Here is an interesting link: Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says
How many of you think that Mr. Abdussamatov is correct in his findings?
Also an interesting read: Paleoclimatology
Brent, humans aren't the only factor. However, we have been dumping billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past couple of centuries. That is a huge amount of carbon that was previously stored within the Earth's crust for millions of years. Don't you think that might have at least some effect on the atmosphere and oceans?
Dave
Does anybody actually believe in the Global Warming swiz?
by The Nothing Man 37 Replies latest jw friends
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PrimateDave
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BrentR
Decomposition and volcanoes do that also which means the earth allready has the ability to deal with it. Plain old rain is the primary mechanism employed along with plants who then convert it to O2.
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sammielee24
I believe we are warming up but I don't believe that humans are the cause of all of it. I do believe that we have finite resources available in water and land that will feed us and the destruction of the earth by overpopulation and consumerism will eventually do a heck of a lot of people in. Biofuels that take food away from people doesn't make much sense but neither does cleaning up the air in one part of the world while the other part spews more than double those pollutants back in...
UN chief calls for review of biofuels policy
· Ban Ki-moon speaks out amid global food shortage
· 33 countries facing unrest as families go hungry- Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
- The Guardian,
- Saturday April 5 2008
- Article history
About this article
Close This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday April 05 2008 on p16 of the International section. It was last updated at 00:05 on April 05 2008.The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has called for a comprehensive review of the policy on biofuels as a crisis in global food prices - partly caused by the increasing use of crops for energy generation - threatens to trigger global instability.
"We need to be concerned about the possibility of taking land or replacing arable land because of these biofuels," Ban told the Guardian in Bucharest while attending this week's Nato summit. But he added: "While I am very much conscious and aware of these problems, at the same time you need to constantly look at having creative sources of energy, including biofuels. Therefore, at this time, just criticising biofuel may not be a good solution. I would urge we need to address these issues in a comprehensive manner."
Climate change has been a priority for Ban since he took over from Kofi Annan, and he has embraced the potential of biofuels, derived from plants, as a long-term substitute for fossil fuels. But as food prices have soared - driven by rising demand, high fuel costs, and climate change - the cultivation of biofuels has come under fire for diverting fertile land from food production.
Some of the loudest criticism has come from within UN food agencies, which are struggling to keep up with commodity prices. Last month the World Food Programme issued an emergency $500m appeal to donors to help it meet its existing commitments to the world's hungry.
WFP officials say 33 countries in Asia and Africa face political instability as the urban poor struggle to feed their families.
There are also mounting concerns over the benefits of biofuels to the environment. They generally burn cleaner than fossil fuels, but fuels such as grain-based ethanol are energy-intensive to produce, and tropical rainforests have been cleared to produce palm oil for use as a fuel.
The role of biofuels is under review in Britain pending an inquiry into the indirect impact of their cultivation by the Renewable Fuels Agency.
Against this backdrop some senior UN officials are pushing for a change of policy, and attack Ban in private. "Ban is just out of touch," one said. "He doesn't know what is really going on in our agencies."
The UN's own special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, called biofuels "a crime against humanity", and called for a five-year moratorium.
Ban rejected that proposal. "At this time I wouldn't make any definitive judgment or definitive plans, in particular vis-à-vis these biofuels," he said. "I know there are some concerns raised by certain quarters about biofuels. But biofuels are a renewable source of energy when we are experiencing extreme difficulties [with] resources."
But Ban conceded that there was a food supply problem and said the primary Millenium Development Goal of halving global hunger by 2015 looked harder to reach than ever. "This steeply rising food price is a new phenomenon," he said. "We have only seven years left to meet the target of 2015. This is very serious."
He said he was overseeing a multi-agency investigation of the issue involving the UN Energy Programme, the UN Development Programme, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the World Food Programme. "They are all working on this issue," the secretary-general said.
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BrentR
The Early Twentieth-Century Warming in the Arctic—A Possible Mechanism
Lennart Bengtsson
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany, and Environmental Systems Science Centre, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
Vladimir A. Semenov
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany, and Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Moscow, Russia
Ola M. Johannessen
Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center/Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
(Manuscript received 7 April 2003, in final form 23 February 2004)
DOI: 10.1175/1520-0442(2004)017<4045:TETWIT>2.0.CO;2
ABSTRACT
The huge warming of the Arctic that started in the early 1920s and lasted for almost two decades is one of the most spectacular climate events of the twentieth century. During the peak period 1930–40, the annually averaged temperature anomaly for the area 60°–90°N amounted to some 1.7°C. Whether this event is an example of an internal climate mode or is externally forced, such as by enhanced solar effects, is presently under debate. This study suggests that natural variability is a likely cause, with reduced sea ice cover being crucial for the warming. A robust sea ice–air temperature relationship was demonstrated by a set of four simulations with the atmospheric ECHAM model forced with observed SST and sea ice concentrations. An analysis of the spatial characteristics of the observed early twentieth-century surface air temperature anomaly revealed that it was associated with similar sea ice variations. Further investigation of the variability of Arctic surface temperature and sea ice cover was performed by analyzing data from a coupled ocean–atmosphere model. By analyzing climate anomalies in the model that are similar to those that occurred in the early twentieth century, it was found that the simulated temperature increase in the Arctic was related to enhanced wind-driven oceanic inflow into the Barents Sea with an associated sea ice retreat. The magnitude of the inflow is linked to the strength of westerlies into the Barents Sea. This study proposes a mechanism sustaining the enhanced westerly winds by a cyclonic atmospheric circulation in the Barents Sea region created by a strong surface heat flux over the ice-free areas. Observational data suggest a similar series of events during the early twentieth-century Arctic warming, including increasing westerly winds between Spitsbergen and Norway, reduced sea ice, and enhanced cyclonic circulation over the Barents Sea. At the same time, the North Atlantic Oscillation was weakening.
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The Nothing Man
Well... the general feeling seems to be that yes, the earth is warming up, but is it our fault? Most don't seem to think so. Of course, they can't back this one up with a terror attack or something like that which instantly converts millions of people! What will they do other than send coadjutor Al Gore on another propaganda mission - but who listens?
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Homerovah the Almighty
I personally think the whole thing has been over sensationalized by the media, wrought with fearful propaganda, and not
put forth based on broad based scientific evidence and conclusion.
One thing the media has not mentioned that the earth does go through cyclical temperature changes, which would help to balance the public viewpoint and would be more truthful.
Nevertheless this has seemed to have developed into a tool for keeping the earth green and help the anti-pollution supporters, which inadvertently may
not necessarily be a bad thing.
Sometimes lies can be created to do a good thing, this may be the case here.
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uninformed
Gore acknowledged that so far Clinton and Obama have devoted relatively little time to discussing their platforms on climate change. But, as he told CBS: "I'm not finished yet."
I beg to differ.
Brant