[Blue]

We don't have any control over the sun, the only thing we do have control over in the equation is the Co2. What say we do something about the Co2 and if I'm wrong, I'll apologise. If I'm right, no need to thank me.

Actually, we don't have as much control over the CO2 as you think. Cap and trade isn't setup to reduce CO2 but to create a brokerage system to make CO2 traders richer.

Our local school system is getting a fleet of CNG powered buses (8 I think). The head of the bus system said he was excited about reducing the carbon foot print of the school bus system. I agree that the technology makes a lot of sense because of our NG resources. However, the dogma is just rediculus.

The 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics and the Law of Conservation of Energy are not going to go away.

Edit: The CO2 and heat buildup is not a linear relationship and isn't the only biological component. Where does water vapor fit into atmospheric physics? Now if I had a $4 Million plus grant on the hook, I might change my opinion.

[Ratmagiclady]

Red herring, anyway. Yes, eating too much beef has an impact on global warming, by cramming em together unnaturally-close... But the fact is that that petroleum-based fertilizer to feed them is the real problem, and it won't last forever, no matter how much we feel OK about screwing things up with it.

I'm a real carnivore, myself, but we *eat too much* of it, ...and *eat too much* in general. They sell more beef than we can eat, and then sell us diet pills for the mysterious obesity epidemic, demand we overpopulate, try to get everyone afraid of birth control but not look at what the hormones that make more beef do to the precious little ones...

The worst that can happen if we act responsibly is some conservative can blow nice fresh air to claim it was all for nothing since 'the world didn't end...' ...the best that can happen if we act irresponsibly is that we end up being fatter, more numerous, and more polluted till we run out of the stuff to do it with.

[Ratmagiclady]

Edit: The CO2 and heat buildup is not a linear relationship and isn't the only biological component. Where does water vapor fit into atmospheric physics?

As a knock-on effect of other inputs and things which retain atmospheric heat, in this case. Water vapor's a greenhouse gas: the warmer it gets, the more of it stays in the atmospheric blanket for longer. Also, if you lose ice caps, planetary albedo goes down, heating things up further... if this gets extreme enough, ironically enough, we could end up with a runaway freeze situation starting in northern climes due to the shutdown of major ocean currents. In the total picture, this is actually quite complex.

The situation with water is that it's mostly a moderating influence, but it's also the mechanism by which crossing certain tipping points could get ugly.

[Blue]

Red herring, anyway. Yes, eating too much beef has an impact on global warming, by cramming em together unnaturally-close... But the fact is that that petroleum-based fertilizer to feed them is the real problem, and it won't last forever, no matter how much we feel OK about screwing things up with it.

I'm a real carnivore, myself, but we *eat too much* of it, ...and *eat too much* in general. They sell more beef than we can eat, and then sell us diet pills for the mysterious obesity epidemic, demand we overpopulate, try to get everyone afraid of birth control but not look at what the hormones that make more beef do to the precious little ones...

The worst that can happen if we act responsibly is some conservative can blow nice fresh air to claim it was all for nothing since 'the world didn't end...' ...the best that can happen if we act irresponsibly is that we end up being fatter, more numerous, and more polluted till we run out of the stuff to do it with.

This gets into agriculture in general. The fact is plants need fertilizer to produce the amount of grains, vegetables, etc for a sustainable food supply. Synthetic nitrate fertilizers and manure have the same eutrophication effects on water systems as does sewage treatment systems and golf courses.

Ammonium Nitrate is made from ammonia and nitric acid which are derived from natural gas and steam with electricity which is why the TVA produced it for both fertilizer and WWII explosives in Muscle Shoals due to the proximity of 2 hydro dams within 5 miles (Wilson and later Wheeler). K and P are added to the ammonium nitrate depending on end use.


Organic in and of itself is not necessarily equivalent to sustainable nor is it automatically safer. There are materials used in organic apple production for example that worry me as much as some of the old o.p. materials as far as chronic exposure goes (Parkinsons for example) and potential for fish kills.

There's a lot of chicken, pork and other livestock being eaten as well. In fact chicken is huge. Georgia, Arkansas, and California are among the poultry leaders.

[Ratmagiclady]

Organic in and of itself is not necessarily equivalent to sustainable nor is it automatically safer. There are materials used in organic apple production for example that worry me as much as some of the old o.p. materials as far as chronic exposure goes (Parkinsons for example) and potential for fish kills.

There's a lot of chicken, pork and other livestock being eaten as well. In fact chicken is huge. Georgia, Arkansas, and California are among the poultry leaders.

Yes, wherever you get agricultural runoff *from,* putting too much out there means too much ends somewhere. Modern fertilizers that enable us to put all this *feed grain* into any animal (or plant) we eat too much of also take a lot of energy to get that kind of chemical density into one place.

Some try to say that we should stop eating meat, I say we should... stop eating so *much.* Before blaming some environmentalist for things not working out, anyway. What goes into fertilizing 'biofuels' that agribusiness *likes* is no bargain. Especially when we could be getting biofuels out of mixed prairie grasses instead of massive cultivation and petroleum-based fertilizer inputs.

This is where things like ethanol really screw the proverbial: setting up a sustainable infrastructure is one thing, but straining the food supply while resisting any other sources for that ethanol: ones which aren't exacerbating other problems profitably.... That's the problem.

One thing's for sure, if someone says we can keep expanding our population indefinitely while using more energy that comes out of the ground, while screwing up what keeps us alive, as if none of these things connect to each other beyond the next fiscal quarter..

Well, maybe some people don't expect to live to see the consequences, but that can't work.

We should have been on this thirty years ago. So that by the time the rest of the world really wanted to live like us, we wouldn't have been exporting stuff that's gonna bite us all in the kiester.

Gotta do something. Gotta do a lot of things. Cause making fun of the fact there's a lot of methane in farts ..won't help.


To be quite honest, it was about 2003 when it really hit me that "We broke something. We can't accept it. We're going to do this the hard way and it's just a question of how hard we screw ourselves till we halfway wise up." Now, I'm never one to count Mammagaia out, but. We already lost at 'truth or consequences.' It's just a matter of what adapts and when. Cause there's already consequences in the pipeline: what we've been experiencing lately ...probably just the appetizers. Some people think that if they can go to their graves and feel it's 'not their fault' that all will be right with the world, but I disagree.

I believe that too much is at stake for denial to be the default.

What's the worst that can happen if we learn a little restraint? We got thinner and better exercised, waste less, pollute less, worry less about what a company decides a price is.... for no apparent reason? I could live with that.

And, no, I'm not talking about 'the end of the world.' I'm talking about the end of something less abstract. The end of things we take for granted.

I try to help the fart situation by eating as many cows as I possibly can.

More and more scientists are backing away from the human factor in global warming. Want to stop CO2? Stop breathing.

[er1kksen]

To be fair, dismissing the notion of global warming based on this crappy summer weather is a bit absurd. After all, the planet is warming up. It's been measured and it's beyond dispute. The dispute is why it's warming.

There's not a shred of good, solid evidence that it's a result of the small quantities of greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere by the activity of that charming little human population. There's not a shred of evidence that it won't start dropping into another ice age next week or warm up to cretaceous climates instead. There is plenty of evidence that the climate has been all over the place in the past for a variety of different reasons both with and without our presence.

Ingraining western culture with the idea of moderation is absolutely a good thing and would speed progress towards the mitigation of lots of society's problems, but not because it has anything to do with global warming.

To be fair, dismissing the notion of global warming based on this crappy summer weather is a bit absurd. After all, the planet is warming up. It's been measured and it's beyond dispute. The dispute is why it's warming.

There's not a shred of good, solid evidence that it's a result of the small quantities of greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere by the activity of that charming little human population. There's not a shred of evidence that it won't start dropping into another ice age next week or warm up to cretaceous climates instead. There is plenty of evidence that the climate has been all over the place in the past for a variety of different reasons both with and without our presence.

Ingraining western culture with the idea of moderation is absolutely a good thing and would speed progress towards the mitigation of lots of society's problems, but not because it has anything to do with global warming.

Thing is it's warmed before and it's cooled before. It's a natural process. Now they say we have been in a cooling period for a number of years. Boy I sure wish I had those digital thermometers they had in the time before Christ. They were soooo accurate.

Don't tell me they can tell to a tenth of a degree what the temp was 1000 years ago because they can't.

[Shibby3.8]

Thing is it's warmed before and it's cooled before. It's a natural process. Now they say we have been in a cooling period for a number of years. Boy I sure wish I had those digital thermometers they had in the time before Christ. They were soooo accurate.

Don't tell me they can tell to a tenth of a degree what the temp was 1000 years ago because they can't.

they don't need to know 1000 years ago. They have temperature records from before the industrial revolution. There's a noticeable increase in the rate of temperature change post industrial revolution. A global climate change event that used to take 1000's of years is occuring in a geological second. Thats the problem.

I know its hard to choke down that we may have altered the planets natural course

I'm not sure many of you realize how much of the earth's climate and weather is interconnected. you shutdown or change one input/variable and the whole equation changes.

For instance, we're losing glacier surface area year after year. That means less reflected sunlight and more fresh water entering the ocean (changing the salinity content). So less reflected sunlight means more absorbed which means more heat. Thats pretty basic to understand, but how about that melting ice and the influx of fresh water?

The earth has a giant saltwater conveyor belt moving around it, which is driven by differences in salinity and temperature. This movement of water brings warm surface water to the higher latitudes which then affects weather patterns (strength of storms, drought conditions, etc.). This conveyor is driven mainly in the area off the coast of Greenland where the salinity content is very high and the temp is colder due to the winds off the NA coasts. This colder denser water sinks to the bottom of the ocean and begins moving toward the pacific ocean by way of Africa and India. Meanwhile that water needs to be replaced, the Pacific being larger and warmer supply's this water which runs in a current on the surface of the oceans back past Africa and North through the Atlantic until arriving back at Greenland to start the process all over.

This cycle is responsible for the ocean temperatures which drive our weather. With the changing of the salinity content around Greenland this 'conveyor belt' may end up shutting down. This will stop the flow of warm water into the Atlantic and drastically affect weather patterns all across the world. The Northern latitudes would be in a constant state of winter due to the lack of warm equatorial water flow. The equatorial regions would begin to dry up and Africa and Europe would be thrown into a severe drought.

Greenland's ice will continue to melt due to warmer global temperatures. We know these temperatures are effected by the content of the atmosphere, we know that when CO2 levels began to increase we saw an increase in the rate of temperature change. Sure it was already rising but it's now rising faster than before we decided to help it along.

Your absolutely right to say its a 'natural process'. Its happened before, but was it supposed to happen now or 500 years from now?

[shooz]

It's kinda like my old grandaddy used to say.
" piss in your own backyard often enough and sooner or later
yer gonna get a boot full."


Hmmmm, note to self, buy some hip waders.

[SteveM]

I try to help the fart situation by eating as many cows as I possibly can.

More and more scientists are backing away from the human factor in global warming. Want to stop CO2? Stop breathing.

I don't get this.....are you saying we "are" f%^ and there is nothing we can do about it so we should buy wall street stock?.....based on corporate welfare...the likes which Canada would never accept?
The US is becoming so communistic based on corporate handouts.....it's so 3rd world and it's sad.

[robjmitchell]

The ocean conveyor is not about to shut down. The idiots who modeled the shutdown required more fresh water than what's left in the greenland icecap. so if we could start an ice age and then start global warming we could then start an ice age!

[lurchlarson]

Your absolutely right to say its a 'natural process'. Its happened before, but was it supposed to happen now or 500 years from now?

Does all of the global warming stuff take into account the CO2 and other gases released during volcanos and earthquakes? Just a honest to goodness question. I know that one of the biggest threats to life on earth was during the "Snowball Earth" period and it was only because of seismic and volcanic activity that the earth warmed up. Greenhouse gases to the rescue there.

Frankly, even if the earth warms up and sea levels rise and cause all the calamities foretold by scientists (who are NEVER EVER WRONG btw) things won't change that much. Sure there will be famines, wars, extinctions, plagues and what not but it's not like that isn't happening now. Humanity will adjust. If we don't we'll die-out like most species that has ever lived on earth.

As far as life going extinct I doubt that anything short of our Sun going Nova, a Gamma ray burst or a mega-asteroid pulverizing the planet will wipe out LIFE. We might go extinct and so might other things but LIFE is resilient and persistent.

As for me. I try not to pollute because I don't like breathing stinky air or dirty water. Not because I feel some desire to "Save the Planet".

I know it this is rambling and I apologize for that. I guess I'll stop now.

they don't need to know 1000 years ago. They have temperature records from before the industrial revolution. There's a noticeable increase in the rate of temperature change post industrial revolution. A global climate change event that used to take 1000's of years is occuring in a geological second. Thats the problem.

I know its hard to choke down that we may have altered the planets natural course

I'm not sure many of you realize how much of the earth's climate and weather is interconnected. you shutdown or change one input/variable and the whole equation changes.

For instance, we're losing glacier surface area year after year. That means less reflected sunlight and more fresh water entering the ocean (changing the salinity content). So less reflected sunlight means more absorbed which means more heat. Thats pretty basic to understand, but how about that melting ice and the influx of fresh water?

The earth has a giant saltwater conveyor belt moving around it, which is driven by differences in salinity and temperature. This movement of water brings warm surface water to the higher latitudes which then affects weather patterns (strength of storms, drought conditions, etc.). This conveyor is driven mainly in the area off the coast of Greenland where the salinity content is very high and the temp is colder due to the winds off the NA coasts. This colder denser water sinks to the bottom of the ocean and begins moving toward the pacific ocean by way of Africa and India. Meanwhile that water needs to be replaced, the Pacific being larger and warmer supply's this water which runs in a current on the surface of the oceans back past Africa and North through the Atlantic until arriving back at Greenland to start the process all over.

This cycle is responsible for the ocean temperatures which drive our weather. With the changing of the salinity content around Greenland this 'conveyor belt' may end up shutting down. This will stop the flow of warm water into the Atlantic and drastically affect weather patterns all across the world. The Northern latitudes would be in a constant state of winter due to the lack of warm equatorial water flow. The equatorial regions would begin to dry up and Africa and Europe would be thrown into a severe drought.

Greenland's ice will continue to melt due to warmer global temperatures. We know these temperatures are effected by the content of the atmosphere, we know that when CO2 levels began to increase we saw an increase in the rate of temperature change. Sure it was already rising but it's now rising faster than before we decided to help it along.

Your absolutely right to say its a 'natural process'. Its happened before, but was it supposed to happen now or 500 years from now?

So they had some really accurate to within 1/10th of a degree temperature sensor back before the industrial revolution?
Borings done on Greenland (I think it was Greenland) showed they had palm trees there.

But now scientist say were are in a cooling period. Back in the 70's they predicted we were going into the next ice age.
Man we can't tell what the weather will be this afternoon and we can tell in 10 years? 50 years? As John Stossel would say "Give me a break"

The earth warms up, the earth cools. It's a natural cycle and will happen no matter what. The problem I see with most "scientists" is they look at 10, and 100 year cycles. In a case like global temperatures you need to look even further. And with most of the tools we use to "tell the past" they just aren't accurate enough and our knowledge isn't broad enough. Even carbon dating is only accurate to 6,000 years. And honestly I think they're guessing at those results also

[Blue]

they don't need to know 1000 years ago. They have temperature records from before the industrial revolution. There's a noticeable increase in the rate of temperature change post industrial revolution. A global climate change event that used to take 1000's of years is occuring in a geological second. Thats the problem. . . .

First off, the bigger the "accurate" data set here the better. The thing about the temperature record we have is this. The set is incomplete and the procedures used were vastly different and the equipment and protocols have changed. Also, there are places that haven't been visited until more recently such as the polar caps. Also, what is the best way to take the earth's collective temperature? When you factor in all of this, 0.1 C becomes within the confidence interval.

The Earth has always been a dynamic place. It started out with serious amounts of methane etc in its atmosphere and humans and other animals wouldn't have been able to survive.

Furthermore, the fertile crescent has changed over the past several thousand years. Alexandria which was once the center of scientific knowledge is under water. Florida was 5x bigger than it is a mere 8,000 years ago. The continents used to form 1 super continent called Pangea and broke up into Gondwanaland and then our current continents. The tectonic plates are shifting and the western coastline of the U.S. is moving ~ 2 inches per year towards the Russian Coast.

So in the grand scheme of things, 100 years isn't scratch. Gore should go back to law which is something he sux at less.

Most of the arse-clowns screaming about CO2 haven't had historical geology, historical geography, and are luck if the had biology for dumb asses in college. A bunch of the guys the all their cheap suit asses up to capital hill and support man-made global warming have huge grants to fund their work.

We have to be good stewards of the earth because its the correct thing to do. However, trading carbon to make the lakes of Al Bore the 2-bit lawyer more millions like the other millions his family made of of strip mining on oil is bullshit.