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Hi Whig!

No, I agree with you 100% I advocate being a good steward of the planet and its resources, and that there is a balance to anything. The problem I see is that there is no balance, we have extremes setting the parameters for debate. We have the ones who don't care at all about the environment and want to abuse it, then we have the other extreme.

To all things there is an asset/liability ratio. We have to determine what is common sense. The current global warming movement is anything but common sense--one just has to listen to the verbage and arguments used.

I think that we will eventually, in a natural fashion move away from more carbon producing fuels. We have already. We have gone from wood, which produces far more carbon than any previously used fuel, to coal (less, but still a lot), to oil (even less, but getting there) to gas (monumentally smaller emissions than wood fuel). Even on the periodic table we are moving closer and closer to hydrogen as a source of energy, and we are doing it in a naturally progressive fashion. Of course, impatience is the way of the impetuous, governments and the activist, and so much meddling will take place within the natural cycles that will happen anyway. This meddling often results in more destruction and hurt than it does good.

I wish that we would devote those billions of dollars in the gw industry toward finding a solution for littering...

Have a good weekend, Whig!

-Jack

 

I like that explanation Jack, and I feel as you do. I always like to call "An Inconvenient Truth," "Chicken Little." (my parents got a kick out of that) I dont think Al Gore is a horrible man- he has always been an environmentalist first and foremost, but he is also a politician, which is a close second, or a tie with his environmentalism.

And I also think people read Jack's posts on global warming, and there being a touch of humor and sarcasm involved, the environmentalist side of Jack doesnt show through- there is an assumption that you feel caring for the environment is a waste of time and money. But the debate has become so wild, its so hard not to have a little fun with it, stray from just posing a straightforward argument for the sake of poking a little fun here and there, especially at Al Gore's expense!

I love the doomsday countdown in the upper left, that is great. And further, I would like to point out that I have never seen/heard you insult Al Gore either.

 

Whig,

There are conflicting reports of whether we are warming or even possibly cooling. There are indications, for example, that the median temperature is even cooling in the southern hemisphere. I don't think the science is yet available that gives us accurate global temps--as even the IPCC had to admit. But if we are globally warming, this is most likely a part of a cycle that has existed since the planet has been here. Even though there are hundreds of scientist (funded by global warming grants)out there that are saying that we are definitely warming globally, I just can't say. I don't have access to the mountain of data available.

As far as man-made vs. natural, I would say that man's significance in this huge world we live in doesn't amount to much. Of course we live in a world where a huge portion of the population think that humans are the center of the universe and this earth and all of its positives or negatives are a result of man. This takes a huge ego to believe, Whig, and I can't buy into this social demogoguery. I have been on the ocean during a storm in a HUGE ship and saw it and the people onboard reduced to nothings in the face of such magnaminous ferocity; I have witness volcanoes on TV that in a singulara eruption emit more CO2 and pollution into the atmosphere than mankind can supposedly manufacture in a lifetime; I have been through hurricanes that whiped man and all signs of him from the face of the earth.

I think that people have become arrogant and consider themselves much more important in the scheme of things than they really are. And for this reason, today's global warming "crisis" is just the latest display of man's egocentricity. People seem to revel in the self-loving/self-loving aspect of such suppposed created calamity.

There are literally thousands of variables in something like earth climate that are extremely complex in nature. Linear thinking people look at linear graphs and think that everything is linear. Complexity surrounds us, and simple statements like CO2 increases heat is just to simple a way of thinking.

Take the Vostok ice core for example. The current scientists who are saying that the CO2 caused warming clearly ignored the graph. What it reveals is that temperature rises much longer before CO2 levels do, and it is the temperature change that increases CO2 not vice versa. If the graph is read properly there is a noticeable rise in temperature, and then 800 years later CO2 levels start to rise. This has been said for years, but it is ignored by anyone who wants to think that it is the opposite.

Whig, CO2 is the building block of life. Without it, we would be dead and everything on this earth. Start removing CO2 and vegetation dies, there is a rise in birth defects, animals start going extinct, etc., etc. It is in all, and a part of all--kind of like the force in Star Wars. I have a very difficult time saying that CO2 is the root of a coming global catastrophe that will destroy us all.

Whig, I have studied this issue since the early 80s. I was around in the 70s when there was a panic over "sound science" that indicated an impending ice age. (BTW, everyone back then thought it, it was the consensus of scientists, and "deniers" were basically branded heretics--yep, even back in the 70s). I am by no means an authority, but I do see that 98% of what is being promoted today is for political or sociological reasons, and have little to do with real science.

"The future is the judicature of fools and the religious" Ancient saying by Jack Mercer. Of course, I add to this list (the opportunist!)

Kindest regards,

-Jack

 

Whig, I enjoy discussing science, theology you name it. It does take me a VERY long time to formulate an opinion on any topic (well...some of the time-ha!), and GW is one of those things I'm just not worried about.

In my lifetime so many crises have come and gone that I have lost count. Y2K, global cooling, global warming, oil shortages, asteroid threats, inflation, deflation, economic collapse, aliens invading...wait, that one wasn't quite so widespread--but there sure are a lot of people who think it may happen. :)

Whig, while I do not work in a scientific field (I am in finance), I do have a degree in engineering and have been an avid student of science since I was a child. This being said, my love for science has made me disappointed in the way "science" is going. Science is unbiased and unyielding. It is based on facts--facts that are arrived at through absolutely controled systems of experimentation and testing. There are several things that don't fit in with this current debate.

First: Consensus is not science. At one time, all of the scientists in the world believed it was flat, that blood leaching did away with fever, that a nuclear detonation would vaporized the earths atmosphere. This was the consensus of scientist of the times, and as we now know, the consensus was wrong. To get a better idea of this, there is a great article at:

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/18496/

This is warning of the dangers of science by consensus (albeit it is dealing with the biomedical field--but it has cross application)

Second point, is that forecasting is not science either. The future can be anticipated, theorized upon, but it can never be established by fact. That is why I always say, that the future is often told by the opportunist, the fool or the religious. For example, I say that Armaggedon will happen. Can that be factually or scientifically established? No, it is my religious belief. Anticipated outcomes can be theorized upon, but not established, and to say that 100 years from now the weather is going to be some way or the other, is the realm of the opportunist or the religious. We can't even predict the weather next week!

Also, as I have mentioned to Doug, something like this magnificent earths climate is a complex system almost beyond measure. There are so many interdependent variables that we only hurt ourselves when we limit our analysis along linear paths.

Whig, we may be warming, we may not be--man may be causing some, he may not be. The only thing I can do is make sure that I behave in a responsible fashion toward others and the environment I live in. I do that with great alacrity, but don't go forcing my belief system on others.

Given that, I see that you have studied the data in great detail, and have a good deal of understanding on the topic--what do you suggest we do?

Take care,

-Jack