We Can Stop Global Warming Today
Al Gore's newest book highlights solutions to the climate crisis
Alex Liu • November 7, 2009
In recent reports on climate change, scientists warn that unless humanity acts quickly, we are doomed to devastating consequences. News stories on how our addiction to carbon based fuels and nonstop emission of greenhouse gases may lead to numerous crises — such as rising sea levels, ocean acidification, and extreme weather patterns — can leave many with an overwhelming sense of despondency. However, Al Gore believes that not only is there hope for humanity, but also that we have all the technological advances and ideas necessary to avert catastrophe — today.
“I’ve come away with the absolute conviction, with no exaggeration, that we have all the tools and solutions to solve three or four climate crises — and we only have to solve one,” Gore said.
Rather than focus on a single technology or action to solve global warming, Gore stressed that governments must employ an “all of the above” approach, employing multiple piecemeal solutions, at a promotional event for his new book Our Choices: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.
For example, while much attention has focused on the importance of promoting energy efficiency and renewable fuels, societies must also curb two other practices that are large sources of greenhouse gas emissions — deforestation and tilling soil in farming practices.
Gore pointed to countries such as Brazil and Indonesia as leading the charge to stop deforestation, coming up with plans that have a limited impact on industrial production.
In order to combat certain farming practices, he believes governments should subsidize no-till farming and other carbon sequestration technologies. For example, Gore thinks biochar, which is basically porous charcoal, may be able to sequester 40 percent of annual carbon dioxide emissions. He also believes that most of the solutions should be enacted on their merits alone, regardless of their effect on the climate.
According to Gore, conservation biologists stress that deforestation, which is contributing to the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth, should be stopped to prevent disastrous effects on our current ecological balance. Furthermore, while deforestation often leads to short term economic gains in industries such as logging and farming, these profits are not sustainable over the long term. Managing deforestation ensures these industries have a longer future.
While current tilling practices achieve the highest yields and quickest returns in agriculture, they destroy soil quality for successive harvests. Thus, sustainable farming and carbon sequestration may be some of the most effective tools “to fight the food insecurity and poverty of developing nations,” Gore said.
Also, Gore stresses that governments should start to enact policies to slow the population growth that leads to higher energy demands. While past studies suggest that industrialization is what brings about smaller birth rates, current research demonstrates this is not the case.
Key components of modernized societies such as the education of girls and higher child survival rates are stronger predictors of decreases in population growth. The two other main influences are the availability of fertility management resources and the empowerment of women to take part in decisions made in their societies. “We should be encouraging this for obvious, beneficial reasons anyway,” Gore said. Gore related these ideas to over 900 people at the American Museum of Natural History on November 3, while promoting his new book, a follow-up to his bestselling book and Academy Award winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. While An Inconvenient Truth focused on the problem of global warming, Gore said Our Choices focuses on the solutions.
According to Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who spoke to Gore along with many colleagues for the book, researchers involved in this work applaud Gore’s in-depth understanding of all these solutions.
“He actually asks about science,” Schmidt said to The Guardian. “Nobody that we have dealt with has ever taken as much time to understand the subtlety of the science and all the different complications and what it all means as Al Gore.” Gore culled all his information from more than 30 “solution summits,” often interviewing the experts from these summits “four or five times sometimes for as long as entire day” after meeting them.
While Gore understands enacting these changes will be difficult, he believes that “knowing that the solutions are available is a source of hope.” His main concern revolves around the apparent lack of political will to take steps toward making necessary changes.
“We have to become active as citizens,” Gore told the audience. “It’s what our democracy is based on. Just remember, here in the United States, political will is a renewable resource.”
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About the Author
Alex Liu
A Bay Area native, Alex Liu studied toxicology at the University of California, Berkeley and then spent three years developing oncology medication at Genentech. Currently attending New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program, he hopes to bridge the gap between science and public policy. He’s interned with NOVA scienceNOW and CNN’s medical unit, and loves working on all things video. In his free time he enjoys powering through seasons of television shows, traveling, rooting for Oakland sports teams, and stepping out onto the dance floor. You can visit his personal website and follow him on Twitter.
25 Comments
fuck off al gore. global warming is the greatest hoax!!!!
Technically, your title for this article is false and misleading. No, we cannot stop global warming today. The best we could do would be to initiate many of the policies and practises Al Gore puts forth in his book in order to begin widespread reduction of CO2 emissions (which a number of citizens and businesses have done and are doing).
Even in a fantastic hypothetical situation where we all stopped using coal, oil and natural gas tomorrow morning (zero possibility), we would only stop contribution of more anthropogenic CO2 to the atmosphere. The CO2 already in the atmosphere will remain where it is for centuries and continue the heating process.
Our overloading of the atmosphere with CO2 over the past couple of centuries has “filled up” or depleted the effectiveness of many of the planet’s natural carbon sinks (increased ocean temperature and acidity, decreased forestation, etc.), therefore it is unlikely that even the planet’s non-anthropogenic CO2 output is currently too great to be completely absorbed by the natural ecosystem.
In addition, we have already contributed enough CO2 to the atmosphere and enough warming has taken place, that several “runaway” processes seem to be in full swing, i.e. we may already have passed some significant tipping points (melting Arctic permafrost and sea ice, melting glaciers and snowpack, thawing of methane clathrates, ocean acidification, species extinction).
Notwithstanding the above, thank you for the excellent article, and I hope that our administrators and government officials fully understand the life and death nature of the environmental crisis in which we are embroiled (no pun intended). Everybody should read this and many other good books on the subject of global warming in order to try to understand how truly world-shattering this problem will become if we do not take quite drastic action immediately. All the hooro stories and scary sci-fi flicks do not hold a candle to the crisis which we are currently perpetrating on our biosphere – our home.
Response to maseral’s unenlightened reaction:
“fuck off al gore. global warming is the greatest hoax!!!!
maseral, November 7, 2009 at 12:52 pm”
This type of juvenile knee-jerk reaction to things we do not like to hear is an indicator of the enormity of the task we face to surmount the fundamental ignorance afflicting too many North Americans, and such ignorance is largely responsible for the difficulty which the U.S and Canada are facing in coming to terms with the upcoming global conference in Copenhagen where the next steps will be taken in the batle to recduce CO2 output, and to allow us some hope of averting potentially the greatest catastrophe ever to visit the living things of this planet. No matter. Global warming does not differentiate between ignorant and well-informed individuals. It will kill them with equal indifference. The pity is that the people killed are more likely to be the children and grandchildren of the generation which is deciding the fate of the planet, and many of them have no voice as they have not been born yet. Democracy carries responsibility not only for the actions affecting our daily lives, but those affecting the quality of life of future generations. It is working in countries like Denmark, England and Germany, but seems to be failing thus far in North America, but I’m not sure why.
scientific proof
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zOXmJ4jd-8&feature=player_embedded
maseral is typical of many of the human species in that for every person with reasonable intelligence there is another who is a total idiot. This is not an insult. When it comes to brains you get what your dealt, not like sex where you get what you pay for, and stupidity is not something one can do anything about. Those of us who can see the big picture of climate change should also consider the big picture of human intelligence. In a democratic society we have a bunch of dolts who elect another bunch of dolts. The idea that these dolts have the capacity to see the problem is remote. If they can’t even see it the surely won’t solve it. Of course climate change is only a symptom of a much bigger problem, and that is over population. No one except the Chinese have ever dared to touch that one. The sky IS falling.
Charles, I think that maseral’s remark was juvenile so you and I can agree on that one point.
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According to a recent Pew Research Center poll (October 22, 2009), only 36% of the people polled answered “YES” to “Is there solid evidence the earth is warming because of human activity.” Your question was, I think, why are folks in North America skeptic of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
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I really think that your own comments provide part of the answer. How many times do we have to hear facts that turn out to not be facts before we start to question the AGW hypothesis? If the science is truly settled as has been claimed then why not just present the science that settled it? Why is it necessary to hype the issue? Why is it necessary to exaggerate or mislead?
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I was so frustrated by the lack of dependable information that I started to download and plot climate data myself. Are you aware that it hasn’t been warming since sometime before 2004–according to the Hadley Center data at least. Hadley Center is not a skeptical source by the way. They strongly support the AGW hypothesis. Download data and plot it for yourself. You might have to. I have seen several attempts to hide the recent warming trend by smoothing the data over 10 years or doing creative linear regressions. There was a recent AP article that did just that. Look at the raw data plot without smoothing it and you will see what I see. You can look at other temperature records and see approximately the same thing.
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What is the actual evidence that proves that there are tipping points? I haven’t seen it. Have you? There is a huge difference between speculation and fact. What “runaway” processes are in full swing?
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The largest sink for CO2 is the oceans. What evidence is there that the oceans are CO2 saturated? Drive along a highway sometime at look at those layers of limestone if you want to see what happens to CO2 that the oceans absorb. BTW, that’s calcium carbonate (CaCO3). So is marble.
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Are you aware that the oceans can never acidify? They are alkaline and the chemical composition is such that ocean water functions as a buffering system–it will always remain alkaline–never acidic. It can become more or less alkaline perhaps but that is more likely to be a result of temperature change than increasing CO2. Keep in mind also that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is around less than 0.039%. Fifty years ago it was around 0.032%. One hundred years ago it was around 0.029% according to generally accepted CO2 data. The increase in CO2 isn’t huge as is sometimes implied.
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Charles, you covered lots of territory in your two comments.I really don’t have time to address each and every statement. If you would like to pick just your strongest argument in support of the existence of an AGW and debate just that, I’m game if you are.
Bruce,
I am short of time, and do not have a home internet connection, but briefly:
I realize the percentages are minute, and that specific raw data readings may seem to contradict the general warming trend that has been documented for the past century, but there are a number of significant factors which stand out, and I do have personal evidence of the trend.
Ocean acidification (tendency toward becoming more acid and not necessarily the state of being acid) is well documented. As the oceans warm and asborb increasing quantities of CO2 producing more carbonic acid (seems paradoxical, but that’s the way it is and again the percentages are miniscule, but the ecosystem is a fairly delicately balanced system), creatures with calcium carbonate shells are having more difficulty producing calcium carbonate. I found “Sea Sick to be a very informative but disturbing book on this subject.
Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” gives a very good overview of all the fundamental basis underlying what Al Gore says about global warming. Flannery was a geobotanist or something of the sort, not an environmentalist, until the effects of global warming intruded on his work, and three years of intensive research yielded the book. He gets into some specifics about tipping points (a term coined by Malcolm Gladwell in “The Tipping Point”. Flannery’s book is well referenced but does not offer solutions.
If you want hard number crunching as to where this is all leading, try George Monbiot’s book “Heat”. If you are interested in the coal, oil and natural gas aspect, Jeremy Legget’s book “The Empty Tank” is enough to give you cold sweats at night. These are all well-referenced works. When all the bad news starts to get you down, try Chris Turner’s remarkable book “The Geography of Hope”. he does not soft-soap the bad news, but most of the book looks at actualized examples of ways to remedy the problem without returning to the stone age or even slowing the progress of technology.
A lot of deniers will decry the cost of moving to alternative forms of energy, but many of them work for or are paid by the oil or coal industries. They work very hard to leave out the actual cost to society of using these resources (environmental damage, war, human displacement from rising sea levels, more dangerous storms – Chris Mooney, “Stormworld”). They also neglect to mention the benefits (lowered long-term energy cost, a functional environment if we’re quick about it, decreased dependency on increasingly scarce resources from increasingly foreign and not always friendly sources, more small-scale local production. They never say that the jobs lost in the oil and coal industries will be replaced by jobs in the wind and solar industries. Which would you rather do – dig coal or maintain wind turbines? Which would you rather have over the back fence – a field of solar-voltaic panels or a smokestack?
There has been no serious debate about AGW for over two years, but thanks to people who like to fudge the issues, we are seriously behind in what needs to be done to prevent at the very least, serious environmental damage. What we need to do is to attempt to maintain conditions that will permit productive agriculture during the hundreds of years that it will take to bring the climate back to some semblance of what it was before we began our giant uncontrolled experiment.
While working in the Arctic about 2o years ago, I saw the effects of AGW in action, as a local bridge built on perma frost canted and became unusable. Today, in the same community houses built on jacks on top of gravel pads over permafrost are heaving, sinking and generally creating some locally expensive problems for the inhabitants. PERMA frost does not melt – but it did, just as it is all over the Arctic in Canada and Russia, releasing billions of tons of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. How do we put that particular genie back in the bottle?
We nominally hit 390 ppm of atmosheric CO2 at the end of 2009, increasing by at least 3 ppm annually, and the RATE of CO2 production is still increasing, while natural sinks lose the ability to absorb (read the World Watch Institue report “The State of the World 2009” for more details).
Do not forget that we are currently at a solar minimum, otherwise average equatorial temperatures would be from 0.5 to 1.5 degrees C warmer (more at the poles). Nonetheless, something is happening that never happened during human history: the Arctic Ocean ice is melting; Greenland’s glaciers are melting at an accelerating rate. There will be no more glaciers in Glacier National Park by 2050 (and probably sooner). Antarctic ice shelves are melting at an accelerating rate. Ocean temperatures are warming, with 2008 being the second warmest on record. Average annual temperatures on the Antarctic peninsula have increased by more than 3 degrees C in the past century.
Obviously seasonal variations will exist depending on what we measure and where, but this Global Warming is not a natural variation in Earth’s biosphere or climate, it is undoubtedly anthropogenic. Like evolution, it is not scientifically arguable. The only thing left open to debate is the degree and a lot of the details. We have changed and are continuing to change a formula which was arrived at over billions of years of random change, often created by lifeforms (cyanobacteria for example). We want a world that will not just support life, but one that is well-suited to human life, particularly – kind of like the one we live in and know by accounts through the ages. We are not only putting such a world at very serious risk, but we may have already gone beyond the brink. At the very least we are perilously close.
This is the problem. A commenter said this:
“something is happening that never happened during human history: the Arctic Ocean ice is melting; Greenland’s glaciers are melting at an accelerating rate”
Evidently this commenter has never been to school or didn’t pay attention. The Arctic was wide open in the Medieval Warm Period. The Norse had farms where there are glaciers now.
You deserve to go without heat or lights for being so dumb as to fall for this scam. Please sell your house or apartment and start sleeping outside now.
Charles, you touched on way too many different subjects for me to address here. I would much rather explore a few of those more completely. What do you think is the strongest argument in support of the existence of a human caused warming crisis?
I believe that the most recent warming trend started around 1910. Arguably that may be part of the same warming trend that ended the Little Ice Age. That warming trend was composed of two warming periods. They were approximately 1910-1942 and 1980-2004. There was a cooling period from around 1942-1980. And so far, from around 2004 until present. The first warming period was of approximately the same magnitude and rate as the second even though the CO2 increase was less than a third of that during the second. The first period is generally assumed to have been mostly natural. The IPCC claims that the second was mostly due to increasing CO2. It is interesting to note that solar activity started to increase around 1910 and reached a peak around 1960 and started to decrease gradually on average. Solar activity from around 1960 until recently was higher on average than at any time since around 1790. Also, several of the natural oscillations that were in a warming phase during the first warm period were in an even stronger warming phase during the second. Bottom line. Looking at natural forces, it should have been warming from 1980-2004 with or without increasing CO2.
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Actually ocean acidification is only a claim. It is not well documented if by that you mean proven. We haven’t had the ability to estimate pH to three decimal places for very long. Even now that sort of pH measurement is likely to be found only in the laboratory. So to know ocean pH a century ago to three decimal places is really impossible. By the way, how do you get a representative sample of the world’s oceans?
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Websters defines “acidify” as (1) to make acid and (2) to convert into an acid. My objection is that most folks assume that it does mean that the oceans are turning into acid. It is misleading.
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As I mentioned, the ocean oceans act as a buffering system i.e. it tends to maintain a certain pH. The reaction between CO2 and water creates a weak acid (like in soft drinks) as you mentioned but that is neutralized by normal sea water. As I recall, the study that you mentioned was done by adding acid (not CO2) to non-buffered artificial sea water. The result was a lowering of the pH of the water in a way that would not occur in the oceans. The damage mentioned would not occur in the oceans. I suspect that they got the result that they were looking for.
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There has indeed been serious debate about anthropogenic global warming over the last two years. I have participated in that debate. I think that it probably isn’t debated among folks who truly believe in it. It should be. Science is about searching for the facts, not about belief.
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The Arctic goes through warm periods periodically. It is most likely related to the phase of certain ocean oscillations. Buildings constructed on permafrost during a cool period might be in trouble during a warming period. The last was in the 1930’s if I remember correctly. I actually plotted the Arctic Ice Extent since 2003. The maximum melt occurs around September each year. The lowest since 2003 occurred in 2007. In September 2008, there was considerably more ice. In September 2009 it was back close to the 2003-2009 average. The claim of an “ice free arctic summers in 30 years” has been pretty much dropped now. Even that claim was only for a complete melt during the minimum around September. Not all year as many people assumed.
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There is no firm basis for the assumption that oceans, the dominant natural sink, are losing the ability to absorb CO2. In fact, it would be illogical to assume so based on the chemistry. Speculation is perfectly OK but it should never be confused with fact.
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Solar activity is indeed at record low levels. Cycle 24 has still not started. NASA has predicted that Cycles 24 and 25 will be weak. If so, solar activity will be low for around 22 years. We are approaching the conditions that existed just prior to the Dalton Minimum. I think that we have surpassed the conditions of the last mini-minimum that occurred around 1900. You might want to double-check the 0.5 C to 1.5 C warmer claim. The total of the warming since around 1910 was only around 1.0 C. The warming “crisis” since around 1980 was only around 0.5 C. Most likely, the recent cooling was more influenced by the ocean oscillations moving into a cool phase than the decrease in solar activity.
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Glaciers have been melting generally speaking since the end of the last major ice age. Remember that approximately the upper one third of the United States was covered at one time. Most of that melted. There was some increase in the glaciers during the Little Ice Age. There has been a warming trend since then. That glaciers would melt during a warming trend wouldn’t be a shocker. The Arctic Ice Extent Minimum has increased over the last two years. Ocean temperatures have probably been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age. The ocean temperature record isn’t very long. And the method of measure has moved from buckets dropped over the side of ships to satellite during those years. We really don’t know what the oceans temperatures were like during the last Arctic warm period which was over 60 years ago. There is no valid reason to believe that the Antarctic ice has been melting. Actually there is pretty good evidence that the Antarctic ice has been increasing because of increased snowfall. The temperatures on the Antarctic peninsula are influence more by ocean circulation than by temperature. I have some doubts about the 3 C warming claim because that would be over twice what has been claimed for the total global warming over the same period.
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Actually even the IPCC does not attempt to argue that the warming from 1910 until 1942 (approx.) was anthropogenic. That is generally accepted as being mostly natural. Of course, the cooler period from 1942 until around 1980 doesn’t count. The IPCC only claims that the warming since around 1980 was mostly anthropogenic. How much of the 1980-2004 warming was anthropogenic is very much open to objective scientific debate. The natural forces that were probably responsible for most of the warming from 1910-1942 while they were in a warming phase were once again in the same warming phase during the 1980-2004 warming. During the second warming period, they were even stronger because of the much higher level of solar activity and the likely higher ocean temperatures that resulted from the long period of high solar activity. I think that the natural cycles argument is easier to defend that the AGW hypothesis.
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It is possible to calculate an estimate of the warming that a certain increase in atmospheric CO2 would have. Just the CO2 absorption characteristics aren’t enough to have caused most of the recent warming. That is where positive feedback came in. They are assumed to exist because without them, the CO2 increase couldn’t have cause most of the warming as claimed. They are assumed to exist but they have not been shown to exist. A positive feedback would allow a small amount of warming from CO2 to be amplified into a much larger global warming. Tipping points are possible if there are positive feedbacks and no negative feedbacks to counteract them. As I said, positive feedbacks are based only on speculation. There is no objective scientific basis for claiming that we are “perilously close” or “beyond the brink.”
I will not dismiss that their is global change going on, but there has been global changes going on since this planet has been formed. To blame it completely on man is just another way for global governments to try and get their hands on peoples money and to push more government control on everything. It is just part of the UN’s New World Order agenda plain and simple. The planet would be changing with humans here or not!
yaya
lets save world
I agree with maseral and bruce richardson. The essential fact is that the scientific evidence that was used to support the manmade global warming theory has collapsed. Some scientists still find it in their own interest to promote it however. Flannery is mking good money off these books, and seems to care little for good science.
Mr Gore runs a company (Generation Investnment Management) that “facilitates” carbon trading schemes and he is simply lobbying to protect his business interests. He established GIM with some guys from Goldman Sachs and well before he went on the road with his “message”. He will not debate global warming – ever wondered why?
Global warming and carbon trading is an unscientific scam dressed up to fool the gullible, make money, and provide a scare factor following the end of the Cold War. Credible scientists do not believe it because CO2 can NOT cause the atmosphere to heat as muuch as the scaremongers say it will tomorrow.
Do your own homework, do not believe everything you read, and do not be gullible anymore than you have to.
While I sympathize with Gore’s intuitive point of view, he clearly doesn’t know about this new energy production technology that is both clean and very cheap (1 cent/kilowatt hour). As reported by both CNN and the New York Times:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1iqa0dSJO0
Check out above link to a 2 and a half minute youtube video of a CNN report. What are the odds that the independent testimony below is fraudulent (not bloody likely unless you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist)? Here is a silver bullet technology: clean cheap and abundant energy.
In a joint statement, Dr. K.V. Ramanujachary, Rowan University Meritorious Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dr. Amos Mugweru, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, and Dr. Peter Jansson P.E., Associate Professor of Engineering said, “In independent tests conducted over the past three months involving 10 solid fuels made by us from commercially-available chemicals, our team of engineering and chemistry professors, staff, and students at Rowan University has independently and consistently generated energy in excesses ranging from 1.2 times to 6.5 times the maximum theoretical heat available through known chemical reactions.”
Also, check out this article: http://www.nytimes.com/external/venturebeat/2008/10/21/21venturebeat-blacklight-power-bolsters-its-impossible-cla-99377.html
Brad Arnold
St Louis Park, MN, USA
dobermanmacleod@gmail.com
http://www.myspace.com/dobermanmacleod
Well Mr Fuck off Al Gore may lack manners but he is bang on that Climate Change due to CO2 is a scam.. You guys can talk amongst yourselves about how important you all are.. But its still a scam.. people are getting angry.. and rightly so..
When Fuck Off becomes action and not just words.. heads will roll.. Then you can talk about other more uncomfortable things..
It really is the worst type of academic filth.. Reality hijacked by politics.. With all the people in school knowing full well “conform or be cast out” are you one of us or one of them? Your future depends on your answer..
Teachers including politics in the “tell them what they wanna hear suck up” for the benifit of doubt when their papers are getting marked.. Is far worse than the scam itself.. Future leaders cant even find the non fiction part of the library.. its of no use to them.. Not good at all..
I ask you.. is there a point where the lieing will stop? or is this open ended?
Not all is black and white -Even if there were only a 10% chance that human caused global warming is really happening, would you bet your kids on it?
Josiah: There isn’t even a 1% chance of human caused global warming happening. Do some real homework on the science behind this argument, don’t just sit back and make stupid and irrelevant “what ifs”.
It is well past time this scam was blown open so we can do some useful research and find out what really drives our constantly changing climate, and maybe even devote some time to managing our real environment.
Josiah, there is a slight chance that the AGW hypothesis will turn out to be correct. More and more it is looking otherwise. At this point it appears to be based on “you can trust me I’m a scientist” evidence rather than hard objective science. There is a much better chance that efforts to “combat global warming” will be expensive and pointless. There is a much better chance that those mostly well-intended efforts will seriously damage our economy to the detriment of our kids. Those of us who are skeptical of the AGW claims are only arguing that there we should have more than opinion and speculation before embarking upon a potentially destructive course of action.
It is pure vanity that makes someone think they’re going to stop global climate change. Climate cycles happen with or without the human ants crawling around on the earth’s surface.
The only real possibility is that governments are covering up the climate change cycles by keeping people preoccupied with carbon credits/taxes.
Go with the flow on this one, there is nothing you can do about it except plan. Europe is going to be frozen tundra. If you’re in the US I suggest purchasing property in warm places like Presidio, Texas.
When (not if) the earth tumbles into the next ice age, places like Presidio, Texas will have nice weather for about 900 years.
C. B. Richardson,
Man, am I tired of claptrap dressed up as intelligent discussion. How many logical fallacies can you fit into one article thread?
1. Science isn’t settled.
In 2004, Naomi Oreskes did a literature review of climate science published. After randomly selecting 1000 articles, what did she find? 1000 articles that were either neutral or supported the hypothesis. 1,000:1.
But, you’re right, there’s no consensus.
2. Every poll of climate scientists ends up with something on the order of 97% supporting the hypothesis.
3. Since that 2004 review, there has not been even one scientific study undermining the hypothesis that passed peer review, publishing, and post-publishing critique without being shown to be significantly flawed. And those that have come closest haven’t come close to denying anthropogenic warming, but have tried to prove things like it’s due to clouds (conclusively debunked) or the suns output (conclusively debunked) or temps in the troposphere (deeply flawed paper.)
Great output from denialists, eh?
4. Worse, we know now for a fact what we always already knew: Big Business think tanks were lying about the science being flawed. A NYT recently published an internal memo (yes, the actual memo) from, I believe, the Global Climate Council (if ever there was a name with a greater lie, I don’t know what it was), scientists telling them the science could not be denied. Yet, they continued to lie for a time, then they quietly disbanded. They have yet to put out anything like a strong statement about lying and the fact they knew they were lying. They lied enough, loudly enough, long enough to convince gullible people like you that their lies were truth.
5. Watch “The American Denial of Global Warming.” Read “Smoke and Mirrors” from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Read that NYT article.
Or, you can just look out your window and watch the ice melt in the Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland; watch animals and plants migrating to cooler places; watch those animals and plants get out of sync with each other; watch the oceans acidify; watch the Jet Stream move north (and south) year after year; watch the methane seep out of the permafrost and ocean floor; watch methane and CO2 increase in the atmosphere; note that we are further away from the sun than we were 2,000 years ago, but significantly warmer…
You’ve been lied to and duped. Think.
Hey deniers, one and all: why don’t any of you post all that science you claim debunks this? Argumentation by Assertion is what 6 year-olds do.
Could it be there isn’t any supporting your stance? Why, yes, yes it could!
Go read these articles: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/index/
And these: http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to_a_sceptic.php
And to really understand climate science from start to current: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html
If you can read what there is on those three sites and still let lies and BS and a total lack of scientific study convince you there is no issue with climate change, you need help.
And, yes, Earth will cool someday if the past glacial cycles are any indication, but not for a long time if we put it far enough out of whack. In fact, the Earth was in a 2,000 year cooling trend until 1850.
Go figure.
Often we forget the little guy, the SMB, in our discussions of the comings and goings of the Internet marketing industry. Sure there are times like this when a report surfaces talking about their issues and concerns but, for the most part, we like to talk about big brands and how they do the Internet marketing thing well or not so well.
onlineuniversalwork
Do you not ever look up into the skies and see the chemical trails of aluminum, barium and strontium being pumped into our atmosphere to the tune of 200 million tons…all over the world without our consent with ill health effects occurring ? Go to Michael Murphy’s chemical trailing website and wake up. How long will Americans sit back and be poisoned by our leaders?
WHY THERE IS GLOBAL WARMING
The information below came from either books or downloaded from the Internet
People in the USA, are being told by the U.S. government and media that global warming is man-made. If that is true, how can the government and media explain the high temperatures the earth has experienced in past years when there were far fewer people? Let us look back in the world’s history: for example, between roughly 900AD and 1350AD the temperatures were much higher than now. And, back then there were fewer people, no cars, no electric utilities, and no factories, etc. So what caused the earth’s heat? Could it be a natural occurrence? The temperature graph at the bottom of this article shows the temperatures of the earth before Christ to 2040.
In the book THE DISCOVERERS published in February 1985 by Daniel J. Boorstin, beginning in chapter 28, it goes into detail about Eric the Red, the father of Lief Ericsson, and how he discovered an island covered in green grass.
In approximately 983AD, Eric the Red committed murder, and was banished from Iceland for three years. Eric the Red sailed 500 miles west from Iceland and discovered an island covered in GREEN grass, which he named Greenland. Greenland reminded Eric the Red of his native Norway because of the grass, game animals, and a sea full of fish. Even the air provided a harvest of birds. Eric the Red and his crew started laying out sites for farms and homesteads, as there was no sign of earlier human habitation.
When his banishment expired, Eric the Red returned to congested Iceland to gather Viking settlers. In 986, Eric the Red set sail with an emigrant fleet of twenty-five ships carrying men, women, and domestic animals. Unfortunately, only fourteen ships survived the stormy passage, which carried about four-hundred-fifty immigrants plus the farm animals. The immigrants settled on the southern-west tip and up the western coast of Greenland.
After the year 1200AD, the Earth’s and Greenland’s climate grew colder; ice started building up on the southern tip of Greenland. Before the end of 1300AD, the Viking settlements were just a memory. You can find the above by searching Google. One link is:
http://www.greenland.com/en/about-greenland/kultur-sjael/historie/vikingetiden/erik-den-roede.aspx
The following quote you can also read about why there is global warming. This is from the book EINSTEIN’S UNIVERSE, Page 63, written by Nigel Calder in 1972, and updated in 1982.
“The reckoning of planetary motions is a venerable science. Nowadays it tells us, for example, how gravity causes the ice to advance or retreat on the Earth during the ice ages. The gravity of the Moon and (to a lesser extent) of the Sun makes the Earth’s axis swivel around like a tilted spinning top. Other planets of the Solar System, especially Jupiter, Mars and Venus, influence the Earth’s tilt and the shape of its orbit, in a more-or-less cyclic fashion, with significant effects on the intensity of sunshine falling on different regions of the Earth during the various seasons. Every so often a fortunate attitude and orbit of the Earth combine to drench the ice sheets in sunshine as at the end of the most recent ice age, about ten thousand years ago. But now our relatively benign interglacial is coming to an end, as gravity continues to toy with our planet.”
The above points out that the universe is too huge and the earth is too small for the earth’s population to have any effect on the earth’s temperature. The earth’s temperature is a function of the sun’s temperature and the effects from the many massive planets in the universe, i.e., “The gravity of the Moon and (to a lesser extent) of the Sun makes the Earth’s axis swivel around like a tilted spinning top. Other planets of the Solar System, especially Jupiter, Mars and Venus, influence the Earth’s tilt and the shape of its orbit, in a more-or-less cyclic fashion, with significant effects on the intensity of sunshine falling on different regions of the Earth during the various seasons.”
Read below about carbon dioxide, which we need in order to exist. You can find the article below at:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html.
FUN FACTS about CARBON DIOXIDE.
Of the 186 billion tons of carbon from CO2 that enter earth’s atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth’s oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants.
At 380 parts per million CO2 is a minor constituent of earth’s atmosphere–less than 4/100ths of 1% of all gases present. Compared to former geologic times, earth’s current atmosphere is CO2- impoverished.
CO2 is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen as a waste product. Humans and animals breathe oxygen and emit CO2 as a waste product. Carbon dioxide is a nutrient, not a pollutant, and all life– plants and animals alike– benefit from more of it. All life on earth is carbon-based and CO2 is an essential ingredient. When plant-growers want to stimulate plant growth, they introduce more carbon dioxide.
CO2 that goes into the atmosphere does not stay there, but continuously recycled by terrestrial plant life and earth’s oceans– the great retirement home for most terrestrial carbon dioxide.
If we are in a global warming crisis today, even the most aggressive and costly proposals for limiting industrial carbon dioxide emissions and all other government proposals and taxes would have a negligible effect on global climate!
The government is lying, trying to use global warming to limit, and tax its citizens through “cap and trade” and other tax schemes for the government’s benefit. We, the people cannot allow this to happen.
A temperature graph normally goes here that shows the Earth’s Temperature from -2400 to guesses in +2400.
If the Earth’s temperature graph is not shown above, you can see this temperature graph at the link:
http://www.longrangeweather.com/global_temperatures.htm