Global warming 'past the point of no return'

[injuneer]

There was an Horizon programme on this last year, it's called Global Dimming.
Because we have been pumping tons of particulates into the atmosphere for more than a century it is actually masking the effects of greenhouse gases, now that we are not pumping so much crud up there it is thought the effects of greenhouse gases are much worse than was originally thought.
We may have reduced particulates but have increased CO2 emissions.
So everyone, light a bonfire!

More of this kind of thing

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4914748.stm

needed, in my opinion.

[TheBlueRaja]

A route has now opened allowing people to "sail" to the North Pole for the first time in recorded human history...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/climatewarmingarctic

European scientists voiced shock as they showed pictures which showed Arctic ice cover had disappeared so much last month that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe's most northerly outpost to the North Pole itself.

The satellite images were acquired from August 23 to 25 by instruments aboard Envisat and EOS Aqua, two satellites operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).

[ntluser]

Originally Posted by TheBlueRaja

A route has now opened allowing people to "sail" to the North Pole for the first time in recorded human history...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/climatewarmingarctic

Wonder how long it will be before some entrepreneur starts offering trips to the North Pole in a similar way to tourists going out into space.

Goiven the rapid meltdown in the Arctic circle I wonder too if we could see a map of sea levels now and compare them with periods in the past. At least it would give us an idea of which coastal areas are likely to flood.

[fireman328]

The good news is that we won't have to go to Mallorca to get a tan !

[ntluser]

Originally Posted by fireman328

The good news is that we won't have to go to Mallorca to get a tan !

True. And wine drinkers can have a vineyard in their own back garden. Can't be bad!! LOL!!

On the downside, you won't have to go to the seaside..it'll be coming to you. Man the lifeboats!!

[danielf]

Meanwhile, in the USA

State sues car firms on climate

[punky]

Does that mean they've decided whether we are going to have extreme heat or another ice age then? Took them long enough

Makes me laugh all this global warming. We've had global warming ever since the last ice age, which is why we are here. The earth warms up, then cools down, and repeats... Its been happening for billions of years, its not just going to stop now because humans are here. The earth has had several ice ages.

I find this graph rather interesting... And this.

The arrogance of certain groups to have control over mother nature never ceases to amaze me sometimes. Nature can't be controlled, no matter how many Priuses they sell.

[ntluser]

Originally Posted by punky

Does that mean they've decided whether we are going to have extreme heat or another ice age then? Took them long enough

Makes me laugh all this global warming. We've had global warming ever since the last ice age, which is why we are here. The earth warms up, then cools down, and repeats... Its been happening for billions of years, its not just going to stop now because humans are here. The earth has had several ice ages.

I find this graph rather interesting... And this.

The arrogance of certain groups to have control over mother nature never ceases to amaze me sometimes. Nature can't be controlled, no matter how many Priuses they sell.

I watched a great documentary about the Icestorm which affects Montreal in Canada.

The effects of the storm were horrendous with pylons collapsing under the weight of the ice on the power cables.

6 of the 8 power networks supplying the city were knocked out. Communications were knocked out i.e TV, mobile phones etc. People were having to leave their homes to go into shelters for safety. Dangerously icy and blocked roads, massively heavy snowfalls, people getting hypothermia, food shortages showed how the storm negatively affected the city.

If an Ice Age comes, the thought of moving glaciers ploughing their way through today's technological dependent societies does not bear thinking about.

[Stuart]

The problem with all these predictions of the end of the world is simply that we don't have a lot (relatively speaking) of data to build a climate model on. We have around 200 years worth of data, but can only guarentee the accuracy of the last 40 years or so worth of data. So, essentially, we are predicting the actions of a system that has operated for millions of years based on a couple of hundred years of data (160 of which is possibly not accurate).

To me, it seems a bit like predicting the personality of a person you've only just met based on their actions in the first 2 minutes.

[ntluser]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

The problem with all these predictions of the end of the world is simply that we don't have a lot (relatively speaking) of data to build a climate model on. We have around 200 years worth of data, but can only guarentee the accuracy of the last 40 years or so worth of data. So, essentially, we are predicting the actions of a system that has operated for millions of years based on a couple of hundred years of data (160 of which is possibly not accurate).

To me, it seems a bit like predicting the personality of a person you've only just met based on their actions in the first 2 minutes.

Try telling that to the people of New Orleans. Building any city below sea level on the coastline is a recipe for disaster.

Holland has just built a fantastic sea defence system to prevent the same thing happening to them.

Predictions merely give us the opportunity to see possible outcomes and to prepare for them. Invariably, when we fail to take basic preparations some disaster happens.

We are already seeing worsening weather round the world; sea levels are rising; trees and plants which absorbed excess CO2 are being cut down; there's a hole in the Ozone layer caused by CFCs etc. That does suggest lines of action we can take.

As for personality predicting, I suppose it depends what happens in those two minutes.

[AndrewJ]

Next they will tax us for farting as it gives off gases which can cause global warming.

[punky]

Originally Posted by ntluser

If an Ice Age comes,

That's exactly it... If. They still saying that due to global warming we'll either end up with extreme heat due to greenhouse gases etc, or extreme cold due to human-created ice age.

Now that's a pretty wide margin of error they have there. Sounds like a Mystic Meg prediction to me... "The winner of the lottery will be...... breathing."

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by ntluser

Try telling that to the people of New Orleans. Building any city below sea level on the coastline is a recipe for disaster.

Holland has just built a fantastic sea defence system to prevent the same thing happening to them.

Predictions merely give us the opportunity to see possible outcomes and to prepare for them. Invariably, when we fail to take basic preparations some disaster happens.

We are already seeing worsening weather round the world; sea levels are rising; trees and plants which absorbed excess CO2 are being cut down; there's a hole in the Ozone layer caused by CFCs etc. That does suggest lines of action we can take.

None of which actually disproves what I said. New Orleans, while a disaster, isn't proof that the world is ending.

We are seeing worsening weather around the world, true. Sea levels are rising, also true. However, we don't have enough data to say what is causing those things to happen. It could merely be a function of nature.

As for personality predicting, I suppose it depends what happens in those two minutes.

Not really, as without knowning someone for a lot longer than two minutes, you have no way of knowing if they are acting within character or not. You could meet me for two minutes, and I may be in a bad mood. You may then assume I am permanently in a bad mood, which may or may not be the case.

---------- Post added at 12:06 ---------- Previous post was at 12:03 ----------

TBH, I am not saying the world isn't ending. Put simply, I don't know. However, AFAIK, neither does the scientific community. Hence, all we have heard MAY just be scare stories based on an inadequate knowledge of the planet's weather systems.

[TheBlueRaja]

So temperatures in England are on average 1 degree higher than in 1950's, snow is rapidly dissapearing from Kilimanjaro's peak, glaciers are receiding at their greatest ever rate and hurricanes are now more frequent over the atlantic than at any other time in recorded history.

But punky has a graph that says over "millions" of years (not the last 100) the Earth does this anyway so were all Ok.

You dont drive a 4x4 do you - or perhaps a BMW?