Global Warming

[Faustus]

There are never easy solutions

 

"2 studies conclude that biofuels are not so green after all"

The use of cropland to produce sources of energy also has some unforeseen consequences in "economies" as well as the "environment"; consequences which shouldn

Edited February 12, 2008 by Faustus

[M. Porcius Cato]

The use of cropland to produce sources of energy also has some unforeseen consequences in "economies" as well as the "environment"; consequences which shouldn

[Faustus]

I have a feeling, that before too long we

Edited February 29, 2008 by Faustus

[Faustus]

I have a feeling, that before too long we

Edited February 29, 2008 by Faustus

[Faustus]

Climate facts to warm to

 

CATASTROPHIC predictions of global warming usually conjure with the notion of a tipping point, a point of no return.

Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior

fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

Complete Interview

[Moonlapse]

But Faustus, I've already been told the discussion is over.

[Primus Pilus]

While driving home, I heard author Lawrence Solomon being interviewed by admitted conservative talk show host, Michael Medved. He doesn't seem to be taking a stance against climate change or environmental concerns, but rather that there are many renowned scientists who don't find scientific evidence to support human influence. He seems to be an environmentalist at heart, but yet one who believes the carbon crisis hysteria is doing more harm than allowing nature to take its course. I may be off on that assessment since I didn't hear the entire interview, nor have I yet read the book, but it sounds intriguing.

 

The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so

[dianamt54]

I just keep this in mind, if the meteorologist can't perdict the weather for tomorrow, how can they perdict the weather in 100, 200 and so on years?

[Faustus]

<THE LAWNMOWER MEN>

Get ready for the lawnmower inspector near you....

In a huge document released last Friday, the EPA lays out the thousands of carbon controls with which they'd like to shackle the whole economy. Central planning is too artful a term for the EPA's nanomanagement.....

 

Thankfully none of it has the force of law -- yet. However, the Bush Administration has done a public service by opening this window on new-wave green thinking

[Ludovicus]

(psst, Neil was being sarcastic)

 

Here's a few questions. Assume that global average temperature will rise several degrees C over the next century.

 

Which is more practical: adapting to predicted changes, or trying to control the temperature indirectly by reducing energy usage?

 

Considering the failure of past and current supranational CO2 controls, how could we possibly reverse or even significantly reduce CO2 output without crushing economies worldwide?

 

Would adaptation or CO2 control prevent the most human suffering?

 

 

Salve,

As far as "supranational controls" go, international efforts (The Montreal Protocol, for one) on reducing ozone depleting gases are beginning to have an effect. If there is no backsliding on adherence, ozone levels will return to 1980 levels by the year 2068.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depleti...ozone_depletion

 

We have a responsibility to do all we can to soften the impact of CO2 on the only planet we can survive on.

 

 

http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/micro/...4islandlost.htm

 

 

December 24, 2006, The Independent of the UK:

"For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas. Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.

 

As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.

 

Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.

 

It has been officially recorded in a six-year study of the Sunderbans by researchers at Calcutta's Jadavpur University. So remote is the island that the researchers first learned of its submergence, and that of an uninhabited neighbouring island, Suparibhanga, when they saw they had vanished from satellite pictures.

 

Two-thirds of nearby populated island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university's School of Oceanographic Studies, says "it is only a matter of some years" before it is swallowed up too. Dr Hazra says there are now a dozen "vanishing islands" in India's part of the delta. The area's 400 tigers are also in danger.

 

Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction.

 

Refugees from the vanished Lohachara island and the disappearing Ghoramara island have fled to Sagar, but this island has already lost 7,500 acres of land to the sea. In all, a dozen islands, home to 70,000 people, are in danger of being submerged by the rising seas. "

[Gaius Julius Camillus]

I am a paleontology intern, and climatic global changes are common for a living vibrant planet. There are regions of the world that were forests teeming with life during the age of the dinosauria. Now, they are deserts. Did the dinosaurs leave a carbon footprint?

 

No.

 

The planet heats, the planet cools. What we need to do is learn how to survive its extremes, not change it. This Global warming movement is very dangerous and rooted in arrogance. People once believed that the earth was the center of all things, and many were persecuted for denying that.

 

Technically, we are preparing to come out of an ice age, and it does not take a scientist to know what happens next. You warm up.

 

LJV

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

The use of cropland to produce sources of energy also has some unforeseen consequences in "economies" as well as the "environment"; consequences which shouldn

[Faustus]

December 24, 2006, The Independent of the UK:

"For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas. Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth.

 

Thanks L, and I for one did read your links to the degree they are pertinent

 

Do we know how many inches sea levels have risen to create this phenomenon, and how much of that is human caused? Since the retreat of the continental ice sheets about 15,000 bp, the earth's climate has been warming with alternating cool periods as one would expect.

 

Mountains subside through erosion; even Sea-Mounts are worn away and are reduced to lower levels. If their land areas were so close to sea level in recent times, and only a foot or two of sea level rise causes catastrophe for the inhabitants, then the compassionate thing to do would be to remove those people affected to safer conditions, including some representative wild life if it poses no exotic dangers elsewhere.

 

Once again I invite you to take a look at some interesting information on solar activity which doesn

[ASCLEPIADES]

Salve, Amici.

The 150 posts over the last 14 months on this thread have been a quite fascinating monitor of the status of UNRV Forum's collective logical status.

 

Being a historical website, our commonest ground of discussion is not strictly scientific; History is no subject of experimental methodology. Ancient sources and even archaeological evidence are inherently open to subjective interpretation.

 

Now, meteorology, climatology and related disciplines are an entirely different story; all of them are mainly based on hard facts, even if their interpretation can be extremely complex.

 

Currently, the existence of an ongoing, progressive and highly significant human influence on the global climate change (predominantly but not exclusively on the warming side) can be considered a scientific debate no more.

 

The evidence is so unquestionably and overwhelmingly conclusive that it has been widely acknowledged by even the most acrimonious opponents of this concept on an international level (eg, the Bush administration), a fact that by itself eloquently speaks against any meaningful disagreement among the relevant scientific community (the so frequently used appeal-to-authority fallacy).

 

So when you find debate (ie, denial) on this issue, its nature is fundamentally political and economical: dealing with global warming is uncomfortable for many of us, mainly because of the inversion of money and work in both a personal and a national level required for its control (eg, more taxes or more expensive fuel).

 

Then, this thread can be seen as a control test for our reasoning and argumentation performance as a group; how do we deal with hard facts?

[caldrail]

I am a paleontology intern, and climatic global changes are common for a living vibrant planet. There are regions of the world that were forests teeming with life during the age of the dinosauria. Now, they are deserts. Did the dinosaurs leave a carbon footprint?

 

No.

 

The planet heats, the planet cools. What we need to do is learn how to survive its extremes, not change it. This Global warming movement is very dangerous and rooted in arrogance. People once believed that the earth was the center of all things, and many were persecuted for denying that.

 

Technically, we are preparing to come out of an ice age, and it does not take a scientist to know what happens next. You warm up.

 

LJV

 

Technically, we're entering an interglacial thats expected by some experts to last 50,000 years, allowing for smaller glaciations and stadials in between. As I've mentioned before, Britain had warm periods during the ice ages and in at least one we had a climate similar to modern africa. In fact, the climatic changes occuring over prehistory are extraodinary, and there have been levels of CO2 present in the atmosphere well in excess of anything China is responsible for. Have a browse through prehistorical climate inormation on Wkipedia. Its very illuminating.