Global Warming

[shankle]

I haven't heard a word for about a week about Global Warming.
So when its above 50 degrees they hound us with it.
When it's below 32 degrees there is dead silence.
Makes you wonder if they know what they are talking about.
IMHO they need several hundred years to gather enough data
to make decisions like this. The Bell curve and the Dots.

[dedndave]

that's similar to the cell phone radiation problem
they don't confirm that it's a health issue because noone has done a 20 year study on it
first of all, cell phones weren't very common 20 years ago
secondly, by the time they do their 20-year study, it will be too late - lol

i should apply for a grant - lol
in 20 years, i will be 74 and i won't care if i get in trouble for not finishing the study
besides, what are they going to do to me ? - take away my health-care ? - lol

[Siekmanski]

And what about Acid-Rain....
Never heard of this in years.....

[Gunner]

And what about Acid-Rain....
Never heard of this in years.....

if i remeber my fishtank with live plants  if i put too much co2 in the tank the water became more acidic   and co2=global warming then there should be more acid rain right   have more to say when i get to a computer later

[Bill Cravener]

I believe global warming is happening. The question is are humans causing it or is some natural cycle of our planet and the solar system the cause? Personally at my age of the game I really don't care. I'll let future generations worry about it.

A few facts I found on the subject;

Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. And the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850.

The Arctic is feeling the effects the most. Average temperatures in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia have risen at twice the global average, according to the multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report compiled between 2000 and 2004.

Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completely ice-free summer by 2040 or earlier. Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from the sea-ice loss.

Glaciers and mountain snows are rapidly melting—for example, Montana's Glacier National Park now has only 27 glaciers, versus 150 in 1910. In the Northern Hemisphere, thaws also come a week earlier in spring and freezes begin a week later.

Coral reefs, which are highly sensitive to small changes in water temperature, suffered the worst bleaching—or die-off in response to stress—ever recorded in 1998, with some areas seeing bleach rates of 70 percent. Experts expect these sorts of events to increase in frequency and intensity in the next 50 years as sea temperatures rise.

An upsurge in the amount of extreme weather events, such as wildfires, heat waves, and strong tropical storms, is also attributed in part to climate change by some experts.

[shankle]

The earth has a wobble in it and that wobble takes about 25,00 years to complete around the North Pole.
We haven't had the ability long enough to study the effects this wobble has on the climate.
I will agree that anything we can do to improve our planet should be done.
Business people worried about the bottom line IMHO have been the worst offenders.
I remember a town called Ambridge Penna. when I was a boy, that so polluted the air that
it was a disgrace. All that from a steel mill.
I hear that Iceland is running on Hydrogen cars. Wouldn't  it be nice if the US had country wide
hydrogen car ability. Again business worried about the bottom line holding back needed progress.
Sorry for the rant.

[ecube]

The argument of global warming really makes me question how much hope humanity really as? I mean consider this, global warming doesn't exist? so what, we still need to make drastic changes to help repair our earth so that future generations have somewhere decent to live, that's a given, so arguing back and forth does nothing. The fact that every scientist on the planet agrees the earth has gradually been getting warmer over millions/billions of years, shows "global warming" exists, in that regard, and the real argument is whether it's drastically increased recently which is a threatening/disturbing situation if so. I think if people do real research on the subject, they'll find many compelling indiciations that is has. Either way we need to make positive changes, proving global warming does or doesn't exist may give the less intelligent a "peace of mind" but still doesn't change the earth being f'd in the future because of our lack of efforts.

[dedndave]

some scientists think we are due for another ice-age
of course, their clock runs pretty slow
their definition of "due for" might mean some time in the next 100,000 years - lol

[baltoro]

...A while back I read Michael Crichton's, "State of Fear". It was completely ridiculous, but a lot of fun. At the end of the book, he presents a bibliography with alot of the same science literature that Al Gore cited in "An Inconvenient Truth". Crichton concludes by stating that: "In fifty years, Global Warming won't be a problem". He doesn't elaborate. Of course, we all know WHY Global Warming won't be a problem in fifty years, but, no one wants to talk about it.     
I spent years reviewing the literature on Climate Modeling and the Greenhouse Warming, because our politicians are attempting to form important policy decisions based on mathematical models of the atmosphere that no one (except a few scientists) really understand. There are some serious shortcomings associated with Climate Modeling. Probably the most noteworthy is that the accumulated error associated with each run of the climate model is comparable in magnitude to the natural variability of climate. There are numerous other systemic inadequacies,...but the fact remains that the future is still uncertain.   
I think that we should be alot more adaptable.     
...I am planning a career change to coincide with peak Global Warming: door-to-door bikini sales.

[ecube]

baltoro if you liked state of fear, you can find like an hour interview with dr.crichton on youtube, where he talks about it. The man was a genius, I loved all his literature, from jurassic park, congo, etc...

[baltoro]

E^Cube,   
Yeah, I'm a huge Crichton fan,...read everything he ever wrote, even "Next". He's definitely interesting.

[jj2007]

Yeah, I'm a huge Crichton fan,...read everything he ever wrote, even "Next". He's definitely interesting.

I must have read a few of his novels, but that is ages ago. Here is a top 100 in SciFi, about one third looks familiar to me. SciFi sharpens the mind, and its ability to imagine a future that looks a lot different from the present.

some scientists think we are due for another ice-age
of course, their clock runs pretty slow
their definition of "due for" might mean some time in the next 100,000 years - lol

"some scientists", yes. There is a huge body, many thousands of climate researchers, called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Governments are not known to be innovative, but still, these guys say that something very serious is going on. But of course, if there is one guy who says "hey, they are all wrong", that is a real feat for the media. Lomborg for example made real profit out of that phenomenon.

It would be futile to give a summary of scientific evidence here, therefore only a small snippet, food for thought from here: "At the end of [the mesozoic] period -- about the Late Jurassic and earliest Cretaceous -- there was another burst of evolutionary creativity associated with rising seas and relatively warm, equable climate throughout the world".

Sounds cute, right? "Equable" means the poles and the equator had roughly the same temperature, due to a thick pullover of CO2, not as strong as the one Venus still has but sufficient to let the polar ice disappear completely. That was great for vegetation, 45 meter giant dinosaurs found enough to eat, but it meant several hundred metres higher sea levels - sorry, New York and Venezia and Rome and Paris and...

Now the point is more subtle: After that period, it took that gorgeous vegetation roughly one hundred Million years to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, to transform it into carbohydrates, and to store it deep into the ground that today is known as Saudi Arabia.

And it took us only one hundred years to spit it all back into the atmosphere. Good night :wink

[dedndave]

sleep well Jochen   :bg

i saw a very interesting documentary on the PMS channel about magnetic pole reversals
they showed a correlation between pole-reversals and ice-ages
they can see another pole reversal happening now
the ony thing is - they really don't know how long it takes to complete
global warming could be (in part) a bi-product of a natural cycle the planet goes through
it may not be something we can stop
i am not saying we shouldn't try to take care of our environment
but - there is only so much we can do, too
if the magnetic poles do reverse, there is going to be a period of time when the magnetic field of earth is weak
that field helps protect us from the rather harsh radiation levels that exist in outer space
if that happens in our lifetime, we can put our heads between our knees and kiss our asses goodbye
or - maybe you could make a killing by investing in lead mines - lol

[hutch--]

I confess I still have this cynicism about "global warming" as a human activity when we know with certainty that the planet has been both a lot hotter and a lot colder over the last few thousand years. Greenland used to be GREEN, not glacial, the Roman era was a lot warmer than it is now yet there is known history that people walked on the Thames when it froze over hundreds of years ago.

I see the whole deal as a great big scam which is avoiding the real issue, pollution on a world scale. Instead of giving global control to the rich to further screw the poor with this crapheap carbon trading scheme, reducing pollution in terms of heavy metals dumped in waterways, toxic emissions from a miriad of industrial sources pelted into the atmosphere that make carbon dioxide look like the clean air act.

Carbon trading is nothing more than a licence for the rich to pollute while the poor pay for it.

[vanjast]

The real terminology is.... Climate Change (not Global Warming)
GW is used by mickey mouse scientists to gather funds for their 'mercedes upgrades'
:bg