I was curious about whether any disc golfers have seen this film yet and what your reactions were. For me, An Inconvenient Truth was clear and straightforward with the science and Gore came off as passionate and sincere. He distilled all the evidence that has been building over the past thirty years, he covered all the relevant points and he was frighteningly convincing. Extreme weather conditions, like the unusually heavy and prolonged rain that we are currently experiencing here in the Mid-Atlantic region, are one of the many projected outcomes of global warming. I left the movie theatre last night feeling shaken to the core. This is serious stuff.
If you live on Earth and cherish the prospect of a full life on this planet, then you owe it to yourself to see this film. This is especially true if you happen to have kids.

Propaganda

Now if the movie talked about all the evidence against
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/al_poster200.jpg (http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/)

Bryan, I haven't seen the movie, but it has been awfully **** hot lately, and I did hear that the earth is at it hottest in at least 400 years, if not thousands. I did watch a Nova show where they said that by cleaning the particulates out of the air, we'll breathe better, but burn up quicker since they reflect the sun back out to space. I heard that there has already been a rise in sea level and the rate is predicted to accelarate.

You mean these scientists are hucksters? They are just saying this to get a rise out of the right. Right? Am I better off taking Dick and W's word on all the science of the day, I mean the science that is allowed to be taught?

Pizza, some days it's hard to say I know you.

It's called science and I'm appalled at how little the general public, and our President, understands it.

Global warming is here, even the nay-sayers agree. Those who stand against it don't argue it isn't here, they make the argument that the warming trends could be part of a standard cycle. What they neglect is the fact that the evidence shows that no change in global temperature has ever occurred so rapidly before. They also ignore the direct evidence that we are impacting the temperature and even if it is a normal cycle, we're making it worse. BTW - the nay-sayers, they are for the most part employees of the big oil companies, funny that. Does it sound a lot like the "cigarettes don't cause cancer crowd?"

In case you haven't noticed Pizza, in the past few years we've had record numbers of large hurricanes and they're beating the crud out of the Gulf Coast. We've also had record numbers of floods (are you watching the news at all?). The amount of rain falling is because there is a whole lot more heat in the ocean, which translates into more energy, more storms, and more rain.

The reason that guys like Pizza want to ignore this is nicely summed up in the name of Gore's movie - An inconvenient truth. To do something would mean a loss in billions of dollars in profit by oil companies and other major polluters; that is, don't count on anything being done in the near future.

What do I believe, well the average temp for the world has gone up 1 degree in 100 years. Big wooppie

For every scientists that says we are having "Global Warming", there are more that say this is not happening. What is actually happening is that we are slowly changing as has always happened. There has always been HUGE floods, there has always been years of very few or many named storms.

We were due for a huge year in the Atlantic Ocean last year, the numbers showed that before the year even started.

Actually read what that link I posted said. One thing it pointed out is that if we had more of a "greenhouse effect" like the movie says, the temp would actually go down instead of up (more clouds)

BTW - Pizza, did you actually read the paper you posted? This guy is classic. He acknowledges global warming and that CO2 does cause it but then tries to show there is no correlation (it's not direct enough for him). He basically slams the pro-global warming guys for relying too heavily on their extrapolations of global temps and then speculates that it could be due to changes in solar activity as evidenced from past changes in solar activity that he... extrapolates. Hmmmm

BTW - he is correct, the hockey stick graph is hokey and misrepresents the situation. It's used because the general public won't pay attention to the subtle yet significant measurements that accuratly depict the changes going on.

When I was working in science I often looked at events that occurred once or twice in 10,000 to 100,000 measurments. Most people just don't get that those events can be important. It's too easy for some marketer or politician to say, "look at how tiny that is, it's nothing."

What do I believe, well the average temp for the world has gone up 1 degree in 100 years. Big wooppie

For every scientists that says we are having "Global Warming", there are more that say this is not happening. What is actually happening is that we are slowly changing as has always happened. There has always been HUGE floods, there has always been years of very few or many named storms.

We were due for a huge year in the Atlantic Ocean last year, the numbers showed that before the year even started.

Actually read what that link I posted said. One thing it pointed out is that if we had more of a "greenhouse effect" like the movie says, the temp would actually go down instead of up (more clouds)



Arggggg!

This nicely sums up my point. Do you have any idea what 1 degree represents in terms of melting the ice caps or glaciers and having an impact on hurricane strength?

Second, your "scientist has it backwards. Clouds don't just hold out sun rays, they also hold in heat. Lets assume we have two sun rays and that they represent a certain level of energy that can impact the earth. One gets bounced out, one gets in. The bounced one is gone but the one that gets in stays in, due to the clouds and transmitts much more of it's energy to heat than it would have.

Why do you think Venus is so much hotter than it's relative postition to the sun merits? It's the cloud cover holding all the energy in. Any science fiction buff can tell you that!

One point overlooked in this is that the number one priority for man's survival should be figuring out how to leave the planet and colonize elsewhere. Stephen Hawking is now on this bandstand, too. If something happens whether accelerated global warming or a meteor strike and man gets wiped out, we lose in the big picture of the evolutionary survival stakes. The only ultimate "win" in the universe is survival of the species from a physical standpoint (setting aside spiritual aspects for the moment.) If we're smart enough to get to this point, we should be smart enough to spend the effort to spread beyond Earth.

Take a closer look at the web site Pizza referred to, they also advocate the use of DDT. Too funny.

One point overlooked in this is that the number one priority for man's survival should be figuring out how to leave the planet and colonize elsewhere. Stephen Hawking is now on this bandstand, too. If something happens whether accelerated global warming or a meteor strike and man gets wiped out, we lose in the big picture of the evolutionary survival stakes. The only ultimate "win" in the universe is survival of the species from a physical standpoint (setting aside spiritual aspects for the moment.) If we're smart enough to get to this point, we should be smart enough to spend the effort to spread beyond Earth.



While in general I agree with Stephan, I hate the thought that the primary reason we need to be looking is because we are taking a dump in our own bed.

I predict that within the next 100 years Mother Nature is going to let us have it. I don't think we will die out but we might lose half our population. Think about ebola. What happens when someone with ebola gets on a plane and flies to Europe?

I hate the thought that the primary reason we need to be looking is because we are taking a dump in our own bed.




I don't think that's the reason. Man has spread out to many places on the planet which has at least spread out the need for overutilizing resources in one location. It's simply a logical survival strategy regardless whether global warming was happening faster or slower than the forecast you believe.

web page (http://www.predictweather.com/global_warming/index.asp)
web page (http://www.abd.org.uk/green_myths.htm)
web page (http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=116)
web page (http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=13830&ch=biztech)
web page (http://www.junkscience.com/may99/fumfrogs.htm)
web page (http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=14871)
Just a few I found in a few minuets.

No, I don't think we have a problem, we are on the right track. That does not mean we should not watch it, we could destroy the earth if we don't watch it.

On the other hand, one little meteor could wipe out everything.

One thing you need to remember

Who makes more news

The guy who predicts "doom and gloom"

or the guy who says everything will be fine.

Who makes more news
The guy who predicts "doom and gloom"



Great point! That explains our currently strategy for the Department of Homeland Security.

Sorry, that's a different thread /msgboard/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

Who makes more news
The guy who predicts "doom and gloom"



Great point! That explains our currently strategy for the Department of Homeland Security.

Sorry, that's a different thread /msgboard/images/graemlins/smirk.gif



Ouch! No, really, the GOP play on public fear? Never!

web page (http://www.predictweather.com/global_warming/index.asp)
web page (http://www.abd.org.uk/green_myths.htm)
web page (http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=116)
web page (http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=13830&ch=biztech)
web page (http://www.junkscience.com/may99/fumfrogs.htm)
web page (http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=14871)
Just a few I found in a few minuets.

No, I don't think we have a problem, we are on the right track. That does not mean we should not watch it, we could destroy the earth if we don't watch it.

On the other hand, one little meteor could wipe out everything.



O.K. Za, did ya read them? Let's start with the first one, the one with the woman who predicts weather based on her corns. Do you really think this woman can have any idea what the weather a week out is? /msgboard/images/graemlins/smirk.gif Would you rely on her to warn you of an imminent hurricane?

Secondly, the goober who wrote the piece didn't bother to look up the classic definition of global warming before he started to write. Global warming doesn't just predict an average increase in temps. Major changes in weather are always accompanied by larger shifts in short term and annual weather patterns. That is, you get bigger swings. One year the coldest winter on record, the next the warmest. Lets see Pizza, last winter it snowed in Houston for the first time in something like 100 years and this year it was one of the warmest ever recorded. This guys observation that there have been some very cold winters does not disprove global warming, rather it is entirely consistent with it. Most of his writing is the same kind of stuff Bush puts out, well, if I can't see it, it can't be real. CO2 doesn't rise, if it did fire extinguishers wouldn't work. Holy cow Za, at least the first one could think... a little.


BTW - Pizza and I have done this before. He pulls up a dozen sites, none of which have any real merit, I get to waste a couple hours of time pointing out the holes in the logic of the idiots who write this stuff, and by then Za has moved onto some other conservative rant. Basically, for Pizza, anything that stands in the way of making money must be wrong.

The second site is sponsored by the British Driving Association, a car industry group who's major goal is to promote, well, I'll let you guess what they are promoting.

Let's see, there is a 3.5% increase in CO2 due to man's activity and that doesn't mean anything to this writer. You'd like this guy Pizza, he's incapable of considering that 3.5% might be important, or even bothering to look to see if it might be important.

O.K. Za, did ya read them? Let's start with the first one, the one with the woman who predicts weather based on her corns. Do you really think this woman can have any idea what the weather a week out is? Would you rely on her to warn you of an imminent hurricane?




Did you read anything other than the first paragraph of that article.

He started out by pointing out that the womans corn's predicted the weather better than the weathermen and all there fancy computer stuff.

It is true, I mostly skimmed those articles. I only pointed out that there are those that DO NOT think there is a big problem or that what may be causing a small rise in temp was not caused by man, but by nature its self.

It is true though that CO2 is heavier than air, right??? The very first article was only pointing out of the propaganda that Gore's movie says.

Let me say again, I have not seen the movie yet, I will wait till it's on video and rent it. However, I will, as with any documentary, not be fooled by what I see on the screen. If I really want to know the truth, I will read about both sides of the argument and base my opinion on that.

Gore is making money off this movie and the talk circut from this, unless he is donating all his money back to science, he is promoting this for profit.

And no, if big business was saying there was/was not a problem, I would not believe them either.

I only posted the other side of the argument. You have to know both sides of a subject to really have an opinion. Don't believe everything everything you read, don't always believe everything someone tell you.

This includes me, do the research yourself and make up your own mind.

The second site is sponsored by the British Driving Association, a car industry group who's major goal is to promote, well, I'll let you guess what they are promoting.




Ok, where do you get that from

<font color="blue"> The Association of British Drivers (ABD) is a voluntary non-profit making organization funded by subscriptions and donations from ordinary members of the public. We receive no funds from the government <font color="red"> or from any companies, </font>and so represent the truly independent voice of the driver.
</font>

The second site is sponsored by the British Driving Association, a car industry group who's major goal is to promote, well, I'll let you guess what they are promoting.




Ok, where do you get that from

<font color="blue"> The Association of British Drivers (ABD) is a voluntary non-profit making organization funded by subscriptions and donations from ordinary members of the public. We receive no funds from the government <font color="red"> or from any companies, </font>and so represent the truly independent voice of the driver.
</font>



Yawn! You're right Pizza, that doesn't mean they are responsible, knowlegable or for that matter not liars. That is that they don't have an agenda, or don't ignore the facts to pursue their own goals. BTW - I'll bet you a gentleman that when someone actually looks, they'll find they're sponsored by the industry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_British_Drivers

O.K. Za, did ya read them? Let's start with the first one, the one with the woman who predicts weather based on her corns. Do you really think this woman can have any idea what the weather a week out is? Would you rely on her to warn you of an imminent hurricane?




Did you read anything other than the first paragraph of that article.

He started out by pointing out that the womans corn's predicted the weather better than the weathermen and all there fancy computer stuff.

It is true, I mostly skimmed those articles. I only pointed out that there are those that DO NOT think there is a big problem or that what may be causing a small rise in temp was not caused by man, but by nature its self.

It is true though that CO2 is heavier than air, right??? The very first article was only pointing out of the propaganda that Gore's movie says.

Let me say again, I have not seen the movie yet, I will wait till it's on video and rent it. However, I will, as with any documentary, not be fooled by what I see on the screen. If I really want to know the truth, I will read about both sides of the argument and base my opinion on that.

Gore is making money off this movie and the talk circut from this, unless he is donating all his money back to science, he is promoting this for profit.

And no, if big business was saying there was/was not a problem, I would not believe them either.

I only posted the other side of the argument. You have to know both sides of a subject to really have an opinion. Don't believe everything everything you read, don't always believe everything someone tell you.

This includes me, do the research yourself and make up your own mind.



Gee Pizza, I've done that. Better than the sites you've quoted. So has Gore. What's more, it's easy enough to apply some logic to Gore's position and realize that your argument that he's making money doesn't fit. Of all the ways to make money why a documentary? Even if you want to make a movie, documentaries make a lot less than entertainment flicks. Furthermore, if you're going to do the lecture circuit, people who consult big business make a lot more than people who consult on environmental topics.

Did it ever occur to you that maybe the guy actually cares? He's been advocating for environmental issues goig back 30 years now. Talk about a bad way to get rich. Oh wait, he's already rich and as a V.P. he's got income for life.

BTW - I read the aritcles until I hit the first easily refutable point. Usually it's so blatant I don't have to read further.

I will admit that I am no expert on anything (other than pizza)

But when I look at the evidence shown, I only see a small increase in world temp. However there is a huge increase in CO2 and Methane in our air now compaired to 150 years ago.

Why only the small change???

Why was last year one of the coolest in decades.

I will agree that we need to work on stopping polution, however I don't think will make a differance.

I think that by the time it makes a differance, we will be out of fossel fuels. I think that may happen in our lifetime. (will at least some of you younger guys)

I worry more about a comet or astroid hitting earth or even a major solar flare than I do globel warming. (shoot, some say the recent increase in tempatures is due to solar activity, they point out the last time there was this much activity was durring the middle ages when the world temp is estimated to be about the same as it is now)

BTW, I read several articles about how globel warming is causing 95% of the worlds glaciers to receed. Well what formed the Great Lakes???????? Does anyone remember that???? And what about that other 5%????

It is my understanding that the difference in average temperature between Ice Age and now is less than 5 degrees. If the average temperature rises just a little, then you will see glaciers starting to melt.
That said, systems that emit little or no greenhouse gasses tend to be the more efficient and use less energy overall.
****, The Silver Springs Shootout was the hottest and muggiest tourny I ever played in !!!

the number one priority for man's survival should be figuring out how to leave the planet and colonize elsewhere



So, you are assuming the Heaven's Gate folks failed in man's first attempt to colonize other galaxies.

I saw the movie last night...and rather than go back and forth with all of you 'in the know'...go see it - hopefully it'll open some eyes a bit wider. Greed and ignorance go hand-in-hand.

the number one priority for man's survival should be figuring out how to leave the planet and colonize elsewhere



So, you are assuming the Heaven's Gate folks failed in man's first attempt to colonize other galaxies.


Hail-Bopp - isn't that a song by Hanson? /msgboard/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

(GOOD ONE, James!!)

Gore is NOT making money from the movie, since 100% of the proceeds from it go to the cause.

Za (i like that nick for Bryan), please get your facts straight. i know it is a lot to ask, but you are spreading everything from innocent fibs to blatant lie with global consequences.

I�ve followed this issue closely for many years and Gore is dead on with all the evidence he puts forth. A few key points: a random sampling of all peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals found not one that disputed that global warming is happening and that we are the cause. By contrast, only fifty-three percent of popular press articles supported the position that global warming is real and manmade. Ninety-nine percent of the world�s scientists who study this agree. The other one percent are on the payroll of Exxon/Mobile. The energy and oil conglomerates have spent millions on misinformation. The glaciers are melting, alpine glaciers as well as those in the Artic, Antarctic and Greenland. The ten hottest years on record have all occurred during the past fourteen years. The evidence goes on and on. Perhaps the scariest thing that I have read came out of the Pentagon. That�s right, Rummy�s world. The Pentagon did their own study of global warming and then they tried to keep it under wraps, but it was leaked. You can Google it. One conclusion was that global warming posed a greater threat to national security than terrorism.
My only problem with the movie was that I thought Gore was too optimistic. Most expert scientists say we have about ten years to drastically reduce CO2 emissions before we reach the tipping point. After that, nothing we do will prevent the unthinkable. One highly respected scientist, James Lovelock, who put forth the concept of Gaia, has already said we have passed that tipping point.

I saw the movie last night...and rather than go back and forth with all of you 'in the know'...go see it - hopefully it'll open some eyes a bit wider. Greed and ignorance go hand-in-hand.


Why did you pay money to watch something that is on the Discovery Channel everyday? There is a special everyday about global warming that's not done by Al Gore, the "self-proclaimed" inventor of the internet.

We are insignifigant in the large scheme of things, Consider a few points, at one time My state Kansas was ocean/coastal property. In the 10th century Iclandic Vikings inhabited Greenland and farmed the land ( Greenland is now 85% Icecaps now) parts of England grew grapes for wine making (now only specalized weather tolerant grapes can be grown in these areas)

I wonder what the explanation for Ice age's or global cooling will be next time the earths cycle goes that way and if we are still around with an industry to blame it on. Science can guess and sometimes make educated assumptions about what conditions have been like over the last several million years but lets have a moment of clarity people.......


ok now roll with the punches or get off this rock. :D

Shh!!! He'll hear you.

No, I asked if he was making money off the movie and personal apperences. I did not say he was, I asked what he was doing with the money.

In the past, Gore has written books and donated all the proceeds to charity. But I could not find anything yet that says what he is doing with the profits of this movie and personal appearences fees.

I only pointed this out because some people say it is only big business scientist who say "Globel Warming" is a myth.

I don't say it is a myth, I am only saying it is part of nature. From the 1940's to the 1960's the earths temp actually went down. This was before the EPA and others started to controle major polution.

On the other hand, we use more fossel fuel now than ever.

BTW, a majority of the CO2 is cause by electric companies. So every time you turn on your lights (unless you are with Green Moutain) you are contributing to the problem.

I only pointed this out because some people say it is only big business scientist who say "Globel Warming" is a myth.

I don't say it is a myth, I am only saying it is part of nature. From the 1940's to the 1960's the earths temp actually went down. This was before the EPA and others started to controle major polution.

On the other hand, we use more fossel fuel now than ever.

BTW, a majority of the CO2 is cause by electric companies. So every time you turn on your lights (unless you are with Green Moutain) you are contributing to the problem.

Scientists made their educated predictions thirty years ago about what would happen if we kept pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Now all those predictions are coming true. The models they created have proven accurate. The scary thing is that those consequences are coming about much faster than even the gloomiest scientists ever imagined. What is happening is so far off the chart that to say it is part of the natural cycle is total nonsense.

We are insignifigant in the large scheme of things


Is this a conclusion or a premise?

This "argument" is often in the background: "our activities are not significant on a grand scale." Just think it thru. Noone really disputes that our activites are significant on a small scale. I mean if I #$*&amp;$! in your well, or dump poison into your pond, or build a smokestack upwind from you, you would obviously agree that there is an impact from my activity.

So, if small activites are significant on a small scale, one could at least entertain the notion that the agrregate of these activities would be significant on a large scale. It just seems reasonable to me. In other words, I would never think of questioning a study on the premise that "human activites are insignificant on a global scale." It's merely an assumption thats holds little water upon closer inspection.

By the way, for a moment of clarity. During the NOVA show about particulates reflecting back the sun's energy, the researcher studied global temperatures for the three days after 9/11. He found that for those three days, with no contrails reflecting sunlight out to space, the average nighttime temp was greater than normal. So, that is a clear example that our activites are meaningful on a global scale.

EDIT
My recollection of the NOVA show was inaccurate. Contrails are thought to block the sun during the day and trap the release of heat during the night. Additionally, the phenomenon was regional (flight bans were only in the US), not global like I claimed. However, I still think it is astonishing that the recorded temperature variation between the hottest daytime temp and coolest nighttime temp was 3-5 degrees higher across the US during that brief period, just from the effects of one of our activities.

Models based on what, Wayne? Predicting global climate change with any confidence would take FAR more data than could possibly EVER have been collected.

Earth is approximately 4,500,000,000 years old (that's billions). Humans have been able to accurately measure weather for only about 100. The industrial revolution began in the early 19th century, but didn�t really rely on fossil fuels until the mid-to-late 19th century. To believe man�s use of fossil fuels for the past 150 years has drastically impacted a reasonable forecast of ability to live on the planet is naive. Citing stats that refer to �hottest years on record� underscores our inability to assess man�s impact on global climate change. The global climate is going to change no matter what humans do to prevent it. The one fact that all scientists agree on is that Earth has been through many global climate changes before man even had the ability to build fire or even walk the planet for that matter. Should we expect the global climate to just halt changing simply because it's convenient for us?

Everyone knows all of our emissions will eventually make it up to that hole in the o-zone layer above The Arctic Circle. CO2 always moves north, right? Our friends in the southern hemisphere had better be looking out for Antarctica because their emissions flow to the south. It�s only logical.

Talk of a �tipping point� reeks of propaganda induced crazes that swept otherwise reasonable thinking people into hysteria during the Y2K craze and even during the previous turn of century where people went mad predicting doom by all sorts of means�asteroids, earthquakes, the wrath of God� whatever. I can hardly think of anything more pretentious than some scientist claiming that we have 10 years to get our act together or else we�re doomed. How long have scientists been saying that for? It is nothing more than far fetched speculation. If it had any credence, it wouldn�t take a slimy politician to produce a propaganda film to try to prove it.

Many folks who read this will jump to the conclusion that I must have it in for the environment. C�mon! I simply don�t believe the conclusion that man is contributing in any degree of significance to global climate change. It is obvious that we need to seek alternative fuels in hope to improve the quality of our environment for the future. Any fool can see that without having to pay to watch a politician who specializes at coming across as �passionate and sincere�. The fact of the matter is that we are already on it. Who could have predicted the technological advances of the past fifty or even thirty years? Who is naive enough to believe that we�ll be relying on fossil fuels to any great extent thirty to fifty years from now?

I guess I'll go home and burn some tires with the rest of the heathens who haven't seen the light. just follow the black smoke if you want to find thursday night triples. (just kidding of course)

http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/gth0039l.jpg

No, I asked if he was making money off the movie and personal apperences. I did not say he was, I asked what he was doing with the money.

bull. you stated he was making money from it. in the second sentence you did say that unless he was donating it, then he was making money.

you have an incredible bias against gore. and against hard facts in general. you will take the time to look for un-researched opinions and then you take them as your own. you do not even bother to look up a simple fact before you stated " Gore is making money off this movie ". he is NOT, and you need to elevate the credibility of your sources.

Actually Paul, scientists are able to accurately measure temperature and CO2 levels going back thousands of years by drilling and examining ice cores from the artic. CO2 and oxygen isotopes trapped in air bubbles in the ice yield extremely accurate measurements. There have been ice ages and warm periods all during those thousands of years, but none of those warm periods have come close to where we presently are. What is striking about that historical data is how closely temperature follows CO2 concentrations. Temperature and CO2 concentrations go up and down in unison. Current CO2 levels are already off the chart and rising rapidly. The graph looks like a hockey stick.
Don�t reject the message because you think the messenger is a slimy politician. Like I�ve already said, there is near unanimous agreement among all the world�s scientists that this is happening. Only the US seems to be in total denial about this issue. After all, we are the only industrial nation that has not signed onto the Kyoto Protocol. Don�t try to trivialize this by comparing it to Y2K or some crazy religious zealot saying the end is near. This is based on hard science and it is real.

Please quote the whole thing and not just the 1st part.

Gore is making money off this movie and the talk circut from this, <font color="red"> unless he is donating all his money back to science,</font> , he is promoting this for profit.




I was finally able to find it, Gore has publicly stated that profits from the Movie and his book are going to be used for education about global warming.

I can't find anything on what he is doing with the personal appearance fees, however I am sure he is using it to cover his expences.

Just for your reading pleasure.

Global warming fever
By Debra Saunders
Jun 13, 2006

There is a conceit among the American left that the American right cleaves to bad science out of deference to religion, while the left is all-science, all-the-time. Former Veep Al Gore's new movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," however, shows how unscientific -- and downright faith-based -- the left has become.
Is global warming human-induced? Gore says that it is, and he may well be right. Last month in The New York Times, Gregg Easterbrook of the Brookings Institution announced that he had converted from global-warming "skeptic to convert." Easterbrook noted that a 1992 survey found that a mere 17 percent of members of the American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society believed in greenhouse-gas climate change. Since then, scientists have found more evidence of the phenomenon.
Gore was wrong in 1992 when he wrote that 98 percent of scientists agreed with him on global warming. Witness the survey cited above.
Now, he is wrong when he argues in his movie that there is a complete consensus on global warming today. As proof Gore cites a 2004 study that looked at 928 climate abstracts and found none that refuted global-warming dogma. That says more about the researcher than the scientific community.
There are a number of well-known scientists who don't believe that global warming is human-induced, or who believe that if it is, it is not catastrophic. Hurricane expert William Gray of Colorado State University believes the Earth will start to cool within 10 years. Neil Frank, former director of the National Hurricane Center, told The Washington Post that global warming is "a hoax." Climate scientist Robert Lindzen of MIT believes that clouds and water vapor will counteract greenhouse gas emissions.
So you have to ask yourself: Why does Gore pretend that apostates do not exist? Scientists acknowledge contradictory data. But the faith-driven Gore argues that all scientists agree with him -- well, except for those who are bought and paid for by big polluters.
Because this is a crusade -- and not about science -- Gore is drawn not to the most reasoned scenarios, but the most apocalyptic.
Consider this exchange with ABC's George Stephanopoulos -- formerly of the Clinton-Gore administration -- who questioned Gore's prediction that global-warming could cause sea levels to rise 20 feet. "But the consensus is several inches over the next century. Right?" asked Stephanopoulos on June 4. "Not 20 feet?"
"Not at all," Gore replied. He added that the scientists he talks to -- his disciples, if you will -- see it his way. He ignores the less catastrophic theories, which predict a rise of an inch per decade, or 3 feet over the next century. To Gore, the worst-case scenario is the only scenario.
I thought Gore's chart comparing carbon-dioxide increases to temperature spikes was dramatic. But because Gore omits what he does not want to see, I have to listen to former NASA scientist Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, when he tells me: "It is an alarming chart, but there are so many alternative explanations for what he's showing. He's giving it one possible explanation and making it sound like the only explanation." Spencer says it is "more likely" that the higher temperatures increased carbon dioxide levels.
Spencer, who also writes for TCS Daily (which receives some funding from ExxonMobil), believes that some global warming is human-induced, but "I don't believe in climate catastrophe. And, "It comes down to whether you believe the climate system is fragile or resilient." It all comes down to belief -- and that is the problem. Global warming has become so politicized that scientists must believe in it. If they predict dire consequences, they win praise from true believers and grants for their important research. Scientists who question the prophecies of doom can expect to be marginalized.
Oddly, Gore begins "An Inconvenient Truth" discussing a young classmate who wondered if South America and Africa once had been connected. Their teacher ridiculed the friend, who turned out to be right. Sometimes the know-it-alls are wrong.
Now Gore is the know-it-all teacher -- and woe to any scientist who does not agree with him, not just on global warming, but on a 20-foot rise in sea level. It is this alarmism -- this extremism -- that has led many a thinking person to question global warming. It's hard to trust those who believe only the most extreme scenario.
Besides, whenever the establishment says you have to believe something, you want people who question the establishment. Or as global cooling guru Gray once said, "Consensus science isn't science."

The models they created have proven accurate.


I made a model of a '67 Chevy Camaro RS/SS that was midnight blue, however GM never produced such a color. Plus, the engine was plastic. But it looked really cool, even though it was totally inaccurate.

If human activity is responsible for the global warming of the past few decades on Earth, who is responsible for the global warming on Mars and Jupiter? I was looking for a good article on solar system warming and did not find one, because news on Triton doesn't sell newspapers on Earth, I suppose. But Triton is getting warmer too. [Most of you probably think Triton is somewhere in the Star Trek universe!]

http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=21970&catcode=13

Who is Debra Saunders Pizza?

Answer...A newspaper columist and an author that tries to profit from writing books bashing Gore and Global Warming.
And I thought the papparazzi were useless profit mongers:D

When will stupid biased political views be overcome and people recognize the problem at hand, and put politcis and profit aside?

When will stupid biased political views be overcome and people recognize the problem at hand, and put politcis and profit aside?


When all the people are gone.

Actually Paul, scientists are able to accurately measure temperature and CO2 levels going back thousands of years by drilling and examining ice cores from the artic. CO2 and oxygen isotopes trapped in air bubbles in the ice yield extremely accurate measurements. There have been ice ages and warm periods all during those thousands of years, but none of those warm periods have come close to where we presently are.



the accuracy of which is still very much in debate. yes they can hypothesize historic climate change and try to correlate that with rises in Co2. no it is not accurate enough to pinpoint the last 150 years of emissions as the cause for the direction climate change is taking right now (1 degree celsius rise over 100 yrs).



What is striking about that historical data is how closely temperature follows CO2 concentrations. Temperature and CO2 concentrations go up and down in unison. Current CO2 levels are already off the chart and rising rapidly. The graph looks like a hockey stick.



what time frame is this hockey stick representative of? what was the decline in CO2 attributable to until the most recent spike?


Don�t reject the message because you think the messenger is a slimy politician.



I'm certainly not rejecting the message. I'm most definitly second guessing it as more people should. I'd be hesitant to buy into any politician's "movie" with such an unfortunately political topic.


Like I�ve already said, there is near unanimous agreement among all the world�s scientists that this is happening. Only the US seems to be in total denial about this issue. After all, we are the only industrial nation that has not signed onto the Kyoto Protocol.



denial is not accurate. the US is far and away the leader in research of climate change and actually did sign into the kyoto accord, but then backed out upon the realization that it targeted the US but allowed developing nations such as china and india to pollute away. sounds like another burden the US is capable of bearing, right? that's fine until industry moves to those countries and pollution isn't reduced anyway. we can sign a feel good kyoto accord, but the bottom line is that it wouldn't impact global emissions. if you pay attention, the US is committing to research and reducing emissions more voluntarily than any other country. we don't need another UN type of wild goose chase in the form of the kyoto accord.


Don�t try to trivialize this by comparing it to Y2K or some crazy religious zealot saying the end is near. This is based on hard science and it is real.



same was said for Y2K. it's a strong parallel, like it or not.

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/mining/products/images/theskyisfalling.jpg

Your inaccurate model has no bearing on the accuracy of any other model. Hitler thought an invasion of Russia was acceptable even though the British were not defeated, therefore all military stategists are morons. Convincing logic.

Bruce, I had to do a lot of clicks to read that stuff about Mars. They suspect Mar's temperature is rising during some recent period of time. I guess I am supposed to assume that since Mar's temp is rising without any human effects, then earth's temp must be rising without any human effects also.

Faulty logic. It's like a car and go cart going down a hill, one has a driver, one does not. The driverless vehicle accelerates due to gravity. Upon witnessing the vehicle with a driver accelerating, can you assume that it's acceleration is solely due to gravity, or does the driver have his foot on the pedal? One cannot answer that question without having a whole lot of other data.

.....wtf?.....

A newspaper columist and an author that tries to profit from writing books bashing Gore and Global Warming


That statement is true to a point. Yes she is a newspaper columist and has written a book "the world according to Gore" or something like that.

I just came across that article when trying to find what Gore was doing with his profits from this movie/book. I found it says some of the things I was trying to point out.

Mostly, that several of the things the "global warming" people point out are just THEORIES. There are other Theories that say different things.

Shoot, next thing you are going to tell me is that we evolved from apes and not Adam and Eve.

my thoughts exactly.

I haven't seen Gore's movie yet.

I have been dealing with federally-funded scientific research on the environment for many years (you know--the kind that ends up in peer-reviewed scientific journals, not just on certain websites). It's quite well-documented that the Bush administration has been actively using Public Relations people to "screen" scientific output and limit the ability of anyone receiving federal research dollars to disseminate anything that contradicts the Bush administration agenda. This is quite significant in the field of global warming research since a very large percentage of climate research is done by federal agencies. (Private research dollars are spent on projects that produce a widgit or something else that can be sold for a profit--we must continue to rely on our government to fund important research on global climate issues). In spite of Bush's ongoing effort to limit the public's access to this body of science, some conclusions can be reached.

Wayne, I think you are pretty close with your characterization.

PG is way off as is md####.

Please allow me to offer a little big picture perspective:

1. There is very little if any REAL scientific dispute about the fact of global warming--it is happening.

2. There is very little if any REAL scientific dispute about whether or not human activities are significantly contributing to global warming--they are.

3. There is very little if any REAL scientific dispute over the fact that human activities are the prime driver behind the current pace of climate changes--it is. Throughout the 6 billion years of earth's history, climates have shifted, but, generally, on geologic time scales, not human time scales (i.e. millions/billions of years, not dozens/hundreds of years) *(the exception being climate changes caused by catastrophic events such as supervolcanoes, meteor impacts, etc.).

4. The only remaining REAL scientific debate is whether or not there is still an opportunity for humans to change quickly enough or significantly enough to have any chance of reversing (or even halting) the changes. Some believe that we can change enough to affect global warming. Others believe that either we can't or we won't change in anywhere near the timeframe needed to have any impact on this train wreck.

To suggest that there is any REAL scientific debate on any but #4 is misleading.

There is however, plenty of "junk science" being funded by corporations and others with a dog in the fight that cannot be trusted. This "junk science" is not peer-reviewed, but it is all over the Internet and it is frequently quoted by good folk such as PG to conjure up doubt about real scientific conclusions reached by the real scientific community.

LW

Really.

I saw the movie last night...and rather than go back and forth with all of you 'in the know'...go see it - hopefully it'll open some eyes a bit wider. Greed and ignorance go hand-in-hand.


Why did you pay money to watch something that is on the Discovery Channel everyday? There is a special everyday about global warming that's not done by Al Gore, the "self-proclaimed" inventor of the internet.



FInd the quote. That is find the quote where Al Gore said he invented the internet. I'm dying to read it.

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Al Gore to Wolf Blitzer, 1999
Here (http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore/) is the transcript, read it yourself.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa040100a.htm

If taking the iniative to create something is the same as inventing it.

<font color="white">you only asked for the quote, not a proper citation </font>

Za,

Take a look at the antartic if you want to know if the small changes are having big effects.

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Al Gore to Wolf Blitzer, 1999
Here (http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore/) is the transcript, read it yourself.



Good, now, do you think there might be any other way to interpret that statement and do you really think Al thinks he invented the internet? Or do you think this is just more
conservative propaganda and has nothing to do with the real issues facing this country and the human race?

Come on now, the left does just as much of that as the right.

(I can't comment on the Antartic other than to say I read somewere that the ozone hole has not grown in the last few years or something like that, don't have time to look up any info on it and don't really care. I said my piece, I know I can't get anyone to think outside the box. No minds will ever be changed on this messboard. I read what everyone is saying, and made up my own mind. I, for one, am not going to worry about it. Besides, I like my Co2 in my Cokes.)

I've also read somewhere that the ozone hole may be shrinking. But the suspected cause of the hole was CFC's (from air conditioning units and the like) and bromide compounds, not CO2. We've reduced these sources by changing technologies to something cleaner, and results are being noticed. And the change was ridiculed by many (anyone remember complaining when your car's old air conditioning unit couldn't be recharged because it was leaking?) even though the science involved was sound and changing course may be proving to be beneficial. DDT research leading to its ban was also discredited by many, but anyone today can easily see the benefits of stopping its use just by noticing that the raptor poulation has increased so dramatically.

The scientists have mostly got it right throughout history. Its the people with the vested interests (business interests, politicians, religious interests, etc.) that muddy the water. If the Vatican had prevailed in maintaining Galileo's (and all scientists that followed him) censure, perhaps we'd still believe the sun orbits around the Earth.

Or do you think this is just more conservative propaganda and has nothing to do with the real issues facing this country and the human race?


Conservative Propaganda? It's a #$*&$! manuscript of what he said!?!?!
I went to one of his speaches when he was running for Prez, and he basically said exactly the same thing he said to Blitzer. Look at his voting record while he was a Senator and you determine if he's telling the truth. Don't take my word for it, look it up. Senator voting is public record.

You people are all idiots, except Pizza.

1. In the 1970's all the scientists agreed that the earth was suffering a giant freeze down, a great winter. All the glaciers were growing, the Arctic Ocean was freezing more than ever before. It was dooms day. Time and Newsweek and all the same papers that spew the spench about global warming today were selling pulp by the ton. Scared readers were worried about a nuclear winter without the nuclear. just a big winter. Same as today, only take the word "cold" and replace it with "warm" and you have the same copy to sell a second time around and not have to pay royalties to the new writers, they just used copy from the 70's.

2. Venus? Are you freaking serious? Venus has an atmosphere that is 99% CO2 and is denser than our atmosphere, which is 0.035% CO2. And Venus is twice as close to the sun as we are. Anybody who compares Earth to Venus is a mongoloid idiot.

3. Some moron said that a cloud cover traps the heat from radiating back to space. What??????? A cloud cover keeps the sunlight out!!! If there was a cloud cover, the heat never would have got in in the first place. It's like standing in the shade of a tree and saying the tree makes it hotter by keeping the heat from going into space. Idiocy!!!!!! The tree keeps the sun out, that's why it's cooler under a tree, and why it's cooler on a cloudy day than a sunny day. What sort of cloud lets light in but keeps it in? Do you think a cloud is a two-way mirror? Go back to science class and try not to get a D this time. What sort of idiot thinks it's hotter on a cloudy day?

4. Glaciers are melting, it's dooms day. Do you know where the glaciers are melting? They are melting in the places where a 1 degree rise in temperature will make them melt. In other words, where it's 31 degrees, now it's 32. Big deal, the glaciers where it's 31 are melting. So freaking what? The glaciers where it's -76 are now -75. They are NOT melting. DUH!!!!!!!

5. A 1 degree rise in temps is doodley squat. The temperature changes prolly 60 degrees every year from winter to summer, and 20 degrees from day to night. No problem. One degree is nothing. Be serious.

6. It's too cold in northern NY where I live, I could sure use some global warming right about now.

7. Some idiot posted that it was warm where they were that day. Are you kidding? It was never warm before global warming? How retarded are you?

Some moron said that a cloud cover traps the heat from radiating back to space. What???????



That moron would be me. But read your quote if you want true idiocy.

I can't believe I posted at this hour just to point how stupid you are. :D

Look, up in the sky, it's a bird, no, it's a plane, nope, it's just Frisbee trying to get a rise.

Keep in mind that this is a guy who thinks he's a genius for rediscovering a 3D imaging technique that was discovered, what, over 100 years ago.

"You may think I'm a genius for thinking this up, but the fact is, the first time anybody took a 3D stereo photo of the moon by taking advantage of the moon's librations was in the 1890's, during the stereogram craze of that era. But, I didn't find that out until after I did this project, so I'm a genius after all!"

One point overlooked in this is that the number one priority for man's survival should be figuring out how to leave the planet and colonize elsewhere. ...If we're smart enough to get to this point, we should be smart enough to spend the effort to spread beyond Earth.



Just so long as we take disc golf to other planets. Wouldn't it be a riot to throw a disc on the moon? Hopefully they'll be smart enough to take discs with them!

Guy,

You're a Ph.D. candidate: 1) apply the same logic you're applying to Gore all politicians, including the conservative ones. 2) Do I really need to spell out hyperbol for you? Like standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier and stating, "mission accomplished!" First, Gore did play a roll in promoting the internet and it's growth. Second, he didn't invent it or even push it as hard as other people did. Third, he tried to over-capitalize on the roll he did play and he spoke stupidly.

That said, what is the relevance of this to the debate over global warming? If you are going to condemn the issue because Gore isn't perfect, then frankly we pretty much have to condemn every issue because there are no perfect human beings.

Finally, the fact that this is an issue suggests that conservatives don't really have anything else they can point to as a problem.

BTW - this article nicely points out some of Gore's efforts in "promoting" the internet. He was ahead of his time in recognizing it's potential. Nonetheless, he did misspeak. But frankly, compared to the verbal diarrhea that comes out of Bush, he's still light years better.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/blgorenet.htm

I heard that they had a disc on Apollo 13 but it was never thrown. :D

Some moron said that a cloud cover traps the heat from radiating back to space. What???????



That moron would be me. But read your quote if you want true idiocy.

I can't believe I posted at this hour just to point how stupid you are. :D



Hey Hey! I said it too. This truly is hyperbol on the part of Morgan. Anyone who's done any astronomy, and Morgan has, knows this truth. He's just being a donkey.

You people are all idiots, except Pizza



Oh great

Use numbers folks. Cloud cover traps heat from escaping into space but also blocks it from coming in. But it blocks 100 times more from coming in than it traps going out. Net result, cloud cover COOLS the earth. That's why it's so much cooler on a cloudy day.

Yes, at night when the sun is not shining, cloud cover has a warming effect. But this is totally negligible as soon as the sun comes up in the morning. This is why the desert gets cold at night and so hot in the day. But in general, the desert is much hotter than cloudy places.

I feel like a 3rd grade science teacher now.

And besides, I don't think there will be a change in the amount of cloud cover anyway as a result in global warming. If you raised the average temperature of earth by 1 degree, how does this make more clouds? The oceans would get warmer by 1 degree and make more water evaporate into the atmosphere, yes. But the atmosphere would also be 1 degree warmer and warm air holds more vapor, nullifying the effect of the warmer oceans. The cloud cover would be the same. That's why the equator is just as cloudy as temperate places, which are just as cloudy as arctic places. That's why it's just as cloudy in the winter as it is in the summer. In the summer, there is more water vapor in the air, but the air can hold it because its warmer.

So the point about cloud cover is moot. Global warming will not change the amount of cloud cover.

Use numbers folks. Cloud cover traps heat from escaping into space but also blocks it from coming in. But it blocks 100 times more from coming in than it traps going out. Net result, cloud cover COOLS the earth. That's why it's so much cooler on a cloudy day.

why is it warmer on a cloudy night?

it makes more clouds the same way it makes more hurricanes... by putting more water in the atmosphere. more water in the air = more clouds. by the way, before you state that 1 degree is no big deal, how about calculating exactly how much more water the atmosphere could hold if its temperature went up 1 degree. its more than a bathtub full.

Like I said, more water in the air does NOT make more clouds if the air is warmer, because warmer air can hold more water vapor. That's why it's not any cloudier at the equator than the poles. Like I said, that's why it's not any cloudier in the summer than in the winter.

The more water vapor there is in the air...the more rain/weather events one may see. Afterall, thunder-storms, tornadoes, hurricanes are merely mother nature equalizing herself.

Katrina displaced a few hundred thousand people...a rise in the oceans, even by a few feet, would displace hundreds of millions of coastal city dwellers worldwide.

Maybe our Mother Earth will blow a few volcanoes...kinda like how a horse (or donkey) uses its tail to whisk away flies.

The worst hurricane was in Galveston in 1900. Katrina was not an indicator of global warming. There have always been hurricanes.

This thread is officially over, Morgan has jumped in. Intelligent conversation can no longer be had on this topic now.

Everything I said was intelligent, and corrected the blunders of others.

Your profile says that you have a BS in physics. I hope this doesn't mean you will BS us with physics.

http://www.blamonet.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/normal_Retard_Win.jpg

Why would I bring science into an opinionated argument?
The facts are (as larry said):
Evidence shows that global warming is occuring, at an unnatural rate.
Evidence shows that we are contributing to that.
Any predictions or arguments on what is the cause and what will happen is pure speculation. SO....arguing about it is dumb.
We can't know for certain what is going on, we have to (big word morgan) infer what we think is happening from the supporting evidence.
Its the same thing as the "what causes cancer" argument. No one knows what causes cancer, all we know is what the trends are among cancer patients, like carcinogens. There is virtually no scientific explanation why a group of cells would mutate and start to reproduce uncontrollably.
So you can argue about whatever you want. YOU don't know for certain, and no one will.
My dad told me a great thing when I was young...

"Opinions are like A-holes.....everybody's got one, and they all stink!"

Everything you said is correct. I only corrected the wrong statements made by others. It is true that people have different opinions about global warming, but that doesn't give people the right to make scientific blunders and add them to the argument. Stating that cloud cover warms the earth is a blunder. Comparing earth to venus is a blunder. Taking a single event like Katrina or the temperature where you are one day as evidence of a trend is a blunder. These are not matters of opinion.

The worst hurricane was in Galveston in 1900. Katrina was not an indicator of global warming. There have always been hurricanes.



Replace "worst" with "deadliest". I think a "heads up" would have been nice for the Texans.

The worst hurricane was in Galveston in 1900. Katrina was not an indicator of global warming. There have always been hurricanes.



Replace "worst" with "deadliest". I think a "heads up" would have been nice for the Texans.



Galveston Hurricane of 1900 (http://www.1900storm.com/)
NOAA report (http://www.noaa.gov/galveston1900/)

The "heads up" didn't come because the hurricane went missing in the middle of the Gulf (no radar, no buoys), and then took a unusual--by the knowledge at the time--left turn. That turn gave it access to open, warm water which gave it speed and strength. Nothing visible indicated a monster storm was headed Galveston's way until it hit.

The effects and consequences of global warming have now left the realm of prediction or speculation. It is happening now and it is happening more rapidly then scientists expected. Furthermore, there are built in feedback systems that will increase that rate. For instance, much of the sun�s heat energy in the north and south is currently reflected back when it strikes the polar ice caps. As those ice caps continue to melt, and they are already melting, more of the sun�s heat energy will be absorbed by the exposed land and water.

You can repeat the environmental leftist creed all you want, but what about my question: If human activity is responsible for the global warming of the past few decades on Earth, who is responsible for the global warming on Mars and Jupiter? Are the scientists who are worried about global warming today the same ones whe were worried about the coming ice age back in the 1980s? Given that in geological time we're just coming out of an ice age, wouldn't it make sense that the planet would be getting warmer? During dinosaur times the planet was five degrees warmer and the fossil record shows that Antarctica was a tropical paradise. I think it can get a little warmer before we need to worry about the end of the planet. If it gets warmer, we won't burn so much hydrocarbon fuel heating our homes. At least until 2011 when the environmental left puts all the global warming away and trots out the coming ice age theory again.

That bright thing in the sky is the sun. It burns hot for awhile and burns hotter for awhile. There's not much a bunch of disc golfers can do about that except play in shorts on the hot days.

Here's what we can do to find out whether humans are causing global warming. We can do it right here.

1. Calculate how much CO2 is in the atmosphere, both now and pre-industrial. We know the CO2 level was 0.23 % before the industrial revolution, they usually use 1850 as the date, and is 0.35 % now. We need to calculate how much this is in total mass, measured in tons or whatever unit you like.

2. Then we need to calculate how much CO2 we have put into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. We can do this by calculating the amount of coal and petroleum we have burned. We have fairly accurate figures for coal and oil production for the past century, and can estimate the total amount from these records. It's pretty easy to know how much CO2 comes from burning these sources. We DONT add wood because all the wood we have burned would have died and rotted into CO2 anyway. We just want to calculate the fossil fuels, coal and oil.

3. If it turns out we added 3 trillion tons to the asmosphere but the increased amount is 3 quadrillion tons, then we had nothing to do with it and the leftists can go sniff patchouli. If we added 3 trillion and the total amount of increase was 3 trillion, then we need to start riding horses again.

I'm not a climatologist, but I already identified how your "theory" is flawed. You assume that since Mars is warming without human influence, the earth's warming must be independent of human influence also. It's merely an implication, and an entirely unsupported one at that. By you at least.

Even if the sun's recent increase is a factor, you are offering absolutely zero evidence that this factor alone accounts for the total increase in global warming. Might it only account for 75%, 20%, 2%?

Not to mention that the modeling of Mar's heating is probably entirely different than the modelling of earth's. Basically, you are doing just what you claim the "environmental leftists" do: throwing out some observations and rushing to conclusions to justify your belief.

I personally have no knowledge on this subject, but as others have pointed out, it is advisable to be skeptical of those with vested interests, and the cries of their lackeys.

That bright thing in the sky is the sun. It burns hot for awhile and burns hotter for awhile. There's not much a bunch of disc golfers can do about that except play in shorts on the hot days.


This is a candidate for my next tag line. :)

Ok earth's atmosphere weighs 5000 trillion metric tons, according to wikipedia under "earth's atmosphere."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_atmosphere#Density_and_mass

A metric ton is 1000 kilograms, so that's 5 quintillion kilograms

If the pre-industrial revolution level of CO2 was 0.023% of this, that's 1.15 quadrillion kilograms of CO2 in the atmosphere. Currently it's 0.035% of the atmosphere or 1.75 quadrillion kg, meaning there is 0.6 quadrillion kilograms more CO2 in the air now than before.

We'll call it 600 trillion kilograms, the amount of CO2 in the air that wasn't there in 1850.

We have used 930 billion barrels of oil since the 1800's according to

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0129/p14s01-wogi.html

A barrel of oil is about, what, is it like 55 gallons or something? And it weighs about 7 pounds per gallon I am guessing 385 pounds or 175 kilograms per barrel, once again I'm still guessing.

So we have burned up 162 trillion kilograms of oil since the 1800's.

When you burn hydrocarbons it's like

C(n)H(2n+2) + (x)O2 ----------> (n)CO2 + (2n+2) H2O

CO2 weighs 46 and H2O weighs 18 so every kilogram of oil you burn produces how much weight of CO2 per weight of oil?

Anybody want to do the math?

All right I'll do the math. Say you have a mole of gasoline, we will use heptane.

C7H16 molecular weight of 7 x 14 + 16 = 114 g

Produces 7 moles of CO2 weighs 7 x 46 = 322 g

This means the weight of the CO2 produced by burning gasoline is 3 times more than the weight of the gasoline. Makes no sense? It's because most of the weight of the CO2 is the O which came from the oxygen in the air not from the gasoline. I think other hydrocarbons would give similar results.

This means, if we burned 162 trillion kilograms of oil it produced 3 times that weight of CO2 and we are already close to the 600 trillion kilograms of CO2. But then you add coal, because when you burn coal the weight of the CO2 is more than the carbon alone. That brings us way above the 600 trillion figure.

So, it looks like all of the increased amount of CO2 in the air is from humans burning fossil fuels. Actually, from these rough numbers, it looks like we put MORE CO2 into the air than the current level accounts for, I guess a lot of it has been dissolved into the oceans.

Yep, all the extra CO2 is from humans. GUILTY!

it is not for us to turn into conservationists and conserve the earth. it is for us to realize that it is the Earth that conserves us and then to act accordingly to preserve (not degrade) the life-friendly properties of this miraculous planet. To pollute it in the name of short term profit is not only myopic -- it's ignorant. In an interview with Bill Moyers, Onondaga chief Oren Lyons told him that polluting the air and water of this earth is to literally take our unborn future grandchildren by the throats and choke them. :mad:

An Onondaga said that? That's hypocritical of him. Anybody who has lived in Syracuse knows about the constant plume of white smoke coming off the Onondaga Nation Territory, they burn their trash in open pits, they pollute 10 times more than the fale face does. I love the Onondaga but he should not sermonize about pollution until he cleans his own house.

But I'm proud the Onondaga refuse to open a casino, unlike the other Iroquois around here. I'm also proud that they refuse to allow interbreeding with white and black people. Onondaga are all 100% Indian, that's why so many are used in movies like Dances With Wolves where many of the actors are Onondaga (http://www.onondaganation.org/index.html) and look like pure Indian. They are pure Indian, no white mixed in. Mohawks today look like white people, blue eyes and all, they are like 3% Indian blood.

Onondaga (http://www.onondaganation.org/index.html)

I hate the thought that the primary reason we need to be looking is because we are taking a dump in our own bed.




I don't think that's the reason. Man has spread out to many places on the planet which has at least spread out the need for overutilizing resources in one location. It's simply a logical survival strategy regardless whether global warming was happening faster or slower than the forecast you believe.



i think there are misguided assumptions in that logic. the whole earth operated on a largely life-friendly, renewable, sustainable resource and energy plan until humans decided waste and degradation of the air and water was acceptable if it cost more money and effort to live in a cleaner, more far-sighted manner. Life on Earth is an intricate system of inter-relations in which each species helps create a renewable, sustainable cycle of change and keeps the populations of other species in balance. crows and vultures and possums and maggots and daisies clean up (and feed off) the dead and help keep the land from being a dead pile of rotting flesh.

there is no reason we need have garbage -- we could recycle and re-use everything if we had the will. unfortunately we seldom consider garbage a problem. look at how nuclear energy is being touted as clean even though it creates toxic waste that lasts for tens of thousands of years and has serious terrorism implications!

if plants and trees are able to grow all those leaves and flowers and fruits each year with nothing but sunshine and earth and air and water, we could get our energy that way too. we're just too stupid and too interested in paper profits that are not sustainable profits. the human mind has solved going to the moon and making incredible weaponry capable of killing all higher life on this planet. if we were as interested in sustainable renewable energy as we are in weapons, we'd be doing well and would never consider looking for a new planet to spoil...

but the system of life creates a trade off for every gain. we don't get fire without sacrificing some wood or fuel. we certainly don't get all of the benefits of technology without costs. if we were as interested in the trade off as we are in what's to be gained, we could stop a lot of environmental problems before they snowball out of control.

Blake once said a fool who persist in his folly becomes wise. maybe we will wait to pollution has our backs to the wall before we mend our ways. the talk about global warming as hype reminds me of how the tobacco companies once said cigarettes weren't hazardous to our health and hired scientists to find evidence to counter studies which showed cigarettes cause cancer. profit was more important to them than human health.

Plus a change,
Plus cest la meme chose...

may a new day dawn in which humans are more intelligent in our relationship to the air, the water, and the land upon which our lives depend...

An Onondaga said that? That's hypocritical of him. Anybody who has lived in Syracuse knows about the constant plume of white smoke coming off the Onondaga Nation Territory, they burn their trash in open pits, they pollute 10 times more than the fale face does. I love the Onondaga but he should not sermonize about pollution until he cleans his own house.

But I'm proud the Onondaga refuse to open a casino, unlike the other Iroquois around here.



do you also call any college kid who says partying every night is a desperate way to live a hypocrite on the basis that many college kids do party every night? do you really disallow any Onondaga from not fitting into your stereotypes?

the statement he made about pollution should be weighed independently from your own pet peeves about Onondaga pollution you see from trash burning. burying it at a landfill isn't really a great option either. maybe we should quit making so much garbage that isn't bio-degradable(?) when the BIA was doing everything it could to commit cultural genocide and make Indians completely dependent wards of the government -- did it ever create garbage dumps and send out garbage trucks to homes on the reservations?

and, is it really so surprising that after 500 years of occupation and attempts at forced assimilation, indigenous Americans are finally starting to emulate us? are those companies that own the casinos on reservations Indian owned or are they just paying a share of their profits and offering jobs in exchange for the right ot do business under Indian sovereignty? do you oppose casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas too? ...

Casinos are gross and disgusting, but the ones around here are 100% Indian owned, the mafia can't touch them. Go to the one in Utica, NY owned by Oneida Indians. All the people who work there are Indians, you can't get a job there if you are white. Mafia goons looking to butt in are turned away brisky by the tribe. No freaking way a bunch of Utica guidos are going to run the Turning Stone (http://www.turning-stone.com) . No way.

LOL, the ones around here are on riverboats (http://grandvictoriacasino.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels/activities/casino/index.jsp) floating on the Ohio river but for the most part dock at Indiana shores. i've never been on one because i am afraid i wouldn't leave with a shirt on my back, but i am pretty sure they aren't paradise either. playing the weekly lottery is my gambling of choice and so far i'm not ahead. no wonder states use them for the guaranteed revenue earners that they are /msgboard/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

I didn't know that Hyatt was an Indian Tribe.

Over here we have the Mohawks (http://www.mohawkcasino.com) and the Mohicans (http://www.foxwoods.com) running casinos and they look like white people. Last of the Mohicans and all.

James Fennimore Cooper (Last of the Mohicans) had almost zero firsthand knowledge of Indians or the frontier. that makes him a really good source for stereotypes.

not many Indians look Indian anyway. Chief Wahoo looks hardly anything like Indians native to the land now called Cleveland and the Blackhawks logo looks very little like chief Blackhawk himself. (you'd have to look it up but i think both logos were the creations of white artists). Crazy Horse had light, curly hair and eastern indians don't look that much like plains indians. comparing a Mohawk to a Seminole to a Navajo to a Haida is like comparing a German to a Swede to an Italian to a Spaniard.

while Hyatt may not be run by Indians i think it shares in common with those casinos that it isn't owned by Indians either. maybe those white looking Indians you see working at casinos are what full-bloods sometimes derogatorily refer to as "hang-around-the-fort" Indians...(?)

Bruce, the "Coming Ice Age" theories refer to one of the environmental consequences that we may encounter as a result of global warming. These were mostly promulgated early in the evolution of climate science and in no way undermine current climate science. Let me try to explain why. Sorry-this may take a couple minutes.

The key is scale. Global warming is just that--it's global. The theory of the New Ice Age refers to a local phemomenon that could affect those of us around the perimeter of the North Atlantic. Global warming and the resultant increase in ocean temps could cause the Gulf Stream to reroute itself. The Gulf Stream is the powerful warm ocean current that flows north along the East Coast of the US and then east across the North Atlantic to northern Europe. It is responsible for the relatively warm climate of England and other areas of Western Europe. If the global ocean currents change and the Gulf Stream no longer bathes the British Isles and Western Europe in relative warmth, areas of permafrost and glaciers could progress South--thus plunging these areas into a "New Ice Age."

This is a real theory and may/may not be a real possibility. It in no way, however, discredits the global warming paradigm. It's merely a prediction of a particular local effect likely to be experienced by those whose climate is currently regulated by the clockwise flow of the Gulf Stream.

There is one other aspect of current predictions of the effects of global warming on climate that may contribute to you mischaracterizing science as "flip-flopping" between "Coming Ice Age" and global warming predictions. Two fairly well-agreed upon effects of global warming will be greater variability in the range of weather conditions in a given location and greater cyclic variability in annual and decadal climate trends. While the earth is currently expected to warm approximately 1 degree Celsius on average over the next century, it's likely that the planet will experience greater annual and decadal variances and it's likely that there could be extended downturns in temps for years or decades which are then offset by even greater upturns in temps for years or decades. In other words, it's possible that as the climate warms on average over the whole globe, we may experience periods of reduced temps long enough for permafrost and glaciers to advance South for a period of time. And as the above "New Ice Age" theory demonstrates, we can also expect local geography to cause variations ranging from significant increases in average temps to significant decreases in average temps.

Someone who doesn't understand how science works, or who has an agenda might take this kind of evidence and hold it up and say, "Look, science can't even decide if they think we're going through global warming or heading for a New Ice Age."

LW

Someone who doesn't understand how science works, or who has an agenda might take this kind of evidence and hold it up and say, "Look, science can't even decide if they think we're going through global warming or heading for a New Ice Age."

LW



good point. in that light, the movie seems aptly titled.

I'm not talking about the Mohawks that run the casino. I've never been to that casino. I've seen lots of Mohawks and they sort of look like white people in Indian costumes. Some guy with long hair smoking a pipe and talking slow and acting all spiritual but looks like he's genetically white. I think the French Canadians contributed most of the fale-face blood to the Mohawks.

Where do you get the idea that some "corporation" owns the Mohawk Casino? Are you just speculating? It would be impossible for a "corporation" to run an Indian casino.

1. Gambling is illegal in NY
2. Non-indians would have to pay taxes, Indians pay no tax.

So the Mohawk casino is 100% owned by Indians who are 90% white, and the Mohican (http://www.foxwoods.com) casino is 100% owned by Indians who are 100% white cause, you know, the last Mohican died in that movie a long time ago. Except the ones in Wisconsin (http://www.mohican.com) . But the Onondaga (http://www.peace4turtleisland.org/pages/onondaga.htm) are 100% Indian and will never have a casino because their traditions are very strict and don't allow that sort of thing, you have to admire them for it.

i admire indigenous americans of any tribe that have retained traditional values and apply them to modern times. when you look at the US govt. policy that was used for a few generations to take young Indian children away from their homes and families and send them to far away boarding schools where they were whipped if they spoke or acted "indian" it is kind of amazing any of the languages or traditions are still alive.

i just get a kick out of people who oppose Indian casinos but not ones in Las Vegas or Atlantic City (or the riverboats around here). i also find it funny that people complain about Indian rights such as no state taxes or special hunting and fishing rights when the government entered legally binding treaties with the tribes prior to the creation of most of the states which want to regulate them. plus, the treaties promise those rights in exchange for huge tracts of land. i guess we could always return the land and therefore have no need to honor the promises /msgboard/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

Indians and casinos article (http://www.midtod.com/highlights/gambling.phtml)

back to global warming --

do you really think Oren Lyons is a hypocrite to speak about intelligently relating to the environment unless he refuses to ride in gasoline-powered automobiles?

Does anyone care to guess which wacko, left wing, alarmist, tree-hugging, environmentalist penned these words:

�There is substantial evidence to indicate that significant global warming will occur during the 21st century. Because changes have been gradual so far, and are projected to be similarly gradual in the future, the effects of global warming have the potential to be manageable for most nations. Recent research, however, suggests that there is a possibility that this gradual global warming could lead to a relatively abrupt slowing of the ocean�s thermohaline conveyor, which could lead to harsher winter weather conditions, sharply reduced soil moisture, and more intense winds in certain regions that currently provide a significant fraction of the world�s food production. With inadequate preparation, the result could be a significant drop in the human carrying capacity of the Earth�s environment.�

�There are some indications today that global warming has reached the threshold where the thermohaline circulation could start to be significantly impacted. These indications include observations documenting that the North Atlantic is increasingly being freshened by melting glaciers, increased precipitation, and fresh water runoff making it substantially less salty over the past 40 years.�

�As temperatures rise throughout the 20th century and into the early 2000s potent positive feedback loops kick-in, accelerating the warming from .2 degrees Fahrenheit, to .4 and eventually .5 degrees Fahrenheit per year in some locations. As the surface warms, the hydrologic cycle (evaporation, precipitation, and runoff) accelerates causing temperatures to rise even higher. Water vapor, the most powerful natural greenhouse gas, traps additional heat and brings average surface air temperatures up. As evaporation increases, higher surface air temperatures cause drying in forests and grasslands, where animals graze and farmers grow grain. As trees die and burn, forests absorb less carbon dioxide, again leading to higher surface air temperatures as well as fierce and uncontrollable forest fires. Further, warmer temperatures melt snow cover in mountains, open fields, high-latitude tundra areas, and permafrost throughout forests in cold-weather areas. With the ground absorbing more and reflecting less of the sun�s rays, temperatures increase even higher.�

�Violence and disruption stemming from the stresses created by abrupt changes in the climate pose a different type of threat to national security than we are accustomed to today. Military confrontation may be triggered by a desperate need for natural resources such as energy, food and water rather than by conflicts over ideology, religion, or national honor. The shifting motivation for confrontation would alter which countries are most vulnerable and the existing warning signs for security threats.�

�Abrupt climate change is likely to stretch carrying capacity well beyond its already precarious limits. And there�s a natural tendency or need for carrying capacity to become realigned. As abrupt climate change lowers the world�s carrying capacity aggressive wars are likely to be fought over food, water, and energy. Deaths from war as well as starvation and disease will decrease population size, which overtime, will re-balance with carrying capacity.�

�Could This Really Happen?�
�Ocean, land, and atmosphere scientists at some of the world�s most prestigious organizations have uncovered new evidence over the past decade suggesting that the plausibility of severe and rapid climate change is higher than most of the scientific community and perhaps all of the political community is prepared for. If it occurs, this phenomenon will disrupt current gradual global warming trends, adding to climate complexity and lack of predictability. And paleoclimatic evidence suggests that such an abrupt climate change could begin in the near future.�

Does anyone care to guess which wacko, left wing, alarmist, tree-hugging, environmentalist penned these words:


The screenwriter for "The Day After Tomorrow"?

you don't get it, wayne. the more you continue to combine well researched hypothesis about climate change with worthless, politically fueled finger pointing as to what might be the cause, the less credibility you have. you've been brainwashed to automatically blame climate change on mankind's insignificant role in the history and future of the planet. you've bought into the fear mongoring hook line and sinker and there is no turning back.

here's a couple honest questions that i think will highlight where we disagree-- which do you believe has had a greater impact on the direction of global climate change for good or ill? 4.5 billion years of the suns radiation, volcanoes erupting, glaciers melting, and dinosaurs farting or the past 150 years of heretofore increasing human pollution. do you really think that the lifespan of the planet has been compromised by human activity? do you really believe that even a 100% halt to ALL pollution is going to save the planet from or even delay the supposedly impending catastrophic climate change?

so which "tipping point" are you buying into this week?

some highlights from a
WSJ artcile from some MIT guy (http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597)...

"The media rarely help, of course. When Newsweek featured global warming in a 1988 issue, it was claimed that all scientists agreed. Periodically thereafter it was revealed that although there had been lingering doubts beforehand, now all scientists did indeed agree. Even Mr. Gore qualified his statement on ABC only a few minutes after he made it, clarifying things in an important way. When Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted Mr. Gore with the fact that the best estimates of rising sea levels are far less dire than he suggests in his movie, Mr. Gore defended his claims by noting that scientists "don't have any models that give them a high level of confidence" one way or the other and went on to claim--in his defense--that scientists "don't know. . . . They just don't know.""

"So, presumably, those scientists do not belong to the "consensus." Yet their research is forced, whether the evidence supports it or not, into Mr. Gore's preferred global-warming template--namely, shrill alarmism. To believe it requires that one ignore the truly inconvenient facts. To take the issue of rising sea levels, these include: that the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940; that icebergs have been known since time immemorial; that the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average. A likely result of all this is increased pressure pushing ice off the coastal perimeter of that country, which is depicted so ominously in Mr. Gore's movie. In the absence of factual context, these images are perhaps dire or alarming."

"A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse. Regardless, these items are clearly not issues over which debate is ended--at least not in terms of the actual science."

i realize that you'll likely dismiss this because the WSJ must be run by exxon-mobil and have absolutely no compassion for the planet, but try to have an open mind. the first part that quotes your hero (gore) about the models he refers to is priceless. remember, wayne-- "they just don't know", but you're willing to preach we have a "tipping point" in ten years! look out!

First of all, I never claimed to be a Gore fan, although I do respect him for using whatever soapbox he has earned from his many years of public service to bring this issue to light. I went to see An Inconvenient Truth with a pretty good understanding of the science behind global warming and was impressed by how accurately and clearly he presented that science. I could really care less about how some politician or some WSJ writer spins this issue. They all have their agendas. I base my statements on peer reviewed science, where, if the conclusion is not supported by data, the article is not published.

And what are the scientists saying:

�The 1995 finding by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of a "discernible human influence" on the global climate was based on several "signature" experiments in which researchers were able to distinguish natural warming from warming due to human burning of fossil fuels. Since that 1995 declaration, subsequent studies have made the case much more robust.�

�In 1995, a team of researchers led by Dr. Benjamin Santer of the Lawrence Livermore Labs examined the pattern of heating in the atmosphere. That pattern of warming -- over land and water and warm and cold areas -- produced a very specific pattern. That pattern matches the pattern projected by computer models of "greenhouse gas" plus sulfate warming. When the vertical structure of the warming was examined, it was found to be graphically different from the structure produced by natural warming.�
Citation: "A search for human influences on the thermal structure of the atmosphere," Nature, Vol. 382, July 4, 1996, B.D. Santer, et al.

�A second "smoking gun" was published in 1995 when a team of scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center verified an increase of extreme weather events in the US. They concluded the growing weather extremes are due, by a probability of 90 percent, to rising levels of greenhouse gases. Those extremes -- which reflect an intensification of the planet's hydrological cycle from atmospheric heating -- are not consistent with natural warming and, instead, resemble the changes that were projected for emissions from fossil fuels. The researchers declared the climate in the US is becoming more "greenhouse-like" -- with more intense rain and snowfalls, more winter precipitation, more droughts, floods and heat waves. It concluded: "[T]he late-century changes recorded in US climate are consistent with the general trends anticipated from a greenhouse-enhanced atmosphere."
Citation: Trends in U.S. Climate during the Twentieth Century, Consequences, Spring, 1995, Vol. 1, No. 1, Thomas Karl et al. Also: "The Coming Climate," by Thomas R. Karl, Neville Nicholls and Jonathan Gregory, Scientific American, May, 1997.

�A third contribution to our understanding of the global climate appeared in the spring of 1995 when David J. Thomson, a signals analyst at AT&T Bell Labs, evaluated a century of summer and winter temperature data. While some scientific skeptics had attributed this century’s atmospheric warming to solar variations, Thomson discovered the opposite: the accumulation of greenhouse gases had overwhelmed the relatively weak effects of solar cycles on the climate. He also discovered that since the beginning of World War II, when accelerating industrialization led to a skyrocketing of carbon dioxide emissions, the timing of the seasons began to shift. Since 1940, he wrote in the journal, Science, the seasonal patterns "of the previous 300 years began to change and now appear to be changing at an unprecedented rate."
Citation: "The Seasons, Global Temperature and Precession," by David J. Thomson, Science, Vol. 268, April 7, 1995

�In 1997, a research team led by David Easterling of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center found the night-time and winter-time low temperatures are rising nearly twice as fast as the daytime and summer-time high temperatures. Easterling called the findings a "fingerprint" study of "greenhouse warming." The research was based on data from 5400 observing stations around the world. "The rise in [minimum-temperatures] is due to higher humidity and more water vapor, especially in the winter in northern latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. In an increasingly 'greenhouse' world this is the kind of rise you’d expect to see," Easterling said. He added that If the warming were natural, and not driven by fossil fuel emissions, the high and low temperatures would more or less rise and fall in parallel.�
Citation: "Temperature Range Narrows between Daytime Highs and Nighttime Lows," Science, July 18, 1997, David Easterling et al.

�In 1998, researchers examining weather records for the previous 600 years declared that 1997 was the hottest year at least since the 1400s. Using written records and information gleaned from tree rings, ice cores and coral reefs, researchers reconstructed the world's climate record for the past 600 years. The record revealed that the warmest years in that span were 1997, 1995, and 1990. Michael Mann and Raymond Bradley, of the University of Massachusetts, and Malcolm Hughes, of the University of Arizona, examined the correlation between temperature changes and other factors such as volcanic activity and variations in the sun's brightness. Those other factors showed a strong relationship with temperatures in earlier centuries, 'but during the 20th century, with its abrupt warming, there is little relationship between any of the natural factors we looked at' and the rising temperatures, Mann said. In the past century, he said, 'we see a remarkable correlation with carbon dioxide emissions, which swamps these natural factors.' �
Citation: "Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries, Nature, April 23, 1998, No. 392 pp 779-787, Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley & Malcolm K. Hughes

�Mann, Bradley and Hughes followed their Nature study with another climate reconstruction from the year 1000 AD to 1998. They found that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest in the last millennium. Strikingly, the team found that the planet had been undergoing a slight but steady cooling trend from 1000 to about 1880. That trend was abruptly reversed as temperatures began to rise rapidly in tandem with large-scale industrialization based on our use of coal and oil.�
Citation: "Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations" Geophysical Research Letters, March 15, 1999, Volume 26 Issue #6 Pages 759-762

�In June, 1999, British researchers examined the planet's temperature record between 1900 and 1998. In particular, they assessed the relative roles of four "climate forcing" components -- solar irradiance and stratospheric volcanic aerosols (which occur naturally) and greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols (which are generated by human fossil fuel combustion). The team, led by Simon Tett of the Hadley Centre in the U.K., found: "The temperature changes over the 20th century cannot be explained by any combination of natural internal variability and the response to natural forcings alone." A commentary in Nature concluded: "The researchers’ findings were unambiguous…All in all, it seems we can lay to rest the idea that recent climate warming is just a freak of nature."
Citation: Nature, Vol. 399, pp 569-572 10 June 1999

�An analysis of the climate of the last 1,000 year published in the July 14, 2000 issue of Science suggests that human activity is the dominant force behind the sharp global warming trend seen in the 20th century. The study, by Dr. Thomas J. Crowley, a geologist at Texas A&M University, found that natural factors, like fluctuations in sunshine or volcanic activity, were powerful influences on temperatures in past centuries. But he found that they account for only 25 percent of the warming since 1900. The lion's share, he said, can be attributed to human influences, particularly to rising levels of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping "greenhouse gases" that come from the burning of fuels and forests. These twin lines of evidence provide further support for the idea that the greenhouse effect is already here," Dr. Crowley wrote in describing the work in today's issue of the journal Science. Several climate experts said his findings offer the most direct link yet between people and the 1.1 degree rise in average global temperature over the last 100 years.�
Citation: "Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years," Dr. Thomas J. Crowley, Science, 14 July 2000, v. 289

�In 2005, a team of researchers, lead by NASA's James Hansen, found that the earth had become a "net importer" of heat -- due to the build-up of human-generated carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Hansen called the study a "smoking Gun" proof that humans are changing the climate.�
"Earth's Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications," Science, Vol 308, Issue 5727, 1431-1435, 3 June 2005

Oh, by the way, those paragraphs I posted yesterday came from a Department of Defense report on global warming that was produced in 2003 and suppressed for four months by the Pentagon before it was leaked.

I realize that when you are talking to people about their religion, facts are irrelevant. Nonetheless,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/56456.stm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html

All that is clear about the global warming debate is that if you are a university professor who receives government funding to write papers about global warming, that's what you do.

A little background on �some MIT guy�: Richard Lindzen charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled "Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus," was underwritten by OPEC.

So, you are saying that the outcome of scientific research is directly influenced by the source of funding for said research.

This begs the question of who makes the decisions concerning government funded research, and if teams that produce findings tht support a specific side of a hot topic are more likely to have their funding renewed in successive years.

Bruce,
The first article is old and useless since they fail to site the articles or the scientists.

Did you read the entire second article?
�He added, however, that the study also showed that over the past 20 years the number of sunspots had remained roughly constant, while the Earth's temperature had continued to increase.

This suggested that over the past 20 years, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation had begun to dominate "the natural factors involved in climate change", he said.

Dr Gareth Jones, a climate researcher at the Met Office, said that Dr Solanki's findings were inconclusive because the study had not incorporated other potential climate change factors.�

The second article also quotes David Bellamy:
�In April, New Scientist published a letter from David Bellamy denying global warming and claiming:
Indeed, if you take all the evidence that is rarely mentioned by the Kyotoists into consideration, 555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich, Switzerland, have been growing since 1980.
It�s not hard to go to the WGMS web site and see that his claim is not even close to being true, as explained in subsequent letters. Now George Monbiot has tracked down the source of Bellamy�s claim. He got it from a crackpot web site (�The next ice age could begin any day�), which got it from Larouche�s 21st Century Science, which got from SEPP, which seem to have made it up. Plus he made a typo, turning 55% into 555. Monbiot concludes:

�It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must climb over a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which then disintegrates in the palm of your hand. You must ignore an entire canon of science, the statements of the world�s most eminent scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published in the foremost scientific journals. You must, if you are David Bellamy, embrace instead the claims of an eccentric former architect, which are based on what appears to be a non-existent data set. And you must do all this while calling yourself a scientist.�

It is science, not religion, that should be guiding this discussion.

Gary,
Lindzen is not conducting research, he is making commentary and expressing opinions on other�s research.

Did you even read the references you posted? This is third time you have implied that the sun is responsible for global warming. And yet, all you have given is:


The sun is currently at its most active for 300 years.

That, say scientists in Philadelphia, could be a more significant cause of global warming than the emissions of greenhouse gases that are most often blamed.



and


The scientists do not pretend they can explain everything , nor do they say that attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be abandoned. But they do feel that understanding of our nearest star must be increased if the climate is to be understood.


and

Most scientists agree that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels have contributed to the warming of the planet in the past few decades but have questioned whether a brighter Sun is also responsible for rising temperatures.



and

He says that the increased solar brightness over the past 20 years has not been enough to cause the observed climate changes but believes that the impact of more intense sunshine on the ozone layer and on cloud cover could be affecting the climate more than the sunlight itself.



So, for the third time, you have offered no evidence on the important question of whether our activites are warming the planet.

i am more prone to beleive what scientists tell me then my government. science is the search for truth. government doesnt want you to know the truth about anything. if the scientists say global warming is taking place then i believe them. the government couldnt even keep neworleans from turning into a giant fish bowl even though they knew a hurricane would hit nawlins eventually. its called prevenative measures and this world has taken far to few. its like getting a speeding ticket not paying it then scratching your head when you get a warrant out for your arrest and an even bigger fine. :confused:

Just an article I found interesting.

Washington Post article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301305.html)

Another web site I found interesting.

web page (http://www.john-daly.com/index.htm)

A little background on �some MIT guy�: Richard Lindzen charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled "Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus," was underwritten by OPEC.



I tried to find this evidence and it refers back to a Harpers Magazine article and I can't find any proof of this from anywere else.

Oh, a search of your EXACT wording comes up with THAT EXACT post (without the first sentence) is FROM THAT HARPERS ARTICLE.

Oh, and who wrote that 1995 article you QUOTED (without quoting)

Ross Gelbspan

A quick google of him shows this

Pulitzer Prize Fraud (http://www.junkscience.com/news/gelbspan.html)

Another article he wrote last year. (http://www.boston.com/news/weather/articles/2005/08/30/katrinas_real_name/)

This guy makes a living promoting doom and gloom, he has written 2 books on the subject and writes one sided articles about it all the time. (all of which list his books)

If you ask me, he writes these articles to promote his book sales.

So, you are saying that the outcome of scientific research is directly influenced by the source of funding for said research.

This begs the question of who makes the decisions concerning government funded research, and if teams that produce findings tht support a specific side of a hot topic are more likely to have their funding renewed in successive years.



Yes, but it's more complex than that. Science is Shakespearian... The truth will out. People often don't understand the scientific method and how things work. Take a look at the tabacco industry. Despite their best efforts, eventually the truth came out. Truth is truth. Even the nay-sayers admit that we're having an impact on the environment.

Let's give the nay-sayers the credit of doubt and say that global warming is due to sun spots. Who then would say, well, let's go ahead and help out? Is it a good thing that we exacerbate the problem? I've always found the notion of doing an open experiment on the world that supports you to be a little stupid. Keep in mind that we know there are huge increases in asthma, and allergies due to the pollution we're dumping into our environment.

I fail to see how anyone can argue that we shouldn't do our best to stop dumping pollution into the air we breath and the water we drink, no matter what their position on global warming is. Given that the only motivation for not doing so is profit, and the evidence is that indeed, those companies with a cleaner environmental stance have more often than not, done better in terms of profit, I would think that most would support this.

I also don't understand why we can't learn from our past. We see this repeatedly, govenment funded scientists without any affiliation to any company, come in and in consensus tell us there is a problem (see cigarettes, Vioxx, Fen Fen, ephedra (sp?) etc.). And then the company funded scientists come in and tell us, "Uh just wait a minute, that's not clear yet." And in every case we find out that the company scientists were wrong. How can we be any dumber? How many times do we have to be slapped upside the head before we figure out that if a company pays for the research, it probably isn't too reliable?

You can't believe what anybody says, you have to do your own research. Does anybody have references to actual first-hand investigators, or are we just going to quote from people who quote from other people on down to the first person who just made it all up, and take sides on which crock of #$*&$! we want to believe?

In my opinion, 99% of people have no clue about anything scientific (although most people think they do). Listening to that 99% is like listening to a group of children talking about whether Santa Clause is real. I ignore all people unless I know they are in the 1% who understand actual science.

Just an article I found interesting.

Washington Post article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301305.html)



WOW! I actually made it to the end of a Za article. My compliments, an excellent article.

BTW - for those who read this, Bill Gray is not unique in scientific communities. I've met a few like him. All too often it's sort of tragic. They get used to seat of the pants science, that is, they trust their instincts more than what the numbers tell them. "I know it has to be thus, I've lived this so often that I know." What happens then is that the measurements don't fit what they "know" so they fudge. Then they write it up, and then it turns out they were wrong.

Mr. Gray has a problem with computer modeling. Let me give you a perspective on computer modeling from a different point of view. Its called Biomatrices. The human (of for that matter any complex organisms) array of gene expression controlling a given traight can be so complex that the human mind can't grasp it by looking at the data. Thousands of genes can be involved in a process and figuring out the relationship by looking at the data is impossible. Now, statisticians study this stuff using computer modeling. Instict and even direct observation is worthless.

Models used to examine climate change are much the same. Looking out your window is just too easy and too misleading. Dr. Gray likes to look out the window. And why shouldn't he, doing so has made him famous. The problem is that what he is looking at is beyond his ability to understand without help.

This aritcle rightly points out that we don't really know what's causing global warming, but to sit back and hope for the best seems frivolous. The counter that it is harmful to the economy just doesn't fly. One doesn't have to shut down one's economy to do something. The same dire predictions of economic failure have been with us since the 70s when I worked in the lumber mills in Oregon. The claim was that if they cleaned up the pollution they were putting in the air and rivers they would go broke and everyone would lose their jobs. Well, they were forced to do those things and today, they make more money than they ever have.

The same predictions were made about unleaded fuel and everyone punched out the unleaded protectors from their fuel tanks in the 70s. Now, there isn't even regular gas anymore and our economy is huge.

California, a state with the most rigid environmental protections in the world, is still the richest state in the union. EVery time we hear this is going to kill the economy, it doesn't. To me the question is, why wouldn't we want to clean up the mess we are dumping into the air?

Another web site I found interesting.

web page (http://www.john-daly.com/index.htm)



This one is a bunch of crock. They imply that Nature isn't up to snuff because someone published a retraction of an article there. This is what science is all about. Checking and rechecking the data. People make mistakes, some are even accidental. When you have 100s of people checking the data, the mistakes get caught. This is why I believe the global warming argument. Of the 1000s of environmentalists looking at this, most say their data supports it. The few who don't always say something along the lines of, well, my experience tells me it's not real. And in every case, those nay-sayers have a vested interest in it not being real. It's the consensus over time that matters. We are now looking at over 30 years of data, and the results aren't getting weaker, they're getting stronger. Typically, in science, over such an extended period, you start to get a clear picture. Thirty years is a long time for there to be so much consistent data with almost no real evidence against.

Oh, and who wrote that 1995 article you QUOTED (without quoting)

Ross Gelbspan

A quick google of him shows this

Pulitzer Prize Fraud (http://www.junkscience.com/news/gelbspan.html)

Another article he wrote last year. (http://www.boston.com/news/weather/articles/2005/08/30/katrinas_real_name/)

This guy makes a living promoting doom and gloom, he has written 2 books on the subject and writes one sided articles about it all the time. (all of which list his books)

If you ask me, he writes these articles to promote his book sales.



Look, this guy is a nut case, if for no other reason that it is unlikely that the oil industry would form some secret cabal to effect the debate on global warming. They don't have to. The reality is that on an issue such as this, those who think they stand to lose something will act. That Exxon Mobil spent millions discrediting global warming is a known fact. Go back and read the Washington Post article, those against the idea (all of them involved in energy production) set up an entire foundation, CEI, to fight the idea. Is it a cabal? Hardly, each organization does what it has to do to fight what they perceive as a threat. That they come together in institutes such as the CEI doesn't mean they sat down in a room with Bush and planned it out. It makes a great read but it's garbage.

However, that doesn't mean that they are right. They are all fighting the same battle to protect their cash flow. That hardly makes a good argument against global warming.

I ask again, do you have any actual citations to this "consistent data," or just the reviews of the reviews of the reviews of this data?

I need to see the actual evidence. Anything else is just chin music

You can't believe what anybody says, you have to do your own research. Does anybody have references to actual first-hand investigators, or are we just going to quote from people who quote from other people on down to the first person who just made it all up, and take sides on which crock of #$*&$! we want to believe?

In my opinion, 99% of people have no clue about anything scientific (although most people think they do). Listening to that 99% is like listening to a group of children talking about whether Santa Clause is real. I ignore all people unless I know they are in the 1% who understand actual science.



You pulled your other post about the garbage research that the contact lens people bring you. It was a good post.

Oh yeah, I have to admit you were right about the cloud thing. It turns out it isn't as clear cut as I thought it was. It might be that clouds contibute to global warming and it might be they help prevent it. Oh well, if I was perfect, Ah'd be rich.

As for doing your own research, in this case it's impossible. I'll go with the widespread consensus.

I ask again, do you have any actual citations to this "consistent data," or just the reviews of the reviews of the reviews of this data?

I need to see the actual evidence. Anything else is just chin music



Go here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed

Type in "climate change" and get back to us when you've satisfied yourself.

Keep in mind that we know there are huge increases in asthma, and allergies due to the pollution we're dumping into our environment.

More religion. Try some facts:
http://blogs.webmd.com/healthy-children/2006/04/cleanliness-and-asthma.html
http://www.parenthood.com/articles.html?article_id=7155

There is so much we know if we just refuse to look around at the evidence.

I ask again, do you have any actual citations to this "consistent data," or just the reviews of the reviews of the reviews of this data?

I need to see the actual evidence. Anything else is just chin music



Go back and read my post where I said I'll accept that global warming is due to sunspots. Then read the part where I said, how can anyone argue that not dumping stuff into the environment is bad and that running an open experiement with CO2 on the world that we depend on seems stupid to me.

Fact is that I don't care if global warming is real. I care that we are stupidly dumping in our own bed without knowing what the end result will be. The argument, "well, maybe it won't be anything" seems a little naieve to me.

Keep in mind that we know there are huge increases in asthma, and allergies due to the pollution we're dumping into our environment.

More religion. Try some facts:
http://blogs.webmd.com/healthy-children/2006/04/cleanliness-and-asthma.html
http://www.parenthood.com/articles.html?article_id=7155

There is so much we know if we just refuse to look around at the evidence.



And your point is? There is also evidence that global warming is contributing to these issues Bruce. But, as I said before, running an open experiement on the world we live in just because we can and some are getting rich, seems stupid to me.

Another web site I found interesting.

web page



Lyle, I only posted a good web site to read. It is full of data and articles that disprove a lot of what the "Global Warming" crowd say.

I really found the Co2 level article interesting. It showed that the Co2 levels were increasing in the 40's to the 50's, yet the world average temp was going DOWN. This was also a period of low sun activity.

CO2 is not a poison. It does no damage to anything. If global waming is untrue, then it's ok to release it without any problem, and the whole debate is moot. If you don't want to release CO2, then don't have a campfire, don't compost vegetation, don't light a candle, don't breathe. We also need to slaughter all the animals of the world, they release CO2. And all the people too.

Try to avoid using words like "dumping" CO2 into the air, to make it sound like garbage. I don't think of CO2 as garbage. I think of it as plant food.

Also, all the CO2 we are releasing into the atmosphere was in the atmosphere to begin with. When earth was created the atmosphere was 20% CO2 and no oxygen. Thanks to life on earth, the 20% CO2 has been reduced to almost zero (0.023% before people), and oxygen is now 20%, same as what CO2 used to be. Life on earth has taken all the CO2 out of the air and turned it into O2, and the carbon was put into biomass, coal, petroleum, coral, natural gas, sea shells which turned into limestone, etc. We are taking a tiny fraction of that carbon and putting it back into the air where it started from. So freaking what?

Also, if increasing CO2 levels from .023% to 0.35% is going to spell the end of the world, then what happened to earth when the CO2 level was 20%???? Should have ended then.

Also, if increasing CO2 levels from .023% to 0.35% is going to spell the end of the world, then what happened to earth when the CO2 level was 20%???? Should have ended then.



Jesus Morgan, haven't you heard of evolution, Oh wait, maybe you don't believe in it? The organisms on this planet haven't existed in 20% CO2 for how many years? To adjust to those changes would take a similar number of years. Furthermore, what's the relevance of this? The changes we're talking about are significantly less and there is no doubt that we can survive them. But, they are going to be a pain and many will die, mostly the poor.

CO2 isn't a poison? Let's do an experiment, Let's put Morgan in a sack and fill it with CO2 and find out if it's not a poison. Let's do another experiment, Let's fill a sack with O2 and put Morgan in it and see how he does.

The fact is that the world has evolved to be a certain way and a sudden (100 years is sudden in terms of evolution) change is going to do a lot of damage. This is the problem, the we're not worried crowd don't quite tell the truth when they say, well it's been that way before, or that it's not a poison. The world exists in a balance and the organisms on it have evolved to exist in that environment, and sudden changes are going to hurt, whether we believe it or not. Yes, the earth can stand a lot of change and does, what level of testosterone does it take to make you want to push the limit to it's furthest level just to see if you can?

In the end, you're still doing an open experiment that there is no need for, why do it? Morgan and Za, you want to experiment, do it on yourselves, not on the rest of us.

Post deleted by Frisbee

Water is a poison. Let's do an experiment. Chain your leg to a rock and wait for the tide to come in. Did you drown? See, water is a poison. Ice cream is a poison. Let's do an experient. Go to the loading dock of the Breyers Ice Cream Co and let the fork lift load 25,000 pounds of ice cream on your head. Did you die? Poison.

Marathon runners that overhydrate have been diagnosed with "water poisoning".

Moderation people. Moderation.

Um...except for playing disc golf. And posting. Everything else in moderation. :cool:

The scientific evidence supporting climate change caused by humans burning fossils fuels is the result of the most extensive and rigorously peer-reviewed scientific research in history. Scientists from many related fields have been doing research on this issue for thirty plus years. The evidence only gets more robust as the results of new studies come in.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a joint effort of the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme that represents over 2000 scientists from 100 countries, has issued several reports on global climate change. Each successive report has concluded is progressively stronger language that the burning of fossil fuels is changing the earth�s climate in significant ways. Bush refused to accept the findings of the IPCC, and instructed the National Academy of Sciences to conduct their own report. The NAS came back to the president a month later and said the IPCC report is essentially correct. That conclusion, that humans are causing global warming at a rapid and accelerating pace, is corroborated by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, as well as the National Academy of Sciences.

The subject of scientific consensus was perhaps expressed best by Dr. D. James Baker, former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: �There is a better scientific consensus on this than on any other issue I know, except maybe Newton�s second law of dynamics.�

Big oil, big coal and other big energy corporations saw the writing on the wall more than a decade ago. The only way to reduce the amount of CO2 pouring into the atmosphere is to drastically reduce the burning of fossil fuels. They saw this as a serious threat to their vested interests, and with good reason. So big energy, led by Exxon-Mobil, initiated a coordinated, aggressive and well-funded campaign of misinformation whose stated goal was to create doubt in the minds of average American voters.

Big energy hired whatever credentialed experts they could find who were willing to question the findings of the mainstream scientific community and paid for them to travel around the country giving speeches, doing interviews and writing articles. People like the guy from MIT.

Big oil and big coal funded think tanks and other quasi-scientific groups that produce reports designed to look a lot like peer-reviewed studies but really are not. Exxon-Mobile has funded over forty such groups, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Quasi-journalistic adventures were also given funds to produce skeptic opinion pieces masquerading as journalism. Web sites providing misinformation proliferated.

Energy corporations demanded that all journalistic reports on global warming, whether written or broadcast, be balanced. So if a reporter quotes one expert who supports the mainstream scientific community on global warming, she must also quote one expert who disagrees. Since about ninety-five percent of scientists agree that humans are causing global warming and about five percent disagree, to have one voice on each side hardly seems balanced. But the energy corporations can demand such unbalanced reporting because they own, one way or another, many of the news organizations. And if the big energy corporations cannot directly influence the editors, they do so by threatening to withdraw advertising dollars.

The stated goal of all this misinformation is to cloud the issue as much as possible in the mind of the average voter. This is one baited hook that I for one am not willing to swallow. But, judging from many of the posts on this thread, the big energy campaign of misinformation has been highly successful.

Climate change is happening now and it is the result of humans burning fossil fuels. The consensus among the scientific community is nearly unanimous on this point. The only question remaining is whether we can muster the political will to confront the problem before it is too late.

The stated goal of all this misinformation is to cloud the issue as much as possible in the mind of the average voter. This is one baited hook that I for one am not willing to swallow. But, judging from many of the posts on this thread, the big energy campaign of misinformation has been highly successful.



wow. i'm glad someone can see through all of that misinformation and lead all of us big energy lemmings to see the light. was ALL of the evidence listed in lindzen's article completely false and spoon fed from big energy? it baffles me how many times people of the global warming doomsday ilk can try to fall back on these absolutely wacko conspiracy theorys. at least gore didn't try to mask his misinformation by producing a blatantly political propaganda film.

these are the same people who walk outside and think that summers are hotter now than when they were a kid and that itself PROVES global warming MUST be happening. the same folks who point at current weather events (like the recent heavy rain in the mid-atlantic) and actually believe that is evidence. who is being naive, wayne?

to the PC global warming doomsday theorists, anything that contradicts the pure evil that man has unleashed on mother earth must certainly be a product of a big oil conspiracy. in truth, it really is impossible for the debate to be as one sided as wayne portrays (who is already misled enough to believe the debate is over).

oh... i forgot... ANYTHING "peer reviewed" is credible and so right-on-the-money we must treat it as gospel. nice buzzword, wayne. how many "peer reviewed" studies insisted that the world would come to a screeching halt during Y2K?


Climate change is happening now and it is the result of humans burning fossil fuels.



so all of that climate change that has been continuous for 4.5 billion years before humans started burning fossil fuels was a result of what?

Peer review is not a buzz word. It the process though which of all credible science is created. It is not flawless but trying to dismiss it as a "buzz word" is insulting. I find it comical that so many are trying to debate this subject with Lyle. He is a trained scientist. Try looking up his publication record(see the NCBI link above). You are outgunned.

no need to be insulted.

i'm aware of what peer reviewed means. calling it a buzz word is in reference to wayne's tendency to hold anything labeled "peer reviewed" as an absolute truth. he seems to expect everyone else to do the same. plenty of peer reviewed studies contradict each other.

Big energy hired whatever credentialed experts they could find who were willing to question the findings of the mainstream scientific community and paid for them to travel around the country giving speeches, doing interviews and writing articles. <font color="red"> People like the guy from MIT. </font>



Can anyone find this proof from anywhere other than the guy who wrote the 1995 Harpers Mag article. I can't find it anywhere else.

One more note, my opinion on this matter had nothing to do with "Big Oil' or "Big Coal" propaganda. It has more to do with history and looking at the evidence shown by the "Global Warming" theory. It just does not add up. Shoot, even Gore as admitted that they overstated some of the possible outcomes in "An Inconvenient Truth".

I will not say I am not concerned about the rise in Co2 lately, however I do not think it is dooms day either. The oceans will not rise.

BTW, Pat Robertson says that all the floods and Hurricanes like Katrina are signs the end of times are near. I guess you all agree with him too. :D

Paul,
You impress me with your intellectual dexterity, the way you are able to effortlessly step over a mountain of evidence to arrive at an insignificant molehill where you can plant seeds of doubt and thereby dismiss the entire mountain. To categorize peer-reviewed science as a buzzword is a little sloppy though.

Water is a poison. Let's do an experiment. Chain your leg to a rock and wait for the tide to come in. Did you drown? See, water is a poison. Ice cream is a poison. Let's do an experient. Go to the loading dock of the Breyers Ice Cream Co and let the fork lift load 25,000 pounds of ice cream on your head. Did you die? Poison.



Excellent, you get the point, if we needlessly add too much CO2, or too much O2, or too much water, or for that matter, ice cream into our environment, it might just kill us. Why do it if it can be avoided?

Paul,
You impress me with your intellectual dexterity, the way you are able to effortlessly step over a mountain of evidence to arrive at an insignificant molehill where you can plant seeds of doubt and thereby dismiss the entire mountain. To categorize peer-reviewed science as a buzzword is a little sloppy though.



eureka! i've figured out how easy it was for you to be mislead! you must be taking all of your peer reviewed research as far out of context as you did in my last post.

please revisit a few of my posts and let me know if you intended to ignore all of the questions raised.

Marathon runners that overhydrate have been diagnosed with "water poisoning".

Moderation people. Moderation.


Um...except for playing disc golf. And posting. Everything else in moderation. :cool:



Rhett hits the nail on the head, and not just about posting. Our use of the environment should be carried out with moderation. It wasn't that long ago that the Great Lakes were dead, rivers in Ohio would litterally catch on fire, and does anyone remember love canal? Every time we act without some controls we end up with a mess. So far we've been lucky, we've always been able to clean up our messes because they've been localized. What happens when you make a mess that is global? Again, why find out? It would take very little to solve the problem and yet we can't bring ourselves to do it. As always, those with the most to gain are waging a political and media battle to prevent change. Are we sure we want to let them drive this issue?

Actually, Paul isn't necessarily wrong, but lets put his view of "peer review" to a comparison. What are we comparing it to? Well, data put out by the energy industry that isn't peer reviewed, and what breaks down to opinions by guys like Rush Limbaugh and other conservitive talk show hosts. While Peer Review may not be perfect, it is still way beyond what we're getting from these other sources. Furthermore, I think that Paul's opinion of Peer Review is based on a static view. That is, someone submits a piece of research, it gets reviewed and published. Lo and behold, both the researcher and the reviewers muffed and the research was bad. In a static world, there you have it; people are stuck with that mistake.

The scientific method is much more robust than that. One opinion is never good enough, each concept gets tested and reviewed over and over and over. Thousands of peer reviewed articles are written and published, each testing different avenues of the issue. When the answers that come back are consistent, the scientific community begins to take notice and the idea becomes codified as a theory. Please note that I am not calling global warming a theory, beyond the misuse of the term by the lay public and politicians, global warming hasn't earned the right to be called a theory IMO.

Thirty years of research on this topic has given a consistent picture that global warming is real and that mankind is impacting his environment. Keep in mind that the main argument that the nay-sayers offer is, it won't be as bad as you think.

Good scientists don't think about how bad this will be. Instead they say it is happening and ask the question, do we really want it to? Yes some take a "Oh my lord, let's assume the worst case scenario" approach; this is almost as bad as the, "you worry-warts, let's assue the best case scenario approach. As Rhett points out, a little moderation goes a long way.

Just for fun, here is the introduction to an essay I wrote about science. The piece is much longer than this but it might give you something to think about.

I believe in science; I know that this has become pass� � nonetheless, I persist. In America today, we have come to believe that scientists are somehow� disconnected. The notion that scientists are out of touch, finds its basis in the concept of the ivory tower. Purportedly, scientists are ensconced in their academic institutions and have no concept of what occurs in the real world. The reality is that it the rest of us, along with our political, social, and religious leaders who are ensconced in our ivory towers, missing the truth of the real world.

When I consider the concept of the ivory tower, I somewhat humorously think of Galileo, and speculate that those who sat in judgment of him created the idea. Galileo had the tumidity to support the Copernican Theories, that the earth circled the sun and not vice versa. I envision that the religious and political leaders who sanctioned, and ultimately banished Galileo, saw him as arrogant, in his tower above them, and foolishly deluded. Hence they acted without remorse, sure of their own interpretation of the world. Today we know just how wrong those leaders were, and just who resided in the ivory tower.

The reality is that scientists reside anywhere but in an ivory tower; their job is quite the opposite. They reside in the muck and the mud of the every-day world. That is because their job is determine how the real world works, to observe, measure and then hypothesize about what they've seen. It is not their job to desire an outcome, but rather to report what is. The unfortunate side of the job is that all too often what they find is inconsistent with what the rest of us want to believe. It is at that time that we, and our political, social, and religious leaders place ourselves in an ivory tower, right along with Galileo's critics.

I do not delude myself into thinking that scientists do not make mistakes. Indeed, I have seen many of those mistakes revealed. However, I am keenly aware that the scientific process, given time to work, does not make mistakes. While one scientist might be mistaken, the testing and retesting of each idea leaves no room for prolonged misinterpretation; eventually the truth will out.

This is not a position or reply to anyone in particular. Just info I have read here and there: Other greenhouse gases are N20, methane, and CFCs. Greenhouse gases trap heat in our atmosphere, not clouds of water vapor. Deforestation has caused about the same amount of rise of C02 levels as the petrochemical industry has. Deforestation is also a double whammy in that the burning of trees releases CO2 and the dead trees no longer absorb it. Other deforestation comes from hundreds of years of logging, clearing, and never growing back original forests. Just something to fuel the fires and add to the CO2.

But the increase in CO2 causes plants to grow back faster, since they love CO2, especially in the oceans where much of the photosynthesis takes place, and it's hard to deforest an ocean.

Lyle, the scientists are not isolated by being in an ivory tower. They are isolated because they are nerds and dorks. Did you ever meet a scientist? As adults they usually have oversized glasses designed in the 1980's, with thick prescriptions. They usually have untrimmed beards that look horrible, and stringy unwashed hair, and horrible taste in clothing. Bad breath. And take a look at their shoes! These are the same people who, in high school, we all know about...the band aid on the glasses, high water pants, and greasy unwashed hair. And the way they laugh!! Oh my Gosh, don't EVER tell a joke to a scientist, the screachy huff-and-puff laughter on the inhaled breath makes Steve Erkle look like a hipster. Plus, they spend all their time playing chess and video games, which isolates them even more.

These are the reasons scientists are isolated. Plus, they can't get girls, unless they have money. Bill Gates, the dork, actually has a wife. Imagine that!!!

But the increase in CO2 causes plants to grow back faster, since they love CO2, especially in the oceans where much of the photosynthesis takes place, and it's hard to deforest an ocean.




Also, with the additional rain on the land, and the increased temperature helping colder regions grow, (perhaps increased rainfall on deserts & savanas turning back into forests), more plants can grow absorbing the additional C02, which caused the rain and the plant growth. Over time the rain and C02 levels cause the plants to grow out of control (especially the kudzoo)and absorb too much C02, which eventually plunges us into an ice age. This kills all the plants, which die and rot and turn into oil which we later drill for and use to regain C02 levels to end the ice age.

Good one Mr. Dunipace.

Let me see � on one side of the debate we have the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society and the National Academy of Science (to name a few), prestigious scientific organizations drawing conclusions from a broad review of the best available scientific research. On the other side we have a Wall Street Journal opinion/editorial piece by some MIT guy. Who should I believe?

...drawing conclusions from a broad review of the best available scientific research.



my point is that the type of fear mongoring conclusions you've been spouting on this board (no doubt verbatim from the thread namesake's propaganda film) are not trustworthy because the best available information is far insufficient to have confidence in those conclusions. even gore admitted that to some extent. that MIT guy described it very accurately as "shrill alarmism".

again wayne, do you really believe that we can confidently conclude that if we don't get our act together by 2016 (which i believe we will) the world is going to end? you said it earlier. those types of pretentious and misleading predictions are where we differ in what we decide is trustworthy or not.

2016 huh ?

I guess Gore does have a solution for the social security shortage after all. :D

An article in yesterdays Science magazine links the proliferation of forest fires (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1128834) in the American west over the past couple decades to global warming. Just another piece of the puzzle.

Paul,
Here is a critique of the flawed science that some MIT guy (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/richard-lindzens-hol-testimony/) uses to question the overwhelming evidence between human production of CO2 and global warming. It should answer all of your burning questions.

Good point Dave. Plants do grow faster with increased CO2 levels, especially woody vines. The National Academy of Sciences recently reported that poison ivy (http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/103/24/9086?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=poison+ivy+global+warming&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT) not only grows more abundantly with increased CO2 levels, but it also becomes more toxic by producing a more allergenic form of urushiol. This is one consequence of global warming that will directly affect many disc golfers.

nice article, but it comes across as way too defensive for me to simply disregard lindzens facts. when he discusses alarmism and the bend of funding with regard to climate change research at the end, his only basis is "well i haven't seen it, so it must not exist".


Throughout his testimony, Lindzen refers to the global warming 'alarmists'. In my dictionary an 'alarmist' is defined as 'a person who alarms others needlessly'. However, Lindzen appears to define as 'alarmism' anything that links human activities to climate change.


you've gotta admit that this statement is pure oversimplification. the social construction of global warming alarmism (ex. scientists keep theorizing that severe weather events are a product of global warming, brainless talking heads like oprah, dan rather and 60 minutes harp on it because it sounds scary, so when joe american notes heavier than normal rainfall, hurricanes or whatever, he thinks "must be global warming") is a real issue and i think this author's tone and attitude is a fine example of it. are research institutes more likely to receive funding if their intent is to tie some sort of causal relationship to pollution than those who work to second guess it? that is an obvious yes. again, everyone knows we need to work towards reducing emissions, not rely on fossil fuels, etc. but relating that to a 1 degree "change" in temp over 100 yrs, or moreover, a "tipping point" like you pointed out earlier is pure alarmism, plain and simple.

also, we get back to the absolute impossibility of models to be able to distinguish natural climate variability from "inorganic" climate change. he refers to data sets over 100 or 25 yr periods (which is a joke to me) and the comments (possibly by other scientists) at the bottom are full of banter trying to get that straight.

this is important-- throw ANY conclusion based on the 100 or so years that any data has been collected out the window! it's impossible for it to be significant with regards to pinpointing the cause of climate change that has been occuring for 4.5 billion yrs!

Good point Dave. Plants do grow faster with increased CO2 levels, especially woody vines. The National Academy of Sciences recently reported that poison ivy (http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/103/24/9086?maxtoshow=&amp;HITS=10&amp;hits=10&amp;RESULTFORMAT=&amp;full text=poison+ivy+global+warming&amp;searchid=1&amp;FIRSTIND EX=0&amp;resourcetype=HWCIT) not only grows more abundantly with increased CO2 levels, but it also becomes more toxic by producing a more allergenic form of urushiol. This is one consequence of global warming that will directly affect many disc golfers.



i guess the unseasonably cool temps we experienced at TNT last night were a result as well? the heavy rain we had recently was-- wasn't it? at least you said so earlier. though the data that proves it must be scintillating. /msgboard/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

what isn't an effect of global warming wayne?

this is another fine example of shrill alarmism to try and bolster the theory that humans have unnaturally altered the life expectancy on our planet.

as i've said from the beginning of this thread-- it's obvious we need to work to build energy efficiencies and reduce CO2 emissions, but trying to prove a relationship between human activity and current weather events is alarmist and impossible. this is illustrated by the tagline for gore's movie-- "the scariest movie you will ever see", accompanied by the poster of a hurricane coming from a smokestack. that is exactly what makes me shake my head in disgust.

here's to hoping our policy makers can filter out such blatant fear mongoring and make policy decisions on reasonable information. blaming current catastrophic weather events on global warming without basis (like gore and hurricane katrina) is a hindrance to that process.

Perhaps you should change your avatar to an ostrich.

you cannot point to a specific evening and claim it was or want a result of global warming. i suspect you know that.

btw, global warming refers to average temperatures around the planet. it is possible, even predicted by the models, that some weather will behave opposite what you might assume from only a surface "understanding" of the phenomenon. the fact is, global warming will increase snowfall (more water in the air) and may increase temperatures in certain local climates.

you cannot point to a specific evening and claim it was or want a result of global warming. i suspect you know that.



that's exactly my point and probably what got me going on this thread in the first place. you cannot point to any specific weather event and claim it was a result of global warming. but here we have wayne at the very beginning of this...


Extreme weather conditions, like the unusually heavy and prolonged rain that we are currently experiencing here in the Mid-Atlantic region, are one of the many projected outcomes of global warming.



yeah.. and the corn on my pinky toe is there because my feet have been sweating too much because the earth has become ever so slightly hotter (just kidding again).

this is important-- throw ANY conclusion based on the 100 or so years that any data has been collected out the window! it's impossible for it to be significant with regards to pinpointing the cause of climate change that has been occuring for 4.5 billion yrs!



And THIS is more important - take anything you may or may not have learned about global warming in the past few pages of this thread and use it with great discretion in forming your overall feelings on the issue. But, and this is EVEN MORE important, do not just go merrily on your way and forget about it. The whole issue is way too important for that!

you cannot point to a specific evening and claim it was or want a result of global warming. i suspect you know that.

btw, global warming refers to average temperatures around the planet. it is possible, even predicted by the models, that some weather will behave opposite what you might assume from only a surface "understanding" of the phenomenon. the fact is, global warming will increase snowfall (more water in the air) and may increase temperatures in certain local climates.



People, read that our President and most of Congress, ignore this reality all too often. It is just too easy for them to form an opinion based on a single data point, rather than think about the whole. The fact that global warming causes greater variation in general will never be fully appreciated by most of the lay public.

BTW - It snowed for the first time in 20 years in Houston last winter. It couldn't be as simple as global warming, I'm betting on some terrorist plot to freeze all of Texas thereby depriving the U.S. of much needed beef and cotton stocks. Or even worse, to decrease the production of high levels of good conservatives (by freezing them all to death) who have the strength of character to fight the axis of evil.

The way I see it, debate in the scientific community has moved beyond whether global warming caused by human production of CO2 is real. Credible debate now focuses on how quickly the warming is occurring and what steps we need to take to slow the process before it is too late. Given the current rate at which humans are pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, many scientists have taken the position that we have about ten years to drastically change our behavior before we reach a tipping point. This does not mean that the earth will cease to be in ten years. It means that after that time mechanisms and feedback loops will have been set into motion that will no longer react to any changes we make.

This scenario is certainly open to debate and some will call it alarmist. No one knows for sure exactly when the climatic systems will reach the tipping point or how much time will exist between passing the tipping point and the onset of the catastrophic outcomes: rising sea level, shutdown of ocean currents, more violent weather, increased infectious disease etc. The IPCC report talks about a range of possible outcomes. I don�t think there is much disagreement, though, that if we continue along the current path we will eventually run up against that tipping point. Gore was much more optimistic in his movie than the scientists who say ten years. On the far end of that scale are people like James Lovelock, who has written that the tipping point is already behind us. By the way, there was an expert panel debate on Lovelock�s ideas on the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5150816.stm) web site yesterday (too bad we have to go to the overseas press to find honest journalism on this issue).

My personal pessimism, call it alarmist if you must, springs from two observations. First, from what I have been reading, many scientists are concerned about how quickly things have started to happen lately, especially the melting of the polar ice caps and the thawing of permafrost in arctic regions. These events are of particular concern because of the feedback loops they will set into motion.

The second reason for my pessimism is my total lack of faith in the American voting public. Big energy corporations have a very tight hold on policy makers in this country. There will be no movement toward reducing our production of CO2 in this country until voters wake up and demand that our government take action. But as long as big oil and big coal continue to cloud the issue and create the illusion of uncertainty in the minds of voters, they will continue in their apathy.

When 100 scientists agree, it means:

25 of them don't agree but say they do because their boss does, and they don't want to get fired because they don't have tenure

25 of them don't agree but say they do because they are afraid of losing their grant money

20 of them don't agree but say they do because they don't understand the question and don't want to look stupid

20 of them were part of the team that came up with the theory in the first place, and are basking in glory, and even though they have since figured out why its wrong, they don't want to admit they were wrong

10 of them are keeping their mouths shut until their experiment is over, because they want to get all the credit and fame for proving it's wrong. So they work in silence

I'm more concerned about additional North Korean missile launches !!!! :eek:

When 100 scientists agree, it means:

25 of them don't agree but say they do because their boss does, and they don't want to get fired because they don't have tenure

25 of them don't agree but say they do because they are afraid of losing their grant money

20 of them don't agree but say they do because they don't understand the question and don't want to look stupid

20 of them were part of the team that came up with the theory in the first place, and are basking in glory, and even though they have since figured out why its wrong, they don't want to admit they were wrong

10 of them are keeping their mouths shut until their experiment is over, because they want to get all the credit and fame for proving it's wrong. So they work in silence



I always find it incredibly amusing when someone who knows nothing about research and how it occurs makes statements like this. While your speculation has some merit for the European model, it has none for the American model.

BTW - Gross generalization time - I've found that M.D.s are the worst at knowing about biomedical research and the most arrogant about thinking they understand it; from your post, I'd guess dentists aren't any different...

Well, I guess I'm using the European model for all my research and experiments without knowing it. And I don't even have a passport. Oh wait, you say I never did any research. So i don't need one. Nice to know.

And now I'm a dentist too. Niiiice. Open wide. (I got something for you right here).

I'm changing my numbers to make it more realistic.

2 of them don't agree but say they do because their boss does, and they don't want to get fired because they don't have tenure

2 of them don't agree but say they do because they are afraid of losing their grant money

93 of them don't agree but say they do because they don't understand the question and don't want to look stupid. They don't have to understand anything, they can just follow along and say "Look at me, I'm a scientist. You can tell because I repeat whatever I'm told like a parrot. But really I'm just an idiot. Watch me use a jargon word...albedo! Did you hear me, I used a big scientific word so everybody knows I'm a real scientist. I get a boner whenever I say that word. ALBEDO. Wow, I said it again. oops, now I have to go play with myself"

2 of them were part of the team that came up with the theory in the first place, and are basking in glory, and even though they have since figured out why its wrong, they don't want to admit they were wrong

1 of them is keeping his mouth shut until his experiment is over, because he wants to get all the credit and fame for proving it's wrong. So he works in silence and pretends to agree.

When all scientists agree, it doesn't mean much. Look at the astronomers before Copernicus. They were in 100% agreement that the sun spun around the earth. They were certainly arrogant about it, had it all figured out to a tee, and anything that did not agree with their theory could be explained by a bogus explanation (the big one was Mars, which has the oddest orbit for something that revolves aorund earth, but they came up with a BS explanation for Mars anyway that they all arrogantly agreed with). Anybody who said the earth spun around the sun was a crackpot and fool, and they would never listen to him. The first thing they would ask is where he got his astronomy degree, since the proof of all science arguments is to attack the person in the typical ad hominem style that Lyle is using right here. They would want to know whether he could speak with all the correct jargon, since scientists won't listen to anybody who doesn't use the right jargon. That's because science principals mostly depend on the words not the actual facts. Chripes, scientists only wrote papers in Latin, it became like a secret language to keep out the skeptics. Doctors too, only Latin, to keep out the quacks. Lucky for us Copernicus knew Latin.

There are those scientists who are interested in personal gain (fame/fortune) but the true scientist is interested in learning about what is going on and those others things -- if and when they come -- are simply serendipidous.

With regard to global warming -- while we can argue about what percentage is natural and what percentage is manmade -- the fact is man is increasing the average global temperature through present practices and while corporations and the politicians they finance have short term interests in suggesting there is nothing to worry about there are long term concerns that we would do well to worry about.

The Earth sustains us and if we degrade its capacity to do it in the name of the short-term financial gains of the wealthy few it is not just greedy -- it is stupid and self-destructive. (the fact that we have been doing just that for a century and a half notwithstanding).

The common non-native notion that we have people on one hand and the land and its plants and the animals on another is scientifically ignorant and leads to the kind of economic calculus which lands us in breathing polluted air and drinking polluted water and patting ourselves on the backs the whole while for technology -- disregarding the fact that we could have technology which does not pollute so dangerously if we only cared to buy into better thought-out paradigms.

when you start increasing the earth's temperature and degrading the water quality of our rivers, lakes and oceans -- and degrade the air quality -- you begin to degrade the whole food chain on which humans depend on for food. life is a whole that works on balanced interdependence. one species by itself cannot survive. without all the bacteria that lives in the human body -- humans would not be here.

we really need to rid ourselves of the notion that we can look at humans as separate form the earth and the universe. we grew out of the earth and the universe the same way an apple grows out of an apple tree. if you start changing the temperature and air and soil and water quality on which the apple tree thrives -- the apples will start to be degraded. the math isn't that complicated people. wake up.

Would anybody like me to explain why the greenhouse effect is a complete myth, and why, even if it were true, it would not matter one bit?

tell you what, go reside on Venus for a few years and then post on here letting us know what it was like living on a globe on which the cloud cover is thick enough to yield a pretty significant greenhouse effect. ;)

one can argue without a greenhouse effect the Earth would not be warm enough to support human life, but on the other hand it makes little sense to argue that fire keeps us warm in winter so therefore forest fires are good for us. too much of a good thing becomes bad. you can probably think of other examples that are close at hand :p

Cloud cover? Cloud cover keeps the earth COOLER by reflecting sunlight off the tops of the clouds and back into space. Did you ever see a photo of the earth taken from space? All those white things are clouds, they cover about 30% of earth, and they are white, white reflects most of the sunlight back to space that hits clouds. Yeah, cloud cover also retains heat that earth emits, and keeps it warmer, but the amount hitting earth that the clouds block out is so much greater than the amount bouncing back that they block in. That's why it's COOLER on a cloudy day. Get that thru your head. Clouds cool the earth. If the earth was covered with water clouds it would be a cold place.

Venus? You have to be kidding. Venus' atmosphere is 99% CO2, Earth's is 0.035%, how can you compare them?

Would you like me to explain how the whole greenhouse effect is a hoax? I can do it using 4th grade science.

Well, I guess I'm using the European model for all my research and experiments without knowing it. And I don't even have a passport. Oh wait, you say I never did any research. So i don't need one. Nice to know.

And now I'm a dentist too. Niiiice. Open wide. (I got something for you right here).



Let's see, first I didn't say you hadn't done research, simply that you didn't know anything about it. Thus the comparison to an M.D., many will do a little bit of work in a lab and think they understand the field.

How did I come to this conclusion? Your lack of knowledge of global warming and your inability to understand and grasp the field as a whole is consitent with that of a lay person, someone who hasn't been trained to either read the literature, or review and examine a field of science and comprehend what is going on there. This isn't unusual, most can't, it takes more than a casual perusal of the current hot topics in the news and listening to conservative talk radio to understand a field of research. It isn't even a cut, simply a fact. It's sort of the equivalent to thinking you understand automobile mechanics because you read Car and Driver.

Second, I had thought I read you were a dentist once in one of your threads, perhaps my mistake. If so I aplogize to the field of dentistry, Oh and you too.

Close, but no cigar, optometrist...

What's funny is , we send men to outerspace for billions of dollars , yet we spend hardly anything studying the vast resources in our Oceans.

Let's go look for other planets and Neglect our own !!!! :mad:

It's funny that you think you are the scientist yet you are the one who made so many scientific blunders. Reading your posts is like watching an episode of Star Trek, where almost every law of science is broken in every episode. You seem more like an administrator in science, not an actual true in-the-trench science dork.

Lyle, I think you aren't a true science weenie, not a dork, and not a nerd of any type. Let me give you a quiz to see if you have basic science aptitute.

1. Why does helium make your voice higher? And no wrong and dumb answers like "because it's lighter." I need a real reason.

2. Why does a golf disc turn to the left when it's overstable and then turn right when it's worn out. I need a real reason for that.

3. Why does boiling water make it freeze faster?

I think you won't be able to figure out the answers for any of these 3 because you are not a science wiz.

if you weren't such a troll i might be interested in discussing this with you /msgboard/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

You got all 3 wrong.

Next...

I understand that global CO2 levels are higher than ever and I understand there are many possible reasons for the increase. However, I am suspect that rising CO2 levels are responsible for the current increases in hurricane activity and intensity.

Hurricanes seasons go through cycles of frequency and intensity. This has been known for years. Here is a some information from NOAA that states hurricanes are cyclical(no pun intended).

NOAA online magazine (http://www.magazine.noaa.gov/stories/mag184.htm)



There is consensus among NOAA hurricane researchers and forecasters that recent increases in hurricane activity are primarily the result of natural fluctuations in the tropical climate system known as the tropical multi-decadal signal. The tropical climate patterns now favoring very active hurricane seasons are similar to those seen in the late 1920s to the late 1960s. The current active hurricane era began in 1995, meaning the nation is now 11 years into an active era that could easily last several decades (20-30 years or even longer). We can expect ongoing high levels of hurricane activity � and very importantly high levels of hurricane landfalls � as long as the active era continues.





Making matters worse, coastal development thrived in hurricane prone areas of the United States when fewer hurricanes struck during 1970-1994....Since the tropical climate patterns are again favoring very active hurricane seasons, the nation is not only seeing more hurricane landfalls, but more damage and more people affected when one strikes.

Exactly! And the glaciers are also cyclical. The alarmists are looking at the melting glaciers and saying they are the result of global warming, when the truth is, they are really the result of glacial buildup in the 40's through the 70's when the earth was experiencing a big freeze (and CO2 levels were almost as high then as they are now, where was the greenhouse effect then?)

We have to wait until 2010 or 2020 when the earth starts another big freeze, but by then Gore will be dead so he'll never know. Now Tom Brokaw is on the bandwagon with Gore spewing his science blunders.

As the French in Italy said yesterday, Oh Madon!

Exactly, a few point out that the Co2 levels have risen dramaticly in the last few years. A the same time we should have had a warming trent anyways.

I will agree that what we are doing is not helping, but I do not believe what we are doing is the cause of it.

Unfortunatly, by the time we really know, several of us will be gone.

yes, and since we "dont know for sure" that man is "the total cause" it sure does not make any sense to limit our contribution. after all whats the problem with being another 35% of the problem???

you guys are proof we need natural selection. unfortunately, your behavior will kill off the smart humans as quickly as it kills off your peers. i guess we are deserve though - unless we cleanse ourselves of all the fools who are not paying attention

1. Why does helium make your voice higher? And no wrong and dumb answers like "because it's lighter." I need a real reason.

Propagation velocity of less dense Helium is higher and perceived frequency (pitch) increases.

2. Why does a golf disc turn to the left when it's overstable and then turn right when it's worn out. I need a real reason for that.

No comment. But I do enjoy the theories about this one.

3. Why does boiling water make it freeze faster?




Previously boiled water may contain less dissolved gasses (oxygen).

The Earth�s systems have always gone through natural cycles: cycles of warming and cooling, cycles of glacial buildup and glacial retreat, cycles of active hurricane seasons and less active hurricane seasons. Scientists have ingenious and accurate ways to measure the background variability of these cycles. But as scientists calculate the current rates of global warming, CO2 buildup in the atmosphere, glacial melting, increased hurricane intensity etc, what they see is too anomalous to be explained by naturally occurring cycles. In some cases the current data is off the chart.

Here is a graph from "Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations," Geophysical Research Letters, March 15, 1999, Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley, and Malcolm K. Hughes


http://www.heatisonline.org/mann.jpg

so you believe that we can compare inferred temperature measurements over the past 1000 years to within .5-1 degree of precision?

i don't.

Dave, you are correct about the dissolved gasses getting boiled out, mostly carbonic acid gas (CO2) so the ice crystals form more quickly. You must be a real science weenie, you probably even know the answer to the second question (he he). Now what about helium?

This graph is completely bogus. The earth has been warming steadily since the ice age melted 10,000 years ago. We are in the warmest time period since before the last ice age started 120,000 years ago. That graph shows a general cooling trend until 1850 it's a complete fabrication and a lie. Show me where they got their data.

120,000 years ago the last interglacial period ended and the earth started cooling gradually, and it took until 30,000 years ago before it reached the coldest time. That's when the Neanderthals died off, it finally got too cold for them, and they couldn't move south because Homo sapiens were there by then.

Starting 15,000 years ago it started warming a little, and then 10,000 years ago a super major gigantic warming period started and melted all the ice. We are in the middle of that now.

When homo sapiens got to Europe 15,000 years ago (not counting the ones who got to southern Europe earlier, Spain, France, is warmer not covered with ice, Cro Magnon man), they found it covered with ice, northern Europe was covered with ice until very recently. Norway was covered with ice until 2000 years ago and the glaciers are still melting now.

When Holland was first settled the ocean level was much lower. They settled on dry land, but over the centuries the ocean level has risen, due to melting polar ice, and that's why the Dutch had to start building dikes to keep out the rising oceans. Venice has been sinking since it was built 2000 years ago on dry land, now it's under water, because of the risin ocean level. There are whole Roman cities under water now, off shore in the Mediteranian. So this graph is wrong to depict a cooling trend until 1850. It's fake.

All that we are experiencing now it part of the same interglacial warming trend, waiting until the next ice age to start, which, according to the cycles of ice ages which are like clockwork and well known to us, will happen in about 5000 years,

What will Gore say then, when Europe and North America are covered with ice again? This is not a debate, it's a known fact. The time between ice ages is 20,000 years and we've used up more than half of it. That's all we have. After that we will all have to move to the tropics.

When people are all living in the tropics because of the ice age, they will hear about Gores movie and laugh. Global warming? What's the problem.

Global warming by man, if it is happenning, is probably a good thing because it might delay the coming of the inevitible ice age by a few thousand years. This is good. We need warm, we don't need ice!!!!!!!

Wait, Dave answered the helium one inside the quote, correctly also. That's 3 for 3 Dave, you are a complete science dork. Nice going.

Perhaps you could share you source of information with us as well. Or should we just take your word for it?

Better or worse?

Wait, Dave answered the helium one inside the quote, correctly also. That's 3 for 3 Dave, you are a complete science dork. Nice going.



Yes, I am. I am also a Star Trek fan. So I have that going for me too.

Which information?

A National Research Council committee, operating as part of The National Academy of Sciences and responding to a request by Congress to review the Michael Mann study, reported (http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=11676) with high confidence that the last few decades of the twentieth century was the warmest period in the last 400 years. There is less confidence in data for the years between 1600 and 900, but the scientific data is generally consistent.

Dave, you are correct about the dissolved gasses getting boiled out, mostly carbonic acid gas (CO2) so the ice crystals form more quickly. You must be a real science weenie, you probably even know the answer to the second question (he he). Now what about helium?

This graph is completely bogus. The earth has been warming steadily since the ice age melted 10,000 years ago. We are in the warmest time period since before the last ice age started 120,000 years ago. That graph shows a general cooling trend until 1850 it's a complete fabrication and a lie. Show me where they got their data.

120,000 years ago the last interglacial period ended and the earth started cooling gradually, and it took until 30,000 years ago before it reached the coldest time. That's when the Neanderthals died off, it finally got too cold for them, and they couldn't move south because Homo sapiens were there by then.

Starting 15,000 years ago it started warming a little, and then 10,000 years ago a super major gigantic warming period started and melted all the ice. We are in the middle of that now.

When homo sapiens got to Europe 15,000 years ago (not counting the ones who got to southern Europe earlier, Spain, France, is warmer not covered with ice, Cro Magnon man), they found it covered with ice, northern Europe was covered with ice until very recently. Norway was covered with ice until 2000 years ago and the glaciers are still melting now.

When Holland was first settled the ocean level was much lower. They settled on dry land, but over the centuries the ocean level has risen, due to melting polar ice, and that's why the Dutch had to start building dikes to keep out the rising oceans. Venice has been sinking since it was built 2000 years ago on dry land, now it's under water, because of the risin ocean level. There are whole Roman cities under water now, off shore in the Mediteranian. So this graph is wrong to depict a cooling trend until 1850. It's fake.

All that we are experiencing now it part of the same interglacial warming trend, waiting until the next ice age to start, which, according to the cycles of ice ages which are like clockwork and well known to us, will happen in about 5000 years,



How about this?

I back up my argument with a new avatar

1. http://www.kidzworld.com/site/p505.htm
2. Disc stability is determined by the speed of air over the disc. Many things affect this; however, the speed of the air on the side turning into the direction the disc is traveling is faster than the speed of the wind on side moving away from the direction the disc is traveling. Speed of air over the wing causes lift. The more the difference is exacerbated the more lift on the side that is turning towards the direction the disc is traveling and the more overstable the disc is. Two things about beating a disc change this. First, nicks and mars slow the travel of air around the wing, Second, as the disc warps it affects the speed that air travels over the two sides of the disc. BTW - it should be obvious that the speed the disc turns on release also effects the rate that air travels on the two sides of the disc. Do I know if this is true? No, but the engineer who I asked assures me it is essentially correct.

3. Boiling water does not freeze faster than cold water, it's an old wives tale. On the other hand, if your water isn't pure, that is, it has contaminates in it, their presence and structure may be changed by boiling the water. Of course, it would depend on the contaminates and their nature. For example, many ski operaters that make snow utilize a bacterium that occurs in nature that has a high level of pilli on it's surface. These pilli act as a nucleation point (that's nuclulation to GW) for ice crystals. Thus, the bacteria help the artificial snow to more readily form.

It should be noted that contaminates in H2O that change it's boiling point would have to be at very high levels to have a significant affect.

An ability to B.S. or to look up science trivia on the web, while entertaining, does not mean that one has the ability to analyze science. Even in this debate, I don't have the expertise to really judge the data, what I do have is the common sense to judge the path that this field has taken.

1. A few scientists stepped forward with the theory expecting that it would be accepted.

2. They met extreme resistance from energy industry backed organizations.

3. Over time, the field as a whole came to accept the initial hypothesis.

4. Today the main critics are the energy industry and conservative talk show hosts. The few science vioces that still demure are either funded by the energy industry or have a vested interest in speaking out against global warming. The public, as usual in such debates, is going with the best funded voice.

Is the hypothesis perfect. Ask Morgan, and by the way, he's correct, it's not. Is it good enough and real? You betcha!

I understand that global CO2 levels are higher than ever and I understand there are many possible reasons for the increase. However, I am suspect that rising CO2 levels are responsible for the current increases in hurricane activity and intensity.

Hurricanes seasons go through cycles of frequency and intensity. This has been known for years. Here is a some information from NOAA that states hurricanes are cyclical(no pun intended).

NOAA online magazine (http://www.magazine.noaa.gov/stories/mag184.htm)



There is consensus among NOAA hurricane researchers and forecasters that recent increases in hurricane activity are primarily the result of natural fluctuations in the tropical climate system known as the tropical multi-decadal signal. The tropical climate patterns now favoring very active hurricane seasons are similar to those seen in the late 1920s to the late 1960s. The current active hurricane era began in 1995, meaning the nation is now 11 years into an active era that could easily last several decades (20-30 years or even longer). We can expect ongoing high levels of hurricane activity � and very importantly high levels of hurricane landfalls � as long as the active era continues.





Making matters worse, coastal development thrived in hurricane prone areas of the United States when fewer hurricanes struck during 1970-1994....Since the tropical climate patterns are again favoring very active hurricane seasons, the nation is not only seeing more hurricane landfalls, but more damage and more people affected when one strikes.





While this is indeed true, it neglects one point, what is the relative strength of those hurricanes and how is that affected by water temp? While the number of canes might not be any different than you might have expected in a given cycle, you have to ask the question, are they stronger?

More importantly, why experiment? Do we really know what the effects of global warming will be. Personally, I'm uncomfortable with the, "well let's try it and see?" approach. When it comes to the planet that is necessary for my survival, I'd prefer to be conservative about taking actions that will directly change the globe as a whole.

BTW - I also am a Star Trek fan, old, not new. I watched Picard say "engage" once and that was enough for me.

On the other hand, Star Wars kicks the crud out of Star Trek any day (in terms of vision) even if it was poorly executed by that beautiful dreamer but oaf of a director... Lucus.

But nothing comes close to The Triliogy for flat escapism, so Dave, when is the Balrog going to come out?

(Frodo lost, Bush has the ring)

I was going to tell a story about growing grapes in Britain, but then I found someone else telling it better:

http://www.cgfi.org/cgficommentary/national-academy-fails-global-warming-ref

Bottom line: It's that hot shiny thing in the sky. Sometimes it is hot and sometimes it is really, really hot.

1. http://www.kidzworld.com/site/p505.htm
2. Disc stability is determined by the speed of air over the disc. Many things affect this; however, the speed of the air on the side turning into the direction the disc is traveling is faster than the speed of the wind on side moving away from the direction the disc is traveling. Speed of air over the wing causes lift. The more the difference is exacerbated the more lift on the side that is turning towards the direction the disc is traveling and the more overstable the disc is. Two things about beating a disc change this. First, nicks and mars slow the travel of air around the wing, Second, as the disc warps it affects the speed that air travels over the two sides of the disc. BTW - it should be obvious that the speed the disc turns on release also effects the rate that air travels on the two sides of the disc. Do I know if this is true? No, but the engineer who I asked assures me it is essentially correct.

3. Boiling water does not freeze faster than cold water, it's an old wives tale. On the other hand, if your water isn't pure, that is, it has contaminates in it, their presence and structure may be changed by boiling the water. Of course, it would depend on the contaminates and their nature. For example, many ski operaters that make snow utilize a bacterium that occurs in nature that has a high level of pilli on it's surface. These pilli act as a nucleation point (that's nuclulation to GW) for ice crystals. Thus, the bacteria help the artificial snow to more readily form.

It should be noted that contaminates in H2O that change it's boiling point would have to be at very high levels to have a significant affect.





Lyle, you are wrong about question 3. Nobody is talking about the boiling point of the water, or the freezing point either, for that matter. What difference would that make? The boiled water certanly DOES freeze faster, I have tried it. What happens is, the cold one starts to freeze first. It even freezes most of the way first. But it takes longer to freeze all the way to the middle. The boiled one will still be warm when the cold one starts to freeze, but the boiled one will freeze all the way to the middle when the cold one still has liquid at the middle, and lots of bubbles. The boiled one will finish freezing all the way to the middle first, and have no bubbles. Ice block machines boil the water before freezing it, and that's why the ice is clear and has no bubbles. It also freezes faster TO THE MIDDLE. This is all because the unboiled one has dissolved gas which slows the formation of crystals, especially at the middle when the dissolved gas is concentrated there.

The link you gave for the helium one gave the WRONG answer. They were right when they said that sound travels faster in helium, and that is the correct answer, but they should have stopped there. They blew it bad when they said the helium changes the wave length of the sound and not the frequency. No, helium does not change the wave length. It changes the frequency. Wave length times frequency is the speed of the wave, if you keep wave length the same and increase the speed, you increase the frequency. If you studied harmonic motion and sound generation, you will remember that the wave length is determined by the length and mass and tightless of the vocal chords. This determines wave length. Helium does not change the length, mass, or tightness of the vocal chords, so the wave length is the same in helium as it is in air. Frequency, on the other hand, is determined by wave length and speed of the wave. So it is frequency, not wave length, that changes when helium passes thru the vocal chords. Since the ear hears frequency and not wave length, the voice is higher. The sound moves from the helium of your breath and into the air, where the speed goes back to normal, and what happens there is the frequency stays higher but the wave length gets shorter. Otherwise the waves would build up somehow, so the wave length has to change at the helium/air junction. Your link says it doesn't change the frequency, it changes the "timber." This is a total BS explanation, it's just wrong. The helium changes the frequency in the vocal chords. Dave got it right, he's a nerd, you are not a nerd, you linked to a wrong answer.

And you were wrong about the boiled water too, Dave was right. As Benson said to Dan Quail, "You are no science dork."

Regional variances in the global temperature prove nothing. Even today, with the overall warming of the earth higher than any time in recorded history, some places are cooler than normal while some places are warmer. It is the average temperature of the earth that matters.

Also, while the Center for Global Food Issues sounds nice, let�s keep in mind that it is a branch of the Hudson Institute, a right-wing think tank that is funded at least in part by such groups as Archer Daniels Midland, DuPont, Exxon-Mobil, McDonalds and Proctor and Gamble.

The agriculture business has no profit oriented reason to want to cook the entire planet, unless they are working for hostile pacifist space aliens.* They do have a serious profit motivated reason to wanting to understand the weather. I don't see what their profit motivated reason for wanting to jigger the science would be, except as between each other. If you are just preaching to the leftist choir by calling these people right-wing capitalist pigs, so be it. I cannot argue with your religion. But if you are arguing that their profit motive is having an influence on their reporting of scientific data, explain that.

They say that there is a 1500 year sun activity cycle that has been identified in ice core samples and which can be confirmed by agricultural history. Calling them capitalist pigs does not change the ice core samples.

--------------------------------------
* For the sci-fi geeks out there, I was referring to the Talons.

I think all reporting is biased a little by the source of funding. Results that are not conclusive are usually worded in the best possible light based on the source of the funding. If not by the scientist, then by the administration in the press releases that make it to the non-scientific community.

DuPont, Exxon Mobile???????

Sorry to be a stalker on this newest attempt, but it seems to be such a comfy way to end the debate for too many people. Without bothering to quote this one, it was another one of your "scientific articles" that says nothing conclusive, just another implication. Apparently, that is all you need to draw a final conclusion.

Your entire thesis is: The sun cycle is increasing, therefore man's activities play no meaningful role in global warming.

Brilliant logic. And you mock others for discarding reason.

I never said the corporate agribusinesses wanted global warming, but I can easily think of a few reasons they might want to cloud this issue: Corporate agribusinesses require tons and tons of petroleum based fertilizers to keep their operations going. I have no evidence, but it seems obvious that the production of those chemicals releases CO2 into the atmosphere. Secondly, and more importantly, corporate agribusinesses are dependant upon a centralized production of food, which means vast amounts of fossil fuels are burned in order to transport those crops to market. Think for a minute how much CO2 is produced for you to have that iceberg lettuce in your salad. Local production and consumption of crops, done on a small scale, is much more efficient.

And who does the Hudson Institute cite as evidence for this 1500-year sun activity cycle:
�top science journals�.

I think all reporting is biased a little by the source of funding. Results that are not conclusive are usually worded in the best possible light based on the source of the funding. If not by the scientist, then by the administration in the press releases that make it to the non-scientific community.



I think you have a misperception about how funding, research and the reporting thereof occurs.

All science is reported in the best possible light, it would be kind of dumb not to. However, credible scientific journals have a standard for how things get published. The process involves a peer review and of course that the journal be interested in the topic (this isn't a problem because even if Nature won't publish it, some lesser journal will.

The standards of credible journals require that a submitter explain clearly how they got their numbers, and how they analyzed them to show they had meaning. The end result is that no matter how the writer skews the writing to make their point, the actual numbers and statistics are there so that a competent scientist or lay person for that matter, can look at the numbers and draw their own conclusions. The numbers don't lie.

Now lets go back to the chart that Morgan assures us is bogus. The numbers in the chart are real numbers, whether Morgan likes them or not is irrelevant. This is how I know that Morgan isn't really a science dork, despite the fact that he claims he is. A science dork would know not to questioned how the numbers were obtained, he would have known that in a peer reviewed journal, the technique for obtaining the data would have been acceptable to the majority of people in the field. He would have also known that he doesn't have the skill to judge whether those techniques were valid and he would have gone to one of the critics of the technique and referred to that critic. Since the only critics are employed by energy companies, their views are... suspect.

Another possible shortcoming is how the data was analyzed. Morgan doesn't mention this because he hasn't thought about it. Basically, you have to ask, do the numbers actually have meaning? Yes it looks like the temps are going up but is it significant? He might even ask, is the change in temperature over time consistent with past warming trends or are they at an exacerbated rate? They might even be slower!

1. Points to consider - Venice is sinking into the ocean because of rising water... and here I thought it was subsidence

2. I would have sworn that when the blockage at the Straights broke that the level of the Mediterainian rose flooding the towns there. I was't aware that they were Roman so he has me there...

3. The last I heard, anthropologists now think there was significant mixing and interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals thus slowing the rising of modern man significantly.


The plain and simple fact is that trading scientific tidbits doesn't prove that you know this topic. There is no doubt that there is much of science that Morgan knows that the rest of us don't. That doesn't make him an expert in this field or right about it. When the best argument he can make is that the data provided by people who work in this field has to be bogus I have to wonder...

the only way boiling water makes it form ice more quickl;y is through convection currents in the water caused by the motion of the boiling and the application of heat non-uniformly. what frizbee and dave are talking about is freezing rates for water that contains a significant amount of other stuff that isnt water.

not surprising that even in his example he ignores the possibility that something else could cause the even he observes.

I was going to tell a story about growing grapes in Britain, but then I found someone else telling it better:

http://www.cgfi.org/cgficommentary/national-academy-fails-global-warming-ref

Bottom line: It's that hot shiny thing in the sky. Sometimes it is hot and sometimes it is really, really hot.



What a wonderful read. Once again the writer shows a complete lack of knowledge about the NAS. The NAS isn't a recipient of government funding directly although many, if not all of it's members are. However, the amount of money that goes into research on global warming is tiny relative to the total amount of money that goes into research per sey. Most of our tax dollars that go into research, go into Biomedical research. It is much more likely that researchers in that area weild a significant influence on the NAS than those involved in geological research.

On the other hand, our current Administration has cut funding to areas it doesn't want looked at with great dexterity (see for example, stem cell research). Whether the NAS wants funding in the geological sciences or not, if George decides he wants it to go away, it will. Wouldn't it be a much sounder policy to tell the government what they want to hear, thus establishing a good relationship that will continue your future funding?

BTW - I would think that ocean currents would be significantly more important in determining the temperature in England than sun spots.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060710/ap_on_sc/new_gecko

Or, could it be global warming? :D

1. http://www.kidzworld.com/site/p505.htm
2. Disc stability is determined by the speed of air over the disc. Many things affect this; however, the speed of the air on the side turning into the direction the disc is traveling is faster than the speed of the wind on side moving away from the direction the disc is traveling. Speed of air over the wing causes lift. The more the difference is exacerbated the more lift on the side that is turning towards the direction the disc is traveling and the more overstable the disc is. Two things about beating a disc change this. First, nicks and mars slow the travel of air around the wing, Second, as the disc warps it affects the speed that air travels over the two sides of the disc. BTW - it should be obvious that the speed the disc turns on release also effects the rate that air travels on the two sides of the disc. Do I know if this is true? No, but the engineer who I asked assures me it is essentially correct.




The engineer is incorrect about the left and right sides of the disc. While there may very well be a slight Bernoulli effect, like a golf ball or baseball, why would that effect turn the disc over as opposed to make it more stable? What it is supposed to do, is what it does to a baseball or golf ball. It creates a higher pressure on one side of the spinning object than the other. The object tends to move away from the higher pressure. So, if a disc were thrown righty back hand and flat with respect to the ground, the left side of the disc would have a slightly greater drag than the right. The disc would then be compelled to move away from the pressure and slide to the right. Not turnover. Assuming the lift were greater on the left side too. What would be the effect? (Don't say turnover)

1. http://www.kidzworld.com/site/p505.htm
2. Disc stability is determined by the speed of air over the disc. Many things affect this; however, the speed of the air on the side turning into the direction the disc is traveling is faster than the speed of the wind on side moving away from the direction the disc is traveling. Speed of air over the wing causes lift. The more the difference is exacerbated the more lift on the side that is turning towards the direction the disc is traveling and the more overstable the disc is. Two things about beating a disc change this. First, nicks and mars slow the travel of air around the wing, Second, as the disc warps it affects the speed that air travels over the two sides of the disc. BTW - it should be obvious that the speed the disc turns on release also effects the rate that air travels on the two sides of the disc. Do I know if this is true? No, but the engineer who I asked assures me it is essentially correct.




The engineer is incorrect about the left and right sides of the disc. While there may very well be a slight Bernoulli effect, like a golf ball or baseball, why would that effect turn the disc over as opposed to make it more stable? What it is supposed to do, is what it does to a baseball or golf ball. It creates a higher pressure on one side of the spinning object than the other. The object tends to move away from the higher pressure. So, if a disc were thrown righty back hand and flat with respect to the ground, the left side of the disc would have a slightly greater drag than the right. The disc would then be compelled to move away from the pressure and slide to the right. Not turnover. Assuming the lift were greater on the left side too. What would be the effect? (Don't say turnover)



You're not really asking me to think are you? O.K. back to my engineer. Give me 24 hours.

Now I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight thinking about this!

p.s. I could always fall back on my original thesis... it's magic?

Dudes, (and I say Dudes with the greatest respect to Lyle and Dave both, since they are both disc golfers and disc golfers are by definition the greatest people in the world)

Overstable discs have more mass in the rims. Understable discs have less mass in the rims. Rims have nothing to do with Bernoullis effect or speed of the air over the flight plate or any other aerodynamic principle you can think of. If you want to come up with the right answer, you must address the rims. Specifically, the MASS of the rims.

Any answer that does not take gyroscopic precession into account is wrong, wrong, wrong and also, uh, let me see, there was something else I was thinking of.......oh yeah...wrong!

why do you use pressure to explain it while saying the Bernoulli effect is insignificant? Bernoulli's principle is all about velocity and pressure.

intuitively i like the idea of thinking of the disc moving away from the higher pressure... that makes sense.

how does precession fit in? i always thought precession (more spin = more precession) was the force partially responsible for making the disc "fight" back against the pressure... thereby meaning more spin would lessen the "turnover" tendency.

are you drawing a distinction between sliding to the right and "turning over"? if so, it's interesting.

3. The last I heard, anthropologists now think there was significant mixing and interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals thus slowing the rising of modern man significantly.

Not that there is anything wrong with that... :D

Homo Sapiens evolved in Africa, South Asia, Indonesia, the Middle East, all tropical warm places. Neanderthal lived ONLY in ice cold places, namely, glaciar-covered Europe, westen Asia, specifically Russia and even Siberia, places where Homo Sapiens did not live at the time.

If European Homo Sapiens intemixed with Neanderthal, we would look significantly different from African and Asian Homo Sapiens, where Neanderthals never lived at all. However, we don't. We, namely European Homo sapians, most closely resemble Homo Sapiens from the Indian subcontinent and Middle East, where Neanderthal never lived.

The idea that we mixed with Neanderthal, a furry ape, is not logical. Most Homo Sapien ancestors never lived anywhere near the Neanderthal until after they were extinct. Only Europeans came to Neanderthal, maybe that's why we have hairy backs and beards while balcks and Chinese barely have beards. No, people in India have beards. Bzzzzt. Wrong answer.

Would you like me to explain how the whole greenhouse effect is a hoax? I can do it using 4th grade science.



if i read you right, you are basicly suggesting global warming is soley a natural phenomenon and that things like man's use of fossil fuels are not playing a significant role in the warm-up.

here's some very basic info for you to distort as much as you like:


<font color="blue"> The greenhouse effect is the rise in temperature that the Earth experiences because certain gases in the atmosphere (water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane, for example) trap energy from the sun. Without these gases, heat would escape back into space and Earth�s average temperature would be about 60�F colder. Because of how they warm our world, these gases are referred to as greenhouse gases

Have you ever seen a greenhouse? Most greenhouses look like a small glass house. Greenhouses are used to grow plants, especially in the winter. Greenhouses work by trapping heat from the sun. The glass panels of the greenhouse let in light but keep heat from escaping. This causes the greenhouse to heat up, much like the inside of a car parked in sunlight, and keeps the plants warm enough to live in the winter.
The Earth�s atmosphere is all around us. It is the air that we breathe. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere behave much like the glass panes in a greenhouse. Sunlight enters the Earth's atmosphere, passing through the blanket of greenhouse gases. As it reaches the Earth's surface, land, water, and biosphere absorb the sunlight�s energy. Once absorbed, this energy is sent back into the atmosphere. Some of the energy passes back into space, but much of it remains trapped in the atmosphere by the greenhouse gases, causing our world to heat up.

The greenhouse effect is important. Without the greenhouse effect, the Earth would not be warm enough for humans to live. But if the greenhouse effect becomes stronger, it could make the Earth warmer than usual. Even a little extra warming may cause problems for humans, plants, and animals.

SO WHAT's THE BIG DEAL? (http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/kids/bigdeal.html)
Sometimes little things can turn into big things. Think about brushing your teeth. If you don't brush for one day, chances are nothing bad will happen. But if you don't brush your teeth for one month, you may develop a cavity. It's the same thing with global temperatures. If temperatures rise above normal levels for a few days, it's no big deal � the Earth will stay more or less the same. But if temperatures continue to rise over a longer period of time, then the Earth may experience some problems

Average global temperature has increased by almost 1�F over the past century; scientists expect the average global temperature to increase an additional 2 to 6�F over the next one hundred years. This may not sound like much, but it could change the Earth's climate as never before. At the peak of the last ice age (18,000 years ago), the temperature was only 7�F colder than it is today, and glaciers covered much of North America!
Even a small increase in temperature over a long time can change the climate. When the climate changes, there may be big changes in the things that people depend on. These things include the level of the oceans and the places where we plant crops. They also include the air we breathe and the water we drink.
What Might Happen? It is important to understand that scientists don't know for sure what global warming will bring. Some changes brought about by global warming will be good. If you live in a very cool climate, warmer temperatures might be welcome. Days and nights could be more comfortable and people in the area may be able to grow different and better crops than they could before. But it is also true that changes in some places will not be very good at all.


Human Health
Climate change may affect people's health both directly and indirectly. For example, heat stress and other heat related health problems are caused directly by very warm temperatures and high humidity. Untreated, heat stress can be a very serious medical problem. Scientists suspect that, in many places, global warming will increase the number of very hot days that occur during the year. More hot days increases the possibility of heat related health problems.
Indirectly, ecological disturbances, air pollution, changes in food and water supplies, and coastal flooding are all examples of possible impacts that might affect human health.
How people and nature adapt to climate change will determine how seriously it impacts human health. Some people and places are likely to be affected more than others. Generally, poor people and poor countries are less likely to have the money and resources they need to cope with preventing and treating health problems. Very young children and the elderly adults will run the highest risks.


Ecological Systems
Climate change may alter the world's habitats and ecosystems � all living things are included in and rely on these places. Many of these places depend on a delicate balance of rainfall, temperature, and soil type. A rapid change in climate could upset this balance and seriously endanger many living things.
Most past climate changes occurred slowly, allowing plants and animals to adapt to the new environment or move somewhere else. However, if future climate changes occur as rapidly as some scientists predict, plants and animals may not be able to react quickly enough to survive. The ocean's ecosystems also could be affected for the same reasons.


Sea Level Rise
Global warming may make the sea level become higher. Why? Well, warmer weather makes glaciers melt. A glacier is a large sheet of ice that moves very, very slowly. Some melting glaciers add more water to the ocean. Warmer temperatures also make water expand. When water expands in the ocean, it takes up more space and the level of the sea rises.
Sea level may rise between several inches and as much as 3 feet during the next century. This will effect both natural systems and manmade structures along coastlines. Coastal flooding could cause saltwater to flow into areas where salt is harmful, threatening plants and animals in those areas. For example, an increase in the salt content of the Delaware and Chesapeake bays is thought to have decreased the number of oysters able to live in those waters.
Oceanfront property would be affected by flooding, and beach erosion could leave structures even more vulnerable to storm waves. Whether we move back from the water or build barricades in the face of a rising sea, it could cost billions of dollars to adapt to such change. Coastal flooding also may reduce the quality of drinking water in coastal areas.


Crops and Food Supply
Global warming may make the Earth warmer in cold places. People living in these places may have a chance to grow crops in new areas. But global warming also might bring droughts to other places where we grow crops. In some parts of the world, people may not have enough to eat because they cannot grow the food that they need.

Global warming may be a big problem, but there are many little things we can do to make a difference. If we try, most of us can do our part to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that we put into the atmosphere. Many greenhouse gases come from things we do every day. As we have learned, these greenhouse gases trap energy in the atmosphere and make the Earth warmer.

Driving a car or using electricity is not wrong. We just have to be smart about it.Some people use less energy by carpooling. For example, four people can ride together in one car instead of driving four cars to work. Here are some additional ways you can help make the planet a better place!

Read
Learning about the environment is very important. There are many good books that will help you learn. To get started, ask a teacher or a librarian for some suggestions. You also can look at the Links page to find other good web sites with information about the environment and climate change.


Save Electricity
Whenever we use electricity, we help put greenhouse gases into the air. By turning off lights, the television, and the computer when you are through with them, you can help a lot.


Bike, Bus, and Walk
You can save energy by sometimes taking the bus, riding a bike, or walking.


Talk to Your Family and Friends
Talk with your family and friends about global warming. Let them know what you've learned.


Plant Trees
Planting trees is fun and a great way to reduce greenhouse gases. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the air.


Recycle
Recycle cans, bottles, plastic bags, and newspapers. When you recycle, you send less trash to the landfill and you help save natural resources, like trees, oil, and elements such as aluminum.


When You Buy, Buy Cool Stuff
There are lots of ways we can improve the environment. One of the ways to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that we put into the air is to buy products that don't use as much energy. By conserving energy, we help reduce global warming and make the Earth a better place. Some products � like certain cars and stereos � are made specially to save energy.


Some Things to Think About
Did you know that you can help the environment if you buy recyclable products instead of non-recyclable ones? Look for the recycle mark � three arrows that make a circle � on the package. Recyclable products are usually made out of things that already have been used. It usually takes less energy to make recycled products than to make new ones. The less energy we use, the better.


Solar Energy
Imagine that it's a hot summer day. You put a scoop of ice cream on the sidewalk, and it melts. Why? Well, you probably know that the sun causes the ice cream to melt. But you may not know that the sun produces solar energy. Solar energy is a fancy way of saying "energy that comes from the sun." Solar energy can be used to heat homes, buildings, water, and to make electricity. Today, more than 200,000 houses in the United States take advantage of the sun's energy.


Cars
Cars are an important part of life for most people. But cars also cause pollution and release a lot of greenhouse gases into the air. Fortunately, there are some cars that are better for the environment. These cars can travel longer on a smaller amount of gasoline. They don't pollute as much, either. Using these kinds of cars can help reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the air.


ENERGY STAR�
Many things, like computers, TVs, stereos, and VCRs, have special labels on them. The label says "Energy" and has a picture of a star. Products with the ENERGY STAR� label are made to save energy. Buying products with ENERGY STAR� labels will help protect the environment. </font>

The Bernoulli effect is the same on the left side of the disc as it is on the right. The Bernoulli effect does not depend on the speed of the various parts of the plate of the disc, it depends on the speed of the displacement of the air that the disc cuts through. Since the disc cuts through the air as one unit, the left side and right side cutting through that spot at the same time, the spin diesn't matter. If the disc were not spinning, it would have the same Bernoulli effect. The spin just keeps the disc stable, has nothing to do with Bernoullis.

AviarX, you might want to just post a link to the text rather than spew 1000 words of spench like that.

There is a link in the text -- all you had to do was click on the link quoted below:
<font color="blue"> SO WHAT's THE BIG DEAL? (http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/kids/bigdeal.html) </font>

Ok now let me explain why Earth has no greenhouse effect. A greenhouse works because plate glass is opaque to infrared. The glass blocks infrared from getting in, while visible light gets in. The visible light gets in and warms things and re-radiates the heat as infrared, which is trapped by the glass because we just learned, glass is opaque to infrared.

Our atmosphere is nothing like this. The atmosphere is mostly transparent to infrared. The infrared from the sun gets in, it is not blocked. The infrared from the sun is by far the most important energy that heats the earth, unlike a greenhouse, where no direct solar infrared heats anything, it doesn't even get in.

Yeah, lots of infrared is reflected back from the earth. And lots of visible light heats the earth and is radiated back as infrared. That's true. But if this were a greenhouse, it would be trapped by the atmosphere like it is by the glass. But like we just discovered in the first paragraph, the atmosphere does NOT block infrared. It radiates right thru it. Only a tiny percentage of infrared is absorbed by the atmosphere, and most of that happend on the way in, not the way out.

Thus, earth's atmosphere is the exact opposite of the glass of a greenhouse. The EXACT opposite.

With the exception of DD, Morgan has knocked you all the #$*&$! out, especially Lyle.

are you drawing a distinction between sliding to the right and "turning over"? if so, it's interesting.



Yes.

p.s. I could always fall back on my original thesis... it's magic?



You would be correct. But it's a specific type of magic.

The Bernoulli effect is the same on the left side of the disc as it is on the right. The Bernoulli effect does not depend on the speed of the various parts of the plate of the disc, it depends on the speed of the displacement of the air that the disc cuts through. Since the disc cuts through the air as one unit, the left side and right side cutting through that spot at the same time, the spin diesn't matter. If the disc were not spinning, it would have the same Bernoulli effect. The spin just keeps the disc stable, has nothing to do with Bernoullis.



Okay, you are correct but only because I used the term Bernoulli effect instead of Magnus effect, which I thought no one would be familiar with. It is actually the Magnus effect I was talking about which causes the object to move away from the pressure gradient caused by the spin. (Curve balls, etc.) I explained it correctly, but I did give it the common name instead of the correct name. Were you lucky, or did you know the difference?

I don't know Magnus from Bertonelli,

Maybe the Magnus effect does something, I never heard of it before. Also, I have to admit, I never understood why curve balls curve. Something about the stitches? But golf discs have no stitches.

Ok now let me explain why Earth has no greenhouse effect. A greenhouse works because plate glass is opaque to infrared. The glass blocks infrared from getting in, while visible light gets in. The visible light gets in and warms things and re-radiates the heat as infrared, which is trapped by the glass because we just learned, glass is opaque to infrared.

Our atmosphere is nothing like this. The atmosphere is mostly transparent to infrared. The infrared from the sun gets in, it is not blocked. The infrared from the sun is by far the most important energy that heats the earth, unlike a greenhouse, where no direct solar infrared heats anything, it doesn't even get in.

Yeah, lots of infrared is reflected back from the earth. And lots of visible light heats the earth and is radiated back as infrared. That's true. But if this were a greenhouse, it would be trapped by the atmosphere like it is by the glass. But like we just discovered in the first paragraph, the atmosphere does NOT block infrared. It radiates right thru it. Only a tiny percentage of infrared is absorbed by the atmosphere, and most of that happend on the way in, not the way out.

Thus, earth's atmosphere is the exact opposite of the glass of a greenhouse. The EXACT opposite.



<font color="blue">
your point that the term greenhouse effect as it is generally used to refer to our atmosphere is not technically congruent with how an actual greenhouse works, is noted with amusement. </font>

- - - -

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/26/Greenhouse_Effect.png/250px-Greenhouse_Effect.png

wikipedia.org Greenhouse Effect link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect)

Mars, Venus and other celestial bodies with atmospheres (such as Titan) have greenhouse effects, but for simplicity this article mostly refers to the case of Earth.

In common parlance, the term greenhouse effect may be used to refer either to the natural greenhouse effect, which is the greenhouse effect which occurs naturally on Earth, or to the enhanced (anthropogenic) greenhouse effect, which results from gases emitted as a result of human activities (see also global warming). No-one disputes the former, or its magnitude; the latter is accepted by a large majority of scientists, although there is some dispute as to its magnitude (see scientific opinion on climate change and attribution of recent climate change).

The natural greenhouse effect

Process
The earth receives an enormous amount of solar radiation. Just above the atmosphere, the direct solar radiation flux averages about 1366 watts per square meter, or 1.740�1017 W after being distributed over the entire Earth. This figure greatly exceeds the power generated by human activities. The difference between the natural greenhouse effect and global warming is that global warming is anthropogenic whereas greenhouse effect is not.

The solar power hitting Earth is balanced over time by an equal amount of power radiating from the Earth (as the amount of energy from the Sun that is stored is small). Almost all radiation leaving the Earth takes two forms: reflected solar radiation and thermal black body radiation.


Solar radiation at top of atmosphere and at Earth's surface.Reflected solar radiation accounts for 30% of the Earth's total radiation: on average, 6% of the incoming solar radiation is reflected by the atmosphere, 20% is reflected by clouds, and 4% is reflected by the surface.

The remaining 70% of the incoming solar radiation is absorbed: 16% by the atmosphere (including the almost complete absorption of shortwave ultraviolet over most areas by the stratospheric ozone layer); 3% by clouds; and 51% by the land and oceans. This absorbed energy heats the atmosphere, oceans, and land and powers life on the planet. It should be noted that the surface of the Earth is in constant flux with daily, yearly and age long cycles and trends in temperature and other variables for a variety of causes; thus these percentages apply on average only.

Like the Sun, the Earth is a thermal radiator. Because the Earth's surface is much cooler than the Sun (287 K vs 5780 K), Wien's displacement law dictates that Earth radiates its thermal energy at longer wavelengths than the Sun. While the Sun's radiation peaks at a visible wavelength of 500 nanometers, Earth's radiation peak is in the longwave (far) infrared at about 10 micrometres.


Atmospheric absorption of various wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (measured along sea level).The Earth's atmosphere is largely transparent at visible and near-infrared wavelengths, but not at 10 micrometres (this is, probably, not entirely coincidental: the transparency to "visible" wavelengths makes eyes adapted to seeing these wavelengths useful; and eyes that could see in a strongly-absorbed wavelength would not be so useful). Only about 6% of the Earth's total radiation to space is direct thermal radiation from the surface. The atmosphere absorbs 71% of the surface thermal radiation before it can escape. The atmosphere itself behaves as a radiator in the far infrared, so it re-radiates this energy.

The Earth's atmosphere and clouds therefore account for 91.4% of its longwave infrared radiation and 64% of Earth's total emissions at all wavelengths. The atmosphere and clouds get this energy from the solar energy they directly absorb; thermal radiation from the surface; and from heat brought up by convection and the condensation of water vapor.

Because the atmosphere is such a good absorber of longwave infrared, it effectively forms a one-way blanket over Earth's surface. Visible and near-visible radiation from the Sun easily gets through, but thermal radiation from the surface can't easily get back out. In response, Earth's surface warms up. The power of the surface radiation increases by the Stefan-Boltzmann law until it (over time) compensates for the atmospheric absorption. Another, simpler, but essentially equivalent way of looking at this is that the surface is heated by two sources: direct solar radiation, and thermal radiation from the atmosphere; it is thus warmer than if heated by solar radiation alone. The result of the greenhouse effect is that average surface temperatures are considerably higher than they would otherwise be if the Earth's surface temperature were determined solely by the albedo and blackbody properties of the surface.

It is commonplace for simplistic descriptions of the "greenhouse" effect to assert that the same mechanism warms greenhouses (e.g. [1]), but this is an incorrect oversimplification: see below.

The above description (and many other simplified expositions of the greenhouse effect) may give the impression that radiation is the most important method for transmitting heat through the atmosphere. In the lower atmosphere, particularly in the tropics, convection and latent heat transport is very important in moving heat vertically upwards from the surface; the greenhouse effect dynamics described above do operate, but become important higher in the atmosphere

Limiting factors
The degree of the greenhouse effect is dependent primarily on the concentration of greenhouse gases in the planetary atmosphere. The deep and carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere of Venus (combined with an orbit closer to the sun than that of Earth) causes surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, the atmosphere of Earth creates habitable temperatures, and the thin atmosphere of Mars causes a minimal greenhouse effect.

A runaway greenhouse effect occurred on Venus because of an interaction of the greenhouse effect with other processes in feedback cycles. Venus is sufficiently strongly heated by the Sun that water vapour can rise much higher in the atmosphere and is split into hydrogen and oxygen by ultraviolet light. The hydrogen can then escape from the atmosphere and the oxygen combines . Therefore less carbon dioxide is reabsorbed by the planetary crust causing an even higher temperature. As a result, the greenhouse effect was progressively intensified by positive feedback [2],[3]. On Earth there is a substantial hydrosphere and biosphere which responds to higher temperatures by recycling atmospheric carbon more quickly (in geologic terms; the timescale for the ocean/biosphere to remove a CO2 perturbation is on the order of several hundred years) [4]. The presence of liquid water thus limits the increase in the greenhouse effect through negative feedback. This state of affairs is expected to persist for at least hundreds of millions of years, but, ultimately, the warming of an aging Sun will overwhelm this regulatory effect.

The average surface temperature would be &amp;#8722;18�C if the atmosphere played no role. In reality this temperature is closer to 15�C above zero due to the combination of the greenhouse effect and the convective flow of heat energy within the atmosphere. Because convection (vertical exchanges of unstably stratified air, predominantly by storm clouds) moves heat above much of the thermal IR absorbance of the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect on the surface is smaller than it would be in the absence of such convection [5].

Recent measurements of carbon dioxide amounts from Mauna Loa observatory show that CO2 has increased from about 313 ppm (parts per million) in 1960 to about 375 ppm in 2005. The current observed amount of CO2 exceeds the geological record of CO2 maxima (~300 ppm) from ice core data (Hansen, J., Climatic Change, 68, 269, 2005 [6]); however, carbon dioxide levels during the Cretaceous Period are believed to be much higher than they are now. CO2 production rate from increased industrial activity (fossil fuel burning) and other human activities such as land-use changes has overwhelmed the normal feedback control mechanisms. Global climate model calculations indicate that the elevated CO2 levels are likely to lead to global warming. There has been an observed global average temperature increase of about 0.5oC since 1960 (Science 308, 1431, 2005). There is still some public controversy about the role of human activities and that of CO2 and other greenhouse gas increases for global warming.

Real greenhouses
The term 'greenhouse effect' originally came from the greenhouses used for gardening, but it is a misnomer since greenhouses operate differently [11] [12]. A greenhouse is built of glass; it heats up primarily because the Sun warms the ground inside it, which warms the air near the ground, and this air is prevented from rising and flowing away. The warming inside a greenhouse thus occurs by suppressing convection and turbulent mixing. This can be demonstrated by opening a small window near the roof of a greenhouse: the temperature will drop considerably. It has also been demonstrated experimentally (Wood, 1909): a "greenhouse" built of rock salt (which is transparent to IR) heats up just as one built of glass does. Greenhouses thus work primarily by preventing convection; the greenhouse effect however reduces radiation loss, not convection. It is quite common, however, to find sources (e.g. [13] [14]) that make the "greenhouse" analogy. Although the primary mechanism for warming greenhouses is the prevention of mixing with the free atmosphere, the radiative properties of the glazing can still be important to commercial growers. With the modern development of new plastic surfaces and glazings for greenhouses, this has permitted construction of greenhouses which selectively control radiation transmittance in order to better control the growing environment.[15].

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<font color="blue"> since you have yet to make any headway into proving global warming concerns are unwarranted -- here's a good link to info on the real topic: </font>

Scientific Opinion on Climate Change link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change)

btw, weren't you once of the theory that the chicken wing was the best disc throwing technique to break the world record for distance?

Your model seems too simplistic. While I agree that the Bernoulli effect causes lift by creating a difference in pressure between the top and the bottom of the disc, and that the angular momentum on the disc imparts stability, more is going on than those two prinicipals. The idea that the stability of the disc is simply due to the amount of plastic in the rim just doesn't fit. Why? Well, the disc has different stabilities during different parts of it's flight. There are at least three characteristics to the flight pattern: 1) early. 2) the flip 3) late stability.

There is no question that the rate the disc travels through the air, and the rate it spins affects it's stability. How is the question. If I were to guess, I would say that the flip (when the disc flips up flat in the middle of it's flight, occurs when the lagging edge is traveling at the same speed as the air the disc is passing through. Remember that at that point, the lagging edge is traveling at exactly the same speed as the air it is passing through; there is essentially no lift on the outer or lagging edge of the disc. On the other side, the disc is traveling at exactly two times the speed of the air the disc is passing through (that is, if the disc is traveling at 20 miles/hour then the rate of speed of the outer edge is 40 miles per hour relative to the air it is passing through) and there is significantly greater lift, thus the flip. Please let me restate, that is a guess.

It only stands to reason that at all times, the leading edge, that is turning into the air has more lift on it than the lagging edge, simply based on the Bernoulli effect. How significant that is I don't know, but it is real.

To make it even more confusing if you throw a disc faster, but with less spin, it seems to be less stable. Under these conditions, the lift on the outer (leading) edge should be less and all I can figure is that the lagging edge is actually traveling slower than the air creating the opposite Bernoulli effect with a downward pressure on the lagging edge. How's that for a load of B.S.?

Of course, none of this explains late flight fade.

Regardless, the model you are proposing, while good, doesn't seem complete to me.

Federal Climate Change Science Program, 2006

On May 2, 2006, the Federal Climate Change Science Program commissioned by the Bush administration in 2002 released the first of 21 assessments which concluded that there is "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system." The study said that the only factor that could explain the measured warming of Earth's average temperature over the last 50 years was the buildup of heat-trapping gases, which are mainly emitted by burning coal and oil




see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

BTW - I wan't to reitterate the point. Morgan's notion that the air traveling over the disc is the same from side to side is incorrect. The same principal can be applied to a turning wheel (thank you Click and Clack). The tire, where it meets the road, is traveling at exactly the same speed as the road, that is, zero miles per hour. On the far side of the tire, it's speed relative to the road is twice as fast as the speed of the car. The same thing happens to a disc and hence the pressure on one side is essentially zero since there is no relative movement of the disc on that side. That area that has no relative speed stretches all the way to the center of the disc. Now, every other part of the disc has some rate of speed relative to the air the disc is traveling through but the amount of lift is different depending on the distance from the lagging point that is at zero speed. That is, each part of the disc has a different level of lift. My guess would be that the overall shape of the disc is more important than the amount of plastic in the rim in determining overall stability. For example, if there is a shape that has greater lift at low air speeds and less lift at high air speeds the result would be an overstable disc. A shape that has low lift at low air speeds and higher lift at high air speeds would result in an understable disc. Even this is too simplistic, but hopefully moderately entertaining for Dave.

thank goodness bumblebees just fly rather than calculating that they can't based on the laws of aerodynamics /msgboard/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

I think Dave is wondering why you never mentioned gyroscopic precession. I know I am.

While lying in bed unable to sleep tonight because of thinking about this, don't count sheep. Count the ways gyroscopic precession can make "nose up" cause the disc to turn to the left, and "nose down" make it go right. Also, think about how the greater the mass of the rim, the more precession there will be.

While you do that, I will be sleeping like a dog, dog.

I don't know Magnus from Bertonelli,

Maybe the Magnus effect does something, I never heard of it before. Also, I have to admit, I never understood why curve balls curve. Something about the stitches? But golf discs have no stitches.



Curve balls curve for the same reason that people give for the disc turning over at high speed. They think the relative wind velocity on one side of the disc is higher that the other. True with a baseball because of the stitches. The stitches, or surface roughness, causes more pressure to build up on the side that is spining into the direction of the throw. The ball simply moves away from the pressure. A disc is different, its "side" (really nose) is very small and smooth in comparison. Although there may be an effect, if it is there at all it too would slide the disc sideways away from the force. The reverse Magnus effect is supposed to occur with very smooth surfaces that don't cause turbulence, (boundary layer separation), but rather just have air passing faster over that side. In that case, the Bernoulli effect of lower pressure for faster moving air, is supposed to take over and move the object toward the faster moving air. This is the opposite direction of movement for the same spin. Personally, I don't believe it as I am a ping pong player, and the ping pong ball is smooth and still acts like a baseball.

Maybe these aerodynamic forces make a disc want to go right, and the gyroscopic forces make it want to go left. There is a balance between the two. At high speed the aerodynamic forces rule, and you get high speed turnover. As it slows down the aerodynamic forces balance the gyroscopic forces and it holds the line. At low speed the aerodynamic forces fade out and the gyroscopic forces take over, and it fades to the left. If the rim is massive the gyroscopic forces take over sooner. No massive rim (putters, frisbees) the thing just flips right to the end.

Also, if a disc has lots of dome (putter, whamo) it gets a lot of its lift from Bernoullis, but if the disc has very little dome (drivers) it gets most of its lift from planing rather than Bernoullis. Compare a fighter jet wing to a low-speed airplane wing. The fighter jet wing has little or no dome, the jet gets its lift from planing. That's why they can fly upside down for long distances and not lose altitude.

For discs, the only way to get lift from planing is if the disc is nose up. Nose up causes gyroscopic precession to make the disc go left.

I like to take the front wheel off peoples bicycles to show them gyroscopic precession. I have shown this to many people using a bycycle wheel, and they always understand it well. I typically make them put the wheel back on the bicycle. I leave them standing there with a fuugked up bike, ha ha!

The goal of posting the funding sources of certain groups like the Hudson Institute is not to dismiss their reports, but to put what they say into perspective. It would be less important if these groups would cite the source of the information they spout, instead of saying �top science journals�. I�ll run right out and look that one up. I suspect this article is part of the massive disinformation campaign being waged by Exxon-Mobile and their cronies. It is constructed to resemble real science, but lacks all the checks and balances of the peer-review process. Cloud the issue and create just enough confusion to allow business as usual for as long as possible.

One question: who stands to loose the most if policy makers ever wake up and begin to regulate the release of CO2? Heck, the amount of time, energy and money that big oil, big coal, and other vested industries are spending on this misinformation campaign can almost be construed as proof that human-induced climate change is real and eminent.

Maybe these aerodynamic forces make a disc want to go right, and the gyroscopic forces make it want to go left. There is a balance between the two. At high speed the aerodynamic forces rule, and you get high speed turnover. At low speed the aerodynamic forces fade out and the gyroscopic forces take over, and it fades to the left. If the rim is massive the gyroscopic forces take over sooner. No massive rim (putters, frisbees) the thing just flips right to the end.



Precession is the "magic" I was talking about to Lyle. Precession is one of three major forces affecting the flight of a disc. The combination of the the three forces creates a stability phenomenon. That stability phenomenon changes at different speeds. Most of what you say is true except for the part where you wonder if gyroscopics take over at low speeds. They don't. They're the same. Precession is the same high or low speed. Gyroscopic forces always try to prevent movement not cause movement. The higher the rim mass, the more gyroscopic force. Precession always translates forces 90 degrees into the spin.

I meant, at low speed the gyroscopic forces take over because the aerodynamic forces drop off, not because the gyroscopic ones increase.

I meant, at low speed the gyroscopic forces take over because the aerodynamic forces drop off, not because the gyroscopic ones increase.



Yes, I understood. Still wrong as you are essentially saying gyroscopic forces are constantly tilting the disc left, and when the aerodynamic forces, which are tilting it right, subside, the disc tilts left. Gyroscopic forces keep the disc straight, only aerodynamic forces change the angles, and the changes are expressed through precession. It is possible for aerodynamic forces to turn the disc left at all speeds, and to turn it left at high speeds and right at low speeds. So, you have to come up with an aerodynamic force that tilts the nose up at lower speeds, is translated 90 degrees into the spin, and tilts the right edge up. Or, you have to come up with an aerodynamic force that pushes the tail of the disc down, etc.

I'm not sure I agree with you guys although that may be because I don't understand.

1) Dave, what are the three forces that act on the disc the combination of which cause changes in stability? Several forces have been mentioned and I'm not clear which you are referring to.

2) Precession and torque tend to cause freely rotating items that are reasonably well balanced to precise in a cone, not to have a stability issue. Take for example a top.

3) Morgan, are you arguing that adding more mass to the edge of the disc affects stability? Dave, do you agree with this statement?

4) The argument I'm making is not a Magnus effect, it is the Bernoulli effect. I'm very confident that the movement of air over the disc is not the same in all places. You are treating the disc as if it is a wing, it isn't, it is rotating.

Perhaps it is more inconvenient than I thought.

I meant, at low speed the gyroscopic forces take over because the aerodynamic forces drop off, not because the gyroscopic ones increase.



Yes, I understood. Still wrong as you are essentially saying gyroscopic forces are constantly tilting the disc left, and when the aerodynamic forces, which are tilting it right, subside, the disc tilts left. Gyroscopic forces keep the disc straight, only aerodynamic forces change the angles, and the changes are expressed through precession. It is possible for aerodynamic forces to turn the disc left at all speeds, and to turn it left at high speeds and right at low speeds. So, you have to come up with an aerodynamic force that tilts the nose up at lower speeds, is translated 90 degrees into the spin, and tilts the right edge up. Or, you have to come up with an aerodynamic force that pushes the tail of the disc down, etc.



Questions,

What are the aerodynamic forces you are referring to here? Also, would you say that it's not precession per sey that is turning the disc, rather, that the aerodynamic forces turn the disc and then the physical attibutes of precession play out as stability. The more the aerodynamic forces turn the disc, the more precession makes the disc act in an overstable manner?

Yes, more plastic on the edges makes the disc more over stable.

The reason (in my opinion) that the new discs are so much easier to throw far is because the lip of the discs has been moved closer to the middle of the disc, creating more spin for the average thrower. It in effect helps us all get the power that only the pinch grippers use to get.

I posted this a few years ago after the Arobie Epic came out. I wanted a driver that had at least 1 inch rim.

Now we are seeing that come out.

(sorry I went a little off topic there)

I'm not sure I agree with you guys although that may be because I don't understand.

1) Dave, what are the three forces that act on the disc the combination of which cause changes in stability? Several forces have been mentioned and I'm not clear which you are referring to.

Lift, Drag, Precession.

2) Precession and torque tend to cause freely rotating items that are reasonably well balanced to precise in a cone, not to have a stability issue. Take for example a top.

Agreed

3) Morgan, are you arguing that adding more mass to the edge of the disc affects stability? Dave, do you agree with this statement?

Only in that it makes the changes in flight angles happen more slowly. And more rim mass helps to dampen torque more quickly.

4) The argument I'm making is not a Magnus effect, it is the Bernoulli effect. I'm very confident that the movement of air over the disc is not the same in all places. You are treating the disc as if it is a wing, it isn't, it is rotating.



Actually Morgan was correct here. Although there is a slight difference on one side versus the other, it is practically negligible. Therefore, it does act as if it is a non rotating wing except for the translational affect of the aerodynamic forces due to precession.

Questions,

What are the aerodynamic forces you are referring to here? Also, would you say that it's not precession per sey that is turning the disc, rather, that the aerodynamic forces turn the disc and then the physical attibutes of precession play out as stability. The more the aerodynamic forces turn the disc, the more precession makes the disc act in an overstable manner?



Sort of. The gyroscopic force, (no matter how much rim mass) does nothing to the flight of a stable disc. It is only an unstable disc in terms of pitch or tilt, that is acted upon by precession. Any force that tries to change the spinning angle of the disc is translated 90 degrees into the spin. Precession doesn't care which way it tilts the disc. It only acts in accordance to the forces trying to change the axis of rotation.

Lyle, you are correct about the conical precession pattern of a top. When the top begins to be tilted over by gravity, its falling motion is translated 90 degrees by precession and chases itself around in a widening cone. If precession were solely responsible for the low speed over stability, instead of just translating the instability, the disc would wobble in an ever growing wobble, not fade.

I think Dave is wondering why you never mentioned gyroscopic precession. I know I am.

While lying in bed unable to sleep tonight because of thinking about this, don't count sheep. Count the ways gyroscopic precession can make "nose up" cause the disc to turn to the left, and "nose down" make it go right. Also, think about how the greater the mass of the rim, the more precession there will be.

While you do that, I will be sleeping like a dog, dog.



Sorry Morgan, I didn't realize that you were posting to me until just now. Honestly, I didn't mention Precession because my understanding of it doesn't fit it as a way to effect the stability of a disc's flight. Even with Dave's most recent posts I still don't get it. Such is life.

My understanding of Precession is based on earth's rotation. The forces that come into play cause the axis of the earth to follow a path that is in the shape of a cone (the aforementioned top). The bicycle wheel experiment (http://www.geol.binghamton.edu/faculty/barker/demos/demo10.html)
is the classic one for showing how torque doesn't result in the axis tilting in the direction of the torque, but rather precessing to the right of the torque and on around in a circle prescribing the cone.

My problem is that I don't see how that can result in stability changes. Precession per sey doesn't give that effect to my knowledge (admittedly very limited). So, I'm missing something; either there is another definition for precession that I've not heard of, or precession combined with another force results in different stabilities.

Questions,

What are the aerodynamic forces you are referring to here? Also, would you say that it's not precession per sey that is turning the disc, rather, that the aerodynamic forces turn the disc and then the physical attibutes of precession play out as stability. The more the aerodynamic forces turn the disc, the more precession makes the disc act in an overstable manner?



Sort of. The gyroscopic force, (no matter how much rim mass) does nothing to the flight of a stable disc. It is only an unstable disc in terms of pitch or tilt, that is acted upon by precession. Any force that tries to change the spinning angle of the disc is translated 90 degrees into the spin. Precession doesn't care which way it tilts the disc. It only acts in accordance to the forces trying to change the axis of rotation.

Lyle, you are correct about the conical precession pattern of a top. When the top begins to be tilted over by gravity, its falling motion is translated 90 degrees by precession and chases itself around in a widening cone. If precession were solely responsible for the low speed over stability, instead of just translating the instability, the disc would wobble in an ever growing wobble, not fade.



I hate to be dense Dave but:

1) What is the force that tires to change the spinning angle of the disc?

2) What do you mean by spinning angle?

My understanding of what you're saying is that when you aply a force on the disc (and I still don't understand that force, is it forward momentum or what?) that the action of precession causes stability changes. I'm still missing something.

BTW - the link I posted suggest that the rate of precession is determined by the distribution of mass relative to the axis of the spinning item. This would suggest that the Precession rate of a disc is determined by the mass of the rim. If there is a relationship between the rate of Precession and stability then what Za and Morgan are saying is correct.