I, like most scientist, believe that global warming is an imminent threat to life on Earth. When predicting the effects of global warming on the Earth over the next century, we must take two scenarios into consideration. First: What will the Earth's conditions be like if people do nothing? Second: What will the Earth's conditions be like if people act? Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic about the outcome of either scenario.
Global warming is often called "climate change" because the atmosphere warms due to green house gas emissions, traps heat inside, forcing the Earth to cool. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most common emission that makes Earth warmer. It is often released by factory pollution or burning fossil fuels. Trees absorb CO2, but the rainforest is being obliterated. Eleven of the twelve hottest years on record since the invention of the thermometer were between 1995 and 2006. In 650,000 years, CO2 levels never exceeded 300 parts per million (ppm), today we are at 380 ppm. Some scientists speculate that in 91 years (2100) we will be over 500 ppm.
Let's imagine society as a whole does nothing to stop global warming. Those who don't believe in global warming often cite that the Earth has only gotten about one degree hotter in the past 60 years and that the atmosphere has sustained severe climate changes in the past such as "The Little Ice Age" of the 17th and 18th centuries that froze the River Thames, the cooling of the Earth during the Jurassic Period, and the warmer climate of Europe during the Middle Ages. This is very distressing to some environmental advocates because regardless of the seemingly slight change in degrees the adverse effects of global warming are very obvious.
The orangutan, polar bear, and tiger are threatened and I predict more animals will become endangered in the next century as a direct result of global warming, and danger to their environments and food sources. Glaciers will melt all over the world causing water levels and temperatures to rise, and more frequent hurricanes and tsunamis. Kilimanjaro has less and less snow on its summit every year, soon it will have none. Shorelines and coastal lands will go under water. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina will be common. Precipitation will be disastrous as some places flood and others drought. We've already seen the tsunamis and tornados of Asia and the droughts of Africa. Seasons will deform, birds will hatch before their food, starve, and die. Property rates will skyrocket as people move inland to escape the perilous water. New diseases develop in an eco-system at war with itself and diseased living conditions persist. Like crabs in a barrel, people will scrapple to survive creating a breeding ground for social unrest, marshall law, and starvation when flood waters consume agricultural fields. Worldwide, many of this is already taking place as people continue to die.
Now, let's imagine that people get on board to save the Earth's thinning atmosphere. Thanks to celebrity environmental advocates such as former Vice President Al Gore for his global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth and Noah Wyle with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for bringing awareness to the public. The more concerned generated on this issue, the better the chance for positive change.
In order for the world to improve, legislation need to ban the manufacture of products we know harm the Earth. We know aerosol cans, gas burning vehicles, and other items damage the ozone, so they shouldn't be made. Give incentives to live eco-friendly. Tax breaks for those committed to using alternative fuels, renewable solar and wind powered energy, abstaining from aerosol cans, car pooling, using eco-friendly cars, restoring forests, and recycling. Years ago, Al Gore suggested a CO2 tax for companies harming the ozone. Implement a pollution tax to discourage people from polluting. The best thing we can do is try to make the damage as little as possible. These are some of the best solutions available.
I hope and believe the global warming situation will improve eventually, but only if mankind effects change. It took much damage for us to effect the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere, but not too much that cannot be undone. However, perhaps it is just too difficult to get everyone to unite on anything. I'm not sure if enough people care to make the drastic changes needed to get it back on track so future generations can enjoy Earth as we've known it.
I will tell you upfront that the earth could be warming for all I know, but I beleive that global warming is not man made. What direct evidence is there that C02 raises the temperature of the atmosphere. There is one solid piece of physical evidence that links CO2 to temperature riase. It is all speculation based off of graphs. If you look at Al Gore's graph correlating C02 to temperature rise, the data, when looke dout more closely than over millions of years. the data could be interpeted as a temperature rise occuring first and a C02 rise following.
Next, all your predictions about what will happen witha temperature rise are purely speculation. How do know that we won't expereince the benefit of relatively warmer atmosphere where crops will flourish and growing seasons be exteneded. What about the benefits to the fish population when a heat rise can increase plankton numbers?
Government has no other end, but the preservation of property. - John Locke
all your predictions about what will happen witha temperature rise are purely speculation.
H
Of course its all speculation, its about what I think the earth will be like in the next 100 years, how can anyone address that topic without speculation and prediction? I'd like to see you try, Edgar Cayce.
Al Gore used old graphs from ice core data which were ambiguous about the relationship between CO2 and warming.
The new and much more detailed graphs from the Vostok Ice Cores show that there is a clear correlation. Carbon dioxide concentrations LAG BEHIND tempurature increases. This lag is clearly visible on the new graphs. On average the lag is about 800 years. Judge for yourselves:
Vostok ice core graph data
The reason for this is that the ocean is a vast storage sink for CO2 and there is thousands of times more C02 in the ocean than in the atmosphere. But the ability of the ocean to store CO2 is a function of tempurature. As the ocean warms up, the CO2 is released from the ocean. (Consider what happens to a can of cold soda pop left on the dashboard of a car on a hot day. As the can heats up, the C02 disolved in the soda is released and the can explodes and sticky goo goes everywhere). CO2 increases are an AFTER-effect of global warming NOT the cause.
Indeed, CO2 in the atmosphere is at nearly record levels for the past 650,000 years. But if you go back 500 million years they were ten or twenty times higher and yet with this extreme concentration of CO2 we still managed to slip into an ice age. Apparently there are other factors affecting climate that are far more important than CO2 and these factors are not included in the global warming climate change models.
If carbon was really effecting the climate via the greenhouse effect all the models predict that we would find a hotspot in the atmosphere. We have been sending up weather balloons for decades and this hotspot has never been found. It does not exist which would lead us to conclude that any warming which may be occurring is caused by something other than an increase in the greenhouse effect.
The fact is that CO2 only traps heat that arrives from the sun in three very tiny and limited wavelengths of the total heat/light spectrum. The CO2 in the atmosphere is already trapping nearly 100% of this heat in these three spectrums so any additional additions of CO2 can be expected to have have very limited effect and cause almost no additional trapping of heat. It is a case of diminishing returns. We could double C02 and it would have no additional effect.
Even the evidence that warming is occuring is extremely dubious. You don't have to look hard on the internet to find examples of the extremely poor placement of NASA's ground based tempurature monitoring stations. Many of them are in urban heat islands surrounded by things like airconditioners and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. NASA's data set for the USA is considered to be about the best record in the world and it is garbage. Data collected elsewhere in the world is much worse and extremely dubious. For example there was a recent embarrassing incident where Siberian data for September was entered for October. In science it is generally considered a mistake to try to assume precision of measurement greater than the margin of error of the instrumentation doing the measuring but that is exactly what has been done.
Better data has been gathered by satelites that have measured the tempurature in the upper atmosphere for the past 30 years. Contrary to the predictions of the models, they have shown no warming since 2001 even though carbon dioxide levels have increased steadily. Apparently the global warming climate models don't work very well at all and there are other factors affecting the climate that they are failing to account for and which are more powerful then CO2. Tempuratures in the atmosphere have been declining while C02 concentrations rise.
The appeal to scientific consensus is a joke. Consensus has no place in science. Science is not democratic. It only takes one scientist to prove the consensus wrong and most of the world's great scientists were great specifically because they rejected the consensus viewpoint. There are large numbers of scientists who do not agree with AGW and a growing body of scientists that used to believe who are becoming skeptics as they examine the growing evidence that the AGW models don't work. Evidence is what matters and there is not a shred of evidence that global warming is caused by human emmissions of C02.
What are your thoughts on the situation with the polar bears?
Regardless of the cause, it's pretty clear that they are losing the ice shelves they would normally hunt off of and have had to start farther "inland" and swim more to their hunting grounds.
What are your thoughts on this? Please bear in mind that I don't really have much an opinion on "global climate change" right now, I'm just trying to get more information from both sides of the fence.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
What Disappearing Sea Ice?
In the last couple of weeks there have been dozens of these articles all based on the same research by the University of Illinois. I'll let you google them yourself.
It turns out that in the last 3 months of 2008 there has been an unprecedented amount of new sea ice and that as of the end of December that the Arctic was frozen to the same extent that it was when satellite monitoring began in 1979. IN THE LAST 30 YEARS, DESPITE THE ALARMIST HYSTERIA, THERE HAS BEEN ZERO, NADA, NYET, NONE CHANGE IN THE AMOUNT OF SEA ICE IN THE ARCTIC.
Of course during that 30 year period there has been substantial seasonal and annual fluctuation. The ice has ebbed and flowed as it has throughout history. When the alarmists talk about receding sea ice they usually fail to mention that in 1903 and in 1941 and in 1943, all before the age of massive carbon emissions, the sea ice receded to the point where ships we able to navigate the Northern Passage. There was nothing particularly special about the melting that took place in the Arctic in the last couple of years.
Of course, the Arctic sea ice is kind of a red-herring anyway . Melting sea ice would be a symptom of warming and offers no evidence about the CAUSE OF WARMING. The fact that there has been no change in ice in the last 30 years suggests that there has been not much warming.
The issue is not whether the earth is warmer or colder or whether the climate is changing but whether these changes are caused by humans and specifically whether they are caused by carbon emissions. There is no doubt that the climate is changing. The climate HAS ALWAYS CHANGED. There is a lot of doubt about whether these changes are caused by human carbon emissions. Given that the hotspot signature in the upper atmosphere that should be present if warming was caused by the greenhouse effect is missing and given that the geological evidence strongly suggests that carbon dioxide buildups lag rather than cause warming, and given that the earth has slid into ice ages even with much higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and given that upper atmosphere tempurature are falling for the past several years even as carbon dioxide increses, I think the likelihood that the AGW theory is credible is dubious. Many scientists that used to buy the AGW theory are starting to agree.
NSIDC begs to differ with you (as well as NASA). There has been a steady decline in both amount of ice formed and the thickness of the ice. Periods of lows do happen, but in the past (such as the years you mentioned), they were followed by rebounds back to near-normal ice levels. Since the turn of the century, that hasn't happened. Instead, they've been consistently lower, having repeat years of ice levels near the levels of the more recent record lows.
Please bear in mind that I have said nothing about speculation on the causes of this event happening. I believe I also made it clear that I am on neither side of the fence on this argument. So please stop acting like I'm trying to imply that the sea ice (or lack thereof) is a symptom of CO2-caused global warming, because I'm not.
I suggest that if you want me to see your side of the argument on this matter, that you provide your own sources, since my legwork has done nothing but disprove your stance on the amount of Arctic ice.
(And for the record, all I did was a search for "arctic sea ice." Just so you know that I didn't specifically search for things that would disprove your stance.)
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
NSIDC begs to differ with you
Not me, the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center.
Here is how they present their data:
Global Sea Ice Area
The red line shows the anomoly from normal. It was zero in 1979 and it is zero now. I am personally struck by how little variation there is in the graph over 30 years.
This information has been widely reported in the last couple of weeks. I gave you one link in my previous post and you can find several more if you go to google NEWs and search for arctic sea ice Illinois.
Here is another one to get you started:
Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979
So now we have NSDIC which is part of NASA and the University of Illinois looking at the same satellite data and reaching different conclusions. If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on the University of Illinois because NASA has repeatedly had egg in their face on this whole AGW thing. Most recently, they "accidently" substituted September tempurature data for October data for Siberia and tried to claim October was a record warm month when the the majority of places in the world were experiencing unseasonal and often record lows. They are true believers in the AGW religion and that makes it difficult for them to do objective science. I have my suspicions that they are deliberately distorting the data to foster a political agenda.
But again I will point out that sea ice is a red-herring. Even if the ice were to melt completely (as it has done many time through geological time without the help of human carbon emissions), it would not be evidence of AGW.
The burden is on the AGW believers who are advancing this hypothesis to establish a link between human carbon emissions and global warming. It is their hypothesis so they need to come up with some evidence.
So far there has not been a shred of evidence that establishes a link between warming and carbon emissions. The theory suggests that there should be a hot spot in the atmosphere where heat is being trapped by greenhouse gases. 30 years of weather ballons have not located this hot spot. This suggests that the hypothesis is wrong and that some other phenomena is causing any warming that might be occurring. The best evidence of a link between warming and carbon was the early ice core data. But this evidence has been devastated by more recent and much better and more detailed ice core data that while it shows an amazing correlation between tempurature and C02 also shows that CO2 lags (not leads) tempurature increases. I posted the link to these ice cores above and they are very easy to look at. It does not take a scientist to see that tempurature increases consistently lead buildups of C02.
If human emissions of C02 are not causing tempurature increases or phenomena like arctic ice melts, then it makes little sense to devastate our economy, lower our standard of living and consume scarce resources or to deprive the third world of the literally life-saving economic growth that could be achieved with the consumption of carbon based fuels if carbon is not the cause of the problem.
I'm a reasonable person. I just want some evidence that carbon emissions are causing the warming. So far I've seen none. And there are tens of thousands of scientists who are looking at this same dearth of data and reaching the same conclusion. I posted links to these elsewhere in this thread.
When seeing such reports about polar bears I bear in mind the fact that 1) it has been proven that those clips of polar bears swimming and near the edge of ice floes are circulated and it is often the same video in different clips and 2) I watch the clip and I see polar bears swimming in water and on the edge of ice floes. What about this shows that polar bears are drowning or are having to swim great distances. Polar bears live on many ice shelfs and during the summer some of the ice melts. Plus, a polar bear feeds on fish and seals which live in the water so what is the problem. Finally, polar bears are expert swimmers so in less they have to swim hundreds of miles to get the food around them, they should be fine.
Government has no other end, but the preservation of property. - John Locke
Finally, polar bears are expert swimmers so in less they have to swim hundreds of miles to get the food around them, they should be fine.
Noooooooo!!!! Polar bears can swim 60 miles, top. And that would require about 10hrs of swimming! the oceans are vast, and no i haven't ever personally witnessed the drowning of a polar bear, but Nature Works and World Wildlife Fund both say they are drowning, looking for food, and ice to rest on.
All the things required to combat global warming are good things to do that promote less pollution. So why not just do them. Not doing them may cause harm, but doing them DEFINITELY WONT!!! better safe than sorry, or does everyone just have something better to do?
http://www.nhptv.org/natureworks/polar.htm
Fortunately, there is just as much sea ice now as there was 30 years ago. It appears that the polar bears will be just fine.
I have no problem with doing things that will give us a cleaner environment. But much of what is being proposed to combat global warming is extremely expensive and will have little or no positive effect on the environment. All they will do is lower our standard of living and give the government greater control of our lives.
Even James Hansen, the NASA scientist who is one of the biggest proponents of AGW theory thinks that the proposed Cap and Trade Regulations which is the most popular legislation in our Congress will be an extremely expensive fiasco.
Nasa's James Hansen warns Barack Obama on climate change
Public policy should be based on sounds science or we are going to be sacrificing our standard of living and accomplishing nothing. If it turns out, as the evidence is starting to establish, that C02 is a harmless gas which is both beneficial and necessary to all life, then it would be very bad policy to waste trillions of dollars (which we don't have right now) trying to stop emitting this harmless gas.
I have no problem with doing things that will give us a cleaner environment. But much of what is being proposed to combat global warming is extremely expensive and will have little or no positive effect on the environment. All they will do is lower our standard of living and give the government greater control of our lives.
H
Thinking environmentally and the government having greater control of our lives sounds like "jumbo shrimp" to me, a complete oxymoron. (so is clearly confused, i thought that was witty lol)
sincere question, through research I've found that most scientist believe in the global warming effect, do you think that is inaccurate?
Cap and Trade will put the government in a position of enormous power because they will get to pick who they hand out emission credits too. That puts the government in a position of enormous control.
Thinking environmentally is fine but I think there needs to be sound science SUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE that carbon dioxide causes global warming before we spend trillions of dollars and lower our standard of living to fight a problem probably is not be a problem at all.
I have no idea how many scientists actually believe in global warming.
I do know that over 30,000 American scientists signed the petition project rejecting the AGW theory and of these, over 9000 were PHDs. That seems like a long way from settled science.
The Petition Project
Here is what they had to say:
We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
And something like 650 scientists recently signed onto the Senate Minority Report rejecting AGW including quite a few who were former UN IPCC scientists.
UN Blowback: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims
Here is a little blurb about that report.
The U.S. Senate report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition rising to challenge the UN and Gore. Scientific meetings are now being dominated by a growing number of skeptical scientists. The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists' equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices and views of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. [See Full report Here: & See: Skeptical scientists overwhelm conference: '2/3 of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC' ]
The religion of AGW is coming unraveled as the evidence mounts that the models don't work and scientists are jumping ship to salvage their careers and what's left of their credibility which has been badly damaged by the AGW hoax.
It is consistent, but still amazing, how the main stream media ignores evidence that does not fit into their current world view.
"Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it."
--Andre Gide
I think that Mai's response is a perfect example of how many of those supporting action are misinformed. I feel that, thanks to the liberal media and efforts to brainwash the youth of our generation, global warming enthusiasts have not been educated on the terrible consequences of acting on global warming when the science is not anywhere near settled. Jackbenimble correctly points out the impact of a cap and trade economy and how the government control gained in the movement would be catastrophic to democracy. but further than that, imposing all the restrictions that global warming activists want to be placed on business would reverse all the prosperity and general increase n living conditions that the world has seen in the past 150 years. Imagine the developing African and Asian nations that are finally rising out of the terrible poverty to a position where they can start helping themselves being shoved back down into the dark abyss of poverty and disease. Imagine all those people around the world that work hard every day to fed their families and provide shelter all of a sudden losing their jobs because businesses can no longer afford their employment with all the taxes instituted by the government. these are only a few examples of the catastrophe that will develop if we act on science that is still being widely disputed at this very moment. Maybe, if the situation proves true and dire these actions to stop global warming may be needed, but without complete confidence in the science and knowledge of the real truth, action would be just lain detrimental and stupid.
Government has no other end, but the preservation of property. - John Locke
if the situation proves true and dire these actions to stop global warming may be needed, but without complete confidence in the science and knowledge of the real truth, action would be just lain detrimental and stupid.
This really get me about people, if global warming (as most scientist and Al Gore -who i think is pretty f'ing rad--) IS true, the things we can do on an everyday basis ISNT GOING TO HURT ANYONE OR EVEN COST A GREAT DEAL IN COMPARISION TO WHAT WE COULD LOOSE.
Why not just buck up and do simple things like not use aerosol cans, and help boom the auto industry by endorsing eco-friendly cars (as obama said in his campaign) use alternative fuels, renewable solar and wind powered energy, car pool, restore forests, recycle.
How about instead of fighting the situation, take the good things from it. Every little bit helps. These are some of the best solutions available. lets do something about Global warming before we are in a "dire" situation!
http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html
Anyone interested in the facts about GW should read this speech by Michael Crichton.
"Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it."
--Andre Gide
Reuters just reported that Antarctica is getting warmer and huge shelves of ice are breaking off. http://green.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090121/sc_nm/us_antarctica_warming.html
Ice flows downhill like water only slower. If huge shelves of ice are breaking off it is a process called "calving". Increased calving is indicative of increased ice buildup in the center of Antarctic causing an acceration of the icepack downhill towards the sea. It would be bigger news if the ice shelves were NOT breaking off because that would indicate less ice piling up at the head-end of glaciers. There have been dozens of studies over the last few years suggesting that the ice pack in antarctica is indeed increasing. And even if it is warming some it is still below freezing and therefore not causing melting. Think about that for a minute. It is still below freezing.
Also, during these recent years when there has been so much alarmism about the Arctic Sea Ice, the Antarctic Sea Ice (different from the continental ice pack) has been reaching new records. This was not predicted by the AGW models.