This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Kitsune Nine Tails: If this is supposed to be a "Did Not Do The Research", then the main title entry needs to be updated showing why and how research was not done, same for the listed examples. There are many aspects of global warming that shows get wrong, but many that they get right, so there needs to be some description of what this trope actually means. Otherwise it's not really saying anything.
- Mediocrates: I've tried to expand the page slightly such that it talks about how the reality of the rate of global warming and the consequences of global warming differ from its fictional portrayal. I've also included it as a part of Hollywood Science.
The Nifty: *sigh*, I really hoped this page didn't exist so that I could suggest naming it Global Warming Is So Hot Right Now.
M_K: This page is absurdly biased. It claims the only reason "denial" exists in the developed world is because the developed world hasn't "felt the effects" yet then goes on to imply that it will in "a few more years." Give me a break. "Denial" has more to do with healthy scientific skepticism than the developed world putting its head in the sand. There is a reason why it's called "climate change" these days, not "global warming anymore." It's because the global warming proponents cannot continue to claim that the earth is still getting hotter when all the predictions in An Inconvenient Truth have not manifested and the global temperature ''dropped and entire degree''
in 2007 bringing us back to 1930's levels. Furthermore, temperature has flattened out over the past 10 or 11 years - not increased as the infamous "hockey stick graph" shows. Can we have a slightly less biased intro?
- Mediocrates: First, the page did not say that it was the only reason that the deniers exist, merely that it is one of the reasons that it is as prevalent as it is. A lie in the second sentence, you're off to a bad start. Second, if you actually bothered to read the NASA average global temperature data yourself then you would know that the man in the article you linked is lying. The average global temperature in 2007 was nowhere near the 1930s, it was in fact both 0.6 degrees celsius hotter than the 1930s and an 0.02 degree rise from the previous year's temperature. Third, a skeptic is someone who requires evidence before being swayed to any given side. Most of such people have already been convinced that man made global warming is real, including the scientific community as shown by the fact that no scientific organization of national or international standing denies the existence of man made global warming and 97% of climatologists accept it as fact. A denier, on the other hand, is someone like you, someone who brings out false data in an attempt to prove that it does not exist. Fourth, if you actually knew the meaning of the phrase "climate change" then you would know that what you are saying is crap. "Climate change" is any long term change in weather patterns. It is an umbrella word, and in the modern context it is synonymous with global warming due to the fact that the climate change we are going through right now is one characterized by warming. Fifth, no one gives a flying fuck about the predictions made in An Inconvenient Truth because they are all predicated with the statement "If Greenland melts" or "If the Antarctic Ice Sheet melts," neither of which have happened yet and are pretty extreme situations anyway. Also, it's not a scientific work, it's a popular work. If you actually want to have the discussion then read the peer reviewed literature, which supports the existence of man made global warming. Finally, if your idea of a "less biased intro" is one that contains factual inaccuracies and cherry picked data, then I think we could do without it. Did Not Do The Research indeed.
- T Beholder: So, i looked into this new American sport, clima
xte-flaming. Not via "checking for yourself" pre-packed cheeseburgers of data, naturally. NASA, and more to the point GISS. And the warm October in Russia. Yeah, and massive snowball fallout in hell. If you doubt it's colder in Russia in October than in September, you're very welcome to check — together with whatever Pagett,M.P. grandson told you it's a sane idea. Ah, here goes the real NASA data. Naturally, it turns out to be cherry-picking again. As to the "false data", it would be better to call it "censored" — just as OMGGW inventors honestly did. As to "peer review", it works if it's independent (not copypasta), which one Wegman... oh, wait, here's a whole pile of fun! Including the title.
Civanfan: I propose renaming this trope to something like "Rapid Climate Change", which would allow the page to accommodate examples of both global warming and cooling in fiction, as well as examples of outside sources altering the Earth's climate (alien threats or xenoforming, etc). It would also allow the article to be more easily written in a neutral way, as a dispassionate analysis of the effects of unusual climate changes in either direction and how they would properly work in reality. The focus of the page would thus be more broad, and it would appeal to both pro- and anti-AGW people (and people who don't care either way) without raising too many hackles.
- Mediocrates: There's a slight problem with that, namely that not many people call it that in their fictional works. It's generally referred to as "global warming" in fiction, which is why it is called that here and should remain so. Likewise in real life the current trend bears the name of global warming, and thus the page should be called that. The odd global cooling or xenoforming example should be mentioned, yes, but it can be without changing the name simply by noting the peculiarities in that plot as it does now. Also as it sits it does include a dispassionate analysis of the reality of the current trend versus the fiction portrayal, and please note that the main point of contention, word "anthropogenic," is nowhere to be found in the page, so if you wish to argue against the current state you have to argue that the world is not warming at all, which is something that I doubt you would be willing to do if your objective really was to avoid "raising too many hackles." The page is about as "neutral" (when anyone says that I take that to mean "in line with their position" rather than actually "unbiased") as it can get without running the risk of understating the scientific evidence for and consensus on the anthropogenic nature of global warming. As it sits I'm fine with it, and ultimately the best you're going to get is no mention of it at all so my advice is that you should quit while you're ahead lest you end up starting a real edit war.
T Beholder: So, what part is "stale"? Just as in 1909 in a greenhouse with IR-transparent material, cover allows IR to pass, while a non-transparent cover heats up and gives out heat on its own. And the heat balance means that the Earth as a whole has just enough heat to receive and radiate exactly equal amounts of energy, so the only things that can ever make any difference are Earth's albedo and Sun's brightness, everything else only affects the distribution. Which is offset by the convection anyway. So the horse was, is, and will be dead — because it's wooden. If i failed to notice some recent revolution in thermodynamics, pray tell me. Or did the physical optics changed too?
- reason: Actually, radiative forcings and their interactions with greenhouse gases in keeping the planet warm remain important parts of our understanding of global warming. Your information seems to be a bit stale.
- reason: For The Lulz end education 22/Dec/09 at 08:14 PM by T Beholder @ Changed lines 6 from: [...]
- Mediocrates: Your information is stale because of discoveries regarding how planets absorb and store heat energy. If, as you claim, solar output and albedo are the only things that can control average planetary temperature and that the atmospheric content "just effects distribution," then why is Venus' average surface temperature (735K, even including the night side) hotter than even the single hottest part of Mercury's surface (700K)? Venus is twice the distance from the sun, thus receiving a quarter of the heat energy that Mercury does, and it's albedo is over six times as strong (0.75 Bond versus 0.119 Bond) meaning Venus reflects away into space far more energy than Mercury does. If what you're saying were true, then Venus would be on average much colder than Mercury. The thing is it isn't, in reality Venus is significantly hotter. The reason is its atmosphere. Venus' atmosphere is denser and thus much better at storing the energy that does make it past the albedo, whereas Mercury simply reradiates most of the energy that makes it past its albedo right back in to space. And this is where we reach the point where you are simply wrong. The point of the greenhouse effect is not that the energy absorbed by the atmosphere from the sun is or is not reradiated, the point is where it ends up. Even though the molecules on Earth that absorbs energy from the Sun do eventually reradiate the heat they capture, not all of it is radiated out into space. In an atmosphere like Earth's (and to an even greater degree Venus') the energy that is reradiated is often times simply radiated to and captured by a different part of the same atmosphere. The greater the atmosphere's thermal mass, the greater the likelihood of reabsorbtion, and the cycle of reradiation and reabsorbtion continues to repeat many, many times for each joule. This creates a backlog, heat gets stored up leading to a higher temperature than if you just had solar output and albedo. And further increasing the thermal mass of the atmosphere by altering the chemical composition can increase the temperature by backing up and slowing down the outflow even more. That is the greenhouse effect, and it is still considered valid science. The horse is alive and well. Honestly, this is high school level physics, you really should know all this. The experiment you are referring to does not apply in this case, as it was dealing with solid objects rather than a gaseous atmosphere, nor does it specify where exactly the heat is going afterward aside from simply "not the molecules that were originally heated."
- T Beholder: So the experiment would be wrong analogy for a cover that miraculously absorbs without re-emission?.. Yeah, but there aren't any. As to the Venus and Mercury, re-read the part about albedo. A bleached half-molten mineral mirror reflects the light better than the stinking acid cloud? Oh, duh. And a bonus "duh" because by now not only few fully literate ones, but everyone not banned in Google knows that the whole issue is about hopelessly political media-preaching, "scientifical" part of which every time turns out to hang on cherry picking and "BACKTO+1400-CENSORED". *snicker*
- Mediocrates: Your information is stale because of discoveries regarding how planets absorb and store heat energy. If, as you claim, solar output and albedo are the only things that can control average planetary temperature and that the atmospheric content "just effects distribution," then why is Venus' average surface temperature (735K, even including the night side) hotter than even the single hottest part of Mercury's surface (700K)? Venus is twice the distance from the sun, thus receiving a quarter of the heat energy that Mercury does, and it's albedo is over six times as strong (0.75 Bond versus 0.119 Bond) meaning Venus reflects away into space far more energy than Mercury does. If what you're saying were true, then Venus would be on average much colder than Mercury. The thing is it isn't, in reality Venus is significantly hotter. The reason is its atmosphere. Venus' atmosphere is denser and thus much better at storing the energy that does make it past the albedo, whereas Mercury simply reradiates most of the energy that makes it past its albedo right back in to space. And this is where we reach the point where you are simply wrong. The point of the greenhouse effect is not that the energy absorbed by the atmosphere from the sun is or is not reradiated, the point is where it ends up. Even though the molecules on Earth that absorbs energy from the Sun do eventually reradiate the heat they capture, not all of it is radiated out into space. In an atmosphere like Earth's (and to an even greater degree Venus') the energy that is reradiated is often times simply radiated to and captured by a different part of the same atmosphere. The greater the atmosphere's thermal mass, the greater the likelihood of reabsorbtion, and the cycle of reradiation and reabsorbtion continues to repeat many, many times for each joule. This creates a backlog, heat gets stored up leading to a higher temperature than if you just had solar output and albedo. And further increasing the thermal mass of the atmosphere by altering the chemical composition can increase the temperature by backing up and slowing down the outflow even more. That is the greenhouse effect, and it is still considered valid science. The horse is alive and well. Honestly, this is high school level physics, you really should know all this. The experiment you are referring to does not apply in this case, as it was dealing with solid objects rather than a gaseous atmosphere, nor does it specify where exactly the heat is going afterward aside from simply "not the molecules that were originally heated."
