An Inconvenient Truth

I havenÔÇÖt seen Al GoreÔÇÖs movie yet by the same title but have to stop and wonder if there isnÔÇÖt some truth to the climate change issue. Here in central Canada there hasnÔÇÖt been any snow for weeks. Temperatures are way above freezing. Ski hills are green and have laid off employees, snowmobile trails are mud pits, the ice fishing industry is a no go and people are riding motorcycles in January (not that it is a bad thing) - yet I hear Colorado and other places are getting pounded. In my 42 years experience of living here we should be up to our a$$ in snowbanks. Is global warming left wing propaganda by the environmentalists or are we on our way to a slow global meltdown. What gives???

BillGS1200 said:

I havenÔÇÖt seen Al GoreÔÇÖs movie yet by the same title but have to stop and wonder if there isnÔÇÖt some truth to the climate change issue. Here in central Canada there hasnÔÇÖt been any snow for weeks. Temperatures are way above freezing. Ski hills are green and have laid off employees, snowmobile trails are mud pits, the ice fishing industry is a no go and people are riding motorcycles in January (not that it is a bad thing) - yet I hear Colorado and other places are getting pounded. In my 42 years experience of living here we should be up to our a$$ in snowbanks. Is global warming left wing propaganda by the environmentalists or are we on our way to a slow global meltdown. What gives???

Click to expand...

While I think global warming is more than just propaganda, I have heard this strange weather is a result of El Nino. I'm just wondering if we'll have to be ready for 40-degree nights in Wisconsin. Still, I would take that over 90 degree nights, any day.

Oh yes, from what scientists say, almost unaminously, global warming is happening. Remember the ice, the size of 11, 000 football fields that broke from Ellesmere Island on August 5/05 but was only discovered a few weeks ago? Our winters have become progressively milder during the last thirty years.

However, having said that, our mild winter this season is most likely more a result of El Nino, combined in part with some global warming.

There is no doubt that much needs to be done now, not in fifty years, to reduce our effect on the environment.

There is such a thing as climate change, and the world naturally goes through different phases.

That being said, I completely believe that this current climate change is being reapidly accelerated due to human polution. "Humans: We aren't the only species on earth, we just act like it."

I have yet to see the movie, too, but regardless of who Al Gore is, I think "global warming" has WAY too much evidence for its existence.

Yet, if we get one flake of snow, it seems like conservatives (my mom, my grandma), act like "Well, this is proof global warming doesn't exist."

We HAVE to look at the big picture. There is no way that what we do doesn't effect the climate. We Have to look at trends and patterns, not live in the moment.

The ice caps are shrinking around the edges, but getting thicker in the middle. The wrong kind of clouds are making their appearance.

(Since I've owned my lawncare business, I've hoped for snow in the winter. It snows maybe once a winter. A decade ago, I remember it snowing more.)

During 9/11, when almost all planes were grounded, there was a SIGNIFICANT impact felt in the overall temperature of the United States. It was warmer. Without the vapor trails acting as clouds, some alarming information presented itself. The data we have about global warming doesn't take things like this into account, because no study could be big enough to have the authority to do such a thing again.

I believe things are worse than we realize. I believe when it's time to really start to turn things around, it will be too little too late.

In 2007, I am going to attempt to produce my own BioDiesel and Ethanol on my 9 acres. I'm also interested in converting my lawnmowers for my business over to ethanol. I've done the calculations, and have determined it would only take 2.77acres of corn to produce enough ethanol to run my truck annually. On the same token, I am going to produce biodiesel to run my equipment to make my ethanol. And, I might make some moonshine. But, shh..

Snik

I do also agree that we are in an uprecedented time of climate change and it is incresing as we can all see and feel. I have seen the movie and I HIGHLY reccomend that you see it and then make up your own minds. One of the things that impressed me was a graph chart showing consistant ups and downs for millions of years( they can measure this). In recent times this warming information is going completely off the charts. I found the movie well done, disturbing, scary, but also hopeful.

Cyclic (no pun)

The "ice age" as we understand it, is just one of many. This is a cyclic thing the earth goes through every 10,000 or so years. The planet experienced many "ice ages" before the one we talk about, all written in the history of the planet. Just remember, the planet is 4.5 billion years old, we have been here, like we are, for the last 30,000 or so, we will die, the planet will survive, it is an olllllllddddddd story. We are only dominant for now. Things will change. It is highly unlikely we will continue to be the last story...

Hasn't anyone read "State of Fear" by Michael Chrichton? He started out writing a book about how global warming was happening, how it affects us, etc. He did a lot of research and ended up writing about the lack of evidence that supports "the theory" of global warming.

Most folks forget global warming really is just a theory, based upon unproven computer models, etc.

In his 'fiction', he presents plenty of data that opposes global warming. For instance, CO2 is being blamed as a green house gas. Earlier in the 1900s, there was a spike in CO2 (volcano or something), yet there was no corresponding increase in global temperatures (in fact, temps dropped slightly).

In fact, there are areas of Antarctica that are actually getting colder.

Media always has to get folks rev'd up on something. When killer bees turned into a bust, they focused on Y2K. Since the year 2000 provided no issues, they've focused on global warming. Except it will take generations to really get a feel if there really is something to worry about.

I didn't see Gore's movie, but according to a Time magazine article, he points out that a lake in Russia which is now almost dried up and blames it on global warming.

What wasn't mentioned is the country diverted three of four rivers that feed the lake.

So, me? Global warming? I'm not buying it. The human race simply doesn't understand global weather/climate dynamics over long periods of time yet.

Panhead_Jim said:

Just remember, the planet is 4.5 billion years old, we have been here, like we are, for the last 30,000 or so, we will die, the planet will survive, it is an olllllllddddddd story. We are only dominant for now. Things will change. It is highly unlikely we will continue to be the last story...

Click to expand...

This planet in fact is on it's third atmosphere.

Everyone knows there has never ever been any climate change until people arrived.

SherpaMayberry said:

I didn't see Gore's movie, but according to a Time magazine article, he points out that a lake in Russia which is now almost dried up and blames it on global warming.

What wasn't mentioned is the country diverted three of four rivers that feed the lake.

Click to expand...

I saw the movie and Time magazine is incorrect. Shocking isn't. He stated that the rivers that feed it were diverted. He included the lake in Russia as an affect man has on our environment.

It’s odd that all the scientists/experts who study this have a unanimous conclusion about global warming. Yet many people believe the laymen who do their own “second hand” research and come to a different conclusion. Nothing against Michael Chrichton as writer—in fact he's probably a really good one, but as a scientist I doubt his conclusions are worth the paper their written on. In fact, the few predictions made in the 1950s about global warming have been proven true.

While I agree that the Inconvenient Truth is a one sided stance on the issue, this is one issue where we can’t afford to wrong. Granted, scientists don’t know much about this issue. A more recent understanding that my wife read in Discover Magazine is that the suns rays bounce off the pollution in the atmosphere, which in fact keeps the temperature down. This is a reason why global temperatures haven’t increased more. So as we clean up our air pollution, but continue to add to global warming, the globes temp will increase faster. Pretty ironic that cleaning up our air pollution is contributing global warming! Based on ice core samples, the CO2 levels are the highest they've ever been and have increased at a significantly faster rate than in anytime in the past. The only difference is that humans started mass buring of fossil fuels in the 20th century.

In my opinion, this is one issue we can’t afford to be incorrect. The ice caps provide a significant contribution to our global conditions. Once gone, we cannot replace them. This is one of those issues were we are better safe than sorry.

Well that's my $0.02, and I’ve been on my soap box long enough.

If I recall correctly, in my 59 years on this earth, this is the 2nd global warming prediction and I have heard the global freezing prediction 2 times. If the predictions had been correct, we would have frozen, then toasted, then frozen again and now we are toasting again. This stuff has been happening for millions of years and long before man entered the picture. I live in the mountains or Virginia 400 miles from the ocean and there are large numbers of fossilized sea creatures around here which means the heat must have melted the ice and raised the ocean levels at one time. Also, there ample evidence here that glaciers formed the mountains which means it must have been really cold here at one time. I think man's impact is minimal.

From what I understand, the common consensus among the scientific community is that the earth is 4,500,000,000 years old...statistically speaking...couldn't anything that's happened in the past 500 years or even the next 500 be considered a statistical anomoly and in now way a trend...isn't it a little silly to be making grandiose declarations about world climate trends with such a small little piece of reliable data? You may be able to prove that the earth has gotten warmer over the past 100 years...but, in a time line representing the history of the earth, 100 years isn't even a single data point...I don't have a real opinion or agenda on the subject...I just wonder if we're falling prey to media hype...it was unseasonably warm in New England today...but the highest recorded temp for this date was back in 1933...were they worried about global warming back then? The coldest day on record was in 1950...that kinda screws up the graph doesn't it? Oh well...I don't want to incite anyone...I'm just not quite ready to start running in circles and declaring that the sky is falling...sorry Al Gore

I spent 20 minutes dicking around with my response...trying not to hurt anyone's feelings...and two other guys posted simillar opinions...I'm glad I'm not alone

john1691 said:

While there is unanimous agreement that there is long term climate change, there is quite a bit of disagreement in the scientific community as to the cause.

Click to expand...

I guess were reading and listening to different sources.

hondarider said:

From what I understand, the common consensus among the scientific community is that the earth is 4,500,000,000 years old...statistically speaking...couldn't anything that's happened in the past 500 years or even the next 500 be considered a statistical anomoly and in now way a trend...isn't it a little silly to be making grandiose declarations about world climate trends with such a small little piece of reliable data?

Click to expand...

Well if weÔÇÖre going back that far, then we are much cooler now than we were in the beginning. If my memory is correct, the earth was much hotter in the beginning with plenty molten lava flows. But the scientist can only estimate whatÔÇÖs going on from the ice cores. IÔÇÖm not sure how old they are but I think they go back about 50,000 years. Could be wrong though.

Personally, I hope you guys are right. This is one area I would PREFER to be incorrect. By the time the earth has any real issues from global warming (if you believe that stuff), weÔÇÖll all be long gone. It will be the next generation or two that will.

On the flip side, the scientific community does appear to have a hard time of being consistent with many their conclusions. One year something is bad for you, a few years laterÔÇöitÔÇÖs not so bad, and visa-versa. I think itÔÇÖs to continue to get grant money. If they solved something permanently, then the money would go away.

SherpaMayberry said:

Hasn't anyone read "State of Fear" by Michael Chrichton? He started out writing a book about how global warming was happening, how it affects us, etc. He did a lot of research and ended up writing about the lack of evidence that supports "the theory" of global warming.

Most folks forget global warming really is just a theory, based upon unproven computer models, etc.

In his 'fiction', he presents plenty of data that opposes global warming. For instance, CO2 is being blamed as a green house gas. Earlier in the 1900s, there was a spike in CO2 (volcano or something), yet there was no corresponding increase in global temperatures (in fact, temps dropped slightly).

In fact, there are areas of Antarctica that are actually getting colder.

Media always has to get folks rev'd up on something. When killer bees turned into a bust, they focused on Y2K. Since the year 2000 provided no issues, they've focused on global warming. Except it will take generations to really get a feel if there really is something to worry about.

I didn't see Gore's movie, but according to a Time magazine article, he points out that a lake in Russia which is now almost dried up and blames it on global warming.

What wasn't mentioned is the country diverted three of four rivers that feed the lake.

So, me? Global warming? I'm not buying it. The human race simply doesn't understand global weather/climate dynamics over long periods of time yet.

Click to expand...

i agree that we lack a full comprehension of the planet's behavior over long periods of time. but i think that you're forgetting that the fossil record does not show such *rapid* changes over time. things have changed in 50 years. in geologic terms, that isn't even an eyeblink - that's the first molecule of the autonomic nervous system releasing a chemical to make the eye blink about 5,000 years later.

i recommend that one avoid the temptation to cite michael crichton as a credible source of science, no more than dan brown as an arbiter of the divinity of jesus.

and i *love* that "paper" you attached. it hasn't been peer reviewed you know, and is very misleading. i did some checking on the whole thing and sound some interesting stuff. you may not be a scientist, so you may not appreciate the difference between peer reviewed work and self-published work. you may not also appreciate that despite the incredible advances made in the world's labs today, the general population of the western world is incredibly ignorant of basic science, and enamored with pseudo-science, religion, and hearsay.

from sourcewatch i found some interesting stuff about the the OISM. i added the bold typeface.

"The Oregon Petition, sponsored by the OISM, was circulated in April 1998 in a bulk mailing to tens of thousands of U.S. scientists. In addition to the petition, the mailing included what appeared to be a reprint of a scientific paper. Authored by OISM's Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary W. Robinson, the paper was titled "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" and was printed in the same typeface and format as the official Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Also included was a reprint of a December 1997, Wall Street Journal editorial, "Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth, by Arthur and Zachary Robinson. A cover note signed "Frederick Seitz/Past President, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A./President Emeritus, Rockefeller University", may have given some persons the impression that Robinson's paper was an official publication of the academy's peer-reviewed journal. The blatant editorializing in the pseudopaper, however, was uncharacteristic of scientific papers."

"In reality, neither Robinson's paper nor OISM's petition drive had anything to do with the National Academy of Sciences"

"Robinson was not even a climate scientist. He was a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology, and his paper had never been subjected to peer review by anyone with training in the field. In fact, the paper had never been accepted for publication anywhere, let alone in the NAS Proceedings. It was self-published by Robinson, who did the typesetting himself on his own computer. (It was subsequently published as a "review" in Climate Research, which contributed to an editorial scandal at that publication.)"

"None of the coauthors of "Environmental Effects of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" had any more standing than Robinson himself as a climate change researcher. They included Robinson's 22-year-old son, Zachary, along with astrophysicists Sallie L. Baliunas and Willie Soon. Both Baliunas and Soon worked with Frederick Seitz at the George C. Marshall Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank where Seitz served as executive director. Funded by a number of right-wing foundations, including Scaife and Bradley, the George C. Marshall Institute does not conduct any original research. It is a conservative think tank that was initially founded during the years of the Reagan administration to advocate funding for Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative--the "Star Wars" weapons program."

"In addition to the bulk mailing, OISM's website enables people to add their names to the petition over the Internet, and by June 2000 it claimed to have recruited more than 19,000 scientists. The institute is so lax about screening names, however, that virtually anyone can sign, including for example Al Caruba, a pesticide-industry PR man and conservative ideologue who runs his own website called the "National Anxiety Center." Caruba has no scientific credentials whatsoever, but in addition to signing the Oregon Petition he has editorialized on his own website against the science of global warming, calling it the "biggest hoax of the decade," a "genocidal" campaign by environmentalists who believe that "humanity must be destroyed to 'Save the Earth.' . . . There is no global warming, but there is a global political agenda, comparable to the failed Soviet Union experiment with Communism, being orchestrated by the United Nations, supported by its many Green NGOs, to impose international treaties of every description that would turn the institution into a global government, superceding the sovereignty of every nation in the world.""

"When questioned in 1998, OISM's Arthur Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon Petition had identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, or meteorologists, "and of those the greatest number are physicists." This grouping of fields concealed the fact that only a few dozen, at most, of the signatories were drawn from the core disciplines of climate science - such as meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology - and almost none were climate specialists. The names of the signers are available on the OISM's website, but without listing any institutional affiliations or even city of residence, making it very difficult to determine their credentials or even whether they exist at all."

"Notwithstanding the shortcomings in Robinson's theory, the oil and coal industries have sponsored several organizations to promote the idea that increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is "good for earth" because it will encourage greater plant growth."

follow the money on that one...

Paul_F said:

Oh yes, from what scientists say, almost unaminously, global warming is happening.

Click to expand...

Yea, but it's a dry heat... Oy-vey

aerialfilm1 said:

Yea, but it's a dry heat... Oy-vey

Click to expand...

Only if you're not living on the coast when all that polar ice melts!

Ask a scientist to tell you whether or not it's going to rain tomorrow.

an inconvenient truth

Crichton came to his views, I recall, after doing an extensive literature review, a list of which is included in his book. I no longer have the book, but I recall much of the literature was out of the journals, and therefore would have to be peer - reviewed. Crichton, being a Harvard trained M.D., would know the difference between peer-reviewed and non peer-reviewed studies.

I stopped worrying about global warming after reading his book.

The biggest problem is that we don't know who or what is behind the scary studies that are presented in the general media, without reviewing the studies themselves.

Rinty