I take no stance. Just information to consider. I've not even particepated in your little discussion here. My position is that we must be careful and closely monitor any changes. Besides lowering the CO2 exhausts even if there isn't going to be a runaway global warming in the near future is good for environment and our lungs. I'm all for cleaner fuels the faster the better, because 1. one day we will run out of fossil fuel anyways 2. they save the environment (of which we are a part of)
Absolutely (perhaps), but changing policy should not be based on a lie. How about this line of reasoning: Check this: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Notice that 500 million years ago the carbon in the air was 20 times more than nowadays. BTW, Let's ask those people of then, how bad the global warming was. See the trend? Down, why? because carbon is removed from the carbon cycle trough the forming of peat to coal and limestone on a world wide scale, sediment covering happens world wide - preventing that carbon to be recycled. Volcanoes who can recycle carbon are only doing so on a very local scale. How would you recycle the coal -once vegetation- that's hunderds of meters deep. So over time, the carbon has a tendency to dissappear into the Earth crust, unusable for the life cycles and the total biomass will decrease over time until earth is a barren desert. deprived of any life, since there is no more carbon available Fortunately, mankind has found a way to recover much of the lost carbon and benefits from it in the process as well, by using that carbon as fuel. This is how the Gaya principle works. So to increase the biomass, nature and the ability to maintain a biological carbon cycle it is essential that mankind continues to recover as much carbon from the soil as possible. So, let's cheer for our oil compagnies, they are the real savers of the world. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Ceratainly in the long term carbon is being removed from the atmosphere and sequestered; at the same time the temperature of the Earth has remained approximately stable over the last 500 million years. How can the Earth have less CO2 yet remain warm? one factor often ignored is the fact that the Sun is slowly increasing in brightness; our current cycle of glaciations and interglacials will eventually cease, depite the long term decline in CO2 levels, and the Earth will begin to be warmed up as the Sun gets hotter. By 1 Gigayear from now we will live on a hot planet with very little CO2.
Also, the carbon is removed from the Earth's crust naturally... sometimes violently. What we are taking out is miniscule.
Re the kyoto accord ? It is difficult to understand, why they singled out co2 as the source of global warming. It is, as I have demonstrated in a previous post, only a small fraction of one percent of atmopheric gases. and if we eliminated it altogether, trees and plants could'nt grow. They absolutely depend on it. Some greenhouse owners buy cylinders of the stuff and release it in their greenhouses in a controled maner to increase the grows of their vegetables. If we are worried about clean air, there are other gases we should try and control such as methane and sulfurdioxyde. Those 2 are mutch more dangerous to human health, and they are the ones responsible for the smog and bad air in our big cities. And they are worse greenhouse gases than co2. Nobody ever died from breathing co2. REGARDS APOLO
Re the kyoto accord ? It is difficult to understand, why they singled out co2 as the source of global warming. It is, as I have demonstrated in a previous post, only a small fraction of one percent of atmopheric gases. and if we eliminated it altogether, trees and plants could'nt grow. They absolutely depend on it. Some greenhouse owners buy cylinders of the stuff and release it in their greenhouses in a controled maner to increase the grows of their vegetables. If we are worried about clean air, there are other gases we should try and control such as methane and sulfurdioxyde. Those 2 are mutch more dangerous to human health, and they are the ones responsible for the smog and bad air in our big cities. And they are worse greenhouse gases than co2. Nobody ever died from breathing co2. REGARDS APOLO
Apolo, I think it is a little bit more complicated than that. Greenhouse gas effect works a bit differently. Here is a very comprehensive explanation. You can even play with the model Again, the bottom line is that the amount of greenhouse effect is rougly logarithmic proportional to the greenhouse gas effect, meaning that a doubling of 5 ppm to 10 ppm is roughly equally effective as a doubling from 280 ppm to 560 ppm. So it's the mere presence of CO2 that causes the greenhouse gas effect and a little variation albeit 250ppm or 500ppm or 1000ppm does not generate large differences in greenhouse gas effect.
HI Andre Thanks for your post. I'm not sure what you mean by "the greenhouse effect is logaritimally proportional to the greenhouse effect. And I'm not even certain if you are oposed to or in agreement with my 2 previous posts. So let me switsh to annother tangent to make my position clear. By far, the gas -which is not a gas- WATER VAPOR is the largest component of the atmosphere that controles the temperature of the earth surface. And without it the earth would be as cold as a cucumber on Mars. Dont get me wrong, I'm not beeing sarcastic. But tell me do you seriously think, that an increase from 315 ppm to 375 ppm in co2 in the atmosphere has any measureable effect on the average temperature on the planet ? REGARDS APOLO ..
Yes we agree on the outcome, but not on the mechanism, This is less relevant. It's the mere presence of a certain greenhouse gas that starts the greenhouse effect already. The minute amount is compensated with the long path that the light is in the atmosphere. But, it's the bandwidth, in which that particular gas works, that gets saturated quickly. This cases that large increase of greenhouse gas effect has only minor effect on the intensity. It''s not the minute fraction, that is already working considerably, it's the saturation that prevents much more temperature increase.
And that is the big complaint many people have with Kyoto. If you are going to regulate things for the safety of humanity... great. figure out what levels are likely to be dangerous and set the limits below this. This isn't being done for CO2. The limits are arbitrary and are not actually backed up by hard science. Nobody really knows how much of an impact humans have, or how much is dangerous. Some like to argue that this is just to present the idea of future limits being set... but it's a silly idea. Wait until you actually have some proof that it is needed/useful before you start regulating.
Avatar, If you're so obsessed with the Arctic but actually the role of the BBC being the Henchmen of the UK government in preaching global warming, perhaps peek here a bit: http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/thread-view.asp?threadid=16254 and the surrounding threads of course. I'd also recommend another thread about the role of the BBC and the UK government. But according to the police of the local authoroties here, it is considered spamming to link to that particular forum. But if you google with "the merely urgent interfere with the truly important" (copy - paste) including parenthesis, it will be the first hit.
Don't worry Av, the North Atlantlic Oscilation and the Arctic Oscillation are weakening sending less warm water up to the Arctic. If you follow the instructions on this link and click on the map somewhere in the right upper area you will see that most North Eurasian weather stations have a downwards trend in temperature. I'm not sure if the img will hold but I try Murmansk for instance: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Besides, most of the Baltic area is rising and the Baltic sea is only shrinking with sea levels lowering. These are just the last vigorous attempts of the believers in the extremely mighty global warming idiology, you should really google that sentence and see how easy it is to rupture that balloon of hot air, just with sound science.
Reply to Avatar. 11-02-04 Thanks for your reply to my last post. Yes I realise that if the northern icecap over the pole melted, it would have bad consequenses in some part of the world. But my 2 main points are. First; of all there is no evidense, that the warming we are (supposedly) observing, is caused by humans driving cars. Or that it is a natural swing in the earth climate caused by the number of sun spots, and the tilt in the earth axis,which happens on a regular basis. And the tiny increase in co2 from 315 to 375 parts pr million observed during the last 48 years, is negligible, when compared to nature's natural way of working. Second; We have seen large variations in the climate before, when there was no automobiles or coal fired powerplants around. It is a well known fact, (to any one familiar with history), that during the viking age (800 to 1200 ad) the vikings sailed from Denmark and Norway to Iceland and Greenland in their open wooden boats.Established a colony in Greenland where they grove hay and oats and raised cattle. Today this is impossible. then they sailed west to Elesmere Iland and then south to New Foundland wherethey found wild grapes groving. and they named the place Vineland. To day you have to go to northern Virginia before you find wild grapes. So it is patendly obvious, that the climate was then about 4 degrees C warmer than it is today, as is supported by ice cores drilled in the Greenland ice sheet. So to conclude, why should we tie ourselve into knots wrecking the economies of Canada, The US and Europe in order to please some doomsday sayers, who are using faulty computer models. If the earth is warming by 4 degrees C, let's us sit back and enjoy it. There is not a damed thing we can do about it. REGARDS APOLO
Good points, apolo! I agree with you a lot, but I won't be buying any land property close to the seashore though.
Yes Avatar. Maybe it is a good idea not to buy property next to the seashore, just in case. It is of course entirely possible, that the oceans may rise a bit if the world temperature goes up somewhat. The important point to consider, when we are talking about the Kyoto Accord is; as Persol said "the limits were set arbetrarely, and not backed up by hard science". For those of you who have'nt read the Kyoto Accord, let me explain. "All countries shall endever to lower co 2 emissions to 6% persent of what they were in 1996" However developing countries will be exemt. (we used to call them undeveloped countries, but that became a derogatory word , so we changed that to 'developing' to please them. but that word is now developing a derogatory meaning, so in the future we may call them "the human resourse rich countries"). So far the european countries and (just resently )Rusia sighned on. . Canada sighned, but is totally ignoring the accord. The USA and Australia did not sighn. That leaves the rest, China 1-1/4 billion people, India 1 bilion, most of Asia 1 bilion, Africa 1 bilion plus, that are not required to comply with the accord. So what the tree huggers in Kyoto is saying is; that if people in Europe and North America will just trade in their buicks for cavaliers or mazdas, this will cool the world climate so sea levels wont rise !! while China, India and the rest keep on poluting. Give me a break. Most powerplants and factories in the developed countries are already equipped with scrubbers on smoke stacks, and they have had strict environmental laws for years, which is not the case in China and India. the reason Rusia sighned on is; that their economy has gone backwards in the last 10 years so theyr emissions are already below what it was in 1996 that means they can sell credits to countries like Canada and the US who are by now about 17 % higher in co2 emissions than they were in 1996, and there is no way they could cut emissions to 6% below 1996 without wrecking their economy. That's right. The rules say, that if a factory in Chicago emit more than the allowed co2 then they can buy a credit from a country that emits less than the allowed amount. If these rules are followed it would amount to a massive transfer of wealth to Rusia, Chile, Columbia and a few other countries who are emmiting less than the limmit. Let's face it; to comply with the KYOTO Accord is an impossibility. And even if we could, it wont make a dam bit of difference. REGARDS APOLO
In the old days, back when graptolites still swam in the oceans and were the primary reef builders, much of the ocean below a certain depth was anoxic. That is, it held almost no dissolved oxygen. I am pretty sure that sinking cold water from the seas off the two poles, the ocean's main means of water exchange, is all that is fending off total anoxia today. As it is, the natural level of oxygen in the deep sea is pretty damn low. If the temperature increased enough to melt icecaps by a significant amount, I am worried anoxia would return and I doubt an increased level of ocean CO2 is going to be very good either. I have no idea what would happen then. Thoughts? Comments? Observations?
I should point out that the socalled polar ice cap is ocoan ice. It is a large flat sheet of ice floating in the water. and as any highschool boy knows, a piece of ice floating in a body of water has 9/10 of it's mass under water and only 1/10 above water. It does'nt mater if it is an ice cube, an ice berg or a large sheet of ice. So if it melts, only the 1/10 that is above surface will add to the level of water in your glass or in the ocean. REGARDS APOLO
The structures of ice molecules are also different to the structure of water molecules so their densities are also different...
