An Inconvenient Truth

[oboe]

Mar's polar ice caps are seasonal, expanding and contracting with the change of Mar's seasons.   They are made of frozen CO2.

[Debonair]

darn now i feel dum:mad::furious:furious OMG & angry too!!! u r wrongs, jerk:furious

[Catalyst]

The Sun is rather jumpy these past years, EagleDNY is correct...

some funny explosions goin on the sun, from what I've read.

Mr.Gore should've added DATA to his video about the Sun, still doesn't excuse our mis-handling of our own enviroment though.

1st time I wear a t-shirt on the 5th of January, usually minus 10 up North, so for you freaks who think nothing is happening, WAKE-UP smell the flowers still blooming in January...

CAUSE won't matter when the EFFECTs take place.

[Yknurd]

How many people have stopped using their cars?

ohnoessss!!11!1!111!11...why not?  why do you hate the earth soooo much?

[lazs2]

The changes in the sun more than explain the current global warming...  in fact.. we should be warming faster.   Perhaps we are causing global cooling?

We must be doing something bad tho cause there ain't no money in not telling people what to do.

Higher Co2 levels have always proceeded global warming not preceded it.

We would be in a global cooling trend but the sun is acting up.

gore gave no data on the sun because that would have indeed have been the most......

Inconvenient truth.

It is indeed inconvenient for the environmentalist political faction of socialists that we are such a minor player in global climate change.

lazs

[bj229r]

One thing I didnt notice mentioned here---most global warming charts seem to START at 1970....reason being the temp was dropping or static until then---has industrial activity increased THAT much since then?
People's belief in global warming, IMO, seems more to center on their political views than anything else--we know most the folk's on this board political views, and the vast majority of those who think it's bs are rightists or libertarians, and those who subscribe to it are left-of-center, for the most part, as well as  'concerned' scientists, who can usually be found on college campuses (well-known bastions of right-wing-thinking), where many have remained their whole adult lives in an insulated cocoon of 'America is wrong--ALWAYS'

[republic]

The debate over global warming ends up being like most debates..

"My favorite political party/news/media/trusted source says your favorite political party/news/media/trusted source is wrong...so there."

We have to all agree however, that the less pollution we put into our environment the better.  Rather than declare the sky is falling when speaking about global warming...how about we start looking at the increased cases of cancer, alzheimer, etc.  An incurable disease scares me far worse than increased temperatures...and is much easier to directly link to increased pollution, etc.

[EagleDNY]

Originally posted by oboe
HAve you ever heard of NASA scientist James Hansen?    If you trust NASA more than Gore, might want to pay attention to him then.

I've read Jim Hansen's stuff - you might be interested to know that I've also read that the models he uses don't include solar magnetic warming effects.  Thus the temperature increases are attributed to greenhouse gases in his models.

Read the NASA link I provided up the thread.  The OBSERVATIONAL evidence of increased solar output over several decades is right there.  Given that they say that a 0.2% variance in solar output is greater than all the energy used by man on the planet, a 0.05% increase in solar output each decade since the 70's means that the sun's tiny variation in output over the last few decades equates to adding about as much heat to our biosphere as all the energy mankind produces.  

I'm not saying that it isn't a good idea to keep our emissions low, our water clean, and watch what the heck we are dumping into landfills, but I'm not going to panic yet.  The climatologists can't tell me what the weather is going to be 3 weeks from now, so I'm not so convinced they can tell me what will be going on 3 decades from now.

[oboe]

Thanks Eagle - its a good link, and I did skim it.   I became less concerned about it when I read this passage:

Although the inferred increase of solar irradiance in 24 years, about 0.1 percent, is not enough to cause notable climate change, the trend would be important if maintained for a century or more.

IIRC, James Hanson and Gore's time horizons are much smaller than a century--I think its on the order of 10-20 years.    That could be why Gore neglected it.

Also would like to point out, it's not the increase in energy output of man's activities over the years that global warming scientists are concerned about.   Its the fact that greenhouse gases are trapping the wavelengths of energy that the earth re-emits after absorbing radiation from the sun.    

I think an appropriate analogy is the inside of a car parked in the sun on a hot day -- the light comes in and is absorbed by materials in the interior of the car, re-emitted as heat, but the heat is reflected back into the car by the windows and windshield.   The auto glass is analogous to greenhouse gases in this example.   Not 100% sure I'm right about that, but that's my impression.

[1epic1]

for those who havent watched An Inconvenient Truth

heres a link to the whole movie

An INconvenient Truth Movie

[nirvana]

Gore can shush it up about global warming because he obviously doesn't live in the mid west.

[EagleDNY]

Originally posted by oboe

IIRC, James Hanson and Gore's time horizons are much smaller than a century--I think its on the order of 10-20 years.    That could be why Gore neglected it.

Thats why I think that the statistical models they are using are "full of it" - the data period is just too short to be statistically accurate.  The report in the NASA link I provided admits that the increase in solar radiation is measurable, but unless it continues for a long period of time (as you said, they suggest a century) the effects on overall climate would be minimal.  

They also admit that they only have the solar radiation data for the comparison from the late 70's onward - while they have been tracking it and noting the increase in output from the late 70's, they don't have any data to compare solar output from a century ago to see how long this trend has been going on.  

We also know that the biggest greenhouse gas is water vapor, not CO2.  The condensation / evaporation cycle of water throughout the atmosphere is the biggest transference of heat energy, and the oceans are the biggest heat sink on the earth.  There isn't much we can do about that, and it turns out that we don't have to because it is all part of the self-correcting system.

CO2, the 2nd largest greenhouse gas, makes up about 0.04% (thats 4/100 of 1% folks) of the atmosphere, and is continually scrubbed out of the air by rainfall and photosynthesis, which converts it back into oxygen.  The self-correcting beauty of this system is that as it gets warmer, you get more rainfall, and more photosynthesis since warm conditions + water = plants growing like mad and consuming more CO2.  

Interesting NASA article on this is at:
 Rain Helps Carbon Sink

Again folks, I'm not saying that we don't have to take care of our environment.  I'm just not quite ready to drink the global warming koolaid being ladled out by Al Gore.

[oboe]

Thanks, Eagle - interesting paper from NASA.    It does conclude however, that any increase in plant life and the resulting increase in photosynthesis is not going to cancel out global warming:

Such carbon sinks, however, are unlikely to lower CO2 concentrations enough to cure global warming.

From a wiki article on greenhouse gases, in particular the role of water vapor:

In climate models an increase in atmospheric temperature caused by the greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic gases will in turn lead to an increase in the water vapor content of the troposphere, with approximately constant relative humidity. The increased water vapor in turn leads to an increase in the greenhouse effect and thus a further increase in temperature; the increase in temperature leads to still further increase in atmospheric water vapor; and the feedback cycle continues until equilibrium is reached. Thus water vapor acts as a positive feedback to the forcing provided by human-released greenhouse gases such as CO2.

This article doesn't agree with your conclusion that it is a self-correcting system.    I don't quite get the quote above because it talks about equilibrium being reached, but in fact is describing a runaway positive feedback loop.

I'm not panicking either but I am trying to learn more about the theories.

[Yeager]

I liked the part where he shows you the guard rail he crashed his car into as a teenager