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| Re: Weather Channel Founder Blasts Gore, Blames Him for Economic Woes (327358) | |||
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Re: Weather Channel Founder Blasts Gore, Blames Him for Economic Woes |
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Posted by JPC on Sat Jun 14 21:32:34 2008, in response to Re: Weather Channel Founder Blasts Gore, Blames Him for Economic Woes, posted by Olog-hai on Fri Jun 13 19:56:34 2008. Ambient global temperature is more dependent on water vapor concentration.Absolutely. There is a greenhouse effect of several tens of degrees due to water vapor in the atmosphere. So H2O is actually a far more important greenhouse gas than CO2 is. Which is completely fine. The problem is not the size of the greenhouse effect caused, but how it changes in time. If it changes too rapidly, life cannot evolve (or at least relocate) to accomodate the changing climate, and mass extinction occurs. Um, what? Are you claiming that there was a civilization of carbon-based sentient beings on Venus that destroyed the planet due to increasing carbon dioxide output? because that's the only way that Venus will be proof of such an assertion. No. What I am saying is that there is ample geological evidence that Venus was once at least superficially similar to earth. Quite a bit warmer, but not entirely too bad. Nowadays, it's got 100 atmospheres, largely of CO2, and global temperatures hover around 800 degrees. In fact, Venus is substantially hotter than Mercury, which is nearly twice as close to the sun. It's a runaway greenhouse effect. I didn't mean to imply that I believed Venus once had life, just that it is a clear case of a runaway greenhouse effect. Please cite this quote. It's not a quote. It was my own logical deduction based on the following three premises: 1. We know that there has been a significant increase in average global temperatures over the past two centuries. 2. We know that there has been a significant increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration since prehistoric times. 3. We know of a plausible (i.e. sound physics) mechanism by which increasing CO2 atmospheric content can lead to increased global temperatures. Now, even if we don't have good enough data to determine whether 1 and 2 are related via 3, a reasonable skeptical point of view is that they might be related, and considering the potentially disastrous consequences of inaction if they are, it would be prudent to take corrective action. Would you put a gun to your head and pull the trigger, because you're pretty sure it's not loaded? If you're mostly sure it's not loaded? If you're almost absolutely sure but still have an inkling of a nagging doubt? (Okay, that's not a fair example - there is no substantial cost to not pulling the trigger in the above case, whereas the cost of capping carbon emissions will be substantial. But the essential idea is the same - the cost of inaction, in the (even if you think it's extremely unlikely) event that all those greenhouse scientists are right, will absolutely dwarf the costs of corrective action. That was the source of my statement which I put in quotes. |
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