Whether we like to admit this or not; the earth and life will go on without us. It's our own survival we are fighting for over here; not a complex system in which life has taken hold by surviving through tough odds without the intend of surviving. This piece of rock really doesn't give a damn.
Well, lots of other species, too, but yeah, in case there's any confusion: Nobody's saying that global warming will lead to the end of the planet as a mass of rock that supports life in some form.
But if we care about how convenient it is to live on? Then global warming is worth trying to avoid, probably.
Why did they decided to cut the graphic at 400,000 years before today? Maybe that's because a couple of million years ago the concentration of CO2 was well above today's level?
Look closely at the right edge of the picture. The text below the picture is revealing...
Human deforestation and burning of fossil fuel has raised atmospheric CO2 to over 380 ppm in the last century, well above pre-industrialized levels, and "off the scale" of this graph top.
The fact that C02 levels have been higher is not necessarily in contradiction to the article, nor an important omission.
This issue as other's have pointed out is the CAUSE of the current levels and the implications thereof.
In the past the high levels of C02 were at least partially due to ice ages, which prevented the normal processes for the mitigation of C02, once the levels built up enough the greenhouse effect melted the ice and restored the levels.
Look around, there's no ice age.
So not only is there no discernible cause for the increase except out actions, we don't have a huge C02-eating army trapped in the ice waiting to be released.
Some natural mechanism will probably step in, but who knows what effects it will have.
We are monkeying with a system we know to have far reaching and potentially devastating effects.
CO2 is essentially airborne fertilizer. Our planet wouldn't be so green without lots of it. (I'd rather be alive during an interglacial, abundantly green geological period.)
I think at this point, everyone has made up their minds which side to believe, and more evidence isn't going to help the matter, unless it is the sort of rock-hard evidence no one can possibly ignore (like repeated snowless winters in Detroit).
A friend of mine (who works in energy) was telling me about how the case for renewable energy is being made (to some extent) successfully in Kansas. They push three points:
- reduce expenditure
- US should reduce reliance on foreign oil
- have a duty to protect the earth god gave us
I wonder if the broader case could be made more successfully along these lines (with variations for each arena) rather than leaving it to more divisive arguments where people aggressively take sides (religion vs science, views on reach of government, etc).
So what? We shouldn't try and collect more evidence? We should give up on the debate? This really shouldn't be about 'sides'.
By the way, as evidence of global warming, repeated snowless winters in Detroit would not be especially more convincing than the huge amount of evidence we already have.
You don't have to wait to observe the effects of climate change. Where I come from - the south-west of Western Australia - when compared to the 70s, rainfall levels are way down, stream flows into dams are way down, number of hot days per year are up, and average temperatures are up.
I'm a little slow to update my belief weightings compared to your average right-thinking liberal, mainly because I read "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and its striking history of past disasters predicted by the environmentalist movement that failed to come true. But I do update my belief weightings eventually and I find myself becoming more convinced that CAGW is a problem over time.
However, I haven't heard of any new good cost/benefit analysis that makes the case for drastic action. Most economic studies I have heard of recommend only modest action, certainly nothing like what is proposed at UN climate conferences. The Kyoto Protocol, for example, easily fails any cost/benefit analysis.
Studying Economics in University again ruined my chances of being a "good person". I can never get on board the "Act Now!" train, I can only think "is the cost of acting worth the benefit it provides?", and that manner of thinking is doomed to make you unpopular at cocktail parties.
You'd think NASA would know well enough to start the y-axis at 0. Lousy graphs of this sort create the appearance of deceit, even in it absence, and wind up giving ammunition to skeptics.
Why does the y-axis of a graph need to begin at 0? 0 is a number like any other number. If the result set you're attempting to display doesn't have any values at 0 then why would you display 0? The graph in question also doesn't show any data points at y=-257,687 ... does that concern you?
So much armchair quarterbacking, very little PhD in climatology. Reading the deniers’ comments I wonder if they tell their doctor how their endocrine system is powered by crystal energy and argue with the pilot about Bernoulli’s “so-called” Principle.
Science has come to a conclusion. Do you listen or merely justify your previously held belief?
The problem is that they really, really hate hippies. And hippies are all about global warming, they'll even go one step further and lecture you with a bunch of crap about "gaia" or something.
So in order for these people to be good, upstanding Americans, they must be 100% diametrically opposed to the hippies, even if the hippie is saying "the sky is blue".
Personally, I'm ok with dropping the gaia and taking the science.
Despite the conservative naysayers, the federal government is heavily invested in climate research. Take the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab (GFDL) in Princeton, NJ. This is a NOAA facility involved with sophisticated climate models. Raytheon, a major defense contractor, was involved in day-to-day operations and public relations.
A defense contractor is involved with public relations for this facility, not Indymedia.
Typically, climate models require the resources of high-performance computing facilities with thousands of processors. These facilities cost tens of millions of dollars to implement, and millions to maintain.
Why is climate research a matter of national security, involving the oversight of defense contractors and personnel with security clearance? For at least two reasons. First, it is of strategic interest to the United States to know how the planet will be affected by global warming. If large parts of China or the Netherlands are going to end up submerged under 20 feet of water, and millions of people will have to be evacuated, this U.S. would not want to outsource the ability to forecast this to, let us say, non-allied countries.
Another reason is that with the increased likelihood of hurricanes in the Gulf (to mention one case of extreme weather) it is a matter of national security to have better models for predicting the likely trajectory of a hurricane as it approaches land. A wrong guess can cost billions.
Despite the global warming deniers among politicians who are loyal to the big energy lobby, you can rest assured that funding for the development of sophisticated climate models and the elaborate high-performance computing systems, scientists and operational support personnel needed to design, run and maintain them them is provisioned by the federal government as a matter national security.
Oh and yes, the graph was limited to 400K years,because otherwise it would show CO2 levels in the past FAR higher than today. And it doesn't show CO2 vs temp over geological timescales, because that graph clearly shows that CO2 lags temp, not the other way round.
It's the same old story - figure out who hopes to make money from a scam, and things get a lot clearer.
"figure out who hopes to make money from a scam, and things get a lot clearer."
So let's get this straight. Your theory is that a 95% scientific consensus exists because they're all trying to make money off a scam? What's the scam, you get a PhD, postdoc, do 4 years of research at poverty-level wages and you get a 40k grant? Wow, that's effective.
Wouldn't they just work in finance or technology if they wanted money? Or, if they know climate science, they could probably just call the coal industry and build graphs saying the opposite for 10X what they're making right now.
So the reality's actually the exact opposite of your statement.
Ha. Quite a few people getting upset about my post. <yawn>
'huge stream-of consciousness ascii list', etc. Ha ha ha!
Points:
* It's TWO lists. Pay attention.
* They're not 'stream of consciousness', they're chronological archives of links to AGW related articles, posts, papers, documentaries, etc.
* They're ascii because that works best for maintaining such a record. Deal with it.
* They're 'huge' because there's been so much going on in the AGW discussion, especially since the CRU emails story broke. I'm not in any way trying to present a convenient summary, but an archive of events. Deal with that too.
Also,can't help laughing at the poor sods who still believe (or pretend) that '95% of climate scientists agree AGW exists and is due to CO2' twaddle. Yeah, if they did I'd have been wasting my time keeping such lists.
However,there's no such consensus, only a small number of individuals pretending they represent a near-universal consensus. And being supported in that effort by various media and journals. As becomes clear to anyone who actually looks into the matter. Which could involve reading through a 'huge list of references'- heaven forbid that it might require actual effort. Or that anyone would dare to subvert the 'consensus' by providing a convenient list of dissenting resources.
[+] [-] todayiamme|15 years ago|reply
"The planet is fine....
The people are fucked."
http://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&...
Whether we like to admit this or not; the earth and life will go on without us. It's our own survival we are fighting for over here; not a complex system in which life has taken hold by surviving through tough odds without the intend of surviving. This piece of rock really doesn't give a damn.
[+] [-] jbooth|15 years ago|reply
But if we care about how convenient it is to live on? Then global warming is worth trying to avoid, probably.
[+] [-] nice1|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kia|15 years ago|reply
By the way here is another picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_CO2_with_glaci...
[+] [-] mmphosis|15 years ago|reply
Human deforestation and burning of fossil fuel has raised atmospheric CO2 to over 380 ppm in the last century, well above pre-industrialized levels, and "off the scale" of this graph top.
[+] [-] M1573RMU74710N|15 years ago|reply
This issue as other's have pointed out is the CAUSE of the current levels and the implications thereof.
In the past the high levels of C02 were at least partially due to ice ages, which prevented the normal processes for the mitigation of C02, once the levels built up enough the greenhouse effect melted the ice and restored the levels.
Look around, there's no ice age.
So not only is there no discernible cause for the increase except out actions, we don't have a huge C02-eating army trapped in the ice waiting to be released.
Some natural mechanism will probably step in, but who knows what effects it will have.
We are monkeying with a system we know to have far reaching and potentially devastating effects.
[+] [-] mkempe|15 years ago|reply
Here are estimated CO2 levels through geologic time -- "currently" rather low! -- at UCSD site:
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1...
CO2 is essentially airborne fertilizer. Our planet wouldn't be so green without lots of it. (I'd rather be alive during an interglacial, abundantly green geological period.)
[+] [-] sliverstorm|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prawn|15 years ago|reply
A friend of mine (who works in energy) was telling me about how the case for renewable energy is being made (to some extent) successfully in Kansas. They push three points:
I wonder if the broader case could be made more successfully along these lines (with variations for each arena) rather than leaving it to more divisive arguments where people aggressively take sides (religion vs science, views on reach of government, etc).[+] [-] flgb|15 years ago|reply
By the way, as evidence of global warming, repeated snowless winters in Detroit would not be especially more convincing than the huge amount of evidence we already have.
You don't have to wait to observe the effects of climate change. Where I come from - the south-west of Western Australia - when compared to the 70s, rainfall levels are way down, stream flows into dams are way down, number of hot days per year are up, and average temperatures are up.
[+] [-] jacoblyles|15 years ago|reply
However, I haven't heard of any new good cost/benefit analysis that makes the case for drastic action. Most economic studies I have heard of recommend only modest action, certainly nothing like what is proposed at UN climate conferences. The Kyoto Protocol, for example, easily fails any cost/benefit analysis.
Studying Economics in University again ruined my chances of being a "good person". I can never get on board the "Act Now!" train, I can only think "is the cost of acting worth the benefit it provides?", and that manner of thinking is doomed to make you unpopular at cocktail parties.
[+] [-] danparsonson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bd|15 years ago|reply
These are supposed to be cyclical, so it's pretty much guaranteed sooner or later we will have to face one.
[+] [-] KaeseEs|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dools|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcritz|15 years ago|reply
Science has come to a conclusion. Do you listen or merely justify your previously held belief?
[+] [-] jbooth|15 years ago|reply
So in order for these people to be good, upstanding Americans, they must be 100% diametrically opposed to the hippies, even if the hippie is saying "the sky is blue".
Personally, I'm ok with dropping the gaia and taking the science.
[+] [-] ChristianMarks|15 years ago|reply
A defense contractor is involved with public relations for this facility, not Indymedia.
Typically, climate models require the resources of high-performance computing facilities with thousands of processors. These facilities cost tens of millions of dollars to implement, and millions to maintain.
Why is climate research a matter of national security, involving the oversight of defense contractors and personnel with security clearance? For at least two reasons. First, it is of strategic interest to the United States to know how the planet will be affected by global warming. If large parts of China or the Netherlands are going to end up submerged under 20 feet of water, and millions of people will have to be evacuated, this U.S. would not want to outsource the ability to forecast this to, let us say, non-allied countries.
Another reason is that with the increased likelihood of hurricanes in the Gulf (to mention one case of extreme weather) it is a matter of national security to have better models for predicting the likely trajectory of a hurricane as it approaches land. A wrong guess can cost billions.
Despite the global warming deniers among politicians who are loyal to the big energy lobby, you can rest assured that funding for the development of sophisticated climate models and the elaborate high-performance computing systems, scientists and operational support personnel needed to design, run and maintain them them is provisioned by the federal government as a matter national security.
[+] [-] thangalin|15 years ago|reply
http://whitemagicsoftware.com/software/climate/master.shtml
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|15 years ago|reply
Only about 1 in 10 surface weather stations is sufficiently properly sited to produce data accurate to within 1 deg. C.
[+] [-] mfukar|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gvb|15 years ago|reply
Seriously, ice core samples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core
[+] [-] motters|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harscoat|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] points|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gaius|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TerraHertz|15 years ago|reply
Oh and yes, the graph was limited to 400K years,because otherwise it would show CO2 levels in the past FAR higher than today. And it doesn't show CO2 vs temp over geological timescales, because that graph clearly shows that CO2 lags temp, not the other way round.
It's the same old story - figure out who hopes to make money from a scam, and things get a lot clearer.
[+] [-] jbooth|15 years ago|reply
So let's get this straight. Your theory is that a 95% scientific consensus exists because they're all trying to make money off a scam? What's the scam, you get a PhD, postdoc, do 4 years of research at poverty-level wages and you get a 40k grant? Wow, that's effective.
Wouldn't they just work in finance or technology if they wanted money? Or, if they know climate science, they could probably just call the coal industry and build graphs saying the opposite for 10X what they're making right now.
So the reality's actually the exact opposite of your statement.
[+] [-] lutorm|15 years ago|reply
And your money argument doesn't work. Are you seriously saying those who argue AGW is NOT real don't have a financial interest in that?
[+] [-] ced|15 years ago|reply
How do you know the people behind the link you gave aren't self-interested?
Besides, just because a foolish/corrupted person says X, doesn't mean that NOT X is true.
[+] [-] TerraHertz|15 years ago|reply
* It's TWO lists. Pay attention.
* They're not 'stream of consciousness', they're chronological archives of links to AGW related articles, posts, papers, documentaries, etc.
* They're ascii because that works best for maintaining such a record. Deal with it.
* They're 'huge' because there's been so much going on in the AGW discussion, especially since the CRU emails story broke. I'm not in any way trying to present a convenient summary, but an archive of events. Deal with that too.
Also,can't help laughing at the poor sods who still believe (or pretend) that '95% of climate scientists agree AGW exists and is due to CO2' twaddle. Yeah, if they did I'd have been wasting my time keeping such lists.
However,there's no such consensus, only a small number of individuals pretending they represent a near-universal consensus. And being supported in that effort by various media and journals. As becomes clear to anyone who actually looks into the matter. Which could involve reading through a 'huge list of references'- heaven forbid that it might require actual effort. Or that anyone would dare to subvert the 'consensus' by providing a convenient list of dissenting resources.