Global Warming deniers, what would it take to convince you warming is real and due to human activity?

I believe the climate of the world is changing. Only a fool would deny that.
I agree we should cut back on CO2 emissions. There is nothing wrong with keeping it clean, and picking up after ourselves.
However, I am not convinced that all this is caused by humans. There were ice ages before humans, and no one is asking why they ended. This may just be a part of the Earths cycle, and that cycle takes thousands of years, or more.

About global warming, I need nothing more to convince me that’s real. It’s happening before our very eyes. I would like to see more research on how much of it is man-made and how much natural.

I agree with @filmfann and @Austinlad. I also think we would be foolish to do not everything reasonable that we can to keep our earth healthy (and free of plastic!)

1. Disbelieving evidence that militaries are pursuing weather weapons as evidenced here, here, and here as well as here as well as not seeing chemtrails paint the sky every day during the Bush administration (they seem to be less nowadays).

2. Reading that global climate agreements aren’t being engineered to shift the burden of carbon caps onto third world nations while allowing industrialized nations to expand carbon output as evidenced here.

3. In light of the above, disbelieving reports I’ve read that global weather stations have been in recent decades reduced in number from 6,000 to 1,500 and that the remainder have been shifted to warmer areas within regions. Here’s one random source/discussion on the subject.

4. Disbelieving that other planets in the solar system are warming as a result of increased solar output. See here, for example.

5. Being led to believe that I have to buy into this new religion of global warming, of which I am a sinner through my production of carbon and must pay for my sins by buying indulgences known as carbon credits and am accused of heresy for thinking otherwise because “the science is settled,” while the priests run the credit exchanges and act conveniently inept or otherwise suspicious (guess what? there’s oil in Haiti) in the face of natural and corporate led disasters and economic agendas, dump depleted uranium in war ravaged countries, dispose of hazardous waste in toxic burn pits, dump nuclear waste off the coast of Somalia, enable the suppression of efficiency technologies, and so on.

If you can convince me that it’s possible to reconcile these facts with the narrative that Al Gore is the poster child for a world leadership that cares about this issue beyond setting up a new way to herd everyone into accepting a new form of taxation and subjugation, I’ll change my mind.

The planet may be warming. I’m sure it is to some degree. As I’ve hopefully demonstrated above, we do have evidence that man is affecting the weather. But, I’ve already been fooled once about original sin.

(And are you going to ignore these points that I’ve carefully laid before you or address them?)

@kevbo I will certainly address your references. Thanks for providing them

1—I won’t try to convince you Air Force 2025 never happened, because it obviously did. It was speculative at the time it was conducted in 1996. It was a what-if futuristic view of what the military might need to develop in the 30 years it looked ahead. The 1997 Paper by William Cohen doesn’t seem to have anything to do with weather. It’s dealing with the Nunn/Lugar act which helped Russia dismantle nukes, and with potential threats to US security from Iraq and Iran at that time. The third reference is the H.R. 2977 Bill introduced by Dennis Kucinich in 2001 to ban the weaponized of space. It mentions every conceivable way space might be weaponized. It does not mean that ET is up there causing global warming. I hope you realize that. Finally, this. Are you seriously suggesting you don’t care if the polar ice caps melt because China tried to manipulate clouds to prevent rain from spoiling the Summer Olympics in 2008? You do know they had such hideous air pollution in Beijing that many of the athletes had to stay indoors and avoid normal warm-up routines, don’t you? I frankly don’t see how any of this has anything to do with global warming due to CO2 release.

2—The row at Copenhagen doesn’t change the facts of global warming in any way. It only serves to show how contentious trying to do something about it will be. BTW, at the time of the Copenhagen conference, the Russian government was saying they would increase carbon emissions by 50% by 2040, have done an about face now that they have been hit by the results of inaction.

3—The link you provided on NOAA tossing out thermometers sources back to www.americanthinker.com which is a far right blog. That is hardly science. I searched independently to see if I could find any credible source for such a claim. I cannot.

4—It’s the sun. That zombie argument has been killed so many times I am surprised you bring it up. Here is the science on it.

5—So you think fossil fuels are free? We ship a supertanker full of money off to our enemies in the Middle East to get the stuff. Global fossil fuel production today totals Total fossil fuel production alone, $27.6 trillion. We can’t just keep running a $300 billion dollar a year trade deficit to support it.

You have a long list of concerns there, but most of them have nothing to do with global warming. Things listed in the question DO have to do with global warming. So I ask again, aside from changing your whole political leaning, what natural events would you need to see to make you think global warming is real and is a threat?

1. Here’s the relevant quote from Cohen… “Others are engaging even in an eco- type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.” That was in 1997, and as you can see (one would hope) it does have to do with weather. This statement is consistent with the language in the Space Preservation Act of 2001, which was introduced by Kucinich and died in committee.

Who said anything about ET? Who said I don’t care? What does preventing rain have to do with clearing pollution? Why are you bringing up crap and making assumptions that do not exist anywhere in what I’ve said? Are you just regurgitating ideology or actually putting thought into this issue?

Item #1 doesn’t have anything to do with CO2/global warming, because that’s not my point. My point is that “we” aspire to control the weather, or we do, in fact, control the weather and it’s a lesser-known secret. If we control the weather or aspire to control the weather, wouldn’t that be relevant to the big picture discussion on global warming? If it’s relevant, then why isn’t it mentioned in the narrative about global warming? Don’t you think the media and government would be exalting our global weather technologies as part of the fix for our problems?

2. The “facts” of global warming are a) weird weather and b) temperature increases. Weird weather is addressed in Item #1. Temperature increases are addressed in Items #3 and #4 (and in #1 to a lesser degree). My point with Item #2 is that the same cadre of interests that are leading the charge against global warming are making sure everyone else pays their share. You’re right though. It is getting harder for respectable foxes to guard a henhouse.

So Russia “has been hit by the results of inaction” and now they are towing the party line. What caused the amped up drought and heat wave? You say global warming, and I say weather influencing technology. I’ll agree to disagree with you on that one.

3. Is NOAA a credible enough source?. Did you miss that the regular joe scientists on the page I originally referenced pretty much verify that data collection in Canada is a shadow of what it used to be.

4. See #3 and try to understand why I am reticent to trust temperature trend data for the last few decades.

5. What does the cost of fuel production (and whether I am ignorant of it) have to do with whether global warming is real? And how does it prove or disprove global warming that we send supertankers of money to “our enemies” that they willingly agree to receive (with the understanding that we will use it to bomb the shit out of them)?

Hey you know what? Someone added $400 worth of parts to his car and doubled his highway gas mileage. If you bother to read the page, you’ll notice that the technology to do this has been around since the 1930s. Why, do you suppose car companies don’t currently use this technology? Or how about this battery technology from the 1990s which hasn’t been seen since despite the obvious interest in fuel efficient cars. The old batteries performed better than the current hybrids do now, so why aren’t we using them? Is it because I believe in aliens and don’t care about polar bears?

Again, my overall point here is that the fox is guarding the henhouse.

So, my concerns do, in fact, have to do with the facts of global warming, which (again) are: 1) weird weather and 2) rising temperatures, and to a lesser extent 3) our collective response to the “problem.”

But let’s turn to your concerns and see how severe and attributable to global warming they really are…

1. You say that “unusually hot” water caused the fish kill. The state’s environment department did not characterize this event as unusual. In fact, the only species of fish that was affected is commonly affected by hot weather. But hey, it’s summer isn’t it?

2. The Greenland article is somewhat schizophrenic. The headline screams worry and drama, but the writer and the scientist are both skeptical in their outlook and only mildly approbative in the end (“I used to be a sceptic… but now I’m keeping an open mind.” and “I still believe climate change has probably been exaggerated… but it is impossible to maintain that nothing is going on.”). This is only to say that the newspaper’s headline writer and the reporter/scientist are on different pages with regard to a diagnosis (and impetus to sensationalize). That being said, It is difficult to argue against the fact of a city-sized chunk of ice as well as the other changes that are happening on Greenland. But: a) it’s not an unprecedented event, b) it belies the fact that the glacier from which it came has been growing for the past 8 years, and c) another presumably respectable scientist says global warming can’t be proven or disproven as the cause because there is insufficient temperature data. See here. Another scientist in the article says “this happens all the time” but that the size is very, very unusual. So, again, not quite as alarmist as the fervor wants to dictate.

3. Warmest year on record? Yawn. See my Item #3 and get back to me at your convenience.

4. This is about two issues. The first is heat and drought. The second is fuel density. While the heat and drought exacerbate the severity of fire, so does Moscow’s policy increasing fuel density by draining the peat bogs as referenced at the end of your second article on the subject.

Certainly the heat and drought in the area are undeniable, as is the severe monsoon in Pakistan. We certainly have a lot of examples of extreme weather (and seismic events) of late. You say global warming. I say weather (and tectonic) modification.

Your last question is a good one, and I don’t have an immediate answer for you that is stripped of political considerations. In fact, it’s rare that science ever trumps politics, and common for science to be used for political gain. I would even go so far as to say it’s a good lie to embrace if I trusted the intentions were to clean up the environment, but I don’t think that’s what this is about primarily. We might get lucky following the implementation of a tax structure and get our efficiency technologies after we’ve been safely muzzled and trained.

I suppose if Manhattan or some other prominent coastal-ish city goes underwater from rising sea levels, I’ll bite.

“what would it take to convince you warming is real and due to human activity?”

Kill off all humans, see if there is a change.

@kevbo You seem to be concluding that because man is obviously tampering with the weather and making it worse, we should not worry about man effecting the weather. In the face of that logic, I will leave you to your concerns.

@ChazMaz Or just see if warming kills us all. Of course, once we’re all gone, who will be around to “see” what changes?

@ETpro – Exactly! :-)

Do you understand the difference between weather and climate? You seem to use the terms interchangeably.

My logic is man is tampering with the weather and making it worse, so we should be skeptical of emissions-based climate change. Yes, I am concerned about man tampering the weather and making it worse in ways that are both intentional and contrary to the remedy being prescribed (restructuring taxes to fix the climate). Again, why aren’t weather influencing technologies part of the discussion if they exist and/or we aspire for them to exist?

We also should worry about man polluting the environment. But pollution isn’t global warming, either.

@kevbo Yes, I know the difference between climate and weather. Weather is local and immediate. Climate is the summing of the effects of weather over an extended period of time and area. Global climate change is the topic.

Weather control is still, as best as I am able to discern, a scientific pipe dream. I am sure military commanders would “like” to be able to control the weather in their theater of operation and make volcanoes and earthquakes at aill, but I see no credible evidence they are actually able to do any of that. I see a mountain of evidence that temperatures are rapidly warming at a time when we should be sliding into a cooler period, that CO2 is rapidly concentrating in the atmosphere, and that the curves of those two phenomena are so closely related that their direct relationship is inescapable.

@ETpro, Well, you also said you could find no credible source for the reduction in the number of weather stations, and it took me about ten seconds to find it on the NOAA Web site, so I will take your assurances with a grain of salt.

Hey! Look what’s on Wikipedia—> Man-made earthquakes are well documented even though less known by the general public.

Hmmm… what else?—> Weather warfare was banned by the United Nations General Assembly in 1977 presumably because thirty years ago the UN used to legislate on scientific pipe dreams.

And while it’s not the most solid source, what might the History Channel have to say about weather warfare?

So, again, unless weather modification, which is being brought to us by the same interests that are beating the drum for climate change, can be reconciled with the global warming narrative, I ain’t buying it.

@kevbo The Wikepedia mention is from a refernece that points to this. http://technology.infomine.com/articles/1/992/earthquake.induced.seismic/man-made.earthquakes.iii.aspx

Interesting, but not germane to the question at hand.

I missed your link to the “NOAA explanation of their reductio in temperature monitoring stations, but now have read it. I am satisfied that the explanation they offered makes perfect sense. We have gone from monitoring only land surface temperatures to now monitoring high altitude, surface sea and deep ocean temperatures around the world. Our data today are far more precise and meaningful than data from 50 years ago.

Regarding weather control see your own link and read future aspirations. That will connect you better with the current state of the art. Controlling weather is being banned because it is being discussed, not because there are weather control stations around the globe actually doing it. Our forces are still stopped by unfavorable weather nearly as often as the were in WWII. The only improvement is in technology letting us operate in weather that used to stop us cold. This is tinfoil hat silliness in the face of a serious threat.

These guys don’t appear to be too concerned.

@ETpro, here is an article that has aggregated the many recent fish kill reports from different sources, including those on the eastern seaboard and the gulf. While warm water temps are attributed as a factor in one report, another questions why seagulls aren’t eating the fish. The author makes something of a leap of faith in linking gulf dead zones with the eastern seaboard. I don’t know enough about ocean currents, but I do vaguely recall that stuff in the gulf eventually travels up the eastern seaboard. If the BP spill fallout (Corexit + methane) is indeed traveling up the seaboard, then that certainly calls into question a global warming based cause for the recent fish kills.

The cause of the Russia drought/Pakistan flood is likely a stagnent jet stream. Does global warming cause stagnant jet streams? (I think weather modification technology probably does.)

You keep talking in absolutes, but none of what you offer seems conclusive, and when you follow up your discredited statements with more absolute certainties it really tells me you’re taking all this on faith.

There’s plenty of room for doubt in all this as well as attribution to manmade causes that have nothing to do with CO2 emissions. At best, maybe it’s a good fairy tale to scare the world into finally taking action against pollution, but again why are the mouthpieces for the world’s largest polluters leading the charge?

@kevbo You can stick a thermometer into water to see if it is unusually warm. I do think Corexit use in the millions of gallons was an utterly dunderheaded thing to do, and am mystified by why the EPA permitted it. But it certainly couldn’t explain the fish kill recently here in Massachusetts. The Gulf Stream heads out across the Atlantic somewhere between North Carolina’s Outer Banks and the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Its bend point varies depending on prevailing winds, but it never comes this far north. It goes from the Mid-Atlantic seaboard across the Atlantic to the southern coast of Ireland and then down to the south—back to BP.

Humans can’t tailor make weather on a grand scale yet. What we have tried generally backfires if it does anything at all. Rainmaking attempts during droughts have almost always failed. We can’t even predict weather accurately beyond 48 hours, and modifying weather over long ranges of time would require highly accurate forecasting over weeks and months. Earth’s weather is an enormously complex dynamical system with a vast number of interacting attractors that produce something that, while probably causal, appears very close to purely stochastic chaos.

Weather science speaks of the butterfly effect, where a tiny thing like the air currents of a butterfly seeking nectar on the coast of Argentina ricochets around, hits random amplifiers, and eventually causes a hurricane in the tropics. We are far from understanding it well enough to try to tweak it to our benefit. That’s why the very idea of trying has brought out laws against in here and internationally.

As to what warming will cause, look at weather events that are possible, and check off All of the above. It causes greater extremes of every kind of weather condition. That is because temperature variations from one point to another are the major driver of weather. More heat, more variations, more rain, snow, wind, storms, droughts—the whole gamut.

No wild conspiracy theory is going to change the fact that:
1—Atmospheric CO2 has risen rapidly and at an accelerating pace over the last 210 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere
2—Man is dumping billions of metric tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.
3—The temperature has been increasing since the dawn of the industrial age, and that increase is rapidly ramping up in step with the rise of CO2.
4—7 of the hottest 10 years since records were kept came in the last 10 years and this year is on track to be the hottest yet.
5—The planets glaciers are rapidly melting almost everywhere around the globe.
6—Sea levels have risen 20 cm since 1880.