Globe Warmer In Time of Vikings

SEWilco writes "A record of recent global temperatures has been assembled by piecing together the hundreds of studies with past temperature estimates [Discovery, Harvard]. The record shows there was a "Medieval Warm Period" warmer than the 20th Century. This was followed by the "Little Ice Age", which ended around 1900. We're having average climate now. Numerous sources indicated this, but apparently were not gathered into one document" This adds some more background reading to the previously linked Telegraph story.

Comments

Bush and Kyoto

[Ogerman]

If these increasing numbers of studies disproving man-influenced climate change turn out to be true, we can all thank Bush for not plunging our economy further down the toilet by signing the Kyoto treaty.

That being said, I am entirely in favor of *real* environmental protection laws and the promotion of cleaner technologies. By 'real' I mean factors that actually affect people--water and air quality, landfills, etc. And I also think we should switch to a hydrogen economy ASAP, not out of worry about so-called greenhouse gasses, but as the single most effective way to fight terrorism--shut off the money flow to the middle east!

Re:Bush and Kyoto

[derubergeek]

I'll start off by saying I predominately agree so that this doesn't look like an argument. I'm only quoting your one line because I'm feeling lazy...

And I also think we should switch to a hydrogen economy ASAP

The only concern I have with the push toward a hydrogen economy is concern about the source of all of this liberated hydrogen. Those who say H20 are going to have to deal with the idea that nuke's are our current best bet toward that economy, at least if it's going to happen in the near future.

Now, I'm not nuke bashing here. The problem I have is that, the current best source for H without using H20 is oil. It takes significantly less energy to get hydrogen from oil than from water. And the only byproduct is carbon (which I would imagine we'll find plenty of uses for if we have an abundance of it). Which means that it's much more likely that our hydrogen economy is going to be oil based.

I'm also not oil bashing here. The real crux of this is that O2 + HC => CO2 + H20. The cool thing is that plants take CO2 + H2O => O2 + HCs. So we've got at least a cycle here.

But what happens when we take HC => H + C, then toss the C, and recombine H + O2 => H2O? We start depleting oxygen from the atmosphere and don't provide a natural path back (although we do get a lot of extra water out of it).

Just something to think about.

For all the pedants out there: 1) Yes - I know my equations are totally unbalanced and 2) Yes - I know my HC oxidation reaction is ideal - in reality there are also NOx, COx, yadda, yadda, yadda, but the focus of this is on the CO2 issue.