Global warming and environmental catastrophe: science or myth?

[GenMarshall]

@Civgeneral
BOO!

Oh yeah, you really know how to win an arguement.

You know that is considered trolling .

Hey civgeneral, don't look for traffic before you cross the street, the danger of being hit by a car is just a crossing guard scare tactics.

That is not a scare tactic, its common sense .

 

[TruePurple]

@CG (facetious argument time)How is that common sense? Plenty of people have crossed streets without looking and have not been hit by cars.

The cross guards just want to keep their jobs, so along with the police who want more money via jay walking tickets etc thought up this scam where they spread this propaganda about the dangerous of crossing the street without looking for traffic. The mountains of evidence that show its dangerous is just part of their propaganda.

<--That argument is just as reasonable as your absurdly simplified "argument" of "Global Warming is just a scare tactic by environmentalists" And by making such a negative & broad statement about a large group of people without a scrap of anything to back it up is trolling.

Global warming is not a scare tactic, its observed fact backed by mountains of evidence- visible ice lose everywhere as well as land lost by sea levels raising, broad changes in climate and rapid negative changes in ecosystems as well as increased storm volume and veracity, droughts and floods.

Next your going to claim the holocaust was Jewish propaganda.

 

[GenMarshall]

@CG (facetious argument time)How is that common sense? Plenty of people have crossed streets without looking and have not been hit by cars.

It is common sense, and it is not part of some plan the crossing guards couped up.

And by making such a negative & broad statement about a large group of people without a scrap of anything to back it up is trolling.

Its not trolling when I just place my opinions. By insulting my style and opinions, is trolling.

Global warming is not a scare tactic, its observed fact backed by mountains of evidence and visible ice lose everywhere as well as land lost by sea levels raising.

I just beleve that it is just a scare tactic by enviornmentalists because I doubt their evidences.

 

[TruePurple]

You can doubt anything you want, but if your going to doubt the incontrovertible things people have seen directly without a scrap of proof, don't waste our time doing so.

It would have to be a completely illogical and vast conspiracy for so many people who have no connection to each other to report all these rapid changes of ice & coast loss and ecology & weather changes yet all be lying. Its just as reasonable to presume the crossguards have a conspiracy to get people to fear being hit by traffic as it is to assume your global environmentalist conspiracy.

If your going to troll and provide great & absurd claims without a scrape of proof or even a thought argument/reasoning to back up your claim, expect ridicule.

 

[GenMarshall]

You can doubt anything you want, but if your going to doubt the incontrovertible things people have seen directly without a scrap of proof, don't waste our time doing so.

Ever heard of opinions? They dont need proof.

If your going to troll and provide great & absurd claims without a scrape of proof or even a thought argument/reasoning to back up your claim, expect ridicule.

I was not trolling. I only provided my opinion. Certanly, I dont wish to waste time with you .

 

[BasketCase]

@Carlos: Once again I caved in to temptation, and took you off ignore for a minute to see if there was anything interesting. I was mostly disappointed, except for this bit:

Science has, in fact, been proven to be wrong much of the time over the course of history. From ancient times to the present--from the "infinitely divisible nature of matter" theory, through alchemy, spontaneous generation, relativity, black holes, to the present day--cherished theories have been proved wrong again and again, pretty much at complete random.

So show me a theory for which there was a plethora of evidence from a multitude of disciplines, one where prediction and testing where played out a gazillion times over many decades - and that THEN was wrong. Just one!

Einstein's theory of relativity. Practical testing appeared to prove it conclusively--until it was discovered that the theory had problems.

Took me all of like thirty seconds to come up with that. Which is in addition to those others I'd already listed in this thread (but then, most of those were based in theoretical science, so I decided to think up another one that wasn't).

Aristotle didn't really have the tools with which to test the infinite divisibility of matter--but he thought he did. To the best tools science had at the time, matter really DID appear infinitely divisible. Cut a piece of iron in half, and the two halves were both still pieces of iron. Practical testing appeared to support the theory. It was only after science developed better tools that Aristotle was discovered to be wrong.

That science has been wrong repeatedly, is simple fact. To its credit, it's usually science that tries to prove itself wrong.

A theory to compete against the "man-made global warming" theory has already been proposed: the theory that we're seeing a natural temperature spike. The theory is based on verified facts; the planet has had a whole lot of small random spikes, throughout its history. So there is a precedent. The theory is also testable. But it's still being argued, so I'll stop there.

Ignore list is back up to its usual population of one.

 

[Urederra]

I had a very good weekend at the countryside, FYI, birds are still flying around.

Let's see if my question has been answered... ummm.... not. What a pity...

First, just to calm down the situation I am going to quote some people:

pickachu answered you very well so far, but I do take issue with you relying on data that HAS BEEN SHOWN WRONG AND RETRACTED IN THE VERY JOURNAL IT WAS PUBLICHES IN - in this very thread!!!!


see, this VERY THING was hown to be WRONG - did you simply not read the thread ordid you ignore that it is false?

Well, that is completely false, and typing it in caps or bold does not help. The data hasn’t been retracted in the very journal it was published in. (later on this post I will show you a paper that has a corrigendum in the very journal it was published, very related to Ruddiman, BTW. ) So, Who is the one that hasn’t understood what it is written in the thread?

Now, if I take data from a Mars explorer that I DO NOT UNDERSTAND I can also prove whatever I want using statistics. The problem will be that I have no clue whether my question makes sense … … Also, I have seen proven by statistics that earth has a 45 hour day - as usual, as soon as you seperate the numbers from the principle they represent, they are just that - numbers - and you can crunch them any way you want.

As tricky says in his post (the element 115 stuff), there is a lot of trash in the web. You can try to fool us and try to prove whatever you want using statistics, but, sooner or later, you will be caught.


What you posted about Dr. (not Mr. as you said) Lomborg I have seen it many times in many papers. They go after the person, instead of attacking his results. That’s an attack ad hominem. Why Dr. Lomborg is attacked in that way? Because they cannot have anything against the argument the person in question is presenting the argument.

and if you check thqat independent institute he was director for you will find it has a deploring lack of biologists and climatologists, not even a meteorologist. And their job is assessment, that is second-hand data handling. These people have NO PLACE to pretend to have first-hand research results.

I have read his book and he does not pretend to have first-hand research results. He is a professor of statistics, very important issue in science. He says in his book was born when he read an inerview with Julian Simon, from the University of Maryland, where he stated that “much of our traditional knowledge about the environment is simply based on preconceptions and poor statistics and our doomsday conceptions of the environment are not correct” Lomborg, at that time a Greenpeace member and professor of statistics got provoked and tried to prove that Simon was lying. He couldn’t, He used the official statistics and he found that Simon was right. After that, he left Greenpeace. The green mafia.

What Lomborg proves is not difficult to understand. In air pollution, for example, he collected all that official data he found and he put in in graphics. The tables go from lead emissions to SO2, CO or lead concentration in air in countries like UK and USA. Results: Air is less polluted today than in 1950 in those countries. It is not rocket science, you look at the SO2 concentrations nowadays and every year back to 1950 and you’ll see that the concentration of the pollutant was higher 50 years ago.

And it does the same with water pollution, global temperatures, acid rain, life expectancy, food production, etc. All are statistics from official sources, (circa 2900) It is so good that his detractors cannot attack the facts written in the book, so they attack him instead. (When you cannot attack the arguments attack the person who does the argument )

Well, have you ever bothered to actually check who's behind all the n'global warming is nonsense' or 'global warming is natural' claims?

I remember well how Basket Case made a long list of links recently - and ALL went to companies or institutes with direct funding by industries who have an interest in GW not being man's fault. OTOH, even all the big oil companies acknowledge it happenes, and CO2 from fossil fuels is a culprit; thus if there really was research showing that'Äs wrong wouldn't we expect them to trumpet that around?

Conclusion: the constant claims of 'It's not true' are nothing but propaganda. Show me any serious independent research that stands up to close scruntity and casts reasonable doubt on human-caused massive warming in the last 8000 years. Can you?

Nope, you can't. Says it all.

Well, that's why I said in my first post that the argument "corporation propaganda" looks to me like Greenpeace propaganda. Where did you prove that the links that Basket Case posted went to companies or institutes with direct funding by industries who have an interest in GW not being man's fault? And even if that is true, Why did you keep attacking ad hominem instead of attacking the arguments?

( I have just made a quick check for the Basket Case links and where you prove that ALL of them are funded by industries but I could find them )

and BTW, as I said in my first post, I am skeptical about the existence of a global warming period and even more skeptical about that global warming could be caused almost entirely by human factors. I am the skeptical one, you are the one who is sure about that, you are the one who has to prove that there is global warming and it is human driven, not me.

And the Ruddiman paper (it is a mini-review more than a paper) Does not explain what caused the Medieval Warm Period nor the following mini Ice Age. So, more papers please... more proves....


Well, this is getting to long… I will write another post later where I discuss Ruddiman paper and the corrigendum thingy in that post.

 

[Perfection]

Ever heard of opinions? They dont need proof.

"You are a complete and utter jerk of extreme moral repugnance!", say I were to tell you that. Since that is an opinion, would you not be able to contest that claim?

Additionally saying they are lying is not an opinion. That is most definitly making a factual claim.

 

[Urederra]

I have read Ruddiman’s paper, the one Carlos posted. He takes the Crutzen and Stoermer’s definition of the anthropogenic era and tries to link CO2 and CH4 oscillations with human events first and then to temperature changes. He does say something about the Little Ice Age which he thinks is linked to the bubonic plague outbreaks, although he doesn’t explain why this tiny CO2 changes lead to the Little Ice Age. (He reports more plagues than that one, why there was only one Little Ice Age?). He does not mention the Medieval Warm Period, anyway, Maybe because he didn’t find anything to relate to it???

Most part of the article is dedicated to the trace of CO2 levels (and in less extend of CH4) thorough man’s prehistory and history, linking the CO2 peaks and valleys to human events. There is at least one mismatch that he tries to explain, no problems about that The really big issue is, at the end of the article, when he tries to link CO2 levels with temperature records to prove that there is a relation between CO2 levels and global (or rather, northern hemisphere) temperatures. And he uses Michael E. Mann’s Hockey stick graph for it. Mann’s papers showing his famous hockey stick grhap were published in Geophys, Res. Letters and Nature (Mann, Bradley and Hughes Nature, 392, 779-787,
1998) a well known, high impact, peer reviewed journal and they have been used as a proof to validate the Kyoto treaty thing.


The Mann’s Hockey Stick graph records the northern Hemisphere temperatures over the last millennium. And it shows that the temperatures in the last millennium remain quite stable until the last 30 years where they rise dramatically, (I will try to post the graph) The graph does not show the Medieval Warm Period neither the Little Ice Age, but the papers where accepted and they have been used widely, even in the Kyoto protocol.

http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/hockey_stick/mann_hockeystick.jpg

Well, two scientists, McIntyre and McKitrick, (Canadians, the second one is Professor of economics (Reminds of Lomborg??). They received no outside funding for their work, so don’t say it is corporate propaganda, please), tried to reproduce Mann’s graph but they couldn’t. They discovered that the proxys Mann and co. used where wrong and the original paper that Mann published in Nature has been revoked. A corrigendum has been published in Nature. (Nature 430, July 1, 2004 p. 105)

Since Ruddiman’s paper uses Mann’s graph to try to link CO2 levels with temperatures and Mann’s graph has proven to be wrong, Ruddiman’s proof of CO2 to temperatures link is not longer valid.

Other couple of things. Ruddiman is Professor of the University of Virginia, it says so in the paper Carlos posted. Guess who is also professor of the University of Virginia. Yeah, Michael E. Mann. They are Buddies!!!


And the other thing. Carlos took Ruddiman’s paper from www.realclimate.org Guess who is the owner of that site. Michael E. Mann. Oh, It is just too funny.

Uff very late for me. I will read the forum other day, bye.

 

[Mountain-God]

1. Claim all scientist are wrong based on a occasional evidences of error by a few.
2. Amatuer scientist then claim own knowledge and opinion superior to all remaining scientists.

Global warming does not exist and is not caused by humans, say amatuer scientist with little to no real experience, but reading a couple articles.

When challenged on this amatuer scientist say 'you amatuer scientist trying to claim the same thing - that hypocracy - therefore you wrong. I'm still right'.

Oh, the curly trails we leave, and all to justify ego and assumption and predjudice - mmm warm blanket predjudice.

 

[BasketCase]

Random note for ya, Mountain God: a lot of scientists in the past performed their own work, on their own time, with their own materials. Many astronomers needed nothing but a basic telescope and a pencil and paper to work out many astronomical theories which are widely accepted today (such as the explanation of how Mars would occasionally start moving backwards in the sky now and then).

I believe Marie Curie did all of her work out of her own pocketbook as well. Condemned herself to death by radiation poisoning in the process, too.

Edit: Forget global warming--this thread is heading for a meltdown. But then, most threads on this subject do that.

 

[Perfection]

BasketCase, I think you will note the vast difference in the sort of research involved in global climate change and your example.

 

[carlosMM]

Pikachu makes a good point, when searching "global dimming" I found a number of sources that speak of less light reaching earths surface, not more.

actually, recent research shows that better pollution control has changed the trend - was all over the news a few weeks back, btw.

 

[carlosMM]

@Carlos: Once again I caved in to temptation, and took you off ignore for a minute to see if there was anything interesting. I was mostly disappointed, except for this bit:



Einstein's theory of relativity. Practical testing appeared to prove it conclusively--until it was discovered that the theory had problems.

Took me all of like thirty seconds to come up with that. Which is in addition to those others I'd already listed in this thread (but then, most of those were based in theoretical science, so I decided to think up another one that wasn't).

the usual - you do not read my posts - how is Einstein's (still valid, in most aspects) theory a multi-disciplinary approach?

And, please, do show me where it is fundamentally wrong, Mr Einstain jun.

Ignore list is back up to its usual population of one.

Well, you only make yourself look stupid if you keep posting things that have been debunked a few posts above - you're welcome Enjoy your coffee.

 

[Mountain-God]

I believe Marie Curie did all of her work out of her own pocketbook as well. Condemned herself to death by radiation poisoning in the process, too.

Apples and oranges - Marie Curie on the subject of climate change would be lost - given that she could, not only, not be everywhere, but also could not lauch satellites, take 1.5mile long ice-core samples, etc, etc, etc.

Most sciences have progressed far beyond the kind of mole-like fumbling you assert.

 

[carlosMM]

oh man, this is gonna cost time....

Well, that is completely false, and typing it in caps or bold does not help. The data hasn’t been retracted in the very journal it was published in. (later on this post I will show you a paper that has a corrigendum in the very journal it was published, very related to Ruddiman, BTW. ) So, Who is the one that hasn’t understood what it is written in the thread?

your opinion and my interpretation of your posts - if I misunderstood you initially, then we agree - all fine.....

btw, the retraction of the paper I referred to was in Science, too, IIRC.

As tricky says in his post (the element 115 stuff), there is a lot of trash in the web. You can try to fool us and try to prove whatever you want using statistics, but, sooner or later, you will be caught.

exactly my point - statistics (as employed by Mr. Humburg, erhm, Lomberg, need to be examined extremely carefully. So again we agree

What you posted about Dr. (not Mr. as you said)

Does a degree mean he is now castrated?

Lomborg I have seen it many times in many papers. They go after the person, instead of attacking his results. That’s an attack ad hominem. Why Dr. Lomborg is attacked in that way? Because they cannot have anything against the argument the person in question is presenting the argument.

nope, because I can't have a go at his theory as he never published it in ana ccepted form - news articles and a book - great! here are his peer reviewed (and thus easily and free of charge accessible for me) articles?????

I have read his book and he does not pretend to have first-hand research results. He is a professor of statistics, very important issue in science. He says in his book was born when he read an inerview with Julian Simon, from the University of Maryland, where he stated that “much of our traditional knowledge about the environment is simply based on preconceptions and poor statistics and our doomsday conceptions of the environment are not correct” Lomborg, at that time a Greenpeace member and professor of statistics got provoked and tried to prove that Simon was lying. He couldn’t, He used the official statistics and he found that Simon was right. After that, he left Greenpeace. The green mafia.

See, you have fallen into the trap: you call Greenpeace a 'mafia' - do you call GM a mafia, too? Because THEY have been proven to break the law a lot of times. Greenepace doesn't have the cleanest record, but the 'other' side has a far worse one....

and the other thing: a professor of economics tries to use data about which he has no clue (what resolution is attempted and displayed, what resolution is needed to gain emaningfull results and interpretations, do various sources stick to the same standards etc - we'll get to that, later again, with the hockey stock curve and Ruddiman), now he uses this data, which was if I understand correctly published not as a conscises set (and thus prepared properly to fit the same resolutions etc) but as seperate parts, he takes this and finds it is not a concise set - what surprise!!!!!

Now, funny thing - why didn't he publish his findings properly, if they stand up to scruntity????

What Lomborg proves is not difficult to understand. In air pollution, for example, he collected all that official data he found and he put in in graphics. The tables go from lead emissions to SO2, CO or lead concentration in air in countries like UK and USA. Results: Air is less polluted today than in 1950 in those countries. It is not rocket science, you look at the SO2 concentrations nowadays and every year back to 1950 and you’ll see that the concentration of the pollutant was higher 50 years ago.

So?

And it does the same with water pollution, global temperatures, acid rain, life expectancy, food production, etc. All are statistics from official sources, (circa 2900) It is so good that his detractors cannot attack the facts written in the book, so they attack him instead.

erhm, wait one - even your short description already shows his flaw! As is quite common, he drops a very important thing in climate studies - TIME!

How long does it take for a heating trend due to more CO2 to take hold? let's, for the sake of argument, pick a number - any number in a sensible magnitude - let's say 100 years, OK? May be a bit more or less, but that's a good ballpark figure.

If you take a 100 year graph and check the levels at the beginning and end, you'll actually MISS a 100 year trend if the graph looks like this:

but the LINK to GW takes place like this:

so you see: CO2 goes DOWN but temp goes UP - clearly, not linked, right?

But there's time - the 100 year lag! you'd need to extend this period over which you compare to see if there will be a temp drop (nad that assumes a monocausality, too, btw, while in reality quite easily feedback mechanisms can lkick that out the window) 100 years after the down trend in CO2 started.

OR, better, see if the two curves correlate if you slide one in time (i.e., are they similar). You'll find that this is true.

So, this Mr. Lomberg (in climate research, he has no degree, so I'll stick to Mr.) makes a typical fundamental mistake that he, as a specialist in statistics, should know about - he uses statistics to disprove something that this test isn't applicable for! he oversimplifies massively, then finds it doesn't work - who's surprised????

Well, that's why I said in my first post that the argument "corporation propaganda" looks to me like Greenpeace propaganda. Where did you prove that the links that Basket Case posted went to companies or institutes with direct funding by industries who have an interest in GW not being man's fault?

In the thread he poisted them in! I followed all links to their 'about us' or so page and found they were interest groups.

And even if that is true, Why did you keep attacking ad hominem instead of attacking the arguments?

read above...... Why should I bother to repeat that GW1 thread?

( I have just made a quick check for the Basket Case links and where you prove that ALL of them are funded by industries but I could find them )

I addressed, in that thread, all links - IIRC (off the top of my head), all were NOT proper proof of GW not happening. Most were interest groups, one or two linked to very outdated research, and one was incomprehensible gibberish by a group that also claimed UFOs are real

and BTW, as I said in my first post, I am skeptical about the existence of a global warming period and even more skeptical about that global warming could be caused almost entirely by human factors. I am the skeptical one, you are the one who is sure about that, you are the one who has to prove that there is global warming and it is human driven, not me.

erhm, no - you cna remain skeptical because you are dumb, because you have financial interests, because you can't read - how do I know (not that I think any of this applies, or I wouldn't try to argue the issue properly and nicely)?

the proof is there to find, and the last few threads had enough links and citations for anyone willing to go and find the research data. The scientific consensus is GW exists. YOU make the odd claim, YOU bring proof.

And the Ruddiman paper (it is a mini-review more than a paper) Does not explain what caused the Medieval Warm Period nor the following mini Ice Age. So, more papers please... more proves....

no, it doesn't - who ever claimed it did? If you want to know what caused the two I can ask a colleague upstairs for papers or textbooks on this. I expected her tio be in yesterday, but she wasn't - holiday time. Please excuse that I do not waste my working hours doing literature research on this when waiting a few days will make it a case of getting the PDFs or a paper title a matter of minutes.

Do you have access to online databases or a good library , btw?

 

[carlosMM]

I have read Ruddiman’s paper, the one Carlos posted. He takes the Crutzen and Stoermer’s definition of the anthropogenic era and tries to link CO2 and CH4 oscillations with human events first and then to temperature changes. He does say something about the Little Ice Age which he thinks is linked to the bubonic plague outbreaks, although he doesn’t explain why this tiny CO2 changes lead to the Little Ice Age. (He reports more plagues than that one, why there was only one Little Ice Age?). He does not mention the Medieval Warm Period, anyway, Maybe because he didn’t find anything to relate to it???

this is a first - a GW doubter actually read this

THANK YOU!

Most part of the article is dedicated to the trace of CO2 levels (and in less extend of CH4) thorough man’s prehistory and history, linking the CO2 peaks and valleys to human events. There is at least one mismatch that he tries to explain, no problems about that The really big issue is, at the end of the article, when he tries to link CO2 levels with temperature records to prove that there is a relation between CO2 levels and global (or rather, northern hemisphere) temperatures. And he uses Michael E. Mann’s Hockey stick graph for it. Mann’s papers showing his famous hockey stick grhap were published in Geophys, Res. Letters and Nature (Mann, Bradley and Hughes Nature, 392, 779-787,
1998) a well known, high impact, peer reviewed journal and they have been used as a proof to validate the Kyoto treaty thing.


The Mann’s Hockey Stick graph records the northern Hemisphere temperatures over the last millennium. And it shows that the temperatures in the last millennium remain quite stable until the last 30 years where they rise dramatically, (I will try to post the graph) The graph does not show the Medieval Warm Period neither the Little Ice Age, but the papers where accepted and they have been used widely, even in the Kyoto protocol.

this i a resolution thingy - sampling too wide, datapoints too few. So your critizism (and the professional one that lead to the revocation) are right on target. Also, the proxies WERE ****ty.

Well, two scientists, McIntyre and McKitrick, (Canadians, the second one is Professor of economics (Reminds of Lomborg??). They received no outside funding for their work, so don’t say it is corporate propaganda,

quick aside - who pays their wages? Even if a STUDY isn't funded by a firm, that doesn't mean there's no infleunce from the outside. Only independent university grants, own money, or independent (!) third party grants are truely free!)

, tried to reproduce Mann’s graph but they couldn’t. They discovered that the proxys Mann and co. used where wrong and the original paper that Mann published in Nature has been revoked. A corrigendum has been published in Nature. (Nature 430, July 1, 2004 p. 105)

So far I am with you.....

Since Ruddiman’s paper uses Mann’s graph to try to link CO2 levels with temperatures and Mann’s graph has proven to be wrong, Ruddiman’s proof of CO2 to temperatures link is not longer valid.

So you take his data and link it with newer, better temp graphs (we did in lecture). Guess what...... the trend still holds.

Other couple of things. Ruddiman is Professor of the University of Virginia, it says so in the paper Carlos posted. Guess who is also professor of the University of Virginia. Yeah, Michael E. Mann. They are Buddies!!!

erhm, so? Why is it laughable that he uses data from his colleague?

And the other thing. Carlos took Ruddiman’s paper from www.realclimate.org

erhm, nope. I got it from professor Mosbrugger, PhD in biology and Ordinarius for Paleontology, former head of the Special Research Area 'Climate-coupled processes' of the German Science Foundation. And we discussed the Mann graph issue quite a lot.....

Guess who is the owner of that site. Michael E. Mann. Oh, It is just too funny.

erhm, again, why?

Do you want to (which seems quite clear to me) insinuate that Mann and Ruddiman have a conspiracy going? That they fake data intentionally to 'prove' GW? or what?

Please explain your position here, you half-said allegations and childish giggles do not help at all!

Uff very late for me. I will read the forum other day, bye.

take time, I'll be gone for almost two weeks soon, too (holiday). Hope I can get the Little Ice age and MWP papers before that.

 

[tR1cKy]

Edit: Forget global warming--this thread is heading for a meltdown. But then, most threads on this subject do that.

I fear you're right

Anyway, let's try to sort out the mess. I woke up too early this morning, and i cannot go to work too early, or i would establish a bad precedent. So i have a whole hour to do it, and probably another hour to play GotM46.

Let's start with my favourite target, TruePurple (j/k)

You mean Venice? Yeah, saw a PBS special on that, the city is sinking into the sea, which is much different then then sea rising.(though that compounds the problem) Since rising water needs ever increasingly high walls.

I'm not sure what a PBS special is, but the acronym and the word "special" following it suggest that it's a TV show. Well, TV shows are not exactly a reliable source of valid scientific data. Sometimes they tell the truth, sometimes they screw up badly, as i reported in my previous reply to your statements (funny how you accuse others to fail in reading the posts BTW).

MOSE's goal is to protect Venezia from being flooded by the rise of the tide. It will do its job honestly for about 50 years, enough time to have technology progress and come out with a better idea to protect the city. You are right in pointing out some of its possible problems. However, MOSE has been thinked (and will be realized) with those problems in mind. The project took years to be drawn, and there's a whole bunch of scientists after it. The problem you mention have been studied, evaluated, and it's been decided that they will be under control. And forgive me if i tend to believe to them, rather than you reporting what you remember about a TV show you've seen some time ago.

If the sea permanently raised you would need a wall that if not up all the time, would certainly have to be up longer then is healthy, due to pollution and commercial interests. And you would have to build it all along vast coastlines, with many unforeseen environmental issues. Its not practical!

Of course it's not, since MOSE is a thing developed to do its job, that is protecting Venezia from being flooded by the tide. Would you criticize a Mercedes because it doesn't fly you from Paris to New York? There are airplanes to do that.

MOSE is an example on how it's possible to set up barriers to protect a city from the rising sea (yes, it's actually Venezia slowly sinking, but the effect it's the same). Other problems will require other solutions. A good percentage of the Netherlands is under the sea level. Well, the industrious Dutch come out with a set of barriers that work perfectly. They even manage to grab some land from the sea (the polders) and turned a malaria ridden, flood prone marshland into a fertile and healthy plain. What was once a bay is today the Ijsselmer, a big lake under the sea level protected from the outer sea by 80 km of coastal dam.

You leave me with the impression that your skeptic statements about coastal barriers are made in haste and with some superficiality. Coastal barriers can work greatly, if set up in the proper way. And they don't even need last-minute technology to be built. The Ijssel Djik wasn't built yesterday.

Moving on...

Greenland (still) is green, on its south end. One online source I found say its about 2 degrees warmer then viking times. (a site that talks about greenlands fluxuating temperatures)

One online source i found says we've never been on the moon. One online source i found says that evolution never occurred and all the living species were created by God 6000 or so years ago.

Just to point out that online you find everything and the contrary of everything. Your claim is actually interesting, but without any reference it's just "a claim". Can you post some reference to it? An article discussing the issue from a well respected journal would be enough.

---------------------

Now from the series "once you reach the bottom, you can always dig a hole":

Global Warming is just a scare tactic by enviornmentalists .

Yes. And element 115 is stable. And we have never been on the moon. And Jesus Christ died of starvation.

Your is propaganda. Read post #1 please.

That is not a scare tactic, its common sense

Do you come from a parallel universe? Common sense is that global warming does exist and human activity plays an important role into it. And this layman's common sense reflects the general consensus of the scientific community on the whole issue. If you're talking seriously, please post references to valid scientific data backing your claim.

Its not trolling when I just place my opinions. By insulting my style and opinions, is trolling.

Obviously you ignore the rules of the netiquette. You are absolutely entitled of an opinion and have all the right to express it in the right place. But you have the duty to express it in the right way.

The right way would be "in my opinion, the whole global warming issue is just a scare tactic by environmentalists". Other people will take it as is (i.e. an opinion) and dispute it if they like. If you say simply "the whole global warming issue is just a scare tactic blah blah..." you state a fact, and accuse a good part of today's scientific community to be lying to the public. The consequence is that your statement appears ridiculous or even suspicious.

It would have to be a completely illogical and vast conspiracy for so many people who have no connection to each other to report all these rapid changes of ice & coast loss and ecology & weather changes yet all be lying. Its just as reasonable to presume the crossguards have a conspiracy to get people to fear being hit by traffic as it is to assume your global environmentalist conspiracy.

If your going to troll and provide great & absurd claims without a scrape of proof or even a thought argument/reasoning to back up your claim, expect ridicule.

It causes me a strange feeling to say that, but those could have been my words.

-------------------

Now let's go on with BasketCase. Although i have the impression that he's ignoring my remarks...

@Carlos: Once again I caved in to temptation, and took you off ignore for a minute to see if there was anything interesting. I was mostly disappointed, except for this bit:
...
...
Ignore list is back up to its usual population of one.

I don't think anyone here is interested in your personal anger against CarlosMM.

Einstein's theory of relativity. Practical testing appeared to prove it conclusively--until it was discovered that the theory had problems.

And, please, do show me where it is fundamentally wrong

Like it or not, BasketCase, this is a legitimate argument against what you say. Can you provide peer-reviewed scientific data about those problems on general relativity you talk about? Or at least some logic reasoning backing your claims? (briefly if possible, since it's a bit off topic).

Aristotle didn't really have the tools with which to test the infinite divisibility of matter--but he thought he did. To the best tools science had at the time, matter really DID appear infinitely divisible. Cut a piece of iron in half, and the two halves were both still pieces of iron. Practical testing appeared to support the theory. It was only after science developed better tools that Aristotle was discovered to be wrong.

That science has been wrong repeatedly, is simple fact. To its credit, it's usually science that tries to prove itself wrong.

You mix apples with oranges. We can assume that modern scientific theories begin with the development of the scientific method. Well, Aristotheles is a bit too early. His wrong conclusions come out essentially from philosophical thinking and very little experimentation. You can't cite Aristotheles as an example on how science can be wrong. It could instead be a good example on how what looks like "right" from the point of view of a very intelligent but disinformed mind can be proven wrong by modern science. Disinformed on modern science, of course!

----------------

Finally, it's quite interesting to see the debate between Urederra and CarlosMM. Both of them seems quite well informed, and constantly trying to post valid scientific reference to what they say. Thank you guyz!

Finally-finally:

Edit: Forget global warming--this thread is heading for a meltdown. But then, most threads on this subject do that.

On second thought, my opinion is that this thread will be alive and kicking for a little more time...

 

[carlosMM]

Finally, it's quite interesting to see the debate between Urederra and CarlosMM. Both of them seems quite well informed, and constantly trying to post valid scientific reference to what they say. Thank you guyz!

welcome - and I am quite sorry that I was so far not able to answer the questions on little ice age and medieval warm period (I keep mixing my memories of the lectures up with the younger dryas thus I do not want to rely on memory here).

Please, do kick me (PM or pst here) if I keep forgetting!

 

[Pikachu]

All I needed was Google to see that the argument over the subject is still quite spirited.

Of course the subject is quite spirited among many people without much knowledge of the science behind the subject. An obvious example is today’s politicians. But that it is spirited among politicians says nothing about its status among scientists with good knowledge about the subject.

Google results can sometimes be misleading. A search in a scientific database would be more appropriate to settle this issue. Can you direct us to some scientific papers with some evidence that humans do not significantly contribute to global warming?

A theory to compete against the "man-made global warming" theory has already been proposed: the theory that we're seeing a natural temperature spike.

Ah, you still resort to the good old ‘the almighty nature works in mysterious ways’ argument. That is not a scientific theory. A competing scientific theory needs to identify the natural mechanisms that could cause the observed changes.

Other couple of things. Ruddiman is Professor of the University of Virginia, it says so in the paper Carlos posted. Guess who is also professor of the University of Virginia. Yeah, Michael E. Mann. They are Buddies!!!

Isn’t this what you would call an attack ad hominem?