Climate Change Discussion

[LMTC]

Perhaps, I can explain by using the example of the possibility of an asteroid hitting the earth. We seem to have little difficulty in accepting a scientific prognostication that there is 100% probability that one will hit but we don’t know the date and that on certain dates in the future the probability of a hit rises significantly.

I don't accept that prognostication at all. Once again there are certain assumptions made to begin with....the assumption that "we" have little difficulty accepting the starting premise. As stated, I do not accept it; it is an assertion which cannot be proven. So the example crumbles.

That's not to say it doesn't make a good point, but it doesn't serve as any starting point for scientific proof.

 

[N80]

I'm curious, do you believe that this is some sort of Marxist/socialist conspiracy? That's the only common cause I can easily associate with those two people.

Eugene Genovese was formerly a Marxist. He renounced Marxist theory. His critique of US politics, which he explores in his magnificent book, The Southern Tradition : The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism is spectacular. I recommend the book to anyone trying to understand conservative thought. The gist of the book is that large corporations do not behave like nor are they held to the same standards as private property owners. They are beholden only to the shareholders and in this regard they are without moral or ethical constraint. Because of their size and power, they become integral to the security of the US and its government. They also have tremendous enfluence over our leaders. In this regard, the two become indistinguishable and both are intimately concerned with the other's well being. This leads to undue power on the part of both. Have we not seen this? Is this not the very thing that the left says is responsible for global warming? Certainly you can see the Marxist enfluence, but the conclusion is radically anti-Marxist. The solution (which Genovese only hints at is that corporations need to be reigned in and that the basis for this is true private property ownership with all the rights and privileges due to it as delineated by the founding fathers. This should be something the left and right could agree on. But neither will, because there is a choke hold on the money and the power.

I am unclear how anyone could associate Richard Weaver or anything he ever wrote with Marxism or communism. He is at the polar opposite end of that spectrum. His book, Ideas Have Conseqeunces is probably the second most important book I've ever read. Basicall this is a philosopical critique of nominalism and its effects on western culture. He makes a case that without some sort of transcendantal belief structure (religion) a culture has no moral compass and does not know which way to go. So they just go. The god of progress. We don't know what we are progressing towards, we won't know when we get there but we are going to go, by god. Ultimately he dismisses pure religion as the solution. He is not anti-religious he just thinks that in a practical sense that ship has sailed for western society. Instead he sets up private property ownership as sacred (as many religions do). The responsibilites and privileges that come with private property are the glue that hold culture together, engender community and provide a moral basis.

I apologize for this detour, but the assumption that citing these two names is somehow related to Marxist conspiracy is just so way off track I needed to clarify. Weaver is one of the founders of contemporary intellectual conservativism and as far removed from Marxism as one can get. Genovese was a Marxist but is now amongst the most anti-Marxist conservative thinkers.

The reason that I cite these two is their shared belief that soulless, unrestrained corporations account for much or the environmental and cultural decay in the world and that governments who are deeply invested in such corporations will be unmoved by the will of the people. They do not call for an end to democracy or even capitalism or corporations. They just call for citizens and governments that hold corporations accountable.

Such a view can unite both the left and right in environmental causes. But it calls for a sea change in how we view capitalism and our economic structure.

 

[hazmat]

Hmmm, seems I have 2 new titles to add to my reading list. Although they may conflict me further (I work for a large defense contractor).

EDIT HERE:

Apparantly we Northerners have little interest in The Southern Tradition - not available in my local library system...

 

[Tig]

Very nice summary. Their views, as you presented them, seem more than reasonable. Thank you N80.
In Wikipedia, they mention that Weaver was "briefly a socialist in his youth".
Richard M. Weaver - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[BobRip]

Lead and the other heavy metals that are used in the various battery technologies are nasty stuff. However, we have a good track record of recycling lead.

95% of lead that is avialable to recycle is. 63% of all lead "produced" is from recycled stock. USGS 1998 lead report

I saw a show on heavy metals on the discovery channel the other day, they quoted a 97% as the current recycle rate.

That's what's great about elemental metals - you can melt them down & re-use.

I thought most (if not all) of the hybrids use nickel metal hydride batteries or Lithium Ion. No lead. However, you point is well taken that a hybrid used more equipment and the manufacturing of that equipment takes energy, metals, chemicals, etc.

 

[N80]

Apparantly we Northerners have little interest in The Southern Tradition - not available in my local library system...

Genovese is a native son of New York, New York!

 

[hazmat]

Genovese is a native son of New York, New York!

Well then his book should be in my library . Just ordered it on Amazon, I'll donate it to the libaray after I've read it.

 

[N80]

In Wikipedia, they mention that Weaver was "briefly a socialist in his youth".

Thanks for the link. I was not aware of that. Seems like he and Genovese both veered left before turning right.

 

[scott_vt]

Hmmm, seems I have 2 new titles to add to my reading list. Although they may conflict me further (I work for a large defense contractor).

EDIT HERE:

Apparantly we Northerners have little interest in The Southern Tradition - not available in my local library system...

Afternoon Haz,
I can see my pleasure reading of Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Ann Rice Etc...... just aint gonna cut it here I certainly have my homework mapped out for the foreseable future

 

[N80]

If you do decide to read Genovese or Weaver it is not light fare. Both books are short, but hard to read. Or at least they were hard for me to read. Them intalectuls talk funny. Seriously, they are academics and they write like academics and sometimes it is tough. I read the Genovese book about three times before I got it figured out. The Weaver book twice. When I get to stuff I don't understand, I just plow ahead and come back later.

To keep things in context, these men, informed by the southern agrarians, make the assertion that the roots of environmentalism, at least the conservation movement, were born in southern conservative agrarian thought and mirrored in similar New England agrarian thought. It came out of people wishing to conserve what they loved.

 

[EddieWalker]

I just saw a show on the National Geographic Channel last night that showed Tigs graph. It was extremely biased and only gave one side of the argument, which really disapointed me.

One of the things they really focused on was the glaciers in Greenland and how they are melting. They said over and over again how bad this is. Really made it sound like the end of the world. But like Thingy keeps pointing out, the Vikings used to live there before the glaciers were there and it was green farmland. It sure would be nice if they mentioned this in there story of how terrible this is.

Just the fact that they ignored and avoided the fact that the glacier hasn't been there all that long, but focused on the melting of it and how the oceans could possibly rise 2 feet from the melting spoke mountains of thier agenda.

Nobody wants to answer my question. If this has happened many times before in history, why is it so bad this time? How come all the previous planetary warming periods were natural, but this time it's because of Man? The graph clearly shows we're due for it just based on the normal cycle over the last 400,000 years.

Another thing they brought up was that coral only grows at certain depths. Then they went to Arizon and showed places where coral is on the sides of some rocks. Obviously at one time it was under water. They wanted to shock us into being scared of the polar caps melting and the water levels of the oceans rising. Whoopy. The coral on the rocks is proof that this has happened before and it's a normal, natural cycle.

Why is it bad when Man is blamed for it, but when it's naturaly, it's ok? Why isn't this warming period natural? It started thousands of years ago, why is it that only the last 40 or 50 years get all the credit? Why do they ignore all the history that goes back thousands of years that shows the tempature of the planet chaning up and down and only consider this warming cycle man made?

They never did say what was so bad about the ice caps melting except to say the shorelines will change. OK, so they change. It's not like it's gonna happen in a day or two. What's wrong with warmer weather? Since we're in a naturaly warming cycle, there is NO way to stop it anyway.

The scinetist that they brought out to prove this remind me of the "psychic hotline." They keep throwing out one idea after another with the hope that one will actually happen. The second one of them get it right, they all claim to have said the same thing and strut around on how smart they were. Yet every single one of them got this past years hurican season 100% wrong.

They are still saying Katrina is proof of global warming, but ignore the reason Katrina was a problem was that the Army Corps of Engeneers wasn't allowed to make the repairs to the levy system that they new needed repairing. Clinting set a new record for funds to repair the levy, but nothing happened becuase the envirnmentalists stoped them in the courts. Bush increased those funds and still nothing happened for the same reason. If they had been fixed when they new there was a problem and the money was made available, they would not have failed and Katrina would have been just another big huricane. Because the levy's failed, Katrina has become the proof for global warming.

It just doesn't make any sense, especially since the worse hurcane season was in the late 30's and early 40's.

Eddie

 

[Raddad]

AP. A long-awaited report says global warming is "very likely" man-made, the most powerful language ever used on the issue by the world's leading climate scientists, delegates who have seen the report said Thursday.

And the document, the most authoritative science on the issue, says the disturbing signs are already visible in rising seas, killer heat waves, worsening droughts and stronger hurricanes.

The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a group of hundreds of scientists and representatives of 113 governments — unanimously portrays the science of global warming as an existing and worsening threat, officials told The Associated Press.

"There's no question that the powerful language is intimately linked to the more powerful science," said one of the study's many co-authors, Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria, who spoke by phone from Canada. He said the report was based on science that is rock-solid, peer-reviewed, conservative and consensus: "It's very conservative. Scientists by their nature are skeptics."

The scientists wrote the report, based on years of peer-reviewed research; government officials edited it with an eye toward the required unanimous approval by world governments.

In the end, there was little debate on the strength of the wording about human activity most likely to blame.

"That is a big move. I hope it is a powerful statement," said Jan Pretel, head of the department of climate change at the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute.

The panel quickly agreed Thursday on two of the most contentious issues: attributing global warming to man-made burning of fossil fuels and connecting it to a recent increase in stronger hurricanes. Negotiations over a final third difficult issue — how much sea level rise is predicted by 2100 — went into the night Thursday with a deadline approaching for the report.

While critics call the panel overly alarmist, it is by nature relatively cautious because it relies on hundreds of scientists, including skeptics.

"I hope that policymakers will be quite convinced by this message," said Riibeta Abeta, a delegate whose island nation Kiribati is threatened by rising seas. "The purpose is to get them moving."

It took delegates just 90 minutes to agree on the signature statement which describes how sure scientists are about global warming being caused by man. The answer — "very likely" — translates to a more than 90 percent certainty.

What that means in layman's language is "we have this nailed," said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who originated the percentage system.

"They're hearing through the science that this is appropriate," Mahlman, a reviewer of panel's work but not an author or editor, said. "I'm pretty happy with the 'very likely' designation."

That phrase is an escalation from the panel's last report in 2001, which said warming was "likely" caused by human activity. There had been speculation that the participants might try to up the ante too "virtually certain" man causes global warming, which translates to 99 percent chance.



___

 

[N80]

Well, there you have it. And it only took how many scientists, and how much money a whole year to add the word 'very' to the word 'likely'? That had to have used tax money.

But never mind that, we now know that we are powerful enough to change the world's climate in less than 100 years. Woohoo, we did it! High fives all around. Oh, wait a minute,you mean its bad because it wasn't planned that way?

Seriously, if raising the climate of the earth a few degrees is just another part of the price we have to pay for the progress we have made, is it really too high a price to pay? That is not a rhetorical question. Can we look back, even with hindsight and imagine, realistically that we could have gotten here any other way?

What, exactly is going to be the price? I'm sure there has to be more than what the media is feeding us: its just going to be baaaaaaaaaaaaaad, pictures at eleven. Four horsemen and all that.

I want the guys who are brilliant enough to differentiate between all the dramatic and massive climate changes in the history of this planet and the one single change caused by us to tell me:

1) What is "very likely" going to happen? (Or if it is a year from now, what is 99% certain to happen?)
2) When is it going to happen?
3) To whom is it going to happen?
4) Who will it harm?
5) Who will it benefit?
6) Will the harm outweigh the benefit?
7) If so, what can we do to stop it, that is "very likely" or "almost certain" to work?
8) How will those things help?
9) When will they help?
10) Who will they help?
11) Who will they hurt?
12) Could the hurt outweigh the help?
12) And if we can't do anything to stop it, what can we do to adapt?
11) Why won't anyone tell us what we can do to adapt?

Until they can answer these obvious, and obviously overlooked questions, their collective myopic agreement fails to impress me even if I agreed with them.

 

[Egon]

Come on fellows, lets be reasonable. We do contribute to pollution. That is a fact.

Now global warming, that comes under different guidelines.

The earth is just following the warming of our solar system. Warming requires energy or is it energy conservation? Or is it both?

Our sun emits EMF pulses that continuously vary. At times these emissions may damage some of our electrical systems.

Do we receive this same type of energy from suns far beyond our solar system? When was the energy from distant solar systems discharge. Are these solar systems even in existence today. We are a few years behind time on any information from outer space.

Black holes, can they attract energy from our solar system until they collapse on themselves?

It is a fact that a great percent of the earths surface lies below water level and may be considered unexplored. Whats happening down there?

Question, questions and more questions for which I have no answer and no understanding of the principles behind them.

Food for though: " Are we alone " " Are we looking at a past which is no longer there" ?

 

[scott_vt]

If you do decide to read Genovese or Weaver it is not light fare. Both books are short, but hard to read. Or at least they were hard for me to read. Them intalectuls talk funny. Seriously, they are academics and they write like academics and sometimes it is tough.

Mornin George,
Would yea be thinkin I could get those durn books in the library, or am I gonna be needin to fork over my hard earned pockey money for a peak into an intellectuals cranium ?

 

[BobRip]

Nobody wants to answer my question. If this has happened many times before in history, why is it so bad this time? How come all the previous planetary warming periods were natural, but this time it's because of Man? The graph clearly shows we're due for it just based on the normal cycle over the last 400,000 years.


Eddie

Eddie, the reason it is so bad is that we tend to optomize our local infrastructure and buildings around what we believe are the "normal temperature swings". FMEA is requiring houses that were more than 50% damaged to be rebuilt 1 foot above the 100 year flood plain. If the sea level rises 2 feet, then this would not be enough. It really does not take a big change in climate to have an economic impact on many areas of our world. Houses near the beach may only be a few feet above high tide. So two feet could make a big difference here. Another way of looking at it (my way) is that we build system that are just good enough to take 100 year floods and then are shocked when a 200 year flood destroys it. This is marginal construction in my book, but it is the norm. We can and probably will adapt and it will cost some money and damage to structures, but it is not the end of the world. New Orleans was built to withstand 100 year floods and we were warned many times of the risk. It seems to actually take severe damage and deaths for us to respond. The Dutch after the major flood in 1953 (I think) said this will never happen again. (A third of their country was under water). They built a 10,000 dike. That's the way I like to plan. Americans are good if they think 5 years ahead, much less 10,000.

 

[thingy]

The main reason this keeps getting attention is of course politics,,,did you ever notice one side says this is the most important thing,and the other side says,,it ain't even happening?,,,,there are very smart people on both sides in this area,,,but it seems they disagree mainly because of which party they belong to.
One side wants a world government,,and wants a communistic way of life for us,,this gobal warming thing fits their agenda,,not to mention both sides need to disagree with each other over everything it seems,its just a way of making us average citizens vote for them,,truth has nothing to do with politics,,alarm the befuddled masses,now that works.
You won't hear anything much about global warming after hillary gets elected,even if its real and gets more noticable to everyone,cause that would mean they would be the ones responsible to address it,, thingy

 

[Chuck52]

Leave it to Thingie to shoot this thread in the head with a 22.

Chuck

 

[EddieWalker]

I just read the UN story and found it rather interesting.

U.N. climate panel says warming is man-made - Yahoo! News

"The report predicts a "best estimate" that temperatures would rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 Celsius (3.2 and 7.8 Fahrenheit) in the 21st century, within a likely range from 1.1 to 6.4 Celsius."

When have they been correct in the past? never. If this is a naturaly cycle, there is no way to stop it. It's happening on Mars, who's to blame for that?

I doubt the numbers given can be proven and rely on allot of worse case guessing to get maximum panic. They do this every year with the weather, what makes anybody think they will use common sense for this?

"Temperatures rose 0.7 degrees in the 20th century and the 10 hottest years since records began in the 1850s have been since 1994."

This is a new number. Everything I've read before this has said that the tempature over the last century rose a full degree. Now it's only 70% of that.

It's also interesting how they only site the years from 1994 to 2004 as the hottest. There was a story that said global tempatures had leveled off and even decreases in the last seven years. I wonder why that was ignored?

Going back to 1850 is also suspect. Why not show what the global tempatures have been on the planet for the last 400,000 years? It's clearly shows that we are not even close to what the planet has naturaly warmed up to in it's natural cycles.

"Bush pulled out of Kyoto, saying caps would harm the economy and that Kyoto should include developing nations."

Clinton was the one who refused to sign Kyoto. Bush just agreed with Clinton. It's just curious why they avoid mentioning that part of it.

"The report projects a rise in sea levels of between 18 and 59 centimeters (7 and 23 inches) in the 21st century -- and said bigger gains could not be ruled out if ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland thaw."

It happened before. It's gonna happen again. Same thing with ice ages and glaciers. They are all part of the natural cycle on the planet. Pretending that this time it's manmade is just playing politics.

Eddie

 

[N80]

I just read the AP report on Yahoo. Very interesting. The gist of the conclusion is that 1) the global climate is warming 2) it is warming because of manmade green house gas emissions 3) it will continue for centuries 4) there is nothing we can do about it.

And while there are reports to follow, the scientists interviewed all say that we have got to start now to stop it and that the window of opportunity is getting narrow! Did they not read their own report? It said we have set in motion something we cannot stop. So what are they preaching about? All we can do is adapt.

And don't forget folks, these predicitions involve a century or two. While this may seem reasonable to weather men, is there anyone in history who has been able to provide useful predicitions about how culture, society, technology or civilization will advance or regress a hundred years or two down the road (outside of whatever religious figures one might subscribe to)?

So if one takes all of their data and conclusions at face value including the inevitability, and figuring in the absolute unpredictable nature of the future of mankind and the slow rate of warming they are predicting, I see little value in this as anything more than a live and learn sort of thing.

And yet, these rational, thoughtful men and women still couch their predicitions in the direst of doom and gloom terminology, almost to the point of being apocolyptic. Do the rational and thoughtful human beings of this planet who have once and for all demonstrated their total dominance over nature by actually changing the climate really need to be 'scared straight'? If we have the power to change the climate will we not have the ability to adapt to the change we have enacted?

Now that the debate is finally over and we know that we are "very likely" the masters of global climate change, the months and years to follow will be the most interesting ones. These same, unbiased, professional, idealogy free model scientists are going to release a series of reports telling us what we need to do about all this. Mark my words, that is when we will see the true colors of this issue and those who support it. They will shake off the mantle of objective science and will now be able to tell us how and why we are to live with the expectation that no president, king, dictator, citizen or slave will question the objective and practical validity of their guidance because after all, the proof has been made, they have agreed with one another. They were right.

I just hope that all those who have followed their lead will apply at least as much, and preferablly, more due diligence and research into examining not only the practical value of their judgements but also the motivation of those judgements. If you let them hide behind the shield of 'science' as they tell you how to live, then you given them one, or two, too many leaps of faith.

Finally, I'll make an easy predicition. Now that this issue is all wrapped up, take note of the role that "tolerance" will play in the aftermath. It is a simple truth, easy to observe, that there are few groups as intolerant to resistance or dissent as environmental activists. Pay attention. Now that they have achieved the coup de grace, there will be no tolerance for dissent. God have mercy on any would-be Galileao.