{"id":1514,"date":"2010-01-06T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-06T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yogisden.us\/?p=1514"},"modified":"2014-06-15T05:10:13","modified_gmt":"2014-06-15T05:10:13","slug":"global-warming-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/?p=1514","title":{"rendered":"Global Warming and Me"},"content":{"rendered":"
I’ve been following the global warming controversy for some time. I think in the early 1980’s I saw my first graph of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere vs time and accompanying graphs of average surface temperatures over time. The trend started up in the late 1800’s following the advent of the industrial age.<\/div>\n
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(Note the above graphs and all the rest of the images, unless otherwise stated, are from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change <\/i><\/span>web site<\/i><\/span><\/a>.)<\/div>\n
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I was interested but not too concerned. The issue got another lift when former Senator Gore became a spokesman and helped put out the movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” I didn’t really listen to him. Sorry, I didn’t care for him, so I didn’t listen to his message.<\/div>\n
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Then as the issue developed further Oklahoma’s own Senator Jim Inhofe came out with his message that global warming is just a big hoax. Of course, why scientists would perpetrate the hoax is not explained.<\/div>\n
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The whole time I was sitting back and just reading and pondering, but I was wasn’t reading and pondering very deeply. My position was that Earth may or may not be warming but it might be due to natural cycles beyond our control. I go to lots of energy industry conferences and stuff and since weather is vitally important to our business for a number of reasons I have many meterologists talk about weather patterns. They all acknowledged that the Earth is warming up, but they also said that they thought it inconclusive about whether humans are causing the warming up by our emissions of greenhouse gasses.<\/div>\n
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But now we are getting to the point where the USA and the rest of the world are talking about spending some serious money on the issue. Hundred of billions of dollars. Hey that wakes me up.<\/div>\n
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So I decided that it is time for Yogi to take a stand on this issue. The issue has become so polarizing though that it is hard to find non-biased sources. I’m an engineer and prefer arguments based on science, facts, and logic. I am also not a conspiracy theorist. So where do I start.<\/div>\n
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As luck would have I received the Winter 2010 Issue of “The Bent” which is an engineering honorary society (Tau Beta Pi) journal. There was an article in it Alan S. Brown who is a science writer. The article is “Climate Models and Their Critics.” (The article is not available online as far as I can tell.)<\/div>\n
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Climate models are very important because we cannot model the Earth in a laboratory. We have to model the weather.  The models are very complex and have to take many factors into account. One simulation can take months to run on the most modern supercomputers. The models have got tremendously better over time but they are still approximate. All models are approximate so criticizing a model because it is not exact doesn’t make sense to me.<\/div>\n
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Mr. Brown references the Intergovernmenal Panel on Climate Change<\/a> (“IPCC”). It is an international scientific body that that reviews climate research. Check it out I think they are solid. They won a 2007 Nobel Prize for their work on climate change. Their web site is amazing. They summarize findings from lots and lots of research. It is all foot noted and documented.<\/div>\n
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Here are some of their conclusions from the “Summary for Policymakers<\/a>” from their last report.<\/div>\n
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“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is<\/div>\n
now evident from observations of increases in global<\/div>\n
average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting<\/div>\n
of snow and ice and rising global average sea level”<\/div>\n
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Further:<\/div>\n
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“Observational evidence4 from all continents and most<\/div>\n
oceans shows that many natural systems are being<\/div>\n
affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature<\/div>\n
increases.”<\/div>\n
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And:<\/div>\n
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“Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures<\/div>\n
since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the<\/div>\n
observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.<\/div>\n
7 It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic<\/div>\n
warming over the past 50 years averaged over<\/div>\n
each continent (except Antarctica)”<\/div>\n
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“Continued GHG emissions at or above current rates<\/div>\n
would cause further warming and induce many changes<\/div>\n
in the global climate system during the 21st century that<\/div>\n
would very likely be larger than those observed during<\/div>\n
the 20th century”<\/div>\n
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I could go on and on but I’ll just cut to the chase and say I am now a believer in the concept of human activity causing climate change by causing increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.<\/div>\n
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So what does that mean? Nope I am not jumping over to the Democratic Party. The country still needs to evaluate what needs to be done about the problem. The proposed solutions are very expensive and need to evaluated on their own merit. For example I am totally against giving China 2 cents to help them solve their problems<\/div>\n
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So what about you, have you taken a stand on this issue yet? What is it?<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been following the global warming controversy for some time. I think in the early 1980’s I saw my first graph of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere vs time and accompanying graphs of average surface temperatures over time. The trend started up in the late 1800’s following the advent of the industrial age. (Note the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[671],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-warming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogisden.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}