EnviroLink Forum

I can say for a fact that participating here has led me to believe that human activity has some impact on rising temperatures over the last 100 years.. when I first started researching and discussing, I believed that human activity had little impact, which looks stupid from my perspective right now. Natural Factors are probably dominant though for the warming over the last Century, and I have not wavered on that view, since there is no compelling evidence to suggest otherwise.

What about you?

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Meteorology Undergraduate

my take on things is that the weather is constantly changing and whether we are involved or not, it is going to change. Because of this, I want to spend my time finding solutions to living with an unknown future weather. Of course it would be nice if people did what they can to reduce their contribution to that change but I think they should be concentrating on not relying on human society because looking at the past, the political and financial climate changes far faster and more extreme then any weather events. Your land can become someone elses in the matter of days if the government does a flip. Your money can become worthless in minutes. The only sure thing is your knowledge of how to live independently. I am a rodent fanatic so I have seen the drastic changes in the rodent species around the world and know it is purely a result of human agriculture changes which are again a direct result of trying to feed the world's rapidly increasing population. Even without any weather changes, the damage to the rodent population and the pest insect population has direct consequences on almost every meat-eating species we know of. Many rodents/small mammals have been shown to have been affected by the weather as early as the 1940s showing that changes to rain fall days can have a drastic effect on some species. For an animal that changes home location an average of a few feet a year, they are now required to move to different mountains or move up the mountain at a rate of dozens of feet a year. This is not happening and they are dying off. People think a few degrees warmer just means Florida weather in Canada but in reality, a half a degree warmer means hundreds of species go extinct every year (of plants and animals). I have been avoiding these discussions because they do not lead to solutions... If I convince one person to not have kids or to insulate their house, I will double the impact of me doing the same but that still is 2 people out of 7 000 000 000. If I instead teach people how to live cheap and with freedom, it might catch on with dozens or hundreds of people... who will have less kids and insulate their house but for direct personal reasons rather then from some prediction of future catastrophe.

I started with a quest to understand what the global warming thing was all about.

As I learnt I found my opinions switching about initially but as I finally found the numbers from the IPCC I came to the obvious conclusion that there is absolutly nothing to fear even if the ropey AGW theory is true and it's effects are as dramatic as the most crazed doom-monger's science would have us believe.

Things on the internet have made me change my mind on some issues, Also made me aware of some things that I would otherwise be aware of. However it's important to not be to trusting. People make all sorts of claims for instance claiming that there is no evidence of something when such evidence is freely available and overwhelming to someone that spends ten seconds on google.

Find out stuff for yourself basically.

to answer your question more specifically... a neo-nazi was arguing that if Hitler had brought about a new order, we would not have a global warming problem. Of course this is laughable but it got me on a quest to find out how Hitler could have gotten into power and could such a situation happen again. This showed me that the society of Germany and area was one of the most democratic and scientific and modern the world had known before the rise of the Nazis and the related political movements that came together to put Hitler in the driver's seat. We could be 12 years away from a repeat of the Hitler regime in any country you name including the USA. (took 12 years for Hitler to go from a nobody to being the chancellor). This is why I am less worried about what nasty things the weather is going to throw at us and more worried about protecting my independence. It just so happens that an independent lifestyle is usually low carbon and low impact on nature (those two -low carbon and wildlife friendly- are different and often conflicting). This is why I see no need to argue if we are causing global warming or not... go independent and by default you will be low carbon (which is good no matter if global warming is 100% human-caused or if it is not happening at all or anywhere between those two extremes).

I am uncertain as to how severe the consequences of climate change will be, however I am certain that the basic theory of global warming due to greenhouse gases is correct, whatever the source of those gases. I see no logical reason to dismiss views of the majority of climate scientists.

It is in the area of predicting what the consequences will be that I run into great difficulties.
At the extreme ends of the discussion we have those people who think that we have condemned humans to extinction in only a few centuries, and at the other end of the scale we have those who think that we will enter a super productive age similar to the age of the dinosaurs. In the middle we have a group choose to believe there will be no consequences.

Personally I think that the issue is just part of a bigger problem and that is we have created an unsustainable system which will inevitably break down unless we radically alter the way we do things. I do believe that humans will survive but probably in much smaller numbers and with a dramatic reduction in living standards.

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Pollution is not the solution

Changing the subject, no scientific paper with the ISI keywords "global climate change" in the decade 1993-2003 would say that natural factors are probably dominant for the last 50 years.

For the last 100, it must be more of a toss-up, but I would suspect that most people would say that that warming is probably mostly due to anthropogenic forcing.

The way to separate the response of the global mean surface temperature into its response to natural forcing and its response to anthropogenic forcing would probably be with climate models. I would have thought that there was compelling evidence there.

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For my part I notice that if I stay on forums for too long, the repeated view that the science is wrong gets to leak into my psyche, and I have to recalibrate by going to scientific sources. Which, ironically for the nomenclature, tends to be via the skeptics community. Not climate skeptics, but actual skeptics society skeptics.

I think it needs to be added to the discussion that changing opinions depends on emotional attachment to certain beliefs. It has been reported in a few psychological studies in recent years that there is a clear divide between those who could be described as authoritarian thinkers and liberals, with the obvious difference being that liberals have less fear of change and uncertainty than authoritarians, who also gravitate towards traditionalism or conservatism because of their emotional attachment to all things they consider to be traditional. This is also what makes them easy pigeons for fascist movements during troubled times, but that's another subject.

So for myself, denial of climate change was one of many issues that pushed me away from right wing ideology. Many...way to many rightwingers can deny the obvious when it threatens pre-existing political ideological positions. This was one of the genius moves of the conservative think tank strategists over 20 years ago when they started their counter-attack against climate change. All they have to do is toss in phrases like "big government" "government regulators" and they have an online mob doing the groundwork so Exxon, BP and the Koch Bros. can maximize their profits. The good news is that as extreme weather events have started hitting closer to home, many are having second thoughts.

In general, liberals tend to be more open-minded to new ideas than conservatives because they have less emotional attachment to core beliefs. Chris Mooney at Discover has covered this in a number of articles:http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/09/07/your-brain-on-politics-the-cognitive-neuroscience-of-liberals-and-conservatives/ But, if there is one area where liberals or progressives have a strong emotional attachment, it is to the notion that progress is linear, and we are just experiencing a little hiccup right now with our assorted environmental problems...all just waiting for some great techno-fix like fusion power to solve all our problems. High tech in all fields of research has so many monied interests and so much propaganda behind it that the few voices who have noticed that new technological innovations usually create new problems requiring more fixes, get drowned out by all the irrational exuberance for new technologies.

It's not a matter of if AGW is real or not, it's a matter of how much warming is due to AGW. I can see how most of the warming could be due to Anthropogenic sources over the last 50 years, but I can also see how most of the warming over the last 50 years could be due to natural climate change. The CO2 concentration from 1970-2000 increased by 18%. During this timeframe, the temperatures rose. This would give you a forcing of around 0.66 w/m^2 from Carbon Dioxide, assuming a radiative forcing per doubling of CO2 to be 3.7 w/m^2 (which is generally accepted as the value for a doubling of CO2). Assuming that this was the only forcing during this timeframe that caused the temperature increase from 1970-2000, it's no wonder how one can get unimaginably high sensitivities. However, the sun's activity has increased during this timeframe, and the PDO/AMO became positive, representing a substantial natural forcing. According to Yu 2002, the Cosmic Ray Flux could have decreased by as much as 8% during the late-20th Century, which represents a substantial increase in Solar Activity during this timeframe.

With the sun's magnetic field over the last 100 years more than doubling, and with CO2 concentrations increasing by 30% during the 20th Century, this represents substantial forcing from both natural and anthropogenic sources, however, when one properly accounts for the observationally measured amplification mechanism from Cosmic Rays, the Natural Forcing appears to have contributed more than the anthropogenic forcing. Note that this does not include any forcing from the PDO/AMO over a multidecadal timeframe.

The Oreskes study that you cite is not very robust.

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Meteorology Undergraduate

More robust than assuming the correlation means causation? No evidence of a mechanism for your natural forcing, but you are more than willing to give it much more credit than it is due.

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With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

From numerous articles I have read, the anthropogenic part of climate forcing is between 75 and 93%, with the higher number most probable. This is especially true for the past 32 years of climate change.
I had read much about it before I went online in Jan2002. I had hope, then, that survivors of the population crash would be able to make it in remote well defended Earthship villages or similar villages with a small manufacturing ability.
Over time I realized that if people continued to burn fossil fuels at the rate they were, up until the crash, then too much HGHGs would be in the atmosphere and in momentum. I had learned more about methane hydrate sensitivity, and knew that the worse than worst case scenario is what is playing out. Time is quickly running out with any hope of stopping eventual thermageddon.
The Earthship villages will not survive, and the amount of time for the Earth to re-sequester the runaway methane turnover, is too long for even a breeder reactor powered underground fortress, over a large untapped aquifer, with grow light farms and many tons of supplies, to last.
Just like time ran out to reduce population, enough to stop the crash, peacefully, last century. People have been miss-informed and ignorant of AGW, leading to fatal delays in going to a low carbon footprint society. People like you, snowy, with doubts, and spreading those doubts, will allow the biosphere to pass the tipping points of positive feedback loops forming from nature. The coal fired power plants will not be replaced with Gen IV nuclear, solar, wind, wave and tidal hydro, in time to prevent the methane self release to turnover ELE completion in a millennium or so.
When I went online, there was hope. The ridiculous prolonged arguing instead of actually going green, has taken away the hope of preventing ecocide. The future for humanity and nearly 90% of other species is now extinction, unless by some remote miracle a WWII type mobilization takes place to reduce HGHGs 90% by 2020.

Hey, snow and others, remember this???? I found it buried in another forum;
"We have two denier loons who have only one agenda which is to destroy this forum and one of those loons you appointed as moderator(snowy).
It is quite clear there agenda is to do anything to stop proper discussion on AGW including wherever possible to create as much confusion and trouble as possible.
Even on WUWT that hold a standard that all discussions must be standard scientifically based it's that simple.
Quote Originally Posted by ANTHONY WATTS
I have been badgered repeatedly to carry “Slayer” articles on WUWT, and with the exception of one cartoon by Josh, I have refused to do so since I and science view the work (and its derivatives) as pointless and fatally flawed.
Now we have reached the situation where we have denier loon realizes his mate isn't going to pull him up for anything and essentially posting garbage after garbage that he openly admits is not standard scientific.
I have no problem discussing what science says about climate science but I draw the line at you being able to make up your own version of science. People coming here to learn and discuss AGW should not have to wade thru post after post that they are the dumber for having ever read.
Perhaps I should start posting that aliens are causing AGW as that apparently will be perfectly acceptable.
We have to have some norms some conventions that we adhere too every climate forum has too because the area seems to attract the loon factor. (from 5-19-12 post by uglybb) "

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"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”― Chief Seattle
“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein

As I am not a climate scientist, and since I can't tell who is one in an Internet forum, then I refer to those who are. In this case, that would be the NAS, which analyzed IPCC and other information. A link to their report has been shared several times in this forum.

There is more then one amateur with an interest in this subject on this board. I understand orthodox atmospheric physics at a basic level. Its simple and easy to show that CO2 has an effect with basic physics whats more it explains a lot. The conditions on Mars and Venus Snowball earth, the Permian-Jurassic extinction event etc. Whats more the reconstructions of past temperature seem verify that we have seen warmer conditions just as we are changing the atmosphere. Whats more I know that Atlantic multidecadal oscillation AMO (if it exists) does not change the "energy budget" of the planet. I could not tell you the exact percentage but I also think that the vast majority of people who work in this field would agree with me rather then the contrary position.

If you believe as I do the implications are scary. True we might not be gnawing on our next door neighbours shin bone this time next week but it is a situation that demands action pretending that it's all a hoax does not help.

No it isn't! Not even as a hypothetical. If our road to extinction was being caused by the kind of long term volcanism experienced in the distant past when the Siberian Traps or the Deccan Traps in India were active and releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, would that make any difference? The sea ice and land-based ice sheets would still be melting; sea levels would still rise; oxygen levels would still decline; oceans would still be turning more acidic and anoxic - killing off marine life; so the human race would still be staring at the prospects of extinction and having to scramble to find ways to reduce the human contribution to CO2 levels and trying to figure out how to speed up the natural carbon sequestering processes like rock weathering to take out that carbon being dumped into the atmosphere by living at an unfortunate period of history when the movements of continental plates caused large scale volcanism. But, since we are not living during such times, all we have to do is deal with our own carbon output into the atmosphere.

It's not a matter of "how much warming is due to AGW" but the manner by which CO2 acts as a triggering factor leading to global warming. This is explained in the NAS final report.