POLL: Do you believe in human-caused ("AGW") global warming?

[Kelly.]

How much of an effect do you personally believe it to be?

I am of the belief that it is so minute when compared to natural causes that it borders on absurd. I don't think clean energy is going to drastically change anything in the long run. [With regards to our changing climate] It should be explored by private companies, not subsidized to the politically connected. With all of the billions floating around, there is incentive to skew some studies, or to flatout lie. Some companies have a very large stake in us going green.

i am not sure how big an effect we have, but i am sure we have an effect.

 

[kcchiefs6465]

AGW is incredibly complex and unless you have a PHD in Atmospheric physics you shouldnt be lecturing anyone (looks at every politician)


There is still a heated debate in the scientific community about this, and the short answer is that no one is really 100% certain.

Political connections and campaign contributions help certain people's certainty.

 

[Kelly.]

On the assumption that the fuel that engine burns comes from what were once living plants and animals, the release of those gases to the atmosphere is just sending them back to where they came from.

i see what youre trying to do there, but to call burnt oil, old plants and animals being released back to where they came from seems a bit of a stretch.

if oil is just old plants and animals, and humans eat plants and animals to survive, you should be able to drink oil and be ok (using your same logic)
give it a shot and report back. im curious to hear your progress.

 

[CTRattlesnake]

Political connections and campaign contributions help certain people's certainty.

Which is why much of the debate is tainted. People on both sides are being paid off.

 

[erowe1]

i see what youre trying to do there, but to call burnt oil, old plants and animals being released back to where they came from seems a bit of a stretch.

if oil is just old plants and animals, and humans eat plants and animals to survive, you should be able to drink oil and be ok (using your same logic)
give it a shot and report back. im curious to hear your progress.

I am not taking a position on whether or not fossil fuels really are fossils. I'm just saying that, on the assumption that they are, then yes, burning them releases those gases back to where they came from. That's not a stretch. It's a mathematical certainty, given the assumption stated.

And also, given the same assumption, I don't see why it would entail anything at all about being able to eat oil. There comes a certain point in the decay of all living things, even those which were at one time edible, after which they no longer are edible. By the time they become petroleum, they are well past that point.

 

[Natural Citizen]

I am not taking a position on whether or not fossil fuels really are fossils...

What do you mean? Are you taling about the abiotic theory?

 

[Neil Desmond]

Here's the thing: humans have polluted the earth--pretty badly.

But the temperature is not rising at an alarming rate...not by anyone's calculus.

Personally, I think that nuclear testing is the #1 source of pollution in the world.

Though I'm supposed to use shitty cfl lightbulbs with mercury in em to save the earth. Yeah right.

Edison's main competitor had a lightbulb that is still running to this day.

Gotta hate planned obselecence.

Yes, there is the "actual" pollution - the stuff that we can actually find around us, and affects us and the environment. That is something that does need to be addressed, and politicians aren't likely going to provide a good solution for dealing with it. What I wonder is if the AGW argument is a diversion to try to distract people from the problems of (actual) pollution, to get them to focus on a possibly made-up existential threat, by people who only care about maximizing the bottom line.

 

[Neil Desmond]

I think it's just silly for men to place themselves upon some pedestal as if they are so relevant in the larger scheme of things. They're just a speck. Not even that. The cosmos is not in any way political. Men are political. In fact, they have made a science of it in and of itself. Which is what this poll is. Is political science.

This is a political forum.

 

[erowe1]

What do you mean? Are you taling about the abiotic theory?

I said I wasn't taking a position on the assumption I stated, just stating a logical consequence of it.

 

[erowe1]

Yes, there is the "actual" pollution - the stuff that we can actually find around us, and affects us and the environment.

Generally speaking, the ways we change our environments are ones that make them much better for us, not worse.

 

[TheGrinch]

I'm very skeptical of it, considering it's appeared since it's conception to be all about control and profit built on faux-consensus, also serving as a wedge issue.

Antecdotally, today is the first day of spring and it's snowing here in GA, that's jsut nuts, as it is normally 75 by now... Last year was the most mild winter I remember, and the year before the most brutally cold in some time. This year has been much more consistently cold but not so bitter cold. Sounds to me like typical yearly variance, aided by longer term natural shifts in temperatures.

 

[Natural Citizen]

I'll ask what I damn well please & I don't care what something proves to you about me, because I'm not what matters; whether we're really causing damage and destruction to the planet, or are being scammed into believing such a thing when it's not true (to make the super wealthy and powerful more wealthy and more powerful, while the rest of us get more and more oppressed), is what does matter. Yes, for every action there is an equal or greater reaction; but there is also something called a feedback process.

By the way, you're not the first person to try the I'm going to try to spark an emotional reaction from this guy by attempting to portray him as a very dumb individual with my "I'm dumbing it down for you as much as I can" ad hom causal fallacy attack on me on this forum; but it's even more entertaining than before because it reveals your ignorance (yes, it can be bliss) about me - especially because the other person had just tried it within the past couple weeks. I'm also amused at how you tried to create the illusion of a nonexistent group of people laughing at the pitiful misportrayal of a question that has absolutely nothing wrong with it.

PS: If I'm wrong about something, just bring it up and point it out. Not only do I not mind being shown that I'm wrong, I will appreciate it being brought up with something that shows how or why I'm wrong. What I don't have much use for is being told things like I'm clueless, dumb, this, that - whatever, without being provided with something to help me take corrective action.

Yeah, I should probably apologize for that. Didn't mean to make you sound like a main stream puppet. I actully had you confused with the last guy who dropped me a bunch of neg reps with the usual kindergarten lol and lmao shenanigans and no actual counter argument. I'm just so tired of being nice to that brood. I'm going to start negging the crap out of them, I think. Might even add a nonsensical lol. Although I do loathe that language. Also wasn't really trying to attack you personally. More so the narrative that so many come here and read. To have a completely political narrative trump discussion like this confuses the casual passer by on the phenomenon titself. Which is essentially my gripe with it all.

 

[Natural Citizen]

This is a political forum.

Without a platform for the sciences, I'd add. In effect, it seems like practical discussion on the sciences aren't particularly condoned in favor of keeping them relative to the political narrative. As if by design. I've seen many really good topics of discussion come up here regarding the sciences and their relevance to the way the world is changing. They are scattered all over the place and eventually buried only to be brought up in another thread based upon whatever the political narrative is for the day. It's just unfortunate in my opinion.

 

[Neil Desmond]

the internal combustion engine powering my car is no more that 40% efficient.
the gases that engine doesnt burn are releases into the biosphere, those same gases absorb and hold heat. i wonder why so many people cant grasp this concept

yes humans have an effect on the environment (good and bad). to think otherwise is to view humans separate from nature.

human caused warming implies there is only one cause which i disagree with. but to think that humans have no control over the environment is very close minded imo.

Just to be sure it's clear, don't confuse an efficiency percentage with percentage of gases that the engine doesn't burn. The percentage of efficiency has to do with how much energy there is, and how much of that energy is converted into mechanical work or heat:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_(thermodynamics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency

A gallon of gasoline has 1.3x10[sup]8[/sup] Joules of energy (source: http://www.evworld.com/library/energy_numbers.pdf). Say you have an internal combustion engine that is 25% efficient. What this means is that of those 1.3x10[sup]8[/sup] Joules of energy, 0.325x10[sup]8[/sup] Joules of that energy is being converted to mechanical work (and the rest is getting converted into heat).

In the Wikipedia "engine efficiency" article, under the section "Oxygen", it states that fuel that isn't burned (in the combustion chamber) reduces certain pollutants (e.g., NOx) but raises others (e.g., partically decomposed HxCy).

 

[presence]

I'm very skeptical of it, considering it's appeared since it's conception to be all about control and profit built on faux-consensus, also serving as a wedge issue.

Antecdotally, today is the first day of spring and

it's snowing here in GA, that's just nuts, as it is normally 75 by now...

Last year was the most mild winter I remember, and the year before the most brutally cold in some time. This year has been much more consistently cold but not so bitter cold. Sounds to me like typical yearly variance, aided by longer term natural shifts in temperatures.

By Dr. Jeff Masters
Published: 3:15 PM GMT on March 20, 2013
Punxatawney Phil got it way wrong. Pennsylvania's famous prognosticating rodent predicted just three more weeks of winter back on February 2. It's the first day of spring, but winter remains firmly entrenched over the eastern half of the U.S., where temperatures of 5 - 25°F below average have been the rule all week. The culprit is the jet stream, which has taken on an unusually contorted shape that is allowing cold air to spill down over the Eastern U.S. and Western Europe, but bringing near-record warmth to portions of Greenland. One measure of how contorted the jet stream has become is by measuring the difference in pressure between the Icelandic Low and the Azores High. There are two indices used to do this--one called the Arctic Oscillation (AO), which treats the flow over the entire Northern Hemisphere, and another called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which is more focused on the North Atlantic. The two are closely related about 90% of the time. When these indices are strongly negative, the pressure difference between the Icelandic Low and the Azores High is low. This results in a weaker jet stream, allowing it to take large, meandering loops, letting cold air to spill far to the south from the Arctic into the mid-latitudes. The AO index hit -5.2 today (March 20). This is the second most extreme March value of the index since record keeping began in 1948; only an AO value of -6.3 in March 1970 was more extreme. We've had some wildly variable jet stream patterns in recent years in the Northern Hemisphere. Just last year, we had the opposite extreme in March, when our ridiculous "Summer in March" heat wave brought a week of temperatures in the 80s to the Midwest U.S. The first day of spring today in Chicago, IL is expected to have a high temperature of just 25°F--a 60 degree difference from last year's high of 85°F on March 20!

Figure 1. The jet stream is taking a large dip to the south over the Eastern U.S., allowing cold air to spill southwards and bring winter-like conditions.

Unusual winter jet stream patterns tied to Arctic sea ice loss
Unusual jet stream contortions in winter have become increasingly common in recent years, according to a March 2013 paper by Tang et al., "Cold winter extremes in northern continents linked to Arctic sea ice loss". They found a mathematical relationship between wintertime Arctic sea ice loss and the increase in unusual jet stream patterns capable of bringing cold, snowy weather to the Eastern U.S., Western Europe, and East Asia, typical of what one sees during a strongly negative Arctic Oscillation. They theorized that sea ice loss in the Arctic promotes more evaporation, resulting in earlier snowfall in Siberia and other Arctic lands. The earlier snow insulates the soil, allowing the land to cool more rapidly. This results in a southwards shift of the jet stream and builds higher atmospheric pressures farther to the south, which increases the odds of cold spells and blocking high pressure systems that can cause extended periods of unusually cold and snowy weather in the mid-latitudes.

..

 

[mczerone]

Generally speaking, the ways we change our environments are ones that make them much better for us, not worse.

Given that the actor is burdened with the responsibility of their changes and have an adequate feedback of how their changes actually affect their own and others' well-being, this is absolutely true.

Unfortunately, the primary role of a state is to insulate actors from their consequences. Even in traditional/constitutional roles, there is a distortion in the price structure for defense/national services and a socialization of the effects of individual action onto the whole of the population.

In effect, your use of the words "we" and "us" make the statement true if you mean "each individual" does those things - but as soon as there is a system that is involuntary and the "we" and "us" turn into a collective state doing/condoning/subsidizing/pardoning the action, then the statement becomes false.

 

[Neil Desmond]

Yeah, I should probably apologize for that. Didn't mean to make you sound like a main stream puppet. I actully had you confused with the last guy who dropped me a bunch of neg reps with the usual kindergarten lol and lmao shenanigans and no actual counter argument. I'm just so tired of being nice to that brood. I'm going to start negging the crap out of them, I think. Might even add a nonsensical lol. Although I do loathe that language. Also wasn't really trying to attack you personally. More so the narrative that so many come here and read. To have a completely political narrative trump discussion like this confuses the casual passer by on the phenomenon titself. Which is essentially my gripe with it all.

Oh, ok; well thank you for the clarification. I appreciate that.

 

[Neil Desmond]

Without a platform for the sciences, I'd add. In effect, it seems like practical discussion on the sciences aren't particularly condoned in favor of keeping them relative to the political narrative. As if by design. I've seen many really good topics of discussion come up here regarding the sciences and their relevance to the way the world is changing. They are scattered all over the place and eventually buried only to be brought up in another thread based upon whatever the political narrative is for the day. It's just unfortunate in my opinion.

I don't mean to say that discussion of science isn't allowed; in fact I'm doing that myself. The way I see it, is that as a political forum, the ideas is for instance: given problem X (e.g., AGW), what - if anything - should the government do about it? There's also the issue of whether AGW is real or a hoax; in a way it's a political issue. I myself answered "no" to this poll, because I'm skeptical based on what I have found in doing research on this issue; I don't go so far as claiming that it's a hoax, because I don't (and so far can't) be certain that it is one.

As another political issue, Ron Paul doesn't believe in evolution; but I do because the scientific evidence is there to support it. The political question in this case, though, is - does that matter? Do Ron Paul's religious or scientific beliefs about that affect how good a President he might have been, or is it even relevant? In that case, I would say that the answer is no. On the other hand, for a politician's belief about AGW and that the solution is carbon tax, carbon credits, etc., the answer is yes.

I like what this guy, Jacque Fresco, has to say that's relevant to this issue:

​

 

[Neil Desmond]

Here's an example of a solution to a pollution problem that's technical (not political):

http://inhabitat.com/19-year-old-st...50000-tons-of-plastic-from-the-worlds-oceans/

 

[UWDude]

Skeptical: The sun is a far greater influence than anything mankind can muster.

Also, horses emitted CO2 all the time. Now they have been replaced by cars which only do it a couple hours a day.