"All Chemists believe global warming is real and man-made"

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: jgigz

Originally posted by: gsellis



Oh, so the Sun orbits the Earth. Because that was the consensus before Galileo said otherwise.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Copernicus who is credited with the heliocentric theory?

Yes, but Galileo got all the credit of being a heretic for saying it.

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: gsellis
Yes, but Galileo got all the credit of being a heretic for saying it.

Well, he got credit for supporting Copernicus's ideas, and later renouncing them for fear of death. Honestly I didn't know that Galileo supported the idea of a heliocentric galaxy. I remember him as the guy that said a vacuum couldn't exist because objects would fall infinity fast through it.

Anyways, back on topic.

 

[tcsenter]

The biggest problem with anthropogenic global warming is that they can't provide any persuasive evidence of anthropogenic global warming. And by that I mean, when you ask them what evidence strongly implies or indicates current 'warming' is any different from numerous other 'warmings' that have occurred, both during and prior to the age of modern man, the answer invariably amounts to little more than "Because the stuff that man has put into the atmosphere wasn't there when those other warmings happened."

I get a kick from how people are so moved by dramatic coverage showing that a big chunk of ice sheet has collapsed into the Arctic Ocean. "Oh no, we've lost another two miles of ice sheet!"

Yeah, that is really bad considering it once extended past CHICAGO. I'm sure it was darned impressive when big chunks of the Laurentide Ice Sheet collapsed into Lake Michigan, too.

 

[dkozloski]

The ice has been advancing and receding in the Arctic ocean as long as records have been kept. When the DEW Line was being built in the 1950's the Arctic ice receded far enough that ocean going barges were run through the Bering Straits all the way across the northern coast of Alaska, past the Canadian border to the Northwest Territory in Canada. In fact this barge resupply takes place to some degree every year. This is how the really heavy stuff gets to the North Slope oil fields. Some years it's easy and some years it's a close call at getting the barges trapped in the ice. The amont of ice free water along the coast is more related to prevailing winds than warming. Satellite mapping has made detailed record keeping much easier but the data is all recent. Who the hell knows exactly what the Arctic ice has been doing over the last 200 years?

 

[tank171]

There is no natural cycles of temperature on earth. The temperature was perfect before Al Gore told us that the earth was warming. Even though the temperature dropped .6 degrees, whice negates most of this warming, in just the past year, we are still going to burn alive. Unstoppable global warming is taking a 10 year break, but that does not mean there is natural cycles. Global warming can not be stopped.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: dkozloski
Why do you suppose Greenland was called Greenland and was successfully colonized until the bottom dropped out of the thermometer?

You seem to know as little about Greenland as you do about every other thing of which you speak.

There are two written sources on the origin of the name, in the The Book of Icelanders (Íslendingabók), an historical work dealing with early Icelandic history from the 12th century, and in the medieval Icelandic saga, The Saga of Erik the Red (Eiriks saga rauða), which is about the Norse settlement in Greenland and the story of Eric the Red in particular. Both sources write: "He named the land Greenland, saying that people would be eager to go there if it had a good name."

Source #1
Source #2

Greenland is at the very "top" of the Earth. It's southernmost portion is roughly as far north as Norway. It has never been warm there, and hopefully never will be. Well, I say "never"-- we've only got proof for the last 600,000 years or so.:disgust:

 

[dkozloski]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: dkozloski
Why do you suppose Greenland was called Greenland and was successfully colonized until the bottom dropped out of the thermometer?

You seem to know as little about Greenland as you do about every other thing of which you speak.

There are two written sources on the origin of the name, in the The Book of Icelanders (Íslendingabók), an historical work dealing with early Icelandic history from the 12th century, and in the medieval Icelandic saga, The Saga of Erik the Red (Eiriks saga rauða), which is about the Norse settlement in Greenland and the story of Eric the Red in particular. Both sources write: "He named the land Greenland, saying that people would be eager to go there if it had a good name."

Source #1
Source #2

Greenland is at the very "top" of the Earth. It's southernmost portion is roughly as far north as Norway. It has never been warm there, and hopefully never will be. Well, I say "never"-- we've only got proof for the last 600,000 years or so.:disgust:

I hate to burst your bubble but you don't have a clue as to what you're talking about.
http://explorenorth.com/library/weekly/aa121799.htm

At one time Greenland had a climate warm enough to grow useful crops; around 1000 A.D.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: dkozloski
Why do you suppose Greenland was called Greenland and was successfully colonized until the bottom dropped out of the thermometer?

You seem to know as little about Greenland as you do about every other thing of which you speak.

There are two written sources on the origin of the name, in the The Book of Icelanders (Íslendingabók), an historical work dealing with early Icelandic history from the 12th century, and in the medieval Icelandic saga, The Saga of Erik the Red (Eiriks saga rauða), which is about the Norse settlement in Greenland and the story of Eric the Red in particular. Both sources write: "He named the land Greenland, saying that people would be eager to go there if it had a good name."

Source #1
Source #2

Greenland is at the very "top" of the Earth. It's southernmost portion is roughly as far north as Norway. It has never been warm there, and hopefully never will be. Well, I say "never"-- we've only got proof for the last 600,000 years or so.:disgust:

You need to look up the Dahl-Jensen Borehole data. It is inconvient to your information.

 

[naddicott]

Originally posted by: kylef
I suppose Richard Lindzen of MIT (Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences) hasn't published any research?

Lindzen is a great person to cite when debating definitions of scientific consensus and providing thoughtful critiques of individual models, although his research in academic journals sticks to subjects like possible evidence for the Iris Effect and doesn't speak to the overall GW debate as directly as his Op-Ed articles. It is a shame, however, that people quoting him often limit their clips to the academic critiques of media/politician alarmism, but then try to take the GW denial argument beyond anything Lindzen has ever actually argued or advocated.

Here's one less frequently cited Lindzen quote:

There is also little disagreement that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen from about 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume) in the 19th century to about 387 ppmv today. Finally, there has been no question whatsoever that carbon dioxide is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas -- albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in carbon dioxide should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed, assuming that the small observed increase was in fact due to increasing carbon dioxide rather than a natural fluctuation in the climate system. Although no cause for alarm rests on this issue, there has been an intense effort to claim that the theoretically expected contribution from additional carbon dioxide has actually been detected.

Source: WSJ - 2006

The bolded section above partly adresses the OP's question, albeit with caveats. Going from "global warming is real" to "global warming is the #1 environmental crisis and major cities will drown in our lifetimes" is a bit more of a stretch. 😛 The latter, it's pretty clear Lindzen doesn't believe to be the case.

Also attributed to Lindzen (from outside magazine - 2007):

Lindzen doesn't dispute that the planet has warmed up in the past three decades, but he argues that human-generated CO2 accounts for no more than 30 percent of this temperature rise.

- This position is a bit more measured than the flat out GW denials that use select Lindzen quotes while building up their arguments.

While I think the linked articles by/about Lindzen are interesting reads, here's a link to a recent detailed rebuttal of Lindzen's government testimony, complete with citations: HoL testimony rebuttal. Personally I have a much easier time accepting that highly complex atmospheric models have more uncertainty/ possible flaws than Al Gore would have the general public believe, than to buy into Lindzen's "iron triangle of alarmism" conspiracy theory essentially accusing a huge number of academics of peddling their scientific integrity for funding.

For the sake of fact checking completeness, the accusation of Lindzen taking money from parties with a financial stake in the debate, made earlier in this thread, is (technically) true in his own words, but pretty minor:

He said he accepted $10,000 in expenses and expert witness fees from fossil- fuel types in the 1990s, and has taken none of their money since.

Source: Boston Globe - 2006

Had trouble digging up direct quotes to the effect, but my understanding (due to 2nd hand paraphrasing) is that Lindzen has on occasion expressed support for general environmental policies that have intrinsic merit regardless of whether the Co2->Warming is leading to an alarming future or not. A skeptic friendly organization, the Marshall Institute, that has commissioned work from Lindzen in the past puts it this way:

Are calls about the uncertainty in the state of scientific knowledge a call for no action? Nothing could be further from the truth. The message to policy makers is not to delay actions until uncertainties are reduced. Rather, actions should flow from the state of knowledge, should be related to a long-term strategy and objectives and should be capable of being adjusted ? one way or the other ? as the understanding of human influence improves. There is a sufficient basis for action because the climate change risk is real. Yet it is equally true that actions must not be predicated on speculative images of an apocalyptic vision of life in the near future.

Another way of looking at the policy/investment angle of GW (put forth by a debate opponent of Lindzen's) was summarized nicely towards the end of the outside article on Lindzen:

Last winter in Miami, during a private meeting convened by an outfit called the Tudor Investment Corporation, more than a hundred portfolio managers gathered at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel to hear opposing speeches from Lindzen and Schneider on whether to factor global warming into investment decisions.

The two men separately made their case. Lindzen told the group that future warming wouldn't be dire. But when Schneider spoke, he appealed to the audience on blunt economic grounds. Catastrophic climate change, he argued, amounted to the kind of "low-probability, high-consequence risk" that investors usually seek to avoid. Tudor analysts could make their own decisions about whether he or Lindzen would end up being right, he added, and that decision would have huge financial consequences.

 

[Nathelion]

Finally someone bothered to actually dig up references to support their position, instead of just spouting the same uninformed bull**** page in and page out. naddicott for the win!

 

[dkozloski]

A really great reference; an opinion of somebody elses opinion.

 

[Paperdoc]

I remember being taught that there were five characteristics of "life" on earth: a living thing consumes food and some component of air, produces waste, grows and then dies, and reproduces. I'd add a sixth: all living things alter their environment to favor their own needs, thus increasing their lifetimes and survival of their species. The big problem in the very long term, though, is that all of these living things also go through a typical population curve of slow growth, exponential growth, a die-off phase and eventually extinction. As near as we can tell, no living being in the world's past has actually caused enough change to the earth's environment to kill themselves off - it always has been some external disaster, or a slow but constant change to which the species could not adapt. So it will be with the human species - as a species we will decline and die, quite possibly because of food shortages, overpopulation, inability to survive a higher temperature, etc. The only real questions are how quickly this will happen, and how agonizing the decline will be. And we just may be the first species in the world's history to have a direct causative impact on our own disappearance.

What was that song? "I'm here for a good time, not a long time, so have a good time every day!"

 

[dkozloski]

We've got nothing to worry about as long as the environmentalists think that they can freeze the present circumstances on earth like a moment frozen in time if we expend enough resources to do it.

 

[Paperdoc]

Originally posted by: dkozloski
We've got nothing to worry about as long as the environmentalists think that they can freeze the present circumstances on earth like a moment frozen in time if we expend enough resources to do it.

VERY true! I am constantly amazed that environmental lobbyists think that freezing things as they are right now, or perhaps reverting to some specific recent time point like 100 years ago and then freezing, is "natural". In fact, nature changes constantly! And most ecosystems we see today have actually been very different a few times even over a short span like 2000 years.

I don't mean to minimize the discussion of Gloabl Warming, though. I'm sure it is real, and has significant roots in human activities, especially in our uses of large amounts of energy to make our lives more comfortable. All that activity speeds up the rates of some changes, quite possibly so fast that we as a species (and others) will never be able to adapt to the concequences quickly enough to survive. But then as I said earlier, we won't survive in the long run, anyway. It really is just a matter of how long is long enough?

 

[dkozloski]

Now we're back to global cooling and an ice age.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...08/06/080609124551.htm

 

[dkozloski]

Global warming refuted.
http://www.kusi.com/weather/co...nscorner/19842304.html

 

[rbV5]

This is not a political discussion, so comments like 'Al Gore makes everything up', or 'This is a ploy to put pressure on the oil companies', or such and such is a right (or left) wing conspiracy are not allowed. Take that to P&N.

Can we just remove this thread from Highly Technical if not just lock it outright? I never post in this forum, however I do read it because of the content, and this thread doesn't appear to fit the "spirit" of this particulal forum.

 

[dkozloski]

Originally posted by: rbV5

This is not a political discussion, so comments like 'Al Gore makes everything up', or 'This is a ploy to put pressure on the oil companies', or such and such is a right (or left) wing conspiracy are not allowed. Take that to P&N.

Can we just remove this thread from Highly Technical if not just lock it outright? I never post in this forum, however I do read it because of the content, and this thread doesn't appear to fit the "spirit" of this particulal forum.

You're right about that. The whole idea of climate change has been hijacked and perverted to where intelligent discussion of the topic is no longer possible. It all went to hell when the climate scientists sold their integrity in the name of political correctness.

 

[dkozloski]

Climate change on Jupiter. Are we to blame?

http://www.canadafreepress.com...obal-warming031307.htm

 

[Eeezee]

Humans have accelerated the warming of the earth, yes. I don't see how anyone can deny that when there are mountains of evidence. Any scientist worth a damn knows that the Earth retains additional heat due to CO2 emissions. It's an undeniable scientific fact. If you release more CO2 into the atmosphere, you get a hotter planet. Anyone who claims otherwise is either lying to you or lacks even a basic understanding of the matter.

Maybe our impact is minor, but there is an impact. Even if it's only one hundredth of a degree (Celsius), that's still a difference. I don't know what our impact is and whether or not it's significant. Wouldn't caution be advisable when a situation is unknown? Maybe our impact is huge; shouldn't we try to reduce our impact, you know, just to prevent the accidental creation of an unlivable climate? We can't survive on Venus, but if we let the matter grow out of control (ie to the point of a runaway greenhouse effect, which we aren't too close to reaching yet) then Venus will be a place that is pretty similar to Earth.

I'm a physicist, although sometimes we're expected to know a fair amount of chemistry.

 

[dkozloski]

Originally posted by: Eeezee
Humans have accelerated the warming of the earth, yes. I don't see how anyone can deny that when there are mountains of evidence. Any scientist worth a damn knows that the Earth retains additional heat due to CO2 emissions. It's an undeniable scientific fact. If you release more CO2 into the atmosphere, you get a hotter planet. Anyone who claims otherwise is either lying to you or lacks even a basic understanding of the matter.

Maybe our impact is minor, but there is an impact. Even if it's only one hundredth of a degree (Celsius), that's still a difference. I don't know what our impact is and whether or not it's significant. Wouldn't caution be advisable when a situation is unknown? Maybe our impact is huge; shouldn't we try to reduce our impact, you know, just to prevent the accidental creation of an unlivable climate? We can't survive on Venus, but if we let the matter grow out of control (ie to the point of a runaway greenhouse effect, which we aren't too close to reaching yet) then Venus will be a place that is pretty similar to Earth.

I'm a physicist, although sometimes we're expected to know a fair amount of chemistry.

Why not approach the question from the opposite direction. Why divert resources and treasure to chasing a will o' the wisp to the extent that you damage civilization as we know it and cause it to collapse all in the name of an unproven hunch? There are as many scientists that claim a warmer climate is more desirable than a cooler climate as support the opposite view. Rising seas threaten coastlines but improve the growing seasons in northern latitudes. Why not first investigate why the predicted progression and and effects of global warming have failed to materialize to the extent that the alarmists have been shouting from the roof tops. The seas are not rising as quickly as predicted. Not only are temperatures not rising as quickly as questionable computer models have perdicted; the increase has stalled and appears to be retreating. Why is that? As long as the argument is as heavily politicised as it is the assertions of any side of the argument are highly suspect. How has human activity on Earth resulted in the increased temperatures observed on Jupiter? There are too many unanswered questions to go off half cocked and destroy the economies of nations based on unproven theory.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: Eeezee
Humans have accelerated the warming of the earth, yes. I don't see how anyone can deny that when there are mountains of evidence.

Because the evidence only becomes mountainous when you have uncritically accepted that it must be so. Their line of questioning or scientific inquiry does not begin with "Is all that stuff that man puts into the atmosphere having a greater affect on the climate beyond the pollution-related health and environmental problems? (smog, acid rain, respiratory irritant, et. al.)"

Nope, they have skipped straight over it, accepting uncritically that it MUST be so, because how could all that 'unnatural' stuff that isn't supposed to be there according to the grand scheme of natural things not be having some adverse affects? Therefore, they go looking for signs or evidence of something they already BELIEVE is happening.

If you have already made up your mind about the premise, you will only find confirmation. If your line of inquiry begins where it should, the mountain of evidence becomes more akin to the foot hills. Persuasive, perhaps, but hardly compelling or convincing.

 

[KurskKnyaz]

Originally posted by: Cogman
So my university chemistry teacher keeps on trying to push the global warming agenda onto the students. Personally, I haven't studied it enough to know one way or another, but I thought that there was some skepticism in the scientific community regarding it.

I post this here and not in P&N because I believe most of you that post here are engineers ect. I don't want this to be a Political debate, just your thoughts on global warming and if it is man made (links would be nice). It would be especially useful if you are a chemist as well.


---
Guys and Gals, lets keep this discussion on the SCIENTIFIC side of the discussion. Provide proof, back it up with something, or just toss out ideas. An idea is not immediately wrong because someone else thought of it, or that the scientific community disagrees with it. We can have thoughtful discussion on the subject without bringing politics into the mix.

This is not a political discussion, so comments like 'Al Gore makes everything up', or 'This is a ploy to put pressure on the oil companies', or such and such is a right (or left) wing conspiracy are not allowed. Take that to P&N.

AnandTech Moderator Evadman

All chemist agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. If they agree that human activity is the result of global warming then they haven't done their homework.

 

[KurskKnyaz]

Originally posted by: dkozloski

Originally posted by: gururu2

Originally posted by: kylef

Originally posted by: gururu2
however, because the evidence strongly suggests (with little argument) that air carbon dioxide concentration is proportional to atmospheric heat dissipation, only the blind would not see a link between human carbon dioxide production and the current trend in global atmospheric temperatures.

...The causality between man-made carbon dioxide concentration and global atmospheric temperature has NOT been clearly established... Doing so requires experiment and analysis... You must design controlled (or baselined) experiments which rule out alternative explanations rigorously... We need to do a lot more research...

this is the gist of your argument...and it really goes without saying. of course we need to do more and more and more and more and more and more studies so that we can do more than 'suggest' this link. however, as with any scientific endeavor, nothing can ever be definitively proved. at some point, the matter must be accepted by only a majority of the scientific establishent- and guess what...man-made CO2 contributions to global warming ARE accepted by a majority of the scientific community. this is why people are paying attention. the roots of this concept come directly from academic studies of the environment.

i hope that you recognize that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, as are water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. the more of these gases you put into the air the higher the heat retention will be. this is fact. this is not based on models. this is based on kinetic molecular theory, the very foundation of all physics and chemistry.

you put more gas in the air, you create a warmer atmosphere....whats so hard to take?

Compared to water vapor, all other greenhouse gases are very minor players. The reason that co2 has been chosen as the villian is that it can be blamed on the human race. Water vapor would not work as a poster child for the doomsdayers and Luddites because man has no influence on atmospheric concentrations. There have been more than a few prediction failures in the scientific world by a consensus of "scientists". The atom bomb was going to create a chain reaction that would destroy the world, we were going into an ice age in the 1970's, Y2K problems were going to bring business and government to a screeching halt. Scientists can be as full of crap and full of themselves as any other group. The best thing the man-made global warming movement has going for it is the tendency for scientists to not put heat on a fellow scientist because he might break your rice bowl by exposing your fraud. I think it's interesting that more and more skeptics with very good credentials are coming out of the wood work because they feel that this detour from reality off up a dirt road has the potential to do some serious damage to world economies if it's not tempered with some common sense.

The problem is that higher temperatures result in higher vapor pressure (water vapor) which then results in even higher temperature that cause an even bigger increase in vapor pressure that causes a bigger increase in temperature.....

...its a vicious cycle that is not initiated by water vapor.

 

[KurskKnyaz]

Originally posted by: dkozloski

Originally posted by: CycloWizard
I'm a little shocked at the misinformation being spread in this thread. Are we in HT or P&N here? I would have expected a little more education from the usual suspects here. I suppose it's a tribute to the politicians on both sides of this "debate," who sponsor information and misinformation, thereby making it difficult for people to really figure out what's going on and what they can believe.

As many people have mentioned, simply because a correlation between two things exists, a causal relationship is not implied. However, there is reason to believe that increasing CO2 levels will increase the net input of energy to the earth. This results in what some people call a "window" effect. Say I have a window with four panes. I shine a flashlight through the first pane onto a mirror. The mirror reflects the light towards panes 2, 3, and 4 that have drapes of various thicknesses covering them. The thickest drapes cover panes 2 (water's absorption spectrum) and 4 (other gases' spectra) such that the reflected light can really only leave through pane 3. Pane 3 has a thin drape on it, but it's hardly a blackout blanket. Most of the input energy to this pane will get out. Increasing CO2 concentration effectively increases the thickness of this drape, with the effect that while most of the sun's energy reaches the earth through pane 1 (which is uncovered), it cannot be re-radiated by the earth, which emits through pane 3.

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but I found it instructive when it was explained to me this way. The absorption spectra of the various components of the atmosphere are easily measured in any chemistry lab and are, therefore, very well known and understood. It's not quite as easy to characterize the power spectra of radiation from the sun and earth, but it's been done (NASA isn't completely useless 😛). Combine these two things and you instantly get a pretty good picture of the global energy balance. It's not completely defined by these things, but these are certainly the dominant factors.

There is no dispute that co2 is a greenhouse gas. The problem is that it isn't a very effective greenhouse gas compared to water vapor. There is a growing group of skeptical scientists that claim that it isn't even a major player due to its lack of effectiveness in this role. What it does have going for it is that as its concentration in the atmosphere has increased and the earth temperatues have increased at the same time. Unfortunately the data also shows that as sun activity has increased, earth temperature has increased as well and the data fits much, much better than the co2 data. At the same time the temperature of Mars has increased as well and there is no way in hell this can be attributed to the increases in co2 on Earth but it does reinforce the credibility of solar activity as an Earth warmer.
c02 is a greenhouse gas. It's yet to be proven that it's the major villain it has been accused of being.

It worthwhile to note that the great ozone layer depletion problem that was going to kill us all has pooped out and disappeared completely off the radar screen. Give it some time to let the foolishness sink in and this fiasco will also die a natural death and fade away like the Dodo bird. The only question is what will appear to take its place in the news cycle.

You can leave water vapor out of the argument. Basic chemistry will tell you that higher temperatures result in greater vapor pressure. Its pointless to even argue about this.