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Global Warming - From Inside the Globe

Bill Kendrick writes "The National Post reports that a team of American and Canadian researchers has found evidence of real global warming: the temperature of the Earth's crust is increasing at a remarkable rate. What's really interesting is that heat absorbed by rocks slowly permeates into the earth. By boring holes in the ground, they can tell how hot the earth was years ago, in a 'reading tree rings' fashion."

6 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. You've GOT to be kidding me... by the_skywise · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Heat from 150 years ago is 100 metres below ground? (Depending on the rock). Sort of like tree rings...

    "Tree Rings" are the result of bark cycles of the tree. This is *not* the same thing... We're talking about rock that has never seen the light of day... so we're talking about radiation permeating the surface and being stored there like a BATTERY...

    What about temperature cycles? Can he "see" the great cold snap of '78?

    What about dispersal patterns? Does radiation permeate equally?

    And does that mean that the caves that have a constant temperature of ~60 degrees WERE the temperatures thousands of years ago?

    What *we* do know... is that its science that makes for good press, politics, and money...

  2. Um, no. by Perdo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Drilling a hole generates heat. Sometimes harder substances generate more heat, sometimes less. While the "heat tree rings" may exist, as seems logical, the act of attempting to observe them corrupts your data.

    Using extremely old holes could mitigate this somewhat, but then you have no measure of the geological composition, and therefore thermal properties, of the rock the hole was bored through.

    This makes any measurements made of core earth temperature so speculative as to be worthless, except as a very "scientific" expensive way to spread fud. There are quit a few "scientific" methods to measure global warming that are in fact just pseudo scientific pawns in the politically charged arena of environmentalism.

    To imagine that we have had no impact on global warming is obviously false. Any argument contrary to what should be painfully obvious to the most casual observer is pure political bullshit.

    --

    If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.

  3. Global Warming isn't a problem by lkaos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We are not going to destroy the planet by global warming. The earth has endured a great deal of meteorological change and life goes on. The fact is that temperatures are going to change whether we like it or not. I almost think that whether we are making the planet warming by .01 degree is irrelavant because natural changes are probably making it warmer by .5 degrees anyway.

    There are better reasons to not cut down forests and to reduce emissions. When people argue global warming, they just pollute the issue and reduce their credibility.

    --
    int func(int a);
    func((b += 3, b));
  4. Re:Oh god, not again by God!+Awful · · Score: 3, Insightful


    Climate change happens. Ten thousand years ago a good part of North America (and Europe) was under a mile of ice. I suppose humans take the blame for melting that?

    Oh, you people are so ridiculous, snatching at whatever random fact that appeals to your self-serving opinion. I remember a Christian Science lecturer once told me that the ice age is what allowed the animals from Noah's ark to walk across the ocean and settle on the various continents. I don't think your argument is that bad, but you're still being willfully ignorant.

    Scientists believe that a number of factors contribute to large scale climate change:

    1. The gradual warming of the sun.
    2. The gradual cooling of the earth's core.
    3. Large volcanic eruptions and meteor impacts, which pollute the atmosphere with dust.
    4. The reflective nature of the polar ice.
    5. The population cycles of plants and animals, which change the composition of the atmosphere.
    6. The thinning of the ozone layer.
    7. The bulldozing of the rainforest.
    8. Commercial farming.
    9. Atmospheric pollution.
    10. Human power consumption.

    So the fact that the first 5 elements have caused periodic climate change over the course of Earth's existance does not prove that the industrial revolution is not causing global warming. Furthermore, we have evidence that the effects of mankind are causing climate change to occur much faster than they were previously. On top of this, we have scientific models (based on chemistry and physics) which can accurately predict the warming trend. (We have the examples of the planets Mars and Venus, which provide further test vectors.)

    This doesn't mean that there won't be little blips in the data. In fact, a volcanic eruption in the mid 90s caused a 2-3 year disruption in the warming trend (source: the Smithsonian Institute). In the past, large scale climate changes have caused the extinction of large numbers of species. So far, the temperature has always returned back to comfortable levels.

    However, the danger of global warming is that several of these factors exist in an unstable equilibrium. As the Earth gets warmer, the polar ice melts. This causes the Earth to reflect less of the sun's energy and more of the ice melts. This results in a 'snowball' effect (to use an inappropriate term). Perhaps in the past, this runaway warming has been quenched by a catastrophic effect like a giant volcanic eruption. Therefore, the equilibrium would be unstable, but chaotic enough to always return to the balance point. There is no guarantee than man-made climate change will have the same effect. Some of the natural factors (e.g. the plant-animal arms race) have a buffering effect, which tends to restore the equilibrium. Man-made factors will get worse as the population increases; they may bias the controlling equations and cause the equilibrium to never be restored.

    -a

  5. Hrm. by autopr0n · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wonder how many "sciantists" you could get to sign a "anti-evolution" petition. A lot, probably.

    The number of "sciantists" who sign an online petition isn't proof of anything.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  6. Please explain to me this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you talk to Europeans, they accept that the Earth is warming up and think that something must be done to prevent it from messing up the balance of nature.

    If you talk to people from the USA, they come up with who knows what explanations about why the Earth is not warming up. Why is it so? Do they teach you at school that the Earth may not warm up and thus it is perfectly safe to pump more CO2 and other greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere?

    There still is an ozone hole. The Earth is warming up. Okay, the ozone hole is not so large as it was a few years ago, but this was because ozone-layer eating gasses were banned.

    Think about it, if everyone had thought "what a bunch of hippie communist propaganda, ozone-schmozone, ha" things would be different now. In that scenario you had better not go to Southern Australia for a vacation.

    So, please explain what drives especially people from the US to close their eyes from the facts and cite corporate spin doctors who offer "proof" about why the planet is NOT warming and hence it is safe NOT to invest in expensive modifications of manufacturing plants or environmentally friendly technology.

    I would love to create stockholder value, but I'm constipated right now.