bil

Dear god.

I grow increasingly fed up with all this. Half the people talking about don't have a clue, and fail to realise a couple of points. Mostly they do not understand that there are very few proveable items.

Here are a couple.

1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas due to its heterozygous C-O bonds.
2. CO2 has been added to the backgound CO2 by human actions, to whit burning fossil fuels.
3. This will have had a warming effect.

Beyond that damn all can be proven. The world is a huge, complex and chaotic system, and the likelihood of anyone being able to stand up and say that anything at all is proof positive or negative of AGW is delusional.

This is because there are many other factors that affect the temp both positively and negatively.

USA Chris. The icecap may be getting bigger, but that is explainable away by the fact that it is a very cold, very massive object. Look at it like this.

In a simplistic thought experiment, take a bath 3/4 full of water at 10 degrees C, and add a block of ice weighing 10 kilos at a temp of minus 20C.

We can work out that by the end of the day the ice will have melted, and the water temp will be lower than it was. If we know what the mass of water iswe can even say what that temp would be. Above all, we know that the ice will melt.

Now, repeat the experiment, but after 10 minutes remove the ice block and weigh it. You will find it weighs more than when it went in.

Likewise the antartic ice cap. OK?

I am sick and tired of idiots telling me that everytime I flush a toilet a polar bear dies, and morons proclaiming that it is quite OK to continue business as usual belching out CO2 as much as we like.

Anyone who thinks that adhoc pollution of any kind is good business is a moron IMO

chulo

So the really complex theories cannot be proven, yet you believe those to be wrong by a simple experiment.

Sorry Bil, makes not much sense, if you cannot prove, you cannot disprove.

Also your bath experiment, you forgot to add the heater element and all the chemicals to the water.

warren d

Is your heating controlled by a thermostat?

bil

As I say, I despair at the lack of intelligent, critical reasoning. I pray that that was meant as a joke, because if not......

What I was demonstrating with the thought experiment was, even tho at the end the ice will all melt, in the short term there is more ice, thus the growth of ice at Antartica does not prove that the world is not warming.

I repeat, other that a few, scientific proveable points it is all conjecture, at best based on intelligent reasong.

Proveable or disproveable, it ain't.

chulo

Science has provided evidence recently that the ice caps will not melt for centuries.

I`m not a scientist, i fear neither are you, i`m sure you`ll proclaim to no more and have more intellect than me, it seems a lot of BE members proclaim such statements of fact.



I guess that`s why there on here.

I`ll leave the debate to the experts and continue to laugh at the ones in there armchairs.

chrisfromusa

I think I'm gonna have to go with what the above people said. Climate change is real yes, we can't keep going on business as usual, but I don't think it's practical, or right, to go into a frenzy believing that the earth is gonna melt away in 50 years, which it's not. There is no AGW, there's only global warming and cooling, and it's been happening since this earth was formed.That's why I'm not worried, but what I am really worried about, is our lack of natural resources. We need to find ways to get off our addiction to oil. We have a 2 nuke plants within 20 miles of my house and a coal fired plant, I say we need more solar panels where weather permitting (Arizona would be a great place. Phoenix and Tucson have a lot of people). Wind energy I don't like, the blades I don't trust and of course the wind doesn't blow all the time unless you build the turbines really high in the air but you need a lot of those and that takes up valuable agricultural space and forest space. I think nuke energy is the best we've got, build a plant properly and it should be good to protect against leaked radiation.

Cape Blue

If there is no AGW then why worry - there is enough coal to last for a long, long time and we can use oil shale etc for mobile fuel.

The wind does blow all the time - just in different places, hence wind turbines have to be part of a diversified network so when it is still in Kent it will be blowing above average in Aberdeen - the average is all you are interested in and as long as you have plenty of windmills in a good geographical spread together with a robust grid there is not an issue. Most turbines do not take up agricultural or forest space - the land can still be used underneath for grazing them and often they are on hilly ground unsuitable for cultivation.

Cape Blue

Do you really think that the scientists involved have not considered previous warming and cooling cycles in their assessment of MMCC?

What they are talking about is a huge increase in the rate of warming (not a slow gradual rise but a steep one) at the same time as the world has far more people living on it and many of them in far more comfort.

The few people living in the MWP had plenty of time to move and change their habits and plenty of space to move into. Today we have billions living in cities where the water supplies could disappear quite quickly and billions living in low-lying areas where they may need to move from Ocean rises.

chrisfromusa

Eh, I don't know. All I know is, at least I'm doing my part to at least consume less energy. I still don't believe that CO2 is the culprit but hey since I've reduced my energy footprint, I've also at the same time reduced my CO2 footprint. As for coal, I'm not a big fan of it, I wish we can get rid of coal entirely, mostly because I'm against all the mountaintop removal they do in the Appalachian Mountains in my state and below it, and the environmental mess that comes with it. Though my question is, why don't they build the windmills any higher? If we can build half-mile high skyscrapers why can't we do the same for turbines? Above a certain point from the ground, the wind almost never stops blowing anywhere

bil

Depends how you define the term. People have increased the amount of CO2, CO2 warms the planet. To me that is AGW.

That effect might be masked by other things going on like the particulates in the 70s?, but it is real. How big it is, and how much of an effect it is having, well, that's the $64,000 question.

jackytoo

I believe in taking care of the world, not polluting it, not cutting down the rainforests etc but I think global warming is a con a hype with everyone jumping on the bandwagon.

Just google arguments against global warming. As many against but they don't get in the newspapers do they, neither do they get the grants

bil

So you will be cutting your admissions without all that global crap???

Personally, I look at all the scientists saying it is real, and that alone worries me. Add to that the fact that I have enough science to understand some of the processes they are talking about, and I think it is for real. I think that the world is warming, that the effect is masked, and that this is a chaotic process, meaning that not everywhere will warm the same, or even at all in some places.

To go back to the title of this thread, it seems that the idea is that we have a god given right to pump as much polluting CO2 as we like.

Don't think so.

jackytoo

Are most people cutting anything? Xmas lights going on all over the place. TV's, computers, dishwashers on. Lets face it the world is only paying lip service. Bleeding hypocrites!

bil

So you don't care enough to cut your pollution?

chrisfromusa

Finally somebody that agrees with me, but most importantly, is objective. If there werent so many arguments against global warming then I wouldnt bat an eye when people say we need to lower CO2. Well the more CO2 there is, the easier it will be to regrow the rainforest since the air is soooo saturated with the stuff