Global Warming: Fact or Fiction?

omnicorp

Is Global Warming real or is it imaginary?

A lot of people seem to think that global warming is imaginary. They say the rise in temperature is tiny and one of the reasons is the expansion of Urban areas which are hotter. They say that there is no definite evidence of the Greenhouse Effect.

Others say thay these people are in denial, that if they ignore it, it won't be real. They point to the shrinking Ice-caps in the Arctic and Antarctic, The Melting Glaciers in the Andes and around the world, the rise in Skin-Cancer and the Extreme weather conditions such as flash floods, Hurriccanes and Storms that are becoming more frequent and disastrous.

Both sides have a good point but what do you think?

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change
http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/
http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/antarc_report/
http://www.climatehotmap.org/antarctica.html
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_business?id=53946761
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/global_warming1.shtml
http://www.swp.ie/resources/Global%20warming.htm

Some recent news stories:
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/magazines/Business/html/20050108T200000-0500_72819_OBS_GLOBAL_WARMING_MORE_A_THREAT_TO_CARIBBEAN_ECONOMIES_THAN_TSUNAMIS.asp
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/07/2149253
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_business?id=53946761

carl_

I found this interesting : http://www.ecolo.org/media/articles/articles.in.english/love-indep-24-05-04.htm

Capt'n Midnight

omnicorp wrote:

Is Global Warming real or is it imaginary?

A lot of people seem to think that global warming is imaginary. They say the rise in temperature is tiny and one of the reasons is the expansion of Urban areas which are hotter. They say that there is no definite evidence of the Greenhouse Effect.

Why ask this question, just try to find any independent scientic or metrological organisation that has proof that global warming isn't happening and can't happen.

Otherwise you have to accept that even if it may not be happening now it's only a matter of time.

PS. I'm tired of your threads that say something like "both sides have a good point" when YOU don't say what YOU think.

omnicorp

Well, I have to be on one side.

Anyway, this is what everyopne thinks not some scientist

Capt'n Midnight

omnicorp wrote:

Well, I have to be on one side.

Anyway, this is what everyopne thinks not some scientist

pffff...
you don't have to be on one side or the other but if you are proposing a topic for discussion you should give reasons why you support/oppose a side or your opinion on the debate etc.

Regardless of who is right or wrong, what people think will have no impact on the process, what they do might.
50 years ago continental drift was a crazy theory, virtually no one believed it. Yet despite peoples opinions it happens the simplist proof is that GPS allows the rate to be measured (Atlantic widening at 2cm per year IIRC)

You could argue about the impact peoples disbelief would have, or mention things like creationism and materialism..

BTW: if it ever rains in the Dry Valleys in Antartica then that would be proof for me. That 100 mile long iceberg is due to hit soon isn't it ?

vibe666

everyone should be more worried about global dimming than global warming. didn't anyone see the horizon thing on BBC2?

for anyone scratching their heads wondering what I'm talking about: http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1108853,00.html

remeber, google is your friend!

bizmark

Whats global dimming when its at home? (apart from a lack of light)

vibe666

ah, too slow on the edit. sorry. there's a link there now Biz.

oh, and one here too!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1108853,00.html (Same as above).

bizmark

Ta vibe

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

vibe666

daveirl wrote:

This post has been deleted.

if you read bill bryson's a short history of nearly everything you'll realise how insignificant we are in the big scheme of things.

the earth was around for billions of years before we were even sitting around in pools of slime wondering what it would be like to be made of more than one cell, and it'll be here for a long time after there's not even dust left of us.

that said, it doesn't mean we shouldn't keep the house tidy while we're here. it's just good manners.

bonkey

vibe666 wrote:

if you read bill bryson's a short history of nearly everything you'll realise how insignificant we are in the big scheme of things.

It depends what you mean by insignificant. If you mean we're unable to have a significant impact on the climate and on life as we know it today, you're almost certainly totally incorrect.

If you mean insignificant in the sense that mankind (esp. civilisation) has been around for a tiny fraction of the time the planet has been, that there have been mass extinctions in the past and in the future, and when all is said and done, life will continue (with or without us) no matter what we do...then sure...we're almost definitely insignificant.

the earth was around for billions of years before we were even sitting around in pools of slime wondering what it would be like to be made of more than one cell, and it'll be here for a long time after there's not even dust left of us.

Yes it will. However, the general concern about global warming is not that it will destroy the planet, but rather that it will destroy us.

that said, it doesn't mean we shouldn't keep the house tidy while we're here. it's just good manners.

It may also keep us from being kicked out quite so soon, which would also be nice

jc

omnicorp

how much CO2 do Humans actually produce?
And is there any proof that this is the cause

Capt'n Midnight

omnicorp wrote:

how much CO2 do Humans actually produce?
And is there any proof that this is the cause

Well let's see
we've destroyed over half of the worlds forests - in this country it's more like 90%
most of the fossil fuel took 100,000,000's of years to be made and we've gone through a large % of it already.
find a link that shows anyone disputing the increase of the level of CO2 in the air !!!

Hint: google for dimethy sulphoxide - acid rain caused by marine algae
I'm sure you could find another organism responsible for climate change

Runaway overheating.
as the climate warms and the trees get cut down , areas aroung the amazon rain forrest won't transpire enought water to create thier own rain - result they get drier, result the forest fires happen more often - result less vegetation so less transpiration until you have savanah - result more fires more CO2 and more warming. then when the oceans have warmed a few degrees the methane hydrates decompose and we get a massive release of methane into the atmosphere and the temperateure goes up another 8 degrees in a fairly short time

Global dimming - when Gaia was proposed people pointed out that the planet was self regulationg temperature with cloud cover alone. hotter climate, more evparporation - more clouds , less sun and so the rise in temperature is tempered.

CerebralCortex

This seems to me to be an extremely frustrating topic no matter where I go for definitive info there are so many conflicting views. In my opinion we should really look at what is happening and its future effects and not be so concerned with why it is happening although we should be interested at the same time in the why.

omnicorp

if we find out why then we can try and stop it

CerebralCortex

omnicorp wrote:

if we find out why then we can try and stop it

But am I mistaken in saying that it has gone beyond stopping at this stage?!?!?!?!
So confused, so confused.

omnicorp

according to some, yes.

bonkey

CerebralCortex wrote:

This seems to me to be an extremely frustrating topic no matter where I go for definitive info there are so many conflicting views.

In the absence of a proven, 100% accurate climate-prediction model, coupled with sufficient information about how everything which effects that model in the future, its simply impossible to get definitive information.

We've nothing near that, so clearly the accuracy of what we can predict is far less.

Maybe I've only been reading one side of the argument, but from what I can see, there is little - if any - credible opposition to the fact that global warming is occurring. How much of an influence we are having on that is questionable, but regardless of how little surely the fact still remains that if we can offset a coming disaster even a little bit it will be to our advantage. So the real question is just how bad this global warming is.

Here, there is a lack of consenses. There are figures quoted from 1-2 degrees over the next hundred years, to Day-After-Tomorrow / The Coming Global Superstorm massive system-shifts. You will find more and more models are tending to "clump" around certain numbers (10-11 degrees is one, IIRC), but the projected impacts from these still differ significantly.

In my opinion we should really look at what is happening and its future effects and not be so concerned with why it is happening although we should be interested at the same time in the why.

You cannot figure the future of a system without understanding how the system works. THis involves finding out what influnces it...which is the why you're saying we shouldn't be so concerned about.

And what, exactly, do you think climatologists are doing, if not trying to better their models of how it all works?

jc

solas

thought I read a couple of years ago that the rate of destruction of the ozone layer was slowing and was beginning to repair itself.

Peter Lavelle
ABC Science Online

Friday, 1 August 2003
Ozone hole over Antarctica
The ozone hole over Antarctica, an annual occurrence during southern spring, may soon cease developing (NASA)
The rate of ozone destruction in the upper atmosphere is slowing, suggesting for the first time the global ban on the production and release of damaging industrial gases is having an effect.
A team led by Professor Michael Newchurch, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, USA, analysed measurements of atmospheric ozone and greenhouse gases taken from three NASA satellites and three international ground stations.

They found that ozone depletion in the upper stratosphere - the layer of the atmosphere between 35 and 45 km above the ground - has been slowing since 1997. Their results are to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres."

Capt'n Midnight

When you fall from high up, after a while your rate of acceleration slows down. This doesn't mean you are falling more slowly.
This doesn't mean you aren't still falling.
At terminal velocity, you are reducing the distance to the ground as fast as possible.

So the fact that the rate of ozone depletion is slowing down is not a cause for celebration, it just means we've reached terminal velocity and we don't know where the ground is.

Until they say the level of ozone is increasing, the hole will still be there.

solas

Y'know this thread prompted me to read up on the issues again, it was about two years ago they had a news segment claiming the hole was repairing itself..I forgot the details.

Earth's ozone layer begins repairing itself
Peter Lavelle
ABC Science Online
Friday, 1 August 2003
The rate of ozone destruction in the upper atmosphere is slowing, suggesting for the first time the global ban on the production and release of damaging industrial gases is having an effect.

http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s914411.htm

But on the topic at hand, yes global warming is real, altho it does and has occurred naturally in the past, there is great evidence to suggest that our industrialisation has had a quickening effect on the process by damaging the o-zone layer, now we have realised the problem we have begun to address it and while I think there is more to do, there is concrete evidence that removing the problem factors (industrial gases) has had a postive effect and stabilizing the damage done to the ozone.

omnicorp

I am amazed at the people who continue to pollute the envireoment because it will "harm the economy" (ie, make them "poorer") if they go green.
There will be NO economy if we continue polluting.

CerebralCortex

Happy Kyoto treaty day

omnicorp

hey hey, let's ignore the pessimists who saY it won't work, as they "coincidentally" seem to be from the oil industry.
Damn USA