Global Warming. Fact or Fiction?

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What about coal? We can still burn coal for hundreds of years, which would continue to increase CO2.

Yes we are *able* to. Coal is also limited. You *could* also burn down all the forests and send all the animals to McDonald's.

Even with increase in CO2, there will be a counterbalancing increase in H2O. With the extra water and Carbon dioxide plants will flourish and enable the populations of herbivores to increase without much necessity of predation until equilibrium has been reached.

1)water vapor in and of itself sometimes acts as a greenhouse gas, protecting more heat than the sunlight it blocks.
2)we may have reached peak oil, but all that means is that we're half-way through the supplies; there's still more than enough oil, natural gas, coal, etc. to exacerbate global climate change.
3)CO2 is not the only, or even the strongest, greenhouse gas.
4)Among the more insidious aspects of global warming is the chain reaction that is happening around the world in terms of natural carbon sequestration mechanisms failing: peat bogs in England and elsewhere are outgassing due to increased heat, tropical rain forests are burning due to increased heat (a dead tree can't sequester any carbon), ocean ecosystems are breaking down and not sequestering as much carbon too. If it gets warm enough to de-solidify (if that's the right term) the gas anhydrides in the ocean floor, we'll be in even deeper s**t.
5)equilibrium will, indeed, eventually be reached, but not without turning forests into deserts and vice-versa. We may not recgonize the new version of our world. Furthermore, the change may take hundreds or thousands of years - a geological eyeblink, but still an unplesant time for the organisms caught therin.

I don't know about permanent global warming but I live in Michigan and I have definitely noticed a change in our weather in the last 5-10 years, especially winters. When we do get snow it only stays a few days before it starts melting. The effect is that even though this year my area has gotten more snow than previous years it does not seem like that because the ground is bare more often than it is covered. Even the UP, famed for its snow, has had green Christmases. We also had tornadoes in October and January, something that NEVER happens here. Summers are hotter as well, 100 degree (F) days were a rarity growing up, not so much now. Is this permanent, is this global? Don't know. But definitely changing.

global warming is a scientific fact, the earth is getting warmer, true it would of done the same anyway, but we have inadvertently sped up the process. anyone who voted for "media scare" is an idiot.

I thought the recent theory was "global climate change" not necessarily "warming."

I don't know which theories are closer to the truth, but even from the time I was a kid, there's been a lot of drastic changes. Especially the last few years. You never used to have a warm october-january. Now, it's not unusual for the area to be entirely green. It used to be at least a foot of snow on the ground for that time period.

Flooding is also happening a lot more. Rain seems to be coming in gushes and simple "soft summer rains" seem highly uncommon. We seem to be having more storms, too.

A point to consider is on a scale, if two things are in perfect balance, even if you add only 0.02% to the weight on one side, the balance will be thrown off. This could explain how humans are contributing to the problem.

people on the whole are just lazy polluting slack-asses.........

I used to believe in global warming, but now I have become rather sceptical. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has gone up phenomenally since a century and a half ago, from about 280ppm to 380ppm, and yet the temperature has only gone up on average by less than a degree. Also the temperature during the past century has gone up and down in cycles - not the constant increase that would be expected if global warming were occurring. This contrasts greatly to the fact that there was a 32° celsius (90° fahrenheit) temperature difference this year between the maximum temperature of 47° celsius (117° fahrenheit) in summer and 15° celsius (59° fahrenheit) two thirds through autumn at this point in time where I live.

Either there is no cause effect relationship between temperature and carbon dioxide, or the carbon dioxide levels need to be much higher for there to be a significant effect. Or there may be other factors.

For example, it has been hypothesised that Venus' ultra high temperatures are the result of very high CO2 levels (96%) as well as high atmospheric pressure (at 92 bars). However, even though Mars has a similarly high level of CO2 it has no significant greenhouse effect because its atmospheric pressure is only 0.007 bars. Earth's atmospheric pressure is in between the two at 1 bar. The idea is that a planet needs to have a thick enough atmosphere in order for there to be a significant greenhouse effect. Perhaps our atmosphere is not thick enough for the current increase in CO2 emissions to have caused a significant effect.

Another important point is that even at today's high 380ppm CO2 level, that is still considerably less than the average amount of water vapour in the atmosphere (although it varies according to the season and the location).

It seems to me that the sun is by far the largest factor in determining temperature on this planet.

Although the discussion on global warming is pretty irrelevant considering the observed phenomena. it sure is revealing on the level of the ability of a good many people to evaluate scientific evidence. No wonder the world is in deep trouble.

"There are many factors that govern climate..." but only one process is being modeled in much of the computer models, Greenhouse Effect. I find it interesting that "the science" has now been determined by the UN anti-scientific scientists as fact while there is much, much real scientific work out their that disputes their claims. Along with the smoozing of enviro lobbying groups meeting with the likes of Enron and GE to name just a few, it is not too difficult to see what "green" many of these are groups are really going after.

The tricks and lies of the Global Warming Alarmists have and will do more damage to the future of the environmental movement. Al Gore, face of the movement, rest my case.

This site is worth examining. http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_pu ... idence.htm

That's an interesting charge ... do you have any real evidence, or is this merely a smear? And didn't Enron go out of business in 2001?



What case? That is a pathetically weak argumentum ad hominum. Either human activity is warming up the atmosphere, or it isn't. The preponderance of evidence is that it really is, although the exact magnitude, speed, and human consequences are not certain. The fact that Al Gore has done more than any person to stimulate discussion has nothing to do with the merits of the case for global warming, which you have not really addressed.




That is quite untrue. The general circulation models include a wide variety of factors and processes. The only way you could say that is if you are simply repeating what someone else said without investigating the truthiness of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Circulation_Models

Scholarly citation from a respectable journal or GTFO.

We could go on and on posting links to sites that support our approaches to this issue. But why? The science is "determined" and now considered "fact" without proper scientific review, pure and simple, and it is near impossible to have a proper discussion when facing a brick wall.

Al Gore stimulated a backlash to the environmental movement that is looking like it will be long lasting. And, the science that has been "settled" is also the same science that Al Gore recites. "

If quack likes a duck, smells like a duck, walks like a duck, then its probably a duck."

Good Day

To try to get to the truth. Many of your positions contain statements that can be tested (and easily shown wrong) - for example, the way you dismissed the computer climate models as not incorporating much. It only takes an open mind a minute or two to read about the models and see that such a belief is not in harmony with reality.




Really? All these journal articles on melting glaciers and rising CO2 get published in peer reviewed journals with no review? That is an incredible statement.





I think that a backlash against the idea of global warming was inevitable (regardless of the messenger), just like the backlash against civil rights was inevitable, just as it was guaranteed there would be a backlash against the idea that smoking causes cancer.



That is certainly true. Unfortunately, simply calling something a duck doesn't make it a duck ... one needs to be certain (and others need to agree) that the quack, walk and smell and other criteria really are ducky.

One thing I have never heard either side "discuss" is increased geothermal temperatures radiating heat. And yet I have heard seismologists in unrelated discussions make the claim that the trend of volcanism and earthquakes have been peaking.

Just a thought. I have no strong position on the argument of climate change.