Quote: Original post by d000hg

Quote: Original post by MikeTacular
Anyway, has anyone watched The Great Global Warming Swindle? I understand there are a couple of flaws in it (there were in Gore's An Inconvenient Truth too), but I have a hard time swallowing some of the things Gore claims after seeing it.

Never heard of it. I only recently watched An Inconvenient Truth so it would be interesting to see something seriously claiming the opposite.

You should. It's very interesting. Here's a linky so you don't have to go rent/buy/google anything.

Quote: Original post by Eelco

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid
Concise? How about because the people who measure and analyse the data say so? [wink]

Which people?

The IFCC, for one. But you wanted me to be concicse [smile]. In return, I don't know what the backing is for saying the "temperatures haven't changed in 15 years, therefore no global warming".

Quote: Factoring in recent data, there is no trend in sea-ice over the recent years either.

That is, insofar it makes sense to talk about trends over such a short period of time. Mostly, it doesnt.

That's the point. Senator Fielding was asking questions about temperature change over the short period of time. They aren't relevant.

Quote: If you want to focus on long terms trend, as you should, one concludes that current temperatures are about equal to the way they were in the early 20th century, and lower than they were during the medieval optimum (note that they used to label warm periods an optimum before AGW came around, and thats not in a mathematical sense, but in a 'gee, life seemed to flourish then' sense). To say we have been significantly influencing temperature either way so far, whether you talk about a 15 year or 30 year timespan, is bogus. There is far too much noise in the data, on any timescale, to draw any such inferences whatsoever.

Do you have a citation or figures for there being no change in the complete global temperature (air and ocean) since the early 20th century? The figures I've seen mainly start from the middle of the 20th century.

And note that I, in this thread, am not arguing anything about whether we are influencing the temperature one way or another. I'm just pointing out that the figures I've seen and linked to pretty strongly suggest that the total global temperature is rising, for whatever reason. That's what Fielding is denying, and for me to sway over to his point of view I'm going to need some harder data than "it's not so different from the high point a decade ago in 1998". Not when the decade-by-decade trend is against that.

Quote: Original post by Eelco

Quote: Penny Wong
The greenhouse effect is a well-understood physical phenomenon, like gravity. Greenhouse gases have a known ability to absorb heat emitted from the Earth's surface and re-emit it in the lower atmosphere.

Misleading to the core. The advection of smog is more well understood, actually. One of my collegues just graduated on the subject of why all models that tried to predict smog [are wrong].

Fuck off, stupid politician. Dont pretend you know anything about physics, or numerical modelling.

You're saying that there are no gasses that exist which absorb and emit radiation in the thermal infrared range? Or that they do exist but this property is not at all understood?

Furthermore, you're implying that because you know a guy that says that smog models are inaccurate, this property of these gasses must be misunderstood as well?

Clouds are a greenhouse gas. I think the property of the atmosphere absorbing heat is pretty well understood. If you want to argue about the connection between climate and the greenhouse effect, then go right ahead, but your current line of reasoning is pretty illogical.

Quote: Original post by Eelco
May the earth warm a few degrees over the next century? Certainly: with or without global warming, it might. Something to keep in mind would be that the IPCC also acknowledges the first 1-3 degrees are likely to be beneficial, as far as human carrying capacity is concerned.

The problem here is were losing capacity around equator, especially in Africa and gaining it around the arctic circle where its probably not going to avert any mass famines.

Quote: Original post by Kaze

Quote: Original post by Eelco
May the earth warm a few degrees over the next century? Certainly: with or without global warming, it might. Something to keep in mind would be that the IPCC also acknowledges the first 1-3 degrees are likely to be beneficial, as far as human carrying capacity is concerned.

The problem here is were losing capacity around equator, especially in Africa and gaining it around the arctic circle where its probably not going to avert any mass famines.

More relevant to us and Fielding locally, the summaries I've read about the effects to various areas suggest Australia will be one of the worst affected areas by climate change. We're a dry arid continent, and climate change will most likely cause further droughts in the south where most of our farming is done. Our water supply is struggling to meet demand as it is.

Now I can see arguments being made for whether a country as small in population as Australia can do anything to halt climate change, but denying the possibility that it's a problem does strike me as akin to sticking your head in the sand.

A correlation between a short-term rise in CO2 levels and human industrialization has been observed and it is very plausible that there is a causative relationship. Beyond that, nothing has been ascertained. I think we are a long way from experiencing the dramatic temperature swings and climate changes that the Earth has witnessed in the past, and there is little reason to believe human activity at current levels can trigger such events.

Reducing our CO2 footprint in the long run is probably a good idea but it should be done gradually and in step with actual observed changes in the climate. Development and industrialization should not take a back seat to wildly speculative extrapolations of faulty computer models. Far more important are the effects of actual pollutants on the environment, which this CO2 nonsense has made people forget.

In the meantime, it is unlikely that the extremely modest amount of warming will cause the sorts of crises people are predicting. In the past, warming has been associated with civilizational development.

Quote: Original post by Codeka

Quote: Original post by d000hg
"if CC is so obviously true, why has global average temperature dropped over the last few years?"

That's like proclaiming the end of the resession if the stock market is up for a couple of days.

:bowdown:

Quote: Original post by Hodgman
Some might back him up on the economics or futility of it, but I don't think any would say anything like this though -

Quote: Over the last 15 years, global temperatures haven't been going up and, therefore, there hasn't been in the last 15 years a period of global warming.

I've never quite figured out how some people have derived the conclusion that temperatures have been falling for 10 years from the one actual fact that there was a temperature spike in 1999. It's very poor logic .... so poor that it seems politically motivated for those who are propagating it.

Quote: Original post by trzy
In the meantime, it is unlikely that the extremely modest amount of warming will cause the sorts of crises people are predicting. In the past, warming has been associated with civilizational development.

Interesting. But for what region is that temperature chart? Is it just a measure of air temperature in the North Atlantic region (i.e. Europe)? The North Atlantic's temperature is dependent on what is happening with the Gulf Stream, so if it's just for that region it might not be an accurate indicator of what is happening world wide, air and oceans combined.

Quote: Original post by pulpfist
Guns makes it much easier for people to take the step and kill something that moves.

No! That's what I'm trying to tell you - shooting a gun doesn't cause death! Yes if you show me a graph of "number of bullet holes" VS "is alive or not" you might see what appears to be a correlation, but I'm telling you its just coincidence, ok?

All those people with bullets in them who died - they were already dying before guns got involved. Having a bullet in them had no effect on their death, it's purely coincidental.

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid
That's right! Guns don't kill people. Blood loss, internal haemorrhaging and organ failure kills people!

And internal haemorrhaging occurs independently of the presence of bullets. It's all myth!

Quote: Original post by trzy
In the meantime, it is unlikely that the extremely modest amount of warming will cause the sorts of crises people are predicting. In the past, warming has been associated with civilizational development.>

A modest amount of rat poison doesn't cause a catastrophe in a well... that's not the problem. The problem is the non-stop addition of "modest amounts" and the fact that humans don't have the ability to easily and safely counteract the problem significantly.

Anyways, when compared to our tiny capability to reduce any problems that develop, the "modest" additions seem rather large.