Debate time: Global Warming

[BadBoy@TheWheel]

They have already done that math--better and more accurate then you have (Not to say that that wasn't a good job or anything). Finding that .01% of the atmosphere is green house gases (which is all we should care about when talking about the green house effect. 01%)and a large percentage of it is water vapour and a small but, still second most abundant green house gas carbon. But, just because it is a small amount doesn't mean it plays a small role. In fact when talking about such small percentages, like less then 36% of .01% (36% is the largest co2 concentration possible, I think) small changes cause for larger effects. Because the concentration is already so small in the atmosphere that adding more can change a lot of stuff, and not in good ways.

It's like in cooking. When I was eight I was making the lemon pie filler for the thanksgiving pies. The smallest amount to put in was like 2 teaspoons of salt, and I put in a tablespoon. The pies tasted disgustingly salty and my mom had to go out and buy new pie from marie calender. Or like yeast. If your making bread and you put in the wrong amount of yeast, even off by just a little, it can not rise, or rise really big.

Nasa. I got all my numbers from Nasa on that post.

One, I personally know for a fact, that when you are dealing with "interpretive" mathematics, you can skew numbers in any direction you want, especially when you are dealing with such small figures, who's going to notice a 1 here instead of a 5? Get it

Another thing that hasn't been mentioned is the damage done naturally by UV decomposition of various NOE's in the earths atmosphere.

I think maybe we are talking about a lot of different subjects, the earth warming and cooling has been happening since recorded time.

The destruction of the atmosphere is another issue, the relationship is a question to me

 

[Goat Whisperer]

Could you explain the decomposition of NOE's a little more. I haven't heard it before, or I haven't heard it said that way before. But either ways I can't find anything about it...

 

[Goat Whisperer]

How do you not get the relationship? Green house gases cause global warming, we are adding onto an important green house gas called co2 as well as methane, causing the warming of the earth. Get it?

 

[SgtSpike]

As most people are aware, Earth's climate would be considerably colder without the naturally occurring greenhouse effect - about 0 degrees Fahrenheit on average instead of the 58 to 60 degree average. The term greenhouse effect is a bit of a misnomer in that a greenhouse blocks heated air whereas the "greenhouse" gasses we discuss here are opaque to infrared radiation from the sun as it attempts to travel back into space off the Earth's surface. Not quite the same thing as what actually happens in a greenhouse.
Nonetheless, the term has stuck, so we have greenhouse gasses creating the greenhouse effect. Water vapor is indeed the dominate atmospheric greenhouse gas for Earth's natural greenhouse effect. Incidentally, this isn't a secret that scientists are trying to keep from the public in order to promote their scare tactics and get grant money. As ludicrous as that statement sounds, I have heard such assertions in "debates" put forth in other forums as an argument denying climate change or CO2 buildup as a real concern.
In any case, even though water vapor is the predominate gas for the naturally occurring greenhouse effect, carbon dioxide plays a more important role in varying the strength of global warming.
The reason for this is due to the almost instantaneous adjustments of water vapor to changing conditions, cycling through the climate system normally in as little as a week. Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, sticks around in the atmosphere for decades. Thus, an increased input of CO2 into the atmosphere does not adjust to current conditions - it doesn't rain liquid CO2. It builds up and thus drives the degree of global warming much more than water vapor.
To sum up, water vapor is indeed the dominate greenhouse gas involved in the naturally occurring greenhouse gas. Due to its quick adjustment to environmental changes in the atmosphere, it helps keep the energy balance of the climate system relatively stable. Carbon dioxide, while much less prevalent than water vapor, lingers in the atmosphere much, much longer (decades) and thus will steadily increase in atmospheric volume, altering the naturally occurring energy balance of the climate system. This is why CO2 has a greater role in determining the strength of the greenhouse effect

This quote makes no sense. It's saying that because water vapor rains and evaporates, it can "adopt" to changing environmental conditions? That still doesn't change the fact that there's a lot more water vapor than CO2 in the air at any given time...

And BTW, NASA could be as biased as anyone for all I know. It all depends who works there and what they believe. Like BadBoy said, numbers can easily be skewed or partial truths shown to make a certain point, so if someone at NASA believes strongly in global warming, they're going to show everyone that global warming is happening whether it is or is not.

 

[Goat Whisperer]

This quote makes no sense. It's saying that because water vapor rains and evaporates, it can "adopt" to changing environmental conditions? That still doesn't change the fact that there's a lot more water vapor than CO2 in the air at any given time...

And BTW, NASA could be as biased as anyone for all I know. It all depends who works there and what they believe. Like BadBoy said, numbers can easily be skewed or partial truths shown to make a certain point, so if someone at NASA believes strongly in global warming, they're going to show everyone that global warming is happening whether it is or is not.

This quote makes no sense. It's saying that because water vapor rains and evaporates, it can "adopt" to changing environmental conditions? That still doesn't change the fact that there's a lot more water vapor than CO2 in the air at any given time...

This viewpoint ignores the reactive nature of water vapor—in other words, the gas doesn't cause warming all by its lonesome. The amount of water vapor the atmosphere can hold is almost purely a function of temperature—the warmer the air gets, the more vapor it's able to glean from the planet. We know, for example, that the atmospheric water content over the oceans has increased (PDF) by 0.41 kilograms per square meter every 10 years since 1988.

So, what's causing the temperature rise that's resulted in greater evaporation? Well, over that same time period, global emissions of carbon dioxide have soared. And unlike water vapor, which returns to Earth as precipitation within a week of entering the atmosphere, CO2 sticks around for between 50 and 200 years. Carbon dioxide accounts for approximately 25 percent of the greenhouse effect, so it's pretty clear that the dramatic increase in atmospheric CO2 is playing a significant role in recent warming. (This warming might have been even greater if not for the ability of the planet's oceans to absorb heat.)
Warmed by CO2, the atmosphere is thus able to absorb more water vapor. And that water vapor, in turn, causes further warming—it amplifies the effects of carbon dioxide. So anthropogenic CO2 serves as the chief engine of global warming, with water vapor playing a crucial secondary role. According to the IPCC, if CO2 emissions were to double, water vapor would amplify the resulting temperature change by another 60 percent. Furthermore, a 2005 article in the journal Science forecast that the amount of water vapor in the upper troposphere will double by the end of this century, as a result of higher temperatures caused in part by the vapor itself. (Scientists refer to this situation as positive feedback.)


A common skeptical rebuttal to these assertions cites the role of water vapor in forming clouds; those clouds, the argument goes, will help block solar radiation and therefore compensate for the greenhouse effect. But a 2005 report by Swiss researchers concluded that this wasn't the case in the Alps, where they monitored climactic conditions over a seven-year period. Even though the mountains' northern slopes experienced increasing cloud cover over this span, temperatures nevertheless rose steadily; the clouds' cooling effects couldn't compensate for the warming associated with elevated greenhouse-gas levels.

And BTW, NASA could be as biased as anyone for all I know. It all depends who works there and what they believe. Like BadBoy said, numbers can easily be skewed or partial truths shown to make a certain point, so if someone at NASA believes strongly in global warming, they're going to show everyone that global warming is happening whether it is or is not.

So where are your calculations to disprove my numbers?

Your officially resorting to attack the man not the science. Instead of giving reasons as to why those numbers could be false, your just saying that they are lies.

Look NASA is an internationally recognized scientific community. When it comes to these all important and straight numbers, do you really think that they would come out biased? It isn't that easy! First off, NASA is not an environmental group. So while you might have some biased scientists, your not going to have everyone in the group biased towards global warming enough that it would go unnoticed. Especially, because the scientists are so careful to look good, so if a person changed a number and everyone ignored the change because they have a 'biased' and another scientific group pointed out that the number was wrong, NASA would become less influential and credible. So they check and re-check calculations and numbers, and make sure no one has just 'changed' them.

 

[SgtSpike]

This viewpoint ignores the reactive nature of water vapor—in other words, the gas doesn't cause warming all by its lonesome. The amount of water vapor the atmosphere can hold is almost purely a function of temperature—the warmer the air gets, the more vapor it's able to glean from the planet. We know, for example, that the atmospheric water content over the oceans has increased (PDF) by 0.41 kilograms per square meter every 10 years since 1988.

So, what's causing the temperature rise that's resulted in greater evaporation? Well, over that same time period, global emissions of carbon dioxide have soared. And unlike water vapor, which returns to Earth as precipitation within a week of entering the atmosphere, CO2 sticks around for between 50 and 200 years. Carbon dioxide accounts for approximately 25 percent of the greenhouse effect, so it's pretty clear that the dramatic increase in atmospheric CO2 is playing a significant role in recent warming. (This warming might have been even greater if not for the ability of the planet's oceans to absorb heat.)
Warmed by CO2, the atmosphere is thus able to absorb more water vapor. And that water vapor, in turn, causes further warming—it amplifies the effects of carbon dioxide. So anthropogenic CO2 serves as the chief engine of global warming, with water vapor playing a crucial secondary role. According to the IPCC, if CO2 emissions were to double, water vapor would amplify the resulting temperature change by another 60 percent. Furthermore, a 2005 article in the journal Science forecast that the amount of water vapor in the upper troposphere will double by the end of this century, as a result of higher temperatures caused in part by the vapor itself. (Scientists refer to this situation as positive feedback.)


A common skeptical rebuttal to these assertions cites the role of water vapor in forming clouds; those clouds, the argument goes, will help block solar radiation and therefore compensate for the greenhouse effect. But a 2005 report by Swiss researchers concluded that this wasn't the case in the Alps, where they monitored climactic conditions over a seven-year period. Even though the mountains' northern slopes experienced increasing cloud cover over this span, temperatures nevertheless rose steadily; the clouds' cooling effects couldn't compensate for the warming associated with elevated greenhouse-gas levels.



So where are your calculations to disprove my numbers?

Your officially resorting to attack the man not the science. Instead of giving reasons as to why those numbers could be false, your just saying that they are lies.

Look NASA is an internationally recognized scientific community. When it comes to these all important and straight numbers, do you really think that they would come out biased? It isn't that easy! First off, NASA is not an environmental group. So while you might have some biased scientists, your not going to have everyone in the group biased towards global warming enough that it would go unnoticed. Especially, because the scientists are so careful to look good, so if a person changed a number and everyone ignored the change because they have a 'biased' and another scientific group pointed out that the number was wrong, NASA would become less influential and credible. So they check and re-check calculations and numbers, and make sure no one has just 'changed' them.

Good arguments - I'm out of responses... for now.

 

[Goat Whisperer]

**Bump

I'm sure there is SOMEONE else out there up for this debate?

 

[Gabe]

I haven't really dug deep into Global Warming theories, so I only know the very basics. But let's use a little Sneaker logic here, and see where that gets us.

Posit: We are letting out tons of CO2 into the air. We are letting out a lot of tons of CO2 into the air. CO2, among others, is a greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gasses cause sunlight to be trapped in the atmosphere, which heats the atmosphere up.
Consequence: The atmosphere is heating up.
Result: Global Warming must exist.

Again, this is just my point of view. But even if it weren't happening; we really should start placing restrictions on the amount of harmful gases released into the air we breathe. They don't call them harmful for nothing.

 

[Minor Axis]

In this issue you have a political party who traditionally declares the issue as "made up" and refuses to consider it I assume based on the possible financial consequences. Bottom line, the issue must be investigated seriously to determine if it exists and what we can do as a species to mitigate it.

 

[BadBoy@TheWheel]

Could you explain the decomposition of NOE's a little more. I haven't heard it before, or I haven't heard it said that way before. But either ways I can't find anything about it...

The worst enemy of the atmosphere as we speak, is UV rays......UV rays accelerate the decomposition of Ozone (the protective material in the atmosphere).

Greenhouse gasses are bad, don't get me wrong, and certain VOC's do have great impacts on the depletion of Ozone, they also impact the acidity of the rainwater, that in turn posions water sources which sucks.

This also contributes to the de-salinisation of the gulf stream currents which also has an impact on weather.

But the suns rays have a huge impact on the depletion of the Earths atmosphere as well.

The good news is Ozone does regenerate.........

The bad news....."Clean Coal" is a hoax:ninja

 

[All Else Failed]

global warming is simply a lie perpetuated by the liberal media

 

[Goat Whisperer]

global warming is simply a lie perpetuated by the liberal media

That is a really ignorant thing to say. Obviously, you haven't read a BIT of this thread. I just finished my report for one of my classes. I suggest you read it before you even make another response:

The following information is well documented and widely accepted, but scarcely talked about in a public way. Truths disclosed in this report have the potential to end the global debate. Before the facts are brought forth, the position of the report must be shown. Anthropogenic Global Warming is and will happen, unless we take immediate action against it.
First, the science behind global warming must be understood. Global warming is caused by the Green House Effect, which is composed of the green house gases, water vapor, carbon dioxide methane nitrous oxide, ozone, and CFCs
Gases are ranked by their contribution to the greenhouse effect, the most important are:

• water vapor, which contributes 36–70%
• carbon dioxide, which contributes 9–26%
• methane, which contributes 4–9%
• ozone, which contributes 3–7%

The green house effect, is the act of long-wave radiation, exerted from the sun, passing through the atmosphere, being partially absorbed by the earth, and partially rebounded back to the atmosphere as short-wave radiation. This short-wave radiation is sent back through the atmosphere and once more partially rebounded towards the earth by the green house gases, where it is absorbed again, effectively sustaining the earth at a constant temperature.

We are impacting this cycle by adding to the second most abundant and most important green house gas: Carbon Dioxide. It is assertable that because Carbon Dioxide is the second most abundant, it would also be the second most important green house gas, but this is not true.

The most notable difference between CO2 and Water Vapor is their life cycles, while water vapor can finish an entire cycle within one week, carbon takes hundreds of years to complete the same cycle. So if we contributed to water vapor it would barely impact the green house effect, as the water vapor would be back to a sustainable amount within weeks, but if we contribute to carbon dioxide the levels won’t be back to a sustainable amount for hundreds of years. So while we can affect the carbon dioxide levels, the same can not be said about water vapor.

As carbon increases in the atmosphere, raising the temperature, it allows for more water vapor to collect in the atmosphere at one time. Allowing for the temperature to increase even more so. This feedback, caused by carbon, proves that CO2 is in fact the most adverse green house gas, and that contributing to it is dangerous.

The earth’s temperature is rising. This is indisputable. Many people believe that we can not record the data correctly, in order to determine the Earth’s temperature is in fact warming, but this is untrue. When scientists recorded the data, whether it be in Fiji or Canada, both had a common statistic, temperatures were going up. It’s these rates that have decided a warming trend. Not just the ‘average’ global temperature.

Another common misconception is that the entire cycle, whether it be from the sun or carbon, is just natural. And there is nothing we can do about it. This is mostly incorrect:
There are some cycles and natural variations in global climate, the current warming is not purely natural or even just mostly natural. Firstly, what mechanism is behind this alleged natural cycle? Because absent a force of some sort, there will be no change in global energy balance. So natural or otherwise, we should be able to find this mysterious cause. Secondly, a "natural cause" proponent needs to come up with some explanation for how a 35% increase in the second most important greenhouse gas does not itself affect the global temperature.
In other words, the climate science community has provided a well developed, internally consistent theory that predicts the effects we are observing. It provides explanations and makes predictions. Where is the skeptic community's model, or theory whereby CO2 does not affect the temperature? Where is the evidence of some other natural forcing, like the Milankovich cycles that controlled the ice ages, a fine historical example of a very dramatic and very regular climate cycle that can be read in the ice core records taken both in Greenland and in the Antarctic?

Is this a candidate for today's warming? A naive reading of this cycle indicates we should be experiencing a cooling trend now, and indeed we were very gradually cooling over the length of the pre-industrial Holocene, for over 8000 years. Not only is the direction of the change wrong, but it is informative to compare the speed of those fluctuations to today's changes. Leaving aside the descents into glaciations, which were much more gradual, the very sudden (geologically speaking) jumps up in temperature every ~100Kyrs actually represent a rate of change roughly ten times slower than the rate we are currently witnessing.
Another claim, is that the sun is causing the warming trend. It's true that the earth is warmed, by solar radiation. So if the temperature is going up or down a reasonable place to find the cause would be the sun. Well, it turns out that it is more complicated than one might think to detect and measure changes in the amount or type of sunshine reaching the earth. Detectors on the ground are too susceptible to all kinds of interference from the atmosphere. After all, one good cloud passing overhead can cause an instant shiver on an otherwise beautiful, warm day, but not because the sun itself changed. The best way to detect changes in the actual output of the sun versus changes in the radiation reaching the earth's surface because of clouds, smoke, dust or pollution is by taking readings from space.
This is a job for satellites. According to PMOD at the World Radiation Center there has been no increase in solar irradiance since at least 1978 when satellite observations began. This means that for the last thirty years, while the temperature has been rising fastest, the sun has shown no trend.
There has been work done on reconstructing the solar irradiance record over the last century before satellites were available. According to the Max Plank Institute where this work is being done, there has been no increase in solar irradiance since around 1940. This reconstruction does show an increase in the first part of the 20th century that coincides with the warming from around 1900 til the 1940's. This trend in irradiance is not enough to explain it all, but it is responsible for a large portion of that trend in temperature. The modeled temperature and the variations in the major forcings that contributed to 20th century climate

 

[Goat Whisperer]

So could the current change be natural? Well, there is no identified natural cause (and they have been looked for), there is no theory of climate in which CO2 does not drive the temperature and the natural cycle precedents do not show the same magnitude or quickness of change. As of right now, anthropogenic global warming is the only plausible explanation.
A warmer world will not be a better world. The most important thing to realize about this, is not how much it will affect nature, the earth, the growth of plants… no what is important to realize is how much it affects us. It is completely realized that while global warming will most definitely be harmful to the environment, the earth will survive. And we will survive as well, but at what cost?
The main problem is destabilization. If the climate shifts, the entire economy will most likely have to shift as well. And with the world so strongly centered on the economy we all currently have, due to high populations, current cultural influences, environmental situations, and international relationships, a sudden climate change could change the world as we know it, and in a very negative way. It would cause, economic, political, and environmental collapse. As well as, a very deep drop in general public health.
Changes that are currently seen are feedbacks such as the infestations of tree-killing bugs like the pine bark beetles, as more environments have warmed, the more beetles could reproduce, and this increase has led to the destructions of entire forestry areas. Another problem that has already raised destruction was the frogs in Panama. Thousands of species went extinct because of a warming in Panama that allowed the frog chitin epidemic to spread quickly. Also, the source of one-third of our pollination comes from honey bees, which are now coming to extinction from global warming trends as well. (Atmospheric Research (2008, September 25). Impact Of Beetle Kill On Rocky Mountain Weather, Air Quality. ScienceDaily. from http://www.sciencedaily.com* /releases/2008/09/080924111147.htm)
Polar Bears are of significance because they have survived past warming cycles. And yet, this time they are going extinct. It’s like the canary in the coal mine. With our environmental conditions, they are starting to go extinct. And they are jus the start, like the spokesperson for all the animals. They show that this time is different, this time (for polar bears at least) it isn’t survivable, and this time it is bad.
The climate has already been affected. The consequences are already going to occur. And if we don’t take action now, the worse and worse they will get:
“The longer we wait to tackle climate the change, the harder and more expensive the task will be.”

(AAAS Board Statement, Climate Change, nas.org)

“…delayed action will increase the risk of adverse environmental effects and will likely incur greater cost.”

(NAS, Joint Science Academies Statement, nas.org)

While the effects of global climate change are monumental, the effects of taking action against global climate change is far more minimal, in fact it would truly only effect our economy, and in worst case scenario, this would be the effect:

“1% GDP Loss From Global Climate Change
20% GDP From Global Climate Change”

(Stern Report, Greg Craven, How It All Ends)

In conclusion, the final quote is:

“Delay is no longer an option, denial is no loner an expectable response, the risks are too high, the consequences to serious.”
(President Elect Barrack Obama, A New Chapter On Climate Change, Nov 17, 2008)

 

[Trance97]

Fuck its cold here today in MN - 10.

Coughs oh this is the global warming thread? Opps my bad

 

[All Else Failed]

Dear AbriannaPeto,

I was joking.


Love and best wishes,


-AEF

 

[dt3]

If only the entire human race would just hold their breath, we could stop putting out all that damn CO2.

 

[Goat Whisperer]

Fuck its cold here today in MN - 10.

Coughs oh this is the global warming thread? Opps my bad

You sound stupid as hell. Weather and climate, are not the same thing.

 

[Goat Whisperer]

If only the entire human race would just hold their breath, we could stop putting out all that damn CO2.

I wish someone would hold their breath...

 

[wednesday]

rofllll...ooh shitz..sorry, i gotz da giggles tonight,...

 

[Ryder]

Be more energy efficient. Recycle.