Global warming true believers…
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Al Gore
Cooly44 — 15 years ago(July 15, 2010 04:43 PM)
How do you explain the global warming of 800 AD, which ushered in the high middle ages and changed agriculture in Europe?
There were no cars, planes or factories. Why did a whole continent suddenly get warm enough so that vinyards could be cultivated in England?
Please, I want to know!!!! -
Vforvendetta200 — 15 years ago(September 02, 2010 03:02 PM)
Not all global warming periods are caused by human activity/industry. Volcanos and earthquakes can also release large quantities of CO2 and methane respectively, as well as other greenhouse gases. I don't think it's a matter of "believing" that we're going through a warming period right now, it's evident that average world temperatures are rising. Whether this rise in temperature is directly caused by human activity or just a natural cycle is something that could still be deba1908ted, because after all we have not yet identified all the factors that affect global climate.
Too bad that politics affect the way we deal with scientific matters, because people on one side will swear that this phenomenon is definitely caused by industry and human activity and sometimes will exaggerate the facts in order to push a political agenda, likewise people on the other side of the political spectrum will deny that there's even any sign of climate change despite the evidence. This is really detrimental to any efforts to try to understand what is actually happenign with the climate and be able to act accordingly.
This issue shuldn't be a matter of political ideology. People should be able to look at the unbiased scientific research, and then be able to make up their own minds about this problem. But what is happening is the opposite. People are being persuaded into taking a particular stance on the issue of Global Warming before they even see a single piece of evidence that supports that particular stance. After all who is really supposed to know about this stuff? Scientists or Politicians? -
Cooly44 — 15 years ago(September 07, 2010 05:29 AM)
Exactly, that's my point. (The Ice Age is another example of drastic climate change that had nothing to do with humans.) When I say believing I mean the reasons for climate change, not the change itself.
Instead of tackling the problem of pollution, which IS caused by people, crazed agendists introduce carbon taxes which will help the earth exactly zero percent.
And all the politicians will make out like bandits, leaving everyone else a little bit poorer. -
clh-1 — 15 years ago(November 15, 2010 02:53 PM)
Explanation for "Mideval Warm Period":
First, allow me to refer you here
http://www.gcrio.org/ipcc/qa/05.html#fig1
Scroll down to Figure 5.1. I will refer to it several times.
Now I am going to warn you: I am about to do something that scientists do with some frequency. I am going to take data that is currently available, and draw an educated and logical conclusion that best fits that data available. I'm also going to open a can of worms a few comments that might be misconstrued as racist by those who don't r2000ead carefully and think things over.
I'm actually going to start after the Mideval Warm Period with the Little Ice Age (don't worry, it will make sense in the end, or you aren't that bright).
There is growing evidence that the "Little Ice Age" (dates vary, but ca. 1550-1800 AD-ish) was, at least in part, anthropogenic.
While in the modern, PC-ified, (especially) American culture, "White Guilt" has put the image of the "ecologically noble Native American, who lived in harmony with nature and was savagely wiped out by greedy Europeans" on almost as high a pedastel as the older Hollywood stereotype of bows and arrows and whooping war cries and John Wayne coming to save the day.
Historically speaking, neither one of them is entirely accurate. Keep in mind that the actual causes of some of the most infamous killers of indigenous peoples (bacterial and viral pathagens) weren't actually discovered until the end of the 19th/early-20th Centuries. I do not completely absolve Columbus, et al from responsibility, but in all likelihood, they didn't know that they were probably carriers for many different diseases.
Sorry, that this is a long-winded history lesson, but it is important to answering the greater question at hand, thanks for hanging in with me.
I bring that up, because the biggest de-populator (is that really a word) of the Americas was disease. And in many cases it preceded Euro-Americans by a generation. Essentially, Indigenous Group A is exposed to Smallpox on the Virginia Coast, without even knowing they've been exposed they do some trading with Group B, who are little further inland. By the time Group A is showing the symptoms, Group B has passed it on to Group C who live to the Northwest, and so on.
There is considerable evidence that the Americas were more "pristine" in 1600 than they were in 1500 because the land that had been cleared by the American Aboriginies (I know it sounds like I'm very British, but actually it's a more descriptive title than "Native American") would become reforested.
Preliminary data from a 2008 study out of Stanford found that during this time of reforestation, enough carbon dioxide could have been sequestered in the new growth to actually effect the Global Average Surface Temperature.
A summary here
http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2008/pr-manvleaf-010709.html
With all that fun data in mind, let's go back to our friend Figure 5.1. Notice from ca. 800-1400 AD there is a general increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. That would have been the maximum period of land cultivation in both the Old and New Worlds, thus a relatively high anthropogenic carbon output coupled with smaller availability of fast acting carbon sinks, and a warmer period is just asking to happen.
Somewhere out there are my various professors and advisors from my undergrad days (my degree is in Environmental Anthrology, I study the "human factor") and they got this pleasant tingle. Now if you'll excuse me, I am going to go ring a bell so an angel can get its wings.
Give Blood Today
God Bless! -
clh-1 — 15 years ago(January 03, 2011 07:22 PM)
I strongly recommend that you click the link as there are several linked articles within the text that you would do well to make the time to read.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/10/11/hal-lewis-resigns-from-the-ameri can-physical-society/
Hal Lewis resigns from The American Physical Society
An unimportant moment in science history, but perhaps a lesson in "normal science" that will shut down Cuccinelli's witch hunt
October 11, 2010
A physicist named Hal Lewis who doesnt know the first thing about climate science has resigned from the American Physical Society because he doesnt know the first thing about climate science.
The anti-science crowd has, with unintentional irony, compared his words of resignation to a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. That laughable assertion might be a half-truth, I suppose, if scientific views were no different from religious ones, which, I suppose, for the disinformers they are. And it might even be a quarter truth if Luther hadnt actually included any theses in his letter but instead cited, say, the work of Nostradamus in defending his critique of the Catholic Church. But it isnt even be a semi-hemi-demi truth because it wont be leading to a major new science religion of Lewisism, since, of course, thats not how science works.
As well see, Lewis couldnt even bother himself to learn the basics of climate science and he apparently doesnt know or talk to very many if any climate scientists. Indeed, this whole story isnt terribly newsworthy: Lewis isnt even the first physicist born in 1923 who was a longtime member of the JASON defense advisory group, who studied nuclear winter, and who has said absurdly unscientific things about climate science. That honor belongs to Freeman Dyson.
UPDATE: To see the APSs reply, click here.
But it did inspire me to break out my copy of Thomas Kuhns landmark book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which is marked up from my MIT undergraduate physics days and still has some amazingly relevant insights for today, as well see. It was Kuhn, after all, who originated the term normal science, a term confusionists and Tea Party extremists like Viriginia AG Ken Cuccinelli1354 are, well, confused about.
If you want some backstory on Lewis and the APS, read our good bunny friend at Rabett Run, Dear fellow member of the American Physical Society.
Lewiss letter itself is almost a satire of one of those when I was a kid reminisces of how great things used to be when people (physicists, in this case) were pure and poor:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).
Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinenceit was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?
How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison dtre of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs.
Just as an aside, I did get to meet many of the physics greats at M.I.T. They were giants, and we were in awe of them. They also developed the atomic bomb and then spent decades trying to convince our government and others not to enter into an arms race, advice that was ignored for decades. So Im not entirely certain that having this life of supposed poverty and abstinence proves anybody had either any moral superiority or greater influence on government policy.
Ah but kids today, well, they are all about the money and who wouldnt be, given all the money at stake, at least according to Lewis:
For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientist -
Rangely8723 — 14 years ago(June 13, 2011 06:46 PM)
The Medieval Warm Period was not a global event; globally, the earth was cooler at the time. While it was warmer in Europe and soda0me parts of the Northern Atlantic, in very most regions of the SH, as well as in wide parts of Asia it was much cooler than today.
Et moi, je lui ferai porter la sienne comme Saint Denis