Does global warming rank next to Scientology as a new religion?

Question

There is so much overwhelming evidence that global warming is not true and CO2 has no affiliation with heat whatsoever, yet this lie continues to perpetuate and manifest.... HOW?????

http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/

http://www.deadfishwrapper.com/ipcc_scientist_disputes_global_warming_hype

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=22621

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb

Now, all they got is 26 scientists that are willing to sacrifice their reputation for the GW scam... Where are the rest????

http://www.earthsky.org/article/50989/20-scientists-speak

Answer 1

Short answer: No. It's more the other way around. For example New Earth Creationists are more likely to deny AGW.

You ask for evidence. Though I doubt you will take the time to learn about the science behind global warming, I will give you a link to Shell, you know the oil company, and what they say about climate change and the evidence surrounding it:

http://www.shell.com/home/content/enviro...



Quote from the site:

"The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change is a serious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response."

Answer 2

Both sides in this debate are acting like doctrine driven religions. Unfortunately there are people on each side of the debate with far too little direct knowledge to even evaluate the claims being made.

All they can do is recite the words of others who are equally unqualified.

Answer 3

Are you unaware of the spectroscope and the laser?  These things rely on the principle that every element or compound can absorb energy over the entire spectrum, but will emit all that energy on only a single frequency.  Neither would work if what you are saying was true.

As it happens, Carbon 12 and Carbon 13 emit in the infrared frequencies, commonly called "heat".  This is the main reason that within the medical field a CO2 laser is the instrument of choice for a cutting laser.  It is also what gives CO2 and other organic compounds their special role in the greenhouse effect.  Water on the other hand absorbs 80-90% of the energy at those wavelengths, but emits poorly, around 10%.  That gives water a special role in the Greenhouse effect as well.  The graphs in this link show the emission frequencies of various substances.

Web sites of paid lobbyists and blogs of right wing goofballs don't have any bearing on this.  The Mars thing is a rather hilarious misinterpretation by  someone like you of a badly worded article NASA put out a couple of years ago, and immediately apologized for.

I am pleased to see you have returned to your natural state, rolling around on the floor.

Answer 4

Funny that you use an Exxon-funded propaganda mill as a source:

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfact...

MYTH - The science of global warming is too uncertain to act on.

FACT - There is no debate among scientists about the basic facts of global warming.The most respected scientific bodies have stated unequivocally that global warming is occurring, and people are causing it by burning fossil fuels (like coal, oil and natural gas) and cutting down forests. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which in 2005 the White House called "the gold standard of objective scientific assessment," issued a joint statement with 10 other National Academies of Science saying "the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions."

Joint Statement of Science Academies: Global Response to Climate Change [PDF], 2005

http://royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.a...

The only debate in the science community about global warming is about how much and how fast warming will continue as a result of heat-trapping emissions. Scientists have given a clear warning about global warming, and we have more than enough facts — about causes and fixes — to implement solutions right now.

Answer 5

One of the problems is that we pay scientists to find certain things and if they find the opposite, they get their funding cut.  If they do find the opposite they have to dress it up and spin doctor their conclusions a bit to make it sound a bit more exciting.

To the people who want to believe, this is all the 'proof' that they need.

(edit)  Case in point is Dana who is such a good example of a devoted believer.

The research done by NASA on Mars found that at best 30% of the warming on Mars could be attributed to changes in Albedo.  If they told it like it is they would fall foul of the prevailing politics at NASA, so they quite literally said a "substantial portion" of the dry ice melt could be attributed to changes in Albedo.  To believers, that's good enough.

Answer 6

Not quite as ridiculous as Catholicism, but still questionable.

Answer 7

Your links include links to sites with both sides of the story. So you really are not proving your point.

In fact, more and more scientists are coming to accept that the current warming trends on the Earth could only have been caused by human activity. The volume of pollution that we produce has been proven to hurt the environment. The continuous reduction of the rain forests and other wooded areas also hurts the environment.

While CO2 by itself might not have dramatic effects on its own, all of the environmental changes made by humans compounds to destroy the environment.

Take care,

Troy

Answer 8

CO2 is obviously a greenhouse gas that humans emit.  Humans probably have some influence on temperature.  They also emit other pollution that certainly has the opposite effect and cool the planet. Those that focus on warming and suggest that it is necessarily bad reveal an ignorance and bias.  They also ignore natural variation.  The global temperature varies by as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit over thousands of years (just off the top of my head, the actual number may be a bit different).  We are at most adding a half a degree with some people predicting up to a degree or two.  I don't think there are credible sources suggesting more than that.  That certainly doesn't lead me to believe that it is enough to drive the climate warmer.  Those that FEEL we are heading for doom seem to be caught up in a modern doomsday cult.  IMO, even things in the scientific realm is often believed with a religious-like conviction among some people.  They get so caught up in pushing their pet theories that they lose objectivity that their theory is just that.

Answer 9

I'm trying to think of a way to explain this so it makes sense for you (I'm still learning all this myself, so it's rather difficult!). Since you seem to have issues with how the greenhouse effect works, and how CO2 plays a role in it, I'll focus on that in this answer. Let me know if you need me to clarify anything.

Some simple math proves beyond reasonable doubt the existence of the greenhouse effect. Earth's effective radiating temperature without atmospheric absorption can be described by the equation

Te = [S (1 - A) / (4 σ)]^1/4

where S is the solar constant, with a value of 1,366.1 W/m^2, A is the planet's albedo with a value of about 0.3, and σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant.

Plugging in the numbers, we come up with a value of about  255K, or -18ºC. The planet's average temperature actually comes out to be around 15ºC, so there must be extra energy coming from somewhere.

So that establishes that *something* must be adding extra warmth to the climate system, but it doesn't tell us what. A look at some radiative physics might answer that question for us.

We know that any object that isn't at absolute zero will radiate energy. The wavelength of the energy radiated is determined by the object's temperature. Basically, the higher the temperature, the shorter the wavelength of most of the energy radiated. This makes sense because the sun, which is very hot at 5,779K, radiates energy mostly in the short wave visible spectrum, peaking at about .5 microns while the Earth, which is a chilly 288K by comparison, radiates mostly in the long wave spectrum, peaking at about 10.6 microns.

We also know that an object that doesn't change it's state or chemical composition when struck by light can only absorb, reflect, or transmit it.

From this, we can say that a greenhouse gas is a good absorber of energy at long wavelengths, and bad at absorbing energy at short wavelengths. The reason why should be clear in a second.

The greenhouse effect is fairly complicated, as is most every part of the climate system. But we can construct a simple and useful model of it as follows. Energy from the sun that strikes Earth's surface is absorbed and reemitted as long wave radiation. Some of this energy goes straight to space, but some of it gets absorbed by the atmosphere, where half is radiated "up" to space, and half is radiated back "down" to the ground (actually, the energy moves in all directions, but for simplicity's sake we can say that, on average, it is going up or down). This extra downward energy is what warms the planet that extra 33ºC and is what we know and love as the greenhouse effect.

To understand why CO2 plays a part in this, remember earlier when I said that Earth's radiation peaks at 10.6 microns. As it happens, CO2 absorbs radiation in the range of about 7-14 microns. Which makes it a good absorber of radiation of Earth, but a poor absorber of radiation from the sun.

Knowing all this, the reason why adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will increase the planet's temperature should be clear. Adding more CO2 moves the 7-14 micron absorptive "window" from near the surface to higher, cooler potions of the atmosphere, which means that the atmosphere below will have to warm up to compensate for it (this also touches on the conductive portion of the greenhouse effect, which I didn't go into earlier).

And viola! If I've done what my job and you understood what I just said, we've established that:

a) the greenhouse effect exists and is responsible for keeping Earth warm enough to support life as we know it.

b) That Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.

c) adding more of it to the atmosphere will increase the planet's temperature.

If you're still having trouble with it, let me know and I'll do my very best to clear things up for you. In the meantime, here are a couple more excellent discussions of the greenhouse effect you might find useful:

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~showman/gree...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_...

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Edit: The notion that the greenhouse effect works by "trapping" heat is a false one. It actually works by lowering the atmosphere's emissivity, and by raising the atmosphere's effective radiating height (and thus, it's temperature).

Instead of thinking of the greenhouse effect like a net thrown across the sky that "catches" the energy and holds it, think of it like a dam built across a river. Just like a dam stops the water from flowing downstream and locally deepens the stream, the greenhouse effect stops energy from flowing to space, and locally heightens the temperature at the planet's surface.

Also, the planet (and thus the atmosphere) does have a constant energy source: the sun.

I'm not 100% why an enhanced greenhouse effect produces warming at night, but the best explanation I can think of off the top of my head is simply that, since the planet continues to radiate energy even when it isn't being struck by solar energy, and since the greenhouse effect will warm the planet so long as the atmosphere is receiving infrared energy from Earth (this makes sense, because we know that the moon, which doesn't have an atmosphere, and thus no greenhouse effect, has enormous variation between daytime and nighttime temperature), an enhanced greenhouse effect will result in warmer nighttime temperatures.

Scientists point to warmer nighttime temperatures as evidence of an enhanced greenhouse effect because if, say, the warming were resulting from an increase in solar irradiance, the bulk of the warming would take place during the day, when the planet is receiving energy from the sun.

Dana's explanation here:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Might make more sense to you.

Hope that helps.

Answer 10

Yes - Most definitely.  Here's a 'science' that cannot be proven by objective standards, so those who want it to happen actually vote on if the science is acceptable to the majority, or the consensus.

Some view a group of scientist like a courtroom where a good closing argument can win over mathematical proof.

If global warming was real, and if the world was in danger, we would be building nuclear power plants throughout the country.

However the Earth isn't in danger.  This is just the politicians who are looking for a power grab, and a reason to raise taxes.

Global warming is the greatest hoax played on man in the last 100 years.

Answer 11

Are you really saying GW is a religion?  Wow!  That is news to me.  As many scientists as you find that say GW doesn't exist you will find twice as many that say it do!  How can you ignore the facts that have been gathered?

Answer 12

You know it's funny because you talk about global warming as just a religion and say there's "so much overwhelming evidence that global warming is not true", and yet you don't even understand the basic science of the greenhouse effect.

Then you link a bunch of "evidence" from a science "coalition" run by a former energy lobbyist, a website called "deadfishwrapper", the right-wing think tank Heartland Institute, and Senator James Oil Man Inhofe.

Then you try to undermine the scientific consensus by linking an article with 26 scientists who "leave little doubt. Earth is getting warmer. Humans are the most likely cause."

Then you start talking about Mars - one of the oldest, most easily debunked, and desperate refuges of global warming denial.

I mean really, I don't need to say anything.  You make the AGW case brilliantly.  In order to maintain AGW denial you need to read right-wing propaganda.  If you listen to the scientists, you can only accept the reality of AGW.

Do you know how much colder the planet would get if there were no greenhouse gases?  33°C.  Your 'cold at night' argument is laughable.

Answer 13

Out of the 500 scientists contacted only 26 agreed.  That is what I call a consensus!

I will let Micheal Crichton explain his theory of environmentalism as a religion, as he can say it a lot more eloquently:

I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.