Topic: Carbon Dioxide & Global Warming - Case not proven...

[Mellon]

Hmmmm some interesting points in there. Carbon Dioxide will always continue to rise as the world population increases...and if the carbon dioxide continues to rise then more water vapour is in the atmosphere the more infra-red radiation is relayed back to the earth causing a rise in surface temperature and accordingly after a slight delay air temperature causing a high level of vapourisation of water now...here's an interesting idea we continue as we are at a steady release of greenhouse gases slowly letting the temperature rise causing the water to evaporate into the atmosphere and heating the planet such until we have a climate close to spains (where as I read apparently has had little difference in temperature ) and the less water there is on the ground the more there is in the air in the form of clouds which condense and shielding the sun causing a cooling effect....call me mad but there's pretty much bugger all we can do now.

Mellon

[komadori]

Unfortunately for your hypothesis, increased water vapour in the atmosphere does not necessarily mean more cloud because if the atmosphere is hotter the vapour is less likely to condense. Apart from that, what you're suggesting has a flavour of the Gaia hypothesis.

[Simon]

Unfortunately for your hypothesis, increased water vapour in the atmosphere does not necessarily mean more cloud because if the atmosphere is hotter the vapour is less likely to condense. Apart from that, what you're suggesting has a flavour of the Gaia hypothesis.

I can't really comment on the issue of water vapour as a greenhouse gas until I've had a chance to read up on the subject and remind myself of the facts.

I'm interested in the Gaia angle though. I didn't have time to read the entire article on Gaia theory, although my understanding of it is that somehow the planet we live on has various negative feedback processes which keep the environment stable (or in equilibrium, as scientists would say). We live on a ball of lava which cooled down to a reasonable temperature around 4 billion years ago, and since it cooled down it has continuously sustained life in the face of all the odds, resulting in Homo Sapiens being the dominant species on the planet. How many other planets have we discovered which provide a habitat for life, let alone intelligent life?

Now Homo Sapiens is busy burning millions of years worth of sequestrated carbon, and pushing the equilibrium to its limits.

If I may personify Gaia for a moment (and assume her to be female, although I could be wrong on that point), what would she do in the face of this threat to her planet?

I don't think she'd give a second thought to Homo Sapiens, the species which is throwing the environment out of balance, she'd let climate change take its course and let it wipe out most of the animal life (that includes Homo Sapiens, that's us folks) and let the co2 emissions continue to rise, until the planet becomes uninhabitable to all animal life.

And then, with all the species which contributed to the latest great extinction safely extinct, she'd probably start over with a new set of plants to sequester all the co2 and maybe if she was feeling brave then she'd try introducing some new animals into the new world.


OK, hypothesising over. How are we going to turn this around before the metaphorical Gaia invokes her own solution? It's up to us (all of us who belong to the species Homo Sapens) to stop Homo Sapiens from irrevocably destroying the environment in which we live.

[Muggins]

I was reading Simon's post when I got to the bit about intelligent life, then thought, well that's to be proven!  Sure, most of us can think and disseminate information, walk, pee in the right place and find food - but how much intelligence does it take to contribute to a thread like this.   

I'm no university graduate - I think that's only about 2% of the British population.  To further comment on a subject like climate change, well, I don't know how many % of that 2% is qualified in that 

So opinion is based on either guilt (that niggle that says I'm driving a huge car and driving too far and too often so it can't be me and it's can't be happening, because if it is, it's me that's helping cause it!!) or observation and instinct.

To base comment on observation, you have to observe and observe at length.  To base comment on instinct you have to have some experience of whats happening and tuned in to the changes around us.

Is there any doubt in this thread that climate change is happening or is the argument what is causing it?




   

[kecl]

I’ve not heard of the Gaia hypothesis before, but for what it’s worth, I believe that whatever is going to happen to this planet in the near or distant future is going to happen.

Whether global warming etc is entirely our own fault or not is open to conjecture, but there’s one thing looking highly probable and that is - it’s too late to stop it now.
I guess we can slow it down a bit, but at the end of the day we, mankind will have to roll with the changes like the rest of nature and our offspring will almost certainly be the ones to pay the highest price .

Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap, so the saying goes and there is no doubt about one thing, mankind has strayed way outside any eco system that keeps the rest of nature in check, and we have used, abused and altered the planet for our own gain, all of which has allowed the population of the world to grow out of control, so maybe, just maybe global warming could be Mother Natures chosen way of controlling our numbers?
We are after all at the top of the food chain, with no natural predators and the only group of living beings that deliberately targets man with the intent to kill is man itself.

One thing that does get on my tits, is when people spout off about saving the planet . The planet doesn’t need saving, it managed just fine for some 4 1/2  billion years before we arrived and it will carry on just dandy with or without us for billions of years to come, and  if conditions on earth get to the point where mass extinction is likely, some form of life will prevail, after all there have already been 5 great extinctions and thanks to the last one, mammals and particularly mankind had the chance to evolve.
 
So there you go , there will always be another living being ready to take our place should we go down the same road to extinction as the estimated 99% of all living species that have ever lived on earth, have already gone. But who knows, after all Homo Sapiens have proved to be incredible adaptors to their surroundings so far , and have come close to extinction before.

[Mellon]

Gaia? interesting but i find several problems with the theory. Simon - you cant turn it around.....and an interesting little fact with the oceans and vegetation than carbon dioxide has a lifespan of around 5 - 12 years so the whole thing is practicaly a farce and if "green people" are so concered with emissions and "saving" the planet than, dont use any form of transport, walk around naked, eat grass and sleep under a tree......no matter what you do , you will always be part of  "the problem".

[Muggins]

"The planet doesn’t need saving, it managed just fine for some 4 1/2  billion years before we arrived and it will carry on just dandy with or without us for billions of years to come, and  if conditions on earth get to the point where mass extinction is likely, some form of life will prevail, after all there have already been 5 great extinctions and thanks to the last one, mammals and particularly mankind had the chance to evolve."

See that's the trouble Kelc, it's not 'getting on without us', we are here, interfering with it in every conceivable way.  Why not treat it in a respectful way so that we and those to come can continue to enjoy it together.  Why give it all up for the sake of a few gallons of fuel, a larger engine size, not bothering to recycle etc., etc.?

[Alex]

Simon quoted:
"OK, hypothesising over. How are we going to turn this around before the metaphorical Gaia invokes her own solution? It's up to us (all of us who belong to the species Homo Sapens) to stop Homo Sapiens from irrevocably destroying the environment in which we live."

I tend to agree with your views and with the Gaia hypothesis- and the film I saw recently called "the Age of Stupid" simply underlined just how  much many people are avoiding the issue and sticking their heads in the sand instead of taking some personal responsibility for changing it. 

A good metaphor was that last week I felt righteously angry glad to welcome BT's recent annual report which mentioned putting solar panels and wind turbines on thier buildings and telling their staff to turn off lights /computers/ etc. Something I tried to persuade them to turn into policy some 15 years ago. 

Another 15 years will be too late.

[Simon]

I was reading Simon's post when I got to the bit about intelligent life, then thought, well that's to be proven!  Sure, most of us can think and disseminate information, walk, pee in the right place and find food - but how much intelligence does it take to contribute to a thread like this.   

I'm no university graduate - I think that's only about 2% of the British population.  To further comment on a subject like climate change, well, I don't know how many % of that 2% is qualified in that 

For what it's worth, I'm not a graduate either, although I've been working for nearly 10 years in a job which is normally given to graduates (I was lucky, I was recruited through a trainee scheme and my experience of doing the job since then more than makes up for my lack of a degree. I'm sure I wouldn't still be there after all this time if I didn't have the intelligence to do it).

Whether global warming etc is entirely our own fault or not is open to conjecture, but there’s one thing looking highly probable and that is - it’s too late to stop it now.
I guess we can slow it down a bit, but at the end of the day we, mankind will have to roll with the changes like the rest of nature and our offspring will almost certainly be the ones to pay the highest price .

Well if you've got any offspring or are planning any, then I guess you ought to start finding ways to slow it down even faster. Yes, there are aspects of climate change which are unavoidable and we'll need to adapt to them, but there are others which we can still avoid if we act fast enough and soon enough. We'll need to cope with the unavoidable ones, but we also need to act to avert the avoidable ones.

Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap, so the saying goes and there is no doubt about one thing, mankind has strayed way outside any eco system that keeps the rest of nature in check, and we have used, abused and altered the planet for our own gain, all of which has allowed the population of the world to grow out of control, so maybe, just maybe global warming could be Mother Natures chosen way of controlling our numbers?
We are after all at the top of the food chain, with no natural predators and the only group of living beings that deliberately targets man with the intent to kill is man itself.

I think you've caught the essence of the problem rather neatly in that paragraph 

Climate change / global warming could be Mother Nature's only way of controlling population growth, and then only if someone tells people to control their numbers. Mother Nature's communications on this matter seem to be somewhat indiscriminate and rather global in nature. Don't wait for a specific communication, act local and think global.

[Mellon]

Just had a thought...has anyone figured out why the jet stream is moving north?

[Muggins]

Simon, Sorry if I offended those that do know what they are on about, without a degree - just feel that a lot of people seems to think they know that climate change and our part in it, isn't happening, they quote reams of this and that from any source. about it. I doubt it's not balanced research, but a picking over of things and pulling out of things they think proves their point.   

I know that the local people involved in environmental issues DO do the balanced research. It makes sense, because why would one want to frighten the life out of people for nothing. 

We can see the waythis unbalanced research works too. I recently had a chain/circular email about a Nun/charity worker, who had saved the lives of children in the war - the email was promoting a sense of total injustice that she had been pipped to the Nobel Prize post by All Gore for his work on his film.  Now, was the point of that email to promote the work of the woman or to have an almighty dig at Al Gore? 

As usual when I get one of these wierd emails I went to urbanmyth.com.

It is true that the woman, along with others did do what was said in the email, although it didn't quite have it right.  It turned out that her supporters these days had put her in for the Nobel prize to raise awareness of her goodness, knowing that she didn't stand a chance of winning it, because the criteria for the Nobel Prize is that nominees have to be ALIVE and have done their good works in the 2 years prior to the prizegiving.   So the fact that Al Gore got it that year, was totally irelavnat to her story. 

The email had been sent, in my opinion, to undermine AL Gore rather than glorify this women.  I deleted it, I did not send it on.

[komadori]

I know that the local people involved in environmental issues DO do the balanced research. It makes sense, because why would one want to frighten the life out of people for nothing. 

But it is very difficult to do balanced research. If people have a strong view on an issue - which campaigners generally do, otherwise they wouldn't be campaigning - its extremely difficult to evaluate research that draws conclusions that differ from their beliefs. Almost everyone will tend to be more receptive to research that fits with their existing views.

[Simon]

Just had a thought...has anyone figured out why the jet stream is moving north?

Would you care to elaborate? I'm not a climate scientist and so find it difficult to keep on top of all the detailed scientific developments, but if you could provide a pointer to where you heard that the jet stream is moving north then maybe I could attempt to find an answer.

Simon, Sorry if I offended those that do know what they are on about, without a degree

Don't worry Muggins, no offence taken at all 

I know that the local people involved in environmental issues DO do the balanced research. It makes sense, because why would one want to frighten the life out of people for nothing. 

But it is very difficult to do balanced research. If people have a strong view on an issue - which campaigners generally do, otherwise they wouldn't be campaigning - its extremely difficult to evaluate research that draws conclusions that differ from their beliefs. Almost everyone will tend to be more receptive to research that fits with their existing views.

Granted, in much the same way that people will tend to read a newspaper which reinforces their own political viewpoint rather than one which will inform them 

I know you've only got my word to take for it, but I do try to take a balanced view of things and make sure that I'm campaigning on the basis of facts rather than ideology.

I think this very thread is a good example - go right back to the top, over 2 years ago, when the Great Global Warming Swindle was broadcast, calling into question the link between human activity and climate change. I watched that film and for a while I was wondering whether I'd been getting it completely wrong all these years. Testament to how powerful a piece of polemic it was.

I wanted to find out what the truth was - is our fossil-fuelled indulgence bringing us dangerously close to mass extinction or is anthropogenic climate change just a massive hoax perpetrated by an unholy alliance of extremist tree huggers and the nuclear lobby (which is effectively the premise of that film)? So I read and I read and I read some more. Not just the briefings released by the likes of Friends of the Earth in response to the film, but blogs and articles (and even the occasional scientific paper where they were available to this humble non-academic) from people and organisations on both sides of the argument and varying places in between, including a number brought to my attention by TS members on this thread.

And while reading all of these articles/blogs/papers, I tried to resist the instinct to pounce on everything which supported my beliefs and ignore everything which didn't, instead trying to assess them all objectively. Like I said, I'm not a climate scientist, I'm not even a graduate, but I believe I'm a competent layman when it comes to scientific subjects and logical thought (I do have good A-levels in Physics, Chemistry and Maths and I've been working as a software developer for nearly 10 years) so I like to think I've got a fairly well tuned bullshit detector when it comes to this kind of subject.

The end result? Well, as you can see, I still believe that climate change is happening, that human activity is making it a lot worse, and I've got a lot more knowledge about it now. And I still believe that we can stop this before it's too late, although we're rapidly running out of time.

[Simon]

here's an interesting idea we continue as we are at a steady release of greenhouse gases slowly letting the temperature rise causing the water to evaporate into the atmosphere and heating the planet such until we have a climate close to spains (where as I read apparently has had little difference in temperature ) and the less water there is on the ground the more there is in the air in the form of clouds which condense and shielding the sun causing a cooling effect....call me mad but there's pretty much bugger all we can do now.

Mellon

Sorry Mellon, I completely failed to respond to this point earlier. Better late than never...

1) OK, so letting the UK's climate change to something like that of Spain's may sound like a good idea, who wouldn't want it to be a bit warmer and less rainy here? But there's no way of being sure that it'd actually work that way. For example the gulf stream (being the ocean current bringing warm water from the region of the Caribbean up to the UK on its way round the pole) could stop flowing before that happens, and if this happens then the UK would become much colder, probably reaching a par with parts of Canada which are at the same latitude as the UK.

2) The role of water vapour is still poorly understood. It's a greenhouse gas, but it also forms clouds which reflect radiation back into space. Or as the climate boffins would say, it has both a positive and negative forcing effect. Which of these is the most powerful isn't really known, and for all we know it depends on a whole host of other factors, such as the composition of the rest of the atmosphere, where on the planet the clouds form, and who knows what else.

And there's a whole lot more than "bugger all" that we can do, even this late in the day. Don't be so defeatist! 

[Buster]

Just had a thought...has anyone figured out why the jet stream is moving north?

do you mean the gulf stream?  I'm not an expert but i always thought that the jet stream was the prevailing wind which usually blows from west to east and most notably results in flights from the usa taking about an hour less than flights to the usa.  the gulf stream is the warm water cycle that flows from the equator in the western atlantic (somewhere near the carribean i think),  and then heads north east across the atlantic and usually hits europe around the south west cost of cornwall. the warm water warms up the air temperature and it explains why the uk, despite being on the same line of latitiude (or is it longtitude?) as canada has a very different climate.  the further north the gulf stream gets, the cooler it gets and it then drops to a lower sea level and starts to head back in the opposite direction, so it's like an ongoinmg cycle.

if you mean the gulf stream as i described it, then apparently it shifts year on year, last year it went further south south and hit portugal which is why we all had a very wet summer and southern europe had a heat wave.  i think the risk with this is that the gulf stream is that there is a theory that the water balance in the atlantic will be impacted by desalination as the fresh water from the ice caps melt and this could cause the gulf stream to shift and therefore make the uk colder/wetter for ever.  basically i heard it was likely to head south, not north.

i'm not an expert and i apologise if i've just rambled on about something entirely different, not got the facts quite right or appeared to tell you what you already know.  

[Claire Ellis]

I do this with some trepidation as I have not read the whole thread, but I had a brief encounter with science about three years ago and I hasten to add that I was pregnant at the time, so not that much went in.
My lecturer at the time stated that volcanoes and cows, pale our emissions of co2 contribution into insignificance.  He was quite adamant that are effect on global warming was all a load of for want of a better word twaddle and yet I have just been looking and online and the amount of conflicting views is quite amazing.
That was a year wasted then! Theology next I think.
 

[kecl]

"The planet doesn’t need saving, it managed just fine for some 4 1/2  billion years before we arrived and it will carry on just dandy with or without us for billions of years to come, and  if conditions on earth get to the point where mass extinction is likely, some form of life will prevail, after all there have already been 5 great extinctions and thanks to the last one, mammals and particularly mankind had the chance to evolve."

See that's the trouble Kelc, it's not 'getting on without us', we are here, interfering with it in every conceivable way.  Why not treat it in a respectful way so that we and those to come can continue to enjoy it together.  Why give it all up for the sake of a few gallons of fuel, a larger engine size, not bothering to recycle etc., etc.?

I absolutely agree with you that we are interfering with this earth in every conceivable way. We are an invading species, who have conquered and now live in most areas of this planet and whilst on our journey to this point in time have managed to destroy and exploit for our own gain, most environments and resources that could possibly be destroyed and exploited, and if our ancestors had not done this then chances are none of us would be here now. But all we, mankind, have done is diverted the direction of the natural world to a different path than the earth might have taken if mankind had never evolved.

The last great extinction was caused by a bit of bad luck when in all probability either an asteroid hit the earth or volcanic activity greatly increased, what ever it was the earth took a turning from the course it had been on, and that is why I said the earth doesn’t need saving, we are the ones who need saving. Life on earth will not stop if we, who think we actually own the earth, become extinct.

Whether global warming etc is entirely our own fault or not is open to conjecture, but there’s one thing looking highly probable and that is - it’s too late to stop it now.
I guess we can slow it down a bit, but at the end of the day we, mankind will have to roll with the changes like the rest of nature and our offspring will almost certainly be the ones to pay the highest price .

Well if you've got any offspring or are planning any, then I guess you ought to start finding ways to slow it down even faster. Yes, there are aspects of climate change which are unavoidable and we'll need to adapt to them, but there are others which we can still avoid if we act fast enough and soon enough. We'll need to cope with the unavoidable ones, but we also need to act to avert the avoidable ones.

Fair play Simon, but without making it sound like an excuse to carry on abusing the earths resources, surely so many of the changes that need to be made will never happen because of £££ $$$  etc. well not until it’s too late anyway.

[Simon]

Whether global warming etc is entirely our own fault or not is open to conjecture, but there’s one thing looking highly probable and that is - it’s too late to stop it now.
I guess we can slow it down a bit, but at the end of the day we, mankind will have to roll with the changes like the rest of nature and our offspring will almost certainly be the ones to pay the highest price .

Well if you've got any offspring or are planning any, then I guess you ought to start finding ways to slow it down even faster. Yes, there are aspects of climate change which are unavoidable and we'll need to adapt to them, but there are others which we can still avoid if we act fast enough and soon enough. We'll need to cope with the unavoidable ones, but we also need to act to avert the avoidable ones.

Fair play Simon, but without making it sound like an excuse to carry on abusing the earths resources, surely so many of the changes that need to be made will never happen because of £££ $$$  etc. well not until it’s too late anyway.

Yes, you've got your finger on the pulse of reality kecl, this is where governments need to step in and make the required $$$ available. But in the meantime we all need to be doing whatever we can at a grassroots level too.

[kecl]

I whole heartedly agree Simon, I don’t condone carrying on the way we have been, nor do I consider myself to be a great green warrior, but our household does not own a car, I haven’t flown anywhere since 1986, and I constantly reuse what I can, even to the point of straightening out nails and screws, ‘cause I’ve never seen the need to waste things.

[Simon]

what ever it was the earth took a turning from the course it had been on, and that is why I said the earth doesn’t need saving, we are the ones who need saving. Life on earth will not stop if we, who think we actually own the earth, become extinct.

Well said kecl 

The planet we live on will continue to exist, the question is will we (homo sapiens) continue to exist on this planet?