Tuesday, May 29, 2007

It's Been Soooooo Long

So much to catch up on but let's start with all that needs to be said about Global Warming....
1) Nancy Pelosi has "seen" it in Greenland. [I hope this is just a political move. Because if she is actually believing this God help us all!]
2) Where she flew in her private jet and helicopter.
3) And the Greenlanders say they love it because it's been good for buisness.
4) Oh and there's the teen I work with who gets nervous with summer coming because they don't know how hot it might get. Yeah, I felt that way about nuclear war as a teen. EXCEPT THAT WAS A REAL POSSIBILITY!!!!!!

We have become complete idiots! I just can't take it any longer. I hope it's true and happens fast.

11 comments:

Zimmerfly said...

Global Warming!!!! Global Warming!!!! I've got to find a new planet to live on before we all cook. I think I'm going to go to Mars. Shoot, Mars is suffering global warming to. Maybe I will go to Saturn. Crap, there's global warming there too. Ok, I'm going to Uranus. Dang it. Uranus is warming to. I can't beleive humans have screwed all of those planets up with all are carbon. Oh well I just better prepare to die.

James said...

YAY BAZ IS BACK!

Hey when are you going to come out for a visit? You can meet my friend Norm Miller who works in the building across from me at Berkeley Lab. He is an climate scientist! There are a lot of anxious people around California's Central Valley who are interested in his data tracking the continuing disappearance of fresh water from their farms, and it's projection over the next few decades as the Sierra Nevada snowpacks make their final retreat.

Thankfully all caused by Demoncrats with hairdryers melting the snow and messing with the scientific instruments because they make sooooo much money off of their Global Warming lies that can't and haven't been verified by independent researchers all over the planet.

Barry said...

No problem with climate change. I'd expect it. But, it is not human caused in any way shape or form. The human caused part is a purely political power and money play.
And a few years does not a pattern make.

Zimmerfly said...

"lot of anxious people around California's Central Valley"

Heck isn't everyone in California in a consent state of anxiousness? They don't know how to live unless they feel like the world is going to end one way or the other and they are the ones who can save it if only people would listen to there idea's that make no logical sense.

James said...

BAZ: No problem with climate change. I'd expect it. But, it is not human caused in any way shape or form. The human caused part is a purely political power and money play. And a few years does not a pattern make.

I'm intrigued. So you'll agree that things are getting warmer on average? We don't have to say by how much or what the cause is, I'm just trying to understand. i.e. the melting polar caps, the receding glaciers, the mountainous snow packs vanishing... you don't deny these things are happening? Ok. I'm with you.

It seems you are saying these may be part of a larger natural cycle, that man has nothing to do with...

So I guess I ask... what about the CARBON in the atmosphere? You seem to accept the scientific data about the indicators I list above (ice, temp, water, etc.), but do you accept that there is more carbon in the atmosphere than ever before? Because there seems to be pretty solid evidence that it really is present in the atmosphere (in the form of carbon dioxide, methane, etc. etc.) and that it didn't used to be there.

I need to know if you this is accurate or not because if you don't believe it's there, then maybe I can provide 20 or 100 links to data on this. If you do believe it's there but it's not an abnormal amount, then maybe I can provide another page full of links on the various ways historical atmospheric carbon has been measured and verified all over the planet. Hopefully, you will accept that the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is an unprecedented levels as far back as we can detect. If you don't accept this fact, I would be interested in seeing your data.

If you believe that the carbon is there, and it is an unusual amount, then I guess maybe you don't believe that it acts powerfully as a green-house gas. To which I produce a bunch of link showing corellations between atmospheric carbon and global average temperatures. True, this doesn't guarantee CAUSALITY... but if increasing atmospheric always occurs with rising global average temperatures, that's sufficient information to avoid increasing atmospheric carbon.

So I think you at least have to be at the point where you will accept that there is a lot more carbon in the atmosphere than has ever been there. So do you not accept that carbon is a green house gas? Do you not accept that atmospheric carbon affects temperature? If that is your point we can check out the evidence on that.

If you don't dispute that atmostpheric carbon is indicative of temperature, then the question is where does it come from? If not from man... where? Volcanoes? Some yet to be determined natural source?

Or do you maintain the current warming has nothing to do with carbon? Just a natural cycle, maybe some kind of solar waxing and waning?

I'm just trying to follow.

Barry said...

I said global climate change not global warming.
You just as well point to the average record low temps around the globe this winter and teh freak blizzards going on now in the US and was it Argentina?
My point is this. I don't believe anyone has enough reliable info to say what the carbon levels were in the past. I don't believe in a purely naturalistic view of earth science with billions of years and no accounting for a massive worldwide flood and massive sudden climate change in the "recent" (in an evolutionary mindset) past.
There are a few things I do know: volcanoes can release more carbon than we can, the sun has more effect on temps throughout the solar system based on natural cycles than humans, that history records similar warming (and cooling) trends before we could produce big amounts of carbon, that not "all" scientist go for human caused global warming as we are constantly told, that 20 years ago these same scientist said we'd all be wiped out by an ice age by now, that there is absolutely no need for panic on the issue (we're all dead in 10 years anyone?)except for gaining political power (global warming is the opiate of the people?), that there is no proof even if there is warming that we could do anything about it, that Americans are not the main/only source of the problem or solution (if there was a real threat), that you can't prove human caused global warming by visiting Greenland, that there is a money trail a million miles long in the global warming religion, and that the main proponents (Al Gore in paticular) sure don't live like the believe their own talk (which really makes it a religion!).

"And just to keep this going:
True, this doesn't guarantee CAUSALITY... but if increasing atmospheric always occurs with rising global average temperatures, that's sufficient information to avoid increasing atmospheric carbon."
So you agree there is no proof of casuality AND how exactly do we know it ALWAYS occurs if the problem is caused by modern humans? When else did this occur to show it ALWAYS happens? What caused it at these other times?

James I'm so sad you have become so Californized :) Oh, and didn't Norm Miller have his own sitcom for a while? It was great. I loved when someone asked his alcholic character if he was still drinking and he replied "No", and they said, "That's exactly what an alcholic would say!". Good show.

Barry said...

Some interesting Norm Miller quotes:
"In the best-case scenario it's still going to warm up. Even if there are decreasing emissions, it's still going to warm up."
Really? I thought decreasing emissions was the solution?

"It's those type of behavioral adaptations that will help us get through some of this, but mostly it will be technological advances."
What? It's not behavior but good old fashinoned ingenuity that will help things? All I'm hearing is change your behavior.

"There's been 150 years of climate record keeping."
Out of billions of years? Gonna be hard to spot a pattern here.

Barry said...

Here's an article that talks about the main point I think on climate change: Who's to say it's a problem?
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3229696&page=1

James said...

quick post while I having a cup of coffee regarding your Miller quotes:

Some interesting Norm Miller quotes:
"In the best-case scenario it's still going to warm up. Even if there are decreasing emissions, it's still going to warm up."
Really? I thought decreasing emissions was the solution?


Norm wasn't offering a "solution". He presented data showing drought and increased number of heat waves correlated with atmospheric carbon content. His study was to evaluate carbon emission standards proposed by legislature. He is a climate modeler who runs simulations of highly complex atmospheric environments. In the quote you refer to, he ran several sets of numbers... the high end where we continue increasing the amount of carbon we release into the atmosphere each year, and on the low end, where we reduce that amount by some percentage over time (knowing that we can't feasibly halt it). In a nutshell, things will continue to get hotter no matter what. It's just that things will be WORSE in the "more carbon" scenario. One example was how much snowpack would be left in the Sierra Nevadas in 2100. In the "more carbon" situation, we <15% of the snowpack was left in 2100. In the other, we were hovering around 50%. In the low end, we end up having like 4 weeks of "heat waves" during the summer months. In the high carbon situation, the entire summer becomes one lone heat wave.

So our choices effect outcomes, but there is not silver bullet. The interesting thing about Norm's findings were that we can just 'turn off the faucet'. There is already too much carbon (1) in the atmosphere, and (2) that is going to be released in the coming years, even if we restrict the release legislatively (which seems unlikely).


"It's those type of behavioral adaptations that will help us get through some of this, but mostly it will be technological advances."
What? It's not behavior but good old fashinoned ingenuity that will help things? All I'm hearing is change your behavior.


Again, I think Norm's point is about "velocity" and "acceleration". Right now, we are accelerating. Having the gas pedal down halfway to the floor instead of all the way down doesn't mean you go slower. Even if we take our foot off the gas, we are still going 100 mph. It's going to take time to slow the car. Norm's comment about "technology" over "behavioral adaptation" means that we don't really have a "brake" (to remove carbon out of the atmosphere) and even if we had one, we can't "freeze" the economic engine of humanity. We need technological solutions including clean energy and carbon sequestering, etc. etc. I don't think he's implying we shouldn't try not to waste energy or that we shouldn't try to legislate environmental/atmospheric protections.

"There's been 150 years of climate record keeping."
Out of billions of years? Gonna be hard to spot a pattern here.


He specifically means "record keeping" by humans in a reasonable amount of scientific detail. Of course we have non-human records (tree rings, soil samples, ice cores, trapped atmospheric gases from various time periods underground and in amber, etc. etc). There are a lot of ways to understand the atmospheric make up historically.

James said...

typo:

The interesting thing about Norm's findings were that we can just 'turn off the faucet'.

Er... naturally I meant:

We can't just turn off the faucet.

Too much carbon is already present.

Barry said...

Looks like the "discussion" move ahead a day or two.