My belief in Global Warming is getting shaky

[Flying Binghi]

"...climate is highly variable from year to year, and the causes of these variations are not at all well understood..."

"Drastic, precipitous, and especially, unilateral steps to delay the putative greenhouse impacts can cost jobs and prosperity and increase the human costs of global poverty, without being effective..."

via, Roger Revelle, climate scientist, and according to a Scientific American article "the grandfather of the greenhouse effect"

( Al Gore called Revelle "a wonderful, visionary professor")



Extracts from, The Deniers, Lawrence Solomon

[Moontanman]

Hey FB I gots to knows, did I answer your question about the sun being turned off?

[Eclipse Now]

Moontanman, I don't think FB was ever asking that question seriously. Nor do I think he will ever admit to it being answered, because as long as FB thinks "I don't like it" is a scientific response, and allowable forum protocol, he'll just keep on keeping on.

In the meantime, I wonder if FB has any evidence that Roger Revelle actually said any of that, or whether it was plucked out of context if he did? Because check out his wiki.

Global warming

Revelle was instrumental in creating the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1958 and was founding chairman of the first Committee on Climate Change and the Ocean (CCCO) under the Scientific Committee on Ocean Research (SCOR) and the International Oceanic Commission (IOC). During planning for the IGY, under Revelle's directorship, SIO participated in and later became the principal center for the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Program. In July 1956, Charles David Keeling joined the SIO staff to head the program, and began measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory on Mauna Loa, Hawaii, and in Antarctica.

In 1957, Revelle co-authored a paper with Hans Suess that suggested that the Earth's oceans would absorb excess carbon dioxide generated by humanity at a much slower rate than previously predicted by geoscientists, thereby suggesting that human gas emissions might create a "greenhouse effect" that would cause global warming over time.[2] Although other articles in the same journal discussed carbon dioxide levels, the Suess-Revelle paper was "the only one of the three to stress the growing quantity of CO2 contributed by our burning of fossil fuel, and to call attention to the fact that it might cause global warming over time."[3]

Revelle and Suess described the "buffer factor", now known as the "Revelle factor", which is a resistance to atmospheric carbon dioxide being absorbed by the ocean surface layer posed by bicarbonate chemistry. Essentially, in order to enter the ocean, carbon dioxide gas has to partition into one of the components of carbonic acid: carbonate ion, bicarbonate ion, or protonated carbonic acid, and the product of these many chemical dissociation constants factors into a kind of back-pressure that limits how fast the carbon dioxide can enter the surface ocean. Geology, geochemistry, atmospheric chemistry, ocean chemistry ... this amounted to one of the earliest examples of "integrated assessment", which 50 years later became an entire branch of global warming science.

Al Gore mentions Revelle as a personal inspiration in a segment of the Academy Award-winning global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Roger Revelle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Essay]

Originally Posted by Flying Binghi

"Drastic, precipitous, and especially, unilateral steps to delay the putative greenhouse impacts can cost jobs and prosperity and increase the human costs of global poverty, without being effective..."
Extracts from, The Deniers, Lawrence Solomon

"steps to delay... greenhouse impacts can cost jobs and prosperity...." -The Deniers

Yes, they CAN, if they are not managed well.
The recent corn/ethanol fiasco is one example of idiots running things, with no concept of the ultimate goal.

But....
The attempts to mitigate CO2 don't have to "cost jobs and prosperity."
These attempts CAN be specifically designed to increase jobs and prosperity.

For my, that's why it's been a no-brainer for so long--solving multiple problems with a single solution. Save the environment, ...and solve poverty at the same time. It's like a win-win situation, rescuing life and the economy simultaneously.

~

[modest]

Originally Posted by Eclipse Now

In the meantime, I wonder if FB has any evidence that Roger Revelle actually said any of that...

Yes, Revelle did. Notice Binghi's quote:

Originally Posted by Flying Binghi

"...climate is highly variable from year to year, and the causes of these variations are not at all well understood..."
<...>

via, Roger Revelle, climate scientist...

Roger Revelle said this in 1988. The next sentence out of his mouth was:

My own personal belief is that we should wait another ten or twenty years to really be convinced that the greenhouse effect is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways.

Seeing as how 1988 + 20 = 2008, I thought that was.. well... interesting

a few days earlier Revelle said:

My own feeling is that we had better wait another ten years before making confident predictions.

Revelle died 3 years later.

-source quoting Environment & Climate News, January 2000

~modest

[Buffy]

I said it earlier in the thread, but it bears repeating:

There is so much money to be made on Green Technology that its silly.

The only problem is that the folks who run the "Old Energy" companies know that to maximize their short-term profits, they need to keep that technology at bay. These folks are Republicans/Conservatives and they have of course brainwashed all their followers that it's "bad for business" if we pursue these technologies, *especially* if the money for doing so comes out of their profits....something that if they were just a wee bit smarter, they'd be doing themselves in order to hide their "excess profits".

The problem really is that the idiots who run these companies got their jobs by knowing the right folks at the country club rather than actually knowing anything, along with no incentives being provided either by the market or government to encourage long-term investments.

Sad really.

Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools,
Buffy

[REASON]

[engineerdude]

Originally Posted by Buffy

My. That sure explains a lot!

Could you explain what the AGW-is-crap folks think the atmosphere does contain?

From wikipedia, link at bottom,

Air, by volume:
Nitrogen 78.9842%
Oxygen 20.9463%
Argon .9342%
Carbon Dioxide .0384%
Other .0020%

From a practical standpoint, and in my opinion, .0384% is essentially zero. If you look at the wikipedia link, they have a pie chart showing atmospheric composition - the amount of CO2 is less than the thickness of the black lines that they used to make the chart.

I know that AGW people talk about "forcing" and "feedback", that magnify the effects of CO2. To me, and many others, these arguments have no sound scientific basis, and are in no way backed up by historical measurements. And for the record, I am not on the payroll of Exxon, and I am pretty much an atheist, and I actually have a science degree. My science degree isn't in global warming, but then that degree program has never existed, and we are all using whatever science basis and common sense we have to draw conclusions.

wiki link:
Earth's atmosphere - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[engineerdude]

Originally Posted by Buffy

I said it earlier in the thread, but it bears repeating:

There is so much money to be made on Green Technology that its silly.

The only problem is that the folks who run the "Old Energy" companies know that to maximize their short-term profits, they need to keep that technology at bay. These folks are Republicans/Conservatives and they have of course brainwashed all their followers that it's "bad for business" if we pursue these technologies, *especially* if the money for doing so comes out of their profits....something that if they were just a wee bit smarter, they'd be doing themselves in order to hide their "excess profits".

The problem really is that the idiots who run these companies got their jobs by knowing the right folks at the country club rather than actually knowing anything, along with no incentives being provided either by the market or government to encourage long-term investments.

Sad really.

Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools,
Buffy

I think the reason we are not embracing "green" technology" is that it is commercially not feasible. Currently the only way to make massive amounts of money from "green technology" is to get the government to write you a check. The instant somebody produces a Green invention that is better than what currently exists the world will switch to it - that is the way free markets work. Until that time, you can expect only charity from people who want to save the planet or politicians trying to look good.

The reason we keep burning oil is not a conspiracy by anyone - it is just the least expensive way to get the job done. Money is cruel and impartial.

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by engineerdude

From wikipedia, link at bottom,

Air, by volume:
Nitrogen 78.9842%
Oxygen 20.9463%
Argon .9342%
Carbon Dioxide .0384%
Other .0020%

From a practical standpoint, and in my opinion, .0384% is essentially zero. If you look at the wikipedia link, they have a pie chart showing atmospheric composition - the amount of CO2 is less than the thickness of the black lines that they used to make the chart.

I know that AGW people talk about "forcing" and "feedback", that magnify the effects of CO2. To me, and many others, these arguments have no sound scientific basis, and are in no way backed up by historical measurements. And for the record, I am not on the payroll of Exxon, and I am pretty much an atheist, and I actually have a science degree. My science degree isn't in global warming, but then that degree program has never existed, and we are all using whatever science basis and common sense we have to draw conclusions.

wiki link:
Earth's atmosphere - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All right dude, I think you've hit the nail on the head, CO2 is practically non existent! Lets figure out what would happen if there was no CO2 and it was permanent, no CO2 at all ever.... Hmmm how about complex life on the earth would die out completly? Whoa, that .0384% begins to look damn important doesn't it? How cold would the Earth be without that .0384% I don't know but it wouldn't really matter would it?