Climate Change

kelownabomberfan · March 20, 2014

Lawsuits can & do happen....
There is no lawsuit that can win because someone said something on the internet. That's what free speech is there to protect. Now they could I suppose depending on what was said go in front of one of those unconstituational human rights commissions but those are a whole different discussion that is probably best left alone cause it'll get more than a few people riled up.

Libel laws still apply to internet postings. And there are limits to what is protected with respect to Freedom of Expression in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Free speech on a message board is a myth - you give it up when you agree to the terms of service that lets the board owner(s) and their appointees edit or remove your posts.

In a court of law the truth can be used as a defence. So if what you are saying is offensive, it still is legal as long as it is true. In the Kangaroo Court of our "Human Right" commissions, the truth can't be used as a defence. Nothing applies to help the defendant in those things, you are basically guilty when you walk in the door and the process is the punishment.

There is an interesting case of libel going on in the US right now - several publications and bloggers have called Michael Mann's global warming "science" into question, and instead of providing evidence to satisfy them, he is suing them instead for libel. This is what is known as a SLAPP lawsuit. In any event, in order to win his case, Mann will now have to prove that his work showing his hockey stick of global warming was in fact accurate and his data is solid. In all these years since his "hockey stick" projections of global warming went public, he has never released his data. If he does in fact do it, and the defendants prove they were right all along about Mann's work, the entire global warming industry might crumble, which it should, given it appears to be built on sand anyway.

17to85 · March 20, 2014

There is an interesting case of libel going on in the US right now - several publications and bloggers have called Michael Mann's global warming "science" into question, and instead of providing evidence to satisfy them, he is suing them instead for libel. This is what is known as a SLAPP lawsuit. In any event, in order to win his case, Mann will now have to prove that his work showing his hockey stick of global warming was in fact accurate and his data is solid. In all these years since his "hockey stick" projections of global warming went public, he has never released his data. If he does in fact do it, and the defendants prove they were right all along about Mann's work, the entire global warming industry might crumble, which it should, given it appears to be built on sand anyway.

The hockey stick is wrong, there's a bump in the middle of it, but that in and of itself doesn't say much about the science behind global warming, just that one guy is wrong about one aspect of things. At this point it's not about whether global warming (climate change is a better term anyway) is real or not, it's about what if anything to do about it, and that is a very good debate that is worth having because there are so many things to say. All the projections about what might happen, lots of speculation and doom and glooming there.

kelownabomberfan · March 21, 2014

The hockey stick is wrong, there's a bump in the middle of it, but that in and of itself doesn't say much about the science behind global warming, just that one guy is wrong about one aspect of things. At this point it's not about whether global warming (climate change is a better term anyway) is real or not, it's about what if anything to do about it, and that is a very good debate that is worth having because there are so many things to say. All the projections about what might happen, lots of speculation and doom and glooming there.

I disagree on the "climate change" comment, as too often now it is confused with "man-made climate change" which is different from natural climate change, which occurs constantly, thanks to changes in amounts of radiation and energy we receive from the sun. Too often now people say "climate change" without understanding that there is a big difference, one is observable - the natural one - and one is still an unproven hypothesis (man-made).

17to85 · March 21, 2014

I disagree on the "climate change" comment, as too often now it is confused with "man-made climate change" which is different from natural climate change, which occurs constantly, thanks to changes in amounts of radiation and energy we receive from the sun. Too often now people say "climate change" without understanding that there is a big difference, one is observable - the natural one - and one is still an unproven hypothesis (man-made).

Well it's about as proven as it's going to get. The relationship between greenhouse gases and their heat trapping effect is real, the fact that since the industrial revolution there has been a metric crap load of greenhouse gasses pumped into the atmosphere is a fact, it's still science and yeah it's a hypothesis, but it's as sound a hypothesis as gravity or evolution at this point. (or do you want to argue about how those are just unproven hypotheses now too?) I am far from a doom and gloomer, but the science is pretty straight forward in this matter, the questions are about what the effect will be and there is a lot of debate there because there are so many variables it is nearly impossible to accurately predict. The debate is all about whether it's worth spending the amount it would cost to do something that it's probably already too late to do anything about or not.

Rich · March 21, 2014

Topic split from the Bomber forum

The Unknown Poster · March 21, 2014

Hmmmmmm...I really want to engage this debate but I just dont feel up to citing sources or getting info to support my positions.

But I will say, I think humanity has impacted climate but that the earth is perfectly capable of absorbing our impact. There are climate change scientists are far too determined to prove their work is true at all costs. Even if the science doesnt support their position they will find something, anything, to hang their hat on. There was that incident in the UK where scientists had falsified their data.

Things are complicated by the fact the solar system seems to be entering a natural warming phase and Im pretty sure man isnt causing the climate on Mars to change (if only we could).

The doom and gloomers who talk about a future with melted polar ice caps fail to mention that in Earth's history it has been both fully frozen and fully melted and will be both again in our future.

As an aside, "climate change" is a better word because "Global Warming" doesnt accurately describe things. A rapid warming triggers cooling etc. And causes havok with the weather.

I read a great fictional account of this called The Coming Global Superstorm. Similarly the later movie The Day After Tomorrow is along the same vein.

17to85 · March 21, 2014

The simple fact is that if people really wanted to stop all the emissions they never talk about the surefire way to do it... dealing with the over population that's going on right now. You want to have a big impact? Trim a couple billion people off the population and suddenly there's a lot less demand for energy globally and a lot of environmental problems are lessened. Good luck getting anyone to listen to that though. Instead they'll just scream about spending trillions of dollars trying to make the problem go away instead, which is a laughable solution at best. Money won't fix this problem, changing our energy sources is the only solution and it just so happens that fossil fuels are just about the most efficient energy source we have and we do like our energy.

kelownabomberfan · March 21, 2014

Well it's about as proven as it's going to get.

It's not even close. The IPCC has issued what - 4 reports now since 1990? And every one has been revised downwards in terms of the so-called "effects" of CO2 in the atmosphere. The last IPCC report even admitted that there is no link between CO2 and severe weather. In fact, there are now peer-reviewed studies that show that in periods of earth's history when CO2 was higher (due to volcanic activity) the climate and weather were more stable than in low CO2 periods. The science of climate is evolving and changing as we learn more, and the din of hysteria from nuts and loons, and mostly from shysters making huge bank off of this hypothesis like Suzuki and Gore get discredited and go live in their 10,000 sq foot mansions and just shut up. So no, it's not as proven as its going to get, far from it.

The relationship between greenhouse gases and their heat trapping effect is real, the fact that since the industrial revolution there has been a metric crap load of greenhouse gasses pumped into the atmosphere is a fact, it's still science and yeah it's a hypothesis, but it's as sound a hypothesis as gravity or evolution at this point.

I'll give you the point that the "theory" behind heat trapping is somewhat sound, but in terms of the actual effects or amounts of heat actually trapped, given sensitivity and cloud vapour effects, there is still a long way to go. Gravity is easy to prove. So to some extent is evolution, given all you have to do is visit a natural history museum to see the world over hundreds of millions of years. It's almost impossible right now to show exactly how much heat is actually trapped by Co2 in the atmosphere, and the IPCC continually having to revise their predictions is just a symptom of that. If you look back over the last 25 years when this theory first started gaining traction (it actually was put forward by some of the same guys like Steve Schneider, who in the 1970's were trying to sell the exact OPPOSITE theory, that earth was headed for a new ice age due to "pollution" (they hadn't glommed on to CO2 yet, that came later)) the earth by now should be awash in water, as the polls should all have melted. In the year 2000, British warmists were expounding on how kids going forward in England would never know what snow looked like. I could go on, but the point is - scientists have no clue what the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere really is going to do, and so comparing AGW to gravity and evolution is just plain silly.

I am far from a doom and gloomer, but the science is pretty straight forward in this matter, the questions are about what the effect will be and there is a lot of debate there because there are so many variables it is nearly impossible to accurately predict. The debate is all about whether it's worth spending the amount it would cost to do something that it's probably already too late to do anything about or not.

I agree. If you read guys like Matthew Ridley and Bjorn Lomborg, you'd see that while they are "luke-warmers" in that they agree on CO2 being a greenhouse gas (man I hate that stupid term, almost as much as "carbon footprint) they say that the trillion dollars the western world has already spent in this "fight" against CO2 is a complete waste of money. The US spent $22 billion last year "fighting" man-made climate change. $22 billion!!! And $12 billion more was spent just on subsidizing wind power, with no end in sight as wind power is horrible inefficient and horribly expensive. Imagine if all of that money had been used instead to fight poverty or to cure cancer and AIDS, or diabetes. Or on going to Mars! Man would be so much better off then we are now.

Here's a link to a lecture Matthew Ridley gave a while ago, where he compares the current "science" surrounding man-made climate change to the "science" surrounding crop circles, and how the two "movements" have a lot in common - quite worth the read: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/01/thank-you-matt-ridley/

kelownabomberfan · March 21, 2014

The simple fact is that if people really wanted to stop all the emissions they never talk about the surefire way to do it... dealing with the over population that's going on right now. You want to have a big impact? Trim a couple billion people off the population and suddenly there's a lot less demand for energy globally and a lot of environmental problems are lessened. Good luck getting anyone to listen to that though. Instead they'll just scream about spending trillions of dollars trying to make the problem go away instead, which is a laughable solution at best. Money won't fix this problem, changing our energy sources is the only solution and it just so happens that fossil fuels are just about the most efficient energy source we have and we do like our energy.

This is why I like nuclear energy. Zero CO2 emissions. But the flaky enviro-nuts are all too scared of it to support it, for the most part. Instead we are supposed to all just go with solar power and wind. If you listen to the Green Party, they'd have the entire country on solar and wind power within a few years, which would mean 90% of us would be dead in two years, of starvation due to lack of ability to grow, harvest and transport food, but much more quickly, from freezing to death, on the first cloudy -40C day with no wind. It's a dead-end philosophy to support horribly expensive inefficient bird blenders. IF CO2 is a pollutant, and I don't agree that it is, then we need to move to something that is economically efficient as an energy source. And that is nuclear. There are no other sources right now. In the future? We'll see. I'm still waiting on dilithium crystals as our future energy source as we saw in Star Trek.

I also like natural gas as it is clean burning. When I see Beijing it makes me sick. I've been to Cairo and almost choked on the air quality there. Massive billowing green and brown clouds of smog everywhere. That pollution wasn't caused by CO2, it was particulates. All of this smog that is slowly killing these people could be averted by switching to nuclear power and natural gas. But people would rather wring their hands about the "dangers" of nuclear and the CO2 emitted by natural gas, then care about actual problems, like particulates from burning diesel fuel and coal and just firing it all into the air in large metropolitan areas.

The Unknown Poster · March 21, 2014

The simple fact is that if people really wanted to stop all the emissions they never talk about the surefire way to do it... dealing with the over population that's going on right now. You want to have a big impact? Trim a couple billion people off the population and suddenly there's a lot less demand for energy globally and a lot of environmental problems are lessened. Good luck getting anyone to listen to that though. Instead they'll just scream about spending trillions of dollars trying to make the problem go away instead, which is a laughable solution at best. Money won't fix this problem, changing our energy sources is the only solution and it just so happens that fossil fuels are just about the most efficient energy source we have and we do like our energy.

I dont know... without going and looking things up Im under the impression the earth is capable of sustaining even more people and that forecasts show the population leveling off and beginning to decline in a few years. The issue is the haves vs have nots I think moreso than general over population.

Jpan85 · March 21, 2014

I think it more important right now that we know the climate is changing over the past few decades. Which there is indisputable proof of. Do we know if its going to continue at the rate its going nobody knows for certain. Yet we have to plan around what possible scenarios that are possible into the future. The key is to be looking at every scenario as to have best adaptation solutions to future climates.

The Unknown Poster · March 21, 2014

But ultimately no matter what we do the Earth will get very warm and the earth will get very cold. There will be future ice ages. I remember in the late 70's and early 80's the scientists all said we were at the start of a new ice age that was coming slowly. Now its HEAT.

iso_55 · March 21, 2014

Lawsuits can & do happen....
There is no lawsuit that can win because someone said something on the internet. That's what free speech is there to protect. Now they could I suppose depending on what was said go in front of one of those unconstituational human rights commissions but those are a whole different discussion that is probably best left alone cause it'll get more than a few people riled up.

Libel laws still apply to internet postings. And there are limits to what is protected with respect to Freedom of Expression in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Free speech on a message board is a myth - you give it up when you agree to the terms of service that lets the board owner(s) and their appointees edit or remove your posts.

In a court of law the truth can be used as a defence. So if what you are saying is offensive, it still is legal as long as it is true. In the Kangaroo Court of our "Human Right" commissions, the truth can't be used as a defence. Nothing applies to help the defendant in those things, you are basically guilty when you walk in the door and the process is the punishment.

There is an interesting case of libel going on in the US right now - several publications and bloggers have called Michael Mann's global warming "science" into question, and instead of providing evidence to satisfy them, he is suing them instead for libel. This is what is known as a SLAPP lawsuit. In any event, in order to win his case, Mann will now have to prove that his work showing his hockey stick of global warming was in fact accurate and his data is solid. In all these years since his "hockey stick" projections of global warming went public, he has never released his data. If he does in fact do it, and the defendants prove they were right all along about Mann's work, the entire global warming industry might crumble, which it should, given it appears to be built on sand anyway.

Watch it KBF, if Mann is a Bomber fan & reads this you may get sued.

kelownabomberfan · March 21, 2014

But ultimately no matter what we do the Earth will get very warm and the earth will get very cold. There will be future ice ages. I remember in the late 70's and early 80's the scientists all said we were at the start of a new ice age that was coming slowly. Now its HEAT.

And it was some of the same shysters trying to sell that blarney in the 1970's that are responsible for the trillion dollars that have been wasted on this global warming scare. Look it up. When I was growing up I vaguely remember the ice age scare, but as that failed to materialize the next scam was acid rain. When that failed to kill the earth the junk scientists had to find a new way to find funding, and walked into the open arms of politicians who know all too well that the best way to control people and wring money from their pockets with taxes is via fear. So they cooked up this "global warming" nonsense. It's amazing how often I hear people parrot mantras that have been fed to them by the man-made climate change establishment. "The earth's climate is changing, it's indisputable" - yet four different satellites that measure these things all corroborate that the earth hasn't warmed in almost 18 years. The past decade has been one of the least active for hurricanes the earth has seen in the past 100 years. You have to remember, the technology to measure the strength of tornadoes and hurricanes is relatively new, and so of course, now we are going to have "record" strength storms, as the viability of previous records going back even 50 years are not very reliable. The weather has been politicized, and the sole aim I see now whenever there is a storm is to try and tie it to global warming, even if there is no tie whatsoever.

kelownabomberfan · March 21, 2014

Watch it KBF, if Mann is a Bomber fan & reads this you may get sued.

LOL - I never said that his work is fraudulent, though I'd like to see his data. You would think that a scientist responsible for hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars being spent would be required to show his work. It is troubling that he has never been forced to do this, given how much hysteria has been driven from his hockey stick. Al Gore won a nobel prize doing up a movie full of complete fabrications, with his showpiece being the hockey stick. Steve McIntyre has completely disproven it. So it will be interesting to see what happens in this case. Speaking of which, here's a hilarious article written by Steyn this week on the case, called "Defaming for Beginners":

http://www.steynonline.com/6178/defaming-for-beginners

iso_55 · March 21, 2014

Check this article out. Cold records are now overtaking warm records. This, on a website that is very pro climate change, in particular Brett Anderson who writes a climate change blog on that site. "Something happened"? http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/weathermatrix/are-global-cold-records-overtaking-warm/24662335

kelownabomberfan · March 21, 2014

Check this article out. Cold records are now overtaking warm records. This, on a website that is very pro climate change, in particular Brett Anderson who writes a climate change blog on that site. "Something happened"? http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/weathermatrix/are-global-cold-records-overtaking-warm/24662335

I think the cold we're experiencing is just proof that the entire greenhouse gas theory is requiring a lot more work and a lot more modeling. I know that the climate change movement is desperately trying to explain away the coldness and change all of their theories around to try and account for it. It's the reverse of what the guys in the 1970's did with their old papers, they just crossed out "cooling" and wrote in "warming" and changed "pollution" for "CO2". Now they are erasing their cross-outs and going back to their 1970's theories. The issue here is that there are billions upon billions of dollars at stake. Huge huge money. The Goddard Institute which is a part of NASA, which was supposed to be working on advanced spaceflight, now receives $4 billion a year in government cash to "study" global warming. That's just wrong I think. I also think as long as Obama and fellow warmists control the White House, that money will keep flowing, no matter how cold it gets or how much the earth doesn't continue to warm, and no matter how less severe storms get. The Democrats and Obama are so politically invested in this unproven hypothesis, they'd look like fools to pull out now. It was like Vietnam for the Americans, even though they knew in 1968 that the war was lost, they continued for another five years to pour men and money into it because they couldn't admit they were wrong. They same is applying here too.

iso_55 · March 21, 2014

Simply, the way I see it, the Earth cooled & warmed. We had 3 Ice Ages. And 3 warmer periods. Something made the Earth cool & something made the Earth warm 3 times. To me, it's all part of the natural process of the way things work on this planet.

kelownabomberfan · March 21, 2014

Simply, the way I see it, the Earth cooled & warmed. We had 3 Ice Ages. And 3 warmer periods. Something made the Earth cool & something made the Earth warm 3 times. To me, it's all part of the natural process of the way things work on this planet.

I think it had a lot to do with that glowing ball in the sky that warmists always want us to ignore. The energy it puts out isn't static, it's always fluctuating. The problem for the warmist types and especially the politicians is that they haven't figured out a way to tax sunshine. But they have found a way to tax CO2 outputs. And so once they figured that out, it was then all about convincing the general public that CO2 was bad. It's not bad. It's a harmless gas that all plant life requires to survive. And once the mechanisms of funding were put in place, and the bureaucrats were comfortable, it became all about how "the science is settled" and how anybody who doesn't just bend over and accept it is a "climate misinformer" and a "denier". The vested interests are now entrenched, and so we have to keep the status quo going, no matter that none of the predictions from the IPCC or any other warmist entity have ever come true, or no matter that the earth isn't warming, and the ice caps are not melting. It's irrelevant now. And the next generation currently coming through our schools has already been brain-washed. I hope that this CO2 nonsense dies the same death that acid rain and the ice age fraud died, however this time there are millions of people involved. It's almost become too big to fail now. What will have to happen is for the entire global economic system to have an even bigger shock than 2008, such that people just won't give a crap about this stuff, as they'll have way too much other stuff to worry about, and funding this nonsense will be the last thing on anybody's mind.

The Unknown Poster · March 21, 2014

Far be it from me to defend the climate change looney's (ah that aint nice) but I think their point is yes, the earth has cooled and warmed on its own in the past but that man is making it even worse now. But even if that is true, whats the worst that can happen? We end up just as warm as we would but quicker?

17to85 · March 21, 2014

It's not even close. The IPCC has issued what - 4 reports now since 1990? And every one has been revised downwards in terms of the so-called "effects" of CO2 in the atmosphere. The last IPCC report even admitted that there is no link between CO2 and severe weather. In fact, there are now peer-reviewed studies that show that in periods of earth's history when CO2 was higher (due to volcanic activity) the climate and weather were more stable than in low CO2 periods. The science of climate is evolving and changing as we learn more, and the din of hysteria from nuts and loons, and mostly from shysters making huge bank off of this hypothesis like Suzuki and Gore get discredited and go live in their 10,000 sq foot mansions and just shut up. So no, it's not as proven as its going to get, far from it.

See this is the only point we really disagree on and you are wrong to try and deny that it is a thing. Yeah reports on the severity change, but I agree with you that it's not as dire as people want to make it, but there is a relationship. I have a geology major and a geography minor, if there's anything I know it's how the Earth works and I am well aware of different climates in the past and different atmospheric conditions, but the science is settled, more green house gasses in the atmosphere means more heat trapped which means the climate changes. They can and will quibble about the extent of it and what kinds of things is causes but the facts are that there is a change as a result. So you really just need to clarify what you're arguing. Don't argue that man made climate change is not real because that is a losing argument. Argue the things that you do, just leave out the whole bit about denying it's a thing.

kelownabomberfan · March 21, 2014

See this is the only point we really disagree on and you are wrong to try and deny that it is a thing. Yeah reports on the severity change, but I agree with you that it's not as dire as people want to make it, but there is a relationship. I have a geology major and a geography minor, if there's anything I know it's how the Earth works and I am well aware of different climates in the past and different atmospheric conditions, but the science is settled, more green house gasses in the atmosphere means more heat trapped which means the climate changes. They can and will quibble about the extent of it and what kinds of things is causes but the facts are that there is a change as a result. So you really just need to clarify what you're arguing. Don't argue that man made climate change is not real because that is a losing argument. Argue the things that you do, just leave out the whole bit about denying it's a thing.

fine! Did you read that Matthew Ridley lecture I posted? You can pretty much substitute what he is saying for my opinion. He agrees that it is a thing too.

17to85 · March 21, 2014

Far be it from me to defend the climate change looney's (ah that aint nice) but I think their point is yes, the earth has cooled and warmed on its own in the past but that man is making it even worse now. But even if that is true, whats the worst that can happen? We end up just as warm as we would but quicker?

"worse" is too subjective a term. I am not even sure they are accurate when they claim that temperature is rising faster than it ever has, pretty sure there's evidence in the past of faster climate changes (usually when coming out of ice ages) but here is the biggest thing, when we're talking about the Earth and the time scale we use to measure events in the past centuries are irrelevant. + or - hundreds of thousands of years is well within the margin of error. So taking recordings from a century and a half and making grandiose claims strikes me as a bit egotistical. Most people can't even comprehend geologic time scales. If the temperature starts dropping in 50 years time then in the big picture this warming here never happened at all because the mean is still right there. Something else to consider is given that tens of thousands of years isn't really that long we are still pretty close to the last ice age. Hell in Victorian times they called it a little ice age. There is a lot to argue about in terms of climate still. With it being a relatively new discipline of science there are bound to be many discoveries that will change the way we think, and that has happened, the problem is that too many people latch onto the worst case scenario that they came up with 10 years ago and still cling to all of that.

kelownabomberfan · March 21, 2014

I also hate how the warmists, especially in the US, attack the Canadian oil sands so much. If you look at how much coal the US burns, and the Chinese as well, the output of emissions far exceed the oil sands. It's blatant politicking in my view.

Here's a study from Andrew Weaver, who is a Green Party MLA and a former professor at UVic, which shows just how little the oil sands contribute to the "man made" climate change warming:

http://climate.uvic.ca/people/nswart/Alberta_Oil_Sands_climate.html

I always throw this back in the face of the anti-oilsands people and they walk away muttering and change the subject. Their usual MO is to just say that whoever is contradicting their blarney is "in the pay of big oil" but they can't say that about a Green Party guy. That's the part that gets them. Leave the oil sands alone, and focus on coal. It is just plain awful for the environment in every way.

The Unknown Poster · March 21, 2014

Im pretty sure the "anti-climate change" or "oil sand supporters" never falsified their data like the climate change people have.

The worst thing, regardless of truth or what side your on, is when celebrities get involved. Im sure there are some well-informed celebrities that legitimately want to use their fame for good. But so many are just plain ignorant and get far more attention then they should. Who was the anti oil sands idiot, Neil Young? Like come on...

Or Sean Penn openly supporting Saddam Huessein, Like get a grip buddy.

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