Will anyone ever come up with proof of manmade climate change/global warming/cooling?
Every link that is put forward to show proof of global warming ends up being a political statement. And all the proponents like to claim that 99% of all scientists believe in it.
If that were true, then why is it so hard to find one scientist that will make a statement that global warming/cooling/climate change is effected by man?
I am a recent graduate from MS State university with a degree in meteorology. Ok first off, all you hear about is CO2 in the atmosphere. Well that is not the dominant factor in Global warming. Its is water vapor!!!!! Water vapor makes up 90% of the gas in the atmosphere. With that being said has humans and our man made pollution only contribute a small fraction of the percentage of water vapor in the atmosphere. Oceans produce the majority. Another quick fact. CO2 levels do no rise before temperature rises. CO2 levels rise after the temperature rises. Its has for millions of years just like the climate has changed for millions of years. The government and the press are just trying to use scare tactics. You have to know all the facts before you can blame man for the temperature rise. If man made the temperature rise then how come we had a cold period during the 70′s when they thought we were in a global cooling phase and then the 80′s and 90′s temps got warmer so now were in a global warming phase!!! CO2 levels have been rising since the industrial revolution but temperature has fluctuated over the 20th century. Another thing… The weather stations the show temperatures are located at airports!!!!!!!!! Surrounded by concrete!! You can’t get an accurate reading from those things. You have to go on satellite temperature readings which show not much of a change over the 20th century. There are countless ways temperature can change.. Global orbit of earth around the son, sun outputs energy at higher and lower levels. There is a lot to comprehend when debating global warming so you can’t just off and blame the human race when you have other factors at play.. The biggest thing is the CO2 levels rise after Temperature rises!!! With that said no you cannot blame the human race!!!!!!!!! Here is a good site to read up on global warmin. http://mysite.verizon.net/mhieb/WVFossils/global_warming.html
You will not find a scientist publicly say it’s man made b/c there are so many other scientist that feel differently and not enough facts!!!!!!
Yeah, the 3 hottest years on record were before 1940. Also, man is not in control of what happens to Earth.
I’ve tried to state that over & over again, that this world has cycles of severe heat and drought, and severe cold and wet.
Hasn’t this world seen Ice Ages?
Don’t we have deserts?
This world constantly changes, and the temperatures do with it.
Maybe ten years from now, the trend will change, and then all of these people will be whining about the "New Ice Age" coming…….
Facts, and figures can be manipulated to prove just about anything.
YEAH I THINK SO LATER ON IN THE FUTURE
Though I believe global warming may very well be occurring. After all it has occurred many times in the earths past. The causes for it has been politicized in the extreme.
Ofcourse global change is effected by man. Man and animal and nature and probably a thousand other variables. Its just that some men’s disproportional volume of hot air effects it even more.
that there is global warming is without doubt but nobody can say it is due to human activity because CO2 is only a very small % of the atmosphere and humans only produce about 5% of that CO2. Also CO2 is not the best greenhouse gas. that is not to say that we should not be concentrating on producing power from other than fossil fuels as they will run out eventually. However I would like to see a lot more attention paid to what steps we are going to take to deal with the effects of global warming which is inevitable rather than trying to control it which we can’t. The earth has been warmer in the past long before man started to use fossil fuels and even before he was around.
There is no question that humanity is not kind to the environment and that we in general are having a negative impact.
However, factual arguments do not yet exist that I am aware of that we are actually responsible for the increase in the temperature and the much reported affects.
Scientists that "agree" have come to a consensus not a conclusion. if they had proof, they would present facts and the replicatable process used to come to those conclusions.
Do we need to be better stewards, absolutely, but let’s do it because it’s the right thing to do, not because of a notion or a fad or what ever global warming factually is.
You know when they have facts, we’ll hear them, with a healthy helping of "we told you so’s"
There is one group, I think it is the league of scientists but I don’t recall at the moment that is a group of scientists from around the world regardless of political beliefs or nationality that has studied this and do indeed state that global warming is man made.
Stop and think of it this way, put too many people in a room and the room becomes too warm simply because of the body heat of the people in the room. Now multiply that by billions, add car and factory emissions, forest fires around the world and so on and it is easy to understand that we are indeed destroying the planet through global warming.
How ever much you try YOU CANNOT ABSOLVE HUMANITY FROM BLAME
Man has changed climates all over this planet for thousands of years and today more than ever ,the quest for ethanol is making it even worse
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AipYXT_2Inncd.19oS8vfyjsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20070618163201AAyuI69
by deforestation
Forests absorb heat from the sun and produce humidity
people have been removing forests for ever
and with all these forests gone the place gets hotter just from that
Most of Spain is a dessert because of the timber cut to build the Spanish Armada
Lebanon was deforested to build the Phoenician fleet it is now a desert
Ghengas Kahn burned all the forest and filled all the wells with sand ,turning vast regions in to desserts in Asia.
I have seen lands in Africa (i was there for 23 years)that have been turned from jungle into desserts by people in a matter of a couple of years ,because of the slash and burn method used by settlers and expanding agriculture,
I have seen rivers dry up because of deforestation in many places in Africa and Mexico ,(been here 7 years)
I live now by the side of a river in Mexico where,in 30 years 5 species of fish have become extinct .
and part of the year the river is dry this is for longer every year because of over use of water by agriculture and as a result of deforestation.
There are natural cycles in the planets life
but a lot is influenced by mans existence ,and this is increasing with overpopulation,putting strains on Natural resources and increasing contaminations as well as destructions of essential components that ensure living conditions for all life forms
In recent times thousands of people have died because of excessive heat,usually old people.in India ,Mexico and France,
In China, thousands of what used to be farmers are running for their lives from the dust storms that have buried their towns and turned their lands into dessert,the globe where they were ,got to hot for them .
and instead of producing food they are now needing it from some where else,and this will drastically effect the world food prices, when they start buying water in the form of grains ,at any cost disestablishing governments, in some countries ,could be the result
(are you seeing more Chinese around interested in agricultural lands ,we do here in Mexico)
The Sahara is growing by 7 kilometers a year( and that was originally deforested by people ,and you cannot replant in the hot sun of the equator)
and most of the desserts we know are a results of mans actions ,and they are increasing ,not getting less ,
Collectively this planets arable lands are drying up because of bad farming practices like,over grazing,use of chemicals and fertilizers,
As far as the food production is concerned, Global warming or some of its effects are serious,rising seas result in land loss
each degree rise in temperature means 10%crop loss
Every year more land loss because of desertification ,we have less arable land to produce food ,for an extra 70 million people ,
And there is less and less potable water (because of deforestation),to irrigate this production ,
More and more Farmers are over pumping deep carbon aquifers to irrigate.
and are plowing more and more unstable lands because they have lost so many million hectares to desertification ,
Collectively because there is so much of it all over the world ,the global precipitation is affected and so is the climate .
As for the Sun
when younger i used to handle the African sun or lie on the beach in Portugal getting brown ,all day long.
But lately ,few people can handle continues exposure with out getting burned
And everywhere i have been ,Sun block has almost become essential for beach bums .
The sun is getting hotter,
AND
The rains here in Guerrero have never been as potent as this year ,in the seven years that i have been here .
this is partly because of Hurricane Dean (which is not far away),
but could it also be that a much hotter sun is evaporating more water from the seas???
hot from the press,yahoo news release 1 minute ago
As Predicted, Global Warming Fuels More Tropical Rainfall
Scientists had predicted that global warming ought to increase rainfall in the tropics. Now NASA researchers say it has.
NOTE
And we are NOT even talking about global warming because of pollution ,this is just MAN MADE CLIMATE CHANGES because of agriculture and expanding populations of today
I am not making the ridiculous claim that man has made global climates ,i give the truth about Man changing local conditions and subsequently local climates when they have changed a place from a forest into a desert,and that logic tells me it must have some effect on the whole if there is enough of this
Don’t buy into Al Gore’s theory. It’s so full of holes and he doesn’t even follow his own advice. He says to walk or ride bike to work and he jets around the country in one of the most fuel-inefficient aircraft in the world. His house uses so much energy. In fact, most of the leading scientists actually say global warming is a natural thing and isn’t a problem. The Antarctic ice is actually growing, not shrinking as Al believes.
There is undeniable proof that the climate is warming, but there are still plenty of sceptics out there about even this fact! Then there are those who say every planet in the solar system is warming (which they aren’t), so it must be due to the sun emmiting more energy (which it isn’t). There are those who ask if the dinosaurs were driveing SUV’s to cause the climate to warm. In most every picture I see drawn of dinosaurs there is a volcano going off in the background which is pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
CO2 IS a gas that traps heat and causes a greenhouse effect- its been proven by many scientists. Humans emmit tens of billions of tons of CO2 every year, thats a fact. If you put those facts together, it seems very likely humans are in part responsible for the earth warming. Definately not responsible for all of it, but at least part of it.
I think if you work hard enough at it you can "not find" anything you want to "not find".
Bush proved that when as a Governor of Texas he introduced The Renewable Portfolio Standards Act that provided incentives for alternate energy production, but as Persident provided political payoffs to the major Greenhouse Gas producers of the USA, blocking most international efforts addressing the problem, and blocking inforecement of most domestic laws on the issue, and declaring "the jury is still out on Global Warming". This made him the intellectual and spiritual mentor of the deniers and skeptics while keeping the rest of the world waiting for nearly 8 years. It also broke the campaign promises he had made on Global Warming and the environment.
Now that all the people he was paying off have long since reversed their stance on Anthropogenic Global Warming, Bush has lackadaisically called his own conference on the subject and declared it to be a serious problem requiring urgent action, the jury having been suddenly discovered not to be out at all.
So you see, what was easy to find prior to taking office became impossible to find while in office, and was suddenly once again easy to find as the door hit him in the butt on the way out. What is sad is that he cannot return the 8 years he has made the rest of the human race delay action on a problem that places their lives at risk.
Yes, this is a political statement. Global Warming has been treated as a political issue, not a scientific issue since Bush took office. The reasons used to block action are no more reasonable or legitimate then intelligent design, creationism, abstinence as the only form of contraception, or the bans on stem cell research.These things can only become scientific issues once more when he and all his kind are banished from positions of power, permanently.
You can see the proof – glaciers that are gone and are not coming back. People whose life work is to study ecosystems see radical change and extinction of these ecosystems. There is a list a mile long of the changes occurring locally, internationally and globally that are caused by humanity’s destruction of the natural world – forests, rivers, lakes, coastlines, etc…Just because the emissions produced by industrialized counties are less tangible to you, makes its damaging effects on the earth no less real.
Unfortunately, it will take further disasters, like flooding, heatwaves, uncontrollable forest fires, and increased violence in weather patterns for those who refuse to realize that global warming is effected by man. And even then, those who refuse to see will try and find other excuses for humanity’s destructiion of the very world humanity lives in.
Personally, I have witnessed the destruction of a forest where I live. In its place was paved nothing but parking lots and the storefronts for some major corporations. I stood in those parking lots one summer and noticed that the temperature was over 100 degrees farenheit. The forecast for that day was for the 80s, and indeed, in nearby forests that hadn’t been cut down yet, the temperature was indeed in the 80s, and it felt much cooler than the hellish parking lot. I realized I was witnessing first hand and on a local level – say it with me now – YES!!!!!!! – it was MAN MADE GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE!!!!!!!!!
I realized that if you multiplied the heat from that one parking lot and the roads surrounding it by all the thousands of paved surfaces and by all the emissions produced by all the cars and factories that made this pavement necessary, you had proof of the negative impact of "man" on his environment, otherwise known as "gobal warming". Somehow, once a piece of land has been paved over or a building built on it, we forget that the land once had a cooling forest or some kind of vegetation on it. Oh well… It doesn’t seem likely that this trend of paving over cooling forests will stop anytime soon, and it’s double the heat. Replacement of cooling forest with a heat producing industrial strength infrastructure. Unless something definitive happens that makes us realize that we need to stop destroying our world now, we can expect more of the same disasters in the present and in the near future. We also need to find a way to build an infrastructure that allows for and promotes cooling such as some of the structures major corporations have built now.
Thanks for letting me help you in your disbelief.
We eill have a more definitive answer in about 10-40 years. By then we will have accurate emperical data sufficient to prove or disprove the present theories.
The temperature data we are using now is not very good. We are talking about very small changes each year. So small it is difficult to measure accurately. We certainly didn’t have temperature monitoring that could measure .01 degrees/year changes in the distant past, and don’t even have this accuracy all over the world now.
As long as De-Nile is a river in Egypt, there will be people who refuse to believe man is having an adverse affect on the environment (I can’t wait until those folks unite with the moon landing hoax people).
There are thousands of scientists who say man is most (not all) of the cause. Let me answer your question directly with just a few individual names.
This is one of the basic papers, proving that man is mostly the cause.
Meehl, G.A., W.M. Washington, C.A. Ammann, J.M. Arblaster, T.M.L. Wigleym and C. Tebaldi (2004). "Combinations of Natural and Anthropogenic Forcings in Twentieth-Century Climate". Journal of Climate 17: 3721-3727
Their work is summarized at:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png
Here’s are bios of the the climatologists that run a website that exists to explain the science showing global warming is mostly man made.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?cat=10
"climate science from climate scientists"
Here is the list of authors and reviewers (24 pages long) of a thousand page report that proves global warming is mostly man made. You’ll need adobe acrobat to read it.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Annexes.pdf
Here’s a list of major scientific organizations that have issued statements that global warming is mostly man made:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
Here are a two very clear quotes, from two very prominent scientists:
"I wasn’t convinced by a person or any interest group—it was the data that got me. I was utterly convinced of this connection between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. And I was convinced that if we didn’t do something about this, we would be in deep trouble.”
Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)
Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut and the first Commander of the Naval Space Command
"Global warming is already starting, and there’s going to be more of it. I think there is still time to deal with global warming, but we need to act soon. Humans now control global climate, for better or worse."
James Hansen, Ph.D. climate scientist, NASA
Finally this. He’s referring to man made global warming, he’s one of the guys behind realclimate.org.
"The fact that the community overwhelmingly supports the consensus is evidenced by picking up any copy of Journal of Climate or similar, any scientific program at the meetings, or simply going to talk to scientists. I challenge you, if you think there is some un-reported division, show me the hundreds of abstracts that support your view – you won’t be able to. You can argue whether the consensus is correct, or what it really implies, but you can’t credibly argue it doesn’t exist."
Dr. Gavin Schmidt, NASA
There is proof of global warming. For something to warm, there has to be a heat source made by man.
The science has been lacking because we can’t see temperature beyond our visible spectrum. Go to http://www.thermoguy.com/globalwarming-heatgain.html and see the science that has been missing.
UV and solar radiation isn’t reflecting off the earth, it is causing buildings to generate heat they aren’t designed for. We are using air conditioning to treat the heat symptom and ir conditioning is really refrigeration using ozone depleting halocarbons, massive electrical waste, more GHG emissions, etc. No one is discussing the fact we are generating heat on every building that is just short of boiling temperature.
Look at the link and I have a time-lapsed video being prepared for youtube now. It will shock you to know the entire process is calculated and assumed compliant.
That entirely depends on your definition of "proof".
If you mean the layman definition, where 100% certainty is necessary, then the answer to your question is no. Just like there’s no proof that the evolutionary theory is true. There’s just overwhelming evidence supporting both theories, which in the scientific world is what’s considered proof.
Your comment about global warming links all being political is simply wrong. Perhaps you’ve spent too much time in the Politics section and not enough in the Environment section, but we all provide scientific links here. Try the IPCC report, for starters:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf
Here’s a scientific paper discussing how the recent global warming is not due to the Sun:
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf
Here’s one saying that the recent global warming is primarily due to human greenhouse gas emissions:
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/prrl0319.html
In comparison, look at Batman’s answer. He claims (wrongly) that the 3 hottest years happened prior to 1940. Does he provide any evidence to support this claim? Of course not, because there is none, because it’s entirely wrong. You tell me which answer has more scientific evidence to support it.
Scientists don’t have to claim that global warming is due to humans, because they all accept it as true (with a few exceptions). When was the last time you said ‘I breathe oxygen’ or ‘sugar tastes sweet’? When something is widely accepted as accurate, you don’t continue to state the obvious.
You hear skeptics saying that humans aren’t causing global warming because that’s the unconventional view. It’s like when people say the Earth was created 6,000 years ago. It seems like people say it all the time because it’s the unconventional view, so people make a big deal out of it when someone says something like that.
byderrule tries to make the rediculous claim that man has been affecting the climate for thousands of years probably to try and refute the obvious evidence that it has been on a warming trend for thousands of years since we came out the last period of glaciation. The temperature rise is like a climbing a saw on the saw teeth. Sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down in the short term but in the long term it has been going up. Currently we are climbing up a saw tooth. In the 1970s we were going down. Clearly there are cycles of the sun and cycles in our orbit and axis of rotation (and the fact that continents have moved near the poles) that is responsible for of cyclical periods of glacial and interglacial periods that last for about a hundred thousand years. We are fortunate to be born in a time where the temps are near a maximum as we have been warming generally for nearly 10,000 years.
Scientists don’t like to use the word "proof" because everything in science is subject to revision as new data comes in. But the case for human-caused global warming is about as strong as it gets.
1. If the Sun is causing the current warmth, we’re getting more energy, and the whole atmosphere should be getting warmer. But if it’s greenhouse, then we’re getting the same amount of energy, but it’s being distributed differently: more heat is trapped at the surface, so less heat should be escaping to the stratosphere. So if it’s the Sun, the stratosphere should be warming, but if it’s greenhouse, the stratosphere should be cooling.
In fact, the stratosphere has been on a long-term cooling trend ever since we’ve been keeping radiosonde balloon records in the 1950′s. Here’s the data:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/images/update_images/global_upper_air.png
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/hadat2/hadat2_monthly_global_mean.txt
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/sterin/sterin.html
2. If it’s the Sun, we’re getting more energy during the day, and daytime temperatures should be rising fastest. But if it’s greenhouse, we’re losing less heat at night, and nighttime temperatures should be rising fastest. So if it’s the sun, the difference between day and night temperatures should be increasing, but if it’s greenhouse, the day-night difference should be decreasing.
In fact, the daily temperature range has been decreasing throughout the 20th century. Here’s the science:
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0450(1984)023%3C1489:DDTRIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2
http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/clfor/cfstaff/jma/2004GL019998.pdf
3. Total solar irradiance has been measured by satellite since 1978, and during that time it has shown the normal 11-year cycle, but no long-term trend. Here’s the data:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/solarda3.html
4. Scientists have looked closely at the solar hypothesis and have strongly refuted it. Here’s the peer-reviewed science:
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/publications/preprints/pp2006/MPA2001.pdf
5. CO2 levels in the air were stable for 10,000 years prior to the industrial revolution, at about 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv). Since 1800, CO2 levels have risen 38%, to 384 ppmv, with no end in sight. Here’s the data:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/law/law.html
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok_data.html
Same data, graphed:
http://www.columbusnavigation.com/co2.html
6. We know that the excess CO2 in the air is caused by burning of fossil fuels, because when we do isotopic analysis of the CO2 we find increasing amounts of "old" carbon combined with "young" oxygen.
Stuiver, M., Burk, R. L. and Quay, P. D. 1984. 13C/12C ratios and the transfer of biospheric carbon to the atmosphere. J. Geophys. Res. 89, 1731–1748.
Francey, R.J., Allison, C.E., Etheridge, D.M., Trudinger, C.M., Enting, I.G., Leuenberger, M., Langenfelds, R.L., Michel, E., Steele, L.P., 1999. A 1000-year high precision record of d13Cin atmospheric CO2. Tellus 51B, 170–193.
Quay, P.D., B. Tilbrook, C.S. Wong. Oceanic uptake of fossil fuel CO2: carbon-13 evidence. Science 256 (1992), 74-79
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87
7. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, responsible for between 9% and 23% of the total greenhouse effect. Since the total greenhouse effect is about 33°C, that means CO2 is responsible for between 3° and 7.5° of our current temperature. This is right in line with the observed 38% increase in CO2 and the observed 0.7°C rise in temperature.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/
NOTE to TOMCAT:
The stratosphere does indeed get a bit warmer at the peak of the 11-year solar cycle. Here is the peer-reviewed science:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VHB-3X9YR6N-7&_user=10&_coverDate=01%2F01%2F1999&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f8649a1c69a70c80288bd977e94037e5
http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/labitzke/solar_signal/MetZ_Labitzke_2001.pdf
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997JGR…102.1355H
http://individual.utoronto.ca/ekwan/ozone.pdf
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1999JGR…10427321B
http://www.springerlink.com/content/k11p972l803x05l0/
I guess what I’m saying really is true then.
CAN YOU PROVE ALL HUMANS ARE MORTAL???
Obviously not! And still billions of people believe it!
That all humans born before 1880 are dead is a fact and we use it as an empirical evidence that humans are mortal.
So why do you expect formal proofs that global warming will happen?
Why would you not take action if you know it is going to happen and it is achievable to greatly reduce its impact?
Let’s turn the question around…
You prove to me that man is not responsible for global warming
I believe human societies should attempt to put binding constraints on human emissions of greenhouse gases only if the advocates of man-made global warming can demonstrate three things:
1) That the greenhouse gasses are certain to raise global temperatures significantly higher than they rose during previous natural climate warming cycles;
2) That the warming would severely harm human welfare and the ecology;
3) That rational human actions could actually forestall such overheating.
To date, the advocates of man-made global warming have not been able to meet any of these minimum requirements. The IPCC’s claim to have found the “human fingerprint” in the Modern Warming was bogus when Ben Santer first altered the science chapter in the IPCC’s 1996 report, and it remains bogus today.
No one has been able to distinguish natural from man-made global warming. Indeed, since the industrialized regions have seen the vast majority of warming, we may be dealing with localized surface heating driven primarily by urban heat islands and land use changes.
The environmental movement may be a bit past its peak influence but it still gets massive approval ratings in public opinion polls. It is still dedicated to making our society feel guilty about its wealth and materialism and retargeting us toward the leaner society the activists believe we should be forced to accept.
Mainstream journalists have long since committed themselves to the environmental cause. It appeals to their sense of superiority, and it gives them an unending source of scary news for front pages and TV sound bites. How else can the journalists generate front-page bylines in a world where human lives are lengthening, famine is being conquered, and the Cold War’s mutually-assured-destruction has disappeared? Even in today’s wars (including the war on terror) death totals are reckoned in the thousands, not millions.
And, last but not least, the climate research community has become massively dependent on billions of dollars per year in government research grants generated by the man-made global warming campaign. Thousands of new PH.D’s have been earned, hundreds of new research projects have been undertaken, and dozens of new scientific journals have been founded to publish their climate research results.
If the public was suddenly convinced (as it is being convinced) of the natural cycles of warming and cooling through the centuries, there would be a crushing impact on the eco-group’s donations and grants, and on the reputations of the journalists who wrote the man-made global warming scare stories, along with professional starvation for various university departments, government laboratories, and whole divisions of NASA and the EPA.
NOTE: In a comment made by IngelaD in an answer to a recent question on AGW posted by dana1981, she stated that someone "also links to TRBC, a religious organization which believes the universe was created in six days”. I challenge her or anyone to prove to me, or to anyone for that matter, that the universe was not created in six days, and to prove with scientific facts, that the alternative hypothesis, the theory of evolution, is true.
The most widespread and influential argument against the veracity of the Bible is the all-too-common belief that modern science has proven evolution, thereby discrediting the scriptural account of creation. The fatal flaw in this argument, however, is the fact that it is impossible to prove scientifically any theory of origins. This is because the very essence of the scientific method is based on observation and experimentation, and it is impossible to make observations or conduct experiments on the origin of the universe.
The widespread assumption that evolution is an established fact of science is absolutely false. Thus, evolution can only be correctly labeled as a belief, a subjective philosophy of origins, the religion of many scientists. Despite this fact, many of today’s scientists and teachers still insist that evolution is an established fact of science.
The very concept of of organic evolution is completely absurd and impossible. It is absolutely astonishing that an idea that is so devoid of any legitimate scientific evidence could have attained a position of such prestige in the name of science!
As George Wald, winner of the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize in Science, has written:
“When it comes to the origin of life on this earth, there are only two possibilities: creation or spontaneous generation (evolution). There is no third way. Spontaneous generation was disproved 100 years ago, but that leads us only to one other conclusion: that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds (personal reasons); therefore, we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance.”
Keith:
The stratosphere is practically invisible to incoming solar radiation except for a tiny amount of UV energy captured by ozone. Please stop saying the stratosphere should heat up because of an increase in solar energy. If what your saying is true the stratosphere should warm and cool every 11 years, because the sun has about 0.8 watts meter^2 of variability within a solar cycle.
EDIT:
Keith
Except for ozone depletion from volcanics the stratosphere overall shows warming. The last 13 years the stratosphere most certainly shows warming. I don’t think the stratosphere is proof for the AGW argument one way or the other. Another decade without any major volcanics, then I think we will know. If I were biased, I would be jumping up and down yelling why has the stratosphere not been cooling for the last 14 years, but I know this not enough data to draw any conclusions.
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog/popup_slideshow.html?p=17&id=Qx7Sa2YldKu7ue9FhL7qzjDSjWGsxC4xYA–
As far as analysis of land based temperature measurements, I cannot accept that as proof, it is definetly corrupted.
http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/weather_stations/
As far as solar trends, there is a valid argument for that as well. Scafetta and West paper supports solar warming contribution at 50% since 1900.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/0313irradiance.html
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/2006GL027142.pdf
But I agree that a portion of the atmospheric CO2 increase since the industrial revolution is because human activities, but not all of it.
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Earth Policy Institute
Plan B 2.0 Book Byte
For Immediate Release
October 2, 2007
THE NATURE OF THE NEW WORLD
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch01_ss2.htm
Lester R. Brown
We recently entered a new century, but we are also entering a new world, one where the collisions between our demands and the earth’s capacity to satisfy them are becoming daily events. It may be another crop-withering heat wave, another village abandoned because of invading sand dunes, or another aquifer pumped dry. If we do not act quickly to reverse the trends, these seemingly isolated events will occur more and more frequently, accumulating and combining to determine our future.
Resources that accumulated over eons of geological time are being consumed in a single human lifespan. We are crossing natural thresholds that we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do not recognize. These deadlines, determined by nature, are not politically negotiable.
Nature has many thresholds that we discover only when it is too late. In our fast-forward world, we learn that we have crossed them only after the fact, leaving little time to adjust. For example, when we exceed the sustainable catch of a fishery, the stocks begin to shrink. Once this threshold is crossed, we have a limited time in which to back off and lighten the catch. If we fail to meet this deadline, breeding populations shrink to where the fishery is no longer viable, and it collapses.
We know from earlier civilizations that the lead indicators of economic decline were environmental, not economic. The trees went first, then the soil, and finally the civilization itself. To archeologists, the sequence is all too familiar.
Our situation today is far more challenging because in addition to shrinking forests and eroding soils, we must deal with falling water tables, more frequent crop-withering heat waves, collapsing fisheries, expanding deserts, deteriorating rangelands, dying coral reefs, melting glaciers, rising seas, more-powerful storms, disappearing species, and, soon, shrinking oil supplies. Although these ecologically destructive trends have been evident for some time, and some have been reversed at the national level, not one has been reversed at the global level.
The bottom line is that the world is in what ecologists call an "overshoot-and-collapse" mode. Demand has exceeded the sustainable yield of natural systems at the local level countless times in the past. Now, for the first time, it is doing so at the global level. Forests are shrinking for the world as a whole. Fishery collapses are widespread. Grasslands are deteriorating on every continent. Water tables are falling in many countries. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions exceed CO2 sequestration.
In 2002, a team of scientists led by Mathis Wackernagel, who now heads the Global Footprint Network, concluded that humanity’s collective demands first surpassed the earth’s regenerative capacity around 1980. Their study, published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, estimated that global demands in 1999 exceeded that capacity by 20 percent. The gap, growing by 1 percent or so a year, is now much wider. We are meeting current demands by consuming the earth’s natural assets, setting the stage for decline and collapse.
In a rather ingenious approach to calculating the human physical presence on the planet, Paul MacCready, the founder and Chairman of AeroVironment and designer of the first solar-powered aircraft, has calculated the weight of all vertebrates on the land and in the air. He notes that when agriculture began, humans, their livestock, and pets together accounted for less than 0.1 percent of the total. Today, he estimates, this group accounts for 98 percent of the earth’s total vertebrate biomass, leaving only 2 percent for the wild portion, the latter including all the deer, wildebeests, elephants, great cats, birds, small mammals, and so forth.
Ecologists are intimately familiar with the overshoot-and-collapse phenomenon. One of their favorite examples began in 1944, when the Coast Guard introduced 29 reindeer on remote St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea to serve as the backup food source for the 19 men operating a station there. After World War II ended a year later, the base was closed and the men left the island. When U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist David Kline visited St. Matthew in 1957, he discovered a thriving population of 1,350 reindeer feeding on the thick mat of lichen that covered the 332-square-kilometer (128-square-mile) island. In the absence of any predators, the population was exploding. By 1963, it had reached 6,000. He returned to St. Matthew in 1966 and discovered an island strewn with reindeer skeletons and not much lichen. Only 42 of the reindeer survived: 41 females and 1 not entirely healthy male. There were no fawns. By 1980 or so, the remaining reindeer had died off.
Like the deer on St. Matthew Island, we too are overconsuming our natural resources. Overshoot leads sometimes to decline and sometimes to a complete collapse. It is not always clear which it will be. In the former, a remnant of the population or economic activity survives in a resource-depleted environment. For example, as the environmental resource base of Easter Island in the South Pacific deteriorated, its population declined from a peak of 20,000 several centuries ago to today’s population of fewer than 4,000. In contrast, the 500-year-old Norse settlement in Greenland collapsed during the 1400s, disappearing entirely in the face of environmental adversity.
Even as the global population is climbing and the economy’s environmental support systems are deteriorating, the world is pumping oil with reckless abandon. Leading geologists now think oil production may soon peak and turn downward. Although no one knows exactly when oil production will peak, supply is already lagging behind demand, driving prices upward.
Faced with a seemingly insatiable demand for automotive fuel, farmers will want to clear more and more of the remaining tropical forests to produce sugarcane, oil palms, and other high-yielding biofuel crops. Already, billions of dollars of private capital are moving into this effort. In effect, the rising price of oil is generating a massive new threat to the earth’s biological diversity.
As the demand for farm commodities climbs, it is shifting the focus of international trade concerns from the traditional goal of assured access to markets to one of assured access to supplies. Countries heavily dependent on imported grain for food are beginning to worry that buyers for fuel distilleries may outbid them for supplies. As oil security deteriorates, so, too, will food security.
As the role of oil recedes, the process of globalization will be reversed in fundamental ways. As the world turned to oil during the last century, the energy economy became increasingly globalized, with the world depending heavily on a handful of countries in the Middle East for energy supplies. Now as the world turns to wind, solar cells, and geothermal energy in this century, we are witnessing the localization of the world energy economy.
The world is facing the emergence of a geopolitics of scarcity, which is already highly visible in the efforts by China, India, and other developing countries to ensure their access to oil supplies. In the future, the issue will be who gets access to not only Middle Eastern oil but also Brazilian ethanol and North American grain. Pressures on land and water resources, already excessive in most of the world, will intensify further as the demand for biofuels climbs. This geopolitics of scarcity is an early manifestation of civilization in an overshoot-and-collapse mode, much like the one that emerged among the Mayan cities competing for food in that civilization’s waning years.
You do not need to be an ecologist to see that if recent environmental trends continue, the global economy eventually will come crashing down. It is not knowledge that we lack. At issue is whether national governments can stabilize population and restructure the economy before time runs out.
# # #
Adapted from Chapter 1, "Entering a New World," in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), available on-line at http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB2/index.htm
Additional information at http://www.earthpolicy.org
government agencies as well as science and engineering departments at accredited universities are not in the business of making political statements (unless your a conspiracy theorist):
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/index.html
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/GlobalWarmingUpdate/
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob-warm.html
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/1998/es202/l13.html