Who here is a global warming skeptic?

[Consistency]

 

Higher temps will be bad for some good for others but ultimately it will not be possible to predict who it will be good or bad for other than to say the areas where food production is highest seem to be the most vulnerable.

 

When it lacks vegetation.

 

 

Absolutely not true, the sun was dimmer in the past and is demonstrably getting warmer, size is not an issue either way...

 

 

Again, since your basic premise is false this makes no sense.

 

http://www.icr.org/article/sun-shrinking/

 

 

This too is false, vegetation growth is more driven by rainfall than animal excrement, a desert is a desert no matter how much manure you place there and rotting manure results in more CO2 not less...

 

And rainfall is driven by oxygen which evaporates. Who produces oxygen from carbon dioxide?

 

Manure contains grass seeds if the cow was free to migrate and eat mature grass(which contains seeds) instead of being confined and fed grains. Manure is also rich in micro-organisms which are the basis of healthy soil.

 

I will find the lecture video where they did an experiment by placing dung on desert land and it turned into a healthy grassland.

 

CO2 isn't the enemy when there is an abundance of vegetation.

 

 

During the time of the dinosaurs the temps were warmer on average, more active volcanoes equal more CO2 which of course equals higher temps, the poles were subtropical with short cold winters and no ice caps. Yes vegetation is thought to have been more prolific then but due to CO2 levels and higher sea levels. Possibly oxygen was slightly higher then as well. Continental drift had the continents in different positions as well and that had an effect on the climate too.

 

There were some draw backs to this scenario, stratified oceans with a thin oxygenated layer over anoxic conditions. This would be a problem for us today. I am quite sure that life can adapt to higher temps but humans maybe not so much.

 

Think big. This is negative small clustured thinking put together for the purpose of sounding smart.

[Moontanman]

When it lacks vegetation.

 

 

http://www.icr.org/article/sun-shrinking/

 

 

Creation Science is an oxymoron...

 

lets try real science...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Life_cycle

 

 

And rainfall is driven by oxygen which evaporates. Who produces oxygen from carbon dioxide?

 

Can you give some evidence of the idea that evaporation of oxygen drives rainfall?

 

Manure contains grass seeds if the cow was free to migrate and eat mature grass(which contains seeds) instead of being confined and fed grains. Manure is also rich in micro-organisms which are the basis of healthy soil.

 

How does this support your assertion that placing dung in a desert will result in the desert becoming productive?

 

I will find the lecture video where they did an experiment by placing dung on desert land and it turned into a healthy grassland.

 

 

I suggest you do so, but since a desert island can refer to an island that has no soil but doesn't mean no rain, i wait to see if your study is relevant...

 

CO2 isn't the enemy when there is an abundance of vegetation.

 

Actually higher levels of CO2 can be shown to decrease modern vegetation growth due to acidic conditions created by extra CO2...

 

Think big. This is negative small clustured thinking put together for the purpose of sounding smart.

 

Don't be insulting, it does nothing to support a bad argument...

[Consistency]

Creation Science is an oxymoron...

 

lets try real science...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Life_cycle

 

 

Reduction in mass. Hence less intense and lower temperature on earth.

 

How does this support your assertion that placing dung in a desert will result in the desert becoming productive?

 

 

I suggest you do so, but since a desert island can refer to an island that has no soil but doesn't mean no rain, i wait to see if your study is relevant...

 

http://vimeo.com/8239427

 

http://www.feasta.org/events/general/2009_lecture.htm

 

Some additional video links: http://www.savoryinstitute.com/2013/02/resources/video-library/

 

Actually higher levels of CO2 can be shown to decrease modern vegetation growth due to acidic conditions created by extra CO2...

 

Yes in cities where there is massive amounts of air pollution, which not only kills plants, it kills us. Everyone thrives outside of cities.

[Moontanman]

 

Reduction in mass. Hence less intense and lower temperature on earth.

 

Again, no, please look at the link i provided and the graph, real science... it works... the mass reduction in the sun is trivial compared to it's total mass btw... and over time the sun is getting brighter not dimmer and eventually it will indeed get much bigger but that would again require some understanding of real science...

 

http://vimeo.com/8239427

 

http://www.feasta.org/events/general/2009_lecture.htm

 

Some additional video links: http://www.savoryinstitute.com/2013/02/resources/video-library/

 

 

please watch your own videos and see how rainfall fits into that equation...

 

 

Yes in cities where there is massive amounts of air pollution, which not only kills plants, it kills us. Everyone thrives outside of cities.

 

 

No, actually this has been documented on high mountain tops and in the lab, cities have no bearing on this...

[swansont]

Why is an effect that takes place over millions of years being entertained as a relevant issue?

[Moontanman]

Why is an effect that takes place over millions of years being entertained as a relevant issue?

 

 

I guess it's because I let him drag me down to his level and beat me to death with experience...

[John Cuthber]

Why is an effect that takes place over millions of years being entertained as a relevant issue?

Because a drowning man will still clutch at a straw, even if he knows it's waterlogged.

[Consistency]

Again, no, please look at the link i provided and the graph, real science... it works... the mass reduction in the sun is trivial compared to it's total mass btw... and over time the sun is getting brighter not dimmer and eventually it will indeed get much bigger but that would again require some understanding of real science...

 

The outer atmosphere is inflated and tenuous, making the radius immense and the surface temperature low, somewhere from 5,000 K and lower.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_giant

 

A G-type main-sequence star (G V), often (and imprecisely) called a yellow dwarf, or G dwarf star, is a main-sequence star of spectral type G and luminosity class V. Such a star has about 0.8 to 1.2 solar masses and surface temperature of between 5,300 and 6,000 K.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_dwarf

 

Surface temperature is lower in the red giant.. so I don't see what you are getting at...

 

please watch your own videos and see how rainfall fits into that equation...

 

My point is the big picture... more ruminants grazing and migrating leads to more vegetation.. more vegetation leads to more carbon fixation which leads to more oxygen in the air and eventually evaporating... which then leads to more oxygen in the hydrosphere and eventually more rain, aka fresh water.

 

No, actually this has been documented on high mountain tops and in the lab, cities have no bearing on this...

 

High mountain tops near volcanoes?

 

My immune system says different. You should come over to milan, italy and you'll say different when air pollution alarms your immune system which then attacks itself via the cox 2 enzyme.

Edited February 12, 2013 by Consistency

[Moontanman]

 

The outer atmosphere is inflated and tenuous, making the radius immense and the surface temperature low, somewhere from 5,000 K and lower.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_giant

 

A G-type main-sequence star (G V), often (and imprecisely) called a yellow dwarf, or G dwarf star, is a main-sequence star of spectral type G and luminosity class V. Such a star has about 0.8 to 1.2 solar masses and surface temperature of between 5,300 and 6,000 K.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_dwarf

 

Surface temperature is lower in the red giant.. so I don't see what you are getting at...

 

 

 

As the sun begins to seriously age it will begin to expand until it occupies the orbit of Venus at least, the surface of the earth will become hotter than Venus is now. This sun will be a red giant, it will radiate away more energy than it does now, but this irrelevant to the issue at hand...

 

 

My point is the big picture... more ruminants grazing and migrating leads to more vegetation.. more vegetation leads to more carbon fixation which leads to more oxygen in the air and eventually evaporating... which then leads to more oxygen in the hydrosphere and eventually more rain, aka fresh water.

 

 

I am still stuck on the "oxygen evaporates" and causes rain thing, what do you mean by this?

 

 

High mountain tops near volcanoes?

 

No, actually a very old range was used, in the example i am thinking of, the Appalachians, no volcanoes

 

 

My immune system says different. You should come over to milan, italy and you'll say different when air pollution alarms your immune system which then attacks itself via the cox 2 enzyme.

 

Anecdotal evidence is irrelevant here...

Edited February 12, 2013 by Moontanman

[overtone]

Absolute rubbish!! They noticed a drop in yield as night time temperature rose ( there seem to be some particular mentionof night time temperature for some reason)

If you don't know why night time temps are a critical issue, you have no basis for labaling anything "rubbish".

 

I'd be surprised if the study itself didn't explain the focus, in the introduction or discussion or even the abstract, but the matter is so common in discussions of the incoming effects of global warming that maybe they took for granted some familiarity in their readership.

 

Meanwhile, a discussion of whether a higher general temp regime would be good or bad for plants, people, etc, is not really relevant. The problem is the speed of the change - we'd be at least as badly affected by a cooling of this magnitude at this rate, and nobody is arguing that we are at some utopian ideal temperature for some reason. I can easily imagine that we might be better off somehow if we had been a bit warmer and less glaciated and better CO2 blanketed over the past few million years, or if the continents had been better distributed over the surface, or if the mountain ranges had been somewhat differently arranged.

 

That does not mean that moving the continent of Antartica into the Pacific Ocean, flattening certain stretches of the Andes and Himalayas, or doubling the CO2 content of the atmosphere, in a couple of centuries, would not cause serious problems.

Edited February 12, 2013 by overtone

[Consistency]

As the sun begins to seriously age it will begin to expand until it occupies the orbit of Venus at least, the surface of the earth will become hotter than Venus is now. This sun will be a red giant, it will radiate away more energy than it does now, but this irrelevant to the issue at hand...

 

I can also read wikipedia.

 

Can I get a reference where red giants radiate away more energy?

[Essay]

I haven't read the whole thread however I am not convinced entirely on global warming. Is the temperature rising? Yes but whether a higher temperature is good or bad is where I am sitting on the fence.

 

There is other factors to take into account.

 

1) We know that the Sun use to be much larger in the past. Hence higher global temperatures.

 

2) Dinosaurs use to be much bigger than current land animals, had lizard skins for the protection of higher amounts of UV radiation and the herbivorous ones required more vegetation daily.

 

My hypothesis based on the evidence.

 

Yes the planet is getting hotter but it could be mainly because we are cutting down large amounts of vegetation, hence less carbon fixation and that herbivorous animal don't have the liberty to do what they are meant to do. That is, eat grass, migrate and poop in less fertile lands and by doing so.. converting unhealthy lands/deserts into healthy grasslands. Healthy soil rich in microorganisms. There is scientific evidence with what I am saying and I will post it once I find it again.

 

More ruminant dung = more vegetation = more carbon fixation = more oxygen = lower/cooler temperature.

You should also include fire and agriculture within your “big picture.”

The equation should read:

More ruminant dung = more vegetation = more carbon fixation = less GreenHouseGas = lower/cooler temperature,

which generally describes the past 50 million years of Gaia’s evolution—including the rise of mammals (esp. herbivores) to predominance, the rise of the grasses to predominance, and the consequent rise of temperate soils that predominate in the temperate latitudes. This allowed enough carbon to be locked up within soils, so that ice could accumulate in the polar regions, and a whole host of consequences follow from that over the past 15-20 Myr—including the development of the “ice-age” cycles we evolved within over the past 5Myr.

Through the “mastery” of fire and agriculture, we have geoengineered the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems over the past few thousands of years, so the normal glacial cycle has been disrupted; but there is no way we’re going back (intentionally) to the days of the megafauna, as a solution to global warming. We need to find another way to restore that carbon-storage function—which the temperate soils did so well—to our extensively managed agricultural soils, and degraded soils, around the globe. As managers of fire and agriculture, we need to replace the function of your free-range herbivores.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v1/n5/fig_tab/ncomms1053_F6.html

 

And we need to do that within the next generation, while doubling food production, restoring degraded lands and waters, and not degrading any new lands or waters. Convertible husbandry and longer cycles of crop rotations can achieve many of these goals. Restoring humic content to soils, restoring the benefits that natural fires brought to soils (biochar), and rebuilding degraded soils, are ways to achieve these goals. Have you heard of the many groups working on these sorts of solutions?

 

~

Edited February 13, 2013 by Essay

[Consistency]

You should also include fire and agriculture within your “big picture.”

 

There is nothing wrong with agriculture which follows the laws of nature.

 

Example: Chickens are excellent predators of insects.. so instead of locking them up.. place them on fruit orchards to eat the insects. We don't need to poison ourselves with pesticides.

 

As managers(MANIPULATORS) of fire and agriculture, we need to replace the function of your free-range herbivores.

Healthy soil requires micro-organisms from the dung of herbivores. We gotta STOP with manipulating the planet. Its insanity.

 

And we need to do that within the next generation, while doubling food production, restoring degraded lands and waters, and not degrading any new lands or waters. Convertible husbandry and longer cycles of crop rotations can achieve many of these goals. Restoring humic content to soils, restoring the benefits that natural fires brought to soils (biochar), and rebuilding degraded soils, are ways to achieve these goals. Have you heard of the many groups working on these sorts of solutions?

 

The lands degrades whether there is too many herbivores and without herbivores. Watch the video on my comment: http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/57883-who-here-is-a-global-warming-skeptic/page-8#entry728859

 

Gaia hypothesis is right. The only thing missing is predators hunting down humans.

 

Cannibalism comes after all the ruminants are Extinct.

[Essay]

 

There is nothing wrong with agriculture which follows the laws of nature.

 

Example: Chickens are excellent predators of insects.. so instead of locking them up.. place them on fruit orchards to eat the insects. We don't need to poison ourselves with pesticides.

 

Healthy soil requires micro-organisms from the dung of herbivores. We gotta STOP with manipulating the planet. Its insanity.

 

The lands degrades whether there is too many herbivores and without herbivores. Watch the video on my comment: http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/57883-who-here-is-a-global-warming-skeptic/page-8#entry728859

 

Gaia hypothesis is right. The only thing missing is predators hunting down humans.

...the "insanity" is manipulating things for short term greed... BUT we have a place in the natural system--a "new natural" system.

 

 

Fire & agricultural management need to be refined, and valued for maintaining a soil-carbon balance that keeps the temperate latitudes from turning either tropical or arctic; in effect, holding the climate stable--warm enough to prevent runaway glacial conditions--but cool enough to also keep the many significant polar contributions stable. This seems to have been the vector or direction of the planet's recent [~50 Myr] evolution--from a gaian perspective--maximizing biodiversity and robust ecosystem resilience.

The megafauna/herbivores to soil-sequestration cycle, which your equation highlighted, worked for 50 million years to cool the planet. Finally it had cooled enough, and the need to slow your soil sequestration cycle developed, about 5 Mya. At that point, an adept biomass manager could fill the niche created by the evolution of those temperate, "arable" soils. Our evolution has been a long and complex dance with fire, from using fire as a tool, to using fire for making more tools, and using fire to make agriculture possible--even today (N-fertilization).

So recently we've done that--to excess--and so now we need to refine our actions and, instead of benefiting from eco-myopia and short-term greed, we should increasingly value the benefits of long-term intentions and sustainable goals for our resources.

We just need to better match our abilities with the parameters of our niche--now that we more fully understand those parameters [such as the significance of humus and the rhizosphere]--or else another species will come along to fill that niche.

~

[edit: bolded]

Edited February 13, 2013 by Essay

[Tim the plumber]

Hi,

 

If you are after some other sceptics here's one;

 

http://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/poptechs-list-of-confusion/

 

The link shows 800 papers but I'm sure he is up to 1200+ as last I heard.

[Iggy]

Example: Chickens are excellent predators of insects.. so instead of locking them up.. place them on fruit orchards to eat the insects. We don't need to poison ourselves with pesticides.

 

Excellent idea. Castaway corn (and other fruit) that hits the ground is good pickings for ground birds. Chickens can make good use of that when rodents would otherwise gobble 'em up.

 

On a horse ranch too -- chickens eat the seed leftover by horses, cutting down the population of mice, opossums, and other herbivores. Fantastic creatures chickens are!

 

The only two concerns I'd have is chicken poo which attracts flies (and whatever eats fly larva) causing, rather than alleviating, an insect problem. The other insects introduced by chickens are chicken fleas. You'd have to be careful not to cultivate them.

 

However, controlled burns are more effective at removing evasive species, cheaper, they accomplish more than just pest control, and they do nothing to moderate migratory species. So, your point does nothing to curtail Essay's point.

 

I liked your post though. I liked the recommendation and the idea.

[AbeMichelson]

I'm skeptical about everything. That's what a scientist is supposed to think. My main problem with a lot of the climate change research is that there is a lot of "bad data" out there. In the 2004(?) report to congress, I remember seeing a table with a report of a 1 degree rise with a margin of error of 4 degrees. Now does this one bad point make all of climate change science wrong? Of course not! However, my general rule is that for every one bad data point you better show me several good ones for me to be convinced. As scientists we have to stop using the word believe/feel, but rather simply supports. We cannot say we are 100% sure, because all an argument against us needs is one bad data point.

[iNow]

[imatfaal]

And if we are talking about scepticism perhaps we should try and apply it to both sides of the argument.

 

If all the data provided by mainstream science were uniformly supportive of a hypothesis you would have every right to ask where the statistically expected anomalies are. But the reports are not uniform because they are not manipulated; the datasets are noisy and dirty but using well established statistical techniques we can make conclusions - and those conclusions generally support the theory of man made global climate change. However, there are studies produced by mainstream climate scientists that do not show significant agreement with predictions and these are seized upon by the deniers as proof of their position. But strangely none of the many reports by the denier (not peer-reviewed because they do not meet the standards of a refereed journal) community ever show anything but a clear argument for their own position. Climate data are so messy it is impossible to believe that this uniformity in reporting by the denialist camp is anything but manipulation of data.

 

Again in the spirit of scepticism the age old question of cui bono should be asked.

[Unity+]

1. Provide the link to this statistic.
2. Notice how it says "peer reviewed climate articles" compared to those who rejected it. I think it would be interesting to find the statistic to those, like me, who are neither supporters of global warming nor skeptics and think more studies should be done.

[John Cuthber]

I remember seeing a table with a report of a 1 degree rise with a margin of error of 4 degrees.

If that's what the data showed, what would you expect them to report?

[swansont]

I remember seeing a table with a report of a 1 degree rise with a margin of error of 4 degrees.

 

Do you have a cite for this? Because the phenomenon of "bad data" is not unheard of in lay people complaining about science.

[iNow]

Provide the link to this statistic.

Here's an idea... you might say, "Do you have a link to this that you could please share so I can look at how they pulled it together?" in the form of a request instead of using the tone of a demand. Just a thought. Do with it what you will. With that said... Here ya go:

 

http://www.jamespowell.org/PieChart/piechart.html

This work follows that of Oreskes (Science, 2005) who searched for articles published between 1993 and 2003 with the keyword phrase “global climate change.” She found 928, read the abstracts of each and classified them. None rejected human-caused global warming. Using her criteria and time-span, I get the same result. Deniers attacked Oreskes and her findings, but they have held up.

<...>

Anyone can repeat this search and post their findings. To sample the most recent 500 articles, click here. Another reviewer would likely have slightly different standards than mine and get a different number of rejecting articles. But no one will be able to reach a different conclusion, for only one conclusion is possible: Within science, global warming denial has virtually no influence. Its influence is instead on a misguided media, politicians all-too-willing to deny science for their own gain, and a gullible public.

 

Scientists do not disagree about human-caused global warming. It is the ruling paradigm of climate science, in the same way that plate tectonics is the ruling paradigm of geology. We know that continents move. We know that the earth is warming and that human emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary cause. These are known facts about which virtually all publishing scientists agree.

 

And here's a link to the above referenced article that reached the same conclusion a few years ago: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686

Oreskes analyzes the existing scientific literature to show that there is a robust consensus that anthropogenic global climate change is occurring. Thus, despite claims sometimes made by some groups that there is not good evidence that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities, the scientific community is in overwhelming agreement that such evidence is clear and persuasive.

Now, I'm sure you can nit pick one or two things and find a small handful of articles that you would have classified differently, but the central point I was presenting will remain unchanged. One or two data points does not negate the decades of work done on this topic, nor is there any disagreement of merit about the overwhelming scientific consensus we see about humans influence on climate across research domains.

Edited January 9, 2014 by iNow

[imatfaal]

1. ..
2. Notice how it says "peer reviewed climate articles" compared to those who rejected it. I think it would be interesting to find the statistic to those, like me, who are neither supporters of global warming nor skeptics and think more studies should be done.

 

As this is an issue of fundamental importance to mankind's future generations - and I really do not want anyone to be left alone in search of data - what do you mean by this:

 

"I think it would be interesting to find the statistic to those, like me, who are neither supporters of global warming nor skeptics and think more studies should be done."

 

There have been 14000 peer reviewed articles which (at the very least) touch on climate change with over 33,000 different scientists working on them - 24 of these articles rejected the hypothesis. Why on earth would anyone who wasn't prejudiced or had been unduly swayed by adverse media coverage claim more work was needed? There is no longer a lack of scientific consensus - the data representation provided by iNow is designed to make that clear. There is however a concerted campaign by powerful and wealthy individuals and corporations to stall any change to our current practice and reverse that little progress we have made - this is done through the courts, the media, and direct political pressure.

 

With respect - science does not work by providing statistics of what percentage of laypersons agree/disagree/are neutral; popularity contests are the domain of television and politics not science. Unfortunately after failing to block scientific progress those who wish the destructive current position to continue moved their argument to a populist campaign based on rhetoric, petty politicisation, character assassination, and down-right lies; this has been largely successful. Voters, for some reason I cannot fathom, look at a statistic which states that out of 14000 articles only 24 dismiss the hypothesis of man-made global warming; and their response is "oh well more work is needed!" A stance of uninformed scepticism is no longer ethically viable; either get informed and make a decision or stop adding your weight to the dangerous policy of procrastination.

[billiards]

Just to add on to iNow's contribution ...

 

John Cook and co-author's have completed a study very similar to the one done by James Powell, their conclusions match very closely with Powell's.

It can be downloaded for free here: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article

Also the "video abstract" can be viewed here: http://bcove.me/c1li8rcl

 

One thing that is missing from Powell's pie chart presentation is the number of articles that remain neutral on AGW and the number that endorse AGW. If we convert Powell's numbers to percentages, the black region (all papers that don't reject AGW) works out to 99.8%. A glance at the Cook et al. paper reveals 32.6% endorse AGW, 66.4% are neutral, 0.7% reject AGW, and 0.3% are uncertain.

 

So actually there are a lot of papers "on the fence". Interestingly when the authors were asked to self-appraise the position of their papers, those that replied were a lot more partisan than Cook et al.'s analysis suggests. 62.7% endorse AGW, 35.5% neutral, and 1.8% reject AGW. The number of papers "on the fence" thins out and the percentages on either side are bumped up. (Incidentally, when I first saw this I thought it must be due to a sampling bias, only 14% of authors agreed to self appraise and I thought that perhaps this 14% represented the more galvanised members of the community. But apparently not as shown in Table 5 of the paper.)

 

If we look at only those papers which take a stand on AGW. About 97.9% are pro AGW by Cook et al's analysis, and 97.2% are pro AGW by self appraisal. The bottom line is that the consensus remains overwhelming.