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Big Arctic Perils Seen in Warming
gollum123 wrote in with news of a new study of warming in the Arctic, showing that warming from greenhouse gases is causing vast changes in the region. If your lifestyle depends on cold and frozen rather than mild and damp, you're in deep trouble.
Another non-liberal geek? Nah I must be seeing things. The amount of greenhouse gases that the civilized world has output since the Industrial Revolution is still less than what is output in one major volcanic eruption. SAVE THE EARTH... PLUG A VOLCANOE!!!
Oh come on... we all know that this is just a LIEberal scam to get more money to "protect the environment". [/sarcasm]
Meh.
CO2 is not a pollutant, It is not toxic at ppm concentrations. It is, in fact, the lifeblood of the planet, and the key to the food chain. It also has little to do with global warming, even at it current level. Water vapor is by far the primary contributor of the greenhouse effect, accounting for 96 to 99%. CO2 accounts for 1 to 3%. The greenhouse effect lets solar radiation in, but, like a blanket over the planet absorbs some IR heat that would otherwise radiate out. This keeps the Earth's mean temperature somewhere around 15 C, instead of roughly -15 C. This vital 30 C swing is the reason that the Earth is habitable. During the current interglacial period, the Earth has been about 2C cooler (The little ice age around 1600, when the Thames was frozen over and Europe was dieing off from famine and disease), and it has also been about 2C warmer (The medieval warm period around 1200, when Greenland was colonized by the Vikings.) We are currently about in the middle of this natural variation, which occurred without manmade CO2. Incidentally, the 500k year Vostok ice core data: http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/vostok.htm shows CO2 either in phase or lagging temperature by up to 1000 years, over four temperature oscillations. This means the CO2 does not drive temperature, but that temperature drives CO2. The most likely explanation is that the ocean outgases, and releases more CO2 when temperature increases, and holds more dissolved gasses as the oceans cools. I'm not disputing the Earth may be getting relatively warmer (as we are coming out of the little ice age). One reason is likely the unusually active Sun. This report: http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/aah4688.pdf shows that over the last several centuries, solar activity is at its highest levels. The IPCC determined that the Sun's variation in energy output were too small to explain global warming. They didn't consider the effects of cosmic radiation on low level cloud formation. Recent studies, an article summing it up can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2333133. stm
show it goes like this: When the sun is highly magnetically active, the increased solar wind shields us from cosmic radiation. Low levels of incoming comic reduce cloud formation. Increased low level cloud formation increases reflectivity (i.e., the Earth's albedo). The difference from active Sun to inactive Sun was about 3% global cloud coverage. The jury is still out, but it could explain the correlation between the Maunder minimum of the 1600's and the little ice age, and account for the warming in the last 3 decades that corresponds with unusually high solar activity at the same time.
Finally, and most damningly, the "Global warming from manmade greenhouse gasses" hypothesis, requires that the upper atmosphere must warm up first, and then cause warming at the surface. Satellite data from the 70s to the present shows no significant warming in the troposphere. Since basis for all current computer models predicting warming is invalid, NO VALID CONCLUSIONS can be based on their results.
Please, to all who have bought into the Global Warming hype: Climate change is normal and unavoidable from century to century. Question authority, and do some of your own research before swallowing everything the green lobby feeds you. The best protection against climate change is a rich, technoligically advanced society that can adapt to natural variation. Don't damn the 3rd world to extended time in poverty by crippling the world's economy.