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notehead
Citizen
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 1807
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 10:50 am: | 
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The number of "scientists" and "studies" that suggest man is not significantly contributing to global warming, or that there is just not enough evidence to make solid conclusions, or that global warming is not a very significant problem, is probably around 5% or less.
Statements that the human role in global warming is unconfirmed or dubious are simply not true. Our own EPA acknowledges that global warming is a serious problem and that human activities play a significant role.
Wake up and smell the carbon dioxide, folks.
From www.epa.gov ...
What's Known for Certain?
Scientists know for certain that human activities are changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide (CO2 ), in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times have been well documented. There is no doubt this atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities.
It's well accepted by scientists that greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere and tend to warm the planet. By increasing the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, human activities are strengthening Earth's natural greenhouse effect. The key greenhouse gases emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries.
A warming trend of about 1°F has been recorded since the late 19th century. Warming has occurred in both the northern and southern hemispheres, and over the oceans. Confirmation of 20th-century global warming is further substantiated by melting glaciers, decreased snow cover in the northern hemisphere and even warming below ground.
What's Likely but not Certain?
Figuring out to what extent the human-induced accumulation of greenhouse gases since pre-industrial times is responsible for the global warming trend is not easy. This is because other factors, both natural and human, affect our planet's temperature. Scientific understanding of these other factors – most notably natural climatic variations, changes in the sun's energy, and the cooling effects of pollutant aerosols – remains incomplete.
Nevertheless, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated there was a "discernible" human influence on climate; and that the observed warming trend is "unlikely to be entirely natural in origin." In the most recent Third Assessment Report (2001), IPCC wrote "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."
In short, scientists think rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are contributing to global warming, as would be expected; but to what extent is difficult to determine at the present time.
As atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases continue to rise, scientists estimate average global temperatures will continue to rise as a result. By how much and how fast remain uncertain. IPCC projects further global warming of 2.2-10°F (1.4-5.8°C) by the year 2100. This range results from uncertainties in greenhouse gas emissions, the possible cooling effects of atmospheric particles such as sulfates, and the climate's response to changes in the atmosphere. |
Michael Janay
Citizen
Username: Childprotect
Post Number: 1389
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 12:54 pm: |
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Note,
That section of the EPA's Site was created under Carol Browner. She was the most unscientific and useless head of the EPA ever.
I have read the EPA's global warming site, and even though it is Browner era propaganda, it still comes to the "We don't know" conclusion.
The number of "scientists" and "studies" that suggest man is not significantly contributing to global warming, or that there is just not enough evidence to make solid conclusions, or that global warming is not a very significant problem, is probably around 5% or less.
Sorry, Wrong.
At best its 60-40 believing in Global Warming. When you get in to peer reviewed and agreed upon, the ratio shifts to the other side. Actually, so far as I know, there is not one peer reviewed report on global warming that shows a causative link to CO2. Not one. That should tell you something.
The NRDC and GWA and the like put out tons of reports, they are the loudest, but that doesn't make them the majority. Usually their reports are based on flawed data, flawed models, or just speculation (which can't be peer reviewed, because its just opinion).
The funny thing is how the NRDC trots out its "Nobel Laureates" to make its points. Google NRDC nobel laureate and see how many times they have made statements on behalf of something or another. Many of these esteemed scientists have nothing to do with the subject they are commenting on. In fact, almost none of them have any noted expertise in any of the particular public policy issues (including global warming) on which they criticize the Bush administration. Their views on public policy issues, in fact, are often no more informed than those held among the general public. So there is little meaning in highlighting the views of Nobel laureates.
The fact that a scientist can map the human genome doesn't make him any more knowlegable on Global warming than you or I... in fact, since he is so dedicated to his field, he is probably less so.
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Robert Livingston
Citizen
Username: Rob_livingston
Post Number: 600
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 1:01 pm: |
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Yeah, nobel winners are all a bunch of useless dumbasses...
Wrong again, Janay.
These nobel laureates weren't weren't speaking specifically about scientific topics they may or may not know anything about. They were speaking about Bush's attitude toward science. They criticize Bush for allowing the coal and oil industries, for example, to dictate environmental policies rather than a team of top scientists.
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Michael Janay
Citizen
Username: Childprotect
Post Number: 1391
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 1:10 pm: |
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Yeah, in that letter from the Kerry campaign...
No agenda there.
One day, you'll grow up, and you'll laugh at how silly you were in your youth.
Until then, keep posting, I need the laughs. |
Robert Livingston
Citizen
Username: Rob_livingston
Post Number: 601
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 1:16 pm: |
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Janay: It must be tough being right all the time. You ever get the feeling there's a reason no one wants to engage you in debate... |
Michael Janay
Citizen
Username: Childprotect
Post Number: 1393
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 1:21 pm: |
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Robert, Robert, Robert,
I'm not right all the time, not even close.
It just must seem that I'm always right to you, because you are always wrong.
Like I said, when you grow up, you'll laugh at the ridiculous things you used to say and do. But for now, I get to. |
Robert Livingston
Citizen
Username: Rob_livingston
Post Number: 602
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 1:23 pm: |
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Janay: what you don't know can fill an empty WMD warehouse... |
Michael Janay
Citizen
Username: Childprotect
Post Number: 1394
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 1:25 pm: |
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Ooooooh, I'm mortally skewered by your razor sharp wit!
The Pain, The agony! |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 2910
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Friday, December 17, 2004 - 11:08 am: |
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Besides hating the website, I know many will hate the quotes by the Greenies too.
http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=\SpecialReports\archive\200412\SPE20041217a.html |
notehead
Citizen
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 1818
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 20, 2004 - 11:16 am: |
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Guess what, folks? In the face of federal inaction, a number of states, including NJ, are taking their own Kyoto-like steps to reduce greenhouse emissions and perhaps get involved in "carbon trading".
check it out |
Dave
Moderator
Username: Dave
Post Number: 4775
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Monday, December 20, 2004 - 12:16 pm: |
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Good site for debunking climate myths
http://www.realclimate.org/
quote:RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science.
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Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 904
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Monday, December 20, 2004 - 1:02 pm: |
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who gives a damn what a bunch of scientists think?
I get my scientific information from politicians and talk radio.
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Straw's world
Citizen
Username: Strawberry
Post Number: 4161
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 20, 2004 - 1:04 pm: |
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It's 14 degrees today  |
Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 905
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Monday, December 20, 2004 - 1:23 pm: |
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that joke wasn't funny when you used it last winter, either.
work on getting some new material. will ya? |
sportsnut
Citizen
Username: Sportsnut
Post Number: 1650
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 20, 2004 - 2:48 pm: |
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I watched an interesting show on the effects of "Global Warming" on the Sci-fi channel over the weekend. The scientists on the show reached consensus on the fact that global warming was happening but a few interesting tidbits:
There was no consensus on how or why it was happening.
There was no consensus on the impacts of global warming. One theory discussed the impacts of the "conveyor" known as the gulf stream shutting down. It was very interesting. It predicted that all of western Europe being plunged into severe winter.
All of which leads me to believe that no one knows what is going to happen or if we humans have a material impact on the environment. There were mud & ice samples taken from the ocean floor and the Greenland ice cap that seemed to indicate that he Earth had gone through similar cycles before (due to the amount of methane found in the samples.)
We can't even forecast what the weather is going to be like two days from now with any certainty and it is funny to see people clinging to prognostications of global doom and gloom hundreds of years from now.
All in all it was still an interesting show. |
Dave
Moderator
Username: Dave
Post Number: 4778
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Monday, December 20, 2004 - 3:02 pm: |
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Well, it may have been interesting, but the conclusion is incorrect, according to RealClimate.org:
quote:
Is there really “consensus” in the scientific community on the reality of anthropogenic climate change? As N. Oreskes points out in a recent article in Science, that is itself a question that can be addressed scientificially. Oreskes took a sampling of 928 articles on climate change, selected objectively (using the key phrase “climate change") from the published peer-reviewed scientific literature. Oreskes concluded that of those articles (about 75% of them) that deal with the question at all, 100% (all of them) support the consensus view that a significant fraction of recent climate change is due to human activities. Of course, there are undoubtedly some articles that have been published in the peer-reviewed literature that disagree with this position and that Oreskes’s survey missed, but the fact that her sample didn’t find them indicates that the number of them is very very small. One could debate whether overwhelming consensus is adequate grounds for action on climate change, but there are no grounds for debating whether such consensus actually exists.
link |
notehead
Citizen
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 1819
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 20, 2004 - 3:07 pm: |
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Apples and oranges, sportsnut.
Nobody is trying to say whether it will be "chilly, with patchy fog" on a particular day in 2104, just as nobody is trying to determine if it was "windy, with a high of 73" on a particular day in 1004.
The question is what will weather conditions be like generally, compared to now. |
notehead
Citizen
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 1820
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 20, 2004 - 3:10 pm: |
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Thanks for that link and excerpt, Dave. That will save me a lot of typing! 
Then again, people will still believe what they want to believe. |
Mark Fuhrman
Citizen
Username: Mfpark
Post Number: 1000
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 20, 2004 - 3:19 pm: |
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The web site Dave linked to above is also very interesting. Most scientists on it (or linked by it) agree that the isotope of CO2 linked with human activity has increased dramatically since the industrial age began. But there is so far no confirmed evidence of this causing climate warming. The evidence comes from models, which by nature require assumptions on mechanics that can be right, wrong, or somewhere inbetween.
My take, for what it is worth, is that we have to think in terms of probability. There is a good probability that CO2 is somehow correlated with climate impact. If we start reducing our production of CO2 waste now, we can phase in the impact on the economy. Added bonuses will be less reliance on foreign oil and cleaner air--we get these bonuses whether the models are correct or not. There will be some negative feedback--nuclear waste, if we go that way; redirection of employment in energy sectors. Better to plan for these now than be forced into them IF the models are correct.
Michael Janay may be right. But he is putting all his eggs in one basket. The cost of being wrong and following his path is ruinous. Assigning some value to the probability that the models on global warming are right means that we should start reducing CO2 output NOW while continuing to test for causality. Later, if the models turn out to be wrong, we can always go back to using fossile fuels as we do now. But if the models are more right than wrong and we do not change our behavior, the result is unchangable.
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notehead
Citizen
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 1821
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 20, 2004 - 4:13 pm: |
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A fundamental point of the causality argument is that the increase in atmospheric CO2 corresponds with the increase in human production of CO2.
As for reducing our petroleum usage, it is just a number of decades before we will have NO choice in the matter -- especially with the massive development going on in China, with India not far behind. Putting any and all climate considerations aside, doesn't it make sense to wean ourselves away from petroleum before we are down to the last 10 or 20 years of obtainable supply? The money we spend now will save a lot more money and grief down the road. Such a process will take decades, therefore we are behooved to get started. Or should we saddle our children with the entirety of this problem AND the country's massive debt? |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 2927
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Monday, December 20, 2004 - 4:13 pm: |
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Road to hydrogen cars may not be so clean
Environmental peril in making, containing fuel
Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
Monday, December 20, 2004
* Printable Version
* Email This Article
Auto-industry ads depict hydrogen cars as the vehicular route to clean, blue skies.
President Bush and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are among their biggest champions.
The politicians' enthusiasm for the technology -- a leading proposal to solve global warming -- is shared by many scientists.
But reality could prove more complex, some critics say. Among the problems detailed at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco last week:
-- Hydrogen is a very "leaky" gas that could escape from cars and hydrogen plants into the atmosphere. This could set off chemical transformations that generate greenhouse gases that contribute to atmospheric warming.
-- The extraction of hydrogen for cars from methane, which is currently the richest available source of hydrogen, will generate carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.
-- Hydrogen can also be extracted from ordinary water via a process called electrolysis. However, using current technology, mass electrolysis of water would require intense sources of energy. If those energy sources burn fossil fuels, they, too, would generate greenhouse gases.
These problems are not necessarily showstoppers, and they may be overcome by future technical innovations. In any event, many scientists believe the environmental problems posed by hydrogen cars may prove to be less severe than the problems generated by today's fossil-fuel-dependent cars.
But given such issues, some experts are cautioning that much more research is needed before the nation prematurely commits itself to developing the "hydrogen economy."
"I'm supportive of research and development, but we are at least two decades away from (deploying) the vehicles on a mass level," said MIT-educated physicist Joseph J. Romm, a former U.S. Department of Energy official, in an interview. Romm's book, "The Hype About Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate," was published earlier this year by Island Press.
"Americans are very much believers in technology and optimism, and yet when you look at the compelling details" about hydrogen cars, Romm said, "it doesn't make bloody much sense."
Economically, hydrogen devices remain highly unattractive: "Fuel cells are very expensive," Romm said. "The demonstration vehicles all cost hundreds of thousands of dollars."
Atmospheric scientists, meanwhile, are trying to figure out how Earth's atmosphere would be affected by leaked hydrogen from cars, hydrogen gas stations, delivery trucks and hydrogen production plants. Unfortunately, the politicians aren't necessarily getting the best scientific advice on the atmospheric issue, said Professor Michael J. Prather of UC Irvine at the geophysics conference on the atmospheric impact of hydrogen cars.
A 2004 National Academy of Sciences report on "The Hydrogen Economy" was prepared by "economists and engineers, remarkably lacking any atmospheric scientist or biogeochemists who understand the natural (atmospheric) cycle of H2," said Prather, a professor of Earth system science and former editor-in- chief of Geophysical Research Letters. "It is surprising that all of these groups examining a hydrogen economy are secure in the belief that H2 is a pure fuel, safe and harmless to the environment," although studies suggest otherwise.
One problem is that hydrogen leaked into the atmosphere binds with oxygen molecules, forming water vapor and clouds. A change in cloud abundance in some regions might alter the local temperature and climate -- for example, the climate might warm if the clouds trap heat like blankets, or the climate might cool if they reflect sunlight back into space.
"The widespread use of hydrogen fuel cells ... would cause stratospheric cooling, enhancement of the heterogeneous chemistry that destroys ozone, an increase in noctilucent clouds, and changes in tropospheric (lower-atmosphere) chemistry and atmosphere-biosphere interactions," scientists from Caltech and Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena proposed in the journal Science in 2003. Noctilucent clouds are eerie high-altitude clouds whose abundance, some scientists suspect, is influenced by climate change.
Despite the uncertainties about the climatic impact of a hydrogen economy, Prather added sardonically, "The promise of a clean, hydrogen-fueled transportation sector has been waved in front of the nation by the current administration, the governor of California and the technologists."
And even though optimists say hydrogen will be generated via electrolysis without producing greenhouse gases, the reality is that the oil companies are gearing up to generate it from methane -- and the most famous greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, forms as an unintended byproduct of the methane-treatment process.
Prather cited Shell Oil's online "Answer Man" page, where a customer asked where the hydrogen for hydrogen cars will come from. The Web site's answer: methane. Kenneth S. Deffeyes, a Princeton University geoscientist and former Shell Oil Co. engineer and author "Beyond Oil," to be published in March by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, also has concerns about hydrogen production.
Although a Shell-pioneered hydrogen filling station in Iceland looks attractive because of its environmental cleanliness, Deffeyes said, Americans need to remember that the much-publicized station is powered by hydroelectric and geothermal electricity, neither of which produces greenhouse gases, "because all the electric power in Iceland is hydroelectric and geothermal."
The National Academy of Sciences report, issued in February and chaired by a retired executive vice president of Exxon/Mobil's research arm, did sound a cautionary note that in a hydrogen economy, "reductions in annual carbon emissions could be achieved ... but ... they would vary greatly depending, for example, on whether hydrogen fuel was generated from fossil fuel resources ... or ... whether electrolysis was used and powered by renewable energy sources, among other factors and choices," the report said.
Skeptics also point out that because of the hydrogen molecule's small size and volatility, it is an extremely leak-prone gas that must be closely monitored.
Scientists must learn the "potential leak points" -- the ways in which hydrogen can leak from cars, plants and other sources -- before there is a major shift to a hydrogen economy, Catherine G. Padro of Los Alamos National Laboratory said at the same geophysics session. Scientists, she said, "do not want a repeat of CFCs," or chlorofluorocarbons, the industrial pollutants that started the destruction of part of Earth's atmospheric ozone, which shields us from cancer-causing solar radiation.
But other scientists say that even if hydrogen leakage generates a small amount of global warming, that would be a relatively minor problem compared with the advantages of switching from a fossil fuel-based transportation system to a system fueled by hydrogen.
If such a mass switchover to methane-derived hydrogen occurred, the nation's total emission of greenhouse gases could decline between 10 and 50 percent, according to studies by MIT and Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, Anthony Eggert, associate director for research in the "Hydrogen Pathways" program at UC Davis, said in an interview.
Eggert calls himself a "realistic optimist" about hydrogen cars. On the one hand, he said, "The vehicle itself is not something that you could afford to buy today because the components within the fuel cell system are still very expensive." Also, it wouldn't travel as far on a single "tank" as today's cars: "You'd have to fill up maybe once every 150 to 180 miles."
On the other hand, Eggert said, "The automakers are making incredible progress in reducing costs and increasing reliability and durability."
One problem, skeptics say, is that a switchover to a hydrogen economy may not occur smoothly enough to avoid making environmental troubles in the interim.
"What we cannot do," Deffeyes writes, "is get the electricity (for hydrogen generation) from an existing dirty coal-fired electrical power plant and claim that the environmental bookkeeping begins only after we buy the electricity."
"If (electrolytic) hydrogen is to be an environmental success, expanding the electrical-generating system necessary to produce it has to be an environmental success," too, he said -- which means looking to hydroelectric and geothermal power, as in Iceland, or solar, wind and nuclear power.
The nation's invisible breezes may yet provide a solution.
The United States has enough wind energy -- which produces zero greenhouse gases -- to electrolytically generate enough hydrogen to support the nation's entire vehicular fleet, said atmospheric scientist Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford at the geophysics session.
Jacobson showed conference attendees a graphic that pinpointed windy places across the United States -- not just in Northern California but also in the Midwest and along the Atlantic coastline -- that could support electrolysis for hydrogen-gas fuel plants.
"There's lots of wind out there," he said. |
Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 906
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Monday, December 20, 2004 - 4:17 pm: |
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I'd like to see the naysayers PROVE to me that reducing CO2 emissions will have a negative impact on the economy. Plenty of experts disagree, claiming the investments in cleaner, more efficient technologies will actually benefit the economy in general. All the predictions of economic gloom and doom, but where's the PROOF?
Where are the peer-reviewed economic analyses that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that adopting the Kyoto protocols will be a calamity for the economy? It's just a lot of Chicken Littles, running around predicting disaster, when there isn't even any consensus on that point. |
notehead
Citizen
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 1822
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 20, 2004 - 4:40 pm: |
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cjc - very interesting article. The more we look into hydrogen, the more questions and issues turn up.
I expect that technical issues can and will be solved. Unless cold fusion solutions suddenly appear, we gotta come up with something!
Dr. - you get Post Of The Day, in my book. |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 2933
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - 1:05 pm: |
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There's always nuclear energy to power electrolysis for hydrogen. Will Greens allow it? Maybe it's the one thing the French got right. |
Mark Fuhrman
Citizen
Username: Mfpark
Post Number: 1006
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - 8:16 am: |
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Doc: The silence in response to your great question is deafening!
As I said above, I can see ways that reducing C02 dependency will help the economy. New technology will spring up, which often starts with smaller producers (which create lots of jobs)--kind of like the way the computer age happened. Powered by the amazing American marketing machine, the technology will rapidly spread through the world. |
Michael Janay
Citizen
Username: Childprotect
Post Number: 1412
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - 1:18 pm: |
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Try reading this article about the "consensus". Its written by Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg15n2g.html
As for economics,
The Energy Information Administration, the official forecasting arm of the Department of Energy, predicts meeting the Kyoto greenhouse gas limits would:
* Increase gasoline prices by 52 percent and electricity prices by 86 percent.
* Decrease Gross Domestic Product by 4.2 percent.
* Reduce personal disposable income by 2.5 percent.
In addition, economist Stephen Brown of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank compared the estimated costs and benefits in terms of reduced human and environmental harm caused by global warming if the U.S. met its Kyoto commitments. Brown found:
* For the United States, marginal cost equals marginal benefit at about 14 percent of the CO2 reduction required by the Kyoto accord.
* Thus Kyoto requires about seven times more CO2 reduction by the United States than is cost-justified.
* Under pessimistic assumptions, compliance with Kyoto would reduce U.S. GDP by from 3.6 percent to 5.1 percent, representing a loss of $1,105 to $1,565 per person, per year by 2010.
* Under the most optimistic assumptions, compliance with the Kyoto accord would reduce U.S. GDP by from 3 percent to 4.3 percent, representing a loss of $921 to $1,320 per person, per year by 2010.
Finally, emission reductions under Kyoto will have at best a negligible effect on global warming because developing countries are not obligated to cut their emissions -- and developing countries produce nearly half of all greenhouse gases.
Then there's this http://www.api.org/globalclimate/wefanatimpacts.htm
Under the direction of Dr. Mary Novak, a team of economists from WEFA, Inc. has prepared a detailed analysis of the national economic, industry and energy sector impacts of the Kyoto Protocol plan to reduce carbon emissions to 7% below 1990 level by the year 2010.
This study, entitled "Global Warming: The High Cost of the Kyoto Protocol," concludes that achieving the Kyoto target through domestic actions would:
Nearly double energy and electricity prices, and raise gasoline prices an additional 65 cents per gallon.
Cost 2.4 million US jobs and reduce US total output $300 billion (1992$) annually, 3.2% below baseline GDP projections, an amount greater than the total expenditure on primary and secondary education.
Harm U.S. competitiveness, as developing countries will not need to raise energy prices (or product prices) to meet mandatory greenhouse gas targets.
Reduce the average annual household income by nearly $2700, at a time when the cost of all goods, particularly food and basic necessities, would rise sharply.
State tax revenues would be reduced by $93.1 billion due to job and output losses attributed to lost US competitiveness in the global market and higher energy costs
Then there's this...
Implementation of the Kyoto Protocol will dramatically cut economic growth, Andrei Illarionov, the chief economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said in Melbourne yesterday.
Dr Illarionov said the overwhelming opinion among Russian scientists was that global warming was nonsense, but political considerations had impelled Russia to sign Kyoto.
Unlike global warming fanaticists, which claim that there is a threat that is unproven, economists understand the ACTUAL costs proposed for possible benefite not proven. Those ACTUAL costs will hurt the economy. I don't think it would be as bad as many predict, but it is money wasted for nothing.
I would be all for Kyoto if there was one shread of causative proof that:
A) The warming being observed is in fact human caused
B) CO2 in the atmosphere is the culprit.
There isn't.
I'm willing to leave aside the fact that 1 degree of warming is not any kind of catastrophe, or that the models predicting warming are routinely found to be flawed (over and over the projections are lowered even as CO2 goes up... explain that one). I just want one shread of solid proof that CO2 going from 275 parts per billion to 355 parts per billion makes any difference in global temperatures.
I'm really not asking for much, am I?
I'm all for energy independence too... but that is a different topic altogether. I'm against pollution, but thats also a different topic. I'm all for fuel effieciency (but not government mandates), also a different topic.
All I'm saying is that before decrying that the planet needs to be saved, we should have proof that its really in trouble. |
notehead
Supporter
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 1830
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - 2:21 pm: |
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MJ, looking over the studies you mention, none of them take into consideration the existing costs of subsidizing the fossil fuel industries or the considerable health care costs incurred by the country as a result of burning fossil fuels. I don't have any published figures at hand, but I think those costs come to tens of billions.
Also, I am puzzled by some of the stuff Lindzen says -- I mean, he refers to carbon dioxide as a "minor greenhouse gas" when it is the major gas in contention. In general, he seems to think that the scientists making gloomy predictions about the likelihood of, and probable consequences of, increased c02 emissions are somehow not privy to his own knowledge of the subject.
As the link that Dave posted on RealClimate points out, studies about the consensus on climate change itself indicate that only a tiny percentage of climate scientists do not believe that there is a serious global warming problem with human causes. |
Michael Janay
Citizen
Username: Childprotect
Post Number: 1413
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - 3:14 pm: |
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Note,
CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas because less than 2% of the atmospheric greenhouse gases is CO2. Thats pretty minor. Then when you add in that less than 30% of that 2% is man made, it becomes very minor. He doesn't believe that scientists are not privy to his knowelege, but that they ignore it to further their own agendas and to receive more funding for their departments.
How are fossil fuel industries subsidized? They are taxed at tremendous rates, and forced to follow regulations that add billions of dollars of costs to their bottom line. They may get cheap drilling rights on federal land, but thats because the taxes on the gas, oil, etc will be huge revenues for the government.
As for health care costs, if you want to get in to the esoteric, fine, but that once again has nothing to do with global warming. Pollution is bad, I'm all for curbing it. Asthma and other breathing diseases would drop, and thats great, and a great arguement with scientific proof to back it up. But that has nothing to do with CO2 and global warming.
And Lindzen devotes a whole section to the "consensus" issue, but he sums up well with this:
Why, one might wonder, is there such insistence on scientific unanimity on the warming issue? After all, unanimity in science is virtually nonexistent on far less complex matters. Unanimity on an issue as uncertain as "global warming'' would be surprising and suspicious. Moreover, why are the opinions of scientists sought regardless of their field of expertise? Biologists and physicians are rarely asked to endorse some theory in high energy physics. Apparently, when one comes to "global warming,'' any scientist's agreement will do.
The answer almost certainly lies in politics. For example, at the Earth Summit in Rio, attempts were made to negotiate international carbon emission agreements. The potential costs and implications of such agreements are likely to be profound for both industrial and developing countries. Under the circumstances, it would be very risky for politicians to undertake such agreements unless scientists "insisted.'' Nevertheless, the situation is probably a good deal more complicated than that example suggests.
or
One might think that such growing skepticism would have some influence on public debate, but the insistence on "scientific unanimity'' continues unabated. At times, that insistence takes some very strange forms. Over a year ago, Robert White, former head of the U.S. Weather Bureau and currently president of the National Academy of Engineering, wrote an article for Scientific American that pointed out that the questionable scientific basis for global warming predictions was totally inadequate to justify any costly actions. He did state that if one were to insist on doing something, one should only do things that one would do even if there were no warming threat. Immediately after that article appeared, Tom Wicker, a New York Times columnist and a confidant of Sen. Gore, wrote a piece in which he stated that White had called for immediate action on "global warming.'' My own experiences have been similar. In an article in Audubon Stephen Schneider states that I have "conceded that some warming now appears inevitable.'' Differences between expectations of unmeasurable changes of a few tenths of a degree and warming of several degrees are conveniently ignored. Karen White in a lengthy and laudatory article on James Hansen that appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine reported that even I agreed that there would be warming, having "reluctantly offered an estimate of 1.2 degrees.'' That was, of course, untrue.
Another great quote is that back in the early 90's the group began to circulate a petition urging recognition of global warming as potentially the great danger to mankind. Most recipients who did not sign were solicited at least twice more. The petition was eventually signed by 700 scientists including a great many members of the National Academy of Sciences and Nobel laureates. Only about three or four of the signers, however, had any involvement in climatology.
Again, if the consensus is that virtually all scientists believe this, there should be at least one shread of causitave proof.} |
notehead
Supporter
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 1831
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - 3:38 pm: |
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No one can deny that politics -- not to mention the simple human desire to conform -- can influence even a scientist's position. They're only human, even though we tend to hold them to a higher standard (as they do, themselves).
Also, the manipulation of data or quotes by journalists on both sides of the issue is often found to be subject to some agenda, which is a huge disservice to laypeople like ourselves who just want an accurate understanding of what is going on.
Just for kicks, I asked the contributors to RealClimate.org what they thought about the Lindzen piece -- I'll post any substantive comments that they make. |
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