Wow. US Senate Recognizes Existence Of Global Warming. Just Wow.

[hatrack]

EDIT

"In fact, we were deeply disappointed that the Senate and, in particular, energy committee chairman Pete Domenici, abandoned their tentative support for emission controls after a visit from Vice President Dick Cheney. Up until Monday night, Mr. Domenici seemed likely to sign onto a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions fashioned by the committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Jeff Bingaman.

His reversal scuttled that option, leaving Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman to fight a valiant but doomed bipartisan battle in favor of an even stouter cap-and-trade proposal. Debate on that measure – a plan that has long struck us as reasonable, measured and workable – produced a very angry and telling exchange between the two high-ranking Republicans, Mr. McCain and Mr. Domenici. That's the thought we'd like to leave you with today.

Mr. McCain, clearly frustrated, implied that Mr. Domenici is mired in denial, inadvertently dooming future generations to untold environmental catastrophes. Meeting anger with anger, Mr. Domenici shot back: "I do not mind the senator from Arizona saying whatever he likes on the floor. I do not mind him getting red in the face and pointing at me and talking to me like I don't know what I am talking about. But he did not listen. I did not say global warming is not a problem. ... He should have said, 'I am glad Sen. Domenici is finally recognizing there is a problem.' "

So, yes, we wish heartily that Mr. Domenici and his colleagues had been able to agree on a solution. That is their job, after all. But we are very glad that, as he said, they are recognizing that there is a problem. Finally."

EDIT/END

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/062405dnedienergy.3b7d77df.html

[phantom power]

1. That is quite a victory. Sadly enough.

Until our fearless leaders actually admit this is a problem, any attempts to solve it are doomed before they begin. So, I feel kind of good about it.

[reBel_gyrl]

2. Finally is right..

I thought it was going to take another ice age, or 4 months of acid rain, or hundreds of children being born with arms in their foreheads to get these people to realize that THIS IS A PROBLEM. So now that they do realize, next they have to admit it out loud, in public, then maybe in a year or so they will start to do something about it. "Here's to our last drink of fossil fuels." -A.DiFranco

[Ragnar]

3. The sad part of all this is...

The Senate is unifying behind pseudoscience. I don't care how much concensus there is on global warming. Until someone can explain how the cooling trend of the mid 20th centuries amidst rising CO2 levels fits in with the theory of global warming, I ain't buying that swampland.

[bloom]

4. "Pseudoscience"

you wrote that you don't how much consensus there is....

So you're going to be the last holdout, eh?

What pseudoscience board are you getting your information from?

[Ragnar]

5. You missed what I said about concensus.

I wrote I don't care about concensus. Science by concensus brought us Eugenics, Phrenology and the Geocentric model.

I get my data not from a message board but from GISS at Collumbia and the Oak Ridge labs reports on CO2 levels.

I'll back off as soon as someone offers me a resonable explanation of the contradictory data. Or someone can demostrate beyond significant doubt how changing less than 1/10000 of the Earth's atmosphere is so destructive to change my mind. I would be very shocked to see either any time soon, because global warming is a political not a scientific field.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Try this

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/vol4/english/077.htm

The 'natural' forcings (solar radiation variation, volcano emissions) would have cooled the earth more than the anthropogenic ones would have warmed it then (remembering that soot emissions also had a cooling effect to counter the greenhouse gases, back when more, dirtier coal was burnt). Combine the 2, and the model fits the observations well.

The current greenhouse effect is thought to keep the temperature about 33 degrees celsius higher than it would be. So the 30% increase in carbon dioxide (I presume that's the 1/10000th you're talking about), which has produced a 0.6 degree rise in temperature so far, looks quite reasonable - that would roughly say the carbon dioxide contribution to the 33 degrees is about 2 degrees, or under 10% of the total. You find that unbelievable? In practice, the calculation will be more complicated than that - the effect may be non-linear, and there could be positive and negative feedbacks with water vapour and cloud cover involved. But all you have to do is look for studies on the warming effects of carbon dioxide. To dismiss them as just the 'consensus' isn't good enough - it's the result arrived at by the scientists who do the studies.

[Ragnar]

7. 30 percent is a troubling figure.

http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-mlo.htm

The data show a 19.4% change from 1959-2004. But even that is misleading. "from 315.98 parts per million by volume (ppmv) of dry air in 1959 to 377.38 ppmv in 2004." That is a net increase of 61.4ppm. Parts per MILLION. I'll give you 39 more parts per million, because I am a generous guy and tend to err on the side of caution when going against scientific concensus. That gives you 100 ppm. That comes out to one part of every 10000 parts of the total atmosphere.

And beside that, the same data show a relatively consistent rise in CO2 levels throughout the duration of the sampling. In the midst of the sampling exist, by the data you show (which is the GISS data I think) there was a 30+ year cooling trend. No reasonable explanation has ever been put forward to reconcile the hypotheses of anthropogenic warming and this cooling trend, at least not to my knowledge.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. There's no need to 'give' me 39 ppm

280 is the typically quoted figure for pre-industrial revolution levels, eg:

The pre-industrial concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 280 ppmv. This concentration had remained fairly constant since the end of the last Ice Age about 14.000 years ago, when it increased from 190 ppmv. Coinciding with this prehistoric rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide was a global rise in average surface temperature of 5°C. The concern today is that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the late 18th century as a result of man-made carbon dioxide emissions is causing a further global warming. Atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is now about 370 ppmv, and is increasing 1.2 ppmv each year. This concentration is higher than at any time during the last 160,000 years. This level of increase over the last 200 years has contributed roughly 60% to the enhancement of the greenhouse effect. To prevent further increases in carbon dioxide concentrations would require a massive 60% reduction of global carbon dioxide emissions.

http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/eae/Global_Warming/Older/Concentrations.html

370/280 = 1.32

The (slight) cooling is explained by the natural forcings - variable solar radiation and volcanic emissions. That's why I linked the 3 graphs - they show that the natural forcings were balancing the man-made ones in the middle of last century.

[Ragnar]

9. I took another look!

Okay I get it. You are playing video games. Computer models are nice for designing your kitchen, but not of any real use in predicting specific changes in the climate.

Your graphs assume we know all the variables. We don't. It's easy to make a model explain something it's designed to explain, and that's what your "natural forcings" modeling does. It is desiged specifically to genreate an explanation for an anomally based on the data at hand. The truth is, there is no concrete evidence that the 35 year cooling trend of the mid 20th century is anything but part of the same natural occurence as the warming trend of the 35 years since and the 50 years before.

There is also a problem with comparing modern CO2 data and data generated from the fossil record. It is quite possible that unaccunted factors generate false readings int he sampling of prehistoric levels. There is no way to verify this data without going 100 centuries into the future and comparing the fossil records of our time with instrument measurements.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. No, the models are what the scientists think the physics makes happen

and they tested them with the conditions over the past 150 years, and they showed a pretty good fit, which indicates the models are probably reliable. So, the predictions they make for the next 100 years have a good chance of being correct too. And what do you think we would use to predict the future climate, apart from computers? They are, after all, what we use for predicting weather.

But if you're the kind of person who will dismiss what the scientists are doing as 'video games', then I think you're not here willing to be convinced of anything. You're here to mislead people about the evidence. The prehistoric levels have not been relevant to the actual arguments we've had here so far, but I see you pounce on them, saying "we don't know if they're accurate". You don't say why, of course. You just thought you'd put a bit of uncertainty into the thread.

[Ragnar]

11. All these models are bogus.

They are designed to explain the anomalies within the context of the current theory. Moreover, to be of any value, they would need to account for all variables. We are nowhere near knowing all the variables in atmospheric conditions.

Another note to consider: Temperatures in major cities have risen faster than in rural areas which have risen faster than in undeveloped areas. This would indicate land use is a major cause of warming in the populated places of the planet. This is contradictory to global warming theories, as land use warming is not an atmospheric anomaly but one of heating coming from proximity to a warm Earth. Do your models factor out anthropomorphic ground use warming, as it is a local and not a global or atmospheric effect?

[bloom]

12. The data that I saw presented

was taken from remote areas - not cities, etc.

But I suspect as well as the previous poster - that you are not interested in data and science as much as you are in not "backing off" as you claimed. As if it's up to us to convince someone who is determined not to be convinced.

You do know, don't you, that Bush & Co. has been caught manipulating findings about global warming to make it sound that there is still doubt among scientists and that Exxon has had quite a disinformation campaign going on.

And of course Bush just keeps saying there needs to be more research. He'll probably say that until he is dead.

[Ragnar]

13. And you know what?

It's the one place he'll be right.

What we do not know about climate change so far outstretches what we do know about it that major policy changes based on that knowledge would be like funding the Manhattan project on the day atoms were first theorized.

[bloom]

14. While there can always be

more research for anything - Bush & Co. uses this charade as an excuse to be impotent. And to let industries be out of control.

So he is not "right" - nor will he ever be anything but clueless.

There is no excuse for the US not taking the lead on energy conservation, reduced emissions, transportation & energy alternatives and generally being a part of the world community with Kyoto and all.

[Name removed]

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[phantom power]

16. But...

the arctic ice-caps are disappearing. The atlantic conveyor is slowing. These aren't a matter of opinion, they are happening, and they are happening because of greenhouse warming.

20 years ago, this was open to debate, but the debate is now over. This isn't something that may or may not happen in a hundred years. It's happening as we speak. That's not alarmism, it's just true. (Personally, I do find it alarming, but everybody's feelings are equally valid and special)

I noted that Britain just issued it's first-ever tornado warning last week. There are "100-year" droughts in progress, in Australia, South-America and Europe. Some parts of Australia have 5 months of water left in their reservoirs.

I suppose you could say it's all just stuff that happens, but it makes me wonder what you would consider to be convincing evidence.

[Name removed]

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[phantom power]

18. You and I do not appear to inhabit the same universe.

If you truly don't believe that the arctic ice cap is shrinking, there's no discussion we can have. Our axiom sets are incompatible.

As for global warming being used as a "sword", in what way? So far, nobody has actually agreed on any policy regulating greenhouse gasses in the developing world, much less begun to enforce them. And the reasons cited are always economic. So, your point of view is still dominant in world politics, for better or worse.

[Name removed]

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[phantom power]

20. Well, I agree that it's going to be the most expensive project, ever.

At least several trillions of dollars, by my estimates, and that's just the U.S.

I also agree that it may be too late to stop it.

We can either undertake the task of adapting our civilization to what's coming, and fighting the changes as well as we can, or we can just let it all happen to us.

Under no circumstances, is our civilization going to continue in the particular way it is now. We will either change it on our own terms, or it will be changed for us by the climate and the shortage of fossil fuels. The longer we wait, the less it will be on our terms.

[Name removed]

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[IrateCitizen]

21. Flame on!!!

That's the statement that springs to mind most for me when I read exchanges such as this.

Personally, I'm a believer in the 95% or so of the scientific community that seems to agree that global climate change is occurring, and that it is at least partially attributable to man, primarily in the form of carbon emissions from the long process of industrialization. But let's set that aside for a moment, and look at where you approach this issue from.

Economics need to be considered very seriously. A balanced cost benefit analysis is necessary to determine sensible public policy. The environmental movement has consistently fought against this thinking - very wrongly. It is the robust modern economy which allows us the resources we need to protect the planet. To ignore the economy in environmental policy is counterproductive.

Now, I could very easily turn this argument around and say that we instead need to look at ECO-logy as being part of ECO-nomics, rather than as an "external", as classical economics treats it. In fact, there are a great many environmentalists and non-traditional economists who have embarked on similar projects.

You state, "It is the robust modern economy which allows us the resources we need to protect the planet." To someone looking at the long arc of industrialization from the outside, such a statement would likely appear as sheer lunacy, because at the heart of it is a basic contradiction -- that the resources required to protect the environment are only developed through a process that has historically been dedicated to raping it of said resources in the pursuit of an abstract known as "profit". Only in the modern world, through our cultural inability to consider any other process besides the current one, can such a statement be considered viable.

The truth of the matter is that we will never be able to deal with ANY of these problems until we realize that the earth is finite, and it is upon the earth and our environment that we depend for our very lives. That's why the words economy and ecology have the same root, ecos. Somehow, we've come to treat them as near polar opposites, to our own collective detriment.

Finally, WRT development in the developing world -- societies that we in the global North refer to as "developing" are actually in a position to possibly deal with a post-oil age much better than we can. Why? Because much of their infrastructure has not yet been established, and it can more easily be fitted to renewable energy technologies rather than centrally-controlled, fossil fuel dependent ones (like we are). Yet, the same panaceas -- World Bank megaprojects, increased fossil fuel use, forcing subsistence farmers off their land for agribusiness and timber interests, and forced industrialization -- continue to be pushed upon them, with disastrous results.

And all this to stop a phenomenon we do not even know we can stop.

Yeah, you're right -- we should just continue on as if everything's OK, while the ecosystems of the planet literally collapse around us like houses of cards....

[Name removed]

23. Deleted message

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[phantom power]

24. self-delete.

duplicate.

[phantom power]

25. That's interesting

You say you like deep ecology. But one of the basic tenets of deep ecology is that the climate influences life, and life influences the climate. That's the very essense of the "gaia" theory. And yet, you say I'm engaging in "hubris", when I claim that humans are influencing the climate.

regarding "consensus", the majority isn't always right, on the other hand, is there some particular reason you think that 95% of climatologists are wrong about this? You just admitted you don't know much about climatology, and yet you feel confident enough to claim 95% of the guys who do know about it might be wrong.

[Name removed]

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[phantom power]

28. This is still confusing to me.

If you really believe we can't deliberately change our effect on the environment, then why do you think we should bother making reasonable efforts to minimize potential damage? Any effort to minimize potential damage implies that we believe we can make directed changes to the environment.

Doesn't it?

I think everybody agrees that humans aren't the only thing responsible for global warming. This warming/cooling cycle has been going on for a long time, and we've only been burning fossil fuels for a couple hundred years. So, yes, it was happening with or without us. But we're accelerating it. That's a real shame, since if we have ourselves an extra few decades, or centuries, or however much longer it might have taken, our technology would be that much more advanced, and we might have had the power to avoid it completely, or at least survive it in style. Or leave the planet altogether.

Or, not. But now, we'll never know.

I don't really understand the term "alarmist". I'm alarmed by what is happening, and not in an abstract way. I'm physically frightened, because I'm pretty sure that my family and I are going to suffer through what's coming, and it will be very very bad.

If you aren't, that's OK. Maybe it's better that way, since all of my fear doesn't appear to be changing the future one way or the other.

[Name removed]

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[phantom power]

31. I absolutely agree with that.

Nobody really has control over anything, only influence. All I really mean is, there are things that we're doing to the climate, and biosphere, etc, that we know are bad. We should halt the emissions of greenhouse gasses, because we now know it's making a bad situation worse. We should stop using resources faster than earth can replace them, because otherwise we will run out.

Those are choices we can still make, if we make them soon enough. If we don't, the laws of nature will make them for us, and we all know that mother nature is la belle dame sans merci.

Regarding BioSphere-2, I never did understand the reaction to their failures. The entire point of building the thing was to learn how to manage a closed ecosystem. Who in their right mind expected them to succeed on the first try?

Oh well, they are still using it as a great research platform, just not for closed systems.

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

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[Boomer]

27. The "Expanding Glaciers" urban legend

George Monbiot has tracked down the origins of the "glaciers are expanding not contracting" claims:

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/22008/

Who knew Lyndon Larouche was a climatologist!

[bloom]

30. And then there is Rep. Joe Barton Harrassing Scientists...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3960195



http://www.chriscmooney.com/blog.asp?Id=1926