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Warming and Slowing the World
chrisleonard writes "We all know that global warming is supposed to heat the planet up, but did you know that it might also slow it down? According to a report from Belgium's Royal Observatory (as reported here by astronomy.com), if the days seem a little longer to you than they used to, it might not be just old age catching up with you. Would it be wrong to call the interaction of the world's warming temperatures and its slowing rotation ... a snowball effect?"
How many years in a row does it have to be 'odd' for?
It used to be perfectly natural for my area to get a little something called SNOW now and then.
The last 5 years have gotten snow that almost immediately melted from the ground (within a day) and even then the snow fall was pitiful.
10 years ago we would get a regular snowfall of some sort.
20 years ago a regular snowfall of some decency.
50 years ago you actually had to own a pair of snow boots to wear more then once a year.
Now days the 1 day of snow we get is so thin that you can walk in it with sneakers.
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We're on a planet that has a 3 billion year history in which the climate has changed dramatically enough to put dinosaur fossils on Antarctica, evidence of undersea life on top of Mt. Everest, strange enough to feature a 20 megaton blast in Siberia 50 years before atom bombs were invented, and random enough to prevent our ability to accuratly forecast tomorrow's weather, AND we conclude based on less than 100 years of weather data that global warming is happening?
Forgive me, but I'm feeling a little like a mayfly seeing its first (and only) sunrise and worrying about global sunlighting.
"The 2nd paper and the people that signed it proved that deforestation was not a problem and that their research showed that our planet's tree population was far greater than it was in the 1920's and increasing rapidly."
Heh, increasing rapidly. . . . .
Dude
You DO realize that there is a SIGNIFICANT different between a SAPLING and a 100 YEAR OLD tree right?
No, seriously. I mean like 50-200ft or so of difference.
The worlds forests are NOT increasing.
Well unless you could forest farms, which are harvested regularly and hardly get to the size of REAL trees.
The forest is shrinking each year. How do I know?
Simple;
gotta drive further along the road to get to the darn'ed thing.
and don't tell me about no world view. World view my ass, no trees in MY area means that _I_ can't breath. And quite frankly I don't GIVE A FUCK about some corporate 'sponsered' (read: EPA made them do it and/or they are making a profit out of it in the long run) program to replant trees.
My lungs, my breath, so stop chopping down all those fr*cking trees.
KTHXBYEANDFUCKOFF
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Care for our planet, yes. Act as responsible stewards of our land and oceans, certainly. But spew bogus alarmist rhetoric to confuse and manipulate the mediagoing public, shame on you. This is junk science at its worst.
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SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
You have no idea what you're talking about. The amount of CO2 going into the air is known... the affect on the weather is what's in question.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Um. No. I vehemently disagree with you. Global Warming is bunk. We only have about 100 years worth of weather data. HOW IN THE WORLD CAN YOU SAY HUMANS CAUSE THIS WITH THIS DATA! It isn't enough! The world is around 3 billion years old ( I think that's it....) and we are trying to say that us humans who have only been here part of that time caused this? No, US folks are skeptical of scientists who talk out there butt. Weather patterns are CYCLICAL! Just because I ain't freezing my butt of now and walking thru 10-12 inches of snow does not mean that the globe, as a whole is any warmer. Do you realize that Texas has had more snow then Columbus, OH?? That's almost unheard of. Also, I believe Texas has also been colder then we are too. Some people will say that global warming caused this chaotic pattern. BS. We don't have anywhere near enough data to prove global warming. Any scientist saying we do should tear up his PhD.....now and go start selling burgers at McDonald's.
Also there's no such thing as an unbiased news source. We're humans. We have opinions and try as we might, we can't always suppress them.
Also, an another note, for the freaks who say we don't have enough oil, well, if we'd drill in ANWR we'd stabilize the market. If we get off of our butts and tap the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, we could be self sustaining and not need oil from saudi. This is a fact (wish I could atrribute a source but it's late and I am going to bed after this). Here's an interesting link about ANWR. The reasons these ecological wackos have come up make no sense and have no scientific backing except some crap some scientists who liked the idea has drawn up.
I am not saying we should not explore alternatives that are cleaner then gasoline. Hydrogen and fuel cells hold great promise not just from an environmental sense, but from a business sense as well. Imagine if we all had a fuel cell on our house. We'd no longer be dependent on wires going underground and into our house and no longer would we have to worry about lightening striking the above ground wiring because there would be none. When ever Hydrogen is cheap (it's cheap now...), you'd just fill it up and be good to go. The waste water created by the reaction could be ran through a filter, and used to flush toilets or take showers or heck even drink. Who WOULDN'T want this? Even the big oil would want a piece of this. The good thing is if we actually tap the Gulf adequately, we could be assured we would have enough oil until this stuff is perfected. Right now, if we decided to bomb someone in the middle east, we may as well grab ahold of a bank loan to buy gas cuz it's going to go up. My biggest point here, is that it doesn't have to be this way. it's only this way becase a small MINORITY thinks the sky is falling when it's not.
Gorkman
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Weather is very complicated. Global warming will not simply give us the same weather, but warmer. It will cause strange, and unexpected new weather patterns. Storms will tend to be more intense (high temp = more energy), some places will get wetter, some drier, some warmer, some cooler.
But all this is nothing compared to the Ocean's rising if it actually get warm enough to break up the antartic ice shelf.
And all xfiles people know that global warming is being orchestrated by a global conspiracy of GOOD guys to stave off an imminent ice-age!
Anarchists never rule
And from a nordic perspective global warming might not be that bad either :)
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
After seeing loads of pseudo-science (on both sides), I took the time several months ago to look at the scientific literature and try to learn about the validity of claims that many laypeople made about global warming. The parent touched on a few of these, and I couldn't resist digging in...
1) Global temperature is decreasing.
No. Even the most cursory look into the subject should show this to be false. For an example, check out the graph on this page. Almost all of the literature I have read agrees on this. The debate comes in when you start talking about how much/why/is this natural?
2) The atmosphere already contains carbon dioxide and needs it in order to keep the Earth warm. Thus, more carbon dioxide is not bad.
While the atmosphere does contain significant amounts of CO2, the thing to remember is that it needs to maintain a balance. As an analogy, think of your body. If you don't have enough iron, you get sick (e.g. anemia). If you have too much iron, you also get sick.
One of the biggest sources of natural atmospheric CO2 is plant matter. At the end of the 19th century, human CO2 emissions were comparable to global plant matter emissions (~150 MMt). By the end of the 20th century, human emissions were 40 times greater than the plant CO2 emissions. You can check this up at the CDIAC site.
3) Global temperature increases can be explained by volcanic emissions.
Also not the case. In fact, one of the landmark papers (Mass, Portman 1989) actually showed that the net effect of each of the several largest 20th century volcanic eruptions was a decrease in global temperature. The reason for this is that, while volcanos do put significant amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, they also release substantial quantities of particulate matter (e.g. ash). The effect of the latter is to decrease the net amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface.
4) Global warming can be explained via sun spots, orbit variations (Earth and/or lunar), etc.
I was unable to find very much evidence of this in the literature. I was, however, able to find a significant amount of "pop sci" articles supporting these theories.
The general consensus is that scientists do not know enough to fully evaluate the problem, but that humans do have a measurable effect on the atmosphere. The scientific side of the debate centers around the size of this effect, and whether or not it is significant. The atmosphere is incredibly complex, and we may never be able to fully describe it. To me, this appears to be as good an argument in favor of reducing emissions as any other.
On a side note, I found the following to be generally true of articles/papers about global warming: The "seriousness" and scientific legitimacy of such an article are inversely proportional to the concreteness of the claims. Papers claiming that "global warming is just a myth", that "global warming can be explained by some never-before-heard theory", or that "global warming is already upon us and will put most of the Earth's land underwater in the next few years" almost never appear in peer-reviewed scientific journals, while papers claiming that "we really don't know enough yet to make firm conclusions" almost never appear in pop sci magazines.
*laugh*
That will teach me to do a quick link search! (Although to be fair, I haven't really researched your claims either). I don't doubt that there are are people in the "global-warming-is-bunk" camp that have political agendas; for that matter many people in the "humans cause-global warming camp" have a pretty clear political agenda too. In my defense, please note the times on my varrious posts over the past few weeks (and frequent refferences to coffee); we've got a new son, & I've been hopping on while rocking him between diaper changes,, etc. at pretty much random times (read: not enough sleep).
So I will back down to a few statements I know first hand to be correct, and not try to back anything with potentially tainted links:
Better?-- MarkusQ