The Stern Report: Global Warming to cost $7 trillion dollars

For starters... If you are a believer in global warming, things won't flood overnight. It'd take decades for changes to effect things.

Secondly, there is such thing as a scatter plot. There are times when things are heating up, there are times when things are cooling down. There have been on-and-off cycles of global warming blame games for decades. You even had the earliest ones in the 20's-30's.

Plus, you can't predict these values. You know what that article is, right? Just another fear-tactic that keeps getting poured down peoples' throats. Show me a fucktard who thought that the pessimist's "worst-case-scenario" scene of global warming would be cheap. Either way, I don't buy into the fact that mankind is causing this.

There have been ice ages at points in the past when CO2 and other greenhouse gases were at their peak. Let's also not forget that increasing CO2 does not necessarily perpetuate global warming. Shoddy computer models have run this along and they don't take into account a number of causal mechanisms that arise once certain parameters are met. For example, once enough water vapor is in the atmosphere (most effecting greenhouse gas), the atmosphere becomes a literal shield from sunlight and causes things to cool down very fast.

Our combustible engines have become much more efficient and emission levels are down. As for countries like China, they don't have the luck with that yet. Still, let's not forget how many "emissions" are unloaded into the atmosphere from every volcanic eruption. It's naive to think that we're melding the atmosphere like play-dough. The atmosphere has evolved over BILLIONS of years. And very, very, VERY slowly. What makes you think that a little over 100 years of burning fossil fuels will suddenly spell doomsday?

Blaming oil companies for this is just juvenile. There is a demand for energy and they're getting it. High gas prices? Supply & Demand.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

*cracks fingers*

What would people gain from Global Warming pushing? Easy. Researchers get more money. If some climatologist or meteorologist is assigned to find out whether Global Warming is occurring or not along with how to prevent it if it is, then he will lean toward the result that will give him a better meal ticket. Global warming is very much politics-meets-science. If he says "no, it's false" then Doc loses grants, as folks will lose interest in it. "Oh, nothings wrong? Ok. Forget about it." But if he says "doooooooooom," people start throwing money at him saying "find out about it."

If you do not believe me, then you obviously haven't met enough "research-rats" as I call them. I went to an AGU conference last winter and I learned something: tons of folks doing research are just working to keep their head above water. They will eyeball the smallest most redundant points and even fib about data just to keep things rolling and obtain more grant money. I have this view formed from personal experience. Not everyone is like that, but the global warming crutch seems to be much the same. I lost my job in the Meteorology department due to funding being moved to elsewhere. Interest was taken away from aerosol particles that form rain clouds and put into global warming research funding. As a result, my boss lacked the money to continue his research and has been sitting on his hands somewhat ever since. And this was all due to that Day After Tomorrow movie scare. Folks were pressing more and more for research on it and it all got sucked up.

Now. To counter your pictures...

Yes. There are points where CO2 is at max and glaciation is occurring. It is when water vapor (the big player in greenhouse gases) disrupts the albedo effect. As a result, sunlight cannot get into the atmosphere. You can see CO2 as an insulation that heats things up, this is true. But enough water vapor forms a shell per se that sunlight can't get through very well.

You say incorrect, but there is a Dr. North here at A&M who would beg to differ. I suggest you look up on him if you doubt me. I've had long discussions with him about global warming in the past. I'm not talking out of my ass on this issue.

CO2 rises are in fact due to heating. There is a heating effect going on right now, but it is not man-caused Global Warming. Every couple years folks say it's getting hotter. It's getting colder. It's brightening. It's dimming. They're like scared chickens. Do you want the big picture of things here?

The last major ice age ended 10,000 years ago. Following a glaciation period is a period of warming. Things heat up and melt ice. Water vapor gets into the atmosphere and disrupts the albedo effect, causing the surface of the Earth to get very, very cold. As a result of this, ice ages take place. Slowly throughout the ice age, the C02 levels lower (as the CO2 gets caught in ice deposits), and enough vapor freezes so that the atmosphere clears up. Albedo effect resumes, begins to melt ice, CO2 levels begin to rise. Wash, rinse, repeat.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

By not mentioning that this is a regular occurrence. There are folks who are slapping the blame-game on burning of fossil fuels as if the atmosphere had never changed in the history of this planet. As I said, things are heating up but it is natural and not caused by mankind. If they mentioned it is natural, there won't be as much fear and research into it. All the "proof" of mankind causing this is full of holes.

Your "conspiracy" prod is laughable. A&M is a big supplier of manpower to the energy industry. And many former students from A&M feel obliged to donate money to the university. It's quite a good one, y'know.

Predicting Rab's next post: "you're going into the oil industry. You must be a conspirator."

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by mindOverMatter

I think that people who say that everything is just a natural cycle (sugh as glaciers all over the world melting at an alarming rate) are just trying to justify what they know is wrong in the first place (like being in flat Miami beach and seeing huge SUVs). I'm not trying to say that it's going be dooms day or anything, and that we should all repent, but I think that it's a big issue that can't be ignored or pidgin holed for ever. I believe that soon we will see the effects.

Or people with Meteorological & Geological know-how. Read the whole thread before lobbing out some random thought like that please. We are in a heating stage. Things are heating up, but they'll back off and then heat up again. Scatter-plot. Simple. There will be a linear trend, yes. But don't go thinking that we're going to chug right into superheating the world within a matter of a couple years all because of the big bad evil SUVs.

RABicle --
Pardon me for making it seem "hilarious," but I am going off of my own personal experiences. I've spoken with individuals who admitted to me that they don't put out the truth because they would lose lots of funding. They put a spin on their research so more grant-givers will be interested. This is something I've noticed and experienced first-hand. Research bias, pure and simple. If you do not want to accept my personal experience as proof enough for this thought process, I don't know what to say to you then.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?