Divers Take Note

[Justin Spencer]

Right now I wish we had a little more global warming (just spent the last hour fixing a broken pipe in well house).

If global warming isn't man made what are the consequences if we act like it is. Maybe some sticker shock for power and some goods while we move toward cleaner energy, however if we lead the world in developing new sources of energy it might actually boost our economy (maybe wishful thinking). Plus we would eventually get cleaner air and water, and a better quality of life (cue the tweeting birds)

What are the consequences if those who think it isn't man made are wrong?

Our grandchildrens faces melt off, they drown in a rapidly rising ocean, pigs get skin cancer and we have no more pork.

The Choice is Simple

[Chief Grey Bear]

I'm free most Wednesdays. How about tomorrow?

How much do you charge the other 6 days?

A disagreement doesn't make us enemies.

So then are you going to extend the same to Justin?????

[podum]

How much do you charge the other 6 days?

So then are you going to extend the same to Justin?????

I have no hard feelings against Justin. I bowed out because I thought he was really angry with me.

BTW Justin, I didn't dismiss your education as more faith than fact. I'm glad people are studying this and are passionate about it. After looking at the data, we have just reached different conclusions.

[FishinCricket]

How much do you charge the other 6 days?

The going average is "one bird in the hand"...

(I am no longer accepting "two in the bush" as payment... Ex wife learned me on that one!)

[podum]

And Justin, I'm opposed to a world without pork. Even if it takes changing my mind on this issue.

[Justin Spencer]

Glad we agree that a world without pork is bad, no hard feelings here and anyone who likes to fish and isn't opposed to drinking a few beers is a friend of mine regardless of their views on politics, global warming, etc. The world would be a pretty boring place if we all agreed about everything.

[Chief Grey Bear]

I have no hard feelings against Justin.

...no hard feelings here and anyone who likes to fish and isn't opposed to drinking a few beers is a friend of mine regardless of their views on politics, global warming, etc. The world would be a pretty boring place if we all agreed about everything.

OK then. Now all that is left to do is to meet somewhere in the middle like, say, ooooh,, I don't know, CAPP'S CREEK. We will swill beer and slap one another on the back over a campfire of sizzling fresh trout, fried taters and some pork-n-beans! I'll bring the cast iron. We'll mark the second saturday of Jan. 2011 as the date. First one to back out is a Ness!

[Al Agnew]

Just another question or two to ask...

1. We have the technology to measure just about anything "natural" that could be causing the climate to change. Everything from the output of the sun to the orbit of the earth. And as far as I know, we have found no "natural" reason for the planet to be warming. So...if we ain't causing it, what is?

2. Not quite a question...yep, CO2 is a relatively minor component of the atmosphere. So is oxygen.

3. If we don't work to cut down our CO2 emissions because it may be messing up our climate, shouldn't we be doing it for a bunch of other reasons anyway? We ALL know that our dependence upon fossil fuels in general, and foreign oil in particular, is a danger to our national security. We all know that coal is messy, dangerous, and destructive to get out of the ground and causes all kinds of pollution problems in the burning and in the storage of what's left after burning (Ameren is asking for a permit to store coal fly ash from its power plant in the Missouri bottoms 30 miles from St. Louis as we speak. They say they'll build a big levee around it to protect it from flooding, and put a double liner in the pond to keep it from leaching into the ground water. Does that make you feel all warm and fuzzy?)

4. If the science is "faith", then a whole lot of scientists are being fooled into being faithful instead of scientific, and a very small minority are the only scientific ones. Does that seem reasonable?

The thing is, this is a monstrous experiment. We don't KNOW the exact results to expect from all the fossil fuel we've been burning. But we are taking carbon that's been locked up in the ground for many millions of years, and which took many millions of years to get there, and in the period of a century or so we've liberated a vast amount of it into the atmosphere. We are seeing that the oceans can't easily absorb it all. We're clearing the great tropical forests that are the other real hope of absorbing it all. And there's evidence that we can expect multiplying factors as warming proceeds. Less ice cover means more bare ground, and bare ground soaks up heat faster. So does ocean water that's free of ice. Melting permafrost releases great amounts of methane, and methane is, like I said before, a much more efficient greenhouse gas than carbon.

Something else interesting that's been on the radar for a while...jet contrails appear to be SLOWING global warming, by adding some "shade". Without all the jet traffic in the last few decades, it's possible that warming would have been rising faster.

Another something else interesting that's been talked about for quite a while...melting of glacial ice in Greenland and Iceland and other places that dump cold meltwater into the North Atlantic could possibly disrupt the Gulf Stream, and bring about much COLDER climate in land bordering the North Atlantic, especially England and Europe. We could be seeing warming suddenly turn to major cooling in those areas. Point is, we just don't KNOW how it will turn out.

Already, however, some scientists and thoughtful people are saying it's too late to stop some of the bad effects of warming from happening, and while it still makes sense to do whatever we can to slow it down, we'd better also be planning for how we'll handle a warming planet.

[Justin Spencer]

Obvioulsy there have been warmer times and cooler times in the history of the planet, but they all came with extinctions and often times were like pressing the reset button on the planet. It is not that the changes aren't part of a cycle, but this cycle is happening much faster than should be expected. Evolution has allowed many organisms to survive over time, and if change is slow enough evolution is able to keep up with this change. If these changes come about too quickly evolution can not keep up and we experience extinctions. Extinctions are normal, changes in climate and ecosystems are normal it just seems as though we are seeing unnatural changes that can be traced back to human activities. Take what Gavin said about snow, they used to sell snowmobiles everywhere in Northern Missouri, armadillos used to only live in the South, I used to winterize the campground in October (bad example). Outside Bend mentioned the changes he has seen changes in the mountains. Just taking things each of us have observed shows that change is taking place. I have really seen no one disagree that warming is occuring, putting the science aside, common sense tells me that the overpopulation of humans probably is a major player in climate change, the exponential growth of the human population paired with the technological advances that have been powered by fossil fuels has to have a negative impact on the health of the planet. I always think back to the J shaped curved of exponential population growth. In every instance (human population not included) the curve goes up like a J and when carrying capacity is surpassed we see the line drop back to where we started because of a catastrophic event such as disease outbreak. Thanks to advances in medicine humans have been able to aviod this natural population check. While this has been good for us it has been bad for the planet. Hopefully before we experience that we will see a reduction in human population and clean up our act. Unfortunately population reduction would be harmful to the world's economy so I don't expect to see that becoming a priority.

[Tim Smith]

As to Justin's point about coral reefs, here's a commentary on my own experience in Belize. It's a preachier tone than I would use in a forum post, but I was pretty pissed off after that dive.

Dead coral at Laughing Bird Caye

This year the Healthy Reefs Initiative Report Card showed that 70% of the coral on the Mesoamerican Reef was in poor condition or worse, in large part due to heat-related coral bleaching that happens every single year now. That's worse than last year and shockingly different from 20 years ago. There is a real chance the reef as we know it will be gone in 50 years.

So while skepticism is important in science, when you make this assertion...

After looking at the data, we have just reached different conclusions.

...the responsible step is to show what data leads you to your conclusion. And you are in fact on very thin ground among people who study these things. Al is right that vast majority of people who actually study this field (95%) are in full agreement that human causes for climate change are important and need to be addressed (check the other climate thread on this forum for the reference).

In fact, the faith involved in this debate lies on the side of the deniers, and the flock that should be setting the ethical example here has been swallowed by the wolves...

...but wolf season begins right now.

Let's do this. Lay what you find convincing about the denier's case (and assuming its the same as the umpteen billion other denier arguments I've seen elsewhere), let's walk through the gaps in the rhetoric and pin down what's important here (Al has already done quite a bit of that). If you want to use citations, let's do it. If you want to cut to the chase and talk about the global scientific conspiracy trying to enslave you and force you to eat tofu at gunpoint, let's do that...

...but it's time to work past this nonsense about no human role in climate change.