good to see this discussion on this site...it is something i think about often...the key for our success as a nation will be to come up with alternative energy...that will eliminate our dependence on the middle east...saving lives...and letting those currupt govenrments sink into the sands...it will also benefit our planet whether we are beyond the tipping point or not...it will also be our only chance to rival the incredible emergence of china in the years to come...our best chance to remain a so called superpower lies in energy...our best resource is our pooled intelligence in coming up with new technology that fuels us into the future...if a politician, whether from the donkey club or the elephant gang, presents this as the most pressing issue facing us as a nation now and into the future then that person wins...and so do we...it amazes me that no one i hear in the public arena presents this as vital...it makes sense whether one is a environmentalist or a hawk...hopefully iraq makes this issue more tangible to the friggin' politicians that keep their heads in the sand...

the politicians are being paid to keep their heads in the sand.

We are not alone..
 

Seems that the Martian ice caps are melting, too.
http://www.climateark.org/articles/2...h/stsumars.htm
We humans tend to think that everything happens because of us. Sometimes it just happens. We are still coming out of the last ice-age. Before that event, where did dinosaurs walk?

I think they tracked mud across my living room.

But seriously, recent climate change is taking place much more rapidly than those past events. The dinosaurs ruled the earth for more than 100 million years, ice ages take thousands to recede. I'd rather take the word of multitudes of scientists who study this thing for a living. But, neither I nor anyone else will be able to convince those who choose not to believe. Perhaps much of it is from "natural" causes, and all those scientists are wrong. Perhaps a few politicians who make their money from the oil industry are right.
Perhaps you have a chance of being saved in a car crash by not wearing your seat belt. I'd rather err on the side of safety.

Well, it's pretty scary how political manipulation drives peoples perceptions.

Idiology trumps objectivity all too often.

-spence

It's called Hubris.

Connecticut
But that was 65Million years ago..

Word Police!
 

Anthropomorphic means ascribing human traits or qualities to something non-human. I don't think it ever means man-made or caused by humans.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science....ap/index.html

Evidently scientists do occasionally disagree. Sea level rise by 2100 - is it 5 inches or 5 feet, someone must be right, right?

Maybe neither? Maybe . . . no one knows.

Right, anthropomorphic is like Disney's portrayal of animals with human thoughts and emotion in Bambi. Anthropogenic means man-made. My mistake.

Whoops, that wasn't Vogt's mistake. He was logged on on my computer (student of mine). Just shows ya what happens when you spend work time on fishing message boards. Matter of fact, that's one of the nicer things about work.

If this is global warming....I am going to help speed up the process by purchasing 12 aerosol cans and firing off at once! lol

Dream of California...weather!

Those aerosols were a concern with the ozone layer, not global warming. Turn up your furnace instead.

Got a question,
if we are pumping oil out of the ground,
and water seeps through the ground,
will it not eventually fill the void left by the oil pumped away?

also, are all of the dams, swimming pools, reservoirs and any other
water stopping structure taken into account when sea level rise is calculated?

If I am out of line just do this - :smash:

97% of the water on earth is in the ocean (http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/waterdistribution.html), so that's all that matters. Surface fresh water is inconsequential.

You're not out of line.

The volume of the ocean is 1,338,000,000 cubic kilometers. Some people think the relationship between water and CO2 play a large role in the temperature of the earth. As the temperature of the oceans rise, the water can hold less dissolved CO2, so excess is released into the atmosphere. The vapor pressure of the water also increases with temperature, so more moisture is released into the atmosphere. Both of these are 'greenhouse gasses' and may cause the temperature of the earth to increase, which leads to more CO2 and water being released from the ocean, which leads to higher temeratures, and on, and on. Some think this may help explain the highly cyclical nature of the earth's temperature over the millenia.

If you watch the news, what's written above is all a bunch of crap. People cause climate change and the last ice age couldn't have possibly happened since no one was around to drive SUVs and ruin the environment.

Ozone layer? That was sooo 1990's hysteria. Get with the times.

report linking global warming to humans
 

Humans might not be causing global warming
 

Link doesn't work

Clearly humans "contribute" to global warming; however, this does not mean that human activity is 100% the cause of global warming. The question is what, if anything, can we do about it?

I think of it this way, if you are ill and the doctor says that 90% of your illness is genetic and you can't do anything about it (example: heart disease) but 10% of your illness is due to factors you can control (diet, losing weight, exersize, stop smoking), you would STILL change the things you can control!

I think the argument over what the causes are, and what proportion of global warming these causes are responsible for is less important than doing what we can to reduce human contribution. I've made a commitment to reduce my fuel burning by at least 20% this year. More is needed of course. But let's not debate what the major cause is, and just do what we can to reduce greenhouse gases. The rest is up to nature.

Humans might not be causing global warming - 2nd try
 

Let me try this again....

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/cause.htm

junkscience
 

After jdubya’s re-post of the junkscience.com site, I thought I’d have a look and see just what they have to say. Quite frankly, after reading the webpage several times, I’m still not exactly sure what point they are trying to make. The best I can do is that their thesis runs something along the lines of….”The earth is warming, carbon dioxide (greenhouse gases) play a role, man’s production of greenhouses gases have contributed, but only a little bit, and that’s all in the past anyway and we can do no more damage, plus global warming is a good thing.”

The following quotes (italics) are taken directly from the site:

1) Is the earth warming? Junkscience.com says yes.

“So, just about everyone can agree there has been some warming, at least recently.”
“Regarding contemporary global mean temperature change, is it plausible, even likely, there has been a change of around a half-degree Centigrade since the Industrial Revolution? The short answer is "Yes". The long answer is "Yes, certainly.”

2) Do we believe in the metrics being used? Junkscience says we can’t agree on mean temperature, but then cites mean temperature in their argument.

“Of surprise to most people is that we don't even have an agreement on what we mean by absolute mean surface temperature. In addition to this lack of standardization is that there is a general paucity of data.”
“…we have no reason to believe Earth's mean temperature is not changing, or that it does not do so continuously -- frankly, temperature stasis is a myth.”

3) Is human activity responsible, at least in part, for the current warming of the earth? Junksciece again says yes.

“Does increasing carbon dioxide affect Earth's mean temperature? Yes,”
“…human emission of carbon dioxide has likely had some measurable effect”

4) After spending substantial energy to minimize the role of carbon dioxide as a contributor the global warming (citing solar irradiation and other factors), they attempt to placate us by assuring everyone that the effect of CO2 has run it’s course (you’ll just have to read the article to get their argument).

“This strongly suggests that measurable global mean temperature increment from increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide has almost run its course.”
“Before long carbon dioxide emission will have exactly no discernable effect on global temperature.”

5) Now here is the coup de grace. Junkscience, after trying to convince us that there is no evidence that the earth is warming beyond what we might expect naturally, they then wish to convince us that a warmer earth is a good thing! They do this in part by saying a cooling earth would even be worse! Who said anything about cooling or that cooling is in anyway an alternative? Several thoughts occur to me concerning the negatives of a warming earth including rising sea levels, decreased salinity of our oceans, dramatic climate changes, etc. are never mentioned. This simply strikes me as the height of disingenuous gobbledygook.

“Do we believe a warmer world would be worse than a cooler world? No, quite the reverse since a cooler world would make feeding the current population significantly more difficult, far more so the anticipated increasing population of the next generation or so. If there is to be a change in global mean temperature then warmer is distinctly preferable to cooler.”


One parting comment. Whenever I see someone use ad hominem in their arguments, it is clear to me that they wish to bolster a weaker argument by belittling their opponents rather than their opponents’ arguments. Here are three:

“Mike "Hockey Stick" Mann”
“Ozone Al”
And reserved for those who don’t buy into junkscience’s thesis: “a bunch of blind Patagonian Sheep”

Judge for yourself.

I still think that global warming pails in comparison to other threats to the Earth.

Rogue asteroids, super volcanoes (Yellowstone National Park) and
wackos with nukes.

:eyes:

Don't forget psycho squirrels that try to run human drivers off the road.

You mean these guys:

SPAWN and

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g1...shht/spawn.jpg


PSYCHO

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g1...hht/psycho.jpg

Yeah, those are the ones.

Someone's been watching too much discovery channel :D:jump: