SeVeR

lol NBV, were you always such a hard!@#$%^&* conservative?

The selection of what statistics to use come under the bias of the author. We both agree that a global warming graph of the last century used to draw a conclusion about global warming is deceptive without a longer time-frame. The source is still true, the selection of statistics is biased though. Still i'm quite happy to agree that 2.5% of the current greenhouse effect is contributed by human influence. This fits quite well with the temperature rise we've seen over the same time, and supports everything i've said.

Not unless he told the CIA what to report. A recent "dishonest" report has come out of the intelligence services about Iran aswell. It doesn't look like a coincidence to me. Story goes: 1. USA dislikes country. 2. USA incriminates country within the press. 3. USA produces false intelligence. 4. USA invades. But the corruption runs deep in American politics. People often say "power corrupts" but in America you have to become corrupt to get power in the first place, it's a requirement! Ron Paul is a republican candidate that seems to see through it all. Obama, despite his religious affiliation, appears to be genuine aswell.

Holy crap that Junk Science is extremely deceptive... no wonder it's called Junk Science, are you sure its not a joke? For instance: I'm a nuclear physicist so can tell you that it's more like re-radiation than anything. Atoms and molecules have defined quantum levels. They rest in the ground state and can be moved into excited states upon absorbing radiation. The separation of the ground state from the excited state is defined by the bond properties of the molecule and the s!@#$%^&* structure of the electrons. Therefore molecules such as CO2 absorb defined values of EM radiation, of the amount that gets them into an excited state. Inevitably the CO2 does not stay in this state and must re-emit that energy to return to the ground state, and for this to happen the same amount of energy that was absorbed must be emitted. The emission is long wavelength/low energy but that is what was absorbed in the first place, and it's interesting to note than this "longer wavelngth" actually corresponds to infra-red radiation, which is commonly !@#$%^&*ociated with heat energy! Another twisting of the truth. The principle of the Earth's greenhouse effect is close to the same as an ordinary greenhouse. The difference is a greenhouse works by preventing convection AND stopping the passge of infra-red (heat) radiation. The gl!@#$%^&* is opaque to infra-red radiation and reflects it back into the greenhouse interior, heating it up. The greenhouse gases in the atmosphere absorb infra-red radiation and re-emit it in random directions. Obviously this is less efficient that an actual greenhouse but it's still a greenhouse effect in that half the infra-red (heat) radiation is sent back down to Earth. Water, CO2 and Methane all absorb and re-emit (re-radiate) in the infra-red part of the EM spectrum. Wrong. They absorb infra-red radiation and re-emit the same EM frequencies in random directions - causing a significant percentage of the heat to be re-radiatied back to Earth. This is as much of a blanket as anything. The only thing he's right about is the gases not behaving as a barrier to convective activity, but drawing a conclusion from only one of the three types of heat transportation is intentionally deceptive. The graphic in question shows the blackbody emission spectra of the sun and the Earth and tells us that greenhouse gases do not trap heat as these two peaks are not in the same region of the spectrum. This couldn't be more deceptive. The sun's emission spectrum is irrelevent because if it did emit in the infra-red we'd all be fried instantly. What's important is the comparison of the Earth's emission spectrum (they got 1 out of 2) with the CO2 absorption spectrum. What you'll find is a large area of CO2 absorption around 13-15 microns, right in the middle of Earth's blackbody emission spectrum. CO2 very effectively absorbs the Earth's heat emissions. Here they finally give us this information, which completely contradicts what they said earlier: http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/absorbspec.gif But they combine it with this laughable and unintelligible diatribe about "saturation": Do they think that these gases are infinitely concentrated or something? A higher concentration of CO2 gas will absorb more heat. An absorptivity of "1" does not mean that all heat is absorbed unless you actually have CO2 or water present in sufficient concentrations to absorb it in the first place! Now he's telling us how CO2 is wonderful. It sure does feed the forests, but it poisons us. Heavy metals in our blood are crucial for keeping us alive, but too much and we die, the same is true for CO2. But this section is all complete bs designed to distract from the issue of global warming. And if that's not significant i don't know what is. Actually the CO2 in the atmosphere would already be shielded to some extent by the water, making the effects of this shielding the standard. If they weren't currently shielded then the effects would be much worse. Therefore the addition of more CO2 will be shielded in the same way (or at least a fraction of a percent more) meaning we can indeed call this a 2.5% addition to the greenhouse effect since the start of the industrial revolution. Then he goes off to discuss the finer points, and i don't have time to go though the whole page. Suffice to say the article is false on most of its primary premises and appears to be deliberately deceptive. I've seen this before on religious forums. Christians will link to a webpage (typically www.answersingenesis.org) and will come out with claims such as "entropy prevents evolution", or "the Earth really is 6000 years old". The webpage in question will use scientific terminolgy to deceive the reader into believing exactly what he/she wants to believe. It's not surprising that this technique is employed for political purposes aswell. It's a good thing i know a little about absorption spectroscopy...

Israel can get away with anything. Did you know that criticising Israel is becoming equivalent to racism? The latest in the war of public opinion: Britain strikes back! The British government allow their captured soldiers to sell their stories to the press! The media sparks in outrage at the money these soldiers turned celebrities are making!... distracting us from the real reason the British government told them to go sell their stories - to hit back at Iran with shocking accounts of how these uninjured, well-fed looking soldiers were threatened, beaten, abused and all other things on the barbaric terrorist manifesto of doom!

Any democrat apart from Clinton would do. There isn't much to say because the news media hasn't told us what to think yet. You didn't give me any sources NBV, i still think you've mismatched those stats. Saying that we've had a 34% rise in CO2 in the last three hundred years and that we're only responsible for 3% of it just seems like crazy talk to me. I didn't get us started on this global warming crap... someone started talking about Gore, then someone brought up the environment and then it all kicked off from there.

So atmospheric CO2 has risen 34% since the industrial revolution started and you're telling me that less than 1% (0.28/0.34) of that is from unnatural sources? If thats true then you've won this argument fair and square - present your sources please, as i've taken your word for it so far. 34% extra CO2 over 300 years, that just happens to coincide with the industrialisation of humanity... it just seems obvious to me what the cause is. The thing about scientific records is they get less accurate the further back you go... and the thing about 300 million years ago is the Earth was alot hotter back then and more drastic variations in temperature can be expected. Lastly we don't know the cause of this drastic change, it could have been an asteroid impact, or a freakishly high amount of solar activity. We can't just sit here and say the world went to !@#$%^&* 300 million years ago so its ok if it happens now. I'm sure the world produces many times that every year, it just gets diluted as its over a large time scale. If we released our annual pollution into the atmosphere in one explosive event we'd probably all be dead in a couple of weeks. Lol, that wasn't a "theory", it was an example with values i just made up. The values weren't important, the point of the statement was.

Yes they are directly proportional, so if the natural greenhouse gas levels are not changing then neither should the temperature. The climate is changing at a rate that is inconsistent with the near constant level of natural greenhouse gases. There must be another contributer to effect such a change. But never at the rate we are seeing now. You said yourself that without our natural greenhoue gases we'd be about 60 degrees colder than we are now. So a small increase in greenhouse gases will have a noticeable effect on temperature. Over the timescale of our recent changes it's effectively constant. Over millions of years it's not.

I don't see how you can say it's "mostly natural" when the rate of change is wholly unnatural. The natural contribution to our current greenhouse effect may be 97% or 99.7% , but whatever amount that is, it's not changing at a rate to produce our rate of climate change. To explain the current rate of climate change it's completely irrelevent to quote a figure for natural greenhouse gases that doesn't change. The variable that is changing is our unnatural contribution. You're defaming science to say a near constant quani!@#$%^&*y (on this timescale) is responsible for such a sharp rise in temperature, especially when there is a much more obvious candidate for the recent trend. Comparitively, if an ion drive propels a rocket to a velocity of 0.45c and maintains that constant speed, and then the chemical rockets are fired adding a further 0.05c: you're effectively blaming the extra 0.05c almost squarely on the ion drive by saying its 90% to blame. Change effects further change, constants don't. Going back to original point, on the timescale of our temperature increase, the natural greenhouse gas contribution is effectively a constant.

Water traps heat quite well actually. Exchanging the polar ice caps for more water isn't going to help for two reasons: firstly ice is reflective of the suns rays and increases our albedo, without it we absorb more radiation and heat up, secondly water vapour is an effective greenhouse gas. Maybe you're thinking about how land compares to water in their reflective properties but we'd have to flood alot of land to make up for the added greenhouse effect from the extra water vapour in the air. This is of course all in addition to the extra CO2 in the air.

The whole point is that no amount, however small, is not trivial when the natural greenhouse gases do not increase as rapidly.

The point isn't to compare the natural to the unnatural greenhouse gases. Its completely irrelevent as until the last 300 years the natural contribution was 100%. We have added an extra 3% to that value resulting in the sharp rise in global temperatures over this time. The temperature as it is now has not been seen in 6,000 years and the rate at which we got to this temperature has never been seen before. All projections say that the temperature will continue to rise past the Holocene maximum. It doesn't matter what the temperature is now, and it doesn't matter that greenhouse gases are primarily from natural sources. We've always had those natural sources and we've developed to depend on them. What we haven't developed to depend on is the introduction of this extra temperature over such a short space of time. Look, imagine a world with 100% natural greenhouse gases and a temperature of 15 degrees C. Then you add 3% more greenhouse gases and the temperature rises to 17 degrees C. It's competely illogical to blame that 2 degree rise in temperature as being 97% natural! That seems to be what you're trying to p!@#$%^&* off as truth here. We don't know how the dinosaurs became extinct. Krakatoa was an isolated incident with global consequences, it was not a global phenomenon. The temperature returned to normal levels after the dust dissipated and settled. I really don't see how it has any relevence. We couldn't avoid Krakatoa and we can avoid global warming, so what's you point?

Being an astrophysicist i can tell you that without the greenhouse effect we'd all be dead right now. That 70% from water and 20% from clouds are necessary for us to not all freeze to death. If you say that 97% compared to 3% means we're not to blame then you're missing the point that 97% means the difference between living in a frozen wasteland or living in paradise. So 97% may equal 60 degrees, 3% may equal 2 degrees, but without the natural greenhouse effect we can't survive. What's important is how we're changing our environment in ways that make it difficult to adapt. The Earth was relatively stable without our influence, with changes happening over thousands or millions of years. Any life would be able to adapt to the trend. We may not be able to adapt to a sudden ice age or regular Katrina size hurricanes and tsunamis. Think about it, if the temperature suddenly jumped to what it was in the cretaceous period in the space of 50 years then would you say it's natural if our greenhouse effect was still 90% natural? Would you then say that the Earth was this way 65 million years ago, so it must be natural now? Back on topic: Obama not having experience isn't a problem, you can't compare him to Bush in that respect. Obama is a self-made man, Bush was s!@#$%^&*-fed.

Yea, for all you know Xterr could be one hot transexual commie hooker.

You said yourself that these changes happen over thousands of years and i agree with you. That 3% increase to CO2 levels has happened over a very short space of time in comparison. It may have taken many thousands of years for the CO2 levels to rise naturally by 3%. We have experienced a sudden jump in temperature coinciding with our sudden introduction of this extra 3%. If it were 10% the temperature would have risen even more. What i'm trying to say is it's not the temperature that's worrying right now, it's the temperature gradient (the rate of change). This rather rapid increase in temperature has coincided with a rapid increase in CO2 levels and whether or not this temperature is currently dangerous we are changing our climate in ways that may be difficult to predict. The reason the rate is important is that a sudden influx of fresh water could disrupt the North Atlantic currents bringing about an ice-age. A slower change might prevent it somewhat or lessen it's effects. In my last post i told you it had risen 300 feet over that time... and that is something i got from the same website i think you were using (i saw all your graphs on there). Most of this rise was before 6000 years ago. It would take 1% of that 300 feet to flood many populated areas... so think about what a 3% rise in CO2 might do.

Gore was looking well beyond 1000 years. I've seen graphs that only show a century of warming and know full well that they're deceptive. Gore is not my hero and i don't deny that he may be a hypocrite, but that doesn't make everything he says a lie. Your first graph of the Holecene period doesn't even show the recent trend in temperature, it stops at around 1700 on our timescale, at the point of the little ice age. The scale is too small to show the recent rise. The other graphs show a cooling trend over millions of years. We know full well how small fluctuations in temperature can bring about ice ages or draughts, so if your argument is to say it's ok because millions of years ago (when the continents were joined at the hip) things were much warmer, then you're sadly missing the point that we didn't exist then and probably wouldn't have survived. Look up Pangaea and it's affect on the global climate millions of years ago. If you add in the last 300 years coinciding with our industrial development (strange how you left that part out) you get something like: http://gristmill.grist.org/images/user/693..._Comparison.png Unfortunately this misses out the slow rising Holocene period from 6000 years ago. So far in the past 18,000 years, the earth's temperature has risen approximately 16 degrees F and the sea level has risen 300 feet. You're right that it was about as warm as it is now 6,000 years ago, but you have to ask yourself if it's natural for the Earth to be at this temperature now. If the Earth becomes any warmer the sea level will rise even more, we may provoke another ice age in the process, and storms will become more severe. It's proven that high CO2 correlates with high temperatures so the data tells us that by putting more CO2 into the air we will affect the global temperature. This strongly suggests the recent warming trend is unnatural. And even if there is a natural component to it, there has to also be an unnatural component. The Earth will survive, as we know it has in the past, but will we?

I just wanna suck on Xterr's yummy milk-sacks.

Gore's inconvenient truth showed that global warming is a natural cycle. It also showed us that the part of the cycle we're currently in is completely unnatural and goes well beyond all previous global warming highs. This isn't a small increase, it can't be caused by statistical, natural deviations. You say its not anthropogenic, but what else could be causing it? This unnatural trend just happens to be happening now... when humans start polluting the air with carbon dioxide and methane for the first time in our millions of years of history. I agree with Astro that the debate is manufactured to produce skepticism where there should almost be none. What people don't understand, they're reluctant to believe.

If this race ends up as Clinton vs Guiliani then i'm actually gonna puke.

Igor joins such fisting greats as Vlad The Impaler and Fistimus Rectimus of ancient Sparta. It has been said that Igor was the first son of Rasputin, and was thus fisted from child-birth by the incestual Russian Tsar. During the first world war Igor fisted thousand of Krauts to death on the front-line stopping only to lick the stinking feces of his lubricated fingers. The legend of Igor was born, but when the 'fists of fury' came home he was greeted by homophobic Bolsheviks... and Lenin (after getting fisted) banished the rampant puppetmaster to Siberia. There he lived for the next 30 years until Stalin came out as a raving homosexual after the second world war; it was Roosevelt's !@#$%^&*goty cloak at the Yalta Conference that finally turned Stalin to the dark side. Igor became the chief executioner for Stalin and took up a new hobby... abortions. It has been said that Igor once aborted a fetus from a woman without her even realising what was happening; one minute she was sitting at a bar, eight months pregnant having a G & T, and then BAM he !@#$%^&*ed it away and ate it with some fava beans and a nice chianti... slurp. The Cold war saw Igor as a spy in America. He would dress up as an alien, shine a torch into his victims eyes and anally probe them until they passed out. It is debatable whether there was any point to this act whatsoever, but Igor to this day maintains that "those !@#$%^&*ed Yanks deserved every inch they got". The legend of Igor and his "fists of fury" remains to this day, and at 108 years old some believe that on his travels he found the fountain of youth... inside someones rectum, obviously.

I don't know, but wouldn't mind finding out if someone else knows. Latest in the battle for western public opinion.

Stalin was gay

NBV: Yes they could be. But it involves putting spy-cameras into the government labs of a sovereign country that has done nothing other than engage in the lawful construction of nuclear power plants. No country would stand for it. Being American (i assume you are) you must respect your right to privacy more than people from most other countries, and on top of that you must recognise your governments right to protect its secrets. Iran has allowed the inspectors in but they won't allow themselves to be spied on and i think that's their right. The UN wouldn't support going to war with Iran either, what they will do is make resolutions and sanctions to keep the US happy. And these aspects are? Proving innocence? Huh... Anyway, if Iran doesn't want spy cameras in their government labs then i don't blame them. That appears to be what the IAEA is talking about when they refer to transparency measures that are not being agreed upon. As for all the other aspects not referred to by these transparency measures, there appears (or at least appeared) to be co-operation.

Well Aileron: 1. If these transports are so hard to spot then couldn't the Israelis have been targetting vehicles indiscriminately? 2. The destruction of city blocks in Beirut, Christian civilian villages in the north, civilian infrastructure and the airport doesn't support a transport specific method of targetting the enemy, it suggests bombing a whole building of people based on the possibility that one terrorist might be inside... or possibly even on no intelligence at all. You're right that getting a list of civilians who died might be a good method of deciding how many were targetted for being soldiers. It would be interesting to see how many were male. It may be useful to note that the Israelis said they killed 600 Hezbollah soldiers. The UN, the Lebanese government and Hezbollah all gave numbers around 50. Although based on the public opinion of them after the war i wouldn't trust Israel's estimate... especially as they pulled out of the country before the dead could even be counted. Ok here is what i've found: "...it has been widely reported that the majority of the Lebanese killed were civilians, and UNICEF estimated that 30% of those killed were children under the age of 13.[128]" Source 128 is: http://www.unicef.org/emerg/index_35274.html I can't immediately find anything about the sex of the other 70% but with such a large percentage of the dead being children you would expect them to be part of family units with women and men present in fairly equal magnitudes. Since the war: The death toll estimates do not include Lebanese killed since the end of fighting by land mines or unexploded Israeli cluster bombs.[6] According to the National Demining Office, 27 people have been killed and 167 wounded in such blasts.[6] So thats another 27 that can be added to the civilian death count. I don't see anything to support your theory but until we see a definitive ratio of male to female deaths its open to speculation. Still 30% of the dead being children doesn't exactly make the prospects of the other 70% being terrorists very likely does it?

This is what you said NBV: And i told you that certain aspects of the scope and nature of Irans nuclear programme do not mean all aspects of it. Your very definition gives us the word "particular". By particular/certain aspects they mean those clarified by remote monitoring equipment, the bloody report tells you that lol. ROFL, you missed out the word 'certain' there NBV... you mean "nature or character of the scope (purpose) of certain aspects of it's nuclear program" don't you? This is getting ridiculous. I told you in the last post that letting the inspectors check their uranium production levels is a transparency measure, so it can't mean all transparency measures. It's clearly telling us that certain aspects of the nuclear programme require transparency measures that have not been agreed on. Other aspects of Iran's nuclear programme are open to investgation by the IAEA which is why we have a report in the first place...