Global Warming

[ThisYouWillDo]

I know I tend to go off at irrelevant tangents in these discussions, but I do wonder just how many subscribers to the Ptolemaic theory of the solar system visit this site, and if they are also members of the Flat Earth Society.

Global warming is as certain a fact as natural evolution is (well, if I'm going to be controversial, why stop at global warming?). Actually, global warming isn't controversial: all the major and respectable scientific academies and institutions agree. It's controversial to deny it - just like denying the holocaust. This summer, the Arctic ice cap was the smallest it's ever been since records began, and the North West Passage was open for the first time; Greenland will soon be able to live up to its name; and Antarctica is sloughing off icebergs as large as countries. All that melted water has to go somewhere, and consequently, Tuvalu faces total submersion as the sea levels rise, despite the fact that that poor nation produces virtually no pollution at all - less than the pollution produced by a small American town.

I also understand that Indonesia is one of the places suffering already from rising sea levels. And so far as land falling into the sea is concerned, land erosion is speeded up by rising sea levels and harsher weather conditions. Weather conditions are changing noticeably – or maybe you hadn’t noticed? Look at Bangladesh, then. That might not be due to global warming, but, hey, who are you fooling if you say it isn’t?

Earth is now 9 degrees warmer than it was in the depths of the last ice age, and in 100 years time, it's expected to be us much as 6 degrees warmer still. Unless, of course, someone has evidence to prove those projections wrong. Ther is a long-term trend towards higher temperatures. I don't know whose fault that is: Nature's or mankind's, but it is within our power to influence it.

We must all wake up and smell the coffee ...yuck - it's tainted with salt water! I do detect an "I'm OK, so the rest of the world can f*** itself attitude emanating from the west.” Fortunately, it’s the poorer and least influential countries that will suffer the most, so why worry? Certainly not politicians. (By west, I am don’t mean USA alone, although USA is probably the most blatant, I mean ALL developed countries.). We have a duty to ourselves, and to the whole world to minimise the adverse consequences of global warming – and to take advantage of any beneficial windfalls – maybe English wine will replace Californian. But burying our heads in the sand isn’t a viable option.

We can't shoot the sea as it breaks into our homes and washes away our property and drowns our loved ones, can we? So what are we waiting for? Why aren’t we “shooting” the intruder now before it gets us, by taking serious steps to mitigate the potential damage? We all have an inalienable right to keep our feet dry, and God help the bastards who try to take it away from us!

[Thorne]

Greenland will soon be able to live up to its name;
Earth is now 9 degrees warmer than it was in the depths of the last ice age, and in 100 years time, it's expected to be us much as 6 degrees warmer still. Unless, of course, someone has evidence to prove those projections wrong.

Just remember, Greenland was named so about 1000 years ago, when it was green. Was humanity responsible for that bit of warming?

It would be hard to understand if the world today were NOT somewhat warmer than it was in the depths of the last ice age. That's why we're not in an ice age now, isn't it? And projections for future temperature increases are just that: projections. They are based on statistical models and the models are constantly changing, being refined, as our data collection improves. The problem is that the ways we collect that data are so much improved within the last 20 - 30 years, with the advent of satellite weather monitoring, that much of the data we are trying to compare it to from prior times is unreliable. How can we know what kind of evolution the Greenland ice sheets have undergone in the last 10,000 years or so? Sure, there's ice core sampling, but that's like looking at an elephant through a microscope and trying to decipher its shape with only a handful of views. Possible? Perhaps, but it's unlikely you'll get it exactly right.

As you noted, it would be foolish in the extreme to deny the existence of global warming, just as it would be foolish to deny that the earth is round. The big question is how much of that warming is caused by man's actions? If it's a lot, then yes, we should be able to have a large impact by reducing our carbon footprint. If it's only a little, than any attempt we make to mitigate it will also be quite minor.