Natural or man made?

At one time two-thirds of the United States was covered by ice. What caused this to melt? What caused any ice age to recede? Man was not around then to cause the environment to heat up. Could it be that this is a natural phenomena? We really do not understand completely how the earth works. Why are some places in the world dry when they use to be wet? Why are some places in the world wet when they use to be dry? Why is there evidence in my area of Montana of an ancient glacier? Why did it disappear? After all, man was not around when it was here nor were we around when it disappeared.

When I was in junior and high school is the seventies the big issue was global cooling. What happened in the thirty years to totally reverse global cooling?

Two hundred years ago much of the Northern hemisphere was coming out of a little ice age. In the Middle Ages, that same area was experiencing a warming trend. Why the drastic changes in such a short period without mans influence?

For those with such a reverence to mother nature it amazes me how little they understand her and how weak they think she is. According to evolutionist the earth has been around for millions of years and has experienced drastic changes due to things such as meteors et. But then man comes along and in a short time can destroy her? The logic, or lack there of, amazes me.

 

why does the logic amaze you? because it would entail that we as a sepcies has overpopulated this planet and are rapidly using up most of its resources. I'm am sure nature has cycles, however it is pretty clear the speed the warming of the ice caps etc is not completely natural, a lot more blame needs to be placed on us as humans.

there isn't very many scientists who would claim that global warming isn't a man-made problem (mainly) and that we need to do something against it.

we need to stop giving ourself excuses to burn even more fossil fuels and continuing destroying our current environment. even if it wasn't causing huge damage (which i without much doubt believe we are) it doesn't give us the right to continue to burn and pollute.

 

What's the difference between "natural" and "manmade" anyway?

This suggests that humans are unnatural, which makes no sense. If humans are not robots, we are natural; and everything we do is natural.

 

i can not belive you would ask that living in montana. you need to take a tour glacier park. stop on top of going to the sun road.
and maybe if you hurry you can go to falls west of yellowstone and see a glacier, or whats left of one

 

Are you saying that glaciers do not recede unless man makes them recede? Then what happened to all the glaciers and ice ages before man was around? I spent ten years in Alaska and saw Portage Glacier slowly recede away from the visitors center. Why? If man did it then prove it. If man made all the other glaciers and ice ages disappear then prove it.

I am for taken care of our environment but I am not going to go along with the radical environmentalist who have no idea what they are talking about. The same groups who try to kill loggers by spiking trees. Or vandalize earth moving equipment. I can go on and on.

Take the Kyoto treaty. This is basically a hate America treaty designed to hurt “evil America”.

 

Why does it matter if global warming is human caused or not?

"It won't destroy the earth" is an insufficiant reason to pollute the atmosphere.

Reducing waste in general and atmospheric emmisions specificaly is a good thing, regardless of whether life on the planet depends on it.

 

its realy a toss up weather we are doing more to prevent global warming, or speeding it up.
it was signifantly warmer in new york immedietly after 9/11 and they stopped all air traffic
what is now fairly certain is this is always what happens before an ice age

 

I have yet to see any evidence that it is anything other than natural. Beside that, I don't see why they call it "global warming" when only some parts of the Earth are getting hotter and others are not. If it really was "global" warming, wouldn't the whole planet be getting warmer at the same time? In my area, the winters actually get colder every year.

Recently, they have changed the name of the phenomemon to "climate change" in response to the problems with the theory that I have just described.

This name is even worse, as if to say the planet is getting both hotter and colder because of the same phenomemon.

If you ask me, these scientists need to do a little more research and get their theories straight in their own minds before trying to sell us on their half-baked ideas.

 

Say, as a matter of this conversation, that man is responsible for the earth’s global warming. Are we also responsible for Mar’s global warming? Ice caps on Mars have shrunk 7 %. Scientist say that solar flares and such from the sun are responsible. If that is so, and our SUV’s are not responsible for the global warming on Mar’s, why then can’t the same effect be true here on earth?

Many have the impression that conservatives are anti-environment. Not true at all. We have a macro version of events in relation to the environment and the left seems to have a micro, dooms day, tunnel vision version.

As a christian I am commanded by God to be responsible in my actions which includes needless waste in relation to the environment. But this is were the left and right depart because the left wants to control everything I drive ec. because of the possibility that man causes the earth changes.

If I had undeniable proof that man was responsible for the earth’s perceived negative changes (who is to say the changes are of a negative nature- maybe the natural flow of the earth has it’s up’s and downs and what we see has bad is just another cycle of this complicated earth) I would be right there to help in any way I could. But I have not seen the proof and have only seen propaganda by irresponsible people such as ex-Vice President Al Gore who just uses this issue as a platform to get his name in the paper for another possible run at the presidency.

Hey, what ever happened to global cooling which was the big scare when I was in junior high? In ten years it will be something else. Global stasis anyone?

God Bless America

 

they are talking the average meen temperture of the planet, the reason its colder in some places is a mater of convection, and thats a whole chapter in climetology so i wont try and explain.
actualy we have known for a very long time from studieing the rings left in pertified wood and the numbers of various creature who only thrive in a warmer climate that the planet warms up before an ice age. Its only recently we that we begin to understand why. convection that brings about a shift in the currents of the ocean that carry warm and cold air around the planet.
and there theories where far from half baked, it has been studied for as long as we have known about the iceages that keep happening, and one consensous was reached right away, that the reason must be that has to do with the atmosphere holding in heat, and one of the biggies that does that is free carbons in the atmosphere. Is it any wonder they kinda paniced when they began to relieze who much we are pumping into the atmosphere, and worse how much we where about to?
there warning came to late however, our mechenized societies would not hear of it, and in true human fashion of justifacation and greed there warning was ignored and twisted untill it no longer held relevence

 

Steffan, your response was quite informative, I'll admit I've never heard of this convection concept, I would like to study it further and get back to you then. You have given me alot to think about on this subject, with acpects that I had not considered.

And about my comment concerning half-baked ideas, what I was trying to say there was that the way these scientists put their theories across, it sounds like an incoherent, garbled mess that makes it seem as if they are contradicting each other, contradicting themselves, and leaving the general public totally confused, as if they had'nt fully thought out their theories before pubishing them (as is the case with the concept of the planet getting warmer and colder at the same time). I'd say a little more clarity in the delivery of that message would go a long way with people like me who are a bit skeptical of the global warming theory.

Like I said above, I will do some research on what you have told me and get back to you soon. Thank you for clarifying some of the issues.

 

they did try, but what could they say? there was simply no way to explain to a general public who was barley even aware there ever was an ice age. so they kept it simple. "we are warming up the planet" . But there was no way the oil ompanies where gonna just stand by and say nothing
and the there was an even bigger obsticle, egos, peopel hate to admit they are wrong and there where many book tour scientist who had made a carrer out of blaming it on an impact, and they didnt care how obvious the data was.
scientist face a similer problem today, they cant even come out and suggest publicly that cromag was our ancester, even though the data leaves little doubt

 

Most likely it is a combination of both. The Earth does go thru a natural cycle of warming and cooling. The large amount of green house gas emmisions from human activity would only accelerate the warming process. It could be accelerating it a lot.

The Kyoto treaty wasn't signed by the U.S. because "it would strain the ecomony" as Colin Powell stated in a speech. That just means that the government is more concerned with business then the enviroment.

 

All I'm saying is, they could have done a better job of getting their point across. If they had, there probably would'nt be so much confusion over the issue today. When speaking to an audience that is largely uneducated on a particular subject, you have to start by explaining the basics of the problem. It just seems to me that they didn't do a very good job of it.

 

Hey, everyone should check out "An Inconvenient Truth", that Al Gore documentary. It is actually very intelligent, well thought out and to the point. There are alot of scientific records shown, data about the temperature and water of our planet.


It shows the natural cooling and warming cycles for the past 600,000 years or so, then it gets to the last 50 years - and it sky rockets, way beyond the average 'high' point of the last few hundred thousand years.

Just another 'normal' cycle, they say? I dunno. Alot of the scientific data is showing unprecedented records.

Meanwhile the North Pole, South Pole, and Greenland are melting away at a rapid rate.

I'm sure alot of this information is available to be researched further, but for "An Inconvenient Truth", you should all give it a try.

I believe their site is: www.climatecrisis.net

Be well.

 

yeah, the earth doesn't suddenly rapidly change in a course of a few decades...these processes naturally take hundreds, if not thousands of years. now, i'm from colorado. when i was a wee lad, like 2-3 it would snow in june. lol, it would snow for most of the year. i remember when the temprature got to be 100F, that was a big deal. now, fast forward to current times. almost everyday, were breaking the record high here. yesterday, the normal temprature for this time of year is 79F. it got to be 101F. it's been proven people. our cars emit carbon-dioxide, which stays in the atmosphere, and makes it thicker. that traps more heat in. just like if you threw more blankets over yourself. the earth has natural carbon-dioxide filters. trees and the oceans mainly. the trees obviously use it like we use oxegyn, and the oceans suck it up, and make shells out of it. but we are straining these filters. the reason some places seem to be getting colder, while others are getting hotter is because, not everywhere on earth relies on the sun directly for it's heat. take england for example. now go look on a globe, and it shares the same lattitude as canada or moscow. now, that should mean it is covered in snow, and is incrediably cold. well, for anyone who's ever been there, it's very temperete. it almost never snows at all. it most usually rains, and it's very dreary there. that's because the gulf stream keeps england warm. the water of the atlantic churns around. warm water from the gulf of mexico goes up, while cold water from the north atlantic goes down. this actually keeps alot of europe warm. global warming is disrupting this because of the melting ice caps. we are diluting the water, making this process harder to happen. i'm not saying it's all just humans fault, but, the majority of it is. and it's because were all about the here and now, and never stop to think about the future. when colorado is a desert, and can no longer provide water to Arizona and California, or Florida is underwater, i hope those of you saying none of this is our fault step up and take a few refugees into your homes.

 

You have to remember, when you criticise the scientific community, that scientists have been, and are being, censored heavily by the Bush administration over what they say about climate change and humanities role in it - scientific reports have been altered to say "might contribute to" when the original said "is heavily contributing to"... the head scientist from the NASA Climate division has come out and said that the Bush administration changed his report and stopped him from making public appearances to speak about climate change...

Here in the UK and Europe, where people are much more open and allowed to talk freely about such things, climate change and mankinds burning of fossil fuels are inextricably linked, scientifically accepted as fact...

It seems to me that the main reason most people reject the argument is that these people are unwilling to moderate their lifestyles along with the rest of the planet. And I find that to be a totally selfish attitude - to drive around in a Humvee when you could walk or ride a bicycle or even (heaven forbid) drive a small car is to deny the existence of millions and millions of other people on the planet.

Time to wake up, quit the excuses and get with the programme!

 

Climatologist Roger Pielske at Colorado State estimates 28% of warming (0.6 deg C for the past 100 years) to be caused by increased CO2 in the atmosphere. See his web site:
http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/04/27/what-fraction-of-global-warming-is-due-to-the-radiative-forcing-
The pertinent quote is:
"For all of the human-caused warming radiative forcings, which includes the 0.5 Watts per meter squared value for the shortwave albedo change, and estimating tropospheric ozone as 0.3 Watts per meter squared, the aerosol black carbon direct effect as 0.2 Watts per meter squared, the black carbon on snow and ice as 0.3 Watts per meter squared, the semidirect indirect effect as 0.1 Watt per meter squared, and the glaciation indirect effect as 0.1 Watt per meter squared (with the latter two forcings using a nominal value, since these forcings are very poorly known), the contribution due to CO2 will fall to about 28%."
A recommendation to all: Pay attention to what climatologists say. Ignore Advocacy Groups and Environmentalist Groups and all those who profit from Hysteria and Fear

 

Go away. Nobody wants to hear you navierstrokes, ok! What you are saying is rediculous and we're not going to change our opinions because you mentioned one scientist who is most likely getting paid off by the fossil fuel industries. Global warming is reality and if your too much of an idiot to see it, then I really feel bad for you. But other then that, just go away because no one wants to hear your propaganda.

 

Cliffs naturally erode and fall into the sea. That doesn't mean its a good idea to stand on the edge of a cliff and jump up and down.

Forests naturally catch fire. That doesn't mean its okay to drop cigarette-ends in them.

The climate naturally changes, and I'm pretty sure the world would be warming up now without us. That doesn't mean its a good idea to pump out loads and loads of extra CO2 into the atmosphere.