We hear a lot about global warming and there are all kinds of viewpoints on it. From the storms we have been having, the heat that doesn't let up and melting ice caps and glaciers I believe we DO have global warming and it is going to get a lot worse. We are living with the effects of what has gone on 40 years ago--we have a lot more coming along.

Are we going to pay more attention to the environment or are we going to continue to degrade our lives?

that was an easy one. Mankind will kill it's mother earth, sooner than expected.

I'm afraid so, but I asked because someone was saying what a crock global warming is. All made up. None of it is true.

I just wonder how the glaciers are melting if there is no global warming?

I can't hold onto the idea of certain doom.
Not that I don't think it can't happen!

I just happen to believe that pessimism serves no purpose!
I have to believe we can still save ourselves from ourselves!

Otherwise, everything else is pretty much pointless, isn't it?

Will it be or should it be easy? Nope! There's a cost to pay!
A well deserved cost!

Unfortunately we are human beings,
and it'll have to hurt enough for us to pay attention!

It'll have to hurt enough before we decide, never again!


As parents we can ask our kids to do something in a nice, quiet, civil tone.
But they won't hear it.
We ask again, only this time the request is made louder.
They must not have heard us the first time so we speak up, and still, nothing!
Once again you ask, only this time having realized your child has become completely deaf, the request is made very loudly!
NOTHING HAPPENS!
NOW we're angry, They HAD to have heard us!
So with faced red with anger born of frustration, we get right in their faces and scream NOW!

Then they have the bald faced nerve to ask us,
"why are you always yelling at me?"


Humanity is no different!
Global warming is your mother earth yelling at you to clean up your room!

Listen to the Wombat!


Wombat Dance

If anyone tells you global warming is not real, you can ask them if they know how to read.

If they say yes, you can ask them if they do read.

Global warming is almost a concensus slam dunk amongst scientists.

That is indisputable.

Everything after that point is opinion.

The most brilliant, visionary scientist of his/her time can still be wrong.

And any fool without a clue can still be right.

But it is indisputable that it IS happening.

Unfortunately, those major industries that polute the most,
hire their own scientists.

And they say there is no proof!

Why didn't Bush sign the Kyoto treaty?


And besides the big guys,
almost all of us drives a car!

Pick your fights Sky of mind,

We are headed into a fascist statehood. We could employ the nukular option in Iran, or China, or N Korea.

Global warming may turn out to be a blessing. Compared to genetic engineering, overpopulation, risk of plague, environmental conversion (farming, urbanization, deforestation), chemical polution etc it may be the ONLY man made global effect that proves positive. At the worst it will be a mix of negatives and positives.

Now if it weren't for resource scarcity and those pesky borders, who would mind a warmer more foliated world?

Now our autos, well they may have to go this decade. I won't blink an eye or cry a tear. If our population keeps growing there is nothing we do that will be sustainable.

Population! 100% of the problem.

Population can be mitigated if we did the right things instead of the wrong things.
And if we fostered a progressive world of understanding and cooperation. If we made it a world of equality instead of the haves and have nots, maybe even the population issue coujld be rationally dealt with?

Instead, as long as greed rules the most powerful nations, we're all doomed!

YUP!

We have dug ourselves into a hole. A complete reversal of focus will be needed to correct the imbalances.

For many it is already too late, as population is correcting itself via AIDS, startvation and genocide as we type/read and discuss.

Hillary was a little off mark. It IS a village.

No, we won't kill Mother Earth. She has survived ecological disasters worse than mankind. We will only destroy ourselves, along with most of the present day flora and fauna. Earth will still be here for billions of years after we kill ourselves.

THis won't be the planets first mass extinction.

both you guys forget the power we have. The USA alone has enough a-bombs to split the earth in half at any given moment. We're working on desolving the atmosphere. We're fucking with the weather and with the moon.....just hope the moon doesn't adjust its orbit one single inch ! Okay, okay, earth will survive all this, no doubt. In a thousand pieces ? As a twin to Mars ? Bush wants to go there. What about today ?

Great point! Seen this when I worked for the worlds largetst aluminum mill.

That stuff blowing out of the stacks, can land on your car and cause you to need a new paint job, but.........it wont hurt you to breathe, swallow or touch!

Its within the "exposure limits"

Plus we need all nations to focus on the enviroment, with more and more manufacturing done off shore, and the less enviromental laws that they have, the worse the global warming will become...

In the 70's, it was said that we were heading towards a new ice age. Just wonder whatever happened to that theory. Is global warming and cooling a natural affect that happens so gradually it's hard to measure? Not saying global warming isn't happening now, but it's possible that, in like 2015 or so, the Earth will start cooling again. Just a thought.

Peace amoung us all!

Stewart,

Google, "Global Warming".

You'll get a number of highly informative sites at the top of the list.

I was reading something today at school. It said that the main cause for the depleating of the ozone was due to cfc's. The fact that now, almost every country on earth has banned them, that the depleation of the ozone will reach its peak by 2015 and will be fully repaired by 2056. That may not fix global warming 100% but could be good news none the less.

Personally, i don't think we are as fucked with global warming as some people say.

We may not be as fucked as some people say.

However, none the less the issue is critical.
Because of this, and the fact that the corporatists minimize the possibilities,
it becomes important and neccessiary to over state the issue.

Just to be heard at all!

Did what you read mention that the end of oil will not be the end of fossil fuel...there will still be two to three hundred years of coal left? Coal adds massive amounts of CO2 and HEAT the the atmosphere, as well as large amounts of mercury to air and soil and water.

How could anyone not believe in global warming at this point? It's 82 here today, and tropical storm 27 - soon to be Hurricane Gamma - is churning out there in the Atlantic, predicted to hit the Yucatan, again. I don't care WHY, it's happening. Do you debate the cause of the fire before you start trying to put it out?

The only people who don't believe in Global Warming are people in the oil industry. If a scientist ever tells you they don't believe in global warming, they are working for an oil company.

Three of my friends are biologists, and keep current in the science world, and, as mentioned above, GW is basically agreed upon by scientists in every field.

OK, so tropical storm epsilon is out there now, and here comes this story -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4485840.stm
Ocean changes 'will cool Europe'
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website


This more or less constitutes a smoking gun
Michael Schlesinger
Changes to ocean currents in the Atlantic may cool European weather within a few decades, scientists say.

Researchers from the UK's National Oceanography Centre say currents derived from the Gulf Stream are weakening, bringing less heat north.

Their conclusions, reported in the scientific journal Nature, are based on 50 years of Atlantic observations.

They say that European political leaders need to plan for a future which may be cooler rather than warmer.

The findings come from a British research project called Rapid, which aims to gather evidence relating to potentially fast climatic change in Europe.

Atmospheric radiator

The key is the Gulf Stream. After it emerges from the Caribbean, it splits in two, with one part heading north-east to Europe and the other circulating back through the tropical Atlantic.

As the north-eastern branch flows, it gives off heat to the atmosphere, which in turn warms European land.

"It's like a radiator giving its heat to the atmosphere," said Harry Bryden from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) at Britain's Southampton University.

"The heat it gives off is roughly equivalent to the output of a million power stations," he told reporters.

By the time it reaches the northern latitudes around Greenland and Iceland, the water has cooled so much that it sinks towards the ocean floor, a process known as "overturning".

This cooler water heads south, forming the return stream of a conveyor belt. The complete cycle sees warm water coming northwards on the ocean's surface, and the cold water returning hundreds or thousands of metres underwater.

Florida-based scientists monitor the northwards-flowing Gulf Stream, and have found it has remained roughly constant over the last 50 years.

The NOC researchers concentrated on the colder water flowing south; and they found that over the last half century, these currents have changed markedly.

"We saw a 30% decline in the southwards flow of deep cold water," said Harry Bryden.

"And so the summary is that in 2004, we have a larger circulating current [in the tropical Atlantic] and less overturning."

And less heat then delivered to European shores.

First evidence

Computer models of climate have regularly predicted that the North Atlantic conveyor may well reduce in intensity or even turn off altogether, a concept that was pushed beyond credence in the Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow.


What happens is that as Arctic ice melts and Arctic rivers flow faster - trends which have both been documented - the northern oceans become less saline.

Less salinity means a lower density; the waters then cannot sink, so the conveyor weakens.

Computer models have predicted that if it turned off completely, Europe would cool by perhaps four to six degrees Celsius.

Commenting in Nature, Detlef Quadfasel from the University of Hamburg writes that the NOC experiments provide "...the first observational evidence that such a decrease of the oceanic overturning circulation is well underway."

Natural variation

The NOC researchers admit that the case is not yet proven.

The analysis involves only five sets of measurements, made in 1957, 1981, 1992 and 1998 from ships, and in 2004 from a line of research buoys tethered to the ocean floor.

Even if the trend is confirmed by further data, it could be down to natural variability rather than human-induced global temperature change.

"This issue of variability is very important," said Harry Bryden, "and we do not have any good grasp of it.

"Models can predict it, but we think we ought to go out and measure it."

Michael Schlesinger from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a leading expert in models of climate and ocean circulation, believes that even with these caveats, the NOC team has probably come up with a link to human-induced climate change.

"The variability question is the right one to ask," he told the BBC News website, "but the phasing is wrong."

A decade ago Professor Schlesinger showed that the North Atlantic conveyor undergoes a natural 70-year cycle of strengthening and weakening.

"The Bryden measurements are out of phase with this cycle," he said.

"The natural cycle had a northern cooling until the mid-1970s and a warming afterwards, and here we see an apparent cooling."

He is also convinced by other details of the NOC measurements showing that the changes in the southerly underwater flow have occurred at great depths.

"The slowing down of the southward return occurs between 3,000 and 5,000m; and this more or less constitutes a 'smoking gun'," he said.

Choosing policies

So what does all this mean for European weather? Will it necessarily get colder - or will the apparent recent trend of warmer summers continue?

Models can predict variability, but we think we ought to go out and measure it
Harry Bryden
"If this trend persists," said Harry Bryden, "we will see a temperature change in northern latitudes, perhaps of a degree Celsius over a couple of decades."

But climate is a complex phenomenon; other factors could conspire, even so, to produce a net warming.

"The UK government is looking, in terms of mitigating climate change and adapting to it, at a warming scenario," said Phil Newton of the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, which funds the Rapid investigators.

"You might now be asking what sort of mitigation and adaptation they should be looking for."

To answer this question, the Rapid team plans to continue its measurements in the next few years.

Its buoys remain in place, and ships can go to gather their data as often as finance allows.

The findings will have resonance beyond the shores of the UK and Europe, as extra heat left circulating around the tropical Atlantic could have major impacts on weather systems in Africa, the Caribbean and Central America.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/scie...ure/4485840.stm

Published: 2005/11/30 18:53:14 GMT

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