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.

[New_BP_Guy]

ya I know that there is a lot of natural co2 going into the air I just dont see humans only producing 4% if the natural effect was more I would still think that we would be at least 40% responsible, ya the earth has lived for billions of years with out the dumbest creatures being created... humans we as a species are so smart we are actually dumb not paying attention to everything else around us, destroying rain forests, farm land, etc. just so we can have exotic houses and paper etc. Oh dont forget the millionaires that need 50 acres of land for 1 giant house for 2 people to live in...

Humans are destroyers and to think that we cant destroy this planet is just naive, since it seems we can destroy everything since we have started evolving...

[RevMojo]

I'm not terribly well educated on the issue, but I'll throw out one of the theories that sticks in my mind :

The white ice and snow of polar ice caps reflects more solar radiation than water or land beneath it. As it melts, and more of the water or land is exposed, the earth absorbs more heat, and temperatures rise, causing further melting. The theory calls for exponential loss of ice and temperature increase as a result. (source: liberal talk radio)

[momakat]

This is almost funny. My walking buddy asked me about global warming and the new cars that they want people to start driving (I heard something vaguely about this on the news as I was getting ready for work). I laughed at her. Global warming . . . global cooling . . . they can't make up their minds. Told her that with all the stuff spewing from factories all over the world, volcanoes, etc. - nobody is going to convince me that buying an ecologically friendly car is going to make any difference to our air quality. All that will do is make the rich . . . richer.

We discussed some other things that could affect climate - deforestation (reduces the amount of oxygen produced in that eco-system, not to mention loss of habitat and animal life), water polution (how many ocean eco-systems have been damaged?) can change the temperature of the water and even the way it circles the earth as a result of those changes, etc. Where I lived in Idaho was near an area where the trees had been completed harvested and the hillsides left bare. The weather pattern changed in that area and for the first time in known history they had a tornado - it came within a few miles of my home. Shocked lots of folks and did lots of damage. But - the trees that normally slowed down the various winds were gone - no more resistance to those air flows.

Global warming? Maybe. Natural cycle? Possibly. History certainly supports a natural cycle of warming/cooling. I have even heard that the earth's magnetic pole is shifting. If it really is . . . what kind of effect would that have on our weather - let alone the mantle? Are changes from these cycles coming? Yup - but so slowly that I doubt any of us will see them or know about them. Perhaps not even our grandchildren . . . IMHO

[torlax]

Global warming is not a natural cycle, the only way it could be is if the earth had an over produce of carbon oxide and dioxide and methane. I think it is caused by the over-pollution we are causing with huge plants that burn stuff like tires, oil, etc. I do believe that global warming is real because if you look back into history, the world used to get alot of weather and the polar ice-caps weren't melting, now they are melting and we are getting less and less weather, and more and more heat. We are RUINING our planet. I am against global warming.

[toker]

Originally Posted by torlax

Global warming is not a natural cycle, the only way it could be is if the earth had an over produce of carbon oxide and dioxide and methane. I think it is caused by the over-pollution we are causing with huge plants that burn stuff like tires, oil, etc. I do believe that global warming is real because if you look back into history, the world used to get alot of weather and the polar ice-caps weren't melting, now they are melting and we are getting less and less weather, and more and more heat. We are RUINING our planet. I am against global warming.

It is only a theroy that co2 and what not is causing things to heat up. Again I point out that we have only been watching the weather, the polar ice caps and everything else only a couple hundred years. This rock has been spinning several million years. How can you even think to work a trend with that little data.

Ponder this for a second... everything that has an end has a start. When did the ice caps form? And if you think about that, if they formed at any given time then you would have to realize that at one point there was not suffecent temps to support the ice caps. So at that point there was a trend for cooling.

Now, lets talk ice age. There wouldnt have been an ice age if the world was always one temp, so... there had to be a trend to colder over a bit of time.

Now, if there was warm, then ice age, now heading back to warm, ... dont you think that is a more logical than, oh man we are killing the planet?


Now, dont get me wrong, can we hurt the planet? sure, I am not stupid enough to think that dumping oil out of my car on the ground isnt going to hurt something. The question is, will me pouring oil on the ground forever destroy the earth I put it on? No, why you might ask? I went out and got the strongest weed killer I could buy, dumped it on some grass that is really bugging me. Two weeks later, it was back.

LIFE will go on.

I really dont think we can destroy this planet... hurt sure, but kill... no.

[DaveA]

I saw a show on the history chanel one day.

They went on to explain a study done on England reviewing the past several hundreds years. This study included the many natural changes (warming and cooling trends) that occured globally; and how these changes directly affected England which included: water levels, famine, drought, extreme population changes, and the many plaques that were spured on by wet warm (global) seasons.

Now all this occured well before industry! Check your history books.

So my opinion very closly mirrors Toker's for many reasons not just the above mentioned; we can only minorly effect the global atmosphere. "hurt sure, but kill... no"

[bleeding_sarcasm]

Ive been pretty careful to stay out of this debate. It isnt really a debate if everyone agrees with eachother, and tho I find it is COMPLETELY beyond me but I am not about to try and force my opinion on people. I only ask that people go out and educate themselves on the subject, instead of form opinions based on hearsay and propaganda that they may "hear in passing"

as an example, I would love for people to go pick up TODAYS news week.

Leadership & the Environment: Green Issues - Leadership and the Environment - MSNBC.com

a few examples are that in washington state, they didnt get snow, so they are having a water crisis, because the snow melt that feeds the drinking water for the population is dry. that is also happening in california.

You mentianed melting of ice caps, as causing slight cooling, one of the things that you didnt mentian, is that with all that excess water, the water level of the world with raise aprox 5 feet, which doesnt seem like alot, but there goes california, florida, denmark, INDIA. we all know how bad new orleans was when a few million people were displaced, now think of how that will effect a few BILLION people being diplaced.

You may not agree that we "cause" global warming, but you have to agree that we definitely arent *helping* it any. the idea of "this isnt my mess, its not my responsability to clean it up" is bad for everyone. if no one cares, and no one does anything, bad things are and will continue to happen, quickly getting worse.

sure its normal for the planet to cool and warm, but over MILLIONS OF YEARS. were people even around in the ice age? no, will we be around in 30 years? yup.

do we know that it will be the end of humanity? i doubt it, will it be pretty bad? probably. doesnt SOMETHING speak for "doing something about it" vs. sticking our thumbs up our butt and saying "welp thats nature" i think the whole "its not my responsability, lets roll over and die" mentality is pretty pathetic.

its like the justification of a trillion dollar deficiet. "i wont have to pay it back, my social security is secure", no, but your grandkids, and your great grandkids will. We sure are leaving them one heck of a nice place when we leave arent we?

"grampy, whats a tree? whats a frog?"

"well here are some really great high definition pictures, because our technology is GREAT, too bad there arent any alive anymore"

woops.

[telefrag]

one thing I haven't seen mentioned yet, and I think its extremely relevant.

the amount of co2 buildup in the atmosphere (human made and non human made) is compounded by not having the earths natural buffer against CO2, which was the millions of acres of rain forest that no longer exist.
the bulk of that deforestation has been over the last 20-30 years.

Those gigantic old growth trees that served as a CO2 vacuum for most of recent history have been cleared to make way for soybean crops, grazing land for cattle, and for palm groves (to make ironically, cheap bio fuels).

Take that into mind, and add a few extra billion people, and it could be almost considered denial to not think we have some part in it.

Thousands of scientists the world over, with the collective intelligence that far exceeds most of the general population all with years upon years of experience dealing with this have all come to basically the same conclusion.

That things aren't going well, and if things don't change, we can expect big problems.

I don't know what is so hard to get about that.

But we have people in positions of high power who have ultimate influence over what we are told about these issues, so in a way they are "manufacturing uncertainty" about the issue.

and most of John Q P, obviously takes it without question.

things to think about.

if it doesn't get deleted.

[bleeding_sarcasm]

here is one of my favorite links:

Breathing Earth
amazing how long you can sit there and watch.

[telefrag]

one thing I'd like to also see discussed is the "faux paux" in calling it global warming, the scientific community that im aware of refers to it as "climate change"
meaning weather patterns are changing, which could explain why we've gotten record rainfall in my area, where others are in deep drought, and some places normally very warm have cooled, and vice versa.

just living in TX for 15 years, I have seen a winter with snow about 4 times more than any year I can recall, more freezing, and more rain in a single year than I can also remember in recent history.
I know weather patterns change naturally due to global events, but alot has change very quickly.

makes you wonder whats really going on.. man made... natural phenomena... we'll find out I suspose.

[morti]

What I am about to type is crass over-generalization and purely anecdotal:

It seems like the weathers patterns (here anyway) were far more predictable prior to El Niño. That was an easily explained natural phenomenon and the changes were rapid. It doesn't seem like the consistency in weather has recovered entirely from that event.

[telefrag]

yeah, I remember how big a deal that was when it happened, but that was so long ago, at least it seems.
how long did they assume the effects were going to last.