Looming Climate Disaster: Hold on to you butts.
- Thread starter korbel
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Korbel said:
Correct, I have to agree. Things got way out of hand and we all got caught up in it, including myself. And yes, I got overly obsessed with "debating rules" instead of actual debate. I understand this isn't a politics forum and that threads here tend to take a life of their own and that one should just be able to go with the flow and just ignore those who just rant. However, and yes, there is an however, I'm not making these "rules" up. And here I'm not referring to debating rules but simple forum posting rules and guidelines. They do exist, and for discussions to remain civil, everyone should try to adhere to them. Now read this thread back from the beginning. When the first few posts in a thread by some posters do not address arguments but instead address/attack another poster directly, this not only sets a bad tone for what will follow, but how can somenone actually believe that these posters are even remotely interested in having an intelligent debate?
I take full responsibility for my behavior in this thread, I just hope that others will do the same.
Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people.
It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine, plagues and disease.
It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine, plagues and disease.
yeah... but what happens over the course of 2000 years on a planet is about as statistically significant as what happened in the last 30 seconds of your life. IOW, the window is too short to be meaningful. I don't disagree with your general hypothesis, I'm just saying that this timeframe of 2000 yrs is equal to an eye blink in planetary terms. Combine that with the fact that people (humans) are idiots and have been publishing more crap than anything else for 2000 years... Most of the "science" found in books more than a couple hundred years old is questionable at best.
BD
BD
I believe it was Plato who argued that "those who tell the stories rule society" and perhaps the most important place that stories are told is in history textbooks read by students. He also said “Those Who Do Not Learn From History Are Doomed To Repeat It”.Ben Dover said:
JustBob said:
True. However, in my humble opinion, in order for one to debate most effectively, one must use all of the facts and information in their arsenal... Your refusal to cite the facts (claiming that you know the facts, but acting as though you are somehow above sharing them with this audience) served to lower the level significantly. The continuous "threats" that you will not post anymore on the topic, followed by more posts, also only serve to harm the validity of your arguments. As someone once said, there comes a time to either put up or shut up. Personally, I would rather see you put up. I'd love to know the salacious facts about global warming and the environment that you are keeping to yourself. Think of the greater good…
BD
Stern Report critiques
For anyone interested in learning more about what shortcomings have been identified in the "Stern Report", the following articles provide a good starting point:
www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009182
and, for the more polemical amongst us:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/11/05/warm-refs.pdf
Tim
For anyone interested in learning more about what shortcomings have been identified in the "Stern Report", the following articles provide a good starting point:
www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009182
and, for the more polemical amongst us:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/11/05/warm-refs.pdf
Tim
beautydigger said:
I love Plato. He also said: "Wise men talk because they have something to say. Fools talk, because they have to say something."
I just love that quote.. I'm not implying that you are a fool!
I believe it was also he who said that the worst of all deceptions is self deception... and a whole lot of other stuff that's applicable to pretty much everything.
with regard to history... yeah it's excellent stuff, ya-da ya-da. The problem is that there's not great scientific data to support a lot of stories. Like when they describe parching heat, famine, dought etc... does that mean it was 35 degress? 40 degrees? 45 degrees?
I think there's a lot of "repeating it" going on with people, whether they've "learned from history" or not!
BD
Ben Dover said:True. However, in my humble opinion, in order for one to debate most effectively, one must use all of the facts and information in their arsenal... Your refusal to cite the facts (claiming that you know the facts, but acting as though you are somehow above sharing them with this audience) served to lower the level significantly. The continuous "threats" that you will not post anymore on the topic, followed by more posts, also only serve to harm the validity of your arguments. As someone once said, there comes a time to either put up or shut up. Personally, I would rather see you put up. I'd love to know the salacious facts about global warming and the environment that you are keeping to yourself. Think of the greater good…
BD
Point taken. However, put yourself in my shoes for a minute, pretend you are JustBob (a horrific proposition I know
), read this thread from the beginning and pay particular attention to the series of posts addressed at you (me) from a particular member. Now my question to you would be: Would you feel any inclination whatsoever to provide "facts" to someone who demands them, but has shown from the start that he's simply not interested in debating with you?So here, I would change the following observation made by Mr Montana from:
To:
"No advancement is possible when, from the onset, one of the participants has refused to get out of the starting blocks."
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"An international team of scientists, drilling deep into the ice layers of Greenland, has found DNA from ancient spiders and trees, evidence that suggests the frozen shield covering the immense island survived the earth's last period of global warming". It may not be within 5 degrees, but it is great scientific data.Ben Dover said:
VT,Vancouver Tim said:
Please investigate Lomborg's performance as an environmental policies critic, perhaps you will reach the same conclusion as I have: he’s basically a con artist. Frankly, I don't put much weight on his claims.
I however submit David Maddison's critique of the Stern Review which, I think, provides a much better starting point: http://www.economics.bham.ac.uk/maddison/Stern Comments.pdf
beautydigger said:
A cited reference would be helpful...
Also, I'm not really worried about the ice shield surviving. I'm more worried about humans and our current "livable" ecosystem surviving. Even if half the ice sheet melts and the other half survives, millions of people would still be royally fucked.
Here's some info I just found right on Wikipedia. I 've copied and pasted a few key areas.
You can read it all here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet
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The Greenland Ice Sheet is a vast body of ice covering roughly 80% of the surface of Greenland. It is the second largest ice body in the world, after the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ice sheet is almost 2,400 kilometres long in a north-south direction, and its greatest width is 1,100 kilometres at a latitude of 77° N, near its northern margin. The mean altitude of the ice is 2,135 metres. [1] The ice sheet covers 1.71 million km², or roughly 80% of the surface of Greenland. The thickness is generally more than 2 km and over 3 km at its thickest point. It is not the only ice mass of Greenland - isolated glaciers and small ice caps cover between 76,000 and 100,000 square kilometres around the periphery. Some scientists believe that global warming may be about to push the ice sheet over a threshold where the entire ice sheet will melt in less than a few hundred years. If the entire 2.85 million km³ of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 m (23.6 ft.)[2]. This would inundate most coastal cities in the world and remove several small island countries from the face of Earth, since island nations such as Tuvalu and Maldives have a maximum altitude below or just above this number.
The ice in the current ice sheet is as old as 110,000 years[3] However, it is generally thought that the Greenland Ice Sheet formed in the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene by coalescence of ice caps and glaciers. It did not develop at all until the late Pliocene, but apparently developed very rapidly with the first continental glaciation.
Positioned in the Arctic, the Greenland Ice Sheet is especially vulnerable to global warming. Arctic climate is now warming rapidly and much larger Arctic shrinkage changes are projected.[4]
In 2006, estimated monthly changes in the mass of Greenland's ice sheet suggest that it is melting at a rate of about 239 cubic kilometres (57.3 cubic miles) per year. These measurements came from the US space agency's Grace (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite, launched in 2002, as reported by BBC[5].
If the entire 2,85 million km³ of ice were to melt, global sea levels would rise 7,2 m (23.6 ft.)[2]. Recently, fears have grown that continued global warming will make the Greenland Ice Sheet cross a threshold where long-term melting of the ice sheet is inevitable. Climate models project that local warming in Greenland will exceed 3 degrees Celsius during this century. Ice sheet models project that such a warming would initiate the long-term melting of the ice sheet, leading to a complete melting of the ice sheet (over centuries), resulting in a global sea level rise of about seven meters[4].
Such a rise would inundate almost every major coastal city in the world. How fast the melt would eventually occur is a matter of discussion. According to IPCC[2], the expected 3 degrees warming at the end of the century would, if kept from rising further, result in about 1 meter sea level rise over the next millennium (see image to the right). Some scientists have cautioned that these rates of melting as overly optimistic. James Hansen, among others, has argued that multiple positive feedbacks could lead to so-called nonlinear ice sheet disintegration much faster than claimed by IPCC. According to a 2007 paper, "we find no evidence of millennial lags between forcing and ice sheet response in paleoclimate data. An ice sheet response time of centuries seems probable, and we cannot rule out large changes on decadal time-scales once wide-scale surface melt is underway." [6]
________________
insert comment: I saw a program that discussed this issue recently. They said that new models indicate that once more severe melting begins, the whole process can then start fueling itsef and go exponentially faster and faster, which in theory could cut that melt time down by centuries...
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The most recent research using data from 1996 to 2005 shows that the ice sheet is thinning even faster than supposed by IPCC. According to the study, in 1996 Greenland was losing about 96 km³ per year in mass from its ice sheet. In 2005, this had increased to about 220 km³ a year due to rapid thinning near its coasts[7], while in 2006 it was estimated at 239 km³ per year [12].
Ziggy Montana said:
I see. So you dismiss Lomborg's views offhand (a known skeptic) just like you do with Lindzen's views (another known skeptic). Attacking the source because you don't agree with the views expressed just doesn't cut it. Now, since you're the one who brought up the Stern review, would you care to show us exactly where Lomborg fails in his criticism of the document?
Did you not also write this:
Ziggy Montana said:
Isn't that what you just did?
Oh, and I don't think I've seen you admit to your share of responsibility for making this thread the mess that it was. Surely an oversight on your part?
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Perspective
The "Ice Age" was not a man made phenomena. If we could go back to the "Ice Age" then Global Warming and related phenomena would have been perceived very positively. A hundred years ago the melting of northern ice masses and the opening of shipping channels would have been very well received.
Our knowledge of the universe is very limited evidenced by the late 20th century appreciation of phenomena like "Black Holes", "Quasars" and many other scientific discoveries and advances.
Regardless of the era,the perception of equilibrium in the universe is in a constant state of flux. Today's rush to make things better could be tomorrow's ecological disaster. Can we afford such irreversible mistakes at any level?
The "Ice Age" was not a man made phenomena. If we could go back to the "Ice Age" then Global Warming and related phenomena would have been perceived very positively. A hundred years ago the melting of northern ice masses and the opening of shipping channels would have been very well received.
Our knowledge of the universe is very limited evidenced by the late 20th century appreciation of phenomena like "Black Holes", "Quasars" and many other scientific discoveries and advances.
Regardless of the era,the perception of equilibrium in the universe is in a constant state of flux. Today's rush to make things better could be tomorrow's ecological disaster. Can we afford such irreversible mistakes at any level?
Perspective II
Far more geologists oppose the theory of man-made climate change than climatologists, simply because the later lack historical perspective. Atmospheric measurements tend to focus on a few decades while geologists are used to looking at much longer records, often many millions of years. So scientists who study the atmosphere are much more likely to adhere to "alarmist" theories than geologists do.
Take the polar bear example (for the record, there are 11 existing populations of polar bears and most are expanding), if you asked a geologist about that issue he might ponder:
"How did the polar bears make it through the 1920s and 1930s (a warm time with less ice)? Then he'd go back. How did they make it through the medieval warm period, a period of several centuries when it was still quite a bit warmer?" Then there was the Holocene Hypsithermal, a warm period of 2,000 to 3,000 years soon after the last ice age ended. The polar bears survived that, too."
Not "Oh my god! The ice is melting! The polar bears are doomed!"
(An exaggeration to make a point)
Far more geologists oppose the theory of man-made climate change than climatologists, simply because the later lack historical perspective. Atmospheric measurements tend to focus on a few decades while geologists are used to looking at much longer records, often many millions of years. So scientists who study the atmosphere are much more likely to adhere to "alarmist" theories than geologists do.
Take the polar bear example (for the record, there are 11 existing populations of polar bears and most are expanding), if you asked a geologist about that issue he might ponder:
"How did the polar bears make it through the 1920s and 1930s (a warm time with less ice)? Then he'd go back. How did they make it through the medieval warm period, a period of several centuries when it was still quite a bit warmer?" Then there was the Holocene Hypsithermal, a warm period of 2,000 to 3,000 years soon after the last ice age ended. The polar bears survived that, too."
Not "Oh my god! The ice is melting! The polar bears are doomed!"
(An exaggeration to make a point)
Point taken...NO!
Hello JB,
"Point taken"...NO! If the point had been learned we would be seeing the pertinent evidence from you. Come on JB, look at your posts. Do we really need to see another...I'm being attacked...I'm being pressured...I'm the one who is the victim post again. I once thought of you as very capable, now I'm embarrassed about that. Isn't it time to move on. Okay. Let's say everyone admits you are right about all the wrong done to you. There, it's over. I did admit my poor part in this episode. NOW...are you going to follow with something relevant to the issue of Global Dimming and/or Global Warming with documented evidence? Or do we have another...it's unfair, you can't pressure me post coming. No one is requesting you to admit to any guilt. We just want to get back on track. The ball of maturity and relevance is now in your court. As Ben Dover said: "it's time to put up or shut up". Let your next post tell us who you really are??? What do you have to say about the issues in the first post here???
Looking forward to it,
Korbel
JustBob said:Point taken. However, put yourself in my shoes for a minute, pretend you are JustBob (a horrific proposition I know
Hello JB,
"Point taken"...NO! If the point had been learned we would be seeing the pertinent evidence from you. Come on JB, look at your posts. Do we really need to see another...I'm being attacked...I'm being pressured...I'm the one who is the victim post again. I once thought of you as very capable, now I'm embarrassed about that. Isn't it time to move on. Okay. Let's say everyone admits you are right about all the wrong done to you. There, it's over. I did admit my poor part in this episode. NOW...are you going to follow with something relevant to the issue of Global Dimming and/or Global Warming with documented evidence? Or do we have another...it's unfair, you can't pressure me post coming. No one is requesting you to admit to any guilt. We just want to get back on track. The ball of maturity and relevance is now in your court. As Ben Dover said: "it's time to put up or shut up". Let your next post tell us who you really are??? What do you have to say about the issues in the first post here???
Looking forward to it,
Korbel
Korbel said:
One, that post wasn't addressed at you. Two, you're the one going on and on now... Three, I want to turn a new page, wipe the slate clean and move on. Both you and I have admitted to our faults in this thread. That leaves one person. You might think this is obsessive but it isn't. You see I made a bet with myself that your friend Ziggy "I'm never wrong about anything, and it's always other's people's fault" Montana would NEVER own up to his own actions and admit his responsability for the mess in this thread. So far, I'm winning the bet. Up to him to prove me wrong.
I did that already, and so did you. Thanks.
JustBob said:
Hello JB,
Fine. The thread is not about Ziggy or any possible admission from him. Let's move on
Forward,
Korbel
