Not sure who Newsweek was quoting. But virtually institution of higher education, along with leading climatologists around the world, say the planet is heating up - and that hydrocarbon emissions are exaccerbating the process. So, jr, don't be confused, or deny empirical science (as our president does). Global warming is here and we have already passed the point of no return in terms of correcting our mistakes. Even if we stopped all emissions today, we have already caused permanent plantary climatological damage.
posted by Chaz at 12:59 P.M. EST on Tue Feb 01, 2005 #
"But virtually institution of higher education, along with leading climatologists around the world, say the planet is heating up."
But in this supposed 1975 Newsweek story, university scientists and scientists from other orgs were pushing the panic button over the world's cooling.
"A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972."
"To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average."
"Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century."
"Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve."
Somewhere I heard or read that back in the 70's, scientists thought that by 1990 it would be too cold to grow crops in the Great Plains.
So how did the so-called scientific community make such a drastic turn in roughly 15 years and go from saying the world was cooling to the world is warming?
posted by jr at 02:20 P.M. EST on Tue Feb 01, 2005 #
So how did the so-called scientific community make such a drastic turn in roughly 15 years and go from saying the world was cooling to the world is warming?
The people in the scientific community for the most part have been educated in universities that indoctrinate their students with leftist propaganda. The leftist have decided over the last two decades that their agenda can be further advanced by global warming over global cooling.
Using their “the sky is falling alarmism” the environmental extremists managed to get the Montreal protocol enacted in the early 90’s. This treaty banned the manufacture and use of chlorofluorocarbons in the United States while allowing the continued use of said chemicals in other countries. Consumers in the United States are now stuck with tetrafluoroethane. It costs six times as much and is not even half as efficient as chlorofluorocarbons when used as a refrigerant. While I happened to agree with environmentalist that chlorofluorocarbons do pose an environmental risk, a restriction on their use would have made much more sense, instead of an outright ban.
The global warming issue likewise can be dealt with in a way that doesn’t require the American public to go back to living in caves. The main global warming gas that environmentalists complain about is carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is created and destroyed every day. To reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere you could either reduce emissions or hasten its destruction. The best way to reduce emissions without substantially decreasing the standard of living in the United States would probably be to replace the coal burning electricity plants with nuclear reactors. The amount of carbon sink can be increased with better soil and forest management.
posted by mike2004 at 07:01 A.M. EST on Wed Feb 02, 2005 #
Aaaha! That's it! Leftists (probably closet communists) are responsible for the "rumor" of Global Warming. Now I get it (wink). And I thought that we got rid of those wacko leftists in the Reagan administration.
I find it interesting that Mike2004's remarks are entirely off the wall in his first two paragraphs, then he comes up with what those "leftist" wackos say is one of the best solutions - decreased use of coal-fired utilities. He's right. The part that he apparently forgot to add is to replace the coal plants with nuclear plants, as well as explore all other practical solutions (wind, solar, geothermal, fusion, hydrogen, etc.).
Despite bad management at Davis Besse, nuclear power has been the most clean, affordable and efficient source of power generated for human consumption. It doesn't pollute the environment or desecrate natural resources. And despite a close call at Three Mile Island, there has never been a nuclear plant-related death in the history of the US. In fact, Chernoble stands as the only serious nuclear plant accident and trained monkeys would have done a better job of preventing that accident than the plant employees. So, nuclear power (fission plants) is the answer until we harness nuclear fusion.
By the way, if you prefer to throw out all of the research done on Global Warming by universities (since according to Mike2004, they were all deliberately altered by leftist conspirators), that's fine. Please then replace those research studies with research done by government scientists around the world. You will again find that Global Warming is real, has been exaccerbated by human pollution and that we can expect to suffer the effects of climate change in ever-increasing waves. The polar ice caps are smaller, the ice shelves surrounding the caps are melting and sea level is rising. Coastal cities at or below seal level will experience severe flooding in the next few decades. And that's only the tip of the iceberg (no pun intended). Many species that are fragile and on the edge of extinction now will likely disappear due to pollution-enhanced climate change. In fact, even if we stopped all pollution now, it's already too late for such damage not to occur. The longer we wait to stop pollution, the more climate-change we will engender and the more damage we will do to the earth's ecosystem.
So, let's ease up a bit on those leftist college professors and concentrate a little more upon the empirical evidence.
posted by Chaz at 03:35 P.M. EST on Thu Feb 03, 2005 #
"The massive west Antarctic ice sheet, previously assumed to be stable, is starting to collapse. Antarctica contains more than 90% of the world's ice, and the loss of any significant part of it would cause a substantial sea level rise."
"Whether the loss of mass by the glaciers is due to natural variation or is caused by human-influenced warming of the oceans is not known for sure. Scientists are now making more field measurements to assess the causes, but warming is a likely culprit."
posted by jr at 10:32 P.M. EST on Thu Feb 03, 2005 #
"A weak El Nino and human-made greenhouse gases could make 2005 the warmest year since records started being kept in the late 1800s, NASA scientists said this week."
posted by jr at 10:50 P.M. EST on Thu Feb 10, 2005 #
hey jr did you know the planet is on a 20 year cycle that's why we have about ten years of heavy snow fall winters and ten light winters try looking that up
posted by Guest at 02:11 A.M. EST on Fri Feb 11, 2005 #
No, I'm not going to look it up. You mentioned the planet's 20-year cycle. You look it up on the web and post a link to the info so the rest of us can read it.
posted by jr at 04:00 P.M. EST on Mon Feb 14, 2005 #
Well I already know about it so you can look it or up and then you can see and then you can quit asking dumb questions and being rude to every body
posted by Guest at 10:00 P.M. EST on Tue Feb 15, 2005 #
So my questions are dumb, you command me to look something up, and you accuse me of being rude? It's rude to not post weblinks to the info you are talking about.
posted by jr at 09:04 A.M. EST on Wed Feb 16, 2005 #
Since our self-proclaimed expert on climatology is too lazy and inconsiderate to enlighten the rest of us dunderheads about the the earth's 20-year cycle, I did a quick search. I found the 200-year sunspot cycle. Maybe guest left off a zero and meant 200 instead of 20.
Wait a minute, here's a little something on a 20-year cycle.
"A second influence on Midwest climate is the 20-year cycle. This cycle can be seen in drought assesments of the 19th Century."
Is that it, expert?
Or how about this one.
"Weather systems in the Atlantic follow a 20-year cycle of severe storms and relative calm. We just happen to be nearly 10 years into the upswing of this cycle."
Speaking of sunspots:
"The 1990s may have been the warmest decade on record, but how do we know that it is a consequence of man-made climate change? Evidence of past temperatures gathered from analysing the thickness of tree rings, air bubbles trapped in ice cores and the chemistry of ocean sediments all suggest that the world has not been this warm since 1000 AD and probably long before."
"One possible natural cause might be sunspots—the visible evidence of increased amounts of radiation leaving the sun. Long-term cycles in solar activity are probably a cause of the warming in the Middle Ages and the cooling of the little ice age. And, more recently, sunspot activity quite closely followed global temperature changes from around 1850 to the 1970s."
"But, since then, the two curves have diverged. Solar cycles should have made the world cooler in the past 20 years, in fact, the world has become dramatically warmer. Available evidence points ever more surely to the increased greenhouse effect caused by human pollution."
posted by jr at 09:26 A.M. EST on Wed Feb 16, 2005 #
I'm glad I could bring you a step closer into the real world. See what a little research can do. Hey next time you might want to leave out that whole 200 thing and the extra zero thing it kind of made you look like an idiot.
Your Friend,
The expert
posted by Guest at 11:56 A.M. EST on Wed Feb 16, 2005 #
"... you look like an idiot."
Now, expert, are you being rude?
None of that 20-year cycle crap I found proves anything to me. And you're right. It was just a "little research." About 60 seconds worth.
Which cycle are we in now? The cold or the hot? You said, "... that's why we have about ten years of heavy snow fall winters and ten light winters ..." Well, based upon our past three winters, including the current one, I'd say we're in the cold cycle. But our 2001-2002 winter was one of the warmest and least snowiest winters on record. Why does the 20-year cycle discriminate against the other three seasons? Since when is winter the only gauge?
And once again, where's your definitive article about this 20-year cycle? What's the cause for the 20-year cycle? Sunspots? The sunspot cycle theory seems to breakdown based upon the post above.
Let me see, expert, are you saying that the scientists aren't aware of the 20-year cycle? That their prediction in the mid-70's of a mini deep freeze was wrong because they didn't know about the 20-year cycle. Ditto for their prediction now of the world burning up. In other words, if the scientists would have just consulted you first, they would know about the 20-year cycle and wouldn't make such outlandish predictions.
posted by jr at 12:42 P.M. EST on Wed Feb 16, 2005 #
We have a 20 year cycle, ten years of cold wet winters where we see heavy snowfall and ten years of light winters with less snow fall. Hmm how long ago was the blizzard of 78 anyway. Right in that window of heavy snow isn't it. Wow imagine that. Sorry, I won't let you in on anything anymore. It's actually a 19 year cycle i would have said that earlier if I had known I was under oath
posted by Guest at 07:37 P.M. EST on Wed Feb 16, 2005 #
The ottawa river will rise over the next ten years just like it did years ago that's why we built up the banks to protect the houses in Point Place. I guess someone besides me knows about this too. We just had a cool summer full of rain too and probably the wettest winter in ten years. Open your eyes and look at what's going on. I mean do you think I just sit here and make stuff up? Who cares anyway?
posted by Guest at 07:49 P.M. EST on Wed Feb 16, 2005 #
Being someone who is paid to study the effects of global climate change, I'd like to submit this link describing a Scripps study showing man is the primary cause for climate change.
Here is the Google news link for differing viewpoints.
What is known is that greenhouse gases are changing our climate. Changes in water temperature, salinity, etc. will mean the climate will become warmer in some places of the world, and cooler in others. England, for example, has a rather mild climate because of the warm water from the Atlantic Gulf stream. Global warming, which would cause a massive influx of melted arctic icecap water, would shut off the warm water current and leave England with an extremely cold climate.
Climate change is very real. I don't understand why so many people choose to believe otherwise.
posted by timault at 03:49 P.M. EST on Fri Feb 18, 2005 #
Sure, climate change is real. Climate change has always existed. The earth has cooled and warmed for millions of years. I don't think anyone is saying there's never a change in the climate.
But some don't believe the current change is due to human influence. And it may not be. The current warming trend may have happened even if there were no humans. It's just a natural cycle. So the next question is, has human influence exasperated the current warming trend? Sped up the cycle or made it warmer than the cycle would have been without humans.
posted by jr at 04:14 P.M. EST on Fri Feb 18, 2005 #
Oh my god we better stop smoking in bars or we'll all burn!!!!
posted by Guest at 04:43 P.M. EST on Fri Feb 18, 2005 #
But some don't believe the current change is due to human influence. And it may not be.
That is what
this study proves, that man is responsible for it. I can say that, just from looking at Carbon Dioxide Levels over the past few thousand years, that there is no natural cause (volcanoes, etc.) to account for the gas' spike to record high levels.
This Scripps study ends, once and for all, the uncertainty you pose jr; whether or not man is responsible for climate change. Now the question is: what do we do about it?
Here is a news link on the study
posted by timault at 09:11 A.M. EST on Sun Feb 20, 2005 #
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