Right-wingers who think global warming is a lefty plot

[Rub'Rum]

QFT. "Fighting global warming" is sometimes used as a motive for some truly obnoxious projects. "Let's replace this rainforest with monoculture palm trees. Biofuels will save the planet!" :wallbang: Maybe human meddling is too insignificant to affect the cyclical nature of earth's climate. Maybe the next ice age won't destroy mankind thanks to the CO2 of today. Who knows?

Trying to prevent climate change might ultimately be a charge against windmills, but I don't really care. If it gets more people to ride bikes, it's all good.

Talk about another complete fraud. Biofuels. Actually, don't talk about it, it makes my blood boil. Making fuel out of the most polluting crops ever! Great idea!

 

[Mon Mauler]

Trying to prevent climate change might ultimately be a charge against windmills, but I don't really care. If it gets more people to ride bikes, it's all good.

I'm not sure you completely appreciate the costs of fighting global warming.

 

[stuge]

What are these costs that completely outweigh the positive things to come out of it?

 

[Mon Mauler]

What are these costs that completely outweigh the positive things to come out of it?

If you regulate the carbon output of an individual, corporation or nation, you are in effect taxing that individual, corporation or nation. It costs more to produce goods, transport goods, sell goods. Prices go up. Consumption goes down. Parts of the market disappear because it no longer becomes economically feasible for them to stay in operation.

Assuming I am correct, and that we have no ability to actually affect the climate, what good comes from it?

 

[AngryZealot]

Assuming I am correct, and that we have no ability to actually affect the climate, what good comes from it?

Nothing. Your assumption is wrong, however, so your line of thinking is academic anyway.

 

[BasketCase]

Here's another way to view what Mon Mauler said.

From the moment you wake up, you have sixteen hours of waking time to get stuff done. Sixteen hours of work each day. You need to eat breakfast, fix the leaking pipe in the basement, repaint the living room wall after your son spilled ink on it, spank your son--oh, and somewhere along the line you have to go to the local factory and build refrigerators so you get a paycheck. Generally that last one takes eight hours out of your day right there.

Point is, we each have a limited amount of work we can get done. What are we going to produce with our valuable time? Food? Cars? Refrigerators? Or are we going to pick up trash? The time we spend trying to clean up the environment is time we did NOT spend producing food or cars or refrigerators. So whenever you're trying to clean up the environment, your living standard is going down.

 

[Till]

Of course, all of this assumes that there is a direct correlation between the level of CO2 in the atmosphere and the mean global temperature, wherein a rise in the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is met with a rise in the mean global temperature. I have not seen any data that conclusively shows this.

Till, I have some literature in my car that will change your whole way of thinking.

Actually, I have a couple books and articles at home on the topic. I'll see if I can't post some cites here later tonight.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas - it absorbs thermal infrared radiation from earth an emits (part of) it back to it. Without this greenhouse effect, Earth would be much cooler. Am i misunderstanding you, or are you seriously challenging either the greenhouse effect, or that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas?
Looking forward to those articles.

 

[stuge]

If you regulate the carbon output of an individual, corporation or nation, you are in effect taxing that individual, corporation or nation. It costs more to produce goods, transport goods, sell goods. Prices go up. Consumption goes down. Parts of the market disappear because it no longer becomes economically feasible for them to stay in operation.

Assuming I am correct, and that we have no ability to actually affect the climate, what good comes from it?

Environmental awareness punishes certain businesses (like SUV manufacturers) and rewards others. E.g. solar energy might become huge in the near future with the right steps in research. Even car manufacturers aren't completely sunk. As fuel efficiency becomes a sought-after quality, those who can provide it meet success. Markets always change to meet new circumstances. Horse carriages became a losing business when the combustion engine was discovered. Environmental regulations have a hard time seriously hurting economies unless they're something like "go back into the trees."

So I fail to see any great harm. Among the positives could be a way for earth to support nine billion people.

 

[Ayatollah So]

People have an innate desire to be part of a story greater than they are, to meet an impossible challenge and overcome it. We want to be the voice of reason pleading from the wilderness, the justified yet crucified savior of mankind.

The proper question would be why are right-wingers immune to this malady. I propose the Christians already feel they are a part of a grander story and the rest love their money so much to be skeptical of anything that would take it.

That's actually a good point. Crappy movies aside, though, global warming seems like a fairly lame doomsday. So we lose coastal lands and have to cope with different weather? A big pain in the tuckus, to be sure, and very expensive, but if you want to worry about doomsday, you've got a much better story with Grey Goo or the Reign of the Robots.

 

[Death_Machine]

What part of the cause of global warming do you specifically believe to be false? Additionally, can you find two NASA scientists who don't believe in evolution either?

I don't know as I haven't looked, but I'd be yes.

Whatever right-wingers you know are an anecdote, and anecdote is, as they say, not the singular of data. Young-Earth Creationism is overwhelmingly better supported by right-wingers than left-wingers. Left-wingers think that right-wingers say the earth is only 6,000 years old because many loud right-wingers do say that the earth is only 6,000 years old, such as classical_hero and Smidlee right here on this forum.

Most of this board would probably classify me as to the right...... which I would not disagree with. Having said that, I have never met anybody IN MY WHOLE LIFE who thinks that the world is only 6,000 years old. Where do you get this crap?

Death_Machine, what's your opinion on evolution?

Evolution happens. Did we come from monkeys, no. I think it happens very gradually over a long period of time.

 

[AngryZealot]

Of course, all of this assumes that there is a direct correlation between the level of CO2 in the atmosphere and the mean global temperature, wherein a rise in the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is met with a rise in the mean global temperature. I have not seen any data that conclusively shows this.

You do not call this a direct correlation?

 

[Death_Machine]

You do not call this a direct correlation?

where did that come from? please cite the source

 

[AngryZealot]

That came from the IPCC in 2001 -- you know, the guys that won the Nobel prize last year.

 

[Mon Mauler]

CO2 is a greenhouse gas - it absorbs thermal infrared radiation from earth an emits (part of) it back to it. Without this greenhouse effect, Earth would be much cooler. Am i misunderstanding you, or are you seriously challenging either the greenhouse effect, or that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas?
Looking forward to those articles.

I am certainly not challenging the greenhouse effect or that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

CO2, though, is only one of many greenhouse gases (most of it's water vapor, IIRC), and it represents a very small amount of the greehouse gasses in the atmosphere. Along the same lines, the human contribution to the rise in greenhouse gasses is statistically, very slight.

In fact, I'm certain I've seen various studies where the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere were many times higher than they are now before we ever started burning fossil fuels.

Also, I seem to remember an article in one of the mags I subscribe to, could be 'Science', that was saying that historically (they determined this from ice core samples, I think) whenever CO2 levels and temperatures both shifted, it was shown that the shift in CO2 levels occurred AFTER the shift in temperature.

I promise I will get the proper cites for a couple interesting books/articles on the topic whenever I can escape from work.

 

[AngryZealot]

Mon Mauler, please see the graph. CO2 levels are now twice that what they have been for the past 500,000 years (average).

Now, it is true that CO2 is not the strongest greenhouse gas. Methane, for example, traps 20x the heat as CO2. The catch is that there is now 200x the amount of CO2 as methane in the atmosphere. Any effect by methane is going to be outdone 10x by CO2. CO2 is the major greenhouse gas component of the atmosphere.

 

[Murky]

I am certainly not challenging the greenhouse effect or that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

CO2, though, is only one of many greenhouse gases (most of it's water vapor, IIRC), and it represents a very small amount of the greehouse gasses in the atmosphere. Along the same lines, the human contribution to the rise in greenhouse gasses is statistically, very slight.

In fact, I'm certain I've seen various studies where the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere were many times higher than they are now before we ever started burning fossil fuels.

Also, I seem to remember an article in one of the mags I subscribe to, could be 'Science', that was saying that historically (they determined this from ice core samples, I think) whenever CO2 levels and temperatures both shifted, it was shown that the shift in CO2 levels occurred AFTER the shift in temperature.

I promise I will get the proper cites for a couple interesting books/articles on the topic whenever I can escape from work.

Keep in mind that a lot of the denialist rhetoric is just worthless garbage that is created by pro-fossil fuel pseudo scientist.

 

[Rub'Rum]

Environmental awareness punishes certain businesses (like SUV manufacturers) and rewards others. E.g. solar energy might become huge in the near future with the right steps in research. Even car manufacturers aren't completely sunk. As fuel efficiency becomes a sought-after quality, those who can provide it meet success. Markets always change to meet new circumstances. Horse carriages became a losing business when the combustion engine was discovered. Environmental regulations have a hard time seriously hurting economies unless they're something like "go back into the trees."

So I fail to see any great harm. Among the positives could be a way for earth to support nine billion people.

I am also tired of seeing "economy" and "environmental concerns" as two completely opposed views. It's hard to prove our point, like you're trying to do, but I also think it's equally hard to prove Mon Mauler's point of view. So I'm not sure where that leaves us. I personally don't believe that changing our habits for the better (and we can't question that using less gas is better in terms of long term, if only for the fact that it's a finite resource) is necessarily going to bring us in an economic collapse worse than the one we've experienced lately.

 

[Mon Mauler]

Mon Mauler, please see the graph.

I'm looking at the graph, and it kind of looks to me like it is in line with what I was saying in my previous post about CO2 levels FOLLOWING temperature.

And, what is going on at the end of the graph (present day)? Is that a depiction of the hockey stick there at the end? I love that hockey stick graph. Good stuff.

Beyond that, I tend to discard political drivel like the IPCC report out-of-hand. You do realize it was written by policy makers, not scientists, right? I'll consult more scholarly sources and get you quality data later on this evening.

 

[El_Machinae]

We are, collectively, just a drop of water in a very, very large ocean. And I think the data supports this.

Speaking of drops of water in the ocean.

The ocean is becoming a noisier place. As seawater turns more acidic, due to absorption of carbon dioxide (CO2) building up in the atmosphere, it allows sound waves to travel farther, according to new research.
...
Scientists have known for more than 3 decades that lowering the pH level of seawater--making it more acidic--causes it to conduct sound more readily.
...
A team led by ocean chemist Keith Hester of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, California, wanted to find out how rising atmospheric levels of CO2 are contributing to this phenomenon. They used projections by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has concluded that ocean pH levels will drop by 0.3 units by 2050--about four times faster than the rate that has occurred over the past 250 years. They combined those estimates with field and lab experiments to test sound conductivity, and they took into consideration estimated increases in ocean temperature and reductions in oxygen content, which also affect underwater acoustics.

The result, the team reports tomorrow in Geophysical Research Letters, is that underwater sounds in 2050 will travel up to 70% farther in some areas, such as the Atlantic Ocean, than they do today. This will be particularly true of the low-frequency moans and songs used by some marine mammals. "We were surprised to see the magnitude of the change was so great," Hester says.
...

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/930/2

I'm just using this article as an example of the level of detail we have regarding CO2 effects. It's not mentioned in the article, but sound now travels 10% further in the ocean than it did before the Industrial Revolution. Man-caused CO2 pollution has changed the acidity of the ocean such that whale sounds travel further, measurably. And this effect is expected to increase by 70%

My point is that we're noticing other effects from CO2. Sure, we may not care about whale songs: but we're noticing actual effects in the ocean. We're really not a mere drop in the ocean.

 

[AngryZealot]

Who we are


The IPCC is a scientific intergovernmental body set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Its constituency is made of :

The governments: the IPCC is open to all member countries of WMO and UNEP. Governments of participate in plenary Sessions of the IPCC where main decisions about the IPCC workprogramme are taken and reports are accepted, adopted and approved. They also participate the review of IPCC Reports.
The scientists: hundreds of scientists all over the world contribute to the work of the IPCC as authors, contributors and reviewers.
The people: as United Nations body, the IPCC work aims at the promotion of the United Nations human development goals

The IPCC is a scientific organization just like any other.

This is a common tactic of ___ denyers. If you don't like a fact, you demand the source. Once you have the source you blow it off and demand more. There's no way to win.

The graph is a simple depiction of well established data. There's no way to spin it politically. You asked for a clear correlation between CO2 and temperature; there it is. You can hate the organization, but data is data.