A MUST SEE! Global Warming Swindle!
POSTED BY: CrevanReaver
UPDATED: Friday, July 3, 2009 16:48
VIEWED: 11643
PAGE 8 of 9
Interesting discussion. Does this remind anyone else of evolution vs creation debates in some ways? Each side is claiming to interpret scientific data and punching holes in the others' use of data. I suppose that is the nature of scientific debates and discovery. Hopefully, years from now, the correct interpretation of data will become obvious to us (like darwinism vs lamarckism (sp?), or heliocentrism vs geocentrism).
I like Anthony's point about how regardless of where we stand on the issue, there are some positive steps we can take that likely everyone can agree with (eg, reduce pollution).
I also like how we are able to have controversial discussions these days without burning anyone at the stake or excommunicating them. (Though I suppose the new equivalent would be throwing someone out of the scientific community for having scientifically heretical interpretations of the data).
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Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:
Hint: ask yourself - where does methane come from, and what is new on the earth in the last 10,000 years? Ruddiman puts out a theory, along with similar arguments regarding CO2 levels.
I think I'm familiar with this one, unless I'm mistaken. I've actually tried to explain on some other threads how according to the natural cycles we were supposed to have begun to enter an ice age ten thousand years ago, and why we haven't. But I couldn't remember the source...
I believe the suggestion was agriculture and irrigation techniques. Wheat evolved from a cross between two closely related plant species in the Fertile Crescent in about 10,000 BCE, and people in the region began to cultivate it shortly afterward.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_agriculture
The cultivation of rice has also been put at about 10,000 BCE, initially from flooded swamps, which eventually grew into the practice of cultivating terraced rice paddies to accommodate terrain in 3000-2000 BCE. Rice cultivation produces a lot of methane, especially when the water rice is grown in is heated by sunlight in the summer months.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice#History_of_domestication_.26_cultiva
tion
Raising livestock also has high levels of methane production associated with it.
Wheat agriculture spread through the middle East, and was widely used by 8500 BCE, when the process reached Greece. By 6000 BCE it had been adopted in India, and in 5000 BCE it had reached England. This, in combination with rice agriculture in Asia, constitutes a large area over which agricultural processes may have occurred. Even though settlements were smaller then they are now, there could have still been enough area devoted to farming and raising livestock to produce large enough quantities of methane to slow the onset of that ice age, and as agriculture spread, even to stabilize the climate.
It's a hypothesis, one I like because it does explain why the climate stabilized when it hadn't in past iterations of the cycle by looking at what element was missing in previous cycles. And there is some agricultural evidence that early civilizations did manage to cultivate extensively. Sumer is thought to have fallen because their farming practices eventually used up all the nutrients in the soils they were cultivating, plus with irrigation practices and evaporation led to a wide-spread salinity problem in Northern Iraq that exists to this day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer#Decline
But though I do like it, I admit it will probably be a difficult theory to prove or disprove. In any case, I would still comfortably say that global temperatures did stabilize in about 10,000 BCE due to methane levels. And that I think that they have since destabilized due to human activity around the time of the industrial revolution and increasingly after the 1950s.
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I understand the limits of models. Nonetheless CTS, you have not addressed the point that we are in a solar MINIMUM, and neither has Crevanreaver, or anyone else who agrees with the video.
If I may remind you, the MAIN tenet of the video is that all of this warming is being driven by the sun. They claim to have decade-by-decade correlation between solar maxima and warming, linked indirectly through cosmic rays and cloudiness. I noticed that one of the graphs they show conveniently ends just before the current solar minimum, where the correlation falls apart.
Now, there are several possible response to this:
1) Global temperature measurement is unreliable (in which case the video's hypothesis may fall apart, based as it is on the premise that global warming is indeed taking place)
2) There is another solar factor which has not been taken into account. (The sun emits through the entire spectrum, and it's emissions frequencies may not always be tied together)
3) The current solar minimum hasn't been long enough to effect the weather.
4) Some other earth factor, such as the emissions of small particles which effect cloud formation, is changing warming dynamics.
Actually, given the complexity of the problem, I can think of a dozen more possibilities.
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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy
Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy
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Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
I have no time to read this book, to tell the truth. Not right now. Could you give us more than a hint? Maybe a synopsis of his observation and hypothesis?
Thanks.
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Television is like a really, really good screen saver.
-- Bill Machrone
See Bytemite's post above. I will add that Ruddiman gets into calculating the amount of CH4 and CO2 that could have been put into the atmosphere during our recent (geologically speaking) period of agriculture. I think this is where his arguments get into some pretty serious hand-waving, but it is interesting to think about. I'm hoping to get some of my students into making these calculations for themselves. ie when you burn a tree and reduce it to ash, all that mass has to go somewhere. It goes into the air. So how many trees would it take to explain the rise in CO2 that we measure in the ice cores? And given the interaction of sunlight with CO2 molecules, how much heat energy does this released carbon trap?
Anyway, I have found that all the data used in this book is available online for free. I've used the orbital and ice core data in my classes. So you really can get to the root of what these scientists are doing, as opposed to those who use 100 years of thermometer data to make the "hockey stick" graph, but don't really explain where the numbers come from.
I don't have time to explain the book any more than that. I spent three classes lecturing on it last spring, and still didn't get to everything. But I wanted to put the title out there in the hopes that folks would try to look at some actual data, rather than relying on what "experts" tell them in politically motivated films.
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hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
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I really cannot resist science talk!
Now, there are several possible response to this:
1) Global temperature measurement is unreliable (in which case the video's hypothesis may fall apart, based as it is on the premise that global warming is indeed taking place)
I'm not sure about this one, but I don't think temperature measurements are unreliable as much as we need a lot more of them. I'd also really like to know *where* these measurements are taken and how they are combined mathematically. North America likely has a much broader distribution of thermometers then Africa, but which is the more important factor in the climate system? The heat of Africa drives the North Atlantic currents - big deal! But then, ice ages likely start in northern Canada. So how do we decide how many of those thermometer readings to use? And how about temperature in the middle of the Pacific? We likely don't have many thermometers there. Does that matter?
2) There is another solar factor which has not been taken into account. (The sun emits through the entire spectrum, and it's emissions frequencies may not always be tied together)
I believe this has been taken into account by climate modelers. The sun's spectrum and the interaction of the various frequencies with different parts of the atmosphere are well understood.
3) The current solar minimum hasn't been long enough to effect the weather.
Ice cores show that at this point of the last several interglacial cycles the weather system had adjusted. We are definitely doing something different than ever happened before. At this point in the cycle, the ice sheets in Northern Canada should be expanding, not continuing to disappear.
ETA: I haven't watched the movie above, but I'm guessing from the posts that this is the part they're ignoring. Yes, there are cycles. But the current cycle is different. That much is quite clear. The reasons for the difference and the long term effects are what needs debating.
4) Some other earth factor, such as the emissions of small particles which effect cloud formation, is changing warming dynamics.
This is an interesting point Ruddiman made - if we actually stop all human emissions today, the climate would get hotter for a brief time because these "reflective" particles that cool the atmosphere would settle out first. The "warming" particles would take longer, but eventually they'd get cycled into the oceans and trapped into biomass and we'd cool off.
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hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Nonetheless CTS, you have not addressed the point that we are in a solar MINIMUM
I don't need to address it. I am not a proponent of this video or its contents.
I happen to find it entertaining, just like I find GW hypotheses and the occasional horoscope entertaining. But you need to address your solar minimum debate to someone who supports the solar flare hypothesis--not to me.
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If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.
--Thomas A. Edison
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mal4prez: The fact that the book distinguishes between cooling particles and warming ones is... wow. I'll have to read it! Now, do you want to contemplate a nightmare scenario???? Global warming releases methane currently trapped in ocean-floor clathrates.
CTS: I misunderstood. I thought you were a supporter of the video's POV.
So, I address the video's proponents: How do you explain the fact that we're currently in a solar MINIMUM, and yet still warming up???
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On a different note, Taco Bell finds solution to global warming. 
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/taco_bells_new_green_menu_takes?
utm_source=a-section
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A wish is a desire without an attempt.
-- Source Unknown
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Silence is consent.
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