Did you see this research on global warming??
I don't know Ralph, I seem to recall that the ice would cover all the most troublesome spots on the earth
One of the causes of the current rise in CO2 is because we're overloading the natural cycle faster than plants can take it all in. (It doesn't help that we're actively burning, plowing, paving over, and otherwise destroying plants en masse...)
Anyway, CO2 is plant food only to a point.
The rise in CO2 levels benefits some types of plants more than others, and currently appears to benefit weeds more than crops plants, probably thanks to their greater genetic diversity. This will ultimately be good for the planet, because it will help get the CO2 levels back under control, but it's not particularly good for humanity.
Also, many plants are very temperature sensitive, so CO2's effect on temperatures can negate its positive effects on plant growth if it causes temperatures to rise outside the ideal range. If temperatures start routinely going above 95 F, then it bodes badly for ALL plant species, because photosynthesis is also temperature sensitive and starts breaking down at temperatures above 95F. This could lead to widespread desertification across much of the central and southwestern US, and other regions expected to see the greatest increases in temperature.
Rising temperatures also lead to more droughts and flooding, more damage from pests and diseases, and various other things that can combine to negate CO2's positive effects.
"The effect of greenhouse gases on climate has been well-documented by numerous studies and is accepted by nearly all climatologists."
Yup! I wanted to go a little more into why we know it's CO2 in my previous post, but I figured that post was enough of a novel already.
CO2 has been recognized as a greenhouse gas more more than 150 years. This is not new science we're talking about here. Since the late 18th century, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen by more than 100ppm, from about 280 to nearly 400 ppm.
Scientists can identify the origin of atmospheric CO2 molecules by their carbon isotope, so we know that a significant percentage of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is from fossil fuel burning. Other human emissions, such as emissions from deforestation and agriculture, are harder to measure because the isotopes are the same as those from natural causes, but can be estimated in other ways.
The current warming shows several markers that are consistent with warming from greenhouse gases, rather than natural sources such as the sun. If the warming was the result of increased solar radiation, for example, you would expect to see greater warming during the day, because the increased solar radiation would warm the surface more, but the heat would be quickly lost back to space once the sun went down.
Instead, we are seeing greater warming at night. This is because the increased levels of greenhouse gases trap the heat longer in the atmosphere, so the surface doesn't cool down as quickly once the sun goes down. You can actually see this pattern very clearly in the recent heat wave the struck the eastern and central US. Though the heatwave set or tied lots of maximum heat records, it set or tied more than twice as many minimum heat records. In other words, nights showed significantly more warming than days, exactly the result you would expect from warming caused by rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases.
There is also an observable decrease in the amount of solar radiation escaping into space over the last few decades of satellite measurement, another result you would expect to see from warming caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases. Significantly, the greatest decrease has been at the wavelengths that CO2 absorbs.
There is also some evidence that the lower atmosphere (troposphere) is warming while the upper atmosphere (stratosphere and ionosphere) is cooling, but it is less reliable. If true, however, that is yet another predicted result of warming caused by greenhouse gases, since the gases are concentrated mainly in the lower atmosphere.
There are some CO2 "fingerprints" as well, but those are the simplest to explain.
Here's a graphic that shows a few more of them:
This is pretty similar to the denier meme going around a few weeks ago re: NASA's "missing heat." In short, what the paper actually says is VERY different from what the deniers are saying it says.
I'll be back with a more detailed explanation of why in an hour or two - I have to get the kids off to school first.If you read my post above, you'll find that in this particular case, the liars are clearly on the side of the deniers.
I'm also sick of people bringing up the supposed global cooling scare.
I wasn't alive in the 70's, but my parents were and based on what they told me and what I've read from other sources, the global cooling scare was the result of a few scientists speculating about future climate that got picked up by the mainstream media and spun out of proportion to sell more magazines.
Somebody has gone back and surveyed the actual scientific literature of the 70's, and found that papers predicting global warming outnumbered papers predicting global cooling by a factor of 6 to 1. The mainstream scientific community has been predicting warming as a result of fossil fuel burning since at least the 1950's. Check out this video, starting around the 58 seconds mark:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVh7z-0oo6o
"How much effect did human activity have to do with the warming in the 1500s and 1600s?"
I think you mean cooling in the 1500s and 1600s? That was the start of the Little Ice Age, not the end. The exact cause of the Little Ice Age is unknown, but it's believed to have been a combination of one or more of the following factors: orbital cycles, decreased solar activity, increased volcanic activity, altered ocean current flows, the inherent variability of global climate, and reforestation following decreases in the human population. These factors (or rather, the opposite of them) are not currently present at levels consistent with the observed warming, with the possible exception of random climate variability, which is random and by definition untestable. However, there is very strong experimental and observational evidence (some of which I laid out in my reply to Ralph above) that human activity is affecting the climate to a significant degree."As for the ice-age scare in the 70s, I was alive and remember it well. There was a lot of hype about it."
Again, the global cooling hype was in the mainstream, not the scientific press. My dad is a scientist (and my mom a science geek), so they were more concerned with what the scientific press was saying, which was overwhelmingly that global warming was the risk, not cooling.
"There were several warming trends between the cold periods."
The so-called Medieval Warm Period is the one most frequently trotted out by deniers, but it was a regional phenomenon, not a global one like the current warming. Additionally, of the regions it did affect, the only one that could really be said to receive a net positive from it was Europe. In the affected parts of North America, Africa, and Asia, entire civilizations collapsed due to mega-droughts that lasted decades. Much like what scientists are predicting for the coming century, in fact, but on a much smaller scale than what we could be seeing by 2090:
Right click and view image for a much bigger look. For point of reference, the Dust Bowl spiked briefly down to -6 but mainly hovered in the -2 to -3 range.
My kids could still be alive in 2090. How about your grandkids? Do we really want to take the chance that our activities are leaving them a world that looks like that?I'd be able to answer that better if I knew exactly which parts you were thinking of.
Just off the top of my head, there is some controversy about what exactly is happening in Antarctica. The coastal peninsulas seem to be warming like everywhere else, but there is some evidence that parts of the interior may be cooling. However, this is controversial because the temperature record for interior Antarctica is so slim. Wikipedia has a decent overview:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica … ontroversy
Otherwise, here is a useful comparison of the warming in the so-called Medieval Warm Period vs today:
The MWP map is based on reconstructed data (gray areas are places where insufficient data exists) and the modern one uses NOAA data. Both are plotted relative to the 1961– 1990 reference period.
I said I think man is primarily responsible for the current warming, not all warming ever.
Previous warming had natural causes. Nobody is claiming that climate isn't affected by natural factors. The point is that the known natural factors cannot account for the current warming. The rise in atmospheric CO2 levels can. So that means that either there is some completely unknown factor at work, or the rise in CO2 - which is primarily the result of human activities - is responsible for the warming. Scientists continue to look for a possible unknown factor, but so far one hasn't been found, nor is one really necessary, since the CO2 can account for the warming by itself.
CO2 levels have been higher in the past, but don't take that to mean that the current rise in CO2 levels is "safe."
The highest known levels of atmospheric CO2 levels occurred before the evolution of plants, when the world was - needless to say - a very different place than it is today!
CO2 levels were also much higher during the age of dinosaurs thanks to much, much higher volcanic activity (currently human activity produces an average of anywhere from about 100 to more than 400 times more CO2 than volcanoes every year), but at that time in earth's history, the sun was approximately 4% cooler, so the higher CO2 levels did not have as much of an effect as they do today. They DID have enough of an effect that there were no year round ice caps for some parts of the dinosaur's reign, so large parts of what are now North America and Europe were under shallow seas. It will take another thousand years or so before we start seeing those sorts of effects from the current warming, but sea level has already started rising and is expected to accelerate within our lifetimes - yours and mine, that is - and hit 3-6 feet of rise (and possibly more) by 2100.
The most recent (and most comparable) period when CO2 levels were similar to our own (~400ppm) was the Middle Miocene about 15 million years ago. Global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher, and there was a wave of extinctions - including up to 30% of all mammal species living on earth.
By the way, high atmospheric CO2 levels (this time as a result of high volcanic activity plus the dreaded methane clathrates, which remain the worst nightmare of climate scientists today) are also one of the lead suspects in the greatest mass extinction the planet has ever seen: the Permian-Triassic extinction event, which killed off up to 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates.Which brings us back to the big question of just how much of the warming is man-made. And regardless of whether it's man-made, is it desirable (or even possible) to control it by implementing legislation and government-inspired "incentives" like carbon tax and carbon trading?
My answer to that second question is a resounding "no". You probably disagree.
Sounds like a good reason to harness that methane and use it to make fuel
What about the ozone layer? That's not man made, and I assume it must hold in a lot of the earth's heat.
The double standard there grates, though. (Not necessarily on your part, habee, but certainly on the part of some others around here!) Scientists make a mistake in estimating, for example, the probable date of the disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers, which they promptly correct when the mistake is realized, and this is somehow proof that global warming is blown out of proportion, or worse, a hoax. Deniers openly lie about the results of a study (it's now twice in the last month alone, between this and the "missing heat" thing) and people faced with the evidence of these lies are still all "lying benefits the pushers of global warming more than those denying."
I always do my best in these discussions to admit when I, personally, am not certain of something, and when the scientists themselves are uncertain as well. The far right, in contrast, has made total closed-mindedness on this issue a litmus test for membership. Some of the people on this forum wouldn't even consider the possibility that 7 billion human beings are influencing the climate if Jesus himself came down from the clouds in a blaze of light to announce it.
How can any progress be made in the face of such willful ignorance and blind adherence to doctrine?"how are the levels of blue-green algae in the world's oceans?"
Not an issue I follow closely, I'm afraid. I know there have been lots of freshwater warnings this year, but haven't heard much about the oceans and haven't particularly sought any out, since I'm 1000 miles from the nearest patch of saltwater. If you've heard something interesting, please pass it on!
Oops,sorry
But other places apart from the US do use taxation - or they're planning to. In the UK, we'll be having a carbon tax as of 2013. Hello to even more fuel poverty for us peasants and rich profits for City traders. Oh joy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/2 … r-windfall
Did you read the article or just the headline? It's talking about the same CERN cloud study that the Lawrence Solomon editorial habee originally posted was talking about, and it spreads the same lies about what the study's results were, only this guy can't even get the publishing journal's name right.
You're really grasping at straws with this one, uncorrected.If you want to welcome the extinction of the human race with open arms, that's your prerogative. Personally, I'd like us to stick around with some degree of comfort and prosperity for at least a few hundred thousand more years.
As I've said over and over, you can make substantial cuts in energy consumption with little or no affect on your quality of life.
For example, substantial savings can be achieved by measures such as improving insulation of residential and commercial buildings, using light-colored roofing materials instead of dark ones, and planting trees or shrubs so they shade air conditioning units.
Another simple example: candidate Obama was ridiculed for suggesting that if all Americans kept their tires properly inflated (currently more than 1 in 4 don't), we would save millions of barrels of oil annually, but the stats have been run repeatedly by different fact checkers and he was exactly right.
Reduce energy waste and we increase American energy independence, hasten our ability to switch to cleaner sources of energy, and conserve fossil fuels for the things we really need them for, instead of wasting them in ways that are easy and cost-effective to prevent. Improving energy efficiency can't reduce carbon emissions to the level we need to prevent catastrophic climate change by itself, but it can make a very good dent in the process, and if combined with clean energy, forest conservation/restoration, and soil building it would just about do the trick.
As laid out in my global warming solutions hub, we need about 10-15 "wedges" of emission reduction to get back down to 350ppm by 2100, with each wedge representing a decrease of 25 billion tons of CO2 emissions worldwide over the next 50 years. (We're currently at about 30 billion tons per year.) I suggest:
* 3 wedges of energy efficiency
* 1 wedge of vehicle efficiency
* 1 wedge of albedo change
* 3 wedges of concentrated solar power
* 1 wedge of solar photovoltaics
* 2 wedges of wind energy
* 1 wedge of geothermal, tidal/wave, and ocean thermal
* 2 wedges of forest conservation/restoration
* 1 wedge of soil building
To expand any one of these wedges to the level we need would take major effort, but with 9% unemployment, it's not like we have a shortage of labor. Jobs such as retrofitting existing buildings for improved energy efficiency, building wind farms, and planting trees have the added advantage of being extremely difficult to outsource.
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