A Note: Global Warming Threads

I agree, there are no studies that I have found so far, and contacts with "the authorities" produce a profound silence, as if they did not want to know.
I had much the same reaction to my 1986 talk on The Greenhouse Effect or the Cost of Pollution to a Scorpion meeting. It took some years for folk to "wake up".
My premise is based on logic so far, which no one has challenged, but equally no one has [it seems] investigated it.
The matter has now been put before the UK Parliament's Health Select Committee. Counter arguments to my logic welcome !!
 
Further to my last post, re sensitivity of Virus to pH changes.
The UNEP-UK Committee [D W Hall, Secretariat in UK] of the International Institute for Environmental Development [IIED] were aware of the subject in 1989, it would be worth contacting them to see what work they may have/are doing on the subject.
Porton Down, the UK's Biological Warfare Unit are aware that Virus are pH sensitive [private communication from an ex emplyee] but all their work is "classified"
 
More info on Virus, put Virus pH sensitive into Google, and look at the various websites listed. One which seems to have done work, on the SARS Virus, is the Meridian Institute in the USA. Their news sheets are available on line
 
Tristan said:
Just a NOTE to the people of Earth Science


#2. I think many will agree (and many will disagree for that matter), that it is not a question of IF global warming is occuring, but rather WHY.
From my understanding, we have proof that the earth has gone from being really warm, to really cold, to inbetween and back through the list again several times.




Enjoy.
T :cool:
Click to expand...

Actually, the data being used suffers from math problems and is unreliable. As I understand it the temperatures being used are simply averaged using high and low temperatures for each day which is as ridiculous an idea as trying to determine the average age of persons in a village by looking only at the ages of the oldest and youngest residents. Global warming may very well be occurring, but those who wish to deal with the issue need to come up with more reliable methods of determining what is actually happening.

In addition, scientists need to consider not just air temperature but soil and water temperature as well. Air temperature tends to be more dynamic with rapid changes. soil and water temperatures change slower and might provide a more reliable indication of the amount of heat energy on the planet. Another factor that needs to be dealt with is changes in the relative amounts of water in solid, liquid and gaseous states. A gram of water in a gaseous state contains 540 more calories of heat than a gram of water in a liquid state which contains 80 more calories per gram of heat than a gram of solid water (ice).
 
Tristan said:
...Can we please make a list of ONLY FACTS which are 100% guaranteed to be true. ...
Click to expand...
Global warming is a complex subject. I doubt if many such facts exist, but here are a few facts to start your list:

(1) Increasing atmospheric concentration of CO2, or other "green house gases" such as CH4, perhaps being the most significant one of them (which man may be able to influence), all else remaining constant, will result in a warmer Earth. Currently, the CO2 concentration is about 0.037% and definitely has been increasing at an ever increasing rate as more well sequestered fossil fuels are being converted to CO2 each year.

(2) Man is also increasing the CH4 concentrations, even by eating beef, providing anaerobic bacteria with food (earth covered land fills), etc. Methane, CH4, is at least an order of magnitude more important PER MOLECULE than CO2 but in much lower concentration in the atmosphere, so currently is a less important contribution to global warming.

(3a) H2O is also an important green house gas, probably by far the most important one, as it is significantly more effective than CO2 per molecule in trapping IR re-radiation that might otherwise escape from Earth and in much large concentrations; however, when these are "clouds" the increased local albedo more than compensates for the trapped IR. Net global effect is uncertain.

(3b) Thus, the atmospheric H2O added by fossil fuel combustion is not likely to have much direct influence compared to many orders of magnitude greater naturally evaporated by the sun. I.e. evaporation and rain control the concentrations of atmospheric H2O; however, indirectly man is producing at least a contribution to global warming (points about CO2 and Ch4 mentioned above) and this is increasing the evaporation rates. - A minor (I think) "positive feed back system." Also, as the atmosphere warms, some H2O vapor in it will not condense into clouds and this adds to the positive feed back.

(4a)At some increase in global temperatures, perhaps only a degree or two, a much stronger positive feed back system will be triggered and then there is no way to prevent eventual seal level rise of about 100 meters. The methane hydrates on ocean floor (more stored carbon than all the fossil fuel yet burned) will begin to decompose, and release CH4 into the atmosphere.

(4b) There is also considerable organic mater currently safely sequestered under ice and snow cover. As Earth warms and this melts, anaerobic bacteria in first few meters of organic rich soil will be releasing great quantities of CH4 into the atmosphere.

(4c) Collectively (4a &b) , are an extremely strong, self accelerating, instability. - Perhaps capable of killing 90+%, if not all, humans.

(5) Every year of delay in reduction of man's contribution to global warming adds several percent to the cost of eventually doing later what could be done now.

I have numbered my facts to facilitate someone challenging them individually.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yesterday here in Australia, it snowed in 3 out of 7 states. It's the middle of summer, & we are currently ravaged by severe droughts and out of control bushfires, and the snow yesterday doused some of the bushfires... \
Does that seem insane to anyone else?

Crazy damn weather... has to be global warming at work, yeah? Because that's just not right...
 
Ezekiel 25:17. "The path
of the righteous man is beset on
all sides by the inequities of the
selfish and the tyranny of evil
men. Blessed is he who, in the
name of charity and good will,
shepherds the weak through the
valley of darkness, for he is truly
his brother's keeper and the finder
of lost children.
And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those
who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.
And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.

*Mother Nature always knows what is of her own, and to defile it, we ruin the Covenant Promise.
What was once before, is once again.
 
Tristan said:
#1. Ill start off with this: Can we please make a list of ONLY FACTS which are 100% guaranteed to be true. From this list, we can do a type of Fermi problem or logic problem to see if, given the facts that we know for sure, global warming truly is an issue. It'll be fun
Click to expand...

I'm sure it will be.

I'll do my best as far as the "one-hundred-percent guaranteed to be true" part.

It's claimed that the sun has a significant effect on global warming. Some here have commented that Mars's global temperature is increasing too, which they say seems to suggest that human civilization and the greenhouse gases it emits aren't a significant factor.

There is a grain of truth here: Two physicists at Duke University, Nicola Scafetta and Bruce West, published a report in the research journal Geophysical Research Letters on September 28th, 2005. The report suggests that the sun's direct role in global warming may be underestimated. At least 10 to 30 percent of global warming measured in the past two decades may be due to increased solar output. The physicists say that our climate models need to be adjusted to account for the effects of changes in solar activity.

However, they also stress that their findings do not refute the accepted theory that global warming is occurring because of increases in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

Furthermore, it's been concluded by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that natural forces per se, including solar activity, produce too little warming to fully explain the warming of the 20th century. This is clearly reflected in these three graphs, the first showing solar and volcanic forces only, the second showing anthropogenic forces, and the third showing both.

References and further reading:
:- Sun's Direct Role in Global Warming May Be Underestimated, Duke Physicists Report
:- Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, §12.2.3.2
:- Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, Figure 12.7
:- Changes In Solar Brightness Too Weak To Explain Global Warming
:- Wikipedia article on global warming

Tristan said:
#2. I think many will agree (and many will disagree for that matter), that it is not a question of IF global warming is occuring, but rather WHY.
From my understanding, we have proof that the earth has gone from being really warm, to really cold, to inbetween and back through the list again several times.
Click to expand...

Indeed. And you're right that it's not a question of if global warming is occurring. But it is also my understanding that it is neither a question of why. It appears that the scientific consensus is that the world's global temperature is warming beyond what it should be, and that it is largely thanks to us.
 
Not only the Carbon dioxide, there are so many factors.
high concentration of buildings,roads Artificial surfaces(plastic as scrap).these
are also reasons.Most of the urban areas are covered by concrete and not giving chance to water to shrink and cooling.

I think the better way is prevention.
 
Hi everyone

I'm new to the board and I'm afraid I have a topic that relates to global warming. Should I give it, its own thread?

It's about mass extinctions and their relationship to global climate change.

I'm too new to post links yet :)
 
Its a 2 page article that I wrote.

I was hoping you guys could review it, and challenge it.

Thanks, Scott
 

My 2 cents...

Global Warming is real. The only question is, how much is contributed by present human civilization. If it is in the order of 2 to 5 percent, then nature will try to balance it towards an equilibrium but within the offset of the past.

The only time, we will be in serious trouble is, if there is a runaway offset. If it gets too warm, Earth might try to offset by creating cloud cover and cooling the planet the other way. These adjustments would take about 100 years as the automated regulation kicks in.

As long as we are in the temperate zone of the Sun, the Earth will balance itself over the long run. So our effect on global warming is no different than the effect of a small meteor strike which if happens, no one will blame each other.

While heat generated close to the surface of the planet is going on for million of years (forest fires), but how the heat generated at 13,000 feet due to airplanes affecting the heat management of the planet....we do not know.

The fact that we are partially responsible for the global warming, we should find technological solutions to lend a hand to Earth for bringing a balance.

To that effect....we should plant more trees, use hot nuclear fusion energy to desalinate water, drive rechargeable cars, manufacture amorphous silicon or polymer solar cells in a continuous sheet to generate power, use LED lights, reduce all heat sources in summer etc. etc.
 
I do not understand how or why 'nature' would try to create an equilibrium. What intelligence exists to support this?

One thing we know from records of earth's climate history is that there have been massive changes in temperatures on the planet. This suggests there is anything but balance, at least in the short term (say a million years).

The way I look at it is to imagine a hot summer's day. Would it be sensible to wear a heavy coat on such a day? The sun is the most important factor but that does not mean that wearing the thick coat is insignificant and particularly unhealthy.

And so with the earth. It is having to wear a heavier and heavier coat each year because 6 billion people are responsible for pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere 24 x 7.
 
sandy winder said:
I do not understand how or why 'nature' would try to create an equilibrium. What intelligence exists to support this?
Click to expand...

The same intelligence that the plants and even lower form animals (fish etc.) have and maintain equilibrium. This has been observed including the gulf stream and North sea water pumps etc...

It is a autonomous system of order
 
sandy winder said:
I do not understand how or why 'nature' would try to create an equilibrium. What intelligence exists to support this?...
Click to expand...
Hi Sandy and welcome.

There are many natural systems that resist change without what is normally called "INTELLIGENCE."

For example, fusion in the sun proceeds very slowly (extremely slow compared to theonly type man can make - the hydrogen bomb) because if it were to proceed more rapidly the reacting protons would expand and collide less frequently. If it were to proceed more slowly then they would cool a little and contract to collide more often. I.e. the sun has a "stable opperating point" for billions of years even though the available fuel is steadly being consumed.

For an Earth based example, consider sun heating the oceans - that makes clouds, which tend to reflect sun light back into space (and other effect on earth's IR radiation) but the net effect is to make Earth's temperature more stable, especially compared to the cloud less moon, which recieves essentially the same amount of sunlight but has huge temperature swings as it rotates.

Your body keeps it interal temperature at 98.6F quiet accurately normally by a complex set of mechanism. etc.

In general all these systems can be considered as "feed back systems" - if the net feed back is negative then stability is produced. If it is positive an instability is produced and will "grow" until the basic system is changed ("growth saturation at unity system gain" occures) For example of this "growth saturation at unity system gain" place a microphone far from the loud speaker of the audio amplifier the microphone is pluged into. There is initially a less than unity loop gain at that operating point of the audio amplifier, but as you bring the microphone closer to the speaker, the gain grows to unity and immediately the operating point of the amplier changes and you hear that anoying squeel - the system is again stable with unity gain but at a new operating point. I.e the growing greater than unity gain shifts the operating point until the the system gain saturates at unity.

I went into this detail make sure you can comprehend the following, which you may find this interesting because your first post is about global warming. (Sorry if you already knew all that, but nature of your question made me think that not the case. Also I love to teach and others may need this help.)

" ...One hopefully improbable, but "ultimate disaster" associated with global warming is that one of the several positive feed back systems may grow to greater than unity gain. For example, the methane hydrates on the ocean floor may be decomposed (Only marginally stable now at depth and some are decompsing as ocean waters warm.) Because CH4 is at least and order of magnitude more effective Green House Gas, GHG, than CO2 the release of even a tiny fraction of the methane stored in these hydrates (in a time scale comprable with, or less than, typical human life span) would achieve that unity gain. (Methane, with atomic weight 16, dose not form ice crystals in the upper atmosphere and thus does slowly escape from Earth if it is not decomposed by UV etc. first.)
If any positive feed back thermal heating system (or combination there of) does achieve sufficiently positive gain to over come the stablizing mechanisms, then that is the end of ALL life on Earth. I.e. Earth will become a slightly cooler vesion of Venus, with a very hot, high pressure, steam atmposphere, for the many thousands of years that it will require for the oceans to boil off into space. (Their heat capacity is enormous, so it will take a long time before they are all gone, but all life will be dead before the are even boiling with possibly a few hot-spring deep-ocean-vent bacteria and worms still "hanging on" until the oceans are entirely gone.) Even if man is making only a small contribution to global warming (which is my opinion) he may be making the "combined systems gain" greater than unity. Certainly several times in Earth's long history then CO2 levels in atmosphere have been higher, but man's production and rapid release of other GHG expecially N2O (several hundred times more effective than CO2 and some others) is without historical precedent - Man may be boosting the "combined systems gain" above unity and terminate all life on Earth in less than 1000 years."


This text is the second footnote from my post at:
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1566703&postcount=242
 
Last edited by a moderator:
geology

i would like to change my course from computer science to geology can anyone tell me anything about geology it kinds of interest me but i don't know what to do.:bawl:
 
mandy said:
... can anyone tell me anything about geology ...
Click to expand...
It is the original "rock music" - the ancient songs the rocks are singing for those who are willing to learn how to listen. :cool: ;)

You will need a good bit of physics to get them to really sing to you.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
mandy said:
i would like to change my course from computer science to geology can anyone tell me anything about geology it kinds of interest me but i don't know what to do.:bawl:
Click to expand...

What University you are going to? Find out if they have a geology, geophysics, petroleum engineering department - then switch your major. I recommend Petroleum engineering because, you will make a little more money. But they all teach the basics. My first degree was Honors in Chemistry, but I took electives in Geology and enjoyed it - later on, when I was designing Titanium plants, the memory came handy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top