Logisti,

Good post. I was just teasing in the post that started this, by the way. It's a shame that this issue has become so politicized, that whatever proof either side has for or against is lost in the shuffle it seems. Everyone has an agenda on this, from politicians to scientists to companies, etc., and it's hard to find unbiased info from anyone. The only "green" that has come from this seems to be the green in many people's wallets.

Somewhat hilariously to your point, there is an up and coming specialty for lawyers across the US: Green Law.

On the one hand, it might be annoying to think that the moment a company decides to do something environmentally conscious (like install plumbing and other systems to recycle the gray-water in their office building) they need to hire a lawyer to cover their arse — but on the other side of the coin it means that these environmental efforts are being treated seriously (and often properly) by the legal system and, for instance, companies that write the insurance policies for office buildings.

A lot of business people have become environmentally-minded and a lot of environmentally-minded people have come up with some very intriguing business ideas. One of the most interesting I've seen is vertical farming. If you have a sky-scraper in the middle of Chicago where each floor is essentially a greenhouse it would be a lot more expensive to grow the food but your shipping costs drop to nothing.

Profit is a great incentive and the more people see ways to be environmentally conscious AND profitable, the faster we'll move in that direction. Right now the largest obstacles to effectively combating climate change are China and India — because they can't really afford to be environmentally conscious.

But if U.S. companies are successful in creating solar panels that produce cheaper electricity per kilowatt/hour than fossil fuels, those countries will be financially motivated to stop using the more expensive source of energy, U.S. companies will rake in $$, and everyone will be happy.

Of course, that's an idealistic vision and realistically it's an imperfect world, but the idea is a valid one: environmentalism and corporations are not enemies, and when they work together it can be a really good thing.

Amen to that. Aside from the environmental concerns, we have to wake up to the fact that the Earth's oil supply isn't infinite. We are going to have to find alternative energy sources because the ones on which we now rely are not going to last forever, and are beciming increasingly more costly to access.

So maybe GH's can start working on tapping the ectoplasmic residue as an alternative energy source. Somebody slime me!

I'm holding out for a ZPM

First, I would like to complement you on your choice of topic because Global Warming is a hilarious issue of debate because it is perpetuated by non-scientists who, due to its terminology, don’t even know how it works. The warming of the Earth caused by Human activities, such as the burning of coal and oil, is widely viewed as having a uniform impact (primarily because of how it is termed), when in reality, the greenhouse effect of increased carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is not evenly distributed.

The reason for this is because humid areas are impacted to a higher degree than areas with dryer climates. The underlying cause is directly related to the extent to which an area is already affected by greenhouse gasses. The distinction between humid and dry areas relevant to their susceptibility to increased carbon dioxide is the amount of water vapor naturally present.

When more carbon dioxide is introduced to a tropical area, for example, where water vapor is already having a greenhouse effect, its introduction will have a less severe impact than compared to an area that contains less naturally occurring greenhouse gasses. Thus, carbon dioxide will have a greater impact in dryer areas. And air is usually dry only where it is cold; the coldest and driest air being at the poles.

The question of whether human activity is the culprit is up for debate. Though I personally believe it to be, I respect those who disagree (where would Science be if no one ever questioned popular belief?). In any case, the warming is real; although, I hold it to be grossly exaggerated (who doesn’t like drastic global disasters?) and less of a threat than other global situations we face today like starvation and infectious disease. The money spent on combating Global Warming could be put to better use.

It's interesting that you mention infectious diseases as a serious issue, many scientists actually link the two. Every year they test mosquitos randomly in the US for West Nile virus and this year they found it two months earlier in the season than ever before, and in more widespread areas. A causal link to rising average temperatures has been suggested.

Similarly, many doctors are concerned about increases in southern-US cases of more serious diseases normally only found in tropical climates.

I would argue that climate change on a global scale will have (and to some extent we can see this happening already) a far-reaching impact on so many different things that we may not initially realize how many problems are caused or exacerbated by the rising temperatures.

Just one example off the top of my head: Apparently for every 1 degree rise in average temperature there is a roughly 10% increase in electrical storm activity (i.e. more lightning), which has been linked to many of the fires burning in California and elsewhere.

Ultimately, I think the solution isn't that difficult or expensive to tackle: renewable energy sources that don't release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere have been in development for decades and are becoming commercially viable and (thanks to the coincidence of the rising cost of fossil fuels) they are quickly becoming cheaper than the traditional energy sources.

Cheaper is the key, because everyone needs energy and the cheaper, the better. With cheap, efficient solar panels and wind turbines (and other energy sources like tidal and geothermal) adopted by the world-at-large (and especially India and China, who need more energy than anyone else, as cheaply as possible) we may be able to tackle the issue of fossil fuels in our lifetimes and we may even be around to find out if the conversion to renewables has a long-term impact on the warming trend — settling that debate too

Place your bets! (j/k)

I am not saying that warming isn't causing problems; when you heat up the planet, bad things happen. What I am saying is that these problems are exaggerated. Obviously we should be trying to figure it out, but there are a lot more pressing issues that deserve our attention: especially the attention of government.

I'd like to chime in here. On another board I belong to, the admin is totally convinced that global warming is a plot perpetrated in order to benefit certain groups, both financially and also to assume control over Nations and people.

Now, that doesn't make sense to me. IF anyone wanted to manipulate people, wouldn't it be just the opposite? Wouldn't they CREATE a global warming scare (IF warming were not true)? The ramifications of that would give them greater power then the opposite view.

The admin of that board will not budge in his view that global warming is a plot. And of course, he is not the only one. He and others call people like myself who absolutely believe in climate change "radical environmentalists".

Perhaps I can give some perspective from a personal level. When I was child (don't ask how long ago that was–a woman doesn't tell!), I can remember that when my parents threw a birthday party for me in November, everyone who attended came in their heavy winter coats. Now, for the last several years I've noticed that sometimes just a sweater or so is enough. A small point, but one that I've definitely made note of.

Storms–much more violent, more windy, rainy and destructive. More solitary occurrences. Our old barn is literally being destroyed by the weather conditions of the last several years. The days of gentle rain seems to be in the past. Now weather systems hit with a real vengeance, with power outages, property damage and the like increasing at a much higher rate then before.

The melting at both ice caps has already been discussed here. Polar bears are on the road to facing extinction. In another area, the insect populations are thriving. Just last evening, I was watching a dragonfly swarm, something I had never seen before. My mind went back to the Permian, when these insects were huge and dominated much of the landscape. The vegetation is extremely heavier the last decade. With the added storms and increased humidity, I joked to my husband that I expected to see one of the Jurassic dinos poking its head out of the brush!

All joking aside, I've been on this earth long enough to have personally noticed a huge difference–and a rapid one at that. Too fast for species to adapt. Climate change on the earth is nothing new; but IMO we have pushed it along at a very rapid pace.

Dissenters point to big blizzards as proof global warming is non-existent. But the point to remember is that it is not a straight line. Like an organism that has caught a bad flu, there will be violent swings of temperature and weather from one spectrum to the other, much like a fever can spike from very high to low to high again. It's like the earth itself is sick.

One last note: on the weather page I keep on my PC, I've been watching the temperature in St. Petersburg, Russia. Very high up on the globe, it is known for its very long and extremely frigid winters. I know its only one year, but the temps in that city only once reached -18 and never went lower then that. In fact, it must have ranked as one of their mildest winters in history. Just one city and one year, but to me it symbolizes something unusual occurring.

Yeah, folks are definitely getting conflicting stories on global warming because of people on both sides of the issue who are either cherry-picking or misinterpreting their data. The simplest breakdown of reality seems to be this:

1) Global Temperatures ARE rising on average, causing (among other things) melting icecaps and rising sea levels.

2) The grim forecast offered by "radical" environmentalists is probably overblown by a considerable amount — in other words, the changes are not likely to be so rapid or dire as they would have you believe.

3) The extent of human effect on the problem (and our potentially to effect a solution) is somewhat of an open question, however it's a bit of a dead issue also because even if we're not the primary source of greenhouse gases, a reduction on our part could still have a significant impact.

Of course I'll be happy to debate and go over the evidence with anyone who does not believe global warming is happening.

Logisti,

I am going to have to disagree with you. The amount of hardware needed to get enough energy from renewable sources like the sun, wind, and waves to make an impact would be devastating. Nuclear energy, on the other hand, is available, cost effective, safe, and it produces considerably less waste than current methods of producing electricity. Considering this, it is hard to believe that 70% of the United State's energy comes from burning coal. Individually, we can and should do our part by utilizing these renewables, but these technologies are just not efficient enough on a large scale (the scale at which our government should be acting). Unfortunately, until recently, nuclear energy has been demonized; it seems tearing down rain forests to make room for corn fields, NOT for food, but for ethanol was a more accepted way to solve our energy problem.

Are you referring to nuclear fusion?

For many years I too thought that nuclear power was the way to go. However, I'm sure that there is something better and safer.

What changed my mind–occasionally I have had to travel to Salem County in NJ, site of a nuclear plant. It has had a spotty history.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2005/2005-06-08-02.asp

Also unsettling are the big signs throughout the countryside regarding what to do if the warning siren at the facility goes off. Doesn't inspire confidence.

Chernobyl was due more to bad human judgment then anything else. But the results were devastating. Therein lies the real danger in these plants: even one mishap can spell widespread doom, even thousands of miles away.

The new technology involving coal and an emissions capture system shows promise. At any rate, the best scientific minds are working on the problems of energy production. I'm still hesitant to support nuclear energy. It's just too scary.

You should read up on the improvements made to these facilities; the likelihood of incidents like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl happening again is EXTREMELY remote. With every new technology, there are glitches – some worse than others – but, we should not shy away from it just because mistakes were made. How many people died before space travel was accepted? Necessary losses? Absolutely. The events of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were unfortunate, but we have learned from our mistakes and have made the necessary improvements to security and safety to the point that those incidents are no longer relevant to the case against nuclear power plants.

I want to feel as you do, and as I stated, years ago my feelings were that nuclear power plants were the way to go.

You make some good points about casualties in space travel, and I guess we can add many more to that list, including aircraft flight. But these involved a relatively small number of people affected. Chernobyl showed us how devastating an incident can be.

A lot of people do share your confidence, though. Home prices in the area around the Salem County facility are still quite high. Apparently a lot of people think the risk of living nearby is worth it. And they are happy with the jobs that have resulted from the power plant being there.

Guess it comes down to: how much of a risk are we willing to take? Right now, I'm not quite ready for it. But I do agree that IF they can be made virtually failsafe-a condition necessary given the horrendous outcome of a major slip up-they would definitely be the way to go.

And, no, I am speaking of nuclear fission plants. Though I do believe, given the advantages of nuclear fusion plants over nuclear fission plants, that we should be researching and experimenting with this technology.

I'll go on record and say that I think E85 is at best a terrible idea and at worst thinly-veiled gimmick where the government is creating an artificial demand for a commercial product. The ethanol requirement for gasoline has a bit more plausibility to it, but ultimately I think that's a bad idea too.

There was a running joke about scarf factories in the USSR. Because there was no free market system factories made whatever the government told them to make, and inevitably the government could never know what products were needed and so over-manufactured some while many items commonplace elsewhere in the world because treasured status symbols.

I understand farmers are part of the foundation of this country, but government subsidies and mandates can only go so far before they become a detriment to the system, rather than a helping hand. Some people surely benefit, but everyone has to live with higher gas prices (because of the 10% ethanol required to be in every gallon of gas) and higher food prices (because of the shortage of corn that can be used to feed livestock, turn into corn syrup, etc).

Putting the corn farmers aside for a moment, the other side of this is the environment. Theoretically, burning an ethanol gasoline mixture is cleaner than burning pure gasoline, however in practice the corn in question required a process involving large amounts of energy — usually in the form of burning coal, oil or other fossil fuels — in order to turn it into ethanol in the first place. It should be abundantly clear to everyone that even if "ethanol" is environmentally friendly, the fossil fuels we burn to create it negate that benefit and make the entire effort environmentally negligible.

Biodiesel, on the other hand, I think is a more reasonable option. Corn Biodiesel is inefficient (land needed per barrel of oil) and even Soy Biodiesel isn't that great but some folks are developing Algae Biodiesel that looks pretty promising because it takes up very little land to make a lot of oil, and the land doesn't even have to be good farmland — although there is an additional investment needed for the algae tanks.

Biodiesel isn't perfect but because the carbon that is burning comes out of the environment as the plants grow, the idea is that these fuels are "carbon neutral" — meaning they only give off as much CO2 as the next batch of plants remove from the air as they're growing.

Nuclear, I like — I mentioned as much in the article up-top, but it's a complex subject perhaps worthy of its own post… which I have just written, and you can read it here!

There was a recent study of a plant's ability to absorb CO2 from the environment. Basically, a plant can get "full" and lose its ability to absorb CO2. As a result, the plant absorbs less water from the ground which, in turn, has caused a rise in river levels where plant life, especially trees, are abundant. Any fuel that produces CO2 as bi-product is a bad idea because it is quite apparent that we have too much CO2 and not enough plant life. I support hydrogen fuel and nuclear energy.

Have to look into info on biodiesel–sounds interesting. Logisti is right in that ethanol is not a good choice. I can remember way back when there where pics of gas stations with big corn cobs posing as pumps!

Nuclear fusion seems to hold more promise then nuclear fission.

We have reached this point where it is becoming necessary to step up our efforts to find a source of clean energy. Just saw a special on Nicola Tesla who had an opinion on the use of finite sources of energy–that it is foolish to depend on something we know is going to run out, probably sooner then later. I think some of us have thought about this from time to time, esp. as our society has become ever more dependent on oil and all its attendant products, in particular.

Now we are scrambling and at least making strides in the right directions. If nothing else, global warming has caused scientists to think ever more creatively, which is definitely a good thing.

Uninterested sources. Stay away from the 'science' and look for things unrelated.

Here's what I mean–

Rising Sea Levels. Besides the pro/con global warming people there are others for whom sea levels are really important–not because of any scientific reason, but because it's their job to know. Harbormasters.

Harbormasters have to know the level of the harbors they control. Too shallow and ships run aground. Too deep and docks are unusable.

Their records say something very clearly about rising sea levels.

Melting Ice

The edges of the icecaps are good places to fish for crab. Fishermen also have data regarding the icecaps that is easily checked.

There are even people who study how ice flows. They've got an interesting take on the Antarctic ice cap.

Polar Bear Extinction

There are people more concerned with zoology than climatology. Their polar bear counts might surprise you.

Baby_yosh, plants don't 'absorb' carbon dioxide. They breathe it. They inhale CO2 and exhale O2 using the carbon as a nutrient(fixing it within themselves).

I believe in global climate change. It is part of the ecosystem. The global climate has altered greatly during the course of human existence–from the warm climate we began our evolution in thru the Ice Age, where our intelligence was honed. At no time has there been an 'ideal' global temperature.

And there isn't now.

The very idea that we should stop this massive ecosystem from going through the cycles it has gone through since before we were–without any consideration of the consequences of such an action is insane.

Jack, as you said yourself, there are clear historical records we can draw from — well, we can see from the ice-core samples in Greenland and elsewhere that we are currently living in higher average temperatures and higher CO2 levels than ever existed going back through a number of hot/cold cycles (ice ages) — so this has no precedent to be described as part of a "cycle".

And this has been largely attributed to the constant and still growing use of fossil fuels since the beginning of the industrial revolution. One could point to the last couple of centuries and say we've ALREADY been conducting a massive experiment and interrupting the normal cycles of the planet — and the eventual end of that experiment (by slowly switching to alternative fuels) is the only goal reasonable environmentalists have in mind.

Um, no, Logisti, just no.

Ice core samples in Greenland tell use that Greenland was once much hotter than it is today. Hell, the NAME of the place tells you that it was once much hotter within human history.

The records I was referring to are UNRELATED records. You can find records of sea levels, ice cap size, polar bear populations from sources that are UNRELATED to global warming pro/con activism.

Those sources paint a very different picture.

There have been fewer than 150 90+ degree days at O'Hare in the last decade. Unrelated. However, activists who want us to do something about AGW/CC have come out recently and announced that we have actually been cooling for the past ten years and will probably do so for about ten more–and they don't know why.

There is no clear evidence what's going on or why–but there are plenty of people proposing 'solutions'.

Just look at humans in general–we are designed for a much warmer environment.

Again, I don't deny that the climate changes–it's supposed to. And, like it or not WE are a part of that. Whatever we do is natural.

I, too, have a 'solution'–we need a helluva lot more research before we start implementing processes whose outcomes are affected by way too many variables to know what will happen.

Take one simple thing–what happens when we start removing CO2 from the air? How will that affect the plants that provide us oxygen? Will we be able to control the effects of the removal–or will we get a cascade effect? The Earth did exist for a long time–longer than our form of life has been around–without so much free oxygen.