Hotter Now Than in the Last 400 Years

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Actually, you don't need to show what the temperature in Madison was in 733AD. It's about global warming, not local. The average global temperature can be derived from the data from polar ice.

But local warming should be looked at considering the data which tells of global warming. Too many of the temperature measuring euipment are located around the globe near airports and city areas. Local warming caused by the pavements stored heat gives wrong information about global warming. Cities store heat, which tends to create city-specific climates, such as thunderstorms frequently.

But the funny thing is that which works locally, works globally as well. The rise in city temperatures isn't only created by the materials which the streets are paved, but also from greenhouse gases, such as CO2. Cities surrounded by hills, such as Mexico city have not only appalling air quality, but also much higher temperatures than the surrounding areas, or other cities of the same size.

And as some of the data isn't as accurate as formal logic, the results can be seen, all over the globe. The question is if not the greenhouse gases emitted by humans isn't the cause for the global warming and extreme weather conditions, then what is.

To say that global warming isn't caused or hasn't increased by human activity, is to say that greenhouse gases aren't the cause of global warming or that the amount of greenhouse gases, and especially CO2 levels haven't risen in the global atmosphere. And that's a big load of

 

Believe me, I agree with you on that. To simply ignore a possible cause is idiotic. But the same can be applied if you say that it's humanity and only humanity's fault that temperatures are increasing at all. Neither position would be true. We may be doing well more than our share, but to claim that every hundredth of a degree rests solely on our actions? Ludicrous.

 

Hmm, I agree with Felinoid again here. What is the world coming to?

 

um, am I missing something here? I can't think of anyone serious who would make such a claim... again, climate scientists were actually the ones to notice climate cycles, the effect of natural events like volcanos on climate, etc...

 

Likewise, I can't think of anyone serious who would make the claim that there's no such thing as global warming. But it's the wackos you have to beware of.

 

As hard it might seem to believe, I think it's possible that humans might be the sole, or at least the biggest reason for global warming this time. How probable it is and to what degree, and I can't tell, seems to be the current issue in the global warming debate concerning scientists.

The impact on human behaviour to ecosystems, local and global is and has been huge for at least 10 000 years. Many of the worlds deserted areas can be considered to be the result of human activity. I wouldn't be surprised at all that the current global warming would indeed be the result of human activity, but not only the result of the greenhouse gas emissions we produce. The effect of deforestation in subtropical and tropical areas and the drying of wetlands should be considered as well, since these absorb and store greenhouse gases.

 

Not really. If you read the posted links, you'll noticed that climatologists form a pretty united front on the issue of how the majority of our excess global warming is being caused by humans.

[ June 28, 2006, 23:32: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

Biggest, yes; sole, no. To believe that we're the sole cause of...well, pretty much anything, is hubris, plain and simple.

EDIT: Ah, sorry. I noticed I was in error "pretty united" and removed my complaint. You're too fast (to have noticed it before I removed it) for my own good, Drew.

[ June 29, 2006, 00:22: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

EDIT: The first point to which I was making my response has mysteriously disapeared.

While humans aren't the sole cause of Global Warming (an essential and completely natural process) it can be reasonably argued (but probably not proven) that we are the sole cause of excessive (in other words, unnatural or non-cyclical) global warming (which is neither essential nor natural).

EDIT back at Fel:I was using "pretty united" cynically, since no study published in a refereed scientific journal has actually disagreed with the stance that global warming is caused by excessive greenhouse gases which are accumulating in the environment due to human intervention within the last 13 years. Not a single one. "Pretty united" in this context is the understatement of the century.

[ June 29, 2006, 09:25: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

You guys give mankind to much credit when you say we are the biggest contributing factor in Global Warming and totally ignore the power of nature. This "Global Warming" phenomenon has grown into a leftist-political religiosity. Felinoid seems to be the most open and reasonable voice in this thread. Give 'em Fel!

 

Have you even read this thread or any of the the links in it? Global warming is perfectly natural. It's even essential to maintaining life on earth. No one is arguing otherwise.Excess global warming, on the other hand, has been agreed upon by the entire scientific community** as being caused by humans causing an excessive ammount of greenhouse gases to accumulate in the envioronment. It is true that volcanic eruptions and other natural phenomena can also contribute to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is also true, however, that we haven't been getting more of said phenomena occuring since the industrial revolution and that the only thing that has changed has been human beings releasing greenhouse gases into the environment.

Not only that, but we (humans) are releasing green house gases into the atmosphere at far greater rate than what naturally occurs-- a level so high that it is exceeding our naturally homeostatic planet's ability to restore equilibrium (as evidenced by our steadilly increasing temperature and rising sea levels due to the melting of the polar icecaps), especially since we continue to increase the level of greenhouse gases being released into our atmosphere instead of working to reduce them. As it stands now, the environmental anomalies we are currently seeing (erratic weather, more tropical storms and tornadoes, rising sea levels, steadily rising temperatures as opposed to cyclical rises and falls) are actually the result of greenhouse gases released 20-30 years ago. If we were to stop all activities that cause excess greenhouse gases to be released into the atmosphere today, conditions would still continue to get worse for 20-30 more years before they actually start to get better.

It isn't closed minded to require real concrete published evidence on par with the evidence currently available that the mountains of scientific data on the subject of global warming are wrong. After all, the level of data available supporting the hypothesis that global warming is caused by excess greenhouse gases which are accumulating in the atmosphere and that the bulk of them are being released by humans is positively staggering.

**Meaning that there hasn't been a single scientific paper or study published in a refereed scientific journal which disagreed with the premise that excessive global warming is caused by excessive greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere due to additional greenhouse gases being released by human beings in the last 13 years. Not a single one.

[ July 03, 2006, 18:35: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

Excess global warming according to who? Some leftist nutjobs dying to be right about man destroying his enviroment. If the Earth is the hottest it has been in thousands of years that does not mean it has never been hotter or that some planetary event connot change this condition on its own. such thinking is closed minded. To hell, I say with the mountains of published scientific evidence. Hitler had mountains of scientific evidence Arians were the pure race and jews and neggros were animals. This scientific evidence was compiled by some of the most brilliant scientific minds of the day. Was he right?
But this aside, I promise you if it gets hot enough for the arctic conveyor to shut down, global warming will go away without mankind doing anything other than what we are doing now.

 

Excess global warming according to every single climatologist who has published in a refereed scientific journal in the last 13 years. There hasn't been a single study or article disagreeing with the world climatological community's stance on global warming published in a refereed journal in 13 years.

No, he didn't. Try looking at the links about global warming. Take a look at how "real" scientists work. I'm pretty damn sure you'll see a distinct difference between the mountains of research conducted on the subject of global warming and the torture committed by Hitler's regime under the guise of "scientific research". I shouldn't have even graced this inanity with a response. It's disgusting that you even brought it up at all....although it does wonders for your credibility.

[ July 03, 2006, 18:18: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

Just out of curiousity - how do you know this for sure?

 

It's in one of the posted links for this thread. As of 2003, it had been 10 years without a dissenting opinion. After doing a bit more digging, I was able to get confirmation that there have been no dissenting studies published by climatologists in any refereed scientific journals since then, either. It's 2006 now....hence, it has now been 13 years without a dissenting opinion published in a refereed scientific journal.

 

Ok, I just had to throw my 2 cents in. Global warming is caused by greenhouse gasses. Ok, I can see that. I don't neccessarily agree, but I can see it. Here's the bit that troubles me. I'm sure we've all heard the statistic that Mt. St. Hellens put out enough greenhouse gasses to equal all the production of man from the industrial revolution to that point in time, effectively doubling the 'tilt'. It put out the same kinds of gasses, too, with the exception of CFCs, which haven't been used for some time now in most of the world.

Here's the real problem, though. Where were the drastic global warming events 600,000 years, 1,200,000 years, and 2 million years ago? Confused about the times? Those are the approxomate years of the three eruptions of Yellowstone, a supervolcano. The last eruption put 2 inches of ash on America's east coast, more than half a continent away. The amount of greenhouse gasses released by such an even would be absolutely staggering. The sum total impact of humanity from the first human to today would be tiny compared to the amount of greenhouse gasses released in about 1/2 an hour by such an even, and spread globally over just a few days. If our environment can't handle a slow increase from our work, what would allow it to handle such a massive, immediate increase as that? And that's just one supervolcano.

My other problem is that the greatest temperature changes, even in modern data, is always seen in the poles. Why is that? we aren't producing many greenhouse gasses there, and the winds don't really blow anything that far.

Here's an alternate explanation for you, if you'll bare with me. The earth's geo-magnetic field is weakening, it has been for the past 100 years as part of a natural cycle and will continue to for the next 200 years until it totally switches polarity. This field deflects massive amounts of solar radiation away from the earth, but it leaks in at the poles where there are holes in the field. If the field is weakening, that means the holes are expanding and letting in more solar radiation at the poles, thus causing the greatest changes there and lesser changes as you move further away.

 

Possible reason for supervolcanoes not increasing global climate dramatically might be exactly that they create vast quantities of ash and smoke, which in effect will block out the sun, thus in fact decreasing the global temperature. It's a sort of a nuclear winter, only caused by volcanoes. Maybe the effects of this and the increase of CO2 rule each other out to some extent?

And the winds do blow very far, around the globe. Like you said yourself

The eruption of Krakatoa and it's effects as wikipedia says them were

 

Ah, but dust clouds last only a short time, and geometricly increased amounts of ash only take logarithmically increased time to settle, meaning an even 100 time more powerful may take 10 time longer, while an even 10,000 times more powerful may only take 50 times longer. Greenhouse gasses, on the other hand, as far as the global warming theory goes, take geometrically longer periods to be re-absorbed into the system, longer if you claim plant death. So an event 10,000 times larger may take 10,000 times longer for the greenhouse gasses to settle.

While the effects may have been mitigated for the durration of the ash cloud, the gasses would have lingered in extremely high concentrations much longer. Either that, or the global warming theory's perception of how the earth processes these gasses is wrong. That would mean that the meat of the theory may well be wrong as well.

Here's the meat and potatoes of this idea. Research has repeatedly shown that plants grown in air with higher concentrations of CO2 grow larger faster, not just more leaves and branches, but bigger leaves and branches as well, which means they take up more CO2. So the higher the CO2 concentration in the air, the faster the system restores itself to a balanced level. The same goes for smaller levels, too. Less CO2 means smaller plants using less, and exponentially less or more to a geometric increase in concentration. This shows us that the earth's atmosphere, as far as CO2 is concerened is in a stable equilibrium. We may temporarily disturb it, or even permanently upset it to a somewhat higher level if we maintain output, but we will not destroy it. The other major gasses have similar system balancing them out, but climatologists don't usually pay attention to what plants are doing. Unfortunately, our scientific communities don't communicate too much. The USGS's data from Yellowstone usually doesn't make it to NOAA.

 

@NOG: Those massive volcanic eruptions don't happen every single year. There would have been some warming about 20 years after each eruption but it would have evened out again because the earth wasn't constantly being barraged with a steady flow of greenhouse gases which, over the course of a few years, added up to far more greenhouse gases than what was released by that volcanic eruption. Remember, we do need some greenhouse gases. Global warming is both natural and necessary. Without any global warming, our wonderful planet would be unable to sustain life. The problem is excessive global warming.

I have also already made reference to the fact that the earth is naturally homeostatic. The problem, here, is that we have actually exceeded the planets ability to correct itself without something drastic happening. The melting of the polar icecaps will eventually even things out. unfortunately, it will also lower the ocean's temperature which will vicariously lower the temperature of the entire planet and trigger another iceage waaaaay ahead of schedule.

We know that we have exceeded the planet's capacity to repair itself quickly because we have reached a point where virtually every year is hotter than the one before. This is not normal, since weather patterns are supposed to be cyclical. It we put the weather of the planet over the last 50 years on a chart, that chart will only go in one direction.

[ July 04, 2006, 22:26: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

All this is telling me is that this whole area is very very very complicated. I don't know what to believe and I find it hard to fathom whether any scientists can truly say they understand exactly how all of these factors interact.