I've never been convinced that we are experiencing global warming.

I don't doubt that deforestation, and CO2 emissions have an effect - I just doubt we are able to accurately predict the long-term effect this is having.

Whatever we do the climate, the Earth's relationship to the Sun has a much more profound effect. Ice ages come and go with great frequency. They do much more to the climate than we do ourselves.

Let all buy SUV, invade iraq and bump up oil consumption...


Global warming is completely real!

I was wondering what was happening to my snow back in 1989, so don't tell me it aint happenin. It was 15 years ago and skiing back to the villages was becoming a luxury. The village in this case is north side at approx 1800 meters!!


Edit:SPELLING!!

[edit on 15/10/2004 by Corinthas]

For one, where is the reference? What journal did the Canadians publish in?

Secondly, one strike against one paper on global warming doesn't negate the phenomena itself.

That graph is the strongest evidence? Please. How about melting glaciers? How about Antarctica melting away? Greenland melting. Gee, I guess real empirical observation isn't worth squat anymore when some geeks found a math error in another geek's geekery. Nevermind ice cores that show a dramatic increase in CO2. Nevermind that nearly any method you choose shows that we are on a warming trend. That the Earth is getting warmer is not in doubt. What is in doubt is how much of an effect we've had in this process.

But whether or not we caused the problem is really besides the point, now isn't it? Our only concern at this point is how to make the environment more amenable to humans. If that involves reducing CO2 emissions, so be it. I don't see what the big deal is. We know oil reserves are being rapidly depleted, we know that oil is getting expensive (both in terms of extraction/processing costs and its political costs). We know that burning petroleum products makes unsightly and unhealthy pollution in our cities. What is the problem here? I don't see why the energy is spent in arguing an obvious point instead of thinking of a solution to the problem (whether or not it is our fault--though it is sort of hard to argue that the amount of CO2 we spew into the atmosphere each year is something that the Earth has seen yearly throughout its history before humans). Gee, like the world would really be terrible if we bothered to re-plant some forrests, switched to cleaner burning fuels, and reduced our use of fossil fuels. Why on Earth would that be so terrible?

Yes, the problem is exactly that. Sometimes scientific 'opinion' is confused with scientific 'fact'

You can prove some things conclusively through sound methods and practical experiementation, but when it comes to things like the Earth it gets a tad more complicated.

It's true than C02 emisions have increased since the industrial revolution - but that is only one component in an impossibly complex system.

I don't understand. Greenhouse gases are those which cause retention of heat. CO2 is a greenhouse gas (so is water when a vapor). Industry results in large emissions of CO2. Everyone agrees to that point at least right?

Now, does anyone dispute that industrial emmissions result in atmosphere concentrations of CO2 being higher than 'normal'? If so, what factor accounts for the elimination of the CO2 industrial input? I'm not saying that there can't be anything, but I'd like to know what that factor is supposed to be. It can be concentrated/absorbed by the oceans for example, but is that what people are claiming?

Nemesis: The sun's compainion proposed to be between 1 - 3 light years away.

Since the discovery of Nemesis it has been made possible that dinosaur extinction was due to meterorite showers pitched towards our inner solar system from this neighbour sun. Its effects leaving earth in a hemisphere of dust acting like a greenhouse, melting polar ice caps and causing an ice age.

It is not believed that nemesis could be to blame for our past ice ages for there have not been any comets involved. Humans would never have been subjcted to one of these meteorite mega-blast's if there is truth to Nemesis becoming further away with time. There would still be obvious effects on our inner solar system if these intimate attractions between suns continued to occur regardless of growing distance. But perhaps thats just it; a magnetic connection not strong enough to pull rocks hurling towards earth but strong enough to send the suns energy in the direction unattending to its solar system....

Originally posted by BirdsEyeView
Nemesis: The sun's compainion proposed to be between 1 - 3 light years away.

Since the discovery of Nemesis

There has been no discovery of nemesis. Its a hypothesis, one lacking sufficient evidence to suport it.

Its effects leaving earth in a hemisphere of dust acting like a greenhouse, melting polar ice caps and causing an ice age.

There was no ice age shortly after the dinosaurs died. Some have hypothesised that the impact from the -single- meteor in the yucatan (not a shower of dozens) threw dust into the air, blotted out the sun, and resulting in somethign like a "nuclear winter", but not an ice age.