George Carlin is not the say all authority on Global Warming, either.
Just like to put straight a few misconceptions rife here:
1/ Global warming doesn’t mean everywhere will get warmer. Global warming changes the weather systems. Consequently some places may get colder.
2/ Global warming will not ‘destroy the planet’ The Earth will go on and life happily with it. Climate change is nothing to it. We humans, however, may find the process to be a whole lot less agreeable. It’s therefore in our interests not to let it change in such a rapid manner.
3/ Aerosol hairspray has nothing to do with global warming.
4/ In evolutionary terms humans are no worse that any other species when it comes to being selfish. We just work to a larger scale.
5/ Weather is not the same as climate.
Duffer, i don’t think you really understand global warming. So the earth has been here for 6 billion years. What of it? Just because the world is old doesn’t mean that any changes in conditions will necessarily take a long time. One of the things that makes scientists think that humans are responsible for much of the current warming of the climate is that this warming is very rapid (compared to previous changes in climate) and is accompanied by a very rapid rise in greenhouse gases like CO2 due to human emissions. Both these are facts.
Now of course correlation doesn’t equal causation. But we know that the greenhouse effect is real (otherwise the earth would be a lot colder). So we’re left with two possibilities:
1 - Something stops the greenhouse effect from warming the planet above a certain level. Some other mechanism is causing the planet to warm. The fact that CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rising at the same time is a coincidence.
2 - The rise in CO2 levels is causing the increase in temperature.
Either could be true. However the evidence is that it is overwhelmingly likely that conclusion 2 is the correct one.
As others have pointed out, this doesn’t mean the end of the world, or even the end of humans. It will just have a massive impact on us and the enviroment.
Another theory is that the warming comes from increased solar spot activity and the increased CO2 in the atmosphere is because CO2 doesn’t dissolve well in the warmer oceans. So, according to this theory, the CO2 is correlated to the warming but not causing it.
Sorry, duffer. Don’t mean to confuse you with facts.
I can’t comprehend what it must be like ot think in such a fuzzyheaded fashion, in which the fact that you’re adopting two kids gives credence to your belief that humans can’t cause unpleasant climate changes. All I can tell is that your modus operandi seems to be:
- Throw out completely absurd shit
- Backpedal and attack simultaneously when called on it
- Issue a completely insincere apology while feeling very sorry for yourself and all persecuted.
Hey, whatever gets your rocks off, dude.
Daniel
This is a gross oversimplification of the processes and effort involved, but just to give you an idea:
Past temperatures can be reconstructed, with varying degrees of accuracy, through different kinds of proxy data (indirect temperature indicators). For example, sea surface temperatures can be reconstructed by looking at the oxygen isotope ratios (O[sup]18[/sup]/O[sup]16[/sup]) captured in the shells of of tiny creatures called planktonic foraminifera, which spend pretty much their entire life cycles in the upper 50 m of the ocean. With a correction for salinity conditions, the oxygen isotope ratio reflects the degree of chemical fractionation between the isotopes that is due to temperature change. Trends of temperature change through time in the ocean can be reconstructed through the analysis and correlation of sediment cores taken from many places on the ocean floor. (Indeed, gathering such data has been a major focus of the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP); its predecessor, the Deep Sea Drilling Program (DSDP); and its successor, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP).)
With the reams of data collected, it’s possible to essentially make maps of sea surface temperatures for a given time slice. These maps can then in turn be made into boundary conditions for use in computer global climate models (GCMs). These models incorporate other data as well (such as reconstructed data on vegetation types and distribution) to calculate, among other things, global average air surface temperatures. Regional temperature trends are still best determined “directly” from proxy data, but the GCMs are a sophisticated tool for understanding the entire climate system response.
It is true that we are still in an ice age (technically we live in the Holocene interglacial interval, since we still have significant ice sheets in polar regions). It is also very true that larger temperature changes have happened in the past (i.e., the interglacial interval around 125,000 years ago). However - one thing that paleoclimate studies are making clear is that sudden and dramatic changes in climate CAN happen. For example, the transitions into and out of the Younger Dryas event - a brief return to colder ice age conditions during the overall retreat of Pleistocene ice sheets- are thought to have happened in a decade or so. That is phenomenally fast.
It’s very nice of you to have a humble view of yourself and your place in Earth history. I often feel humbled myself by the immensity of time and the forces that shape the world. However, when we are talking about climate change, there is no need to invoke the whole of Earth history, or even the bulk of the planet. Weather and climate on human time-scales are driven by changes to the atmosphere, as it is the atmosphere that determines how much heat is retained at the Earth’s surface. In that regard, the industrial activities of humans in general since 1850 have had a major impact by altering atmospheric composition through the introduction of excess quantities of carbon dioxide.
To give some perspective: atmospheric levels of CO[sub]2[/sub] at the Last Glacial Maximum (approx. 21,000 years ago, the height of the last major ice advance) were about 140 ppm. The pre-industrial value (pre-1850) was about 280 ppm. The current measure is about 390 ppm, and it is projected to continue rising above 400 ppm within a decade or so without significant changes to our fossil-fuel burning patterns. In other words, our activities have produced in just 150 years nearly the same amount of change in atmospheric CO[sub]2[/sub] that helped lead to the end of the Pleistocene ice age.
Now do you understand, just a wee bit better, why it’s not possible to stick your head in the ground and pretend that humans are not having an impact?
For all the details: Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
sunfish, Ph.D. (sedimentary geology/paleoclimatology)
I think you have confused two completely different things here. Sun spot activity and/or small changes in solar luminosity affect atmospheric production of carbon-14, which is the radioisotope of interest when age-dating once-living things. People attempting to radiocarbon-date an object need to be aware of the fluctuations so that they can make corrections to produce a more accurate age estimate. That has absolutely nothing to do with the overall level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Proportions of various carbon isotopes in the atmosphere: carbon-12 (stable), 98.89%; carbon-13 (stable), 1.11%; carbon-14 (unstable/radioactive), 0.00000000010%. (More info on carbon-14 and radiocarbon dating here.) Carbon introduced into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning is almost entirely carbon-12, and in fact it too can impact the accuracy of a radiocarbon date (by skewing the carbon-12 proportion of the sample and making it look older than it really it; it’s called the Suess effect).
In any event, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does contribute directly to warming because it helps trap energy absorbed at, and re-emitted from, the Earth’s surface. That a warming surface ocean is not the best sink for excess carbon dioxide doesn’t alter that fact. There is currently a lot of discussion about potential sinks for excess CO[sub]2[/sub] that might be put to use in mitigating the human impact, but a lot of basic research remains to be done in this area.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/CO2.htm
Sunfish, that’s where I found thas theory. The other thing about the sunspots is somewhere else whithin that site.
The term ‘global warming’ has been replaced in a lot of contexts with ‘global climate change’ and 'climate destabilization’ to indicate more clearly that it’s not just about ‘warming’ but about chaotic, unpredictable weather. One factor is that extreme weather events (floods, storms, tornados, earthquakes etc) will increase, and this is consistent with what has been observed (in Canada, anyway).
Even if it was just ‘warming,’ we’d have a lot of trouble coping: crop growth would be disrupted, as well as the survival of natural areas, and ecosystems in general. Health problems would occur as increased temperatures would bring new kinds of diseases/parasites that populations have no natural immunity to. Finally, if the ice caps melt too much Florida, California and other low-lying areas (including entire nations such as Maldives, or islands surrounding Australia) would disappear into the sea. This would produce a whole lot of refugees. People in Australia are already thinking about ways to mitigate this problem.
Earthquakes?!?!?
From that link:
Real scientists also know there is such a thing as radiative properties of gases that have an impact on the warming of the atmosphere. Your web site authors have apparently not paid attention in science class since about the 4th grade.
I would really, really, really, recommend getting your information from a better source. The reports published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can get a little involved, but if you are very interested in the issue, the extra time you invest in reading at least the introductions and summaries would be well worth it. Alternatively, to just get a better grasp of the fundamental issues, have a look at this Global Warming FAQ put together by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).