These systems require industries to pay fees when they emit carbon dioxide or other greenhouses gases above a set limit, with the money going to reward cleaner businesses.

What are they going to do about water vapor?

Wind Rider on December 4, 2007 at 5:35 PM

To be REALLY cynical… thats exactly why the politicos are pushing Global Warming NOW.

If they push silly things like CO2 quotas through NOW, they will be able to later say they did somthing about Global Warming… and see??? it worked…

If it starts to cool before the Dems can take control of our economy, and the UN gets all these silly treatys through… then they loose that power permanently.

Interestingly, the paper points out that there’s basically a showdown about to come up that will prove which solar cycle predictive/descriptive model is actually right. One methodology (which the warmers seem to favor) indicates we’re about to get roasted, the other, based upon what appears to be a much broader range of data/indicators, potentially is predicting we’re about to enter a mini-ice age period, similar to ones experienced with a recurring periodicity of around 129 years or so. You may have heard the mentioned as either the Maunder minimum or Dawson minimums. And the data that will indicate which is the correct model will occur during 2008.

Interesting stuff. My post is here

I am on the fence with the issue of Global Warming. I’ve heard both sides shout things back and forth at each other, but I am still not convinced about either. Can someone give me a reasoned set of arguments backed by evidence for or against Global Warming? Thank you.

df4jc on December 4, 2007 at 2:42 PM

The IPCC report is a good place to start if you want the anthropogenic global warming side of it. It summarizes the state of climate science supporting the theory. What I took away from it:

-According to temperature reconstructions (based mostly on tree ring proxies), the rate of warming over the last thousand years is accelerating.

-Reconstructions from ice core samples show a long-standing relationship between the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and the temperature at the site of the core samples. The apparent lag between carbon levels and temperature is explained by inherent latencies in the climate system.

-Computer models based on global warming theories agree well with the historical record, and predict warming will continue. Furthermore, when changes in solar energy are introduced into the models, there is no significant change in the amount of warming in the models.

Off the top of my head, I think that’s their whole case. FWIW, I think the temperature reconstructions and ice-core data are compelling. The results have been reproduced using different core samples, and different proxies, and they should be taken seriously. These two lines of evidence alone are not sufficient to convince me of anthropogenic global warming, however.

The temperature histories show only that temperature change is natural and common in the history of our planet. It’s been much warmer at times in the past, perhaps the recent past and certainly the distant past; and it’s been much cooler.

There is some relationship between greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and temperatures. If there weren’t a greenhouse effect warming the planet, life on Earth would be impossible in the first place. Humans introduce a fairly small change in the concentration of greenhouse gases, compared to other natural processes.

So how sensitive is our climate to small changes in the natural concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere? The various computer models try to answer this question, but how reliable are they? The agree well enough with the recent temperature history, but there’s no way to know they haven’t been “tuned” to give a good result. The only way to find out if the models are worth anything is to wait and see which ones make the best predictions over the next, say, decade. Even then, if you think about it, there are ways that the models can give poor results, but still have a sound basis in theory. Or the models could end up being right, but all they really predict is a fairly linear increase in temperature, so one of them has a good chance of getting it right by chance.

I think the question we should be asking ourselves is, “does it matter whether the global mean temperature is somewhat higher over the next century?” Probably not.

The US and Europe put in a LOT weather stations, and kept track of temperature change for the last hundred years or so.

Problem is that with population increases, these weather stations moved from country to city… and with more concrete and buildings around, the Heat Island Effect caused these same weather stations to have increases readings.

To proove global warming, they take the delta of all these stations, then (and this is documented and admitted by the people who do this in NASA and elsewhere) CHANGE the data to supposedly take out the effect of the heat island effect.

When using Satelite data, there is no global warming… at least none that cannot be directly attributed to sun cycles.

Currently the Northern Hemisphere is slightly warming… while the Southern Hemisphere is slightly cooling… but because there are so many MORE weather stations in the Northern Hemisphere, that temp difference has a greater impact on the overall number (these folks apparently don’t know basic statistics…).

Add in the natural suns cycle (which peaked a year or so ago, and is now in decline), WITH a large amount of undersea volcanic activity in the Pacific (more volcanoes and earthquakes on the rim)… and you have Oceans slightly changing their currents… which leads to both weird weather, and some Arctic Ice melt…

The whole CO2 thing is nothing more than a blatant way to control business and society. It has not been prooven that CO2 is driving climate change… and in fact the data shows that CO2 acutaly LAGS temperature change by a number of years.

Now… to the politics? Under what authority will the Feds regulate business to this large of an extent? This would be a BLATANT wealth redistribution.

Flopping Aces: Environment Archive

I could give a revised addition that explains how I view the hypothesis that is global warming.

Well, rather than that, I will simply say that the global warming hypothesis is a weakly supported one. Moreover, as additional research is done, the hypothesis is further weakened. What we hear now is mostly dogmatic assertions that the hypothesis has been proved and we need to essentially stop being a civilization to fix it. By my experience, it has become a religion of anti-human, anti-capitialism believers. There is also a portion who believe they can profit off of global warming, like these carbon credit schemes.

Weebork on December 4, 2007 at 4:05 PM

Thanks, a good basic summery, but I did not ask that question, I think that was jf4jc.

allrsn on December 4, 2007 at 4:16 PM

Indeed it was I. Df4jc…but who’s taking notes?

Weebork on December 4, 2007 at 4:05 PM

Thanks, a good basic summery, but I did not ask that question, I think that was jf4jc.

No. Nor will they ever, unless we remove them at the ballot box.

jdawg on December 4, 2007 at 3:42 PM

Very true.

Ok where is the real steveegg and what have you done with him??? The real steveegg would have known that congress has been infiltrated by brain dead liberal democrat socialists and is incapable of learning.

doriangrey on December 4, 2007 at 4:05 PM

I simply hit the “send” button too early. Besides, you do know me well enough by now (or at least should) to know that is part of the thought, even if unexpressed.

Thanks for the name.

I’ll forget again, but the important part, the evidence, is all I really need to remember!

allrsn on December 4, 2007 at 3:00 PM

To answer your question, it has been perceived that the earth’s overall temperature has been increasing. Scientists are attempting to explain why it is warming. Some believe it has to do with the greenhouse effect, where certain gases in the atmosphere trap incoming heat from the sun. If too much of these gases are present, it is thought the planet would heat up too much and be problematic for life to exist under too much heat.

So there is a group of scientists who believe man’s industrialization has released so much carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), both greenhouse gases, into the atmosphere that is is causing the planet to warm up. They have come up with a hypothesis that is currently being tested for falsification.

There are also a collection of other scientists who do not attribute the warming of the planet to the activities of man and have proposed their own explanations. Examples of alternative explanations are the activity cycle of the sun (ie more output equals hotter temps), a process that deals with the relation between cloud formation and cosmic rays (I am leaning towards this one) which also includes the activity of the sun, normal ebb and flow of the climate, etc.

Thus the debate rages.

Didn’t Congress learn its lesson last year?

steveegg on December 4, 2007 at 3:41 PM

Ok where is the real steveegg and what have you done with him??? The real steveegg would have known that congress has been infiltrated by brain dead liberal democrat socialists and is incapable of learning.

iurockhead on December 4, 2007 at 3:24 PM
The Great Global Warming Swindle was a great film. After reading your post, I was reminded of the part where there is an American scientist, I forget his name but he had blondish hair and a mustache (clip) Weebork on December 4, 2007 at 3:55 PM

John Christy

BTW, what ever happened to all the major hurricanes predicted this season? What’s up with that?

d1carter on December 4, 2007 at 3:47 PM

They are working on fixing that. By inflating the number of hurricanes and named storms.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/PR-NOAA-Hurricane-Prediction-Season-113007.html

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/45690/story.htm

From the second link:
US weather experts posthumously upgraded Tropical Storm Karen to a hurricane as the 2007 Atlantic storm season drew to a close on Friday, making the year a near-average one for hurricane activity.