Skifree is upset, of course, with the weather.
Sixty degrees at 8 am in January! Climate change?
El Nino?, Both?
Unfortunately climate change is real, ongoing and with no end in sight. We must address the problem. Money spent now IS well spent. The Stern Report outlines the scope of the problem. It also has the clear adviso that
“…the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting.”
Skifree is pleased to hear that the Patrick administration is poised to link Massachusetts back into RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative which head-in-the-sand-Romney pulled out of. States HAVE to show leadership where the current federal adminstration has failed so miserably. If Ahnold can do it so can we.
And its not about skiing. It is about the effects on humanity… think how many in Bangldesh live within meter of sealevel, think of how many island nations will be wiped out as storms wash over them due to sealevel rise. That’s the beginning.
Change is coming too fast for all but the richest to accomodate to.
Just because global warming is happening doesn’t mean it’s always going to be this warm. Just a few years ago I recall you guys were seriously freezing your butts off…it’ll happen again, even as the average temperature over time rises. There have always been lousy years for snow.
One thing we don’t know is whether global warming will shut down the Gulf Stream and actually make Europe much colder than it is now. There is evidence that it would.
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Climate change has the effect of redistributing hot and cold, moist and dry as well as increasing the average global temperature.
Source NYT Jan. 6th 2007
Here are a few bulletins from planet Earth :
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Would be displaced in Bangladesh. We can’t handle 100,000 refuges from Darfur, how can we handle 20,000,000 from Bangladesh.
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Science Magazine and Time have both had cover stories “The Debate is Over” Climate Change is Real.
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Excellent and readable books –
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Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth,
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Tim Flannery’s “The Weather makers”
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Want to learn about the role of Big Oil, Coal and the “Press” in the “debate” on GW?
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Read Ross Gelbspan’s “Boiling Point”
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Want to know what to do?
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Check out
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Low Carbon Diet a 30 day program to lose 5000 lbs. by David Gershon
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Specific Actions:
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Recycle
Reduce Hot Water usage
Reduce laundry (wear it twice)
Turn down the thermostat
Plan and group your errands – make fewer trips
Change to low energy light bulbs (compact fluorescent)
…
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Have me present about global climate change. I’ve just returned from Nashville where I was trained by Al Gore. My presentation is about an hour and it is free.
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Do you have an affinity group that should hear this talk? (Churches, rotary, Chambers of Commerce, Schools, scout troops, Elks Club, Lions, etc…) I can be reached at 617 480 4426
In. That. Order.
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We spend lots of time focusing on the recycle bit. I really suggest you (the royal you, not Smart Mass in particular) focus on that first one. Cutting down on consumption not only is much more efficient in terms of reducing environmental and energy impact, but it’s also far more efficient at saving you money.
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What do you buy that is just plain wasteful? Unnecessary? Foolishly disposable?
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The easiest way to reduce — look at how much trash your household produces each week, and try to figure out how to reduce its weight and volume. Maybe that means composting. It could certainly entail purchasing fewer things with elaborate, excessive, or any packaging. Usually, the easiest way to reduce consumption (and save the most money) is to reduce your creation of things you’d consider litter — paper cups, wrappers, plastic water bottles, etc. Generally speaking, if you buy less, you’ll throw away less. A caveat is that sometimes spending more now for a quality product will reduce your overall cost (and waste) in the long run.
capitalists are going to have a real problem with this “buy less” idea đŸ™‚
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An example,
Yesterday in the Nashville Airport, a co-presenter “needed” to get something with “Nashville” on it for her daughter.
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She spent $10 on a “beenie baby” bear. A piece of synthetic cloth stuffed with plastic beads and a label on its belly “Nashville.” (Fortunately, no packaging other than the mfg tag/price tag)
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Could she have gone without? Probably.
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How much do we spend on this kind of stuff?
What does it cost us in Man-Released Carbon?
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Mark
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Since this is my first post to this site I will get a few things out of the way before I start my comments, I am a conservative (not a Republican) living in Massachusetts, I have degrees in geology and chemistry from one of our local state schools and work in the environmental consulting field.
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Skifree you said “Unfortunately climate change is real” This statement is extremely misleading and not accurate as you present it. As is other statements such as “Scientists attribute the loss of summer ice largely to the buildup of carbon dioxide and other man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”..and..”Science Magazine and Time have both had cover stories “The Debate is Over” Climate Change is Real.” While some people would like you to believe the “Debate is Over” that is simply just not true. What scientists agree on is that the global climate is changing, man’s influence on that is widely debated. Including recent publications in peer reviewed journals such as Geology (Sept. 2006) in which “scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research present new evidence that ocean surface temperatures varied as much as 6 degrees Celsius (about 11 degrees Fahrenheit) during the Aptian Epoch of the Cretaceous Period 120 million years ago….The finding is relevant to the ongoing climate change discussion, IUB geologist Simon Brassell says, because it portrays an ancient Earth whose temperatures shifted erratically due to changes in carbon cycling and did so without human input.” In another article (Climate of Fear) in the Wall Street Journal by RICHARD LINDZEN, an atmospheric physicist, a professor of meteorology at MIT, the University of Chicago and Harvard University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Science and Economic Advisory Council of the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy, “To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues. First, let’s start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man’s responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred.”
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Last year we all heard about how the increased number of hurricanes was more “proof” of global warming. A statement that was not only inaccurate but is likely scientifically false.
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My point in this is that man induced global warming is far from scientific fact. If you are going to discuss complex, scientific issues, go to more then one source and you might want to throw in some peer review scientific journals instead of a propaganda movie made by a man with an obvious political agenda or an economist.
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So, do you understand my confusion with your statements?
You could not do me a better service in proving my point. You leave off the last line of what I wrote, misquoting me and trying to change the context of my words. Shame on you stomv, if this going to be the level of debate on this site, I guess I will be moving on.
The initial quote, which you quoted correctly, was:
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This statement is 100% factual. Climate change is real, and it always has been — since the beginning of Earth, and (hence) clearly since before the industrial revolution. No scientist would disagree with this statement.
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It’s also worth noting that the context of this quote includes El Nino — in fact, they appear three words directly before this quote.
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If the statement is misleading, it’s because you’re jumping to conclusions. It is 100% accurate as it is presented.
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In your jumbled mess of counterarguments following, you write
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The initial poster makes no claim about man’s influence on creating or hastening the warm climate change in his statement — you conjured it. That’s why I dropped it from my initial quotation in this thread — it was irrelevant and unnecessarily pointed out additional errors of yours.
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As to what I did quote — I did quote you claiming “it is, but it isn’t.” That clear logical fallacy left your post in need of work, to put it nicely.
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To recap:
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1. Climate change is real.
2. Scientists agree that the global climate is changing.
3. Your post was the equivalent of unsorted contrarian claims barfed into one big paragraph.
4. Your “if you’re going to treat me that way, I’m going to take my ball and go home” is quite welcome from my perspective if you can’t handle a poster pointing out an obvious problem with your claims, as written by you.
stomv,
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I’ll just address your statements in lists, since you appear to have a problem with my previous style of posting.
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1. “The initial poster makes no claim about man’s influence on creating or hastening the warm climate change in his statement — you conjured it.” Bullshit! The initial post started with the quote about global warming and then went on to say “Skifree is pleased to hear that the Patrick administration is poised to link Massachusetts back into RGGI” If you are trying to claim that the initial poster is not claiming that global warming is man induced then why the need for greenhouse gas initiatives? If global warming is not man induced then the greenhouse gas initiatives will not effect the current climate change.
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2. “If the statement is misleading, it’s because you’re jumping to conclusions. It is 100% accurate as it is presented.” I was replying to all that had posted, as shown by the quotes taken from skifree’s later posting including the excerpt from the NY Times article and Smart Mass’s posting. Unlike you, I read all of the posts and responded to them as a collective whole. If you are going to try and claim that the original poster and subsequent posters were not discussing global warming as a man induced crisis, your full of shit.
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3. “That’s why I dropped it from my initial quotation in this thread — it was irrelevant and unnecessarily pointed out additional errors of yours.” Bullshit, again! You were trying to straw man me.
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4. “As to what I did quote — I did quote you claiming “it is, but it isn’t.” That clear logical fallacy left your post in need of work, to put it nicely.” Hey, if the concept is too hard for you to understand without resorting to name calling, then maybe you should stick to easier subjects. (see now that is me straw maning you back) But to be serious, as I have stated in 1 and 2, the previous posters were referring to global warming as a man induced crisis, my line “What scientists agree on is that the global climate is changing, man’s influence on that is widely debated” is relevant to the discussion, no matter how much you wish it wasn’t.
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5. “Your post was the equivalent of unsorted contrarian claims barfed into one big paragraph.” Again trying to straw man me. Why not stick to the issue. I didn’t know 4 sentences followed by quotes from actual scientists in the field was that hard for you. I try to lower the level of the debate for you next time.
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So why not try arguing the actual subject next time instead of trying to straw man the opposition.
But before we get started, let’s get one thing clear: I did not set you up as a straw man. I took things that you actually wrote and refuted them. There were absolutely no straw men created by me, as I did not create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to you. In fact, one might make the case that you set up skifree with a strawman, as nowhere in his post does he attribute carbon emissions with the warm winter we’re experiencing — and yet you write
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So I ask you, did you set up a straw man? Did you, in the second sentence of your big ol’ paragraph, bring up strings of words with quotation marks around them as if skifree or someone else in the thread had made the claim (in the thread), and then go on to refute those claims? Uh huh. You did.
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But, to respond to your post…
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Firstly, please go easy on the language. We’re family friendly around here, and I’ve asked nicely. His quote about global warming doesn’t exist. In fact, re-read: Cimate change? El nino? Both? If you’re referring to his climate change quote, note that he immediately follows it with a question mark, and then poses another hypothesis (and in my opinion, myopically at least, the correct one): El nino. So, let’s be clear: skifree did not make a claim about man-induced global warming in his post.
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As to “why the need…”, well there are lots of logical connections. Here’s one: lets say, for the sake of argument, that the Earth is suddenly and dramatically (by geological standards) through no action of humans. We do know that carbon emissions do exacerbate this warming. We don’t know how much they exacerbate the warming, but nobody refutes that they do contribute, if only (in this thought experiment) trivially. In any case, reducing the carbon emissions won’t make us warmer. So, even if we don’t know for sure, it’s a risk reducer. We don’t know for sure if a tiger is in the cage, but we have enough reason to think it might be there — so how about putting a lock on the door. The claim ” If global warming is not man induced then the greenhouse gas initiatives will not effect the current climate change.” is logically incorrect. It’s possible that global warming isn’t man induced — that the Earth was suddenly heating for other reasons — but that reducing our carbon output will cool (slow the warming) anyway. That’s entirely plausible. It’s also plausible that man is causing the warming, and that reducing the carbon will slow the warming. In either case, one doesn’t have to prove (or even claim) that carbon in the atmosphere is warming the Earth to argue that reducing emissions is a wise thing to do (just in case it is the cause).
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Again with the language. Tsk tsk. Watch out though — I’m about to quote you again…
so you take skifree, the NY Times, and Smart Mass‘s individual comments, merge them in your mind, and reply to all of them as if they were a three headed hydra? That doesn’t make one whit of sense — and don’t accuse me of twisting your words or creating straw men, because this was an uninterrupted quotation. Feel free to call me a liberal though. đŸ™‚
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I’m not going to claim that skifree et al do or do not think global warming is a man induced crisis. I can easily point out that skifree never used the word “warm” and since he started the thread, it seems hard to claim that he was discussing global warming.
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Again with the language, and the definition of straw man. My initial post wasn’t about global warming, it was about whether or not the climate is or is not changing. You claimed both in the span of a few column inches, and hence I asked for clarification. Then you went all potty-mouth.
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Name calling? Let’s be clear: I never called you a name. Not once. I questioned your words — but I never called you a name. Nor did I start throwing around four letter words, which can not be said in your case.
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Again, you don’t know the meaning of straw man. Nor do you know how to count: the paragraph has nine sentences by my count, but with many run-ons and ellipses, it’s hard to know for sure.
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I did stick to the issue: check my initial post, in which I highlight two logically contradictory statements and seek clarification. Instead of attempting to resolve my confusion or clarify its source, you attribute my honest question to “typically liberal”, shame me, accuse me of having some nefarious purpose, and then suggest that you’ll be “moving on.” In my next post, I carefully connected the dots. I’m not sure what else you would like me to do. I’m not going to take the time to try to dissect your mental stream of consciousness — it’s not organized well enough to give it careful consideration.
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Why not respond to my simple direct question instead of misusing the term straw man and sprinkling four letter words throughout your post?
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I don’t know if I’ll respond further to this thread or not, but I do know that I won’t if you continue to lace your post with profanity.
All,
The statement below (this is paragraph#1) was signed by the heads of ELEVEN different national academies of science including our own. This includes Brazil, China, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, USA and UK
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Source
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Anyone who doesn’t take this seriously is in denial, is being paid by Exxon, or just enjoys being a devil’s advocate….