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I've said it before and I'll say it again. The CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) THEORY is nothing but a SCAM. It is a LIE based on a redistribution of wealth political agenda. It is nothing more and nothing less.
Yep, all those foreign scientists are all scamming data to spite a specifically culturally American conservative talking point position.
Sigh, your gonna have to learn to not put words in my mouth if you want to continue this conversation. I mean, you could just have your own conversation with your strawman headspace version of what I am trying to say if you want.
What I have ACTUALLY SAID SO FAR:
The science on carbon isotope concentrations is not that hard to understand (high school level)
Injecting political conspiracy theories into scientific discussion is idiotic
What I have NOT SAID:
Science is done learning about climate change
Science knows 100% of all factors about climate change
The current scientific simulation models are flawless and perfect
Also:
Yes, they do. Not knowing 100% of all possible effects is not the same as not having a good idea as to what the primary ones are.
Yes, it's akin to what I experience in genetic research.
In genetic studies related to searching for genetic mutations related to a disease, we'll often find a few causal links, but they often only explain part of the story. So we know that there are key factors out there that play into causing the disease. But we ALSO know that there are things we still don't fully understand yet, and still need to investigate (either through the accumulation of new sampling and data, leading to better statistical models, or through more wet-lab experiments (e.g. gene knock out experiments to assess how the various genetic targets affect animal models).
In science, one can have a good grasp on some of the main causes, without fully accounting for every single variable's overall contribution to the problem. It is no different in climate science - and we do have a good grasp on the concept that human-released hydrocarbons are why the atmosphere (as an entire planet - get this "coldest Northeast winter" nonsense out of here...local weather is not climate) is warming so quickly.
It's quite obvious what we need to do: stop releasing hydrocarbons into the atmosphere. But that is hard to do because of our reliance on them - and many people are VERY reluctant to accept this basic fact because it means we have to accept that we're part of the problem. To me, though, no good comes out of pointing fingers...instead of assigning blame, we can just put all of that nonsense behind us and start working on solutions (which we can all work on together, putting TONS of people to work in the process!). People talk about "energy independence" - there is no greater energy independence than creating all of that energy right here in the good 'ol USA.
And for my unborn children's sake (and for their children's sake), I hope we can start acting soon.
I fear that four years of Trump's obfuscation nonsense will set us back much further than we should be at that point...Republicans will eventually (very reluctantly) start accepting that climate change is very clearly being driven by human activities...just as they've finally started accepting that the world is warming (previously, they denied that part of the theory). But will it be too late at that point to do anything?
I have zero connections to these people, but it a very sensible plan for how we can all get off of hydrocarbons (at least for energy production) today: The Solutions Project - 100% Renewable Energy
Last edited by HockeyMac18; 02-14-2017 at 12:50 PM..
Yep, all those foreign scientists are all scamming data to spite a specifically culturally American conservative talking point position.
AND ALL THE MODELS R WRONG!!?!111oneoneone!!!
I always get a kick out of the "models are wrong! Therefore the field is wrong!" retort. For one, I never actually see people point out which models are wrong, and specifically how they're wrong. Secondly, a model being off doesn't invalidate an entire field of research.
If that were the case, we wouldn't have cancer, infectious disease...or really, any disease research field. We're constantly refining disease models as our data generation and computational tools improve, our wet lab experimentation delivers new insights, and as our computational power increases (allowing us to ask more complicated computational questions).
Obviously. However it requires a person to understand what they read as well as have the ability to discern between credible and non-credible sources.
Most folks who post in these forums have no idea how to research credible sources of information. They are comfortable with being intellectually lazy.
Never claimed otherwise.
We already know how much humans are affecting climate change. It's not secret information...it's out there for anyone to read.
There's this little difference between natural CO2 generation and human generated CO2. Yes we can measure the difference between these two isotopes.
Here is a less technical version of it. Over the last 150 years, carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have risen from 280 to nearly 380 parts per million (ppm). The fact that this is due virtually entirely to human activities is so well established that one rarely sees it questioned. Yet it is quite reasonable to ask how we know this.
One way that we know that human activities are responsible for the increased CO2 is simply by looking at historical records of human activities. Since the industrial revolution, we have been burning fossil fuels and clearing and burning forested land at an unprecedented rate, and these processes convert organic carbon into CO2. Careful accounting of the amount of fossil fuel that has been extracted and combusted, and how much land clearing has occurred, shows that we have produced far more CO2 than now remains in the atmosphere. The roughly 500 billion metric tons of carbon we have produced is enough to have raised the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to nearly 500 ppm. The concentrations have not reached that level because the ocean and the terrestrial biosphere have the capacity to absorb some of the CO2 we produce.* However, it is the fact that we produce CO2 faster than the ocean and biosphere can absorb it that explains the observed increase.
Another, quite independent way that we know that fossil fuel burning and land clearing specifically are responsible for the increase in CO2 in the last 150 years is through the measurement of carbon isotopes. Isotopes are simply different atoms with the same chemical behavior (isotope means “same typeâ€) but with different masses. Carbon is composed of three different isotopes, 14C, 13C and 12C. 12C is the most common. 13C is about 1% of the total. 14C accounts for only about 1 in 1 trillion carbon atoms.
CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels or burning forests has quite a different isotopic composition from CO2 in the atmosphere. This is because plants have a preference for the lighter isotopes (12C vs. 13C); thus they have lower 13C/12C ratios. Since fossil fuels are ultimately derived from ancient plants, plants and fossil fuels all have roughly the same 13C/12C ratio – about 2% lower than that of the atmosphere. As CO2 from these materials is released into, and mixes with, the atmosphere, the average 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere decreases.
Isotope geochemists have developed time series of variations in the 14C and 13C concentrations of atmospheric CO2. One of the methods used is to measure the 13C/12C in tree rings, and use this to infer those same ratios in atmospheric CO2. This works because during photosynthesis, trees take up carbon from the atmosphere and lay this carbon down as plant organic material in the form of rings, providing a snapshot of the atmospheric composition of that time. If the ratio of 13C/12C in atmospheric CO2 goes up or down, so does the 13C/12C of the tree rings. This isn’t to say that the tree rings have the same isotopic composition as the atmosphere – as noted above, plants have a preference for the lighter isotopes, but as long as that preference doesn’t change much, the tree-ring changes wiil track the atmospheric changes.
You conveniently miss how to be knowledgeable with respect to the topic you're trying to discuss.
A good rundown of isotypes and their contribution to the evidence pile related to human-caused climate change.
All we need is to stop eating meat. It will turn around in no time. Yet according to a 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), our diets and, specifically, the meat in them cause more greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and the like to spew into the atmosphere than either transportation or industry. https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...use-hamburger/
I wonder how many liberals will give up their meat to clean the air????
All we need is to stop eating meat. It will turn around in no time. Yet according to a 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), our diets and, specifically, the meat in them cause more greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and the like to spew into the atmosphere than either transportation or industry. https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...use-hamburger/
I wonder how many liberals will give up their meat to clean the air????
I've already done so!
The meat industry is pretty actually terrible for our planet. I don't tell others to not eat meat (I don't believe in that), but if they ask why I don't, I do go into detail about these points. I've convinced multiple friends to either go meat-lite, or give it up entirely, based solely on the environmental impact angle.
Of course, I know we'll never give it up as a species, which is why I hope fake meat or lab-grown meat can someday replace the wasteful (in terms of resources) meat industry.
When I think of actual scientific theory that turned out to be fairly accurate (with minor corrections established by others though the premise itself was fairly accurate) I think of Nicholas Copernicus who challenged the concept of the earth being the center of the solar system or of Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis who was ridiculed for his belief that washing hands could prevent transmitting germs.
Copernicus was essentially right, though Kepler added to his theory by changing the planetary orbits from circular to how they actually are.
The fact is these people developed theory based on what they observed. They didn't base their theory on what they observed, then turn the causation and correlation around, coming up with theory that was bunk, as is the case with the CAGW crowd.
True climate science shows as a FACT that atmospheric elevations in CO2 have always occurred AFTER elevations in climate temperature. To suggest that man is contributing even a trillionth of atmospheric CO2 levels or that those contributions are CAUSING global temperatures to rise one must completely disregard what has happened in the past. Scientists have not discovered a single time in history (before the CAGW crowd's new claim) that before 2000 years ago elevations in CO2 preempted an elevation of global temperature. Not once. To claim it is now the CAUSE for elevated temperatures, and that somehow man is CAUSING it and that it is catastrophic requires a leap of faith that science cannot justify with science alone.
All we need is to stop eating meat. It will turn around in no time. Yet according to a 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), our diets and, specifically, the meat in them cause more greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and the like to spew into the atmosphere than either transportation or industry. https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...use-hamburger/
I wonder how many liberals will give up their meat to clean the air????
THERE are the key words: GIVE UP!
We have people telling us we must GIVE UP our paid for hydrocarbon powered vehicles, and buy expensive electric vehicles that have limited range, and take anywhere from an hour to overnight to recharge.
We have people telling us we may have to give up meat, unless we are lucky enough to live where we can hunt wild game.
We have to give up power plants that are run on hydrocarbons, but we can't have nuclear plants, and we can't build more hydro-electric facilities.
But it is just fine to mine massive amounts of steel, aluminum, and silicon to make windmills and solar panels. What do you suppose powers the machines that do the mining and hauling?
By the way, what do you suppose lubricates the bearings and gearboxes in those windmills? What powers (and lubricates) the trucks that hauls those solar panels to the installation site?
It is also just fine to mine the rare-earth metals for high tech batteries and control systems, even though the recycling of those things is, at best, rather iffy at the moment.
Of course, those same rare-earth materials are in the cell phones that nearly everybody has, that often wind up in the landfills when they get broken, because it is cheaper to replace than it is to repair, and recycling the things just isn't economically feasible.
The railroad scrapped all their electric locomotives many years ago, so now all trains are powered by multiple diesel-electric locos, 6 or 8 per train. Have you any idea how much fuel a V-12 or V-16 diesel engine with 500 to 700 cubic inches per cylinder burns? Oh, yes, per ton-mile, it is economical.
It is said that "If you got it, a truck brought it!" I'm sure there are long-haul electric trucks on the drawing boards, but they are not in service yet. the designers have a problem: Every pound of weight that you add to a truck is a pound it can not haul!
At the present state-of-the-art, we simply can not live without petroleum and the things the petrochemical industry makes for us. I don't see that changing in the foreseeable future.
We best begin learning to cope and adapt to the inevitable changes that will be brought about by climate change. All the wailing and gnashing of teeth over what may or may not be causing it is a useless waste of time.
Last edited by Redraven; 02-14-2017 at 01:40 PM..
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