Weather Channel founder calls Global Warming "a scam."

LOL! Except, you know, for the fact that it's getting warmer, globally.Other than that, he's right, no global warming at all.It's not so surprising that he offers no evidence besides "I'm important; you should trust me. Besides I totally talked to some guys and read some papers." Reputable in what way? Do you think there's a test you have to take before you can start a TV channel, or what?

I don't think anybody has ever argued that global warming puts the planet in peril; simply that human civilization is, now, more dependent on climatic conditions than at any time in the past (as counter-intuitive as this may seem) and that the radical re-jiggering of those conditions is most certainly not going to be good times.Government groups like the USDA have done studies on the effect of warming on things like human agriculture, and the results are not pretty - as much as a 50% drop in yields under some scenarios. We don't produce enough surplus to simply absorb that kind of long-term drop in food production.And that doesn't even begin to take into account the massive displaced coastal populations as their cities are inundated over the next century.A guy who says "oh, it's all a hoax" simply can't be taken seriously. What is a hoax? The fact that human CO2 emissions are the equivalent of multiple Mt. Pinatubo eruptions every year? The fact that CO2 in our atmosphere is a greenhouse gas? The fact that magic gas faeries, in all likelihood, are probably not going to take care of the problem for us? The fact that drastic changes to climate have not, in the past, been good for species that depend on climate conditions remaining the same, like human beings?What, exactly, is he saying is a hoax? He's not very specific and he doesn't present any evidence. Before we all go around wondering if "maybe he's right", as though the vast weight of scientific evidence against him doesn't exist, maybe we could get a better handle on what he's supposedly right about?

Because those things are maybe 10% of the emissions. The problem is not you using incandescent instead of florescent light bulbs; the problem is industrial and manufacturing emissions.The people at the bottom - us - don't need to be guilted into radically changing our lifestyles, because our lifestyles aren't really the source of the problem. It's the big corporations who need to be incentivized - or forced - into altering their installations to generate less emissions.

What jet are you talking about? Gore flies commercial airlines. Everybody knows that. The funny thing about this bit of misinformation is, nobody wants to drill there. There's not a single oil company who thinks there's more than 6 months worth of petroleum in ANWR, which is certainly not worth the ten years of construction it would take to start drilling operations.And, of course, even if they did, since you can't run a pipeline to ANWR, you can only drive the oil out in trucks. But you can only drive to and from ANWR while the ground is frozen, and hilariously, as global warming proceeds, that becomes less and less of the year.So ANWR really isn't any kind of solution. Nevertheless, oil drilling has been legal there for several years now so it's not quite clear who you think is stopping anything at all. It's just - nobody's interested in doing it, which makes reasonable people wonder why there was such a rush to open up an area of drilling that nobody wants to drill in. But then Republicans don't generally let facts get in the way of a good argument, do they?

Doubtless he can explain how a cooling sun results in a warming Earth, and where all those megatons of CO2 are going after being produced by humans.Funny that he doesn't do so. I don't understand who you think is making that assertion. Cataclysms? It's not like warming is going to make the Earth explode. It's just going to result in the deaths a billion human beings, plus mass extinctions of other organisms, is all. Meteorology isn't climatology. This is like a urologist talking about neuroscience. Backed in what? I still don't understand what his position is. Human CO2 is simply spirited away by elves?

So, a blurry white guy gets out of a jet and we're supposed to believe that it's Gore?Why? Hannity said so? Did you question this claim at all, or did you assume that, because Hannity said it on tv, it must be true?And how come Hannity doesn't mention that Gore buys carbon offsets when he travels, regardless of whether it's by charter jet or commercial airline?Could it be because... Sean Hannity is a lying gasbag?At any rate - I don't understand the relevance. How Gore decides to fly around doesn't change the scientific evidence. Gore could be a closet pedophile, but what would that matter? The scientific evidence for global warming doesn't have anything to do with Al Gore's personal characteristics.Is it just that conservatives have only one way to argue - set someone up as a surrogate for the actual issue, and then attack them personally in every possible way? I guess when all you have is personal attacks, that's the only thing you can do. You can't very wll character-assassinate the Planet Earth.

What if they're not wrong, which is a lot more likely?Why is it that the best scientific models are always taken with the caveat that "hey, they might all be wrong", but the dire predictions of some economists that dealing with global warming will "destroy the economy" are always taken without question?Economics isn't even a science. Those guys can't even predict next week's stock market. How could they predict the results of a campaign to reduce carbon emissions? It seems like there's as much money to be made fighting global warming as lost. I still don't understand. What's the hoax? Conservation of mass? Matter actually just disappears when its convenient to do so? Why would it? Where's all the human-produced CO2 going to go? Space? Magic gas fairies?

Why not? The scope of the thread seems to be the supportability of the Weather Channel guy's claims. Not exactly. The caveat is "scientific claims should be taken with confidence commensurate with the evidence that supports them", not "all of science could be wrong just as easily as it could be right."Misunderstanding the nature of scientific tentativity is a tactic you see deniers using quite a bit, as well as shyster defense lawyers on Law and Order. That's the denier argument - there's every reason not to significantly change our lifestyles if there isn't any global warming, because it would "destroy the world economy."It's just a double standard, is all I'm saying. The evidence-based warnings of climate scientists are dismissed as Chicken Little-ism, or hand-waved away because of misleading fake tentativity, but the cataclysmic warnings of the economists, based on no evidence at all, are taken without question as the inevitable outcome of any attempt to reduce emissions. And how does that work? Our crops just magically don't need as much water? Arable land will suddenly appear just as fast as it disappears in other areas?I just don't yet understand the argument. It's like saying "the Statue of Liberty is a hoax." Wait, what? I mean I can go and see it. I can walk up inside it. I can touch it. Where's the hoax? So what if is it just going to flutter out? I'm trying to understand the argument. Surely Weather Guy isn't advancing an argument based on magic? Being sarcastic to highlight the deficiencies of an opponent's vague argument? No, that's not what I accuse Holmes of doing.Look, if neither Weather Guy, nor NJ, nor you are going to actually flesh out an argument, can you blame me for trying to do it for you? It's abundantly clear what I'm asking for, here. I simply want to understand the argument. What, exactly, is being asserted is a hoax?Be specific.

Rubber bands can break if overstressed. The capacity of the climate system to self-regulate is almost certainly restricted to a range of values in the middle; when those values are exceeded, stability becomes negative.

Why would it?It would only be contradictory if two things were true:1) We had reason to believe that the same conditions that caused anomalous warming periods in the past were also present today (they aren't);2) We had reason to believe that the natural carbon sinks were able to keep up with the increased CO2 production from human industry (we don't; quite the opposite.)Imagine a house on fire. It's getting warmer - a lot warmer. But the fact that, in the past, your house got warmer when you turned the furnace up is not evidence that your house is not on fire, now. Sometimes more than one thing can cause the same effect. That the effect was caused by something different in the past is irrelevant if we know that there's a different cause, this time.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Once we know we've exceeded the stability of the midrange, does it matter? We know where the climate is headed. Does it matter how accurate our guess is?What's the difference between "too arid to support sufficient human agriculture" and "really too arid to support sufficient human agriculture"?

Solar output has been dropping, slightly, for most of the past several decades, throughout the major period of warming we've observed.What else do you suppose has changed in the past 200 years?

Insolation changes would be the big factor, and yes, we observe insolation changes - the sun has actually been cooling throughout the major period of warming.So that's clearly not it. Climate is complicated, but in regards to warming, we can simplify it into two aggregate factors:1) The energy incoming into the climate from the sun;2) The degree to which that energy is retained by the climate system instead of radiating out into space.It's sort of like filling a bathtub with the drain open. At a certain size of drain, and a certain setting at the faucet, the water level remains constant because what comes in is balanced by what goes out. This system even reaches a certain level of positive stability, because if the tub starts to fill, the increased pressure at the drain pushes water out faster. If the tub starts to empty, the pressure is reduced, and water flows out more slowly. So the water level stays constant even with slight variations in the faucet flow.There are two ways to make the tub fill, though. One is to start plugging the drain. As the drain closes up, water outflow is reduced and there's a net gain in water level. The other is to open the faucet more. More incoming water exceeds the drain outflow, and there's also a net gain in water level.The climate change deniers say, essentially, that climate change (if it exists) is being driven by the sun, and they'll point to any number of spurious indications in support - "it's warming on Mars;" "it's related to sunspots;" etc. They'll do everything except show you a chart of insolation (that is, the incoming solar energy to the Earth) levels for the past couple of decades, because that data clearly shows a decline in solar output over the past decade or two, when we've seen the most warming.So the only possible explanation is that the climate change is being driven by a reduction in how much heat energy the climate releases to space (albedo), and we know what can reduce that - greenhouse gases.And we can measure the degree to which those gases have increased, directly. And we can estimate from various sources how much greenhouse gas is produced by human industry every year.The question really isn't "how do we know humans aren't responsible", the question is really "why wouldn't humans be responsible, when we know exactly how much greenhouse gas we're putting in the atmosphere, and we know exactly what greenhouse gases do in the atmosphere." Climate change deniers never seem to have an answer for that question, but the burden of proof is really on someone who's essentially asserting that human greenhouse emissions disappear from the atmosphere, by magic.

We have climate data for the past 160,000 years. Direct measurement isn't the only way to measure world temperatures.