New Scientific Findings Cast Doubt On Global Warming

[Attalus]

The link is here.

[Timber Loftis]

The fractious debate over the Kyoto Protocol has obscured the agreement of most parties - including the Bush administration - that long-term action on global warming is necessary.....

To break the political log-jam on climate, policymakers on the left and right need to move beyond the increasingly polarized and unproductive debate over near-term emission control measures modeled on the Kyoto framework. Instead, we need a new policy dynamic....

First, despite the remaining uncertainties, there is growing agreement - on the part of the Bush administration and most scientists and policymakers - that industrial activities are contributing to a rapid increase in GHG concentrations in the atmosphere andthat this buildup may well alter the earth's climate in serious and potentially harmful ways. This consensus that anthropogenic climate change is real and requires a meaningful government response did not exist just a few short years ago and reflects a striking evoluition in thinking among many traditional climate skeptics.

Second, President Bush explicitly reaffirmed U.S. support for the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change [of which Kyoto is merely a sub-agreement --TL], whose long-term goal is to stabilize atmospheric concentratons of GHGs at levels "that would prevent dangerous antrhroponic interference with the climate system." [And which also made it a LEGAL FACT that "anthropogenic climate change is real and requires a meaningful government response." Seems like the administration is only 10 years behind what it agreed to. And I though Iraq was slow to act. The Senate passed that treaty, btw, so it is law in the USA. -- TL]

And third, there is a widespread recognition that breakthrough technologies for producing and consuming energy are necessary for the dramatic changes in the carbon profile of our economy required to reverse the current GHG buildup and achieve the convetion's stabilization goal.
__________________________________________________ _
The Environmental Forum, Robert Sussman (Deputy Admin. of EPA, 1993-94, Partner at Latham & Watkins, D.C.) "Climate Change." Vol. 20, No. 1, Jan/Feb 2003, p. 19.

Thanks to the good doctor for an excuse to drag out my soapbox. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

[Attalus]

Interesting, Timber. I am sure that like any life-form, we will pollute whatever environment we are put into with substances toxic to us. It was only about two hundred years ago that elementary sanitation measures were put in places of dense population, though the ancients did have an inkling. (Rome had a rudimentary sewer system.) Humans are unique in being able to recognize subtle threats to their well-being and acting on it.

[Arvon]

The earths temperature has changed a few degrees higher and lower over the last 5000 years. All one has to do is look at the studies done on the Bristle Cone Pines. And be sides do you want to trust a climatologist who can't tell us, with any accuracy, what the weather is going to be tomorrow, telling us what going to happen 10 or 20 years from now? These studies are just BS.

[The Lilarcor]

Yes, if Global Warming was to have happened by all this pollution, which certainly doesn't help, but doesn't destroy, then the earth's atmosphere would have been killed by all the meteors that have crashed into the earth (including the one that killed the dino's) and the major volcanic eruptions. Sure all the precautionary measures are good, but it wont prevent the breakdown of the atmosphere.
From what I have heard, if all our nukes went off, we'd be in another ice age due to all the dust and gunk in the air, so how is it any different then all the cars and other pollutants that we have? None (besides the tremendous radiation) and the atmosphere is made of O3, it heals itself so we dont really need to worry. And Timber, if this is what you basically said, sorry, but I didn't make out what you meant.

[Azred]

None of the evidence that seemed to support global warming was never fully convincing enough to me. It usually appeared to be mostly wild speculation of "doom & gloom" about the future.

Come to think of it...why do so many people think the future must inevitably be worse than the present?

Anyway...if the environmentalists were so conviced that global warming is an inevitability and that the polar ice caps were going to melt, whey haven't they tried to establish a community on Antarctica? Think about it--even with all the ice gone there will still be plenty of room for temperate growing regions and plenty of fine fishing. Oh, well. [img]graemlins/petard.gif[/img]

[Kakero]

I read somewhere that widespread deforestation also is said to cause this global warming thing. Trees are said to be the natural air cooling system. So when trees are being cut down, the surrounding temperature rises. So imagine when forest are being cut down world wide. The global temperature will increase and thus global warming happen.

[/)eathKiller]

*lets loose tons of spray-paint cans*

WEEE CFCs can't do nuttin' no more !

[slicer15]

Well...the report only says that pollution isn't the cause of Global Warming, it never said anything about pollution not damaging the environment.
It probablt still does...and I remember we did this for my English mocks. We had a paper report saying global warming was bad, and another said it was good. The one that said it was good indeed said that during the middle ages it was warmer than today, and it was very prosperous. But who knows? I mean, science is only best guess, right?

[Timber Loftis]

Originally posted by Kakero: I read somewhere that widespread deforestation also is said to cause this global warming thing. Trees are said to be the natural air cooling system. So when trees are being cut down, the surrounding temperature rises. So imagine when forest are being cut down world wide. The global temperature will increase and thus global warming happen.

Carbon Dioxide is the main greenhouse gas (GHG). Trees breathe in carbon dioxide and turn it into oxygen, which animals breathe in and convert back to CO2. Deforestation removes trees, and thus removes what is known as a "carbon sink." Less trees, more CO2, less oxygen. That simple.