Global warming my butt...

[Bill Glasheen]

Some time back when the weather was unusually warm, I made a comment that the tree hugger crowd was screaming global warming as a cause. No, I said, it was el Nino. But then a discussion ensued which I presume was the prequel for Al Gore getting an award for his global warming film.

What-ever...

We are extracting carbon-based compounds (from previous eras) out of the ground and gassifying them. CO2 levels are going up in the atmosphere, and carbon content is being reduced from under ground. The earth will get a little warmer. And NOBODY is going to stop it. Not unless you want a war with China and India, and impose dire restrictions on their economies... Give it up. Live green if it makes you feel good, and enjoy life.

But IT'S EL NINO, STUPID!!!!

This morning I walked a mile with my suitcase from the hotel to my Boston office. In RECORD LOW 6-degree weather.

Told you so, told you so!! BLBLBLBLBL!!!!!!!



Groundhog my ass...

- Bill

[jorvik]

Well I've thought that Global warming was my arse for some time
if you go back in time you can see all sorts of different types of climate
in the 1700s in England they had Ice Fairs on the frozen Thames, there are actual pictures from those days and it looks very like the arctic.then it got warmer

[Icebladeraptor9]

There's a reason its cold in Boston, its called New England winter.
Global warming is happening, whether or not your "ass" contributes to the greenhouse gases by farting or not. The give it up attitude is one of the reason my generation has a large mess to work on cleaning up the mess made by every generation before and including mine. As a martial artist you take care of your body, why not take care of the world?

Oh and jorvik, the climate fluctuates, you can't expect things to be the same on earth all the time; things change constantly, regardless of humans or not. We are contributing to global warming by just being alive. We can't stop it. There was a reason for the Ice Fairs by the way, ever heard of the Little Ice Age? It was preceded by a relatively short period of warming and then the period of cold resulted.

[tigereye]

Well I've thought that Global warming was my arse for some time
if you go back in time you can see all sorts of different types of climate
in the 1700s in England they had Ice Fairs on the frozen Thames, there are actual pictures from those days and it looks very like the arctic.then it got warmer

Climate change were always there but since the ancient times, people have believed that human activity could affect the environment.
The discovery of past ice ages shows that Earth's climate is in constant changes and scientists have searched for the cause of these changes.
Since the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s, there have been many inventions that burn fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. Burning these fossil fuels, releases gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. These gases have risen on a very high level than at any time in before.
As these gases build up in the atmosphere, they trap more heat near the Earth’s surface, causing climate to become warmer than it would naturally.
These gases are known collectively as greenhouse gases because they contribute to a warming of the Earth's surface. The phenomenon called the greenhouse effect.
The greenhouse effect was discovered in the late 19th century.The theory of global warming wasn't accepted as a scientifically proven fact until 1992 when the United Nations held a Conference on Environment and Development.
Today, global warming is a widely accepted reality .

We have right now in Brussels the The Spring European Council top conference which bringing the European Heads of State and Government together.
One of the agenda items is
"Energy and climate change" .

[jorvik]

Quote
" Today, global warming is a widely accepted reality . "

It depends upon who you speak to.there are many scientists who say there is no climate change, it is just part of a natural order, or that human interferance has had little impact. For example one large volcanic erruption can really boost the Co2 in the atmosphere/

[tigereye]

Quote
" Today, global warming is a widely accepted reality . "

It depends upon who you speak to.there are many scientists who say there is no climate change, it is just part of a natural order, or that human interferance has had little impact. For example one large volcanic erruption can really boost the Co2 in the atmosphere/

Perhaps politicians didn't find other topic to fill there agenda with...
Seems they are very serious about climate change and environment protection.

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAct ... anguage=en
--

[jorvik]

Well firstly in my country they are not regarded as "Politicians" but "Eurocrats" whose only purpose is to strip sovereign states of their independance.
Hopefully the European Constitution is dead in the water after the French and Dutch rejected it .and these folks will have less and less power as time goes by.
Irrespective of this. Europe is a really small player in the world economy. with less and less say ( although the French.and indeed our own president b.liar don't know this)......( p.s. B.liar isn't really a president but no one has the heart to tell him )
china and India are the emerging economies and the US and russia still have quite a lot of clout...without these guys on board you've got nothing

[Bill Glasheen]

There's a reason its cold in Boston, its called New England winter.

I know New England winters. I went to prep school in Exeter, New Hampshire.

Perhaps you missed the fact that I stated. Today's low temperature in Boston was 6 degrees. Many places in New Hampshire were 10 to 20 below. (This is in Farenheit, Eva.)

It is March 9th. It is not supposed to be 6 degrees in Boston on March 9th. How do I know this? Because never before in the 100 years of recording temperature has it EVER been as cold as 6 degrees in Boston on March 9th. March 7th - the day I flew up - was the coldest EVER day in New Hampshire.

New England has NEVER been this cold in March. Not in all the years man has recorded temperature, anyhow.

Record cold has nothing to do with global warming - to say the least.

Meanwhile... It was exceedingly warm earlier in the winter. And that had nothing to do with global warming either. It was El Nino. But some folks were attempting to attribute those mild temperatures to global warming.

The give it up attitude is one of the reason my generation has a large mess to work on cleaning up the mess made by every generation before and including mine. As a martial artist you take care of your body, why not take care of the world?

As much as you might like it not to happen, all the oil, oil shale, and coal remaining undergound will get drilled/mined and used. We may be able to find "clean" ways to burn these fuels. But ultimately burning means turning these aliphatic and aromatic compounds to CO2 and H2O. And that means more CO2. And that means more greenhouse gases. So.... How do you propose stopping that?

Good luck convincing India and China that they have no right to compete with us on their own terms. No matter how "green" we want to be, they will use the available oil and coal. Why? Because it's cheaper. Cheaper means they sell more. Selling more means they get more money. Getting more money means they get more power and world influence. And we're going to stop that?

The good news for those who worry about climate change is that there's only so much carbon to spew into the atmosphere. It will have an endpoint. Temperature will not increase infinitely.

Eva

That was a very eloquent statement of the issues on global warming. However I want to call you on one of your statements.

Since the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s, there have been many inventions that burn fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. Burning these fossil fuels, releases gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. These gases have risen on a very high level than at any time in before.

I do not need to look at the geological record to conclude that what you said is wrong.

Where did all the oil and coal come from that we are burning today? From past life which existed ABOVE ground. Oil and coal are nothing more than hundreds of millions of years of biological life compressed and buried below ground. (That's why we call them "fossil fuels.") This life took CO2 out of the atmosphere and converted it to carbon-based compounds (proteins, carbohydrates, fats, etc.). We live in a closed system. That means that all the CO2 we are digging up and releasing into the atmosphere once ALREADY was in the atmosphere. We're just changing the equilibrium point to a different place in time - for better or for worse. When you consider that life thrived in this higher CO2 environment, then it couldn't have been all that bad.

Don't buy any beach front property though...


My points are the following:

• Most changes that we observe in climate are random fluctuations. It takes hundreds of scientists a generation to detect even a degree change in the average weather of our planet.
• We don't (yet) know why there were warm times and ice ages in the past. We don't yet know what are random, long-term fluctuations, and what are trends.
• While we are spewing greenhouse gases BACK into the atmosphere, our planet is also cooling off - from within. Most people never account for that. I've got a neighbor down the street with a "green" mindset who heats his house with geothermal energy. That means that he and the natural processes of heat diffusion in general are cooling off our earth's core. It happens. And it IS a trend - in the opposite direction
• There aren't any other available means to get significant amounts of energy that don't also upset environmentalists. Radioactive energy is carbon neutral, but it upsets the anti-nukes. Wind energy is carbon neutral, but it takes too many windmills and it upsets the bird lovers. Alcohol production can be carbon neutral, but it takes a lot of petroleum-based fertilizers to grow many of the crops. The list goes on...
• Fossil fuels are just too cheap to mine and consume. It WILL get consumed. The real question is how we as a world community will deal with the new weather equilibrium, and what sources of energy we will use when all the fossil fuels go away.

Not all change is bad.

- Bill

[Glenn]

Quote
It depends upon who you speak to.there are many scientists who say there is no climate change, it is just part of a natural order, or that human interferance has had little impact. For example one large volcanic erruption can really boost the Co2 in the atmosphere/

Not quite...Tigereye is correct that "today, global warming is a widely accepted reality", I doubt you would find an earth scientist stating "there is no climate change". The Earth has been experiencing a general global warming trend for around the last 12,000 years, since the most recent ice age maximum. Short-term trends like a week-long cold snap, El Nino, and even the Little Ice Age are just "noise" fluctuations that virtually disappear in this long-term trend.

Where the devil is in the details is trying to factor out how much of the global warming occurring today is natural and how much may be caused by human activity. This is the tricky part and where most of the disagreement occurs. Earth scientists concede we seem to be having an effect on climate, it's just difficult to pin down the details and separate this one cause (or really groups of causes) from all the other causal factors.

It's certainly not difficult to imagine that human activity can effect climate on a grand scale, we affect all other aspects of nature on on a grand scale...deforestation, the viability of natural animal populations, ozone levels (too much at low levels, not enough high up), land use (conversion of natural land for cities, farming, etc). Humans definitely have an effect on the environment, so it is no great step to say we can influence the climate.

There is a nice model of what greenhouse gases can do to a planet's atmosphere, Venus. But it is doubtful we would ever produce an effect to that degree, for one thing all life on Earth would be killed off before it got that bad.

Speaking of El Nino, we like El Nino events here in the mid-continent...tornado frequency and severity goes down in the mid-west when El Nino is in full swing.

[Glenn]

[*] There aren't any other available means to get significant amounts of energy that don't also upset environmentalists. Radioactive energy is carbon neutral, but it upsets the anti-nukes. - Bill

Something else that is frequently overlooked is that nuclear fission is not a long-term solution either. Uranium is a finite resource on Earth, and we are only able to dig so far down to extract it. When you compare currently known proven and potential uranium reserve amounts (i.e. what has already been extracted and what is thought to exist in known deposits that we can extract in the future) to today's usage rates, its been estimated that there are only about 40 years worth remaining. Naturally this assumes no new significant deposits will be found and that usage rates won't change, neither of which is necessarily likely. But it points to the fact that we will run out of uranium eventually too.

Nuclear fusion (the Sun's power source) has more long-term potential, but is not currently economically feasible and the technology really isn't where it needs to be yet either.

[tigereye]

I do not need to look at the geological record to conclude that what you said is wrong.

Where did all the oil and coal come from that we are burning today? From past life which existed ABOVE ground. Oil and coal are nothing more than hundreds of millions of years of biological life compressed and buried below ground. (That's why we call them "fossil fuels.") This life took CO2 out of the atmosphere and converted it to carbon-based compounds (proteins, carbohydrates, fats, etc.). We live in a closed system. That means that all the CO2 we are digging up and releasing into the atmosphere once ALREADY was in the atmosphere. We're just changing the equilibrium point to a different place in time - for better or for worse. When you consider that life thrived in this higher CO2 environment, then it couldn't have been all that bad.

Don't buy any beach front property though...

- Bill

It is true Bill,

Once upon a time there have been a natural recycling on Earth. What happened during the
centuries? Why the natural recycling is not working? This is what scientist trying to find out.
During the last 2,000 years, the climate has been relatively stable.
The global average temperature in the last few decades was warmer than during the last 500 years but the highest level was only during the past 25 years .
So the activities of the last few decades could provide explanation to the climate change.

I believe that the primary reason for the changes is the increased population, rapidly developing technology and the nuclear testing which become as a daily practice...

[jorvik]

there has recently been a programme on UK tv about global warming in which 12 eminent scientists gave their view as to why there was no global warming
take this as an example
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... wstop.html

in my country we have become very cynical after all the lies of tony bliar, and the eec.so we tend not to believe everything we read or hear.and try and look for an underlying motive, I don't see one yet but it will surface

[Glenn]

there has recently been a programme on UK tv about global warming in which 12 eminent scientists gave their view as to why there was no global warming
take this as an example
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... wstop.html

Actually jorvik, you may want to re-read that link. While The Telegraph's title of that article sensationally touts Dr Solanki's research as "The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame" in typical media fashion, Dr Solanki himself puts the research in a different perspective (bolded emphases are mine):

Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.

Average global temperatures have increased by about 0.2 deg Celsius over the past 20 years and are widely believed to be responsible for new extremes in weather patterns.

Most scientists agree that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels have contributed to the warming of the planet in the past few decades but have questioned whether a brighter Sun is also responsible for rising temperatures.

Dr Solanki does not know what is causing the Sun to burn brighter now or how long this cycle would last.

He says that the increased solar brightness over the past 20 years has not been enough to cause the observed climate changes but believes that the impact of more intense sunshine on the ozone layer and on cloud cover could be affecting the climate more than the sunlight itself.

Once again, all of the scientists interview for that article agreed that global warming is a reality and that greenhouse gases seem to be playing a role, Solanki's research merely indicates an even more complex system contributing to global warming than previously thought.

The only detractor in the article was David Bellamy, a conservationist who made a career in educating people about scenic nature and trying to block rural projects that would alter such scenery, such as dams and windmill farm projects. In 2004 he suddenly came out against human-made global warming, however the evidence he provided, that 89% of glaciers are advancing rather than retreating, was shown to be incorrect. The original source for his evidence appears have been fabricated (although Bellamy does not appear to have had a role in the fabrication, just in not being thorough enough to check the reliability of his sources before going public). In 2005 Bellamy admitted his figures were wrong and he announced that he had decided to withdraw "from the debate on global warming", but that was after the 2004 article jorvik provided above. He still does not agree with human-made global warming, but is taking a lower profile about it since he has no evidence to support his claims. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bellamy

[Bill Glasheen]

I don't think there's any question that the ecosystem is changing. The real questions are to what degree, is that bad, and can we really stop it.

This is the kind of nonsense that gets me laughing.

The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium.
At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels

- AP, 11Mar2007


Does anybody besides me read this and want to burst out laughing? All these reports are filled with such nonsense. We will lose species, but other species will explode. We will have less water but we will have more water. We will have less food production but we will have longer growing seasons. Etc., etc.

Absolutely none of this is helpful. It gets people stirred up for what, to argue?

We humans are like cockroaches on this earth. If we do everything that the hand-wringers say we should, we multiply and displace. We consume. We spread like cancer. And then someone else complains because we affect the environment we live in.

There is a greater equilibrium going on here. Carbon levels are shifting. But the endpoint will not be something this earth hasn't seen before, and life (of some sort) once thrived at the place of this new equilibrium. So... What are we going to do?

And where will we get the energy to continue on when fossil fuels are depleted?

- Bill

[Glenn]

In addition to skepticism about the opinions of earth scientists actually studying global warming, I recommend skepticism of the occassional scientist who appears in the media against human-made global warming. They rarely have any direct experience in the research and tend to just use the media to promote their personal beliefs or other ulterior motives.

In general, you will always be able to find some scientists willing to be spokepeople against a supported theory. As an extreme example Nazi Germany had no trouble finding scientists to say they rejected the relativity theory of Jewish Albert Einstein, and of course their motives are easier to determine. Skepticism of the detractors is just as healthy as skepticism of the experts though, often healthier.

And no, this is not directed at Bill! Bill is generating thought and discussion based on his personal observations of what others have claimed in the media. Based on some of his comments he appears to me to be playing devils advocate about extreme views.