Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

Discussion in 'Warbirds International' started by squirl, Aug 26, 2005.

  1. squirl

    squirl Well-Known Member

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    Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    Sometimes people remember things. No one knows why this happens, but occasionally a song will pop into somebody's head or people will remember a joke told long ago. Today, I remembered when Malino was talking about global warming:

    I couldn't help doing some research, and I came across this website.

    This website suggests that global warming is not what people think it is.

    Here are the basic points of their argument:

    1. The idea that man-made pollution is responsible for global warming is not supported by historical fact. The period known as the Holocene Maximum is a good example-- so-named because it was the hottest period in human history. The interesting thing is this period occurred approximately 7500 to 4000 years B.P. (before present)-- long before human's invented industrial pollution.

    2. CO2 in our atmosphere has been increasing steadily for the last 18,000 years-- long before humans invented smokestacks ( Figure 1). Unless you count campfires and intestinal gas, man played no role in the pre-industrial increases.

    [​IMG]

    As illustrated in this chart of Ice Core data from the Soviet Station Vostok in Antarctica, CO2 concentrations in earth's atmosphere move with temperature. Both temperatures and CO2 have been steadily increasing for 18,000 years. Ignoring these 18,000 years of data "global warming activists" contend recent increases in atmospheric CO2 are unnatural and are the result of only 200 years or so of human pollution causing a runaway greenhouse effect.

    Incidentally, earth's temperature and CO2 levels today have reached levels similar to a previous interglacial cycle of 120,000 - 140,000 years ago. From beginning to end this cycle lasted about 20,000 years. This is known as the Eemian Interglacial Period and the earth returned to a full-fledged ice age immediately afterward.

    3. Total human contributions to greenhouse gases account for only about 0.28% of the "greenhouse effect" (Figure 2). Anthropogenic (man-made) carbon dioxide (CO2) comprises about 0.117% of this total, and man-made sources of other gases ( methane, nitrous oxide (NOX), other misc. gases) contributes another 0.163% .

    [​IMG]

    Approximately 99.72% of the "greenhouse effect" is due to natural causes -- mostly water vapor and traces of other gases, which we can do nothing at all about. Eliminating human activity altogether would have little impact on climate change.

    --end of quoted material--

    As far as I am concerned, there are just too many factors which can contribute toward climate changes. It seems that the real "global warming" is what brought us out of the last ice age. If environmentalists had existed back then, they would have said, "The earth is warming! The glaciers are melting!" but their fellow humans would have said, "Shut up! It's freezing out here!" It is ironic how the forests, which environmentalists fight hard to protect today, were created by "global warming."

    Just look at these maps:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    I am certain that if "global warming" were to reverse today and the glaciers started to advance, the environmentalists would be out in force: "Stop the glaciers! They will bulldoze the forests of Canada, Russia and the US with their might! Save the trees!"

    The bottom line, however, is that a few hundred years of industrial pollution seem not to be making much of an impact, especially because the principal greenhouse gas is water vapor, not CO2. And when scientists have been able to construct a timeline going back 400,000 years based upon ancient ice samples, a simple fact becomes apparent:

    [​IMG]

    ...about 125,000 years ago, when humans released not one single molecule of industrial CO2 emissions, the temperature was higher than it is today. It is like I said, too many factors contribute to climate change. It is shortsighted to call a 20th-century temperature gain "apocalyptic global warming," especially when there were much more violent climate changes in the past.
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2005
  2. Vadim Maksimenko

    Vadim Maksimenko Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    Absolute true :) Always considered Green Peace a bunch of idiots. With the same effect they may protest the Earth magnetic field deviations :D
     
  3. RolandGarros

    RolandGarros Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    I get all my most important scientific information from dudes on videogame BBSs
     
  4. Allsop

    Allsop Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    no shit, if anything, humans are brilliant for inventing air conditioning right?
     
  5. Allsop

    Allsop Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    Couldnt industrial polution work like clouds? Actually keeping earth cooler for the most part? hahahaha.
     
  6. -afi--

    -afi-- Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    That tiny, miniscule amount of greenhouse gases that humans put into the air is all that's necessary to change the atmosphere.

    That whole "ozone layer" hole didn't happen for no reason, mango.

    For some reason, I'm more inclined to listen to my Geology professor who has a Doctorate degree in the matter over someones opinion on a flight sim message board.
     
  7. Perdomo

    Perdomo Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    I'm no expert, but... when I see that map of the "present", in which my country is shown as 70% or more forest... all I can say is "stop doing researches, come here on holidays and take a look". My country is becoming a desert. When I was a child, every year there was snow in Madrid, two - three days a year, but there was snow. Now there is almost no snow. There were months were it would rain non-stop, and now we are really lucky if we have 3-4 days of rain a month (in spring or automn!! in summer it never rains!). So, according to my experience, part of that information is false. As I have no personal experience on the rest, I must asume that it may be false too.

    Anyway, the sooner we are extincted, the better for earth. Fuck mankind.
     
  8. -al---

    -al--- Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    our small tree mammal friend here has definitely too much free time. Go collect some nuts, you nut :)

    edit: yeah that >70% canopy cover is a nice piece of BS. I hope the rest of your research material is a bit more accurate.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2005
  9. squirl

    squirl Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    It is not a "hole." It is a thin spot. "Hole" is a term used by Green Peace to make it sound as though there is absolutely no ozone over Antarctica.

    From USA Today:

    "The Antarctic "hole" is really a radical thinning in the amount of ozone in the atmosphere above Antarctica,, with maybe half of the ozone there being destroyed."

    This "hole" is not even there all the time:

    "In November or December, as the air warms, the vortex breaks down and ozone-rich air from elsewhere mixes with the ozone-poor, polar air, filling in the hole."

    Too many people are misinformed about environmental changes. People don't care about processes which take thousands of years, they care mainly about what happens in their own lifespans. So because of this, we see "fads" in the way that people look at the climate:

    "Since about 1940 the global climate did in fact appear to be cooling. Then a funny thing happened-- sometime in the late 1970's temperature declines slowed to a halt and ground-based recording stations during the 1980's and 1990's began reading small but steady increases in near-surface temperatures. Fears of 'global cooling' then changed suddenly to 'global warming,'"

    The "global warming" trend that has been seen since the 1980's has gone on for over 20 years. One may think that a 20-year history is enough data to allow a scientist to predict what will happen in the next 20 years, but this is not the case. Predicting what will happen to the climate in the next 20 years is just as futile as looking at the morning trends of a stock market and predicting the afternoon closing price.

    Look at the position of the red dot in this picture:

    [​IMG]

    Should the ancient humans have predicted the sudden downturn in temperature as a sign that another ice age was coming? As it turns out, the temperature loss evened out, then "warmed" to the temperature range that we have today.

    I guess I am saying that we have to look at this intuitively.

    Many people think that human emission of greenhouse gases is causing global warming. These people propose that the world should adopt measures to cut back on these emissions in order to cool the world back down. If they truly believe in this, then how do they explain the warming which ended the last ice age? Surely there were no human emissions (the population was one twelfth of one percent of what it is today, with small campfires as its only pollution) yet, somehow, the climate drastically warmed.
     
  10. squirl

    squirl Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    You are assuming that your entire liftetime gives you enough experience to make a prediction of your country's future. It would take thousands, not dozens, of years of analysis before a real conclusion could be made.

    Look at what has been called the "Little Ice Age":

    [​IMG]

    The "Little Ice Age" was a time period when the world experienced slightly lower temperatures. I am sure that some people in that time period thought that their land was "turning into an arctic tundra." Here we are in the 21st century, and we can see how that is obviously untrue.

    Dr. John R. Christy, a leading climate and atmospheric science expert, said this:

    "...the Earth was evidently coming out of a relatively cold period in the 1800's so that warming in the past century may be part of this natural recovery."

    People had become accustomed to abnormally cool temperatures, so once the Earth began to return to normal they automatically assumed that this natural recovery was actually manmade.

    If people were just as sure about the "Little Ice Age" as you are about "Global Warming," isn't it likely that, in time, "Global Warming" will be found to be untrue?
     
  11. Glas

    Glas Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    Possibly.

    I have heard before that the ozone layer has a kind of protection mechanism that makes it repair itself. Dunno enough about it to know if its true or not.

    That said, I think for the sake of makind and the other inhabitants of earth's health more than anything else, we must reduce industrial pollution significantly and remove, wherever possible, anything that could damage the atmosphere either in the short or long term. The removal of cfc gases from pressurised canisters, for example, was a good step towards this (I think :dunno: )
     
  12. Perdomo

    Perdomo Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    Not only my life time, but there are reports saying that Spain was mostly covered by forest 500 years ago. Only in my life time the desertization is accelerating. It will probably take some time, maybe decades, maybe even one or two more centuries. But when you take the popular knowledge about weather (in spain, and I guess in most countries, there are these phrases wich resume common popular knowledge acquired trough observation during centuries...) you can see that it isn't true now. Weather is changing. And Spain is becoming a desert.

    And all that doesn't change the fact that Spain hasn't been at more than 70% forest for the las 100 years (and if you look at photos from the 1900's, you would see a lot more trees than what you can see now), so those sources are not reliable to me.
     
  13. -afi--

    -afi-- Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    .
     
  14. ledada

    ledada Well-Known Member

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    day after friday

    hi squirl,

    probably you have had a rough night after watching a better unnamed product of the movie industry, which made you 'research'...

    the 'greenhouse-effect' is without doubt already beyond any scientifical meaning, due to the abuse of the expression by both, pro and con, sides. however, it doesn't decribe a trend, which will lead to stormy weather until monday - from when on it will rapidly change to -140°c (well, that was scary in the movie, wasn't it? :)). probably no scientist will appear on stage for the prophecy of an ice-age earlier than 30.000 years from now on (which will also mainly be reasoned by milankovich-cycle and not by co2-increase)

    the dilemma is, as it can seen once more in your post and your sources, that the anthropogenic induced part of the global warming has indeed nothing in common with the fancy grafic, which you presented, but is a lot more grave.
    since general education makes it nowadays easy enough to spread paroles, which pretend to have a scientific base, the discussion is taken into represantation by politicians, who have (which they share with many 'internet sources') not the slightest knowledge of the subtle relations between humans and nature and the meaning of science in general.

    i don't feel a need to answer your 'arguments', as you seem to have a fetish-like desire for reac'chauvi'nism, which - luckily enough - is, in this case, a pretty isolated position, compared to the more numerous amount of 'climasceptics' some 10-20 years ago.
    'dexter's laboratory' is not how science works... (and it is also not the holy gral, searched for by knights, living for the best for mankind).

    but for the start, instead of trying to leave some vague impression of your... 'profundness', i'd like to recommend some, at least, semi-scientific ressources like 'scientific american: earth in glasshouse' (dec 2004, imo), 'rosenberg: climate change impacts for usa' (edmonds-springer, 2004) or the very sophisticated answer of rahmstorf to an excellent written, but very generalized (and obviously drwing wrong conclusions) article of alversleben, published for scientific lecture at the potsdam institute for climate-research. the latter hint in special, as it quotes very detailed (even for both sides) sources.

    i was already even thinking, it could be interesting to read your post at the start, but honestly... you shouldn't have started talking about 'ice-ages' and 'cooling or heating'.
    that is not the warning!
    (and christy is anything else but a 'leading scientist' :) eventually the speaksman of some climate-committee - parlamentary spoken)
     
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  15. reuben

    reuben Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    as for CFC's. (which I happen to remember some things about since I worked in the refrigerant/heatpump business.

    The CFC's that the west removed/banned in use from 2002 are still being used in other parts of the world.
    CFC let out 10 yrs ago is annoying ozone now. So we need to wait 10yrs before we see effect.
    What actually happens is that the chlorine in the cfc disturbs the ozone. 1 chlorine takes out 1 oxygen from the ozone (O3) and makes something else of it. (cant remeber what it becomes, you chemist guys tell me, O2 and something else)

    As for a few years back, the (supposed) product that was smuggled the most from Mexico to US (counted in mass, not moneys worth, IMO cocaine is more expensive than CFC) was R12, refrigerant with chlorine.

    Still the other countries can use CFC. The EU has legislation for exporting CFC, it has become so that if I sell a used refrigerator (w CFC) I can only sell it privately, in my own country, otherwise the customs kick my butt. If I evacuate a system that has used CFC and export it, I also get my butt kicked. Weird.

    It would be better to help the countries that depend on CFC types to convert. With this legislation the used part market is killed. Some guys in africa or whereever will not be able to get used parts, and they cant afford new parts they have to fix leaking systems with duct tape (ok a bit exaggerated) thus making many small systems leaking a steady flow of CFC. Thank's goverments.

    Cya
     
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  16. Glas

    Glas Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    Yeah, refrigerators. LOL reminds me of a funny story from about 20 yrs ago. We had a 'fridge mountain' somewhere in Glasgow, which was basically a dumping ground for old refrigerators. There were all sorts of scare stories came out that there was a hole in the ozone the size of ten football pitches right above Maryhill, as a result of the fridge mountain.

    :rolleyes:
     
  17. Zembla JG13

    Zembla JG13 FH Beta Tester

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    Couldn't spare the time to see through all this. But to Afi, the hole in the ozon layer has been known to shrink, grow, move, and all those things despite any change in greenhouse gasses. In other words... it's kind of a myth. Greenpeace has been known to produce myths by using pseudo-science and trying to make "complex matters" "readable" for John Doe and sorts.

    Greenpeace are a bunch of liars in my eyes, idealists that kind of forget what it all comes down to...

    As for the greenhouse effect being a myth itself, not sure about that. The beauty in statistics is that through a couple of fairly simple calculations and recalibrations you can have pretty much any graph look the way you want it to. I've read about both theories, and haven't really spent much time on additional research. But they're both theories, don't think we'll know for sure which is valid unless we go on this way and actually see the theory through... and neither of the theories offer a great future prospect.

    I feel another lengthy flamewar coming up...

    <Z>
     
  18. -afi--

    -afi-- Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    haha trust me, Zemb, I know about it :). My professor was a hard ass on this stuff, but as much as it is blown out of proportion by Greenpeace, it is still an issue that unfortunately can't be fixed economically.

    That's enough about it, though. Hangover is keeping me down...
     
  19. airfax

    airfax Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    And if you leave the frigerator home, and the customs still kick your butt, you'll understand why...

    :D
     
  20. reuben

    reuben Well-Known Member

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    Re: Global "Warming" or "Thawing" ???

    If I get my butt kicked by customs and fridge is at home, it's because I try to take too much beer through border :D