For all you global warming deniers

I guess it's just pick a side and defend it to the end. I for one prefer to bury my head in the sand and only give my opinion when it is not asked for.

Let me also saw that reporter Bob McKeown is liberal Canadian reporter. If you can actually listen to the report as someone who is truly on the fence about global climate change, you will hear Bob lean toward the liberal side by the tone in his voice.

IMHO

CHEERS!

Abking,

You characterize people that contest your views on AGW as:

     self-righteous
     greedy
     rednecks
     (apparently) lacking moral fortitude

So as for "the rest us are us are ... less loud and obnoxious", wouldn't you consider ad hominem attacks such as the above as being loud and obnoxious? Something worthy of the likes of Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Savage?


The "denialist" crowd already has you nailed, should the climate start to cool, they can always point to these among others:

http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/Calen/Landscheidt-1.html
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/08/25/globalcooling.shtml

Lastly, this loud, obnoxious, self-righteous, greedy, lacking in moral fortitude redneck's household scores, on a per capita basis, at the low end of the "fair-weather ecofriend" range on the Wired Carbon Quiz: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/carbon.html   

And I'm not including our full time live in nanny in that score, and this is also before we convert to propane heat, something we will be doing in January. If I make those adjustments, then our household is solidly Deep Green. Just where does your family score? I want to make sure that we don't have a case here, of the pot calling the kettle black.


Regards,
Scott

Sorry, folks, but I think the ultimately self-righteous and greedy redneck crowd will support this one full-term - meaning I feel we'll have to get all the way to the end before they'll admit that it's true.  Luckily the rest of us are numerous, although less loud and obnoxious, and I do feel there's a chance we'll elect someone with enough moral fortitude to push a sane agenda.  We might even elect Gore again!  The sad thing is that if we stop the trends and actually prevent global catastrophe the Good Ol' Boys will still be sitting around claiming it was never real in the first place! 

Um, Gore lost fair and square as was shown by the multitude of newspaper reviews of the florida result (not to mention the fact that it was entirely pathetic to even be that close, he lost his home state for chrissake).

Wishing for something to be so does not make it so.  What makes it so is incontrovertible evidence.

The fearmongering of the global warming crowd is unbelievable.  While it may be (and probably is to a degree) occuring the results of such global warming is not known, and those that claim they know are not being forthright.

Throwing around 18 degrees F in 50 years is just freaking ridiculous.

MolBasser

Scott, I'm still working on your earlier post with quotes (however, I seem to been preempted on point 1).  I will say this tho...

civil discussions do not include cheap shots at ones personal character or family background ( I personally am proud to be from redneck stock  )

Point 2-

IPCC TAR predictions of increase in GASL is 90-880 mm from 1990 to 2100. Current measured increase in GASL is about 1.5 mm/year, with no sign of acceleration. Even if you take the IPCC TAR central value of 480 mm over 110 years, you get less than 30% of the rate of your stated increase. So, who do we believe? The USGS, or the oft quoted IPCC?

Now, an additional 500 km^2 of Bay is bad, just how exactly? I mean for wildlife that is, not for humans.  Ditto for thousands of additional km ^2 of wetlands in the Central Valley. And that assumes that humans don't manage to fix levees, which I sincerely doubt, as humans do tend to get things done when we are being reactionary.

I'm still trying to track down the publication of this data ( my citation is from notes at CALFED), but its rather glib to disregard the value of property which may be lost to the sea, not to mention transportation services...
The IPCC TAR is a 2001 study, new conclusions that may emerge, generally have better acuity due to the inclusion of data not available to previous study's.  anyway, I'm still looking..

point 3

If temps increase by the IPCC TAR central value of 4.3 C by 2100, I imagine that folks aren't going anywhere all of a sudden. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but most of humanity isn't doing the hunter-gatherer thing any more. You or I wouldn't even notice a 1.4 C increase in temperature, which is at the low end of the IPCC TAR.

It should be remembered that whenever talking about "central values" v's "localized impacts" when it comes to rainfall and temperature data, there is rarely a global average.  All of the "weather" that you and I experience is of a localized nature with many, many variables, thus, an increase of 10c locally may sound crazy, but its possible (drive from SF to SAC in the summer...).  As far as not noticing 1.3c (2.34f), you may not, but the young, elderly and those with certain illness like MS would definitely notice the change.  For example, if you add 2.34f to each day in June of 06 for Sacramento (assuming global averages are constant and consistent) the month with 3 days of 100 or more would become a month with 8 days of 100 or more, which sounds allot more like august than June...

Point 4

I guess I better not build in the 100 year flood plain then. Or if I do, I better adopt something along the lines of the Dutch experiments in floating housing:   http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/environment/floating-cities-the-dutch-might-have-the-answer-for-global-warming  Changes would need to be made in how agriculture is done in the Valley. But, since a lot of the Valley relies on flooding fields, this may be a draw. Or again, levee technology might just be improved.  Time will tell

Again, being dismissive does no good, I personally would never live or build in the 1000 year floodplain.  That's probably because I'm a geologist who values his property and life.  Agriculture in the valley faces the threat of reduced water, but that may not be as big of a threat as increased urbanization.  The LA basin was once a massive agricultural engine, with millions of pounds of pork, beef and citrus, not to mention all the milk that was produced in that region.  Now its a massive engine for mindless entertainment and porn (not much difference, but I have to make some distinction between hollywood and porn).  The valley is already a bedroom community for the Bay, Sacramento and LA, its only going to become more so.

Point 5

That value is approximately triple the worst case scenario numbers of the IPCC TAR, which predict up to 5.8 C mean increase in Global temperatures by 2100, vs your 10 C in 50 years. Can you cite the resources that provide the basis for this extraordinary prediction?  Better yet, has this scientist's prediction passed peer review? And did anyone in the audience question this number, or was it just silently accepted as gospel?

1, Amy Lund Luers with the Union of Concerned Scientists, based on models developed with the US Army Corps of Engineers, and lots of peer reviewed work in development of the models, keep in mind the language (up to 18f), for most of CA they are predicting increases within the range IPCC discusses (see graphic below)  However when discussing the US as a whole (avoiding the issue of globalizing weather) the interior regions of continents tend to develop more extreme weather patterns than the margins.  We can see that in central continental regions, deserts are growing (the Sahara has grown by 1km/yr for the last 300 years or so, I have not investigated causality... http://www.ciesin.org/docs/005-319/005-319.html  http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/Africa/03/wornall/wornall.html)  and as I am from the midwest, this is deeply disturbing to me.  I would be very upset if my children did not know the bounty of the Ozark mountain streams...


2.  There were 1212 registered participants at the CALFED06 Conference (D. Wissekerke-registrar) and not a single session went by without a barage of questions.  It's actually rather insulting to the entire scientific community that such a charge would be made.

MolBasser--reprinting notes from national conferences are sometimes allarming, but rarely ridiculous...sorry if I offended your sensibilities.  Global warming/climate change is not something that should be politicized, however when it comes to fearmongering, I think that the concerned citizens still have a lot to learn from the "terrorists are going to kill us all!!!!" camp...  2c
I agree that all of the consequences of global warming are surly not known, but that's just like saying that the consequences of running your car into a bramble patch are unknown, so you should do it anyway (what if there are trees and rocks in there?)  We should still slow down, evaluate what we are doing and try our best not to find out what will happen first hand.

I think that about covers it all for this round, feel free to point out anything I missed or got wromg.

Jim

Jim,

I'll work on yours, while you work on mine I'm only hitting a few points, as I too will need time to absorb your responses.

civil discussions do not include cheap shots at ones personal character or family background

I'll try and stop using the term "alarmist". Other than that, I'm fairly sure that this does not refer to anything else I said. A possible exception being my my pointed, yet sincere request for Abking to respond with the per capita Carbon Output for his family. Which output, by the way, I wouldn't mind seeing from a range of posters. I personally think our household is doing pretty well, but if that isn't the case, then I'd like to know that too.


Point 2)

but its rather glib to disregard the value of property which may be lost to the sea, not to mention transportation services...

Your point is well taken, I'll  rephrase below. But since the concept of dismissiveness is being brought up, let me introduce Point 6)

Point 6)
It appears that many Kyoto proponents dismiss the U.S. costs of meeting Kyoto protocol. This cost has been estimated by some economists to be as high as trillions of dollars. Now my take on this cost is that if people think that the Iraq war was expensive and a drain on the U.S. taxpayer, how will they feel about a number which could be orders of magnitude higher? This is the same Kyoto which won't be enough to stop AGW, according to some strong proponants of AGW. And since meeting Kyoto means going after the low hanging fruit first, further reductions in the U.S. Carbon output will be even more burdensome, if not politically impossible. Which brings us to China, which will be the top emitter in the near future (2009 according to the IEA) and yet has no emissions limit in Kyoto. China also indicates that it would not accept limits in Kyoto round 2, but would consider limits in Kyoto round 3.

Point 2)
Getting back to the local effects. If there are high costs with combating AGW and its resultant rising sea level, and there are high costs with rising sea level but a gain in wetlands, then isn't there validity in stating that abandoning these lands to the ocean is the better option? I'm pretty sure that this idea was proposed by environmentalist/preservationist groups post-Katrina, but this is purely from memory, no googling.

Point 5.1) Ok, that chart looks closer to IPCC TAR than what I  envisioned when I read 18 F in 50 years. It still looks like a major jump though, with California being a state with significant maritime influence. A) Did Amy Lund use the IPCC TAR range in Global temperature increase as the inputs to her model?  B) And am I correct in interpreting that the upper end is based on extremely bad behavior continuing or accelerating for the next 65-95 years? If so, what is the definition of this bad behavior, in terms of emissions increase?    Also, doesn't the low end scare you? It assumes good emissions behavior and yet still starts well above IPCC TAR minimums.

Point 5.2) Excellent to hear that there were a barrage of questions, so it is very likely that there will be an answer to my question 5.1 A) above. Please do not intepret my question about the response to Lunds models to be an accusation. Since that number was so much higher than anything I've seen, I reacted the same way I would have had you had writen about a presentation on the healing power of slugs. Call my response incredulous, but not accusatory.


Regards,
Scott

Cool!   A green global warming denier!  I'm a carbon-fouler, Scott.  I just like to spew crap to stir the pot...

but seriously, I will admit right here and now that I can't compete with your superior intellect.  You win!

I still stand behind what I said though.   

Gore lost fair and square

Let me start out by saying I think Gore is an idiot, but he got more votes, and I wouldn't put tampering past the Bush/Cheney clan for a second to take the "electoral college"...those two bastards are as corrupt as anything this country has ever seen.

Gore lost fair and square

Let me start out by saying I think Gore is an idiot, but he got more votes, and I wouldn't put tampering past the Bush/Cheney clan for a second to take the "electoral college"...those two bastards are as corrupt as anything this country has ever seen.

They are rat nasties, that is for sure, but a combined effort of many newspapers (many of them liberal) did the recounts the the courts stopped and Bush won (as the recounts were demanded by the candidates).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12623-2001Nov11.html

Thank God we have only 2 more years....

MolBasser

Recounts only work when the voting machine isn't a black box full of software that Bills kid could hack marketed by Rep. supporters.  I love that we go around the globe spouting democracy and our president lost the popular vote...how does he live with himself...I guess all of the money is PRETTY soothing.

The main problem I have with global warming alarmists is their position that every effect of global warming will be bad.  This is not the case, and it is extremely dishonest to tally up all the negative effects that 'might' happen without similarly tallying up the positive effects that 'might' happen as well, or failing to consider that people can adapt to changing conditions by planting drout tolerant crops or building sturdier buildings in hurricane prone areas.

I moved from MN to CA, a ~20'F increase in average temperatures. According to Al Gore I should be dead...

failing to consider that people can adapt to changing conditions

I don't believe that the 'alarmists' are really worried about people so much.  We'll probably think of a way to survive.  It might cost us a bit of inconvenience and money to deal with increased temperatures, sea level, etc.. but we'll figure something out.  The cockroaches, rats, and pigeons will probably be okay too.

I believe that most of the concern is with the rest of the ecosystem.  Organisms have two basic methods to deal with climate change.. migrate or evolve.  If the climate changes as much and as quickly as predicted, then this will out pace the evolutionary rate of most species leaving migration as the only option.   Some animals like birds shouldn't have an issue migrating to a new area where the climate suits them.   Mammals and smaller critters will be okay as long as there are swaths of applicable habitat along the way (cities, highways, etc.. sometimes get in the way).   

Getting to the right climate is only half the problem.  Once the animals get there they have to find the appropriate ecosystem to live in.  Trees and other organisms that create suitable habitats like forests ecosystems probably won't be able to keep up given that their only means of migration is through growth and reproduction.

From a geological time perspective this sort of thing happens.  There have been many mass extinction events in the past and life somehow continues in one form or another.

Now for those that need an example that might affect their own interests... I'm guessing that will probably loose a few species of native trout along the way.

   

I'm still sifting through this stuff, but I couldn't even figure out what the hell a denier is.

Dictionary.com:     1. also (děn'yər) A unit of fineness for rayon, nylon, and silk fibers, based on a standard mass per length of 1 gram per 9,000 meters of yarn.

   2. also (də-nîr')
         1. A small coin of varying composition and value current in western Europe from the eighth century until the French Revolution.
         2. Archaic A small, trifling sum.

hmmm....

As the other climate change believer on this board, let me predict a few responses... liberal bias from Canada (a social country). Do you really think anyone will watch this before they jump all over you?

In other news, thanks for the link.  I've been having a similar debate with my father-in-law.  Maybe I can get him to watch this.

Brian

Another one here too, just not as good a writer.

UC DAVIS
Scientists research stretches of global warming, cooling
Fossil studies helped determine sea levels at various times
- David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Friday, January 5, 2007

The ancient Earth has seen its global climate come and go -- a few million years of ice-covered cold at times, and long epochs of dry, ice-free warmth at others, all due to the vagaries of nature.

Then there are danger times like today, when after thousands of years of relatively cold temperatures around the globe, planet Earth is warming measurably as greenhouse gases of the industrial age spur an ever-faster rise in worldwide thermometer readings.

A UC Davis scientist and other researchers examining the past for clues to the present are suggesting that global warming and cooling have run in cycles. They've uncovered evidence that some 300 million years ago a long-lasting ice age froze entire continents and then gave way 40 million years ago to a period of global warming that melted all the ice and left the Earth dry, dust-blown and covered only with sparse vegetation.

During those extreme temperature swings, said Isabel P. Montanez, a geochemist and geology professor at UC Davis, came shorter periods of warming and cooling.

It was a highly unstable period of climate change, marked by millions of years when temperatures yo-yoed up and down as the atmosphere's natural levels of carbon dioxide, the major heat-trapping greenhouse gas, rose and fell wildly, says Montanez.

Montanez led a team of researchers that gathered evidence of fluctuations in ancient carbon dioxide levels by analyzing fossil plant leaves and weathered rocks throughout the American Southwest, ice cores in Antarctica, Australian fossils, and coal formations in China.

By recording species changes in long-vanished, shallow-water creatures called brachiopods, the scientists calculated how sea levels rose during warming periods as glaciers and continental ice sheets disappeared.

The team's conclusions are being published today in the journal Science. In an interview Thursday, Montanez said the report is the first well-documented study showing the transformation of a long-lasting ice age into an even longer period of increasing global warmth -- "from icehouse to greenhouse," she called it.

Surface temperatures from the Paleozoic ice age and the warm period that followed left their signs in the varied species of brachiopods, she said. And the advances and retreats of massive glaciers in Australia provided signs in scoured mountainsides that the global warming phenomenon was highly unstable.

The ancient supercontinent of 300 million years ago that left its evidence for the team to study is known as Gondwana, and most of today's Southern Hemisphere continents, from Australia to Africa and South America, were formed when Gondwana broke up.

During the long Paleozoic ice age, vast continental ice sheets were many miles thick on southern Gondwana, while in the far north, the ocean must have been covered with miles upon miles of broad sea ice, Montanez said.

Then carbon dioxide gas, emerging into the atmosphere from minerals and weathered rocks, volcanoes and carbonates in the seas, began to increase sporadically, and what had been a continuously frozen continent began to thaw.

Computer calculations by the team showed that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere must have swung back and forth between 250 parts per million to 2,000 parts per million, Montanez said.

The world froze again and thawed again as carbon dioxide levels rose and fell until, by about 265 million years ago, the continent warmed and the end came to the "most widespread and long-lived icehouse of the last half-billion years," Montanez and her colleagues wrote in their report. "This global warming event accompanied a permanent transition to an ice-free world," they wrote.

That "permanent" ice-free world, they said, lasted until about 3 million years ago when a new ice age began -- an age that has continued with some fluctuations until the latest warming period began within the past century or two, and has accelerated ever since.

According to Lee R. Kump, professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, the report from Montanez and her colleagues "makes a pretty compelling case" for that long-ago change from an ice-bound world to continuing episodes of hot, dry global climate.

In an interview, Kump noted that although some skeptics have questioned whether carbon dioxide is indeed the major "driver" in any global warming scenario, the evidence is now strong that it is. For the past 400,000 years, he said, atmospheric levels of the gas have ranged naturally from 180 to 280 parts per million, while today's "human perturbed" level has already risen to about 370 parts per million.

"This study," he said of the report in Science, "clearly shows how a period of strong warming came at the end of a long, intensely glacial period -- and we're breaking out of another million-year glacial period again right now."