A very simple and easy to understand explanation of why climate change is REAL.

Your last is not at all what I am suggesting. In fact, that would be rather obviously idiotic. That would be like saying that if you did not start out knowing all there is to know about chemistry you could never understand chemistry. We make more and more progress in the knowledge of all realms of science virtually daily, in fact we've gathered more knowledge in the last 150 years than we have in the entire remainder of the history of mankind. Sadly rather than humility as we look at what now seems like the half baked theories of previous generations it has filled us with hubris. WE DO NOT YET KNOW EVERYTHING, in fact, when it comes to climatology we have barely scratched the surface. We are not flipping a coin here. It's more like rolling a couple of dozen hundred sided dice some of which are loaded and the loading isn't fixed but slightly mobile. After 500 rolls or so you're beginning to figure out that some of those dice numbered 1 through 100 never yield values below 25, others never yield values above 75. Some form clusters others don't. And no I'm not talking about strictly temperature. The most massive change man has inflicted on the planet in the last 150 years is changes in land use. It is not production of CO2 which has seen in fact minimal change. Yet alarmist are arguing that the thing we've impacted the least is responsible for all the problem. It's like claiming that the small rivet that fell from the front wheel well of the airplane caused the tail to fall off.

 

Your claim on co2 is counter to a massive amount of science, and thus you should cite something for your radical claim.

Yes, we do not know everything - about anything, in fact. Yet we do not allow that to paralyze us. We still make public policy even though we do not ever have complete knowledge.

 

Because YOU minimize the effect of AGW does not mean that has any value.

Land use CAN have effects on releasing diseases into the world that were previously contained...but temperature can do so as well. Land use probably will have a much smaller impact on the severity of storms than AGW will. It certainly will not melt the polar ice caps or raise ocean levels.

Because one thing is a problem (land use) does not mean that nothing else is or that nothing else is of greater importance. That's just stupid

 

The delusional and dishonest are those who refuse to acknowledge what happens over the course of an Inter-Glacial Period.

 

Massive deaths in 3rd world areas that have never been able to support jensrlvrd is actually the earth fixing the problem. It's when people try and fix it by moving those people into other area, that we create more problems. CA can barely support the people there. We only have so much water. FL is reaching that breach hold soon even though we're building too fast. Our leaders should be hung on prime time when we start having water shortages because they allowed the building to happen.

 

it looks to me like you're refusing to acknowledge what happens when billions of tons of co2 are released into the atmosphere, from burning fossil fuels

"Lower-level atmosphere—which contains the carbon load—is expanding. The boundary between the lower atmosphere (troposphere) and the higher atmosphere (stratosphere) has shifted upward in recent decades. See the ozone FAQ for a figure illustrating the layers of the atmosphere. This boundary has likely changed because heat-trapping gases accumulate in the lower atmosphere and that atmospheric layer expands as it heats up (much like warming the air in a balloon). And because less heat is escaping into the higher atmosphere, it is likely cooling. This differential would not occur if the sun was the sole climate driver, as solar changes would warm both atmospheric layers, and certainly would not have warmed one while cooling the other.

Direct evidence of human contribution to atmospheric CO2


Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main heat-trapping gas largely responsible for most of the average warming over the past several decades. To compare how CO2 stacks up in influence to the many other important heat-trapping gases contributing to climate change see the CO2 FAQ. There is a way that scientists can tease apart the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to see how much of the CO2 is from natural sources and how much is from combusted fossil fuel sources.


The atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased from a pre-industrial era (AD 1000 – 1750) concentration of approximately 280 parts per million (ppm) to around 383 ppm, as measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii in 2007. The carbon in the atmospheric CO2 contains information about its source, so that scientists can tell that fossil fuel emissions comprise the largest source of the increase since the pre-industrial era.


Here’s how scientists know. The same elements (i.e. same number of protons in the nucleus) with different mass numbers (arising from the different numbers of neutrons in the nucleus) are called isotopes. Each carbon molecule has six protons in the nucleus, but there are many different isotopes with varying numbers of neutrons in the nucleus.Carbon isotopes from different sources are “lighter” (high negative value) or heavier (lower negative value). For example, carbon from ocean is the standard with a value of “0” while carbon from fossil fuels ranges from -20 to -32. While atmospheric carbon has an average value of -5 to -9, it is becoming “lighter” over time as carbon from fossil fuels become more abundant in the atmosphere."



http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warmin...uman-contribution-to-gw-faq.html#.VgmOvkvIrJw

 

Well that is just wonderful thank you for the full and total abject failure to even understand what I was talking about. Or for that matter to have even the most basic understanding of the science.

The whole point of what I said was that if human beings are having a noticeable impact on climate - so-called AGW- then it is far more likely that it has more to do with whole sale changes in land use than it does with an increase of 1/10000 of CO2.

 

you're repeating misinformation from big-oil lobbyists

do you think dumping billions of tons of co2 into the atmosphere wouldn't have an effect?

 

Oh CA has made it much worse than need be by destroying many of the water retention projects grandmas and grandpas put in place a hundred years ago. So cal has been semi arid at best since the end of the last ice age. Without making use of every drop of water that falls out the sky or runs through a river there is no way in hell too support so cal's current population. One should note that the overwhelming number of Trees that died in socal were transplants

 

Humans put 40 BILLION tons of CO2 (that's a GAS mind you) into the atmosphere every year. Only 40% of that gets absorbed by natural forces.

Consequently in the last 150 years...the concentration of CO2 has gone up 110PPM in that span to 400 PPM. That's a 25% increase in just 150 years

 

One issue does not negate another. That's just stupid.

 

All the CO2 we've dumped into the atmosphere in the last 150 years has increased the amount of CO2 by 1 part per 10,000. Today and through out history the overwhelming amount of CO2 that enters the atmosphere on any given day is placed there by nature herself the primary culprit being respiration

 

Please note The amount of CO2 currently in the atmosphere is roughly 30 trillion tons The difference between 1 part per 10000 and 110 parts per million is ten parts per million.

So basically you are telling me that I should fret over an increase per annum of 24 billion/30 trillion. Oh and while you are at it list all the ways nature removes CO2 from the air.

 

Which has absolutely nothing to do with what I said.

 

it has increased concentrations of co2 enough to overheat the earth

and it isn't natural co2, as i showed earlier, it's from burning fossil fuels

"There are human fingerprints on carbon overload. When humans burn coal, oil and gas (fossil fuels) to generate electricity or drive our cars, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, where it traps heat. A carbon molecule that comes from fossil fuels and deforestation is “lighter” than the combined signal of those from other sources. As scientists measure the “weight” of carbon in the atmosphere over time they see a clear increase in the lighter molecules from fossil fuel and deforestation sources that correspond closely to the known trend in emissions."

 

as noted it has increased it by 110 parts per million in 150 years...an increase of 30%

 

Was it?

Was it a global phenomenon?

 

Errrrr no

The lungs are never spotless they just have less effect than others

 

And there is no correspondence between CO2 and temperature if you don't show it in 20 year increments.

 

Which doesn't in the grand scheme of things matter a damn. To date there is no carbon overload. AS I pointed out earlier we've had ice ages begin when CO2 levels were higher than this.

 

Actually you cannot say what the 'odds' are if you cannot know how much is natural variation, which no one knows.

 

Whatever might be the most "massive" change wrought by mankind is irrelevant.

The point is that various actions by mankind are affecting the temperature of earth, and there are consequences for that.

 

Because other forces were in play.

 

if you don't show it in 20 year increments...

So there is...you admit it. Thank you

 

The reason the planet takes several decades to respond to increased CO2 is the thermal inertia of the oceans. Consider a saucepan of water placed on a gas stove. Although the flame has a temperature measured in hundreds of degrees C, the water takes a few minutes to reach boiling point. This simple analogy explains climate lag. The mass of the oceans is around 500 times that of the atmosphere. The time that it takes to warm up is measured in decades. Because of the difficulty in quantifying the rate at which the warm upper layers of the ocean mix with the cooler deeper waters, there is significant variation in estimates of climate lag. A paper by James Hansen and others [iii] estimates the time required for 60% of global warming to take place in response to increased emissions to be in the range of 25 to 50 years. The mid-point of this is 37.5 which I have rounded to 40 years.