The North Pole is melting
 

http://www.socc.ca/seaice/seaice_current_e.cfm
http://www.socc.ca/images/seaice/current.png

http://intothegreyzone.blogspot.com/
http://unv.net/2007/TECH/science/08/...eut/index.html
The more ice free sea there is , the more heat is absorbed - which leads to more ice melting and more ice free sea, and so on. It's a "positive feedback loop", the melting is not linear.
I don't know if global warming is all our fault but I think this is significant news.

All I want to know is whether or not the property value is going to rise, on my house in Omaha, due to its being on beachfront property.

We need to reclaim the CO2 from the air, and fast. Cutting emissions isn't enough, really. We need to actually take the CO2 out of the air, and convert it to electricity.

From that site...

This major decline in sea ice extent is consistent with the general consensus in the sea ice community that the loss of sea ice is accelerating and anthropogenic climate warming is one of the main causes

This major decline in sea ice extent is consistent with the general consensus in the sea ice community that the loss of sea ice is accelerating

Maybe, I've also seen data showing just the opposite, which ironically blamed global warming too.

but..............

anthropogenic climate warming is one of the main causes

Bullocks...

I won't get into this too much this time but there is strong evidence of a 1500 year warming/cooling cycle. There is NO evidence of human global warming, period, nothing, not a scientific shred, but there is plenty of evidence of this cycle. Correlation does NOT equal causation, period.

There are many sites talking about this ice melting. I should have found another, I don't know and cannot say that global warming it's all our fault

There is a ton of evidence, but it's circumstantial. Here's the thing: those big brained people out there who are experts on such things, who have access to all the data and can interpret it correctly, who have the necessary experience and training, are all pretty much in consensus that the human race has had an effect on the climate. It's hard to ignore that.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/...arming.html#Q3

The last few years have shown an increase in Antarctic Sea Ice, and the Southern Hemisphere in general has shown a reducing in temperature.

In short the scientists don't know, nor can they explain much of what they find. Very few (if any) hold out that there is change to the global environment, the debate lays in the cause and effect it will hold on society.

I personally do not believe it will hold much of an impact. We have risen .2 Degree Celsius since the mid 19th Century according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and with that have seen the biggest economic, social, and technological boom ever in history. I'm not saying lets turn the heat up and keep it going, but it obviously is not as bad as Gore makes it out to be.

Who cares if it's anthropogenic? If the poles melt and change the patterns of air and water currents, that's a major problem.

I agree.
To a point.

I mean, I'm sure that you are correct. The fossil record shows that climate change is cyclic. We're probably due. Not too much that we can really do about that. Adapt, I guess.

However...to claim that all of the pollutants, that mankind has belched into the atmosphere just over the past hundred years, have not had a significant effect is a bit naive. Don't you think? Seriously? I mean it has to have had some impact on all of this. Even if it's just a simple escalation.

I'm gonna run outta ice for cocktails.

OMG! What about Santa and the elves and the reindeer???
The pole will remain after the ice is gone, until the theoretical flip-flop thing.
(Yeah, sorry)
Still and all, Omaha becoming a beachfront anytime within our timeframe seems highly unlikely.

I'm curious about this... Granting for the sake of etc. that the current warming trend isn't caused by human behavior (which I'm not convinced about, but granting it even so), do you believe the things people are saying about the end-game of the warming trend? The OP is fairly dramatic as a result--and people more credible than Al Gore have been talking about massive flooding and other catastrophic weather events related to global warming. Do you believe that's coming?

Second question, only sort of related. Do you believe that if we altered our behavior, we could ameliorate the effects of this (granted-for-the-sake-of) non-human-caused phenomenon? Is even the most massive world-wide effort enough to impact this (granted-for-the-sake-of) natural cycle? Or are we on this roller-coaster without any brakes for as far as it takes us?

There is a 100,000 year cycle (Ice ages anyone) and they also surprising found a much milder 1,500 year cycle. It is this cycle that we are in (well we are always in it but its the warming cycle of it) and if true it WILL get a bit hotter and then, again as seen in the middle ages, it WILL get colder again. This is documented by both polar ice cores and corroborated by history. Europe was warmer in the times of the Romans, got cold in the middle ages (which caused much of the problems) and is getting warmer again.

So you tell me is the very minimal warming effect human produced CO2 causing offset by the particulate pollutants which would reflect sunlight? No one knows but the one thing thats apparent is that its very MINOR. Hell we might even be slowing down the warming with our dust clouds acting much like increased cloud cover. I used to fly small aircraft and being around Chicago you could always find it first by the big brown cloud before you saw it over the horizon.

We don't KNOW the effects but I do not think they are anywhere near worthy of acting all hysterical about it. As you know from my past postings it annoys me to no end to have people with absolutely no scientific backgrounds or even interests acting like we have to do SOMETHING now in some feel good gesture. Not that you fit this group of course, but you don't have to ask around to long to find someone like that.

I'm no scientist by any stretch of the imagination, but to reverse the line of thinking, why, as NOT being one, should I be irresponsible about my place in all this? Isn't it better to err on the side of helping, even if the data isn't complete?

/me goes outside and burns leaves for a week and cuts down a bunch of trees, then hauls them off in her massive 8mpg SUV...

I'm all for cutting down on pollution, but I'm not for scaring the public over a chimera.

Environmentalists are trying to take the 'easy' way to get public environmental concerns going with the 'OH MY GOD WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!' type of alarmism. The problem is that in the long run, that doesn't work, and doesn't change the social conscious. When it turns out we are not all going to die people will go back to not caring and might even go overboard out of resentment for being duped in the first place.

Crying wolf isn't what we need, we need people actually caring about the environment for its own sake. Only then will you see real changes in lifestyle.

I am, and always have, considered myself an environmentalist. The best thing Clinton ever did, in my opinion, is the massive Federal Park land grants. I believe we need to clean the air, water, and need to have massive investments in Wind/Air/Tidal energy generation.

I do, however, believe that the environmental "cause" has been hijacked by global socialists and the anti-globalization crowd. By running around saying the sky is falling, and taking the focus away from key pollutants (sulfates and nitrates) and onto CO2 is ubsurd. There is very little evidence out there already, and the evidence there is contradicts itself at every turn that CO2 causes global warming.

If we want to save the environment, clean the air/water/land I'm all for it. However I do not want my cause to be hijacked because people don't want industry in China to go up because they do not want a stronger global economy.

Seems a lot of ice has been melting and there hasn't been a devastating rise in ocean levels yet from what i can tell. This seems to be mostly ocean ice melting and the problem may be with land ice.. however from what i remember, when water freezes it expands. So when this water in the ocean thaws wouldn't it create more space in the ocean that the melting land ice can then fill? Also when the ice on the land melts and runs off the land the weight on that land is then relieved some and the land can then rise a little.

So does that mean all the global warming alarmist that were trying to convince us that every coastal city would be underwater are wrong?

You know those cute pictures with NYC underwater?

How the hell do you turn C02 to electricity... (!).

I think this is rather a simplification. It takes a lot of water, clearly, to raise sea level.

The important issue is the trend (or not, given there are always fluctuations) as well as the reflectivity change.

Most people well understand the Chicken Little effect you seem to focus on, but many also manage to ignore the hype in favor of the actual Data. It might help the discussion to keep in mind both sides of the information when formulating opinion. Case in point:

This seems to be a relatively sound statement of scientific consensus, but in the very next breath you choose to Ignore much of the opinion held by the very same community of scientists, in an attempt to support your beliefs:

There are available, vast reams of data concerning the ways in which CO2 plays into Global climate, and though I agree no one theory or hypothesis can explain the full effect, any truly logical interpretation of the information would show cumulative effect in play. Its all good and fine to get pissed off at the Hype Ustwo, I am as well (though for different reasons), but to use that as a reasoning for hiding ones head in the sand is almost as ignorant.

Has anyone seen "An Inconvenient Truth." Gore presented a very convincing argument for the causation of CO2 and Global warming. I don't know about you all, but I'd rather not wait for it to get 122 degrees outside (which has happened in India already) before finally acting.

Al Gore refuses to debate anyone on the other side, care to ask him why?

An inconvenient truth is propaganda, nothing more, and like all propaganda its very convincing if you don't know what you are looking at.

...because Al Gore invented in the Internet.

He's not a scientist, nor has he ever claimed to be. Demonize him all you want, but he is speaking on behalf of scientists. Those are the people to debate with. I'd no sooner expect Al Gore to debate on climate than I would expect that Mac guy from the Mac commercials to explain the finer points of Mac OS X. He's a spokesman. Surly you must realize this.
An Inconvenient Truth really isn't propaganda. It's too bad you can't see that.

Of course CO2 plays a part in the climate. My first encounter with the global warming climate theory with CO2 playing a part was in the early 80's, it focused around why Venus was hotter than it should be based on its orbit. I've NEVER doubted CO2 plays a role, what I do deny is that human produced CO2 from the burning of fossil (and wood) fuels has had any measurable affect on the climate. Undoubtedly it plays a part, but its like blaming one French fry on why an obese person is fat. Sure it played a PART, but if they never saw that fry they would still be fat.

If the warming trend is inevitable, as will be our next ice age for that matter, I have to ask why anyone would make to make token, but expensive gestures that do nothing but lower the quality of life of humans across the globe.

Interestingly the best hydrocarbon fuel engine at 100% efficiency produces only CO2 and water as 'waste'. This would be a wonderful achievement and in fact we are getting close to this at a practical level. Instead we are labing CO2 as a pollutant which is just insane.

All global warming advocates have are 'computer models' in their favor so to speak. Well those same models can't 'predict' the global cooling of the 70's can't recreate any past climates, yet we are suppose to trust them as a crystal ball for the future?

Pardon me for doubting.

Bottom line, as most people here have pointed out, there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that anthropogenic activity has had a significant effect on the global increase in temperature since the 1970s. There is virtually no disagreement about this among the scientific community.

Every "scientific" argument the deniers make (that I have seen) is very easily debunked, just as every "scientific" argument the creationists make is easily debunked (or the Holocaust deniers, or the HIV/AIDS deniers, or the smoking/cancer deniers, or the round earth deniers, etc.).

For example, the argument that there have always been climate cycles is certainly true, but the causes of those cycles (e.g. periodicity in the earth's rotation or sunspot variation) cannot explain the recent warming.

It should also be pointed out that the scientific community in general is inherently conservative. A consensus of this kind takes many years to develop, after all the counter-arguments have been addressed in all possible permutations, in great detail in the peer-review process. This in fact is one of the criticisms of the IPCC and other formal bodies, namely that they strive to be so careful in their conclusions that they end up about 5 years behind the science, which currently is implying that the situation is a lot worse than previously thought.

Global warming denialism logically is a form of conspiracy theory, since it has to explain why thousands of scientists all over the world and international scientific bodies have all come to the identical conclusion. If that conclusion were wrong, then there must be a grand, global conspiracy of some kind that involves just about every climate science laboratory in the world.

The fact that you think this saddens me. Its quite amazing how a population in the information age can be so susceptible to what amounts to propaganda.

And lets pretend your blanket statement was true. There was a consensus that man would never fly at one point by the scientific community. There was a consensus that animals were spontaneously generated by their environment. There was a consensus that nuclear fallout was safe after the initial exposure.

Consensuses mean absolutely nothing in science. Nature is not a democracy.

But just back to your original point....

http://www.oism.org/pproject/index.htm

From what I gather they had over 17,000 signatures from scientists, engineers, an other doctors.

Among the scientists qualified in the field, there is no consensus that global warming has human causes. I hate to break your bubble, really.

As my Psych Professor repeatedly says, "Corrolation does not mean causation!"

Temperatures have been going up since the mid 19th Century, and industry has increased since the mid 19th Century. These have two things in common, but there's no evidence one causes the other. The EXACT same data can be used to say Global Warming pushed industrialization along... absurd isn't it?

Can those computer models explain the Medieval warming trend when Greenland supported a Viking colony of 10k people, with all their livestock (approximately 3-4 per person)? Or when the French were complaining that the English started making better wine then them? The answer is no, they just ignore it hoping we will too.

Conspiracy theory? You misunderstand the argument because you don't want to hear it. People don't deny the world is getting warmer, the cause of it is under contention by scientists worldwide. You think there is a unanimous scientific contention of manmade global warming? Then you need to do read a lot more.

NASA recently announced there is global warming on Mercury, Venus, and Mars... is that because our industry? Oh nevermind, NASA is in on the conspiracy. Nothing to see here people...

The logical fallacies of global warming denialists are easy to demonstrate. Here are some nice examples.

First they often say that scientific consensus is meaningless because, for example, nature is not a democracy. Then they attempt to refute global warming by claiming that there is no scientific consensus. This of course contradicts their own logic; you can’t have it both ways.

Second, there’s what we might call the “some guy said on the web” fallacy. Global warming denialists don’t support their claims by citing peer-reviewed research articles. This strategy would fail miserably, because the overwhelming scientific evidence is not in their favor. So instead they cherry-pick stuff from the web. For example, they cite web petitions that anybody could sign numerous times, and claim that these petitions prove that there is no consensus among “scientists qualified in the field”. Of course, they fail to point out the obvious, namely that the “some guy said on the web” plea can be used to prove absolutely anything you want.

Third, we have the time-tested “strawman” argument, in which the denialist tries to make scientists look stupid by misreprenting their arguments, which he obviously does not understand. The most common of these among the denialists is the “correlation does not prove causation” plea, but close on its heels is the “models can’t predict what I don’t want them to be able to predict” hope, which is more wishful thinking than anything else.

There are many others, and I’m sure we will continue to see them. What is encouraging, however, is that the denialism community does show signs of progress. In the mid 1990s they were claiming that global warming per se was a hoax, loudly and swaggeringly. Now they seem to have abandoned that proposition. Whether this progress was purely a political strategy (after all they don’t want to look like complete fools to their constituents) or whether it really is an embracement of the science is an open question.

This is another example of the dodge, and an attempt to sideline a serious discussion with something irrelevant to our earth. Temperature fluctuations on any other planet mean virtually nothing to the climate here, short of major changes in the solar output. While there are data pointing to cyclical changes in the star we orbit, they too have not been adequately shown to be a player in the climate shift we are experiencing. So...here you not only manage to claim the invalid "Corrolation does not mean causation" argument, you then try to use it to support a theory no planetary scientist would ever bring up, for fear of getting laughed out of the Lab. Though there is not consensus that CO2 is causing this shift in temperatures, there IS consensus that the gas can increase temperatures when added in bulk to a system that cannot remove it quickly enough. This is not in doubt within the community.

You misinterpretted me. What I was saying is there is a link between temperature increase and the growth of industrialization. One can easily argue that the increase in temperature relates to a longer and more stable growing season for those growing on the American plains and up in norther Europe, where the major industrialization countries were placed. One can then use this corrolation to argue that the increased yield helped specialization and therefore education to increase the scientific breakthroughs we now know as the Industrial and Post-Industrial eras.

Much like how historians now cite the Black Plague as a major stepping stone on the path to the democratic and populist movements now encompassed as "Western Society." It's absurd at first to think of that, but the corrolation is there. The plague killed millions, an estimated 1/5-1/3 of the population. Nobility no longer had the serfs to work the fields, nor the ability to prevent the free movement of said workers. The peasants could now demand increased salary, better treatment, and more control over thier own lands. It became their own lands because the nobility no longer could control or maintain it, or their own expenses, so they sold or leased off the property. Suddenly the merchant class boomed, families rose and families fell. I'm not even going to go into the religious aspects of it, as the plague has even been cited as a justification for Luther's split with the papacy.

My current book I'm reading and about 1/2 way through is 'The Ancestors Tale' by Richard Dawkins.

For those of you who don't know who he is, he is an evolutionary biologist who wrote 'The God Delusion' and if you still don't know who he is, he was married to Mrs. Garrison in a South Park episode.

He's kind of a dick about his opinions, which explains why I like him even when I don't agree with him 100%.

He is a premiere evolutionary biologist. One of my few regrets is that I didn't persue evolutionary biology as a carreer. Its something I'm a true natural at, I set the curve in an 800 person class without cracking a book, and if you show me an animal I can almost trace its evolution just based on the physiology and ethology. Potential perhaps wasted but I can't complain.

Now most of you have already stopped reading, but for those who haven't I'm sure you are wondering how this all ties into this thread.

Well just in two points. One was a part where he was talking about the theory of plate techtonics. At the time in the 60's this was still contriversial and he mentioned how after a lecture on it his professor took a vote in the class what their thoughts were (50-50 btw). He lamented that a vote was taken as truth is not determined by voting and it sends the wrong message to the students.

Then he mentioned how antartica was once sub-tropical (and it was at the pole, it must have been an amazing place with amazing adaptations due to the light/dark cycle and if I had stupid money I'd sponser a major paelentological dig there).

You see there were several periods of time where the poles had no ice at all, and at least once it appears the world was 100% covered with ice. Climatology really isn't a big enough word to cover trying to understand this, its really planetology, though even that doesn't cover it as the sun figures into the equation directly and perhaps most strongly of all.

You can argue until you are blue in the face about what you THINK is happening, but really no one knows. None of the current models can explain the cooling in the 1970's or the little ice age. In fact some are going so far as to try and claim they didn't happen in order to make the models look better. No one knows why Europe was warmer in Roman times, and while deforestation was once blamed for the Sahara desert now being a desert, it seems its far more complex than ancient humans cutting down trees for ships. Hell climate change is a possible culprit for the weakening of the Roman empire according to some historians.

The problem is we don't rightly know how the system works.

Now you can say the logical choice would be, since we don't know, we should make sure we don't do anything that might affect this. In most cases I do agree with this type of thinking, but not here. Mostly because the solutions are such that either they are expensive and would make NO impact on the climate like Koyto (even Koyto supporters have admitted this) or are so restrictive that they become not expensive but repressive. Real DATA, not computer models but monkey see monkey measure data does not support the conclusion that we are the cause of a warming trend.

Compared to natural green house gas sources, humanity is pretty weak. Perhaps the worst offenders are not our cars, but our cows, and even then, we may have billions of livestock animals, much of those have just replaced the original fauna such as the buffalo, Elk, an large ruminants, so how much of an increase I'm not sure.

My point is you don't change millions of peoples lives on a unproven chance. The same type of people, and I'd guess some of the same people who want this now are the same ones that thought we should blacken the poles in the 1970's to prevent the great global cooling that would have starved millions of us by the 90's had it been true. They lamented the governments lack of interest and how they wouldn't do anything until it was 'too late'. Then a mere 5 years later, its all about the global warming.

I beg to differ, there is plenty of evidence pointing to the cause of the little ice age....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

I also beg to differ on humanities contribution to global warming, these are also well documented....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

But you are right that Dawkins is married to Mrs. Garrison, and righfully so, as his "opinions" have been accepted as fact, when they are nothing more than delusions, which have been thrown out to the masses in order to sell more books. Thank God for free enterprise.

This is another favorite tactic of global warming denialists. They reference distinguish scientists in a context that implies that those scientists themselves have serious doubts about global warming, when the truth is quite the reverse.

Dawkins for instance would consider anybody who uses his books to cast doubt on global warming as kooks or in the pocket of oil companies, or both.

There is a small difference between a fringe group of the community making a statement on hypothesis, and the vast majority of an entire community of multiple fields expressing support for a theory. You claim to be scientifically minded Ustwo, yet the way you express logic does not point to this as reality. When the Global cooling hypothesis was in play, virtually no one took it seriously due to a complete lack of supporting Data. The current support for Global Warming however, has become mainstream thought in the scientific community. Timelines are increasingly important in this consensus, and have added a certain level of momentum to a desire to act.
As visible changes predicted my science begin to be documented (polar melting as an example), the perceived need for action is increased, and society begins to pay more attention to the science. As for the "mere 5 years later" statement, I am sure you are aware that many more scientists were studying the warming trend at the time, than were involved in Snowball Science...but this does not support your stance, and is easily ignored in light of that.

Oh I was sure Dawkins was a global warming guy, I never claimed he didn't support it in the least, but I do respect his evolutionary biology work. Dawkins is as bad as anyone on the political side and I tend to glance at those as he will use out of context quotes or even bogus ones of GW as supporting his position on religion. It is the current book I"m reading on the subject of evolution. The nice thing about something that happened 100 million years ago is that people forget their politics when talking.

Honestly I'm the only scientist HERE in this thread, but I like to try to get people to think a bit differently than what they are spoon fed. Instead one person attacks Dawkins as a hack the other tries to claim I'm using his name to make me look better, and a third I'm not sure what is talking about.

Tecoyah the global cooling scare (and the temperatures DID go down) was in the late 70's by the early 80's thats when the scientific community started to talk about global warming. Those are the 5 years I'm talking about. I'm not denying there might be a warming trend, I do not think its human caused though. This does not put me in a fringe unless you are talking about whats in the media. I'd put any member of this fringe vrs anyone else in a debate about the science behind human caused global warming. Its not enough to show its happening, you must show we are a the problem.

If you can find me a global warming model that would explain the past climates I might take notice, but they can't show the last 100 years which are well documented, how the hell do you expect anyone with a clue to believe they can do the next 100 years? Hell they don't even agree with each other, but since they all show 'warming' they are all equally bad right? Garbage in garbage out.

Oh and Dave, what are you begging to differ on? Your thoughts, as you just cut and pasted an article I am already familiar with (the information not the source) and the second article didn't say anything.

I want you three to take a look at this diagram.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...nspot-bfly.gif

In light of davids first quote, what does this tell you?

You should know by now, none of my posts make any sense. :) I could've posted many articles and countless pretty graphs to make my point, but I'm to damned lazy...Ok, just one pretty graph

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p...e_400kyr-2.jpg

Carbon dioxide during the last 400,000 years and (inset above) the rapid rise since the Industrial Revolution; changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun, known as Milankovitch cycles, are believed to be the pacemaker of the 100,000 year ice age cycle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

Your graph may be prettier Ustwo.....:)

I find it very interesting that CO2 started rising 100 years before Industrialization.... yet industrialization is to blame.

Really? That is surprising, since no scientist would have been fooled, as you were, by the methodology of the Seitz petition that you cited above:

Here’s the petition text:

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p37.htm

If you scroll down, you’ll see the text “Please send more petition cards for me to distribute.”

Any practicing scientist (such as myself) will find this absolutely hilarious. Not only can I sign the petition multiple times, but I can order more and distribute them to all my friends to sign, and they too can get multiple copies. We can have a party and invite the whole Elk’s Lodge. No wonder the petition has 19,000 signatures. Science sure is great, I can make it say whatever I want to.

Before hearing that you’re a scientist, Ustwo, I would have thought the chances were zero that any scientist would be so gullible. Sorry to have to tell you, I still think the chances are zero.

Nice example of how “correlation doesn’t prove causation” vanishes like a ghost whenever global warming deniers talk about sunspots.

Anybody who wants to claim that solar radiation is responsible for the recent rise in temperature, feel free to explain the following data.

http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/5743/sunspotsuc8.gif

This is a graph of four different measures of incident solar radiation, followed by the observed temperature rise since 1975. These are (a) sunspot number, R; (b) the open solar flux Fs from the radial component of the interplanetary magnetic field; (c) the Climax cosmic ray neutron counts C; and (d) the total solar irradiance, TSI. Sharp readers will note that while the temperature has been rising, the solar radiation overall trend has been slightly falling.

Go ahead, propose a causal model that explains how a slight negative trend in solar radiation can cause a large positive trend in temperature. The scientific community would be very interested in seeing it.

Ref:Lockwood and Froelich, 2007, Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series A 463: 2447-2460.
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media...pa20071880.pdf

Hint: stable isotopes.

I'm glad we have actual scientists on the board but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to interpret the data. No offense meant to raveneye or Ustwo, its just that most members aren't practicing scientists, and I don't think thats necessary to have an informed opinion on global warming. I've said this before in similar threads, just open your eyes and look around, profound changes are already under way. A constant barrage of "this is a natural cycle" isn't going to cut it anymore. Theres nothing natural about burning untold billions of tons of fossil fuels over several hundred years. Almost anyone can see that. Almost.....

Nice example of something Ustwo never said.

And how would you know what that natural cycle is to know its not cutting it?

If there was a natural warming and cooling cycle (and I only say if as it applies the current trends, we know there IS one regardless) how would you know if it 'cut it'?

Saying things like 'profound changes' mean nothing, we don't even know what normal changes are. How long have we been studying this kind of thing with any precision? Decades at best, with a smattering of temperature data and some anecdotal reports.

I can make two claims with equal certainty. The earth as some point in the future will be warmer. Likewise the earth as some point in the future will be colder. We know this, it happened 1000's of times in the past, and quite personally I'm far more worried about humanity and the next ice age than humanity and global warming, but still both will happen to us.

To sit here and decide that we MUST be doing it based on what we currently know is almost a form of hubris. Some things, man just doesn't have that much say in, one way or the other.

Refer to the pretty graph I posted on the first page, that may help.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6995999.stm

The North Pole melting wouldn't be such a bad thing. Canada and Russia would stand to benefit. We could open up more trade routes and perhaps would have more territory for finding resources. Could you imagine finding a bunch of oil up there, maybe some diamonds?

Perhaps then you can explain the relevance of Ustwo's sunspot butterfly diagram without pleading that correlation implies causation. Ustwo seems to be suddenly reticent about the topic himself.

Just a general comment about the whole CO2 and greenhouse gas problem... Is everyone aware of the impact the world meat industry has in regards to greenhouse emmissions and environmental degredation? The meat industry generates more CO2 than all combined motorized transportion in the entire world (just under 20% of all sources according to the UN's FAO - check website for stats). This doesn't account for huge quantities of more dangerous greenhouse gases like methane, and numerous other nasty details that the meat industry unleashes on the environment.

Now I like a good steak any day of the week, but why is the single largest culprit in greenhouse emmissions never mentioned by environmental groups? Well there's PETA (check out their website too). Al Gore doesn't seem to mention this one in his "documentary" and tasty meat products were plentiful at Live Earth.

Faster than buying a Prius and installing flourescent lighting (which both depend on horribly toxic materials and processes to produce), going vegetarian would be the quickest single measure in the world that would reduce CO2 and greenhouse gasses immediately. ...however, the economic impact would be devasting.

At some time in history, I believe "Greenland" was named that for a reason.

Somehow, I find the opinions of those in a position to actually see all the Data a bit more compelling than speculative guessing by the masses. As complex as this issue is, we are forced to trust in the scientists that have the time, and resources to devote to its study:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/n...stm?globaloney

The Executive Summary on the status of the polar bear was just released to the US Fish and Wildlife Service on Sept. 7, and you can read it here:

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/special...ve_summary.pdf

As many of us here are aware, the USFWS proposed to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species act in January of this year. At that time they ordered the USGS to assemble the best science available on the viability of the polar bear population to inform recovery efforts. This Executive Summary is that report.

It is not good news. Here are some excerpts:

Their predictions are derived from a simple calculation of the environmental carrying capacity for the bear population:

This is a very optimistic analysis, as it ignores recent data that suggest the sea ice is disappearing at a much faster rate than assumed here, and it completely ignores other factors that can cause extinction such as genetic inbreeding and random drift, demographic stochasticity, environmental stochasticity, and hybridization with the grizzly bear. Even if a few polar bears are theoretically capable of subsisting on the dwindling habitat, the probability that they are wiped out by disease or chance climate fluctuation or just bad luck during any given year will be very high.

I think that by mid century, and perhaps well before that time, the population will be mostly genetically subsumed by the grizzly bear, since they seem to be hybridizing more and more frequently as the grizzlies migrate ever more northward with the warming climate.

Meanwhile, while we sit here yabbering, as of this month the Northwest Passage is navigable for the first time in recorded history.

SOMETHING is happening. And it's a bigger SOMETHING than humanity has ever witnessed before. It would be logical to see if it's something we can do anything about.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell we are powerless to change something as complex and overwhelming as a change in Climate. Instead we might work on adaptation and contingency plans. At this point it makes little sense to point fingers at the cause....but lowering emissions is a good idea from virtually every conceivable angle regardless.

Precisely engineer fine details of climate, no. But we certainly can strongly influence the global mean temperature, as we have been doing for the last 50-odd years.

And we can continue to do so in the future, as the IPCC has carefully shown in its physical basis report:

Attachment 16312

And here are the scenarios referred to in the figure:

OK. Which alternative included the people coming to understand each other?

Love conquers everything except hate, and understanding without love is not.

(I'll confess idiocy)

The easiest way to do this is to stop cuting all the Amazon forest. No one talks about that - just the carbon cars and planes produce. We can have balance but we keep cutting down the filtration/processing/conversion system!

Actually no one talks about it but Plankton are many, many times greater more responsible for CO2 fixation than the rain forest.

http://www.gdrc.org/oceans/fsheet-02.html

Not that I'm all for cutting it down, don't get me wrong, but once again I see a nature will balance aspect to which these scaremongers completely ignore anything which doesn't go their way. Increased temperatures will increase enormously the amount of water fertile to plankton, which will in turn enormously increase the carbon fixation rate.

I haven't had time to really sit down and sift through this thread in the last couple of days, but 'they' always forget the oceans here.

This is where the scare tactics, 'fear not facts' come into play.

These are the same type who said that cutting down rain forest would get rid of the worlds oxygen not long ago.

The rain forest could be utterly destroyed and not much would change, in 02 or in C02, as you said its mostly the oceans.

But this does cut to the heart of the environmentalists who support this kind of thing but are not just useful idiots like our boat climbers from another thread. They figure that you can't get stupid joe six pack to care about bio-diversity. He might not care that a species of frog is about to go extinct or the like, so lets scare him into supporting the cause. It doesn't matter if its honest or not.

The problem, besides being a liar, is that Joe Six pack might be uneducated but hes not completely stupid. Sooner or later the lie is discovered, and nothing changes long term.

As I'm sure everyone knows, its not just the north pole, but Antarctica is melting as well. With the loss of the the sea ice, the loss of the krill that live under it is almost certain. Why should we care???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krill

http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarc...al_warming.htm

Actually, check out the recent polls. About 60-70% of Americans believe global warming is real, caused by humans, and are concerned enough about it that they have made personal sacrifices to cut down their energy use.

It appears that Joe Six Pack has no problem at all telling the difference between the fringe loonies and the scientific consensus. And by loonies, of course I mean the global warming deniers :)

hahaha

It's all pretty simple to me. Global warming is real and so are the global changes in weather. The question is how much we had to do with it, and how much we can control it. The good news is theyre both linked. If we caused it then we can learn to control it and probably will. If we can't control it then all we can do is go on as we are and there isn't much to say.

If you've spent the time to watch the Al Gore global warming tour movie, take a while to watch these. (the entire 9 part series is on google video)
And this

Big Bald Ron wants us all to go watch The Great Global Warming Swindle, which is a very nice example of how not to do effective political propaganda: for example, if you display a phony temperature graph that “disproves” global warming, don’t say you got it from NASA.

"The original NASA data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find," Mr. Durkin said. You can't make this stuff up :lol:

And the list goes on, phony science, phony scientists. One truly wonders why people choose to be fooled by this stuff.

So, the director of the film used bad graphs. I guess that negates the climatologists with PHD's opinions, right?

Its all mans fault! Lets all turn off our computers and stop using cars!
Lord knows that mankind caused the last ice age to end, right?
This is a cycle. The world has always been cyclical in regards to temperature. But now, since MAN is here, its all MANs fault! This shit was going to happen sooner or later. Whether you and Al Gore agree or not, the planet would continue to get warmer if every single human on this planet died today. That's a fact. Nobody can change it.

Yup. Funny thing about data, you can pretend it doesn't exist as much as you want, but it still doesn't go away.

Yup, funny thing about all the other facts that are known that you don't seem to be concerned with.

Like the fact this is a normal cycle in the earth's temperatures.
Like methane contributes to this as well.
Like Atmospheric circulation bringing warmer air to the poles.
Like normal ocean currents bringing warmer water to the poles.
Like clearing sulfuric aerosols from two large volcanic explosions(1982 and 1991) are allowing more direct sunlight into the atmosphere.
Like increased solar activity, which is known to have a direct impact on temperatures.
Like differences in global orbits and the angle of tilt of the axis cause more direct sun to be shining on the planet, causing warmer temperatures.
Like cutting down large wooded areas which contribute to warmer temperatures.
Like water vapor in the atmosphere, which is responsible for trapping twice as much heat as CO2 emissions.


All of those factors, which with the exception of the loss of forests are 100% out of the hands of MAN, contribute to global warming.

> Big Bald Ron:

> Like the fact this is a normal cycle in the earth's temperatures.

Nope, as has been shown in this very thread.

> Like methane contributes to this as well.

So if we reduce our methane emissions, that will reduce global warming? I agree with that :thumbsup:

> Like Atmospheric circulation bringing warmer air to the poles.

Uh, atmospheric circulation can't cause global warming, unless you think that the earth is immune from the 1st law of thermodynamics.

> Like normal ocean currents bringing warmer water to the poles.

Ditto.

> Like clearing sulfuric aerosols from two large volcanic explosions(1982 and 1991) are allowing more direct sunlight into the atmosphere.

Aerosols disappear very quickly from the atmosphere. Mt. Pinatubo's were completely gone by 1994. Any effect on the global temp was a short blip.

> Like increased solar activity, which is known to have a direct impact on temperatures.

Except that solar activity has been declining (if anything) over the last 50 years, as was shown in this thread.

> Like differences in global orbits and the angle of tilt of the axis cause more direct sun to be shining on the planet, causing warmer temperatures.

Sure, and these changes in orbits occur over tens of thousands of years. They can't possibly explain the sudden increase in temperature during the last 25 years.

> Like cutting down large wooded areas which contribute to warmer temperatures.

Yep :thumbsup:

> Like water vapor in the atmosphere, which is responsible for trapping twice as much heat as CO2 emissions.

Sure, but water vapor's residence time in the atmosphere is very short, on the average of about 10 days. So it can't be a forcing. It is certainly a feedback, however. Whenever surface temperatures change, the water vapor adjusts very rapidly, maintaining a constant relative humidity. For example after the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, temps declined slightly for 3 years and the water vapor declined also in response.

> All of those factors, which with the exception of the loss of forests are 100% out of the hands of MAN, contribute to global warming.

Except for the ones that don't contribute :)