dalem

No, they don't.

It's not about belief, it's about scientific analysis.

Of course you don't, no one does, and climate science is still barely out of its infancy. The tests I speak of are part of the scientific method. For instance, up above I mentioned solar output, which I believe is the primary driver of our global temperature. A test of my claim would be to get solar output numbers and global temperature numbers and compare them - the curves will either show a relation or not. If they do show a relation then the next step would be to deduce mechanisms that explain how incoming solar radiation translates into global temperature. If they don't show a relation (or a close enough one) then my theory can be said to have failed that test and should be discarded (or seriously re-worked).

Now currently my position has passed the initial test, as the numbers do seem to match fairly well, but the historical data are very rough - we don't really have what we would call good data on solar output that is older than about 2 or 3 decades. Global temperature data is actually a little better, but it's also tough to nail down the finer points historically. So even though things seem to match up well and common sense reinforces the idea, that doesn't mean that anyone can say definitively that it IS the Sun.

In contrast, the industrial CO2-greenhouse-global warming theory has not even passed its initial test: historical data don't really show a good correlation between C02 levels and global temperature.

-dale

Bluesman

'Preventionary measures' COST MONEY, and would in all likelihood increase human suffering with a downturn in standards of living, and probably actually costing lives, too. It WOULD hurt to take such measures, whether they're needed or not.

I'm not signing up for 'doing something' if that 'something' is the wrong thing to have done.

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Fortudinae

Of course it's a good thing.

A square mile of ocean supports far more biomass than a square mile of land.
Plus we could all become boatniks and live like Jimmy Buffett; it would be so cool, feeding table scraps to the whales.

That's why the Republicans have all those secret global warming machines going - they're all closet Parrothead party animals.

And and then when we have the nuclear winter it will cool it down nice even more like to normal and stuff. Yeah. Hey I knew that.

1010011010

Ice core and certain geological data show that ice ages are immediately preceded by a warming trend. Thus, when the atmospheric and oceanic scientists noted a warming trend, the geologists said "The next ice age is imminent!". However, to a geologist, "imminent" means some time within a thousand years.

The next ice age is still impending.
The warming trend pumps more and more energy into the weather system responsible for circulating the air and flatting the curve for global temperature distribution. The system eventually falls apart either through thermal breakdown for the convection patterns (inadequate thermal driving head), chaotic system failure (small perturbations become large enough to significantly disrupt normal patterns) or increasing albedo from runaway cloud cover abruptly removes energy input (and subsequently the system just falls over).

Without equatorial/polar mixing, the poles become much much colder, highly reflective high creeps down the latitudes and eventually (very eventually) the seasonal changes in solar intensity re-establish the weather system.

There's not a whole lot we're likely to be able to do about it.

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Julie

Our government is already spending $4 billion yearly to scientists to prove/disprove global warming. That's alot.

By preventive measures, I mean emissions control which automakers would incur, not the government. Alternative fuels, which our government is already giving incentives/tax breaks for that. Industries would bear the cost of emissions, not the taxpayer, unless you considered the incentives/tax breaks for doing these things, which we are already do NOW. Stronger industry regulations.

gunnut

Yes I've heard of that comparison. Venus is about the same size as earth, but the atmosphere is composed mostly of carbon dioxide. It acts as an extreme greenhouse and raises the surface temperature to 400F I believe. Here's the kicker, Venus is not earth. It's much closer to the sun with a different make up of surface chemistry. In fact, it's so cloudy we don't even know precisely how the planet works. I concede that if we move the earth to Venus's orbit and pump 100 times the amount of CO2 we have today into our atmosphere, we'll experience a greenhouse effect. But even then we can't test it. We can only theorize it, with unknowns of how the earth will react. Computer models only take into account of what we know. They don't tell us the unexpected.

What do you mean by fast? Geological time and human time are slightly different. We have been collecting data for 150 years. We have written records of European temperature for 1500 years. What is that to the earth? Dinosaurs roamed the earth for 150 million years. Man has only been here for 3.5 million years, if you count our distant ancestors. The last ice age was 40,000 years ago, give or take a thousand years. Even that is 30 times longer than we have records of the temperature variation of a single continent.

Scientists like to say that dinosaurs died off "suddenly." If you look at what they mean by "suddenly" you'll see that they're talking about a span of a million years. Humans, or our ancestors, made a great leap from ape like creatures that walk upright to more modern looking man like creatures with the ability to communicate in a virtual blink of an eye. When you actually look at that time frame, it's on the order of a million years. Ancient Egypt spent 2000 years to build those pyramids. When you think about it, that's 10 times longer than the US has been a republic. They spent more time on building pyramids than the time it took Europe going from the Roman Empire to the European Union.

That's a poor analogy. The only common thing is people dying. I have no idea where you're going with that argument.

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gunnut

That's a poor comparison. The ocean is 3 dimentional. A square mile of ocean...what? How deep do you go? 1 mile down? 1 cm down? How deep do you go on land? Just the surface?

Fortudinae

Take your pick.

Any amount of seawater can support biomass, anywhere.
Land surface biomass is limited to nutients in the soil and availability of water.

In short a water world can support more biomass than any land world. A world without water is sterile; ergo the more water the more life. Melt that ice, make more water! The Gorbal Wurming crowd should be in favor of icecaps melting-

Nuke the icecaps!

canoe

See diagrams below.

This I completely agree with, however some people seem to have already made up their minds one way or the other and don't care about the science.

Below I attached the CO2/Temperature graph from Vostok, Antartica (1993)
You can see the core samples CO2/CH4 levels in relation to the proxy temperature at the time.

The next diagram is a core sample taken from Vostok in June 1999 comparing CO2 and temperature data.

Attached Images

	99148efig3.gif (19.8 KB, 23 views)
	IceCores1.gif (15.0 KB, 23 views)

gunnut

I agree with you. They really should if they're so concerned about the planet as a whole. However the leftist socialist hippie treehugging global warming cultists are more concerned about themselves than the planet. They just want a nice place to plop their homes down, a nice picket fence yard, a corner cafe to sip their latte, and keep out all the things that might inconvenience their little corner of the world.

canoe

Your assuming its even possible to prevent global warming on a worldwide scale. I seriously doubt it is. I'm simply in favor of doing the research to understand what were going to have to deal with in 20-30 years. I really don't like surprises.

brokensickle

Outside of the increase in solar radiation there is no hard evidence that
the levels of CO2 are the cause of global warming. Compared to Venus we have a minute amount of greenhouse producers.


Ivan

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canoe

Was just looking at the NASA website, they were basiclly saying there has been a small increase in solar activity in the past 25 years which goes in cycles. But not enough to account for the increase in global temperatures in the past 10 years.

(specificly it has increased by 0.05% in the past decade, the total effect it would have on temperature is estimated to only be between 4-20% of the actual temperature variation were seeing right now with greenhouse gases beleived to make up the other 80%+)

I don't see what point making a comparison to Venus is making, if Venus has alot more CO2 and is warming from the insulating effect would that not be proof global warming from rapid increases in CO2 levels can occur?

I do have an interesting question though, as I think there are probably alot of people who are like minded to what you beleive, what type of 'hard evidence' would it take to convince you climate changes are occuring from CO2 levels increasing?


Heres the direct link from NASA:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/New...100116003.html

Fortudinae

They are addicted to fear - their world revolves around what they are afraid of (recessive trait).
If there isn't something to fear they concoct something to fear. The worst of them concoct something for the Fearful to fear. However you don't want to be in the same boat as the Fearful, or pin your hopes on them - for you will surely die.
Just let them go cower in their fear holes where they feel comfortable, and don't take them too seriously. Natural selection is against them.

1010011010

Correlation is not causation.
Interesting bit of info about that graphic and the data it's based on.
The changes in CO2 occur before the changes in temperature in several cases.

This is about as interesting as a gas solubility curve insofar as the "Humans can affect global warming" hypothesis is concerned.