Anybody here actually believe in all this Global Warming malarky?

Jokester said:
Michael Crichton is not a scientist ;) .

Jokester
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Nope, he's a MD, and possibly one of the most respected authors on ficticious scientific subjects, including the MD trade itself, genetic engineering, nano technology among others, and his work is never lacking in decent amounts of respected research backed up by a full reference list (virtually every page of State of fear has a reference).

He is no climate expert or meterologist, but he offers a different view the the usual carp printed in The Sun and backs it up with credible data.
 
danrok said:
That's only partly correct. Global warming doesn't have to be caused by humans. Carbon dioxide and other pollutants can come from natural sources as well.
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Exactly. Then would that be a catastrophe? No it would be a natural climate shift. Without anything to reference against it is impossible to tell otherwise.
 
Moredhel said:
No it doesnt lie, but science has remained inconclusive as to weather or not it exists. In fact since 1998 the trend has been towards global cooling.

I'm more in favor of the cycles theory myself.
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Monstor information post, please read, i put a lot of effort in



I understand that too, but look around you... the earths climate does indeed move in cycles, these events such as temperature rises and ice melting and a ton of other things have happened before, your all quite right... but you forgot something... these natural cycles happened before over hundreds if not thousands of years, not in less than a centaury which is what we are experiencing now,

here are some points you probably didn’t know, and whilst you may argue that the evidence is inconclusive as to what is causing these events, you certainly cant say that its a normal "cycle"


1) Greenhouse gases are being released 30 times faster than the rate of emissions that triggered a period of extreme global warming in the Earth's past. - Professor James Zachos of the University of California

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4727528.stm

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2) September 2005 set a new record minimum in the amount of Arctic sea ice cover,"

Though there are significant variations across the region, on average the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet,

"What we're seeing is processes in which we start to lose ice cover during the summer," he said, "so areas which formerly had ice are now open water, which is dark.

"These dark areas absorb a lot of the Sun's energy, much more than the ice; and what happens then is that the oceans start to warm up, and it becomes very difficult for ice to form during the following autumn and winter.

"It looks like this is exactly what we're seeing - a positive feedback effect, a 'tipping-point'." - Mark Serreze, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) , Boulder, Colorado.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4290340.stm

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3) The Amazon Rain forest is currently having the worst drought in what was said initially to be 30 years, now they say its beaten 50 year records and the water levels are still dropping. The Amazon Tree’s are the Lungs of the World.

A state of emergency was declared in all 61 municipalities of Brazil's Amazonas state as the drought started affecting towns and cities further downstream.

"Witnesses say rivers and lakes have dried up completely, and millions of fish are rotting in the sun."

"Brazilian government meteorologists have said the drought is the result of unusually high temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean, that have also been linked to last year's devastating hurricanes."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4355994.stm

which actually links us neatly to point 2, the sea temps are increasing due to a number of factors one of which are the dark water sections that were talked about in item 2... its all linked, the problem is you need to look at it as a global thing, not just one even t here, one event there...

look up the Gaia Theory developed by professor lovelock in the 70`s, its now used by scientists all over the world, though they tend to call it, "the Earth Model"

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4th and final item, Watch Prof Lovelock, he’s predicted the events of the last 5 years for the last 30, and his reasons for wanting nuclear energy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/video/40193000/rm/_40193103_nuclear22_disko24may_vi.ram
 
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As an armchair theorist I cannot wait to see the other armchair theorists to jump in and get in a heated debate, only to be smacked down by those who know what they're talking about.

However, this issue is different to others (such as 0.9r = 1, will a plane on a treadmill fly, etc), because even the scientists disagree :)

I believe that throwing gazillions of tons of CO2 among other things into the atmosphere can't possibly be a good thing, but I also believe that a century or millenium is nothing in geological time.

So who knows....
 
Jokester said:
Global dimming (atmospheric pollutants reflecting heat back into space) is believed to have masked the effects of greenhouse gases in the west up until the past 10-15 years when catalytic converters were introduced in cars and other efforts were introduced to reduce pollution from heavy industry. Might just be a coincedence but since then we've seen repeated record high temperatures.

Jokester
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This is the most important post here.

Taking "the impact of fossil fuels as the cause of gobal warming" to be the only process in action and the only one that needs to be measured is utterly dumb, there are lots of atmospheric processes in action and they all need to be taken into account; unfortunately psuedo scientists, politicians and the press only seem to take one into account at a time.
 
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shadydelboy said:
Nope, he's a MD, and possibly one of the most respected authors on ficticious scientific subjects, including the MD trade itself, genetic engineering, nano technology among others, and his work is never lacking in decent amounts of respected research backed up by a full reference list (virtually every page of State of fear has a reference).

He is no climate expert or meterologist, but he offers a different view the the usual carp printed in The Sun and backs it up with credible data.
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He was called as an expert witness to testify to Congress on the subject and was greated widely by dismay be those in the scientific community as he was seen to be peddling half truths and only showed the small picture.

Jokester
 
Okay guys, I guess it's time I put my knowledge across, after all I do this crap for a degree.

Basically, it is just too difficult to be able to give a conclusive answer to this. We know that the Earth moves in cycles, but we don't know what kind of cycles there is. One model for the cylces is called a "stable system": if you imagine a horseshoe curve with a ball sitting in the middle of the arch (the ball representing the earth), the idea is that the ball can move around in the curve but will ultimately settle down again. Another model is the "Metastable system" this is an advancement of the stable system, whereby you have a ball in a curve, but the ball has the potential to move out of the threshold of the curve and into another curve - thus this may represent us moving into a totally new cycle / system. We don't actually know which best represents to Earth.

There are more arguments today to suggest global warming is happening, but the truth is it's mainly all scare-mongering. There are other theories, which I wont go into but are suggested to also affect global warming. The truth is, we are warming up, but 2000 years ago, we were much warmer than today and 100 years ago we had a mini-ice age (the Thames froze over). The climate is constiantly changing.

Because none of us will be alive long enough to proove any of these models or theories, scientists have to use their common sense. We cannot deny that human impact is not having an affect with all the increased particulate matter and increased greehouse gases. We can actually see where the industrial revolution began in ice cores at the poles because all trade winds ultimately end up at the poles. There are major events happening, such as floods in Australia, drought in Peru and a drought in Europe in the 1990s but these can be acredited to the El Nino / La Nina affects.

In conclusion, because I can't bothered to type anymore :p
- We can't know for sure if global warming is actually happening, but there does appear to be an immediate impact and this is rather too coincidental with the increase in human activity. I would explain more on this, but i'm too lazy :)
 
Nix - Im guessing your a Physical geographer? Im human (human geographer, not "human" :).

Anyway, My 2 cents is that as Nix already said we are going through one of these "cycles", possibly even changing to a different cycle. However, this can't happen over a week or 2 months or even 2000 years. I think that we are moving to a new cycle or stage that since the creation of the earth all those billions of years ago we havent yet gone through, or at least not to our knowledge. Thus no record of this kind of climate behaviour.

Mankind has simply aided us into thinking we're helping the climate change through pumping all this CO2 into the air. Perhaps we are? It certainly can't be any good for us to be pumping all this rubbish into the air and im sure that is making a difference in the climate. However for it to have an effect as we've seen over the past decades I personally don't believe that mankind is to blame.

P.S. If any of that sounds like rubbish then dontworry, it's 1am, im tired and I got a cold.
 
I'm more of a human geographer I guess as I prefer the issues there. We'll find out when I graduate to wether I get a BA or BSc :p

I remember reading somewhere and watching a documentary that particulate matter can bond with clouds and essentially shield us from the sun's radiation. The day after 9/11, all aircraft was grounded and the day was an extremely hot one with little cloud or aircraft vapor, and this has led some scientists to believe that we are actually much hotter than we currently realise. It's been argued that a loss of the particulate matter and greenhouse gases could actually speed up global warming because the blanket/ shield is no longer there. Infact the drought Africa expeirecned in the 90s has been blamed on the western industrialisation.

We today can't certifidley say "yes, global warming is taking place" as I explained earlier, but it is sensible to start implementing methods just incase i.e. more carbon sinks, cleaner technology (but it's best to implement this carefully) etc.
 
Its not something that bothers me. They say the world will heat up, well considering its literally frozen outside a little more heat would be nice.

I do believe what they say, but until an accurate timescale has been set i couldnt care less what is said, and i dont believe the papers etc as they always make a mountain out of a molehill, so i never know whether what they state is true.

Theirs always and intergalactic ray or some stupid disease threatining to take out this planet, if we all worried then life wouldnt be worth living.
 
Global warming - I will be dead by then so I don't care = cop out!
Cause of gobal warming and effect NOW - Asthma for 1. Would you like to breath in car fumes?

Act now, stop harming children now, stop getting fat now, give the NHS a break now!
pay less tax now, live longer!

See the pattern here?
 
weescott said:
pay less tax now, live longer!
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I bet you don't even realise you've contradicted yourself do you? :p

More people living longer = higher proportion of elderly population .: increase dependancy ratio on the working population.
This means an increase in taxes for everyone to pay for state benefits and more people on the NHS because more people are old. The consequence on this will probably be an increase in retirement age.

Basically, they'll be more people trying to get a slice of that fine cake and they'll be less cake to go around.
 
lol, that's like saying lets have a war, lots a of people will be killed but at least we won't have to pay for thier pensions!

Propostorous agruement
 
That's economics for you. We can't do anything about it though, because, well it's just not ethical. Although war is never a good thing on any economy. After WWII, Britain only recovered because of the investment America paid to the economy. Although, this was arguabley a selfish motive as they wanted to make sure communism didn't take over in Europe and they wanted to improve their own capitalist trade within Europe.
 
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