Originally Posted By jonvn "Most likely is that about the time global warming becomes something to woirry about, cyclical global cooling will have started" And you get this idea from where, exactly? Just made it up? I find it interesting how many gyrations people will go through so they can avoid the issue. Here we see two: 1) Other people do nothing, so why should I? 2) By the time it happens, it'll start to cool down anyway. Neither of these is reasonable, or logical. They are excuses and they ignore a very real problem facing us, and our children. Hundreds of millions of people around the world will be displaced, famines will occur, wars, and so on. But hey, that's my kid's problem, not mine. I have never seen such a selfish attitude from a parent before in my life. Then we have the junior scientist's idea that somehow global cooling will start, which of course has absolutely no backing, but certainly sounds soothing. Why bother doing anything when all of a sudden, by magic, the earth will start to cool down? The fact is that the sooner we start to take care of this mess, the sooner the problem will get taken care of. We are already starting to see the effects of this problem, and as we continue to do nothing about it, the situation will only get worse. When your kids are in their 50s, the situation is going to be rather unpleasant. And your grandchildren are going to have it even worse. If this is the legacy you want to leave for them, fine. You look your kids in the eye every day and leave for them a mess that they will have to suffer with for their lives, and their children too. Wonderfully caring parent. And to the junior scientists out there who think somehow this is going to fix itself, well, no. The earth, for the last 2/3 of a million years at least has not been in this situation. Yes, we've had cycles of warming and cooling, but it's not been like this, and if you paid the least bit of attention to what's been said here and elsewhere, you'd be aware of that. Sticking your head in the sand is not exactly the best way to deal with a problem.
Originally Posted By jmoore1966 Al Gore isn't exactly the best messenger. I know, Al Gore & Clinton = Good for Environment. Bush + Cheney = Evil, bad for environment. However, look at what happened during th 8 years of Gore/Clinton. How did we move away from our foreign oil dependency under Clinton/gore? I didn't see much progress or effort at all. In fact, SUVs were given a pass for smog restrictions because they qualified as "light trucks". Is it any surprise that SUV sales went through the roof since the auto-manufacturers were able to produce them cheaper without the new smog restrictions. Many auto manufacturers stopped making sedans in favor of SUVs. Here we pass tighter smog laws to improve our environment, yet leave a huge loophole that leads to the explosion of SUV sales that get to ignore the newer smog laws. When did that loophole finally close? Oh yeah, after Clinton/Gore. I defiitely won't give Bush the credit for closing this loophole, but I really can't see any evidence that gives Clinton/Gore a better environmentl record than Bush/Cheney other than people just saying that it was. Anyways, just my 2 cents -- as you can tell, the SUV loophole has always been a sore subject with me -- and I'm not anti-SUV -- just anti-hypocrisy.
Originally Posted By jonvn "Al Gore isn't exactly the best messenger." Then ignore him, as I have said before. He's simply digesting down the jargon into understandable bits so that regular folks can follow it. If you want to go read the science behind it, I've posted several websites you can read about it all by yourself.
Originally Posted By mrichmondj Doesn't anyone find it depressing that our human civilization that has advanced for 1000s of years -- beyond any other species that we know of -- will likely end because we destroy our own habitat and had knowledge of that fact all the while we were doing it? It's one thing to face extinction from an asteroid or catastrophic event beyond your control, but quite another to know that you are responsible for the demise of your own species and do absolutely nothing about it. I am often awestruck at the complexity of human life and how it has managed to evolve to the place we are at in today's world. We have no evidence of any other time where civlization was so advanced. What has taken 1000s of years to create might be destroyed in a matter of hundreds or years and maybe even decades. It's very sad.
Originally Posted By jonvn What amazes me are the people who say they are too busy taking care of their kids to actually care about the world their kids are going to live in. But what you say kind of reminds me of how fermentation works. Yeast is a naturally occurring bacteria. It's everywhere. It's on the skins of grapes, for example. When you squeeze juice out of grapes, and put them in a vat, some of the yeast goes with them. The yeast starts to consume the sugar in the grape juice. They excrete alcohol and carbon dioxide. When the alcohol content reaches 16%, fermentation stops because all the yeast is dead. Seems like that's what we are doing. We're the yeast.
Originally Posted By JohnS1 "Neither of these is reasonable, or logical." No, but they sure rile you up! Calm down, jonvn - some of us are just kidding, you know.
Originally Posted By JohnS1 From a Canadian newspaper last fall: Global cooling effect Terence Corcoran, National Post Published: Saturday, September 16, 2006 News that the Conservatives might be taking a more cautious approach to Kyoto and climate change could not come at a more appropriate time. The science behind the idea of man-made global warming, always theoretical and often speculative, appears set to receive another blow. A report in New Scientist magazine yesterday chronicles the work of a crew of scientists who forecast a new wave of global cooling brought on by a decline in activity in the sun. The New Scientist report, along with other scientific assessments warning of global cooling, also come as a blow to the campaign -- led by David Suzuki and one of the directors of his foundation -- to portray all who raise doubts about climate change theory -- so-called skeptics -- as pawns of corporate PR thugs manipulating opinion. If the Suzuki claim is true, then the tentacles of Exxon-Mobil reach deeper into science than anyone has so far imagined. Dramatic global temperature fluctuations, as New Scientist reports, are the norm. A Little Ice Age struck Europe in the 17th century. New Yorkers once walked from Manhattan to Staten Island across a frozen harbour. About 200 years earlier, New Scientist reminds us, a sharp downturn in temperatures turned fertile Greenland into Arctic wasteland. Email to a friend Printer friendly Font: ****These and other temperature swings corresponded with changing solar activity. "It's a boom-bust system, and I expect a crash soon," says Nigel Weiss, a solar physicist at the University of Cambridge. Scientists cannot say precisely how big the coming cooling will be, but it could at minimum be enough to offset the current theoretical impact of man-made global warming. Sam Solanki, of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, says declining solar activity could drop global temperatures by 0.2 degrees Celsius. "It might not sound like much," says New Scientist writer Stuart Clark, "but this temperature reversal would be as big as the most optimistic estimate of the results of restricting greenhouse-gas emissions until 2050 in line with the Kyoto protocol." The New Scientist says this gives the Earth some breathing room in the face of climate change over the next 50 years, but it warns against complacency. "If the Earth does cool during the next sunspot crash and we do nothing [about man-made global warming], when the sun's magnetic activity returns, global warming will return with a vengeance," says Leif Svalgaard of Stanford University in California. Well, that's one man's view based on his take on the science. But other scientists have differing views. Last month, the Russian Academy of Sciences' astronomical observatory reported that global cooling could develop in 50 years. Khabibullo Abdusamatov, head of the agency's space research branch, is reported to have said a period of global cooling similar to one seen in the late 17th century could start in 2012-2015 and reach its peak in 2055-2066. "The Kyoto initiatives to save the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off until better times," he said. A few excerpts from the New Scientist report appear below, and the full text is available through the magazine's Web site for a nominal fee. Readers can judge for themselves to what degree the magazine's report highlights the need for much greater scientific certainty over the causes of climate change. Debate over the role of the sun in forcing temperature change is nothing new. Professor Ian Clark of the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa, wrote on this theme on this page in 2004. The climate models used by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change do not take adequate account of solar activity, Mr. Clark said. "Past and recent climate warming can be explained by changes in solar activity," he said. Another scientist tracking the sun, one among many, was Theodor Landscheidt, the late and renowned German solar expert and forecaster. "Analysis of the sun's varying activity in the last two millennia indicates that contrary to the IPCC's speculation about man-made global warming as high as 5.8 degrees Centigrade within the next 100 years, a long period of cool climate with its coldest phase around 2030 is to be expected." Worth noting here is Timothy Ball, the former University of Manitoba climatologist and frequent contributor to the idea that official government science is ignoring the role of the sun and that global cooling may be looming, not warming. Mr. Ball, for his thoughts, has become the victim of a slanderous campaign by David Suzuki and his associate, Vancouver public relations guru James Hoggan. They charge Mr. Ball with being a climate change "denier" -- as if it were akin to denying the Holocaust. They also portray him, and all "skeptics" who raise doubts about official climate science, as being in the pockets of corporations. Mr. Hoggan and Mr. Suzuki appear to be the leading backers of a major disinformation campaign run out of the Vancouver offices of James Hoggan & Associates. Mr. Hoggan sits on the Suzuki Foundation board, and among other things somehow funds two full-time researchers to operate a blog that is focused solely on discrediting scientists who do no uphold the official UN view on climate change. It's all a corporate scam, they claim. "There are people," says Mr. Hoggan, a veteran self-promoting pro in the PR business, "mainly people who are getting paid by oil and coal interests, and [some] who are just basically ideologues, who are trying to confuse the public about climate change." Says Mr. Suzuki: "The skeptics are a small group known for their support of corporations like the fossil fuel industry. In fact, many are receiving money directly from the industry." The New Scientist article yesterday, and many other science studies and reports over the years, suggest the Suzuki group is operating an empty political campaign. The Harper Conservatives should fear nothing as they work to set a Kyoto policy.
Originally Posted By JohnS1 And here's another fun read from a Russian newspaper: Russian Scientists Forecast Global Cooling in 6-9 Years Created: 25.08.2006 17:47 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 22:33 MSK MosNews Global cooling could develop on Earth in 50 years and have serious consequences before it is replaced by a period of warming in the early 22nd century, a Russian Academy of Sciences’ astronomical observatory’s report says, the RIA Novosti news agency reported Friday. Environmentalists and scientists warn not about the dangers of global warming provoked by man’s detrimental effect on the planet’s climate, but global cooling. Though never widely supported, it is a theory postulating an overwhelming cooling of the Earth which could involve glaciation. “On the basis of our [solar emission] research, we developed a scenario of a global cooling of the Earth’s climate by the middle of this century and the beginning of a regular 200-year-long cycle of the climate’s global warming at the start of the 22nd century,†said the head of the space research sector. Khabibullo Abdusamatov said he and his colleagues had concluded that a period of global cooling similar to one seen in the late 17th century — when canals froze in the Netherlands and people had to leave their dwellings in Greenland — could start in 2012-2015 and reach its peak in 2055-2060. He said he believed the future climate change would have very serious consequences and that authorities should start preparing for them today because “climate cooling is connected with changing temperatures, especially for northern countries.†“The Kyoto initiatives to save the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off until better times,†he said, referring to an international treaty on climate change targeting greenhouse gas emissions. “The global temperature maximum has been reached on Earth, and Earth’s global temperature will decline to a climatic minimum even without the Kyoto protocol,†Abdusamatov said.
Originally Posted By jmoore1966 Hidden deep in the heart of Mt. Kilamanjaro is the Earth's thermostat. Of course, once it is found our problem is hardley solved. There will be wars fought over to set it at 78 or 74.
Originally Posted By jonvn "No, but they sure rile you up!" I'm almost never riled up. If you say something I think is offensive, I will say so, but I can get a whole lot more riled up than what you have seen here.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 I saw a lot of editorializing in #72, but not a lot of science (let alone peer-reviewed science).
Originally Posted By JohnS1 My sole point in pasting those stories was to be like Darkbeer. No, wait, never mind - I did have a reason. Jonvn suggested I had just pulled the notion of global cooling out of thin air, so I thought I would show that there are plenty of links to plenty of articles discussing views by Russian, Chinese, European and American scientists who believe we are still on schedule for another ice age, and that cooling will begin within the next century. There is no reason to think the forces which have caused periodic ice ages to occur over millions of years won't continue to do so. That's the only reason I posted those, just to show that I didn't dream up the term "global cooling" just to be funny.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 That's fine. But although the earth has gone through warming and cooling trends for millenia, it should be acknowledged that a). the warming trend we're seeing now is unlike the others, and b). scientists saying we're due for a cooling trend in this century is a decided minority.
