Global Warming V1.0

[natas]

This is version 1 of the debate "Global Warming". What this thread is not is a place to come and insult, mock, degrade or put down members for their views. Engage the debate in the spirit in which it is meant to be debated.

In this thread we will talk about the following:

• Is Global Warming real?
• What we believe are the possible causes
• Is Global Warming a natural cycle the earth does?
• General Global Warming arguments (for or against)

Special rules for this thread:
1) As always, please stay on topic. Off topic replies, will be removed.
2) Limit small replies like "that was awesome", or "Your wrong". Instead of replying like this, use rep or the "thank you" button.
3) Try your best to back your statement up with scientific fact, studies you have read or done.
4) DO NOT plagiarize. If you quote someones findings, please give credit by providing the name, or a direct link.
5) Before posting, please read the rules of this forum.

Now, have fun and educate the world of your views!!

[SoberGuy]

Just to get this started, here's a little Time Magazine article from 1974. Food for thought....

In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone's recollection.

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds —the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa's drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest's recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.

Sunspot Cycle. The changing weather is apparently connected with differences in the amount of energy that the earth's surface receives from the sun. Changes in the earth's tilt and distance from the sun could, for instance, significantly increase or decrease the amount of solar radiation falling on either hemisphere—thereby altering the earth's climate. Some observers have tried to connect the eleven-year sunspot cycle with climate patterns, but have so far been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of how the cycle might be involved.

Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.

Climatic Balance. Some scientists like Donald Oilman, chief of the National Weather Service's long-range-prediction group, think that the cooling trend may be only temporary. But all agree that vastly more information is needed about the major influences on the earth's climate. Indeed, it is to gain such knowledge that 38 ships and 13 aircraft, carrying scientists from almost 70 nations, are now assembling in the Atlantic and elsewhere for a massive 100-day study of the effects of the tropical seas and atmosphere on worldwide weather. The study itself is only part of an international scientific effort known acronymically as GARP (for Global Atmospheric Research Program).

Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.

The earth's current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries—the U.S., Canada and Australia —global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."

30 years ago the prediction was global cooling and a disastrous ice age. Perhaps the fluctuations are normal, eh?

[schatzie001]

I don't buy the whole theory - I do believe the fluctuations are normal. I think more scientific fact needs to be presented. The scientists don't all agree on this.
I remember the "Ice Age" scare back in the 70's. It scared the bejeezus outta me then. I cannot imagine what kids now are thinking! They are probably as wigged out as I was back then. But then, that's how some people like to get their message across - by scaring folks instead of presenting enough factual evidence. I have seen it happen too many times to be sucked into it now.

[New_BP_Guy]

this may or may not get deleted, but it is my joke that could be true?

my theory with the changing climates around the world is; that the china/japan area is building multipul super tall buildings just for people to live. that all the weight is actually throwing the planet of its axis, changing the temperatures due to the change in rotation around the sun, since they are the most populated areas in the world...

[toker]

The last overall static's I have heard with in the past week with regard to green house gases is that we as the human population, contribute only 4% of the overall co2 into the atmosphere, and that included us breathing. (source talk radio)

Overall, Volcanoes erupting, organic material decaying produce more "Green House" gases than we do.

I feel the overall need for people to feel they can cause planetary disaster is one major fact that drives this theory.

Temps are going up?? Temps are going down??

How long has the people of this world been keeping track of the weather? I will give you 500 years, and I doubt it has been that long. Now, how long as the planet been around? Just as an example, lets go back 1 million years How much data do we really have for an actual trend analysis? 500/1000000 = 0.0005% People say the planet has been around 50 million years… ok... 500/50000000 = 0.00001%

How can we really know anything with regard to what this world is doing because of us?

[New_BP_Guy]

I cant really believe that we only contribute 4%, with the billions of cars driving around, factories, and many other human factors compared to a volcano going off once in a while.

Personally I believe that a lot of these "public" stats are doctored just to make people feel that they are not responsible for what is going on, and that they dont need to change their life styles or stop making gas/diesel vehicles. that is just my whole though of the stats, people hiding from change.

[natas]

I believe this actually came from the book Jurassic Park

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity! Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time.
It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. Might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. You think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine.

When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. Hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.

[toker]

Well, honestly it is what they were talking about, like it or not, you can find anyone to support any theory at any given time.

Lets break down a couple things for a second.

When plants die their material decays and that in turn produces co2. How many plants die and decay every fall? Or in the case of my flower garden all year? lol.

Volcanoes. In one good eruption how much junk is pushing into the air? Loads no doubt. Could it be measured, I doubt it because of its scale.

Do cars produce co2, sure, that's not in question. Its an overall idea that the cars we drive, the factories we have, all meet or exceed that which is produced by the earth on its own.

Before a volcano goes off, its a known fact that the co2 that comes out of the ground around the volcano can kill off smaller critters, how much co2 do you think it would take to kill critters in the open air? My guess, lots.

Are we adding junk into our world. yes. the question is, is the junk we are putting out adding up and causing the world to act differently? I don't know. and honestly, we never will know for sure.

Not until we get enough data to trend weather patterns, and therein lies the biggest issue.

So, we can either do what we are doing currently... or we can run around thinking we can actually destroy this planet and stop everything to try and prevent what I personally don't think we can do.