Bush Administration concedes that there is anthropogenic climate change

[BasketCase]

@Samson: Scroll up to my 3rd post ago and check out that link from nationancenter.org; then go down one post and check out http://www.reason.com/rb/rb111004.shtml and you've got two instances of people who got the shaft from bad reporting.

I see both of those happening fairly often, and not just in fringe publications. I've seen CNN do that. The fact is, the people who did the nationalcenter.com study said very clearly that they were not certain that mankind was the primary cause of global warming:

"The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes are also a reflection of natural variability."

Somebody misquoted them.

The one from reason.com is the one I find most disturbing; there are scientists out there who claim they're being ignored or intimidated into silence for posing dissenting theories. If you disagree with a theory, then by all means disagree with it, and say so, and post your reasons why--but you have no right to pillory somebody just for disagreeing with you.

That kind of behavior has no place in science. A while back, people were getting laughed at (or their lives threatened) for raising crazy ideas such as that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe. Well, guess what? The heretics, in many such cases, were right.

My point was just to get across the idea that there are a whole lot of dissenting ideas out there. In the last global warming thread, I came up with the idea that the Earth's weakening magnetic field may be THE number one factor in global warming (although later I discovered I wasn't the first to come up with that idea--what a bummer, no research dollars for me).

Nobody in the previous thread was able to debunk it. Doesn't mean it's true, but nobody was able to prove it false, either.

Edit: And, the other reason I posted that big pile of links was because somebody in here wanted evidence, so I decided to go nuts. There's lots out there. Not that it'll ever convince anybody--when two studies disagree, people take the study they want to believe at face value, and call it a debunkage upon the other one. Which is kinda bogus.

 

[carlosMM]

Carlos, give it up.

Why should I - I want from you the evidence for your bolded claim.

Again you do not give it.......

sounds like you're a liar or you are unwilling to admit you were wrong. EWither way that#s bad manners and a lost debate.

so, can we now get anything proper about the supposed reductions?

 

[carlosMM]

Edit: And, the other reason I posted that big pile of links was because somebody in here wanted evidence, so I decided to go nuts.

Wow, so instead of bringing it you flood us with stuff that is not relevant?

Please, you wrote:
we.
Already.
Have.

Bring proof ON THAT ISSUE now.

 

[BasketCase]

American law is public. Wouldn't have been much trouble to jump on the web and go take a peek.

U.S. Gas Mileage standards

Under the current system, passenger cars must meet an average of 27.5 mpg, a number largely unchanged since 1985.

See? Yes, that last big change was a while back, but it was a big one (my current car gets almost twice the mileage as the average American set of wheels in 1985), and there have been several smaller ones since.

Rude is when you automatically assume I'm lying about things when I simply hadn't gotten around to them.

 

[bigfatron]

That's quite interesting - I didn't known this standard existed.

Whether 29mpg is aggresive or relaxed really depends on how the measure is taken - do you know is it a constant 55mph or is it simulated urban, or the combined measure?

If the former then it is very weak (it's hard to find a car in Europe other than a true high-performance sports model that gets under 30mpg on a 55mph run), if the figure is simulated urban then it seems quite tough to me.

If it is combined then it is still on the weak side - for instance a 3.2l Merc E Class estate will match the average, you have to get up to the 5l models to significantly underperform. A more 'normal' car, such as a Ford Focus 1.6l hits 42mpg for a petrol engine and 60mpg for the diesel (combined cycle in both cases).

Presumably this is enforced on the manufacturers/importers, to ensure their mix of sales meets this average? Interesting system, but unless the measure is on urban consumption it is pretty flabby as a control. If it is on constant 55mph it is so weak as to be almost meaningless.

 

[BasketCase]

I don't know how the standard is applied, but I've seen some pretty serious improvement over my lifetime.

The car I'm driving right now gets around 24 MPG in mixed conditions. That's half again better than my last car, an 8-cylinder '83 Buick LeSabre, and almost twice as good as the first three cars my family owned in the seventies.

 

[Samson]

I don't know how the standard is applied, but I've seen some pretty serious improvement over my lifetime.

The car I'm driving right now gets around 24 MPG in mixed conditions. That's half again better than my last car, an 8-cylinder '83 Buick LeSabre, and almost twice as good as the first three cars my family owned in the seventies.

Yeah, but despite all that US CO2 equivalent output is still going up every year. How does that make you cleaning up?

 

[bigfatron]

I don't know how the standard is applied, but I've seen some pretty serious improvement over my lifetime.

The car I'm driving right now gets around 24 MPG in mixed conditions. That's half again better than my last car, an 8-cylinder '83 Buick LeSabre, and almost twice as good as the first three cars my family owned in the seventies.

But 24mpg in mixed conditions is pretty awful - as the figures I quoted showed, even a high performance, large luxury car gets better than that. Do people really need pulling power above a top of the range Merc?! It's kind of hard to believe.....

Relying on "it's better than twenty years ago" as an excuse is not really going to wash if the performance is still hopelessly inadequate, especially if the alternatives are already out there, varied and proven.

So, it seems there are some very easy things that the US could do to reduce climate emissions that would have virtually no effect on either living conditions of ordinary Americans or the national economy - which blows a major hole in the Bush theory of why action on climate change isn't feasible.

Seems it is not a case of 'can't' but 'won't'.....

 

[BasketCase]

By "Merc", did you mean this car? 2005 Mercedes Benz E-Class

EPA Fuel Economy: City: 14 – 27 Highway: 20 – 37

I looked up the Ford Focus on the same site: City: 22 – 26 Highway: 31 – 34

My car, on the same site: City: 18 – 20 Highway: 27 – 30.

I obtained 24 MPG in actual use by running the trip odometer over the course of a tank, and then looking at the gas receipt on my next refill to see how much gas had actually been used. At a completely random guess, I'd say that's for somewhere between 50% city driving and 75% city driving. Since this wasn't done with either the Beemer or the Focus, the comparison is a little dicey.

The "high-performance" Merc clearly doesn't do significantly better than my car, and while mine falls behind the Focus some, there's no way you can call mine "awful".

And that's when you compare my six-year-old car against current models.

If you still think my car is a smokestack, well, take heart: I'm only putting around 6000 miles a year on it. I'm spewing well below my fair share of CO2.

But enough about me. Cars such as the Focus, which get better mileage than mine, are already available in U.S. markets. We got on the ball a long time ago, and started raising the standards. And the cars that have been in U.S. markets in recent years have been surpassing the standards. So it's not a case of "can't"--and it's also not a case of "won't". It's a case of "already did".

 

[BasketCase]

Yeah, but despite all that US CO2 equivalent output is still going up every year. How does that make you cleaning up?

I've found several web sites that say our CO2 emissions have been going down over the course of Bush Jr.'s term.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. In any case, the picture is a lot bigger than just CO2.

 

[Samson]

I've found several web sites that say our CO2 emissions have been going down over the course of Bush Jr.'s term.

Go on then, give us the links. Mine definatly showed the CO2 equivalent emmisions going up every year up to 2003.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. In any case, the picture is a lot bigger than just CO2.

Indeed, that is why I said "CO2 equivalent", that is what all the figures I gave use. I think CO2 is a vast majority of it however.

 

[BasketCase]

http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=555

The Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported on July 1 that U.S. carbon dioxide emissions decreased by 1.1 percent in 2001.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/gg02rpt/carbon.html

Total emissions of carbon dioxide in the United States and its territories were 1,578.7 million metric tons carbon equivalent in 2001, 18.2 million metric tons carbon equivalent (1.1 percent) less than the 2000 total (Table 4). The decrease in emissions from 2000 to 2001 was the first since 1991

Somewhere out there, there was a web site with a graph on it, that showed U.S. carbon dioxide emissions going down for four years running, starting in 2001. Haven't found that one yet, but I find it suspect; that site claims the World Trade Center attacks were the source of the dip. Several sites have claimed that 9/11 caused a dip in CO2 emissions, but I find it hard to believe that a single attack (with an attendant economic slump that only lasted about a year) would cause a decrease in emissions for four years.

The short rule is--I never make a claim unless I know I can substantiate it.

Besides, now that I've posted those links, chances are you still don't believe me anyway.

 

[Samson]

The short rule is--I never make a claim unless I know I can substantiate it.

Besides, now that I've posted those links, chances are you still don't believe me anyway.

Thanks for those links. Unfortunatly they do not link to source material, but they basicly agree with mine (minor differences) so I can belive them (mine includes links to source material, even if I have not read it).

So, CO2 alone went down from 2000 to 2001. A large part of this is reduced air travel. Every other year they have gone up (relative to the previous year).

Total aggregate anthropogenic emissions of CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs and SF6 expressed as CO2 equivalent (so CH4, 25 times more powerfull at global warming, gets its value multiplied by 25) have gone up year on year.

Do you still maintain you are cleaning up?

Here are the relavent bits of the tables, hope they work in code format

From Here;

Total aggregate anthropogenic emissions of CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs and SF6, 1990
and 1997–2003, including emissions/removals from land use, land-use change and forestry

              1990      1997      1998      1999      2000      2001      2002      2003      % change
United States 5,046,059 5,747,512 5,838,752 5,926,125 6,130,768 5,980,065 6,031,568 6,072,181 20

Total anthropogenic CO2 emissions, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry,
1990 and 1997–2003

United States 5 009 552 5 579 984 5 607 159 5 677 970 5 858 201 5 744 782 5 796 757 5 841 504 17

 

[BasketCase]

Do you still maintain you are cleaning up?

Yep. 10 chars.

 

[Phlegmak]

There is no such thing as global warming. You are just imagining things.

Video

 

[FriendlyFire]

That kind of behavior has no place in science. A while back, people were getting laughed at (or their lives threatened) for raising crazy ideas such as that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe. Well, guess what? The heretics, in many such cases, were right.

PSST Basketcase the Greeks discovered the world was round it was eristotole (?) who mathamatically calculated the circumferance of the world. And prior to that it was very likely the mayans with there advanced astonomical sciences.

 

[Urederra]

So, it seems there are some very easy things that the US could do to reduce climate emissions that would have virtually no effect on either living conditions of ordinary Americans or the national economy - which blows a major hole in the Bush theory of why action on climate change isn't feasible.

What is climate emisions?

 

[Phlegmak]

PSST Basketcase the Greeks discovered the world was round it was eristotole (?) who mathamatically calculated the circumferance of the world. And prior to that it was very likely the mayans with there advanced astonomical sciences.

Well, if you want to bring up all that, then the world went backwards technologically for a while. Too bad that's impossible in Civ.

 

[cgannon64]

I'm guessing that someone in here must be arguing that climate change isn't happening, since this thread reached ten pages.

I'll ask them: Person, do you argue that the greenhouse effect is theoretically impossible?

 

[Urederra]

I'm guessing that someone in here must be arguing that climate change isn't happening, since this thread reached ten pages.

I haven't followed the thread very thoroughly either, not much spare time lately, but I think nobody argues about the non-existence of climate change. Actually, it is very difficult to maintain that, climate is always different every year. That is why the wine produced by a particular wineyard is different every year and it always has been that way.

Anthropogenic is a key word in this thread

I believe the discussion is about the theoretical efficacy of the Kyoto protocol and how is possible that pollution from developed countries (meaning US) has an effect on climate and therefore has to be controlled (and if it could actually be controlled) whereas polution from non developed countries (meaning China, India, Mexico...) doesn't have to be controlled.

I'll ask them: Person, do you argue that the greenhouse effect is theoretically impossible?

I'll answer: No, the greenhouse effect is not theoretically impossible. And I would add that it is a proven effect.

Now it is my turn to make questions.

Do you know all the causes that govern the climate on Earth?

Can you prove quantitatively how big the greenhouse effect is? Can you say that the greenhouse effect produced by anthropogenic gases accounts for 90 % of the actual climate change? Are you sure that is not the 10 %?

Because if it is 10 % of the climate change, then, why should destroy our economy by trying to change it? And why only the US economy whereas other countries can pollute at will? Shouldn't we try at least to see what other factors might be controlling the climate?

And, do you know all the effects of a theoretical rise of temperatures on Earth? All of them are bad?

Those are my questions. .