Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: redmenace on June 29, 2006, 11:41:43 am
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http://www.stats.org/stories/how_not_to_jun28_06.htm
ROFL OMG :lol: What a bunch of jackholes at teh AP.
Why do I get the impression that this movie is going to be like 'Farenhight 911,' in other words the equivolent of political pornagraphy. This isn't the only article either.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm
The idea that there is consensus among weather experts is a lie and nonsense.
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HI IM ALGORE! PLEASE HELP ME STOP. MANBEARPIG HE IS A DANGER TO US ALL! I AM BEING SUPER SERIAL HERE.
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The idea that there is consensus among weather experts is a lie and nonsense.
There was a petition signed by pretty much all of the worlds leading academic institutions that says "global warming is a threat" a couple of years ago.
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Even if the facts are wrong...it doesn't really matter. It gets people thinking about the problem.
We've screwed with the planet and the planet is eventually going to screw with us. Those who deny that dumping thousands of tons of chemicals into the atmosphere and oceans is a bad thing are a bit whacked in my mind. How you can justify that in your own mind is pretty hard for me to believe so its pretty obvious that $$$ is the motivator. I'm not very optimistic about the future of our comfy existance. Western civilization has an opportunity to turn itself around right now...we've got to make some sacrifices and devote resources (money, people, research, organizations) into changing our ways. Our impact on the environment should be so small that the planet will be able to take care of us just fine. We can do this and largely preserve the way of life we have if we do it right and we do now.
I fear that if we continue to **** around like we have...we're not going to be able to keep our lifestyle at all. The future will be much worse.
Its easier to pull back from the edge if you haven't reached it yet.
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The idea that there is consensus among weather experts is a lie and nonsense.
There was a petition signed by pretty much all of the worlds leading academic institutions that says "global warming is a threat" a couple of years ago.
I am not going to deny global warming. I am, however, going to state that the earth does go through weather patterns. But saying that global warming is a threat is not the same as the dribble that Al "demagog" Gore is dishing out in his movie. The effects or even the causes are still in debate. For instance, certain ice shelfs in the artic are expanding. At the same time however, permafrost in Alaska is melting. But I wouldn't go around saying that there is consensus among climate experts on a majority of the subject.
I do think the AP really showed a bias in their conclusion that experts all support the science and the points that the movie/book make. If they were objective, they would have been more careful in how they presented the information.
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Sure...the Earth does go through patterns. There's some feeling that the sun goes through some pretty significant patterns itself as well (no natural system is completely static) and that it may be having a warming period right now that may contribute a bit to our current situation. The difference between this time and the last time is that the last time we had a major warming period it took significantly longer to happen. Instead its taken only a few generations and will take a few more before things start to truly get out of hand.
Most of our political leaders have their fingers in their ears and their heads burried underground hoping it won't happen while they are in office.
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Most of our political leaders have their fingers in their ears and their heads burried underground hoping it won't happen while they are in office
It isn't just the politicians. Many people in the US just parrot the party line. The sheer level of ignorance of even well educated Americans about things like this is just mind boggling.
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Of course the overwhelming majority of scientists agree that global warming exists (those that deny it, are very questionable). However, whilst many biologists, environmental scientists and the like say the cause it human production of CO2, the majority of climatologists completely disagree instead insisting humanity hasn't contributed nearly enough CO2 to cause global climate changes and that the earth is simply moving through a natural cycle. That's the problem with Al Gore's claim that 100% of scientists agree that humanity is causing global warming.
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The problem with you, of course, is that this is behaving like no natural cycle should. It's moving far too quickly.
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Of course the overwhelming majority of scientists agree that global warming exists (those that deny it, are very questionable). However, whilst many biologists, environmental scientists and the like say the cause it human production of CO2, the majority of climatologists completely disagree instead insisting humanity hasn't contributed nearly enough CO2 to cause global climate changes and that the earth is simply moving through a natural cycle. That's the problem with Al Gore's claim that 100% of scientists agree that humanity is causing global warming.
It doesn't really matter if we're the primary cause...we're dumping garbage (generic term for all of those various chemicals and whatnot) into lakes, rivers, oceans and the air. That stuff does environmental damage locally if not everywhere. Its abhorent. We're killing ourselves because we're too greedy and too lazy. Even if we aren't cause number 1 for global warming it doesn't mean that it isn't coming and we shouldn't try and stop from helping it along because we're doing a fantastic job.
All scientists worth their salt know that global warming is occuring. If you talk to those in the far north those people don't care too much for politics and have said that their land has changed over the last 50 years like never before recorded in their peoples histories. Then you have a yahoo politico who has no clue saying "no...no worries...oil companies say its ok!" Towing the party line is right.
Its fortunate that we actually see any traction on this front...I am impressed locally in how well the environment has been turned around. Locally I used to live in steel city industry wasteland where the fish were dying or dead, the rivers and creeks were dying or dead, the habour area was almost completely devoid of the natural species...fortunately some serious work was done and after 25 years of planting trees, diverting water, setting up a fish barrier to let natural species in and larger species out and a bunch of other things...we're starting to see improvement. And its so nice to see.
But this is purely a local thing and its not perfect. A company down the lake has been cited more recently for dumping tons of chemical waste into the lake. Its immoral....but they did it anyways (cheaper that way) and now they are pretty much out of business. The fish are dead in that area...the frogs gone. It'll take time to recover from that sort of thing.
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Question: Has anyone else here seen Al's movie? I saw it last week, while I agree there is a bit of.... questionable information... he provides (a LOT of it is theories and projections), but the facts that he does present are solid and are based on MULTIPLE scientists works, not his own. All he did was collect, and share the information. Thats it. But, perhaps the most staggering, is the photos of the retreating of the glaciers. I don't give a **** what you believe about global warming, but when you see two photos taken from the EXACT same spot 50 years apart, and the msot recent one shows only a small fraction of glacier coverage... well, that can't be denied. I mean, look (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850) at those photos and read that article... It's just mind boggling. Oh, and here (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686) is a link about the scientists surveyed and polled about gloabal warming.
Also, a couple of nice links supporting Al's movie. Now, I'm not saying that eveything he said is 100% true, but he does make a pretty good arguement.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=299
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=13&articleID=000B557A-71ED-146C-ADB783414B7F0000
EDIT: Appearantly, the speech on which the movie is based on, is available in the web. Clicky clicky (http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com/2006/04/video-of-week-al-gore-inconvenient_28.html)
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Like I said, pretty much no one is denying global warming. However, the question is whether humanity is responsible or not. Climatologists say not really, environmental scientists say completely.
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i say, time to move inland and get a boat.
hmm, that'd be interesting. i think if they decide to keep new orleans where it is, the whole city, buildings and all, should be equipped with floaties. that way, when the waters rise, the whole city will. then they can do it venice style
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Never mind
I feel bad having this post contribute to my postcount, I don't suppose it can be deleted.
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Like I said, pretty much no one is denying global warming.
Considering that 20 years ago the vast majority of scientists that say humanity is not to blame did deny global warming was even occuring I find it a little hard to believe them now.
If you actually look at the science presented to justify their claim that humanity isn't to blame you'll find it is pretty weak and often takes no account whatsoever of countervailing processes like global dimming which mask the effect humanity is having on the environment.
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Ah well, tell it to Tuvalu (http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=21205&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html).....
Of course, the whole climatalogical cycles thing is part of manmade warming theory; the whole concept of global warming (in this context) is that man-made emissions are and possibly have pushed the climate system into a new phase simply by acting a proportionally small but effectively significant contribution to a closed feedback loop* type system.
*in very simple terms
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Actualy global warming has already started to show its hideous consequences. For example certain seasons have beguns to shrink and even completely dissapear with the transition from winter to summer not ggoing throus spring at all. I mean the warming takes place very vrey fast so fluds have become regular since we dont have a gradual melting during spring like we used to. Also the weather seems to go into extremes with -30 and -40 degrees celsius temperatures during the winter (this has happened in areas where a decade ago the worst winter you could expect was at about -20,-25 max temperature) and +40 +45 degrees celsius during summer, and these are slowli becomnig standard temperatures for certain areas where such extremes were very very rare at bets.
So global warming definetly has an impact even today. You just have to know at what to look at.
also if this keeps up and the current polution levels in the atmosfere continue to rise as they have been dooing till now in 50 years time we wont have anithing to save. also even pictures from satelites show that the colour of aour planet is no longer blue so to speak but rather its starting to get a sort of merky colour can describe it exactely.
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So, who on these boards actually believes Global Warming is a) not a real threat, and/or b) not our fault?
Edit: Due to the somewhat obvious fact most of use do believe it is our fault and it's a major threat, let's just leave it to GW detractors to post their feelings, shall we? :rolleyes:
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I for one say a)its our fault b)a real threat
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There's also global warming on Mars, Jupiter, and Pluto. Which leads me to believe that a) global warming is happening, and b) it's not our fault. The only thing those three planets, plus Earth, have in common is the sun. :)
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Oi veh. Please tell me you aren't serious.
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There's also global warming on Mars, Jupiter, and Pluto. Which leads me to believe that a) global warming is happening, and b) it's not our fault. The only thing those three planets, plus Earth, have in common is the sun. :)
The surface of Venus is hotter than the surface of Mercury for the same reason, howeverm there's no (known) life on Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, Venus, or any other planet, producing CO2 in large quanities, on Earth however, we're dumping thousands of tons of CO2 into the air every year, we're not causing global warming, we're exacerbating it.
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I'm pretty sure we've already mentioned the difference between 'man-made' warming and cyclical, and the whole tipping-point theory.
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What gets me about people who claim that global warming isn't manmade is this.
Why on Earth would anyone invent the claim that it was? To do so would take a conspiracy of enormous proportions. You'd need to convince over half the climatologists in the world to go along with you. You'd then need to convince all the other people involved in peripheral disciplines to go along with you.
Why do this? I just don't see it. I can't see the gain you could get from it. The only thing I've heard that makes any sense is that they are doing it to get money for research. But that's a charge that is just as applicable to the naysayers so again I'm stumped.
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It's easier for the naysayers, too, because they don't have to do anything for their money.
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Like I said, pretty much no one is denying global warming. However, the question is whether humanity is responsible or not. Climatologists say not really, environmental scientists say completely.
I think those two groups are more arguing over who takes center stage. The end result is still that humans need to cut it out and stop contributing to the process. Even if it isn't global warming...all these things are bad for our species and the other species we rely on to survive. We're not very good at being humble and lots of people sluff off extinctions but eventually those missing plants and animals are really going to harm us. Nature takes care of itself really well but we're cramping its style.
There's hope. We've got new ways to build things, cars that are completely recyclable, hopefully cars in the near future that have even cleaner exhausts with zero pollution (we're doing well with many new cars being very low pollution), houses, electronics, and consumable items that don't pile up in dumps but are recycled to be used again and again. We're making progress so its not all doom and gloom.
But the world is changing. The Pentagon estimates that the environment will be the biggest national security threat within 15 to 30 years overshadowing terrorism in a big way. More extreme weather is going to reduce crop yields. I'll really worry when North America stops making a surplus in food. Thats when things are going to get stretched. More effort needs to be made by the people up to...they do it too slowly...but at least we're generally moving forward rather than back.
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But the world is changing. The Pentagon estimates that the environment will be the biggest national security threat within 15 to 30 years overshadowing terrorism in a big way.
You'd think the American government would take it more seriously then. It's not like you can lock the Jet Stream up in Gitmo is it? :)
You're right though. The pentagon's assessment of the impact of global warming on politics was pretty scary reading actually.
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The idea that there is consensus among weather experts is a lie and nonsense.
actually the idea that there ISN'T consensus among all the respectable experts on the planet that human beings are contributing to global warming is outright incorrect.
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But the world is changing. The Pentagon estimates that the environment will be the biggest national security threat within 15 to 30 years overshadowing terrorism in a big way.
You'd think the American government would take it more seriously then. It's not like you can lock the Jet Stream up in Gitmo is it? :)
Only because it doesn't own a copy of the Koran.
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The idea that there is consensus among weather experts is a lie and nonsense.
actually the idea that there ISN'T consensus among all the respectable experts on the planet that human beings are contributing to global warming is outright incorrect.
:rolleyes:
It's not a matter of yes or no, it's a matter of how much.
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yeah, if all we're doing is pissing in the ocean then I think the best thing to do would be to try and put our resources to figureing out how to cope with the changes that we have no ability to effect.
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It is good that this particualr subject is getting more interest again.
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The idea that there is consensus among weather experts is a lie and nonsense.
actually the idea that there ISN'T consensus among all the respectable experts on the planet that human beings are contributing to global warming is outright incorrect.
:rolleyes:
It's not a matter of yes or no, it's a matter of how much.
Doesn't matter. Its changing....so we are going to have to:
A) At the very least not helping the situation
B) Going to be facing the effects of the situation regardless of if we acknowledge our fault in the problem or not
C) Going to have to realize that dumping toxic chemicals into the environment isn't a good thing regardless of its overall effect on the global warming effect