You know Majic I recall all the press about global cooling, an impending ice age, etc. However, all that hysteria is a product of the media, not the scientists involved--there may be a few exceptions to the above statement, but not very many.

The sad fact is, reporters and journalists in general are notoriously inept at reporting scientific material of any kind. They seem to look for something they think the "common" man can latch onto and then run with it. The problem is, they end up being wrong most of the time simply because they did not understand what they were trying to report.

As far as I can determine from my own memory, the scientific consensus has been very consistent concerning global warming. There has been much discussion about it, but mostly in the press. Scientific studies and climate simulations have steadily grown more and more accurate over the years. They still are not good enough, but they all agree on the major points about the direction our climate is heading and why it is heading in that direction. I believe the latest IPCC report finally came right out and said that it is about five times more likely that mankind is responsible for global warming than nature. That marks the first time the scientists have really tried to head off the mis-reporting by the media.

Astronomer, I agree with you.

I'm a physicist (not in climate) but I was friends with a few in the early 90's.

By then, already, the actual honest-to-truth what-they'd-tell-you-in-the-bar-between-friends scientific belief was significantly ahead (in terms of being more sure about global warming) than were officially presented in the large IPCC reports.

Even then the supposed skeptics were seen generally as backwards kooks by then..

Also, the scientists in public typically turned out predictions only to 2050----because some of the predictions going out to 2100 were so frightening that the scientists would be accused of "fearmongering" if they presented some of those (quite plausible) scenarios as reasonable predictions."

Doesnt global warming or the temperature increase also involve extreme conditions in weather which could mean increasing warmth or really cold summers or winters. It doesnt just mean warming it also infers that weather catastophies no matter whether they are warm or cold, it is caused by our actions. Like hurricane katrina was caused by us. We destroyed wetlands but also we interfered with our ozone layer which caused extreme hurricanes. There definitly is global warming its just a matter of if we can stop it at where is it right now. They say if we dont help our planet by 2010 we are doomed.

pornanist I don't know who they are that say we are doomed by 2010 unless we do whatever. I would however tend to seriously doubt anyone that said such a thing. What we can do is plant trees, lots and lots of trees, this would tend to curtail the amount of carbon dioxide mankind generates by burning fossil fuels and curtail the amount of methane as well.

While it is true that living plants generate methane (a greehouse gas 23 times as potent as carbon dioxide), this is far outweighed by the amount of carbon they fix into their structure (thus removing it from the atmosphere) and by the quantity of oxygen they produce. Never forget that trees are essentially the lungs of the world (along with the blue-green algae in the oceans) and air quality is always improved in the vicinity of trees.

Along with planting trees, we can all try to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels. The biggest use of such fuels is in our transportation devices, thus using devices that consume less fossil fuel will help. It is probably too late for such activities to produce very much change in global warming over the short term, but in geologic terms, trees grow very fast so plant away.

Originally posted by pornanist
Doesnt global warming or the temperature increase also involve extreme conditions in weather which could mean increasing warmth or really cold summers or winters. It doesnt just mean warming it also infers that weather catastophies no matter whether they are warm or cold, it is caused by our actions. Like hurricane katrina was caused by us. We destroyed wetlands but also we interfered with our ozone layer which caused extreme hurricanes. There definitly is global warming its just a matter of if we can stop it at where is it right now. They say if we dont help our planet by 2010 we are doomed.

It wasn't until after my last post was submitted that I realized I had not addressed the points you made above, so let me at least try to take them on now.

Your statement about extremes of weather being a byproduct of global warming is true to an extent. What is likely is that as global temperatures rise they will do so more in the tropical regions than elsewhere. This in turn will cause atmospheric mixing to become more noticeable as the tropics try to shed their excess heat to the cooler regions of the world. Increased wind speeds and pockets of air laden with atmospheric moisture will thus be moving about. The air coming from the tropics will contain more moisture than it does now simply because hotter air holds more moisture. Anyway, as the tropical air moves northward (or southward), it will tend to dump moisture as it cools and since it will contain more to begin with it will dump more as it cools. Therefore precipitation when it does come will likely come in greater quantities and come quicker than now. Furtheremore, the greater temperature differences between tropical and polar air will result in greater atmospheric turbulence, etc. In short, weather is likely to be more extreme by today's standards.

Do not read into the above that we will get more overall rainfall or snowfall on a planetwide basis than now. The total amount of worldwide precipitation is likely to be less than now because more moisture will remain in the atmosphere at all times because of the increased temperatures.

Originally posted by Astronomer70
pornanist I don't know who they are that say we are doomed by 2010 unless we do whatever. I would however tend to seriously doubt anyone that said such a thing. What we can do is plant trees, lots and lots of trees, this would tend to curtail the amount of carbon dioxide mankind generates by burning fossil fuels and curtail the amount of methane as well.

While it is true that living plants generate methane (a greehouse gas 23 times as potent as carbon dioxide), this is far outweighed by the amount of carbon they fix into their structure (thus removing it from the atmosphere) and by the quantity of oxygen they produce. Never forget that trees are essentially the lungs of the world (along with the blue-green algae in the oceans) and air quality is always improved in the vicinity of trees.

Along with planting trees, we can all try to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels. The biggest use of such fuels is in our transportation devices, thus using devices that consume less fossil fuel will help. It is probably too late for such activities to produce very much change in global warming over the short term, but in geologic terms, trees grow very fast so plant away.

Astronomer why do you think that the statement "we're doomed by 2010 if we don't do something" is so hard to believe? I'd like to know your reasons.

I think that there is a tipping point. And I think we've already reached it. It takes about 30 years for our actions here on Earth to affect our atmosphere. That means that if we changed everything we're doing, tonight, we would still be doomed for the next 30 years to having catastrophic weather. And it would worsen over those 30 years. It might also get so bad so quickly that our planet will never be the same. We don't know, but we do know that these things have a very good chance of happening.

Also, I am wondering in what way methane is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide - how is it more potent? Certainly, you can't mean that it's 23 times more lethal than carbon dioxide??

While it is true that living plants generate methane (a greehouse gas 23 times as potent as carbon dioxide), this is far outweighed by the amount of carbon they fix into their structure (thus removing it from the atmosphere) and by the quantity of oxygen they produce. Never forget that trees are essentially the lungs of the world (along with the blue-green algae in the oceans) and air quality is always improved in the vicinity of trees.

It's not clear that reforestation is going to do a huge amount to ameliorate greenhouse gases, because after a short-term blip the decay from the dead plant matter will re-release what was previously fixed into the biomass of the trees. I don't know the magnitude of the temporary gain but I suspect it is fairly small compared to increasing fossil fuel emissions.

Only if one were to bury them geologically in a way which prevents decay for a very long time (i.e. turn it into a future fossil fuel), will it truly help.

Possibly oceanic algae which can fall down to the depths of the ocean and not really decay or do anything quickly might help---but that process is already ongoing and is included as part of the pre-industrial equilibrium between greenhouse emitters and greenhouse sequesters and it is extremely doubtful we can do anything significant on the global scale of oceans.

I'm not sure, but I've heard it said that much of the coal and fossil fuels came from an age before bacteria had evolved the ability to metabolize the tough things like cellulose and lignin so that the biomass created continued to pile up and fossilize. Today obviously such bacteria exist (they live in cow guts) and hence large scale biological sequestration of carbonaceous biomass may be impossible.

Simply put, we must stop digging up coal, no matter what. Nothing else is as remotely important.

Global warming has not ended. Average temperatures are compared to average temperatures from the year before - that is how we can see the warming.

pai mei... good response...

enough said..

global warming has occured and is still happening, but there may be a point of no return as some of the top posts point out. how much damage can our environment take before it wont come back...

deserts are easy to make but almost impossible to get rid of *environment wise*...

so is the earth getting hotter... yes

can we do something about it... yes

will we... no,

its that simple

Originally posted by FoxStriker

will we... no,

We will when it effects people's bellies and they can no longer sit on the couch and watch Oprah.

Until then we probably won't do a whole lot.

The problem is not with the lazy common man, but the politician who continues to be voted in each time no matter what they do. People say that the voice of the people is the vote, but it lies in the $. Until people stop wasting their money on things that give them minute amounts of utility and focus their funds on lobbying, things will never change.

Originally posted by CAConrad0825
The problem is not with the lazy common man, but the politician who continues to be voted in each time no matter what they do. People say that the voice of the people is the vote, but it lies in the $. Until people stop wasting their money on things that give them minute amounts of utility and focus their funds on lobbying, things will never change.

It will be a problem with common man if they continue to let parasites feed on them until they have nothing left to give. Complaceny to the agenda is not an option, unless you want nothing to change. Voting and being a conscious consumer requires a person to get up off the couch and turn off Oprah.

The cold snap began on Jan. 30. Low temperatures have ranged from 7 to 15 degrees C (mid-40s to mid-50s F.) in the northeast and mountainous areas, far below norms of 17 to 20 degrees C.

What, if anything, this has to do with global climate change, Ms. Seth will not begin to guess. She attributes the chill to a high-pressure front moving down from Siberia, which, she says, has cooled off greater Indochina, including Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and parts of Thailand.

Krang Karath, a Phnong chief in the northeast province of Mondolkiri, which has suffered some of the most extreme cold this past week, said his people had taken to drinking little cups of fish sauce and stashing hot coals under their beds to stay warm. Inmates in Mondolkiri provincial prison complained to the prison director of a strange new sensation in their arms and legs: numbness.

Global Warming Eh?