Looks good so far.
Update: Latest results as of 8:30 Eastern Time.
VanishedDate: For some reason there is now a blank spot on the web site where the poll used to be.
Looks good so far.
Update: Latest results as of 8:30 Eastern Time.
VanishedDate: For some reason there is now a blank spot on the web site where the poll used to be.
Albatros,
I won’t try to answer everything you wrote, but here’s a few points:
First of all, the ‘hockey stick’ is a concoction. When ALL the data is correctly included, the graph shows not only a current temperature increase, but earlier periods that were even warmer – well before greenhouse gases became the scapegoat du jour – hardly the convincing proof of AGW that it’s been used for. It has (incorrectly) been used in many presentations to sell people on the global warming scare.
You’re admitting that if scientists don’t fit the agenda of their employers, then they should be turfed – somehow I expect you regularly accuse global warming skeptics of being beholden to those who pay their salaries, but don’t see the irony in your own statement. If science is what it has been designed to be, then it is a search for truth through the natural world. You have very little faith in your position if you believe that opposing views shouldn’t be given public consideration. Of course, misguided political agendas may be created from bad science (and I am admitting that this can cut both ways) – but we should have faith that with an open and honest exchange of ideas that the truth will win the day. The fact alone that the pro-AGW side attacks almost exclusively with ad hominem arguments is probably one of the biggest obstacles to people like me believing that your arguments are valid. On the other side, I hear the AGW skeptics openly engaging people with their views, apparently unafraid to put their ideas to public scrutiny – this says a lot.
I’ve mentioned your relativism elsewhere, but to justify the deaths of millions of people in the developing world through what was effectively a DDT-ban, in order to boost raptor numbers is appalling, quite frankly. You might as well carry a gun around and shoot people just before they accidentally step on a slug of a rare species. The enviro-nuts were absolutely wrong on that one, and need to ‘fess up to it. Certainly, DDT can be used more discriminantly that it was initially, but the ban is a travesty.
As for your views on the population explosion, read some Julian Simon. We’ve been receiving dire warnings from the likes of you for literally decades now, with NONE of the dire consequences forecast coming to pass. You have stretched credibility well beyond the breaking point on that one. In fact, the biggest demographic challenges causing problems are the below replacement birthrates in most developed countries – in large part caused by the population scare messages.
You’re in great company in blaming religion for society’s ills – Mao, Stalin are just a couple of your bed-mates. The truth is that ALL of the major advances (health care, education, social services) you take for granted in our own decadent western nations come from the selfless actions of innumerable people of faith who sought to help their fellow man, in a way more tangible than anyone in the eco-movement will ever achieve.
I’m not sure what to make of your claim that climate science has evolved so much in the past 35 years. First of all, part of the reason why an ice age was being forecast was because global temperatures were actually dropping (hmm, how can that possibly square with the fact that CO2 levels were also increasing, if CO2 is the major culprit in AGW?) from 1940 up to the end of the 1970’s. Secondly, although billions of dollars have been thrown at climate science, there is far more that we don’t know than what we do know. The overall effects of the most-abundant GHG (H20 vapour) are far from known. The computer models have trouble predicting PAST climate, let alone future climate. To be truly scientific, we should demand a certain level of predictability in this ‘science’ before we commit major amounts of our economies to addressing it.
Let me just ask you a couple direct climate-related questions, and see if you can find information to repudiate them. First of all, it has been claimed that solar activity more closely mirrors global temperature fluctuations than CO2 levels. Secondly, it has been argued that CO2 levels often increase with global temperature, but lagging behind the temperature increase by X number of years. The latter argument makes a heck of a lot more sense to me, as warming water bodies would release dissolved gases, since gases are less soluble in warm than in cold water.
the only way to log repeated votes (beyond some extreme and exotic custom s/w) is to expunge the cookies, then disconnect and wait a while, then reconnect. and it only works for connexions that get a new isp addr. Im not sure if thats true of the instant link type isp’s as opposed to my primus for example while requires a ‘connect’ click each time I power up.
it does work but is very time consuming and very very inconvenient since you either wipe out all the ‘good’ cookies also or spend even more time looking for the particular one(s) effecting the voter ID mechanism.
ergo, not likely, ergo the much dismaying vote results on herr suzuki’s rigged poll are LEGIT.
If these scientists are not up on current science, then they are not of value in correcting the problem and need to be replaced by those that will help fix the problem.
Population- Julian Simon says that through population come innovation. I know the story, more people, more Einsteins, right. Do you honestly think this earth can support 6.7 billion people? If so, how high do you think it can go? At some point the earth becomes incapable of supporting human being, let alone other forms of life on the planet and we end up with a global Malthusian crisis. We are running out of energy resources and water we are running out of water. What does the US do when the Ogallala aquifer runs dry in a few short decades? Oil will become the new oil in the future. How can you possibly imagine that population isn’t a problem?
Religion- How many wars have been connected with religion? Luck us, were neighbours with a country who goes to war over both religion and resources.
I’ve got a question for you. Do you understand what the global carbon balance is? If you don’t, go look it up and then answer this. If man starts pumping millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, what do you think that is going to do to the carbon balance? Now what takes CO2 out of the atmosphere? Trees and the ocean, right? Ok so what happens when man not only pumps CO2 into the atmosphere, but also cuts down the trees that absorb the CO2? Answer? You get a net increase in CO2 into the atmosphere which leads to global temperature increase and leads to a increase of acidity in the oceans which results the loss of species which means a loss of fish to feed the growing number of people on the planet.
>First of all, it has been claimed that solar activity more closely mirrors global temperature fluctuations than CO2 levels.http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/
jimbola “Great Global Warming Swindle”? Saw that in television did you?
Poll Results as of 01:00hrs 5 Mar 07:
Yes, and we can do it through domestic reductions: 1920, (8.92%)
Yes, but we’ll have to buy some international credits to do it: 375, (1.74%)
No, but we should still try: 774, (3.60%)
No, so we shouldn’t bother trying: 18453, (85.74%)
Total Replies : 21522
… Hilarious!
Albatros, it’s not just that there are more Einsteins (although that’s certainly the case), it’s that when you have free societies, the population pressures themselves create problems that the people within those societies solve. Although there is a period of time with difficulty, after the problem(s) is/are solved, everybody ends up better off. Yes, I believe the Earth can hold many more billions than 6.7 – sustainably. I agree that it’s a counter-intuitive approach, but ALL the data supports it. Malthus (and Erlich, etc) was completely wrong – people have been making Malthus-like predictions even since Malthus himself – tell me, when was he ever right? As for water, the technology already exists (and will surely get only better) to recover oceanic water. As the need for this increases, it will become economically worthwhile to do so. Water is truly one of those absolutely renewable resources – what with the planet being covered 2/3 by water, I don’t think there should be any fears in that regard.
Wars are not a uniquely religious phenomenon – they are a part of the human condition. In fact, the greatest purges of the 20th century (surely the bloodiest century on record) were primarily anti-religious, not from fighting between religions (which is part of why religious people are perhaps even more ‘on guard’ against anti-religionists than we are against each other).
Science requires innovation – if you only get people subscribing to a type of groupthink (which I’m not even prepared to admit exists on AGW, quite frankly), then you’ve lost a hugely-important segment of the scientific community. AGW has become so politicized, by people who overstate the case, whether it’s ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, or ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, or any of a long series of apocalyptic pronouncements that never seem to come to pass, that you’ll forgive those of us skeptics who believe this to be just the latest in a long series of announcements meant to get us worked up so we’ll part with more of our money to support the latest enviro-fad. ‘Wolf’ has been cried about 50 times too often. Not only that, but I’m not convinced that these scientists aren’t at the vanguard, promoting the scientifically-sound ideas that the rest are currently ignoring – time will only tell.
I’m not sure I can just take your word for it that solar variability isn’t significantly responsible for temperature fluctuations. You didn’t respond how it’s even remotely possible that CO2 is the major culprit for AGW when, despite regular additions of CO2 to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, that global temperatures dipped from 1940 through the 1970’s.
If CO2 concentrations increase FOLLOWING an increase in temperatures, then, yes, it certainly does decrease the culpability of CO2. If you want to speculate that A causes B, but B precedes A, then you must have access to some kind of time-machine thingy.
How is a global temperature increase going to lead to more acidic oceans? As I stated earlier, higher water temp leads to lower gas solubility in water. More CO2 should be liberated from the oceans, leading to a lower acidity, all other things being equal. Do you have access to some research showing why acidity should increase with fewer acid-causing gases being able to become dissolved in it?
Not sure if this has been posted yet, but verrrry interesting!
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2f4cc62e-5b0d-4b59-8705-fc28f14da388
“tell me, when was he ever right” Easter Island
“As for water, the technology already exists (and will surely get only better) to recover oceanic water.”
So they are going to irrigate the entire western agricultural area now irrigated from groundwater through the use of desalination plants. Ok, do you have any idea of the cost of such large project as that? Do you have any idea of the energy required for desalination? To give you an idea of the water required to be desalinated think of this; the Colorado River is one major source of water for the US southwest. It’s average flow rate is 30,000 cubic feet per second at the Hoover Dam. As it passes through farmland and towns that sit on what is supposed to be natural desert, water is drawn off for human use. These days, most of the time the Colorado River no longer reaches the ocean because of over use. That 30,000 cubic feet per second flow of water from the Colorado River is only one of several sources of water for that region of the US.
Right now the largest desalination plant in the US sits in Tampa Florida. It has seven batteries of reverse osmosis filters, with each battery of filters being supplied by pump that is driven by a 2250 hp turbine. When it’s finally completed following several cost over runs, with all of the pumps running at maximum output, this plant will supply Tampa with 30 cubic feet of water per second or one thousandth of the Colorado River’s average flow. The cost of this water is expected to be the cheapest yet to be produced from a desalination plant at $2.49 per thousand gallons.
By 2020, the Ogallala Aquifer is expected to be 80% depleted and possibly unusable by 2050. This Aquifer supplies 30% of the total groundwater used for irrigation in the U.S.. In order to replace that water supply with desalinated water, the US would require the equivalent of 463 Tampa desalination plants supplying a total of 13438 cubic feet per second of water. Then add to that a massive pumping system that would be required to transport that water from the Gulf of Mexico to as far as South Dakota. The US will not put out that much in cost and resources when they can get that water from Canada at a fraction of the cost.
Don’t even watch “The Day After Tomorrow” if you’re looking for science because in that movie there isn’t any. Well, there is but it isn’t good science. Global warming will not lead to an ice age because the thermohaline circulation will not stop with the melting of the ice caps.
Solar output? The sun’s output has been increasing since about 1970. The problem with using that in explaining global warming is it has been increasing at a rate of about .05% per decade. In order for this to have an affect on climate, this trend it will need another 7 decades.
It’s getting late so for the rest just go to realclimate.org they do a great job at explaining many questions including the increasing acidity of the oceans.