Lesbian Assassin wrote:

As much as I hate to take the side being championed by both Dareb and his lapdog Lummox...

Now that got my attention!

Before anyone asks... I'm a pedestrian, not only do I not own a car but I've never been licensed to operate one. I believe that the national (global?) insistence on everyone having their own personal conveyance and driving it at the least efficient speeds ought to be criminal. It's stupid and wasteful... if 200 people are going in the same direction, it's stupid and wasteful to build and fuel 200 separate vehicles to carry them. It would be still be stupid and wasteful even if we all used clean-burning flubotinum powered cars.

I'd love to see passenger rail travel make a comeback in the US. Actually, a train from Akron to Cleveland -- two cities that would be pretty logical candidates for an interurban rail -- would drop me off almost at the door of my workplace. (There actually used to be an interurban running from Medina, my old hometown, to Cleveland, but it's long gone. I wonder if that Toon judge bought it out like he did the Red Car... well, in real life, I think it was a collaboration between a car company, a tire company, and an oil company, but either way it was a bad idea.)

That said, though, I don't entirely agree with the part about cars being stupid and wasteful. Granted, other people use cars for stupid and wasteful purposes, but I always have a good reason. :)

That said, though, I don't entirely agree with the part about cars being stupid and wasteful. Granted, other people use cars for stupid and wasteful purposes, but I always have a good reason. :)

That's pretty typical. :P The Onion had a story about this, "98% of Americans favor public transportation for other people," or something like that.

Okay. Here you go, Lummox. These statistics come from a number of books, but one particular book stands out as having all the facts, a textbook called Geosystems, 4th edition, by Christopherson. This is a textbook put together for reading in a geography course at post-secondary level.

The book states that from 1774 to today, C02 concentrations in the atmosphere rose from 0.028% to 0.037% (page 296). As many know, this time period incorporates the industrial revolution and the modern-day Information-technological paradigm.

The book also states that since 1880, the annual mean of the "Observerd Global Surface Air Temperature" rose from -0.36 degrees celcius to +0.42 celcius (page 295). This same temperature rose from 0.0 celcius to +0.42 between 1976 to 1998. In accordance with speculation, paleoclimatologists, those who are in the science of studying past climates, have a measure that Earth is, today, within "1 degree celcius of equaling the highest average temperature of the past 125,000 years". This is not being caused by a natural process. There is a relationship between our release of greenhouse gas emissions (from things far from wildfires, which are natural and occur regardless of our intervention) and this rise in temperature. Paleoclimatologists, that are quoted in this book, state that there has been no such recorded increase in temperature in such a small time dating back two thousand years. Wildfires were happening then, and wildfires are happening now. These alone cannot be the cause for this recent increase in the annual mean in global temperature.

It is postulated, in the book, that these recent increases in carbon dioxide came from a number of processes in production during the greater part of the industrial revolution (power supply from burning fossil fuels, very prevalent in North America and Western Europe back then). It also states that the majority of the increased carbon dioxide in the 20th century was due to the continued burning of fossil fuels in power plants and transportation devices, namely automobiles, airplanes, and ships (page 75).

Your statistic that 1.6 billion tonnes of C02 is released into the atmosphere and that 1.7 billion tonnes absorbed is bunk. North America is a carbon sink, but it doesn't cover half the amount of total C02 released by the continent's population, which, according to this book, is numbered at somewhere in the neighbourhood of 4.1 billion tonnes annually (1995). The United States alone contributes 23% of carbon dioxide emissions in the entire world for 1995 (this % has since decreased slightly but the actual amount of emissions produced has increased).

This book is just straight up scientific fact. I'm not trying to get anyone to switch on the panic button or get all uptight that we need to get down on our knees and change our ways right here and now because we spew too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. All I'm saying is that our human-made processes of production play a huge factor in what's going on. That needs to be understood by both optimists and pessimists alike. Wildfires or no wildfires, we are contributing, and people need to realize that.

-Dagolar

Dago wrote:

Okay. Here you go, Lummox. These statistics come from a number of books, but one particular book stands out as having all the facts, a textbook called Geosystems, 4th edition, by Christopherson. This is a textbook put together for reading in a geography course at post-secondary level.

Just to clarify, geography is a social science, not physics or meteorology (or climatology).

The book states that from 1774 to today, C02 concentrations in the atmosphere rose from 0.028% to 0.037% (page 296). As many know, this time period incorporates the industrial revolution and the modern-day Information-technological paradigm.

You realize of course that measurements from 1774 would be highly inaccurate, right? This figure has to come from an extrapolation based on other evidence. One has to assume a margin of error.

However, bear in mind that the industrial revolution happened in that time. It was already going in Britain, but here in the US it didn't really heat up for a while.

The book also states that since 1880, the annual mean of the "Observerd Global Surface Air Temperature" rose from -0.36 degrees celcius to +0.42 celcius (page 295). This same temperature rose from 0.0 celcius to +0.42 between 1976 to 1998.

Like Lexy mentioned to you, short-term fluctuations do happen. 12 years is a bad estimate to work from. The longer-term figure you mention... well, I'm not sure what that specific measurement would have to do with the overall picture anyway, but I'm guessing you aren't either. Still the difference there is less than a degree Celsius, which pretty much tracks with what I've said all along.

In accordance with speculation, paleoclimatologists, those who are in the science of studying past climates, have a measure that Earth is, today, within "1 degree celcius of equaling the highest average temperature of the past 125,000 years".

And now you're going way too far. There's a tremendous amount of disagreement on past climates, and our current climatological models aren't adequate to extrapolate that far. (Actually they're not really even adequate for the present.) And depending on the guesses applied, people may or may not take into account subtle effects like the procession of equinoxes.

This is not being caused by a natural process. There is a relationship between our release of greenhouse gas emissions (from things far from wildfires, which are natural and occur regardless of our intervention) and this rise in temperature.

You've established no such relationship with the figures above; at best you've shown a very rough correlation, which like I said is statistically meaningless.

Furthermore, if temperature data were extrapolated out to 125,000 years, and we're hotter than then, it suggests that for almost all of that time there would have been a steady but very slow average temperature increase totally unrelated to human activity.

Paleoclimatologists, that are quoted in this book, state that there has been no such recorded increase in temperature in such a small time dating back two thousand years.

That's because we've been recording temperatures for only about a century. The best we can do about the past beyond that point is to take guesses from what we know of history. What we do know is that the Greenland colony was founded during a warm period in the northern hemisphere, and temperatures turned cold again a significant time later. (Roughly the 16th or 17th century, as I recall.) There was in fact a known long-term wide variation in temperature swings which was going on before the industrial revolution. So while that doesn't prove we're having little or no impact now, it does show that temperature swings over long periods do happen.

Wildfires were happening then, and wildfires are happening now. These alone cannot be the cause for this recent increase in the annual mean in global temperature.

Stipulating to a recent increase over the last century, that still doesn't mean that our activity was a major factor, and it's an error in judgment to leap to that conclusion. Truthfully we don't fully understand the mechanisms that warm and cool our planet over time.

It is postulated, in the book, that these recent increases in carbon dioxide came from a number of processes in production during the greater part of the industrial revolution (power supply from burning fossil fuels, very prevalent in North America and Western Europe back then). It also states that the majority of the increased carbon dioxide in the 20th century was due to the continued burning of fossil fuels in power plants and transportation devices, namely automobiles, airplanes, and ships (page 75).

This seems more or less reasonable. Increased population and a long-term practice of heating homes with coal (very inefficiently; modern power plants are much much cleaner) probably also contributed.

Your statistic that 1.6 billion tonnes of C02 is released into the atmosphere and that 1.7 billion tonnes absorbed is bunk. North America is a carbon sink, but it doesn't cover half the amount of total C02 released by the continent's population, which, according to this book, is numbered at somewhere in the neighbourhood of 4.1 billion tonnes annually (1995).

Heh. Compare this to your earlier figures.
200 million cars output as much as 700 million tonnes, you said. So 50% more people output almost 6x as much? This suggests that the average human being puts out 4x as much carbon dioxide in a day as a high-powered car. I submit that this is ridiculous.

Furthermore you haven't really demonstrated that the paper I produced doesn't cover human output--and it's ludicrous to think that if it took an entire continent's ecosystem into account, that didn't include people or for that matter all other animal life. If people put out 4.1 billion tonnes per year, then wildlife must surpass that by a tremendous amount. Are you sure the book didn't say "million"?

The United States alone contributes 23% of carbon dioxide emissions in the entire world for 1995 (this % has since decreased slightly but the actual amount of emissions produced has increased).

Now you've switched to gross, not net. That's not what matters here.

This book is just straight up scientific fact.

I've demonstrated more than a few places where it's at best speculative. And one where it can't remotely be right.

I'm not trying to get anyone to switch on the panic button or get all uptight that we need to get down on our knees and change our ways right here and now because we spew too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. All I'm saying is that our human-made processes of production play a huge factor in what's going on.

And I'm saying that by insisting on "huge", you're still jumping to conclusions that aren't supported by the figures, and that in itself is panicking.

That needs to be understood by both optimists and pessimists alike. Wildfires or no wildfires, we are contributing, and people need to realize that.

Of course we're contibuting to CO₂ output. But by how much? Your figures don't settle that by a long shot. And what you haven't settled is whether, and how, CO₂ content contibutes to global warming. As I've said again and again, a single variable is too simple a reduction for any system as complex as an ecosystem.

Lummox JR

And I don't care if you say measurements since 1774 are highly inaccurate. When they are confirmed from multiple sources, they have some have some truth to them.

How many studies have been done that attempt to measure CO2 levels in the late 18th century? How do you know these sources aren't all using the same figure because they got them from the same master source? And how can this figure be anything but a "guesstimate"? If 20 different people make the same "guesstimate" based on the same assumptions and methodology, they will come up with about the same figure...

For instance, we might know that today there are 2,000 cubic tons of delanthium in the Dural Sea. We have no way of knowing how much there was 200 years ago, but we can look at the present rate of increase (15 cubic tons a year)and assume that such a rate is more or less fixed. Thus, 200 years ago, there would've been 1,700 cubic tons.

Have we proven anything? Nope. We've just established that, assuming 15 cubic tons are added a year, then 15 cubic tons are added a year.

Since the only people who really see a pressing need to deduce CO2 levels some 200 years ago are people trying to show an alarming increase (emphasis on "alarming"), then we can safely assume they all started with a similar set of assumptions and will all arrive at about the same conclusion. In the end, though, they're just guessing.

We don't change the environment that much, actually. Global Warming is contributed to by us, but not as much as we think. The planet can do worse to itself. There ia a layer of igneous rock over asia called the Deccan Traps, where there was some serious volcanic action at some point in history. If the lava spread out equally, asia would have gotton about a metre higher. The atmosphere would have gotton unbelievably nasty. Just coz nature makes deathblows, however, doesn't mean that we can imitate it!

This reminds me of a Song that goes somthing like this...

O... the weather outside was whitening, till the dog did somthing frightening, hes got no other place to go, yellow snow yellow snow yellow snow...


MERRY EASTER AND HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!

Dago wrote:

Guessing? Do you have any idea how involved these sciences are? People study this kind of stuff for a life time. How do paleontologists figure out how old dinosaur fragments are? How do we know that, through science, the earth is 4.5 billion years old?

Actually we don't "know". Few things are "known" by science, particular with regard to things that were never measured or observed; the process of extrapolating results is not science, but the application of science. This 4.5 billion figure is considered a best estimate by many but not all scientists, and it's based on a lot of things.

Part of the problem is that here, too, a lot of cross-referencing of results has been done. Some of the earliest dating methods were based on studying radioactive decay in rock, but it requires making assumptions we can't be sure about as to the original composition of the rocks being studied. Over time, those figures got bandied about enough to become widely used, and they got referenced by other fields which based their own dating on those figures to try to find a baseline comparison. Then those were used to test new dating methods, and so on.

This is not to say the figure is necessarily wrong, but it's not unconditionally accepted and any true scientist must be open-minded in the matter. Take for example the age of the universe: Astronomy is constantly challenging that figure, and right now there's no real consensus on it.

Lesbian Assassin, literally hundreds of papers are published every decade relating to this sort of thing for updates and research. It would be good to do some research on just how involved these fields of studies are. There are probably tens of thousands of people studying this sort of thing today.

Which means we should have very very good data about the current climate. It doesn't mean we have data about the climate a millennium ago; at best we can extrapolate a guesstimate, as Lexy said, based on climatological models and recorded history.

And it's science folks, it's not guesswork. These people are using data going back quite a few generations.

About four or five, yes.

Issac Newton was studying physics hundreds of years ago. It has some serious backing to it. If you took the time to learn what paleoclimatology involves and the kind of research that is needed, you'll see, clearly, they can't ALL be guessing.

You're absolutely right. At least several of them must have gone back in time machines to set up devices to record temperature all over the world over a period of a few thousand years.

You're misunderstanding Lexy's use of the word "guess". These people are making educated guesses, but they're not pulling the results out of thin air at random. However, such an estimate is a conclusion and nothing more, and cannot be considered data for another hypothesis.

That clearly needs to be understood by people reading it. If you're going to say that this guesswork, than everything in science is guesswork and there's no point in looking into it further.

Science relies on observation and measurement. It may be applied to make rough estimates of what could not be measured, particularly for missing data that's "nearby" (in space or time, depending on the nature of the estimate).

The application of science is not science itself. Nor should it be misused as a means of proving a hypothesis--that's what data is for.

Completely contrary to that, we are, today, involving ourselves quite heavily in this science because it WORKS, it MEANS something. Sorry, LA, this is far from guessing.

And this is still far from understanding what she meant by that.

Why is it so difficult to accept that experts on these subjects are correct in their findings?

Because their findings are not based on data but on extrapolation. That's not science. Furthermore, calling someone an expert doesn't necessarily make them one, nor does it make them right, even if many of them agree. A thousand years ago, "experts" agreed on various methods of spontaneous generation, a theory that stated life just materialized out of the right conditions, like a sweaty shirt in a box would produce mice. "Experts" once had compendiums of healing herbs based on the Doctrine of Signatures that did diddly squat for the conditions they were supposed to alleviate.

As I've tried to explain, fads are nothing unheard of in science, even in times of the modern scientific method. Sometimes whole generations, whole centuries, even whole civilizations can have something totally backwards, all because they're unwilling to question what's established and collect data for themselves.

Yet for the past decade, the initial buzz on global warming has been slowly losing ground. In fact more and more scientists have been coming to the conclusion that the first fears were exaggerated. That doesn't mean there's no danger at all or that we should do nothing, but it does mean we need to study the issue more carefully from a truly scientific approach instead of relying on the extrapolated figures that have been floating about.

I don't understand this struggle you two have with accepting that yes, indeed, we here, right in North America, and in the rest of the world, are at least partly responsible for the chancge in the biophysical world today.

I don't understand the struggle you have with accepting any other viewpoint either. You're a puzzle to me: You tried to approach this from a questioning standpoint and yet you've vigorously argued the affirmative. I for one am not arguing the negative as such; I'm merely offering it as a possibility and saying we can't rule it out. And one of the reasons we can't rule it out is that the field has been dominated by much of the same shoddy statistics and overreliance on extrapolation that you yourself have been using. I'd love to see more study in this area, if it's done honestly and with an eye to data over hypothesis.

What we do know for certain is that it certainly couldn't hurt the environment to reduce car emissions; it got along well without them before. It's difficult to estimate the other costs of doing that, though. And to better chart a course, we should more clearly understand what the potential benefits are to offset that cost. It's pure folly to follow junk science figures to that end, and we've had 20+ years of almost nothing else, because it was a fad.

Fad thinking can be seen all over the scientific world of the 20th century. Look at the dominance of Freudian psychoanalysis on the 50s, or simplistic ideas of surviving nuclear holocaust in the 60s. In the 70s environmentalism hit it big (partly it was due, partly I think it was a post-hippie thing), and besides the idea of global warming it also gave us the idea that Earth's population would skyrocket out of control and leave us choking for space. (Take a look at the fiction of the era to see.) Fad thinking can lead to dangerous missteps, and in many of those cases we now see how silly some of that thinking really was. It always got as bad as it did because people relied on what was already "known", not on new data.

If there's a little truth to global warming, I'd like to hear it from someone who doesn't have an ax to grind, and is unwilling to accept past answers as gospel.

Lummox JR

Lummox, this is silly. I mean you're trying to refute the life-time research by thousands of people who study this today and in the past from a single, fairly uninformed opinion. The bottom line is that a lot of science works.

Would you say it's a fad that chemists throughout the centuries have slowly come to conclude that the atom contains protons and electrons. Nuclear physics revolves around such things and has been for a long time. This is a fad? Chemistry has been around for hundreds of years. People have won nobel prizes on the stuff. This, is also a fad?

And one of the reasons we can't rule it out is that the field has been dominated by much of the same shoddy statistics and overreliance on extrapolation that you yourself have been using. I'd love to see more study in this area, if it's done honestly and with an eye to data over hypothesis<<<

Lummox, you say you'd love to see more study in this area. You don't go out and look for it! You get on here and make this ridiculous argument that these "shoddy statistics" and "overreliance on extrapolation" is coming from generations of work done by thousands of people. Saying that it is ALL a fad and that it has a very good possibility of it ALL being wrong is the most pessimistic attitude I've ever seen toward this field of study. You give absolutely no credit to the people who study this and you're trying to convince me that we need to be skeptical about every single statistic coming from all science in existence.

You might as well assume every bit of science is a fad and that every statistic ever published has a very good chance of being incorrect. If the world was filled with skeptics like that, we wouldn't be here today. You have absolutely no basis and no legitimate argument that these figures are incorrect. I've pulled up one textbook source verifying this change, I've seen many others over the years and many people talking about. Do you want me to go pull out my articles and look up internet sources too? Are they ALL wrong, Lummox? Is it all a statistical fad?

Skepticism is a fine tool until it becomes prevalent to the point of being ridiculous, where the skeptic has hardly any background in what they're trying to talk about. You're trying to argue opinion against fact and you don't even realize that geography includes meteorology. Go do some reading, read some papers done by paleoclimatologists and related professionals. Do some research yourself. Don't just take it from me. I'm not making these numbers up. If you're going to argue your point any further, go do some reading Lummox. The speculation-about-everything argument is getting old. Back it up.

-Dagolar

Dago wrote:

That's because we've been recording temperatures for only about a century. The best we can do about the past beyond that point is to take guesses from what we know of history...<<<

I didn't say we had no means of recording temperature until a century ago; I said it was not standard practice...<<<

No you didn't.

What I said was that we were not recording temperatures on a regular basis more than about a century ago, and we only have about a century of meteorological data. I probably didn't in fact use the exact phrase "standard practice", but you're going to have to come up with more of a rebuttal than that if you want me to take you seriously in this discussion.

And as I said, there are no reliable worldwide recordings of either temperature or CO2 for more than about a century. I'd be surprised if such CO2 measurements were even made then.<<<

See, this is what I mean about getting informed about the profession, in this case, paleoclimatology. Lummox, there were no people around at the time of the dinosaurs passing on information so that paleontologists today could figure out how old the bone fragments are. It's based on chemical and carbon dating tests.

Duh. That's exactly what I said. We have no data from that time--only extrapolations. (In the case of CO₂ though, I meant about the 1774 time frame you mentioned when I said "then". At least there were people around who knew about the chemical at that time, but no one would have been taking wide atmospheric measurements.)

Oh, and FYI, dinosaur dating isn't based on carbon dating. Carbon-14's half-life and our ability to detect the isotope in trace amounts make it impossible to use that technique to date anything out past about 50,000 years, and it's still subject to the same errors as all extrapolation.

If I used the figure wrong, it's because you misstated it there. The way you worded your sentence, the 4.1 billion figure is tied to the population, not total output from everything.<<<

I said ALL INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES, NOT JUST SMALL AUTOMOBILES. Everything.

You said "population" and the wording of your sentence strongly implied--almost expressly stated--that was specifically what you meant the figure applied to. I can see in hindsight that you may not have in fact meant it that way, but you obviously worded that poorly.

Lummox, go do some of your own research. Go do some reading. Back up what you have to say. So far you've put up an uninformed opinion and an inadequate argument based on that opinion.

I've already presented you one paper on the subject, and I've had counter-arguments to everything you've said. How exactly does this count as "uninformed"? And if my argument is inadequate, how is what you've had to say any better? You've been quoting from suspect sources and are outright telling us (in so many words) that much of your information comes from extrapolation, not hard data.

I have not presented a complete position, to be sure, but I think that's unwarranted for what ought to be a simple "let's keep an open mind about this" point. And as much as you quote science (and the application of science), it's clear you have a hard stake in clinging to a very specific belief you have no intention of ever changing no matter what you're shown. You already made up your mind based on what you saw, because you saw it from a lot of cross-referenced sources handily quoting each other's figures. Well if X says it's true, and Y says X says it's true, and if Z says Y says it's true, then X and Y and Z all say it so it must be true. You're reasoning by bandwagon, not process. So now if anyone tells you that the sources and methods of determining those figures are unreliable, you simply reject it out of hand. If you're going to keep arguing your point, you're at least going to have to acquiesce to the scientific method or there's no point carrying this any further.

Lummox JR