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The Great Global Warming Swindle from Channel4.com

Mar 5, '07 12:30 PM
for everyone

Link: http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swin...

I'm not absolutely convinced global warming isn't real, by the way -- I am just not convinced it is.

Tags: global warming

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13 CommentsChronological Reverse Threaded

bonzootoo wrote on Feb 7

What would convince you?

jvon wrote on Feb 7

Another 100 years of warming, maybe. I still remember the "ice age scare" in the 1970s, when everyone (well, the same people hyperventilating about global warming now) thought that we were going to go into an ice age and freeze to death.

bonzootoo wrote on Feb 8

Well at least you have a tipping point. I would say that the ice age scare was scorned by the vast majority of scientists less than thirty scientists with credentials got behind it. And unlike that "scare" we do have 52 years of consistently increasing CO2 levels directly meassured along with fairly good evidence (ice cores) that this is by far the most rapid increase in CO2 in the last 600,000 years.

I would at least submit that one should look at it more closely than the "ice age scare".

jvon wrote on Feb 8

So for 52 years the CO2 has been increasing. But why were the temperatures dropping in the 70s? Why did they start rising BEFORE the CO2 started going up?

And even if CO2 really is causing warming, what are we going to do about it? The US is no longer the largest producer of CO2; China is. We will be dwarfed by China and India's output in just a few years.

It certainly bears watching, but I don't think the hysteria is warranted. And the predictions that have been tossed around, frankly, are ridiculous. The models are just that, models. They cannot be used to predict future trends, they cannot even explain our current conditions.

bonzootoo wrote on Feb 9

Sorry I was not clear about CO2, 52 years ago is when a guy from Harvard got the idea to measure CO2 in the middle of the Pacific as far away from any industry and at different altitudes to see if the basic air was changing in any way and this research has continued and expanded ever since. The ice cores which are a good test but not perfect since if there was nearby local pollution (such as a volcano) near Greenland it would interfere. But the ice cores do indicate that start CO has been going up in a generally consistent acceleratingly way with a big increase as the industrial age started.

As for the 70's dip in temperature. First temperature has been greatly affected by global dimming - caused by heavy pollution that block the suns rays. This dimming reach it's highest point around 1972 - a couple years after the clean air act was enacted in the US who were at that time by far the biggest polluters in the world. Thanks to pressure from the world community heavy pollution has gone down in India and China despite the massive increase in total factory/power plant output. This might be evidence that if we take care of out own house and reduce greenhouse gas we could pressure other places. Especially since China is drastically dependent on our purchasing. Also the 1970's dip was very small and for a very short period of time and not world wide.

jvon wrote on Feb 9

Wait, so all we have to do to cool the earth off is make lots of smog? So what was the problem again?

From what I've read (and I've read a lot) this stuff is not nearly as well understood as you're trying to convince me it is. It's entirely possible that the dip was due to a decrease in solar output, and it's also possible that the increase we're seeing now is due to an INcrease in solar output. In fact I read something a few months back saying that changes had been observed on the surfaces of neighboring planets as well. I'd like to hear how THAT is caused by our CO2 production.

bonzootoo wrote on Feb 11

Yes, smog would cool off earth - the kind we had pre-1970 here (very tough to breath, lots of asthma, and eye irritation) - they do have a fair bit of it in China and India still but it is getting better there so... Global dimming after large meteorite/comets most likely killed off the dinosaurs.

The solar flair issue is worth looking at - but the researcher who leads it from University of Hawaii has a few issue - not least of which is where he gets his funding. One big issue is that he can only match up flairs going back a short while and it in no way explains why CO2 matches temperature going much farther back. He has not attempted to explain this to my knowledge.

maukuuku wrote on Feb 11

How can you people keep coming up with the CO2 argument when study after study shows CO2 follows high temperatures, and not the other way around?.

jvon wrote on Feb 11

Yep, that's true, CO2 spikes tend to follow, not precede, temperature spikes. One theory is that temperature affects how much CO2 can be dissolved in the oceans.

bonzootoo wrote on Feb 12

Please refer me to such studies. Being a "you people" I would like to no about these countless studies.

jvon wrote on Feb 12

You will be overjoyed (I am sure!) to learn that there is a new expanded edition of "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years" out in paperback.

http://www.amazon.com/Unstoppable-Global-Warming-Updated-Expanded/dp/0742551245/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202835347&sr=8-1

It includes references to that theory and countless others that might (or might not) explain why we are seeing warming now.

bonzootoo wrote on Feb 12

Please send me a copy.

jvon wrote on Feb 12

I'm sure your local library has one if you don't want to buy it.

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