Global Warming, unstoppable

[ResinRat2]

OK, I'm putting my plug in it right now before this turns into a sarcastic shouting match. You are free to your opinion, and if you want to try to control others then that is your calling. I respect your rights as well. Just be careful who you surrender your rights to. That/those person(s) may not be so forgiving once the reins of power are in his/her hands.

You may not respect what I have to say, but so far I can express it. Now I am going back to my research. Call me whatever you want; any further discussion one way or the other won't sway anyone's opinion anyway.

[Gearhead]

Well lets see:-
Does the solar output affect the earths climate? ---  yes.
Do greenhouse gases affect the earths climate? ---  yes.
Which is having the greatest affect?               ------we don't know for sure.

Which one can we do something about?          ------ I'll leave that one to you.

You are making two assumptions that are not well thought out.

The first assumption is that the earth has an ecological balance.  Things change and are not in balance and have not been since creation.

You are assuming that stopping the production of greenhouse gases will reverse the climate trend.  Absolutely false.

The permafrost is melting and will emit more CO2 than mankind could even think of producing.

To reverse global warming will take a number of proactive steps.

1. Sequester carbon and carbondioxide.
    A.  Injection and burial of carbon and CO2.
    B.  Encourage the production of limestone by sea organisms
    C.  Encourage photosynthesis by oceanic plankton

  Plankton off of California have decreased 80% since 1940. Sea birds and fish are starving to death.  The sea recycles the majority of CO2.  Without restoring the plankton, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is futile.  It may slow things very slightly, but will not have much impact.

[stevewal2]

Ok, I was being sarcastic, no offense.
I've got no intentions to controll anyone.  .  I just keep hearing this same line of reasoning, that there are people out there trying to use global warming to try to alarm poeple, and in some way take away their civil liberties. It just kind of gets under my skin when I have spent so much time over the years trying to expanding an awarness of the beauty and value of the natural enviroment, and how we are far worse off in every way by destroying it.

I think the lumping together of environmental problems under the heading of global warming is fine with me. Yes we don't know how much of the waming is man made, and we don't know if global warming is the largest global environmental threat. But in my view it's a great place to start making changes. After all cutting down on greenhouse gasses can help to resolve many environmental problems at once (smog, acid rain, ocean acidification, to name a few). So if environmental issues have been packaged to make them consumer friendly, maybe that's the best way of  getting them across to the masses.

Cheers,
Steve.

[stevewal2]

Hi Gearhead,
No I'm not making either of those asumptions, I just did'nt want to start getting into too many details.

The world is in a constant flux. Ecolgical balance does occur to a degree before environmental change happens, and a new balance eventually forms, only to be desturbed again.

Cutting down on greenhouse gasses will not immediately reverse the affects of global warming, it will not even slow it down for 30 or 40 years due to the buffering affect of the oceans.

The melting of permafrost will produce co2, but more impotantly methane (which is a far more powerfull greenhouse gas) thus exacerbating the problem.

The decline in phytoplankton is a problem. 20% world decline since 1990. As far as I am aware this is at least partially caused my stratospheric ozone depletion which increases the amout of shortwave radiation, hamfull to the plankton. So we need to look at whats still causing ozone depletion, ie cfc's (yes they're still being used) and aircraft exhausts. Iron seeding of the oceans is another option, to sucessfully stimulate plankton growth,  but must be used with care, as the full impications to widespread seeding are not known.

I agree that we need to encourage oceanic invertabrate growth. Co2 sequestriation is fine for the time being, but is only part of the solution.

We still need to cut pollution.

[FreedomLover]

Study just released:

Global warming a bunch of hooey!!!

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57253

Guess we won't be sunbathing in the Arctic anytime soon.

Environmental extremists (Al Gore, for example, who certainly won't sacrifice his excessive lifestyle but wants you to sacrifice yours) would probably say the writers of this report are just a bunch of greedy, evil, ignoramus, non-scientists trying to fool us all.

Too bad these guys, unlike Gore, are REAL scientists.