2008 - The year global warming was disproved.

[jnhay]

As a species we've regressed.. Anyone that needs proof of that spend time with a group of 10-14 year olds for more than 5 minutes and you'll have all the proof you need.

You only say that because you're 33. Are you sure you and your friends were much better at that age?

[PeterMP]

We have been lucky: We came about during a time period of almost flatline shifts in temperature: It used to be crazy..

99% of our Earths history we would lose 6.2 billion people this week..

Be grateful for what we have.

and recycle

You didn't answer the question.

Where all of the previous changes in global temperature the result of the same forces?

[PeterMP]

You're missing the point.........badly. Point is, in six billion years, this planet has experienced warming and cooling trends thousands upon thousands of times. It's been MUCH hotter and MUCH cooler over the last 6 billion years than it is today.

Six billion years: Let's put that in perspective, shall we?

If the Earth's existence was one 24-hour day, humans as we know them today (and I'm talking about the dudes who still needed an appendix to process raw meat) have been around for roughly 2.4 seconds. The last century of "recorded history" right around the time of the first industrial revolution is approximately .0017 of a second.

Can we have that much of impact in .001 of a second, especially given the fact that your average volcanic eruption makes thousands of industrial revolutions look like an environmentally-friendly utopia? Doubtful. Any claim otherwise is lunacy.

Now, I recycle as much as the next guy and I'm all for conservation.........but this hysteria-induced government intrusion which is surely to come as a result of the environmental ding-bats is simply unacceptable. It could be avoided too, if humans would only use an iota of the logic we've developed over the last 250,000 years. Unfortunately, I grow more cynical by the day regarding mankind's intellectual capacity.

You didn't answer the question either, but I'll go ahead and address your point.

Do you not believe that using nuclear weapons that we could have an affect on the climate?

Do you not believe that CFC's were destroying the ozone hole?

Do you have any idea what the effect on life/climate would be if there was no ozone hole?

***EDIT***

Realistically, if we wanted to I think the human race has the ability to grab meteors and start redirecting them towards Earth. Would that affect the Earth's climate?

[Thiebear]

It really is crazy when you think about it.

Let's say the doubters are right. Let's say man is contributing no impact or minimal impact to global changes, but that they are still happening. Well, are these effects still real? Are we not seeing temperture rises, deforestaton, expanding deserts, mass extinctions? I mean even if we're not the direct cause or most powerful cause if we could find a way to artificially make ourselves healthier and make the world more better... than who cares about the origin. Sometimes you treat the symptoms.

Lets not confuse what Man can do

and what Man can not do.

Man is not changing the worlds rotation to the slower because were fatter.

Man is not changing the worlds warming/cooling periods..

Man is ruining our ability to survive on this planet. 120 years after we Easter Island ourselves the world will be back to 2000bc status

When every volcano on earth erupted and killed out 99% of everything living... the earth survived.. the 99% (not so much).

[PeterMP]

Man is not changing the worlds rotation to the slower because were fatter.

Man is not changing the worlds warming/cooling periods.

Why weren't all of the world's previous warming/cooling periods identical?

[Corcaigh]

Why weren't all of the world's previous warming/cooling periods identical?

Duh ... because Al Gore is so fat.

[Thiebear]

Why weren't all of the world's previous warming/cooling periods identical?

If you look at the chart its pretty close and it also depends on how many things happened, was it solar + volcano + water trends.

Where was the Earth in the solar system?

Where was the Earth in relation to the Moon/Sun?

Where were the continents at the time?

[PeterMP]

If you look at the chart its pretty close and it also depends on how many things happened, was it solar + volcano + water trends.

Where was the Earth in the solar system?

Where was the Earth in relation to the Moon/Sun?

Where were the continents at the time?

Actually, it isn't "close" by statistical measures.

"In a previous paper (Wunsch, 2003), it was shown that much of the observed variability was difficult to distinguish from comparatively simple random walk phenomena. Here, we extend those results by seeking a quantitative measure of the fraction of climate change for which orbital insolation changes clearly predominate. The measure used is a simple one: to find the fraction of the energy in the records ascribable to the direct, linear, response to orbital insolation forcing, and only then turn to the 100 ka-band energy. (The underlying mathematical structure is the Parseval/Rayleigh theorem expressing the record variance as the sum of its Fourier components; see Wunsch, 2000, Appendix.)A major difficulty faced by anyone attempting to use cores to understand climate change is the need for an age model to convert from depth coordinates to time. If the underlying true record is dominated by the orbital frequency bands, errors in the age model can displace energy from those bands, thus reducing the apparent Milankovitch energies. Then, up to further problems of the unknown relative phase and of event identification, one can adjust the times of fluctuations to coincide with the astronomical forcing, and thus “tune” the core. Conversely however, tuning can take energy that properly belongs in the non-orbital bands, and improperly place it there (e.g., Neeman, 1993; Huybers, P., Wunsch, C., 2004. Depth and orbital-tuning: a new chronology of glaciation and nonlinear climate change. Paleoceanography, 19, PA1028, doi: 10.1029/2002PA000857.Huybers and Wunsch, 2004). We will show however, that even in tuned records, the fraction of the variance in the myriadic band derived from the insolation forcing is so small that the inference it controls the overall record is not an obvious one. This point of view is an old one (e.g., Kominz and Pisias, 1979; Imbrie and Imbrie, 1980), but it has been not much heeded."

"At zero order, all records are consistent with stochastic models of varying complexity with a small superimposed Milankovitch response, mainly in the obliquity band. Evidence cited to support the hypothesis that the 100 Ka glacial/interglacial cycles are controlled by the quasi-periodic insolation forcing is likely indistinguishable from chance, given the small sample size and near-integer ratios of 100 Ka to the precessional periods. At the least, the stochastic background “noise” is likely to be of importance."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBC-4C5PTB0-1&_user=526750&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000023759&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=526750&md5=714800b3ea48f7820e8f921a81a8cba8

In other words, there isn't a clear pattern that can be observed with respect to the Earth's rotation, and the Earth's climate changes can essentially considered to be a stochastic (random) phenomenea.

So things other than simply the Earth's rotation w/ respect to the sun have affected climate in the past.

What about CO2 EVEN IN THE PAST?

http://www.pnas.org/content/105/41/15815.full

"A coherent scenario explaining preindustrial atmospheric CO2 changes of the last millennium and their possible temporal link with changes in terrestrial and marine carbon uptake or release still needs to be established. Reconstructed multidecadal changes are not as prominent as man-made CO2 increases since the onset of industrialization. Yet it seems obvious that a dynamic CO2 regime with fluctuations of up to 34 ppmv implies that CO2 can no longer be discarded as a forcing factor of preindustrial air-temperature changes. The results of our study therefore underscore the need to understand anthropogenic global warming within the context of rates and amplitudes of natural CO2 variability of the last millennium. A stomata-based CO2 record may provide an important observational constraint on the sensitivity of climate models."

http://www.agu.org/journals/pa/pa0802/2006PA001405/

"The abrupt warmings and the big CO2 increases recorded in Antarctic ice cores occur through an internal mechanism with an internal 100,0000-year timescale. The root of the internal mechanism is the unstable overturning in the ocean around Antarctica. [106] The most recent transition began with a seesaw-like fluctuation in the overturning around Antarctica [Monnin et al., 2001], which released respired CO2 from the deep ocean up to the atmosphere [Marchitto et al., 2007]. The CO2 release at this particular time flipped a CO3= deficit in the deep ocean into a CO3= excess [Marchitto et al., 2005], which led to an enhancement in the ocean's CaCO3 burial that augmented the atmospheric CO2 increase. Warming from the elevated CO2 then led to more overturning, which led to still more CO2 in the atmosphere and more CaCO3 burial, etc. In this way, the internal feedback and the burial of CaCO3 converted a relatively minor overturning fluctuation into a major transition."

[Chachie]

Regardless, global warming will go down as one of the biggest scams in history. Keep trying to defend it.

:thumbsup:

I have no idea if global warming is real or not, but-

Why is environmental consciousness a scam? Who needs to "defend" a desire to clean up the air and stop using harmful fuels? Your point is silly and only makes you look like you've got your head in your arse. If your family wanted to clean up your house and yard would you call them scammers? Would you wallow in your own filth until it became a health hazard?

I don't understand how efforts to improve our atmosphere are scams whether there is an impending danger or not. It's all positive progress whereas the alternative is undeniable.

[Destino]

Let me look at the we've only been around for a tiny fraction of the earth's history so we can't have a big impact argument:

Prior to the dispersion of humans across the earth, extinction generally occurred at a continuous low rate, mass extinctions being relatively rare events. Starting approximately 100,000 years ago, and coinciding with an increase in the numbers and range of humans, species extinctions have increased to a rate unprecedented since the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event.[4] This is known as the Holocene extinction event and is at least the sixth such extinction event. Some experts have estimated that up to half of presently existing species may become extinct by 2100

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction

Someone really needs to tell the life on this planet that humanity has chased out of existence that we couldn't have possibly done so in so short a time period. They need to stop faking and start breathing again until we've survived long enough for hard headed republicans to consider our civilization to be of real consequence.

[Stophovr6]

Just a question. I've heard people who doubt global warming(man made or not) say that we don't have enough evidence to prove it. That our core samples from the arctic aren't old enough to prove anything. Or that our recording of temperatures has only gone back so far, and that we can't make any judgements based on those numbers, because we don't have enough information.

So how can we come to the conclusion, that global warming is a farce, because of one year? 2008 in this case. Last year, 2007 proved global warming was false. Hell anytime there's a snow storm or it goes below freezing, someone declares global warming false. I dunno, seems silly. We'll find out one way or another. Or we could take steps to make sure we don't **** things up beyond control. But I guess that's too bothersome for some people.

[Skinz4Life12]

In other words, what you are saying is that the fundamentals of our environment are strong. Right, Senator?

:applause::applause::applause::applause: HAHAHA thank you Burgold! What a quote, I'll have to use that one next time this subject is brought up

[alexey]

It seems last 8 years have really solidified the ignorance of the republican base. I suspect that rebuilding and reforming that party will be much harder than many anticipate. It appears that even repeated electoral beatings will not break down this ignorance. I am very curious to see what reasonable republicans will do when they realize the extent of the damage.

[Corcaigh]

It seems last 8 years have really solidified the ignorance of the republican base.

But the party is not ignorant at the top. At some point the line was crossed between spin and plain denial of reality as a standard way of working.

In 2004 when Sen. Bill Frist, an actual MD, and House Majority Leader claimed that sweat and tears could be spread HIV, rather than criticize one of his own parties programs, a major milestone along that road was reached.