So that Al Gore guy...

[hawkhuff]

No, I'm not confusing the issues. I specifically said "climate change or not", specifically separating the issues. What I'm saying is that the reduction of burning fuel and the development of alternative forms of energy is a positive, completely ignoring and potential climate change. And H2O can certainly be a pollutant, since water vapor provides an aerosol vector for particulate matter (I.e., part of smog is water vapor carrying particles).

 

 

Find it in the EPA regs where water is a pollutant. It quite simply isn't. Nor is CO2.

 

Is it a vehicle for pollutants? Yes, but that doesn't make it one and some particulates are insoluable which is what makes them particulate in the first place. Water is also a vehicle for virtually everything else on this planet and it has the largest influence on climate of all the greenhouse gases. CO2 has exponentially less influence by comparison. Indirectly, one of Algores earliest graphs shows this but he doesn't know it. Poor slob.

 

Water isn't the main culprit in smog it is actually sunlight and vehicle exhausts which is a photochemical process that forms O3 and lots of other nasties. However, this isn't a factor in global warming it's more a localized phenomenon.

[RSBro]

Except the Ozone layer didn't necessarily "heal itself", steps were taken to reduce Ozone depleting chemicals. Saying "see it wasn't an issue" implies that it just got better without any efforts, and that's false.

Ok, but it still got smaller, as I understand it- not just kept from getting bigger... this is my little nitpick

[Mudbass]

And, as I pointed out earlier, Rush Limbaugh.

 

 

 

Anybody can be nominated, even Limbaugh. Does anybody really think he was ever a serious contender for the prize? Even Limbaugh knows he was never in the running. He joked on his show that if he won the prize he'd run for president.

[King Kashue]

Very true. And therein lies the difference between these two issues. Basic chemistry vs. an extremely complex system (climate and climate change) that we actually know very very little about.

Oh definitely. That's the distinction I was trying to highlight.


I can show you climate change reflected in written sources (things like records of crop yields, etc.), dendrochonology, etc. for much of human history, long before the industrial revolution.

Does the Earth's climate change cyclically, absolutely, to deny that denies an easily demonstrated fact (and some folks do deny it, which seriously reduces their credibility).

However, do I think that mankind has affected the climate of the Earth? Absolutely. There are 6 billion of us, exponentially more than just a few centuries ago. Can we affect the Earth on a geological scale? Perhaps not, but part of that is because if we affect it too much in the short term, we'll likely kill ourselves off

The idea that the entire world needs to go "green" right now or we'll all be swimming through New York in five years is just silly. But if some changes can be made with little difficulty, why not make those changes?

Is it certain one way or the other? No, because as you note, the Earth's climate is a massively complex system, however, waiting until we "fully understand" it (assuming that's even possible) is not necessarily a good idea, 50 years from now, coming to the conclusion "Okay, now we're sure these things are happening, but we needed to fix them 25 years ago" seems sub-optimal (and that is most definitely a possibility).


It seems that there needs to be a distinction between "Hrm, a number of these claims seems to be suspect" and "Until someone can prove it conclusively, we shouldn't take any measures to fix it"...Those positions seem miles apart to me, but they're often treated as substantively the same...

[hawkhuff]

Except the Ozone layer didn't necessarily "heal itself", steps were taken to reduce Ozone depleting chemicals. Saying "see it wasn't an issue" implies that it just got better without any efforts, and that's false. The way CFCs interact with Ozone is basic chemistry. Now, their effect on the Ozone layer is slightly more complicated, but unlike Climate Change, there actually is a strong consensus on the matter, which is why industries changed the way they use CFCs. There's a reason no one really fights about the Ozone layer any more. The production of CFCs was cut, the depletion was reduced in the manner expected, everyone's happy.

No need to condescend. I know it is basic chemistry.

CFC's have long been shone to break the ozone into oxygen; in the laboratory. Fact is, no one has demonstrated this has happened in the upper layers of the atmosphere. In fact, the density of the CFC, specifically the CFC 14 (the alledged culprit) would preclude significant quantities being elevated to the upper reaches. Moreover, there is a demonstrated equilibrium between ozone and oxygen and it is the sun that drives the process.

And as for the ozone hole goes, it fluctuates and continues to do so. From what I have read scientists still are not quite sure what to make of it. That is, they have only known about it since the early 70's and they don't know the whens and whys to this fluctuation.

[King Kashue]

 

Find it in the EPA regs where water is a pollutant. It quite simply isn't.

 

 

Fine, change "be" to "facilitate", the point of the sentence is the same.

 

 

Is it a vehicle for pollutants? Yes

 

 

Which was the substance of my statement...glad we agree.

 

 

Water isn't the main culprit in smog it is actually sunlight and vehicle exhausts which is a photochemical process that forms O3 and lots of other nasties. However, this isn't a factor in global warming it's more a localized phenomenon.

 

 

I didn't claim it was the main culprit, I said it contributed.

 

And I didn't say smog was a factor in "global warming" (in fact I explicitly said the opposite...twice...and to be really precise, I never made a claim at all about "global warming", since "climate change" is a more accurate term for the phenomenon being theorized).

[hawkhuff]

Oh definitely. That's the distinction I was trying to highlight. I can show you climate change reflected in written sources (things like records of crop yields, etc.), dendrochonology, etc. for much of human history, long before the industrial revolution. Does the Earth's climate change cyclically, absolutely, to deny that denies an easily demonstrated fact (and some folks do deny it, which seriously reduces their credibility). However, do I think that mankind has affected the climate of the Earth? Absolutely. There are 6 billion of us, exponentially more than just a few centuries ago. Can we affect the Earth on a geological scale? Perhaps not, but part of that is because if we affect it too much in the short term, we'll likely kill ourselves off The idea that the entire world needs to go "green" right now or we'll all be swimming through New York in five years is just silly. But if some changes can be made with little difficulty, why not make those changes? Is it certain one way or the other? No, because as you note, the Earth's climate is a massively complex system, however, waiting until we "fully understand" it (assuming that's even possible) is not necessarily a good idea, 50 years from now, coming to the conclusion "Okay, now we're sure these things are happening, but we needed to fix them 25 years ago" seems sub-optimal (and that is most definitely a possibility). It seems that there needs to be a distinction between "Hrm, a number of these claims seems to be suspect" and "Until someone can prove it conclusively, we shouldn't take any measures to fix it" ...Those positions seem miles apart to me, but they're often treated as substantively the same...

I will agree with most of what you say here with one exception.

I too agree that we can change things and influence things on this planet. But do we significantly change the climate? From what I have seen in my studies on the subject, no we are not as significant as we sometimes lead ourselves to believe. And what changes are measured are like smog, they are localized.

[King Kashue]

No need to condescend. I know it is basic chemistry.

 

 

I wasn't saying you didn't. I was drawing a contrast between CFC/Ozone reactions (a simple process), the reaction in practice (more complicated) and the topic of the thread, the Earth's climate (Vastly more complex than either).

[chris-dax]

How come we almost lost several other bird species until it was recognized that DDT was quickly eliminating them - at which point modifying human behavior changed the outcome?

 

 

100 things you should know about DDT

 

Extensive hearings on DDT before an EPA administrative law judge occurred during 1971-1972. The EPA hearing examiner, Judge Edmund Sweeney, concluded that "DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man... DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man... The use of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife."

 

[sweeney, EM. 1972. EPA Hearing Examiner's recommendations and findings concerning DDT hearings, April 25, 1972 (40 CFR 164.32, 113 pages). Summarized in Barrons (May 1, 1972) and Oregonian (April 26, 1972)]

 

Overruling the EPA hearing examiner, EPA administrator Ruckelshaus banned DDT in 1972. Ruckelshaus never attended a single hour of the seven months of EPA hearings on DDT. Ruckelshaus' aides reported he did not even read the transcript of the EPA hearings on DDT. [santa Ana Register, April 25, 1972]

 

After reversing the EPA hearing examiner's decision, Ruckelshaus refused to release materials upon which his ban was based. Ruckelshaus rebuffed USDA efforts to obtain those materials through the Freedom of Information Act, claiming that they were just "internal memos." Scientists were therefore prevented from refuting the false allegations in the Ruckelshaus' "Opinion and Order on DDT."

 

On close inspection even the oft-repeated eggshell thinning threat to bird life held little validity. DDT opponents alleged then and now that DDT caused eggshells to be thinned/softened for certain types of birds, causing failure to hatch and populations to decline. A well-known fact among poultry farmers is that eggshell thinning is a common problem with an easy solution, increase dietary calcium. No one ever established a background rate for eggshell thinning among falcons, so when a few were found, opponents blamed the falcon decline on DDT.

 

A simpler cause of falcon population decline and far less artful than the eggshell thinning scenario is falcon hunting and eggs collection. As reported by Thomas Jukes and others the hunting of falcons and the destruction of their nests were widely practiced in the eastern United States. People were encouraged to shoot the adult falcons and destroy their nests.

 

Meanwhile studies of peregrine falcons in Alaska and Canada show that peregrines are thriving despite relatively high levels of DDT in their fat. The case for DDT having anything to do with the decline of peregrine falcons is very weak, given the numbers of falcons who have thrived in Alaska and Canada.

 

Last year, the WHO rectifed one of the greatest tragedies in public health by lifting its DDT ban. The mosquito-killer has proven to be the most effective tool against malaria, a disease that annually kills 1 million children, sickens hundreds of millions and reduces economic development in poverty-stricken regions of the world.

[King Kashue]

I will agree with most of what you say here with one exception. I too agree that we can change things and influence things on this planet. But do we significantly change the climate? From what I have seen in my studies on the subject, no we are not as significant as we sometimes lead ourselves to believe. And what changes are measured are like smog, they are localized.

 

Your studies? Reading secondary literature or personal research? (Note: That could be interpreted as confrontational, especially given our interactions, but I intend it as just a question, since you've not made specific mention of it before ).

 

 

And definitely, smog is localized, in that Los Angeles air isn't going to cause problems in Singapore, but smog from Arizona and Los Angeles makes it to the Grand Canyon and can cut visibility by up to 75%. It's not as localized as some folks think (and when much of the population of the Earth is living in a city with smog, I'm not sure that it matters that it's three dozen localized phenomena or not )

[hawkhuff]

Fine, change "be" to "facilitate", the point of the sentence is the same. Which was the substance of my statement...glad we agree. I didn't claim it was the main culprit, I said it contributed. And I didn't say smog was a factor in "global warming" (in fact I explicitly said the opposite...twice...and to be really precise, I never made a claim at all about "global warming", since "climate change" is a more accurate term for the phenomenon being theorized).

 

 

Here is where you are wrong and it isn't a trifling of a word. Water is not and has never been classified as a pollutant. And the point is not the same. We can, and do, regulate particulates but we do not regulate water in the air. Even if there is less water (low relative humidity) there will still be particulates. Phoenix and LA has this problem to one degree or another and their air can be dry at times.

 

I wasn't necessarily correcting you on the smog, bro. I was pointing out earlier that pollution is an entirely different issue from climate change. Both legally and scientifically.

 

I incorrectly use climate change and global warming interchangably. A habit from my teaching chem classes.

[Mudbass]

Water is not and has never been classified as a pollutant. And the point is not the same. We can, and do, regulate particulates but we do not regulate water in the air.

 

 

Not yet. But here it is hot off the presses.

 

http://www.fox28.com/News/index.php?ID=26322

 

Researchers Find Humidity Rising with the Temperature

It turns out the world isn't just getting hotter -- it's also getting stickier.

 

A study based on computer models finds that as the world's temperature rises, the amount of moisture in the air near the planet's surface is also rising. It's up by 2.2 percent in less than three decades.

 

One British researcher who co-authored the study says the higher humidity is "an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming."

 

Another author says humidity increased over much of the globe, including the eastern United States. But a few regions, including the U.S. West, South Africa and parts of Australia, are drier.

 

The research appears in the journal Nature.

[hawkhuff]

Your studies? Reading secondary literature or personal research? (Note: That could be interpreted as confrontational, especially given our interactions, but I intend it as just a question, since you've not made specific mention of it before ). And definitely, smog is localized, in that Los Angeles air isn't going to cause problems in Singapore, but smog from Arizona and Los Angeles makes it to the Grand Canyon and can cut visibility by up to 75%. It's not as localized as some folks think (and when much of the population of the Earth is living in a city with smog, I'm not sure that it matters that it's three dozen localized phenomena or not )

We're not communicating here. What I meant by my studies is that I have long studied the chemistry, the politics, and regulations dealing with these issues. In my jobs and my graduate work. I didn't mean to imply they were my original research.

We diverge on the term localized too. When I refer to localized I mean certain areas on the planet as opposed to the entire planet. This could encompass a region as you used in your example. However, the region you're citing is still considered localized by environmental scientists.

[hawkhuff]

Not yet . But here it is hot off the presses. http://www.fox28.com/News/index.php?ID=26322 Researchers Find Humidity Rising with the Temperature It turns out the world isn't just getting hotter -- it's also getting stickier. A study based on computer models finds that as the world's temperature rises, the amount of moisture in the air near the planet's surface is also rising. It's up by 2.2 percent in less than three decades. One British researcher who co-authored the study says the higher humidity is "an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming." Another author says humidity increased over much of the globe, including the eastern United States. But a few regions, including the U.S. West, South Africa and parts of Australia, are drier. The research appears in the journal Nature.

 

 

No {censored}.

 

Warm water holds much more water than does cold.

 

They really come up with some {censored} don't they?

 

Uh oh.......watch out for the regulators.

[hawkhuff]

Not yet . But here it is hot off the presses. http://www.fox28.com/News/index.php?ID=26322 Researchers Find Humidity Rising with the Temperature It turns out the world isn't just getting hotter -- it's also getting stickier. A study based on computer models finds that as the world's temperature rises, the amount of moisture in the air near the planet's surface is also rising. It's up by 2.2 percent in less than three decades. One British researcher who co-authored the study says the higher humidity is "an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming." Another author says humidity increased over much of the globe, including the eastern United States. But a few regions, including the U.S. West, South Africa and parts of Australia, are drier. The research appears in the journal Nature.

Come to think of it, not so this year.

Ask anyone in the southeast or mid Atlantic states.

Warm and dry as Hell this year.

[Craig Vecchione]

 

Here is where you are wrong and it isn't a trifling of a word. Water is not and has never been classified as a pollutant. And the point is not the same. We can, and do, regulate particulates but we do not regulate water in the air. Even if there is less water (low relative humidity) there will still be particulates. Phoenix and LA has this problem to one degree or another and their air can be dry at times. I wasn't necessarily correcting you on the smog, bro. I was pointing out earlier that pollution is an entirely different issue from climate change. Both legally and scientifically. I incorrectly use climate change and global warming interchangably. A habit from my teaching chem classes.

 

 

Forget all that {censored}, this is your real threat:

 

http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

[King Kashue]

Here is where you are wrong and it isn't a trifling of a word. Water is not and has never been classified as a pollutant. And the point is not the same.

The substance of my statement was H2O can contribute to smog. I said "water can be a pollutant", you corrected me, what I should have said is "water can facilitate pollutants"...The intent of my statement regarding H2O and smog is still the same.

We can, and do, regulate particulates but we do not regulate water in the air. Even if there is less water (low relative humidity) there will still be particulates. Phoenix and LA has this problem to one degree or another and their air can be dry at times.

Certainly, as you said, it's not the primary contributor to smog, but it's definitely a factor (as for LA, the Native American word for the region roughly translates as "land of the haze" The air was always hazy...we just added pollutants to what was already there )

I wasn't necessarily correcting you on the smog, bro. I was pointing out earlier that pollution is an entirely different issue from climate change.

From my original post on I've explicitly stated that...We're good on that front...

[Mudbass]

Come to think of it, not so this year. Ask anyone in the southeast or mid Atlantic states. Warm and dry as Hell this year.

Don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger. I don't make this enviro-wacko {censored} up. I'd never be able to keep up with the big boys.

[King Kashue]

We're not communicating here. What I meant by my studies is that I have long studied the chemistry, the politics, and regulations dealing with these issues. In my jobs and my graduate work. I didn't mean to imply they were my original research.

 

 

That's what I was asking for clarification on, thanks.

 

 

We diverge on the term localized too. When I refer to localized I mean certain areas on the planet as opposed to the entire planet. This could encompass a region as you used in your example. However, the region you're citing is still considered localized by environmental scientists.

 

 

Oh yeah, I recognized what "localized" means (as opposed to global). Just want to make a point about how large the "local" scale is.

 

I also wanted to note that even though it's a localized phenomenon, when you've got similar localized phenomena in enough places to affect the majority of the Earth's population, whether it's localized or global is somewhat irrelevant (since as a population the effect is just as widespread)...

[RSBro]

Great link!

http://www.eux.tv/article.aspx?articleId=15975

Subject: /Czech-Nobel/Peace/Reax/Czech/

Czech president Vaclav Klaus: "surprised" at Nobel prize for Gore

Prague (dpa) - Czech President Vaclav Klaus, a rare vocal global- warming sceptic among heads of state, is "somewhat surprised" that former US vice president Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize, the president's spokesman Petr Hajek said in a statement.

"The relationship between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct," the statement said. "It rather seems that Gore's doubting of basic cornerstones of the current civilization does not contribute to peace."

Klaus said in a recent speech that environmentalists' efforts to halt global warming "fatally endanger our freedom and prosperity."

The Czech president publicly expresses doubt on what scientists, including those participating in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, also this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, deem very likely - that global warming is caused by humans.

He also said that rising temperatures may not matter enough for governments to throw funds at halting the process.

In a newspaper interview earlier this year, Klaus said that only Al Gore, and not a sane person, would say that mankind is ruining the planet.

The Czech president has also recently participated in Gore-bashing newspaper advertisements ran by The Heartland Institute, a conservative US think tank.

[Jugghaid]

Oh definitely. That's the distinction I was trying to highlight.

Gotcha

I can show you climate change reflected in written sources (things like records of crop yields, etc.), dendrochonology, etc. for much of human history, long before the industrial revolution. Does the Earth's climate change cyclically, absolutely, to deny that denies an easily demonstrated fact (and some folks do deny it, which seriously reduces their credibility). However, do I think that mankind has affected the climate of the Earth? Absolutely. There are 6 billion of us, exponentially more than just a few centuries ago. Can we affect the Earth on a geological scale? Perhaps not, but part of that is because if we affect it too much in the short term, we'll likely kill ourselves off

Couldn't agree more.

The idea that the entire world needs to go "green" right now or we'll all be swimming through New York in five years is just silly. But if some changes can be made with little difficulty, why not make those changes?

I agree. And I'm all for alternative fuels and many other things that we can do to make changes. In fact when I buy a new truck next year it will be a flexfuel vehicle.

Is it certain one way or the other? No, because as you note, the Earth's climate is a massively complex system, however, waiting until we "fully understand" it (assuming that's even possible) is not necessarily a good idea, 50 years from now, coming to the conclusion "Okay, now we're sure these things are happening, but we needed to fix them 25 years ago" seems sub-optimal (and that is most definitely a possibility).

True. However, we need to be careful in what we do. With the limited knowlege we have at this point, we could very easily do more damage than good if we are not careful. Look at Yellowstone as an example as to what can happen due to the best of intentions and the least of knowlege. We may look back 25 years from now and say "Oops, that wasn't a very good idea, was it?". In addition we also do have to look at the financial/social realities of any changes that we make. Those changes need to be economically feasible. They need to be smart. They need to be responsible. They need to not be "kneejerk" responses based on way too little information.

It seems that there needs to be a distinction between "Hrm, a number of these claims seems to be suspect" and "Until someone can prove it conclusively, we shouldn't take any measures to fix it" ...Those positions seem miles apart to me, but they're often treated as substantively the same...

I agree with you. There are a LOT of things we can do right now that will not turn the world upside down socially and economically that are just plain the right things to do and don't really have a downside. We should be doing them. We don't really need ALGORE to tell us that we shouldn't dump toxic pollutants into our water sources, do we? We don't need to cause a panic to do that. We need some good old fashioned common sense. Something all politicians ssem to be gentically deficient in. Same with a lot of other people who just blindly follow them. what we need to do id spour a lot of resources into actual study and double blind testing procedures and de-politicise the science around these issues to find out what the truth really is. Then start coming up with solutions. In the meantime we don't have to sit on our hands and do nothing. But we need to be careful as to what we actaully do and think through the consequences.

[hawkhuff]

I also wanted to note that even though it's a localized phenomenon, when you've got similar localized phenomena in enough places to affect the majority of the Earth's population, whether it's localized or global is somewhat irrelevant (since as a population the effect is just as widespread)...

If you look at some large cities of the world smog isn't as big a problem as in LA or Mexico City. Geography plays a major role in this and that's why some are much worse than others. Case in point, Chicago doesn't have major smog problems because of the prevailing winds from the Great Lakes. They do have the Cubs though.

In terms of the human population smog being localized is much worse but I take your point.

But going back to what I was saying earlier. Smog is a localized problem and is contrasted with global climactic change. Smog, therefore is easier to deal with in terms of studying, modeling and subsequent pollutant reduction. It's entirely another thing to do these things on a global scale.

If the entire planet was like LA or Mexico City we be {censored}ed.

And about the ad hominems - I apologize for them.

[hawkhuff]

Great link! http://www.eux.tv/article.aspx?articleId=15975 Subject: /Czech-Nobel/Peace/Reax/Czech/ Czech president Vaclav Klaus: "surprised" at Nobel prize for Gore Prague (dpa) - Czech President Vaclav Klaus,

This {censored}er has already been branded as evil.

I wonder if they treat the socialists the same way. You know, like Algore has been associated with some radical leftist enviro-groups.

[RSBro]

This {censored}er has already been branded as evil. I wonder if they treat the socialists the same way. You know, like Algore has been associated with some radical leftist enviro-groups.

I just liked the "In a newspaper interview earlier this year, Klaus said that only Al Gore, and not a sane person, would say that mankind is ruining the planet" part!

[Jugghaid]

Not yet . But here it is hot off the presses. http://www.fox28.com/News/index.php?ID=26322 Researchers Find Humidity Rising with the Temperature It turns out the world isn't just getting hotter -- it's also getting stickier. A study based on computer models finds that as the world's temperature rises, the amount of moisture in the air near the planet's surface is also rising. It's up by 2.2 percent in less than three decades. One British researcher who co-authored the study says the higher humidity is "an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming." Another author says humidity increased over much of the globe, including the eastern United States. But a few regions, including the U.S. West, South Africa and parts of Australia, are drier. The research appears in the journal Nature.

 

 

great. Now we're all gonna die from "Global soaking".