What Do We Think About Climate Change

[Boston]

thats another myth that needs busting

Myth: Global warming is just part of a natural cycle. The Arctic has warmed up in the past.

Fact: The global warming we are experiencing is not natural, it is happening significantly faster than natural processes. People are causing it.

People are causing global warming by burning fossil fuels (like oil, coal and natural gas) and cutting down forests. Scientists have shown that these activities are pumping far more CO2 into the atmosphere than was ever released in hundreds of thousands of years. This buildup of CO2 is the biggest cause of global warming.

Since 1895, scientists have known that CO2 and other greenhouse gases trap heat and warm the earth. As the warming has intensified over the past three decades, scientific scrutiny has increased along with it. Scientists have considered and ruled out other, natural explanations such as sunlight, volcanic eruptions and cosmic rays. (IPCC 2001)

Though natural amounts of CO2 have varied from 180 to 300 parts per million (ppm), today's CO2 levels are around 380 ppm. That's 25% more than the highest natural levels over the past 650,000 years. Increased CO2 levels have contributed to periods of higher average temperatures throughout that long record. (Boden, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center)

As for previous Arctic warming, it is true that there were stretches of warm periods over the Arctic earlier in the 20th century. The records available for that time period indicate that the warmth did not affect as many areas or persist from year to year nearly as much as the current warmth. Notably, a brief regional trend does not discount a longer global phenomenon.

We know that the planet has been warming over the past several decades and Arctic ice has been melting persistently. And unlike the earlier periods of short term Arctic warmth, there is no expectation that the current upward trend in Arctic temperatures will reverse; the rising concentrations of greenhouse gases will prevent that from happening.

[hoytedow]

Thanks, Boston for implying that the shoe of the holocaust denier fits me. That makes you a bit of a character assassin doesn't it?
Forgive him, Father, for he knows not what he does.

[berny1066]

The weather is definitely changing snow storms,Floods,droughts,and all appear to be excessive.
More hurricane more everything looks like something is different???

[Brent Swain]

Past cycles didn't happen when civilsation and population pressures made us so vulnerable. The consequences to humanity were huge back then, but tiny compared to the effect they will have today.

[Boston]

nobody is lumping you in with the holocaust deniers Hoyt
lets keep it real

cheers
B

its a term that has been used for the "climate change" deniers
for a long long time

and good point Brent
today we have upwards of 7 billion mouths to feed
yet we are loosing cropland at an astounding pace
running out of both fossil fuels and fossil water and fast
and what is it
1 out of 10 rivers dont make it to the ocean anymore during at least a few months of the year
and the ones that do tend to be carrying so much dissolved salts like selenium that they are unfit for irrigation or drinking water
kinda like the Colorado river

less than 10% the worlds population hold 90% of the worlds wealth
20% the worlds population consume 80% of its resources
1/4 the worlds population still lives as it did 1000 years ago with no power no running water and no sanitation
1/2 the worlds population still survives by subsistence farming
3/4 the worlds population lives on land less than a few feet above sea level and in areas that will be effected by rising oceans
we are more vulnerable today than ever to a quickly changing environment

[hoytedow]

We would have more cropland if the Federal Government would quit seizing it and turning it into parks. Quit building on the fertile floodplains. Quit building levees in an effort to preserve monuments to human stupidity, then there would be more arable land.

Sorry I'm so testy today, just feeling a bit tarred.

[fasteddy106]

This bears reposting as some seem to doubt there is an agenda behind AGW....

Their Own Mouths: Global Warming is a Fraud

"We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public's imagination... So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest." - Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports

"Unless we announce disasters no one will listen." - Sir John Houghton, first chairman of IPCC

"It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true." - Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace

"We've got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy." - Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation

"No matter if the science of global warming is all phony... climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world." - Christine Stewart, fmr Canadian Minister of the Environment

"The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe." - emeritus professor Daniel Botkin

"We require a central organizing principle - one agreed to voluntarily. Minor shifts in policy, moderate improvement in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change - these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public’s desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary." - Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

"Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsiblity to bring that about?" - Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme

"A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation." - Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies

"The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are." - Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund

"Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control." - Professor Maurice King

"Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class - involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing - are not sustainable." - Maurice Strong, Rio Earth Summit

"Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it." - Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute

"The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet." - Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation

"Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun." - Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University

"The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil." – Sir James Lovelock, BBC Interview

"My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world." -Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!

"A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal." - Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major UN donor

"... the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion." - Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind

"If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels." - Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the World Wildlife Fund

"I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems." - John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

"The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing." - Christopher Manes, Earth First!

"Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing." - David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club.





The oil companies didn't make that stuff up. Those are words of the elitist sobs that want to run the world. Sadly, some of the members here share those sentiments.

[fasteddy106]

As far as Bostons little class warfare diatribe. It's drivel. Free enterprise and capitalism have been the only political movements that have moved people out of poverty, all others have maintained the status quo or implemented mediocrity as a goal. It was the green folks who condemned tens of million to die of malaria and other insect borne illnesses through the ill thought out ban on DDT, not capitalists.

[fasteddy106]

Quote by Boston.....

3/4 the worlds population lives on land less than a few feet above sea level and in areas that will be effected by rising oceans



Back that one up, it's ******** and you know it! Post the demographics please.

[Boston]

Originally Posted by hoytedow

We would have more cropland if the Federal Government would quit seizing it and turning it into parks. Quit building on the fertile floodplains. Quit building levees in an effort to preserve monuments to human stupidity, then there would be more arable land.

Sorry I'm so testy today, just feeling a bit tarred.

no worries
happens

whats more often the case is that we build our sprawling cities out over the best farmland and move the farms to less productive lands

Denver is a prime example
the areas along the "mighty" Plat are about as fertile as it gets yet if you look at the growth of the city its exactly were the best soil is

the farms have all been pushed out to the short grass prarie lands and that needs tons of irrigation to produce anything

that irrigation brings up the salt line to surface level eventually ruining the soil for farming

another little treasure is wind erosion
we lose several inches of top soil a year to wind and its not coming back any time soon

the land the gov hold as BLM land is open to grazing and farming if you want
the amount of acres held for parks is minimal and most often not farm land in the first place
Yellowstone and the Tetons for example or Canyon Lands

the next big issue is farmlands in low lying areas that are subject to salt intrusion as the oceans rise

as a whole the human race would not look to bright to an outside observer

you might read Cadillac Dessert
cheers
B

[hoytedow]

The oceans are not rising. In fact as the glaciers sweep away Canada, with apologies to Brent, the sea levels will be dropping.There are campsites off the Gulf Coast of Florida that date back to those times.

[Boston]

myth busters time again

Myth: Sea levels are not rising

fact: Sea levels are rising at an alarming rate

During 20th-century the average global sea level rose by around 17cm (Church and White 2006). Between 1961 and 2003 sea levels rose at an average rate of 1.8 mm per year. More recently the rate of sea level rise has accelerated, with global average increasing by 3.1 mm per year between 1993 and 2003 (Bindoff et al 2007). See Figure 4.

However, because the sea levels of the planet rise in an uneven fashion – unlike in a bathtub – in some regions sea levels are actually falling while in other areas the rate of sea level rise has been several times the global mean (Bindoff et al 2007). This regional variation reflects the complex interactions between the Earth’s climate and sea levels, but does not change the fact that there is an observed global trend of rising seas.

( image was huge so you can go check it out at the link below )

Sea level rise is driven by a number of different factors, including the melting of polar ice and the expansion of ocean water caused by rising sea temperatures (also known as “thermal expansion”). The contribution of each of these drivers to sea level rise since 1961, as reported by the IPCC, is shown in Table 1.

( table came up all goofy so I just left it out but you can see it here
http://www.climateinstitute.org.au/i...&catid=115:cm2)

Church and White (2006), “A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise”, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol 33.

Bindoff, N.L., J. Willebrand, V. Artale, A, Cazenave, J. Gregory, S. Gulev, K. Hanawa, C. Le Quéré, S. Levitus, Y. Nojiri, C.K. Shum, L.D. Talley and A. Unnikrishnan, 2007: Observations: Oceanic Climate Change and Sea Level. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA

[hoytedow]

Was this sea level data collected by the same bunch of highly trustworthy individuals that told us we caused AGW? If so, they are incredible and I don't mean that in a nice way.

[Boston]

There are tens of thousands of scientists working on this issue. The vast majority of them believe man is the cause of the present environmental crisis

if 100 people told you that cliff was to high for you to safely jump off of
and 1 said go for it
what would you do

cause thats about the spread among scientist concerning climate change

[hoytedow]

Many scientists disagree with AGW but have been intimidated into silence.