I'm sure you mean "anthropogenic climate change", not "global warming".
Anyway, the event is sanctioned by Pope Gore, who apparently is right about everything, so please do not cast aspersions on today's planet-saving concerts. It's all in a good cause, "raising awareness", because nobody's ever heard about this junk science before.
Remember, these folks will not change their lifestyles one iota -- but expect the rest of us to go bankrupt doing so.
Very pathetic and sad elitism on display.
Eh, pointing out the hypocrisy of Live Earth is a little easy. But I think it's a positive effort overall. I'm going to just guess that the amount of behaviors that change for the better as a result will more than make up for the extra jets and limos of rock stars. Even if it's a short-lived change the net gain is probably going to be for the better.
Now a day's worth of war, or a week or a month, THAT plays real havoc with the environment.
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[External Link]
I know whenever someone mentions millionaire rock stars... the first thought that runs through my mind is "guardians of mother earth."
Maybe while he's at it... Al could execute some refugees to raise awareness of the situation in Darfur.
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"....and the energy consumption on the day, is likely to be at least 31,500 tonnes of carbon emissions..."
But, but....aren't they paying Algor's conglomeration of carbon-offset companies to neutralize their footprints? I mean, that should take care of it....right?
(blink, blink)
The object is awareness, and to that extent, even headlines pointing out the hypocrisy of the performers are a success. This attention implicitly accepts a view that carbon emissions are undesirable, or at the very least people are getting more exposure to the concept of a carbon footprint.
The carbon footprint of this event is huge. That is a result of the unavoidable fact that is at the core of the problem that it's allegedly addressing.
Anytime we do anything significant, the way that we do it now, it involves a huge amount of CO2 emissions. Build a stadium, build a road, plant trees, drive to work, crank the stereo, change the baby, it's all the same.
Attributing them to a concert is just a way of organizing numbers. People would drive elsewhere for the weekend, watch something else on TV, etc, but they'd still be steadily supplying their 10 tonnes a year, probably 12 a few years down the road.
With regards to the hypocrisy, yeah it's there in spades, but attributing that to a concert is, again, just playing with grouping. In the larger scheme of things, it's like pointing out that there is probably a lot of irresponsible sex following an AIDS benefit concert.
Regardless, the coverage is great and to be honest, I'm watching Metallica performing in London right now on a bigscreen TV with the stereo turned to 11 so I can drown out the champ cars, and I'm not dissapointed.
Spinal Tap:
"Remember, you are a carbon based life form so don't exhale"
Anybody catch the stupidest short film shown during the Sydney part of the concert (early evening yesterday) and designated by CTV's Shamus whatever as great, awesome, fantastic or some other silly descriptive? Shame on Shamus!
The film depicted a man with a quarter the IQ of Forrest Gump - and none of his endearing qualities - finally becoming aware of the "ecoBulbs," culminating in his being told how to screw in the "twisty" bulbs. Pathetic.
It was too pukey ... had to shut off the TV after that.
Damian, I also am with you about the global warming thing. I believe it is man-made. But neither carbon taxes, Kyoto Protocols, or Live Earth concerts are going to do anything about it. I find it distasteful that people need to be entertained first and foremost before they do anything of conscience anyway.
Posted at 2007-07-07 14:30:29 [PermaLink]"Unlike many of my colleagues on the right, I don't think global warming is some kind of scam."
Anthropogenic climate change is the scam, Damian. Global warming is real enough. Climate change is real enough and ever present. The scam comes in with the Left's rain dance, it's identification of the "root cause" of the problem, and with its proposed "solutions."
Hypocrisy isn't the issue, rather challenge the big lie. "Anthropogenic Carbon Climate Change" is pure bullshit. Carbon footprint - just don't step in it.
Raise awareness, sure, if that makes one feel all warm 'n fuzzy - but please don't pretend it has any meaning beyond scamming the vapid and ignorant.
Run the numbers: For carbon dioxide to outpace water as a greenhouse gas, it would have to be increased something in the order of two or three magnitudes... between a hundred and a thousand times it's present molar constitution of the atmosphere.
It is beyond human capacity to even make a significant dent in the greenhouse behaviour of the atmosphere. The only significant "man made" aspect to the whole issue is the underpinning lie... the humans are responsible for causing "change" and that all change is undesirable.
I don't give a damn if they all go home in Hummers.
Ran: I don't know what numbers to run, or what you personally believe or know, but most people who mention water always seem to think that because there's more water in the atmosphere it is a bigger greenhouse gas...
Water probably does constitute a majority of the total greenhouse gases but does it constitute the majority of additional greenhouse gases that are present above historic norms? Has there been an increase in water emissions? Are they caused by or related to the increase in carbon dioxide emissions?
The problem anyway is the balance though between sources and sinks - as we increase our emissions of greenhouse gases, are we removing the planet's ability to absorb greenhouse gases?
Like trees for instance, which absorb C02 and emit O2 are mostly carbon sucked from the air, then we burn them. Clearing land and what not - especially the rain-forest. Oil/gas/coal same thing on a completely different time scale..
I don't claim to know what *causes* global warming, but nobody else does either really. However, I've seen enough to be convinced that the issue is caused by man.
We have ice core records that go back hundreds of thousands of years - but now the planet isn't making new layers of ice at all (quite the opposite) and doesn't look like it's going to any time soon...that's a clue in itself that something is wrong. We can see the natural warming/cooling cycle in these ice cores, so if this is a natural warming cycle, the ice shouldn't melt.
At this point I find it weird when people argue man's involvement...
"I don't claim to know what *causes* global warming, but nobody else does either really. However, I've seen enough to be convinced that the issue is caused by man."
That kind of reasoning pretty much sums up the AGW believers' position. It is religion, not science.
Steve - "Water probably does constitute a majority of the total greenhouse gases."
Yes. CO2 (pure) behaves as a heat-trapper roughly 10 times that of H2O, but water out-populates the atmospheric composition something in the order of 10 thousand times. Water rules, especially when cloud behaviour is factored into the total equation.
Further, human contribution to the total CO2 count is miniscule, fractionally only in single digits.
As for CO2 cycles, the oceans cumulatively both absorb and emit more than land plants: simple solution into the water itself and bio-mass accumulation in algae and water plants.
So YEAH, humans DO contribute to the atmosphere's greenhouse behaviour, but note well that the total contribution is something like one-tenth of one percent... well below the DAILY fluctuations Nature provides. We can't even begin to compete with Nature, let alone "solve the problem."
"but now the planet isn't making new layers of ice at all (quite the opposite)" Nope - wrong. Ice accumulation on Greenland and Antarctica is accelerating. many glaciers are indeed melting. What Algore isn't telling you is that others (Greenland, Antarctica) are growing.
BTW, Kilimanjaro is losing it's snow cap. Why? CO2! -from UNDERGROUND volcanic emissions seeping into the soils above. This accumulation kills off roots: I has stripped a lot of the vegetation that normally hydrates the air blowing up the Kilimanjaro. The air now heading up is dry, and it's sublimating the ice and snow. It's not because you used a Lawn Boy to cut the grass.
"I don't claim to know what *causes* global warming, but nobody else does either really. However, I've seen enough to be convinced that the issue is caused by man." Yes? Truly convinced with insufficient data? Ought not such faith be confined to religion?
"At this point I find it weird when people argue man's involvement..." Amen, bro.
That's not the real issue anyhow. What matters are the proposed "solutions." All of them are recycled marxist nonsense warmed-over with feel-good "environmental" rhetoric.
Steve, I see the issue differently. I'm convinced that global warming is real and that climate change is real. I'm open to contrary evidence. That said, I am not convinced in the least that solutions, all of them coming from our marxist socialist brethren, have any chance at all of success.
The entire set of assumptions is shaky enough without piling marxist religion onto it as a "fix" to a development that may in fact not even be a problem.
Ran,
I don't presume that I could make any dent in your out and out refusal to accept any of this, but your water argument is too simplistic.
You're treating the two contributors to the greenhouse effect as if they were two identical substances that differ only in effectiveness.
CO2 differs from water in a number of ways, the most significant being that water has no ability to accumulate in the atmosphere.
The water content of the atmosphere is determined primarily by the temperature, if there is extra water in the air, a super-saturation of sorts, it rains. The water cycle that exists regulates the content.
So while it is an effective greenhouse gas, it's effect cannot increase significantly without an increase in temperature. Not the way the CO2 levels are rising, with absolutely no rain-type mechanism to balance the content in the air as the levels rise exponentially. Of course, the fact that water content is dependent on temperature means that as CO2 levels cause warming, the extra water that the atmosphere can then absorb piles on with a positive feedback relationship.
Your talk of CO2 being absorbed by plants and the ocean is fine, that does happen, but atmospheric CO2 content is and has been measured to be increasing exponentially, so it's blatantly obvious that there isn't enough excess carbon sink capacity to validate your argument.
"CO2 differs from water in a number of ways, the most significant being that water has no ability to accumulate in the atmosphere."
Water as a molar concentration average is more than a thousand times more prevalent than CO2 and more than a hundred times more prevalent than all other greenhouse gasses combined... I gave those numbers from a university [MIT's?] website last year. Easy enough to re-scan.
"Your talk of CO2 being absorbed by plants and the ocean is fine, that does happen, but atmospheric CO2 content is and has been measured to be increasing exponentially, so it's blatantly obvious that there isn't enough excess carbon sink capacity to validate your argument."
Nothing obviously "but" about it. The capacity of the oceanic component is vast. Further, your "exponential fluctuation" varies annually. The human contribution is far more stable and predictable... if it were significant, it would flood the data with a predictable trend within a known error. Does not work that way: It was an [NOAA?] study that noted a drop in CO2 last year. The study attributed the drop to oceanic absorption.
Contrary to your assertion, Dara, I accept a lot of it. Subject to better evidence, global warming appears to me to be real.
However, when we peg real numbers to the data, it challenges the Left's anthropogenic rain-dance assumptions and especially it's marxist solutions.
"Water as a molar concentration average is more than a thousand times more prevalent than CO2 and more than a hundred times more prevalent than all other greenhouse gases combined."
Yes, and the presence of that water is what keeps us warm at night. That water concentration is more or less constant and contributes to the very large greenhouse effect that we need to maintain a stable temperature from day to night. The CO2 contribution is overlaid on that system.
I also said nothing of an exponential fluctuation. I'm talking about the very real data that shows that CO2 levels are at their highest point in history and, subject to fluctuations on a smaller time scale, increasing at the fastest rate seen in history. A one year drop in CO2 does not in any way touch upon this. You can argue about the relationship that CO2 has with global warming, but the levels and the exponential rise are hard facts.
If you're seeking consensus, you could do better than to put a polarizing figure like Al Gore at the forefront of Global Warming environmentalism.
Moreover, declaring doubt off-limits, as he and other movement activists have done, makes Global Warming seem more like a religious crusade than a serious scientific issue. Global warming theory is based on predictive models that have a poor track record. I'd like to see more solid evidence before derailing worldwide economic development.
"The CO2 contribution is overlaid on that system."
Sure! But run the numbers. IT ISN'T SIGNIFICANT. Worse, the human contribution to that insignificance is at best marginal.
Yes - CO2 hovers near *historical* levels. Still not enough to explain even a thousandth's of the present warmin' effect. Look: the numbers are simply not with your pet theory of anthropogenesis.
What is true are NASA'a observations of "climate change" warming on Mars, the Moon and other planets... Hey, could it be that the Sun is emitting more, and that Algore is FULL OF SHIT? I, for one, think that's the situation.
Pathetically, the economic "theory" behind the "solutution" is totally marxist. That in and of itself is enough to put the whole game in doubt.
Lawrence Solomon presented more excellent reasons to doubt the AGW hypothesis in his National Post column last Saturday: [External Link]
[According to UN IPCC doom mongers...] “Carbon dioxide from man-made sources rises to the atmosphere and then stays there for 50, 100, or even 200 years. This unprecedented buildup of CO2 then traps heat that would otherwise escape our atmosphere, threatening us all.”
[...]
"THIS IS NONSENSE," says Tom V. Segalstad, [External Link] head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo and formerly an expert reviewer with the same IPCC. He laments the paucity of geologic knowledge among IPCC scientists -- a knowledge that is central to understanding climate change, in his view, since geologic processes ultimately determine the level of atmospheric CO2.”
[...]
"Most leading geologists, throughout the world, know that the IPCC's view of Earth processes are implausible if not impossible."
[...]
“Catastrophic theories of climate change depend on carbon dioxide staying in the atmosphere for long periods of time -- otherwise, the CO2 enveloping the globe wouldn't be dense enough to keep the heat in. Until recently, the world of science was near-unanimous that CO2 couldn't stay in the atmosphere for more than about five to 10 years because of the oceans' near-limitless ability to absorb CO2.
[...]
“Then, with the advent of IPCC-influenced science, the length of time that carbon stays in the atmosphere became controversial. ”
[...]
“Amazingly, the hypothetical results from climate models have trumped the real world measurements of carbon dioxide's longevity in the atmosphere.”
The IPCC has no real data and no plausible theory that supports its view. It has no evidence that contradicts well established geological science proving the contrary. Conclusion: the IPCC AGW hypothesis is BUNK!
Damian,
I don't think anyone thinks climate change is
"some kind of scam" - a moral panic, yes, an excuse by statists to extend their programme from the national to the transnational level (who believe in all sincerity that they are doing good), but a "scam"? No.
thanks
"Yes - CO2 hovers near *historical* levels."
No. No it doesn't, not at all, no way no how. It's about 1/3 higher than it has been for the time we have data on (420,000+ years) and rising exponentially; i.e. there has been a 30% rise in the past 100 years and it is predicted to rise 2/3 in the next 100 or so years.
As for water vapor, here is a good summary from New Scientist on the relative efficacy of CO2:
[External Link]
They also have a bunch of other articles, many of which touch on your other points. Here is the one on why human CO2 emissions are significant even compared to the natural CO2 cycle:
[External Link]
I'd suggest that you read the rest of them.
Long story short, people have been saying the same things that you have for a while. Nobody has published a peer reviewed paper that can attribute what we're seeing to other causes. Sure people may disagree and poke holes into the existing body of work but until they can put together a comprehensive theory that can cover all of the bases, they are SOL, in a scientific sense.
From what I can tell, your arguments are all covered by those New Scientist articles. If you feel like continuing, get some new ones.
Don't you think that making "rockstars" as spokespersons against climate change is like choosing Paris Hilton as a spokesperson for moral turpitude awareness. I'ts a self parodying stance. To me, only a radical change for the global peace and order situation -for the better- will end our dependance for a carbon intensive lifestyle. For more of this please visit my friend's blog at [External Link]
Posted at 2007-07-12 07:48:28 [PermaLink]I heard that as a consequence of heightened public awareness of global warming Heinz is considering modifying its famous bean source formula in an attempt to reduce flatulism and help the people of the world reduce their impact on the planet ... It’s the small things that'll make a difference!
Posted at 2007-07-26 05:58:00 [PermaLink]