RE: Global Warming: Long term observations yield unsurprising results
March 5, 2015 at 5:09 am
(This post was last modified: March 5, 2015 at 5:11 am by ManMachine.)
(March 4, 2015 at 12:33 pm)popeyespappy Wrote: The physics behind global warming are simple. When energy in is greater than energy out things warm up. Even professional climate change skeptics like Roy Spencer admit as much. Likewise the theory behind anthropic climate change is equally as simple. Increasing the amount of greenhouse gasses such as CO2 cause our planet to radiate less energy back into space which results in energy in being greater than energy out. Therefore warming.
CO2 does absorb energy. This is an observable, testable scientific fact verified by many experiments. A recently released study, Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010, has confirmed the amount of energy absorbed by atmospheric CO2. The unsurprising part is that the conclusion that an increase of 22 parts per million results in an energy absorption equivalent to .2 watts per meter squared falls within the assumptions used for most climate change models. What would be a surprise is if this new nail in the coffin lid of climate change denial made a bit of difference to the nuh-uh crowd.
Here's another point of view.
Humans, like every other species, are subject to the machinery of evolution. The environmental changes that give rise to organism efficiencies from mutation, drift and the other gene-scape forming processes can be caused by many different things, not least of all the organism itself.
It's a branch of Chaos Theory called Complex Adaptive System Theory (CAS Theory). CAS Theory tells us that there are two critical features of any complex system:
1. The initial conditions that 'kick-start' the system
2. The point at which the system generates feedback that affects the system itself
The human race are at point 2, which is giving rise all kinds of unnecessary histrionics and hyperbole. We have reached a point where our actions are impacting the environment that sustains us to our determent, which is a natural evolutionary process, it's happened before to other species and it will happen again.
Fighting to perpetuate conditions optimal for our survival is both futile and arrogant. We have known for over a hundred years how the forces of evolution work and yet we are blind to them when it comes to a critical analysis of our own place on the planet. People like 'Friends of the Earth' are not behaving is a manner that is friendly to the Earth at all - this is a gross misrepresentation - they should be called Friends of Humanity by Attempting to Perpetuate the Conditions Optimal for Human Survival and Fuck the Earth, FoHAPCOHSaFE is not a catchy title I know but is accurate.
So there you have it, the debate about whether or not global 'warming' is an inevitable part of climate change is utterly beside the point and has hidden the real debate for decades. When it comes to the real debate any position that argues from a position that is predicated on our ability to master evolution is nothing short of overblown, out-of-control, species-egotism and is rightly doomed to fail.
MM
"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions" - Leonardo da Vinci
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
