Global Warming

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by Mind Over Matter, Mar 13, 2011.

  1. Mind Over Matter Registered Senior Member

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  3. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    I do not know enough about climate technology to provide a scientific analysis to back up my views, which are as follows.
    I have no doubt that there are some who have a political or other agenda motivating them to make a hue & cry about human activities affecting global warming.

    I think that most of the climatologists are basically on the right track when they claim that there is global warming & that human activities are contributing to it.

    The data seems to indicate that global temperatures are rising. There seems to be good reason to believe that human activities have contributed.

    I consider the only issue to be the accuracy of the models & mathematics used to calculate the amount of effect that human activities have.

    Before the industrial revolution, there were large fluctuations in global temperatures. I think we are still at the ending stage of an ice age.

    I am almost certain that climatology models & mathematics are not capable of making accurate predictions. They can only provide average values with a range of expected error.

    I have never seen an article which provided error estimates for the various numerical values provided, although I am almost certain that such error estimates are provided in the scientific papers & usually omitted from news media summaries.

    It could be that the human contribution is larger or smaller than estimated by the mathematics. It is possible that the worst case errors will actually become a reality, making current predictions seem optimistic & making the naysayers look like idiots. It could be that the best case scenario will turn out to be reality, resulting in the naysayers being able to say I told you so.

    I think that there were periods in the distant past (prior to various ice ages) when average global temperatures were much higher than the values in the past few hundred years. It could be that natural fluctuations in global temperature will overwhelm the effect of human activities. This seems possible, although I consider it unlikely to occur in the next 200-300 years.​
     
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  5. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    The very FIRST thing *anyone* should do is check out the person behind the story. I think after you read this article about Spencer you'll have some serious doubts about his reasoning and motivation for what he says: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roy_Spencer
     
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  7. jmpet Valued Senior Member

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    It took 10-30 million years for the layer of hydrocarbons to become petroleum, and it was due to an overabundance of oxygen at that time.

    We tave taken 45% of this 20 million year storehouse of CO2 and released it in the past 150 years consistently and gradually- adding more and more to the atmosphere.

    There is no intelligent argument that says Global Climate Change is fiction; to suggest so is folly.

    Your OP comes with lots of grains of salt.
     
  8. winer36 Registered Member

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    More and more people are realizing that it was a scam by leftists all this time

    They tell us that we are at fault but the truth is that it is normal for earth to be going through these changes.
     
  9. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    Hope you are also using that same salt shaker on the orthodoxy of anthropogenic global warming.
     
  10. sifreak21 Valued Senior Member

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    there is proof of global warming yet skeptics keep sayin NO NO THATS NOT HAPPENING.. geologist, Botanists, zoologst, and geologists have proof that it is infact hapening yet for some reason the masses dont believe it
     
  11. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Roy Spencer is a proponent of Intelligent Design, so he's another biased religious nutcase.
     
  12. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not sure how much it matters what's causing the global warming, accept how it might help us mitigate the problems it's going to cause. I can't seem to get that picture of New York skyscrapers sticking out of the ocean out of my mind. Does anybody have an estimate of how many people world wide will be impacted when that happens?
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Global warming is already impacting people. Tribes in Alaska are having to move their whole villages, the Armed Forces are having to account for warming in their planning and budgets, countries are moving to claim portions of the thawing arctic...
     
  14. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    It will happen so slowly that people will simply move out of the buildings closest to the shoreline and build new ones on higher ground on the inland side of the city.

    Nonetheless there are a few places that don't have much of a grade, and so large areas will eventually be underwater. Florida is one, and much of Bangladesh will disappear.

    Because we are just coming out of an ice age (defined as a time during which there are permanent glaciers on the tallest mountains and permanent icecaps over the poles), sea level is only about a hundred meters above its historical low. The historical high is about 250 meters above its current level. (Some scientists say 400.) But what it's done in the past is to fluctuate over a range of about 150 meters from one ice age to the next, and very slowly the range rises and falls.

    These periods of ice age fluctuations are very rare. There have only been a few of them and they are separated by tens or hundreds of millions of years during which there is no permanent ice anywhere on earth, even at the poles.
     
    Last edited: Mar 18, 2011
  15. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    Maybe it might happen like that. However try and picture yourself in that situation. The tides coming in and not going out. In order for you to move to a new place you need to sell the one your living in. That's bad because nobodies buying and all the available places you might want to move to are going up in price fast, because of all the people wanting to move there. Also because of the obvious situation it's not likely you will have insurance coverage for that problem. So all you can do is wait for the next big storm and kiss your ass good bye.

    That might be a bit pessimistic, but your comment lacked a lot of nasty reality.
     
  16. livingin360 Registered Senior Member

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    The answer to your question is extremely simple. Does greenhouse gases cause global warming? ... Yes... Are the levels of greenhouse gas's continually rising? Yes. Is the rest of the global warming debate just trying to distract away from a solution to the two points stated above?... Yes... The answer is simple the carbon dioxide levels are higher than what they have been in nearly a million years and photosynthesis must be increased to convert it to a normal level. Why do people and countries always get so caught up in drama they forget why the drama began in the first place? ftw
     
  17. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    I don't doubt for a moment that humans are making the problem of global warming much worse and much faster than the normal warming cycle would have been. The big question is can we do anything about it, to either stop it from getting any worse or even to reversing the current damage that has already been done. Just last night I watched a program that talked about what all that extra CO2 is doing to our oceans, besides rising the level. They are becoming more acid to a point where the bottom of the food chain is threatened in a big way. If we become unable to take any food from the oceans in the near future (sometime this century). How many humans will starve to death?

    Let me guess, maybe enough to make the land we will be losing to rising ocean levels not much of a problem, or the least of our problems.
     
  18. livingin360 Registered Senior Member

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    I think the only solution is to decrease carbon dioxide. All that needs to be done is to halt deforestation and reforest unused area's around the globe and to come up with scientific ways to safely introduce more photosynthesis in the oceans. The acidity is actually attributed to the increased carbon dioxide the ocean is absorbing. Scientists are finding though that fish are evolving very quickly to the increased acidity though.
     
  19. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    I'm still astounded at how many otherwise-intelligent people think that trees are the answer to higher CO2 levels!

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    Why don't you people realize that trees are only temporary "storage" for CO2? Trees die, decay, and that CO2 goes right back into the atmosphere!:bugeye:
     
  20. livingin360 Registered Senior Member

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    I heard something about that. But i thought tree's still do a great deal of photosynthesis converting carbon dioxide into oxygen. For example i know that without the northernmost parts of the Taiga are a essential part of our carbon cycle.
     
    Last edited: Mar 18, 2011
  21. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Sure - trees convert a lot of CO2 into O2 (during the daytime). But don't you realize what will always happen to that carbon they stored while they were alive? It turns back into CO2, that's what, and you are right back where you started before the tree was ever there.
     
  22. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    What about shell fish and corals and diatoms and anything else that uses calcium in their survival strategy? Calcium dissolves in acidic water. Anyway if that's not bad enough warmer oceans have less O2 dissolved in it. Sounds like mass extinction in the oceans and that can't be good for us anyway you look at it.
     
  23. livingin360 Registered Senior Member

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    What do you think the best solution would be?

    I didn't know that

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    screw us what about the species that would go extinct. ugh..
     

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