Climate problem ‘enormous'

[Hedley]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WEATHER/02/05/a ... index.html

[mellow_pilot]

Why is it that people always throw up some current weather to counter climate change?

LONG TERM AVERAGE RISE IN TEMPERATURES!!!! As in a couple degrees in average temp over a long time. Not, "it's never going to be cold ever again, so throw away your boots and parka." No one ever said there wouldn't be cold days.

Hedley, you of all people astound me in this regard. You're obviously scientifically inclined, what with the physics and all, I truly don't understand your position on climate change...

[Hedley]

I truly don't understand your position on climate change

It's very simple: if climate change (like cold fusion) is for real ... how can I get some?

[mellow_pilot]

I truly don't understand your position on climate change

It's very simple: if climate change (like cold fusion) is for real ... how can I get some?

Climate change is a short flight away...

[Glen Quagmire]

Bob Carter is a member of the Institute of Public Affairs which is a right wing, corporate funded think tank based in Melbourne. The IPA is funded primarily by major mining companies and the oil and gas industry (Esso Australia a division of Exxon and Shell). The IPA has affiliations with think tanks in the U.S.A, Canada, UK and Asia. It has a particularly close relationship with the American Enterprise Institute which has received millions in funding from Exxon.

Tim Harris, the author of the article, is part of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP) which has Tim Ball as its chairman. Tim Ball is a member of the Calgary based "Friends of Science" which was founded in 2002 by retired oil patchers and is believed to obtain most if not all of its funding from the oil and gas industry.

Tim Patterson is on the Friends of Science scientific advisory board as well as the NRSP. He also gave a talk at a Tech Central Station event which is believed to have received nearly 100,000 dollars from Exxon in 2003, although Tim Patterson was never paid for that speaking engagement.

The Canada Free Press has also been criticized in the past for jumping at conspiracy theories.

http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title= ... ip_Project
http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title= ... of_Science
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bob_Carter
http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tim_Patterson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Free_Press

[2R]

At least we should be able to run away from those slow moving glaciers when the next ice age hits next tues at 11 utc

Unless they are Enormous glaciers with big teeth

The only Suzuki i liked was the 500 and the mudplugger bikes that they put out for offroad.


Hey do you thunk that Esso will give me a free tank of gas for posting my disbelief at global warming ????Ok how about a hat then ???

[the_professor]

So all my scientists are funded by oil and gas interests, and all yours are funded by government agencies who are left-leaning enviro-whackos? I guess one thing they all have in common is that they need to arrive at results that support their funding and grants. Who can blame them?

If we can clean up some pollution, great. Just don't ask me to change my standard of living based on the conjecture and scenarios of what is suddenly the new vogue in both science and public opinion.

[Glen Quagmire]

You have to know what you are reading is the point. Had you quoted someone without ties to oil and gas I would have been all ears. Saying that all other scientists (thousands and thousands) are funded by left leaning wackos is a bit too close to the fringe for confort. Come back here to the middle where the normies hang out so we can keep the dialogue going.

[the_professor]

You have to know what you are reading is the point. Had you quoted someone without ties to oil and gas I would have been all ears. Saying that all other scientists (thousands and thousands) are funded by left leaning wackos is a bit too close to the fringe for confort. Come back here to the middle where the normies hang out so we can keep the dialogue going.

I don't know if Tim Ball is one of your approved scientists, but here are some things he has to say:

"If you look at Environment Canada’s website right now they do 0–3 months, 3–6 months forecasts. Click up any of their own analyses of their previous forecasts using computer models for a smaller area and you will see that in 90% of the country they are less than 50% accurate. In other words, it is less than chance, yet these are the same people who quite blindly with a computer model tell you that it is going to be warmer a hundred years from now. The fact is that the computer models don’t work. The fact is that we don’t understand even a fraction of the mechanisms of climate and so for anybody to tell you that they can forecast climate is wrong."
http://www.fcpp.org/main/publication_de ... ?PubID=864

"If our civilization stopped producing carbon dioxide entirely, this would result in a net reduction of six gigatons per year to the atmosphere. This amount is so small in comparison with that produced by nature that it is less than the uncertain-ty in the measurement of carbon dioxide that is transferred in and out of the oceans or the soil and forests each year."
http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/INGLES-2/KyotoFlaw.html

[Glen Quagmire]

Tim Ball is a charlatan. Anything he postulates is highly suspect considering his close ties with big oil. It has been 14 years since Tim Ball has written a peer reviewed scientific paper.

Ball has even made the outrageous argument that climate change and global warming would be good for us. "A warmer Canada would improve our lives in these and other ways too numerous to list. Global warming? Let's hope so," he wrote in June 2006.

Ball has been identified as a Canadian climate change skeptic who is a "scientific advisor" to the oil industry-backed organization, Friends of Science. Ball is a member of the Board of Research Advisors of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a Canadian think tank.

http://www.charlesmontgomery.ca/mrcool.html
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tim_Ball

Here is a link to the only study done on scientific consensus for climate change. Amazingly none of the 928 papers reviewed argued against human influence on climate change.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/f ... /5702/1686

By the way I am not some hippie tree hugger or alarmist that cares infinitely about climate change. I find it fascinating that so many people can be so misinformed, considering the ready access we all have to information. Ever more intriguing is the fact that people hold fast to their conjectures even though all the evidence might point in another direction. Is it pride? Too hard to admit maybe you are wrong. Anyway I don't really get it.

[2R]

There are going to be a lot of broken ankles when the sheep start jumping off the global warming bandwagon and trying to get with the next fashionable theory from the socialist elitist think tanks of the sorbine.

I cannot waiy for the wide ties and white suits to come back into fashion.

[the_professor]

Tim Ball is a charlatan. Anything he postulates is highly suspect considering his close ties with big oil. It has been 14 years since Tim Ball has written a peer reviewed scientific paper.

Yawn. I bought gas yesterday. Does this mean I am a supporter of big oil too? I guess I'll just have Google "scientist AND NOT big oil AND peer reviewed AND Glen Quagmire approves" and see what I come up with.

Too hard to admit maybe you are wrong. Anyway I don't really get it.

Yesterday, Environment Canada's climatologists predicted that the next three months will be colder than normal. It's based on their "model", of course. I'm pretty sure EC is not funded by big oil, although I'm sure you'll probably go and dig up some random link somewhere that will prove otherwise.

Anyhow, let's come back at the beginning of May and see just how accurate their prediction was, using the beloved computer model. We'll see if their forecast turns out to be "worse than chance". Odds are it will, because nobody has yet developed accurate and reliable weather models.

Why the climate change models are suddenly being used as gospel has no basis in reality, and chances are the weather we actually see between now and May vs. Environment's forecast will likely demonstrate that.

[Glen Quagmire]

Yawn. I bought gas yesterday. Does this mean I am a supporter of big oil too? I guess I'll just have Google "scientist AND NOT big oil AND peer reviewed AND Glen Quagmire approves" and see what I come up with.

Your argument mirrors something a hard liner would say, or a five year old. Tim Ball working for a big oil funded think tank is quite different from you buying gas. Have you ever heard of a conflict of interest? It' like basing your stance against evolution based on research conducted at Liberty University.

You keep going with your Environment Canada predicting the weather angle, which is deeply flawed reasoning. In any event I am done posting reality because I can see it won't help. Unfortunately for you guys with so much scientific consensus on the matter you have become the fringe, similar to the minority that believes cigarettes aren't bad for you. There were scientists making those claims too. When faced with the unreasonable the only defense is ridicule.

Here is a link to an online dictionary. Perhaps you might need to look up words like consensus, science, research and charlatan. The last being a perfect definition for many of you skeptics and your beloved Tim Ball.

http://dictionary.reference.com/

[the_professor]

You keep going with your Environment Canada predicting the weather angle, which is deeply flawed reasoning.

If you read my post, you would have seen that I was not talking about a two-day forecast. The three month temperature "scenario" was developed by EC climatologists, not meteorologists. This was specifically noted on the broadcast I watched by the meteorologist who made the comment. She specifcally made a note that she was not a climatologist, but was merely announcing their results.

You ignore the fact that both short-term weather prediction and long-term climate change both rely on the input of variables to come up with a result. As the variables becomes less reliable and concrete, the accuracy of the model necessarily decreases.

Anybody can guess at how high CO2 levels will be in twenty years, or where land use will be at, or how big or small the glaciers will be . But unless you have divine foresight, the accuracy of those predictions cannot be verified, and thus the models merely present a possible range of scenarios, and nothing more. If that's enough for you to hang your hat on, then good for you.

But man and science have screwed up way too many predictions and theories in the past for us to blindly charge ahead without questioning climate change science.

[2R]

These Scientist's cannot accuratly predict six balls bouncing around forty nine .What chance do they have of predicting the future of this rock hurtling in the cosmos and all the factors and variables associated with that ???

If The Socialist Republic of India and The Communist Chinese are not commited to Kyoto Why would the West listen to the socialist think tanks and self-destruct it"s military industries ???

[the_professor]

These Scientist's cannot accuratly predict six balls bouncing around forty nine .What chance do they have of predicting the future of this rock hurtling in the cosmos and all the factors and variables associated with that ???

Scientific climate models are crap. That is why nobody can say with any degree of certainty what will happen in 100 years:

2006 was supposed to be one of the worst hurricane seasons ever, remember? The sky was falling after Katrina, and the evils of global warming were upon us.

The models were used to predict a very active season:

Klotzbach's team issued its first extended-range forecast for the 2006 season, predicting a well above-average season (17 named storms, 9 hurricanes, 5 of Category 3 or higher).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Atlan ... ane_season

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED? Glen`s beloved scientists screwed up, again:

"This is the first year that there have been no landfalling hurricanes along the U.S. coastline since 2001, and this is only the 11th year since 1945 that there have been no U.S. landfalling hurricanes," said Gray, of Colorado State University.

This contrasts with last year's record season of 27 named storms and 15 hurricanes, seven of them intense. Among the deadly storms to pummel the United States last year was Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged New Orleans and parts of the US Gulf coast.

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/hurrica ... nds_x.html

Oh, but wait. With a longer time frame, and fewer concrete variables, we should put blind faith ahead of logic and just accept IPCC theories developed using flawed models. Anything contrary is obviously only being promoted by `the fringe`and big oil.

[Glen Quagmire]

Boring

Your arguments prove you know nothing of what climate change is really all about, and more improtantly what it is based on. Your source of information is most likely the editorial section of the Calgary Sun

2R you contribute nothing to this conversation. That's all I have for you, a well placed insult.

[the_professor]

Boring

Your arguments prove you know nothing of what climate change is really all about, and more improtantly what it is based on. Your source of information is most likely the editorial section of the Calgary Sun

2R you contribute nothing to this conversation. That's all I have for you, a well placed insult.

I quote sources that call the general consensus into question, and you do the opposite. Therefore you "know" what climate change is about, and I don't?

I am a climate change skeptic, while you have bought in head-first. However, neither of our positions can be positively verified inside the next 5 or 6 generations of people on this planet, and even then it will only be an indication of a trend during cycles that last tens of thousands of years.

Thirty years ago Pluto was a planet, until the scientific definition and interpretations changed. Thirty years ago scientists were calling for an ice age, and now they say it's all about warming.

What I do know is this -- when it drops to -40 overnight, as it has recently, instead of putting on a sweater I have turned up my house's thermostat. Oh, and I've left my car running every time I've run into Tim's for the last ten days. My "carbon footprint" (the newest nauseating term to come online) doesn't matter for @#$!-all when China is operating 21,000 coal mines, and India is running hundreds of thousands of smoking mopeds around their cities.

My individual actions will have no discernable impact on the state of the atmosphere, and I'm not going to start acting any differently simply because the majority of scientists say they have detected minute changes in what is an ever-changing atmosphere to begin with.

[shimmydampner]

That's because people on both sides don't realize the difference between climate and weather. And those that do, like to blur the lines and cloud the difference to support their own theories. It works in favour for both sides, depending on how you skew it.

[2R]

Down to insults already there glen ???

I guess i better agree with you then as i would not want to go to the next stage.

I am old enough that i can wear what i want .Without any fear of being told that it is not the fashion. For me it does not matter what the latest clothing style is.The same goes for MY opinions .They are mine. I am not regurgitating somebodies opinion to look trendy. So if you want to quote what some scientist said then go ahead.They have been wrong before .They have proven that they are not infalliable.My scientist is bigger than your scientist sounds like that old my daddy is bigger than your daddy that we used to hear at school.Yes it is boring but only because you insist your sources are correct.
When you learn to think for yourself ,perhaps you will see the futility in believing everything that you read.

Ps i seldom read the editorials in the calgary sun as the sunshine girls have more interesting opinions

[Hedley]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WEATHER/02/07/c ... index.html

CHARLESTON, West Virginia (AP) -- Blowing snow and intense cold blamed for 11 deaths across the country ... temperatures have been at their lowest in more than a decade.

Now, which eager child here will contact the families of those eleven dead people, and lecture them about the dangers of the global warming problem?

[the_professor]

I can see Glen's response already.... It'll go something like this:

"Blah blah you don't understand blah blah blah Big Oil blah blah blah Big Oil blah blah blah my scientists are credible because I said so, and yours are not credible because I said so blah blah blah"



http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/

[the_professor]

Climate change models are pure horseshit. 30 different models analyzed cannot even mirror the temperature increases we have seen during the past century, where we have hard data that can be cross-checked. So when Al Gore stops talking about how he invented the Internet and moves on to telling us all that the sea is going to rise 20 feet, take some pause.

But give him credit, he did get his Nobel prize nomination this week. (who says Big Oil are the only selfish climate theory proponents?) From a Wall Street Journal editorial:


"There are substantial differences in climate models--some 30 of them looked at by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--but the Climate Science study concludes that "computer models consistently project a rise in temperatures over the past century that is more than twice as high as the measured increase." The National Center for Atmospheric Research's prediction of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warming is more accurate. In short, the world is not warming as much as environmentalists think it is."

"Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans concluded that 'global warming appears to play a minor role in changes to Arctic sea ice.'"

Finally come the polar bears--a species thought by global warming proponents to be seriously at risk from the increasing temperature. According to the World Wildlife Fund, among the distinct polar bear populations, two are growing--and in areas where temperatures have risen; ten are stable; and two are decreasing. But those two are in areas such as Baffin Bay where air temperatures have actually fallen.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnist ... =110008416[/b]

[corporate joe]

Global warming caused by humans is as widely accepted amongst all scientists over the world as is the roundness of the earth. What varies amongst these scientists is not if it is bad, but rather how bad.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/f ... /5702/1686

Climate change does not mean everywhere in the world gets warmer. It means the AVERAGE temperature gets warmer. One who still does understand that should not even be debating (or posting opinions for that matter), he should be informing himself.

Those who do not act to reduce global warming will be spoken of in tomorrow’s history books as irresponsible (to say the least). Future generations will read of these people who still had the choice to act, but rather chose to deny, and they will wonder who these idiots were and why they risked (or ruined depending on how optimistic you are)everyone's future in the process.
Don’t waste your breath Glen, you will notice that it is always the same small group of individuals on these forums who spew the same nonsense, and who have the same simplistic views on many subjects. These people are not interested in reason. The entire scientific community has reached a consensus, there are thousands of pages of studies all over the world yet these people have “arguments” to deny what is in front of them and is undeniable. Would you waste your time reasoning with someone who is telling you the earth is smaller than the moon? No, you wouldn’t because it is such an obvious fact acknowledged by all that no one in their right mind still denies it.
No matter what you say, no matter what you do these people will not change their “mind”.

[Dust Devil]

http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFoss ... _ages.html