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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.
I guess I'll be buying property in Antartica. "The Sunshite State - Reloaded"
I'm not trolling I just have an honest question...
When that big lump of ice out there in the North Pole melts, will we *notice* it at all?
My reasoning is that most of the ice is underwater, and ice takes up more cm than water, so there would be a smaller volume of water than there is ice. Sure some of the ice is above sealevel but surely the difference in volume compensates for this?
Where am I wrong?
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Actually melting the permafrost is likely to produce less usable landmass. According to the article:
"Oil and gas deposits on land are likely to be harder to extract as tundra thaws, limiting the frozen season when drilling convoys can traverse the otherwise spongy ground, the report says. Alaska has already seen the "tundra travel" season on the North Slope shrink to 100 days from about 200 days a year in 1970."
Manufacture in China
Hasn't the artic been warming for the last 10,000 years since the last Ice Age? I'm sure mankind is contributing somehow to this process but why is what seems to be a natural cycle of the earth an inherrently bad thing? Its just another natural phenomenon we must learn to deal with with like earthquakes, volcanoes, storms etc.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
...and we should accept it. Is it fault of humans? Maybe, maybe not. But remember there were times where glacier covered half the Europe, there were times when Sahara was a green country, when what today is mediterran sea was a valley of a huge river... It just happens. Now just be wise and prepare to face it instead of looking who is to blame.
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I'll start with the last comment first:
Do you assume that global warming means that temperatures will rise uniformly across the globe?
Do you assume that global warming would cause no shift in weather patterns?
Do you assume that any shifts in weather patterns would not be disruptive to agriculture?
Do you assume that disruptions in agriculture can be easily accomodated, say by rapidly shifting agricultural production to different parts of the globe (assuming, of course, that there would be vast new tracks of arable farmland as a result of changed weather patterns)?
If the answer to any of these questions is "no", then global warming should make you nervous.
If your answer to any of these is "yes", then it's you, not the environmental scientists, who have some explaining to do. They seem like pretty shaky assumptions.
Let's see: the Sun is at an 8000-year high for solar activity, Mars is emerging from its own Ice Age and its polar caps are disappearing, and the Earth's magnetic field strength is approaching nil before it reconstitutes with an opposite polarity. And we are to believe that human activity is somehow solely resposible for global warming?
I live in the Northwest Territories (Canada) and I can say in the last 15 years the winters have become much warmer. I remember stretched where is was -35 C for 3 weeks at a time. Now it only reaches that occasionally. I cannot speak for long term trends however. And yes, I did walk to school both ways uphill.
1: Show me ACCURATE 1 million year tempature records. Wait!! We only have 80 years of records
Holy shit man, don't you know it gets warmer in the summer than the winter? We're all doomed! Doomed!
this is my sig
Let me guess: you are an American. Let me answer at least a couple of the questions you just brought up: 3) Scientists are scientists (unless owned by a politician like the ones working for Bush that say global warming is OK..) and they are people who stay true to facts. If scientists are continuously telling you something bad's coming, it means they reviewed quite a few facts before reaching this conclusion. And finally, the above being said, I'd listen to what they have to say. On a side note, you may want to look up the IPCC (www.ipcc.ch). Those guys are from all over the place and they have been working on global warming for a while now. They are saying the same thing. 4) I'm sorry, this is just a stupid question. Global warming (or massive amounts of ice melting) doesn't just make the climate a bit warmer. It actually starts a chain reaction of events which take place in a land slide and end with a signifant portion of the earth's biosphere dead or extinct. Yes, this coming from the same guys that can tell you what your weather will be like tomorrow correctly 90% of the time.
...people will soon start to realize the potential harm these issues can do to our society as a whole. I cannot understand how any sane person is able to ignore the simple fact of environmental problems getting worse over time.
The US government still manages to deny cooperation on the Kyoto Protocol with most stupid arguments, a treaty already ratified by 125 countries all over the world.
"The world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is China. Yet, China was entirely exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. This is a challenge that requires a 100 percent effort; ours, and the rest of the world's. America's unwillingness to embrace a flawed treaty should not be read by our friends and allies as any abdication of responsibility. To the contrary, my administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change. Our approach must be consistent with the long-term goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere." -- George W. Bush
???
The greenhouse gas problem will grow at a steady level for decades after we have started countermeasures, I hope then there's enough time left afterwards.
From a long term perspective, moderate global warming is not necessarily bad. Earth will likely find a new balance, and the ecosystem will adapt. Total biodiversity and bioproductivity may drop, or, quite possibly, increase. Some humans (or their evolutionary successors) will certainly survive.
Of course the long term is a couple of million years. In between, the change, and the probably unprecended speed of the change, puts an enormous additional stress on an eco (both -logic and -nomic) system that has adapted to colder, stable temperatures. Some may profit, some may lose, but on average we will all lose significantly. Nice beachfrotn property on the Kola penisula will not be of much use to a Florida retiree whose condo is washed away by a hurricane.
Of course, there is also a non-zero chance at a runaway greenhouse effect...
Stephan
I am prepared to send two of my ex's to the north and south poles respectively. Those cold hearted frigid bitches will soon put an end to any thawing going on.
All I ask for saving humanity is a tropical island paradise where I can be surrounded by nubile maidens.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
---I'll start with the last comment first:
---Do you assume that global warming means that temperatures will rise uniformly across the globe?
Course not. Look at the midwest here during 1850's. MUCH more desertlike and much less water. And the earth took that area FROM less livable to more livable.
---Do you assume that global warming would cause no shift in weather patterns?
The natural forces are more destructive than most things we can make. Tornadoes, earthquakes, VOLCANOES (1 spew=100 years of 'pollutants), hurricanes/tsunamis..
The only thing more destructive than most of those are nuclear warheads.. And even 50 years cures most of those problems. Look at Bikini atoll.
---Do you assume that any shifts in weather patterns would not be disruptive to agriculture?
The sahara was a wonderful wilderness. Now its sand. And LOTS of it. The "americans" sure as hell didnt do it. Nature CHANGES weather patters naturally. Whether it be good or bad for us, I dont know.
---Do you assume that disruptions in agriculture can be easily accomodated, say by rapidly shifting agricultural production to different parts of the globe (assuming, of course, that there would be vast new tracks of arable farmland as a result of changed weather patterns)?
Easy as in 1 year, or 100 years? The human race wont die out, but most will. Darn.
---If the answer to any of these questions is "no", then global warming should make you nervous.
---If your answer to any of these is "yes", then it's you, not the environmental scientists, who have some explaining to do. They seem like pretty shaky assumptions.
Im just looking at previous happenings in general. Though, you gotta love that false dichotomy at the end.
Humans are adaptable, yes-within a particular set or limitations. It is our duty as a species to modify whatever is necessary to perpetuate our survival, whether it is artificially regulating the climate by any means necessary or limiting particular actions that contribute to health problems or in a minor way to the trends that we must abate for survival. Environmentalism has nothing to do with this apart from the aspects it derives from scientific study on trends that are common with the prompts for necessary actions for our species survival on the extended scale. Whether this is a "natural" trend or not does not matter, that it will produce inconvenient situations for humans does matter though and makes it a thing to seek control over.
1) By analyzing fossil layer contents we can quite accurately estimate temperatures of given year. Some plants grow better if it's warmer, so you'll find more seeds, more remains etc. Of course there are accidents - fires, epidemies etc that change the results a lot. But examine the data from several places around the globe and you'll come up with quite decent estimates.
2) I won't. It did. The results were catastrophic. Human/industry fault or just natural order of things, we face it and should prepare to it.
3) Tell me scientists who claim the opposite aren't getting grants from government?
4) It may create some inhabitable land in some areas. It will make some currently inhabitable areas uninhabitable (deserts, dry steppes, flooded areas). It will also send most of the most inhabitated land under water. Think both US coasts, mediterran sea, Holland and quite a bit of European shores, most heavily inhabited areas of India, pacific islands, quite a bit of Japan...) - I hope profit of gaining new places to live will outweight the necessity for some 60% of Earth population to migrate and find new homes?
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"the ice that was floating in the water was displacing a lot more water than it actually contained"
*gasp*
Out come the enviro-trolls.
Yes, here you come.
1: Show me ACCURATE 1 million year tempature records. Wait!! We only have 80 years of records
It's called paleoclimatology. It was developed by people who actually studied when they went to school, as opposed to following your apparent curriculum of eating glue and getting your head stuck in bannisters.
2: Show me this hasnt happened before.
What does that have to do with anything? If it happened before it can't happen again? I mean, remember the last time you got your head stuck in a bannister? Did the fact that it had happened before prevent it from happening again?
3: Tell me the "scientists" studying arent also getting grants from... greenpeace or ELF..
Well, if you read the article then you would see who commissioned the study. But I guess it's more fun to accuse the scientists of being bribed liars. Because who wouldn't be corrupted by those climatology grants; you can really live the high life on those.
4: WHY exactly is global warming bad? Wont it give more landmass (eg, melts permafrost siberia) and lessen the "nice tropical -120F on antartica?
See, those pesky laws of thermodynamics mess things up. Maybe you should have taken junior high school physics instead of eating all that glue. Water, like many, many substances, tends to increase in volume when you add heat. So sea level rises. So you may gain part of Siberia, but you also lose a sizeable chunk of the world's coastal areas.
Maybe you shouldn't jump to conclusions on the validity of the science on the basis of an NYT article.
A .html m l l eoclimate.htm
One of the many ways of studying past climate patterns is by looking at ice cores.
We have pretty good data on long term climate patterns in cold places. Some links here:
http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/globalwarm
http://www.secretsoftheice.org/icecore/warming.ht
http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/pa
Anyone else wipe the sleep from their eyes as they read "Big arctic Penis seen...".
Yeah, it was only me. Dear lord, im going back to bed.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Correction: the ice replaces exactly the amount of water it occupies when floating (=law of Archimedes). Proof: take a glass of water, put in ice cube, fill up glass to the edge (but not overflowing!). Ice melts, and water is still exactly up to the edge.
Secondly: the bigger part of ice masses aren't floating, but piled hundreds or thousands or metres thick on top of land masses. And a glacier isn't usually found in an ocean or lake either. So if these ice masses melt, you get more water -> sea level up -> less land for people to live on.
My next comment will be ready soon, but subscribers can't beat the rush or see it early!
4) There are also theories that, after a short period of global warming, the increased area of water will cause an increase in cloud mass, reflecting more of the sun's energy and causing global cooling, plunging the world into another ice age. Why is global warming bad? Because we don't know which potentially harmless or potentially horrific chain reaction might occur, but it most likely will make the world MUCH different than it is now, and when things are MUCH different on a global scale, it's usually not a good thing.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Actually, that's not necessarily the case. During the last ice age the effect of all the additional water being locked up in the arctic ice cap caused the sea levels to fall. As a result land that is currently underwater was exposed by the declining sea level, forming amongst other things the land bridge from the European mainland to the British Isles. As the ice age came to an end and the ice sheets melted, those areas of land were again submerged, opening up the Irish Sea and, sometime later, the English channel. This is why there are fewer species of mammals in Ireland than there are in the UK mainland; they never got the chance to cross the land bridges before they were submerged by the melting ice.
Of course, saying there is going to be more or less land kind of misses the point. What's the use of having an extra few million square km of land, if it's under an icesheet a few km thick? Or if we go the other way, having a nice warm, but somewhat smaller, Eurasia/North America if all the lands around the equator get to become an infertile desert like the Sahara? Those are two extreme examples of course, the reality is likely to fall somewhere in between; but gains in one area of the globe will still be off set by losses in another.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Really? Is that why my beer cans shrink when they freeze? I think you are missing something.
Which is why I used the word "tends". Water is somewhat unique; when it changes from liquid to solid it expands, due to the formation of a crystal lattice.
But that behavior only happens in a narrow band of temperatures. It doesn't kick in until water hits about 4 degrees celsius; above that temperature, water behaves like other liquids, and expands when it's heated. Ocean temperature varies by latitude, but over much of the earth water doesn't hit the 4 degree mark until you go down more than a kilometer. So the water above that will, in fact, expand if you add heat.
I fail to see how this is so insightful.
It's easy to say "I don't care" about some environmental issue, because natural processes also cause cataclysmic effects. The fact is that humans CAN alter the environment and humans DO breathe the air the environment produces, drink the water, and eat the fruit of the land.
The planet will survive no matter what we do, I'll grant you that. On the other hand, it need not support mamillian life. Though the course of history many classes of living organisms have become extinct though natural proccesses. It's quite possible that given a critical mass of people, all producing some minor atmospheric effect, we could alter the environment on the order of those natural processes, such that mamilian life were no longer sustainable. Natural selection would weed out the mammals and a new form of life would emerge.
If you're OK with that, go ahead and ignore the research about global warming. I for one would like to preserve the human race. I'm not saying all the science about global warmning is good. It isn't. However, to say that 6 billion people on the planet cold never affect the environment in a negative way is quite silly. We do need to take environmental research seriously, debunk the bad research, and heed the good research.
Why is this assertion repeated every time this topic comes up? It's patently false. We annually burn up couple of km^3 pure carbon and turn it all into CO2. A very major volcano spews only a few km^3 of material, most of which is just rocks that fall to the ground next to the volcano. Do you have any valid links to back up your claim?
and Republicans and "Liber-I-always-vote-for-republicans-tarians" will say "The flooded costal cities are big lie that the liberals are pushing. What we need are bigger SUVs and more logging."
Ice floats because its less dense than water. If you had ice which was frozen onto the bottom of the seabed, then melting that ice would cause a drop in sea level (because the water takes up less space as a liquid than a solid). If you have ice which is floating in the ocean, then melting that ice has no effect on ocean level (an ice block displaces an amount of water with mass equal to the total mass of the ice block). If you have ice which is anchored to land which is above sea level, and it melts, then it can cause an increase in sea level.
So the question is, what fraction of ice is in the form of icebergs, what fraction in submerged structures, and what fraction fixed to land above sea level.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> The amount of greenhouse gases that the civilized world has output since the Industrial Revolution [...]
You are merely making an unfounded statement, but still got moderated up. Care to back this up?
According to "Gerlach, T.M., 1991, Present-day CO2 emissions from volcanoes: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union (EOS), v. 72, p. 249, and 254-255." CO2 emissions of all volcanoes are surpassed by us humble beings by a factor of 150.
Sulphourous-emissions of volcanoes and all other natural sources are surpassed by 330%.
I guess, you'll now have to retort to doubting the integrity and/or qualification of the scientist in question.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
If all of the icecaps melt, the result is to raise the global ocean level about 200 feet. IIRC, over 80% of the world's population lives in places that are less than 200 feet above sea level. At current rates it will take a few hundred years for this to occur, but the implication is that a large part of the human race and much of its wealth (in the form of cities and associated means of production) will have to be relocated.
Not usually. While a super-eruption may be able to put out more in one eruption than humans can in a single year, these eruptions are few and far between. The last one of this magnitude, IIRC, was Krakatoa, and before that was Taupo, and before that I think was the volcano in the Med in ancient Greek times. However, such eruptions also kick a lot of ash into the air, which causes a cooling effect, so really, some people should be asking for more volcanos to erupt.
BTW, I'm on the side of the skeptics. I just like for everyone to be on the same page.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
200 years is way too short to tell us anything
How about 420,000 years? And all I had to do was an obvious google search.
Or I could have looked at wikipedia for discussion and pretty graphs.
The fact that some scientists may be focusing their attention in particular studies on post-industrial-revolution effects doesn't mean that other scientists haven't established a longer baseline in other studies. There are a lot of data out there if you go look for them, so I'm not sure why the grandparent only referenced short-term studies.
" Workweek Causes Climate Fluctuations"
--
make install -not war
"Sulphourous-emissions of volcanoes and all other natural sources are surpassed by 330%."
Sure, now.
But volcanic activity is nothing if not variable; the Earth goes through periods of intense vulcanism; vast areas covered in lava. Check out what caused the Deccan Traps in India for one example.
Massive volcanos which we today think of as just large islands with a few volcanos scattered around like North Island New Zealand where lake Taupo is a *crater* lake; the whole island is (probably) one gigantic monoclastic volcano.
Sure, *today* and for the duration of human history we have outdone all of the volcanos of the world, but take in the big picture.
All it would take is just *one* of those massive events and nature will have accelerated past us in greenhouse (and other noxious) gas production.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Not American scientists - Not even all American politicians. Just the Bush administration and a few other representatives in the house and senate. Hell, even McCain thinks it's happening. And the Bush administration actually recently admitted that it poses a threat. So, yeah. Way off.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
You are absolutely right!
So, I reccomend that we go along with your way of thinking and go on raping and pillaging the earth, destroying everything we touch!
Since we know nothing, there is no danger whatsoever that we could actually be hurting our own chances at survival.
Our Ignorance will protect us!
ohh, sorry, that last line was stolen from Bush's election campaign.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Greenland, as well as much of Antarctica is covered by mile high glaciers, much of it indeed piled up on dry land. If much or all of this ice melts, the result will be much like dropping an ice cube into a glass of water, in that it will raise the level in the glass. If you own real estate in the Netherlands or much of the southeastern US, as well as other low lying parts of the world, you can kiss it goodbye under a rising sea level. Unfortunately, this also includes a number of large coastal cities, which will require their relocation inland to make way for the expanding coastal fishing areas. Our skyscrapers will make good structure for sheltering marine life, and will one day be on many sea captain's list of fishing hotspots. If the Antarctic and Greenland glaciers melt, the sea level could rise 200 feet. All of the current major seaports would be inundated, and cities on rivers even hundreds of miles inland would be at least partially inundated by the rising waters.
Sure. And those types of huge natural events have been among the prime suspects to explain some of the mass extinctions that have occurred over the eons. Maybe that should tell us something.
I clicked on this article specifically to see the Libertarian environment trolls come out and scream about how it's all a left-wing conspiracy and climate change is just fine, and boy, I was not disappointed.
Well, I was disappointed in the human race I guess
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
You're talking about events that scale to where they kill nearly every human within 200 miles of the eruption by parboiling them in a cloud of superheated steam. The amount of ash dumped in such a case would create a year without a summer, and such erruptions probably kill 20% to half the living creatures on the planet every time one happens.
So what's your point? Everyone disagreeing with you on the amount hunams contribute to the greenhouse effect right now is a fool that isn't more concerned about the 0.0005% chance of another Thera scale erruption instead? Nature could hit us with something that would dwarf all our efforts, so we should just lie down and wait for the ash to bury us all?
I have some bad news for you that you evidently haven't heard. You're going to die someday. Better quit striving now and avoid the rush. Let's not stop at your big picture - the really big one is the Sun is going to blow up in a few billion years. The even bigger one is the fine structure constant isn't constant, and the universe will eventually fly apart as even individual elementary partuicles push each other away at ever increasing speeds.
Who is John Cabal?
Look at the midwest here during 1850's. MUCH more desertlike and much less water. And the earth took that area FROM less livable to more livable.
Sure it was. (I guess the Great Lakes don't qualify as "water.") Do you have any evidence to back up this assertion? Besides, didn't you say in another post that we only have 80 years of temperature data?
The natural forces are more destructive than most things we can make.
This is precisely why we need to be careful what we do to the climate.
VOLCANOES (1 spew=100 years of 'pollutants)
Wrong. Volcanoes contribute an insignificant amount of carbon dioxide compared to human activities.
The only thing more destructive than most of those are nuclear warheads.. And even 50 years cures most of those problems. Look at Bikini atoll.
The Bikinians are still trying to get the money to clean up their atoll. Like the carbon we're spewing into the atmosphere, the radioactive contamination didn't just go away.
The sahara was a wonderful wilderness. Now its sand. And LOTS of it. The "americans" sure as hell didnt do it. Nature CHANGES weather patters naturally. Whether it be good or bad for us, I dont know.
Nice logical fallacy. Past changes occurred independently of human activities; therefore nothing we do now will affect the climate.
The human race wont die out, but most will. Darn.
The extent of your compassion is quite touching. I'd rather avoid fighting an endless global war over dwindling resources if possible.
Can I have a play on that slippery slope once you're done with it?
This may seem like a slippery slope fallacy, but it is indeed based on solid evidence. Analysis of historical climates indicates that climate changes are indeed very sudden.
source
source
source
source
But hey... we can wait untill our society has been crushed by global climate change before we take off our blinders.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
"The point is, the big picture (1 billion years of earth history) doesn't matter for us."
Surely this disinterest only applies if you don't intend to reproduce?
Actually, one of the things that amazes me about modern humans, is that they do seem remarkably disinterested in their own survival into the future.
Its as if they think that the species ends with them or something. Very wierd. Very... counter-Nietzscheian, counter-survivalist. Self destructive.
My point was that someone else played down natural sources of climactic change and I don't believe that this is justified given the scaling of disaster levels involved.
Its like someone says 'oh we are producing *far* more noxious gasses than mere volcanos' which needs to be moderated by noting how *huge* 'mere' vulcanism can get.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Sure we do ... it's just that some people would rather pretend it didn't happen.
Well, now we know why you have so many ex's.
The water held in the air is not available to flood anything.
Do you have any credible reason to think that the amount of increased atmospheric H2O will counteract rising sea level temperatures?
There are TROPICAL fossils and fossil fuels in the arctic. How did they get there?
Why do you keep asking this question? Nobody's disputing that the greenhouse effect was more pronounced a few million years ago. But just because champsosaurs didn't have a problem with the climate, don't assume that we won't. If you haven't noticed, we're not semi-aquatic alligators. But you know, you're just proving my point: climate change can mean extinction. And I really don't want to be extinct.
These changes take a long time and living things are very adaptable. We will also adapt over the many generations that such changes happen.
a) it could happen faster than that, and b) "adapting" requires a lot of organisms in a species dying.
1. CO2 is not a pollutant. It is, in fact, the lifeblood of the planet, required for growth of vegetation. It is the cornerstone of the food chain. The increased CO2 aerial fertilization effect has contributed to the greening of the planet, as confirmed by satellite photography.
2. Water vapor is by far the primary contributor of the greenhouse effect, accounting for 96 to 99%. CO2 accounts for 1 to 3%. Methane and others trace gasses account for 3. During the current interglacial period, the Earth has been about 2C cooler (The "Little Ice Age" around 1600-1700, when the Thames regularly frozen over), 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.
4. 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.
5. 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 dismissed the sun as a likely source of Earth changing climate!. Here is a link to a recent study showing how the sun's variation could have a feedback that would drive earth's climate change: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2333133. stm/ The theory 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. Reduced low level cloud formation reduces reflectivity (i.e., the Earth's albedo). More energy is absorbed instead of reflected, and the temperature increases. The difference from an active Sun to an inactive Sun was about 3% global cloud coverage. The correlation in the study is remarkable. 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.
6. In November 1991, Danish scientists Eijil Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen, startled the climatological world with a paper in "Science" describing a 0.95 correlation between solar cycle length and global temperature (IPCC version). "Science" writer, Richard Kerr described it as "one dazzling correlation". The blue line is temperature, the red line is solar cycle length.) As can be seen, global temperature has tended to increase in lockstep with shortening of the solar cycle length (ie. solar maxima becoming more frequent) I hope you follow the link, because one look at it, and you are forced to say, "Its the Sun, stupid." The graph is at the bottom of this link: http://http//web.dmi.dk/sol-jord/projekter/rum_vej r/oversigt.html/
7. The best protection against climate change is a rich, technologically advanced society that can adapt to natural variation. Don't damn the 3rd
Yes, but volcanos also spit out other shit besides CO2, so at least give all the details, thank you.
= ns999 94321
But OTH, have you read other news about how OUR STAR, the SUN star, has been more active in the last 70 years than average for the last 8000 ???
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id
Quite possibly this could be causing warming too.
Also recent measurements of the amount of light reflecfed from the DAY SIDE of earth onto the dark side of the moon shows that is has increased, so thats another wierd effect. Again, caused by more crap in the air? or more light from the sun? or both? hmmm
Theres a lot of factors, but if the sun will go NOVA or mini NOVA or just 25% brighter, we cannot control it.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Yes, and if you plug in the numbers you will see that any heating of the atmosphere will result in neglible water uptake by the atmosphere on average.
g es /Image1.gif
9 0_ satellite_finds_warming.html
I just took a quick look at this figure:
http://www.tesag.jcu.edu.au/subjects/ge1400/Ima
You can see that a temperature increase in the atmosphere of 10 degC results in roughly a doubling of the water holding capacity of the atmosphere. The upper limit of the IPCC estimates of the global mean atmospheric temperature change is 5.8 degC.
Furthermore most of the atmosphere is undersaturated (that is the relative humidity is less than 100%). In a future warmer climate the relative humidity is expected to drop further.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2004/mar/HQ_040
This means that we will probably see less than a doubling of the water vapour content if the temperature rose 10 degC. An upper estimate would thus be 2.8 cm sea level drop due to more moist in the atmosphere. This is neglible in comparison with the expected total sea level change
And yes, I am a climate scientist (although a physical oceanographer - but I had a substantial portion of meteorology during my education).
>>>Correction: the ice replaces exactly the amount of water it occupies when floating (=law of Archimedes). Proof: take a glass of water, put in ice cube, fill up glass to the edge (but not overflowing!). Ice melts, and water is still exactly up to the edge. actually wrong. if you do it that way the ice will melt to form less volume of water than ice (i.e. under the edge). This is because ice is less dense than water. This is why icebergs and icecubes float. the fact that water expands when it freezes is why your water pipes can burst in winter.
Here is the explanation. The population in the USA is still growing, primarily due to the children of illegal aliens. Without unfettered immigration, the American population would decline gradually.
Population decline is not the biggest problem facing developed countries. The biggest problem facing developed countries is the fact that the 3rd world is brimming with angry people who want to flood into the 1st world.
Advocates of unfettered immigration play this strange spin game in which they insist that the only way for the 1st world to continue to enjoy a good standard of living is to constantly grow the population. Note that such a scenario is not sustainable. Nonetheless, these advocates continue to "invent facts" because they need such invented "facts" in order to support their agenda.
Anyone who refuses to admit that a larger population is more environmentally damaging than a smaller population is a bigot and should be ignored. There is plenty of such bigots in LaRaza.
I for one would like to preserve the human race.
Ok; enough with the humans and mammals dealie.
Barring extreme global catasrophe of the world-ending variety, e.g. comet, asteroid impact of a huge magnitude, possibly a huge thermonuclear exhange (maybe), Sun going Nova - nothing, repeat nada, is going to eliminate every human from the face of the planet. It's not going to happen.
What will happen is civilization -as we know it- would end. Billions of people might die, maybe. Countries as we know them may end. But homo sapiens is not going anywhere.
There is enough energy on this planet from nuclear and non-nuclear sources (coal) to sustain humans for a very, very, very long time. A limited population centrally managed, a long damn time. It is quite easy to generate shelter, food, oxygen and clean water on earth provided you have a reasonable technological infrastructure and most importantly an abundant energy source and knowledge. Unlike prior times, engineering and scientific knowledge is extremely widespread in the world.
Would it suck to live in such a world? Likely.
It is quiet possible the natural course of events on this planet is the destruction of the ecosystem. Man is a part of nature; we are not aliens thrust upon the planet. There are many very serious challenges facing mankind in the near future and all of them have to do with one thing, and one thing only: ENERGY.
One thing I can guarantee you though, until that comet from the sky comes - and maybe even after - there will be a bunch of naked apes - somewhere - living nearby available energy.
Worry more about funding research into real clean sources of energy - highly efficient solar panels, fusion reactions, even the potential to extract energy directly from the vaccum of space itself. Once you have enough clean energy, we can make every other problem go away. If you do not believe such a source of energy is possible, then we are headed for global catastrophe of another kind anyway.
Period.
..don't panic
I'm curious, how many scientists do you suround yourself with on a daily basis, how many scientific papers have you read on the subject, and have you done any serious scientific research projects on the subject?
I can speak for what I see in the scientific community over here at University of California, Riverside. The consensus seems to be, in the Atmospheric Science, Soil Science, Environmental Science, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, and Environmental Engineering circles, this:
1) The mean global temperature is rising and has been rising.
2) This rise is highly correlative with the rise in Carbon Dioxide emissions since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
3) A correlation by itself does not mean anything.
4) Carbon dioxide is a known greenhouse gas, whose output has indeed increased steadily over the past two centuries, due to human activity.
5) So have other types of greenhouse gasses, including Water, methane, CFC's, etc
6) Water has a residence time in the atmosphere of about 11 days, meaning a water droplet, after evaporation, will on average stay in the atmosphere for about 11 days before condensing and precipitating down. The majority of this ends up in the ocean or in soil, where it's residence times are far greater. Translation -> warming effects of water are most likely negligable.
7) Methane - everyone farts. We can't really revolutionize how Cows are raised or decrease their farts. The main way to control methane production is via landfills. This is begining to be done.
8) CFC's are already highly regulated.
9) Carbon Dioxide has a residence time in the atmosphere is quite high in human terms, over 100 years. That means, when it gets up there it stays up there for a while, keeping heat close to the surface of the earth, warming it. This is believed to be fact, backed up by countless papers and objective experimentation.
10) Taking into account that mean global temperature is indeed rising, CO2 has been emitted at an ever-increasing rate since the 1800's, and this rise is correlative to the rise in mean average temp, we might have a connection. It could also, indeed, be a natural climate shift.
11) Whether it is a natural phenomena or not, we should do what be can to fight it, because it could mean more dramtic climate variability, more extreme storms, and perhaps a shift of the green belt north and south - which would be bad for the US economy. Canada would be the new bread basket of the world.
12) The Day After Tomorrow was a pretty funny movie, but was not accurate at all.
That seems to be the scientific consensus. The evidence is convincing, but like everything else in science, you can't prove anything - only disprove it. This global warming model has not been effectively disproven. The news letter for the American Geophysical Union has articles in nearly each issue about global warming, it's causes, and it's effects on the global climate system. This is real science. It is not laughed at in the main stream science community. While i'm sure you can find sources to the contrary, you can also find minority scientific sources to back up creationist theory and the existence of God. Both of which cannot be known, both of which there exists some evidence for, one of which the evidence against is fairly voluminous (creationist theory).
Now for my little bit of opinion
One of the largest emitter of CO2 is not industry, it's not factories that employ hundreds of thousands of workers - it's cars. It's technology that can CHANGE. That can be forwarded, not to the detriment of our society, but for the betterment. Creating more efficient cars, developing viable hydrogen fuel cell cars will not destroy our economy, it anything it will improve our economy. R&D dollars will go to fund research initiatives that will create jobs - high paying, high-tech jobs. There will always be a need for fossil fuels - that industry won't just die