46 replies to this topic

[mvillanueva]

Sorry, wrong word choice in a hurriedly scrawled post: I meant "reasonable" instead of "objective." So substitute the word, and I stand by everything else I wrote.

And I saw the "give up diving" comment not as inciting, but rather as a pointed exhortation to "walk the walk if you're going to talk the talk."

diversity of opinion (and diversity of fact, ha ha).

And I would love to stand with you too!!

Hey... it is only the internet!!


Can I still dive with you?

[Genesis]

Geez Marvel, the entire cite I provided was a treatise on bias and its pervasive nature in the scientific community! Indeed, the cite I provided was an essay pondering how this candidate was going to advance their worldview using the field being entered. In other words, science not for the purpose of science, but rather for the purpose of advancing a pre-conceived notion of what result they wanted to see.

Two quotes:

I enjoy this process, too, but that's not why I decided to undertake a Ph.D. at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego.

I returned to school because I see global-scale environmental problems that my generation will have to address. The issues that motivate me to sit through a day in front of the computer, my shoulders becoming stiff and curved, are admittedly idealistic ones -- "contribution to humanity" is key among them -- rather than just the adrenalin rush of discovery.

"I can't prove 'em, but I see 'em - so we're gonna go address 'em!"

As a student, I am being groomed to succeed in this world of science. Where does that leave my interests in policy? Where does that leave my interests in working with human populations on the impacts of climate change? Where does it leave my interests in being able to talk about my work with the media or to reach out to advocacy groups? Am I less of a scientist if I pursue these interests? And if I decide that the battles to make my kind of scientist more acceptable in the academic world are too large for me, what is left for the next generation of students who again have few mentors?

"I'm an advocate first and scientist second."

The impacts of climate change? That's the entire point under debate here! This candidate hasn't proven a single thing, but by God, they are certain there is climate change on a global scale, they're certain we're the cause of it, and they're certain that we need to do various things to address it.

"My kind of scientist"?

There's only one kind of scientist - an objective one!

The article originally cited is one article. One claim. And not even the study itself - indeed, it doesn't even meet the quality standard of a scientific abstract!

Here are a couple of cites from "the other side", which took all of 30 seconds to find:

http://www.abd.org.uk/green_myths.htm

http://www.globalwar...cle.php?uid=116

From the latter, which features the leading scientist on extreme weather events (hurricanes, specifically):

"The global warming debate has several facets. One of the most important is the detection of the human signal amongst the surrounding natural variation. The problem is that the variation is much larger than the predicted human-induced warming. Paleoclimatic research, for example has found very large and rapid temperature changes over the last 100,00 years, providing a puzzle for climatologists. So far, however, the evidence has pointed to a seesaw effect where the Earth’s polar regions experience temperature change at different times, shifting back and forth.

New research published in Science (October 2, 1998) has found evidence that the abrupt warming that occurred in the North Atlantic about 12,500 years ago, also occurred in Antartica. Ice core samples from Taylor Dome, in the western Ross Sea sector of Antarctica show that the temperature there warmed by 20 degrees Fahrenheit in a very short time. This corresponds with a 59 degrees warming that occurred over 50 years in the Arctic, suggesting that the temperature change was global.

According to James White, a climatologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder and a co-author of the study, "We used to suspect that some of these big changes that occurred naturally in the past were only local. Since we see the same thing at opposite ends of the Earth, it does imply that the warming was a global phenomenon." These findings "throw a monkey wrench into paleo-climate research and rearrange our thinking about climate change at that time," White said (Chicago Tribune, October 4, 1998)."

Fifty-nine degrees in the arctic, from natural causes, pre-dating Man's influence? And we're screaming about one degree changes?

and....

"Dr. Gray also addressed the problems of climate modeling. He said that numerical modeling has been a great success for forecasting the weather for five to ten days into the future. This is because forecasters can measure the wind patterns that are there in the present and ride those out for a few days. After a while, however, the current energy fields no longer hold and predictive power plummets. Another problem is the "butterfly effect" where small modeling errors either in the measurements or in the physics grow over time becoming nonlinear and the whole thing "blows up on you." "

The "other side" of the debate is out there - if you care to look - and there are literally thousands of scientists (18,000 of them who signed one document, as an example) who do not believe the "greenie weenie" premise that the sky is literally going to cook us.

The modern-day chicken-littles have a huge mountain to climb, and its quite elegantly presented by the facts of climate over the last 100,000 years on this planet, during which we've been a significant "force" for only the last few hundred, and a large-scale user of long-cycle carbon fuels for less than two hundred years.

One report in the media, which does not make available the text of the actual study nor its counter-argument for the known flaws in these studies (without addressing, in a proven fashion, those flaws you have a political position piece, not a study) means nothing - other than being a "hit piece".

Given the insanity surrounding the do-nothing Kyoto "accord", which we wisely refused to be engulfed by, it is not surprising that such a hit piece would magically appear at the appointed time.

Coincidence? I think not, yet these studies take years (if properly conducted) to bear fruit.

Again, I'm very interested in a debate with those who passionately believe in this phenomena. I will believe they have the conviction of their position and their belief in the science of it, instead of pushing a political agenda, as soon as they:

1. Go "off grid", so they do not contribute to the generation of electricity by coal or natural gas, nor will they burn fossil fuels, other than timber (which they must personally insure is immediately replanted), which is a short carbon-cycle fuel and thus carbon-cycle neutral, for heat and hot water. The average homeowner contributes more greenhouse gas from their electricity and heating use of fuels than they do from their car - by a WIDE margin.

2. Retire their current car for a Diesel VW Jetta (50mpg) in which they burn nothing but biodiesel ($3+/gallon, or make it yourself from waste vegetable oil), since that fuel is also carbon-cycle neutral (short-cycle carbon produced from annual crops) Yes, both the fuel and vehicle are more expensive than other alternatives. Do you believe in what you preach or not?

3. Undertake no recreational activity that uses long-cycle carbon fuels of any sort, as such uses are simply indefensible for fun. This last requirement immediately excludes scuba diving backed by any commecial concern, but leaves open the possibility of entirely personally-operated dive vessels and air fill stations (see below.) Of course that's going to be damn expensive, but you really believe in this, right?

It is interesting to note that of the 'scientists' who believe in this 'theory' - I have been unable to find one person who meets the above criteria. Indeed, how many of them will step down from the dias and immediately board an airplane, which is a huge guzzler of those very same fossil fuels, flying halfway around the world to preach on how horrible global warming is, while they're causing it!

The ability to live so that one has a minimal impact on global warming on a personal level exists. If you're going to claim that this is a position you believe in, the place to start IS WITH YOUR OWN LIFE.

For divers, the problem is far more profound. Virtually every aspect of diving uses fossil fuels, and these fuels are being used, and CO2 produced, simply for your recreation!.

Your gear, from the O-rings to hoses to tank boots, are made out of fossil fuel, and created using even more of them (to obtain the electricity or heat to form them). Your tanks are made of aluminum or steel, both of which must be refined from raw ores or recycled materials, and both of which require outrageous amounts of energy to turn into the finished pressure vessels you use. The process of compressing air of course requires great expenditures of energy, and the most common sources of electricity are of course coal and natural gas - two long-cycle fossil fuels. If you own your own compressor, and its gasoline or diesel powered, you're a direct polluter - otherwise you're an indirect one.

Then you load your tanks and gear into a SUV, which you are operating not for commerce but for convenience - the worst kind of CO2 pollution. And finally, to top it all off, you board a dive boat which goes 50 miles in a day, but burns one hundred gallons of diesel fuel doing it- again, just for your recreation.

As I pointed out, I used to do a fair bit of work with the sustainable development folks, and made quite a study of it myself. I've spoken at one of their symposiums before on the potential of technology - in my case, the expansion of high-speed communciation, more commonly called The Internet - to reduce the impact of human damage to the planet by reducing the reliance on long-carbon-cycle fuels. While the case is not so clear and simple as some would make it out to be (it takes energy to operate said networks, you can't or won't dial back the thermostat while you're at work if you're home all day, etc) a fairly complete study which I made of the matter showed actual greenhouse-gas emission savings in the range of 20-30% from people working from home over such links as opposed to getting in their cars and driving to work.

You want to start yelling about global warming?

Cool.

Live what you preach, and we will find the foundation for a debate. Prove your own hypocrisy the moment you step off the soapbox and into that SUV or airplane, and logical, thinking people are free to laugh in response.

Edited by Genesis, 18 February 2005 - 08:49 AM.

[drdiver]

I personally don't know of anyone who believes that much can be done about global warming. Even the Kyoto Accord is seen as a first step toward change that might eventually have an effect. We are in the trend and we'll just have to ride it out.
Getting rid of your SUV isn't going to help at all.

It's more than a bit absurd to say that because you believe in something, you have to completely conform to a constructed code of behavior.

A person could believe in the death penalty, but be unwilling to be an executioner.

I believe in weekly home trash pickup but I don't plan to become a trashman.

There are many, many things that we all believe in but we don't necessarily carry out in our personal or professional lives.

For those on this thread that would like to read a nice succinct discussion of global warming, the EPA has a good page.
http://yosemite.epa....ertainties.html

And another interesting article can be seen at
http://www.atsnn.com/story/81795.html

Carbon dioxide is just one of several greenhouse gases.

[mvillanueva]

I personally don't know of anyone who believes that much can be done about global warming. Even the Kyoto Accord is seen as a first step toward change that might eventually have an effect. We are in the trend and we'll just have to ride it out.
Getting rid of your SUV isn't going to help at all.

It's more than a bit absurd to say that because you believe in something, you have to completely conform to a constructed code of behavior.

A person could believe in the death penalty, but be unwilling to be an executioner.

I believe in weekly home trash pickup but I don't plan to become a trashman.

There are many, many things that we all believe in but we don't necessarily carry out in our personal or professional lives.

For those on this thread that would like to read a nice succinct discussion of global warming, the EPA has a good page.
http://yosemite.epa....ertainties.html

And another interesting article can be seen at
http://www.atsnn.com/story/81795.html

Carbon dioxide is just one of several greenhouse gases.

Dennis

Thanks for those links; that is useful information.

Michael

[jextract]

An article in MIT Technology Review seems to think that the claims of global warming are overheated (pun intended):

http://technologyrev...uller101504.asp

[jextract]

Third, it allowed "trading" of emissions credits rather than actually requiring that you cut emissions, and if you didn't feel like paying for someone else's "unused" credits, you could simply pollute and pay the fine. Or not, since there was no enforcement ability.

Buying and selling of emissions credits is the most cost effective way to cut overall emissions. If you are a company that is a light producer of emissions you can increase your profits by selling credits. If your marginal cost of reducing credits further is exceeded by the profit you can make by selling those credits, you are incentivised to do so. If you can not sell those credits, you have no incentive to reduce your pollution further. If on the other hand you are a company who has enormous marginal costs in reducing pollution, you can buy your forgiveness from a company whose cost to reduce pollution is less. If you have no market to buy from you may be faced with a situation where you can not meet your pollution targets and are forced to shut down entirely. One of the reasons, for example, that we have problems with electricity here in California is that we haven't built a power plant in decades because they can't meet the new overly stingent environmental standards. Additionally, there are companies and plants who refuse to do improvements that would increase efficiency and reduce pollution because the current plant is grandfathered into an older regulation that they would lose the benefit of should they make the improvement ... the entire plant would be subject to the latest regulations. Effectively, this disincentivises companies from making improvements that would reduce pollution.

[jextract]

Here is an example of bias in media over this subject, as reported in Best of the Web:

http://story.news.ya...to_islands_dc_1

"Islanders on tiny Tuvalu in the South Pacific last week saw the future of global warming and rising sea levels, as extreme high tides caused waves to crash over crumbling sea-walls and flood their homes," Reuters reports:

"Our island is sinking together with our hearts," wrote Silafaga Lalua in Tuvalu News. . . .

Tuvalu is a remote island nation consisting of a fringe of atolls covering just 10 sq miles, with the highest point no more than 17 ft above sea level, but most a mere 6.5 ft.

Global warming from greenhouse gas pollution is regarded as the main reason for higher sea levels, now rising about 2mm (0.08 in) a year, which could swamp low-lying nations such as Tuvalu and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean if temperatures keep rising.

For the sake of argument, let's assume this "global warming" stuff is true. If the sea continues rising at 0.08 inch a year, that means Tuvalu will be mostly submerged in 975 years, and will disappear entirely in 2,550 years. So in the year 4555 we can expect to read headlines like: "Tuvalu Disappears, Bush to Blame."

[mvillanueva]

Buying and selling of emissions credits is the most cost effective way to cut overall emissions. ....

Jamie:

This marketing of emmission credits has been very successful in Europe. It is quite a big business there -- while the costs to pollute are often passed onto consumers, the oeverall effect has been to reduce emissions.

[WreckWench]

I would like to thank all participants in this thread for regaining emotional and passionate and compassionate composure and/or for not losing it in the first place. While heartfelt commentary is good, inciting a response or otherwise tossing potentially inflamitory retorts, remarks, conclusions or statements around is not appropriate on SD.com Why? Because it creates arguements and discord for the sake of 'discussion and debate'. This is not conducive to the friendly nature of the site and detracts from the fun that people have come to expect on singledivers.com.

And if you feel compelled to have such discussions without regard for common courtesy and respect as requested by other members as well as the staff, you'll simply be asked to carry the discussion on via pm, or offline. Many websites already exist which will accommodate discussions far beyond what is appropriate on SD and it may come to the point where you'll be asked to carry a particular conversation on in another venue.

If the conversation remains objective and polite regardless of the side of the question you are on, then we ALL will learn and benefit from it. If you get lost in your zeal, even if you are right...you'll lose your point in the hyperbole.

[Genesis]

I personally don't know of anyone who believes that much can be done about global warming.  Even the Kyoto Accord is seen as a first step toward change that might eventually have an effect.  We are in the trend and we'll just have to ride it out.
Getting rid of your SUV isn't going to help at all.

It's more than a bit absurd to say that because you believe in something, you have to completely conform to a constructed code of behavior.

A person could believe in the death penalty, but be unwilling to be an executioner.

I believe in weekly home trash pickup but I don't plan to become a trashman.

There are many, many things that we all believe in but we don't necessarily carry out in our personal or professional lives.

For those on this thread that would like to read a nice succinct discussion of global warming, the EPA has a good page.
http://yosemite.epa....ertainties.html

And another interesting article can be seen at
http://www.atsnn.com/story/81795.html

Carbon dioxide is just one of several greenhouse gases.

The two references you put forth are exactly the kind of troublesome "conclusion by argument rather than by evidence" thing I've been talking about.

The EPA's "paper" makes all sorts of statements without any citation or actual evidence. Their claim that the "buildup" in CO2 levels is a consequence of human activities, for example, is unproven. In addition, CO2 is not necessarily a long-cycle gas - indeed, it is essential for plant growth and by extension, for life on earth. Were it not for CO2 in the atmopshere, we would all be dead in a very short period of time. The biological cycle and food chain we all depend on simply must have CO2 in the atmosphere to operate!

There is a further confounding factor missing from the sky-is-falling folks, and since most of them are fairly intelligent I can only surmise that this omission is intentional. That is the fact that biological processes are greatly influenced in their rate by temperature.

Indeed, a 10 degree Celcius rise in temperature generally doubles the rate of biological processes, provided that it is within the range that organism can tolerate!

This is why operating rooms in hospitals are kept as cool as can be tolerated by people in scrubs. Warmer temperatures radically increase the rate of growth of bacteria, thereby making infections more likely - and more deadly.

The confounding factor not accounted for is that this acceleration in biological activity will cause more CO2 to be taken up and converted to oxygen via photosynthesis as the temperature rises - both in sea and on land. Plankton in the sea account for a radical percentage of the total CO2:O2 conversion - without them we would all be dead due to O2 starvation, even if we could solve the food chain problems that their lack would produce.

This is just one of the missing factors that anyone who has studied biology, myself included, can identify in these "studies." If these factors were accounted for and explained then one could proceed. However, they're not and thus you can't, unless you're willing to ignore known biological facts to "make your point stick."

The bottom line is that there are many "buffering actions" in the environment that act inversely as threats arise and fall. So as CO2 causes sea temperatures to rise, CO2 conversion rises for a given mass of plankton, and plankton growth and reproduction also increases in rate - both of which decrease CO2 levels. The system rebalances itself.

This does not happen immediately of course, but it does happen. It is why, when the planet has gone through ice ages in the past, it didn't stay frozen. It is also why, when the temperature in the arctic rose by 59 degrees fahrenheit in the last 10,000 years, it didn't stay that warm! We are fortunate that this is the case, otherwise the planet would have self-destructed a very long time ago - before humans could have ever walked on it.

The folks screaming about the global warming issue have uniformly ignored this basic biological fact. It is a fact that everyone who has ever taken any sort of medical training, or any kind of biology - even at the high school level - knows about. I can only surmise that the reason for this omission in their models is intentional, because to include it does not suit the pre-conceived notions of the persons doing the study. That this sort of omission passes peer review without causing the studies to be rejected is scandalous - but this sort of 'omission' is not uncommon. Witness the 'cold fusion' debacle of a few years ago - that paper passed peer review as well, but not long after it was published people started having trouble duplicating the results! Ultimately, the claims were withdrawn.

In addition there is a further confounding factor - the energy emissions of the Sun change over time. It has been rising of late. Historical evidence suggests that it ebbs and flows, and there is evidence suggesting that there is a time-based pattern. Again, this emission change has been routinely ignored by the studies, yet to ignore this is the worst kind of folly, since the Sun is indeed the energy source that makes life on earth possible at all. Very small changes in the Sun's energy emission have radical effects on the climate of the Earth, just as our orbit makes life possible here.

There are many more factors similar to these. In addition many of the mathmatical models used by these folks have been discredited, much as the "hockey stick" article from MIT shows.

That the "scientists" who have run these studies managed to get their work through peer review tells me that the reviews are either not stringent enough or people are intentionally burying their heads in the sand to avoid exposing willful misconduct on the part of these 'scientists'.

BTW, while CO2 is only one of several greenhouse gases, it is the one which is disproportionately represented simply due to the fact that the burning of carbon-based fuels produces so much of it. All the other gasses pale by comparison.

Indeed, while we can talk about other gasses from a standpoint of smog and air quality, when it comes to greenhouse emissions in the context of combustion of carbon-based fuels only CO2 matters.

As an example, to illustrate how bankrupt the EPA's "Ratings" of vehicles for "greenhouse emissions" is, they rate vehicles using only NOx and SOx emissions. By these ratings Diesels always lose, and always will.

This rating system is fundamentally dishonest.

Why?

Because for each pound of carbon-based fuel you burn, you will produce an amount of CO2 that is determined by the amount of carbon in the fuel and the oxygen used to oxidize it. These amounts dwarf the other emissions of that vehicle to the point that the other gasses, in the context of greenhouse emissions, are irrelavent.

Your car emits 22lbs of CO2 for each gallon of gasoline (or diesel) it consumes, and this number cannot be decreased except by burning the fuel less efficiently (and emitting other pollutants!) As a comparison, under the pre-06 diesel standards, you are allowed to emit 0.3 grams per mile of NOx. Diesel fuel weighs 7 lbs/gallon, and if your car gets 50mpg then you can emit (0.3 * 50) = 15 grams per gallon of fuel consumed. Since there are 454 grams in a pound, you will emit 0.15% as much NOx as you do CO2. (BTW, the 2006 standards cut the permitted NOx emissions by some 90%!)

Now let's compare.

Diesel fuel contains roughly 20% more BTUs per gallon than gasoline. So for an engine efficiency exactly equivalent for both fuels, the diesel vehicle will travel 20% more miles than the gasoline vehicle for the same number of gallons used.

But it gets better. A diesel-cycle engine is significantly more efficient than a gasoline-cycle engine, particularly at part-throttle operation, because a diesel has no throttle plate. Diesel fuel consumption is typically figured at 1 gallon for every 16-20 horsepower/hour. That is, if you run a diesel engine of 20 horsepower for an hour at full output, it will burn somewhere between 0.8 and 1.0 gallon during that time.

Gasoline engines are rated at 1 gallon for every 10 horsepower/hour.

Diesels gets that improvement by operating at a higher thermal efficiency. With higher thermal efficiency comes higher NOx emisssions. There is no way around this fact; it is a matter of the basic physics of combustion in an atmosphere that contains nitrogen, just as is getting bent if you dive breathing an inert gas and come up too quickly!

Indeed, diesel engines are so efficient that if you start one in the wintertime and then go back inside it will never warm up! Not until you put it under load and drive it will you get heat in the car. Not so for a gas engine, which will happily warm up if you start it on a cold morning and then go back inside for some coffee. (My Jetta solves this problem on cold mornings with seat heaters until the engine can warm up!) Same thing in my boat - as soon as I come back to idle, the diesel engines immediately start to cool down - they're unable to keep their internal temperature up without being forced to do work.

So by simply switching to diesel cars we would drop our CO2 emissions attributed to cars by 40% immediately. We would increase NOx emissions, but 0.15% increase in one greenhouse gas hardly outweighs a 40% decrease in another! Its completely lost in the noise. And with 2006 standards, diesel engines will be required to meet gasoline engine NOx emission standards (mostly done by catalytic converters), so even that disability will disappear.

Simply put, NOx, for greenhouse purposes, is irrelavent. Only CO2 matters.

The EPAs "Green" ratings for vehicles are, to be blunt, fraudulent and they know it. Yet they continue to push "hybrid" vehicles and slam diesel ones.

Why? Politics.

Don't believe a bit of this - go do the research for yourself. The research on fuel burn per horsepower/hour of output is readily available from anyone who owns one or more boats - modern vessels all have fuel management systems on them and the owners can tell you what they burn. The amount of CO2 emitted for a gallon of fuel is a simple matter of molecular weights - add it up.

These numbers are entirely reliable and backed up by both engine manufacturers and scientific testing. If they weren't I would have run out of fuel more times than I can count in my boats - but I haven't.

Please examine claims made about "global warming" and what we can do with a critical eye. There are things we can do right now to have a real impact on this issue. One of them would be to ban the sale of gasoline powered vehicles, mandating diesel-fueled vehicles be sold instead. That would make a real impact on US CO2 emissions - indeed, it would roughly double Kyoto's demand on the United States all by itself. Even better, diesel-fueled vehicles can be run on short-carbon-cycle fuels (those grown from renewables), which have zero net CO2 contribution (since the same CO2 produced must be taken back up by the plant turned into fuel in order to make more fuel.)

Never mind the developing world problem, which nothing we can do in this nation will address. By 2025 China alone will emit more CO2 than the United States, Japan and Canada - under their pre-Kyoto projections - combined.

China is exempt from limits under Kyoto.

Indeed, even if we were to stop all greenhouse emissions tomorrow, global levels would continue to rise due to the developing nation pressure.

Developing nations are expected to produce more than 75% of all CO2 emissions within the next 50 years - those very nations exempt from Kyoto.

BTW, California's power problem was home-grown insanity of the worst kind. You cannot prevent all development of a given necessary infrastructure while you permit unbridled growth in the same area, and not expect something to break. Yet that is exactly what California did over the course of more than 20 years. IMHO the result was not only predictable but deserved, and unless the folks out there wake up and decide that they must put infrastructure growth before the population and business growth, they're going to get a further series of nasty surprises. May the rest of the nation have the political will to "just say no" when the folks responsible - the California voters - scream for bailouts. One potential solution? Nuclear power.

[jextract]

Interesting column from the Wall Street Journal
http://www.opinionjo...ml?id=110006314

[peterbj7]

I can't resist adding my two-pennyworth. I have to confess that I haven't read the lengthy diatribes above, because at the end of a busy working day I just haven't got the patience. I am convinced that global warming is happening, that it is happening quite independently of anything man may or may not do, and that nothing man can do in the future will have any effect on it whatsoever. I base this assessment largely on commonsense, given a reasonable knowledge of geological history and of other intelligent scientists' assessments based on their detailed researches.

What interests me is not how to stop it, because I'm quite sure that's impossible, but how to predict what its effects may be and in what timescale, and hence what we should be doing to live with it. Dramatic and profound changes are undoubtedly on their way, and if we are to have any hope of surviving them we must understand them. Many areas currently in agriculture will cease to support crops (look at how the Sahara was created) so we need to start developing areas which may be able to replace them.

This is the paramount need - to be able to continue to produce food. If sections of land are submerged by rising seas, that is something we just have to manage. We can't stop it. So long as we can eat - many of these changes are predicted to occur too quickly for agriculture to adjust. I fear there will be massive and prolonged famines in many densely populated parts of the world that will lead to vast loss of life, because at the same time the traditional aid donors will find their abilities to spare and distribute enough much diminished.

This may seem to some "doom and gloom"; I think it's just realism. We are living through the tail end of an ice age and there is still quite a lot of ice still to melt. I think the geological record suggests that that will happen. And increasingly scientists believe that these changes do not happen in a smooth uniform way but in a series of abrupt "jerks". A major one for the Atlantic seaboard is the disappearance as we know it of the Gulfstream - many scientists now believe this has already started and will be complete within 20 years. The climates of Britain and Europe will change dramatically.

I do feel mankind is currently rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

[drbill]

Have not read all the posts in this thread, so I may duplicate ideas already posted.

I do not think the fact of "global warming" is in dispute. Of course the cause of global warming may well be in dispute.

To present a "true" picture, one needs data analyzed with consistent tools throughout the time frame involved. Fortunately we have some reasonably tried and true tools to analyze temperature in sequential layers liie ice pack and sea floor sediments.

There is no question that we do not yet understand the natural short- and long-period variations in climate. Our database is in most cases too limited to understand them completely. In addition ones with different periods may reinforce or cancel out one another. It is a very difficult situation to tease out the data.

For example, we have been warming since the Little Ice Age (dated in various parts of the world from 1350 to 1900 AD). This warming is occuring over periods of centuries, relatively fast by geologic time. More recently, warming coinciding with the industrialization of Europe and America seems to be accelerated. This acceleration is what one might expect from changes due to a strong anthropogenic component.

Personally, I believe that global warming exists. I believe that global warming has a significant anthropogenic signal or component. I believe climate change is occuring more rapidly than would be the case if it were strictly "natural" in origin.

And I bought my home on Catalina on a hill at an elevation of about 200 feet to ensure I will still have property when the Flats (tens of feet above sea level) here in Avalon become a submerged dive park!

Dr. Bill

[drbill]

Live what you preach, and we will find the foundation for a debate. Prove your own hypocrisy the moment you step off the soapbox and into that SUV or airplane, and logical, thinking people are free to laugh in response.

Although I would disagree with some of your post, you raise a good point here. I have lived on Catalina for 35 years. I do not own a car here and walk everywhere (occasionally riding my bike). I carry all my dive gear 1+ miles to the dive park and then back every using a hand cart. I do own a car on the mainland, but drive it less than 1-2,000 miles a year and it gets 40-45 mpg.

When I lived in Chicago, I would ride my bike to work (7 miles each way) which meant I didn't have to go to the gym to work out. I would even ride it into the city or to the Lake. Of course during those absurd Chicago winters (81 below with the wind chill my last year there), I did have to drive.

We all must recognize our own contributions to environmental degradation before we can solve the problems. Many can adjust their lifestyles substantially to reduce impacts, while some cannot (especially if they live in LALA land where mass transit still needs further development). I am fortunate that I can life a lifestyle with less impact than most are realistically able to achieve.

Dr. Bill

[drdiver]

It's a laudable concept and I'm glad you're doing it. I do my bit, I have a 10 minute drive from work.

But most of people don't have that option. Especially the single moms that comprise 30% of the work force. They have to get the kids to school and then get to work or wherever they need to go.

Most people can always find something for someone else to do, but they can't walk a mile in their moccasins.

I have the luxury of deciding how I will commute, but many people don't and I deplore the inhumaniy of people (and I'm not talking about you Dr. Bill) who want to pronounce on what needs to be done without a consideration of the economic, social and above all personal consequences of taking an action to prevent global warming.

The basic reality is we can't do anything. Not without major economic upheavals and even if we did, it is is doubtful that it can be done in time to make a difference.

Just my two cents worth, I'm not trying to start an argument.

Peace,

drdiver