An Open Message To Global Warming Scare-Mongers From A Skeptic, page 1

Skepticism is always good, and i don't know why people would slander you because of it. But imo, there has been more than enough proof that these changes are happening, and i don't think anyone can deny that extreme changes in climate patterns are happening.

The problem with this topic is the phrase that has been used to describe these changes we are currently going through.

The definition of global warming in most people's minds is that the whole globe is at the same time heating up, but this is not the case. While many areas of the world are indeed become hotter, there are other areas that have cooled because the Earth's ecosystem tries to balance itself, and tries to achieve a constant balance.

The whole premise for most scientists claiming that global warming is not really happening, is because of this balance that the Earth's ecosystem constantly tries to achieve, because there are some areas that are showing a cooling trend.

What is happening right now to the Earth, has happened many times before. In part it is only a cycle in the life of this planet which has the right conditions for life as we know it to exist. But it is also true that these past changes have had a negative impact on many species on Earth. This time around the one speices that is going to have more of a negative impact because of these changes is mankind.

Another premise for many scientists who disagree that global warming is happening, is the belief by many, that mankind can not possibly have any influence in the ecosystem of this planet. But when there is a problem, adding more problems on top does not make things better, or the same, it makes things worse; and that is what mankind has been doing. We have been adding problems which is making climate change faster.

For example; we know that the Earth's climate depends not only on the Sun, but on the oceans and seas as well. The oceans/seas of Earth control in great part the global climate, it is for a reason that the oceans are called the "global heat engine" of Earth.

A few facts about The Oceans:

Cover 70% of the surface of the Earth.
Have 1,100 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere (99.9% of the heat capacity of the Earth's fluids)
Contain 90,000 times as much water as the atmosphere (97% of the free water on the planet)
Receive 78% of global precipitation
A quote from Arthur C. Clarke gets it right:

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when clearly it is Ocean"

--Nature, v. 344, p 102, 1990.

Excerpted from.
www.whoi.edu...

When there are changes in ocean patterns, there are changes in climate globally.

The global ocean circulation patterns, or thermohaline (thermo= heat, haline = salinity) circulation, depends on the balance of salinity and temperature of the oceans. Which in turn is what allows for the mild winters in many of the northern and southern regions. Any change in salinity and/or temperature, affects this ocean circulation, and in turn the global climate.

If the delicate balance of the thermohaline circulation is broken, and noone knows for certain the breaking point, this global circulation will not only slow down, which has been demonstrated that it has slowed down, but can completly shut down the north Atlantic conveyor. This in turn will make for colder climate patterns, more so in the northern latitudes. So in the end, the result of global warming is a colder climate for most of the world.

There has been much discusion on whether or not mankind is contributing to what is called global warming, and it is true that there are scientist who don't believe that global warming exist for the reasons I have already given.

But one has to ask, since when adding more problems ( in this case greenhouse gases and other chemical and gases human activity has been releasing since the industrial revolution) to a problem that already exists, (the cyclic pattern of climate change) does not contribute to make these changes faster of worse?

What has many people worried now is that over the past 250 years humans have been artificially raising the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Our factories, power plants, and cars burn coal and gasoline and spit out a seemingly endless stream of carbon dioxide. We produce millions of pounds of methane by allowing our trash to decompose in landfills and by breeding large herds of methane-belching cattle. Nitrogen-based fertilizers, which we use on nearly all our crops, release unnatural amounts of nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere.

Once these carbon-based greenhouse gases get into the atmosphere, they stay there for decades or longer. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), since the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels have increased 31 percent and methane levels have increased 151 percent. Paleoclimate readings taken from ice cores and fossil records show that these gases, two of the most abundant greenhouse gases, are at their highest levels in the past 420,000 years. Many scientists fear that the increased concentrations of greenhouse gases have prevented additional thermal radiation from leaving the Earth. In essence, these gases are trapping excess heat in the Earth’s atmosphere in much the same way that a windshield traps solar energy that enters a car.

Excerpted from.
earthobservatory.nasa.gov...

Anyways, you want not to believe that global warming is actually ocurring, that is fine, it is your choice not to believe it, but the evidence to me shows that not only is it real, but it is happening as we speak, or in this case as i am writing this.

---edited for errors---

[edit on 12-4-2005 by Muaddib]