Global warming is it really happening

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by some_guy01, Oct 5, 2001.

  1. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    8,616
    Dear Deus...

    Will you please come and tell that to all the humans who leave their GARBAGE behind in the Woods and the Rivers and everywhere they can find a place to leave their GARBAGE behind???!!!

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    We cleaned up after the humans left you know. Late in the afternoon, on sunny Sundays and through the week. Go figure how long we were busy doing so.

    Research??? Just take a look in the Woods, after the 'civilised' humans have done their visits to the Woods with their food supplies and chairs and play toys.

    A little respect for the Woods, Nature in general that is, should be nice.

    Global warming is happening yes. Hell, lets do some research how it comes that it is happening. How much research and doing nothing about it has yet to follow before humans understand that their inventions are the main problem here?

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  3. goofyfish Analog By Birth, Digital By Design Valued Senior Member

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    That is about 27 cubic kilometers of new ice/year (check my math, because I suck at it.) Given the very low precipitation in Antarctica that's a lot of new ice. I assume it is net growth, because I understand that two years ago the scientist who was measuring cracks and movement of the ice shelf (using a GPS system) determined that it was calving. People I talked to figured that meant it was warming up there. Just goes to show today's research conclusions might be quickly reversed by tomorrow's research observations.

    Working on a few decades of reliable data and trying to predict 100,000 year cycles and assess blame for every litlle perturbation is assinine. Of course it's also assisine to rule out possibilities just because the data is incapable of confirming those possibilities. I absolutely believe that humankind is having a negative impact on the planet, but I also believe the model is more complex than we can understand at this point.

    Peace.
     
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  5. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    Goofyfish...

    Guess you say it very right. Doesn't take away the fact that humans can try, at the least, to have a little more respect for Nature.

    Ever walked in a Forest? Did you see all the garbage left behind, because of the people who had an entertaining afternoon in the Forest? It's ridiculous to see what they leave behind and than I don't even mention the trashcans which are placed a few meters from the place the garbage is left behind.

    Yeah, imagine, that the people walk that few meters to put their garbage actually IN the trashcan.

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    And I am talking close to 'home' now, not even about the damage done to the Planet.

    Guess it messes me up too much. I always get angry from this crap. Don't understand this kind of mentality...

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  7. odin Registered Senior Member

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  8. Deus Seeker of Truth Registered Senior Member

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    It seems to me that this article suggets that if we can't link greenhouse gas emissions to global warming, then there is no reason to legislate against their release into the atmosphere. What about protecting the quality of air we breathe? What about preventing acid rain, which damages buildings, cars, etc?
     
  9. goofyfish Analog By Birth, Digital By Design Valued Senior Member

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    A good observation. As I said previously in this thread, positions concerning the environment have become so polarized, that it's impossible to have a rational discussion surrounding the facts. Data can be presented to support both sides of the issue, which would indicate to me that we are not yet looking at the correct data.

    Peace.
     
  10. kmguru Staff Member

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    11,757
    Global warming?

    It is March and we are freezing here in Louisiana....
     
  11. Miss Chicken Registered Member

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    29
    Global warming?

    Tasmania has just had its coldest, cloudiest and stormiest summer on record. The mean daily maximum was less than 20C. We normally have 10 days in summer over 30C, this summer we had one (32C). I think we only got about 5-6 days over 25C.
     
  12. Unidentified Flying Object Registered Member

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    13
    I think that would the global warming be caused by humans or not, when world ends it'll be caused by humans
     
  13. goofyfish Analog By Birth, Digital By Design Valued Senior Member

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    Fear not. Though we may dent it and damage it, the world will not end. The worst we will be able to do is make it unfit for us to inhabit. And then the problem is solved, eh?

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    Peace.
     
  14. kmguru Staff Member

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    If a very large asteroid comes our way or the sun goes supernova or a blackhole shows up next door or massive radiation from a pulsar etc etc humans will not be the cause.
     
  15. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    8,616
    *Tasmania has just had its coldest, cloudiest and stormiest summer on record. The mean daily maximum was less than 20C. We normally have 10 days in summer over 30C, this summer we had one (32C). I think we only got about 5-6 days over 25C.*

    *It is March and we are freezing here in Louisiana....*

    What you think causes these weather changes? Just a 'coincidence'...?

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  16. goofyfish Analog By Birth, Digital By Design Valued Senior Member

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    I’m not exactly sure how I feel about this one. They might take a moment to consider how coral reefs turn into islands in the first place before lamenting the fact that some of them may, again, disappear beneath the waves.

    Peace.
     
  17. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    8,616
    Well, I heard that parts of the world, including a piece of Texas, will be flooded within a couple of years. There will come flooded land above Sea level again then too.

    Wish I could remember where I've read that. I'll look it up and get back to here and post it. It's a little foggy in my mind, can't remember it well.

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  18. Rick Valued Senior Member

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    Many Channels like discovery,FOX had stated that the yellow stone park volcano erupts every 600,000 years and it is due this year.catastrophes...ahaha...(<B>NOTE THIS WAS IN 1999</B>)

    As i said earlier in U.S itself millions of Dollars are spend annually for weather research purposes,needless to say many people hold jobs due to it.what will happen if we prove that weather forecasting is B.Shit and nothing else?

    simple they"ll loose their jobs.i often wonder we cant predict weather perfectly and here we are talking about climate!!ha! talk about frantic money makers.I stayed(During a convention in Miami on FSOs) in hotel and only after say erm...5-6 hours before were able to say that storm was coming,this was only recently,1997 or 1999 i dont remember correctly.


    bye!
     
  19. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,616
    It's not from the television or internet I've heard it. It is somewhere in my emails, from someone who predicts Earthquakes and amazing, she's always right!

    The weather forecast doesn't say a thing to me. You can smell it in the Air when a Storm is coming and Rain and Snow you can smell in the Air, and Thunder and Lightning... Also hours up front, so what I'm concerned, all weather forecasters can go home.

    Don't believe in doom predictions like Yellow Stone Park. So many of those predictions, they never come true.

    I'll look for the email, it is a mess in my emails. Have to do a good clean-up in there.

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    Trashy me...

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  20. kmguru Staff Member

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    Banshee:

    You could use the search feature if you are using outlook. Anyway, I have a resident psychic who has been right too many times than wrong. She predicts that we will have a major anamoly in the world in about 10 years, but could not say if it is climate related. Another prediction that may happen in 30 years or so is that part of Louisina will be under water. Which means, the sea - level may rise another 50 feet or so. It may mean also that, while we feel cold, the temperature swing can cause icebergs to melt in a big way.
     
  21. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    8,616
    Thanx Kmguru...

    That is what I've been looking for and haven't found back til now.
    It's somehow the same prediction. Are we talking the same Psychic here?

    Now I am curious! I will do a search for the original message. Thank you for the tip...

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    She also said that Land which is under the Seas now will come above Sea level while parts of (among other Land) Texas and Louisiana will go under. You recognize this?
     
  22. kmguru Staff Member

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    11,757
    Banshee

    There was a television program that discusses these predictions. I taped it several years ago, but can not find it now. I do not put much faith in other peoples prediction because unless that person is consistently correct in the past, that prediction is useless.

    I only count on my friends over the years. Each friend have different capabilities. So, once they are tested, I can use a certain probability (confidence factor) for each event. I think, we all have predictive capabilities because of the way our brain works. But each of us can be good in certain specific areas because that is the point of focus for that brain.

    Anyway, time will tell...
     
  23. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    8,616
    Goodbye cruel world
    A report by top US scientists on climate change suggests that catastrophe could be imminent

    Jeremy Rifkin
    Friday March 1, 2002
    The Guardian

    We live in a world that has become so desensitised by watching calamities unfold on global television - both natural and human-induced - that it takes something really spectacular even to get our attention.

    And it usually has to be visually dramatic to register, much less elicit a deep emotional response - such as the tragic events of September 11.

    Recently, I came across a frightening report published by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - the nation's most august scientific body. Yet, because there was no visually provocative content, the report had received only a couple of short paragraphs tucked away inside a few newspapers.

    Here is what the academy had to say: it is possible that the global warming trend projected over the course of the next 100 years could, all of a sudden and without warning, dramatically accelerate in just a handful of years - forcing a qualitative new climatic regime which could undermine ecosystems and human settlements throughout the world, leaving little or no time for plants, animals and humans to adjust.

    The new climate could result in a wholesale change in the earth's environment, with effects that would be felt for thousands of years. If the projections and warnings in this study turn out to be prophetic, no other catastrophic event in all of recorded history will have had as damaging an impact on the future of human civilisation and the life of the planet.

    A year ago the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) issued a voluminous report forecasting that global average surface temperature is likely to rise by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees centigrade between now and 2100. If that projection holds up, we were told, the change in temperature forecast for the next 100 years will be larger than any climate change on earth in more than 10,000 years.

    The impacts on the earth's biosphere are going to be of a qualitative kind. To understand how significant this rise in temperature is likely to be, we need to keep in mind that a 5 degrees centigrade increase in temperature between the last ice age and today resulted in much of the northern hemisphere of the planet going from being buried under thousands of feet of ice to being ice-free.

    The UN study predicts that a temperature rise of 1.4-5.8 degrees centigrade over the course of the coming century could include the melting of glaciers and the Arctic polar cap, sea water rise, increased precipitation and storms and more violent weather patterns, destabilisation and loss of habitats, migration northward of ecosystems, contamination of fresh water by salt water, massive forest dieback, accelerated species extinction and increased droughts.

    The IPCC report also warns of adverse impacts on human settlements, including the submerging of island nations and low-lying countries, diminishing crop yields, especially in the southern hemisphere, and the spread of tropical disease northward into previously temperate zones.

    The newly released NAS report begins by noting that the current projections about global warming and its ecological, economic and social impacts cited in the UN report are based on the assumption of a steady upward climb in temperatures, more or less evenly distributed over the course of the 21st century. But that assumption, they say, may be faulty - there is a possibility that temperatures could rise suddenly in just a few years' time, creating a new climatic regime virtually overnight.

    They also point out that abrupt changes in climate, whose effects are long lasting, have occurred repeatedly in the past 100,000 years. For example, at the end of the Younger-Dryas interval about 11,500 years ago, "global climate shifted dramatically, in many regions by about one-third to one-half the difference between ice age and modern conditions, with much of the change occurring over a few years".

    According to the study: "An abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause." Moreover, the paleoclimatic record shows that "the most dramatic shifts in climate have occurred when factors controlling the climate system were changing". Given the fact that human activity - especially the burning of fossil fuels - is expected to double the CO<->2 content emitted into the atmosphere in the current century, the conditions could be ripe for an abrupt change in climate around the world, perhaps in only a few years.

    What is really unnerving is that it may take only a slight deviation in boundary conditions or a small random fluctuation somewhere in the system "to excite large changes ... when the system is close to a threshold", says the NAS committee.

    An abrupt change in climate, of the kind that occurred during the Younger-Dryas interval, could prove catastrophic for ecosystems and species around the world. During that particular period, for instance, spruce, fir and paper birch trees experienced mass extinction in southern New England in less than 50 years. The extinction of horses, mastodons, mammoths, and sabre-toothed tigers in North America were greater at that time than in any other extinction event in millions of years.

    The committee lays out a potentially nightmarish scenario in which random triggering events take the climate across the threshold into a new regime, causing widespread havoc and destruction.

    Ecosystems could collapse suddenly with forests decimated in vast fires and grasslands drying out and turning into dust bowls. Wildlife could disappear and waterborne diseases such as cholera and vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue and yellow fever, could spread uncontrollably beyond host ranges, threatening human health around the world.

    The NAS concludes its report with a dire warning: "On the basis of the inference from the paleoclimatic record, it is possible that the projected change will occur not through gradual evolution, proportional to greenhouse gas concentrations, but through abrupt and persistent regime shifts affecting subcontinental or larger regions - denying the likelihood or downplaying the relevance of past abrupt changes could be costly."

    Global warming represents the dark side of the commercial ledger for the industrial age. For the past several hundred years, and especially in the 20th century, human beings burned massive amounts of "stored sun" in the form of coal, oil and natural gas, to produce the energy that made an industrial way of life possible. That spent energy has accumulated in the atmosphere and has begun to adversely affect the climate of the planet and the workings of its many ecosystems.

    If we were to measure human accomplishments in terms of the sheer impact our activities have had on the life of the planet, then we would sadly have to conclude that global warming is our most significant accomplishment to date, albeit a negative one.

    We have affected the biochemistry of the earth and we have done it in less than a century. If a qualitative climate change were to occur suddenly in the coming century - within less than 10 years - as has happened many times before in geological history, we may already have written our epitaph.

    When future generations look back at this period, tens of thousands of years from now, it is possible that the only historical legacy we will have left them in the geologic record is a great change in the earth's climate and its impact on the biosphere.

    · Jeremy Rifkin is the author of The Biotech Century (Gollancz) and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington DC

    comment@guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4365494,00.html
     

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