^ And the climatologists say: "Max Mayfield told a congressional panel that he believes the Atlantic Ocean is in a cycle of increased hurricane activity that parallels an increase that started in the 1940s and ended in the 1960s."

Yep, hurricanes come in cycles. Some say the cycle length is 30 years, others say 50, some say 12. But they all agree, we are going to have increased hurricane activity regardless of what global warming does.

"but many scientists agree that the present hurricane surge is likely part of a 60-to-70-year cycle that changes the strength"

Go to google and search "hurricane year cycle"

4/4/2006 10:39:29 AM

you MUST actually understand that my point was if any climatologist says that hurricanes could be a result of global warming, they're much more credible than some college kid or even recent college graduate

4/4/2006 11:37:23 AM

With my comment on the activity of the previous year being related to global warming you obviously missed the point. To establish a direct link to one active year to global warming is absurd. I never said it wasn't happening. You can also pull ice cores till the cows come home and not a single one of those ice cores will tell you about a single hurricane that occured.

4/4/2006 12:23:37 PM

The rise in sea level isnt the only problem here. Artic ice is mostly fresh water... and there is a lot of it at that. Even if the sea level rises only 3-9ft the entire ecosystem would change bc the salinity of ocean water would decrease. Salt water ecosystems are different than fresh water ones, so who is to say that the sea life will be adaptive enough? Im not sure what the number is but some large percentage of food all around the world comes from the ocean. Also, the change in salinity would probably change some aspects of the weather....but it doesnt matter. The way we all are right now no one wants to fix the problem since its a long term thing.

4/6/2006 1:45:26 PM

^ Now that is just silly. Short of antarctica meltin away completely, hell, even then.

The salt content won't change that much. If the ocean rose 9 ft on fresh water alone with an average ocean depth of 12200 ft, that would only reduce the salinity by 0.07%.

4/6/2006 3:22:49 PM

Quote :

"^ Now that is just silly. Short of antarctica meltin away completely, hell, even then. The salt content won't change that much. If the ocean rose 9 ft on fresh water alone with an average ocean depth of 12200 ft, that would only reduce the salinity by 0.07%. "

the point is this decrease in Salinity occurs in regions where currently we have upwelling regimes (Antarctic) or deep water formation (N. Atlantic, Weddell Sea). This affects the global circulation of the ocean, the whole system shifts into a new mode, stratification. There's a lower supply of nutrients to the high latitudes and therefore low latitudes (which are fed from the high latitudes google Sub-Antarctic mode water) basically decreasing primary production across the globe. This is similar to the same mechanisms scientists have been focusing on to explain glacial - interglacial shifts.

4/11/2006 10:39:21 PM

4+ Billion Years of earth history. We've observed maybe 0.00001% of that time. We can't predict the weather a week ahead and yet all ya all think we can forcast whats gonna happen centuries down the line... talk about faith.

4/11/2006 11:17:42 PM

way to appeal to ignorance

4/11/2006 11:41:03 PM

^^^ Did all that badness happen after the last ice-age ended (it took a lot of melting to get where we are today)?

4/12/2006 12:33:03 AM

Quote :

"4+ Billion Years of earth history. We've observed maybe 0.00001% of that time. We can't predict the weather a week ahead and yet all ya all think we can forcast whats gonna happen centuries down the line... talk about faith."

have you people never heard of core samples? jesus, it's like me saying jesus didn't exist even if we found him frozen in a block of ice with papers and photos of him rising from the grave

4/12/2006 7:13:30 AM

So whats your core sample say the weather was like down in Florida 400 million years ago?

4/12/2006 1:51:53 PM

^slightly cloudy with a chance of rain.

4/12/2006 1:54:32 PM

^^Why's that relevant?

4/12/2006 2:12:53 PM

core samples contain pockets of air, microbes, pollen, and other indicators that can make determining things like air quality, temperature, and plant life at the time very concise.

4/12/2006 3:33:30 PM

since the world was created 3000 years ago core samples are lies created by the devil.

4/12/2006 3:46:48 PM

hey you guys know that global temperature averages havent risen since 1998 right

also if you look at solar charts, you will notice that in the last ~10 years, solar activity and radiation has been stronger

but nobody wants to pay attention to facts like that

4/12/2006 3:51:01 PM

Quote :

"^^^ Did all that badness happen after the last ice-age ended (it took a lot of melting to get where we are today)?"

That melting happened over millenia, not decades.

4/12/2006 3:52:59 PM

Quote :

"you MUST actually understand that my point was if any climatologist says that hurricanes could be a result of global warming, they're much more credible than some college kid or even recent college graduate"

yeah right...so just because they've been studying imperfect sciences for 10-20 more years than a recent college graduate, that gives them a perfect understanding of a multi-billion year old system? me thinks not

please also, someone address the fact that global temperature averages have not risen since 1998...since the only evidence to support global warming is trying to find an increasing trend in global temperature averages...which have not increased in the last 7-8 years

4/12/2006 4:01:05 PM

Quote :

"hey you guys know that global temperature averages havent risen since 1998 right also if you look at solar charts, you will notice that in the last ~10 years, solar activity and radiation has been stronger but nobody wants to pay attention to facts like that"

Global temperatures have risen. 1998 was merely the hottest year on record.

Oh wait, you wanted me to prove the opposite. oops

[Edited on April 12, 2006 at 4:03 PM. Reason : .]

4/12/2006 4:02:20 PM

but i thought that global warming was a fact, and if its not as hot as it was in 1998...well that just doesnt make sense...and i'm not gonna consider that environmentalists might have an agenda

4/12/2006 4:05:17 PM

Keep grabbing at those straws....maybe you'll have enough to make a straw lady for that straw man.

4/12/2006 4:10:22 PM

so do you believe in global warming due to anthropomorphic CO2 emissions outweighing natural temperature fluctuations, or do you not necessarily put a lot of faith in 100 years worth of data when trying to understand 3 billion year old system?

forgive me for not jumping to conclusions...i mean when i try to understand a system, i dont jump to the quickest potentially incorrect conclusion when i only have data for the last 0.00000003% of the system's approximate timescale

4/12/2006 4:12:31 PM

Quote :

"So whats your core sample say the weather was like down in Florida 400 million years ago? "

weather and climate are 2 separate things. weather deals with specific storm system events, where as climate deals with averages and other statistics over a longer period of time.

4/12/2006 5:12:25 PM

pwning science threads is easy when people like me and smath actually majored in sciences and other people think they know their stuff from majoring in english and communications and stuff

4/12/2006 5:58:37 PM

Except for the fact that you're on opposite sides of the argument and your side lost.

To a bunch of CHASS majors, no less.


[Edited on April 12, 2006 at 6:06 PM. Reason : .]

4/12/2006 6:05:29 PM

Quote :

"way to appeal to ignorance"

I'm just suggesting that asserting certainty on the issue of longterm climate change is not the logically resonable position for any skeptic to take.

My chemistry teacher ( at another university ) was an outspoken environmentalist. He made lots of media appearances and so on... He really had a passion about informing the public. One day he was discussing some new study of surface temperatures that seemed to indicate some slight increase. I have always been curious how solar activity is accounted for in such studies. So I asked him, how do they account for solar variability. He just looked at me like that was a weird idea and said he didn't know of any studies that had done that. I was like WHAT!!!! What a joke, yet he was going around telling the public about the coming doom and gloom and suggesting they change there way of life on the basis of such studies.

I do think some amount of environmental regulation is healthy, but regulation predicated on some emotion driven scenario of future doom and gloom is dangerous. Environmental damages are hypothetical but the damage done to soceity (if technology was limited in the way many envirowackos would like) would be real and not 100 years down the road.

I wonder how many buisnesses have been driven overseas merely because of over regulation on the environment.

Maybe the studies have gotten better by now, but I don't see how they can go to far into the future as our understanding of the longterm output of the sun and it's various cycles is somewhat crude ( plasma physics is hard. ). I'm all for studying such questions, I just think the discussion belongs in the academic world, not the sensationalist evening news. And certainly not in congress, good grief.

4/12/2006 6:05:41 PM

hey boonedocks...why dont you show me how i lost by debating what i just posted here

Quote :

"so do you believe in global warming due to anthropomorphic CO2 emissions outweighing natural temperature fluctuations, or do you not necessarily put a lot of faith in 100 years worth of data when trying to understand 3 billion year old system? forgive me for not jumping to conclusions...i mean when i try to understand a system, i dont jump to the quickest potentially incorrect conclusion when i only have data for the last 0.00000003% of the system's approximate timescale"

btw for the record, i dont know if "global warming" per se exists or not...theres just so many people that equivocate "global warming" to "global temperature increases" whereas "global warming" really refers to "manmade global temperature increases"

NO, i repeat, NO scientists deny that global temperatures have increased...their debate comes down to whether or not manmade emissions caused/influenced the increases, or if its "natural cycles of the earth" just fluctuating

4/12/2006 6:10:32 PM

Quote :

"My chemistry teacher ( at another university ) was an outspoken environmentalist. He made lots of media appearances and so on... He really had a passion about informing the public. One day he was discussing some new study of surface temperatures that seemed to indicate some slight increase. I have always been curious how solar activity is accounted for in such studies. So I asked him, how do they account for solar variability. He just looked at me like that was a weird idea and said he didn't know of any studies that had done that. I was like WHAT!!!! What a joke, yet he was going around telling the public about the coming doom and gloom and suggesting they change there way of life on the basis of such studies."

Holy crap. I heard Limbaugh say the same thing about a year or so ago. What a coincidence!

And there are studies:

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/damon.html

-------------------------------

Quote :

"so do you believe in global warming due to anthropomorphic CO2 emissions outweighing natural temperature fluctuations, or do you not necessarily put a lot of faith in 100 years worth of data when trying to understand 3 billion year old system? forgive me for not jumping to conclusions...i mean when i try to understand a system, i dont jump to the quickest potentially incorrect conclusion when i only have data for the last 0.00000003% of the system's approximate timescale"

I'm surprized that a science major (oooooooooh) doesn't know how ice core samples work.


[Edited on April 12, 2006 at 6:19 PM. Reason : .]

4/12/2006 6:16:54 PM

i'm NOT surprised that you didnt address anything i said

4/12/2006 6:25:45 PM

Quote :

"so do you believe in global warming due to anthropomorphic CO2 emissions outweighing natural temperature fluctuations, or do you not necessarily put a lot of faith in 100 years worth of data when trying to understand 3 billion year old system?"

You said we had 100 years of data. Air trapped in ice provide us with over half a million years of data:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3792209.stm

Quote :

"NO, i repeat, NO scientists deny that global temperatures have increased...their debate comes down to whether or not manmade emissions caused/influenced the increases, or if its "natural cycles of the earth" just fluctuating"

Also in this article:

Quote :

"Initial tests on gas trapped in the ice core show that current carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are higher than they have been in 440,000 years."

HEY WHAT A COINCIDENCE!! CO2 LEVELS ARE AT RECORD HIGHS, WE'RE PUMPING OUT MUCH MORE CO2 THAN WHAT IS NATURAL, OVER HALF A MILLION YEARS OF DATA DEMONSTRATE A STRONG CORRELATION BETWEEN CO2 LEVELS AND GLOBAL CLIMATE, THE CLIMATE IS CURRENTLY EXPERIENCING A SHARP SPIKE IN TEMPERATURE!

WHAT COULD THIS POSSIBLY MEAN?! PLEASE HELP ME, SCIENCE DEGREE!!1

4/12/2006 6:44:21 PM

^ CO2 emissions were increasing far more during the 1950 to 1970 range than they did after that, yet temperatures stabilized during this range and shot up after 1980 when CO2 emissions began falling precipitously year on year.

Now, you tell me what that means.

[Edited on April 12, 2006 at 8:03 PM. Reason : .,.]

4/12/2006 7:54:43 PM

^^ok, 500,000 years data, eh?

now you're up to about the most recent 0.00016% of the earth's geologic time scale

thats about the most recent 13 seconds of the earth's 24 hour existance

Quote :

"CO2 LEVELS ARE AT RECORD HIGHS"

even though levels were higher 440,000 years ago, you consider us to have record high levels of CO2?

Quote :

"WE'RE PUMPING OUT MUCH MORE CO2 THAN WHAT IS NATURAL"

are you suggesting a natural event like a string of volcanos doesnt produce as much CO2?

Quote :

"OVER HALF A MILLION YEARS OF DATA DEMONSTRATE A STRONG CORRELATION BETWEEN CO2 LEVELS AND GLOBAL CLIMATE"

they've already analyzed a half million years worth of data and come to a conclusion? wow those are the fastest scientists ever

Quote :

"Over the last 400,000 years, interglacials have lasted about 10,000 years, with climates similar to this one. Before that they were less warm, but lasted slightly longer. We have already been in an interglacial for about 10,000 years, so we should - according to the pattern - be heading for an ice age. But we are not. The Epica team has noticed the interglacial period of 400,000 years ago closely matches our own - because the shape of the Earth's orbit was the same then as it is now. That warm spell lasted a whopping 28,000 years - so ours probably will, too. "

so does this part of the article escape you or something? the part i just quoted that suggests the Earth's orbit could factor in? or maybe where it says there were other long warm spells in the past...did humans cause those hundreds of thousands of years ago?

4/12/2006 8:09:11 PM

Quote :

"ok the scientists stating that the "Artic" ice is melting, and in 100 yrs when it melts the sea will rise 5-20ft are stating utter BS think Ice in your glass, when it melts does the height of the liquid increase "

holy mother of sweet jesus


THE ANSWER IS YES. ice is less dense, a lot stays above the water level. when it melts, all the ice then enters the fluid state, this increasing total water volume and water level.

Quote :

"are you suggesting a natural event like a string of volcanos doesnt produce as much CO2?"

ummmm.....natural events can cause catastophe for ecology....what does that have to do with the fact that humans can also do this?

both are bad, both cause short and long term implications for the global climate. yes the planet has survived some nasty ass volcanoes, the point is our lives our short, we will have kids, just becuase the planet MAY eventually adapt doesnt mean we neeed to screw our short term future.

[Edited on April 12, 2006 at 8:50 PM. Reason : -]

4/12/2006 8:44:02 PM

i was replying to Boonedocks' post about how we are emitting "MUCH MORE CO2 THAN WHAT IS NATURAL"...I was giving an example of something natural that pumps out lots of CO2

4/12/2006 9:00:56 PM

Quote :

"Present-day carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from subaerial and submarine volcanoes are uncertain at the present time. Gerlach (1991) estimated a total global release of 3-4 x 10E12 mol/yr from volcanoes. This is a conservative estimate. Man-made (anthropogenic) CO2 emissions overwhelm this estimate by at least 150 times."

http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man.html

Regardless, I was saying we were creating levels of CO2 that are unnatural. Would anyone be willing to argue that the CO2 leaving our smokestacks and tailpipes are natural?

Quote :

"CO2 emissions were increasing far more during the 1950 to 1970 range than they did after that, yet temperatures stabilized during this range and shot up after 1980 when CO2 emissions began falling precipitously year on year. Now, you tell me what that means."

Do you think climate change is instant? The correlations are on scales much larger than 20 years.

[Edited on April 12, 2006 at 9:42 PM. Reason : .]

4/12/2006 9:37:20 PM

pumping enormous amounts of locked carbon from the ground into the atmosphere in the form of CO2

SOMETHING bad is bound to happen

the only question really is what...

4/12/2006 9:40:01 PM

Quote :

"^ CO2 emissions were increasing far more during the 1950 to 1970 range than they did after that, yet temperatures stabilized during this range and shot up after 1980 when CO2 emissions began falling precipitously year on year. Now, you tell me what that means."

Not that I doubt this at all, but why do you keep posting "facts" like this without references?

And logically, one would not expect the warming consequences of CO2 to occur until well after it has been released. Personally, I believe the bulk of CO2 "damage" was done in the late 1800s and the first half of the 20th century.

Quote :

"i was replying to Boonedocks' post about how we are emitting "MUCH MORE CO2 THAN WHAT IS NATURAL"...I was giving an example of something natural that pumps out lots of CO2"

YAY SEMANTICS!

4/12/2006 9:48:34 PM

Quote :

"Not that I doubt this at all, but why do you keep posting "facts" like this without references? And logically, one would not expect the warming consequences of CO2 to occur until well after it has been released. Personally, I believe the bulk of CO2 "damage" was done in the late 1800s and the first half of the 20th century."

Yes, I suppose references are not too much to ask for.

However, I must take issue with the 1800s reference. Yes, we fell a lot of trees during this time, but that doesn't produce CO2 emissions. While the industrial revolution burnt a lot of coal, it only did so in a few countries and even then it did so sparringly because it was fundamentally limited by the ability of mankind to mine it, which was still being done largely by hand.

But you are right in one respect: more air pollution was being emitted just in England after the turn of the 20th century than in the whole of the industrialized world at the turn of the 21st century. SO2, NO2, soot, mercury, lead, etc (note I exclude CO2). It was several times worse back than today. Why? In england alone coal use has been cut to almost 1/6th from it's peak back in 1908. It isn't because they are using less energy, it has simply been shifted to cleaner fuel sources (such as natural gas and oil).

Thanks to oil, we don't have to put up with this stuff. Pumping oil out of the ground is machine driven and then when it burns it produces almost none of the above mentioned offensive molecules. But we don't get less CO2 production, just less pollution. And since it is cleaner, we feel safe burning far more of it. England consumed about 280 billion tonnes of coal a year at its peak, today the world consumes about 3.4 trillion tonnes of oil a year.

http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/inform/energy_trends/coal_art_sep2001.pdf
http://oils.gpa.unep.org/facts/quantities.htm

All of that asside, my statement still stands. The theory of CO2 based global warming does not allow for delayed reactions. It can be counteracted sometimes and assisted others, but there is no mechanism for having delayed effects. emitted CO2 very quickly circulates almost equally throughout the atmosphere. If the CO2 is causing all the warming then one would expect it to closely match worldwide CO2 levels. Which, when you compare the above temperature graph to this graph, doesn't hold much water. What the hell happened mid-century?

4/12/2006 10:41:54 PM

oic, I forgot that all the gas contained in the Earth's atmosphere could be heated instantly.

and that temperatures depended entirely on CO2 levels, and that a 20 year variance from the correlation refutes everything.



omg it leveled off in the early 60's. CLEARLY there's no larger trend here.

4/12/2006 11:06:30 PM

Quote :

"that temperatures depended entirely on CO2 levels"

I know you were being sarcastic, but this was your point, and the point I was contradicting.

Ah yes, the age old straw-man. Obviously 30 years can be considered instantaneous.

And yes, a 20 year variance does refute the belief that the earth's warming is entirely caused by CO2 levels. Yes, rising CO2 levels will cause warming. But the large variances demonstrate that this effect pales in comparison to other effects upon the planets temperature. And it is those effects that I argue is driving global warming, with a little help from CO2.



[Edited on April 13, 2006 at 12:23 AM. Reason : img]

4/13/2006 12:22:17 AM

Your right the fact that vast amount of trees were removed in the 1800's does not produce CO2, but trees themselves, and vegitation in general are carbon sinks. A reduction of trees would have caused an increased level of CO2 in the atmosphere since respiration would no longer be occuring to remove it. There's a lot of speculation going into "Carbon Banking" right now, but there's not enough long term science to say what the effects will be.

I have wondered why the government still allows the use of CO2 as a propellant for paintball guns when it's limited in everything else. Damn, little Johnny is pumping out greenhouse gases as fast as he can pull the trigger.

4/13/2006 1:10:59 AM

ahahah

you linked to something from junkscience.com

4/13/2006 1:38:43 AM

Quote :

"All of that asside, my statement still stands. The theory of CO2 based global warming does not allow for delayed reactions. It can be counteracted sometimes and assisted others, but there is no mechanism for having delayed effects. emitted CO2 very quickly circulates almost equally throughout the atmosphere. If the CO2 is causing all the warming then one would expect it to closely match worldwide CO2 levels. Which, when you compare the above temperature graph to this graph, doesn't hold much water. What the hell happened mid-century?"

First off - your statement doesn't really make sense. I think you're trying to say "CO2 can't cause global warming b/c there are periods in time when CO2 is being put into the atmosphere and yet there is a leveling off (or perhaps decrease) in global average Temperature"

Response: The Earth is a dynamic system and exhibits variability over different timescales. El Nino, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Southern Annual Mode are just a few examples of processes that can lead to large changes in the Ocean-Atmosphere system on decadal timescales.
The real point of the matter is we are fast approaching an atm. pCO2 concentration that hasn't been seen in 2.7 Myrs, and this is without a doubt due to the burning of fossil fuel.

4/13/2006 2:52:41 AM

Quote :

"Except for the fact that you're on opposite sides of the argument and your side lost."

regardless, at least we have a concept of what we are talking about, and can conceptualize what we are debating about, as opposed to repeating what we heard on cnn.com or foxnews.com

4/13/2006 5:30:50 AM

That's an incredibly arrogant thing to say.

But typical


[Edited on April 13, 2006 at 9:22 AM. Reason : .]

4/13/2006 9:17:04 AM

i don't mean it in an assholish way, but there is a lot of misinformation thrown out in debates like this that people latch on to and argue for to the death, when they don't really understand it at all.

4/13/2006 10:02:06 AM

No, phrishhead, that was not what I meant to say. I prefered how I said it:

Quote :

"And yes, a 20 year variance does refute the belief that the earth's warming is entirely caused by CO2 levels. Yes, rising CO2 levels will cause warming. But the large variances demonstrate that this effect pales in comparison to other effects upon the planets temperature. And it is those effects that I argue is driving global warming, with a little help from CO2."

Your response, actually, is my point. "The Earth is a dynamic system and exhibits variability over different timescales. El Nino, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Southern Annual Mode are just a few examples of processes that can lead to large changes in the Ocean-Atmosphere system on decadal timescales." As such, it is difficult to derive causation from a mere correlation. Yes, temeratures are rising, yes CO2 levels are rising, this does not prove majority causation unless you can disprove the other big competing theories.

For example, how much of the warming is due to the urban effect? I suspect the answer is "A lot" because of the dramatic differences between ground-based and satellite based global temperature readings.

How much is due to changes in solar output? How much is due to changes in the planets tilt?

Add in the fact that the measured increases are relatively small and I think we come to a conclusion that we can find better ways to address this problem. We are not going to halt the urban warming effect, and we have no control over the sun or the planets tilt or whatever else might be happening.

As such, attempting to regulate CO2 emissions is only going to waste resources that would best be spent getting ready for a warmer world.

[Edited on April 13, 2006 at 10:10 AM. Reason : .,.]

4/13/2006 10:09:14 AM

[image][img]http://homepage.mac.com/ozarkmatt/fark/waterworld.jpg[/img][/image]

[Edited on April 13, 2006 at 10:59 AM. Reason : y]

[Edited on April 13, 2006 at 11:01 AM. Reason : smaller pic]


[Edited on April 13, 2006 at 11:02 AM. Reason : yay edits]

4/13/2006 10:58:34 AM

IS THIS THREAD SERIOUSLY STILL ACTIVE

END YOUR FUCKING LIVES

4/13/2006 11:13:06 AM

Quote :

"How much is due to changes in the planets tilt? "

Long time scale:
Tilt or obliquity has a 41,000 yr timescale and together with Precession and eccentricity are thought to drive the 100kyr glacial cycles through changes in insolation at 65N (however these changes are much too small and an "amplifier" is needed).
Currently:
Obliquity is decreasing (from a maximum about 10kya)
current we are on a downward trajectory of insolution
- it's affect when taken alone would be to move to a colder world.

4/13/2006 12:44:39 PM