Comments on: On top secrets and climate change

By: nadie

nadie — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 16:55:12 +0000

“A decade ago the IPCC was apolitical.”
Absolutely, not true. It was used in its earliest days (like 1990 or so) by the Euro policitos to placate their green parties.

By: drewbie

drewbie — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:00:09 +0000

CDN – I wasn’t really going for accuracy, but since you brought it up…

CO2 isn’t .051, it’s still holding strong at .0390%, as of June 2010
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends /#mlo

By: CDNrebel

CDNrebel — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:38:37 +0000

Drew, I think it’s 78% N and 21% O2 and 1% enert gases and suspended particles. Never heard about the drop in oxygen levels personally, but given that CO2 (and other oxides eg SO2, NO3, CO etc) have risen from .035% to .051%, I would imagine a corresponding drop in O2 – so from 21% to 20.984%. Could call that rounding error, but still shouldn’t preclude wanting to try to reduce pollution (recycle more, composting, reusable bags etc).

By: drewbie

drewbie — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:10:53 +0000

Benny, O2 makes up 28% of our atmosphere. Nitrogen makes up the other 72%. Anything else is a rounding error.

There has been no measured drop of oxygen.

By: HBC

HBC — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:17:05 +0000

Worst thing about throwing billions of dollars at climate change is, it’s a huge excuse for doing nothing about what’s staring everyone in the face: aggravated pollution.

By: Benny_Acosta

Benny_Acosta — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:10:17 +0000

Climate change is happening. And a high school level of knowledge in basic chemistry is enough to be able to understand what’s going on.

When something is burned it uses up oxygen and creates C02 and water. Over the years scientists have seen an overall drop in the oxygen content of the atmosphere and an increase in C02. Some will argue that volcanoes put out more C02 than fossil fuels do. But volcanic eruptions do not remove oxygen from the atmosphere. That’s because the heat from volcanoes comes from the magma down below. There is no burning of anything so oxygen is not depleted.

Those vehemently against the idea of climate change also don’t want to change the way we manage our energy production/consumption. But in truth, even if global warming was not an issue, why is it so bad to want to be more responsible with our environment and create non-polluting technologies? Such a thing would benefit everyone. Global warming is happening. And the time to act was about twenty years ago.

By: STORYBURN15

STORYBURN15 — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:23:40 +0000

I love how global warming changed its name to climate change when it realized its initial premise was flawed.

http://storyburn.com

By: Trooth

Trooth — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:23:45 +0000

“A small sidelight of Schneider’s career was that he played himself in the 1993 CBS miniseries Fire Next Time — nothing to do with the great James Baldwin book. The show depicted a United States reduced to ruins by global warming. Plus, survivors were in constant danger of exposure to bad dialogue! Set in the year 2017, the miniseries was classic Hollywood galimatias, showing a post-apocalyptic landscape unlike anything projected even by worst-case analysis. In the miniseries, Schneider appears as an aging scientist, lamenting that nothing was done while there was time. I wish he had been given the chance to live until 2017 and see that the world will be mostly fine.”

And this is why the naysayers stay naysayers. Doom and gloom scientists are always wrong until we have an extinction event. How about instead of fighting climate change, we fight polution, work on cleaner burning fuels and cars, everything that everyone would agree we should do because of our immediate health, and energy independence. Side effect, reduce the greenhouse emissions. Don’t predict things that probably aren’t going to happen cause we see that the earth is in no danger to be post apocolayptic in 2017.

Conservatives should jump on board for programs for oil independence, conserving our natural resources, providing a clean and healthy environment for everyone. Instead the doom and gloom scientist try to push for immediate changes, the politicians use the doom and gloom forecasts to create new taxes and industries that fills their own coffers (Al Gore anyone?) and pushes industries and jobs overseas where the net effect is no reduction in emissions on a planetary scale.

By: Thalya

Thalya — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:25:26 +0000

The danger of politicizing climate change is that it leads people to thinking of political-style solutions (compromises) instead of physical actual real solutions (fix it). If we need to reduce CO2 to 350ppm, and we’re currently at 500ppm (or whatever), then reducing it to 425 is NOT A SOLUTION.