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The more of this that I see in the media (of all stripes), and the more talks that I go to, the more I get the impression that no one really knows what they're talking about.

Here's another link from that same source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/enviro … exist.html

And another:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/colu … roved.html

Hank Rearden wrote:

The more of this that I see in the media (of all stripes), and the more talks that I go to, the more I get the impression that no one really knows what they're talking about.

Here's another link from that same source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/enviro … exist.html

Himalayan glaciers
A report by the UN Environment Program this year claimed that the cause of melting glaciers in the Himalayas was not global warming but the local warming effect of a vast "atmospheric brown cloud" over that region, made up of soot particles from Asia's dramatically increased burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

It's possible that they may not actually know what they're talking about, but doesn't this exemplify very clearly that humans can have a measurable impact on the climate?

Farmerkev wrote:

mo' ron wrote:

Hank Rearden wrote:

The more of this that I see in the media (of all stripes), and the more talks that I go to, the more I get the impression that no one really knows what they're talking about.

Here's another link from that same source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/enviro … exist.html

Himalayan glaciers
A report by the UN Environment Program this year claimed that the cause of melting glaciers in the Himalayas was not global warming but the local warming effect of a vast "atmospheric brown cloud" over that region, made up of soot particles from Asia's dramatically increased burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

It's possible that they may not actually know what they're talking about, but doesn't this exemplify very clearly that humans can have a measurable impact on the climate?

You want me to explain what you did wrong here or figure it out yourself?

I forgot to include an ellipsis, sorry.

I don't really thing anyone knows what is going to happen.  Although I can attest that it does seem to be getting warmer; Winters in Colorado keep getting warmer and warmer with less and less snow fall in the city.

I just biked today since it was 60 degrees.

-mark

Last edited by avkills (2009-01-02 8:35 pm)

avkills wrote:

I don't really thing anyone knows what is going to happen.  Although I can attest that it does seem to be getting warmer; Winters in Colorado keep getting warmer and warmer with less and less snow fall in the city.

I just biked today since it was 60 degrees.

-mark

Getting warmer (or cooler for that matter) though does not require a cause/effect relationship with CO2.

I saw a show on that snowball earth thing. When glaciation occurs CO2 isn't precipitated from the atmosphere which leads to it's build up.

ShnickyShnack wrote:

There was an ice age in the last 6,000 years?

Just a little one. It ended a little over 150 years ago.

I think the simplest explanation is that the Telegraph writer pulled the conclusion out of his ass. I haven't read the original paper, but I have read a similar paper by Bao. I've also read the abstract of Bao's latest paper.

Science 2 January 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5910, pp. 119 - 122
DOI: 10.1126/science.1165373

Stretching the Envelope of Past Surface Environments: Neoproterozoic Glacial Lakes from Svalbard
Huiming Bao,1* Ian J. Fairchild,2 Peter M. Wynn,3 Christoph Spötl4
The oxygen isotope composition of terrestrial sulfate is affected measurably by many Earth-surface processes. During the Neoproterozoic, severe "snowball" glaciations would have had an extreme impact on the biosphere and the atmosphere. Here, we report that sulfate extracted from carbonate lenses within a Neoproterozoic glacial diamictite suite from Svalbard, with an age of 635 million years ago, falls well outside the currently known natural range of triple oxygen isotope compositions and indicates that the atmosphere had either an exceptionally high atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration or an utterly unfamiliar oxygen cycle during deposition of the diamictites.

As for "the Gulf", "N America", and "Europe", those didn't exist.



On another note: I suspect that a certain proportion of global warming skeptics takes great solace in the fact that "we" survived the Permian extinction (251.4 Mya)

Last edited by jerwin (2009-01-03 12:11 am)

bedstuy wrote:

I can see Laurentia from Alaska!

You betcha !

Look! There's Florida!

Even if they don't work differently I agree that the author of the article jumped to conclusions that correlation implies causation. Especially when the likelihood of an ice age causing a CO2 spike because of a drop in global rainfall and other precipitation (which remove C02 from the air) is more scientifically plausible.

There are other pieces of evidence the would fit with Snowball Earth, like glacial boulders found in area supposedly found in locations that dated to periods where the location was in theory near the equator. I'd say it's a credible theory but I'm not sure whether or not it's completely accurate.