Dramatic Music - Global Warming

[Aurelius]

Global warming is shunted to the side as a crazy liberal scheme of worldwide domination! (Wait I thought these guys were supposed to be wimps!?!) The main confusion is that global warming and cooling trends occur and we happen to be entering a period of warming. Warming and cooling trends are effected by the amount of carbon that is in the air, we call this the greenhouse effect.

The greenhouse effect is actually another one of those natural systems that help life on Earth to continue living. The only problem is that we now have more carbon dioxide in the air than anytime in the last 420,000 years. Whether you believe in creation or evolution this is far before either theories state that we were on the planet. It's shown that the rise in CO2 found in Antarctic ice samples directly corresponds with the rise in temperature. The Earth simply has more blankets on than it has in a very long time and there is no fast way to take them off.

The biggest misconception about CO2 and global warming is that our current measurements don't match the measurements taken from the ice samples. We've got way more carbon, but the temperature isn't matching. The problem is that such rapid increases in carbon have never been observed in the ice/geologic records and there's simply no way to determine how long the sun will take to heat our extra blanketed planet, but based on prior data eventually it will get that hot.

We won't be incinerated when we walk outside and the majority of plant life will be just find and dandy, but the snowpacks that provide water for most of the planet will be gone and sea levels will have displaced millions of people across the globe. Don't take my word for it, listen to NASA they're smart (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/1023esuice.html)! Other nations around the world, including China, have realized that CO2 is a leading cause in global warming and have ratified the Kyoto Accord. Why haven't we?

[Guns R Cool]

Plants consume CO2. There are more plants today than there ever have been in the history of the world. Plants are bigger and greener than ever before. Reduce CO2, plants start to die.

I also don't mean to burst your bubble, but the North Pole is just a giant ice cube. 90% of it is under water. What happens when the ice in a glass of ice water melts? The water level lowers. So if the North Pole actually melted, then the sea level would decrease. The fact that the sea levels are increasing is proof that the North Pole is becoming colder and the ice sheets are expanding.

The surface area of the earth is 196,940,400 square miles. The atmosphere is 50 square miles thick. Do you realize how large of a space that is? Saying that CO2 emissions could possible affect that large of an area is like saying that if I farted in New York City, some guy down the block would smell it.

[Aurelius]

Where do you get this crap about plants being greener and more abundant? You've got to be joking me here. Fern forests covered most of the planet for a few million years...

The artic region is far less worthwhile to talk about than the Antartic where the majority of the ice sits on top of land! Published studies have shown that glaciers are retreating and that the continent is losing more ice than is forming. This is despite earlier reports that more precipitation would increase the mass of Antartica.

Carbon dioxide is measured in parts per million (ppm). Hydrogen sulfide kills at 600 ppm (vent your manure pits) and carbon monoxide kills at 300 ppm. In 2000 CO2 was 369.5 ppm. In this big ole' atmosphere that comes to a whopping 787.035 gigatons of carbon alone or 1,730,000,000 pounds. Oh yeah in 1850 we had 22% less CO2 in the air. It seems like a pretty hefty jump to me. Think geologic timescale, not puny human existance timescale.

[Aurelius]

From the other thread...


If you have done so already Aurelius, read The Cooling World and explain that to us.

In the 1970s people were just beginning to study the climate closely. 5 years prior to the article being published smart people at MIT pointed out that global warming was a possibility because of CO2. For the next decade there were discussions of global cooling and warming because people were figuring out for the first time what was going on. Give a monkey a hat and they might try to put it on their ass a few times before getting it right. It's obvious 30 years later that temperatures have gone up. Gwynne was obviously wrong and even in the article states that many things were uncertain. Science is great in that people start out with a question and go looking in as many holes as necessary until they come up with an answer. In science we (should) trust.

[IHL]

You want to start trading links to stories that claim global warming is real or not? You started with the NASA link, I'll give you this one.

Don't Believe the Hype (http://www.theamericanright.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3948)

There are plenty of others also. No, I don't believe global warming is real. I don't believe we have this devasting effect where we will destroy a planet that has been around for millions of years.

And I don't believe the biggest clown in the world, Al Gore, when he says cigarette smoking (http://www.drudgereport.com/flash6.htm) is a major cause of global warming. Give me a break! You believe this moron. How many cigarettes does it take to equal one volcanic eruption. And I have news for you... volcanoes were erupting for millions of years before cigarettes were ever thought of.

No, I don't believe it because it simply isn't logical and I can find a scientist that says global warming is hype for everyone you can find that says its real.

Even IF I believed in global warming - the second Algore came out and said it was real, I'd instantly stop believing it.

Believe what you want, but don't try to push your theories - there are no facts - that global warming is real. We might be warming, we might be cooling, we might all be turning green with blue spots, but if we are, we can't do anything about it and we didn't do anything to cause it.

[Dr. Madd]

Deserts are increasing in size. The tropics are getting drier.. All these things are signs of being in an ice age, Global warming my rear-end.

[Aurelius]

If I was Lindzen and getting paid $2,500 a day by oil and coal I to would ignore my responsibility as one of the only sentient beings on the planet and say whatever they wanted me to as well. Al Gore is just a figurehead behind the global warming theory now. He's said some dumb things over the years, but somehow that makes everything he says wrong as well?

I don't understand how you can say on one hand it might be real or it might not, but then fail to take preventative measures. It's as if you were going to build a house next to a mountain and somebody tells you that there could be falling rocks at one spot but not another. Instead of taking the precaution of building your house in the safe spot you up and decide you can't do anything about it! When did we Americans get so lazy?

[IHL]

Falling rocks next to a mountain? That I can buy. And I would be willing to bet there had been falling rocks before, and probably even evidence that rocks had fallen recently. You know, maybe some little rocks laying around with a path behind them show their route. Ok, I might not build a house there. Logic. Evidence. Common Sense. All of which are lacking in the global warming folks.

A better anology might be building that same house next to a field of crop circles and saying that aliens were going to come down and scoop me up so I had better not build a house within a mile of the field. Now I'm not so worried.

Global warming is nothing but crop circles. My argument about it perhaps being real is only acknowledging that everything is cyclical, even temperatures. Its nature, it normal.

By the way... have you asked Algore and Barbra Streisand where in the hell all the hurricanes went this year? They said we were going to have more and they would be more intense because of global warming. Where are they? Because you can bet your global fanny that if there had been a few hurricanes, your side would be attributing them to global warming and George Bush like they did last year. So therefore, Bush must have kept them away this year, right? See, I knew he was a good president.

[Dr. Madd]

*laugh out loud IHL's smackdown on Global Warming* That was good!

[Aurelius]

Well Madd there's not much really to say. It's down to belief now at this point. Much like how I don't believe there is a god because there is no scientific or historical proof. If there was as much evidence of a god as there was global warming I'd be down at my local church praying for forgiveness though. Maybe some of you should take a leap of faith and trust scientists who aren't getting paid money by the companies that would benefit from global warming remaining "undecided".

[Aurelius]

So was Saddam a real threat as it turns out? Perhaps not. Did we have any way of knowing it. Not really. Who had the guts to try to at least do something to protect us? George Bush.

So was global warming a real threat as it turns out? Perhaps not. Did we have any way of knowing it. Not really. Who had the guts to try to at least do something to protect us? Al Gore.

Sorry it's to rich I couldn't resist.

[IHL]

It isn't rich at all. Saddam absolutely had WMDs. He used them. No theory, no hypothesis, no assumptions, no wild claims. He had them. He used them. He killed thousands with him. If you think that somehow equates to Algore claiming cigarette smoking is a major cause of global warming and the ruin of modern man - then have a ball with it.


Maybe some of you should take a leap of faith and trust scientists who aren't getting paid money by the companies that would benefit from global warming remaining "undecided".I will be glad to, when you take a step back and not trust the scientists who get grants to study it. How long will their grants last when the say - "global warming isn't real"?

[Aurelius]

I will be glad to, when you take a step back and not trust the scientists who get grants to study it. How long will their grants last when the say - "global warming isn't real"?

That's the awesome thing about science, you don't have to be right. The scientists studying global warming will say, "Hey we're wrong!" and then try to figure out how they were wrong and learn from it. Next they'd go off and get another grant to study the climate again because we still don't know how everything works. It's really scary though how a theory can exist as the popular concensus between scientists for over 30 years and people aren't willing to place at least some stock behind it.

[WhiteAfricanAmerican]

That's the awesome thing about science, you don't have to be right.

Wow, this from the guy that few posts earlier wrote:


Maybe some of you should take a leap of faith and trust scientists who aren't getting paid money by the companies that would benefit from global warming remaining "undecided".


Trust scientists, who don't have to be right.................

BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

[Aurelius]

Trust scientists, who don't have to be right.................

BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

Trust people who stand to lose money if they have to pollute less....

BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

For those of you that are so afraid of science I implore you to stop going to the doctor, turn the tv off (though you could just change it off of Fox News), and most importantly stop using those new fangled voting devices (just boycott voting).

[biggie67uga]

Why turn off just Fox News? Because it's so slanted and biased? Godforbid

[viper2000rt]

No one here is afraid of science, we simply do not see enough evidence to support certain stretched claims. Now, if strong conclusive evidence was reached and agreed upon by the entire scientific community then yes, we would be more inclined to listen. But it's not. It's speculation and every article I've ever read from a credible scientific source simply cannot say for sure. This has nothing to do with taking the leap of faith, it has to do with facts and an agreement on the interpretation.