Poll: Do you believe in global warming?

[spartan231490]

After having read a few of the comments on this thread: I weep for humanity.

 

[lacktheknack]

"Trapping extra heat logarithmically" = has less and less effect as more is released into the atmosphere.

Ahh, okay. You want a term like, "diminishing effect", or somesuch. Logarithms are used for measurement, so the above phrase on its own wouldn't mean anything.

Noted. Thanks.

The "reset" point is more of a question aimed at people who think that humans should be offed to "save the Earth". I know a lot of them, maybe I'm biased due to that.

Aha, fair enough.

Surely such people wouldn't want to kill off so many animal & plant species too, though? They surely don't want global warming.

Well, they want us all dead, as they think it's the only way to save said animals and plants. It's a... short-sighted viewpoint, to say the least.

 

[Lord Kloo]

I believe in Anthropogenic Climate Change (now shortened to ACC for easiness). Doing a Geography and Climate Sciences degree kind of exempts any other kind of position on the matter unless you can provide bloody good evidence against ACC.

Also we got ourselves into this mess I hope we can bloody well get out of it, denial has yet to solve any problems.

Fun thought for the long run that could be factually impossible, if we can alter the climate so dramatically then if we survive the current warming period and stabilize the climate we could stabilize it forever and avoid future ice ages and super-warm periods.

 

[kortin]

I believe Global Warming is a natural thing and we're just giving it a little push. We aren't the sole cause of it nor can we stop it.

 

[Vegosiux]

Indeed, I believe in global warming. For only when the seas rise high enough will He awaken and bring upon us a new age. Fhtagn and all that!

...what? That's gonna be on the brochure!

Well, they want us all dead, as they think it's the only way to save said animals and plants. It's a... short-sighted viewpoint, to say the least.

Let me blow your mind for a moment. I'm one of the people who think that there not being this many humans on the planet would generally be an alright thing; yet the only means I'd accept toward that goal would be people voluntarily deciding to stop making so many babies. Also, not offing the entire species, just reducing the numbers through having negative RNI for a generation or two. It would appear that most of Europe is already working on that, too.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Thats like asking do you believe in gravity. Global warming is a fact, and while you can pretend it is not real, you wont float away. The actual discussion is whether it is man-made or natural.

Or, you could use the BEST argument I've ever heard about why it doesn't matter which is: "who care? God's gonna rapture us all up soon anyway leaving the planet a desolate wasteland for the sinners." Can you believe that was from a fairly high ranking person in government?! (can't remember who it was, I saw it on a documentary).

 

[piinyouri]

No, but I do believe in climate change, whether it be natural and artificial.

This sums up how I feel as well. We had a much milder summer this year, while other areas that are used to cooler summers had warmer ones. If I am not mistaken, this has happened throughout Earth's history, and its simply doing it again, in my opinion.

Indeed.
We've been having wildly hotter summers every year for around 3-4 years now but this one was exquisitely mild, never even getting to the triple digits.(which yes, is very tame for the summers here)

To clarify however I certainly believe it's possible that mankind is influencing the planets weather ecosystem, however how much of that is us and the planet doing it's usual (relative to space length time) thing, and if us, exactly how much are influencing is actually contributing, I do not know.

How I feel about the affair though is this. Regardless of whether it's us or the planet, there's not much need to worry, at least not in the way everyone seems to want people to worry.
"We're going to ruin the planet for our future generations"
"...irreparable damage"

This is just simply not true in my eyes.
I don;t think were able to 'ruin' the planet. Even bathing it in nuclear fire from an all out war would not destroy the earth.
It would take a very long time for that radiation to expire, but you have to understand, when humanity is gone, time is more or less non existent. The universe has all the time in the world, and all that radiation will dissapear eventually, given that it occurs before our sun dies. (which will actually destroy the Earth in all likelihood)
The Earth's past has been a hellacious place. You look back and see some of the outright nightmarish things that have happened here, the death of super continents, the several 'super' ice ages where the entire planet was covered in ice pole to pole, and we think we're capable of damaging it beyond repair?
The only way we could irreparably harm the Earth would be to blow it up, literally.

The only thing we're eliminating or ruining is ourselves. The Earth will be fine. It might look like a different plae than when we lived here, but it will still be here.

I probably came off more harsh than I meant to in that. XP

 

[Something Amyss]

I don;t think were able to 'ruin' the planet.

Which would be lovely if humans weren't looking at it from a self-interest point of view.

We're not saving the planet for entirely noble reasons, we're saving it as-is because we sort of enjoy living here. I say sort of because there are large swathes of the planet not normally inhabitable and everything in Australia is designed to kill humans. That, and every so often we fire a few people off the planet n hopes that maybe they can escape to a better place.

 

[lacktheknack]

Indeed, I believe in global warming. For only when the seas rise high enough will He awaken and bring upon us a new age. Fhtagn and all that!

...what? That's gonna be on the brochure!

Well, they want us all dead, as they think it's the only way to save said animals and plants. It's a... short-sighted viewpoint, to say the least.

Let me blow your mind for a moment. I'm one of the people who think that there not being this many humans on the planet would generally be an alright thing; yet the only means I'd accept toward that goal would be people voluntarily deciding to stop making so many babies. Also, not offing the entire species, just reducing the numbers through having negative RNI for a generation or two. It would appear that most of Europe is already working on that, too.

I'm not talking about you, though. I'm talking about people who literally want to off the human race to save the plants.

I live in Alberta, man. You're either pro-oil (what with our entire everything being based on the oilfields), a student, or you're completely off your rocker and want everyone to die. It's a weird place to be.

 

[MeisterKleister]

Al Gore is an idiot, and is doing all this simply to make bank.

Al Gore made a lot of money on this, no question, but I can't read his mind and therefore cannot comment on his motives.

But his motives are irrelevant to the discussion anyway - they have no bearing on the evidence.
Al Gore is irrelevant to the discussion, he has no authority/expertise on the subject.
And his movie is irrelevant to the discussion, though it did spread some awareness of the issue, which I think is at least laudable.


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If you have objections or confusions about Global Warming and would like to learn more, I would strongly suggest watching the video series I posted here before and/or browsing through the Global Warming FAQ from the Wikipedia article:

Climate change explained, and the myths debunked - Playlist [http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfHsWPfAIyI7VAP]
Talk:Global warming FAQ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Global_warming]

I still see a lot of objections, misunderstandings and myths here about Climate Change science which are addressed/debunked in the first few videos in this playlist.

 

[piinyouri]

@Zachary Amaranth
Indeed. Reminds me of the (I believe) Carlin bit where he mentions that environmentalists aren't interested in preserving the balance of nature, they just want a nice place to ride their bikes and live, which isn't really a BAD thing, as we do need a nice place to live, but as you said, less than noble.

 

[Playful Pony]

You cant not believe in it, can you? And still be considered sensible i mean. Its somthing that objectively does or does not existd, and the matter of discussion should be how serious it is and what should be done.

Clumsily seny from my phone...

 

[Milanezi]

I believe it, not only because of scientific talk, but because I feel it: I live in Brazil and the weather here, right now, SHOULD be a mild heat (by our standards), however we're getting extreme cold in one day (snow in some regions, hey Brazil was known to be a country with NO snow) and ridiculous absurd hot weather the next. I'm sorry, the weather IS fucked up...

 

[Vegosiux]

I live in Alberta, man. You're either pro-oil (what with our entire everything being based on the oilfields), a student, or you're completely off your rocker and want everyone to die. It's a weird place to be.

If I say it sounds like a place that seems right up my alley, mainly because I'd likely have a reason not to want to know most of the people there, would that leave a demerit on my file? And yeah, I agree, those folks who just want all humans to die out are a bit on the loony side. I was just trying to show that there's a moderate, long-term approach to dealing with this population boom issue we've been experiencing in the recent decades...and you set up a punchline for me *grin* I kind of hijacked your post and built my points on it. Sorry; I promise you'll have free passage.[footnote]And that's it for silly jokes for now[/footnote]

But yes, I firmly support the notion that we need to start working on population control somehow (preferably through voluntary action such as not breeding so much and educating people why it's a bad idea to multiply too quickly). We've already extended our lifespans to twice or three times of what it was, in evolutionary terms, just a moment ago. The planet is a sturdy thing, it was built to last, and there's nothing we can throw at it that it can't shrug off, but with rampant growth and consumption, the question is whether we can shrug off what we're throwing at it. Keeping our population under control isn't a matter of the planet not being to handle it, it will handle it just fine, it's a matter of us not exhausting our host to the point it kicks us out, so to say. Right now we're like the sitcom stereotype friend crashing on the couch, not yet overstaying his welcome, but liable to if he keeps being a lazy slob who only drains the household without giving anything back.

But yeah, it's not like we need to reduce the population by a signficant fraction right now. Over a few generations, though...

...fuck, I sound like a Malthus fanboy now and I never really liked his postulates, the guy's more of a chronic pessimist than I am.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

I think you're misunderstanding the debate, so the poll is basically worthless. Only idiots don't believe in global warming. The important and actually contentious question is: 'if it is caused by people or not.'

And given the relative power of humanity versus the freaking sun itself. I would have to say that the sun causes global warming, go figure. Most increased heat periods follow increased directional solar flare activity.

We actually barely make a drop in the bucket as far as greenhouse gases are concerned(except by our forcible propagation of species like cows.) A dog has more carbon emissions than a dreaded hummer, and we have been constantly moving to safer and safer fuels as time goes on(wood is worse than coal is worse than oil is worse than nuclear.) Also the graph Al Gore presented to "prove" global warming is a result of bad science and disingenuous graph creation. It is far too large of a time period shoved on too tiny of a graph so that people can't tell the relationship is a reverse one. The carbon actually lags about 200 years behind heat, because the ocean(which contains a lot of carbon) acts as a giant heat sink, slowly raising and lowering temperature behind the rest of the world, causing evaporation and ipso ergo tons more carbon.

 

[VodkaKnight]

It exists, but people ignore it because people are shit.

 

[Olikar]

CO2 in the atmosphere leads to a greenhouse effect, that is a fact.

Humans have been pumping more and more CO2 into the atmosphere for more than a hundred yearsnow , that is also a fact.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out the implications of these two facts.

 

[MCerberus]

It's a rather odd issue why this is still being debated, a bit ago 97% of scientists agreed about this subject. A couple years later, some dudes whose funding came from some ultraconvservative billionaire brothers known for playing loose with facts to advance their political goals recanted.

At this point denial is "vaccine = autism, chemtrails, fluoride mind control" levels of stupid.

edit- and just think, the current temperature plateau is set to end (and rise) some time in the 2020s. That decade is going to SUCK.

 

[thewatergamer]

I think I already posted before but in response to my last post
Sorry if I got a bit ranty as stated before I tend to get pissed when people talk about how evil oil is since its what gives alot of my family jobs but anyway

I am not going to pretend Global Warming doesn't exist, It does Global warming exists and its happening right now, it happens every day and has happened since the begginging of time,

Their is a major difference between man made global warming and non-man made global warming

As far as I can tell, man hasn't really made any significant impact on climate as many people like to believe, even though its incredibly difficult to find non biased evidence since most studies tend to go one of two ways:

Man made global warming is happening right now! hide your kids ban the oil!

Or the other extreme: Environmentalists are evil propaganda cultists!


This makes it very difficult to prove either way, what really gets under my skin though is when people on either side of the argument openly dismiss the others opinions and just immediately decide that their way is a fact and anyone that doesn't agree is an idiot and should be ignored

There a debate to be had over whether or not man actually affects the globes temperature to any significant degree,

Honestly the debate over whether or not global warming exists has devolved from a scientific study into another pandering political squabble with both sides having their own agendas...

I'm not going to pretend that oil is perfect because its certainly not, many harmful things can come about due to it and its because of environmentalism that alot of toxins and chemicals that were once released into the environment are now regulated, but as of now we still need oil to power our technology and until we find another alternative that is just as reliable we are kinda stuck with it,


In conclusion:

Rename the question do you believe in "man caused" global warming because their is a huge difference

I would love to see less arguing over whether or not something exists and more fixing things that we know exist and ARE real problems, like say overfishing or extreme deforestation, but thats never going to happen because all politicians seem to care about these days are their own personal agendas and advancing themselves, crushing anyone or anything that stands in their way

 

[Frission]

And given the relative power of humanity versus the freaking sun itself. I would have to say that the sun causes global warming, go figure. Most increased heat periods follow increased directional solar flare activity.

Solar variations, which may account for an increase in the ultraviolet range of light, is only a very small part of the solar spectrum. Across the eleven year solar cycle, it varies less than 0.1% and even during the "ice age" of 1750, solar output climbed no more than 0.12%. It's likely that greenhouses gases wields more influence than the total solar output in driving the last fifty years of warming.

I'll also have to ask where you got the rest of the post on greenhouse gases, because it doesn't conform to any actual results of any experiments from any credible labs that I can think of. Particularly the part about a hummer vs a dog.

Are you also talking about the ocean conveyor belt? The ocean conveyor belt transports heat around the globe. One of it's functions is that it transports from the tropics to the northern part of the Atlantic ocean, releasing it into the atmosphere and thereby warming Europe and adjacent landmasses by 10C (18F). After which it cools, sinks and flows to the tropics again. The cooling water sequesters some of the C02 from the atmosphere deep into the ocean.

It's also one of the systems which could be changed by climate change. It's part of the thresholds and tipping points of climate change. One of the theories is that with freshwater melting off the Greenland ice sheet, the conveyor belt could be weakened or even shut down in a short a period as a decade. This will feed a feedback loop where less Carbon is absorbed, which only further weakens the conveyor belt. Not to mention that Europe and north America will have a sudden decrease in temperature, which is not a good thing. The term is climate change for a reason.