the ash of burned wood and coal into the atmosphere. This went on for centuries.

 

The ash given off by one volcanic eruption is 10 times the amount of polutant generated by all of the gas burning automibles that have ever existed.

 

PLEASE BACK THIS UP WITH A RELIABLE QUOTE, BECAUSE I WOULD LOVE TO SEE ONE

 

 

Now some joker is going to come along and tell you that your Ford Fusion or Honda Accord that is equipped with a catilytic converter to reduce the polution it puts out is far worse then all of those centuries of even worse methods of polution that have gone on. Yeah right.

 

Aside from the fact that many (some would say up to two thirds) of forest fires are the result of humans (either through arson, carelessness or accidents), the inescapable fact is that by burning oil that's been in the ground for millions of years, WE ARE USING UP STORED ENERGY.

 

Anyone with any kind of basic understand of science will appreciate that energy does not disapear, it only changes form. There is only one energy input to our planet and it is the sun - all energy on the planet can be attributed to it one way or another. It's well-known petroleum is the result of ancient vegetation decomposed under specific circumstances. Energy that once made it to earth as sunlight was captured in a plant, that then decomposed (but not completely) remained deep underground until we brought it out. That energy is used when we burn fossil fuels, and when molecules break down they release that energy.

 

It took thousands, even millions of years to accumulate all this energy, and we are releasing it within decades - how can that logically not cause global warming?

 

Of course it's not just that the energy is being released, it's that some of the by-products of its release (via way of combustion) are gasses like C02, which holds heat because it absorbs infrared radiation (which would otherwise allow heat to radiate to space) and keeps it here. Sure the earth is big but we are going through millions of barrels of oil a day, releasing thousands of tons through burning fossil fuels every day. Yes, a lot of CO2 is produced naturally, that can also be reabsorbed and converted to oxygen by vegetation - but you can't release extra millions of tons of CO2 while cutting down trees and expect to keep the balance going.

 

I don't understand the planet's weather nor have I ever heard of anyone who says they do - one thing I know is that NO ONE can say FOR SURE we are NOT responsible for global warming, and NO ONE can say for sure what the consequences could be. I do know for a fact we are releasing huge amounts of energy and it can be accumulated as heat, so clearly we COULD be a significant factor. That means we could be responsible and ought to try and do something about it, otherwise we are gambling our children's future.

Edited January 15, 2007 by marc-o

[BlackHorse]

PLEASE BACK THIS UP WITH A RELIABLE QUOTE, BECAUSE I WOULD LOVE TO SEE ONE

 

Abosolutely, I'd feel the same way.

 

http://www.stevenspublishing.com/Stevens/E...a7?OpenDocument

 

Which states specifically:

It was noted in the natural events book that one of the major volcanic eruptions, Mt. Vesuvius or Mt. Krakatoa produced more carbon dioxide than humankind has produced since our existence on the planet.

 

I'm sure I could find more if you like but I thought this would satisfy your scientiffic curiousity.

[BlackHorse]

Additonally, some of you may recall my above post about the ice caps on Mars melting. My conclusion is that it can only be attributed to increased solar output, which naturally would heat up things here on old mother earth right?

 

Well guess what.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...7/18/wsun18.xml

 

the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.

 

A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes.

[David Johnson]

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html

 

Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities.

 

Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1992). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 22 billion tonnes per year (24 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 1998) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon ©, rather than CO2.]. Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of nearly 17,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 13.2 million tonnes/year)!

[mustang_sallad]

but you see, volcanoes and forest fires are natural events that have been going on for millions of years. There's been a fine balance between CO2 sources and CO2 sinks. Like i said before... we piss and sweat and breath out EXACTLY as much water as we consume. If we were to consume 0.1% more water than we excrete, over a year, that would add up to almost 2 liters of water just sitting in your body. Five years of that and you're carrying around 22 lbs of water. The only thing is that CO2 in the atmosphere has several opportunities for positive feedback, meaning the more excess CO2 in the air, the more is released. So this tiny imbalance of 7 billion tons that emit every year will only increase, even if we maintain our own emissions constant. All the while we are destroying these carbon sinks through deforestation, fucking up the other side of that balancing equation as well.

 

That article about the Sun burning brighter is very interesting, but the article you linked even mentions that the Sun has remained relatively constant over the past 20 years while temperatures have markedly gone up.

 

About the role cars play in global warming. I am not at all saying the transportation is the number one cause of global warming. But this is an automotive web site, and I am very interested in cars, and my life's work will most likely deal with cars. And it is SO easy to reduce the impact of cars, compared to some of the other issues at hand. This dude Robert Socolow, an engineering prof from Princeton, has proposed 15 steps towards stabilizing CO2 emissions. For simplicity's sake, he defined each of these steps as something that would reduce annual emissions by a billion tons by the year 2054. In that system, two of those wedges deal with cars. One is that each car be driven half as much, and another is that each car be twice as efficient. Fuck, high school kids could design a car that's twice as efficient, the technology is there. Highschool kids are also pretty good at riding bikes. This ain't rocket science, lets just do it.

 

Or you could just sit there and soak up every shred of supposed evidence against GW you find, which has probably only reached your ears thanks to support from companies like Exxon, and throw it around like the god given truth to support your god given right to believe you're not causing any harm. People are very quick to accept anything that means they don't have to change anything.

[Bluecon]

The ash given off by one volcanic eruption is 10 times the amount of polutant generated by all of the gas burning automibles that have ever existed.

 

PLEASE BACK THIS UP WITH A RELIABLE QUOTE, BECAUSE I WOULD LOVE TO SEE ONE

There you go. One volcano in 1883 lowered the temperature of the earth 1.2 deg.

Northern Michigan had snow on the ground thru the whole summer. Yet mankind and the earth survived.

The CO2 from cars in the USA is miniscule (way less than 1%) as a source of greenhouse gas in the world.

The whole CO2 and Kyoto thing is politically driven.

 

"Global Climate

In the year following the eruption, average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 degrees Celsius. Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888[citation needed]. The eruption injected an unusually large amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas high into the stratosphere that was subsequently transported by high-level winds all over the planet. This led to a global increase in sulfuric acid (H2SO4) concentration in high-level cirrus cloud. The resulting increase in cloud reflectivity (or albedo) would reflect more incoming light from the sun than usual, and cool the entire planet until the suspended sulfur fell to the ground as acid precipitation [4]."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa

[Bluecon]

but you see, volcanoes and forest fires are natural events that have been going on for millions of years. There's been a fine balance between CO2 sources and CO2 sinks. There has been no such thing in the past. Temperatures and CO2 levels have varied greatly. You are still believing in Al Gores hockey stick idea of temperature. Ther is no normal temperature for the earth. It has varied greatly thru time.

 

About the role cars play in global warming. I am not at all saying the transportation is the number one cause of global warming. But this is an automotive web site, and I am very interested in cars, and my life's work will most likely deal with cars. And it is SO easy to reduce the impact of cars, compared to some of the other issues at hand. This dude Robert Socolow, an engineering prof from Princeton, has proposed 15 steps towards stabilizing CO2 emissions. For simplicity's sake, he defined each of these steps as something that would reduce annual emissions by a billion tons by the year 2054. In that system, two of those wedges deal with cars. One is that each car be driven half as much, and another is that each car be twice as efficient. Fuck, high school kids could design a car that's twice as efficient, the technology is there. Highschool kids are also pretty good at riding bikes. This ain't rocket science, lets just do it. And you aint no rocket scientist.

 

The amount of CO2 gas released by cars in the USA is miniscule as compared to the amount released in the world. Lowering the level of CO2 gas from cars will do nothing to lower the amounts of greenhouse gases.

 

Or you could just sit there and soak up every shred of supposed evidence against GW you find, which has probably only reached your ears thanks to support from companies like Exxon, and throw it around like the god given truth to support your god given right to believe you're not causing any harm. People are very quick to accept anything that means they don't have to change anything.

And some people are very gullible and will accept whatever the government preaches to them. I suggest you read 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Remember Stalin and the "Useful Idiots", change isn't necessarily better.