Making it sound like CO2 rises are unprecedented and leaping to the conclusion that CO2 causes temps to rise is not good logic.
Posted on 11/11/2007 7:28:52 PM PST by kathsua
Why do they buy the nonsense about alleged greenhouse gases causing dangerous global warming? The claim about the power of greenhouse gases sounds like magic and the evidence for “global warming” is of little value.
Those who talk about global warming claim a 0.5 C (1 F) increase in what they call the global average temperature indicates the earth is getting warmer. You don’t have to be a mathematician or physicist to recognize that one temperature cannot represent every place on earth from frigid polar regions to blazing deserts. Nor can a single temperature represent year round conditions in temperate regions where temperatures can range from -18 C (0 F) in the winter to 35 C (100 F) in the summer.
The claim that a 0.5 C (1 F) increase is significant ignores the fact that the number represents only a 0.17% change over a century. (Note: Per cent changes in temperature must be calculated using the Kelvin scale because of the arbitrary zero points of the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales.) Scientists might be able to obtain an accuracy within 0.17% in laboratory conditions, but not in the real world. Inadequate maintenance of equipment can reduce accuracy. Changes in the area near the site of the reading can affect temperatures.
Carbon dioxide constitutes less than 0.04% of the atmosphere. How can anyone believe that an increase from 0.036% to 0.037%, for example, could possibly increase air temperature?
One of the oldest scams in physics involves the perpetual motion machine. Such machines supposedly operate with little or not energy. The inventor may claim that his machine may produce nearly as much energy as it consumes. Claims about greenhouse gases imply they cause the atmosphere to function as a perpetual motion machine.
The idea that individual CO2 molecules can actually radiate enough energy to heat anything sounds so ridiculous that it’s hard to understand how any logical person could believe it.
Police will tell you that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Scam artists tend to oversell whatever they are peddling. The people who claim global warming, are overselling claims about climate change and gullible journalists are buying what they are selling.
Gullible???
That’s their agenda!! - They understand very well that “global warming” is simply a tool to control people, take their money, and shove socialism down our throats.
Actually the science behind it is simple, even simple enough for reporters to grasp...
CO2 molecules don’t radiate energy. Depending on the density of an atmosphere, the sun’s energy hits the surface of a planet. some of that energy is absorbed by the atmosphere. Some of that energy is absorbed by the planet. And some of it is reflected back out into space.
The key is that the denser atmosphere acts as an insulator, absorbing more energy on the way in, and allowing less of the energy to be radiated back into space. CO2 is denser than the normal molecular Nitrogen/Oxygen mixture that primarily makes up our atmosphere. The greater the percentage of CO2, the denser the atmosphere, especially at ground level.
Do I buy the whole “global warming” thing? Well, sort of... I believe that we’re in a natural warming phase of the planet, possibly caused by recent sun storm activity, or possibly by the simple natural cyclic variance of the climate on the earth.
Do I believe that we can control “global warming?” Uh... No.
Mark
But do I buy that
Global warming to a T.
As one who has spent years in the newspaper business and radio broadcasting-you nailed it.
Making it sound like CO2 rises are unprecedented and leaping to the conclusion that CO2 causes temps to rise is not good logic.
You can't use info from "an inconvenient truth" here. This isn't du or the nyt. Please enlighten us as to the science behind this claim. There are counter claims that warming releases co2 from the oceans and that the increase in co2 trails the warming.
Also did you miss the correction that NOAA did on temperature data recently? Seems 1934 was the warmest year on record, not 1995. You also must have missed the gentleman who was posting pictures of NOAA's temperature recording stations, on jet runways, near incinerators, in blacktop parking lots.
"All else equal" = false assumption, as many factors are interrelated and interdependent, and "all else" is NEVER equal in climatology.
A 50% increase in CO2 from the time before the industrial revolution is significant. Heaping ridicule on the idea that it might cause a half-degree increase in world average temperature is not good logic.
False premise = false conclusion.
It’s also a mistake to say that we just cannot measure temperatures that accurately. The science of thermometers is very well understood, and the mathematics of taking the average of a lot of data points is understood too. In fact, taking averages tends to average out whatever errors there may be in the data.
Errors do not "average out" when the instruments themselves are rarely checked or calibrated, and where collecting errors have been ascertained through actual verification measurement, almost invariably have been skewing the temperatures in only one direction - upwards.
Welcome, newbie, if you're genuinely exploring the science of global climatology - but no welcome extended if you're here simply to spout half-baked notions you've picked up from the Gore-acle. You will find that FR is one place where you won't get to spew crap unchallenged.
I keep waiting for the one to answer, "I want to report the news."
A look at a little longer period of earth's history sort of breaks down any simplistic assumptions
about a correlation between CO2 levels and temperature.
Late Carboniferous to Early Permian time (315 mya -- 270 mya) is the only time period in the last 600 million
years when both atmospheric CO2 and temperatures were as low as they are today (Quaternary Period ).
I agree. I don't know what this writer is thinking of by invoking the concept. The criticism seems incoherent.
Heaping ridicule on the idea that it might cause a half-degree increase in world average temperature is not good logic.
Of course, ridicule is never good logic, but it is powerful rhetoric, and irresistibly attractive to many.
It’s also a mistake to say that we just cannot measure temperatures that accurately.
I think there is merit in the criticism of the average temperature concept, which has problems even aside from instrumental and operational issues. What are we taking an average temperature of? Just the air? Just the troposphere? ... the lower troposphere? What about the oceans?
All these temperatures are discussed, but it's not clear to me how they can all contribute to a single "average temperature".
Another point, if we can take a time average temperature of "the earth" or "the atmosphere", we ought to be able to take a global space average which would vary as a function of time. Does the "average temperature" rise at perihelion? What is the time variation, on a scale of hours or days, of the space average? I think this would be scientifically interesting if you did have a scientifically coherent definition of an "average temperature".
The problem is that it's easy to define an average over whatever data is at hand, but a lot harder to establish the physical significance of this kind of heterogeneous data.
Courses from the Dan Rather Correspondence School of Repurting:
Interviewing techniques 101– Easy ways to make people look bad (Like, turn off the air conditioning so they sweat)
Selective Editing 201 – Taking out the parts where you accidentally made them look good
Accuracy and Verification 333 – Everybody pretty much skips this course
Techniques of Omission 158 - How to deal with information that contradicts your story
Fortune Telling 202 – Very popular course
Journalism Ethics 264 - Course cancelled for lack of interest
Document creation 341 - Back up your stories with great-looking “originals” that will pass close scrutiny
CYA In Case You Are Caught 301 - My 92-year-old aunt will vouch for you (She is an expert witness and needs the money)
Because they’re hoping to tell people something everybody doesn’t already know — even if they have no idea what they are talking about, and have been told.
“God, just let me be the first to know something for once in my life.”
They are enamored of the messengers. They consider Algore a brilliant man, and he’s a Democrat, so if he says it, it must be true. No one ever accused Journalism students of the being the brightest lights in college.
Yeah...3% is nothing, eh?
Of course, it was 0.0278% back in 1750 and is now more than 0.038%....a 40% increase. Gee...that can't have an effect!
It's simply holding 2 watts per square meter more energy from the sun than it used to. That's increased only a full third since 1990. Nah, that can't have any impact... </sarc>
The deniers' claims are as disingenuous as the chicken littles'.
Let’s just do an energy balance. Where does all the excess energy go?
Go to a college and see who is majoring in "journalism". Lets see....sleep late, drink beer, avoid all science and math classes, whine about studying and graduate in 6 years..... Just like "education" majors.
Next question please.
The CO2 can be somehwat controlled (although very expensively) but the other greehouse gases (methane, for instance) can’t. However, the combustion of fossil fuels also puts small particles in the air and causes a reflection of sunlight approximately equal to the calculated “forcing function” of CO2 gas.
So the thinking goes.....”we’ll control the CO2, keep the fine particles, and all will be OK and you don’t have to feel guilty about driving your car or heating your home, right?
Trouble is...the CO2 scrubbers, also remove the fine particles !!!
Oh well, back to the drawing board.
It seems reporters are inheritly lazy. they just write what they WANT to believe, because real journalism would require investigation.
have you not heard the latest junk science environwacko meme?
Humans are causing climate change to happen faster.
Watch out, the junk science environwackos will say humans are causing radical climate shifts to happen four times a year...
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