Scientists agree ... Consensus on Global Warming
POSTED BY: Ghoulman
UPDATED: Friday, February 10, 2006 11:42
VIEWED: 22755
PAGE 1 of 21
The scientists (yes, science is real!) have been agreeing on Global Warming for years, it's the White House and thier cronies who have failed to give a rat's tiny pink arse.
Any news on the US and the Kyoto Accord or should I just assume Bush pooped on it? :x
I post this so those with a conscience can argue to the liars that yes, indeed, the sky is falling and they are to blame.
The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Naomi Oreskes
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686
Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, "As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change" (1). Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.
CLICK LINK FOR ARTICLE
.... here is another article (yes, I stole this story from /.)
Global Warming: A Perspective from Earth History
University of Leicester geologist Jan Zalasiewicz heads a group of eminent geologists which has just published a paper in The Guardian outlining its belief that the world is under serious threat of environmental destruction.
http://ebulletin.le.ac.uk/features/2000-2009/2004/12/nparticle-vkt-hgf
-t4c
CLICK LINK for YADDA, YADDA ...
Global warming: A Perspective from Earth History [A position paper of the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London, first published in The Guardian]
Global climate change is increasingly recognised as the key threat to the continued development – and even survival - of humanity. Here, we give the context obtained from earth history, as the pattern of global environmental change in the past provides an indispensable context to establishing likely trajectories of future climate change. We find that the evidence for human-induced climate change is now persuasive, and the need for direct action compelling.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
more bad news on the enviornment, don't expect Bush to do anything about Kyoto's CO2 treaty
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I seem to vaguely recall that Russia was in the process of approving the Kyoto Protocol. This would make US approval a moot point.
[Does some quick web surfing]...
Yup. Here's something from last month:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/11/18/russia.kyoto.ap/index.html
Quote:
excerpted from article titled "Russia Kicks Off Kyoto Countdown" dated 18th November 2004
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Russia formally notified the United Nations on Thursday of its acceptance of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, starting a three-month countdown for the long-debated 1997 pact on cutting greenhouse gas emissions to come into force.
President Vladimir Putin signed the protocol into law earlier this month, allowing it to take effect in 128 nations that ratified it, said U.N. environmental agency spokesman Eric Falt. The United States has refused to join.
On Thursday, Russia's permanent representative to the United Nations, Andrei Denisov, turned over the accession documents to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in Nairobi, where the U.N. Security Council is holding a rare meeting outside its New York headquarters.
"I congratulate President Putin and the Russian Federation for their leadership in making it possible for the protocol to enter into force -- as it will, 90 days from tomorrow on Feb. 16, 2005," Annan said. "This is a historic step forward in the world's efforts to combat a truly global threat."
...
I'm not familiar enough with the Kyoto Protocol to know what exactly will happen on February 16 next year but I hope this is a step in the right direction. Since my country, the US, is far and away the leader in the emission of carbon dioxide and we are not making any changes the affect will be less than what it could be.
On a side note, I just found out about an interesting web resource for those interested in climate science. It's called RealClimate.org and is a sort of blog put out by a number of different climate scientists. It's only been going on for a few weeks but has lots of potential, at least IMHO. Here's an exercpt from an entry dated 9 December 2004:
Quote:
excerpted from http://www.realclimate.org/
...
RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary.
In order to limit the scope to those issues where we can claim some competence, the discussion here is restricted to scientific topics. Thus we will not get involved in political or economic issues that arise when discussing climate change. The validity of scientific information is completely independent of what society decides to do (or not) about that information. Constructive comments and questions are welcome, as are guest articles from other scientists who may choose to contribute on an occasional basis.
Here's some teaser entries from the past few days to give you a flavor for some of the things being posted on the site:
"Are Temperature Trends affected by Economic Activity?" 8 December
"Why does the stratosphere cool when the troposphere warms?" 7 December
"The Surface Temperature Record and the Urban Heat Island" 6 December
"Recent Warming But No Trend in Galactic Cosmic Rays" 6 December
"The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment" 5 December
Since this isn't my field all I can do is peruse the qualifications and employment of the contributors ( http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?cat=10 ) and say this looks like a solid group of knowledgeable experts.
* Thanks to Josh Marshall at TPM for the initial link to the RealClimate.org site
There are three kinds of people: fighters, lovers, and screamers.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Whenever the spectre of global warming rears up its head, I remember the horrible fuss made a few years ago over that hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. Everyone was convinced that it was proof that aerosol propellants had finally done the planet in.
What nobody in the media seemed to notice was that the hole was located fifty miles downwind of Mt. Erebus, one of the largest active volcanos on the planet. Erebus spews out more greenhouse gasses per week than combined human industry does in a year, and, after allowing for a consistant delay, the hole's size varied almost exactly with the volcano's activity cycle. Also, since upper atmosphere ozone regeneration is tied in with solar ultraviolet radiation levels, the polar regions, which are in darkness for months at at time, are much more vulnerable to such problems than the rest of the planet.
But, since none of that is likely to panic the public into watching a TV news show, or buying a magazine, it was largely ignored. Calm consideration just isn't sexy to advertisers.
But back to global warming; I hate the idea of agreeing with the Bush administration on anything, but even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day. There's just as much evidence that the planet is heading into a new ice age, and that, ironically, industrial biproducts might be the only thing holding it back.
Anyone interested in the subject should read the novel Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael F. Flynn, which, while fictional, is well researched on the subject of global climactic changes.
"I fear nothing, except for the sky falling!" -- Obelix the Gaul
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
No, the sky is NOT falling, and there's not 1 gorram thing anyone could do about it if it were. I know the scientific Drama Queen Crowd would just LOVE to pin this all on Bush, but the hard cold truth of hte matter is, they can't. Can't blame it on Bush, can't blame it on America, can't blame ANY of it on mankind at ALL!
The Earth is roughly 4.6 BILLION yrs old. During her time, this old girl has seen catastrophic collisions, sweeping climate changes on a global scale, massive volcanic eruptions ..and all with in the 1st billion yrs of her young life. Long before mankind stuck a match to his first fossil fuel, the oceans rose and fell due to variations in the global climate. Glaciers pushed across Canada ( not that many even noticed ) all the way to the northern 1/3 of the United States. Then they melted and receeded. How ? Must have been some early cave-man multi national corp that freely burned fossil fuels in order to make all those early cave- man, free market products! OR....it could be that the planet is merely going about its own business...greatly influenced by the cycles of the sun, continental drift and ever changing weather patterns.
The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo,Philipines (1991) released more gasses into the atmosphere than all the factories and automobiles in the entire history of mankind.
Quote:
The volume of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption was about 5 cubic km of dacite. It was the third largest eruption of this century. It produced the greatest volume of SO2 ever measured, 20 Mt, about three times more than El Chichon (McCormick, 1992). This gas reached the stratosphere and circled the globe in three weeks (Bluth and others, 1992).
But hey, lets not get into dusty old details about the history of this planet. It's far more fun to ignore the facts and just blame Bush, right ?
Umm, no.
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
While I've been aware for some time that any good size volcano can do more damage to the atmosphere than we could do in a really, really long time, that doesn't mean that it's open season for pollution. While global warming may be a bunch of bull, there are many other things at stake simply because we do not understand climatology or ecosystems--macro or micro--well enough to make the call that we aren't hurting anything if we give large companies the chance to save a few bucks. Statistically, people are living longer, yes, but they are also less healthy. People are fat, increasingly have asthma, get common colds, need glasses...what happened to improving quality of life over putting a few bucks back in a corporation's pocket?
And maybe these things aren't directly tied to pollution. Astronomy is my area, not biology. Maybe diet is to blame. But then maybe pollution in the soil that grows the food that is eaten by our beef is to blame, not for everything, but for something. Find websites, read statistics...but always keep in mind that any good theory on this stuff should advertise itself as just a theory.
We do know that pollution harms things. It might not melt the polar ice caps and send massive land hurricanes around the globe like in the Day After Tomorrow (dumbest movie ever) any time soon, but really does something have to spell the end of the world for us to do something about it?
A lot of pollution is harmful and, within reason,unnecessary. And you know what? I do blame Bush because he is in a position to do something about it. Not that he's the only one, though. Not by far.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Wow, I wake up and people all of a sudden turn on what basically the entire scientific community has agreed upon. One should also note that this is a consencous of the *vast* majority of the scientific community that crosses disiplines! So, I ask you, how often does this happen? Shouldn't this basic fact kind of tell you something?
The most that I've seen an actual scientist say in the direction that global warming isn't happening is that, it's a natural phenomina that happens in cycles, but we are helping it along. Humans are having an impact on the environment.
What I really don't understand about people that say, it's natural and out of our hands is that, so 
it. But, even if we aren't doing it on a global scale, we are doing it on a local scale. Why isn't this clear?
Take a look at any oil spill. How many creatures died because of that? How much of the habitate did it kill? The answer is always, a lot?
Take a look at Hollywood. You can't even see the sign anymore because of the pollution.
Winnipeg (where I live) has some of the cleanest air (for a city) in North America. But, when I go out to the country (read: a few kilometers in any direction 
) and then come back home, it is noticably stinky (read: polluted). Hell, I even go down outside (I live downtown) and it stinks.
Our collective health is going down. And this is all because a few *large* corps want to make a buck.
Take a look at the Dairy industry. The Dairy farmers, in the US, inject there cows with certain drugs to make them produce more milk. Unfortunatly it makes them more susceptible to infection, especially in there utter. What happens is that puss enters the milk to an unhealthy level (any level is just plain gross 
). How many of you think that this won't effect our health?
Take a look at GW's "clean air act" that gives out points (that are transferable) to polluters for being clean or takes away for not. The problem here is that some chemicals that are *heavy* are included in the list. Sure CO_2 is a light gas that will spread, but some aren't. So, what you have in the end is a hot-bed of dangerous chemicals in some areas. Not exactly conducive to home gardens or farming healthy produce. This will also get into the water table, etc.
Take a look at another bill that passed that allows companies to clear cut basically without enviornmental oversight. WHAT THE HELL?
Clear cutting will remove the trees that will then leave the top soil vulnerable so nothing will grow there again since there is no soil. How about land slides? How about all the CO_2 that those trees removed from the air?
The problem is that the US is one of the biggest polluters on the planet and is ignoring this issue far beyond irresponsibility. The rest of the world is becoming more and more friendly toward the enviornment. Germany will reach its Kyoto goal years before it has to. Did it effect there economy? Yes. Did they recover? Yes. So, what the hell is the US thinking?
And even if you don't agree that global warming is happening, it is clear that corps. are currently running in an unsastainible way that is irroding the enviornment. What will happen when there is no more trees to cut down? What will happen where the soil, water, etc is so polluted that nothing will grow there anymore? How much money will be made then?
All I can say is 
----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Not true. Mt Erebus emits less than 185,000 tonnes of CO2 carbon per year, while human activity releases more than 7,000,000,000 tonnes of CO2 carbon per year.
Erebus spews out more greenhouse gasses per week than combined human industry does in a year.
http://cobbles.eps.mcgill.ca/~wardell/old%20erebus%20results.htm
Initial measurements show that that the CO2 emission rate for Mt Erebus is 1850 tonnes per day (it calculates to less than 185,000 tonnes CO2 carbon per year.)
http://climate.wri.org/pubs_content_text.cfm?ContentID=2162
Each year, the burning of fossil fuels and biomass, along with other activities such as cement making, releases over seven billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere in the form of CO2.
You seem to be confusing the ozone hole with global warming. CO2 is the most prominent greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and does not destroy upper atmosphere ozone.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
And here is a brilliant graph that displays the increase in Carbon Dioxide, Methane and Nitrous Oxide emissions over a 1000 year time span. Source is listed on the pic. Note the sharp increase that starts at around the time of the industrial revolution.
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/files/IPCC1ghgpast.GIF
It has become foolish to think that we as humans aren't affecting the enviornment. Why do people resist?
----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Ahhhh, there is nothing so fun as a watching a person drown in facts they don't quite understand.
Quote:Dacite is a rock http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Products/Pglossary/dacite.html, so the '5 cu km of dacite' is type of volcanic ash. I don't quite know how this is supposed to relate to 'released more gasses into the atmosphere than all the factories and automobiles in the entire history of mankind'.
Auraptor: The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, Philippines (1991) released more gasses into the atmosphere than all the factories and automobiles in the entire history of mankind. Quote: "The volume of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption was about 5 cubic km of dacite. It was the third largest eruption of this century. It produced the greatest volume of SO2 ever measured, 20 Mt, about three times more than El Chichon (McCormick, 1992). This gas reached the stratosphere and circled the globe in three weeks (Bluth and others, 1992).
But, moving right along and checking the figures of SO2 gas released from Pinatubo:
Latest global per year estimates for human-generated SO2 sulfur is 92,044 kT (from 1985, before China started burning coal on a massive scale), total Pinatubo emissions were roughly 7,710 kT SO2 sulfur.
http://www.ortech.ca/cgeic/poster.html#Table%201
TOTAL SULPHUR (kilotonnes) 92,044 (1985) human anthropogenic SO2 sulfur
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Projects/Emissions/Reports/Pinatubo/table1.h
tml
17 +/- 2 Mt SO2 (7,710 kilotonnes SO2 sulfur)
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME