Weather Channel Founder: Sue Gore to Expose Global Warming (Atlanta: house, gated)

[gt6974a]

Man-Bear Pig

[blondandfun]

Originally Posted by neil0311

Maybe our climate is warming, and maybe it's influenced by greenhouse gasses (yes, I know the distinction with pollution, but is there really a difference in this case?), but isn't the political side of this more interested in making the case for the extreme and pushing an agenda in the process.

How can you be against an agenda which would possibly reduce global warming and definitely reduce pollution, not to mention reduce dependence on limited/unreliable resources?

Do you think we're rushing it by reducing pollution and helping the environment?

Tell that to the millions of asthma sufferers that we were rushing it a few decades ago.. tell them we should go back to when there were green clouds looming over the cities.

This world is going to be covered in a layer of tar if we don't act and take the lead.

[blondandfun]

Oh, and Gore's profit is nill compared to the billions the oil companies are getting each year due to their political might.

[neil0311]

Jay, you are obviously either an atmospheric sciences student (your handle is WXJAY) or otherwise educated in that area, which I am not, beyond my pilot training. Having said that, my initial comments weren't on the validity or lack of validity of global warming, but rather on the way that the OP was jumped on and attacked. That attack is one example of the religious political fervor that some feel about the topic. I am skeptical of the claims but not the objective of leaving our planet in better shape than we found it.

My feeling is that I want a clean environment, and I want to do what's right for the planet, and I think most people do. I think the disagreement comes from those who feel that the politicizing of the issue and the militant litmus testing is where the problem happens. Global warming has become a tenant of the far left and is used as a wedge and weapon to attack other things in the name of "saving the planet." Anyone who questions the militants or takes a slightly less dogmatic view is immediately belittled and attacked. This thread I think pays tribute to that fact.

BTW...it's not about Al Gore. He's just a symbol of what I describe, in the same way that liberals love to use Rush Limbaugh as a straw man.

[FromCLTtoATL]

Exactly what part of it is a myth? Does he think average global temperatures, in fact, are NOT rising rapidly and that the most successful mass conspiracy ever conceived in history is giving us false thermometer readings?

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by FromCLTtoATL

Exactly what part of it is a myth? Does he think average global temperatures, in fact, are NOT rising rapidly and that the most successful mass conspiracy ever conceived in history is giving us false thermometer readings?

For me the main question is this:

Assuming that global temperatures are rising (and this appears to be the case), how much (if any) of that temperature increase is due to human activity, and how much would have occurred anyway due to natural cycles and processes?

[onemanarmy]

Originally Posted by rcsteiner

For me the main question is this:

Assuming that global temperatures are rising (and this appears to be the case), how much (if any) of that temperature increase is due to human activity, and how much would have occurred anyway due to natural cycles and processes?

Well, Im no scientist nor do I have the answer, but my opinion is that the earth was not meant to substain the life of 5 billion humans, especially industrailized ones. Well thats kind of redundant, because industrialization is the only way the earth can handle 5 billion people, but the question is for how long.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by onemanarmy

Well, Im no scientist nor do I have the answer, but my opinion is that the earth was not meant to substain the life of 5 billion humans, especially industrailized ones. Well thats kind of redundant, because industrialization is the only way the earth can handle 5 billion people, but the question is for how long.

I'm be willing to bet that most current humans are still living in non-industrialized societies, or at least in lifestyles which don't directly rely on the industrial presence in their countries.

[wxjay]

Originally Posted by rcsteiner

For me the main question is this:

Assuming that global temperatures are rising (and this appears to be the case), how much (if any) of that temperature increase is due to human activity, and how much would have occurred anyway due to natural cycles and processes?

There have been studies of this, of course with simulations. There is a great paper whereby the scientists took a coupled climate model and ran it once with just the "natural forcing" (i.e., volcanoes, solar variations, etc.) and predicted global mean temperature in the late 19th and 20th centuries. They then ran another simulation where they "turned on" anthropogenic effects (including increases in sulfate aerosols and of course the increase in CO2 since 1850), still keeping natural forcing on, and recorded the mean temperature from that run.

The "natural-only" run and the "anthropogenic run" match each other through about 1950, and then they seriously diverge. The natural run shows a cooling on average toward the end of the 20th century. The anthropogenic run shows temperatures then rising after the 1950s and climbing until the end of the century. What is more amazing is that, if you overlay the observed global mean temperature for the 20th century, it tracks that predicted from the anthropogenic run VERY well.

The point from the study is that the sudden rise in temperature is undoubtedly being driven by anthropogenic effects (otherwise we would be cooling).

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by wxjay

There have been studies of this, of course with simulations.

I'm a computer applications programmer by profession and not an expert on computer modeling per se, so I'm hardly an authority, though I have used the coarse results of upper atmosphere wind models in commercial airline flight planning.

However, I do know that any given computer simulation is only as accurate as the combination of basic formulas and specific data elements used in the simulation in question.

Even if the data provided is absolutely accurate, there are typically dozens or even hundreds of factors being taken into account during the simulation, and if even one of those factors not being accurately represented to even a small degree, that tiny variation can radically change or even invalidate the results of the model over time.

That doesn't even get into unforeseen events or unknown factors that are not being accounted for in current models, though over time they're certainly getting better and better as we learn more and more about how the planet ticks.

Weather is a chaotic system, is very complex, and tends to be very difficult to emulate even for a short period of time in a local context.

Extend that to a global weather model over a period of decades, and I suspect the opportunities for error increase significantly.

I realize that there are probably many dissimilarities between global climate forecasting and local weather forecasting, but I also suspect that many of the same factors are in play to some degree in both cases.

My level of trust in simulations is probably somewhat lower than the average citizen's, since I have a very good feel for the influence of human fallibility in both software design and development, so presenting the results of a computer simulation without additional context just proves to me that the simulation in question produced a result.

Actually attaching that simulation to reality is more important.

It does sound like the set of historic data does tend to follow the model you are citing fairly closely, and that should probably be good enough to act as a warning to governments and industry (reducing the atmospheric release of materials known to be harmful and/or problematic is probably not a bad thing by itself). But does it actually mean the model is predicting what will occur?

I can't honestly say I believe that to be true. Not yet.

An approximation is probably all we'll have, of course, and even a rough approximation can provide useful pointers.