Global Warming - Writers Forum

blademasterzzz · 08-21-2005, 05:54 AM

Your opinions on the subject.

Kane · 08-21-2005, 05:57 AM

I like the cold.

journyman161 · 08-21-2005, 07:36 AM

While humans are altering the climate by our presence & our technology needs, the current 'panic' over global warming is actually a beat up.

I have a pic waiting for OK in the gallery that I'll link to when approved, but basically, this current cool period is an unusual one for Earth. Normally the average global temp has been well above even the worst predictions of what we'll achieve due to greenhouse effects generated by humans.

From memory, I believe they're predicting something like a 5 degree warmup over the next 50 - 100 years; for most of its history, the average has been an easy 10 degrees above that we have experienced for ALL OUR HISTORY!

Pic to follow soon...

Kill Bill · 08-21-2005, 10:26 AM

Some day we'll have to open our eyes to the epedemic because we have no choice. For now, let everyone say it doesn't exist even if it does. We're going to the ones paying for our own actions when the times comes. No one else.

journyman161 · 08-21-2005, 10:32 AM

Quote:

For now, let everyone say it doesn't exist even if it does

All I'm saying is we have bigger problems than human-instigated global warming. The current trend in temperature is heading back up to the average 22 - 23 degrees it is normally; for all human history it's been around 12 - 13 degrees.

Global warming is strictly a minor problem compared to the earth returning to it normal temp.

I'm not saying it's not happening, just it's a minor effect. Earth is planning on killing us off rather more drastically than mere effect greenhouse gasses produced by humans.

LensmanZ313 · 08-22-2005, 04:40 AM

I believe that this "global warming" is all part of a natural cycle. People talk about the rising temperature of the oceans. Has anyone bothered to track the activity of underwater volcanoes? Plus, I've heard that glaciers in some regions of North America have actually increased and trying to track that story down . . . .

Glaciers.

Quote:

Geologists exploring the rugged Continental Divide say they discovered more than 100 additional glaciers here in a single summer, a surprising find since glaciers around the world are shrinking in warmer temperatures.

The results dramatically change the map of one of the nation's oldest and best-known national parks, along with the knowledge of weather and water cycles at high elevations.

Previously, officials believed the park 60 miles northwest of Denver included 20 permanent ice and snow features, including six named glaciers.

The new survey by geologist Jonathan Achuff shows there are as many as 120 features. Most are located in cold, north-facing pockets on the east side of the Divide at elevations above 12,000 feet.

Most of the newly discovered glaciers are covered with rocky debris; continuous freezing and thawing splinters the brittle granite that forms some of the park's majestic peaks. Park officials say comparisons with historical photos suggest that at least some of the glaciers are expanding.

Glaciers are barometers of climate change, and researchers said the survey results here contradict global warming trends.

In Antarctica, the Pine Island Glacier thinned by 36 feet in eight years; the rate of ice-thinning is 10 times greater than the rate of snowfall there.

In Africa, the famous white mantle of Mount Kilimanjaro has shrunk by 82 percent since 1912. A survey by Ohio State researcher Lonnie G. Thompson predicts the equator-straddling glacier will vanish entirely by 2015. Already, some rivers in Tanzania have dried up as a result, he said.

Similar icy retreats have been measured in the Andes of Peru and the Himalayas of Tibet. Aerial photos over the past three decades show the number of named glaciers in Montana's Glacier National Park has dropped from 83 to fewer than 65.

Perhaps the only major glacial system that is increasing in size today is in Norway. Coastal glaciers are more complicated, and some global warming models predict increased snowfall there as precipitation patterns change.

In Colorado, park officials said subtle climate changes may be helping the formation of glaciers or at least reducing their retreat.

The Divide already funnels snow from the West up and over ridges, where it settles in eastern basins just below the tallest peaks.

Also, expanding development near Denver is sending hot air that helps to form additional cloud cover over the mountains in the summer. While precipitation hasn't changed much, temperatures have been slightly cooler in the past several years.

``We're not running quite in synch with global warming here,'' park spokeswoman Judy Visty said.

Achuff and others are preparing expanded studies that would begin next summer, including the possibility of drilling core samples to the bottom of large ice features, using satellites to measure the glaciers' movements and seismic testing to determine how much ice and rock the features contain.

Perhaps the most significant of the newly discovered glaciers is located beneath a boulder field near the 14,255-foot summit of Long's Peak, one of the West's most popular climbs. The glacier, it turns out, has been skirted by thousands of visitors annually.

Previously, some geologists speculated that the boulder field was a ``rock glacier'' - a catchall term for thick mixtures of debris and ice. But the granite may actually cover up a thick ice slab, insulating it from the sun.

``There could be a large chunk of ice under there, perhaps several hundred feet thick and a mile long,'' Visty said.

Climate Fraud.

Quote:

Climate fraud
by Klaus Rohrich

January 24, 2005

I recently saw a newspaper ad that urged Canadians to take the "one-tonne challenge". Placed by the Government of Canada, the ad featured a picture of none other than Rick Mercer of the CBC’s metric hour (22 minutes) fame, holding up a booklet published by the government entitled The One-Tonne Challenge. The ad and the booklet exhorts Canadians to reduce personal emissions of so-called greenhouse gasses by 20 percent per year or one-tonne per person and to "take action on climate change".

I find it interesting that it’s no longer about "global warming" and that the newest bug-aboo is "climate change". I remember in the late 70s everyone was concerned about the coming ice age. Clearly no one has a real clue about what is happening to the earth’s climate, although the liberal left wants to turn whatever it is into a morality play. It gives me cause to be suspicious of the agenda of those who would impose restrictive compacts, such as the Kyoto Accord on the world. No matter how I look at the treaty and no matter what the treaty purports to achieve, it still looks like a wealth redistribution scheme disguised as a plan to save us from ourselves.

There is so much confusing and contradictory information about climate change circulating today, that it is difficult to make sense of it. Quite frankly, the issue has become too politicized to be meaningful, with complex data being reduced to slogans such as the one currently being touted by the Government of Canada.

Both sides of the argument are claiming the other side is lying. Recently John Kerry chided the "non-scientific, pseudo-scientific, anti-scientific nonsense emanating from the right wing". When couched in terms such as these by people like John Kerry, I am given to wonder what the real agenda might be.

I have heard people that I believe are intelligent and whom I respect tell me with a straight face that the evidence of climate change and particularly mankind’s precipitation of it is irrefutable. However, no matter how hard one looks, it’s difficult to find definitive "evidence" in any form other than computer models. And while many of us rely on computers in our day to day endeavours, I can’t say that I would place a great deal of trust into a computer simulation, particularly in light of the fact that most such simulation-prediced outcomes have turned out to be incorrect.

In the 1980s the United Nations formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to act as a clearinghouse for climate research on a worldwide basis. The trouble with that is that the same wonderful group of bureaucrats that brought us the "Iraqi oil for food" scandal runs the IPCC. Except in this case, instead of money and oil disappearing, we’re finding that scientific research that contradicts the accepted orthodoxy about climate change somehow doesn’t find its way into the public eye, or if it does, it’s in a highly edited form to ensure it conforms.

The IPCC’s 1990 report, which was its first, acknowledged that there was a great deal of concern that human influence might be responsible for climate change; there was no concrete evidence that this was indeed the case. The 1995 report issued by the IPCC did announce that there was now evidence that there was "a discernible human difference" on the world’s climate. One problem: the scientists who worked on this report did not actually say that. What they did say was that they could not tell whether or not there was a discernible human influence on climate. The claim was added after the research was completed and the conclusions were changed by the bureaucrats at the IPCC to conform to their agenda.

All the accepted dogma regarding climate change appears to be flawed in some manner. In his excellent new book State of Fear, Michael Crichton explodes a lot of myths, which many of us tend to accept as gospel. For instance, the idea that ocean levels are rising at an unprecedented level is total hogwash. According to research quoted by Crichton sea levels are rising, but at no faster rate than they have been for the past six thousand years. The rise is miniscule, no more than six to eight inches every century. Additionally, recent trends indicate that sea levels are increasing at a much slower level than they have in the past.

Some members of the scientific community have expressed concerns about glaciers melting. And while indeed there are a number of glaciers that appear to be melting, some are actually increasing in size. There are some 160,000 glaciers in the world today with about two-thirds of them inventoried (497 in California alone). The mass balance data from studies lasting more than 5 years available today only covers 79 glaciers. How can we infer from this small sample that all of them are melting and that man is responsible?

Much has been written about Mt. Kilimanjaro’s glaciers melting, with blame going, where else, but to global warming. The facts are that the most recent studies of that mountain have ascertained that the glaciers’ melting is actually due to the deforestation of the rainforest at Kilimanjaro’s base, which has been responsible for warm, moist air currents feeding the glaciers. With the forests gone the air now rushing up the mountain is hot and dry, hence melting glaciers.

Much has been made of this year’s hurricane season in the U.S. with claims that the storms were the biggest, most numerous and most powerful in history. But examination of available data covering the 20th Century’s decades paints a different picture. The largest number of hurricane strikes in the last century occurred during the 1940s. In fact, the IPCC’s own report issued in 1995 states "examination of meteorological data fails to support the perception" of an increase in the number and severity of storms or their relation to long-term global climate change.

We can all put on hair shirts and suffer for our affluence by participating in the Kyoto accord. Not that it would do any good, as the same projections generated from computer simulations that we rely on to predict the inevitability of severe climate change, predict a decrease in global temperature of only .04 degree Fahrenheit over the next decade, providing the Kyoto accord is fully implemented.

Yes, we can all do better in how we utilize energy and there certainly isn’t anything wrong with conserving non-renewable resources. But I have my doubts that hamstringing ourselves in the name of a nebulous treaty will have much of an effect at the end of the day. I’m also infinitely suspicious of anything advocated by the Canadian government. Looking at their track record in stimulating the economy, providing universal health care, managing a firearms registry or helping Canada’s aboriginal people. I shudder to think what harm they could do if they start fooling with the weather.

journyman161 · 08-22-2005, 10:31 AM

OK, here's the graph of global average temps for the past few hundred million years.
Note the majority of the time, the average has been 10 degrees above what has been normal since before Man came on the scene, but now we're in the upswing back to MUCH hotter than the predictions for man-made global warming...
http://www.writingforums.com/album_pic.php?pic_id=176

Hodge · 08-22-2005, 10:01 PM

Journey, regardless of whether what you say is true or not (I haven't heard this, but I haven't heard a lot), the Earth's temperature is not supposed to rise this fast. The greenhouse gasses we pour into the atmosphere cause a greenhouse effect, surprisingly, and the weather is going to continue to get more destructive as we mess up the ecosystem. That, and the oceans are going to rise.

Kane · 08-22-2005, 10:11 PM

I've heard the same thing recently as well. The time period that humans have existed in has actually been cooler than the rest of the history of the Earth, and it will get hotter again. Global Warming induced by man is of small concern when compared to the changes that will occur naturally.

journyman161 · 08-22-2005, 10:15 PM

Did you look at the graph. We're currently experiencing the slowest upswing so far recorded. It seems most of the changes have been cataclysmic.

It's going to get worse, & you may be right, we could be swinging our weight behind the pendulum, but the major effects will not be stopped by reducing or even ceasing all greenhouse gasses.

We're in the position of turning on the fan to help the hurricane winds whistling around us.

Kane · 08-22-2005, 10:23 PM

So, 10 degrees celcius is 18 degrees fahrenheit, meaning the average temperature on that graph shoots from 53.6 to 71.6. Here where I live, during the summer, it averages in the 90's. So where do these averages take place? Or is that the averages taken from all over the world and averaged out? What will those 10 degrees mean for mankind, and his ability to survive on the planet?

journyman161 · 08-22-2005, 10:38 PM

that's average global temps Kane. Averaging the poles & the equatorial regions.

Back when the debate first started over global warming in the 70's, it was estimated that a rise of less than 5 degrees in average global temps would wipe out most current life forms.

they're talking 2 degrees or so will bring catastrophic release of water from the southern ice cap. one thrid to one half of that cap melting or being released 12,000 years ago raised the sea level by nearly 300 feet!

It's estimated a 10 metre (slightly longer than a yard) rise in sea level will wipe out 90% of cities around the world, & if it is catastrophic, a concommitant loss of life.
Lives will be lost anyway as billions head for the ever-shrinking hills. More will go as not only do crops fail, but highlands fail to have the fertility required to multicrop or even produce good yields.
And that's not even taking into account the murderous nature of man as he find 10,000 neighbours suddenly wanting the patch of ground he has chosen.

We should survive, albeit in vastly reduced numbers, but I strongly doubt civilisation will.

Get hold of a topo map of any area that interests you & take a blue texta & shade all areas below 1000 feet above sealevel - they will be continental shelf. You will find a truly amazing amount of land vanishes.

Don't forget to shade any inland areas that aren't totally surrounded by heights of more than 300 metres.

If you want to get into ultimate details, remember to look at the paths out of cities; anything difficult to traverse at all will escalate the numbers of dead.

It might be said I don't worry about manmade global warming & it would be true. For me it's like worrying about the pebble falling when the avalanche is right behind it.

Hodge · 08-22-2005, 10:40 PM

Journey, that graph covers a time period of over a billion years. The temperature is not supposed to rise as fast as it has been—something like two or three degrees in the last 150 years. The temperature does rise normally, and we just came out of an ice age something like 15,000 years ago, but it's not supposed to climb back up this fast. Nature used to have a balance between the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere and the flora that soaked it up. Now we're cutting down the flora and releasing even more CO2.

bobothegoat · 08-22-2005, 11:07 PM

Here's some interesting stuff about global warming...

Quote:

One of the most profound benefits of being able to continue photographing Mars in the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Extended Mission is the opportunity to go back and re-image a site that was seen in the previous martian year. New MGS Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) images have provided a startling observation: The residual martian south polar cap is changing. The fact that it is changing suggests that Mars may have major, global climate changes that are occurring on the same time scales as Earth's most recent climate shifts, including the last Ice Age.

MOC images of the south polar cap taken in 1999 were compared with images of the same locations taken in 2001, and it was discovered that pits had enlarged, mesas had shrunk, and small buttes had vanished. In all, the scarps that enclose the pits and bound the mesas and buttes retreated about 3 meters (3.3 yards) in 1 martian year (687 Earth days). This rapid retreat of polar scarps can only occur if the ice is frozen carbon dioxide (also known as "dry ice"). Retreat of scarps made of water ice is much slower and would not have been measurable from one martian year to the next.

The portion of the martian south polar cap that persists through summer is called the residual polar cap. The two sets of four pictures shown here are from four places on the residual south polar cap. The pictures from 1999 were taken in October of that year, the corresponding pictures from 2001 were acquired in August, approximately 1 Mars year after the 1999 images were obtained. In each case, the pictures are illuminated by sunlight from the upper left, and each shows an area about 250 meters (273 yards) across. The polar cap is layered, and the layers have eroded to form pits, troughs, mesas, and buttes. The pits form as sunlight warms frozen carbon dioxide during southern spring and summer, and the ice sublimes away. There is so much carbon dioxide that it does not all go away in one summer---in fact, it may take hundreds to thousands of years to disappear.

These new observations indicate that the south polar residual cap is not permanent. It is disappearing, a little bit more each southern spring and summer season. At the present rate, a layer 3 m thick can be completely eroded away in a few tens of martian years. Since each layer is equivalent to about 1% of the mass of the present atmosphere (which is 95% carbon dioxide), if sufficient carbon dioxide is buried in the south polar cap, the mass of the atmosphere could double in a few hundred to a thousand Mars years. That could lead to profound changes in the environment. For example, it would change how much and where wind erosion would occur, and where and for how long liquid water could survive at or near the surface.

It also means that Mars may have been very different in the recent past (perhaps only a few thousands of years ago). On today's Mars, the ice is eroding, but in the past that material had to have been deposited. The martian climate was probably colder, and there was more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For some reason, large amounts of carbon dioxide froze at the south pole---one might say that there was a "Martian Ice Age"---and this freezing occurred on a time scale similar to that of the most recent Ice Age on Earth.

Mars is changing, and it is changing on a time scale that we can measure and observe. If all of the carbon dioxide that is being released into the atmosphere from the south polar cap is not freezing out somewhere else, and if it is not being adsorbed into the martian soil, then it must be causing the atmospheric pressure to increase. If this is so, and if one were to assume that the entire known volume of the polar cap is made of carbon dioxide that sublimes at the same rate we see today, then it could increase the martian atmospheric pressure by as much as 10 times, to about 1/10th the density of Earth's atmosphere, in just the next few thousand years. Although this atmosphere would not be breathable, carbon dioxide is a "greenhouse gas" that would cause the global temperature to increase considerably and make it easier for liquid water to persist elsewhere on the planet. Perhaps, just perhaps, a thickening martian atmosphere would eventually make it easier for people to live on Mars.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/ca...rel/index.html

Martian ice-caps are supposedly made of CO2... or is it?

Quote:

Although the upper crust of frost is clearly carbon dioxide, scientists are now convinced that much of both caps' supporting mass must be frozen water--structurally, "dry ice can't stand up two miles high," Garvin remarked.

(excert from: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...htm?list540155 )

So yes, the global warming on Mars is causing the global warming (on Mars) to speed up. Then again our global warming (here on Earth) is causing methane to be released from the permafrost, so really we're in the same situation. If the SUVs are starting global warming on Earth, what's doing it on Mars? I wish I knew... Personally, I suspect the sun. It would be interesting to see if similair trends are occuring on other planets.

Of course, global warming is happening, but I believe we need to stop throwing blame around and actually do something to prepare for these inevitable changes.

journyman161 · 08-22-2005, 11:13 PM

Yep, we're blowing up the rocks in the path of the avalanche, increasing it's mass, but the global change is going to swamp any manmade effects.

Also, if you look at the previous rises & falls, even given the fact that the further back we go the more uncertain the data is, the current rise is extraordinarily slow compared to them.

If it were the same as back then, the warming period we've experienced in the past 20K years would be compressed, perhaps by a factor of 20. By the graph, we should be in an assymtopic rise already.

But I'm not in disagreement with you; we have affected the balance. It's just not really fair to blame it all on human action, particularly when the period of human dominance has coincided with a slower than usual rise.

Mind you, I'd have to check, but it could be simply the orbital characteristics that have slowed things down. Earths obliquity, the match up between perihelion & summer in the north as well as pole wobble may be the reason for the slowing of the rate of warming.
We are, after all, about halfway through the 41.000 year cycle of obliquity, but with the vernal equinox in aquarius, I'm not sure how close we are to perihelion.