Is Global Warming the real problem?

[Jaga]

What do you think?

[sciwriter]

Jaga: IMO global warming is a technological problem and should not be made a political issue by political "hot heads" who support Al Gore for President. (I'm not referring to anyone on this forum.) Thanks. Carl

[Bob S]

;D Jaga and Carl. IMHO there should have been a 3rd choice; None of the above. Now, I have been taking temperture notes for the past 200 million years and this seems to be just another cycle. The Earth has gone through a lot of climate changes since it was formed. In the beginning when the Earth was first forming, it was real hot. There was a time when even the North Pole was a tropical paradise and it was only a hop skip and jump to Europe If I am not mistaken, there was even a shallow sea in one of the Western deserts We have weathered a few Ice Ages and might be at the start of a new one (remember the small ice age of the late 1700's and into the 1800's?
The Polar Caps of Mars are also getting smaller and I don't believe there is any Human interferance there. Geez, it always gets warmer during the Summer time and gets colder in the Winter. "The Sky Is Falling, The Sky Is Falling" LOL ;D

[sciwriter]

Bob, interesting! Thanks. Carl

[Bob S]

sciwriter said:

Bob, interesting! Thanks. Carl

Carl. There was a time when even the rain was almost pure acid. Somewhere that acid rain met a base and what resulted?
Acid + Base = Water + Some type of Salt.
The one mystry is: What type and name of base did that acid encounter?

[rdywenur]

Now, I have been taking temperture notes for the past 200 million years and

Bob did you know George Burns ;D

[piwo]

As others have said, the earth goes through cycles. I don't profess to know if this is just a cycle, or a definite shift. How could one be sure, since the globe has done this over the millennium? I pray it is only a cycle, and also pray that people take it serious enough to modify behaviors so as not to encourage it. Tall order, and no one nation will any longer set the tone. USA does not produce so much, other economies are booming and demanding more goods and using resources.

Lots of theories, lots of explanations, lots of "see, I told ya", but for every claim, there is a a counter claim. A sea of confusion....

[bescheid]

Well, not knowledgeable of the problem, then, I am not knowledgeable of the answer.

But, I would tend to side with Piwo on this,as a climate/weather cycle.

Mother nature will do as mother nature will. We as man,are not a partner in the grand plan of nature. We can only cope with what we have.

My training was not unfortunately in this field of endeavor. My university training was primarily in the field of the study of man {Middle Eastern anthropology} and in the weakness of man, Criminology, with a side of, international relations and from that point on, a multitude of academies and related schools of nonsense.

But what I do have to add is not most likely very welcoming here. Man as a being, in innately very inadequate, very unprepared, and very fearful of any changes in his {generic term for people} environment. People from early times from the beginning in Africa, generate gods and worship to give to them selves a sense of well being and created feelings of safety from events they have little understanding there of.

People have evolved extremely so from the savanna times on the African deserts to Europe, to the currant world. But one thing people have not evolved from is this: FEAR of the UNKNOWN.

Charles

[Bob S]

;D beschied, et-al. Mankind with its inflated ego cannot produce a fraction of what one volcano eruption can. I would advise all the environmentalists to try and put a plug in every volcano on Earth (including the one's in the oceans). While they are doing that job, perhaps some of them could put a shield over the Sun to block out all those rays and to finish the job, perhaps they could change the orbit of Earth a bit.
beschied, perhaps a lot of people don't agree with your ideas, but, they are as valid as anyone else's. You are right, we don't have the knowledge of God or the Angels and no one has been around long enough to have a valid history of climate change. A person could have no idea of what the Pacific Ocean is or looks like by mearly observing one drop of it's water in an eye-dropper. There is always fear of the unknown, but we are all in Gods hands and at the mercy of nature.

[Bob S]

rdywenur said:

Now, I have been taking temperture notes for the past 200 million years and

Bob did you know George Burns ;D

;D Yes, I think I baby sat him when he was a tyke and even then he fancied cigars rather than a baby bottle. LOL ;D

[leslie]

Rdyw..

Which George is it you are talking about that is burning? Has it been in the newspapers? There have been a lot of self-generated fires with all this hot weather! Poor George.
Leslie

As a typical Brit, can I make the 'warming' compromise (unless it has already been said). There can be no doubt about climate change due to the Earth wobble, and all the gases we are pouring into the atmosphere show a scientific warming effect. 1 + 1 = a helluva lot of global warming?

I'm building a spaceship in my back garden and intend to get off this planet as soon as I can - anybody want to come with me? I don't know where I shall be heading or if we would ever get get there, but we'd have a lot of fun!!

Leslie

[justjohn]

Warmer Waters Disrupt Pacific Food Chain
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.


By MARCUS WOHLSEN

FARALLON NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Calif. Jul 22, 2006 (AP)— On these craggy, remote islands west of San Francisco, the largest seabird colony in the contiguous United States throbs with life. Seagulls swarm so thick that visitors must yell to be heard above their cries. Pelicans glide.

But the steep decline of one bird species for the second straight year has rekindled scientists' fears that global warming could be undermining the coastal food supply, threatening not just the Farallones but entire marine ecosystems.

Tiny Cassin's auklets live much of their lives on the open ocean. But in spring, these gray-and-white relatives of the puffin venture to isolated Pacific outposts like the Farallones to dig deep burrows and lay their eggs.

Adult auklets usually feed their chicks with krill, the minuscule shrimp-like crustaceans that anchor the ocean's complex food web.

But not this year. Almost none of the 20,000 pairs of Cassin's auklets nesting in the Farallones will raise a chick that lives more than a few days, a repeat of last year's "unprecedented" breeding failure, according to Russ Bradley, a seabird biologist with the Point Reyes Bird Observatory who monitors the birds on the islands.

Scientists blame changes in West Coast climate patterns for a delay in the seasonal upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich waters from the ocean's depths for the second year in a row. Weak winds and faltering currents have left the Gulf of the Farallones without krill, on which Cassin's auklets and a variety of other seabirds, fish and mammals depend for food.

"The seas are warmer. And the number of krill being produced is lower," said Bradley as he held a Cassin's auklet chick, the only one from a study of 400 nests he expected to survive.

"Normally we would have hundreds," he said.

The failure of last year's Pacific upwelling killed seabirds from California to British Columbia. Scientists had hoped the change was just a natural temperature fluctuation in what is known as the California Current.

But the return of higher ocean temperatures and scarce food resources this year has scientists wondering whether last year's erratic weather was not a fluke but the emergence of a troubling trend.

"How many years in a row do you see this before you start raising your eyebrows?" said Frank Schwing, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Pacific Grove.

Climatologists describe global warming as a worldwide rise in temperatures caused by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses thought to trap heat in the atmosphere. Predictions of global warming's effects include rising sea levels, fiercer storms, more wildfires and warmer oceans.

Without long-term data, scientists have so far found it difficult to make direct links between specific natural events and global warming.

But the Farallones present a special case. Researchers have kept Cassin's auklet counts there every day since 1967. Never before have they seen such a drop-off in numbers. That decline comes as California ocean temperatures hover three to five degrees above average.

"One of the things that the climate models predict is that we're going to have unpredictable weather, extreme weather, that the whole seasonal cycle of events will not be what we expect," said Bill Peterson, a NOAA oceanographer in Newport, Ore. "We aren't seeing normal patterns."

Perhaps nowhere is this ecological disruption felt more than here on the Farallones, a 200-acre island chain often described as California's Galapagos. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service keeps the national wildlife refuge closed to visitors except for a small group of scientists and volunteers who live there year-round.

The krill-dependent whales and salmon that inhabit the surrounding waters have not appeared to suffer from the changes in food supply. But during a visit to the islands this summer, scientists pointed to other species feeling the consequences.

The absence of krill has led to a collapse of the juvenile rockfish population. This is the main food source for young of the common murre, a bird that resembles a flying penguin. Though the murre has made a dramatic comeback recently, with about 200,000 adults nesting on the islands this year, nearly three-quarters of murres breeding this year are not expected to raise chicks that survive.

"At this point it's way too late in the season for the birds to initiate another attempt at breeding," said Peter Warzybok, a Farallones-based biologist with the Point Reyes Bird Observatory. "They'll just have to wait around for next year and hope that it's better."

Significant drops in murre and Cassin's auklet numbers occurred during the El Nino years of 1983 and 1992, when warmer Pacific waters near the equator upset weather patterns worldwide.

A January conference of more than 40 climatologists, oceanographers, and wildlife biologists issued a report describing last year's altered coastal climate as El Nino-like conditions in a non-El Nino year. Some researchers have given the new climate shift its own name: "El Coyote."

The report said a "ridge" of winter air blocking winds from the Gulf of Alaska lingered more than two months longer than normal in 2005, which delayed the upwelling until well past the birds' breeding seasons.

"It's not just a local effect," Schwing said. "It's related to global-scale changes in atmospheric circulation."

But it could take researchers another decade to determine whether global warming caused those changes. Some climatologists warn against drawing overly broad conclusions from only two years of unusual weather.

Definitive results are "not around the corner," said Nick Bond, a research meteorologist the University of Washington who has studied the upwelling's failure.

"We just don't know how much the deck is stacked" by the effects of global climate change, Bond said. "It's hard to tell from just a deal or two."

But whatever the cause, the ecological outcome if the trend continues is already clear, according to scientists.

The Cassin's auklet is unlikely to adapt to the sudden loss of its main food source. And other animals could follow, Schwing said.

In the worst case, he said, "we could see a great depression of the entire ecosystem."

[bescheid]

J.J.

That was a very excellent and informative presentation you have shared I very enjoyed the accuracy and pertinent researched information by the author.

I was some what surprised of the cause and effect of krill/Auklet relationship, but, it makes sense. The food chain effect. At present I am not aware of any whales being washed up along the local shores from starvation, but, I would only suppose this is just the early stages of the Pacific food chain process.

This year though, in our area of the known world, there was an unexpected bumper crop of Salmon. So not sure how the krill situation would have what effects upon this type of fish.

The situation that is apparent as a clear and present situation though, and one that should not be taken lightly {besides the volcano chain} is the rapid release of carbon dioxide previously absorbed in sea water out of the atmosphere.

It will be an interesting challenge of adjusting to natures requirement of a balance in all things.

Charles

[sciwriter]

www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/opinion/27doran.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Half cold & 1/2 warm. Carl:

NY TIMES

Cold, Hard Facts

By PETER DORAN
Published: July 27, 2006
Chicago

IN the debate on global warming, the data on the climate of Antarctica has been
distorted, at different times, by both sides. As a polar researcher caught in
the middle, I’d like to set the record straight.
In January 2002, a research paper about Antarctic temperatures, of which I was
the lead author, appeared in the journal Nature. At the time, the Antarctic
Peninsula was warming, and many people assumed that meant the climate on the
entire continent was heating up, as the Arctic was. But the Antarctic Peninsula
represents only about 15 percent of the continent’s land mass, so it could not
tell the whole story of Antarctic climate. Our paper made the continental
picture more clear.
My research colleagues and I found that from 1986 to 2000, one small, ice-free
area of the Antarctic mainland had actually cooled. Our report also analyzed
temperatures for the mainland in such a way as to remove the influence of the
peninsula warming and found that, from 1966 to 2000, more of the continent had
cooled than had warmed. Our summary statement pointed out how the cooling trend
posed challenges to models of Antarctic climate and ecosystem change.
Newspaper and television reports focused on this part of the paper. And many
news and opinion writers linked our study with another bit of polar research
published that month, in Science, showing that part of Antarctica’s ice sheet
had been thickening — and erroneously concluded that the earth was not warming
at all. “Scientific findings run counter to theory of global warming,” said a
headline on an editorial in The San Diego Union-Tribune. One conservative
commentator wrote, “It’s ironic that two studies suggesting that a new Ice Age
may be under way may end the global warming debate.”
In a rebuttal in The Providence Journal, in Rhode Island, the lead author of the
Science paper and I explained that our studies offered no evidence that the
earth was cooling. But the misinterpretation had already become legend, and in
the four and half years since, it has only grown.
Our results have been misused as “evidence” against global warming by Michael
Crichton in his novel “State of Fear” and by Ann Coulter in her latest book,
“Godless: The Church of Liberalism.” Search my name on the Web, and you will
find pages of links to everything from climate discussion groups to Senate
policy committee documents — all citing my 2002 study as reason to doubt that
the earth is warming. One recent Web column even put words in my mouth. I have
never said that “the unexpected colder climate in Antarctica may possibly be
signaling a lessening of the current global warming cycle.” I have never thought
such a thing either.
Our study did find that 58 percent of Antarctica cooled from 1966 to 2000. But
during that period, the rest of the continent was warming. And climate models
created since our paper was published have suggested a link between the lack of
significant warming in Antarctica and the ozone hole over that continent. These
models, conspicuously missing from the warming-skeptic literature, suggest that
as the ozone hole heals — thanks to worldwide bans on ozone-destroying chemicals
— all of Antarctica is likely to warm with the rest of the planet. An
inconvenient truth?
Also missing from the skeptics’ arguments is the debate over our conclusions.
Another group of researchers who took a different approach found no clear
cooling trend in Antarctica. We still stand by our results for the period we
analyzed, but unbiased reporting would acknowledge differences of scientific
opinion.
The disappointing thing is that we are even debating the direction of climate
change on this globally important continent. And it may not end until we have
more weather stations on Antarctica and longer-term data that demonstrate a
clear trend.
In the meantime, I would like to remove my name from the list of scientists who
dispute global warming. I know my coauthors would as well.
Peter Doran is an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the
University of Illinois at Chicago.

[piwo]

Thanks Carl. Another opinion weighs in. Since I lack the scientific knowledge to speak authoritatively, I'll listen to them all. Like Politics, all believe they are correct (on both sides) and anyone who can't accept their conclusions are dolts.

I'm quite sure I'll be fertilizer before this question is definitively answered, but it doesn't mean I'm not interested in the question.