Floods Poll

[LonelyPilgrim]

That human activity, directly or indirectly, is contributing to a rise in atmospheric CO2 and Methane, among other 'greenhouse gasses' is incontrovertible. That those gasses are contributing to the gradual warming of the Earth's atmosphere is very nearly undeniable.

What the precise effects will be and whether they are really all that bad is where the real debate is. Climate change isn't by itself all that bad, it's a natural occurence, but rapid climate change on a global scale could have severe negative impacts on human society not limited to geographic and ecosystem changes. Water shortages, severe flooding in coastal regions, an increase in severe weather... these all have corresponding political and geo-political fallout.

I believe that human-induced global warming is a problem, but counter the scare-mongers out there we aren't likely to see the real dramatic effects for another 50 to 100 years. That's not to say we aren't in a crisis now, though. Even if we stopped excess CO2 production today, it takes about 50 years for CO2 to cycle through the atmosphere. That means, baring some amazing technological atmosphere-scrubbing advance, the actions of today are determining the future climate for the next 50 years or so. Point being, even if we did all that we could do to stop emissions today, the spectre of global warming and the corresponding hardships will be with our generation for our entire lives.

Cheerful thought.

Anyway, y'all should send some of that rain over here, we're in a drought.

[hr]

Arma virumque cano...

[Gubbins]

Quoting LonelyPilgrim from 22:28, 26th Jul 2007
That human activity, directly or indirectly, is contributing to a rise in atmospheric CO2 and Methane, among other 'greenhouse gasses' is incontrovertible. That those gasses are contributing to the gradual warming of the Earth's atmosphere is very nearly undeniable.

A contribution, yes. Whether they are the root cause of global warming is another matter. We don't really know if human activity accounts for 10% or 90% of global warming. Examining the solar constant for the last 120 years can account for 50% of global warming by very simple physics. 10% of global sea rise to date is due to the dessication of the Aral Sea by former USSR republic irrigation.

Of course, things are unlikely to be that simple, but it would be naive to suggest that cutting out all of CO2/CH4/etc. emission would solve the problem, even if the situation were allowed to stabilise.

[hr]

...then again, that is only my opinion.

[DrAlex]

Quoting Gubbins from 23:04, 26th Jul 2007
Of course, things are unlikely to be that simple, but it would be naive to suggest that cutting out all of CO2/CH4/etc. emission would solve the problem, even if the situation were allowed to stabilise.

Perhaps, but so too would it be naive to say that cutting emissions is silly because it might not be the cause (not that I'm accusing you of this). Many people do argue this though...

Back to the topic at hand however, check out these pictures.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/ ... =330241388

[hr]

The Sinner: Where no one ever learned "if you haven't got any thing nice to say, don't say anything at all."

[Midget]

Most of the ideas - changing from fossil fuels (because they are going to run out and are very carginogenic -particularly cars etc), more recyclying, using less energy generally, planting more trees... etc are all good for everyone whether or not they help reduce global warming.

The green movement which has been around for ever is not a silly fad it is about looking after our environment. Global warming may be a hyped up political non-issue out of our control but it has done one thing and that raise awareness of green issues which would help us here and now. (less rubbish = less landfill, less fossil fuel burning = less cancer and so on).

Just because you don't believe in the Global Warming thing doesn't mean you should stop trying to be more 'green'.

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IMAGE:img9.imgspot.com/u/04/241/18/160019.jpg new shite
http://standrews.facebook.com/profile.php?id=37100090

[eagle]

Point 1 - El Niño, Gulfstream and Jestream are all different things.

Point 2 - "Green" Electricity shouldn't cost more, as this merely allows the well off to continue their lives as normal, while thinking that they're making a difference. Those who can't afford to pay the premium are forced to continue with the fossil-fuel-based electricity.

[Haunted]

Quoting eagle from 09:09, 27th Jul 2007
Point 2 - "Green" Electricity shouldn't cost more, as this merely allows the well off to continue their lives as normal, while thinking that they're making a difference. Those who can't afford to pay the premium are forced to continue with the fossil-fuel-based electricity.

Like it or not, it does cost more.

Perhaps when people accept that nuclear is green, maybe we'll get somewhere.

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Now with 100% more corn

[munchingfoo]

Did anyone else see that time team episode where they found an ancient seaport and town 10 miles in from the coast somewhere in England?

It really annoys me when people look at global climate change caused by humans as "an absolute fact, its just so obvious".


This planet has been around for 4.5 billion years.

4.5 billion years ago it looked nothing like it does today.

3 billion years ago it looked nothing like it does today.

1 billion years ago it looked nothing like it does today.

[snip]

check out this graph which I didn't make.



and this website which I didn't write

http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm


Oh look, there massive global climate change.
Oh look, theres even some inconsistancies (spikes/rapid changes etc).
Oh, look at the dates, humans weren't even alive.


Sure - go green - I live by this.

I don't own a car - I walk most places - I turn off my stanby modes - I don't use carrier bags at tesco - da de da de da.

What I don't want is some self promoting politician telling me I have to do this because the earth's climate change will stop if I do or even worse some green eco hippy giving the - I'm so much better than you - I live in an forest and I burn only organic wood in my evening fire.


STOP IT! Or I'll shove my carbon footprint so far up your ass you'll think the climate of your stomache is going to change.

[hr]

Tired Freudian references aside - your mother played my mighty skin flute like a surf crowned sea nymph trying to rouse Poseidon from his watery slumber!

[Geo]

Quoting DrAlex from 13:52, 26th Jul 2007
And yet, people continue to deny the existance of climate change. Everyone should consider this summer a warning, the Gulf Stream will permanently move just like it has oscilated this summer.

Especially when you consider the heatwave in South-West Europe this summer, that has been responsible for the deaths of many people -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6917002.stm

This latest bout of floods seems to have recieved far more national press coverage than the ones in Yorkshire last month - is it that they're more severe?

[munchingfoo]

I doubt you will find many sane (or with a brain) people who deny that climate change exists - but that isn't the argument.

The arguement is - are we causing it and can we do anything about it?

[hr]

Tired Freudian references aside - your mother played my mighty skin flute like a surf crowned sea nymph trying to rouse Poseidon from his watery slumber!

[DrAlex]

Quoting munchingfoo from 10:32, 27th Jul 2007
check out this graph which I didn't make.

This is an image that has caused quite a bit of controversy, but there is a lot of evidence that this graph is accurate to a high degree. Climate changes, it's true, and your graph of shifting tempatures is also widely trusted. However, that period of unprecidented warming certainly matches up quite well to industrialisation, no?

[hr]

The Sinner: Where no one ever learned "if you haven't got any thing nice to say, don't say anything at all."

[sat]

Quoting a66 from 16:28, 26th Jul 2007
In contrast Skye is suffering from a drought and producing of Talisker has had to be stoped.

So, as they say, the effects of climate change won't be noticed for a few years. In the case of Talikser, probably ten.

[oddly familiar]

I read recently that nearly 50% of british people believe that anthropic global warming is still a matter under debate in the scientific community, an impression that has been reinforced by bush's previous denials and nonsense like the channel 4 show "The great global warming swindle" - a programme where even the scientists who appeared in it "denying" global warming criticised the director for twisting their words and misrepresenting data.

Just so that everybody knows, there is no scientific debate about this. Whether you believe it or not is up to you, but please don't try and say there is a scientific debate about it. It has been presented in the media in a way that suggests that there is, but try and find a journal article from the last 10 years saying human made CO2 has no effect and you'll be lucky to find one.

[hr]

saru mo ki kara ochiru

[DrAlex]

It also makes more logical sense to assume that man-made sources of CO2 cause and are causing global warming, and so we should limit our emissions. If we stop emitting large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and it turns out that this is just another observational anomoly, maybe we will have lost a few bob in the R&D of new technologies, but if we do nothing and catastrophic climate shift occurs, this planet will never be the same again.

[hr]

The Sinner: Where no one ever learned "if you haven't got any thing nice to say, don't say anything at all."

[munchingfoo]

Quoting oddly familiar from 11:39, 27th Jul 2007
try and find a journal article from the last 10 years saying human made CO2 has no effect and you'll be lucky to find one.

Of course, the effect of CO2 (amongst other molecules) is known. What is not known is the extent of the effect OR the extent of the effect humans are having on the extent of the effect OR the extent of the effect humans are having on the extent of the effect with respect to the huge number of other factors (two of which have been noted here)

Also we need to consider the sea - CO2 sponge effect and various other CO2 specific factors.

[hr]

Tired Freudian references aside - your mother played my mighty skin flute like a surf crowned sea nymph trying to rouse Poseidon from his watery slumber!

[Gubbins]

In keeping with tradition (for it has happened more than once), check out these graphs I didn't make:

[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f4/Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png[/img]

[img]http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/irradiance.gif[/img]

Now I may be coming across as being among those who deny we are having an effect on the planet. I'm not. I'm just saying the evidence is not clear as to the effect we are having.

Of course there are many good reasons why we should cut down on our waste production and fossil fuel consuption. It's just that I'm irked by the knee-jerk reaction that the media have, that the public seem to be picking up on, is that any kind of unusual weather must be directly linked to manmade emissions.

We can say that CO2 concentration is correlated with the equilibrium global temperature. We can say that humans appear to be increasing the CO2 levels, amongst other things. We cannot justifiably say that global warming is solely due to human activity, when in reality the inputs and outputs to atmospheric CO2 are far greater than any influence we have. We certainly cannot say that England's recent wet weather is our fault. I would suggest that the damage seen has less to do with pollutants and more to do with the ability of the land to retain water due to increased drainage and more concreted areas, and years of building houses on floodplains.

The moral of my story is this: take care of the planet, it's the only one you have, but don't expect a climate that's perpetually in flux to stop changing just because you think you've got a say in the matter.

[hr]

...then again, that is only my opinion.

[munchingfoo]

P.S.

Its all this guys fault.


[img]http://www.invent.org/images/images_hof/induction/hires/midgley.jpg[/img]

[hr]

Tired Freudian references aside - your mother played my mighty skin flute like a surf crowned sea nymph trying to rouse Poseidon from his watery slumber!

[romantic]

St Andrews solar physicists interpretation:
(this was published in a few places, including the local paper bizarrely...)

Astronomy & Geophysics

Volume 48 Issue 3 Page 3.07-3.07, June 2007

Does the Sun affect the Earth's climate?

Eric Priest University of St Andrews,
Mike Lockwood University of St Andrews,
Sami Solanki University of St Andrews,
Arnold Wolfendale University of St Andrews

Svensmark's article in the February issue (A&G 2007 48 1.18) presented a possible mechanism for the way the Sun could influence the Earth's climate. He suggested that water droplets condense in the ionization trail left by cosmic rays, whose flux varies inversely with solar activity: when the magnetic field of the solar wind is stronger, it shields the Earth from galactic cosmic rays and so decreases their flux on the Earth; according to Svensmark's ideas, this produces fewer clouds and thereby heats the Earth. This raises two key questions: firstly, is this mechanism viable and, secondly, can George Bush gain comfort from it in terms of the origins of present-day climate change?

It is now well established that, at least before 1970, there was indeed a correlation between the Earth's climate and solar activity. This can be seen in the papers by e.g. Solanki and Krivova (2003), for the last 150 years and Bond et al. (2001) over longer timescales. For instance, in the 17th century (dubbed the "little ice age") the temperature of northern Europe was lower than normal and the river Thames froze over, and this was also a time of very low solar activity (called the "Maunder minimum") when there appear to have been very few sunspots at all for 70 years. Also, the concentration of CO2 has been measured for the past 650000 years from ice cores: it decreases during each ice age and goes up in between, to a maximum value that is generally 280 parts per million.

Although these correlations do exist, there is as yet no generally agreed mechanism to explain them. The white-light solar emission does vary, but by only 0.1% over a solar cycle, and the century-scale drift appears to be also of this magnitude, which is too small to explain the variation in the Earth's temperature. One suggestion (not yet proved) is that the UV or EUV emission of the Sun, which varies much more than the white-light emission and which is absorbed high in the atmosphere, could somehow be influencing the low-atmosphere climate and amplifying the solar effect. Another plausible suggestion is the one offered by Svensmark: but it is also not yet proved, since it is at present not clear that the cosmic ray-induced aerosols are in practice strong enough to affect climate. A puzzling feature of the suggestion is that there is no correlation of cosmic-ray flux with high-level clouds – which is where the ionization is highest – and yet an apparent correlation at low levels (below 3.2km) where the ionization is low. Another difficulty concerns the averaging that is needed, since both cosmic rays and cloud cover vary with latitude in different ways.

So, even if it works, does Svensmark's mechanism give any support to George Bush's attitude that the current global warming is not caused by human activity? Not at all! The observed correlations between the Sun's behaviour and the Earth's climate have completely failed since the 1970s. In the past 30 or 40 years the Earth's temperature has gone up much more rapidly than you would expect from the Sun – indeed there is strong evidence that since 1985 all the changes in the Sun have been in the opposite direction to that required to warm the Earth. Also, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is now 380 parts per million – very much larger than it has been for the past 650000 years. This was highlighted at a recent meeting in the Royal Society on the science of climate change following on from the IPCC's (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report reviewing the latest scientific data on global warming.

The mechanism proposed by Svensmark and any influences that the Sun has had on our past climate are valid and interesting fields of study that may well give us valuable new understanding of our climate system. But, in our view, there is no doubt at all that the ongoing global warming is not being caused by the Sun but mainly by the greenhouse gases such as CO2 that we are emitting. We all, therefore, have a part to play in reducing the greenhouse effect in future – we must not fail to respond to the rapid and unprecedented changes that are taking place today because of debate over the much slower changes that occurred in the past.

[Bizarre Atheist]

I will consider the consequences of polls before suggesting them.
I will consider the consequences of polls before suggesting them.
I will consider the consequences of polls before suggesting them.
I will consider the consequences of polls before suggesting them.
I will consider the consequences of polls before suggesting them.

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http://www.charities-campaign.org.uk

[oddly familiar]

Quoting Gubbins from 12:32, 27th Jul 2007
In keeping with tradition (for it has happened more than once), check out these graphs I didn't make:

from a cursory inspection of the graphs I see that they show no particular increase in the average of solar irradience since around about 1951 onwards, yet the graph above that shows clear rises in temperature in that same time period. The scale on the time axis is different in the two graphs, making it look more like a correlation than it otherwise would. The first two thirds of that solar graph is irrelevant

[hr]

saru mo ki kara ochiru

[eagle]

CO2 dissolves better in cold water than warm. (Warm Coke goes flat more quickly than chilled)
So if the oceans heat up, they release more CO2, thus adding to the greenhouse effect. Damn, that's a vicious cycle, and one which could be represented by the recent spike in CO2 levels.