Yeah because Al Gore doesn't have those or a vested interest in the existence of global warming. No, not at all.
I agree that Al Gore isn't a particularly good source. I read his book and it's one of the more boring books that I've read. I like his documentary because it brought attention to the issue, but it over-simplifies some things and gets some others wrong outright.
However, I've been paying attention to the issue since the mid-90s - still nearly a decade after Hansen's famous testimony before the Senate. I've read a few books and tons of articles by proponents of the idea that humans are causing climate change and skeptics. All of the counterarguments that have I've seen raised by skeptics have been answered by the proponents. Then the skeptics ignore the answer (rather than countering the counterargument) and bring up a new argument which also gets answered.
The skeptics fall into three categories.
- Scientists that actually agree that man-made climate change is probably happening, but they either believe that the degree of change is much less than the consensus or they're a lot less sure than the 90% certainty cited by the consensus. Or they just disagree that it's a consensus because it's not unanimous. This includes Gray, Lindzen and Christy.
- Scientists - usually non-climatologists - that have lied about their own research, the research of others or their funding source. Svensmark and Michaels fit in here.
- Non-scientists. I'm not a scientist either, but I'm not being paraded in front of the world as an expert. I'm pretty sure that Nigel Calder is one of these. He doesn't claim to be a scientist (that I've seen). He's one of the few that jumped in feet first on the global ice age thing back in the 70s.
Like I said, I'm not a scientist, but one side of the debate doesn't seem too reliable and has had all of their objections answered.
The CEI isn't that reliable when it comes to science. Getting an endorsement from a right-leaning news organization isn't exactly a ringing endorsement either.
The temperature since 1900 isn't the best one to be comparing since there was a change in industrial practices about 40 years ago, thanks to the Clean Air Act. Particulates (which were heavily regulated by the Clean Air Act) cool down the earth by reflecting heat and CO2 warms it up. (It's a gross oversimplification, I know.) In the 70s, the particulates which had been damping the effects of the CO2 and other greenhouse gases, started decreasing and temperatures started to rise. The US was generating the largest share of particulate pollution, but other industrialized nations also enacted their own legislation around that time. This isn't a new explanation. If the CEI had been paying attention to the "doomsayers" of the 70s, they would have read this because there was some debate about whether particulates or greenhouse gas was more of an issue. The consensus? More data needed. This (and flakes like Calder) is what Newsweek flipped out about.
Ehrlich was wrong. Great ecologist, lousy prophet. Contrary to popular opinion, he isn't one of the ones that was claiming we'd have a global ice age, although he did say that it was a possibility if we didn't change. But the figure on mercury is dated. A recent study shows mercury levels rising in fish over the last few decades. I haven't seen any studies on the levels of mercury in fish in 1900. I'd love to see how they came up with it.
The Green Revolution was a huge success, but it's had a few problems. There have been increases in cancer, but not in the US because many of the worst are illegal to use (but not manufacture) in the US. We farm out our pollution.
They gave three measures of air quality - one specifically linked to the deleading of gasoline. (Yes, there have been environmental successes.) The EPA measures six major ones.
I haven't heard the claim about more trees than Columbus before. I usually hear that comparing it to about a hundred or hundred-fifty years ago. That is true. A lot of land that was cleared for agriculture has been abandoned - or more usually, converted to suburbia - and trees fill in or get planted. Most of it isn't particularly useful from an ecological standpoint, but hey, it's trees and trees are pretty. And yeah, most of the trees on government property are cut down by private companies periodically. They're managed for business interests, not ecological ones which is why all the trees grow in straight lines and are the same age. And why they're the wrong species.
And that's a quick response to the CEI article.
Also, about your uhmmm...Wind and Solar power? Can you answer me this question, how many Wind power plants does it take to power the world? Or maybe the self righteous holier than thou American environmentalist can commit another act on genocide on Africa and the Middle East.
I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here. I know that the thread has been bouncing around a bit, but I don't recall a proposal to immediately quit all forms of energy production except for water, wind and solar. Are you trying to say that nothing is going to solve everything so that we shouldn't do anything? You certainly weren't showing why it wouldn't work as you claimed. There are issues to each of these, but that isn't a reason to say that they can't help out at all. It's like suggesting that recycling isn't an answer because it also uses energy. But it uses a lot less energy than creating a product from scratch - especially if you have to weigh the cost of disposing of that object in.
I don't know how many wind farms it would take to power the world. However, I know that 100 square miles of mid-range quality solar cells in the Nevada desert would power all of the US. The expense would be a huge issue since solar isn't competitive yet (except over the long term). More importantly, we don't have any kind of energy infrastructure to transport all of that juice around the US or store it when it's night in Nevada. A state-by-state approach would work a lot better, filling in brownfields and using the tops of buildings. It's still not a perfect solution. Photovoltaics aren't quite where they need to be yet and the storage needs to be figured out. Unfortunately, the US is years behind there. The real research on photovoltaics is being done in Germany, Japan and China. Hopefully, we can just nab it when they finish the research since we don't seem to be in any position to be helping out much in the near future.
Wind farms are a pretty good solution in the midwest. They're compatible with ranching and with some conservation uses. (Some species can't handle them, but others coexist fine alongside wind farms.) The Nature Conservancy is working with utility companies to figure out how to site them so that the companies won't get into a fight over wildlife protection after doing all the preliminary work.
I'm not a fan of hydroelectric. We've already pretty much tapped out the potential for that in this nation. Most of the rivers with any kind of hydroelectric potential at all have been dammed multiple times. The Snake River alone has fifteen. And these dams have wiped out habitat and are steadily silting up.
Soupy mentioned biofuels and I'm not sure that's much of a solution either. The biggest issue for ethanol is that we're already using all of our decent cropland for food. We can't really expand much more without wiping out conservation lands or suburbia. It'd work in areas that have huge sugar exports - or
maybe if we didn't have such an enormous tariff on sugar. But for now, it looks like a shellgame to me. Biodiesel seems to hold some potential IMO. We have thousands of tons of organic trash and if we can somehow convert that to fuel without worsening air pollution, it could be a help.
I'm a treehugger, but I also like nuclear as an option - with one stipulation. I want an answer about where the nuclear waste is going to go. To me, that answer is going with breeder reactors, but that's pretty much been off the table since the 70s because we were afraid about the possibility of losing fissionable materials since breeder reactors generate their own fuel. I don't expect us to be less afraid of it now even though it's worked fine for Europe for 30 years.
The first steps need to be improving our energy infrastructure so that we can move energy around the US and amping up the research into alternate fuels.
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