Even so, climate change poses no real threat to our planet, says a consensus of reputable scientists.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvLt3nU14W4
The convention mentioned in this video may be past, but the message still remains. You especially need to see this. Very informative.
The very premise that the word of “reputable scientists” is sufficient to settle a debate reveals that you either do not understand what science is, or that you are willing to accept any authority provided that it agrees with what you already believe. All that matters is what is actually happening, and how observational or experimental data indicate it is happening. Your use of the word “reputable” is especially unpersuasive. What reputation are you appealing to? Are you appealing to these professionals' actual degrees? Well, there are vast more professionals with even more impressive credentials who support the prevailing views on climate change. Do their degrees not count? Hrm.
No, I think what you are appealing to is the notion that these particular scientists have access to better data, or have made better interpretations of data, than the majority. This is where their supposed reputation comes from. They're not just professionals: They're professionals
who got it right. Or so you say. On what basis do you, personally, make that judgment? Serious question.
Despite being a serious question, there is only even one good answer to such a question: good data. Scientists themselves don't matter, and reputations are only ever relevant indirectly. The best scientists will try to make their own presence completely transparent in their work. Only the science itself really matters, and what “the science” tells us (via those aforementioned weather stations and research ships and observational satellites) is that global warming as a subprocess of global climate change is now underway. That much is not legitimately in dispute.
There is room for at least some debate on almost everything else. On the least credible end of the spectrum is the claim that the current warming is the result purely or primarily of natural processes. This claim is implausible because most of the natural agencies identified as potential culprits, even in aggregate, are not capable of producing the magnitude of change we have seen on the short time scale involved. It is even more implausible because it ignores the incredible influence of human activity in shaping the Earth's environment, where we have altered the composition of the oceans, the land, and the atmosphere. In contrast, on the most credible end of the spectrum is the claim that the global warming now underway is part of a sustained trend, and that temperatures will continue to increase so long as we continue to bolster or trigger the planet's heat-retaining mechanisms. The degree of consensus on that point is why every climate prediction model that I know of has forecast significant warming in the course of this century.
The fact that
some scientists disagree with the prevailing views on climate change is a good thing, but what they're going to be disagreeing with is data validity and model accuracy, and thus with the overall theory. That debate, within the broader scientific community, is rarely aired in the public eye. Far more juicy, and profitable I suppose, is the promise of a good, old-fashioned, two-sided controversy over a sensational premise. All of the aforementioned disagreements are lumped into a single camp, the “global warming is real and we're causing it” camp. The other camp consists of those who are opposed to the changes in policy and law that would come as a response to these changes in the climate. So that's the “debate” we're having instead...a largely manufactured circus. I'm familiar with the Heartland Institute, and when they put their name on a climate change item it's rather like the Discovery Institute putting its name on an evolution item. The Heartland Institute is not a scientific organization or even a scientific lobby; it is a free-market political lobby whose stated objectives include the privatization of public services and massive deregulation—an agenda which just so happens to be threatened by the increased government intervention in free enterprise that is certain to come with more stringent environmental laws that will be passed in response to global warming. The Heartland Institute has every reason, except a scientific one, to deny human-made climate change and to fund its opposition. Indeed, the Heartland Institute itself has in the past received substantial funding from the established interests of the energy sector—the interests who perhaps stand to lose the most in climate change reform. These days, the Heartland Institute no longer discloses its funding sources. Hrm.
I watched your “very informative” video. It's not very informative. It's filled with contradictions. At one point, a graphic on the screen says “Nothing is clear” while the voiceover says “In fact, the science is proving the Earth is cooling, not heating up.” So, which is it? Another graphic says that thousands of scientists have signed a petition claiming that “global warming poses no crisis to Earth.” So we're cooling down, but, even if we were heating up instead, it wouldn't be a problem? Talk about hedging your bets! The video then has the audacity to claim that global climate change reformists are in it for the money—which is as brazen as it is because the whole existence of this controversy is due to the fact that the implications of this emerging science have driven industry interests to spend enormous amounts of money fabricating an opposition that will dispute the credibility of the science—a better theater of war, I suppose, than trying to make the case that we shouldn't make any changes to our industrial practices in the midst of an overstressed planetary environment. In classic Republican tradition, they go on to try and scare you with anxious music, threats of global financial ruin, and fast flashes of emotionally jarring images, only for the voiceover guy to then allege that it's the other side that's trying to scare you, and that the Heartland Institute doesn't do that. Cue the soft music and fluffy clouds. (Seriously; watch it for yourself.)
I checked some of their sources, and in every case I found a distortion. Credentials are overstated and statistics are misrepresented. In at least one instance, it's a flat-out lie. Unfortunately most people do not go to the extra step of checking sources; if an interest identifies its sources, most people consider that to be a good enough sign that the sources are valid and are being accurately represented.
Your “very informative” video has no credibility, and that you would recommend it to someone like me is foolish. I know the difference between science and marketing. Either you don't, or you think I'm stupid.
Speaking of me, what's my basis for saying all of this? What authority do I speak from? After all, I'm not one of those who has a Ph.D in an applicable field, or in any field for that matter. (Incidentally, some of the scientists comprising that list of “reputable” global warming deniers don't even have degrees in climate-related fields.) I haven't been personally involved in any scientific research on the subject. What I
have done is follow the news. There are plenty of science blogs out there, as well as government and university websites which publish their reports, and sometimes a story will even make it into the traditional news media. This continual torrent of new information makes it clear that one of two things is going on: Either our understanding and documentation of global climate change is improving tremendously, or there is some kind of global scientific conspiracy going on (either a conspiracy of great cunning, or a conspiracy of great stupidity; take your pick).
But I wouldn't necessarily trust any news as much as I am able to after having taken a glaciology course back in college. My major was astronautical engineering, but I was always fond of branching out and taking interesting classes off my degree track. One of them, and, incidentally, the single best class I ever took in my life, was “Geology 417: Environmental Change in the Glacial Ages.” The professor was about to take on emeritus status; this was his last quarter teaching that course. The entire twelve weeks consisted of him showing us slides. Literally. We didn't do anything else except for the midterms and finals. But it wasn't boring or sedative. It was absolutely riveting. The professor and the material came together like nothing I've ever experienced before, and I learned a great deal. One of the countless things I learned about is just how real global warming is. That was clear even in 2002, and anyone who had gone into such a classroom with an
open mind would not have been able to arrive at any other conclusion.
Lord J, I must ask. How do you view climate change?
I view climate change with the respect deserved of any topic so complex, and with the urgency demanded of any crisis so serious.
In the process of writing my reply, you edited your post and added this:
Update: As it turns out, trees are the biggest contributor to climate change and the greenhouse gas it emits that makes up 99% of the atmosphere...
Water vapor.
Pah. How could I have forgotten the trillions of tons of added greenhouse gas emissions? Those are of particularly no consequence!
You're right. They are of particularly no consequence.
Humans produce a negligible < 1%, also of no particular consequence.
I may as well have not bothered to write a reply at all. I thought you were being serious.
Since I've come this far, I suppose I'll bother to fact check you. Sigh.
First, the atmosphere is not 99 percent water vapor. What you probably meant is that water vapor makes up most of the Earth's atmosphere's current greenhouse gas. But if that is what you mean, then what you actually wrote was a very crude mistake. And "99 percent" is not a correct statistic in any case.
Water vapor is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, much more so than carbon dioxide. Global warming deniers love to point out that water vapor is usually not included in "greenhouse gas emissions," and indeed the inclusion of water vapor would trivialize all human industrial output. The problem with treating them interchangeably is that global warming is not the same as global warmth. Water vapor is and has been present at saturation levels in our atmosphere for millions of years. Much of the Earth's mild surface temperature is due to to the heat exchange between day and night facilitated by water vapor. Without water vapor, the days would be hotter and the nights would be much colder. On average, however, the planet's surface would be much colder.
Obviously not every area of the atmosphere is "saturated" with water vapor in the classical sense of saturation, but the dynamics of the atmosphere are such that,
globally, you can't put any more water into it: As much comes out in the form of precipitation as goes up in the form of evaporation (and sublimation). Therefore, absent other changes to the environmental variables of the planet, water vapor has already reached 100 percent of its global warming potential.
In contrast, the amount of
carbon dioxide that the atmosphere is capable of absorbing is nowhere near its limit. Indeed, its limit is beyond the limits of most life on Earth: On land all oxygen-breathers would suffocate, and the oceans would turn to acid, killing most sea life. Similarly, with methane, a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO
2, the atmosphere's storage capacity is far, far higher than the amount of methane presently in it.
Carbon dioxide and methane are only two of several key human-made greenhouse gas emissions. By our practices we are introducing quantities of these gases into the atmosphere on a scale that nature has not replicated in thousands if not millions of years. Unlike water vapor, these represent
new additions of greenhouse capacity into the atmosphere. That's why they're so dangerous. All of those fossil fuels and cows and destroyed forests...they are releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere completely in defiance of the planet's present native equilibrium. They are adding warmth to an already warm planet. Going by the rate of warming rather than the absolute output of greenhouse gases--which is, after all, the relevant way to analyze the data--humanity's share is far, far greater than your bogus "< 1%" figure. Hrm.
I learned most of this stuff seven years ago, in that glaciology class, as well as in an astronomy class a year or two earlier, in the midst of discussions on Venus. I can't help but think to myself that, if only you'd had access to a good education, we wouldn't be having this "discussion" today.
On a final note, I couldn't let this go without some comment, since it gave me a laugh: Trees are not the largest source of climate change by any conceivable measure. If you're talking about that whole discredited water vapor bit, then, no, the oceans put out the vast majority of water vapor. If you're talking about deforestation, then, no, it's fossil fuels that put out the most carbon dioxide. Trees do put out a lot, but they also soak up a lot, whereas fossil fuel combustion is a one-way street. If you're talking about planetary albedo, then, no, trees are very dark as far as land surfaces are concerned. Jeez. It's almost like you get your facts from the Heartland Institute or something...
Edit: Minor flow mistakes corrected.
