The Copenhagen 2009 (Climate Change) Summit thread

[Ivysaur]

@ Went: Even if the world's plants cannot absorb all of the CO2 we emit, they are still absorbing a significant amount of it. And since we're already emitting such an insignificant amount, we're talking about many, many years of emission before we'd see any noticeable affect. Remember, CO2 is only a minor greenhouse gas. I have faith that we will have enough reliable forms of alternative energy before we ever get to that point. Fossil Fuels obviously aren't going to last forever, and I'm looking forward to the day where we don't have to use them anymore.

The problem is, they already absorbed a great amount of it before the huge increase in CO2 emission two centuries ago... and since we have been just destroying more and more plants so we can cultivate vegetables and make new cities, chances are the amount isn't as significant as it should be. That's the main problem, actually.

Anyway, I'd like to see reliable forms of alternative energy... as soon as possible. But any drop in the current emissions is always good. Because that will mean more time to develop these sources before it's too late. That's the main point of the summit.

 

[Rabbit]

The facts I'm referencing have been well documented throughout this thread.

Just which facts are you referencing?

Yeah but...what does that have to do with the argument at hand?

Well, it sounded like your argument was, "Somebody stands to profit from global warming, therefore it's a hoax." I'm showing that others stand to lose from it, so it's not a good argument.

Something else that's been said...was it Cobalt? Anyway, someone suggested that, if there's more CO2 in the air, plants will absorb more of it. I don't think that's how it works. Plants can't breathe in more CO2 than they need, just as we can't breathe in more oxygen. The amount of CO2 that's removed from the atmosphere is determined not by quantity of CO2, but by the quantity of living organisms that use it. So, unless there was a change in the number of CO2-eating bacteria or CO2-consuming plants, we can assume the rate of CO2 removal to be constant.

 

[Mario The World Champion]

I don't have any opinion about this summit. I'll keep an eye on it to see if anything good might come out of it. I'm more interested in getting more renewable energies coming to the forefront so we don't have to keep sending billions of dollars to oil rich Arab countries who some of them promote terrorism.

 

[Luck]

I did this because I was bored.

I wasn't talking about the Science Magazine quote; that was in 1976. Global cooling was pushed since 1975. The government supported it in '75. In 1975, "THE WEATHER CONSPIRACY … coming of the New Ice Age" was pushed and published by eighteen authors. Newsweek and The New York Times, and I'm sure others, published and spread the idea. In fact, back as far as 1974 the National Science Board, scientists were promoting the cooling theory and were convinced a new ice age would happen within 20-30 years.
There was a frenzy, and George Will didn't create this, nor did the Science Magazine edition of Dec. 10, 1976. However, while the Science Magazine article didn't promote coming global cooling, Science News did March 1, 1975. This isn't a myth. There were people protesting about it. There was a real belief that science proved there would be a new ice age or at least a huge drop in global temperatures.

That's an easy way of saying that you have nothing to say.

Well, if you want to be skeptical, then you can do it yourself to see if they really lied about it. I, however, trust that scientists wouldn't lie about this just to get money. These are scientists, not politicians.

Not only does the cutting down of trees not affect the cycle, it's otherwise not relevant to anything other than ecosystem destruction. The vast majority of oxygen comes from sea algae and not trees. Regardless, trees are always being planted and replanted, and even without intervention nature itself grows trees on its own. And even still, land vegetation isn't limited to trees. The more CO2, the more countless other forms of vegetation are spread. So some insignificant trees are lost in Latin America, meanwhile trees are also being farmed and raised and bushes, flowers, vines, grasses, and the king of Oxygen (algae) are all going to continue growing in number. So no, it's not staying in the air. It's being recycled by land vegetation and the oceans.

We don't get more vegetation out of cutting vegetation down. It doesn't work like that.
I also like how you don't care at all about CO2 being absorbed by the oceans. You do know that the oceans absorbing CO2 leads to the oceans being more acidic, right?

That's another thing. We've also decided to classify water vapor - that's water in gas form - as a greenhouse gas. Now even the most generous calculations not only show CO2 numbers insignificant, they show water vapor making up darn-near all of the greenhouse contribution. So now nutrients for life to exist, water and CO2, are bad and need to be fought. It's ludicrous, and unless we plan on wiping ourselves out, there's nothing to be done about it. Our impact is insignificant.

And every climatologist disagrees with you just to get the money. Scientists don't do it for money, they do it find out more about the world we live in.
Also, natural greenhouse gases are different than artificial greenhouse gases. No one said to make CO2 and water vapor extinct, just to reduce the amounts.

It's basic math, and if that's too hard to understand, then maybe the skeptic isn't the uninformed one here. Also ...what? CO2 apparently is a greenhouse gas, so how is a greenhouse gas competing with humans in emitting greenhouse gases? I'll attempt to make some sense of that *thing* you posted. Humans produce greenhouse gases besides CO2 and that altogether exceeds the standalone CO2 emissions. Is that it? That's true, however even together all greenhouse gases from mankind are insignificant and couldn't even breach the 5% line.

The difference isn't going to be negligible. The polar ice caps are already melting at an exceedingly higher rate, so speeding it up won't do anything about it. For us to adapt to our environment, we need time to adapt.
Also, I'm pretty sure that if the scientific sites did do this in a conspiracy, they would hide it better. They wouldn't give opposing evidence to the public.
Starting the biggest scam of the century doesn't work that way, especially with the smartest people on the Earth.

No, I don't doubt that many scientists believe this. But then I don't doubt that they've believed countless other things over the years. It's just smashing to see you cling to scientific dogma.

Really? Dogma? I thought you were better than that. Science is based on facts and evidence, and unlike dogma, it changes whenever opposing evidence is revealed. Do you believe in gravity because you want to? No, you don't. You believe in it because it just works.

Uhuh, yeah yeah Faux News, Fakes News, blah blah Fox sucks. What exactly makes Fox, a station with every point of view from libertarians to socialists, more biased than MSNBC and CNN? Oh right, because they're not and that makes no sense, that's why. I still throw my support behind MSNBC, home of the Olberman, for most biased news group ever.

Yeah, because people like Bill O Reilly, Glen Beck, and Dave Ramsey(with special guest appearances of Ann Coulter) have such a wide range of views. They deliberately lie on their news and were caught by many people, many times. But this has nothing to do with the subject, so I won't respond to you about this.

Yes I did read them, and they said nothing. Here's a summary of what I read:
link 1- Nasa (see: hoax)

Spectacular evidence.

link 2- The UN and IPCC are authoritative. Greenhouse gasses are needed for life to exist. Buuuuttt... people gasses=bad. There is no debate on global warming even though there is. Different parts of the planet are warmers, and others are colder. The sun actually does affect the overall temperature.

Of course the sun affects overall temperature, but solar activity in the last decade or so decreased when temperature significantly increased.

link 3- Global warming is real. Humans cause it. This is controversial. We need to do something. There are signs of warming. Some parts of the world are warmer, but some aren't. It's warmer. We can't prove temperatures from thousands of years ago. There are gaps we fill in with other things. Computers help scientists make models.

I like how you require everything to have recorded evidence. Tree rings are basically a record of what happened, just like autobiographies. If you want, you can try it out yourself.

Funny you distrust a new story because it's on Fox which is super fake, but believe United Nations and intergovernmental bodies which are sooo unbiased and untrustworthy.

Only because the government has a smaller track record of failing.
The president of Fox had to apologize many times when they were caught lying on a news story.

I'm not even a fan of The Great Global Warming Swindle, which was an out of left field reference to begin with, but there's no proof he was misrepresented or tricked or anything of the sort. There's no more proof he was wronged than that he wronged them. Get real with this quote mine stuff. And in the future please say distorted instead of quote mined. You're not a scientist, so using their jargon really doesn't fit; it's weird dude. Like, for realz.

Um, what? Wunsch said it himself that his message was being taken out of context, and the creator of the movie actually threatened to sue him for defamation unless Wunsch went to the public and said that he wasn't being misled or misrepresented.

Oh well. At least it's nice to know that I have logic on my side.

If by logic, then you mean thinking that you are smarter than every climatologist even though you probably don't know nearly as much as them as you think, then you are correct.
But that's just me, I prefer to listen to the professionals, not just random people on the Internet.



You know what guys? I have a solution. You find a well known climatologists e-mail, and talk to them about it. Everyone gains knowledge in mature discussion.

 

[Esper]

What specific harm is there in playing it safe and is it worth the risk of being wrong?

It's like saying we need a series of horrible laws to limit dropout rates because they increase child molestation, and then after that being rebutted, saying it's still a good idea to pass those laws even though the child molestation connection doesn't exist just because we should still want to limit dropout rates anyway.

What I'm taking from this is that you think it's bad to take action (in your example passing a 'horrible' law) to curb a problem (dropout rates) to stop a bigger problem (child molestation) when the connection between the problems is shown to be weak/nonexistent (dropout rates not affecting child molestation) even though one of the problems (dropout rates) would still be solved or at least reduced. While the bigger problem isn't solved, I still see one problem being addressed. How is this bad? It almost sounds like (and I'm sure you didn't mean this) you're implying that we shouldn't worry about carbon emissions because they're not the real cause of climate change and that we need to find a different way to stop it, meaning you're arguing it's still a problem.

I think what you're trying to say is that one problem (child molestation / climate change) isn't as big as people say because there's no connection between it and a known, widespread problem (dropout rates / carbon emissions). Or is it that a climate change is/would be a huge problem (like child molestation) and that carbon emissions (and dropout rates) shouldn't really be thought of as a problem in their own right and also because they don't relate to real problems? Ahhrgh! My head!

Anyway, to my original question. If I may summarize, what I gather is that you think the negative consequences of treating carbon emission as a problem are: 1) some people are making money off it, mainly because they are 2) lying to us and are trying to get 3) laws of some kind to be passed addressing emissions which will have some deleterious effects somewhere.

Aside from people lying to make money (people which you'll find in pretty much every group on every side - if it were true would it be any worse than having people lie about WMDs to make money off oil?) what bad things would these laws do?

 

[Corvus of the Black Night]

Glenn Beck is totally right. We are all going to lose our sovereignty to these evil socialist nations.

It may be true that I love nature and I should be a total tree hugger, but I think that the relations may be more important than what we're going to do to save Bambi.

 

[FlameShocker]

No we shouldn't limit carbon emissions. This is the first time in history that people have accepted that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. Unbelievable. It's a basic, necessary component of life. No CO2, no life. Are they going to cap how much we can breathe? Ugh. This Copenhagen summit is nothing more than a summit for hypocrites, liars, and fear-mongers. I'll take these people seriously when they stop cooking the books and hiding data, stop polluting more in one day with their private jets than everyone else in a year, and stop making films about children dying in an environmental apocalypse. Seriously. I'm all for solar farms, but for practical reasons, not because I think humans can cause the world to end.

This

I believe that at least most of the "carbon dioxide is a pollutant theory" is crap. If there were no carbon dioxide, all the plants would die. While I believe that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, I also believe most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere wasn't put there by humans.

Also, and I know that this is somewhat off-topic (for this post, anyway), "the media" (as spoken of on Fox News) is full of hypocrites, liars, and fear-mongers, too.

It's odd. People are starting to use the fake idea of man-made global warming like a religion. I guess, deep down, everyone has a need for a structure that is at least like a religion.

 

[CensorFairy]

Without getting sucked into the debate- I support a gathering like this to discuss global climate change.
It's a real problem and I don't understand why people can't see that. .______.

 

[Ivysaur]

This

I believe that at least most of the "carbon dioxide is a pollutant theory" is crap. If there were no carbon dioxide, all the plants would die. While I believe that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, I also believe most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere wasn't put there by humans.

Also, and I know that this is somewhat off-topic (for this post, anyway), "the media" (as spoken of on Fox News) is full of hypocrites, liars, and fear-mongers, too.

It's odd. People are starting to use the fake idea of man-made global warming like a religion. I guess, deep down, everyone has a need for a structure that is at least like a religion.

The problem is, the small part of CO2 made by humans alone is enough to increase the temperatures. If you want to get more data on that, try reading the last posts in the previous page, please. Saying "fake idea" in bold and italics won't negate the fact that thousands of scientifics say otherwise.

And scientifics, as opossed as religions, try to prove their points with deductions based on the reality so they can back up their work. That's slightly more reliable than visions from people.