Page:
The Real Fryed FishGod's illgitament son
1,489 posts
Location: state of confusion


Posted:
Ok so as I am sure some (if not most) of you know the Kyoto pact was inacted today. Now the devide is split down the middle on if this will do any good, so I pose this question to you........

What if global warming is a natural process? What if the planet warming, the polar caps melting, and the eventual flooding of Earth is supose to happen?

Now I am not disputing the fact that we do need to start taking ALOT better care of this planet. Deforestation, the polluting of our ocean and seas, and the general watse we produce is all a major problem; and I am sure it plays at least a small part in global warming...........but what if this is going to happen no matter what we do?

You can't avoid pain by fencing yourself from it.
Some times you need the help of others more than anything else
But you have to let them close enough to help......
People want to be needed, I found that out too


Mistress_MaledictiHeaven doesn't want me, and Hell is afraid I'll take over
192 posts
Location: Wolverhampton


Posted:
Global warming might be an entirely natural process that is going to happen anyway, whether we're around or not. I think the important point about Kyoto is that it gives recognition to the fact that we are all contributing to global warming and that essentially we're hastening the destruction of our own planet.

We can all do our own little bit to help in this cause, and in doing so we'll bring global warming rates back to what nature intends, not go storming ahead towards our own downfall.

sin

"Abashed, the Devil stood and saw how awful Goodness is"


SymBRONZE Member
Geek-enviro-hippy priest
1,858 posts
Location: Diss, Norfolk, United Kingdom


Posted:
"What if the planet warming, the polar caps melting, and the eventual flooding of Earth is supose to happen?"



Please explain. Are you implying some kind of divine influence at work?

I think we’ve proved that carbon emissions are the cause of global warming. More or less everything we do in the west is bad for the environment in some way.



I don’t think the Kyoto pact is good enough. We need to get the US and Australians on board for a start.



It’s only trying to cut emissions by 5.2% over the next 7 years! And the countrys that have signed up are only responsible for 55% of the global emissions anyway. That’s only 2.5% in 7 years! What’s that going to change? We need to take drastic action now.



soapbox

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees


spritieSILVER Member
Pooh-Bah
2,014 posts
Location: Galveston, TX, USA


Posted:
I agree with Gothmuppet. Industralized nations are hastening the effect global warming is having on this planet.

I also think it will be really hard to get the US to agree to much. The car manufacturers and the government can't even agree that electric or hybrid cars are a good thing. Instead, they are producing mass quantities of huge gas guzzling trucks and suv's. There is no incentive to produce a car that gets better gas mileage, so the car manufacturers are reluctant to do so, even though the Toyota hybrid is sold out months before a new car arrives at each lot. Go figure. confused

vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
first of all, there is a natural cycle to warmer and cooler periods for earth on the whole. the problem is, even before global warming, we are already in one of the peak warmer periods. this means anything humans to do to cause even higher temperatures is not mitigated but execerbated by the part of the cold/hot cycle we are in.



2. global warming does not mean that it will get warmer everywhere. what it does mean is that overall average temperaturers will get higher. it could be that global warming actually makes some regions cooler. it could also do things like cause a shift in the gulf stream and other ocean currents. if that happens, the UK could find itself with much harsher winters with significant snowfall. iceland could become covered in ice again. greenland might become green again, instead of covered in ice (there are reasons these places have seemingly anacronistic names you know). what will almost certainly happen is that rainfall patterns will shift. some deserts will expand, others may shrink. The gulf coast of texas could go from subtropical to fully tropical and be able to support rain forests. brazil might dry up and become a vast desert instead of covered in rainforest.



3. the main thing to notice is that, while a worse case scenario for global warming would be devestaing to many ecosystems and many extinctions may occur, life is tough and pretty much impossible to kill off - the earth will adapt and recover, as it has to major climate shifts in the past. what is in far more peril is both the large and small economies of the human race.



remember that in the long run, all human made catastrophies are only wind up being catastrophies for humans (and some other species caught in the crossfire mind you) - in the long run. for nature and life itself on the whole, it will just be a temporary glitch after a short term calamity which will be sorted out after 10 thousand years or so, once the silly humans have killed themselves off or so hopelessly destroyed their economy that they have gone back to living in caves. a million years later, there will be nothing to even suggest we were here or did anything wrong besides a few obscure archelogical and geological trace clues.

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


_Clare_BRONZE Member
Still wiggling
5,967 posts
Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland (UK)


Posted:
Sweet. The sooner we die off as a species the better it will be biggrin

Getting to the other side smile


The Real Fryed FishGod's illgitament son
1,489 posts
Location: state of confusion


Posted:
Sym...........what if the Earth is going to warm no matter what? not so much devine itervention as much as a natural process of a planet.......think about it, the only planet we know anything about is Earth (and we dont know that much to begin with)

what if this is a process all planets go threw, extreme climate changes, hell it happened once, but he world froze, maby its just time it warmed up.........

now im going to put a stop something i see starting right now

if your going to point fingers at certin countries, and try to placce blame STAY OFF MY THREAD!!!!!!! i hate that censored

this is not the thread to point fingers on ok?

You can't avoid pain by fencing yourself from it.
Some times you need the help of others more than anything else
But you have to let them close enough to help......
People want to be needed, I found that out too


SymBRONZE Member
Geek-enviro-hippy priest
1,858 posts
Location: Diss, Norfolk, United Kingdom


Posted:
Climate change is very hard to put down to one cause but to answer your question, no I don’t think the earth is warning up ‘by itself’. Over the past 12,000 years the average temperature has been more or less the same, with only minor fluctuations.

Since 1979 we’ve had an average rise of 0.22c a decade. Just to put that in to perspective, the biggest mass-extension we know about (at the end of the Permian) saw a change of about 12c over a few thousand years. That was (arguably) caused by a huge chain of volcanoes going of simultaneously (geologically speaking) all over the world. We are seeing more or less the same amount of change now without any natural events on that scale.

As for finger pointing; I didn’t point a finger. I was just pointing out that only 141 countries have signed up to Kyoto. 45% of the countries responsible are doing very little to prevent, or lessen, climate change.

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees


The Real Fryed FishGod's illgitament son
1,489 posts
Location: state of confusion


Posted:
Written by: spritie


I also think it will be really hard to get the US to agree to much. The car manufacturers and the government can't even agree that electric or hybrid cars are a good thing. Instead, they are producing mass quantities of huge gas guzzling trucks and suv's.




this is what i was talking about Sym, not you man

as for your points, thank you for a well thought out input......to recap what you said, we are basicaly speeding up the proces by several thousnad years do to our industrialization (or are you saying that we are the only possible cause of global warming)

You can't avoid pain by fencing yourself from it.
Some times you need the help of others more than anything else
But you have to let them close enough to help......
People want to be needed, I found that out too


PrometheusDiamond In The Rough
459 posts
Location: Richmond, Virginia


Posted:
I would point my finger at mother nature.

The history of Earth is replete with (what we would call)devastating climate changes. To the Earth, it's just routine. Ice ages, world-wide floods, world-wide fires, magnetic reversal of the poles, earthquakes, continental drift, hurricanes, volcanos, ...all these things are perfectly natural and are supposed to happen. And they will happen regardless of what we do or don't do.

Global warming is only an issue because people feel threatened by it. They hope that because they somehow caused it, they can also somehow prevent it.

Nothing we do is going to hurt the Earth. Even if we detonated every bomb we had, and wiped out mankind in nuclear holocost, the Earth would recover in a few hundred years. It's a self-correcting system and it's 'correcting' itself all the time. A lot like forest-fires, nature will decimate an area, only to have it spring forth with new and more abundant life.

Now to answer the original question. If warmer climates are on the way, we'll simply have to adapt, like we always do. You may see populations drift a little further north, you may see new technologies emerge, designed to deal with the altered environment. Michigan real estate values might rise. Famine in equatorial countries, desert expansion, summary extinction and creation of new species and a spike in ice cream sandwich demand.

rolleyes Mmm, ice cream sandwich...going to get one now cool

Dance like it hurts; Love like you need money; Work like someone is watching.

Never criticize someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes. That way, when you DO criticize them, you are a mile away, and you have their shoes.


spritieSILVER Member
Pooh-Bah
2,014 posts
Location: Galveston, TX, USA


Posted:
Written by: Fryed Fish


[as for your points, thank you for a well thought out input......to recap what you said, we are basicaly speeding up the proces by several thousnad years do to our industrialization (or are you saying that we are the only possible cause of global warming)




I don't think humans are the only cause of global warming. I think it is a natural process that our planet is undergoing. We are indeed just helping it along at the moment.

The Real Fryed FishGod's illgitament son
1,489 posts
Location: state of confusion


Posted:
see i agree with that spritie, but how much are we helping it along? and are we helping too much (im not sure helping is the right word here when you thinkg about it but whatever it works)

now, if this is something that happens, then, in theory, we should evolve to with stand the new climate right? now what if the fact that global warming is happening so fast (as pointed out by sym) that we dont have time to evolve to suit our new climate?

You can't avoid pain by fencing yourself from it.
Some times you need the help of others more than anything else
But you have to let them close enough to help......
People want to be needed, I found that out too


spritieSILVER Member
Pooh-Bah
2,014 posts
Location: Galveston, TX, USA


Posted:
I think we need to evolve no matter how fast things are changing. Our planet is constantly changing. That is the nature of what we live on.

In the past, if people haven't been happy with the area they lived in, they found a new one that was better suited to their purposes or they learned to live with what they had and adapted their tools and living conditions. That's the way of humanity on this planet. It has been for centuries. I don't see global warming changing that any.

I do think a lot of industrailization has taken it's toll on the planet. I wish there was some way to alter that, but the big companies and their lobbies in Congress (at least in the states) would never allow for such changes.

vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
just be clear - my position is analogous to promethious in that I do totally beleive life will continue to flourish on earth till the sun drops of the primary chain and turns into a red giant, despite any setbacks humans or anthing else offer.

but I do also totally beleive humans can mess things up enough to make ourselves and a lot of our current fellow earthlings quite miserable.

global warming is an issue, but it won't be the end of the world no matter what, but it could be very serious indeed.

and just to be ironic (i have no proff to offer), I'll say the countries lmost severly affected by climate change are likely to be the ones who are currently enjoying a certain wealth from the present climate.

ice sheets have broken up before, glaciers melted, and sea levels have been higher, but the present world economy is built on what has been up til now, not what is coming. there will be some rearranginging of the political/economic world coming.

and saying that temperatures have always been more or less the same ignores the fact that a couple degrees cooler on average means an ice age and half of north america and most of europe under glaciers. a couple degrees warmer means... who knows - but it is still more or less the same temperature really, isn't it?

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


SymBRONZE Member
Geek-enviro-hippy priest
1,858 posts
Location: Diss, Norfolk, United Kingdom


Posted:
Written by: vanize

a couple degrees warmer means... who knows - but it is still more or less the same temperature really, isn't it?




That is remarkably ignorant. When 12 degrees causes the biggest extinction the world has ever seen (with 90 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of terrestrial vertebrate dieing out) I think it’s save to say that “couple degrees warmer means...” quite a lot!

I don’t think anyone has said anything about the earth being damaged by the current ecological patterns we are causing but is seems everyone has tried to argue with some invisible poster who thinks the earth is going to implode.

Also I would like to point out that we are seeing changes at the moment that have only been seen on a geological scale before. (obviously!)

Fryed Fish: To add an analogy to your summing up of my point: I see it as an empty swimming pool. It’s not 100% still but there is no major fluctuation going on. The Permian-Triassic extinction was a school party learning the butterfly stroke where as we are just a portly chap diving in at one end.

The water will still be there, just it’ll be mixed up quite a lot.

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees


vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
watch out who you call remarkably ignorant buddy some of us have PhD in physics and have a fair clue as to what we are talking about.



and if you bother to read what I wrote and think about it, you'll find I'm saying exactly what you are saying.



and I trust you mean 12 degrees farenheit? 5 degrees is the accepted warming for that period, but in celcius. and that from an ice age temperature I beleive. and no one knows if that extinction has anything to do with temperature - it is just specualtion



also note the timescales you are quoting have error bars of +/- 300,000 years or so (at least for the extinction). and I beleive about 900,000 is the accepted number really. and the temperature change could have been due to the extinction as well.

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


GlåssDIAMOND Member
The Ministry of Manipulation
2,523 posts
Location: Bristol, United Kingdom


Posted:
The ice age was only 2°C lower average temperature....
the earth will survive
and so will the cockroches
humans...... maybe some of us

SymBRONZE Member
Geek-enviro-hippy priest
1,858 posts
Location: Diss, Norfolk, United Kingdom


Posted:
Sorry, that sounded a little more offensive than I meant it to.

But if you have a PhD in physics then why did you say "it is still more or less the same temperature really, isn't it?". Surly you of all people would know that is means a lot? Your PhD means that you 'out rank' me on this subject by a very long way, but I didn’t know you had it and you were making a point that seems very odd for someone with your knowledge

hug

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees


vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
Written by: Sym_



Sorry, that sounded a little more offensive than I meant it to.



But if you have a PhD in physics then why did you say "it is still more or less the same temperature really, isn't it?". Surly you of all people would know that is means a lot? Your PhD means that you 'out rank' me on this subject by a very long way, but I didn’t know you had it and you were making a point that seems very odd for someone with your knowledge



hug






actually you were the one who said the earth has always been at more or less the same temperature, and I was just pointing out that 2 degree down = ice age, so what does 2 degrees up equal? 2 degrees is only a 1% change on the kelvin scale (the one we should be using if you want to talk about absolute changes), so more or less the same temperature makes a false sense of stability even though it is not an untrue statement per se. just making a point in an unnecissarly obscure way I guess.



hug back

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


snorkmember
52 posts

Posted:
Ok, Honestly I think it's unlikely we are have a significant influence over the atmosphere.. This [censored] happens naturally. But im not opposed to limiting fossil fuel burning and whatnot. But their are atleast to me, more solid reasons for doing this. One the oil WILL run out. Two, forests WILL RUN OUT. 3. Uranium, mercury, lead, suplhuric acid, etc etc.. are all bi products of our industrial processes. They poison our waters and in turn our fish, poison our soil, dramaticly change the PH balance of ecosystems. Were poisoning ourselves, and I think we are seeing the health consequences of it all around us.

All these reasons, combined with a "play it safe incase were right about global warming" should be the motivation to cut back industrial growth. I really think that the focus has been lost, and it's dwindled down to running around waving arms in the air yelling about massive floods and huge temperature increases. Chances are that will happen anyways, it might be worse because of us. Who knows. But I don't want that to happen, and have no clean water or food, forests, and no fuel to burn of any kind because we drained all the oil wells. I think all those things happening at once is far more terrifying then global warming alone.

snorkmember
52 posts

Posted:
ps-we put more uranium up into the atmosphere burning fossil fuels then we do with nuclear power. I really don't comprehend the complete aversion to nuclear power.

The Real Fryed FishGod's illgitament son
1,489 posts
Location: state of confusion


Posted:
the aversion to nuclear power is the destrictive possabilities 3 mile isliand, Tchernobyl, both still very much in ruins from the reactor melt downs.......my opinion any way

You can't avoid pain by fencing yourself from it.
Some times you need the help of others more than anything else
But you have to let them close enough to help......
People want to be needed, I found that out too


snorkmember
52 posts

Posted:
with modern reactors, several things have to critically fail for it to get even close to either of those.

vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
BTW, that last post brings to mentioning a couple other things.

there are a lot of proposed theories about extinctions such as the one mentioned by sym. for the most part we really have no idea what caused most of them. geologically speaking we can find some things like temperature changes that sort or correlate with the events, but none are consistant across extinctions or even within a particular extinction, and the only one that is which I can presently think of that most in the science community will say "yes, this caused and extinction" was the comet/astroid impact that took out the dinosaurs for good - and even that, which has a fair amount of good evidence going for it, is not universally accepted.

likewise, the global warming thing is not universally accepted among scientists either, though by now the majority of us are as convinced as we need to be, and it is seen now as a matter of how bad it will be, not if it will happen. but we are also now fairly certain there will be no "run-away" greenhouse effect that will leave earth as an uninhabitable sauna desert either, as was the horror story of the 80's enviromental extremist propaganda.

the enviroment and the cycles of life are very chaotic, and very strange things happen at very strange times. Take to extinction mentioned above - one theory is indeed that massive numbers of volcanoes erupted during this time, causing a long term increase in greenhouse gasses. there was a lot of volcanoes at that time. did this cause the rise in temperature? not clear. the time scales are difficult to match up, and even if they do match, why did it take a million years for the extinction to take place, and why did another happen only 9 million years before?

other periods of increased greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere have apparently been mitigated by large algae blooms in the ocean, effectly trapping these gasses in the ocean floor once the algae die and effectivly regulating the earth's temperature by removing those same greenhouse gasses quickly. but you know what - algae blooms tend to rob the oxygen from the water and kill other sea life. repaeted algae blooms could account for the vast ocean extinctions duing the aformentioned time (but also the sharp loss of ocean shelf area as the continents pressed together can too)

presently we are seeing increases in the incidences of red tide - which is an algae bloom. this is not coincidence, as we are not only increasing the CO2 content of the atmosphere, but also pouring loads of other stuff algae just loves into the ocean, like phosphates (from soap and detergent runoff).

changing the temperature is going to have an effect, but changing the air composition levels will be the thing that probably gets reacted to faster. and simple organisms react faster than complicated ones. algae is already reacting I think (this is scientific opinion only though). things get too far off balance, then the algae will start choking the rest of the sea life. on top of that, warmer temperatures kill off reefs and other critical ocean habitats. compile that with over fishing and the increasing dependance of humans on the ocean as a food source, and well.... I think you see where I am going.

but then again, things react in odd, choatic ways. while some things die, others will find their time has come (and is that something we want to see?)

but it is all specualtion, and scientists cannot do anything more than speculate about all this, whether it is now or it is the permian extinction. and despite that even when we more or less agree, it is only a fair guess at what might have happened or be going on and we can't state it as a group any more stongly that that really, no matter how fervently some individuals amongs may feel about one theory or another. all we really know is something about what was before and what came after (or a cloudy guess as to what might come), not what really happened. unfortunately politicians seem to not even respond well to facts, much less a good guess.

another point on the permian extinction - we know that fungus was considerably more dominant than usual afterwards for a while - we could just as easily blame fungus changin things as well as volcanoes, ice ages, or the shifting of techtonic plates. that an ice age (which there was also one around this time) is just as strongly suspected in some camps to be the cause of this extinction as global warming due to vulcanism is in others makes my point clear I think.

Also note that life was still very abundant both during and after this extinction - the amount of relative living biomass probably didn't change much - just that the number of species (which left fossile records - another important caveat) was greatly reduced. Many dinosaur species died off as well, but in general dinosaurs flourished in the wake of the extinction - perhaps due to less competition or warmer weather, or maybe they contributed to the die off of the other species.

point is, we don't really know. we don't know about then, we don't know about the near future, all we can do is guess and try to make wise choises. in this case - we can choose to do what we can to mitigate global warming, or not. if we do, then the worst that happens is we slow our economies some and we are wrong. if we don't the worst that could happen is far worse. it doesn't take a wise man to see the wise choice.

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


The Real Fryed FishGod's illgitament son
1,489 posts
Location: state of confusion


Posted:
it's just no fun to post after some one with a PHD is it wink ubblol

You can't avoid pain by fencing yourself from it.
Some times you need the help of others more than anything else
But you have to let them close enough to help......
People want to be needed, I found that out too


vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
Written by: snork



with modern reactors, several things have to critically fail for it to get even close to either of those.






with modern reactors, even a critical failure only means the stacks get quenched.



used to be reactors had their coolants pumped in, and a power failure of some type could cause the coolant to not reach the reaction chamber and you could get a melt down.



now they are designed so that the coolant has to be actively pumped OUT. so any failure means automatic shutdown of the reaction. it is very costly for a power plant to have to stat back up after a shutdown of this nature mind you, but not nearly as expensive as a chynobl expereince.



also - the uranium going into the atmosphere via coal is mostly U238 - you have to refine it to a more unstable isotope before you can use it in a reactor or before it becomes particualry dangerous. if I remember correctly you can sleep on a slab of U238 every night for a year, and still not recieve the yearly maximum dose of radiation suggest by safety agencies.



still nuclear power in its current form is far better for the planet and human society than coal burning plants are. Europe knows this - something like 90% of the power in france is from nuclear reactors (that number comes from mid '90s though). if you ask me, greenpeace is chasing the wrong demon by being so anti-nuclear power. coal is far worse for us and the enviroment overall, and far less containable.

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
Written by: Fryed Fish


it's just no fun to post after some one with a PHD is it wink ubblol




sorry... redface

I just get worked up about some things...

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


The Real Fryed FishGod's illgitament son
1,489 posts
Location: state of confusion


Posted:
ubblol thats fine its what i wanted out of this thread

You can't avoid pain by fencing yourself from it.
Some times you need the help of others more than anything else
But you have to let them close enough to help......
People want to be needed, I found that out too


_Clare_BRONZE Member
Still wiggling
5,967 posts
Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland (UK)


Posted:
"I just get worked up about some things... "

Teehee. Bless.

kiss hug

Getting to the other side smile


Gnarly CraniumSILVER Member
member
186 posts
Location: San Francisco, USA


Posted:
Fryed_Fish :

.......Define 'natural'? Sure the planet has its little ups and downs. Like ice ages. But are you REALLY suggesting that our current situation has nothing at all to do with us???

The CO2 content of our atmosphere has gone up more since the start of the industrial revolution than it did in the past 400,000 years and probably longer. Since 1730, the overall temperature of the planet has gone up 0.8 degrees C. In geological terms, that is an eyeblink. Our civilization right now is like a bomb (or yeah, masses of volcanoes) going off. This is cataclysmic.

Do you have any imagination at all? Can you even begin to wrap your brain around what this means? The Earth was 2 degrees C cooler during the last ice age. What's the opposite of an ice age, when it hits in the space of 400 years instead of thousands? If the gulf stream and the thermoclines of the ocean collapse, if the ice sheets melt and the oceans rise... what you've got is whole cities being wiped out, masses of forest dying off, the climate going completely crazy, which means famine and drought the likes of which we've never seen before. Then comes war. Economies and governments will come apart like a house of cards. We're talking Mad Max kinda crap here. It sounds crazy but if you know ANYTHING about science at all, and you see the numbers, you have to be a brainwashed moron not to think to yourself 'holy flying diahhretic monkeys that's just not right!'

We only have 10 years left before the CO2 content is high enough to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect-- decomposing permafrost in the arctic, dying and decomposing forests, possibly even methane releasing from the ocean floor (which dwarfs every other source of fossil fuel on the planet put together), pumping more and more greenhouse gases out... and then even if we did shut down every oil burning thing we've got, we couldn't stop it.

https://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0124-11.htm

WHY the hell do people insist on acting like this might all just be a bad dream or something? Common sense people! I mean come ON!! Wake up!!

Even if it -was- a 'natural' process and if it IS 'supose' to happen, we are in BAD trouble. Okay okay the Earth is not going to implode. Life (of some form) will survive. But like George Carlin says, "The planet is fine! .......The PEOPLE are [censored]."

"Ours is not to question The Head; it is enough to revel in the ubiquitous inanity of The Head, the unwanted proximity of The Head, the unrelenting HellPresence of The Head, indeed the very UNYIELDING IRRELEVANCE of The Head!" --Revelation X


onewheeldaveGOLD Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,252 posts
Location: sheffield, United Kingdom


Posted:
But then there's 'global dimming' [see link below].

This suggests that whilst global warming has increased, it has been very much held in check by global dimming.

As dimming is caused by polution, then reducing the emmisions resonsible could bring on a worst case scenario for humanity.

Damn! sometimes you just can't do right for doing wrong smile


https://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_prog_summary.shtml

Written by: from webpage above


But perhaps the most alarming aspect of global dimming is that it may have led scientists to underestimate the true power of the greenhouse effect. They know how much extra energy is being trapped in the Earth's atmosphere by the extra carbon dioxide (CO2) we have placed there. What has been surprising is that this extra energy has so far resulted in a temperature rise of just 0.6°C.

This has led many scientists to conclude that the present-day climate is less sensitive to the effects of carbon dioxide than it was, say, during the ice age, when a similar rise in CO2 led to a temperature rise of 6°C. But it now appears the warming from greenhouse gases has been offset by a strong cooling effect from dimming - in effect two of our pollutants have been cancelling each other out. This means that the climate may in fact be more sensitive to the greenhouse effect than thought.

If so, then this is bad news, according to Dr Peter Cox, one of the world's leading climate modellers. As things stand, CO2 levels are projected to rise strongly over coming decades, whereas there are encouraging signs that particle pollution is at last being brought under control. "We're going to be in a situation, unless we act, where the cooling pollutant is dropping off while the warming pollutant is going up. That means we'll get reduced cooling and increased heating at the same time and that's a problem for us," says Cox



"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it."

--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32


Educate your self in the Hazards of Fire Breathing STAY SAFE!


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