The Climate Challenge

[technomage]

Well her In Australia (Sydney, NSW) it's definitely gotten hotter on average than it once was.

In the uk it's usually very cold this time of year. but the last 10 years is been milder. I was shocked to see a bee collecting polen from a flower yesterday, both the flower and the bee are not usually about until april. On of my collegues at work was up feeding hedgehogs with his daughter the other day, again the hedgehog should have been hybernating.

Make of that what you will :?

[cragwolf]

A really good blog that debunks many of the ignorant and disingenuous claims made against and on behalf of climatology is RealClimate. To learn about the subject in a more structured way, I recommend the American Institute of Physics web site, which has a mini-site devoted to The Discovery of Global Warming. Happy reading and learning.

[Robert Kosek]

Looking back I must laugh at this, since it really has little significance. In determining the future, maybe so, and in the present, sorta. I've been saying conserve energy for years, turn the lights out when you leave the room, etc, and not just for monetary reasons.

I wasn't worried about specifying where I got my information from, cragwolf, since you obviously would heckle it regardless of if I stated it were creationist in origin or not. I've had this argument repeatedly with coworkers, people with Master's Degrees and Ph.D.'s too, and actually fought them into a position of indecision upon the matter. We had some very entertaining and eventful debates over the lunch table, we're quite the multi-national bunch.

You need merely have asked for where I got the information, rather than assume I hid it. I made no effort to hide my tracks whatsoever; I copied the text verbatim. Google or Creative Commons (perhaps) would've located it in the blink of an eye and there you'd be.

It's because of individuals such as yourself, Cragwolf, that I decided not to become a scientist, researcher, or even programmer such as in C++ as I'd have to be (that or Java/C#). Because when the theory (or project) outweighs objectivity to the point that any shred of a clue makes it worthwhile or 'valid', there is nothing I can do to dissuade the illusion. The Church of Darwinism is quite the monster when it comes to stomping out any conflicting sciences, although most frequently the researchers in the forefront of it will actually admit there is no evidence whatsoever supporting their theory.

I don't have the faith required to believe in evolution, Darwinism, or old earth theories. Nor global warming for the time being -- it was quite cold up in Montana when I lived there.

Of course if you live within range of the sea and worry about property damage within the next twenty years, why not move inland, chicken little?

And yes I am so entirely uneducated to forget the side of science known as peer review, or 'double checking', or 'verification'. The Truth Behind An Inconvenient Truth, courtesy of the NCPA. In point of fact they have an entire category upon Global Warming. I don't typically comprehend all of the science behind an idea, but I typically trust private organizations dedicated to reviewing and verifying the various rogue theories out there. You might also check their "Myths of Global Warming" article while you're there.

[cragwolf]

Robert, I don't want to speculate on why or how you came to be so willfully ignorant and horribly misinformed about such well-established scientific theories, but you're an adult now, and an intelligent one at that (how else could you design sophisticated algorithms and implement them in Object Pascal?), so there is always a chance that one day you will break off the emotional shackles that tie you down and limit your world view. If that happens, I will be here to recommend some books for your scientific edification.

[technomage]

I don't want this to get into a argument (or personal in any way). You all make some good arguments on wether gloabal warming is happening or not. Not all scientists argee, but that is what science is all about, I'm sure there are people out there who say that Newton's theory of gravity is compelte bolderdash , but the theory works most of the time so until a better one comes along......

All I will say is this...

whether you believe in the gloabal warming theory or not, we must all acknowledge that it is the responsibility of every person to do their bit to keep this planet in good condition, not only for us but for future generations. Until such time as we are able to sow the seed of humanity to other world this is all we have.

[Chesso]

Just remember guys, atleast someone has to oppose an idea, it won't evolve very far without some conlflict, and if no one challenges it, you might not just not find a better way, and well yeah I'm sure you get my point as I'm not fully sure how to get it across :lol: .

[LP]

Huh, PGD will never change! :lol:

[size=7px]Since nobody seem very enthusiastic about congratulating Pascal winner(s) in TMDC or giving any comments on Asphyre/Lazarus conversion, thought I'd join this discussion... =)
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Well, in the past years I've certainly witnessed some weird climatic changes, but there is no mathematical certainty that it is directly caused by Human activity (although in commonsense we could say so - multiple explosions from the warheads here and there during all the wars should've affected the climate in some way).

I personally am skeptical about global warming. Since I've been told by my folks who were(are) physicists/vulcanologists that weather weapons have existed for many years already, why would we contribute the extreme climate changes to a natural phenomena (global warming) and not to be sinthetic (e.g. weather weapons, detonations during warfare, etc.)?

However, I also doubt we would be able to prevent any of climate catastrophes even if we wanted to, considering that to destroy some 400 meter asteroid that might hit Earth, the governments need like 20 years of preparation. Gee, looks like Bruce Willis ain't gonna save us after all.

I recall when I went to observatory with my father to look on the impact of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 parts onto the surface of Jupiter. Man, that looked terrible! The entire 143,000 km planet was a mess! We may have the same fate very soon, so you guys should not worry about the long term weather effects. :lol:

[edit: offtopic]
P.S. That "99942 Apophis" asteroid linked above - check what it means. Cool, isn't it?
[/edit]

[cronodragon]

I'm not sure neither about the global warming being real or not. The only time I have seen it to be a real danger was playing Sid Meier's Civilization :lol:

But I can say that today I'm more interested on the topic. I have respiratory allergy problems. I get really bad, specially when I breath dust, and medicines are expensive (imported = +taxes) and their effect temporary. When you have respiratory allergy you can't breath well, you sneeze the whole day, even two or three days constantly, and the nose get's blocked. If you can't breath well you get sleepy, so it gets very hard to think... specially when programming. It's something that really makes your life bad :cry:

Watching another documentary on tv, there was an study about the relation between the destruction of the corals in the Caribbean and respiratory problems in the population of our countries. It seems there is not connection, but incredible as it sounds they found a common cause of those very different problems: the sands of the desert in Africa. They explained how the sands get in the atmosphere and large clouths of dust fall over our lands. :shock: Weeks later I read an article in the newspaper that confirmed me the information of the documentary, a big clouth of dust falled directly over our country. So this is very real, and I feel the effects directly on me. The study revealed that the sands from Sahara come with spores that produce allergies and asthma.

And what makes more sand?? Deforestation! So deforestation in Africa is making us sick. The whole world is connected in one or another way, this is not neoliberal propaganda.

If the global warming alert is just a complot of some scientists for us to stop deforstation, industrial pollution, oil burning, eating pieces of shark, cutting elephants ears or whatever, for me it's a great idea. Hopefully people will get more attention on those problems that affect or will affect everyone.

So to those people in Africa, please, please don't piss in the sand :lol: Joking

[Chesso]

That's quite true, even if it isn't fully real or real at all, there's plenty of good reasons to still do these things.

[cragwolf]

It almost goes without saying that the science of climatology is filled with great uncertainties. I am rather agnostic about the subject, particularly when it comes to our abilities to predict the climate with computer modelling, but that's mostly because of my own level of ignorance on the subject. The scientific debate on climate change is currently being won by those scientists who suspect that humans are contributing to the recent observed global warming. They may end up being completely wrong about it, of course. But unless you study the subject in significant detail, your skepticism and opinions on it are practically worthless.

The other debate is the political debate. This is only partly based on science, but also on religion, philosophy, economics, greed, fear and ignorance. This is the debate that you typically see in the popular media, such as newspapers, TV and the internet, and thus it may skew your view of the subject. The political debate generates more heat than light, while the scientific debate generates more light than heat. But both debates are needed. One only wishes that the political debate was as illuminating as the scientific debate.

It is true that conflict is a necessary component of science. But there are real conflicts and there are fake conflicts. The conflict between evolutionary scientists and creationists is fake: creationists are simply deluded nutcases. The conflict between evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould (now deceased) is a real conflict: are genes the only units of natural selection, or can species or even groups of species also play that role? Fake conflicts do not advance the progress of science; indeed, they can hinder it when the nutcases are in positions of power, such as in school boards and the White House. Only real conflicts move science forward.