Since my Petrodollar thread grew dangerously offtrack on this subject, I felt it's time (already) to start the great 2012 Global Warming debate thread here on Wickedfire.
Past iterations of this thread were unorganized and didn't convince anyone either way, so this time I'm going to take it upon myself to put the good shit up front here in the OP. I'm also going to answer some questions/make some rebuttles from the petrodollar thread here.
First let's repost this Graph Moxie posted last night:
This is some pretty damning evidence, directly from NASA, that we Humans have been fucking up the natural balance of at least the Carbon Dioxide levels in our atmosphere. If you don't want to believe that fact then please go argue with NASA about it; no one on this forum is going to be able to prove it to you better than they can.
Now the real scary shit comes when you consider how the greenhouse effect works. (NOTE: I'm going to be getting a lot of the following evidence from the PDF here. It's a compilation of work by many of the foremost Climatologists of our day, not just some stupid liberals in a basement somewhere.)
First, you must understand that our carbon measurements are a NET gain... Not just 'a little more from some factories,' but the entire planet's output is considered and tallied...
What it breaks down to is pretty obvious. We're gaining a lot of CO2. In fact, the weight of CO2 added to our system by human activity worldwide is comparable to 8,000 Gulf of Mexico oil spills each day by some estimates. It is NOT TRIVIAL.
So how does more CO2 create global warming?
At least here in the US, we had a very shitty education about this in school. (I'll set conspiracy theories about why aside for now.) They allowed us to think the term referred to the average air temperature, which it does not. The vast majority of global warming is in the ocean. They also told us it was all about clouds and reflectivity but really those have very little to do with it at all.
It's about a FEEDBACK LOOP.
Throughout history, as far back as they can measure with ice core samples, climatologists have observed an effect worldwide... That warming (in a local region, at least) causes CO2 levels to rise, and then more CO2 causes Temperatures to Rise in return. Put these two together and you get positive feedback loop that sounds impossible to break free of.
But mother nature has always broken us free from that feedback loop by not injecting too much CO2 over too long of a period. Volcanoes erupting and other huge CO2 releases were always Time-limited events, and after all of the CO2 was spread out among the biosphere, the feedback loop would go back to sustainable levels.
The Fossil record, too, is full of events they can point to like eruptions, which match in time to gas samples found in ice core bubbles halfway around the world. The bottom line here is that they are quite sure in their hypothosis now; Major outgassing for a short amount of time is something the earth can absorb without raising its' temperature too much. It will get uncomfortable for a while and then the Earth sucks it up somehow. Every time.
However, what we're doing is UNNATURAL. It's like we've set off a Krakatoa at all corners of the planet 24/7/365, for over a century now, and the Earth never gets a rest!
The Feedback loop is constantly being supplied.
So you're probably thinking at this point if that's true, we'd have other evidence besides the singularity of CO2, correct? Not just the pollution and other obvious stuff that doesn't prove anything, but real, hard, scientific data that shows how the climate is different now than it is at any other point in history, amirite?
This is where I feel there has been a huge coverup by Climate Deniers.
There is HUGE evidence out there for this... But the cherry-picking climate deniers never talk about those, and always act like the CO2 levels alone are the only evidence. Well it's not. It's just the first in a league of Hockey stick-shaped charts showing our climate over the last 1000 years:
There is simply too much evidence against climate deniers. We have caused this, and we WILL be suffering the damage, whatever that may be.
To address one last common concern; "why are there so many papers published AGAINST climate change?" It's really simple. There are many corporations with big bucks who do not wish to stop polluting and releasing too much CO2. So these corporations hire scientists to publish a paper against the theory of AGW, and some of these have even been caught and exposed as fraud. (There are documentaries about this, surely some Youtube stuff as well.)
The publishers of the PDF linked above took the time to look at the BACKGROUND of all of the paper publishers on the topic of AGW in all of the biggest journals... What they found when they discarded the publishers who were not Climatologists for more than a year before Publishing their papers was pretty revealing:
Simply put; the propaganda against AGW has a huge lobby, and will never stop. But they are WRONG. To learn the facts about AGW you HAVE TO find the facts for yourself and listen to the few, quiet, LEGIT sources of science.
The PDF I linked to above, again, is one of those few places. Be wary of the rest.
Past iterations of this thread were unorganized and didn't convince anyone either way, so this time I'm going to take it upon myself to put the good shit up front here in the OP. I'm also going to answer some questions/make some rebuttles from the petrodollar thread here.
First let's repost this Graph Moxie posted last night:
This is some pretty damning evidence, directly from NASA, that we Humans have been fucking up the natural balance of at least the Carbon Dioxide levels in our atmosphere. If you don't want to believe that fact then please go argue with NASA about it; no one on this forum is going to be able to prove it to you better than they can.
Now the real scary shit comes when you consider how the greenhouse effect works. (NOTE: I'm going to be getting a lot of the following evidence from the PDF here. It's a compilation of work by many of the foremost Climatologists of our day, not just some stupid liberals in a basement somewhere.)
First, you must understand that our carbon measurements are a NET gain... Not just 'a little more from some factories,' but the entire planet's output is considered and tallied...
What it breaks down to is pretty obvious. We're gaining a lot of CO2. In fact, the weight of CO2 added to our system by human activity worldwide is comparable to 8,000 Gulf of Mexico oil spills each day by some estimates. It is NOT TRIVIAL.
So how does more CO2 create global warming?
At least here in the US, we had a very shitty education about this in school. (I'll set conspiracy theories about why aside for now.) They allowed us to think the term referred to the average air temperature, which it does not. The vast majority of global warming is in the ocean. They also told us it was all about clouds and reflectivity but really those have very little to do with it at all.
It's about a FEEDBACK LOOP.
Throughout history, as far back as they can measure with ice core samples, climatologists have observed an effect worldwide... That warming (in a local region, at least) causes CO2 levels to rise, and then more CO2 causes Temperatures to Rise in return. Put these two together and you get positive feedback loop that sounds impossible to break free of.
But mother nature has always broken us free from that feedback loop by not injecting too much CO2 over too long of a period. Volcanoes erupting and other huge CO2 releases were always Time-limited events, and after all of the CO2 was spread out among the biosphere, the feedback loop would go back to sustainable levels.
The Fossil record, too, is full of events they can point to like eruptions, which match in time to gas samples found in ice core bubbles halfway around the world. The bottom line here is that they are quite sure in their hypothosis now; Major outgassing for a short amount of time is something the earth can absorb without raising its' temperature too much. It will get uncomfortable for a while and then the Earth sucks it up somehow. Every time.
However, what we're doing is UNNATURAL. It's like we've set off a Krakatoa at all corners of the planet 24/7/365, for over a century now, and the Earth never gets a rest!
The Feedback loop is constantly being supplied.
So you're probably thinking at this point if that's true, we'd have other evidence besides the singularity of CO2, correct? Not just the pollution and other obvious stuff that doesn't prove anything, but real, hard, scientific data that shows how the climate is different now than it is at any other point in history, amirite?
This is where I feel there has been a huge coverup by Climate Deniers.
There is HUGE evidence out there for this... But the cherry-picking climate deniers never talk about those, and always act like the CO2 levels alone are the only evidence. Well it's not. It's just the first in a league of Hockey stick-shaped charts showing our climate over the last 1000 years:
There is simply too much evidence against climate deniers. We have caused this, and we WILL be suffering the damage, whatever that may be.
To address one last common concern; "why are there so many papers published AGAINST climate change?" It's really simple. There are many corporations with big bucks who do not wish to stop polluting and releasing too much CO2. So these corporations hire scientists to publish a paper against the theory of AGW, and some of these have even been caught and exposed as fraud. (There are documentaries about this, surely some Youtube stuff as well.)
The publishers of the PDF linked above took the time to look at the BACKGROUND of all of the paper publishers on the topic of AGW in all of the biggest journals... What they found when they discarded the publishers who were not Climatologists for more than a year before Publishing their papers was pretty revealing:
Simply put; the propaganda against AGW has a huge lobby, and will never stop. But they are WRONG. To learn the facts about AGW you HAVE TO find the facts for yourself and listen to the few, quiet, LEGIT sources of science.
The PDF I linked to above, again, is one of those few places. Be wary of the rest.
