Posted on 05/12/2008 1:37:03 PM PDT by shrinkermd
I did not listen to Rush’s entire show. The part I did here, was a “look-down-your-nose-sneer” at Senator McCain’s concern and proposals about climate change. I know this is problematical with those believing we are on the edge of a catastrophe and those who feel this is all hokum.
Seemingly, faith has replaced all reason in assessing the problem.
In actual fact the problem is really quite simple. What the European and other governments want to do is to hold the concentration of carbon dioxide to 450 parts per million. Presently, it is 380 ppm. At the beginning of the industrial age it was 280 ppm. As far as I can tell these are facts. My source is a recent article by Fred Pierce in the New Scientist. That link is: here.
The actual problem is not clearly a scientific problem and there are disputes as to the meaning of the rise of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. A few excerpts from the above article include the following:
”…European governments are pressing for an agreement that would keep atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide below 450 parts per million. This compares with pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm and current levels of 380 ppm. This, they argue, will prevent warming by more than 2 °C, and so avoid "dangerous" climate change.
”Yet many climate scientists wince at this. First, because the European governments like to claim that the IPCC backs these targets, when in fact the IPCC goes out of its way to say that setting targets is a job for politicians. And second, because nobody knows either whether 450 ppm will hold warming below 2 °C, or whether this amount of warming will turn out to be safe. "It's horrifying when you see things boiled down to simple terms like a 2 °C warming. That will mean hugely different things for different places," Palmer says.
One reason the IPCC's official reports are slow to bridge this gap is the panel's policy of only considering published peer-reviewed research that is available when its review process gets under way. This means the current report, published last year, takes no account of research published after early 2005.
An increasingly scary debate about the state of the Greenland ice sheet is almost entirely absent in the 2007 report, for instance (see "What if the ice goes?"). Other recent research suggests that warming may be accelerating beyond IPCC predictions: first, because higher temperatures are releasing greenhouse gases from forests, soils and permafrost; and second, because the ocean's ability to absorb CO2 seems to have declined in the past decade.
"An increasingly scary debate about the state of the Greenland ice sheet hardly figures in the IPCC's 2007 report"
Equally worrying is the fact that climatologists are losing confidence in the ability of existing models to work out what global warming will do to atmospheric circulation - and hence to local weather patterns like rainfall. The most recent IPCC report made a number of regional predictions. It felt able to do so because it was generally assumed that if most models agreed on future climate in, say, the Amazon rainforest or western Europe, then they were probably right.
From my perspective Rush is more interested in pandering to his base with oversimplifications and relying on ridicule as argumentation.
I frankly, don’t know how serious this problem is, but there is a problem—within the lifetime of many reading this post atmospheric carbon dioxide will double. As cited in this article:
One of these unknowns was highlighted last month in the preprint of a paper James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies has submitted to the journal Science (www.arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126). Looking back 50 million years, to a time when falling CO2 levels in the atmosphere reached 425 ppm - a level we are likely to reach within two decades - he says that was the moment Antarctica got its ice cap. This suggests that the planet may have a tipping point at around that level, give or take 75 ppm, and that by going above it we could render Antarctica ice-free once again. That would raise sea levels by around 60 metres.
I think Senator McCain’s interest in this subject is based on factual considerations. What we don’t know, we don’t know but now is not the time to close off all reasonable consideration and debate.
Within my lifetime the Scientist were sure we would be facing starvation on a mass scale because of the population growth, we would be freezing to death because of global cooling, the ozone hole would expand and further endanger life on earth, acid rain would destroy the ocean, ddt would destroy birds, 56 years old.
IBTZ?
next week - huh how about in an hour!
Amen - keep those grant funds coming to the Alarmists of my Nation.
I wonder if you and McCain have seen this...
http://www.forces.org/Multimedia_Portal/index.php?selection=174
I’d like for you to see it and comment on each of the points contained therein, especially the fact that warming PRECEDES rises in CO2.
I wonder if you and McCain have seen this...
http://www.forces.org/Multimedia_Portal/index.php?selection=174
I’d like for you to see it and comment on each of the points contained therein, especially the fact that warming PRECEDES rises in CO2.
I have had enough. My write-in for President is virtually eminent.
CO2 is plant food.
If it's like last summer should be hot as hell and I am personally looking forward to it. (I love those summer nights!!)
I have worked with PhD who don't know the difference between ppm and ppmv, Do you think that the lawyer politicians have a clue?
Put down the bong and step away.
Well, faith has certainly replaced reason on the Global Warming Terrorist side. More and more real scientists have popped up and showed how the whole thing really IS bunkum. That the UCGW climate models are so poor that they wouldn’t get better than C- in any normal college undergrad math course. That famous “kockey stick” that Algore touted so energetically is an outright fraud, using wildly false data to achieve its’ published results.
So faith is all they have left.
That an entertainer like Rush should take the mickey out on them is very appropriate.
The proper response to the global warming activists - from Algore to John McCain- should be laughter, loud, derisive laughter! Algore is the Henry Gondorf of the 21st century, and John McCain is the scam’s highest ranking sucker! If it was just McCain’s money at risk, so be it, but it is not! It is our money!
(I think Senator McCain’s interest in this subject is based on factual considerations) - You “think”? Shouldn’t you “know” before endorsing McCain’s position?
(What we don’t know, we don’t know but now is not the time to close off all reasonable consideration and debate) - Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the Global Warming side wants us to do - close the debate. Don’t you know that if you don’t agree with them you’re a denier? The fact that McCain wants to increase taxes (that’s effectively what his credit trading system does) before all the evidence is in, puts him squarely with the “let’s close all debate” faction.
I must buy stock in Avon...lipstick sales are going through the roof from McCain supporters..
You and the RINO you rode in on....
Put another way -- the alarmists admit they don't really know how to build and interpret their models. They admit that the complexity is alarming. They admit (without meaning to) that there is still plenty of room, and need, for more SCIENCE to be done, rather than raping the western countries' economies.
I think Senator McCain’s interest in this subject is based on factual considerations.
You're entitled to your opinion. My opinion is, John McCain can't hardly SPELL "science", let alone understand it. He's pandering for votes from his base, which is socialists, Democrats, and fuzzy-thinking "moderates".
What we don’t know, we don’t know but now is not the time to close off all reasonable consideration and debate.
But what Algore and his ilk are DEMANDING -- and what McCain is now CAVING IN TO -- is exactly that! Shut off debate and begin the destruction of the Western economies.
Now, shrinker, I have a question for you: What about China? If McCain and the others are really serious about GW, then WHY DOES CHINA -- the second largest and growing producer of greenhouse gases -- GET A FREE RIDE???
I can only think. I guess you and many posters on this thread “know.” Faith is where you find it.
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