Who says south pole ice is expanding at an "alarming" rate?

[thatguyoverthere]

Originally Posted by JaJae

I've posted this graph myself about 5 times now and have said that temperatures have declined in the past decade. People still seem shocked by it and/or don't believe it. The media won't tell this side of the story.

JaJae, just about every person in the world believes global warming is real and that humans play a role.

[Linzyhop]

Originally Posted by thatguyoverthere

JaJae, just about every person in the world believes global warming is real and that humans play a role.

but the dems are saying man is the SOLE reason for Global Warming. Biden just said it last night in the debate! i think the man adds to it, but is not the sole reason for it. The earth warms and cools in periods over hundreds of years since its existence. have we caused some bad effects, surely, but we are not the cole cause of the "warming" we are experiencing today. can we do something to help preserve the planet? of course, but again, to think humans are the only reason the earth is warming up again is ridiculous.

[Heres Johnny]

No, They're saying we are a primary contributor.

[kombayn]

Originally Posted by thatguyoverthere

JaJae, just about every person in the world believes global warming is real and that humans play a role.

It doesn't mean they're right. I just scratch my head at this whole political mess it's become. They sit there and blame us! It's a joke. I can't stand it, because it seems that's governments only answer. Make you feel bad or scare you half to death or shit, BOTH! I just rather have scientists and research groups deal with this, how to fix it, if even possible and then give the research to the proper people so it can be funded correctly.

[Photon1001]

Scientists and researchers are dealing with it. The going has been slow, but solar energy really does have the potential to change the world.

[kombayn]

^Yeah, I agree. Parts of Los Angeles County are starting to implement solar energy over the local cities governments. I'm sure we have a lot of lobbying going on from the energy sector like Edison to prevent the start of solar energy, that'll be a lot of money lost for them.

[Photon1001]

Its unfortunate that think they should fear solar, as the power companies essentially still hold a sanctioned monopoly on the power. More energy being generated on the power grid reduces the cost of energy production, ergo, they really stand to make a potential windfall from solar power.

[thatguyoverthere]

Humans are warming the poles: study (ABC News in Science)

Humans are warming the poles: study

Monday, 3 November 2008 Jessica Marshall
Discovery News

A new study has concluded that the recent rise in temperature near the earth's poles is directly attributable to human activity.

The international study of temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic, appears in Nature Geoscience.

"The polar regions exhibit the largest climatic variability on earth," says Dr Andrew Monaghan of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, who wrote a commentary accompanying the study.

"Detecting and attributing climate change has been more difficult than elsewhere, and the issue has been confounded by comparatively short and sparse temperature records in both the Arctic and Antarctic."

Antarctica was the only continent where evidence for human-caused climate change was inconclusive, according to the most recent assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in 2007.

Direct attribution

The new study finally makes the link: "The main message of this paper is that we're able for the first time to directly attribute warming in both the Arctic and the Antarctic to human influences on climate," says lead author Dr Nathan Gillett, who completed the work while at the University of East Anglia.

Greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, are transported globally and persist in the atmosphere, so they exert a warming effect even in uninhabited polar regions.

A global team of researchers used climate data collected from the Arctic and the Antarctic during the past 100 years and 50 years, respectively, and compared the measurements with predictions from four different climate models.

In one test, they used only natural influences on climate, such as variations in the sun's intensity and volcanic eruptions, in the simulations. In another, they added human influences, including greenhouse gas emissions and the ozone hole, which tends to have a cooling effect.

"What came out of that is that there was a clear detection in both the Arctic and Antarctic of a human influence on climate. We've shown that we detect the human fingerprint in both...regions," says author Dr Peter Stott of the UK Met Office.

The strongest effect is in the Arctic, where temperatures have warmed by more than 2°C in the last 40 years. Summer minimum sea ice coverage in the Arctic was the second-lowest on record in 2008, behind 2007, which broke the previous record low by more than 20%.

The sea ice losses in the Arctic contribute to warmer land temperatures in the area, which in turn can lead to increased permafrost melting and the release of additional greenhouse gases, says Monaghan.

Antarctic warming

The Antarctic shows a smaller but still significant overall warming trend.

While some parts of the continent appear to be cooling, such as over the South Pole, warming is pronounced over West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula.

Warming in these coastal regions may lead to collapse into the ocean of ice sheets - including the 2002 loss of the Larsen B ice sheet - which contribute to sea level rise.

Measuring trends in the Antarctic is more difficult because there are fewer than 20 data stations, and they have been operating for fewer years than in the Arctic.

"In my mind, the most important issue is the potential implication of polar ice sheet melt on sea level rise," says Monaghan.

"At the same time we have this increased sense of urgency to gain a better understanding of the various factors that influence polar climate variability and especially whether humans are playing a role.

"So that's why this study is so important. It formally demonstrates the human contribution for the first time."

[Photon1001]

does anyone still doubt climate change?

[HughRuss]

Originally Posted by Photon1001

does anyone still doubt climate change?

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

http://globalwarminghoax.wordpress.com/
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/news.php

Etc. Etc.

[Photon1001]

^Come on now, you don't actually believe that stuff?

Experts: Global Warming Is Real

Inhofes 400 Global Warming Deniers Debunked - 400 Scientists Doubt Climate Change - thedailygreen.com

From my understanding, many of these deniers are the result of some of the same PR firms hired by big tobacco to deny the harmful effects of cigarette smoking being hired by the coal and oil companies.

[thatguyoverthere]

Originally Posted by Photon1001

does anyone still doubt climate change?

I've learned that you have to be very, very specific when discussing this issue, because debating with climate change deniers is the intellectual equivalent of trying to catch a greased pig. If there is any loophole in the language, they will slip through it, without any doubt.

You have to identify a climate change deniers specific stance(s) before you can even begin to debate them, or they WILL move the goalposts of the argument any time you try and corner them.

-

Examples of some of the climate change deniers stances:

The global warming proponents are all suddenly calling it climate change because the globe isn't really warming! (Untrue, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was created 20 years ago.)

Because it's (cold outside my house/snowed somewhere in May), global climate change is a bunch of bunk.

Climate change is entirely natural.

Climate science is not legitimate science. (But that never stops the deniers from pointing out climate change on Mars to support their argument, as if our scientists understood the climate of Mars better than the climate of Earth! )

Man contributes to climate change, but not at all significantly.

Man significantly contributes to climate change but it's (too late to deal with/too expensive to deal with/no big deal) anyway.

-

Even Lindzyhop demonstrates some of this just a few posts above. Since she heard Biden say that humans are the sole cause of the warming, that gives her license to ignore everything anyone else says about climate change. She would rather listen to a politician or other non-scientists and force the whole argument through them, instead of listening to the vast majority of scientific, academic, and corporate organizations that overwhelmingly say that human activity is significantly contributing to the current warming of the climate, and that the risks of inaction are real.

Do I wish Joe Biden had had my experience with debating climate change deniers and that he had included the qualifiers that are so essential to preventing deniers from focusing on one little portion of the language in order to ignore the big picture? Absolutely. But unlike the deniers, I'm not going to try and make one or two old politicians become the lynchpins of what is essentially a scientific argument. I'm not going to argue the science of climate change anyway (because unlike climate change deniers, I'm not going to assume that I understand climate science better than actual scientists.) What I will argue is the scientific opinion, which according to my research is overwhelming in its support of the concept of anthropogenic climate change.

[Photon1001]

I found a pretty good doco about this on how many big oil companies kept the global warming debate alive long after the vast majority of scientists have concluded that global warming was real, very similar to how the tobacco companies suppressed the facts about its cancer link.

The Denial Machine