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Global warming alarmists point to surface-based temperature measurements showing 1997 was the warmest year on record. But U.S. government satellites and weather balloons rank 1997 as the seventh coolest year since satellite measurements began in 1978. Which record is more reliable?
Satellite data agree almost exactly with those recorded by weather balloons, even though the latter use an entirely different technology. While the satellite record extends back only to 1979, weather balloon data go back 38 years to 1960. Neither set of data shows a warming trend since 1979. Source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The satellite's measuring instrument was a radiometer that actually measured microwave emissions from the stratosphere, not the upper troposphere. The greenhouse gases from the well-mixed troposphere don't get into the stratosphere very easily. In fact, they act as a sort of lid, so that while the troposphere warms up, the higher levels of the stratosphere can remain cool.
Paradox resolved. The upper troposphere is indeed heating up, just as the lower troposphere � the region we live in � is showing higher temperature readings every decade.
Global greenhouse warming is real.
"I intend to prove not only that global warming is not a problem, but that it is in fact not even real."
Perhaps you'd best rethink that statement, as regardless of what you may say, the earth is in fact warming.
Myth: Scientists Agree the Earth Is Warming. While ground-level temperature measurements suggest the earth has warmed between 0.3 and 0.6 degrees Celsius since 1850, global satellite data, the most reliable of climate measure-
ments, show no evidence of warming during the past 18 years. [See Figure I.] Even if the earth's temperature has increased slightly, the increase is well within the natural range of known temperature variation over the last 15,000 years. Indeed, the earth experienced greater warming between the 10th and 15th centuries - a time when vineyards thrived in England and Vikings colonized Greenland and built settlements in Canada.
Parrhesia wrote:
It is a real threat because it is happening. The Earth IS warming. Perma-frost is retreating, it's melting and according to a NASA climate scientist the perma-frost has been retreating since satellite record taking began in 1979 at an average of 9% per decade, with more recent data saying 14% per decade, suggesting acceleration of the decline.
Sea levels are rising around the globe, though not uniformly. In fact, sea levels have risen more than 300 feet over the last 18,000 years - far predating any possible human impact. Rising sea levels are natural in between ice ages. Contrary to the predictions of global warming theorists, the current rate of increase is slower than the average rate over the 18,000-year period.
Accuracy in land-based measurements of global temperatures is frustrated by the death of stations, frequent station relocations, and changes in how oceangoing ships make measurements.
Although all of the greenhouse computer models predict that the greatest warming will occur in the Arctic region of the Northern Hemisphere, temperature records indicate that the Arctic has actually cooled by 0.88 C over the past fifty years.
While ground-level temperature measurements suggest the earth has warmed between 0.3 and 0.6 degrees Celsius since 1850, global satellite data, the most reliable of climate measurements, show no evidence of warming during the past 18 years.
During fall, the trends show a significant warming of 2C/decade over the coasts of Greenland, near Iceland, and in Siberia but a cooling of 1C/decade over the Beaufort Sea and Alaska during fall.
During winter, the trends show a significant warming of up to 2C/decade in eastern Greenland and Europe and 2C/decade over Eurasia, extending north over the Laptev Sea; however, a cooling trend of 2C/decade is shown over the Beaufort Sea and eastern Siberia extending into Alaska.
During spring, a significant warming trend of 2C/decade can be seen over most of the Arctic.
_______
Comiso's (2003) study of the Arctic found that temperatures tend to very by the season and even by region. The study did come to the conclusion that warming does seem to be the general trend across the arctic.
Temperatures recorded this year in the upper 500 meters (1,625 feet) of sea in the Fram Strait -- the gap between Greenland and the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen -- were up to 0.6 C (1.08 F) higher than in 2003, they said in a press release received here.
Contrary to the predictions of global warming theorists, the current rate of increase is slower than the average rate over the 18,000-year period.
A few points are worth remembering. First, in quite recent Earth eras,
sea levels have risen and fallen far more cataclysmically than our current
worst-case scenarios anticipate. Since the end of the last ice age (after
the time pre-Columbians arrived in the Americas), the oceans have probably
risen by more than 300 feet (compared to a worst-case greenhouse scenario of less than 3 feet in the coming century). With the melting of the
great continental ice sheets and the relative stabilization of climate in the
current interglacial era, sea level rise appears to have slowed.
That�s the good news. The bad news is that in the last few centuries
human settlement and development along coastal areas have mushroomed.
So small sea level rises will have much greater human impact �
and human changes to the coastlines will probably magnify the ecological
impact of sea level rise as well.
IPCC Assessment finding: �There has been
no detectable acceleration of sea level rise during this century. However,
the average rise during the present [20th] century is significantly higher than
the rate averaged over the last several thousand years... .�
You wrote-
The bad news is that in the last few centuries
human settlement and development along coastal areas have mushroomed.
So small sea level rises will have much greater human impact �
and human changes to the coastlines will probably magnify the ecological
impact of sea level rise as well.
www.sepp.org...
Forget about health scares; there are still other ways to frighten the public. One of the all-time favorites has been to predict a catastrophic rise in sea level that would inundate much of Florida and other coastal regions and even cause storm surges with waves smashing into New York's skyscrapers and the Washington Monument. But a new scientific discovery has suddenly changed all this. True, sea level has risen about seven inches in this century, but not because it warmed. It is now quite certain that the oceans have been rising at about this rate, and even more rapidly early on, for the last 15,000 years Because of the end of the Ice Age, it is warmer now than it was 15,000 years ago [and we should all be grateful for this]. But this increase in temperature is slowly and inexorably melting a major ice sheet in the Antarctic; it will continue to melt away for the next 5,000 to 7,000 years or until the next Ice Age, whichever comes sooner. And there's nothing we can do about it except to adapt and invest in properties further inland.
The real truth is that the main greenhouse gas - the one that has the most direct effect on land temperature - is water vapour, 99 per cent of which is entirely natural.
If all the water vapour was removed from the atmosphere, the temperature would fall by 33 degrees Celsius. But, remove all the carbon dioxide and the temperature might fall by just 0.3 per cent.
www.junkscience.com...
For a start, carbon dioxide is not the dreaded killer greenhouse gas that the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the subsequent Kyoto Protocol five years later cracked it up to be. It is, in fact, the most important airborne fertiliser in the world, and without it there would be no green plants at all.
plants take in carbon dioxide and water and, with the help of a little sunshine, convert them into complex carbon compounds - that we either eat, build with or just admire - and oxygen, which just happens to keep the rest of the planet alive.
Increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, double it even, and this would produce a rise in plant productivity.
The glaciers melted, the ice cap retreated and Stone Age man could begin hunting again. But a couple of millennia later, it got very cold again and everyone headed south. Then it warmed up so much that water from melted ice filled the English Channel and we became an island.
The truth is that the climate has been yo-yo-ing up and down ever since. Whereas it was warm enough for Romans to produce good wine in York, on the other hand, King Canute had to dig up peat to warm his people. And then it started getting warm again.
Up and down, up and down - that is how temperature and climate have always gone in the past and there is no proof they are not still doing exactly the same thing now. In other words, climate change is an entirely natural phenomenon, nothing to do with the burning of fossil fuels.
Although we wouldn't be around, because without it there would be no green plants, no herbivorous farm animals and no food for us to eat.
The link between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming is a myth. It is time the world's leaders, their scientific advisers and many environmental pressure groups woke up to the fact.
YOU WROTE-
With regard to your pie graph with the supposed results of a gallup poll, those numbers have been largely refuted, with the misconstruing of the numbers of the poll being attriubted to Rush Limbaugh and George Will. The real numbers from the poll are as follows: 66 percent of the scientists said that human-induced global warming was occurring, with only 10 percent disagreeing and the rest undecided
www.thebatt.com...
More than 17,000 scientists have signed the Oregon Institute Petition, which states that "there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate.
Karry Mullis, the 1993 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry once said, "Environmentalists predict that global warming is coming, and our emissions are to blame. They do that to keep us worried about our role in the whole thing. If we aren't worried and guilty, we might not pay their salaries. It's that simple."
This is really not relevant to our topic. The fact that people are foolish enough to build more homes on the coast does not make global warming real or not.. Any natural effect to be expected over time are going to happen.. sure these areas will be damaged by natural disasters, but it has nothing to do with global warming. These things happen normally over the course of history..
The link between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming is a myth.
Water vapour in the troposphere, unlike the better-known greenhouse gasses such as CO2, is essentially passive in terms of climate: the residence time for water vapour in the atmosphere is short (about a week) so perturbations to water vapour rapidly re-equilibriate. In contrast, the lifetimes of CO2, methane, etc, are long (hundreds of years) and hence perturbations remain. Thus, in response to a temperature perturbation caused by enhanced CO2, water vapour would increase resulting in a positive feedback and higher temperatures.
YOU wrote
Global warming is caused by so-called "greenhouse gases", and occurs through the 'greenhouse effect." The gases to blame for this phenomenon include methane, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's, which also are to blame for ozone depletion).
YOU wrote
The link between burning fossil fuels and global warming may be a myth. As I've already stated the causes of this warming are absolutely debatable, but the burning of fossil fuels are hardly the only cause considered for global warming. As I've mentioned previously there is sunspot activity to consider, volcanic activity, as well as the disruption of enormous carbon sinks such as the oceans. I've also presented the possiblility of global warming occuring natural but being accelerated by man. While the specific cause mentioned here may be a myth, the phenomena itself is NOT.
Why are temperatures rising? The first chart nearby shows temperatures during the past 250 years, relative to the mean temperature for 1951-70. The same chart shows the length of the solar magnetic cycle during the same period. Close correlation between these two parameters--the shorter the solar cycle (and hence the more active the sun), the higher the temperature--demonstrates, as do other studies, that the gradual warming since the Little Ice Age and the large fluctuations during that warming have been caused by changes in solar activity.
The highest temperatures during this period occurred in about 1940. During the past 20 years, atmospheric temperatures have actually tended to go down, as shown in the second chart, based on very reliable satellite data, which have been confirmed by measurements from weather balloons.
Consider what this means for the global-warming hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts that global temperatures will rise significantly, indeed catastrophically, if atmospheric carbon dioxide rises. Most of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has occurred during the past 50 years, and the increase has continued during the past 20 years. Yet there has been no significant increase in atmospheric temperature during those 50 years, and during the 20 years with the highest carbon dioxide levels, temperatures have decreased.
In science, the ultimate test is the process of experiment. If a hypothesis fails the experimental test, it must be discarded. Therefore, the scientific method requires that the global warming hypothesis be rejected.
NephraTari basically shot herself in the foot when she said the Earth wasn't warming (which it is), and then changed gears to say it is but that it's nothing to worry about. Make up your mind. parrhesia showed a very well researched debate and excellent understanding of the subject, very well done to her and the time she sacrificed to commit to it.
NephraTari wore her pimp glove well. She persevered throughout the debate, was able to present complex subtlities and used Parrehsia's words to support her argument.
At first Parreshia let loose with what seemed to be a crushing onslaught. I found myself thinking that Kano picked a bad topic again. But I forgot to give credit for human ingenuity. While it may seem like a cheap trick to say that the earth is warming and that's different than Global Warming, the topic used the words "Global Warming". NephraTari was able to refute or at least neutralize Parreshia's points and therefore stands tall on Parreshia's back, as the victor.
While it was a good and lively debate, NephraTari seemed to get off on the wrong foot and had trouble recovering. This one must go to parrhesia.
I choose to interpret the topic of this debate as: "The temperature of the earth is rising and this will be a large problem for mankind." I think both participants have spend too much time on the debating the reality of global warming. The question is not if it is natural or normal, the question is: Is the temperature rising? Nephratari admitted this was true, so I'm going to acceppt the first part of the interpretation as true: The temperature of the earth is rising.
Not much time was spend on the question if a rising temperature is a large problem. Parrhesia did say that coastal areas will be flooded if the ice continues to melt. All Nephratari said in reply was that it was stupid to live there and that it was not relevant. I think it is relevant and I think Parrhesia showed that his side of the debate is right. I therefore declare Parrhesia winner of this debate.
NephraTari wins this one. Just a lot more information with a clearer presentation. Great job to parrhesia as well though! to you both!
Since this debate was about global warming (period) being a real problem (period) I have to declare parrhesia the winner.
Although I understand the distinction that NephraTari based debate on I have to say that argument went off subject.
If the subject were "Global warming is real" then I would have given my vote to a well argued debate by NephraTari.
"Global warming is a real problem" is a broad but defined subject that both debators agreed to by either stating or admiting that warming per say exists (the cause is of no concern) and further that problems do occur (intelligence of those in harms way is of no concern)
All parrhesia had to show here was simply that warming is real which NephraTari agreed was happening, just not the cause or that humans influence it.
Secondly parrhesia needed only to show a problem occurred due to warming such as sea level rise to make the debate topic true.
I believe NephraTari was at a distinct disadvantage from the beginning with this topic due to the luck of the draw. It would be a very difficult subject to argue in the negative for anyone.
I do have to add parrhesia did not run away with this debate as could have been done by a far more focused argument concentrating on the two simple proofs at hand.
Nephratari, hands down. I don't think that parrhesia was ever able to gain a viable foothold, and she just...died on the operating table, I suppose. Her arguments just never hit home, and they rolled of like water on a duck's back. Way to hang in there, though.
When I saw this debate I knew it was going to be a barn burner and I wasn't disappointed. WOW. A shame one of these debaters has to leave the table. The person with the slightly better arguement as to global waming being a "problem" is NephraTari.
a lively debate indeed...
Both did their homework, however, I felt that parrhesia made a better argument. Well done