Michael Crichton says manmade Global Warming is as real as ....

[PanAtheist]

Michael Crichton says manmade Global Warming is as real as ....

.... as real as living dinosaurs resurected from DNA extracted from the guts of mosquitoes caught in tree-sap in the Jurassic, which then became amber.

Read all about it!

"The era of procrastination is coming to a close; in its place we are entering a period of consequences"
Winston Churchill

[Philboid Studge]

Chrichton has been a global warming skeptic for a couple years now. I'm with Harry Evans on this.

[Tenspace]

Haven't read (or heard of) Chrichton's new book yet. I'm finding it hard to get into his writings since his little quantum episode.

Philboid, what do you think of some of the alternative causes for our current warming? To me, there are cyclical models which could provide additional explanations (I don't doubt that humans are warming the planet, but I do think we're not the main cause). What do you think of solar variation or insolation theories? Also, the galactic plane model shows some interesting correlations with the strata.

[Philboid Studge]

It's tricky Tenspace, because some alternative explanations are designed to simply counter the claim that anthropogenic activities are a significant forcing agent on climate. I haven't been tracking this stuff on a daily basis for a couple years now, but then, as now, no one was really sure how much human activity is contributing to recent decadal trends (there is very little real dispute over whether there's a human contribution, the debate is about how much.)

I don't mind assuming there's some human influence and proceeding accordingly: most schemes for reducing CO2 emissions (not to mention methane et al) can ony have positive consequences, even if human-induced global warming is bullshit -- cleaner air, better economy of fossil fuels as we transition to other energy sources, new technologies, etc.

Wasn't it just twenty years ago or so that we were supposed to be entering a cooling phase?

I know nothing scientific about global warming, but it does seem Earth is quite pissed off right now....


-Amen

JesusChrist wrote

I know nothing scientific about global warming, but it does seem Earth is quite pissed off right now....


-Amen

I think we are past the point of no return, the Christians are as always saying this is the end. Every disaster in recorded history has been a sign of the end times. I am glad I met Jesus Christ a fellow atheist.

[Tenspace]

Philboid Studge wrote

It's tricky Tenspace, because some alternative explanations are designed to simply counter the claim that anthropogenic activities are a significant forcing agent on climate. I haven't been tracking this stuff on a daily basis for a couple years now, but then, as now, no one was really sure how much human activity is contributing to recent decadal trends (there is very little real dispute over whether there's a human contribution, the debate is about how much.)

I don't mind assuming there's some human influence and proceeding accordingly: most schemes for reducing CO2 emissions (not to mention methane et al) can ony have positive consequences, even if human-induced global warming is bullshit -- cleaner air, better economy of fossil fuels as we transition to other energy sources, new technologies, etc.

Wasn't it just twenty years ago or so that we were supposed to be entering a cooling phase?

I agree about reducing obvious long-term harm to the planet, but do we really have a big enough data set to make empirical calls? If, for example, the solar system's cyclical meandering above and below the galactic plane correlates with the mean temperature of Earth, then that would have to be factored into the results.

As always, give politicians a serious issue, and they polarize it for their own personal benefit. I say we keep reducing what we can, while trying to find a way off this rock. :)

Philboid Studge wrote

I don't mind assuming there's some human influence and proceeding accordingly: most schemes for reducing CO2 emissions (not to mention methane et al) can ony have positive consequences, even if human-induced global warming is bullshit -- cleaner air, better economy of fossil fuels as we transition to other energy sources, new technologies, etc.

Wasn't it just twenty years ago or so that we were supposed to be entering a cooling phase?

Prehaps you could be a little more clear on only having positive consequences. I don't think the factories that get shut down because they can't afford to meet enviromental standards, the loss to productivity as less workers can be hired when companies have to spend millions to meet these standards, the creation of the giant, wasteful, paper-shuffling buerocracy known as the EPA and the damage to 3rd world countries as we step in and tell them how not to use thier own resources (Convenient that we have this position after we have already gotten to 'exploit' ours in order to industrialize our own countries) I don't think that there are 'only' positive consequences. More technology is stifled because of regulations then created. It's the New Technologies that create less CO2 emissions, not the other way around.

[Philboid Studge]

tenspace wrote

I agree about reducing obvious long-term harm to the planet, but do we really have a big enough data set to make empirical calls? If, for example, the solar system's cyclical meandering above and below the galactic plane correlates with the mean temperature of Earth, then that would have to be factored into the results.

As always, give politicians a serious issue, and they polarize it for their own personal benefit. I say we keep reducing what we can, while trying to find a way off this rock.

The size of the data set is great, but it rests largely on computer modeling, so coming to empirical conclusions is rather problematic -- and given the political/economic considerations, without a true smoking gun I have the feeling we'll keep on adding fuel to the fire, as it were. It's not like the ozone hole, where sonde and other measurements confirmed what was predicted -- and dramatically illustrated it, even so the fat-cats could understand it. Re climate: Testing alternate factors -- cyclic solar flaring, galactic plane meandering (I confess, that's a new one to me; I suppose it was advanced fairly recently?), etc -- is likewise problematic because we have such a brief real record of climate as it is(just over a hundred years), and are obiged to use a number of proxy models (ice coring, tree rings, fossil record, etc) that are as un-empirical (izzat a word?) as the computer modeling. Put all together, the evidence seems to be very convincing to (most) climate scientists, but not enough to get the public or their leaders sold on it.

Anyway, I'm with you: reduce where we can, and eventually launch off this god-forsaken rock!

From WAPO, 2005 will probably have the highest mean global temperature of any year since the advent of systematic temperature records

Climatologists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies calculated the record-breaking global average temperature, which now surpasses 1998's record by a tenth of a degree Fahrenheit, from readings taken at 7,200 weather stations scattered around the world.

and later in the article

William O'Keefe, chief executive of the George C. Marshall Institute, which is skeptical of global warming predictions, said policymakers should not rush to impose new rules on industry when it remains unclear whether the current warming worldwide reflects natural climate variability or a human-induced trend.

"It still remains very complicated," O'Keefe said.

But Rafe Pomerance, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for the environment under President Bill Clinton and who now chairs the bipartisan Climate Policy Center, said a modest system to limit and trade carbon dioxide emissions could help curb global warming.

"We need to develop a range of very serious policies and put them in place," Pomerance said

um, even if we possibly aren't contributing to global warming...shouldn't we try to do something to cool it? I mean, regardless of it being a natural cycle, shouldn't we try to cool the earth just a little?

[Tenspace]

darwinfish wrote

um, even if we possibly aren't contributing to global warming...shouldn't we try to do something to cool it? I mean, regardless of it being a natural cycle, shouldn't we try to cool the earth just a little?

Interesting thought. Damping the natural cycle of whatever's causing global warming. I wonder if there'd be any consequences.

darwinfish wrote

um, even if we possibly aren't contributing to global warming...shouldn't we try to do something to cool it? I mean, regardless of it being a natural cycle, shouldn't we try to cool the earth just a little?

Seriously, I say yes, or then again facetiously, maybe serious, we can always try to genetically engineer Kevin Costner Waterworld gills. I've already started work on the urine-recycling machine. :P So far, there's still too much asparagus.

Chrichton is not a climatologist. He is a fiction writer with some scientific background. I personally will not take scientific advice from a fiction writer. Even that Bushfuck is now saying that greenhouse gasses are a contributing factor. If these idiots want to prove the theory wrong, why don't they fund research? I don't mean, hire some guy to tell you what you want to hear, I mean, do real research into other causes. The usual cycles that caused ice ages and the like are not the cause. According to that cycle it should start getting cooler. You may remember the "global cooling" warnings of 20 yrs ago. That is not what is happening. I would like to hear one of these "global warming" skeptics change the properties of greenhouse gasses. How do you explain away the well known properties of these gasses? Where is the experimental evidence that methane does not cause these effects? It seems to me that they would have to change the laws of chemistry to think these gasses have no effect on the atmosphere.
I am not a climatologist either, but I can understand what has been written by chemists and climatologists.

[GodlessHeathen]

Revmonkeyboy wrote

Chrichton is not a climatologist. He is a fiction writer with some scientific background.

Not that it makes him any more credible on this issue, but IIRC, he's actually a medical doctor.