Jeb21 said:

I don't get your point. Are you saying that I am an idiot because I have forgotten my 7th grade science lesson? Even if i am an idiot, i can still read, research and learn what I need to know to make a decision. I am always willing to learn.

None of this matters though. Folks who are not idiots, who are actual scientist have agreed to a 97% level, that climate change is real and is the result of man made activity.

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if you are saying global warming is real, and man-caused, and the vaunted 97% figure says CO2,
is responsible , then maybe you should know the percentages....

FLT said:

All these super smart scientist are funded from grants that are paid for with taxpayer dollars. Most of them couldn't even feed themselves with out being on the goverenment give away program . Just a thought. :ranger:

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First, this is not true. Second, our government should put every brilliant scientist we can find on the payroll now.

History has taught us that the society with the technological advantage normally prevails. Can you imagine what the world would be like today if the Nazi scientist had invented the atomic bomb first? or Japan or Russia? Our national security and our success in the world depends upon the very people who you denigrate. And it is not just you. Our society uses the very technology created by these geniuses to ridicule them. We seem to think that break through inventions happen by magic or they grow on trees.

Our most valuable national asset is the brilliant men and women who have devoted themselves to science. We should be thanking them, rather than scorning them.

fl57caveman said:

if you are saying global warming is real, and man-caused, and the vaunted 97% figure says CO2,
is responsible , then maybe you should know the percentages....

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I don't agree with that logic but if we used that logic. Then the folks who oppose global warming should also know the same information. Do you believe if you had asked the membership at large to answer your question without using Google that they could have passed your test? Do you think if you asked the climate deniers in general the same question that they could have passed either?

I am saying that climate change is real because, I believe the scientists (and because I live on this planet and have notice the difference). There are not many things that you can get 90+ percent of scientist to agree on. When they reach that level of agreement you have to take it seriously.

BTW, I know the answer to your question, it took me less than 30 seconds to find it on Google. Knowing that information does not change my position on this issue.

Is it safe to say you and I don't agree on much?

FLT said:

Is it safe to say you and I don't agree on much?

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Actually, we probably agree on most things (I mean we are both on a gun forum - which suggest we have at least a few things in common). We simply disagree about the one topic that most folks disagree about and have disagreed about forever .. . politics.

What I don't understand is when science became politicized. A fact is a fact regardless of your political bias. For example, the earth's climate is changing is a fact and should not be disputed. That is not a political issue. What to do about it or whether to do something about it, is a political issue.

Here is my response to the final question-what to do about it - we need to invest in renewable energy big time. I know that some efforts have failed in the past and I am sure that some efforts will fail in the future as well, but ultimately, fossil fuels are in a limited supply and create greenhouse gases and cause other pollution issues (strip mining, by-products of fracking, oil leaks). None of these things are good - certainly not from a local perspective, and probably not from a global perspective.

If we can break our dependence on fossil fuels then we have an advantage over Russia and China and we can reduce the financial and political power of the middle eastern countries and the of the big oil companies. We also can limit our negative impact on the environment. At some point the rest of the world will also need to switch over to renewable energy. If we are already in the lead in this area (like we were in the lead on atomic/nuclear weapons) then we will have a huge financial and political advantage.

Of course to do this we will need the expertise of the "egg heads" i.e.scientist, engineers and the like.

Do you have a strong disagreement with me on these points?

Great link. That is a very effective analogy. It is also stunningly misleading What the author has done is the equivalent of trying to balance the checkbook by only looking at one side of the ledger. You cannot do it.

The issue is not how much CO2 does the earth naturally put in the atmosphere. The issue is what is the net amount of CO2 does the earth put into the atmosphere compared to mankind's net CO2 increase. You know, given your love of 7th Grade Science, that the earth naturally takes CO2 out of the atmosphere though plants. Here is a more balanced look at the issue

https://skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm

So the land mass of the earth naturally puts 439 gigatons of Co2 in the atmosphere but its plants take 450 gigatons back out (-11 gigaton difference). The ocean puts in 332 gigatons of co2 but absorbs 338 gigatons (- 6 gigaton difference).

We humans put in 29 gigatons of co2 but absorb none of it back (+29 gigatons).

So the earth net co2 is negative 17 gigatons while mankind's net is positive 29 gigatons. Which means that every year a net of 12 gigatons of CO2 remains in the atmosphere. We live in a closed system so the Co2 will always remain in the atmosphere.

fl57caveman said:

the 97% figure, is from a group of 200, not the world's total.

I have no doubt climate is changing in areas of the world, but it is not man-caused ...

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This whole thing was from an Aussie named Cook, who posed the question that asked if they believed that there was such a thing as a global warming trend, and if they thought that ANY of it was influenced by humans. Not a significant portion, a dangerous level, or anything we should worry about. It was not whether or not a .1% average increase over 100 years would be cause for alarm. Many of the "scientists" had no experience in climatology, meteorology, or other relevant field. Many of those same people later withdrew their opinions when they found out how the information was being manipulated.

My assessment is that there is human influence on the climate. We have drastically changed the landscape and certainly from farming, livestock, and industrial activities alter the composition of the atmosphere. There are also other things going on. The important factor is correctly assessing these impacts. Also there needs to be some rationality in what regulations we chose to in-act. Satellites over africa typically show brush fires all over the place that release huge amounts of CO2. China and India release tremendous quantities of CO2. Then there is Al Gore the 'inventor' of the internet that was trying to make a political agenda out of all of this.
I do not have any answers and the sad thing is that the experts do not have any of substantial value either.

Forrest fires are a double whammy when it comes to CO2 because they release CO2 into the atmosphere while killing the trees that could re-absorb the co2.

As for mankind caused the climate change - if you don't want to believe science, just look at places like Mexico City, or Bejing or LA. Look at the strip mining or the fracking. We need to get our collective heads out of the sand and accept that not only are we the problem, we can be the solution.

I'm waiting for all the Global Warming alarmists to explain how man is ultimately responsible for this COLD snap. I yeah, I keep forgetting, they changed it FROM Global Warming to Global Climate Change when it was not following their models. I guess that will give them some kind of out.

I found this on the NYT for you:

Climate refers to how the atmosphere acts over a long period of time, while weather describes what’s happening on a much shorter time scale. The climate can be thought of, in a way, as the sum of long periods of weather.

Or, to use an analogy Mr. Trump might appreciate, weather is how much money you have in your pocket today, whereas climate is your net worth. A billionaire who has forgotten his wallet one day is not poor, anymore than a poor person who lands a windfall of several hundred dollars is suddenly rich. What matters is what happens over the long term.

And while climate scientists expect that the world could warm, on average, roughly 2 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century — depending on how quickly greenhouse-gas emissions rise — they don’t expect that to mean the end of winter altogether. Record low temperatures will still occur; they’ll just become rarer over time.

One 2009 study found that the United States saw roughly as many record highs as record lows in the 1950s, but by the 2000s there were twice as many record highs as record lows. Severe cold snaps were still happening, but they were becoming less common.

“Of course it sometimes gets very cold,” said Todd D. Stern, the United States climate change envoy under President Barack Obama. “Five minutes’ worth of education would tell you that what matters are global averages, and those are going implacably up.”

Mr. Trump, who once called climate change a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese, has recognized its threats where some of his properties are involved. Last week a council in Ireland gave a golf resort owned by the president approval to build two sea walls. An early application for the construction cited the threat of global warming.

Define Long period of time. Scientists are extrapolating what amounts to 1 minute of geological time into broad climate statements for the next 1000 years.

“You can’t tell much about the climate or where it’s headed by focusing on a particularly frigid day, or season, or year, even,” writes Eoin O’Carroll of the Christian Science Monitor. “It’s all in the long-term trends,” concurs Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Most scientists agree that we need to differentiate between weather and climate. The NOAA defines climate as the average of weather over at least a 30-year period. So periodic aberrations—like the harsh winter storms ravaging the Southeast and other parts of the country this winter—do not call the science of human-induced global warming into question.

The flip side of the question, of course, is whether global warming is at least partly to blame for especially harsh winter weather. As we pointed out in a recent EarthTalk column, warmer temperatures in the winter of 2006 caused Lake Erie to not freeze for the first time in its history. This actually led to increased snowfalls because more evaporating water from the lake was available for precipitation.

But while more extreme weather events of all kinds—from snowstorms to hurricanes to droughts—are likely side effects of a climate in transition, most scientists maintain that any year-to-year variation in weather cannot be linked directly to either a warming or cooling climate.

Even most global warming skeptics agree that a specific cold snap or freak storm doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not the climate problem is real. One such skeptic, Jimmy Hogan of the Rational Environmentalist website writes, “If we are throwing out anecdotal evidence that refutes global warming we must at the same time throw out anecdotal evidence that supports it.” He cites environmental groups holding up Hurricane Katrina as proof of global warming as one example of the latter.




So the answer seems to be 30 years

I am still waiting for Al Gore to come and tell us all how "Global Warming" is the ultimate reason for this cold snap.

Oh wait, they changed it from Global Warming to Global Climate Change when the temps stubbornly refused to rise like they predicted. Of course the predicted droughts, floods and super hurricanes never happened, either.