Challenge met.

Robin, one correction,check the "posted by" at the end of the article. Dean's in the hospital; remember?

> Dean's in the hospital; remember?

Yet another consequence of global warming...

Robin,

Note, however, that we have already SEEN global temperatures higher than the "global warming" models predict, in recent (as opposed to geologically ancient) history, without any of the scary end of the world scenarios taking place. While your answer proposes some terrible things, it is all based on "what if" at the same level as an invasion by space aliens.

Further, "the environment" is going to change ANYWAY, regardless of what we say or do. We do not have the power to control the earth.

Ya know, I was well aware that Dean had just been in surgery and was in no condition to blog but for some reason that never crossed my mind. I blame sleep deprivation.

Anywho, two points with respect to Gary's response. First, as I mentioned the key is the energy present in the global atmosphere, not individual temperatures at specific times or places. The "trigger" would not necessarily be related to average global temperature for a particular year or maximum temperature in a specific region or location. The "trigger" would be something more along the lines of average temperature over a period of many years, which would cause irreversible effects such as the melting of an ice sheet, shutdown of the north atlantic oceanic conveyor, etc. Second, the specific details of the way the environment exists now are relied upon by humans. The ability of humans to live in a world with a different environmental structure is not as relevant as the vast disturbance to current living conditions and current living areas that could result from environmental change. Just as many people might be able to live in a world with ocean levels a few meters higher (or lower) than today, but those changes would cause a great amount of disturbance to many peoples' lives who live in the affected regions and to the global economy as well. Similarly, changes to local and regional climates could dramatically (and negatively) impact many peoples' lives and the global economy. For example, if a region would be rendered uninhabitable due to desertification and widespread draught or glaciation or routine flooding that would be disasterous for the people living there, even though they might be able to move somewhere else. As a thought experiment, consider rearranging the locations of rivers, lakes, ports, coastlines, deserts, forests, etc. and how that would impact the ability of people to live where they currently do. The disruption to the lives of people living around the world could easily match or exceed the disruptions caused by war, revolution, etc.

The problem as I see it is that we currently do not know enough about the global environment and climate to predict how they might react to different kinds of human activity. There can be no question that human activity is impacting the global climate and the global environment. What we want to know is whether that activity will, perhaps someday, perhaps soon, lead to potentially disasterous consequences for our own lives. It is as if we were beating on a bees' nest with a stick and we did not know whether that nest was empty or whether it contained killer bees. That would tend to call into question the rationality of beating on the bees' nest, at least until we can determine for certain that it is not filled with killer bees. The question of what the consequences of human activity on the climate and environment will be is a serious one, and one that has yet to be answered. I won't discuss now the best ways to go about determining the danger or of mitigating it, that's an equally complex question with equally complex answers, but there can be no question that the matter is of utmost seriousness.

Considering that global warming is of the "utmost seriousness," I would then suggest, Robin, that you immediately stop driving and sell your car, your microwave, stop using any electricity whatsoever, and for that matter just stop breathing altogether because it is wasting precious resources that is draining and killing our planet. Sound ridiculous? It is. Let's not go into the myriad of conspiracy theories out there concerning global warming. In the end, it really doesn't matter. Mother Nature has a natural balance, an equilibrium, that will always prevail. For every cause there is an effect. If humans are causing global warming, and if it causes all these horrible things to happen...are they really so horrible? It's only nature's way of balancing out the Earth. I can guarantee that we will not kill our planet, but rather, our planet will kill us first. And rightfully so. Tornados, storms, earthquakes, diseases, etc are nature's way of keeping the population down, etc etc. Obviously the population and our advanced technologies have bloomed past these natural ways of keeping the planet in balance. So, let's say the earth warms up, big chunks of Pole ice caps plump off into the ocean, making them rise, soaking up land, yada yada, climates change, desertification, the end of all human life. It would be as it should be. We have been overcoming the laws of nature, I assure you that the laws of nature will soon overcome us. That is the way it should be. I can accept that. I can also accept that none of this will happen in my lifetime. And if it bothers me so much (which it doesn't), then I would immediately get rid of my gas-guzzling Volkswagen, turn off my electricity, cease to have a computer and a website, have a huge oxygen-producing garden in my backyard, a compost heap, and get sterilized because, for god's sakes, we are overpopulating the planet.

But, to be honest, I am not going to do those things, and therefore, I am not going to worry about it. Because the earth has her own balance and nothing I can do will change that fact.

Robin,

Much better answer. :)

While I recognize that a rise in sea level would be very disruptive to people living along the coast, I'm not sure that that justifies destroying the economy of the Free World, which is pretty much what Kyoto calls for (not that I want to make this an arguement against Kyoto per se). Such things as a rise in sea level, or even desertification of an area are local and transient effects. They seem profound to those who live through them, but they are not significant to "the Earth Our Mother".

Note, if you will, that these two statements are contradictory....

>>"...we currently do not know enough about the global environment and climate to predict how they might react to different kinds of human activity."

>>"There can be no question that human activity is impacting the global climate and the global environment."

The second statement is wrong. There can be, and IS a question as to whether human activity is impacting the global environment.

The biggest item of concern seems to be the "rise" in CO2 levels, but in fact, we KNOW that CO2 levels were significantly higher than they are now 1000 years ago, when the could not possibly have been raised by human activity.

One or two questions that I never see answered by these environmental global warming “scientists” are: Just how in the world do you compile your data to conclude that global warming is man’s fault this time around? Or, can we please see your data? These global warming “scientists” keep their global warming data very close to their chests. They let you see what they WANT you to see. That means some of their data does not support the global warming hypothesis.

Steve Schneider, the foremost global warming scientist, famously said: “We must be careful what data we release to the public.” This pompous statement is quite remarkable coming from a scientist whose provender is taxpayer supported. If taxpayers support this research, then taxpayers should be privy to it. Instead, these global warming “scientists” treat us stupidly.

I am sorry; but I just cannot take these “scientists” seriously. If they want us to treat them seriously, then they should open up ALL their research for public scrutiny. They should open up all their research as a requirement for receiving taxpayer funding.

I also cannot understand why I do not see anybody asking basic, basic questions regarding this “science.” I understand that climatology is not weather forecasting. But for the life of me, I fail to understand that if your friendly meteorologist has trouble forecasting the weather one week in advance without using sophisticated supercomputer modeling then just how can any scientist go backward one or two millennia to measure man’s contribution to any current global warming?

Also, accurate temperature records have been kept for only the past 140 years. Of that, only for the past eighty years have systematic records been kept. Temperatures were originally recorded only in the largest American cities when such records were first kept. Only in the past fifty years or so have accurate temperature records been kept nationwide.

If temperature records are so scarce in recorded history then just what are our global warming “scientists” comparing their data to? Can you accurately predict millennial climatological trends based on accurate temperature records from the past half-century? Can you accurately compare temperatures in our largest cities where sunlight radiates off pavement superheating the air with temperatures from those same cities one hundred years ago? If you did, you just might conclude that temperatures are higher than one hundred years ago. Can you fairly compare temperatures from those same cities with those temperatures recorded on an Iowa farm? Just how do these “scientists” arrive at “trends” in climate change?

The Earth has always experienced periods of warming and cooling. They always occurred before without the assistance of man. Just how do these global warming scientists separate man’s contribution to global warming this time around?

Back in high school, I remember reading a 1976 Time magazine front-page article about the coming global cooling. The story stated that the Earth just emerged from its last global cooling cycle around 1776, two hundred years earlier. This 1976 story questioned whether we were going back into another GLOBAL COOLING cycle. I remember it quite clearly. The magazine cover featured a watercolor illustration of colonial American kids playing and frolicking in the ice and snow.

Does anyone care to name who the leading global cooling scientist was back in the late 1970’s? It was none other than the famous Steve Schneider. That’s right. In fact, he co-authored an October 1978 Science magazine article about the coming global cooling. Now, Herr Schneider is the world’s foremost global WARMING scientist! Go figure.

Common sense simply tells me that you cannot trust any science that cannot be independently confirmed by another source, especially if it is government funded. In my humble opinion, Global warming “scientists” are simply feeding at the taxpayer trough. Until these “scientists” make their entire clownish research public, nobody should take them seriously.

The question of rising ocean levels, apparently the key concern raised here in connection with the question of the present longterm global warming trend, may be less an emergency than anticipated.

The Climate Impact Group, a scientific contractor with the Office of Global Programs of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)projects global sea level rise of 2.0-8.6mm/year during this century, compared with 1.0-2.5mm/year during the 20th century. Their "best estimate" is that sea levels will rise an average of 19" throughout the century, with an expected range of 6"-37".

Although an anticipated global sea level rise of these levels will create problems for some estuarine and coastal part of the United States, such as southern Louisiana and southern Florida, these are problems are not insoluble. Nor do they justify ill-considered proposals that would upend the lives of perhaps billions of people.

Among other considerations is that automotive emissions, a key component among factors that generate so-called greenhouse gases, are expected to be greatly reduced as the advanced societies increasingly utilize fuel cell vehicles which are powered by hydrogen and which emit pure water. This is hardly a pipe-dream; fuel cell automobiles are presently being tested in the United States, Japan and various European countries. The engineering for this largescale changeover is mostly in place. Obviously, not much progress can be achieved until fuel cell refill facilities are as ubiquitous as those for gasoline are today. But the automotive and fuel distribution industries will achieve all this with little US governmental or international prodding. Because it will make sense economically.

Although I studied geology for a couple of years long ago at the University of Illinois, I have little knowledge of atmospherics. So I know no more than any other newspaper or internet reader does about the totality of factors that regulate atmospheric temperatures, glacier formation/melting or other considerations that govern seal levels. But my instinct is that what goes around also comes around, and I suspect this applies as much to the environment as it does to politics. If you live on an ocean beach, move your house upland a few feet or inland if necessary. If you live in New Orleans and like southern Louisiana, relocate to Hammond. Is your home over on the outer banks near Cape Hatteras? Don't worry; you're living on a large sandbar which will probably shift and adjust with the ocean levels. Lower Bengadesh? Regardless of ocean levels, they lose tens of thousands of people each year who drown trying to live on mud flats out in the Bay of Bengal. I call that over-population and stupidity, which I regard as conditons they have chosen to live with rather than problems they should deal with.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

>>>"Common sense simply tells me that you cannot trust any science that cannot be independently confirmed by another source, especially if it is government funded."

Thank you. You said it so well.

Anybody remember the "we are heading for another ice age created by our pollutants" scare of the '70s? Then sometime in the '80s it was "oops, we meant to say we are creating global warming".

Nobody I know ever mentions some important facts omitted by environmentalists. I learned in an undergraduate geology class in1981 that nature pollutes MORE than man does. NO environmentalist will ever tell you this. Environmentalists usually do not include in their standard presentation that hothouse gasses cause global warming, either.

Conveniently omitted from their global warming data is the most abundant hothouse gas of all: water vapor. That’s right. The most abundant hothouse gas is evaporating water! They always inform everyone about carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and all hothouse gasses produced by man; but they always omit the one caused by Mother Nature herself. I find this very informative.

In fact, water vapor accounts for 98%-99.4% of all hothouse gasses. Why does nobody ever mention this? Is it because the environmental global warming “scientists” are hiding this information? So, if you see any crazy statistics illustrating man’s contribution to global warming please ask your fellow environmentalist, “What percentage does water vapor contribute to global warming?”

See http://bizarrescience.blogspot.com

and

http://jonjayray.blogspot.com

for more skepticism about global warming.

Kevin, it was my understanding that one of the major weaknesses of current weather models is that they did not properly reflect the effect of water vapor (i.e. clouds) very well.

The problem is that these comments were regarding the fact that water vapor was one of the factors ameliorating global warming. First by reflecting solar energy away from Earth, second by "spreading out" temperature variations within a climate.

>>The problem is that these comments were regarding the fact that water vapor was one of the factors ameliorating global warming.

Learn something new every day you will be a genius the day you die. Of course, it will not do you any good by then. Thank you for the info Casey. Where did you learn this?

Sad to say I can't recall. Ever say to yourself "Damn, I wish I had bookmarked that article!"? So have I. I probably saw it on Jerry Pournelle's website somewhere.

I've studied modeling a bit as a Systems Analysis major, and the light really started to go on when I read about "little" things like not modeling water vapor correctly. For chrissake, three-quarters of the bloody globe is covered by water. Which reminds me, most major climate models also don't accurately reflect the effect (if memory serves) of high-altitude clouds in the tropics.

Also also: from what I've read: no model in existence can take year 1900 input and result in year 2000 output. Look upon that statement. Gaze upon it in awe and wonder.

Then ask yourself: if the best models we have can't accurately reflect historical results, how can we trust their projections for the next 50 or 100 years!?

Much of the motivation behind the global warming hysteria is purely political. The environazis simply hate mankind and the capitalist free market system. They want a small, docile population they can boss around and force into densely populated, impoverished little islands of humanity. One idiot praised the advantages of life in an African village because it did not yet have electricity. Others want to humble the West and transfer wealth on a massive scale to the third world. We don't deserve what we have, after all. Even if all the world embraced the Kyoto accord, it would be just a first step. The fanatics will never be satisfied.

Europeans make much of the "precautionary principle" that says we shouldn't do anything until we're certain that the action poses no risk. Well, what if drastically reducing CO2 emissions, or whatever, facilitates the resumption of the _current_ ice age. A bit of browsing (lost the link) reveals that we are about 10,000 years into an interglacial period. Interglacials typically last 10,000 to 40,000 years. The loss of some beachfront property, even the inundation of Manhattan, would be as nothing compared with the advance of glaciers a couple of miles thick over much of North America and Europe. Canada would be the stuff of legend before anybody saw that soil again. So, maybe we should step up CO2 emissions in an attempt to ward off the greater danger.

It's absurd to think we can direct the climate or stop it in its tracks. Might as well try to steer a supertanker with a teaspoon. Even if human activity has some measurable impact, we can't predict what the long-term effect of it will be. Fire, or ice, or a repeat of the Medieval Optimum?

One way or another, the climate is going to change. The sensible thing is to go about our business and cope with changes as they occur.

Merry Christmas!

One argument never addressed is man’s component of global warming to nature’s. I admit that I have not read much on the subject; I also see no reason to do much more, either. But if man’s contribution to global warming is through hothouse gasses just how much is it? Well, if you count water vapor it is between 0.6% and 2%.

Now how much will global warming decrease if you remove ALL of man’s contribution? In other words, is 0.6% really causing all the devastation the environazis say? Is 0.6% of ANYthing a large enough statistical sample to cause catastrophic global warming? I doubt it.

I saw a show on TDC over the holidays about massive volcano eruptions. You know the ones that are ten times more violent than Mt. St. Helen’s eruption in 1980. The largest volcanic eruption was the eruption of Mt. Toba in the Pacific Ocean 70,000 years ago. Mt Toba ejected enough sulfuric acid to fill the sky blocking out the much of sun’s rays for years. This caused Earth’s average temperature to drop 5 degrees Celsius causing; you guessed it an Ice Age!

I do not propose that I am an expert on environmental matters; but I think that temperatures will rise following any ice age. Does Herr Schneider calculate the disappearance of an ice age from 70,000 years hence to global warming, or do you believe he actually calculates that the entire episode was caused by volcanic activity?

If scientists do not consider any massive volcanic eruptions, then they might just have to recalculate the causes of global warming. Does anybody believe global warming scientists ever calculate the impact of volcanic eruptions on the environment? Just thought I’d ask.

Another interesting point, Kevin: apparently the pattern is (approximately) 90,000 years of ice age, 10,000 years of warmer interglacial period, etc., etc., etc....

Apparently the recent interglacial period has lasted over 10,000 years.

Things that make you go "hmmm"... :)

Folks,
I would have to agree with Dean!!


That's all for now :)

i agree with dean!
green land could b a big turisit and build lots of hotals and make money!

well i don't care about this but i agree with dean but i also think we r killing our selves. ok ya some animals r gonna die and then they all will die cuz remember the food chain. well than we don't have any meat, milk, cheese, Ice cream, no meat products and no dairy products! now we gotta surive off of fruit and veg.! o but wait some vegies will not grow in heat! so some vegies and some fruits! well there will such a demede for fruits and vegies that there won't b enother and prob most people die! but a baby and kids need milk or some kinda dairy product to grow. people will die! animals will die! and the earth will b a wasteland!

IM DOING A DEBATE ON GLOBAL WARMING AND I NEED SOME HELP ON WHAT TO SAY TO ARGUE THAT ITS NOT MANS FAULT AND THAT IS A NATURAL ACCURANCE, AND WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ABOUT IT NOW. IF YOU ALL KNOW ANY GOOD SOURCES THAT WOULD ALSO BE HELPFUL.
SEND THEM TO MY EMAIL AT CJCAIN2004@MSN.COM IF YOU DONT CARE. THANKS.