Post by Citizen Winston Smithhat does not mean that what man does has no effect as we burn 100
million tones of fuel every day.
Your ignorance is incredible.
Compared to YOURS?!?!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/climate_change/1023334.stm
Viewpoint: Get off warming bandwagon
Currents BBC
Changes in ocean currents may cause global warning
...
Global Warming means the net amount of heat on the planet is increasing.
So kinda "obviously" that heat has to come from outside.
And therefore is 99% likely from the sun.
Changes in ocean currents can at best move heat around like the
El Nino/La Nina cycles that it's been recently found are driven by
the gravity of Jupiter.
The moon and earth are at the same distance from the sun. The moon
is slightly darker (albedo) so *should* be warmer than the earth.
But it turns out the earth is around 30C warmer than the moon.
The reason for that 30C is the greenhouse gases in the atm.
In the 60s and 70s evidence was presented to the US Congress that
increasing CO2 levels in particular were a problem. CO2 acts like
the gas pedal in a car. It had a perhaps relatively small influence on
global tempereratures, but warming the earth by trapping more of the
sun's heat in the lower parts of the atm simply heats the oceans that
raise more water vapor. And water vapor "everyone agrees" is the
big greenhouse gas on earth.
60-70-80 years ago even Exxon scientists confirmed all the basic
findings of research done over the prev 100-200years. Greenhouse gases
trap heat near the earth's surface, humans are producing more co2 by
digging up fossil fuels that had been safely stored 10 mi underground
for the last 100 million years and burning them inefficiently (since
every $100 you spend on gasoline only goes to make $20 worth of power
delivered to the drivetrain) was simply returning earth's atm and therefore
the earth's surface to the state it was in during the "dinosaur era"
when temps were quite a bit warmer than that are now.
Like any business with a dangerous product that has killed 10s of millions
of people over the years through pollution and the growing effects of
disaterous climate events, the fossil bidness does not give a crap about
anything but enriching itself.
At this point it's probably realistic that nothing will stop them
at least burning down to the last drop of oil and gas that are
due anyway to run out in the next 50y or so.
We might be able to stop the clock winding back more than 50-60 million
years if we stop burning coal.
It's possible of course they may develop scuples and backbones and
decide to start making gasoline and pastic out of the CO2 already in
the air using solar power. That will mean the price of gas will nosedive
and it will be indefensible to spend a big chunk of national incomes
propping up an industry that has technically been trading insolvent
for the past 100y (taxpayer support gloablly runs around 5-6x more
than the revenue).
--
Exxon Senior Scientist James F. Black (1978):
In the first place,
there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in
which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon
dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels. A doubling of carbon
dioxide is estimated to be capable of increasing the average global
temperature by from 1 [degree] to 3 [degrees Celsius], with a 10
[degrees Celsius] rise predicted at the poles. More research is
needed, however, to establish the validity and significance of
predictions with respect to the Greenhouse Effect. It is currently
estimated that mankind has a 5-10 yr. time window to obtain the
necessary information.
Exxon Environmental Affairs Programs Manager M.B. Glaser (1982):
Predictions of the climatological impact of a carbon dioxide induced
"greenhouse effect" draw upon various mathematical models to gauge the
temperature increase. The scientific community generally discussed the
impact in terms of doubling of the current carbon dioxide content in
order to get beyond the noise level of the data. We estimate doubling
could occur around the year 2090 based upon fossil fuel requirements
projected in Exxon's long range energy outlook. The question of which
predictions and which models best simulate a carbon dioxide-induced
climate change is still being debated by the scientific community. Our
best estimate is that doubling of the current concentration could
increase average global temperature by about 1.3 [degrees Celsius] to
3.1 [degrees Celsius].
Exxon Climate Modeler Brian Flannery And New York University Professor
Martin Hoffert (1985): Consensus CO2 Warming: Transient climate models
currently available, when run with standard scenarios of fossil fuel
CO2 emissions, indicate a global warming of the order of 1 [degree
Celsius] by the year 2000, relative to the year 1850, and an
additional 2-5 [degrees Celsius] warming over the next
century. However, the sensitivity of such predictions to known
uncertainties of the models -- that is, the robustness of CO2 warming
predictions -- has not yet been extensively explored.
