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I answered this before, but you may have missed it. The argument is not about CO2 levels themselves. They aren't harmful (unless they're a whole hell of a lot higher). The argument is about temperature. Increased temperature will melt the icecaps, cause flooding, land erosion, crop failures, and god knows what else.

The CO2 levels aren't the problem. It's the temperature. It's not enough to just show that CO2 levels have increased.



Why not enforce policy to reduce water emissions, or chocolate, or squid populations. They're just as likely to cause problems...

Gbaji, I find it ironic that you're attempting to argue that, because we aren't seeing vastly higher temperatures today, CO2 has no effect on temperature. This is foolish firstly because the sheer scale of the graphs leaves open the possibility that the last 150 years haven't been long enough to result in the change you're saying should have occurred. There's also the fact that, even if CO2 levels and temperature are correlated, that doesn't mean CO2 is the only factor involved - i.e., an X% rise in CO2 levels doesn't mean we should be seeing an X% rise in temperature.

It's hard to take anyone who is so often just totally wrong as gbaji is. And thus it is almost counterproductive to reply. However just for clarification, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and it will warm the Earth. Here is a very simple explanation:

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/greenhouse.html

When gbaji says: "The CO2 levels aren't the problem. It's the temperature. It's not enough to just show that CO2 levels have increased. " he is in effect saying carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas. This is simply wrong.

What gbaji could say is that the amounts of carbon dioxide humans have put don't have the power to change the global temperature much. He almost says this when he says: "The argument is not about CO2 levels themselves. They aren't harmful (unless they're a whole hell of a lot higher)."

But in saying so, he indicates that current human emitted levels of CO2 have not increased global temperature at all (or a negligible amount). This is very, very unlikely to turn out to be true. There is simply no way to account for current global temperatures without human activities. With them it makes sense. Yes, this is based on computer simulations. They are complicated. That is why it is essential that many, many different groups with totally different programs achieve similar results.

And they have.

All climate skeptics need to do is find one credible model which actually accounts for temperatures without recourse to human activities. As we have discussed extensively in this forum in the past, many of these have occurred: such as solar activity. They don't work. Many others have tried.

But you actually have to do the math. It is very complicated and there is a chance due to a kind of groupthink that all models are wrong. You will never get certainty.

Instead of fixating on a single graph, to argue for or against the science, you'll probably have to actually read it:

https://www.up.ethz.ch/education/biogeochem_cycles/reading_list/cox_etal_nat_00.pdf

for example. First one that came up for me that is well written, you might have access to and addresses what we're talking about.

Next, what gbaji is (poorly) trying to point out is that there is not an immediate 1-1 correlation between increasing CO2 and temperature. Thus the recent spike in CO2 did not create a relatively equal size spike in temperature. Thus we should conclude either (A) there are other factors and/or (B) the effects of CO2 are delayed in temperature and/or (C) the correlation is not 1-1, or perhaps varies at high levels of CO2. In fact, all 3 are well known. The models handle them well and in various models, they all come out about the same. The time scale for the delay is about 50 years.

Instead gbaji says that there is NO SIGNIFICANT EFFECT ON TEMPERATURE.

This is so naive, I can't really reply. Except I will note it could have been true.

The game gbaji is playing is that he doesn't know anything. If you give him that graph, alone, as your data, he can say it doesn't prove it. He hasn't heard of the greenhouse effect or what greenhouse gases are. You have to teach him all that. And about all the climate models. If it serves his purpose, he doesn't know what a computer is unless you tell him about it - even though he's typing on one. And even the dictionary is no barrier to him: even if two phrases such as "in addition to" and "above and beyond" are listed as synonymous, he can distinguish them. You can't talk sense into him - that isn't part of his game. There is no common background of sense (such as, perhaps, a dictionary) to which you can fall back to. No common ground. Nothing exists unless you prove it to him and he can state anything, however absurd, without proof.

Despite the generally nonsensical nature of his game, it occasionally rises to the level of quality at which it might confuse someone.

I'm sure the world does seem insane when you know nothing about how it works.

Um... The Greenhouse Gas effect is about the increase of temperature caused by high concentrations of greenhouse gases. It has nothing to do with whether the gases themselves will poison us, clog our arteries, make us fat, drive us crazy, blind us, or what have you.

It's about the temperature. The entire reason to reduce CO2 levels is to theoretically prevent future temperature increase. What did you think is was about?



Actually, what I was hinting at there is that really high concentrations of CO2 will cause asphyxia in humans. Not because the gas is poisonous, but because we can't actually breathe it. Too much CO2 means there's too little O2 and Nitrogen, which is what we need. CO2 is bad for us in more or less the same way that water is. We can't breathe it. That's really it.

Oh. But plants do breathe CO2 and produce Oxygen (which we need). So CO2 is important to have in the air...



Really? No way at all? How about you look at Ash's temperature graph. See how the end point of the temperature graph is *not* significantly higher than other similar points in the past? See how it's not even higher than it was just a few thousand years ago? Notice that the temperature trend has been downward for the last 8 thousand years or so?

Clearly, temperatures have been higher than they are now in the past. So I'm not sure how you justify your statement. Why do you assume that something which has happened at regular intervals for as long as we can record temperatures is somehow unexplainable?




What accounted for the temperature peaks in the graph before?

Don't you think the burden of proof ought to be on the guys insisting that we spend ridiculous sums of money dealing with a problem which may not be a problem at all? I don't have to explain why temperatures go up and down over time. I need only show that they have done so since long before the industrial revolution. Thus, it's silly to argue that the temperature changes going on right now *must* be because of modern man's activities.

You're predicating your argument on assumptions that are just plain false. Not only have temperatures been this high before, they have been higher. The reality is that we're seeing incredibly minor and normal temperature variation within a larger pattern which is also holding as "normal".



The models do not handle them well. They predict things which have not happened and show now sign of happening. The models have been twisted and bent over backwards to fit historical data while allowing for the assumed future effect of increased CO2 levels on temperature. And every year that goes by, as the actual temperatures don't match the models, it becomes increasingly obvious to everyone that the models are at least partially, if not wholly wrong.

Also. It's not just about correlation. You have to consider causation. It is abundantly obvious that temperature causes changes in CO2 levels, not the other way around. I could explain this at length, but there are a thousand sites out there that can quickly and easily fill you in. And it's funny that most global warming supporters just plain ignore this fact. Strange, given that it's the core of the whole thing. If the historical correlation is to be assumed to be relevant, then it has to show temperature following CO2. Your own statement above assumes this. You claim that it just hasn't been enough time, and the increased CO2 levels *will* cause higher temperatures to match in the near future.

But there's no reason to expect this. There are numerous other gases which follow the same correlation to temperature as CO2. If it were just two things correlating, the causation could be argued to go either way. But when you have three or more things, and one is temperature and the others are gas concentration, it has to be the temperature which causes the changes in gas concentration. All the complex computer models in the world shouldn't counter what any halfway competent chemist can tell you about the certain cause here.




You're still assuming that current temperatures are unusual in the long term. You're going backwards. Starting with that assumption and then grasping for a conveniently placed explanation. The assumption is wrong. The explanation is therefore unnecessary.




I'm quite positive I have known about greenhouse gas theory long before you'd ever heard of it. It's something which has been discussed in science fiction circles since I was a kid. Please don't project your assumptions on me.

Greenhouse gas effects don't just magically occur or not occur. They are present all the time. By some estimates, the Earth is currently about 20 degrees F hotter than it would be if greenhouse gases were not in effect. Good thing, huh?

However, the impact of any single change of quantity of a greenhouse gas on temperatures is very minimal. Doubly so when we're looking at a gas like CO2, which is one of the least significant greenhouse gases. Methane is much more relevant to greenhouse gas effect. But then, methane hasn't increased at the same high rate that CO2 has, so it's harder to convince people of a crises...


Of course, neither have temperatures, but that's just kinda being ignored.


Personal attacks are pretty pointless IMO. If you can express why we should all adopt the global warming assumption, then do so. If you can't, then maybe it's not me who doesn't understand the issue?

The way I understand it, no one has ever said that the temperature of the world would never increase if we humans weren't mucking things up. Pretty much everyone knows that the planet has gone through highs and lows and will continue to do so. What most people are saying is that humans are hurrying a natural concept along a lot faster than it would normally occur.

Were we dealing with any sort of rational person, sure. But instead we're dealing with YOU. Therefore, we can more accurately say that it goes more to make a case for the notion that your criteria for "proof" are unreasonably slanted toward things which confirm your pre-existing beliefs and are subject to change at any given moment, depending on how desperate you are to appear "right."

Because of this, there is no reasonable expectation of your ever conceding that anything has been "proven" to your satisfaction, but the fact that you fail to do so is in no way dependent on whether or not the evidence is valid.



Edited, Dec 3rd 2009 11:04pm by Ambrya

Yeah, why be responsible and think about ways of reducing our impact when multinational corporations need more money? It's a mean liberal conspiracy against those sweet, altruistic corporations. Environmentalists have so much more power.

It boggles my mind that someone with zero expertise in the field can so adamantly deny the validity of the research done on climate change.

NASA is a liberal conspiracy. The Earth is the center of the Universe, the sun rotates around it.

Well assuming that temperature is a fairly complex system, we should be in a cooling period, and so if CO2 does increase temperature, then we should probably see a slower rate of decrease then normal, or a leveling off rather then a discreet warming. That's still relative warming though. It's completely irrelevant, that graph really doesn't let us say anything about the last 50 years, I don't know why you'd try to read that into it. The graphs he linked only show a broad relationship over many many years. Which was all anyone aside from maybe Gbaji was saying.

Certainly, and due to the nature and complexity of the idea, no graph would adequately show us something with the last mere fifty years (or it would be really, really hard let's say,) because of the ludicrously large time-frame in which it is set. To ignore that quite obvious complexity with the excuse of skepticism is understandably shortsighted but still quite shortsighted indeed.

It's reasonable to assume, if we have also already assumed that the correlation is true, and we have also exhausted alternate means to explain a correlation due to some mutual causal factor, that, over similarly ludicrously large periods of time, human increases in Co2 will produce an effect in temperature. It would not be reasonable to expect that the trend would respond quickly.

This reminds me of what my father used to tell me about flossing. It's really difficult to tell people to floss every day when they will only reap the benefits 50 years from now.

Ignoring a potential problem like that, though, produces potentially bad effects in a long run so long that most people simply won't care about it, because no matter how much people like to think of the childrens, we often don't give a sh*t. Skepticism about whether or not such an effect will really occur is just obfuscating the more insidious total lack of care about human progress; that skepticism it allows one to simultaneously divorce one's self from the possibility that humans will actually still be living 500 years from now, and allow one's self to sleep at night, willfully ignorant of one's own lack of humanity.

Well, that should be polemical enough for the day.

Edited, Dec 4th 2009 12:13pm by Pensive