A little rebuff to global warming

[KennyR]

Right Wing America vs. the World again on global warming. Why am I not surprised?

Anyway:

Fox spokesman Jeffrey Godsick says, "The real power of the movie is to raise consciousness on the issue of (global warming)."

Yeah, and my arse plays the harmonica.

It's a special effects movie to make money from cinema, DVD, and promotion. It could be about a giant lizard from Mars, it wouldn't matter - they just wanted scary and impressive effects. It's political and environmental values are exactly zero.

I think the anti-global warming crowd are just taking this opportunity to try to launch yet another publicity drive against a firmly supported theory held by tens of thousands of experts and scientists in 170 countries. Actually, I had expected the accusations to come from the other side first. Seems America's industrial ruling class and their pocket 'scientists' preempted it. Like Saddam's WMDs.

But of course, it's good publicity for the film, so many palms will be greased anyway.

[KennyR]

Then the 'crats should pick a better movie. Using The Day After Tomorrow for environmental awareness is like using Braveheart to learn Scottish history. Both are Hollywood fluff with only tenuous links to fact.

[KennyR]

Well, that's human beings. Tell them that there is a near 100% certainty of a meteorite impact killing 30% or more of life on Earth's surface in the next 20 million years, and you'll get:

"Bah, what do scientists know?"

"It doesn't say it in the Bible, so it won't happen."

"They could be wrong."

But show them Armageddon with Bruce Willis and suddenly nuclear shelters are selling again and meteorite impacts are on everyone's minds. And Nostradamus predicted it all. And the Bible did too. That must be how Judgement Day will come, blah blah...

And don't politicians love it. But its not just the democrats who take advantage of popular myths - they all do. Yes, even the GOP.

[KennyR]

You know what, Tigger? Your country is probably the only place in the world where one can find a scientist who will actively aoppose global warming theory. Isn't that a little strange to you? Doesn't it ever occur to you that it's you who might be the one who's believing in a myth?

Anyway, since the greater part of the scientific community (and it's excellence) are behind my argument, I can simply dismiss US claims, just like I can dismiss orgone or faith healing. You can believe in super carbon traps or Noah or Nessie all you like, it doesn't change the mountain of evidence.

[KennyR]

Blobrana wrote:
This fact taken with the latest satellite observations show that we are living at one of the warmest periods of earths history, and that a runaway greenhouse scenario may raise the temperature even higher. But eventually this will be `buffered` by the planet and that eventually the world will get cooler , a lot cooler, dude...

The Earth does 'sink' excess CO2 in the atmosphere, and that sinking does increase in speed by the warmer the seas get. Fossil fuels are one of these natural sinks, storing biological carbon since the Carboniferous, when the climate was a lot warmer than it is now. Limestone has been storing it for even longer.

But as you know, that carbon doesn't stay trapped forever. Volcanism will release it eventually. It will be stored again, of course. But this takes time - if the volcanism is too extensive, it will release CO2 faster than the biosphere can store it. And you also know, from the fossil record, that periods of intense volcanism also match periods of very rapid climate warming, mass extinction, and desertification.

What the burning of fossil fuels is doing now is simulating intense volcanism. We push billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere which is not being recycled and which is streaming out faster than the biosphere can store it. The last decade has not only been the hottest on record, its temperature has increased faster than at any other time in the fossil record, barring mass extinction events.

Mass extinction is already occuring due to climate change. The environment is warming. This pattern is too familar in Earth's history to simply be ignored or dismissed. Every year digs up more evidence from now and from fossils.

[KennyR]

Tigger wrote:
And you are right, about the last 10K years, grapes for wine were grown in parts of England which wont support them now (too cold), the Viking settlements in Greenland are now under ice, I'm pretty sure they didnt build them that way.

And 10K years ago the Sahara wasn't a desert. The rising of the Himalayas starved it of moist winds from the east. If you say that large scale geological events could have happened unnoticed in the last 50 years and still be causing the average global temperature to rise geometrically, you're the one with bad science. Even the Gulf Stream cycles (which made Greenland's coast livable for a time) aren't so short.

And as for the IPCC - you keep saying this like I read a report once and formulated all my opinions from that. I remind you once again that environmental chemistry was an integral part of my honours degree, and I do know the science, and none of it was ever taught to me as political or even as data in doubt or in controversy.

[KennyR]

Sorry T_Bone, this decade's warming could be from CO2 we released in the 50s. The worse is yet to come, and the longer we keep flinging out CO2, the worse it will get.

[KennyR]

And if you think Hollywood summer blockbuster movies can be any kind of serious propaganda, I understand better why you're a Republican, Red.

[KennyR]

No Fade, but if you forgive me for saying so, the US was never a country where in general people had any great knowledge outside the movies. For instance, I guess now most Americans think it was Americans who captured the Enygma machine, that William Wallace spoke English and did it all for a woman called Murren, or that cowboys were all white men who had draw gunfights a lot.

It may suck, but politicians know how to tap into popular myths. That's why they're politicians. Look at Bush - he managed to capitalise on the misconception that the 9/11 attack was somehow linked to Saddam.

[KennyR]

I recently heard that The Last Samurai was being accused of being liberal propaganda too. I think that says all that that we need to know on this subject and the people who think such things...

[KennyR]

I doubt he'd accept the results, probably calling them liberal propaganda or flawed IPCC science or something again. He'd be doing that still when his house is underwater, I think.