I have a Q

it is about Al Gore & global warming

did'ja see that movie?

what's your opinion?

much ado about what is essentially a naturally occuring cycle of nature?

or

much ado about a needed wake up call?

I think you are my scence guru now ... what a responsibility you never volunteered for !

Pep <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Didn't see the movie, but:

Definitely there's a na2ral cycle. Lots of them, really. Sunspot cycles of 22 years, inertia of massive changes in things like glacial advances and retreats (such that, if things are warming, it takes decades or even hundreds or thousands of years for some systems 2 show definite trends - but we're already seeing definite trends in ice sheet retreats).

There was an interesting show on Nova recently about "global dimming" due 2 cloud condensation on particulate polution in the air. The idea is that dimming cools the earth, but it's not cooling it as much as greenhouse gases are warming it, and at some point in the next several years or decades, global warming will rapidly outpace the cooling effects of dimming, and we'll have a REAL problem.

Things like the hurricane season last year might be getting worse over time, but even if they're worse this year than last, we'd need 2 watch the weather for at least a sunspot cycle or 2 2 be able 2 definitively identify a trend.

But basically, we're hosed.

-ol' 2long

Can I play, Pep?

WAT
-------------------
All fossils are transitional.

Me too. I'm actually credentialed.

GC

GC should go first.

Pep,

http://www.junkscience.com/

Cy, that stuff is malarkey. Ideologically motivated.

go for it

gotta help daughter do sompin

will be back for enlightenment later....

I would like to hear what 2long and Graycloud have to say about it.

On the one hand I read articles from many that say there is undisputed proof men caused global warming. ON the other I come across articles like this one (by someone who seems to have credentials to talk about it with authority) that seem to say we are still not sure. Gllobal Warming?

A few years ago I read a letter to the editor of SIERRA magizne. SIERRA had written an article about Global Warning using data from ice cores taken in the Antarctic. They said the ice cores proved warming without a doubt. Then this leter to the editor showed up written by the man that published the ice core data. He more or less called the SIERRA arcicle writer a lier - going on to say that the data shows there is warming but that there has been similar warming trends many times, some far worse than this one and that research is still ongoing on the causes of this warming trend.

So, I would like to hear from you guys about it. What I have seen so far is very confusing.


SS

GC,

Beg to differ but I believe the malarkey is on the other side of the argument.

Certainly it's important for people to come to their own conclusions. However, for a complex, controversial, and evolving issue like human-influenced climate change, it's also important to decide who you're going to trust. I think for many people that's the tricky part.

Who can you trust? Who is acting in good faith, and who is acting in bad faith?

Opinions differ.

I'll tell you this, the debate you see in public is quite different from the debate among scientists doing peer-reviewed work.

Al Gore's statements about climate change, the ones I've read, are similar to what you overhear if you follow the mainstream scientific discussion. By "mainstream" I mean the conversations that occur among those doing peer-reviewed work in the field. Things you read about in Science and Geophysical Research Letters. Things you hear in workshops at conferences attended by people like me and 2long and JL (No, as a scientist I hardly deserve to be named in their company.).

In the late 1980s, some models predicted the kinds of warm temperatures and increased variability we're seeing now, but the people working on them were cautious about those conclusions, and rightly so.

Probably some of those projections were just lucky. The individuals responsible for them would say the same thing.

I think what's happening right now is a sort of perfect storm: some cyclic variations in phase, for now, with climate change caused by carbon loading, for which humans are largely responsible.

The part we're responsible for is a big deal.

A heat wave in Europe during the summer of 2003 killed 35,000 people. It would be foolish to discuss whether or not that heat wave was "caused" by global warming. However, many of the possible scenarios predicted by the IPCC (the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) make heat waves of that sort common by the middle of this century.

The earth's climate is changing, and is getting warmer in most places. Human beings are primarily responsible, and it's going to get worse unless we do something about it.

To pretend that the "other side" of the argument is a credible expert opinion deserving of equal time is simply brain-dead. These people refuse to participate in the scientific method. Oh, they pretend to embrace it. They reprint cherry-picked materials and reference peer-reviewed articles to create an air of authority, while dismissing the conventions arrived at by the community.

These people are playing you for fools.

Full disclosure: my car's fuel tank is currently full of biodiesel, and I voted for Gore in 2000.

GC

Graycloud, could I ask you to expand on a couple of things? First, most people know what Science is, but they may not know what a peer-reviewed publication is, and probably are not familiar with eophysical Research Letters. They will also probably not understand your reference to the conferences that you and JL and 2Long wander around in, so you might want to give more details on that.

Underneath all this is, perhaps, the worthwhile discussion of how the scientific community comes to a consensus on whether a theory or model is accurate or inaccurate. Because if you're saying that there's a consensus among scientists, then lots of folks are going to wonder how that consensus came about.

And then, of course, there's the "real" questions. Stuff like what the major findings are that lead to the general consensus, if any, or what observational support there is to indicate that any particular model is accurate or inaccurate. Etc. etc. etc.

Personally, I'm doing the planet a favor today. It's 3:33pm and I haven't started my car today, nor will the AC be on today. I'm still probably conspicuously consuming just by existing where I do, but every little bit helps.

I've seen excerpts of the Gore film. It started as a slide show and he was talked into making it into a movie. My personal opinion is that it looks like he's running for office.

I also think he took some liberties with his facts. For example, showing ocean levels having risen really high against a present day looking New York City skyline is misleading, I believe. This portrays that those high levels are imminent.

I also think he's short on solutions and alternatives to carbon loading. There are baseload electricity generation options he doesn't advocate for because, I suppose, that's not what his base wants to hear.

From my observations, it appears the real scientists are pretty much in agreement on this topic. There are dissenters. I don't know as much as GC to know whether the dissenters have agendas or sincere disagreements as may be expected in any scientific inquiry. The question seems to be not whether carbon loading is contributing to GW, but how much?

JMHO

WAT

I beg 2 differ here. You are more knowledgable on this subject than I. I'm not a climate scientist, not directly that is, and not focused on recent or modern climate even when I am. Most of my stuff is much greater than hundreds of millions of years old, and deals with other planets. But other planets can serve as warnings. Like Venus as an example of a massive runaway greenhouse. Venus is hotter by a couple hundred degrees F, even at night and at the poles, than Mercury at noon on the equator at perihelion. All because of it's 90 bar CO2 atmosphere. The effects are real, and now it's dawning on scientists, at least, that we're truly seeing them on this planet.


He won that year, if you recall. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

-ol' 2long

Good points, J. All these things, journals, conferences, workshops, conventions... they're just manifestations of the way science is practiced. You bring your work to these venues and your peers decide if it has any merit. Do it enough and you gain some credibility, and you get invited to participate more. Papers submitted to professional publications are sent to you for review. You're invited to sit at long tables and discuss the controversies in your little corner of science with your peers. Some of them are colleagues you see every day, some of them are collaborators you see a few times a year, some of them are competitors who think you're wrong about something very important. Some of them don't think your project is worth the powder to blow it to he!! and they undermine you every chance they get. There are personal issues and political issues and all the problems you'd expect. By "political" I don't mean "ideological", by the way. I've never really seen much of that in the science world.

The question of consensus is sticky. Often a consensus is said to have been reached on some subject even though credible individuals disagree. The climate change discussion is this way. There are respected researchers who disagree with the current consensus about global climate change, which is generally expressed in the reports of the IPCC. That does change the way the consensus looks. Shoot, you could argue that no single scientist has had more influence over the IPCC reports than noted "global warming skeptic" Richard Lindzen (some of whose early work on atmospheric dynamics I cite in my own dissertation).

As for the other stuff you mentioned, J, the real debate points... it's not doable here. We'd be in the weeds in no time at all. This is complicated stuff, and I don't know anybody who can enter the public square and distill it into a simple discussion that can be heard above the noise made by those who are more interested in their side winning than they are in the truth.

Above all else, the mainstream scientific community wants to be right. With them, getting the truth usually wins out over money and ideology, and most of them make a special effort to preserve their credibility. Without it their careers are over. Most of the ones I know wouldn't accept research money from anyone with a vested interest in the outcome of their work.

Unlike noted ExxonMobil beneficiary and junkscience.com proprietor Steven J. Milloy.

Oh, I'm digressing so terribly. It's over. I have to see how my own computer model is doing.

GC

Hey, I'm from Florida, and WE ALL KNOW Gore lost (LOL!). What I find hilarious is that the Republican party can't flush Katherine Harris down the toilet fast enough. She's like a (rhymes with bird and starts with a T) that won't go down. Sorry, that was crude.

And I digressed.

I agree with GrayCloud that "these people are playing you for fools." We're in for a rough century here, and our greenhouse contributions have made it exponentially worse. Remember that Global Weather has a huge momentum, and that even a tiny, but long-term, temperature change will have a huge impact.

Weather follows the principles of Fluid Dynamics, and we all know that unpredictable things happen, often in a cascading manner, when you mess with normal fluid flow. Small increases in the temperature of sections of the oceans feeds the weathermaking machine, and now we're in for a load of hurt.

Speaking as someone who lives 50 yards from the ocean, and 17 feet above sea level, I quote 2Long: "We're hosed."

Thanks Gray.

I spend some of my time working on committees that deal with land use issues. (Management plans for Wilderness areas, National monuments.) I get hit from both sides. People who think we don't do enough to preserve, and people who think we go way too far. We look at the land, and we make decisions as best we can with the data we have, and then listen to people complain who have never seen the land in question.

I have read about the GW issue and wondered - because there is so much conflicting stuff written.

I wanted to know what you thought, because I trust you to be honest about it.

SS

Okay, this is the deal:

If you are now living below the Mason/Dixon line, you must stay there... regardless of how warm it gets.

GW or not, you may not come up north hauling your little A/C units in the back of your big [censored] SUV's looking for a little slice of the north, because you are sooooo hot.

Tough on you! We weren't good enough for you before GW, so you cannot change your mind now, just because it is a little warm down there.

Got it?...and no, we will not be shipping semi trucks full of snow down for you at Christmas time.

Right Gray? This is just the way it works, isn't it?

Hey Gray, will it be better for me to stay on Lake Superior or move over to the other side of Lake M, in the long run that is?

I am wondering if this is just a natural occurance & expected cycle .... & that modern life has very little to do with the changes....

Pep

Are you wondering or have you already decided?
gc