Global Warming caused by Humans
 

Well, according to a new Journal of Science report, global warming IS happening, and IS caused by humans.

Here is the first link I found about it, more to come as I do more research:

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/tec...223642,00.html

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Global warming a fact, say US govt experts
WASHINGTON - There can be no doubt that global warming is real and is being caused by people, say two top United States government climate experts.

Industrial emissions are a leading cause, they say - contradicting critics, already in the minority, who argue that climate change could be caused by mostly natural forces.

'There is no doubt that the composition of the atmosphere is changing because of human activities and, today, greenhouse gases are the largest human influence on global climate,' wrote Dr Thomas Karl, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Centre, and Dr Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research.

'The likely result is more frequent heatwaves, droughts, extreme precipitation events and related impacts, such as wildfires, heat stress, vegetation changes, and sea level rise,' they added in a commentary to be published in the latest issue of the journal Science.

The two men estimate that, between 1990 and 2100, there is a 90 per cent probability that average global temperatures will rise by between 1.7 and 4.9 deg C.

Such dramatic warming will further melt already crumbling glaciers, inundating coastal areas.

They noted that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen by 31 per cent since pre-industrial times. Carbon dioxide is the No. 1 greenhouse gas, causing warming temperatures by trapping the sun's energy in the atmosphere.

'Given what has happened to date and is projected in the future, significant further climate change is guaranteed,' they wrote.

The US has balked at signing global treaties to reduce climate-changing emissions. But global cooperation is key, said the experts.

'Climate change...may prove to be humanity's greatest challenge,' they wrote. 'It is very unlikely to be adequately addressed without greatly improved international cooperation and action.' -- Reuters
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More to come...

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-tsc120103.php

Pretty much the same article, with a few more excerpts from the actual report.

MB

1.7 degress in 110 years!!!?!?

RUN! WE'RE ALL DOOMED!1!!!




I can't bring myself to take these dumbasses seriously.

That's 1.7 degrees Celsius, or around 3 degrees F. Up to 9 degrees F. And it may not seem like much to you, but look at it in a human body... 98.7 F. That raised to 101.7 F and you have a fairly bad fever, raised to 107.7 F, you're well on your way to death.

MB

Yeah, being 98 degrees outside instead of 95 degrees in 110 years is going to bother me a whole hell of a lot too.

I won't look at it in a human body either, because for one 98.7 is an average, and two it's completely different than global climate.

Very bad comparison. The earth has been far hotter and far cooler and has had life through all of those periods.

The concept of 'saving' the earth is false. The earth doesn't need saving and has survived FAR worse then SUV's just fine.

The concept of 'maintaining' the earth 'as is' is another issue and I'm much more worried about a possible ice age then a natural warming trend.

I was just using the body temperature as an example...face it, 1 degree is ALL that seperates ice from water. And I'm not worried about saving the planet, the planet will do just fine without us, however, I do have a bit of compassion for our species. As it stands right now, no one can really tell what difference that 3 degrees will make, or even if it will make a difference, but the thing is, we ARE responsible for our actions, and our actions ARE making a difference.

I used to think the right was all about "personal responsibility" and "accountability." At least that's what I believed when I considered myself a fine upstanding young conservative. However, all the arguments I hear against global climate initiatives sound like dodges of responsibility.

And another thing: 15 years ago, every right-wing article I read stated that there was "no such thing as global warming." In the last 5 years there has been substantial proof of global warming and all the arguments turned to "Its a natural cycle of the earth, we don't have any control of how close to the sun we are." And now with at least limited proof that industrial-age emmissions ARE causing some effect on global climate, I've been hearing arguments such as Phaenx's "its only a little change." When is enough going to be enough that the right suddenly says, "oh crap, they WERE right, and we're all pwned unless we start doing something now?" And IF it comes to that point (and I really hope it doesn't, as much as I don't agree with you guys sometimes, I really do like you), will it be too late?

Oh well, enough ranting for now. :)


Cheers

MB

It's still flawed reasoning. Look at it in terms of geologic history and there is no way ANYONE can make accurate statements about whether the earth is the hottest it's ever been or that there is really a warming trend. Concrete temperature records only exist for about 100 years. The rest are assumptions based on questionable science.

Global warming has become an industry. It creates grants and scholarships for study, money for foundations, government programs, and has been wildly successful in separating proponents of ecological reform from their money. What motivation is there for these groups (including the government since the public has bought into it) to prove it isn't happening? The search for truth perhaps? Not likely since that means no more $$$$.

I've wondered this as well...

6 degrees F cooler and this planet would be in an ice age.

So if that is all we need for an ice age, think what a 6 degree F RISE will do to this planet.

Personal responsibility only applies IF you think there was a problem. I am personally all for pollution reduction, I just don't think of C02 as a pollutant.

Too much of anything is a pollutant.

Too much oxygen and it is poisonous to animal life. It becomes corrosive and eats away at your lungs.

Too much water vapor in the atmosphere and we will choke on the air.

Too much nitrogen and the air would become dangerously flammable

Too much CO2 and the earths temperature rises.....

Yes very zen of you, but again, I don't think human produced CO2 reduction will amount to anything important other then crushing economies. Some models have methane produced by farm animals (yes cow farts) as a bigger problem then CO2 in the greenhouse effect.

Ustwo, please stop relying on Rush Limbaugh as your greenhouse gas scientist of choice:



Here are those endnote references:

Well you don't have about 95% of the scientific community backing you up on that one like I have. You are the fringe.

Methane is about 36 times better at trapping heat per molecule, but it is also only somewhere in the hundredths of a percent of the volume of the CO2 we are putting in the atmosphere. So, by doing the math it is easy to dismiss any obscure models you may find that would attribute methane as a bigger problem than the CO2.

:rolleyes:

Again, I'm really not in the mood for about the 5th or 6th time in my life to go into debating global warming on some message board in depth, but please, try not to make ignorant statements about me by somehow assuming Limbaugh is the source of my science knowledge. It always ends with the other guy either saying crap like 'Well since we are not SURE we should still reduce emissions just in case!' forgetting the cost of doing so, or I get the equivalent of 'lalalalalala I can't hear you'. I get that on every OTHER thread here, but at least those aren’t rehashes to me. Maybe if you keep making ignorant statements you can goad me into it. :hmm:

Rush isn't a scientist, and as such makes an excellent straw man for the global alarmist crowd.

A few years ago I did listen to Limbaugh on global warming and I really wanted to call in since he had the right conclusion but was missing the real evidence. I've been looking into this long before any of you heard about it in the early 80's late 70's as a kid (though the alarmists then were worried about possible global cooling and how we would all be starving in the 90's). Then it was a true theory, totally non-political, and never mentioned by activists. At that point the big environmental story was acid rain, and my first science project was on the effect of acid rain on Annelids. I kept up with the tree hugging degrees in college and post grad. The bad science and political motivations of the global warming crowd was a real turn off.

Basically the center of the global warming crowd is, anti-human expansion, anti-progress, and suffers from elitism and a nice touch of hubris. For many global warming is a means to an end, and many are more then willing to believe them since they have similar feelings.

There MAY well be a global warming trend. It has not been proven, and there is contradictory evidence, but I can not discount the possibility. What I find suspect is the human effect on this warming. Nothing I've seen so far proves it to a point where I'm willing to trash the US economy over.

What gets me is the assumption that reducing likely human contribution to global warming would "trash the American economy." It would do nothing of the sort. It would SHIFT the American economy away from industries that currently make shitloads of money with polluting technologies, and toward "clean" industries, those that develop technologies to replace and/or compete with the dirty ones. It's not a matter of ruining the economy, it's a matter of shifting the balance away from some fairly entrenched interests. Incidentally, the economic impact of running environmentally clean industries is ALL short-term. The long-term consequences of adopting cleaner technologies are almost always a net gain for the company, it's just that CEOs and shareholders seem to look at the short term. Ford motors, oddly enough, is actually a leader in "green" industry technologies, and they're realizing tons of benefits. Fuji and Kodak cleaned up their acts about 5-10 years back and got huge economic benefits. This "wrecking the American economy" argument is just a screen for protecting the immediate interests of the petroleum, power, and auto industries.

Lurkette, cheap power and cheap transportation are key for a good economy.

Where do you think most of it comes from?

This isn't about being clean. You CAN'T get cleaner then H2O and CO2 with combustion.

I'm happy seeing 'clean' cars and the like, but if it burns, it makes CO2.

Who says clean has to be expensive? There's cost involved in altering the infrastructure for wind power, geothermal power, hydroelectric (although that has a negative effect on the ecology, usually). You wouldn't even really have to develop a whole lot of new sources, just shift the existing sources away from the "dirty" and nonsustainable ones and towards cleaner renewable sources.

There are things that can be done other than shifting to different kinds of combustion: intelligent city planning to reduce total miles driven, incentives for fuel efficiency (both in manufacturing and in purchasing more fuel efficient cars), better mass transit, etc. None of these would "trash" the economy - they just require adjustments in how we think about moving from one place to another. But they also require the will to encourage such a shift in thinking.

Lurkette I'm sorry but you don't know what you are talking about. Its not like you would just need to turn our coal, oil, and natural gas plants to wind/solar/wave/geothermal power and be done with it. The problem with wind/solar/wave is that the amount of power produced isn't enough. It would take an insane amount of wind and solar plants to produce the CURRENT level of power generation the US uses. The solution of the greens is always making due with less power, and that my friend is basically saying 'lets have a recession'. Geothermal is not practical in most parts of the country, and the same applies to hydraulic.

And lets take transportation. You can make cars more efficient and I’m all for it, but either they get their power from gas (aka CO2) or are charged before hand with power produced by other means. Means you wish to eliminate in favor of far less efficient means. And now lets add cross country transportation for shipping, everything from condoms to grain. More expense, more cost.

Would you suggest we start to reduce our emissions while at the same time NOT having the technology to back it up (we don't) AND redesign all of our major cities involving millions and millions of people to be 'eco-friendly' and somehow think this will be painless?

It wouldn't require a shift in thinking, it would require a draconian government to force the population into lower standard of living while paying for the biggest rebuilding process the world has ever come close to seeing. Not going to happen here.

Ustwo, the only assumption in my post was that you get your opinions from Limbaugh, which the evidence from countless previous threads would suggest.

When you replied with your non-human explanation for CO2 emissions, I was reminded of one of the more famous "Rush Myths" concerning the environment, so I posted those myths specifically relating to CO2 emissions.

Instead of replying to that, you decided to insult me, then present anecdotal evidence from your youth.

Welcome, to the Desert of the Ignored.

/moving on...

Oops, sorry, I forgot - I'm an idiot and Ustwo is the repository of all right thinking.

Listen, show me some data from INDEPENDENT scientific and economic sources *i.e., not the Sierra Club or the Center for Individual Freedom, or the much bandied Rush Limbaugh) and I'll gladly eat my words.

I think a key source of disagreement here is a basic difference in assumptions.

I don't think that preserving the grossly elevated American standard of living is sufficient argument for ignoring the purported effects of human behavior (largely Western, largely American behavor) on global climate change that affects not just 300 million Americans but 7 billion people around the world. You can argue about the science all you want, but it's fairly well-accepted that the global warming trend is a fact, and that human behavior contributes a substantial amount of that effect. It's a bit of a Pascal's wager for the environment - the consequences of ignoring the science, if it happens to be true, are much greater than the consequences of acting to change our behavior in the face of faulty assumptions.

Apparently this Global Warming conspiracy is the largest, most successful in history.

It includes:

EPA

NCDC and NOAA

NOAA & NESDIS (Confirms ground based measurements of global warming over the past 25 years

IPCC
A collaborative effort of thousands of international scientists.

National Academy of Sciences

National institute of water and atmospheric research

US GLobal Change Research Panel (GOVT)

Global Change Data and Information Systems (GOVT)

All federal agencies that organize under GCDIS:
ARM
CDIAC
DAACs
DTIC
EIA
EROS
FGDC
GCMD
LTER
NAL
NCAR
NOAA NEDI
NOAA NVDS

NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research GOVT)

US Department of State

The 100 + nations that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol

I can find dozens more credible institutions such as the US Department of Energy under Reagan verifying global climatic models, and a collection of insurers and reinsurers who are trying to stem their economic downfall as global warming induced problems chip away at their available funds etc...

Global Warming naysayers are the fringe, while all the credible scientific institutions including almost all universities line up behind Global Warming happening, being a problem, and being primarially human induced. Your list, if you made one, would include mostly groups funded by Exxon and Scaife.

Lurkette, I can understand you concern, but I can guarantee you there is no possible way in hell to make my job cleaner for the environment, and if it could be done I could guarantee you that it would cost 100x more to get the job done, but other countries wouldn't change their ways, and even more imports would be brought to this country, which would eliminate millions of jobs.

A qick question, How can there be intelligent city planning to reduce total miles driven when almost all cities are already built? And what about people who choose to live 50 miles away from work... Are you saying the governmenet should make them move into a 5 mile radius from where they work? I want no part of that world.

I'll agree that some companies could do simple things that would cost nothing, but if nobody is making them change then why would they? It just can't be done in all situations. Like it or not, there are a ton of factories that keep the economy moving, and people employed. If they couldn't get things done and keep cost down they would all go to Mexico, and completely fuck up the economy.

The pollution from driving will be virtually eliminated once we transition to electrically driven cars.

And the solution to that is to dump billions of dollars into the research for it. Then, once the american car companies have that technology, we would have a leg up on the competition and easily make back that spent capital.

Then once we have solved that for our cars, it will only be a matter of scale to get it to work for our industries.

All it takes is some leadership.

If by leadership you mean government mandates, new technology that currently does not exsist, and a buttload of new nuclear plants I agree.

Also we won't ask about the coal mining towns and unions ;)

Must....resist.....urge........to.......post......more......

Yes leadership by government mandates where our leaders contribute the tens of billions of dollars towards hydrogen fuel technologies, solar cell technologies, nanotech and wind turbines rather than give those tens of billions of dollars to the fossil fuel companies in the form of tax breaks.

We must do this so that the technology that currently does not exist, DOES in the near future so we can mandate that industries convert over to them.

I think you would be surprised what city planning can do over the long term. The government has a lot of power to influence the public with incentives of one sort or another. Over a ten-year period or more, governments can easily change living or commuting patterns with mortgage incentives, taxes, and other ways of making different areas more attractive.

On the other hand, here in california the bay area spent a lot of money building affordable housing near Caltrain stations, and they found out afterwards that most of the tenants still didn't ride Caltrain. You can't force people to do many things, but I believe you can change the behavior of people over the long run. For an opposite example of this look at GM's intentional destruction of public transit systems in many major metro areas many years ago.

I have seen quite a bit of evidence supporting global warming. From my perspective, to deny that it is happening or that human consumption is not the root cause is just naive. What else would be driving the warming. Yes, there have been past temp swings, but nothing as drastic as what is currently happening. The reality of it all is that economics are against doing anything proactive about it - there is no money in changing and a lot of money invested in the status quo - big business, fossil fuels, etc.

You have heard of the 'Little Ice Age' haven't you?

An anomaly caused by huge amounts of ash in the atmosphere and a decrease in sun activity which, when factored over the 6000 year cooling trend is nothing more than a blip on the radar?

Yes, I've heard about the little Ice Age.

Just as the global warming "trend" data is a barely perceptible blip in the geologic time radar.

Hmmm, 6000 yrs. for a little ice age blip vs. 115 yrs for our current little blip. I am truly stunned at the inherent blindness of most humans in this country. All it takes is a few minutes of reading to gather the data, and with any intellect at all the warming trend becomes obvious, even to those who may be somewhat ....challenged. But dont worry, the effects will probably have no bearing on your life, your children will likely be BASKING in your glory.

The earth is 4,550,000,000 years old. Even if we had 1 billion years of data we would be looking at less than a quarter of its history.

Ummm whats this 6000 year figure? Sorry kids, wrong Ice age.

THATS the 'little ice age' and note when it ended.

First, the warming trend is 300 years long.
And we know what caused the little ice age.
Just like we have very solid, credible evidence to explain the warming trend that all scientific evidence tells us should not be happening if not for human interference.

What evidence explains why earth is getting warmer? Because it truly is.

The suns radiation has been dimmer "lately" (as in the last couple hundred years)
We are getting farther from the sun.
Earth trends show us we are entering a glacial period.

How does all that fit into your theory of the world naturally warming?

The 6000 year figure is this....

This planets orbit around the sun oscillates from a round orbit to an ellyptical one.
6000 years ago the planets orbit peaked in it's circular and began its transition to its ellyptical.

Why this is important is that the round orbit gives a more regular warming which allows the earth to generally warm up. The ellyptical one is uneven and produces a general cooling.

We know this cycle has persisted for at least 700,000 years from measurements we made through ice core and sea bed samples.

The science is that the ellyptical orbit we are presently getting further and further into affords us less and less insolation. This is the reason for the back and forth of the planets glacial cycles.

This is all irrefutable, observable evidence and along with the physics of carbon (it's heat absorbing properties) blows to shit any argument that says global warming RIGHT NOW is a natural process.

Again, the 'little ice age' was very different. It was a sharp cooling trend that lasted a few centuries and we are only just recovering from.

Prior to this Europe at least (1400's), was WARMER then it currently is, as was the earth 6000 years ago (about 2 degrees).

Yet despite these swings in temperature, the current weak trend MUST be due to human causes?

Yes before the 1400's the earth was warmer than it currently is. The world was still coming down from the high temps.
Then the abberation of the LIA occured. and it bounced back, and kept going down until the IR.

lets do this, This is a generic graph to show what I'm talking about.

AA....BB....CC....DD....EE....FF....GG...HH....II....JJ....KK....LL....MM
58....56....55....52.....44....40....39....44....51...50....49....51....53

At points AA through DD normal global cooling is occuring. Then at point EE we started the LIA. Abnormally rapid cooling occured. The cause was unusually high volcanic activity. Around point HH the planet recovers and by II we are back to normal global cooling levels.
Then point LL (slightly after the Industrial Revolution) and there is a change in direction. The planet starts warming and as you go out to and pass point MM the planet keeps warming when it really should continue to cool to 48...47... etc.

So when you average out the LIA anomaly you see the graphs steady decline. We know the cause for the LIA. We also know the cause for the STRONG warming trend we are experiencing now.

And it is a strong trend. This is the most rapid warming this planet has experienced for at least 4 million years and possible the fastest warming in the last 20 million.

Ok, you have goaded me into it.

*chuckles* fastest warming in the last 4 MILLION years? Oh dear. :lol:

Ok Superbelt, I hope you are ready to back this up with real data, you can expect my responce in a day or two, right now its time for an Xmass party.

/shrug no matter what is said here people will always claim they have the 'data'

i suggest we all stop wasting our time believing our 'data'

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.

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.

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. :)

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.

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. :)

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

<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.

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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

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

More -

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

Maybe its from all the electric cars and hybrids :)

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

2Wolves

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.

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

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

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

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. :p

Hubris, hubris.

2Wolves

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.

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'.

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?

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

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.

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,

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I was being...facetious. :rolleyes:

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.

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.

my bad :o

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.

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?

*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.

...and Bush wants to cut the EPA's funding?
...to fund a war in Iraq for more OIL that is causing the pollution...

I think Bill O' rights has got the right idea, methinks the debate going to heat up. Anyway, back on topic, I think that humans combined with a warming trend are causing global warming, it isn't a good thing, but thats just my opinion?

EVERYTHING is caused by humans. Haven't we figured that out yet?

Damn :::OshnSoul::: beat me to it....

Yeah...Kinda obvious. LOL :lol:

Lets just float this one up again to avoid having to do it all over.

Sounds like a good idea, but you did start the other thread :)

BTW, did you know that you're sig is so out of context as to be misleading?

After rereading all of that I realize that I made a very long impassioned post responding to your criticisms of the way I handled myself (my last one) and you never responded.

If for every action there is an equal but opposit reaction, and heat is a measurement of energy (or something like that, been a while since my last physics class) if the earth is warming up what is cooling down? If the earth is releasing more energy, where is it going? And in time why won't the net release of energy net back to equilibrium?

There was a good NOW with Bill Moyers segment a while back called "Ode to Kyoto." It was about the energy industry's stealth campaign to confuse the public and stop Kyoto. Judging by some of the comments made in this thread, it appears to be highly successful...

http://www.pbs.org/now/thisweek/index_012304.html#video

Did anyone point out yet that this statement isn't even close to being based in reality? I looked through the thread and didn't see it....You will have to charge those cars up, and at the moment, you are probably charging them with coal power.

In any case, unless research has changed dramatically since I last looked at it, aren't Volcano's and other naturally occurring events like that the primary sources of CO2 and other vehicular-emissions-like gasses, by several orders of magnitude?

Virtually eliminated. The most likely electrically driven cars will be from hydrogen/solar. Solar cells WILL be getting better. A huge bump in federal funding will see it happen faster. Then we can use solar power to concentrate the hydrogen exclusively. There, virtually clean source of energy. Using coal and oil power plants 'now' for the hydrogen at the very least allows us to turn the pollution from cars into a point source, which is something that can be controlled and cleaned up much easier and cheaper.

Volcano's and other naturally occurring events are the primary sources of CO2 but they release their CO2 all at once. One big dump and that dump falls out of the atmosphere relatively quickly (planetary scale) because it is so concentrated in one place.

Humans on the other hand produce a constant stream of CO2 that is well dispersed over the planet. The other part of that problem is the loss of carbon sinks, by various means.

Hogwash. Find research from real scientists, not environmentalists. 95% of meteorologists disagree that any warming is caused by humans. The world has been FAR hotter in the last 500 years than it is now. The mid 1800s were particularly hot.

Here's a fact that should put to rest any baloney notions of humans causing anything.

In 1991, Mt. Pinatubo erupted and put over 2000 TIMES as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere in one day than mankind did in the entire 20th century.

Volcanoes are a source of carbon dioxide, but their contribution to the global budgets of greenhouse gases is very small. On the time-scale of decades to centuries, greenhouse gas emissions from volcanic sources cause negligible climate change. It's because the gasses are spewed out in such a large concentration, all at one short point in time that it's effects are lowered. If all the active Volcanos in the world were to steadily release their gasses over the course of hundreds of years you WOULD see a net planetary increases in greenhouse gasses. As it is, it literally comes out in the wash.

[edit]So you can wrap your head around this concept. You have a pot of water. You also have an energy source. You could do one of two things to heat up the water. Either release all the energy at once at the water in a large flash of heat, or give it a steady heat of 100 degrees C for five minutes. Which heats the water better?[/edit]

A volcanic eruption has many effects, the sulfuric acid that this particular eruption created in the stratosphere blocked out sunlight. This led to a direct global surface cooling of 0.5 degrees C a year after the eruption. You can expect the cooling influence of a Volcano the size of Pinatubo to last almost a decade.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1128035329.htm

As to this. Show your hand. Show me a source of 95% of meterologists disagree that any warming is caused by humans. It is also funny that you say, in a thread started with an research project printed in the JOURNAL of SCIENCE, that you want research from real scientists. This leads me to believe you haven't bothered to read anything on here.

Woudl you classify the Pentagon as an Environmental Group?

Also feel free to quantify your claim that Mt. Pinatubo released 2000 times more greenhouse gases than humans have in their entire history. Please cite me how much in each gas Mt. Pinatubo released, and how much humans have in their history.

Finally "The world has been far hotter in the past 500 years than it is now." Um, What? Again source. Here' I'll spot you with this one.
20th Century warmest in 500 years.

Here's another one A 500 year climate change record from bore-hole data
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~earles/t-trend.gif
Wow, you're right, look at how high the last 500 years are compared to today!

*Hint, for everything you come back with (if you come back): Limbaugh letter does not count.

Some people will never accept global warming as a truth, mostly peole who make money off the things that cause global warming.

In highschool I had 2 absolutely brilliant science teachers, they taught me the real reason some people don't accept global warming.

[QUOTE=Superbelt]The pollution from driving will be virtually eliminated once we transition to electrically driven cars.QUOTE]

This statement would make sense if we produced electricity using nuclear power (BTW big in europe) otherwise if the electricity is produced via a coal burning plant the emissions come from the power plant not the car? What about battery disposal etc.

It seems when we try to build nuclear power plants in Calif environmentalists always protest?

Whats funny is that I too grew up in the 70s and earkl 80s when global cooling was all the rage, we were heading for another ice age and acid rain was going to dystroy the crops and mankind was going to starve to death hence I am a bit jaded by scientists. I wonder if they really know what they are doing. Just a few days ago in the paper they said the ozone hole was shrinking?

Actually Nuclear power currently draws heavily from coal powered electrical plants. There is an intense power need to start and continue the fission process, and coal power is the only one with sufficient umph to do it.

The Ozone hole grows and shrinks during the year. It depends on the seasonal temperatures. There has ALWAYS been an ozone hole/thin area that fluctuated, it was just that our chlorine emissions into the atmospere were making it ridiculously larger.

the realistic solution is ...we need more pirates...

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~bgmark_quik/pirates.jpeg

Please don't bump three-year-old threads to post a funny image in relation to them.