Global Warming... my butt...

[Pantharen]

I live about 4hrs north of Seattle Washington on the Pacific Ocean. Generally the temps dont go much below freezing, and generally we rarely see snow. In the last 4 years we've seen far more snow than in the last 30, and sub zero temps lasting longer than 2 days.

Since Friday we've been hovering around the zero centigrade mark. Today the daytime high is a blistering -8c (18f). With an Artic outflow warning and winds about 70kph (45mph). With the windchill dropping it to -13c (9f) and even colder the farther inland we go. Being that I am right on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, we also have to factor in the dampness from the sea air, which makes it feel even colder.

Yep, feels like Global Warming to me...

[mudseeker]

oh man, don't even get me started on this subject. i did a college research paper on it last year. al gore is full of it and the news only tells you one side of the story.

[76silverado]

Global warming... Does that explain wind chills in the -50 range in ND? Or the fact that its about 15-18 here in NW Arkansas right now? No, global warming is **** IMO.

[Moostang]

I don't think we are contributing to it like they try to make us believe, but the earth is possibly going through a natural warming cycle. Of course you can't take the weather from one day to judge it, it is just a few degrees average that happen over years.

[mudseeker]

Originally Posted by Moostang

I don't think we are contributing to it like they try to make us believe, but the earth is possibly going through a natural warming cycle. Of course you can't take the weather from one day to judge it, it is just a few degrees average that happen over years.

hey, when did you read my research paper? hmm, i wonder if a saved that paper. i think it would be good for this thread.

[gmctrucks]

Obama said he's going to do something about Global warming and just look he got a head start on it even before he gets in the office. I bet Bush is pissed because he doing this behind his back.
He! He! GMC
PS-Maybe I should have voted for him it seems that's he's on the ball. Maybe he knows mother nature hey he might.

[mudseeker]

read if you wish, it might put you to sleep.

Comp 101
Greg Nave
Tues, Thurs 2-3:50

Climate Change: The Real Cause

You hear it on the news whenever you turn the television on, the polar bears habitat is vanishing. A major earthquake has hit china and a tidal wave has destroyed a handful of settlements. Most of the time the blame for these events is put on people, polluting the air with their cars and factories. The experts say the destruction of the o-zone is one of the affects of the human race and in turn is altering our habitat and climate. It is hard to believe the human race is the only cause of the earth’s climate change. People were not around when the ice age occurred. Climate change is just a natural cycle of the earth, the human race may have helped accelerate this cycle, but the blame can not be put on us alone.

Climate change is a natural factor of the earth’s geological cycle and is determined by many factors such as the shape of the land, rotation of the earth, wind, cloud cover, ocean currents and the sun. The earth is constantly changing shape due to the numerous plates that lie beneath the surface. Some people blame earthquakes, volcano activity, and tsunamis on the pollutants created by the human race, when in all reality it is just the natural cycle of the earth and has been occurring long before man arrived. Climate change could be compared to the butterfly effect. If a volcano was to erupt, it would be logical to think the climate in the area would change slightly and small differences would be felt in farther regions. Not only would it change the shape of the land, but the resulting volcanic ash in the air would block sun light for a short period. Volcano’s are one of the main natural factors of climate change. Antarctica used to be a lush rain forest millions of years ago, but due to the activity of volcano’s and the change of the earth’s surface, it became what we know it as now, a big sheet of ice. (Linden 35) Volcanic activity has declined greatly in the last hundreds of years, with this came the decrease in cloud cover. Without cloud cover, more sunlight is allowed to warm the earths surface.

During a period around 8000 years ago, “global temperatures plunged 5 degrees centigrade, to nearly ice age levels, and then, after 60 to 200 years of frigid temperatures, suddenly jumped back up to relative warmth” (Linden 42). It would be a fair assumption to say that this pattern could repeat itself. As far as anyone knows, the earth could be at the beginning of another one of these drastic climate changes. What the majority of people think is global warming, could be just the onset of a natural climate change. The changes in climate during the past couple of decades are not something to dismiss, but the experts have made it look worse than what it really is. In a recent interview with Laura Blue, Bjorn Lomborg comments on Al Gores remark about the rise of sea level in the near future, “I really think if it's an indication of anything, it's that the public debate has gone so far toward the one extreme that obviously it has to be 20 feet and anyone who says it's slightly less than that has got to be bonkers” (Lomborg). Lomborg mentions about people going to the extreme side of the global warming idea. If a person was to mention that cars emit pollutants, then some people would think that must be the main cause of our climate change. They do not take into account that the earth’s climate has been changing long before man started using fossil fuels.

In current studies it has been determined that it takes approximately ten years for carbon dioxide to stabilize in the bio sphere, opposed to the previously thought fifty years. With all the cars on the highway and in the big cities releasing numerous harmful chemicals, “only a small fraction of the increase in atmospheric CO2 observed in the last 100 years can be of fossil fuel origin” (Seitz 64-65). It was not until the 1980’s that the majority of the American public became aware of “global warming”. Since then, the global warming scare seems to have gotten worse, even though the emissions from the automobiles have gone down due to stricter guidelines. If the human race is to blame for global warming, would not the effects of it have gone down with reduced emissions from automobiles?

The energy from the sun is a main factor in the earth’s cycle. In a study by Nigel Calder, he discovered that the temperature changes on earth coincide with sunspot cycles. (pg 66) It has yet to be proven that the pollution created by the human race on earth can effect the sun’s cycle, cloud cover and other land masses such as ice and sand are major factors in regulating its effects. These surfaces reflect the unneeded energy from the sun and send it back into space. “geothermal heat can be trapped and melt ice under a two-mile-thick pile” (Alley 132). With the ice melting at the poles, there is less of that important surface to reflect the suns energy. The experts say the ice at the caps is melting because of humans and the pollution that has formed holes in the o-zone. What they do not take into account is most of the suns energy is focused on the equator, since it is closest to the sun. Winds and ocean currents carry this heat to the poles.

The ocean currents play a big role in the earth’s climate. The warm salt water from the tropics travels north and helps warm the local climate as it is replaced by fresh water. If the Atlantic ocean were to receive more fresh water, it would cause “large, abrupt, widespread changes in the atmosphere that are very similar to those recorded in the ice rings” (Alley 148). This is because the water current would slow due to the less salty water not being able to sink. With out the movement of the oceans surface water, the warmer water from the equator could not travel north to warm the rest of the planet. The earth is not having a cooling problem though, it is quite the opposite. It could be that the Atlantic is not receiving as much fresh water, causing the warmer salt water to travel farther north than normal.

The warmer salt water could be blamed on the amount of sunlight received at the equator. The amount of sunlight the equator receives is determined on the earth’s rotation and tilt. “The shape of the Earth’s orbit—the plate—changes from a nearly perfect circle to an oval shape on a 100,000-year cycle” (Riebeek). Let us say the earth is going through an oval cycle, this could explain the excessive heat the earth has been experiencing. Due to this cycle, the summers would be longer and warmer and the winters would be shorter and colder. This cycle could also cause an ice age effect, depending on the shape of the oval. With the earth possibly closer to the sun during the summer, the ocean temperatures would become considerably warmer. The warmer ocean water’s would take longer to cool as they traveled north, which in turn would warm the local area.

Do the actions of humans have an effect on the earths climate? The answer is yes, but the effects are so minimal compared to natural events that they may not be noticeable to the average person. It is clear that most of the recent changes in the earths climate are just the effects of natural events, such as the earths orbit around the sun or ocean currents. During the last few years, the “global warming” hype has been exaggerated by celebrities trying to do public service. The effects of climate change are more noticeable in California though due to the surrounding mountains.

Alley, Richard B. The Two Mile-Time Machine. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000
Begley, Sharon. The Truth about Denial. 15 Aug. 2007
Blue, Laura. Let’s Chill About Global Warming. 28 Sep. 2007
Linden, Eugene. The Winds of Change. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006
Lovejoy, Hannah, Ed. Climate Change and Biodiversity. New Haven and London: Yale University, 2005
NASA. Earth Observatory. 15 November 2007 <http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/>
Roleff, Tamara L., Ed. Global Warming: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego: Greenhaven Pres

[Pantharen]

http://icecap.us This webpage was created by the guy who created http://theweatherchannel.com if your wanting some interesting reading on global climate, and the facts about global warming, and how the bull droppings about "fighting global warming excellerated by mankind" is nothing but pure bull droppings...

If there is evidence of Global Warming, how is it that Texas,got snow this year, and last year Brazil got snow... If anything the planet is cooling rather than warming..

A single volcano produces more pollution than 10 million automobiles. How many Volcano's in Hawaii only erupt once...

[Pantharen]

Dec 10, 2008
No Evidence to Support Carbon Dioxide Causing Global Warming! By Bob Ashworth
In the early nineties, some scientists were saying that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were causing global warming. This was disturbing to the author; a chemical engineer who has worked on coal conversion processes his whole life. Before it was investigated as to whether or not this was really true, the author developed a scheme to remove CO2 from power plant flue gas by bubbling it through a pond of water to form algae, then skimming it off, drying it and feeding it back to the power plant as a fuel to be blended with the coal. This would do two things, reduce the overall CO2 emissions to the atmosphere, and conserve our coal reserves.
After investigating CO2 as a cause of global warming, it appeared at that time to be false. In the late 1990’s it was brought up again and in 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced that CO2 was causing the earth to warm and developed computer models to predict how much the earth would warm in the future. In 2006-2007, the author evaluated this again in depth and found the premise was clearly false. IPCC scientists did not relay that, during the time from the mid 1960’s to 1998, the stratosphere cooled almost three times as much as the earth warmed. From this input, the author could prove that CFC destruction of ozone, not CO2, was the cause of the abnormal warming over that period. He wrote a paper that has been peer reviewed and in mid 2009 will be published in a respected technical magazine. However, putting this aside, does any evidence exist to support the premise that increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere have caused the earth to warm?
Do Scientists Support Global Warming? First, most scientists do not agree with the CO2 global warming premise! In the United States 31,072 scientists, including the author, have signed a petition rejecting the Kyoto global warming agreement and of these, 9,021 have PhDs, including Dr. Edward Teller. The graph below shows the IPPC computer modeling projections from the year 2000 to 2300 based on various assumptions of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. The pink line, added by the author to the IPCC graph, represents actual measured temperatures.

IPCC, 2007: Climate Change Models 2007 compared to Actual Temperature
The actual temperature in 2007 was some 0.7C cooler than the IPCC projection based on the assumption that CO2 concentration did not increase with time. On an actual temperature basis, one sees that the IPCC models predict temperatures that are not even close to actual measurements. To this old chemical engineer the predictions represent the classic “garbage in-garbage out” analysis for computer models.
Based on actual data, CO2 causing global warming is clearly a figment of the IPCC’s imagination. The lesson to the world here is, when it comes to science, never blindly accept an explanation from a politician or scientists who have turned political for their own private gain. Taxing carbon will have absolutely no beneficial effect on our climate, will hurt the economies of the world, and will be harmful to the production of food because less carbon dioxide means reduced plant growth. Many scientists, including the author, see global warming from CO2 as a cruel global swindle, so that a few, at the expense of the many, can reap huge profits from carbon taxes

[mrjohnwayne]

I do believe that there is global climate changes. I do not believe that it is caused by what the media says.