Comments on: The GOP Vs. Global Warming

The New Republic: Why Are Republicans More Skeptical, Even As Evidence Grows?

[co2max]

I view the human contribution, individual, to climage change to be even less relevant than mom-and-pop investor influence on the stock market. Even the big individual, private stock buyers and sellers, collectively have no real push or pull on the market system as a whole. These are the human affectors on the big system. By contrast, the corporate investors and fund managers of the world, work their magic in accordance to their own needs and forces and influence the market in significant ways. These bigger forcers on the market are similar to the natural forces which determine how our climate behaves.
Zoroaster, I agree that you and I could have a reasonable and even enlightening discussion on this issue. Unfortunately, my time here is UP! and I have to ride the bike home.

This was a fun day on-line

CO2Max (aka. Boxorox on other thread lines)

[lawyertom1]

Yes, Al dumbed it down, and many of the rocket scientists on the Congressional panels still did not get it. Of course the issue is complex; find any scientific issue of global proportion (literally) that isn't complex. As my kids would say, dahhhh. The obsession with CO2 is the only thing that bothers me. Methane is a major issue, but never rates discussion. After all, flatulence from cows and sheep is not all that *** or exciting. Then we throw in solar cycles, the three various wobbles in the Earth's orbit & spin, and it is not as simple as the popularists would have it. All that being said, it is real. We do need to act. We need to stop cutting slack for India and China, among others. I am not in the panic mode, at least not until I look at the results of the ice core analyses. These show that it is possible for the climate to flip into a new "stability" pattern in short order (only a decade from one "steady state" to another). That data gives me considerable pause. It is what should make people realize that the problem is more pressing that we generally assume with our long lead-time programmatic proposals. It is the factoid that gives me personally the greatest concern.

[zoroastor]

Ha. I wrote that last one while you were posting. Okay. You do address the issues, and you do so intelligently. I could actually have a rational discussion with you.
I don't believe that any one person contributes to any signifigant degree, or even one state or maybe even a country as prolific in greenhouse gas production as the US.
I do believe that 8+ billion people might have that effect.

[zoroastor]

I see you haven't really addressed any of the issues I raised. Further, the smoking thing may be off base for YOU personally, but it is the same type of logic, accepting only to "facts" that support your opinion.
Unlike you, I don't know for sure. It certainly seems that there is a mounting pile of evidense to support the theory. You, on the other hand, say it just isn't so. And you're sure because you are a physical geologist of higher intellect than the ones telling you it is happening?
Flat earth. Hard to tell. You are not living in the same socio-political climate that existed then. However, different from today, Christianity was the dominately held belief. And, like you, was the CONSERVATIVE held belief. Though I can't say for sure, I would bet that in those circumstances you might feel differently.
Full of myself? Why? I get no benefit whatsoever from global warming. In fact, I'll pay more for just about everything. I'm full of myself because I sound literate and educated? Or because I have trouble with and am frustrated by what appears to me to be intentional and willfull ignorance (not stupidity) on the part of the neo-con collective.

[co2max]

(continued)...
Fast-forward another 10 years and global warming is declared a possibility for many natural reasons and *maybe* some human ones for the long term. I was skeptical. I studies it and remained skeptical till the sea sediment data made it clear that our climate has been oscillating not just on a millions-of-years scale, but on a thousands-of-years scale.
The greenhouse effect is a sound scientific basis to work with. The problem we have before is one of driving forces. We don't have all the evidence yet, but what has been collected so far is circumstantial and disconnected. It makes sense that auto and industrial exhaust do not help the situation, but how far they promote this "problem" is still very difficult to gauge.
Lets concentrate on clean air and clean water and imposing sound land and resource policies. Much of these efforts will rectify more pressing environmental problems and perhaps even lighten the greenhouse load as a collateral effect.

[co2max]

Zoroaster--
Okay, you come across as not so half-baked at the moment. I'll play along.
My resistance to the AGW campaign is summed out nicely by Al's proclamation last week of "Planetary Emergency." It is anything but that.
I fully accept global warming as a present reality. I do not accept humans as being the principle contributor to it. There are so many, immense natural factors involved which apply themselves to our climate that for any us to think that we control the climate is ludicrous.
All I want to say is that you need to CONVINCE ME. I can be convinced. I have been a geologist in one capacity or another for almost 30 years. In the beginning of this "debate" I was a disbeliever of the phenomenon, relying on what I knew about global warming from studies of Terra Forming on Mars in the 70s and 80s. That turned out to be judged virtually impossible; studies turned to the possibilities of climate change on earth and deemed plausible but unlikely.

[co2max]

Zoroaster-
You and your friends are really full of yourselves.
To say that we are the same group that disbelieves that cigarettes don't cause cancer, just where do you guys dig this up from??? It defies understanding by anybody. Others compare us to the flat-earthers and even the Creation Science adherants. That is plain stupid to such a thing. It's the Creation Science mentality that hit me in the face growing up in Alabama that makes me so fiercely anti-AGW now.

Speaking of Monte Python . . . that is the only movie I can think of that made me laugh more out loud than Al Gores propaganda film. I really feel for the guy missing out on winning "Year's Best Comedy" for "Inconvenient Truth." Yep, he had to settle for "Best Documentary" instead. That must be a real source of shame. But it's still a funny show.

[zoroastor]

CO2Max,
Trust me when I tell you, that if I were inclined to, we could trade scientific sound bytes and statistics all day. Mine would support my belief in global warming, yours would support your disbelief. There isn't a lack of "experts" on either side of the fence that we could use to back it up.
Yes, I've heard of all your "evidence". What I think you do, however, is accepting evidense that already supports your belief, and disregarding any that does not.
As you sound like you might know, it is very difficult to accurately measure any pattern on a geologic scale that occures over time periods of less than a century. The time period during which we have been creating greenhouse gasses is not even a blink of an eye in geologic time. Therefore, even though, I could quote you statistics that back my belief, I don't think you'd buy 'em. However, you can test the theory in controlled environments. It isn't some whack job crazy idea. The "theory" is sound, and makes logical sense to even the most uneducated. It isn't until someone with an econmic agenda and stake in the issue tries to debunk it, that the average person would even question the common sense of it.
By the way, why don't you want to believe it? Are you afraid of the cost? Just afraid of the future? Wouldn't you rather be prepared on the very off chance you are wrong? Worst case scenario, the air is cleaner.

[zoroastor]

I liked the Monty Python piece and the quiz by 911 both right on target and simple enough for any moron to understand. Hey, even some of the neo-con zombies might get it.

If this is a scam, who benefits? The companies making solar energy panels? I think if you tried to follow a money trail, you'd end up looking at industries unable to pull a scam of this proportion off.

And how in the world did they get such a large majority of the global scientific community to go along with it. Maybe the are all in for a big cut of that solar panel landfall that is sure to happen.

And as another poster wrote, it doesn't take a super genius to see the basic physics at work.

But keep in mind that these are the same people who still don't believe cigarettes cause cancer, that it's better NOT to prepare for a pandemic like birdflu (I've always been of the "better to have it and not need it, rather than need it and not have it" school. And by the way, anyone here get scammed out of money on that bird flu scam?), and that the sun, in fact, orbited the earth.

[co2max]

"Yes, Martha, I do believe we have left the rational world now."

How do you people on the left side of this issue equate Anthropegenic Global Warming Defiance with Creation Science, Cancer due to Smoking and Fundamentalist Christianity? You just decided to throw in those radical fringe issues to dilute what we're really getting at? Must be the case.

Stop avoiding the truth and deal with this topic directly. Name-calling isn't very clever. That's for children and simpletons.

As for the science -- ever hear of Milankovitch cycles, ice core sample, deep-sea sediments, North American Pollen Database, earth-orbit eccentricity, or even water vapor? These are among a huge list of items which give bearing on the issue of causality of climate change and I haven't seen anybody with the guts or the will to talk about them. doctor_jason gave it a try yesterday, but everything he posted just got slammed as "don't give me cut-and-paste links, what do you really think" garbage, after he was berated endlessly for stating knowledge and opinion without at first providing documented support for his position.