[shifuimam]

I have an issue with the whole theory of global warming. Liberals love to blame America and our consumption and our environmental practices for the earth's temperature rising.

But here's the thing - if the earth is 6+ billion years old, how do we know that there hasn't been extreme changes in the earth's temperature in the past? There's proof in ancient trees in Europe that there was a very similar dramatic change in the earth's temperature during the Dark Ages. The earth's temperature has fluxuated since its beginning - and it isn't solely caused by us and our carbon monoxide-producing engines.

I'm not saying that air pollution is good. What I am saying is that we need to keep bitching about how it's our fault that the earth's temperature is rising and start figuring out how we're going to handle it. In the dark ages, they didn't have the knowledge, history, and resources that we have now. There's a 99% chance that it's going to happen again, and blaming the US isn't going to stop it from happening.

I can find more articles if you really want, but at least consider this:

"Over the last 700,000 years, the climate has operated on a relatively predictable schedule of 100,000-year glaciation cycles. Each glaciation cycle is typically characterized by 90,000 years of cooling, an ice age, followed by an abrupt warming period, called an interglacial, which lasts 10,000-12,000 years. The last ice age reached its coolest point 18,000 to 20,000 years ago when the average temperature was 9-12.6° F cooler than present. Earth is currently in a warm interglacial called the Holocene that began 10,700 years ago."

We know that there was an ice age tens of thousands of years ago. Why in the world do we think that that's never going to happen again? Instead of pointing fingers and screaming that it all goes back to the industrial revolution, we've got to start looking at the past - the far away past - and realize that those same cycles are very likely to afflict the planet again, and it's not just caused by humans.

I'm just annoyed by it. I assume that most here will disagree with me, but I'm sick to death of hearing people (including hardcore liberal Democrats that I know personally) bitching and moaning about global warming and how it's caused by The Selfish Americans(tm).

[Dakarʒ]

Who would you rather say what causes global warming?

[nonhuman]

I've read good arguments on both sides. I am, at the moment, not fully convinced either way.

I do, however, think that the current trend of blaming all warming solely on human CO2 emissions is foolish. Certainly there is warming, that's an observable fact. Certainly there is an increase in atmospheric CO2, that's also an observable fact. However correlation does not equal causation. It's possible that increased atmospheric CO2 is driving increased global temperature, and there is some evidence that would seem to support that hypothesis. It's also possible that increased global temperature is driving increased atmospheric CO2, and there's also evidence that would seem to support that hypothesis.

In the end, however, I think it's mostly irrelevant. I personally am putting a good amount of effort into reducing my own energy consumption (and therefore emissions of CO2 and other pollutants). This, however, has nothing to do with a desire to stop global warming, and very little to do with any environmentalist goals at all. Right now I'm mostly interested in minimizing my utility bills and general cost of living. Amazingly enough, the methods for doing that are the same methods used for reducing one's 'carbon footprint'.

It's fascinating the way market forces work, ain't it?

[Graviton]

Wow! This idea that the earths temperature has always been fluctuating will come as a real shock to scientists working in climatology. Why didn't they think of that?

You should send them an email or something.

[OldManMac]

Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned on the seat belt light for your your protection. We anticipate some turbulence ahead.

[Dakarʒ]

Karl.... they changed your username for you?

[ghporter]

Whether we're in a steep warming portion of a glaciation/melt cycle or not, we HAVE dumped trillions of tons of carbon and other heat-trapping chemicals into the air over the last 300 years or so, mostly in the last 75 years. That certainly can't help the planet's ability to adjust. If we are to blame, it would probably take a REALLY longterm point of view to conclusively prove it. But even if we're not, we could certainly do less to make it worse.

[shifuimam]

I agree. We should be doing everything we can to reduce emissions and help the environment - and this is coming from someone who is really annoyed by tree-hugging hippie types.

My point of contention is with people who truly believe that it's solely (or nearly entirely) caused by us and our CO2 emissions, instead of understanding that it's part of a cycle that has been going on for centuries on the planet.

I'm sure that most scientists realize that the earth's fluxuating temperature is not solely human-caused. It's the other people that don't get it so much.

[OldManMac]

Originally Posted by Dakarʒ 

Karl.... they changed your username for you?

Yes, I asked them to. There was a thread here a week or so ago, from another poster, who asked about changing his user name, and Demonhood replied that they would consider it under certain circumstances. We now return you to the turbulent skies of Debatetonia.

[Dakarʒ]

Originally Posted by OldManMac 

Yes, I asked them to. There was a thread here a week or so ago, from another poster, who asked about changing his user name, and Demonhood replied that they would consider it under certain circumstances.

Well then, congratulations, geezer.

[black bear theory]

nothing in your OP is new information. we've known for several decades that we have been in a warm period between cooler glacial periods. here is an excerpt from one of those 'global cooling' articles from the seventies: FORECAST: UNSETTLED WEATHER AHEAD | TIME

Global cooling might be explained by a link between ice ages and changes both in the earth's attitude and in its orbit around the sun. That concept was championed by Germany's Alfred Wegener (best known for his ideas about continental drift) and later refined by Yugoslav Mathematician Milutin Milankovitch, for whom the theory is now named. Last year three scientists —James Hays of Columbia, John Imbrie of Brown University and Nicholas Shackleton of Cambridge University in England—published the strongest evidence yet that Milankovitch was right. Analyzing cores of sediments taken from beneath the floor of the Indian Ocean, the trio assembled an accurate record of the earth's climate dating back 450,000 years and correlated this information with data about the earth's orbit.

Their finding: the timing of each of the planet's major ice ages was closely related to changes in the earth's attitude and orbit that reduced the amount of summer sunlight striking the polar caps. Unless man somehow unbalances the equation, these scientists concluded, the trend over the next 20,000 years will be toward a cooler global climate and the spread of glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere—a new Ice Age.

...

Other scientists believe that the earth is actually getting warmer. As they see it, the cooling trend of the '50s and '60s has leveled off and worldwide temperatures are rising. As evidence, they point to uncharacteristically mild winters during recent years in Scandinavia and, with the exception of this year, in New England. Temperatures in Australia and New Zealand as well as Antarctica have risen slightly. Glaciers in the Alps have retreated slightly, and temperatures measured at 40 scattered points in the middle latitudes of North America have either stayed the same or risen during the past six years.

If a warming trend is indeed under way, many scientists say it probably has been caused by increasing amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) spewed into the atmosphere by the burning of coal and petroleum products. While the CO2 does not prevent solar radiation from reaching the earth, it blocks the escape into space of heat rising from the earth's surface—the so-called greenhouse effect.

global cooling vs. global warming? they were both right! however, only one of them is going to have an effect on us (our generation and future generations) and the other won't.

natural greenhouse gases account for 33C of our atmosphere's temperature. CO2 has varied cyclically between 190-290 ppm over the past million years. we are now 100 ppm higher than the most extreme in that time period and rapidly rising due to burning of fossil fuels. trillions of tons of CO2, which has been sequestered from our ecosystem for 10's to 100's of millions of years, is now being returned to the atmosphere at rates 100x greater than that of natural processes in only a few hundred years.

humans are to blame for this and there is no evidence that anything like it has happened anytime before. this disequilibrium is what concerns me most.

[Mithras]

OldManMac: Like the new moniker!
shifuimam: Who are we to say what causes cancer? Who are we to say what causes supernovae? Who are we to say what causes hurricanes? We're &^$!%$ humans, that's who.

[tie]

Who are we to do science, indeed? We should shut down the universities and let Bush's lobbyist friends write our textbooks.

Sorry, I really don't understand your argument, nor why you repeatedly say "liberals" when you mean "scientists."