Re: The sky is falling

Enlighten yourself, do a search of the CO2 levels during the 165 million years the dinosaurs roamed the earth, if that is what you choose to believe

Ever notice we never hear of the benefits to the world of a warmer average temperature supposedly caused by CO2? More CO2 means more plant growth that will produce more oxygen, longer growing seasons, creation of new areas to grow food and more food production, less sickness from indoor pollution, savings in the amount of fuel to need to cool rather than heat and the reduction of the overall need for more carbon fuels in the first place etc. LOL

Very much of the CO2 is generated because of the heating of some areas where animals like the mammuts are buried are rotting away and generate CO2. There is no real evidence available if humans did cause the mammuts to become extinct. Some people blame it on the fact that there were no Pabbuts around.

All kinds of people come with all kinds of predictions. Some say it is getting colder and others say it is getting warmer. I live in an area were we would like to get it a bit warmer so by all means make it hotter. I would very much like to believe that we could influence the heat a bit more.

Over the millions of years all kinds of things have been happening. Some people say we get water every year from outer space. Others say we are losing water into space.

Some people claim the continents are drifting apart, others say the crust is braking up like shell on an egg.

Nobody knows for sure what is happening. It leaves a lot of room for speculations. One thing I have learned is that nobody knows everything.

It is very interesting to see what happens when places get flooded. Most of the time it is because people build their houses to close to the water. Also when there are houses blown away or collaps because of earthquakes it is because they have been poorly built.

Bad houses and bad places for the houses mean that people get killed or need to rebuild or move away. That has been happening for millions of years.

If people are so clever at controling the weather they should try to make some of the deserts habitable and melt the snow.

And more malaria because there will be more tropical areas, disruption of the climate so that areas that rain distribution is all changed, more liquid water because oceans will rise because water expands as it get warmer (its maximum density is around 40 F), ice caps on mountains will melt sooner, causing problems with not enough water in the summer because the spring runoff ends earlier leading to potable water shortages, and economic disruption.

Please don't suggest that changes like this are good or that less energy will be needed.

Jeff

Isn't that one of the defination of insanity? ;)

We all know the "horrors" of global warming, the kooks keept telling us, but why not tell us of the benifits?

. .

:-)

Those benefits will be more than offset by the rise in ocean levels. That's the big bugaboo that everyone is wondering about. We have way too many port cities (like New York for example) that are at sea level. We know that the warmer climate is going to reduce the mass of water in the ice caps. What we don't know is by how much. It may be that just a few degrees more will cause both icecaps to completely melt - which would be a disaster for those cities - we just don't know. And we really don't want to gamble to find out.

Ted

You're like those creationists who think they've successfully refuted the biologists with a few simple facts they believe have been overlooked by the highly trained, highly experienced biologists.

The professionals in the field have long already considered those factors, and they would be outright shocked if the CO2 level was 3%, which is approximately 100 times the current level.

Yes all we hear is the supposed GW negatives. We know there must be positives, else God wouldn't be putting us through this.

It's happened before. For example Florida was under water through much of recent geological history. Man wasn't around to see it though, but the science of geology can look back very effectively. I'll bet Gore and gang didn't pass an advanced geology course, but I know they passed in movie drama, exaggeration and scene swapping.

I guess our friend Jeff thought I was referring to an 'hour'of work LOL

There are many who still question the CO2 causes the earth to heat theory Consult a HS book and you will see plants consume CO2 and produce O2. Since that is a fact, how does CO2 warm the earth, since more CO2 will produce more plant live which In turn will produce more O2 in the atmosphere which will lead to more Ozone (O3) As we all know it is Ozone that reflects the infrared rays from the sun. Apparently more CO2 should cause the earth to cool not heat ;)

You are correct .03 would have been closer. Perhaps we should not be putting nitrigen in our tires ;)

The Earth's atmosphere is a layer of gasses surrounding the planet earth and retained by gravity. It contains roughly (by molar content/volume) 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.038% carbon dioxide, trace amounts of other gasses, and a variable amount (average around 1%) of water vapor . This mixture of gases is commonly known as air. The atmosphere the earth byabsorbing ultraviolet solar radiation and reducing temperature extremes between day and night.

There is no definite boundary between the atmosphere and space. It slowly becomes thinner and fades into space. Three quarters of the atmosphere's mass is within 11 km of the surface.

What other say about man as the cause of globel waming

Search tectonic plates for the cause of the El Niño effect would be worthwhile as well

One theory on the origins of El Nino has been proposed and, surprisingly, it has very little to do with the atmosphere or the sea. The new theory suggests that the primary mover behind El Nino is hot magma welling up between tectonic plates on the Pacific sea-floor. The upwelling magma heats the overlying waters enough to affect the ocean surface, initiating the cascade of events that brings on the wrath of El Nino.

Carbon dioxide increase occurs during summer months and mainly in polar latitutes This points to the thawing permafrost, melting glaciers, and shrinking Polar ice caps as having a key role of carbon dioxide emissions. This increase in carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is caused by nature. The extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere mostly comes from pumping sequestered carbon in the form of hydrocarbons and coal into the biosphere.

Why do thawing permafrost and melting polar ice caps increase the rate of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere? Because there was a HIGHER CONTRATIONS of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because it was colder at the time the glaciers were formed. Also, there was abundant vegetation in the polar regions, vegetation that has been frozen but is now decomposing and thus releasing more carbon dioxide (and other gases such as methane) back into the carbon cycle. Human consumption of carbon dioxide is fairly consistent, but nature adds carbon dioxide back into the biosphere during periods of ice thaw, thus the carbon dioxide growth rate varies with NATURAL cycles.

Dr. Paul R. Epstein, M.D., M.P.H., associate director of Harvard University Medical School's Center for Health & Global Environment writes: Consider India's autumn of disease last year. For much of the summer, temperatures had soared from their normal 80-90 degrees Fahrenheit and hovered around 124 degrees. Three-month monsoons led to conditions conducive to breeding malaria, dengue fever, and pneumonic plague. By the time the epidemics ran their course, the three diseases had afflicted thousands of people and killed as many as 4,000.

Climate variability has profound effects on the Earth's biota; and alterations in the incidence, duration, onset and intensity of storms, hurricanes, floods, and droughts greatly impact societies, productivity and development through changes in the diseases of human, animals, and plants. Because climate affects temperature, humidity, and precipitation, it influences human health via three interconnected pathways: 1) distribution and quality of surface water; 2) life cycle of disease vectors and host/vector relationships; and 3) ecosystem dynamics of predator/prey relationships which control populations of disease vectors. Changes in temperature, precipitation, humidity, and storm patterns, often related to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon, are associated with upsurges of water-borne diseases such as hepatitis, shigella dysentery, typhoid, and cholera; of vector-borne pathogens such as malaria, dengue, yellow fever, encephalitis, schistosomiasis, plague and hantavirus; and of agricultural pests such as rodents, insects, fungi, bacterium, and viruses. And because climate variability can be forecasted, the potential exists to predict the likelihood of outbreaks of infectious disease.

ENSO Disrupts Ecosystem Dynamics Climatic extremes effect animal, plant and human health by affording opportunistic species fresh terrain and generating new bursts of activity. Droughts encourage locusts and rodents, while floods foster fungi and mosquitoes. Fluctuations in climate which alter the structure or function of ecosystems can change the population dynamics of opportunistic pests and disease vectors, and of the predatory species which normally check their population growth. Owls, for example, help control rodent populations involved in Lyme disease and Hantaviruses. In the U.S., deforestation in the Pacific Northwest and prolonged drought in the Southwest, both encourage the proliferation of rodents by damaging owl refuges.

Rodents are involved in the life-cycle of many groups of diseases around the world. In the U.S. a new disease, the Hantavirus (with a 60% mortality rate), emerged in the "Four Corners" area near the borders of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, following an explosion of the deer mouse population. Six-year droughts in the southwestern U.S. that devastated populations of owls, snakes, and other rodent predators, were followed by heavy rains in 1993 that increased food sources for rodents; in the absence predators the well nourished rodents flourished. The story is similar in southern Africa, where heavy rodent infestations closely followed the El Niño years of 1976, 1983, and 1993.

Since the 1960's researchers in southern Asia have observed an association between algal blooms and upsurges of cholera. It is becoming increasingly clear that ENSO warm events are also associated with upsurges of cholera, perhaps via the marine reservoir and/or the contamination of ground water accompanying ENSO-related flooding. Recent increases in coastal algal blooms and related cholera epidemics may be linked to climatic perturbations of ecosystems already stressed by pollution, habitat destruction, or the introduction of non-indigenous species.

ENSO Forecasting as a Weapon Against Infectious Disease New developments in climate forecasting can provide the basis for a proactive approach to the spread of human diseases and agricultural pests--mitigating or preventing outbreaks before they occur, saving scarce public health resources and saving lives. Integrating health surveillance with environmental and climatological monitoring, disease early warning systems for conditions conducive to outbreaks can aid in the design of timely, ecologically sound and environmentally benign public health interventions. Climate forecasting can also be extremely useful in targeting scarce funding for surveillance and response, research and training, and emergency production of vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics, in the U.S. and abroad.

While climate forecasting cannot predict exactly where, when, and to what extent outbreaks will occur, current forecast capabilities combined with the state of understanding regarding the links between climate and health can be used in assessing the vulnerability of populations to outbreaks of infectious disease, and in determining the likelihood or risk of epidemics. Even at this early stage, probabilistic climate forecasting can arm public health practitioners with a powerful tool for reducing the morbidity and mortality caused by outbreaks of infectious disease. In this case, as in others, chance favors the prepared mind.

One can choose which scientist whom they wish to believe, but to deny there are those scientist that do not believe man can effect the earth temperature are legion, who believe that current events are the result of ever repeating natural cycles beyond the control of man.

I personally believe that changes in the sun, volcanic activity, and tectonic plate movement as well as our current relationship to the sun are what determine what happens on earth...

To discount the natural cycle of nature is a bit foolish at best

I don't believe it is the President fault either ;)

While ozone absorbs some infrared energy, its main effect is to absorb ultraviolet energy, which keeps people from getting sunburned. It absorbs some infrared light, but, because the sun doesn't give off a lot of infrared light, it wouldn't block much heat energy from getting from the sun to the earth. Rather, it would block heat energy from leaving the earth, which would warm the earth. However, the effect of ozone is not enough to make it a major greenhouse gas, according to the US. DOE.

It is not known how the combination of increased temperature and increased CO2 will affect plant life.

CO2 absorbs infrared energy (heat energy) radiated or reflected from the earth. But most of the energy reaching the earth from the sun is visible light. So the, light and heat are able to reach the earth, but are not able to leave the earth as easily, because the CO2 in atmosphere absorbs the heat (infrared). The CO2 then re-emits the infrared light. Some of the infrared light is re-emitted towards the earth. So the CO2 in the atmosphere acts like a barrier to escaping heat, acting like a blanket or a sheet of glass in a greenhouse.

The same effect makes another plant, Venus, hot.

The vast majority of scientists, as well as scientists who have training in fields related to global warming, feel the that evidence that global warming is caused in part by man.

True. However, to ignore all the evidence that global warming is caused, in part, by man, is even more foolish.

I suppose one might choose to believe that LOL