[Vision2020] PCEI Climate Change Forum Discussion On Local Blog

[Paul Rumelhart]

Even though I tend to be skeptical of many of the doomsday scenarios 
that seem to crop up in this debate, I do find it hard to believe that 
they are apparently denying anthropogenic global warming.  It seems 
pretty clear to me that we are having some effect on our environment, 
and that the greenhouse effect due to carbon dioxide is part of the 
problem.  As I've said many times before, there are plenty of other 
reasons to reduce our dependence on oil, this is just one of them.  I'm 
still skeptical of the magnitude, though.

That being said, the research I've seen that references satellite data 
that shows that our sun is increasing in brightness seems pretty telling 
to me.  I'm skeptical of the sunspot cycles and the Maunder minimum 
having that great of an effect also, though I'm hoping that research in 
that direction will continue, but the fact that the big ball of fusing 
hydrogen that gives us all our energy in one way or another (except 
possibly for radioactive elements buried in the Earth or energy from 
tides) is getting brighter (and presumably warmer) seems like it ought 
to be important.  Trying to determine the effect of greenhouse gases 
inside our atmosphere in such a complex system seems inherently 
difficult and thus to some degree I'm skeptical of the magnitude of it.  
Clear readings from space is a lot less ambiguous.

That doesn't mean that we don't have a problem on our hands, but I think 
that some people go too far to try to blame every part of climate change 
on the evil oil barons.  The global warming party line is to blame it 
all on us, and to decree that reducing our carbon footprint will solve 
the problem.  I haven't reviewed much scientific literature on their 
predictions, but I think that's a pretty bold thing to say without some 
detailed predictions that have been made that accurately described the 
climate change over a sizable period of time.  I'd also like to hear 
some ideas about how to fight global warming given the assumption that 
reducing our carbon footprint isn't enough, or, failing that, some ideas 
about how to survive it better.

Paul

Ted Moffett wrote:
> All-
>  
> A mere mention of the fact that our local cool weather the past few 
> days says absolutely nothing about long term global climate trends, 
> given the difference between local seasonal weather variability and 
> long term global climate change, inspires this response from local 
> blog right-mind.us <http://right-mind.us>:
>  
> http://right-mind.us/blogs/blog_0/archive/2008/03/27/58989.aspx
> -----------
> I suggest presenting these arguments and data to a panel of well 
> credentialed climate scientists who host an award winning website/blog 
> on climate science, Realclimate:
>  
> http://www.realclimate.org
> -----------
> However, given that some of the issues presented in the response on 
> right-mind.us <http://right-mind.us> above, have already been 
> discussed in detail on this website, you may just be referred to the 
> previous discussions:
>  
> http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/sun-earth-connections/page/2/
>  
> http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/sun-earth-connections/
> -----------
> I am merely a concerned citizen with no specialized scientific 
> expertise, who studies the scientific consensus on anthropogenic 
> climate change (and what we can do to address the problem), if there 
> is one, which it appears quite likely there is, given the consensus 
> position on the issue arrived at by the Intergovernmental Panel on 
> Climate Change:
>  
> http://www.ipcc.ch/
> ----------------------------
> Scientist Gavin Schmidt, offering his expertise in the discussions on 
> sunspot correlations with Earth's climate (The Trouble With Sunspots) 
> at the URL above on Realclimate, is a specialized climate science 
> expert, revealed by the bios on Schmidt at the URLs below.  If you 
> truly want to debate an expert on climate science, someone of 
> Schmidt's caliber would provide a worthy challenge:
>  
> http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=46
>  
> http://www.giss.nasa.gov/~gavin/ <http://www.giss.nasa.gov/%7Egavin/>
>  
> -----------------------------------------
> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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