Saw an interesting opinion written by George F. Will recently in the newspaper. He had an interesting prospective he called Easterbrook's "Law of Doomsaying" where he noted that those successful at the subject predicted dire events to occur between 5 and 10 years into the future. The predicted global calamities should be near enough to invoke serious concern but distant enough that errors can be overlooked. Very interesting. Sounds a lot like global warming, and it was especially appropriate that he mentioned the widely accepted view of the 1970's that a new Ice Age was imminent. This was viewed as a "likely source of wholesale death and misery" and that the world's climatologists "are agreed that we must prepare for the next ice age". The article mentions one other point that I thought very interesting. The unstated premise of such eco-pessimism is that "environmental conditions are, or recently were, optimal". Thus they must be preserved, right? (Shake your head up and down to signify yes here.) Brings to mind another saying about those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it. Interesting, huh.
In geological terms we may well be close to the next ice age, in human terms we are much closer to a man made global warming.
I've no clue as to which side of the debate you stand. Is naturally occuring change fine but manmade change just automatically bad? Actually, I might be generally agreeable with that, but I need real proof and not lots of people saying (shouting) that of course there is a global warming problem. High CO2 levels and a warmer earth have many beneficial effects. Global warming is a natural and very useful physical phenomenum. If it didn't exist, the earth would look like a big snowball. By orders of magnitude, the biggest contributor to this natural phenomenum is water. Did I hear someone ask how water vapor in the atmosphere will be affected by increased levels of CO2? There are lots of topics to explore in this subject, but very few of the topics include the expressions "of course" or "for sure". Now, when you say "we are much closer to a man made global warming", then I say "prove it". A bunch of government paid people studying the problem might produce the correct answer. But for now there's very little that they say that I would accept as indisputable. Again, show me the model that accurately includes historically known past global warm and cold periods. That's all I'm asking for. Don't have it? Then preface your remarks with "some speculate" rather than "It's known". That's how science should work.
Edited by djack77494, 06 January 2010 - 05:49 PM.
I must admit I didn't realize there still was any debate about global warming.
Is man made change bad? Of course it is if it has an adverse impact on the lives of millions (and potentially billions) of people, not to mention the extinction of many plant and animal species. If it had no adverse impact we wouldn't care about it.
The phenomenon your referring to is actually the Greenhouse effect, and yes this is essential to keep the planet live-able. On the other hand Global warming in this context is a man-made global increase in (or in some parts decrease in) temperature.
A model that predicts every past change is a naive and unrealistic expectation, what you can easily show is that increasing CO2 increases the greenhouse effect, which we have already agreed is a real and proven concept.
The existing models do take into account the net change in water vapor in the atmosphere.
It is known that an increase in CO2 will increase the greenhouse effect and will increase the global average temperature, additionally there is no other plausible explanation for the recent rises in atmospheric temperature and the evidence is in the majority of peoples opinion, overwhelming. Whether you choose to believe it or not is down to the individual.