Global Warming

[lifterdead]

Why NOT to buy a Prius

In 2006, an Oregon market research firm released an incendiary 500-page report. Its claim: A Humvee (13 miles per gallon city, 16 highway) uses less energy than a Prius (48 city, 45 highway). Scientists quickly debunked the study, but the Hummer lovers got one thing right. Pound for pound, making a Prius contributes more carbon to the atmosphere than making a Hummer, largely due to the environmental cost of the 30 pounds of nickel in the hybrid's battery. Of course, the hybrid quickly erases that carbon deficit on the road, thanks to its vastly superior fuel economy.

Still, the comparison suggests a more sensible question. If a new Prius were placed head-to-head with a used car, would the Prius win? Don't bet on it. Making a Prius consumes 113 million BTUs, according to sustainability engineer Pablo Päster. A single gallon of gas contains about 113,000 Btus, so Toyota's green wonder guzzles the equivalent of 1,000 gallons before it clocks its first mile. A used car, on the other hand, starts with a significant advantage: The first owner has already paid off its carbon debt. Buy a decade-old Toyota Tercel, which gets a respectable 35 mpg, and the Prius will have to drive 100,000 miles to catch up.

Better yet, buy a three-cylinder, 49-horsepower 1994 Geo Metro XFi, one of the most fuel-efficient cars ever built. It gets the same average mileage as a 2008 Prius, so a new hybrid would never close the carbon gap. Sure, the XFi has no AC or airbags — but nobody said saving the planet would be comfortable, or even safe

Taken from a controversial article HERE: http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-06/ff_heresies_intro

I love/hate that article at the same time. The author gets some things right, other things completely wrong.

 

[Rageking]

^interesting post

one of the main sources of global warming is the clearing of land. even if we do cut emmisions greatly in the next few years the earth will continue to warm because of the greenhouse gases still in the air. trees are our friends when it comes to this by cooling the earth by releasing oxygen, but we are destroying many forests at an alarming rate.

 

[tim290280]

^^ Umm actually no they aren't.

 

[Rageking]

^what trees? are you disagreeing with photosynthesis?

or are you talking about the destruction of forests?

 

[tim290280]

^^I'll clear it up

^interesting post

one of the main sources of global warming is the clearing of land. no it isn't even if we do cut emmisions greatly in the next few years the earth will continue to warm because of the greenhouse gases still in the air. this is more due to the lag period of any remediation scheme trees are our friends when it comes to this by cooling the earth by releasing oxygen trees are completely overrated on both counts , but we are destroying many forests at an alarming rate. agree but this is only the tip of the iceberg

 

[WaveRider]

^^I'll clear it up

Yeah Tims hit the nail on the hammer if I recal 60% of oxygen is produced by the worlds oceans. And the world treasts the sea like a dumping ground:angrydude:

(I might be a little bias being a surfer but trees are definatley the tip of the ice berg.:techn9ne:

 

[Ironslave]

You can't argue that global warming is non-existent when you practically agree that we are damaging the enviroment. Your actions certainly speak louder than what you have typed. (other wise u would not actively reduce carbon emissions)

Sadly we see a lot of enviromental problems due to increases in population globally. But anyone who thinks global warming does not exist needs to back it up with real data then some loony who thinks that it may be possible that it doesn't exists and throws together a last minute article

ha, okay, this is going to be a fun topic.

I actively reduce carbon emissions for 2 main simple reasons 1) It's a waste of money that I'd rather keep myself and 2) I have the common sense to realize that there is no benefit in me polluting my neighboring area and it is courteous to others for me to reduce emissions. Are these emissions "warming" the earth? Maybe, maybe not.

I also find it convenient that you deliberately ignored the example I gave where one researcher looked at data and found one thing, while another looked at the exact same data and found another.

Are you an environmental chemistry major? Can you explain the science behind 'global warming'? How about can you look at the statistical analysis from the above example, critique the methods used in both cases and tell me which side may have made some procedural error? I can't do this, thus, I clicked the "I don't know" option to this poll, because I don't know.

Now, I'm going to continue to play Devil's Advocate. You state that anyone who doesn't believe in global warming needs to back it up with real data; and these do just that.

Climatologists Reject Media Claims of Global Warming Consensus
Written By: Alan Caruba
Published In: Environment & Climate News
Publication Date: August 1, 2005
Publisher: The Heartland Institute


Leading climatologists spent the month of June fighting false proclamations from non-scientists claiming scientists have reached agreement that catastrophic global warming is occurring.


Alarmists Claim Debate Over

On June 1, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) claimed "the debate is over" and global warming alarmists' predictions had carried the day.

The Natural Resources Defense Council on June 9 declared, "The world's leading scientists now agree that global warming is real and is happening right now. According to their forecasts, extreme changes in climate could produce a future in which erratic and chaotic weather, melting ice caps and rising sea levels usher in an era of drought, crop failure, famine, flood and mass extinctions."

On June 13, USA Today declared, "The debate's over: Globe is Warming." In support of its claim, the newspaper cited the positions of some left-leaning religious groups, some corporations who will reap a financial windfall from a switch to alternative fuel sources, and some politicians.


Scientists Disagree

While each of the above claims from non-scientists received significant media coverage, leading climatologists spent the month of June rebutting such proclamations.

Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, sent a letter to the editor of USA Today directly refuting its claim. "Your editorial ... claim the global warming debate is over. Not so," wrote Singer.

Singer wrote, "Sea level will continue to rise by only seven inches per century as it has for thousands of years no matter what we do or what the EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] says. And temperatures in the next 100 years will likely rise by less than one degree F--not exactly a catastrophe."

Added Singer in a subsequent letter to the Canadian media, "Thousands of scientists from many countries now fully understand that Kyoto and other efforts to control human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are ineffective and entirely unfounded scientifically.

"Even if you ignore the enormous cost of Kyoto (estimated recently by Prof. George Taylor of Oregon State University--see http://www.sitewave.net/news/s49p628.htm--at one trillion U.S. dollars a year for full implementation in OECD countries), climate science research is rapidly moving AWAY from the hypothesis that the human release of greenhouse gases, specifically CO2, is in any way significantly contributing to global climate change."


Sun Called Primary Cause

"If we just look at the historical data, there is a scientific consensus that the global mean temperature has risen modestly during the twentieth century," said Myron Ebell, director of global warming and environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "The impacts have been small and probably beneficial in aggregate. This historical data puts the onus of demonstration on those who think this gradual warming trend will accelerate and lead to dire consequences."

The controlling driver of global temperature fluctuations, according to Dr. Benny Peiser of England's John Moore's University, is solar ray activity. "Six eminent researchers from the Russian Academy of Science and the Israel Space Agency have just published a startling paper in one of the world's leading space science journals. The team of solar physicists claims to have come up with compelling evidence that changes in cosmic ray intensity and variations in solar activity have been driving much of the Earth's climate," Peiser was quoted as saying in the May 17 National Post.

Moreover, reports Peiser, Jan Veizer, one of Canada's top earth scientists, published a comprehensive review of recent findings and concluded, "empirical observations on all time scales point to celestial phenomena as the principal driver of climate, with greenhouse gases acting only as potential amplifiers."

Added Peiser, "In fact, the explicit and implicit rejection of the 'consensus' is not restricted to individual scientists. It also includes distinguished scientific organizations such as the Russian Academy of Science and the U.S. Association of State Climatologists, both of which are highly skeptical of the whole idea."


False Consensus Was Predicted

Indeed, back in November 2004, German climatologist Hans von Storch, director of the GKSS Institute for Coastal Research (IfK) in Geesthacht, Germany, foresaw that claims of alarmist consensus would be made by non-scientists and even some scientists.

Von Storch, who has yet to side with either alarmists or skeptics, warned, "We need to respond openly to the agenda-driven advocates, not only skeptics but also alarmists, who misuse their standing as scientists to pursue their private value-driven agendas."


Media Echo Scariest Claims

Noting the propensity of large media organizations to echo the alarmists' claims, von Storch wrote, "Judgments of solid scientific findings are often not made with respect to their immanent quality but on the basis of their alleged or real potential as a weapon by 'skeptics' in a struggle for dominance in public and policy discourse."

Ebell agrees: "If the debate is over, why do they exaggerate so much? It seems that once some scientist makes any sort of speculation about the extent or impact of future warming that sounds even slightly scary, then we never hear the end of it, no matter how many times subsequent research refutes it.

"After reading hundreds of scientific articles and consulting widely on what they mean and how they fit together, I am convinced that if there is a consensus, it is not alarmist," said Ebell.

another

"JunkScience.com announces that the major professional society for U.S. physicists has declared that there is no scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming. The American Physical Society announced in the July issue of its journal Physics & Society that it would begin on its pages a debate on the central issue of the global warming controversy -- that is, does manmade CO2 drive global climate. "This is the death knell for the falsehood spread by Al Gore and other global warming alarmists that there is any sort of consensus of scientists supporting the notion of catastrophic manmade global warming," said JunkScience.com publisher, Steve Milloy. "We are elated that we survived to see the truth emerge and that we helped bring this sea change about," added Milloy

STATEMENT OF THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY:
"With this issue of Physics & Society, we kick off a debate concerning one of the main conclusions of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body which, together with Al Gore, recently won the Nobel Prize for its work concerning climate change research. There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. [Emphasis added] Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion. This editor (JJM) invited several people to contribute articles that were either pro or con. Christopher Monckton responded with this issue's article that argues against the correctness of the IPCC conclusion, and a pair from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz, responded with this issue's article in favor of the IPCC conclusion. We, the editors of P&S, invite reasoned rebuttals from the authors as well as further contributions from the physics community. Please contact me (jjmarque@sbcglobal.net) if you wish to jump into this fray with comments or articles that are scientific in nature. However, we will not publish articles that are political or polemical in nature. Stick to the science! (JJM)

Edit: and Al Gore didn't hit the nail on the head, though, I'd like to hit Al Gore in the head with a nail.

 

[SerbMarko]

Al Gore is a whore.

 

[Tonyk212000]

Al Gore is a whore.

 

[SerbMarko]

i cant vote.. non of the options apply to me.. sorry..

can you please add a "I dont give a shit" option?

 

[Big_Guns_Lance]

i cant vote.. non of the options apply to me.. sorry..

can you please add a "I dont give a shit" option?

 

[Tech]

Who cares if global warming is a problem. Real or fake. Man-made or done by nature. Who cares.

there are much much more important issues to deal with right now. don't get me wrong, ice melting in the North Pole is really scary......but I think ending the middle-eastern wars and fixing the economy are more pressing issues.


/sorry of someone already said it.

 

[Duality]

^ i agree but nonetheless it is a potential concern that deserves some notice. but there are more pressing issues at hand.

 

[lifterdead]

Who cares if global warming is a problem. Real or fake. Man-made or done by nature. Who cares.

there are much much more important issues to deal with right now. don't get me wrong, ice melting in the North Pole is really scary......but I think ending the middle-eastern wars and fixing the economy are more pressing issues.

I respectfully disagree. Temporary economic woes seems insignificant in comparison to the complete breakdown of an ecosystem that may result in catastrophic changes.

War in the middle east is a different story. At worst, it may result in an nulcear exchange, which I would classify as more pressing than worrying about the atmosphere afterwards.

 

[Tech]

I respectfully disagree. Temporary economic woes seems insignificant in comparison to the complete breakdown of an ecosystem that may result in catastrophic changes.

War in the middle east is a different story. At worst, it may result in an nulcear exchange, which I would classify as more pressing than worrying about the atmosphere afterwards.

maybe it's just me, but worrying about car exhaust and pollution seems ridiculous when we have American soldiers dying every single day for absolutely no reason. we have the government using the constitution as toilet paper.

like it or not, the majority of people in the world are more concerned about how to pay for gas, food, and their childrens schooling, than they are about the polar ice caps melting.

if our country (and the world for that matter) were in better shape, I'd be all for helping the environment. but as far as I'm concerned, lets start fixing the problems that will kill us in the next five years....not the problems that will kill us in the next 500 years.

 

[lifterdead]

maybe it's just me, but worrying about car exhaust and pollution seems ridiculous when we have American soldiers dying every single day for absolutely no reason. we have the government using the constitution as toilet paper.

like it or not, the majority of people in the world are more concerned about how to pay for gas, food, and their childrens schooling, than they are about the polar ice caps melting.

if our country (and the world for that matter) were in better shape, I'd be all for helping the environment. but as far as I'm concerned, lets start fixing the problems that will kill us in the next five years....not the problems that will kill us in the next 500 years.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough? I meant to say war in the middle east is a different story. I AGREE with you, in that case. (Just not on the economy.)

 

[Hypocrisy86]

There is no global warming.
Just more shit for hippies, and wanna-make-more-money politicians and richies o make money off of. etc

 

[Ironslave]

Excellently put by Tech.

 

[tim290280]

Tech I have to say that I get where you are coming from but what is wrong with dealing with both?

If what we do to fix the issues we have impacts further on climate change then they will have been for nought. Refugee issues alone should be enough to spur us to do something about climate change (because the world really doesn't need more poor people).

We only get one world to live on, fuck it up and say goodbye to society as we know it. It may not directly affect us in any extreme but then what is any legacy you leave worth?

 

[Tech]

we can deal with both, but just not at the same time. there has to be a priority in this country. (USA)

Fix our immediate problems first, then deal with global warming later.

I'm too lazy to type all of the problems in this country, but I can honestly say global warming isn't even on the top 20.

my point is, global warming should not be on the front page of newspapers. It is not a problem that will kill us anytime soon nor is it a problem that will collapse our country. The wars and runaway spending are both problems that will cripple the United States within the next 50 years. These are the problems that will have the most impact on our citizens.....not hot weather, rising oceans, and pollution.

For example, John McCain thinks global warming is the number one issue this election year. That makes me sick. The number once issue is our crumbling economy and these bullshit wars. If John McCain becomes president, he's can't do shit to help the global climate, but he sure as fuck can send me and my peers off to fight in more unnecessary wars. (ie Iran)