Global warming is it really happening

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

  1. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,616
    To add some "fuel" to wet1's post...

    Iceberg Breakoffs Alarm Scientists

    May 14 � The Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves are cracking up and, on the face of things, it is the most serious thaw since the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago.
    The break-up of the ice shelves in itself is a natural process of renewal, but the size and rate of production of icebergs � some the size of major cities � is alarming scientists, some of whom blame global warming.

    The break-off last month of a 500 billion ton chunk of the Larsen Ice Shelf � 650 feet thick and with a surface area of 1,250 sq. miles � is the second big break since a giant iceberg broke away in 1995 and is well beyond normal activity, scientists say. On Monday, scientists announced that another massive iceberg had broken off the Ross Ice Shelf, reducing the Antarctic formation to about the size it was in 1911 when explorer Robert Scott's team first mapped it.

    The production of vast amounts of icebergs is a threat to the world's climate and the way the ocean's function, they say. And the process, once started, cannot be reversed. The fear is that a snowball effect will lead to disintegration of the vast West Antarctic ice shelf, kilometers thick in parts.

    "The (first) break-off said 'this is not theory, it's real � a rapid and dramatic collapse of an ice shelf can happen'," said Neal Young, glaciologist with the Antarctic Cooperative Research Center (CRC) in Hobart. "This is saying 'that wasn't a one-off thing."'

    Significant warming in parts of the pristine Antarctic wilderness is expected to continue to send huge icebergs into the Southern Ocean, and lead to the disintegration of other sections of ice shelves that fringe Antarctica's continental ice cover. A longer-term effect would be if the disintegration led to a meltdown of the grounded West Antarctic ice sheet, which would cause the world's oceans to rise by up to five meters (17 feet).

    The Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out into the Southern Ocean, has warmed by 2.5 degrees Celsius over the past 50 years, while some other areas have cooled. Some parts of West Antarctica have been losing ice, while, like shifting grains of sand on a beach, ice has built up elsewhere.

    Scientists are not too worried for the moment about rising sea levels. This is because floating ice shelves displace large amounts of sea water, and sea levels would effectively remain unchanged if the ice shelfs disappeared. The real problems arise if the ice built up over millions of years on parts of Antarctica's land mass melts.

    "We aren't too worried about the first 100 years or so when the ice shelves go, because there's no real effect on sea level and feedback on global climate is really rather small," said Bill Budd, Professor of Meteorology at the CRC, co-operative group between Australia's Antarctic Division, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), the University of Tasmania and other bodies.

    But scientists believe that the expected loss of half the Antarctic's sea ice by the end of the century will have important consequences for Earth's entire natural system. They are finding that the world's deep ocean circulation system will slow as the Antarctic produces smaller amounts of dense oxygen-rich seawater, possibly within 30 years, threatening marine life.

    "We can't reverse it. Because the greenhouse gas levels are already up, we can't bring them down, they just get higher, and the (ocean) cutoff will be stronger at higher levels," Budd said.
     
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  3. Xev Registered Senior Member

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    Well Edufer, you were right about Archimedes' principle. My bad.

    Oh bah! Whatever causes high levels of greenhouse gases can be brought down - provided we have the will to do so.

    For instance, CO2 could be converted to O2 at an accelerated rate by 'fertilizing' the ocean. This would cause an increase in the number of organisms that preform such conversions.

    P.S: Thanks for the article, Banshee.
     
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  5. kmguru Staff Member

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  7. kmguru Staff Member

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    If CO2 is a problem, we could easily modify sea plankton to grow rapidly and produce oxygen at a higher level....just an idea...

    no one seems to be working on that...does that mean, it is not a problem?
     
  8. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,616
    Given the lead-time it would take to develop, manufacture the adapted organisms and allow time for them to affect the environment, I wonder just how long from time of realization to time of equilibrium. Upon reaching equilibrium how long it would take to level the process out.

    People have always been short sighted, governments even more so, as they respond to the peoples wants, needs, and fears. There will be a lot of hand wringing and debate on if this needs done before such a process would begin.

    The question is, should we? Have there been enough serious studies that prove we are on a ramp up of temperatures in an endless spiral and that it has begun? Edufer argues, rather eloquently for the opposite.
     
  9. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    I do not think it will take that long to have Genetically Modified Plankton deployed. We do that with GM Corn, Salmon and a host of other plant life. We are pretty good at it. What is required is the truth (either CO2 is rising or in balance within a natural variation). If it is politically motivated like R12, PCB, DDT and other stuff then the truth is not out there.....it is in the bank....follow the money....
     
  10. Edufer Tired warrior Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    791
    Contradictions, contradictions... The Larsen shelf <b>broke off</b>, it did <b>not thaw</b> or melted. As it has been demonstrated before, Antarctica <b>has been cooling</b> during the last 25 years, so the huge amount of ice formed during those 25 years caused the breakoff, just for the sheer weight, not because temperatures that have been <b>going down</b>. At least they recognize that <b>some</b> scientists blame the "thaw" to global warming.
    Fears, terror, Apocalypse, what else? Scaremongers are driven by their pockets. As kmguru points out, <i>"If it is politically motivated like R12, PCB, DDT and other stuff then the truth is not out there.....it is in the bank....follow the money...."</i> (and the geopolitical power that provides more money than ever before in Earth's history.

    kmguru also said: <i>"...we could easily modify sea plankton to grow rapidly and produce oxygen at a higher level....just an idea... no one seems to be working on that..."</i>

    Actually, it has been studied and proposed by a oceanologist back in the 80s. I will find the article (buried deep in my file cabinet --not in my hardisk) and tell all about it. He proposed to "seed" the polar seas with iron filings, because it has been demonstrated that iron oxide enhances the CO2 intake by phytoplanktons. But the scientific establishment dissmised the idea as "wacky". Anything that goes against the establishment seems to be wacky...
     
  11. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,616
    SCIENTISTS BEGIN TO HEED INUIT WARNINGS OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN ARCTIC
    By DeNeen L. Brown
    Washington Post
    Tuesday, May 28, 2002; Page A01

    IQALUIT, Nunavut -- And so it has come to be, the elders say, a time when icebergs are melting, tides have changed, polar bears have thinned and there is no meaning left in a ring around the moon. Scattered clouds blowing in a wind no longer speak to elders and hunters. Daily weather markers are becoming less predictable in the fragile Arctic as its climate changes.

    Inuit elders and hunters who depend on the land say they are disturbed by what they are seeing swept in by the changes: deformed fish, caribou with bad livers, baby seals left by their mothers to starve. Just the other year, a robin appeared where no robin had been seen before. There is no word for robin in Inuktitut, the Inuit language.

    Elders say they are afraid of the changes. "When I was a child, if there was a ring around the sun or the moon, it meant the change of weather in the next few days. Better or worse, it was nature's message for the hunter," said David Audlakiak.

    He is walking on a thick layer of ice frozen over the arctic waters. The hills behind him should still be covered in snow, but are mostly bare. As this winter ends, he says that it has been warmer than winters past. The bald spots showing the tundra are disturbing.

    Audlakiak, who grew up in an igloo, says there are more signs the land, sea and animals are in turmoil. "The weather pattern has changed so much from my childhood. We have more accidents because the ice conditions change. We are living in one of the most unforgiving climates in the world. It is becoming more dangerous every year."

    There is increasing evidence that the Arctic, this desert of snow, ice and killing cold wind, one of the most hostile and fragile places on Earth, is thawing. Glaciers are receding. Coastlines are eroding. Lakes are disappearing. Fall freezes are coming later. The winters are not as cold.

    Mosquitoes and beetles never seen before are appearing. The sky seems to be clapping as thunderstorms roll where it was once too cold for them.

    "The Inuit always observed the sun and astrology for direction and for weather," Jayko Pitseolak, an Inuit elder here, said through an interpreter.

    "We were taught . . . that one day the world will change, and it has."

    While scientists debate the causes of climate change and politicians debate whether to ratify the Kyoto accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that many scientists believe cause global warming, the Inuit who live in Canada's Far North say they are watching their world melt before their eyes.

    For years, the wisdom of Inuit hunters and elders about climate in the Arctic, known as "traditional knowledge," was largely disregarded. Sometimes it was called merely anecdotal and unreliable by scientists who traveled here with their recording devices, measuring sticks and theories about the North. Some of them viewed the Inuit as ignorant about a land in which they and their ancestors have lived for thousands of years.

    But in the last few years, scientists have begun paying more attention to what the Inuit are documenting, and even incorporating it into their research about changes in the climate, the prevailing weather conditions of a given area. In 1997, the Canadian government mandated that government agencies incorporate traditional knowledge into land-use decisions and consult aboriginal people about the environment.

    "Traditional knowledge is very useful," said George Hobson, a
    geophysicist and retired director of the Polar Continental Shelf
    Project, a Canadian government agency that provided logistical support to government and university scientists researching the Arctic.

    "If you go back 100 years or 200 years ago, European forefathers thought they [the Inuit] were savages. 'What did they know?' they said. But there was traditional knowledge and people were not tapping it. It was just waiting to be passed down. Some people might say, 'I'm a university
    prof, what does that fellow know? He doesn't have grade six.' But when they have grade six and they have lived out on the land, they had one hell of a lot of knowledge about land and animals. They may not have had the same education, but they were not stupid. You could not be stupid and survive in that kind of climate."

    During the past 40 years, average temperatures in Canada's Western Arctic have risen by 1.5 degrees Celsius, to -13.5 degrees Celsius, according to Environment Canada, the government's environment ministry. Temperatures have also risen in the Central Arctic, but not in the Eastern Arctic, where some scientists suggest there may even be a modest cooling. "Global warming doesn't mean all areas will warm," said Tom Agnew, a senior meteorologist with the Meteorological Service of Canada.
    "Some will warm and some will cool a bit." Some scientists predict a rise in sea levels leading to devastating floods, thinning ice and
    perhaps even an ice-free Arctic within 50 years.

    Terry Fenge, former research director of the Inuit Circumpolar
    Conference of Canada, said that in the last decade scientists have
    acknowledged the Arctic as a barometer of climate change and the effects of pollution. "This is one of those very important areas where traditional knowledge and traditional science is coming together with Western science and they are both in essence saying the same thing: Climate change is not a future event. It is happening now."

    For the Inuit, climate change poses an immediate danger to a way of life. They cannot read the weather the way they used to.

    "When you think in terms of the long-term negative effects of climate change, this could be the beginning of the end of the way of life for a whole people," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, president of the circumpolar conference. "Our cultural heritage is at stake here. We are an adaptable people. We have over the millennium been able to adapt to incredible circumstances. But I think adaptability has its limits. If the ice is not forming, how else does one adapt to seasons that are not as they used to be when the whole environment is changing underneath our feet, literally?"

    For thousands of years, the Inuit have lived by rules that require them to respect animals and the land. The Inuit's ancestors are believed to have arrived in the Western Arctic about 10,000 years ago, migrating from Siberia across what was then the Bering land bridge.

    They adapted to the cold climate as they hunted seals, walruses and beluga whales. It was a time "when people and animals could speak together and when spirits of the sea and the land controlled the fate of both the animal and human world," according to a report by the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, a nonprofit Inuit organization.

    Hunters would forecast the weather by looking for signs in the way animals behaved or by looking at clouds, stars, wind, snow and water currents. Some Inuit knew to expect bad weather if a caribou or seal shook its head, according to a report on traditional knowledge by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a research institute in Winnipeg.

    "In spring, Inuit expect bad weather when northbound geese reverse direction," the report said. When an echo traveled for miles, poor weather. Cold was expected when "the woodpecker's beak moves fast."

    Siloah Atagoojuk, who lives here in Iqaluit, has lines on her face, but she does not want to pretend she knows more than anyone else -- nor does she try to assign blame. She is simply worried. Her world is not as it used to be and her people may not be able to adapt to it. "There is sickness in the animals," Atagoojuk says. "The flesh doesn't look good. You have to cook it extra. Even the caribou are not healthy, as fat -- same for marine animals.

    We have known all along since we were little kids there will be a time when the Earth will be destroyed and destroy itself. Seems this is happening."

    The sustainable development institute produced a videotape of
    observations by Inuit hunters and elders that was recently shown as evidence of climate change at a conference in The Hague. In the video, hunters and elders speak about melting permafrost, shrinking glaciers and a stronger sun. There is concern that the community of Tuktuujaqtuuq, in the Western Arctic, could slide into the sea.

    "Tuktuujaqtuuq is very low and very vulnerable," said Rick Armstrong, manager of scientific support services for the Nunavut Research Institute.

    He said ice acts as a buffer between land and ocean and protects coastal communities from storms and erosion. "With the warming, there is a concern they may need to move buildings in Tuktuujaqtuuq."

    The Inuit, many of whom toggle between the Stone Age and the Space Age, building igloos and surfing the Web, have created a Web site on which elders and hunters post their observations. "About two years ago, when we were corralling reindeer . . . the north wind started blowing and there were dead birds and dead hair seals and dolphins. All kinds of
    sea birds that were washed ashore," said Herman Toolie of the community of Savoonga. "And dog salmon that were never touched by sea gull or foxes. They were never eaten.

    We were wondering why. . . . One of the elders said that these things never used to happen. It is something new to them."

    Near the sea's edge, the ice floes are melting. The hunters are heading out on snowmobiles. Natsiapik Naglingniq knows they are headed into danger, unable to rely on the weather or the ice, which is opening and closing,teasing those who walk across it. Just the other day, a hunter went on the local radio to warn that the ice seems to be melting from the bottom.

    Naglingniq says that when she was just a girl, living in an igloo, her job was to take out the garbage and, as she did, take notice of the world.

    "When I would come back in, my parents would ask, 'So what was the weather like out there?' I would explain. By explaining the weather to my parents, I learned to be able to tell what the next day's weather would be like."

    In the dark, she would watch for a ring around the moon. "That would mean that it will be a bad day tomorrow." But if she saw a clear night and the stars getting closer and farther, as if they were getting bigger and smaller at the same time, "it meant it will be windy the next day."

    In the past, Naglingniq says, there were good days and bad days, but not the same as the weather today, changing so rapidly that people cannot make sense of the ring around the moon or the burning circle around the sun.

    "We were told by the elders at the time there will be a change,"
    Naglingniq says. Beneath her fur-trimmed parka, her eyes are turning a milky gray, but she says she can see when something is amiss. Last summer, the elders saw insects they had never seen before. "The insects are larger," she says. "It has lots of legs and it is quite big. As soon as it observes humans, it curls up in a ball. It's strange." She cannot say its name. There is no word in Inuktitut for this insect...."


    http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18506-2002May27?language=printer

    Sign Of The Times? This article and a little comment on it will be posted in Parapsychology too, 'cause not everybody reads all the Forums.
     
  12. Edufer Tired warrior Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    791
    Some comments

    There is nothing that environmentalists wouldn't do for pushing their idea of global warming. It is a highly profitable business that is getting spoiled by <b>big</b> scientific evidence (also by small facts, as I always state at the bottom of my posts). So now they are using poetry and anecdotal stories for the purpose of keeping the fraud alive. Let us analize some of the link Banshee gently pointed us to:

    <font color=#0000ff><b>quote</b><i>"Daily weather markers are becoming less predictable in the fragile Arctic as its climate changes."</I></font>

    Actually, weather is not changing much in the Arctic. In Alaska, for instance, it is cooling. Please see: <A HREF="http://www.john-daly.com/thunder/index.htm"><b></B></A> But that has been taken into account by this "scientist":

    <font color=#0000ff><b>quote</B><i>"Global warming doesn't mean all areas will warm," said Tom Agnew, a senior meteorologist with the Meteorological Service of Canada. <b>"Some will warm and some will cool a bit."</b></I></font>

    Then, we shouldn't be talking about "Global Warming", but about <b>"Localized Warming and Cooling"</B>. But that doesn't sound as scary as "Global". The castle of cards may collapse. So better stick to the catastrophic warming. It pays more dividends.

    <font color=#0000ff><b>quote:</b><i>Fall freezes are coming later. The winters are not as cold.</i> </font>

    Not as cold? See the weather stations temperature measurements (and satellite's too) and see how wrong this claim is:
    <A HREF=http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm><b>"What the Stations Say"</B></A>

    Or just remember the blizzards in the US East coast in previous years (and what about the some of the last winters in Europe?) Or the earlier migration of swallows from Argentina to California, this year? And what about the earlier and more heavy snowfalls in Patagonia?

    <font color=#0000ff><b>quote;</b><i>"We were taught . . . that one day the world will change, and it has." ... " We have known all along since we were little kids there will be a time when the Earth will be destroyed and destroy itself. Seems this is happening."</i></font>

    Inuit and eskimos have been saying that for centuries. And they were right, as in 800 AD Earth (and the Arctic too) began to warm --in a much stronger and faster way as it has been doing since 1850. The temperature reached its peak about 1100 AD, with <b>2°C higher than today</b>. By the year 1250 AD, the Inuit began to say <b>"the world is changing"</b>, and they were right. The Little Ice Age had just begun. Until 1700 they kept saying: <b>"It is getting colder every day, dammit!"</b>, and they were right once more. Then, Earth started recovering from the Little Ice Age and they said: <b>"Good! It is getting warmer. How nice!"</b> And from then on, they have seen how Earth kept warming slowly but not steadily --some decades were warmer, some decades were colder. The Ups and Downs of Climate. The rule is: <b>Earth climate has never been steady for long times.</b> Change is the rule. Change is normal.

    <font color=#0000ff><b>quote:</b><i>For years, the wisdom of Inuit hunters and elders about climate in the Arctic, known as "traditional knowledge," was largely disregarded. Sometimes it was called merely anecdotal and unreliable by scientists who traveled here with their recording devices, measuring sticks and theories about the North" ... " Hunters would forecast the weather by looking for signs in the way animals behaved or by looking at clouds, stars, wind, snow and water currents."</i></font>

    Good!. We can save huge amounts of taxpayers money if we stopped predicting the clima with computers and expensive scientific equipment, satellites, rockets, radiosondes, etc, and let the old Inuit sages do the predicting (or prophecies). In my opinion, it wouldn't make any difference. Their predictions would be as accurate as the IPCC computers... but we could use the money saved for other more useful purposes (as taking care of poor people starving to death in "developing" countries.

    <font color=#0000ff><b>quote:</b><i>The Inuit's ancestors are believed to have arrived in the Western Arctic about 10,000 years ago, migrating from Siberia across what was then the Bering land bridge." ... " They adapted to the cold climate as they hunted seals,..."</i></font>

    10,000 years ago the Holocene had started. That means that huge ice masses were covering most parts of Europe, Asia and North America. All that ice came from the water in oceans, so they were about 25 meters lower than today. Then, how come they <i>"got adapted to the cold climate"</i>, if they came from Siberia, <b>a place as cold as nothing else on Earth?</b> (Verjoyansk, Siberia, has the world record of low temperature outside the Antarctic stratopshere: -70°C).

    Things like all these arguments started in the early 80s to make me suspicious about what the "greens" say: exaggerations, "anecdotal" evidence taken for "factual" or scientific evidence, distortion of facts, half truths, misinformation, misinterpretations, blattant lies and lately wild frauds. I can understand why less informed people tend to believe their claims, but I can't understand why well educated people, when presented with the scientific facts, dismiss them and keep believing in horror stories. Must be something psychological, and that should be discussed in the psychology forum. I'll follow you there. Perhaps there are people that could enlighten me on this.
     
  13. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,616
    For Edufer...something else for you to 'unraffle'...

    Response on the former post...incoming e-mail

    Unfortunately I have to agree with the Inuit. The Inupiat up
    here say the same thing and so do I. The weather has changed
    drastically since I was young (been up here since 1954) tho most
    notably the last 15 years or so.
    Instead of once in a while having a mild winter, now it is once
    in a while we have a 'normal' winter that we used to experience
    years ago. Two years ago, the winter temp never dropped below
    zero which in all my life up here Ive never seen; and it did set
    a record.
    The glaciers are melting at an accelerated rate. Some glaciers
    that stayed ice the first 20 years of my life up here are now
    virtually nothing but water lakes or such erosion back into the
    mountains they are now quite inaccessible.
    We have brown recluses mating with wolf spiders; cockroaches,
    fleas, and even ticks; all insects that were not indigenous nor
    even present to any part of Alaska when I was younger. Some were
    not even present ten years ago.
    According to the Inupiat, many of the fish are tainted; and
    smaller. The same goes for the herds; they are smaller in size
    and sicklier. We now have species of sharks up in these waters
    never before seen.
    The incidence of brucellosis is quite marked. Many animals even
    domestics are coming down with this sickness quite easily these
    days as well as humans. Even CDC reports the Arctic regions
    quite high incident in this bacterium.
    Where as the world reports a rise in temperatures of 1 to 1.5C
    we are experiencing an average 11-12C higher in temps. Meltdown,
    imho, has begun in more ways than one.

    Respects,
    Vanessa

    =====
     
  14. Edufer Tired warrior Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    791
    Anecdotal evidence

    The nice email from Vanessa is <b>anecdotal</B>, not scientific proof of anything. It has the same value as my "anecdotal" claim that:

    1) Winter has come sooner in the last years (down in Argentina),

    2) The swallows have started their migration journeys a week earlier (from Goya, Corrients to San Jose de Capistrano, California),

    3) That hundreds ot trucks are stuck right now in the Andes (border Chile-Argentina) because of snowstorms and blizzards that came earlier than usual,.

    4) Snowfalls in Bariloche (a winter resort) came about a month earlier.

    5) And that we have freezing temperatures not usual for this time of Autum (just see records from previous years and see I am right), etc, etc, etc....

    When you look at <b>facts</B>, temperature records in the Arctic, and Antarctic, satellite readings, sea level records, etc, etc, then you can clearly see that there is <b>no steady warming tend.</b> On the contrary, there seems to be a <b>slight cooling trend</B>, but that could also be attributed to "natural" variations of the clima. So let Inuits enjoy their warmth until they start to freeze again.

    Cheers!
     
  15. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,616
    Bravo Edufer...

    No scientific facts this time?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    Only an anecdotal reply?

    I am disappointed, you can do better than that. I posted it especially for you...

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  16. Edufer Tired warrior Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    791
    Yes, anecdotes

    Yes. Show me where is some scientific fact in your friend's email. Temperature measurements during a long time span, observed and recorded facts, etc. BTW, the 8.00 PM TV news just told us that 600 trucks in the Chilean side of the border, and 800 truck in the Argentinian side are stuck under one of the greatest blizzards ever known in the region. Snowfalls in Chile (and rains in Santiago provoked one of the greatest catastrophes known there in ages (besides earthquakes, of course).

    Now, have fun:

    <B><CENTER><FONT size="5" color="#ff0000">WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE POLAR BEARS?</B></CENTER></FONT><FONT size="2" color="#000000">
    <BLOCKQUOTE><B><CENTER></FONT><FONT color="#0000ff">Maybe nothing - since Arctic temperatures seem not to be warming
    </CENTER></B></FONT><FONT color="#000000">
    <B><I></FONT><FONT color="#800000">&quot;Polar bears will become extinct in the wild within 60 years as a result of global warming&quot;</I></B></FONT><FONT color="#000000">; a new report will reveal this week. By 2060 climate experts believe Arctic pack ice will have melted to such an extent that all of the existing population of 22,000 polar bears will starve as the animals they feed on, such as seals, become harder to find.

    Twenty years after that, in 2080, forecasters from the Norwegian Polar Institute believe that the last of the Arctic pack ice will disappear completely.
    (<B></FONT><FONT color="#800000">From:
    </B></FONT><FONT color="#000000"> <A HREF="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=1845196&thesection=news&thesubsection=world"> <B><I></FONT><FONT color="#000000">New Zealand Herald</I></B></A> </FONT><FONT color="#000000">, 14 May 2002):

    <B></FONT><FONT size="4" color="#ff0000">OR
    </B></FONT><FONT size="2" color="#000000">
    Research in the American Arctic has revealed that the polar bear and bowhead whale populations are booming after decades of decline, and part of the reason for that may be global warming. Although the long-term predictions suggest many Arctic species could be jeopardised by any continued rise in temperatures, scientists think that at the moment some animal populations may be benefiting from a slightly warmer climate.
    <B></FONT><FONT color="#800000">FULL STORY</B></FONT><FONT color="#000000"> at <A HREF="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1324000/1324416.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1324000/1324416.stm</A>

    <B></FONT><FONT size="4" color="#ff0000">OR</B></FONT><FONT size="2" color="#000000">
    <B><CENTER></FONT><FONT size="4" color="#800000">Thin Polar Bears Called Sign of Global Warming</B>
    </FONT><FONT size="2" color="#000000"><B><i>Environmental News Service | 05/16/2002</i></B>
    </CENTER>
    <B>WASHINGTON, DC, May 16, 2002 (ENS)</B> - Hungry polar bears are one of the early signs that global warming is impacting Arctic habitat, suggests a new study from <B><I></FONT><FONT color="#800000">World Wildlife Fund</I></B></FONT><FONT color="#000000">. The report reviews the threats faced by the world's 22,000 polar bears and highlights growing evidence that human induced climate change is the number-one long-term threat to the survival of the world's largest land-based carnivores.

    Global warming threatens to destroy critical polar bear habitat, charges the report, <B><I></FONT><FONT color="#800000">&quot;Polar Bears at Risk.&quot;</I></B></FONT><FONT color="#000000"> The burning of coal and other fuels emits carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases that blanket the earth, trap in heat and cause global warming. Increasing CO2 emissions have caused Arctic temperatures to rise by five degrees Celsius over the past 100 years, and the extent of sea ice has decreased by six percent over the past 20 years. By around 2050, scientists now predict a 60 percent loss of summer sea ice, which would more than double the summer ice-free season from 60 to 150 days.

    According to the <B><I></FONT><FONT color="#800000">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change </I></B></FONT><FONT color="#000000">(IPCC), climate change in the polar region is expected to be the greatest of anywhere on Earth.

    <HR WIDTH=500 HEIGHT=15 COLOR="#FF0000">

    <B></FONT><FONT size="4" color="#ff0000">SEPP Comment:</B></FONT><FONT size="2" color="#000000"> <B><I></FONT><FONT color="#800000">But that's not what's being observed.</I></B></FONT><FONT color="#000000"> Anyway, the solution is simple. If you find a thin polar bear, <B>offer it a chubby tree hugger. </B>

    <HR WIDTH=500 HEIGHT=15 COLOR="#FF0000">
    </BLOCKQUOTE>
    </FONT>
     
  17. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,616
    Thank you so much Edufer.

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    it's always a joy to read your posts.

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    Have a beer on me. Talk to you later...

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  18. Deus Seeker of Truth Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    65
    Take it or Leave it

    As much as I don't want to get back into this firefight, I'm going to contribute this and you can do with it what you will.

    From all that I've read, it seems to me that there is a global warming trend caused largely by human activities. It also seems to me that we are due to go into another glacial period soon, if the normal cycles hold. That could be where the evidence of cooling is coming from. Most geologists/climatologists agree, I think, that the activities of man and global warming may hold of the glaciation for awhile, but eventually it will still happen.

    Regardless of whether you think there is global warming or not, I hope everyone can agree that the polluting we do hurts the environment.
     
  19. goofyfish Analog By Birth, Digital By Design Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,331
    Re: Take it or Leave it

    Certainly it does. The question is one of degree.

    I'm one of those who looks at the global warming issue this way: yes, the earth is warming, no, there's not a whole lot we can do about it by way of regulation or conservation. I'm with University of Virginia Environmental Science Prof. Patrick Michaels on this, who believes:
    He's also quite skeptical about computer modeling as an accurate predictor of climate change.

    Cleaner-burning energy sources are coming -- but they'll arrive sooner if we don't burden our economy (the very thing that drives such advancement in technologies) with a tangle of ill-conceived regulations engendered by questionable science.

    Peace.
     
  20. goofyfish Analog By Birth, Digital By Design Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,331
    Imagine no restrictions on fossil-fuel usage and no global warming!

    An interesting, related item.
    http://www.lanl.gov/worldview/news/releases/archive/02-028.shtml
     
    Last edited: Jun 5, 2002
  21. Deus Seeker of Truth Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    65
    I think the article is a little optimistic about what this method could do.
    I think if you were to put all of these devices in the desert they wouldn't be quite as efficient as if you actually put them near big cities.
    Although this idea shows promise, there is another practical, inexpensive method for removing CO2 from the air: plants.

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  22. Edufer Tired warrior Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    791
    Removal of CO2

    I am sorry to spoil your great idea, Deus, bringing you old information. Plants (all green stuff on Earth, crops, jungles, golf lawns, prairies, etc), only contribute 3,5% - 5% of the oxygen produced every year in this beautiful planet. The remaining 95 - 97% is produced by phytoplankton in the oceans, especially in the cold oceans (Antarctic and Arctic seas).

    Plants (green stuff) are needed (I say: essential) for quite different reasons, easy to understand. Apart of providing us with food, trees provide shade that contributes to keeping microclimas steady, plants produce "evapoperspiration", they give humidity to the atmosphere, helping to produce the "greenhouse" effect, they provide chemicals for medicines, they are also useful as wind barriers, home of wild species, etc, etc, and thousands of etc.

    I agree with the claim that states the best way to produce oxygen (sequestring CO2 from the air) is by cutting old trees and letting new ones to grow in size. Once trees reach maturity, they stop being efficient CO2 removers because they have stopped growing in size (transforming carbon into wood), thing they do when growing. The same oxygen they make during daytime, is used at night for their metabolic functions. Balance=zero.

    Actually, as discovered by Bert Bolin (the head of the IPCC, not less) in studies performed back in the 70s, mature forests and jungles have <b>a negative balance of CO2</b>, that is, they produce <b>more CO2 than they absorb!</B>.

    As in the US for each tree being chopped down for commercial use, <b>six more are planted</b>, this seems the best way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Controlled logging is the way to go.
     
  23. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    I have not done any calculations (energy to material balance) but may be we could put a few CO2 to O2 scrubber systems using solar power, nuclear power or gas power...will that help?
     

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