So, the world isn't cooling after all...

[War&Politics]

Interesting article on Yahoo about a study that seems to refute the whole "global cooling" thing that has been doing the rounds lately...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/...global_cooling

[Gaidin]

I am...SHOCKED..../sarcasm

[Sulfurion Blackfyre]

I'm confused, weren't we actually supposed to be in a Global Warming (oh! the apocalypse) or something? What now we're heading to the the Cold Age? What's next the Wind Age or Earth Age or something?

[S.L.I.G]

So people looking at statistics passes as good Science now? No. Global cooling has been based off good Science, and even those who believe in man made global warming support it- saying it as a natural process that lessons, but does not erase, our effects on climate change.

Next.

[total relism]

i dont know a whole lot about this subject but ill put in my thought because im bored


im not saying the earth isn't warming i dont know, but if it is i dont think it is caused by humans.
The sun has much more to do with the temperature than anything we can do. One volcano gave off more carbon than man has throughout all history. we only give off 3% of all carbon compared to nature.
Ive herd the graphs actually show that as the temperature rises than the carbon rises not the other way around.
The ocean has allot of carbon locked in it and as the tepature rises the oceans warm and release allot of carbon in the atmosphere.
Ive also herd sun spots and recent sun activity is the cause of the worming.
I here so many contradictory things i here its cooling the ice is advancing we set more all time cold records than hot etc.
by the way in that article when they say warmest ten year period ever that only goes back about 150 years.
Its hard to know whats true i dont look into this stuff that much.
I have herd many bad things about how scientist are treated that dont believe in man made global worming one professor gave a speech in Austria against global warming and was chased out into his car and followed. ITs definitely a emotional subject for some.
You also have to think about reasons some would be for it or against it. Many environmentalist will be behind it no matter what.
Alot of people see humans as the enemy and want to let nature live in harmony. But forget we are part of nature.
They put animals before humans.
Back on the first earth day 1971 i think it was. the leading scientist on climate change
made predictions about earth if we did not stop our carbon emissions or greatly reduce them by the year 2000. One harvard professor said the earth would be 11 degrees cooler because pollution would block out the sun.
Another said life would be 80% destroyed and the remaining life would only be only alive in north America and northern Europe. I forget the others but they were all doomsday scenarios.
we have obviously increases our emission and these obviously did not happen. Al gores movie has many flaws he used the scare tactic as well. meanwhile when he was challenged to debate by a scientist he refused.
In the 80s they told everyone we were heading for a ice age
there will always be some big fear of nature to scare the public today its global warming who knows what it will be in 30 years
In the end im not that worried i think it would be better for a warmer earth better farming longer farming.
many test have been done in labs with farming different plants with higher carbon the results are amazing

[Maverick]

Our entire existence doesn't do anything next to a volcanic eruption. Don't give me crap about climate change being even remotely effected by mankind.

What's the argument against clean water, clean air, less waste and the preservation of natural beauty and biodiversity?

[Andurath]

What's the argument against clean water, clean air, less waste and the preservation of natural beauty and biodiversity?

I agree totally with this. I don't know if the world is warming or cooling but my air and water could sure use improvement, not to mention I am not looking forward to what would happen if our equatorial forests were to dissapear and the space shot from earth look like a mud wrestling pit.

[♔Jean-Luc Picard♔]

Our entire existence doesn't do anything next to a volcanic eruption. Don't give me crap about climate change being even remotely effected by mankind.

[Yosemite]

Our entire existence doesn't do anything next to a volcanic eruption. Don't give me crap about climate change being even remotely effected by mankind.

are you sure about that

you should back this up

[roy34543]

And one of the most important arguments, Dropping geopolitical ties to corrupt countries that have oil.
(mind you, we have the cleanest air and the least waste in decades)

[Manco]

Anyone who believes 6 billion humans and all the industry won't have an effect on the climate is severely deluded.

[Dr. Croccer]

Anyone who believes 6 billion humans and all the industry won't have an effect on the climate is severely deluded.

Seconded. There are some scientists who think that the Industrial Age contributed a lot to climate change.

[Andurath]

While politicians will use any excuse to pander to those they think it important to pander to for whatever reasons, and the developing nations will think that they are being held back becaue they cant develop thier countries the same wasteful way the rest of the world has been developing, it is just imo wise to try and further our technological and economic development in a way that has lower impact.

This makes sence from a geo-economic standpoint:

As the economies of the world become less and less Siloed and exclusive ;interaction will make for a more normalized economic scale eventually. Cheaper cleaner energy will make it more possible for economies of every background to develop on the same playing field.

This makes sence from the standpoint of development:

Case in point is China that is already encountering water shortages due to development, sustainable ways of development must be found or many developing countires will hit a resource wall where try as they might they will not be able to develop by any means. Many countries (most notably in Africa) are already faced with this issue.

This makes sence from the standpoint of the future:

It may be true that there is no way we can polute the world enough to kill ourselves with pollution, however there are many other resources that are certainly being impacted, world fisheries , the tropical zone to name only two. We stand to lose many resources at the current rate of development that no-one can cleary forsee the impact of.

So while I do not support any kind of political agenda to the 'global warming ' or 'global cooling' theories. I think it makes good sence for us to create sustainable ways to power our cities and maintain our populations in healthy environments that have the lowest impact possible, and employ sensible methods of conservation, This I say although I have never been a strict environmentalist.

[boofhead]

So while I do not support any kind of political agenda to the 'global warming ' or 'global cooling' theories. I think it makes good sence for us to create sustainable ways to power our cities and maintain our populations in healthy environments that have the lowest impact possible, and employ sensible methods of conservation, This I say although I have never been a strict environmentalist.

I agree. That's why we take 250,000 immigrants a year. Because global warming tells us to take some care.

[Timoleon of Korinthos]

Earth's climate is altered periodically due to a phenomenom called Milankovitch cycles. Essentially Milankovitch cycles describe changes in the shape of Earth's orbit around the sun and axial tilt and rotation. These effects all occur with differing periodicities which can be overlayed and used to reliably perdict how the Earth's climate will change. Milankovitch cycling predicts that the Earth's climate should currently be cooling, but we are warming. This is the standard argument for the existence of climate change.

There is general scientific consensus that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising, but the real problem is to link those increases with changes in temperature. It is very hard to make a conclusive link between the two.

The real worry is what will happen if temperature continues to rise. About 14% of the worlds CO2 is locked up in tundra permafrost in addition to huge oceanic frozen methane hydrate stocks. CH4 is much worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas because of its ability to capture four times as much solar energy. So, if atmospheric CO2 and temperature are causally linked, what has climatologists scared to death is the point at which you lose the linear relationship between CO2 and temperature and move into a situation, where this process self-accelerates itself once the ices melt and all these CO2 and CH4 stocks are released into the atmoshpere. And it should be noted than once a carbon dioxide molecule is released into the atmosphere, it stays there for a hundred years or so on the average, before being used in photosynthesis by the plants. I don't know what happens to CH4, but I have never heard of anything that absorbs it.

Now, can we make a guess at when that might occur? At the retreat of the last Pleistocene glaciers and moving into the present Holocene interglacial, average temperatures were significantly higher than they are currently, although CO2 was lower, and the permafrost was still stable. This means we are not at that critical stage yet and might not actually get there. The question is, do we want to take that risk?

[Tankbuster]

Anyone who believes 6 billion humans and all the industry won't have an effect on the climate is severely deluded.

This should have summed up the thread, but of course, someone is bound to start repeating the same old myths that have been bouncing across the right-wing's empty brain chambers for the last several decades:

Our entire existence doesn't do anything next to a volcanic eruption. Don't give me crap about climate change being even remotely effected by mankind.

Our entire existence actually does do something compared to a volcanic eruption, whether you look at our impact on various ecosystems, water pollution, changes in biodiversity, etcetera.
But of course, you were talking about CO₂ and other greenhouse gas emissions. Well in that case, your example just becomes embarrassing. Do volcanoes emit more greenhouse gases than humans?
Not even close.
Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1992). (This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts.
Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 22 billion tonnes per year (24 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 1998) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2.].
Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of nearly 17,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 13.2 million tonnes/year)!

I don't know where this stupid idea comes from, but it still bounces around.

There is general scientific consensus that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising, but the real problem is to link those increases with changes in temperature. It is very hard to make a conclusive link between the two.

Yet most of our current models are not even close to accounting for the bulk of current temperature change. About 60% of current global warming is to be attributed to CO₂ according to our current estimates.
The case for man-made global warming is quite sound.

The question is, do we want to take that risk?

That's indeed what the questions comes down to.
And it's a no-brainer; we only have one planet to run the experiment on.

[Timoleon of Korinthos]

Yet most of our current models are not even close to accounting for the bulk of current temperature change. About 60% of current global warming is to be attributed to CO2 according to our current estimates.
The case for man-made global warming is quite sound.

I also firmly believe in this, but, to play the devil's advocate, current models are not reliable and perhaps they will never be due to the complexity of modelling a polyparametrical, non-linear phenomenon as is the curve of temperature-time.

Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1992). (This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts.
Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 22 billion tonnes per year (24 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 1998) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2.].
Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of nearly 17,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 13.2 million tonnes/year)!

I don't know where this stupid idea comes from, but it still bounces around.

Just for the record, Greece alone, which amounts to a mere 10 million people, total annual consumption of electricity 55000 GWh, and a fuel mix of 60% lignite, 12% RES, 20% natural gas and 8% Diesel oil, emits roughly:
82,452,997 tonnes of CO2
327,601 tonnes of SO2
132,502 tonnes of NOx
and 53,798 tonnes of PM10 per year

Imagine that Germany has almost 10 times as much of the established electrical power of Greece (Grecce: 13,000 MW Germany: 120,000 MW) and that China adds to their grid 14,000MW every year, Chinese add more than one Greece every year! Thankfully, both Germany and China are pioneers in RES, I think Germany for example has installed 20,000 MW of solar pannels, so their fuel mix is much more environmentally friendly than the Greek one, but stil their size makes a vast difference.
And note that all these figures reflect only a glimpse of the problem, because they do not take into consideration the energy consumption and subsequently the emissions in the sector of transport of goods and people: meaning cars, buses, trucks, trains, ships which by the way still haven't been subjected to any control, and airplanes.

[Tankbuster]

I also firmly believe in this, but, to play the devil's advocate, current models are not reliable and perhaps they will never be due to the complexity of modelling a polyparametrical, non-linear phenomenon as is the curve of temperature-time.

Well 'not reliable' is quite a hard judgement. It's not a perfect prediction or even approximation of future events of course; no model is. But that's not to say that they can simply be discarded as unuseful.
These models have been programmed and mapped according to a vast number of temperature-time data measurements, and while they are far from perfect it would be silly to claim that their results don't give us a rough image of what is happening.

The main difficulty with these models has to do with the feedback effects (positive and negative). Extra CO₂ might melt the poles, shutting down the Gulf Stream and actually making the Northern Hemisphere colder. But because there is a different atmosphere, we might get plants of a darker colder, which will absorb more sunlight, making the planet warmer again. But then again if those poles melt then we lose a large area of sunlight reflection so that will also make the planet warmer...
As you can see these are all kinds of secondary effects that need to be taken into account, and we don't have the necessary data to map all these phenomena to their precise contribution to current warming. However we do have some idea to what extent these are major contributors; and they are not. The albedo effect and the rest of these feedback mechanisms are largely secondary effects and will not be able to change the course of climate change, only temper it.
Regardless, these mechanisms are already incalculated into present climatographic models; not perfectly modelled and tweaked, but we're getting there. The results we've been getting from perfecting these models, however, has remained largely the same: we still need to attribute a substantial part of temperature increase (55%-70%) to man-made emissions.

So as much as I appreciate devil's advocates, in this case it amounts to crossing your fingers and hoping that various sorts of feedback effects will somehow even out our meddling with nature. And that the models will eventually agree with that kind of wishful thinking.
I sincerely doubt it.

And note that all these figures reflect only a glimpse of the problem, because they do not take into consideration the energy consumption and subsequently the emissions in the sector of transport of goods and people: meaning cars, buses, trucks, trains, ships which by the way still haven't been subjected to any control, and airplanes.

Yup. Sad.

[Phier]

Well 'not reliable' is quite a hard judgement. It's not a perfect prediction or even approximation of future events of course; no model is. But that's not to say that they can simply be discarded as unuseful.

Tell me which of these models can be plugged into past situations and give us the current? Or explain things like the Climate Optimum or the Little Climate Optimum?

I'd say they are woefully non-predictive currently. Its quite possible to claim this without any bias in the anthropomorphic global warming debate.

[Lysimachus]

There are some scientists who think that the Industrial Age contributed a lot to climate change.

What's there to think about? It did, and since the XIX. Century's methods of energy production were more primitive than ours now they burned fuel relentlessly and it's finally having an effect.