VisioNaryD

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Hello, VisioNaryD, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Again, welcome! Awickert (talk) 18:37, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Global warming

As for fixing sources, the best advice I could give you is to see if there are any that are not scientific journals or are not digests of scientific journals: newspaper articles are usually reliable for individual things like dates, etc., but can not hold scientific theories on their own. I've skimmed the global warming references, and they all look pretty solid; I'm not really a climatologist, so I couldn't do a whole lot to critique the published literature on my own. But you should definitely do your own thorough scan of them. Awickert (talk) 18:37, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for being so welcoming.

I have found something I would like you to critique on, just because it intrigues me.

On one of the sources from Newsweek that says Global Warming Deniers are well funded, however I think it should be mentioned that those who have supported the theory generally donate massive amounts more to the cause. Someone stated "Al Gore, alone, has a $300 million fund to promote his views during the next few years."

I don't know much about this. Awickert (talk) 17:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

But more important, another poster said the following:

"The simple fact is that about 10,000 years ago about the northern 1/3 of the earth, including all of Canada and a good portion of the U.S., was covered under a massive, thick glacier. That glacier melted, which gave way to modern civilization.

So way before man started burning things, the earth naturally warmed up. How do you explain this? How does this not explain current temperatures.

This is because of orbital forcings in the climate system: see Milankovich cycles. However, they operate over much longer time-scales (tens of thousands of years) than current global warmingAwickert (talk) 17:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

What is alarming is the media (and now US govt's) have accepted as fact that man is the cause of global warming and there is something we can do about it. The fact is that global warming as a result of man is not scientific fact. There are plenty of credible scientists (who have never taken Big Oil money) who do not accept it. And even if man did cause this increased global warming, the proponents of man-mad global warming science community have clearly stated there is nothing we can do about it, even if we stopped all CO2 emissions 100%."

It's not scientific fact, but at the very least, there's a very strong correlation between emissions and temperature, and a known mechanism for CO2 to increase temperature, so I would say that there's the reason for the acceptance. And (assuming we are causing the Earth to warm) I've never heard from anyone that there's nothing we can do about it. If we stopped emissions 100%, there would be no additional warming, which is one big worry, so that would be something. There are plans with "wedges" of the carbon future to reduce. In addition, there are way-out plans to do massive geoengineering to reduce the temperature. So I wouldn't say that there is "nothing" we can do. As for the stance of the scientific community, in my experience, they have been strongly convinced that the cause is anthropogenic, with a few notable scientists (Dick Lindsen, for example) who say that it's not caused by that. Awickert (talk) 17:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

So with these two, the first one, perhaps if it's possible if the article doesn't already mention that global warming supporters are well funded or perhaps funded even more so than the deniers if some proper research can be done to show this.

With the second one, I just want to know if this is accurate. I have never heard this idea before so I've found little to support it. VisioNaryD (talk) 08:31, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for giving your feedback on those, so there are scientists that support the idea that global warming is natural in a sense?

Or that it just isn't caused by humans?

VisioNaryD (talk) 03:20, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

A few, yes. No one debates that it's happening, by they debate its cause. Definitely a small minority, but their work might be worth a gander. As for Dick Lindzen, I'm not sure how much he has in the published literature on this these days; I know he had some ideas in the past, but I don't think they got too far... he definitely has a strong opinion, though, so if you're on the track that you want to look for scientific evidence of global warming not being a problem and/or not being anthropogenic, that's the sort of way you'll have to go. Awickert (talk) 05:42, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I generally think Global Warming is just a term applied to a natural proccess, rather than something that really exists in the form of us causing it.

There are people who say it doesn't exist, and I remember hearing somewhere that a group of scientists said it was not happening and not something we should worry about.

My opinion on it generally is that the world won't be underwater in 100 years. That includes Al Gore's assertion that Florida and other places will be underwater.

I just don't buy that conclusion.

I do think however that it always a good thing to take care of the planet you live on. I just take issue with the general assertion that drives fear into people to force them to think the world is in danger to such an extent that they need to waste their money on unnecessary green products that in many cases don't help or are dangerous.

I really just take the skeptical route, because I think one needs to be a skeptic to all science. No matter how solid people may claim it is or will be.

Anyways I'm still looking through the sources. If I find anything else I do want your opinion on it. If you are okay with that.

VisioNaryD (talk) 05:53, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good - I'll try to be unbiased when offering advice, though I'm going to have to disagree with you on most of what you said. Nobody can say it's not happening and have credibility: we have instrumental records that say it is. Earth is warming much faster than any natural process we know of, and is stunningly correlated with CO2 emissions, and we know how CO2 can change absorb radiation. So no, I don't think we should try to scare people, but on the other hand, I really think that the evidence points to it being a real issue to think about.... not to mention that it would hurt my Nordic ski season :)

I think that one of the big issues is that, although there can still be debate on the issue, so much of the evidence points towards a warming earth, and the effects would be the inundation of the heavily-populated coasts... at some point, it's like walking a tightrope at 100 feet about the ground instead of 5 - the consequences are just too big to not start to try to do something.

On top of that, as the future goes on, petroleum is just going to be harder to find; at some point, it won't be economic to find and extract. The biggest reservoirs are the easiest to find and the cheapest to extract, and as they get smaller, it's more expensive to find the oil, and there's less profit...

In any case, I'll keep watching your page. If you dig anything up that you want me to try to look over, I'll be around. And if I don't seem to notice, you can drop me a line on my talk page too. Awickert (talk) 06:35, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with most of what you said as well.

I think in 50 years Global Warming will be regarded as something that wasn't nearly as bad as it was hyped up to be.

But that's just my opinion.

Anyways, I'll hit you up if I find anything else worth mentioning.

PS: I'll also contact you in 2050 assuming Wikipedia is still around and we are as well, and we can discuss how things have changed or haven't. :P VisioNaryD (talk) 08:34, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

All right, great, 2050. Awickert (talk) 16:27, 27 January 2009 (UTC)