Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Climate Change Forum Is global warming a lie?

HEY! I dont think soo, but where i live you dont realy notise the fenonomen "Global warning"! Its actualy getting colder!

Global warming is perhaps not the best term for what seems to be happening. Global climate change might be a better name for it. Changing weather patterns will bring about local ups and downs on a temporary basis, but the general trend, over a longer time scale, is what the concern is about.
There will always be those who will argue, even with hard facts, but there can be little, or no, doubt that polar ice is diminishing and sea level is rising, but, of course, it has all happened before, so those with a vested interest in activities which increase our carbon footprint have plenty of scope for argument.

Global warming is the correct term. Climate change is also the correct term. Global warming causes climate change. It can cause drought in some areas and flooding in others.

Local weather != global climate. The earth (on the whole) is warming; that does not equate to warming everywhere.

Bryan

I didn't say global warming was an incorrect term, but in view of the numbers of people who seem to doubt its reality because their local temperatures appear to be dropping, I wonder if some possibility of confusion might be attached to it.

Might you not also argue that climate change causes global warming? but lets not nit-pick.

People doubt global warming for many reasons. If they doubt it because their local weather is cooler, then they don't understand the difference between climate and weather.

The whole popular argument of global warming shows a misleading dichotomy between "believers" and "deniers", with deniers appearing foolishly wrong, so we seemingly have to accept what the believers say. But that misses the most important point, which is what effect will it have on us? Just because it's happening doesn't mean it's the end of the world. With 100 years to work on it, it's not hard to move cities, build sea walls, install air conditioners, move agriculture, relocate huge parts of the population, etc. Just look at the spectacular changes in all these things we've made over the previous 100 years.

Not hard to move cities? If you live in a city now, consider what that land was used for 100 years ago. Odds are it wasn't part of a city back then. Also, odds are that your building isn't designed to last till 2100 and will probably soon be replaced, global warming or not.

If only it were an issue of simply moving cities. The problem is much more profound than that.

The biggest issue (human wise) is loss of arable farm land. With only a few exceptions, most of the current "bread baskets" of the world are expected to loose a great deal of precipitation, leading to limited food resources. To make matters worse, the current evidence doesn't seem to suggest that new areas are going to "open up"; it looks like a lot of that rainfall is going to move to already wet areas.

Add in the potential loss of sea foods, due to oceanic acidification, and you've got a whole lot of trouble.

All of this, of course, ignores the impact on non-human species; many of which have already gone extinct due to AGW, and many more of which are currently at-risk.


Bryan

If these are the important issues, then it would be helpful for those scientists and others who get in the media to actually mention them. The best I usually hear is "rising sea levels", "poor Bangladesh", and "poor cute polar bears" but those are relatively trivial problems.

I suppose the global warming proponents have been so focussed on getting the masses to blindly believe that they didn't pay attention to reasonable types.

"I suppose the global warming proponents have been so focussed on getting the masses to blindly believe that they didn't pay attention to reasonable types."

What most people "know" about evolution is what they have been told by teachers, parents, preachers, and political pundits. Same thing with global warming. Most of what people are told about on this subject is misdirection from media-savvy, carbon-financed political pundits; politically-driven, astro-turfed websites, etc.

AEI, CEI, Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, and other Exxon-backed, constitution-loving True Americans inform us what the evil, lying scientists are saying - all the while keeping the real scientists locked up in FOIA requests and other legal maneuvers. This usually involves a bit of misdirection and misrepresentation.


Scientists have a conference and hundreds of hours of presentations. The paid "patriots" extract the 10 seconds of it for which they have a clever reply and then replay it along with their "refutation" over and over and over. The audience feels nice and indignant, but also enlightened.

The denialists figured out a long time ago they don't have to win the argument. All they have to do is waste time and create confusion.

Never having lived in America I haven't seen what you mention. All I hear is "we must work together to create a sustainable future for our planet" blah de blah blah.

Maybe activists are part of it. But I've met plenty of people who just don't believe it for themselves, maybe it's a bit of dogmatism or a bit of contrariness.

I had thought that the reason we don't hear about these details is they're too complicated for the mass media to bore people with. But then you think how much we all heard about mortgage derivatives, etc. in the financial crisis, and how we know all about the links between burning oil, greenhouse gasses, global warming and rising sea levels. It wouldn't take much to also connect it with loss of arable land, loss of sea food, etc.

Unless those last two points aren't very certain. But that just means the whole global warming thing might be pretty fine even if it does happen.

This technique is common in religion, politics and (unfortunately) even in scientific discussion fora. Those of us who want real information and real discussion should take every opportunity to "out" it.

We do. But its not sexy, so it doesn't get reported. A former student of mine now works for environment Canada, in their climate change division. She recently gave a local news channel a 2 hour interview, where she went over the many issue our country will face. The channel only showed about 30sec on that interview, where she discussed the unlikely possibility that our coastal cities could be flooded; and left out the bits where she said those effects were unlikely to occur anytime, and if they do occur, will occur decades to centuries in our future.


Bangledesh has already lost ~6% of its costal areas, and threatens the homes and livelyhoods of tens of millions of people. I cannot believe that you would call that "trivial".

Bryan

Ah, well that could be the answer. So it's the media's fault for not reporting global warming properly.




Sure, relative to half the world starving, it's trivial. But this demonstrates the undue importance people put on rising sea levels. Losing property isn't that bad, it's only money and things. Moving away from your hometown forever isn't that bad either. Nearly all of us do it.

But if these things are fairly sure to happen, we'd better prepare for them, so had the Bangladeshis. Not spend all our effort in vain making token gestures to look like we're preventing them.

Pakistan is one area of the world that is experiencing early effects of what may be global warming. I don't think 10s of millions of people getting washed out is a trivial problem by any stretch.

They've dealt with resettlement in the IPCC papers. There are two general ways of handling GW - reduce emissions (dramatically) and adaptation. The idea of moving people is on the table, but it can't be seriously discussed, if the oil companies have convinced everyone that AGW is a fraud.

Like many problems, however, the expense and effects of this are exacerbated by waiting till the last minute to address them.

Except, half the world is not starving (yet); Bagladesh is currently flooding.


Actually, its uprooting the majority of the human population. Plus its the loss of some of the more productive farm land. This isn't a few people having to move; its the complete upheaval of most major cities, the concordant economy and farmland.


I agree, but people being people, I suspect nothing will happen until after the [censored] hits the fan.

Bryan

Who says half the world is starving? Not me.




That's what I don't think is so serious. Cities are constantly being 'upheaved'. We just don't notice so much because new buildings are put where the old ones were. People also are commonly migrating. We had to to cope with the population growth of last century. We also had to find a whole lot of new farmland. We've essentially already been through some of the popular effects of global warming, and come out much better off.

If Bangladeshis need to build a new city faster than natural rebuilding, then other countries should be helping to pay for that, not wasting their money on roof-top wind turbines and petrol taxes which will most likely help nobody if they don't actually stop global warming. If they need more farmland, then other countries should be offering them some of theirs, not making voter-pleasing promises of green jobs, unachievable emission reduction goals and all the other showy, expensive preventative effort that could easily be a complete waste.


Imagine when you're a kid someone saying "You'll have to move out of your family home and go permanently to another town. You'll be forced out by a shortage of land and a collapsed local economy. It might sound bad, you might even want to try to prevent it. But at the end of the day millions of people did and are continually doing that quite happily. I live on the other side of the world.

kallog wrote---I live on the other side of the world.

Two things;
1) The 'other' side of the world in relation to---- where?

2) Why do you see this 'other side of the world' thing as significant? It is all the same world and subject to the same governing rules. I feel the clue is in the terms GLOBAL warming and GLOBAL Climate Change. None of us are on the 'other side' of this situation. To put it simply we live on a planet which is a sphere and 'global' encompasses all of us.!

Hello, I'm a bit late back, but..



If you find yourself telling somebody something so obvious, then it's a good sign you've misunderstood.

I'm on the other side of the world form where I was born. It doesn't matter if I left because of economic reasons or floods. Either way, I moved and it was fine. Plenty of people do the same. That's an understatement, we do it on a spectacular scale. Not always to the other side of the world, but at least to another city.

No. It's called GLOBAL warming for a reason.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.pdf