Global Warming:Real or Fake?

Re: Global Warming:Real or Fake?

I think that there's not as much denial of the existence of global warming in the government as you suggest. What there is plenty of, though, is denial that we're all going to die in the next ten years because of it (yes, I'm overstating the doomsayers, but you get the idea).

It isn't "plain" to see that global warming is occurring and you personally are not able to tell that it exists because "the weather has changed a lot lately". Global warming is only evident from studying climate changes over decades, if not centuries or millenia. Unless you're an evironmental scientists who studies global climates, you're not going to be able to tell that it's happening; a tenth of a degree change in average temperatures just plain isn't noticeable by people.

--Guido

Re: Global Warming:Real or Fake?

Oh sure, it definitely exists. But I don't think that it is going to kill us in the next 10 or 20 years. That's the overstatement of the day. I do, however, believe that it will inevitably evolve into a huge problem unless we cut down on the things that are causing it.

Re: Global Warming:Real or Fake?

The "government" isn't denying anything. It's fun to just come up with this magical term "government" and try to attribute corruption to it. But that just has no bearing on the real world. It's funny that liberals are the ones who invented the global warming scare and just like liberals always do, they try to turn the whole thing into a huge political issue, pointing fingers everywhere, demanding recompense and reacting vehemently to imagined coverups. (leftist = irational chip on the shoulder)

Global warming has to do with scientists, specifically geologists, who are almost all in agreement that though the climate is changing over time (over a LOOONG GEOLOGICAL PERIOD OF TIME), it is not due in any way shape or form to emissions from our cars or factories or other pollutants.

Pollution is bad because it makes the Earth less pretty. But it isn't hurting it.

It's absurd to say that human beings could have that big of an impact on such a large and static celestial body. (Static by our own timeframes which is the issue at hand)

If you take all the politics out of the issue, it suddenly becomes amazingly obvious that you've deflated it entirely.

The Earth is at a warming phase in a CYCLICAL process of warming and cooling. The Earth has been doing this for billions of years.

Al Gore stated in his idiotic movie that if the ice caps melted it would raise the sea level above most of the buildings in manhattan.

Simple logic says otherwise:

Do ice cubes float?

What about rocks or other regular solids?

Does this strike you as odd?

What do you think this suggests about the nature of water in its solid state?

The sea levels would only rise a little bit because of the large amount of the ice caps that is currently ABOVE sea level. But the vast bulk of the ice caps which is BELOW sea level would, by melting, cause the sea levels to DROP.

Even if ONLY the parts of the ice caps above sea level melted, it would only raise the entire sea level of the earth by a couple feet at most. Probably a few inches. If even that.

So if that argument by the environmentalists is completely flawed, how many of their other arguments are flawed as well? Probably most if not all of them. (save for the fact that the earth is warming, which is undisputable) But I don't feel the need to explain all those points because the burden of proof is on those supposing the big green spaghetti monster. Funny how they use the same argument against creationists (so do I) but don't apply it to their own logic. (I do)

Re: Global Warming:Real or Fake?

That was a pretty good first post.

Re: Global Warming:Real or Fake?

In my opinion, everyone posting in this thread should to see two things:

An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary headed by Al Gore, and
Exposed: Climate of Fear, a special on the Glenn Beck program (CNN Headline News 7PM and 9PM on weekdays), which serves the purpose of "balancing" the movie above.

An Inconvenient Truth presents the total "Global Warming is here, severe, and an enormous problem" look, while Climate of Fear presents the whole "The climate changes all the time, we're not causing problems, get used to it" thing.

Now I'm sure most of us know the arguments saying that we are in fact causing global warming and that it will eventually kill us all. I'm not going to delve into those. Instead, I'm going to focus on the counter-points presented in Climate of Fear, using a point-counterpoint presentation. In bold are the claims made by An Inconvenient Truth, and under that is the response from Climate of Fear

1. The Earth's temperature has risen over the past 100 years.
R. Yes, it has. By a whopping 0.7 degrees Celsius. Who's to say this incredibly small amount wasn't due to natural climate fluctuations that we all know occur?

2. The Earth is going to experience severe weather, polar melting and flooding.
R. Think back to the 70's and 80's, when headlines in the New York Post read "Scientists Agree Earth is Getting Cooler," and "Fifth Ice Age Incoming?" That time period should've experienced a warming in the Earth, since it was within the last 100 years.

3. Look at this graph. Notice how the CO2 and temperature both spike to unheard of levels in the past 100 years?
R. Look more closely. If you notice, the temperature begins to rise before the CO2 does throughout the entire graph. And if you look at the latest UN report about global warming, you'll see that this graph is nonexistent, and there is no explanation as to why.

4. If the ice caps melt, the world's oceans are going to rise by 20 feet!
R. Many scientists say otherwise. If the ice caps melted, a lot of people say the ocean would rise by mere inches.*

*The reason the ocean would rise is because much of the ice is present on top of landmasses, so even though water condenses when it melts, the volume of condensing water flowing into the ocean would cause a net rise in sea level.

5. There is no debate in the scientific community about the causes and effects of global warming
R. Wrong. 19,000 scientists, in a mass event, spoke out about how they disagreed with the view that humans are causing global warming and that it will be a massive problem. Besides that, the state climatologists of Delaware and Oregon (and these are just examples) do not personally agree with it. However, they cannot speak their opinions under the title of State Climatologist, or else their job is at risk. They must speak only the opinions of the administration.

EDIT: Remembered another argument. (x2)

Those are the main arguments that I can remember right now. I'll refresh myself on the subject and get back with more info, but I may not be able to do so until this weekend.

EDIT: Response to an above post:

Your post is a prime example of another point presented in Climate of Fear. There's too much politics involved in global warming, involving blame and arguments between Democrats and Republicans, to the point where the whole issue has been blown out of proportion. I am not a republican by any standard (I consider myself more of a Democrat, but towards the middle of the leftist-rightist scale), and I feel I can look at this objectively. Noticing some parts of your post, you're talking about how "liberals" (I hate using that word for some reason) decided to bring it into politics and place blame on everyone. I can only point out that you're doing the same, blaming liberals for bringing the argument into politics when you yourself are bringing politics into this argument with your blame.

Re: Global Warming:Real or Fake?

sharpnova = unsupported generalisations

Re: Global Warming:Real or Fake?

sharpnova, quit listening to Sean Hannity. He gives a bad name to logical conservatives.

--Guido

Re: Global Warming:Real or Fake?

My theory goes like this (keep in mind that I don't usually browse the critical thinking threads, so I might sound like a kid with down syndrome trying to talk to you).

They made a calendar like WAYYYYY long ago, I bet they just rounded it to the nearest.......something...like minutes........way long ago. It's been quite a long time since someone invented our calendar. Maybe with that several minutes each year we got more and more off of our calendar..........and then whoa....SEASONS COMING EARLIER!!!!!!!!!!Let's blame it on global warming.........


It's possible.

Re: Global Warming:Real or Fake?

I thought thats why we have leap year every 4 years, to correct that type of thing. Cause arn't there actaully 365.25 days in a year?

anyways, yes i think global warming is real. Of course there will be no dramatic effects in the next 10-20 years but there have been many studies that show in the next 100 years, the global temperature will infact raise a little bit. Of course 1 or 2 degrees isn't that big of a deal. But when it heats up the ocean water, then hurricanes form, they stay stronger longer because they feed off warmer waters. Are humans to blame for this? I think yes

Re: Global Warming:Real or Fake?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the graph in "An Inconvenient Truth" also show fluctuations dating back millions if not billions of years, including the recent 100-year spike? That spike went far above what it had ever been in the long distant past. That was supposed to derail the "cyclical" explanation.

This issue frustrates me since no regular person can really gather much of any useful information on their own, so we're forced to resort to watching biased documentaries and decide which we can trust.

In any case, I'm inclined to side with the liberals on this even if it does turn out to be an exaggeration. Call me a hippie, but I could go for some change in the way we're treating this planet. It's really pretty despicable. What's so horrible about wanting to change that?

Re: Global Warming:Real or Fake?

Actually, I can check that right now. I'll see just how far back the graph went. From what I remember, it didn't even go back to medieval periods, but I could be thinking of something else.

Alright I checked it. The graph dated back not even 1,000 years. Also, the graph used by the IPCC, an international organization dedicated to global warming, "contained a wide margin of error, not shown in An Inconvenient Truth." Also, the Little Ice Age, which was a cold period that ended in the 19th century, and the Medieval Warm Period were left out or not spoken about. Or something like that.

In the meantime, consider the argument that the CO2 actually began to rise shortly AFTER the temperature did, which apparently that graph shows if you look at it closely enough.

Re: Global Warming:Real or Fake?

No it's not. We know with extreme precision when seasons should be here and when they shouldn't by the angle of the earth's rotation with respect to the sun.

--Guido

Re: Global Warming:Real or Fake?

The earth seems like a living thing..... Like trees/plants. If we treat it like **** it dies.....We are on our way...YAY I WIN!

Re: Global Warming:Real or Fake?

Oh, I just thought I'd pop in and allow you guys to conduct some research while I'm gone (starting Wednesday). The following people are scientists that do not support the whole "It's our fault and it's going to kill us all" theory, and I'll let you guys research them a bit in my absence.

Chris Horner, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming"
John Christy, Ph.D., state climatologist of Alabama
Mario Lewis, Ph.D., government policy maker
David Legates, Ph.D., state climatologist of Delaware and professor of climatology at the University of Delaware
Tim Ball, Ph.D. from the University of London
Roy Spencer, Ph.D., former Sr. Climate scientist, NASA
Patrick Michaels, PhD., Author of "Meltdown"

There, that should tide you over.

EDIT: FOUND THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE SPECIAL



Check it out