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Orbits of Jupiter and Venus Affect Earth's Climate, Says Study (usatoday.com)
According to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, gravitational tugs from the planets Jupiter and Venus gradually affect Earth's climate and life forms. The phenomenon occurs every 405,000 years and has been going on for at least 215 million years. USA Today reports: Jupiter and Venus are such strong influences because of their size and proximity. Venus is the nearest planet to us -- at its farthest, only about 162 million miles -- and roughly similar in mass. Jupiter is much farther away, but is the Solar System's largest planet. The study says that every 405,000 years, due to wobbles in our orbit caused by the gravitational pulls of the two planets, seasonal differences here on Earth become more intense. Summers are hotter and winters colder; dry times drier, wet times wetter. At the height of the cycle, more rain falls in the tropics, allowing lakes there to fill up. This compares to the other end of the cycle, when seasonal rains in the tropics "are less and lakes have much less of a tendency to become as full," [study lead author Dennis] Kent said. The results showed that the 405,000-year cycle is the most regular astronomical pattern linked to the Earth's annual turn around the sun, he said. Right now, we are in the middle of the cycle, as the most recent peak was around 200,000 years ago.
No, it doesn't. What it does is show amazingly well how desperately some people will cling to anything in order to explain away things they don't want to take responsibility for with some ridiculously irrelevant theory rather than deal with the facts which demands a change in behaviour.
The mere idea that these planets would have greater influence than us pumping the atmosphere full of known greenhouse gasses is outright moronic. But of course people like you jump for it, because you get to say "the dog ate my homework!", or in this case "it was all the planets fault, we can't do anything about it so let's party and forget about the whole thing." Because that's the kind of retard you are.
Oh the horror if we should accidentally all be fools and inadvertently create a pollution free world of electric cars and smog free cities! What a terrible catastrophe that would be! To be fooled by such evil ploys! I am sure glad that you are here to show us the light and protect us from such a terrible outcome!
So it's Jupiter and Venus that's putting all the extra CO2 into the atmosphere? Thanks for sorting that out for us.
PS: I read somewhere that mars is responsible for all the plastic bottles floating in the ocean. We can probably relax about that one, too.
No sig today...
CO2 in it self isn't a problem. But the volume of it which we add to it is a huge problem because that in turn leads to other, worse problems.
Saying that CO2 isn't a problem is just showing that you either failed high school physics and don't understand the greenhouse effect, or that you are wilfully ignoring the problem.
What it boils down to is what we can do. We can't stop the ice caps from melting when we reach that point, we can't stop the acidification of the oceans. But we can at least limit how much CO2 we add to the atmosphere, which will help with those issues.
It's the quantities that make the poison. Especially in complex systems like our climate or biological life you often can't simply reduce things to 'this is always good' or 'this is always bad'.
For example you can also argue that water is essential to life. And indeed all life we know requires water as a solvent and carrier for other essential molecules.
But there's instances where there can be too much water. And I'm not even talking about things like floods here.
There's phenomenons like hyperhydration, when a person drinks so much water for example. It can dilute the electrolytes in your system so far that your neutrons can't function properly any more. And it's potentially fatal.
Of course it doesn't. But it helps to explain why, *hundreds of years ago when science barely existed*, intelligent people could take astrology seriously.
The sun has a massive effect on us, the moon too (light, tides). So why couldn't the other heavenly bodies effect us?
And they do effect us. But since then, science has managed to quantify that effect. And that effect, it turns out, consists of gravity and pretty much nothing else. Very occasionally, like in this study, that gravity has noticeable effects on our lives.
Challenge to your assertion: have, in the past, been periods with much higher concentrations of CO2 and simultaneously a thriving ecosystem?
(The answer is 'yes')
Challenge to your assertion: did that ecosystem have 10 billion humans in it, largely living in the places which were flooded back then but not now?
(The answer is 'no')
That was a different eco system. Mostly trees and plants. Most of the animals were in the water.
Also these changes took thousands of years to take place. While we are expecting changes in under a hundred years.
Will man made climate change kill all life? No but much of its diversity will be killed because it is changing faster then they can adapt.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So is chlorine, but it's still a poison.
So is iodine, but it's still a poison
So is sodium, but it's still able to be a poison.
Just because something is essential in trace amounts doesn't mean we should flood the air or water with it. The quantities matter, and it doesn't take much to turn the air unbreathable.
I inherit this problem, I own this problem, I must be one of the many that suffer to fix the problem
"Responsible" does not only mean "caused".
As in, adoptive parents become responsible for the children they adopt, despite not causing those children to exist.
You (and I) are responsible for climate change in that we have to fix it or suffer the consequences. Doesn't mean we created it. It means we are taking responsibility from the careless generations before us.
Please explain. Who is attempting to ruin whose economy? Who is taxing what that would attain such a goal? More to the point, who *specifically* stands to profit? Please note that "the government" is not an acceptable answer, especially to the last one. Are specific actors in the US government seeking to ruin the US economy? Are there members of the UN seeking to ruin the global economy? To what end?
Now lets look at the mirror image of your conspiracy theory. We know there are parties who stand to gain financially from continuing to produce fossil fuels for as long as possible. We know that they would see cheap solar or nuclear power (or worse, a general decrease in energy usage) as a business-threatening proposition. We know in the past, these same corporations have done horrible things to the environment in the name of profit (leaded gas, anyone?). So why wouldn't it make more sense that these parties, with a well-known profit motive, are actually the ones spreading FUD?
Also, a 25 foot rise in sea level would be a big deal to those living on the coast. I don't think telling them just to "adapt" will soothe their worries, especially for those who live on an island. Some current projections put us beating the Eemian temperatures within my lifespan, and being 2 degreesC above that during my children's life. In the next century we could be seeing average temperatures not seen on this planet in the last 5 million years. Just because 3 or 4 degrees C sounds like a small number doesn't mean that the effects won't be catastrophic.
Natural climate changes takes hundreds of thousands of years, about the amount of time it took for humans to become distinctly humans.
They do? Ice covered most of the Northern US just 12,000 years ago, during the last glacial period. Oceans were ~100 meters lower back then, too... Now we're being warned about maybe a meter over 100 years (about the same rate of change as we've seen since the last glacial period) and that it's doomsday!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!