Consensus on Global Warming?Follow

It's an interesting argument you make, that being correct isn't as important as demonstrating you're correct to people who can't be bothered to find out for themselves.

The Greenhouse Effect, or Global Warming, or Climate Change, is a topic that generates a lot of heat and controversy. If your reading were confined to only the popular press, you would probably think that the climate scientists could not agree on anything about the Greenhouse Effect - in other words, that there was a lot of internal debate among the climate scientists as to whether Global Warming is actually happening. But the opposite is true - the climate scientists almost universally agree that not only is Climate Change real, but that we humans are causing it. [this article is one of a series of limited word articles. Elsewhere he goes more into "the obvious" that climate change happens all the time as part of natural cycles, but that the present "Climate Change" controversy is about whether humans can affect those cycles one way or the other]

Way back in 1824, the French scientist, Joseph Fourier, wrote one of the first papers on greenhouse gases. The Greenhouse Effect works like this. [Don't bother reading the italics if you know how it works]The Sun throws its rays upon our planet. The surface heats up, and radiates its warmth back into space. If there were no atmosphere, the surface temperature on Earth would be -15°C (which is what it is on the Moon). But the natural greenhouse gases in our atmosphere (such as water vapour, and yes, carbon dioxide) absorb some of this hradiated from the surface. If they then emitted this heat, and sent it all into space, our surface temperature would be about -15°C. But the gases send half into space and half back down to the ground. These natural greenhouse gases lift the surface temperature of the Earth by about 30 C° to a more pleasant +15°C.

Since modern industrialization began around 1750, carbon dioxide levels have risen by 31% from about 280 ppm (parts per million) to 368 ppm in the year 2000. [This article is a year old, but within that year that final figure was revised upwards] Over the whole of the 20th century two things happened, thanks to carbon dioxide (from the burning of fossil fuels) and other greenhouse gases. First, the temperature rose by about 0.6C°, while the average ocean level rose by about 20 cm. About half of this 20 cm rise is caused by glaciers on land melting, while the other half is caused by the fact that warmer water takes up more room. Increases so rapid and high haven't been seen for nearly a million years.

Now an important thing to realize in this debate is the role of the specialist. You wouldn't get a builder to do plumbing, and you wouldn't ask a pathologist to do some surgery. So if you wanted an opinion on climatology, you would not ask a meteorologist, or a virologist, botanist, metallurgist, or physicist - you would ask a climatologist. Among the climatologists, there is agreement that carbon dioxide levels are increasing, and that in turn, this is raising temperature and ocean levels. On December 3, 2004, Dr. Naomi Oreskes from the University of California analysed 928 scientific papers that dealt with "climate change", and that had been published in peer-reviewed journals between 1993 and 2003. Not one of these 928 papers disagreed with the consensus position, even though they may have disagreed in minor details.

So why do half of the articles about climate change in the popular non-scientific press put forward the idea that the climate scientists are deeply divided over the fundamental concepts of the Greenhouse Effect? Because, according to the Royal Society, huge companies that make their profits from the burning of fossil fuels stoke the fires of deliberate disinformation - such as the myth that the climate scientists have not reached a consensus.

On September 4, 2006, Bob Ward, the Senior Manager for Policy Communication at the Royal Society, wrote to Nick Thomas, the director of corporate affairs for ExxonMobil in the UK. The Royal Society, which had Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein as members, is the oldest and most prestigious scientific society in the world - and it's also deeply conservative. Mr. Ward asked why ExxonMobil paid millions of dollars to groups that "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence." Such a strongly worded letter is very unusual for the Royal Society.

But science can make mistakes, and so science teaches humility. For example, up till the 1960s, geologists believed that the continents were locked in place - but the geologists were wrong. They admitted their mistake, and now we know that the continents drift around the surface of the globe at roughly the speed your fingernails grow at - about 5-10 cm per year. In the same way, even though the overwhelming majority of the climate scientists agree on the fundamentals of Global Warming, they could be wrong.

But climate change has been looked at very closely for a long time, so in this case, the scientific consensus is almost certainly correct. This leaves us with the hot problem of what to do about it.

Instead of arguing about who has the credentials and who doesn't, why don't we get to know the facts about Global Warming? Now, I might just not understand this, but I assume that you and the rest of you posters (besides gbaji) and most other earthlings think Global Warming is being sped up by humans, is this right?

If so, why are the polar ice caps on Mars melting? We have no known evidence (Unless hidden by the Government) of other lifeforms on Mars that could be harming the ice caps on Mars. We also know that there were warming periods in older times such as the Dark Ages. Maybe it's just a cyclical process?

I'd be willing to bet that I know a great deal more than you do on certain topics.

Due respect, probably not. It's possible you have a vast storehouse of knowledge on, say, 17th century ship building or something, but I sort of doubt it. Come on with it, though. I'd certainly respect you a lot more if this were actually the case.

However, when I realize I'm out of my league, I too refrain from posting. You'll notice my obvious absence in the aforementioned quantum physics thread. I understand the concepts and the logic quite well, but when you get into the higher math part of it, that's beyond me. Likewise, I can speak fairly well to history, especially with regards to science, but I'll typically refrain from any in-depth discussion on specific religions.

I'll take your word for it. You're a lot more likely to know what you refrain from posting about then I am to attribute your absence to restraint.

The difference between you and me is that you presume yourself to be an "intellecual", where as I'm a logician.

You and I. Anyway, you're not a logician. All CS/IT people seem to think this for some reason, I'm not sure why. You, Gbaji, lots of other people. Logic is a formalized process. It goes beyond cause and effect. There are graduate level courses in logic for a reason, and it's not because it's difficult for people pursuing higher degrees to see through an Appeal to Authority fallacy.

I don't "know" a lot of things, but I'm particularly well adapted to figuring out problems and solutions to those problems.

Relative to what? See this is the problem we're having. You have a certain amount of ego invested in your abilities to do certain things. Things I'm sure you do better than many people, hell most people. You're falling prey to exactly what you're projecting onto me: assuming that you better understand logic than other people.

You don't. It's ok. It's a trivial thing. If the bulk of your self esteem is invested in that concept though, it must be infuriating to deal with me.

Thus, when I question your "truths", it's because I'm genuinely interested in determining whether you're full of sh*t or have something to offer in the way of furthering my own education on the subject. Your tendency to resort to erecting a glass house around your argument leaves me very little reason to assume the latter is true, and I'll continue to assume the former until proven otherwise.

Your loss, I guess. You post as if I have something invested in changing your mind or convincing you of something. I don't. What's the ROI for me? You're incapable of gratitude towards me for doing so, we're well past that point.

Your personality is largely predicated on mutual respect with people you feel equal to, but we're not equal and while I respect you as a person, I'm not likely to PM you for advice when I can't figure something out.

You forgot to mention your weakness in Boolean logic.

No, I just enjoy beating a good joke into the ground.

Careful. You're encroaching on Mindel's domain.

The difference is that I'm nice.

And not that "creepy" fake nice that seems to crop up every once in a while, either.

You're taking what we do here: Post largely anonymous messages on an internet forum hosted by a site about video games, far, far, far, far too seriously. It's meaningless. It's one step above shouting at the television. Most of the time, I'm on the phone with Nexa or 12 tabling holdem or watching TV and laughing at this place. Lighten the @#%^ up, already. It's not a corporation. We're not working. We're not curing cancer.

Not really. I think perhaps you (and others) misinterpret my feelings toward this place. When I come here, I look at this as nothing more than a typical conversation I might have with friends at a bar over a few beers - mostly jovial, but occasionally valuable discussion. Therefore, when certain subjects come up, yes, I seek further information, particularly when someone goes to the extend of quoting numbers or facts that they obviously could not have come up with on their own. It makes me want to know where that information is coming from, because if it's truly out there, I could probably learn a lot more from the information directly rather than merely limiting my input to the opinion of a facetious drunk in a bar poster on a forum.

THEN FUCKING LOOK IT UP

Christ, what is it, laziness? If I could link it, you could google it. Are your research skills *really* that bad? This is honestly your take? "Well that seems like an interesting fact, I wonder if that's legit? I'll just badger this person to link a web page I could find in fifteen seconds, and if they don't, I'll just assume it's not true"

In short, the disconnect between me and several of you is that I look at this as a conversation. The setting or context of the conversation is irrelevant to me. That is to say, I don't give any reasonably sincere/serious conversations to be had here on a forum any less merit than conversations I might have in a bar, over dinner, or any other general setting. Consequently, I approach those conversations with the same vigor and motivation as I would any other conversation, and thus, am just as likely to call you on your facts if I think you're full of sh*t.

Really? So if I quoted a completely valid statistic at dinner, you'd demand that we stop eating and that I show you proof that it was valid? I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you don't get invited to that many dinner parties.