Forums / Miscellaneous Discussions / Global Warming I

Tis the season for debating I guess =p In another thread I said We don't even know for sure that we're responsible for raising our own planet's temperature, and I realised right away how many people will disagree.

I've heard a lot from each side but I still feel like I don't know anything at all about this issue. Since we're all arguing abut everything else, why not this lol? Also, I only tend to hear about this from Americans and we all know their government is less interested in preventing warming and has less to gain from preventing it, so what does our awsomely multi-national vu community think?

it cant be conclusively proved that we are the force that put this time of global warming in motion, the world ha gone through many cycles like this, we may be exas.....ecsac.........making the problem worse but it will happen anyway, eco nuts and green peace hippies just like to make everything into a doomsday thing

true, but its going 50 times faster then it used to;)

to solve global warming, we must teach our lungs to split CO2 molecules

Whether or not global warming is humankind's doing, we should try and keep from worsening.

If humans aren't the cause of global warming (which, may I ask, did humans cause global warming when we were exiting the last ice age or did it happen itself? And if it happens by itself back then, why doesn't it hold true today?) then how are we going to be the 'solution' to 'global warming'?

It's the biggest scam that's being pushed nowadays and has a very 'cult-like' following plus High Priest Owl Gore.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all for finding alternative fuel sources (real ones, not ethanol.) to make us more environmentally friendly but I see no reason to hinder the industrial countries' economy with a looming 'global warming' threat..

teh real solution to globol warming lies within this psot on teh very next line

stop being fools and relize the hoax that is being shoved forcefully into your naive minds. open your eyes and see the natural cycles of the earth!

i learned in biology when i was in like 7th grade that it is a cycle a 7th grader smarter tahn msot politcal leaders in america is very common now a days. but the earth for decades has fluctuated over the years. the person who wrote my science book believes it ahs something to do with the sun spots on the sun. about every 20-30 years or so the opposite side of the sun is showing. go back 20-30 years ago people were complaining about global cooling and how we were gonig into another ice age. go back anotehr 20-30 years youd probobly find they were worried about global warming again.

OPEN YOUR EYES ITS NOT GONNA HAPPEN! there is a better chance of the movie I Am Legend coming true!

I'm far from a scientist, but what I learnt in school was that when you burn carbon based fuels like oil and coal, it ends up in the atmosphere, destroying the ozone layer and blocking the suns rays.

That hardly sounds like a reoccuring natural phenomenon to me. And if it was, then well the dinosaurs didnt do so well with some of these warming cycles, did they? =P

I don't believe in Global Warming.

I find it fascinating how people keep bringing up the "it´s happened before" arguement every time this discussion comes up when, in fact, this planet has never before been in a situation even closely resembling this.

Our planet harbors over 6.6 billion people as of sept. 07. 6.6 billion people have needs, 6.6 billion people are taxing their environment and exhausting mother earths resources.

As Roxbury mentioned burning carbon based fuel is a direct threat to our ozon layer and I dont think I will have to go into detail about what exactly that layer is supposed to do.

It is true that the world climate goes through cycles of warmth/cold, but scientists have reached to the conclusion that those cycles never before have been as fast as now. A warming that may have taken thousand fo years is currently happening in mere decades.

As i see it we can either keep on ignoring the lessons history has taught us in regards to other environmental disasters caused by humans or we can take a step back and examine what exactly we are doing and how that could have degenerative effects on the planet we thrive on. And just maybe if we, by some freak accident, manage to put personal gain aside and chip in to make a difference...well just maybe our race has a future.

As i see it we can either keep on ignoring the lessons history has taught us in regards to other environmental disasters caused by humans

Liiiiike, what Val? What natural disasters beyond forest fires started by an arsonist could be caused by man? Does man directly control nature? How does man cause earthquakes?  How does man take a hurricane and make it smash into coastlines? How does man control where rain does fall, or where rain doesn't fall? (flooding and droughts right there). We can't! Unless you have some God complex.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2007/10/antarctica-ice-cap-growth-reaches.html

So, yeah, there's ice cap GROWTH at the south pole and the arctic ice cap is about 3% off from normal last I heard and we're now a week into winter here in the north hemisphere. Only Owl Gore can get a Nobel Peace Prize for fear mongering.

1. Is global warming occurring? Have the forecasts of global warming been confirmed by actual measurements?

There is no proof that significant man-made global warming is taking place. The computer models used in U.N. studies say the first area to heat under the "greenhouse gas effect" should be the lower atmosphere - known as the troposphere.1 Highly accurate, carefully checked satellite data have shown absolutely no such tropospheric warming. There has been surface warming of about half a degree Celsius, but this is far below the customary natural swings in surface temperatures.2

2. Are carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels the primary cause of climate change? Can the Earth's temperature be expected to rise between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit in this century as has been reported?

There are many indications that carbon dioxide does not play a significant role in global warming. Richard Lindzen, Ph.D., professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the 11 scientists who prepared a 2001 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report on climate change, estimates that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would produce a temperature increase of only one degree Celsius.3 In fact, clouds and water vapor appear to be far more important factors related to global temperature. According to Dr. Lindzen and NASA scientists, clouds and water vapor may play a significant role in regulating the Earth's temperature to keep it more constant.4

3. Under the Berlin Mandate, developing nations are to be exempt from any emission reduction requirements agreed to in Kyoto. What effect will this have on overall greenhouse gas emissions over the next thirty years?

Undeveloped countries such as China, India and Brazil are included in this exemption. However, they are projected to produce 16 percent more carbon dioxide by the year 2020 than the United States, even if the Kyoto Protocol is not in place.5

4. Would a modest increase in the temperature of the planet necessarily be bad? Are there any potential benefits?

According to the World Bank, one-third of the world's population already suffers from chronic water shortages. The Worldwatch Institute predicts that this situation will be exacerbated further by the addition of an estimated 2.6 billion people to the world's population over the next 30 years. By 2025, the group claims, some three billion people -- or 40% of the world's population -- could be living in countries without sufficient water supplies, leading to crop failures, diminished economic development and even to regional conflicts as nations find it necessary to fight for control over scarce water resources.

While the scientific community is divided over many aspects of the global warming theory, the effect of global warming on precipitation levels is not one of them: Global warming would mean more condensation and more evaporation, producing more and/or heavier rains. Global warming, therefore, could offer the answer to the water scarcity problem that the Worldwatch Institute has been seeking.

If history is any indication, greater precipitation may be only one of many benefits of global warming. For example, between the 10th and 12th Centuries, when the temperature of the planet was roughly 0.5 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today, agriculture in North America and Europe flourished and the southern regions of Greenland were free of ice, allowing cultivation by Norse settlers. Evidence of this was found in 1993 when scientists from the National Science Foundation-sponsored Greenland Ice Sheet Project II extracted an ice core from Greenland's ice sheet that spanned more than 100,000 years of climate history. Samplings from the core suggest that a Little Ice Age began between 1400 and 1420, blanketing the Vikings' farms in ice and forcing them to abandon their farms in search of more hospitable climates. Prior to the onset of this Little Ice Age, temperatures were comparable to the temperatures general circulation models used by the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have projected for 2030-2050. Yet, the world's leaders stand poised to take dramatic steps to curb the risks of this kind of climate change.

Global warming could also mean greater agricultural productivity and greater water conservation. CO2 acts as a fertilizer on plant life while reducing plant transpiration (the passage of water from the roots through the plant's vascular system to the atmosphere). Thus, with global warming, agricultural output could be expected to increase while making less demands on the water supply.6

5. What would be the economic impact of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to meet the standards of the Kyoto Protocol?

If the Kyoto Protocol had been ratified by the U.S., the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates gasoline prices would rise 14 to 66 cents per gallon by the year 2010, electricity prices would go up 20 to 86 percent7 and compliance with the treaty would cost the United States economy $400 billion per year.8

6. If the United States can meet the targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions with little or no costs, why haven't corporations done so on their own?

This question is irrelevant, since abiding by the Kyoto Protocol would be devastating to our economy. However, supposing it was economically responsible to adopt it, we still must never base environmental actions on anything but sound science. We have ample experience of doing more harm than good with environmental regulations based on unsure science. For example, the Clean Air Act mandated oxygenates in gasoline and we ended up with no improvement in air quality but now have the oxygenate MTBE polluting wells in 31 states.9,10,11

We should not take actions that may not be necessary but will certainly increase the level of poverty in this. As economist Walter Williams of George Mason University has observed, "As you look around the world, it is poverty, as opposed to dirty air, that has implications for health."12

7. Are the burdens of meeting the demands of the Kyoto Protocol are distributed fairly?

No, the burdens of meeting the demands of the Kyoto Protocol would fall most heavily on minorities. A study commissioned by six African-American and Hispanic organizations found that the increased costs forced by the treaty would cut minority income in the United States by 10 percent (in contrast, white incomes would go down only 4.5 percent) and 864,000 black Americans and 511,000 Hispanics would lose their jobs.13

8. Is there scientific consensus that global warming is underway? If so, how was this consensus determined?

Dr. Lindzen has said there were a wide variety of scientific views presented in the NAS report and "that the full report did, [express a wide variety of views] making clear that there is no consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends and what causes them."14 The same is true of the all of the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change's studies on which the notion of global warming is based.

A university.

Does anyone know anything about the study Gore mentions where they look at whether there is a real scientific debate? He said that there was such and such a study which reviewed all scientific journals who mentioned climate change and that it reported zero as having disagreed that global warming was happening. If that is true I'd be really interested to know why there is not a single peer-reviewed source saying that it isn't. (Not that I believe everything in these articles, but seriously, WHY is it that we hear of a debate when really there is none, if in fact that study was true)

Um, Val? That's no disaster. The things I mentioned are disasters. Now in your cited example, did the logging industry screw up? Well, yeah. However that can be fixed. Still, how do vermin infested trees effect 'climate change'? After cutting those trees, how many degrees did the temperature increase? What makes those trees more important than the billions around the world?

Seriously, resources are there for our usage. Why limit ourselves?

What makes those trees more important than the billions around the world?

they produce oxygen.

I think he means Willem, is that people who have more money are able to prepare better for eventual disasters, like Bush owning a fully self sustainable farm somewhere in Texas with it's own electricity generator or something.


The debate is due to political and corporate propaganda. Like what happened with smoking.