lurkette

Isn't there data on global climate/temperature from the fossil record? I don't think this is so ludicrous.

And what else do we have to guide us, the voices in our heads? Or is that just you ?

In the absence of data all you have are hunches and opinions, which do not make the best guidance for decisions that affect millions if not billions of people.

There's conflicting data, but some of it is better science than others, and there's a lot to be said for the understanding that comes from the process of interpreting that data.

__________________
"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

- Anatole France

Superbelt

I know the numbers accurate. I have the documentation somewhere in my stack of research materials.

Unfortunatly I have a conference at Penn State Main Campus tomorrow morning running through Friday. Then the Fiancee is graduating saturday....

I can't get to it until Friday at the earliest. I'll try to though, but no promises.

onetime2

Data suggests that Mars is warming as well.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom..._011206-1.html

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...agedatasuggest

I wonder if our CO2 is leaking to its atmosphere.

__________________
Strive to be more curious than ignorant.

Ustwo

Lurkette – For now lets ignore global warming, I’ll go into some details on that in a later post. Lets just look at the claim of

Now that sounds scary. Its one thing if it was the hottest year of the century, or the fastest warming in 1000 years but in 4 MILLION years and maybe 20 MILLION years, it MUST be bad right? Well I’m afraid its nothing but scare mongering to worry people like yourself about global warming. One of the ploys of the environmentalist extremists is that they don’t trust a non-scientist to come up with the right conclusions on their own. If they said something like “There is a slight warming trend which we have noticed and we are concerned that it may be due to human actives” they don’t get on the news, people don’t vote differently, and they don’t get funding. Instead they count on you not understanding the science involved and scream ‘the sky is falling’ or in this case ‘fastest warming trend in 4 million years’. The problem is they are lying/bending the truth and know it.

There are several ways to date ancient materials. There is carbon 14 dating, which uses the half life of radioactive carbon (5700 years I think) to date organic material. Its based on the assumption of the level of radioactive carbon something accumulated while alive, and then checks that to how much is left. Based on the half life you can get an pretty accurate date, but it only works for material less then 70,000 years old. This of course won’t work for fossils since they are older and no longer organic. In the case of fossils other isotopes are used such as potassium/argon, or uranium/lead to date the material. This is a very good dating method, and has about 1% error but there are two problems with it. The first is that it only works from a point when the material was fossilized, and how long this takes is open to debate. If you assume a constant rate of fossilization (and I’m not sure you can) then this problem isn’t that big an issue, because ALL of your dates will be off by the same amount and in geologic time, not that far. The other real problem is that 1% error. For scientific studies like evolution, this isn’t a problem (though if you are familiar with the idea of punctuated evolution it might be), 1% error is minor. On the other hand lets take a look at it from the concept of climate.

It is VERY difficult to know the year to year temperatures before the late 1800’s since there were not good, consistent measurements. All information comes from reports, agriculture figures, etc, but has no useful numbers. Rather recently deep ice cores were taken from Greenland and the Antarctic which gave a pretty good picture but that can come in a post about global warming, (this is not a post about global warming but scientific dishonesty). Now lets look at that 1% error and the 4 million year warming claim. 1% of 4 million is 40,000 years. In terms of climate change that’s HUGE. You can tell generally if temperatures were warmer or colder, and if the trend was warming or cooling, based on what kind of plant life is found in these layers but there is no way you could tell how fast a change took place. At the same time you would need to consider continental drift as you are talking enough time that the movement of the continents would make a difference in ‘local’ temperatures, and you could generally tell CO2 levels based on the density of plant material, and perhaps CO2 concentrations calcium carbonate layers, but there is no way you could tell how fast a warming trend happened some 4 million years ago even if it took place over night.

While there was a global COOLING period from 1945-1979 (leading to scares of future famine and even an ice age), there has been a rise in temperatures from 1980-2003. This is hardly surprising since we are just coming out of a global cooling period of several centuries and the current temperatures are LOWER then were seen in AD 1200.

In conclusion, while claims of ‘the fastest warming in 4 million years’ sound good to those who don’t’ know the science, they are laughable to anyone who looks at these things objectively. I hope you realize that I am not out to see the planet screwed up, and I do wish to lower pollution levels, but I can not do so while being scientifically dishonest as so many in the global warming crowd are.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

apechild

During the past four months, the temperature in my backyard has fallen by an average of 2.2 degrees fahrenheit per week. At this rate, all matter will cease to posess thermal energy when the temperature hits zero kelvin sometime during Bush's second term.

The folly of linear extrapolation, folks.

__________________
Skwerl. Its wuts fer dinner.

onetime2

Hmmm. mine too. It might be a terrorist plot. Well that, or winter is here.

__________________
Strive to be more curious than ignorant.

Mr. Mojo

<b>'Prehistoric man began global warming'</b>
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...732281706.html

December 11, 2003

Measurements of ancient air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice offers evidence that humans have been changing the global climate since thousands of years before the industrial revolution.

From 8000 years ago, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide began to rise as humans started clearing forests, planting crops and raising livestock, a scientist said on Tuesday. Methane levels started increasing 3000 years later.

The combined increases of the two greenhouse gases implicated in global warming were slow but steady and staved off what should have been a period of significant natural cooling, said Bill Ruddiman, emeritus professor at the University of Virginia.

The changes also disrupted regular patterns that dominated the 400,000 years of atmospheric history that scientists have teased from samples of ancient ice.

"You have 395,000 years of history, which sets some rules, and 5000 years that break those rules," Professor Ruddiman said.

He briefed reporters on his theory at the autumn meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Tuesday. Further details appear in the December issue of the journal Climatic Change.

Previously, scientists assumed widely it was only with the onset of the factory age that human activity had any significant effect on the global climate. The prehistoric changes in carbon dioxide and methane levels have been noted before but were attributed to natural causes, Professor Ruddiman said.

"It's a great new idea we need to talk about and evaluate," said Bette Otto-Bliesner, a paleoclimate expert at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, who was not connected with the research.

Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and methane naturally fluctuate, in part because of changes in the orbit of the Earth and the resulting variations in the amounts of sunlight.

But human activity apparently thwarted expected decreases in the atmospheric concentrations of both gases.

Leading the change was the revolutionary adoption, across both Europe and Asia, of agriculture and animal husbandry, Professor Ruddiman said.

Analysis of air trapped in ice cores drilled from the Antarctic ice sheet show anomalous increases in carbon dioxide levels beginning 8000 years ago - just as crop lands began to replace previously forested regions across Asia and Europe.

About 5000 years ago, the ice cores reflect a similarly anomalous rise in methane levels, this time tied to increased emissions from flooded rice fields, as well as burgeoning numbers of livestock, Professor Ruddiman said.

The prehistoric practices apparently overrode a build-up of ice that models predict should have occurred from 5000 years ago.

AP


This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...732281706.html



So did Adam & Eve have SUV's? Or is it just a nature that makes the temperature rise? What was that Ice Age all about?

When the weather man can predict the weather for the whole month - accurately - then I'll really buy in all this alarmist BS.

__________________
When I jerk off I feel good for about twenty seconds and then WHAM it's right back into suicidal depression

Mr. Mojo

http://www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm

The Cooling World
April 28, 1975
There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.

“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

__________________
When I jerk off I feel good for about twenty seconds and then WHAM it's right back into suicidal depression

Ustwo

Thanks for that last article Mojo, I remember all that, but didn't have a source for it.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

2wolves

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...imate_inuit_dc

When all else fails sue!

Paul Crowley, a lawyer for the Inuit, said they were unlikely to try to sue the United States for global warming because it was probably too expensive. Suing is an idea suggested by some low-lying Pacific Island states that could be washed away by rising sea levels.

As a quick side note we should all remember the nice doctors of the 1950's saying smoking was ok. Science isn't science when you've sold your spirit.

2Wolves

__________________
Nation of the Cat. Forgive maybe, forget .... not quite yet.

apechild

More -

The article does not mention whether or not the magnetic weakening is being caused by SUVs.

__________________
Skwerl. Its wuts fer dinner.

Conclamo Ludus

Maybe its from all the electric cars and hybrids

__________________
Lord, have mercy on my wicked soul
I wouldn't mistreat you baby, for my weight in gold.
-Son House, Death Letter Blues

2wolves

No. Its because the poles are about to switch ends again, western techno civilization falls then the Amish take over!

2Wolves

__________________
Nation of the Cat. Forgive maybe, forget .... not quite yet.

seretogis

I take it that you've seen the NOVA special on this as well? Pretty interesting cycle that we are due to experience, perhaps in our lifetimes. As for global warming, I think it's incredibly arrogant of humans to think that we (or our SUVs) have any significant effect on the planet.

__________________
seretogis - sieg heil
perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost
no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

Liquor Dealer

It's my damned Escalade that's causing the problem - so er.... Guess I'm sorry 'bout that.

2wolves

The initial influences do not have to be global: http://unisci.com/stories/20012/0625011.htm
to have significant results.

"Weather is what scientists call a complex chaotic system whose central property is that a tiny change in one part of the system can become magnified over time into a major change elsewhere. This means that a small localized weather change not accounted for in computer forecasting models can cause the actual weather pattern to gradually diverge from the models until what occurs in the sky over our heads is very different from what the weather person predicted a few days before."

The butterfly in China thingy. Ya know.

2Wolves

__________________
Nation of the Cat. Forgive maybe, forget .... not quite yet.

m0ntyblack

Another link for your viewing enjoyment:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/1...5,00040003.htm


-------

Climates in cities changing: Research
Asian News International
Washington, December 13

New evidences from satellites, models, and ground observations reveal urban areas, with all their asphalt, buildings, and aerosols, are causing major impact on local and global climate processes.

This was revealed by some of the world's top scientists convening in a special session at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco recently.

Dr J Marshall Shepherd of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center along with Steve Burian of the University of Utah, used the world's first space-based rain radar, aboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite, and dense rain gauge networks on land to determine that higher rainfall rates during the summer months downwind of large cities like Houston and Atlanta.

They offer new evidence that rainfall patterns and daily precipitation trends have changed in regions downwind of Houston from a period of pre-urban growth, 1940 to 1958, to a post-urban growth period, 1984 to 1999.

Cities tend to be one to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (0.56 to 5.6 degrees Celsius) warmer than surrounding suburbs and rural areas. Warming from urban heat islands, the varied heights of urban structures that alter winds and interactions with sea breezes are believed to be the primary causes for the findings in a coastal city like Houston.

Dr Daniel Rosenfeld at Hebrew University in Jerusalem reveals the increased amount of aerosols, tiny air particles, added by human activity to those naturally occurring also alter local rainfall rates around cities.

The particles provide many surfaces upon which water can collect, preventing droplets from condensing into larger drops and slowing conversion of cloud water into precipitation, Rosenfeld added.

In summer, rain and thunder increases downwind of big cities, as rising air from urban heat islands combines with 'delayed' rainfall resulting from the presence of aerosols, creating bigger clouds and heavier rain.

"The space-borne instruments on Terra, Aqua, TRMM, and Landsat provide a wealth of new observations of aerosol particles near and downwind of cities, the cloud optical properties, and surface reflectance characteristics that can help us understand the effects that urban environments have on our atmosphere and precipitation patterns," Dr Michael King, NASA Earth Observing System Senior Project Scientist, said.

NASA's Earth Science Enterprise is dedicated to understanding the Earth as an integrated system and applying Earth System Science to improve prediction of climate, weather and natural hazards using the unique vantage point of space.

-------

Whether we're arrogant about it or not, our actions DO have consequences.

MB

Ustwo

The solution is obvious, ban civilization!

I'm about to declare victory in this thread and I didn't even have to write my bits on global warming.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

2wolves

Hubris, hubris.

2Wolves

__________________
Nation of the Cat. Forgive maybe, forget .... not quite yet.

mercury-hg

something about the logic "we don't have the technology at the moment, so our alternatives are (1) continue the way we have or (2) abandon civilization" seems flawed. what about another option -- (as people have attempted to express in this thread previously) industries could be gradually re-aligned to support clean(er) power/transportion sources. is definitive proof needed before we take action to repair/prevent damage to the environment? had we always waited until scientific theories were fully proven and fleshed out, we'd still be gnawing on raw wooly mamouth meat. what we have now is strong evidence that global warming exists and no reason to act in willfull ignorance of those findings.

Ustwo

Now mercury based on what you said, we should have gone out of our way to cause global warming since we had global COOLING from 1945-1979, please see the above post by mojo on that subject.

As for my ban civilization post, that was based on 2wolves post about cities disrupting the local weather pattern. My responce to that is of course 'no shit'.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

mercury-hg

no, not at all. i refer to the all-but-proven DAMAGE done to the environment. the cooling of 1945-1979 may have been a natural occurrance or may have been due to excessive particulates. models could not begin to explain the cause then. in the 28 intervening years we have significantly improved our weather/climate modelling and overall computing capabilities. why suggest that we ignore that?

and because cities can disrupt local weather patterns, an apparently unavoidable consequence, isn't it all the more important that we do what we can where we can?

Ustwo

Because the models don't agree even witch each other or past data.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Ustwo

You know I get my self worked up for this thread finally. I brought out a little of the 'big guns' and no one came out to fight, despite saying they would.

I am dissapointed in you lefties. There is a ton of bad science out there you can quote.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Superbelt

Your post that followed my last one showed me that you have no interest in reviewing any information that I could produce that shows that we are in the fastest warming trend in possibly 20 million years. And you are also unwilling to think that humans have any part in it.

Because of that I felt it would be a waste of my energy and life to actually take the time to find the information, regardless of the differenty scientific journal or researcher who produced/recorded it, just to have it ignored/mocked with little to no effort.

Sorry to disappoint you,

Endymon32

This is the key to the argument, Does anyone think that any company will just pay the cost and switch to eco friendly factories, or just go to Mexico, or some other corrupt nation? How will this,
A) save the the envirorment
B) help the American enconomy?

Ustwo

Superbelt, face it, you dont' have a clue, you can't produce any evidence on your perposterous 20million year claim, which is a lie, and you know you will only look like a fool for trying to post it. My post is hard science, something not appreciated by the global warming crowd.

Do you HONESTLY think that we can determine a change of a fraction of a degree in temperature in the earths over all climate for a grand total of 20 MILLION years? Only someone who gets their scientific knowledge watching star trek could even conceive of such a thing being true.

This my friends, is why I didn't want to get into a real debate on global warming. I'm sick of dealing with the arrogance and utter scientific ignorance of the global doomsayers who haven't bothered to read deeper then a press release.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

smooth

I found this to be an interesting recent article on the subject. There is some catastrophe speculation toward the end, but the overall discovery merits discussion, IMO.

The Ice Age Cometh

By Thom Hartmann, Thomhartmann.com
February 1, 2004

While global warming is being officially ignored by the political arm of the Bush administration, and Al Gore's recent conference on the topic during one of the coldest days of recent years provided joke fodder for conservative talk show hosts, the citizens of Europe and the Pentagon are taking a new look at the greatest danger such climate change could produce for the northern hemisphere – a sudden shift into a new ice age. What they're finding is not at all comforting.

In quick summary, if enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting polar ice caps and the melting glaciers of Greenland flows into the northern Atlantic, it will shut down the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe and northeastern North America warm. The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown return of the last ice age – in a period as short as 2 to 3 years from its onset – and the mid-case scenario would be a period like the "little ice age" of a few centuries ago that disrupted worldwide weather patterns leading to extremely harsh winters, droughts, worldwide desertification, crop failures, and wars around the world.

Here's how it works.

If you look at a globe, you'll see that the latitude of much of Europe and Scandinavia is the same as that of Alaska and permafrost-locked parts of northern Canada and central Siberia. Yet Europe has a climate more similar to that of the United States than northern Canada or Siberia. Why?

It turns out that our warmth is the result of ocean currents that bring warm surface water up from the equator into northern regions that would otherwise be so cold that even in summer they'd be covered with ice. The current of greatest concern is often referred to as "The Great Conveyor Belt," which includes what we call the Gulf Stream.

The Great Conveyor Belt, while shaped by the Coriolis effect of the Earth's rotation, is mostly driven by the greater force created by differences in water temperatures and salinity. The North Atlantic Ocean is saltier and colder than the Pacific, the result of it being so much smaller and locked into place by the Northern and Southern American Hemispheres on the west and Europe and Africa on the east.

As a result, the warm water of the Great Conveyor Belt evaporates out of the North Atlantic leaving behind saltier waters, and the cold continental winds off the northern parts of North America cool the waters. Salty, cool waters settle to the bottom of the sea, most at a point a few hundred kilometers south of the southern tip of Greenland, producing a whirlpool of falling water that's 5 to 10 miles across. While the whirlpool rarely breaks the surface, during certain times of year it does produce an indentation and current in the ocean that can tilt ships and be seen from space (and may be what we see on the maps of ancient mariners).

This falling column of cold, salt-laden water pours itself to the bottom of the Atlantic, where it forms an undersea river forty times larger than all the rivers on land combined, flowing south down to and around the southern tip of Africa, where it finally reaches the Pacific. Amazingly, the water is so deep and so dense (because of its cold and salinity) that it often doesn't surface in the Pacific for as much as a thousand years after it first sank in the North Atlantic off the coast of Greenland.

The out-flowing undersea river of cold, salty water makes the level of the Atlantic slightly lower than that of the Pacific, drawing in a strong surface current of warm, fresher water from the Pacific to replace the outflow of the undersea river. This warmer, fresher water slides up through the South Atlantic, loops around North America where it's known as the Gulf Stream, and ends up off the coast of Europe. By the time it arrives near Greenland, it has cooled off and evaporated enough water to become cold and salty and sink to the ocean floor, providing a continuous feed for that deep-sea river flowing to the Pacific.

These two flows – warm, fresher water in from the Pacific, which then grows salty and cools and sinks to form an exiting deep sea river – are known as the Great Conveyor Belt.

Amazingly, the Great Conveyor Belt is the only thing between comfortable summers and a permanent ice age for Europe and the eastern coast of North America.

Much of this science was unknown as recently as twenty years ago. Then an international group of scientists went to Greenland and used newly developed drilling and sensing equipment to drill into some of the world's most ancient accessible glaciers. Their instruments were so sensitive that when they analyzed the ice core samples they brought up, they were able to look at individual years of snow. The results were shocking.

Prior to the last decades, it was thought that the periods between glaciations and warmer times in North America, Europe, and North Asia were gradual. We knew from the fossil record that the Great Ice Age period began a few million years ago, and during those years there were times where for hundreds or thousands of years North America, Europe, and Siberia were covered with thick sheets of ice year-round. In between these icy times, there were periods when the glaciers thawed, bare land was exposed, forests grew, and land animals (including early humans) moved into these northern regions.

Most scientists figured the transition time from icy to warm was gradual, lasting dozens to hundreds of years, and nobody was sure exactly what had caused it. (Variations in solar radiation were suspected, as were volcanic activity, along with early theories about the Great Conveyor Belt, which, until recently, was a poorly understood phenomenon.)

Looking at the ice cores, however, scientists were shocked to discover that the transitions from ice age-like weather to contemporary-type weather usually took only two or three years. Something was flipping the weather of the planet back and forth with a rapidity that was startling.

It turns out that the ice age versus temperate weather patterns weren't part of a smooth and linear process, like a dimmer slider for an overhead light bulb. They are part of a delicately balanced teeter-totter, which can exist in one state or the other, but transits through the middle stage almost overnight. They more resemble a light switch, which is off as you gradually and slowly lift it, until it hits a mid-point threshold or "breakover point" where suddenly the state is flipped from off to on and the light comes on.

It appears that small (less that .1 percent) variations in solar energy happen in roughly 1500-year cycles. This cycle, for example, is what brought us the "Little Ice Age" that started around the year 1400 and dramatically cooled North America and Europe (we're now in the warming phase, recovering from that). When the ice in the Arctic Ocean is frozen solid and locked up, and the glaciers on Greenland are relatively stable, this variation warms and cools the Earth in a very small way, but doesn't affect the operation of the Great Conveyor Belt that brings moderating warm water into the North Atlantic.

In millennia past, however, before the Arctic totally froze and locked up, and before some critical threshold amount of fresh water was locked up in the Greenland and other glaciers, these 1500-year variations in solar energy didn't just slightly warm up or cool down the weather for the land masses bracketing the North Atlantic. They flipped on and off periods of total glaciation and periods of temperate weather.

And these changes came suddenly.

For early humans living in Europe 30,000 years ago - when the cave paintings in France were produced – the weather would be pretty much like it is today for well over a thousand years, giving people a chance to build culture to the point where they could produce art and reach across large territories.

And then a particularly hard winter would hit.

The spring would come late, and summer would never seem to really arrive, with the winter snows appearing as early as September. The next winter would be brutally cold, and the next spring didn't happen at all, with above-freezing temperatures only being reached for a few days during August and the snow never completely melting. After that, the summer never returned: for 1500 years the snow simply accumulated and accumulated, deeper and deeper, as the continent came to be covered with glaciers and humans either fled or died out. (Neanderthals, who dominated Europe until the end of these cycles, appear to have been better adapted to cold weather than Homo sapiens.)

What brought on this sudden "disappearance of summer" period was that the warm-water currents of the Great Conveyor Belt had shut down. Once the Gulf Stream was no longer flowing, it only took a year or three for the last of the residual heat held in the North Atlantic Ocean to dissipate into the air over Europe, and then there was no more warmth to moderate the northern latitudes. When the summer stopped in the north, the rains stopped around the equator: At the same time Europe was plunged into an Ice Age, the Middle East and Africa were ravaged by drought and wind-driven firestorms.

If the Great Conveyor Belt, which includes the Gulf Stream, were to stop flowing today, the result would be sudden and dramatic. Winter would set in for the eastern half of North America and all of Europe and Siberia, and never go away. Within three years, those regions would become uninhabitable and nearly two billion humans would starve, freeze to death, or have to relocate. Civilization as we know it probably couldn't withstand the impact of such a crushing blow.

And, incredibly, the Great Conveyor Belt has hesitated a few times in the past decade. As William H. Calvin points out in one of the best books available on this topic ("A Brain For All Seasons: human evolution & abrupt climate change"): "The abrupt cooling in the last warm period shows that a flip can occur in situations much like the present one. What could possibly halt the salt-conveyor belt that brings tropical heat so much farther north and limits the formation of ice sheets? Oceanographers are busy studying present-day failures of annual flushing, which give some perspective on the catastrophic failures of the past. In the Labrador Sea, flushing failed during the 1970s, was strong again by 1990, and is now declining. In the Greenland Sea over the 1980s salt sinking declined by 80 percent. Obviously, local failures can occur without catastrophe – it's a question of how often and how widespread the failures are – but the present state of decline is not very reassuring."

Most scientists involved in research on this topic agree that the culprit is global warming, melting the icebergs on Greenland and the Arctic icepack and thus flushing cold, fresh water down into the Greenland Sea from the north. When a critical threshold is reached, the climate will suddenly switch to an ice age that could last minimally 700 or so years, and maximally over 100,000 years.

And when might that threshold be reached? Nobody knows – the action of the Great Conveyor Belt in defining ice ages was discovered only in the last decade. Preliminary computer models and scientists willing to speculate suggest the switch could flip as early as next year, or it may be generations from now. It may be wobbling right now, producing the extremes of weather we've seen in the past few years.

What's almost certain is that if nothing is done about global warming, it will happen sooner rather than later.

http://alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17711

sixate

smooth, do believe every conspiracy theory you read? First you don't believe that DNA testing works (yes, I read your PM), now this..

Global warming my ass. Today was the first day in over a month where I saw a temp over 20. It's been cold as fuck around here. Same as it always is this time of year. Summer will be hot.... Life goes on.

Bill O'Rights

All I know is this. It is 6 degrees below 0(F) outside, right now. They're calling for our third major snowstorm this week, and I'm running out of places to put snow that I'm shoveling off of my sidewalks and driveway. Where, oh where, is this global warming that you speak of. Oh, and this coming from someone that prefers the cold to the heat.

__________________
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

Superbelt

Global Warming does not cause winter to stop.
Global Warming does not mean every part of the planet warms. There is a net positive in warming planetwide, but regionally certain atmospheric and geographical conditions can cause areas to actually get colder.
Global Warming is primarially situated right now at the poles, and certain levels of the atmosphere where the balance is more fragile.

The breakdown of the north atlantic circulation is not a conspiracy theory. We know it has happened before and it can happen again. There is science behind it.

smooth

LOL,

1) I never said I "believed" this or everything that I read, for that matter. In fact, I even stated that the last section of it was speculation, but that I was presenting it so we can discuss this recent development in the scientific community.

2) I told you there were serious complications with DNA testing, not that it didn't "work." This wasn't based on "something that I read," but rather extensive research two of my professors have conducted. Based on your assertion, I don't believe you even made the effort to educate yourself on the matter any further, even though I gave you some links and titles to avail yourself of. So that point isn't worth persuing with you.

3) If you bothered to read the article, you would have noticed that the people are claiming that we are on the verge of an ice age--exactly what you present as evidence against "global warming."

Shit, if you're going to dispute things I type, at least bother to read the damn article instead of maligning what I say.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

smooth

I guess I should have just posted this section for the readers with short attention spans--seems they never quite made it this far through the article.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

Bill O'Rights

I was being...facetious.

Ustwo

Oh goody global cooling is coming back into vogue.

The world climate MAY go to hell. It has done so many times in the past. Odds are there WILL be another ice age, and their may be another warm period. That is THE issue but its not the issue activists want to talk about.

A natural climate change, even if its catastrophic, doesn't excite people. On the other hand BLAMING people for it lets the young with skulls full of mush go out and protest and feel good about themselves, and suits the desires of the anti-technologists and anti-capitalists at the same time.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Superbelt

Know what's not in vogue? Global Warming Dismissal. At least in the science community.

It's actually kind of popular in the elitist, OXYmoron, dittohead sect.

smooth

my bad

Ustwo

Superbelt I'm STILL waiting for your "proof" of your earlier claim. Until then don't expect me to take you seriously on this issue. I think its pretty clear you don't really know what’s going on beyond the rhetoric.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Superbelt

You're right. I only have a degree in geoenvironmental studies, have taken three classes in atmospheric systems including one graduate level, read several books all written since 2000 on global warming, dozens of journal articles from both sides of the issueand overall a mountain of documentations that is stuffed full in a 13 inch tv box right now.
I spent an entire semesters graduate class researching the subject to take part in a professional debate.

I've provided literally DOZENS of links and resources and agency science in this thread already. But I only know the rhetoric, (as opposed to the informative impartial information provided in the Limbaugh Letter, some of which I also read ). And I'm sure providing you with the "proof" would mean little more than jack shit to you, so why bother emptying out the box and spending hours going through my disorganization to give you something you will dismiss anyway?

Bill O'Rights

*plops onto the sofa, with a huge bowl of popcorn*

Oh, this is gettin' good.

Yeaahh Superbelt, ya got 'im on the ropes!!

C'mon, Ustwo, shake it off and get back out there swingin!!

Who the hell needs Pay Per View, when ya got the TFP?

Oh, and by the way... Hey smooth!! No harm, man.

__________________
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.