Living Car Free - Any Car-Free People who don't believe global warming is man caused?

Okay, I just don't get it. For those of you that don't believe global warming is man made, which of the following don't you understand?

1. Atmospheric CO2 concentration correlates strongly to the average temperature of the plantet.
2. Humans are pumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Seriously, which is it? #1 or #2?

1) I agree 100%. What lifestyle change have you made to help?

2) I agree 100%. Quit driving. Quit buying electricity and all the crap you really don't need that contributes to it. I have.

3) What would you like to see done to change all this? Birth control in the water? Shut down industry and power plants?

1) I agree 100%. What lifestyle change have you made to help?

2) I agree 100%. Quit driving. Quit buying electricity and all the crap you really don't need that contributes to it. I have.

3) What would you like to see done to change all this? Birth control in the water? Shut down industry and power plants?

1. I've given up the car, go almost everywhere by bike or foot, live in an 800 sq foot house even though I can afford a much larger place, use compact fluorescent or LED bulbs, have energy-efficient appliances, and have cut back on animal-based food.

2. Not buying electricity isn't a realistic option for most people, but there are a lot of ways for all of us to use a lot less of it. (see #1).

3. I would suggest that we do the following: stop building new coal-fired power plants, and start immediately and seriously to transition to non-fossil-fuel electricity generation (wind, solar, hydroelectric, maybe nuclear). Encourage the eventual elimination of cars that run on fossil fuels. Stop subsidizing biofuels, and return tax breaks to wind and solar. In the meantime, do everything possible to encourage energy conservation and promote energy efficiency in every nook and cranny of the economy. Provide tax incentives for smaller, more efficient houses, and tax dis-incentives for large tracts of huge, inefficient ones. In other words, have a coherent energy policy that keeps an eye on climate change and promotes real national security and sustainability.

As for birth control in the water, we're already doing that, though not on purpose.

Originally Posted by Tabor Okay, I just don't get it. For those of you that don't believe global warming is man made, which of the following don't you understand?

1. Atmospheric CO2 concentration correlates strongly to the average temperature of the plantet.
2. Humans are pumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Seriously, which is it? #1 or #2?


#1. Pg 18 of http://media.kusi.clickability.com/documents/Comments+on+Global+Warming1.pdf

Correlation doesn't imply causation, as the old scientific adage goes. Specifcly, there are studies which point out that natural warming causes an increase in athmospheric CO2, because heat diminishes the solubility of carbon dioxide in the ocean. So an increase in CO2 always follows a natural increase in temperature.

Not that I want to discuss man-made global warming. As a "denier", I don't take the topic as seriously as the people who believe in anthropogenic GW. I wouldn't like to raise a flame war. I'd just say that IMHO there are not enough hard scientific facts to prove that there is man-made globar warming.

Anyway, I'm car free because cars are expensive and overregulated.

Edit: ebr898 made my point, I guess.

Just listening to the interview with "side-step" Palin and I got to wondering: is there anyone in here who is car free that also doesn't believe either in global warming or that it's caused by human activity/intervention?

I am car-lite, and I am not convinced that the climate changes are man-made. I agree that something is happening, but I am not convinced that it is caused by man. I am also not convinced that it is not man-made.

There is pretty compelling evidence that Earth's warming may be caused by solar flares.

A lot of the "science" I have seen trying to prove that global warming is man-made seems to be politically motivated. An example is PETA's attempt to blame the USA beef and dairy industry because domestic cattle produce flatulents that cause global warming. Umm, ya... well, thanks for the invite to the tofu party, but I gotta go now...

Well what scientific facts could be presented that would make you change your mind? Are there any?

Obviously something is wrong with the current literature so ask away and let's all look together. Saying you don't recognize it because Al Gore is a navel-gazer does not cut it.

Correlation doesn't imply causation, as the old scientific adage goes. Specifcly, there are studies which point out that natural warming causes an increase in athmospheric CO2, because heat diminishes the solubility of carbon dioxide in the ocean. So an increase in CO2 always follows a natural increase in temperature.

So you are denying that CO2 is a green house gas, even though that is a measurable property that it possesses?

Originally Posted by Tabor Okay, I just don't get it. For those of you that don't believe global warming is man made, which of the following don't you understand?

1. Atmospheric CO2 concentration correlates strongly to the average temperature of the plantet.
2. Humans are pumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Seriously, which is it? #1 or #2?


#1. Pg 18 of http://media.kusi.clickability.com/documents/Comments+on+Global+Warming1.pdf

I read the article you linked, written by John Coleman, a long-time weatherman who, among other things, started the Weather Channel, and I found it interesting but not convincing. For those of you who didn't read the article, Coleman claims the very idea of human-caused global warming is a complete scam, and states it's simply not something we need to worry about: the changes we've observed are natutral fluctuations. As much as I'd desperately like to believe him, I don't, mostly because his claims are based on cherry-picked data or outright, um, inaccuracies. For example, Coleman claims that US temp records show that a few years in the 1930's were actually some of the hottest years on record. The IPCC report, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, on the other hand, use world temp records, which clearly show that every one of the hottest ten years on record have occurred since 1990; 19 of the hottest 20 years on record have occurred since 1980. At another point, Coleman claims that temperatures have varied by as much as 3C over the last three thousand years, but fails to mention any source for this one; the IPCC and UCS both present clearly-cited data that show that the average temperature from 1000 to 1950 never varied by more than 1.0C, based on ice-core samples and historical records. At another point, he claims that climate models are wildly inaccurate, which is simply not true; recent computer-based climate models have been compared to historical weather data, and have been shown to be very accurate indeed. We can only surmise that their predictions of future climate trends will be equally accurate.

On the other hand, I was intrigued by two of his other arguments: one, that solar activity is more closely correlated to global average temps than CO2 levels (and the cause vs effect question more easily argued). Two, that the effects of CO2 are far less pronounced than we've been led to believe, given the fact that this gas makes up less than 0.035% of the atmosphere.

On the whole, I think there are very good reasons for thinking that the current warming trend is real and is very much outside the norm, probably caused by human activity, and therefore something that needs to be taken really seriously. Coleman even included a graph that displayed decreased solar activity starting in the early 2000's but the temps keep going up. Kind of makes you wonder what's going to happen in eleven years, when the sun gets slightly more active again.

Apparently, millions of square miles of presently frozen tundra around the world face the possibility of thawing, which would let the decomposition process of untold tons of dead plant matter resume, and release trillions of cubic feet of methane and CO2 into the atmosphere.

Then there's the trillions of cubic feet of methane "ice" off the continental shelves, just waiting for another degree or two of ocean warming to release them.

There's been some speculation that warming periods in the past could have done the same thing, and the sudden release of such large amounts of gases in relatively short periods, may have actually suffocated large percentages of creatures living at the time.

So you are denying that CO2 is a green house gas, even though that is a measurable property that it possesses?
Of course CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but it's quite weak and there are only traces of it in the atmosphere. There are other, more powerful greenhouse gases. For instance, CH4 is quite a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, but also scarce in the atmosphere. And H2O is, by far, the most powerful greenhouse gas on planet Earth.

I'm not denying it's a greenhouse gas. I'm just saying it's effect is mostly irrelevant. Besides, in herent failures in the ice core measurements have given skewed data about CO2 increase in the last decades. It has to do with the diffusion of such gas in ice, causing old core samples to have an uniformly lower quantity of carbon dioxide compared to recent core samples. The ice data is inconsistent with lab measurements of atmospheric CO2 in the last two hundred years, which show chaotic variations of CO2, with a high about the late 40's, and a low in the 60's, if I remember well.

Anyway, I would rather spend my time doing something else than discussing global warming, really.

I am car free, and I do not believe that we are the cause of the current climate change taking place. Climate is meant to change, the earths climate has a known history of cycling and this current change is simply part of a greater cycle. while CO2 is related to climate change it is not necessarily the cause. from what I recall our records show that the CO2 increases of the past actually occurred after the temperature rises. I also know that the pollutant thrown into the air by a single volcano far will far out weigh the impact of an entire countries cars for a few years.

My decision to be car-free has nothing to do with the environment, it has everything to do with health, personal finance, and my innate desire to break the rules dictated to me by society.

Posts like this make me hate the internet, and despair for the future of this country. I suggest you gather some basic facts before you subject others to your diatribes. It should be clear to anyone who's paid any attention at all that things are dangerously different in our climate. ... How much of an idiot do you have to be to ignore the obvious?
The cycles of the sun have far more to do with weather on Earth than anything humans have done.

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/02/solar-cycle-24-could-be-13-years-long-cooler-times-ahead/

If you wish to discuss "ways that fascists attempt to control ignorant masses", that's an entirely different subject, and one not related to any particular condition of weather.
~

I'm not involved or educated enough in the science to claim one way or another what is definitively causing warming... It might be caused by man, or not, but I certainly buy into the notion that we're currently not helping and may indeed be contributing to the problem or trend.

I don't let that stop me from being car lite and doing what I can to avoid the consumerist lifestyle that might add to it.

If indeed we are responsible, then one huge root cause is the elephant in the room no one wants to address, overpopulation. Although, if things go the way the Chicken Little contingent says it might, that might take care of itself--Earth might self-regulate humans right out of existence.

It's the politics that muddy the situation, on both sides. There's them that want "responsible" alt energy, but you don't get hydro without damming (damning) rivers or putting something in the ocean, which interferes with fish ecology; you don't get wind without harming the paths of migratory birds and/or sealife ecosystems; you don't get solar without covering large expanses of real estate, creating who knows what unintended environmental consequences (ref. biofuels).

No easy answers, that's for sure. I watched a show the other day about a guy who studies solar radiation and atmospheric reflection. On the days right after 9/11, he saw a marked increase in surface temperature which he attributed to a lack of contrails due to all air flights being grounded. His conclusion was that if oil prices spike causing a severe price hike in air travel and subsequent demand drop in flights, it could lead to a compounding catastrophic temperature rise.

The cycles of the sun have far more to do with weather on Earth than anything humans have done.

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/02/solar-cycle-24-could-be-13-years-long-cooler-times-ahead/

If you wish to discuss "ways that fascists attempt to control ignorant masses", that's an entirely different subject, and one not related to any particular condition of weather.
~

I'm not emotionally attached to the IPCC report, but I find it to be the most well-documented, most rigorously reviewed, and most moderate of any source of information I've been able to find. Some sources agree with many people on this thread, who say, yes, the climate is changing, but it's not our fault at all. Others claim that the IPCC is soft pedaling, and that positive feedback loops are going to kick the living sh*t out of us in a matter of decades, and there's some data from the Arctic suggesting that this may be the case. I'm a science teacher, not a scientist, so I don't do my own research, but my instincts and my training tell me to trust the consensus view until a better consensus evolves, and right now, the consensus view says that humans are messing with a formerly finely-tuned balance though our burning of fossil fuels.

My only objections to the consensus are these:

1. I have never yet had anyone able to tell me how CO2, which comprises 0.038% of the atmosphere at present, is able to warm the planet by a few degrees F by increasing to that level from 0.028%. My own classroom experiments, which are admittedly not very well controlled, suggest that water vapor traps heat at least 20 times better than CO2. In addition, when I emailed a couple of professors at the University of Washington asking about the mechanism that makes CO2 such a good heat-trapper, all I got was one vague response about the historical correlation of CO2 and temperature, which is not quite satisfying, since there's really not a good way to establish which one -temperature or CO2- is the cause, and which one the effect.

2. The polar ice caps on Mars have been receding recently, as well as those on Earth, which obviously suggests that solar activity is the cause of the climate change we've observed. I'm not sure this one's actually true, though, because my only sources of information on this come from sites that are attempting to debunk the human-caused global warming argument, and I've discovered that these sites are incredibly unreliable. If anyone can point me to a site that has info on this subject without having an agenda, I'd appreciate it.

3. This one's just a gut feeling, but here it is: I suspect that land use might have more to do with warming than what we're doing to the atmosphere. If you pave huge tracts of land with asphalt or concrete, or you cut down thousands of square miles of forest per year and replace it with stubby palm oil plants, you're exposing more of the surface of the planet to absorption by IR, which then ends up warming the air. The warm air then warms the oceans, and you end up with the clusterf*ck we have now, all without much involvement by CO2. But, again, I have no data to back that up, it's just a conjecture.

My bottom line is this: I'm personally not totally satisfied that CO2 emissions are the smoking gun. But hundreds, if not thousands, of people with more knowledge than me are convinced that this is in fact the case, and until I see a more convincing, more well-documented model, that's the one I feel compelled to present to my students.

The planet is going to get hit by an asteroid in the next 10,000 years anyway and everything will die. Who cares.
If you have ever flown across the country in a jet you polluted more than a whole year of regular living.
I once cared about "saving" the world from us-but gave up because it is quite pointless. I ride because I enjoy it, and it saves me money.
Human caused or not the world is going to perish.

How many blog posts does it take to equal one scientific consensus? Anybody got a table of conversions?

I am car-free, animal-free, and unfortunately that's about as far as I've gone to helping the problem. I am studying conservation biology, and studied ecology for 5 years. I have lived the majority of my life in the mountains, and have only traveled a small amount. However, in the course of my life in the mountains and my limited travel, I have witnessed the following things:

1) Animal populations in wild areas decreasing significantly. Animal populations in island ecosystems (ecosystems with no pathway of retreat, hemmed in on all sides by either water or radically different ecosystems) being decimated by human invasion. In Costa Rica, for one example, the native species of terrestrial animals are constantly driven further and further into the interior and higher and higher up in elevation due to the MASSIVE influx of non-native, human-introduced animals. DOGS. CATS. Insects. Rodents. Costa Rica is just the easiest place to see and measure this phenomena that I've been to. It's happening everywhere. Even here in Central Oregon where I live.
2) Plant species becoming extinct faster than we can even identify them. Most people believe this only happens in the rainforest or anywhere else massive clear-cutting is the norm, but that is not the case. This is happening all over the world, and from a botanists' viewpoint, based on the number of relic species we still have living on the planet now, it seems to happening much faster than ever before.
3) Bird populations are being decimated, their habitat is disappearing, their migratory patterns are being constantly changed and often completely blocked and their nesting/mating periods are becoming shorter and more frequent.
4) Snow pack and winter season length and severity fluctuates. And from a human perspective, measured with our tools and meters, this seems normal. However, if we look at this from the animal perspective, it's not normal. These animals are changing their patterns of behavior in ways that suggest dramatic and rapid deterioration of their habitat and food chain.
5) Animal Mutation - Mostly caused by toxins we have introduced directly into their food chain and ecosystems, but also caused by necessity, the need to adapt to a rapidly changing environment, and rapidly decreasing habitat. PCB's in the ocean are changing species far into the American interior. Animal mutations are becoming commonplace even in ecosystems we once believed impervious to human impact. Our petroleum-based manufacturing is doing things to the planet and it's inhabitants that no amount of cyclical change, no amount of normal climactic patterns, and no amount of fact and data-based research can dispel or deny. Hermaphroditic jelly fish and polar bears? Frogs with 5 eyes? Trout with no dorsal fins and stubs where lizards have legs? This stuff isn't normal, and it isn't Darwinism. It's us.

Read 'The World Without Us', if you have a chance. It's very interesting, not a soapbox campaign, not a diatribe, and not an attempt to sway you in your opinion. It basically just raises the question of how tied into the ecology of this planet is the human race. If we disappeared overnight, for whatever reason, would the planet miss us? Would the planet be better off without us? And what would it take for our impact on this planet to be erased? What kind of time period would that be? Some of the evidence will surprise you. Some of the information will shock you. Some of the ideas will amuse you or appall you. But you will be enlightened, possibly frightened, and your sense of our responsibility to the planet will be heightened.

Good Luck!

I'm one.
2008 the coolest year in the past 5 years. If it takes "global warming" to get people to change their behavior about energy then they just have not been paying attention.

Actually it takes $5.00/gal for Regular unleaded to get people to change here in NA.

Actually it takes $5.00/gal for Regular unleaded to get people to change here in NA.

Apparently it takes more than that in my part of the country. :rolleyes:

The question presumes that there are folks too dumb to turn on a computer. Are there actually any people that dumb?

Read 'The World Without Us', if you have a chance. It's very interesting, not a soapbox campaign, not a diatribe, and not an attempt to sway you in your opinion. It basically just raises the question of how tied into the ecology of this planet is the human race. If we disappeared overnight, for whatever reason, would the planet miss us? Would the planet be better off without us? And what would it take for our impact on this planet to be erased? What kind of time period would that be? Some of the evidence will surprise you. Some of the information will shock you. Some of the ideas will amuse you or appall you. But you will be enlightened, possibly frightened, and your sense of our responsibility to the planet will be heightened.

Good Luck!

What this book provides is a little bit of shock value. We humans thing that humanity equals the World... that we will always survive and that it couldn't survive w/o us...

Well... no... the author (Alan Weisman) reminds us that a) other species have over-specialized and died out and b) locations where humans have abandoned tend to flourish... as long as we haven't completely poisoned them. And c) if we don't wise up soon, it may all quickly come to pass.

I am car free and don't believe man has that much to do with global warming... Doesn't take to much intelligence to realize we would still be in the last ice age if it weren't for global warming and man was not much of a factor then... The earth goes through it's cycles....
Go Sarah

The question presumes that there are folks too dumb to turn on a computer. Are there actually any people that dumb?

clearly, you haven't been keeping up with the thread.

How many car-free people believe Global Warming is Jesus giving us an extra tight hug?

1. I have never yet had anyone able to tell me how CO2, which comprises 0.038% of the atmosphere at present, is able to warm the planet by a few degrees F by increasing to that level from 0.028%. My own classroom experiments, which are admittedly not very well controlled, suggest that water vapor traps heat at least 20 times better than CO2. In addition, when I emailed a couple of professors at the University of Washington asking about the mechanism that makes CO2 such a good heat-trapper, all I got was one vague response about the historical correlation of CO2 and temperature, which is not quite satisfying, since there's really not a good way to establish which one -temperature or CO2- is the cause, and which one the effect.

You are correct that water vapor traps heat much better than CO2, when both are present. But, for example, the polar regions have very little water in the air, and so that is where the CO2 increase has the largest _direct_ effect. Because the earth naturally pumps heat from the equitorial regions to the poles, the effect can "back-propogate" over the whole globe.

People can debate the magnitude to their hearts' content, but this is the basic mechanism.



2. The polar ice caps on Mars have been receding recently, as well as those on Earth, which obviously suggests that solar activity is the cause of the climate change we've observed. I'm not sure this one's actually true, though, because my only sources of information on this come from sites that are attempting to debunk the human-caused global warming argument, and I've discovered that these sites are incredibly unreliable. If anyone can point me to a site that has info on this subject without having an agenda, I'd appreciate it.

They usually cite the original peer-reviewed papers. Do you have access to a good library?



3. This one's just a gut feeling, but here it is: I suspect that land use might have more to do with warming than what we're doing to the atmosphere. If you pave huge tracts of land with asphalt or concrete, or you cut down thousands of square miles of forest per year and replace it with stubby palm oil plants, you're exposing more of the surface of the planet to absorption by IR, which then ends up warming the air. The warm air then warms the oceans, and you end up with the clusterf*ck we have now, all without much involvement by CO2. But, again, I have no data to back that up, it's just a conjecture.


I'm not sure land use has that great of an effect, as far as energy absorption. Hmmm...don't know why I think this. Certainly, cities and such act as 'heat islands', but I'm not sure the overall energy balance is substantially different.

A technical note: You say "the surface of the planet to absorption by IR," but this is not the whole picture. In gross terms, the surface absorbs higher energy radiation from the sun (which passes through CO2 and water) as well as low-energy IR, but re-emits basically low-energy IR (which doesn't pass those gases).

A technical note: You say "the surface of the planet to absorption by IR," but this is not the whole picture. In gross terms, the surface absorbs higher energy radiation from the sun (which passes through CO2 and water) as well as low-energy IR, but re-emits basically low-energy IR (which doesn't pass those gases).

Sorry, I was being sloppy. What I meant was that if you expose more of the planet's surface to direct sunlight by removing forest cover, it's more likely that a larger percentage of the solar spectrum will get absorbed at the surface and be "reflected" as IR rather than shorter-wavelength visible light.

Sorry, I was being sloppy. What I meant was that if you expose more of the planet's surface to direct sunlight by removing forest cover, it's more likely that a larger percentage of the solar spectrum will get absorbed at the surface and be "reflected" as IR rather than shorter-wavelength visible light.


And as an aside to this, the upper atmosphere is actually cooling, which completely discounts the GW-deniers premise that this is caused by solar cycles.

Simply, what is happening is that less heat is escaping the troposphere (where we live) and reaching higher levels.

I am car-free, animal-free, and unfortunately that's about as far as I've gone to helping the problem. I am studying conservation biology, and studied ecology for 5 years. I have lived the majority of my life in the mountains, and have only traveled a small amount. However, in the course of my life in the mountains and my limited travel, I have witnessed the following things:

1) Animal populations in wild areas decreasing significantly.

2) Plant species becoming extinct faster than we can even identify them.

3) Bird populations are being decimated...

4) Snow pack and winter season length and severity fluctuates.

5) Animal Mutation

Except for #4, none relates to climate change though. And this is my biggest problem with the environmental debate. Global warming is blamed for every environmental issues while real problems and solutions that we can actually put our finger on are ignored.

Except for #4, none relates to climate change though.

How do you figure that??! :rolleyes:

Global warming is causing habitats to change faster than many organisms can either adapt or relocate.

How do you figure that??! :rolleyes:

Global warming is causing habitats to change faster than many organisms can either adapt or relocate.

The effect of global warming on habitat change is minor compared to good ol' fashioned rampant human destruction and waste.

The effect of global warming on habitat change is minor compared to good ol' fashioned rampant human destruction and waste.

While I certainly wouldn't discount good ol' fashioned rampant human destruction and waste, I think you are seriously underestimating (http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/climate_change/problems/impacts/index.cfm) the impact of climate change on species.

It ranks right up there with killer bees and pit bulls.