A third question for global warming / climate change skeptics?
I've studied climatology / climate change etc and it's a subject I know something about. What credible arguments would you use to convince me that anthropogenic global warming / climate change is either fabrication or of little consequence.
Please, credible arguments only.
Thanks to everyone who has answered but I'm still waiting for sight or sound of the elusive evidence that disproves anthropogenic global warming.
Here's some feedback...
ASE: 2.3 or 2.9 trillion tons of carbon in the carbon cycle (can't recall off the top of my head). In 2006 humans emitted 29 billion tons of CO2, that's 1% of the total IN A SINGLE YEAR.
I've read many books, maybe you could suggest some that have credible evidence to dispute AGW.
I've studied climate change for 23 years and have a degrees from three universities not that that has anything to do with the question.
TOMMY: Credible evidence?
BOB: Thanks Bob, I agree that we're messing the natural carbon cycle up. As mentioned in above comment, we added 29 billion tons of carbon last year, the natural cycle can remove an excess of 3 bn tons but the remaining 26 now resides in the atmosphere.
BACK2SAYSTUFF: Not heard the telegraph poles analogy before and I agree with you about slewing data. However, there is a great deal of climatic data accumulated from many different independent sources each using different methodologies and the crucual factor is that the results concur.
We are tiny but then so is the atmosphere, so tiny that every bit of it has passed through many human bodies before you or I get to breathe it. There isn't much atmosphere per person and it doesn't take much to mess it up.
Volcanoes contribute 500 million tons of CO2 per year to the atmosphere, that's about the same as the states of Florida and Virgina. Oceanic CO2 exchange is in equilibrium.
Attribution of climate change to natural disasters is compared to a baseline figure for volcanic and seismological events, such events are not affected by climate change. Whilst numbers of volcanoes and earthquakes has remained steady there has been a dramatic (over 100% in some cases) rise in the...
...number of floods, droughts, storms, heatwaves, wildfires and similar events.
Global warming data is not extrapolated from local events but from satellite telemetry across the globe.
BYDERULE: I can't think of one and it looks like we're not alone. Congrats on top enviro.
JIM Z: Understand your point but temps and CO2 are inexorably linked via a feedback process - one leads to the other irrespective of which comes first. For example: temps rise, permafrost melts, methane (from methanogenesis) is released, GHG concentrations incresase, temps rise etc etc, the cycle could be started by any of those events.
CO2 may or may not be the most important GHG, next to water vapour it's the weakest and has the lowest GWP (global warming potential) so it's pretty ineffective but exists in far greater concentrations than all aother AGHGs combined. It's total copntribution to GW is surpassed only by that of H20.
TRUTHSEEKER: You also make good points. We know why and how the world is heating up (that's straightforward science) but we don't know what to do about it. Many schemes are being considered, there are four frontrunners which singularly or in combination could offset global warming, this is what I'm currently involved in. I'm not a Christian (or any religion) so I won't comment further on the religious points you make.
KM: You state it's a myth but don't citate or substantiate your comments. Following the money leads nowhere, if it was about money people wouldn't have gone into climatology but would have chosen other aspects of research instead where there is money to be made - pharmacuticals, medicine, petrochemicals etc.
(why can't we have more than 1000 characters to work with)
There are normal cyclical changes, there always have been. They can not account for the unprecedented rise in tempoerature's we've witnessed in the last 200 years. The shortest cycle the Earth goes through is a 19,000 year precessional cycle, the sun has shorter cycles but the difference between insolation maxima and minima is a variation of less than one thousandth from the mean. Over long periods of time these cycles do make a difference but we're talking thousands oir millions of years.
DANA1981: A detailed scientific argument that holds water, but it supports the global warming theory and not the other way around. Still, there are more answers I've yet to
read and maybe the elusive science to refute global warming will turn up as I read on.
3DM: We can't quantify or qualify God but can do so in respect of AGW through measurement, analysis and experimentation.
Whilst I agree that a consensus in itself doesn't prove anything you have to establish why there's a consensus. It's easy to point to historical events where a consensus has been wrong, but they were consensus (pl) of opinion not established through scientific process. As a for instance, the consensus thought the world was flat because that was the present Biblical interpretation (there being four corners of the Earth, supporting pillars, ends of the Earth etc). I'm not aware that any scioentific consensus arrived at through due process has been wrong before.
Man has produced a net cooling effect in the past through high levels of relective pollutants (primarily SO2) in the mid 20th C.
Not sure why the claim that CO2 is not the primary driver of AGW, the NASA article shows that the CF of CO2 exceeds that of the other AGHGs. It has a lower GWP but that's more than offset by atmospheric concentrations.
As previously mentioned, there are natural cycles at work and they are responsible for at least some of the current warming but at most this is 20% and probably less than 10%. All natural variables are taken into account when determining NGW and AGW contributions to overall GW.
I agree that this isn't a black and white issue even though there are many people who see it as such. There are some credible scientific reasons to question some aspects of AGW, they don't disprove it, just mean we may have to rethink some of it - a bit like having some peices of a jigsaw wrong, they fit into place just not where they are now.
I agree that this isn't a black and white issue even though there are many people who see it as such. Contrary to the question I asked there are some credible scientific reasons to question some aspects of AGW, they don't disprove it, just mean we may have to rethink some of it - a bit like having some peices of a jigsaw wrong, they fit into place just not where they are at the moment.
OPOOHWAN: Good points. The world is old (as old as you say) but we have several techniques at our disposal for evaluationg the historical climate, we can go back 542 million years using oxygen isotope analysis and whilst not exact it gives us a pretty accuarte picture of what's happened before. More recently (last 750,000 years) we can use more accurate techniques including ice core analysis.
The global warming issue is something that recently has been taken out of context. It was never a big issue back in the 70's and was more media sensationalism than documented science. There are several online articles that put things into context - just search for Global Cooling.
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