# Interesting C&D article on Global Warming
**URL:** https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798
**Category:** NYSpeed Off Topic
**Created:** [September 21, 2006, 8:17am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798 "2006-09-21T08:17:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@JayS](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/JayS)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2006, 8:17am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/1 "2006-09-21T08:17:06Z")
I posted this in the CA sues Autos thread but think it deserves it’s own post so people actually see it.
[http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/11408/an-inconvenient-truth-sos-from-al-gore.html](http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/11408/an-inconvenient-truth-sos-from-al-gore.html)
> **An inconvenient truth: SOS from Al Gore. - Columns**
> BY PATRICK BEDARD, September 2006
> He’s _baack!_ Just when you thought the scolding was over and it was safe to pull your ear plugs out, Al Gore has a brand-new harangue going.
> Actually, it’s the same old doomsday prediction he’s been peddling since he was a senator bucking to be President back in the ’90s, only this time it’s packaged as a 94-minute film. _An Inconvenient Truth_ previewed at the Sundance Film Festival last January. “This is activist cinema at its very best,” said the official festival guide.
> You can guess what activated him; his long-playing paranoia about global warming. He and the mainstream media say it’s a done deal. We’re toast.
> “Be Worried. Be Very Worried,” blared the cover of _Time_ in April. “Climate change isn’t some vague future problem — it’s already damaging the planet at an alarming pace. Here’s how it affects you, your kids, and their kids as well.”
> This is, by the way, the same _Time_ that was telling us as late as 1983 to be worried, very worried, that temperatures were descending into another era of “glaciation.”
> Gore’s “inconvenient truth” is that — there’s no tactful way to say this — we gas-guzzling, SUV-flaunting, comfort-addicted humans, wallowing in our own self-indulgences, have screwed up the planet. We’ve hauled prodigious quantities of fossil fuels out of the ground where they belong, combusted them to release carbon dioxide (CO2) into the sky where it shouldn’t be, and now we’re going to burn for our sins.
> This feverish sort of should-and-shouldn’t evangelism plays particularly well these days among those who are looking for something to believe that carries no obligation to sit in a church pew. Nature has left us no scripture, so Gore can preach it as he feels it. Faith, brother. Don’t even pretend to understand. Anyway, humans, except for the rare enlightened ones like Al Gore, are alien trespassers in nature.
> Let’s not dispute the earth’s temperature. It’s warmer than it used to be. As an Iowa farm boy, I learned about the soil we tilled. Most of Iowa is flat, graded smooth by glaciers. The rocks we plowed up in the fields, or plowed around if they were big, were rounded in shape. The glacier tumbled them as it scraped along, and it ground their corners off.
> The North American ice sheets reached their largest expanse about 18,000 years ago and then began to recede. Within 5000 years they had pulled back considerably but still reached south as far as central Ohio. After another thousand years, however, the U.S. was largely ice-free.
> Needless to say, there have been no glaciers reported in Iowa as long as anyone can remember. It’s warmer now. And if it would just warm up a bit more, fewer Iowans would need to trot off to Florida, Texas, and Arizona during deepest winter.
> The long absence of farm-belt glaciers confirms an inconvenient truth that Gore chooses to ignore. The warming of our planet started thousands of years before SUVs began adding their spew to the greenhouse. Indeed, the whole greenhouse theory of global warming goes wobbly if you just change one small assumption.
> Logic and chemistry say all CO2 is the same, whether it blows out of a Porsche tailpipe or is exhaled from Al Gore’s lungs or wafts off my compost pile or the rotting of dead plants in the Atchafalaya swamp.
> “Wrong,” say the greenhouse theorists. They maintain that man’s contribution to the greenhouse is different from nature’s, and that only man’s exhaustings count.
> Let’s review the greenhouse theory of global warming. Our planet would be one more icy rock hurtling through space at an intolerable temperature were it not for our atmosphere. This thin layer of gases — about 95 percent of the molecules live within the lowest 15 miles — readily allows the sun’s heat in but resists its reradiation into space. Result: The earth is warmed.
> The atmosphere is primarily composed of nitrogen (78 percent), oxygen (21 percent), argon (0.93 percent), and CO2 (0.04 percent). Many other gases are present in trace amounts. The lower atmosphere also contains varying amounts of water vapor, up to four percent by volume.
> Nitrogen and oxygen are not greenhouse gases and have no warming influence. The greenhouse gases included in the Kyoto Protocol are each rated for warming potency. CO2, the warming gas that has activated Al Gore, has low warming potency, but its relatively high concentration makes it responsible for 72 percent of Kyoto warming. Methane (CH4, a.k.a. natural gas) is 21 times more potent than CO2, but because of its low concentration, it contributes only seven percent of that warming. Nitrous oxide (N2O), mostly of nature’s creation, is 310 times more potent than CO2. Again, low concentration keeps its warming effect down to 19 percent.
> Now for an inconvenient truth about CO2 sources — nature generates about 30 times as much of it as does man. Yet the warming worriers are unconcerned about nature’s outpouring. They — and Al Gore — are alarmed only about _anthropogenic_ CO2, that 3.2 percent caused by humans.
> They like to point fingers at the U.S., which generated about 23 percent of the world’s anthropogenic CO2 in 2003, the latest figures from the Energy Information Administration. But this finger-pointing ignores yet another inconvenient truth about CO2. In fact, it’s a minor contributor to the greenhouse effect when water vapor is taken into consideration. All the greenhouse gases together, including CO2 and methane, produce less than two percent of the greenhouse effect, according to Richard S. Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen, by the way, is described by one source as “the most renowned climatologist in all the world.”
> When water vapor is put in that perspective, then anthropogenic CO2 produces less than 0.1 of one percent of the greenhouse effect.
> If everyone knows that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas, why do Al Gore and so many others focus on CO2? Call it the politics of the possible. Water vapor is almost entirely natural. It’s beyond the reach of man’s screwdriver. But when the delegates of 189 countries met at Kyoto in December 1997 to discuss global climate change, they could hardly vote to do nothing. So instead, they agreed that the developed countries of the world would reduce emissions of six man-made greenhouse gases. At the top of the list is CO2, a trivial influence on global warming compared with water vapor, but unquestionably man’s largest contribution.
> In deciding that it couldn’t reduce water vapor, Kyoto really decided that it couldn’t reduce global warming. But that’s an inconvenient truth that wouldn’t make much of a movie.
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### Author:  [@Fry](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Fry)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2006, 8:32am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/2 "2006-09-21T08:32:28Z")
Well as much as I want to flaunt that in the face of global warming nuts, I have to admit that the article is from a biased source and they didn’t site their references. But it makes sense. Whatever. I’m naturally skeptical of anything that the mainstream media can ring the alarms for and turn into a scary story.
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### Author:  [@JayS](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/JayS)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2006, 8:51am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/3 "2006-09-21T08:51:14Z")
Some more on Richard S. Lindzen.
Here is one of his articles:
[http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597](http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597)
I don’t have time to read all this at work, but it goes into great detail about the often overlooked water vapor impact, and sites several sources:
[http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse\_data.html](http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html)
If you search “water vapor global warming” on google there are all kinds of articles to read.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Stevil](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Dr.Stevil)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2006, 10:09am UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/4 "2006-09-21T10:09:58Z")
:tup: good read and makes alot of good points
I wish I could find the article I read a while back, but it pretty much stated that under controlled tests, a small group of plants put out more green house gasses than an SUV. Gore is super serial
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### Author:  [@66impalass](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/66impalass)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2006, 1:33pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/5 "2006-10-12T13:33:20Z")
to quote the article you posted
> If everyone knows that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas, why do Al Gore and so many others focus on CO2? Call it the politics of the possible. Water vapor is almost entirely natural. It’s beyond the reach of man’s screwdriver. But when the delegates of 189 countries met at Kyoto in December 1997 to discuss global climate change, they could hardly vote to do nothing. So instead, they agreed that the developed countries of the world would reduce emissions of six man-made greenhouse gases. At the top of the list is CO2, a trivial influence on global warming compared with water vapor, but unquestionably man’s largest contribution.
hrm I wonder why that we should do something in our ability to try to slow the greenhouse effect down. What could we do if we could not controll water vapor. We sould probably limit something that we have control over.
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### Author:  [@Pass\_McGass](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Pass_McGass)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2006, 1:39pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/6 "2006-10-12T13:39:16Z")
Watch both al gore’s movie and Tom Brokaw’s 2 hour special on discovery. Both are VERY informative and really well done. I actually liked brokaw’s special a little better.
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### Author:  [@JayS](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/JayS)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2006, 1:39pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/7 "2006-10-12T13:39:55Z")
> [@66impalass](#):
>
> to quote the article you posted
>
> hrm I wonder why that we should do something in our ability to try to slow the greenhouse effect down. What could we do if we could not controll water vapor. We sould probably limit something that we have control over.
Try reading the whole thing, and maybe understanding it next time. Make sure to read the additional articles that are linked, but be warned there are some big words and science in those.
:tup: for doing exactly what most global warmers do… pick one or two sentences from an article, ignore the rest that doesn’t help your point, and use those few sentences as your entire arguement.
It’s not that it’s something we can control and therefore should. It’s that it’s something we can control, but makes up such a minor percentage of the actual greenhouse effect that controlling it or not makes no difference.
> [@Pass McGrass](#):
>
> Watch both al gore’s movie and Tom Brokaw’s 2 hour special on discovery. Both are VERY informative and really well done. I actually liked brokaw’s special a little better.
I watched Brokaw’s, I will never watch anything by Al Gore. Brokaws was the same flawed science. Not fact, just proof through repetition. Repeat the same stats the leave out the water vapor contribution, and hope eventually it becomes fact.
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### Author:  [@Rx3](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Rx3)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2006, 1:40pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/8 "2006-10-12T13:40:14Z")
WEll I don’t believe in Global Warming after today. It’s fucking snowing. Where’s the warming? 😛
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### Author:  [@66impalass](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/66impalass)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2006, 1:56pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/9 "2006-10-12T13:56:39Z")
> [@JayS](#):
>
> Try reading the whole thing, and maybe understanding it next time. Make sure to read the additional articles that are linked, but be warned there are some big words and science in those.
>
> :tup: for doing exactly what most global warmers do… pick one or two sentences from an article, ignore the rest that doesn’t help your point, and use those few sentences as your entire arguement.
>
> It’s not that it’s something we can control and therefore should. It’s that it’s something we can control, but makes up such a minor percentage of the actual greenhouse effect that controlling it or not makes no difference.
>
> I watched Brokaw’s, I will never watch anything by Al Gore. Brokaws was the same flawed science. Not fact, just proof through repetition. Repeat the same stats the leave out the water vapor contribution, and hope eventually it becomes fact.
:tup: try doign some research about who you are posting articles by, like some one in a different field of climantology
> **Richard Siegmund Lindzen** (born [February 8](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_8), [1940](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940)) is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at [MIT](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT) renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves.
>
> He is a member of the [National Academy of Sciences](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Academy_of_Sciences) and the Science and Economic Advisory Council of the [Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Annapolis_Center_for_Science-Based_Public_Policy&action=edit).[[1]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_S._Lindzen#_note-0) He previously held positions at the [University of Chicago](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Chicago) and [Harvard University](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University).
>
> He was a lead author of Chapter 7 of the [IPCC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC)’s [Third Assessment Report](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Assessment_Report) of 2001.[[2]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_S._Lindzen#_note-1)
and some one, that himself has posted incorrect work
> In September 2003 Lindzen wrote an open letter to the mayor of [Newton, Massachusetts](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%2C_Massachusetts) (Lindzen’s home),[[16]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_S._Lindzen#_note-14) his views on global warming and the [Kyoto Accord](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Accord). He says _“… [T]he impact of_ CO2 _on the Earth’s heat budget is nonlinear. What this means is that although_ CO2 _has only increased about 30% over its pre-industrial level, the impact on the heat budget of the Earth due to the increases in_ CO2 _and other man influenced greenhouse substances has already reached about 75% of what one expects from a doubling of_ CO2_, and that the temperature rise seen so far is much less (by a factor of 2-3) than models predict (assuming that all of the very irregular change in temperature over the past 120 years or so – about 1 degree_ F _– is due to added greenhouse gases-- a very implausible assumption).”._
when in reality
> However the statement _the temperature rise seen so far is much less (by a factor of 2-3) than models predict_ is not correct.[[17]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_S._Lindzen#_note-15) See [climate model](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_model) for more information.
and if you read articles he has written, not just select ones which he has later changed opinion about, he says we are going about this the wrong way. He has other theorys about how we should be handling the limitation of CO2 and CO, which again that article you posted did not mention any effects of.
The fact that CH4 has increased about 150% over pre industrial age levels, scares me, and the fact that carbon monoxide multiplies its effects of CH4.
than you get into the whole situation of who he actually works for
> According to a former [Boston Globe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Globe) reporter and author, [Ross Gelbspan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Gelbspan), Lindzen has accepted money from oil and coals interests for consulting services, expert testimony, and speech writing. In a 1995 article in [Harper’s Magazine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper%27s_Magazine), Gelbsan asserted that Lindzen charged “oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; [and] his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels and a speech he wrote, entitled ‘Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,’ was underwritten by [OPEC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC).”[[24]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_S._Lindzen#_note-21)
so please stop being a blind conservative and open your eyes, go to a wast to energy plant and see how much NOx SOx and COx are scrubbed out by the SDA’s, see what is used to control the release of all of these gases. See the levels of the gases would be released with out these controls. And the fact that there is an expotential increase in these gasses, not linear is another main point that people miss.
I write operation reports for about 5 Waste to Energy plants, I deal with emessions caps of another two plants for a living. You are only reading a very biased report, and not actually doing anythign to educate yourself with the truth.
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### Author:  [@fairgentleman\_Z](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/fairgentleman_Z)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2006, 2:46pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/10 "2006-10-12T14:46:15Z")
I never noticed that you started a new thread on the subject. But I did notice that you still have not replied to my suggestion…
> [@fairgentleman Z](#):
>
> yup, read the whole thing written by an ex-racer and jounalist.
>
> That is true, **only 3.2%** of the total amount of co2 that goes in the atmosphere is produce by humans.
>
> About half that is obsorbed naturally by the earth.
>
> The Keeling curve rises about **only ~.4%** each year (since 1958). This is directly cause per net accumulation of co2 gasses not naturally being absorbed.
>
> So take that $10,000 that you wanted to invest and put it in a savings acount that removes the yearly net profit (notice I am not compounding interest). After 48 years @ **only .4%** it is only $1920. Since that is an ingsignifigant amount by your standards please send that $1920 this way.
>
> I am just going by the truely measurable regions of the curve and not even the predicted 200~250 years of the Industrial Revolution.
>
> [http://members.aol.com/trajcom/private/carbon3.htm](http://members.aol.com/trajcom/private/carbon3.htm)
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### Author:  [@ChevyChase](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/ChevyChase)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2006, 2:51pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/11 "2006-10-12T14:51:28Z")
global warming is a cycle of the earth. deal with it.
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### Author:  [@pdubya](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/pdubya)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2006, 2:52pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/12 "2006-10-12T14:52:48Z")
I really do wonder how much of what we do has an impact on the climate, Take for instance how we had more 90 degree days this year then last i know the changes they say are gradual but it seems that they are more noticeable when they do occur. I know that what we do does play a direct impact on the way the enviromnet reacts and all but it seems the potential is there for it to become worse an worse faster then all these people have predicted. Shits gotta change thats all there is to it.
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### Author:  [@SoloIIscoob](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/SoloIIscoob)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 3:30pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/13 "2007-11-27T15:30:18Z")
Bumpity…
…anyone read the Time Magazine special edition on Global Warming? i found it to be a new realm of reporting on global warming. i.e. not saying what ifs and what could happen, but rather what has happened, what it means and how we MUST change it.
i cant find anything on it online(funny?) but its a special edition TIME issue that is a conglomorate/update of all the global warming articles in TIME in the last couple months/years
here is 51 things we can do…
[http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/environment/article/0,28804,1602354\_1603074,00.html](http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/environment/article/0,28804,1602354_1603074,00.html)
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### Author:  [@Nikuk](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Nikuk)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 3:46pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/14 "2007-11-27T15:46:04Z")
go smoke a doob
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### Author:  [@Rx3](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/Rx3)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 4:05pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/15 "2007-11-27T16:05:25Z")
We cannot do. Many of these ideas seem great on paper, but implementing them properly just won’t work or are not economically feasible. There was a thread on some of this stuff and why $$$ it would be impossible to roll out. Paging JayS.
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### Author:  [@eMKay](https://forums.speedlife.net/u/eMKay)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 4:06pm UTC](https://forums.speedlife.net/t/interesting-c-d-article-on-global-warming/17798/16 "2007-11-27T16:06:37Z")
It’s by Bedard, so that automatically makes it ignorant and biased.