Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Climate change after all

Looks like the climate is changing after all.

Tree deaths soar in Western U.S.

Ann

The climate is always changing.

Except for when it's not. But usually it is.

PJ

How many of us know why Greenland is called Greenland? Come on now, raise your hands. I see a few. Good.

For those who don't know why a subcontinent which appears to be covered with glacial ice is called Greenland - and it really is a puzzler - I will elucidate. Eric the Red and his son Leif helped establish a colony in southern Greenland to take advantage of the rich farmland and low population density (a group of Irish preceded them but left before the Vikings arrived). The land was cold in winter but warm in summer, warm enough to raise crops and cattle and even establish a robust trade with people from the British Isles and nearby countries. All this began in 991 AD.

The settlement remained until the early 13th century, when they were frozen out by the changing climate. The ground became so hard they couldn't bury their dead and had to cremate them. The crops failed and they couldn't feed their dairy cattle, so they had to eat them. And eventually Greenland was pretty much covered with ice and everybody either packed up and went back to Norway or died. Given the much lower population density of the Earth back then, and the far lower level of pollution-creating technology, it's highly unlikely that human activity brought on this climate change.

My point? Global cooling and global warming have been happening for thousands of years. Sometimes asteroids or meteorites or comets cause problems, sometimes volcanoes erupt and cause problems, sometimes the sun heats up or goes into an intense solar flare cycle or even cools down. Here\'s a description of a solar flare in 1859 that shorted out telegraph wires on the East Coast of the US and started a number of fires.

And sometimes the climate changes for no apparent reason, like in the late 13th century. Did you know that southern England was warm enough to grow grapes similar to the ones now grown in southern France? And that the resulting wine was famous world-wide? And that the global cooling in the early 13th century wiped out the crops? Maybe we're just getting back to what was the norm a thousand years ago.

Or maybe Al Gore was right and we're all doomed, doomed, I tell you!

Is the climate changing? Yes. That's not open for debate. Our climate is changing world-wide.

Is human activity the primary cause, or even a strong contributing cause? Unclear. No one can produce anything really concrete on the subject, and there is still no so-called "consensus" among scientists world-wide concerning the subject.

Can we stop climate change? Again, it's unclear whether we can stop it. There may not be a way to stop the shift.

Should we try to stop climate change? That's a difficult question to answer without any firm idea on what to do, how much of it to do, and when to do it. What if the climate change is something that the earth needs to happen to it to stay healthy? What if this is something that happens every once in a while irrespective of human activity? What if we try to "fix" global warming and totally screw up the entire ecosphere?

It's unreasonable to expect change not to come. People get older and die. Trees die, and not just because of climate change. Did you know that the American chestnut tree, which dominated the eastern American landscape from the time before the first European settlers, was nearly wiped out in the first part of the 20th century by a fungus? You can read about it at this website, among other sites.

The story about trees dying due to global warming is only partially factual. It assumes that man-made global warming is a fact, and therefore implicitly accuses the reader of complicity in the murder of all those magnificent and stately trees. Aren't we terrible?

But we have to remember the lesson of Yellowstone National Park. For decades, the Forest Service protected the forest from fire. And when fires finally came in 1988, they were so intense that they killed the soil in some places. New growth is coming in (see this site), but not as quickly as wild forests where fires are not kept away from the forest for such a long time and therefore aren't as intense. Just because we can do something to Mother Nature, it doesn't mean we should do it. She gets cranky sometimes.

My other point is that we don't know nearly what we think we know. And a lot of what we know is wrong. Before Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity, most scientists believed that something called "ether" or "aether" occupied the space between the planets. Whole systems of thought were built around the concept. Famous physicists tried to measure the aether's effect on light (check out this site or Google Michelson-Morley) and failed, and then went on to build even more elaborate explanations for their failure - because the aether really was there, you see.

Of course, there is no aether in space. So something that everybody knew about space in 1880 was totally wrong. What will we feel stupid about believing today when we learn something new tomorrow? Scientists once believed that atoms could not be split. Then we learned that they were made up of even smaller particles, which were then the smallest things in existence. Then we learned that there were even smaller things in the microverse which make electrons look immense by comparison. I don't doubt that the CERN accelerator will teach us lots of new things in the next decade or so.

Man-made global warming doesn't fall into the "believed whole-heartedly but totally false" category, but neither does it fall into the "fact" slot. I hope we can all be reasonable about such discussions and not adopt dogmatic positions which do not invite reasoned discourse.

I found an editorial written by the founder of the Weather Channel about global warming. The man is a meteorologist and businessman, not a politician.

Here it is.

Hope this informs. Mind you, it's not proof of anything, but I'd rather listen to a scientist than to a politician with an axe to grind or money to control.

Regardless of your stance on warming, most of the things that might cause it involve a waste of money, pollution, etc., all of which are undesirable for reasons unconnected to warming.

For example, brownouts are caused by too many energy-inefficient appliances trying to get power from a grid that doesn't have enough capacity; it isn't particularly difficult to reduce power consumption by improving insulation, swapping light bulbs with mini fluorescents, etc., and regardless of the effect on the environment, it will definitely reduce pollution, your electricity bill and the load on the grid.

Good point, Marcus, it does no one any good to get to the point of insisting that if something is said to be good for global warming (or whatever), then it must be utterly worthless. (Or vice versa; someone can dislike flourescent bulbs without wanting to kill the earth). Changes should be judged individually on a cost/benefit analysis. Where you get into disagreement is how much "avoiding global warming" counts as a benefit. But if something's got other benefits as well and small enough costs, then sure, go for it.

PJ

I'm old enough to remember the sixties, and I remember that here in Sweden at least, smoking was allowed pretty much everywhere. No, not inside stores. But there was smoking in movie theaters, and in about half the compartments of trains, and on airplanes, and in absolutely all restaurants and cafés. At most workplaces, the staff rooms had an impenetrable fog of smoke in them. I remember when I worked in the largest hospital in Malmö in the mid-seventies. All the nurses spent their breaks in a tiny little staff room, where the smoke was so thick that you could hardly breathe. Sometimes I snuck down into the non-smoking staff room in the basement. When I did, I would be there all on my own. And let's not even talk about what it was like when I was fifteen years old, and I did my 'school practice' (which was something everyone had to do) in the newsroom of a newspaper! No, you don't want to know how much smoke there was in there! And what about when I started working as a teacher in 1981? The first school I worked at consisted of several buildings, and the building I worked in smelled suspiciously mouldy. I can't tell you what it was like to come into the staff room in the morning, which smelled just awfully of mould and yesterday's tobacco smoke!

My point? My point is that as far back as the sixties, there were newspaper articles and warnings from scientists that smoking was dangerous. But you can't believe the chorus of denial that was heard from the smokers, and from those who thought they made money by accomodating to the smokers. Smoking isn't dangerous! This person's grandfather smoked all his life and he lived to be a hundred. You can die young even if you don't smoke - there was this young woman who got lung cancer at thirty even though she had never smoked. And what about all the exhaust fumes from traffic? Why should anyone stop smoking when the city air is going to poison them anyway? Lots of things are dangerous, so why do some people insist on picking on smoking?

I can remember a Readers Digest article on smoking from the 1960s. I specifically remember that the article advised non-smokers not to be afraid of the puffs of smoke that smokers blew in their faces. "The smoker gets most of the smoke inside himself, and he is relatively harmless," said the article.

Today there is very little doubt that tobacco is one of the major killers in the world. But for decades, the danger of smoking was pretty much denied. And for decades, extremely little was done to regulate smoking.

I think it is the same thing with climate change today. There is so much research insisting that climate change is real and that it is at least to some extent caused by humanity, but this is denied by a lot of people. My feeling is that a few decades from now, humanity's (partial) responsibility for climate change will be as generally acknowledged as the danger of smoking is acknowledged today.

Ann

Your opinions and feelings, Ann, while quite valid, are not facts. Yes, there are a number of scientists who insist that global warming is at least partially the result of human activity, while others insist that there is insufficient evidence to make that claim. In this regard, the debate over climate change does indeed parallel the one over smoking in the 1960's.

But here's a critical difference. The people who insisted that tobacco was not a major health risk were largely economically beholden to tobacco sales, either directly or indirectly. Those who refuse to join the human-caused global warming parade are generally not economically beholden to any anti-global warming entity. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. Those who insist that mankind is destroying the Earth through global warming are largely the ones who have some economic reason to make sure that we think that it's our fault that the earth is heating up.

If the UN-sponsored think tanks and research organizations - along with the ones funded by the US government and American businessmen - all held news conferences this week and said something like, "Well, we know the earth has been getting warmer for the past few decades, but we can't prove that humans are responsible. We don't know how to stop climate change, and we don't know what would happen if we did stop it. It's just as likely that we'd make things a lot worse."

Their funding would be cut off, that's what would happen. I don't know of anyone who'll pay scientists to say "I don't know," even though that's often what the truth is, irrespective of the discipline in which they work. True, they know lots more than us non-scientists who only read extracts of the results they produce, but that doesn't mean that scientists have dropped an exclusive lariat around the truth. And scientists have bills to pay just like the rest of us.

My feeling - which is just as valid as anyone else's - is that in fifty years, people will look back at the 20th century and the early 21st and think, "Man, they were dumb! First they had the Piltdown Man, then all those holocaust deniers, the Y2K scare, and the global warming fakeout! How were they even smart enough to breathe regularly?"

I can't argue with you there, Terry. Of course my opinions and feelings are not facts. And of course I can't know what the future will be like.

But I have to disagree with you here:

If I get you correctly, you are saying that most people who blame climate change on humanity do so because they can make money for themselves by spreading this idea to others. Well, you may be right there. But I also get the impression that you are saying that those who reject the idea of humanity's responsibility for global warming do so from a mostly rational, objective and altruistic point of view, not because they are motivated by economic self-interest or greed.

To that I will only say that when the question about global warming has been discussed on these boards, some people here have actually said that it would cost too much to change the general behaviour of humanity in order to try to save the climate. In other words, these peoople have said, pretty much, that they don't want to help paying the cost of trying to steer humanity down a different path.

To me, that means that at least some people who oppose the idea of humanity's responsibility for climate change do so at least partly because of economic self-interest, not because of objectivity or altruism.

I worry about climate change and humanity's responsibility for it, and I don't think I stand to make any economic gains if there is a global effort to fight climate change.

Ann

Terry can speak for himself, but I'd add... yeah, of course, those motives are in the mix. We're talking about human beings here; not very many of us are as pure as the wind-driven snow. I think we're talking about degrees of dependency here, if that's the right word.

Scientist A has a job where he researches global warming, makes predictions, speaks at conferences (in Bali!), etc. If he sees trends in his research that contradict global warming theories, he has a choice: speak up and possibly lose his job, or just kind of abandon that line of research in favor of other areas. Scientists are human; most of us would have a hard time giving up lucrative careers for a matter of principle, especially if the data are unclear. Some are more cynical, I'm sure -- if there's a good scam in progress, why not cash in on it? Anyway, there are people who get paid to tell other people about global warming.

Then there are those of us who aren't getting compensated by any anti-global warming groups, but who don't want to spend twice as much as we currently do on groceries, considering that there's still reasonable doubt on the science.

Both economic self-interest. Are they really equivalent?

PJ

You are in error, Ann. Your statement above assumes that global warming is something which humans have either caused or have materially contributed to. This premise is false.

Here\'s another story about Al Gore and his dishonest global warming presentation. Be sure and watch the YouTube video linked within this story.

If humans are indeed causing global warming - or even significantly accelerating it - no one can prove it. You don't know that humans are causing global warming. You may believe it, but you don't know it, because there is no proof for the assertion.

Mind you, I'm not claiming that the assertion is untrue, only that it's unproven. And the more that Al Gore changes his presentation, the more we see scientists go on record saying that global warming is a farce, the more weather data that comes in each year which contradicts all the warming models, the less inclined I am to give this theory the time of day, much less accept it as a given.

I would also like to address the economic part of your statement, where you accuse those who disagree with you of being selfish and greedy. I personally don't agree with you at all. I do not oppose the global warming theorists on the grounds that "fixing the problem" will take money out of my pocket. I oppose the global warming theorists on the grounds that there is no problem. We've been having this debate for more than twenty years now, and if humans were causing global warming there would be a strong consensus in the scientific community. There is not. If we were burning up the planet, there would be reams of data with multiple corroboration across multiple disciplines. There is not. If we were drowning in our own CO2, we'd know it. And we aren't.

Your logic is flawed because your premise is faulty, Ann. The data does not support your assertion.

Terry, you told me that you know this:

You said that you don't believe that global warming is a problem, if it exists at all. And you say that there is no proof that global warming is a problem, or, if it exists, that it is man-made.

I googled 'global warming' and got 43 million hits. I googled 'global cooling' and got 900 000 hits. I googled 'climate scam' and got 3.3 million hits. No, there is no consensus here, of course, but people find a lot more reason to talk about global warming than about global cooling or climate scams.

Most certainly there are very many sites and very many scientists who claim that there is no global warming, or that humanity has nothing to do with the Earth's climate. But there seems to be many more sites and many more scientists who think that global warming is real, and that humanity has something to do with it.

I know you are critical of Wikipedia, but I still found it interesting that Wikipedia definitely seems to come out in favor of the existence of global warming and humanity's partial responsibility for it:

Wikipedia on global warming

I also found a site managed by a branch of the U.S. Government, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The way I read what they say about what we know, scientifically, about climate change, they are saying that we still don't understand many aspects of climate change, but that we have very good reasons to believe that humanity is contributing to global warming:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the scientific knowledge about climate change

So while I have to agree that I myself don't know if global warming is happening at all or if it man-made, I have to counter that you don't have more or better knowledge about it than I do, and therefore you can't say that global warming isn't happening or that it isn't man-made.

Of course, the fact that there seems to be more believers in than skeptics of global warming does not in itself prove that global warming is real or man-made. History is full of paradigm shifts, where the existing best science was proved to be completely wrong. However, the fact that you belong to the minority in a scientific debate does not in itself prove that you are right.

I made my point about smoking earlier because I think there is an interesting similarity between smoking cigarettes and releasing greenhouse gases and smoke into the atmosphere. In both cases we are talking about producing smoke that wasn't there before and exposing other life forms to that smoke. Like I said in my post on smoking, for the longest time it was denied that cigarette smoking could harm the smoker, much less the passive smoker. This was denied even though there was a lot of circumstantial evidence to the contrary. But in my opinion, just as it makes perfect sense that cigarette smoke is dangerous to the human body, so there is a huge amount of circumstantial evidence that humanity hurts the Earth's biosphere by releasing large amounts of man-made greenhouse gases, soot particles and other pollutants into the atmosphere.

Ann

Ann, do you remember a few years back when so many people were sure Y2K would be the end of civilization or the world? And what about the current 2012 thing? I got 619,000 results for 2012 doomsday, 887,000 for 2012 end of the world, and 1,320,000 for 2012 predictions. Does this mean the world is going to end in 2012? I seriously doubt it. Just because you can find tons of websites about something doesn't mean it's true. All it says is that a lot of people are talking about it.

Tara

Absolutely. And I remember Y2K, but it didn't scare me all that much. The general sense of worry was nothing near what the persistent and long-lasting worry regarding global warming has been, not the way I remember it. Besides, if Y2K happened, it would be a one-time thing, and hopefully there would be a relatively quick and easy fix for it.

Like I said, the simple fact that people talk a lot about something doesn't make it a serious problem. But when so many scientists worry about global warming, you won't have me saying that it's all just so much hogwash or that all those scientists are only motivated by the prospect of making a bunch of money for themselves.

Again, scientists have been known to be wrong so many times before. Today's scientists don't know nearly enough about how the Earth's climate works to be able to say with any certainty that the climate is really changing, or that humanity is responsible.

But so many of them are worried. And if you picture all the chimneys and exhaust fumes in the world as humanity's collective smoking, then I think it is more than reasonable to see the Earth as a patient that is growing ever sicker because of the effects of passive smoking.

Ann

Well... I guess we can't argue with that.

Actually, while I was googling, I did come across mention of a greenhouse gas that sounded very alarming. Ever heard of DHMO?

It is often used
I mean, I first heard about this 15 years ago and *still* the stuff is legal? There have been efforts in the New Zealand parliament to do something about this (they're very environmental-minded) but so far nothing's come of it.

PJ

p.s., I forgot to add links. The stuff I quoted is from here

A good site to start with actually would be the DHMO Research Division website.

At the weekend, I watched one of a series of programmes called "Explore..." They have a small group of reporters doing little reports on various aspects of a particular country each week. Areas off the beaten track. So far, they've been absolutely fascinating. This week it was a small group of countries in Africa.

One of the reports was about a tribe who are actually living with the consequences of the fact that the climate in their part of the world has changed drastically in the last few years.

What was once a fertile region is rapidly becoming desert. A group of emaciated men sat in a despondent circle and spoke of how soon they may have to give up their way of life because they are finding it harder and harder to survive.

They now all carry machine-guns. To protect their small herd of cattle from other, raiding tribes. The tribes used to co-exist peacefully, but as the climate has changed, resources have become a source of conflict. Raids on their cattle are frequent; gun battles to protect them occur almost daily. This week, one man said, they killed 6 raiders, lost three of their own. But they saved their cattle. This time.

A charity paid to have a large man-made reservoir of water built - but as it's now the only source of fresh water in the area, it's also become a focus for conflict and war among the tribes as they fight for control of it.

Watching and listening to these people it made me ashamed that here in the West we have the luxury to talk about and debate climate change as an abstract theory.

Some in the world aren't so fortunate.

LabRat

Just because you weren't scared and I wasn't scared doesn't mean that there weren't a bunch of people scared that it would herald the end of history, or civilization or some such rot. There seems to be a number of people who are truly concerned about 2012 being what Y2K was supposed to be.

That would be the point. We don't know enough to say with any certainty that humanity is responsible. OTOH, we can say with certainty that the climate changes. That's a recorded fact. Otherwise, we wouldn't have had ice ages, it would always have been like it is now.

That's a different topic. Pollution is nasty. It's responsible for making people sick and causes all manner of health problems. However, a single volcano releases more CO2 and other greenhouse gases than all of humanity has in all of history. Go measure what any volcano that's erupting right now is producing and you'll see what I mean.

I'd say more, but I've got to get my daughter to a dental appointment to deal with a chipped tooth.

Tara

Tara, are you seriously comparing the 2012 thing (which I had most definitely never heard of until you mentioned it in your post) with the warnings about climate change? I googled 2012 to find out what on earth it was all about, and as far as I can figure out, it has something to do with some cryptic utterance made by Nostradamus some four hundred and fifty years ago. So tell me, Tara, are you seriously comparing a prophecy by Nostramus with the warnings about climate change made by a majority of today's scientific community? Do you think these two warning bells deserve the same attention?

I'm going to return to the question about smoking. Like I said, the dangers of smoking were denied with the help of arguments much like yours. Why pick on smoking, when so many other things are dangerous? Even if you never smoke you may slip in the tub and fall and break your neck. Or you can choke on a chicken bone. A friend of mine visited a stand-up comedy club in London in the summer of 2002, and she told me afterwards that the main joke had been that America should not worry about another terror attack, because more Americans die because they step on rakes. (Well, you know, when you step on a rake the handle flies up and hits you on the head, and you die.)

This is my point. It's ridiculous to say that we shouldn't worry about smoking because people may slip in the tub anyway. It is ridiculous to say that we shouldn't worry about terror attacks because people may step on rakes and get hit on the head and die anyway. And it is ridiculous to say that we shouldn't worry about climate change, because the world might end in 2012 anyway, because Nostradamus said so - well, maybe he said so - back in the sixteenth century.

I don't have much to add, except that the opinons of today's scientific community mean more to me than a prophecy by Nostradamus.

Ann

No, I'm comparing the hysterical reactions surrounding the two subjects. IMO, anytime you get a hysterical knee-jerk reaction to something, especially something that there just isn't enough scientific evidence for (such as human caused global climate change or 2012, which also claims to have scientific reasoning behind it) that tells me that reason has flown out the window.

Tara

Isn't there supposed to be some kind of sunspot activity in 2012 that will destroy all communications without any notice or something?

I know I read something about that...

Carol

The Y2K problem didn't happen in the end because thousands of man-years were spent solving the problem before it happened and/or minimising the disruption that errors could cause.

It probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but it was a global effort that ranged from people spending a few minutes debugging a minor program to huge financial software houses rewriting and checking every line of code that they had ever produced to make sure that it wasn't going to cause problems, recompiling it, fixing the new problems, repeat and mix over months or years. I know several retired programmers, about half of them were called in to help with old software that they'd worked on going back to the 1970s, in languages that time has almost forgotten. And it worked - because people took it seriously, and devoted the resources to the problem that were needed to solve it. There were problems, nevertheless, but most of them were relatively obvious and easy to fix. We don't really know that every last one was fixed successfully, though by now it's pretty likely that everything was, or at least that the effects of any remaining errors are small enough to go unnoticed.

Hopefully work on the next problem of this sort to come along - the Binary Millennium bug due to hit in 2049 - is already well in hand. But if people bury their heads in the sand and say it'll never happen, and refuse to devote resources to solving it, then they are in for a VERY nasty shock.

To Labby: I understand your feelings, and your compassion does you credit. Yes, we should remember that climate change affects not only our pocketbooks, but the very way of life for many. I feel for those people. The way they have lived may be coming to an end.

On the other side of the coin, though, isn't that what's been happening for millenia? The Romans invaded Gaul (now France) and forever changed the way those tribes had been living. The Romans invaded Britain and forever changed the way those tribes had been living. The Vandals and Visigoths pressed Rome from the east and changed the course of European history. Islam exploded out of the Middle East in the seventh and eighth centuries and changed the way of living for hundreds of thousands and redirected the fate of nations.

In April of 1815, a South Seas volcano exploded (Mt. Tambora) and the resulting ash cloud in the upper atmosphere helped bring on the Year Without a Summer in 1816. In the young nation of the United States, crops were frozen by June and July snowstorms, and river ice clogged Northern waterways all through the normal summer months. Hundreds of farms failed, and the resulting upheaval pushed tens of thousands of farmers, ranchers, merchants, and opportunists westward. This, in turn displaced the Native American tribes who had occupied those lands (after taking them from their previous tenants, of course).

A side note: That was also the year Mary Shelley began writing her prototypical horror novel "Frankenstein." She had accompanied her husband and a number of friends to Lake Geneva to swim and boat and play outside as they had done in years past, but it was far too cold, so her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley challenged the members of the group to create a ghost story. Mary won with her story about a giant creature with no soul which held only hate in its mind. Tellingly, the story begins and ends on ice, typical of the Year Without a Summer.

In Europe that same year, food riots brought on by shortages caused by the killing cold changed the way France, Germany, Britain, and most other northern European nations dealt with the poor. That was the start of the modern "social services" network to keep people from dying in the streets or rioting for food and shelter.

In the 1840s and 1850s, Ireland suffered the spread of a potato-killing fungus which, according to some estimates, took 1.5 million lives in Ireland and pushed another million out of her borders to other countries, most to America. New York and Boston employers soon learned to spell "No Irish Need Apply" in their sleep, and the immigrant Irish spent generations working out from under that prejudice and exploitation.

My point is that change happens. We either react to the change or end up crushed by it. It isn't fair, it isn't nice, and it isn't proper. But that's the way life is. While those suffering due to climate change deserve our compassion and our assistance, the continuance of their traditional lifestyle cannot be the reason we make world-changing decisions.

Ann wrote:
I could not agree more. I have no faith in anything Nostradamus allegedly "prophesied," especially since his "predictions" only make sense when looking back on events and forcing them into one or more of his writings. I, too, am far more likely to listen to the scientific community than to Nostradamus.

However, I would like to point out that "the opinions of today's scientific community" are not unanimous on the subject of global warming. They're not even close. There are thousands of scientists who deny that humans are either causing or materially contributing to global warming, so we can play the dueling PhD game all day and neither of us would win. My point is that you (and many others in our world) have accepted global warming as the fault of humans without solid proof or even a solid majority consensus.

We can debate whether or not climate change is primarily our fault, and I have no problem with presenting facts on either side of the debate. What I have a problem with is those who make a statement based on the "certain knowledge" that human activity is responsible for destroying our planet when that "certain knowledge" is only an act of belief in something that is unproven. I can't emphasize this enough, apparently, because so many on the other side of the debate seem to put their hands over their ears and shout "La-la-la-la-la" at the top of their lungs when someone brings up a logical or factual objection to the assertion.

I believe Marcus made a good point when he noted that many of the things which might cause global warming are things that cost us money anyway, so we can and should do something about them. I'm all for that. I'm all for not wasting our resources. For example, I'm all for alternative energy sources for transportation if it makes sense from the economic, ecological, and resource management perspectives.

But I'm not in favor of making huge changes willy-nilly because a new climate report has been published which touts the virtues of action A over actions B, C, L, and X. There are too many reputable scientists who insist that we humans are not a significant contributor to global warming to ignore their voices. This isn't decided, not by a long shot, and refusing to admit that there are two sides to the debate only makes one look dogmatic and inflexible, no matter which side of the debate one is on.

This is where you are wrong, Tara. There is scientific reasoning and and scientific research behind the warnings about climate change. That means that scientists look at such things as mean annual temperature of the Earth, the measurable emission of various greenhouse gases and pollutants made by human activity, the activity of the Sun, the climate variations in the Earth's past etcetera etcetera. The scientists gather as much data about the present and the past as they can, and from them, they try to predict the future. It is very complicated to predict the future climate, because there are so many factors that are incompletely known, which is why scientists disagree about climate change. However, the majority of the scientists believe that human activity is affecting the climate, and they have used science - that is, actual measurements of factors like temperature and greenhouse gas emission, plus mathematical models - to arrive at their conclusion.

A prophecy by Nostradamus is not built on science. Nostradamus made no measurements of anything that he could observe in the world around him. He didn't use a thermometer to measure the temperature. He had no way of measuring the level of pollutants in the air. He had no way of knowing about the climate in all the rest of the world, since parts of the world were unknown to Europeans in his time, the sixteenth century.

What Nostradamus did to make his prophecies was, if I have understood things correctly, study the Bible as well as read occult literature of his time. That is not science. If, for example, you claim that you can learn about the future from reading the Bible, particularly if you claim that you can learn that some momentous event is going to happen in the year 2012, then you must carefully explain what passages there are in the Bible that contain this information. I have read the Bible, and I'm quite sure that the Bible doesn't discuss the year 2012. If you want to claim that such passages exist, then you must clearly identify them and explain how you can know that they refer to the year 2012. If you can't do that, then you can't claim that the Bible predicts the end of the world in 2012, and then you can't use the Bible to claim that you know that the world will come to an end in a specific year.

Nostradamus is known for couching his prophecies in very vague and ambiguous words. Because of that, no one has managed to use Nostradamus to accurately predict an actual major event in the world. After a major event has happened, people have scoured Nostradamus' writings for anything that can be construed as a prediction of these things. Because Nostradamus was so good at speaking in riddles, it has often been possible to find a passage that seems to predict an actual event after it has happened. However, if the actual event had unfolded differently, it would have been possible to use the same passage by Nostradamus to predict that alternative event. To put it differently, Nostradamus is useless for actual predictions of the future, and he is only good for confirming what you already know.

The crucial thing to remember is that Nostradmus' prophecies are not science, because he didn't use scientific methods to arrive at them. Because what makes science into science is not the answers you get, but the methods you use. Science requires that you use observations, measurements and mathematical models, and that you can clearly explain how your observations, measurements and calculations led to the results you arrived at. You must be able to explain it so clearly that other people can make similar observations, measurements and calculations to see if they will get the same results that you got. That is science.

If you claim that you have received special, privileged information from God or from ghosts or spirits, or that you have been lifted above the time stream by emissaries of God and have seen things that no other person will ever be privy to, then whatever information you claim to possess is not science, because no scientific methods were used to arrive at it. It is, of course, possible that the information that you claim to possess will turn out to be correct after all. If you were right about one thing but wrong about many others, then your correct prediction was probably just a lucky guess. If, however, you make a number of detailed and clear predictions about the the relatively near future based on the information that you received straight from God and they all turn out exactly as you said they would, then you are either part of the biggest scam ever or you have just given the world proof that God exists and that you are his spokesperson.

But since no one has ever managed to interpret Nostradamus' prophecies correctly before the actual events happened, it is clear that they don't contain actual information but just suggestive wording that can be interpreted the way you want to after the events have happened.

So, Tara, the prophecies by Nostradamus are not science, but the predictions about climate change, which are based on observations and measurements of actual events and mathematical calculations using the results of those measurements and observations, are science. That's an absolutely crucial difference.

Ann

Ann, you seem to have gotten the misconception that I believe in the Nostradamus prophecy. I do not. I do not believe in prophecies or anyone else who claims to be able to psychically predict the future. I do know, however, that there are periods of warming on this planet. That is a proven fact. They have scientific evidence that the planet does warm up. They have not, however, proven to my satisfaction that it is humanity that has caused this. Also, there are scientists who also are not satisfied with the evidence.

Personally, I'd be a little more credulous if the pro-global warming crowd didn't mess with the temperature readings as they have been exposed as having done. Just last year, they (NASA, I believe it was) took the readings for August and copied them to September, making it look like it'd been hotter than it actually was.

Tara

This is just an aside, but if memory serves the significance of the date “2012” has nothing to do with Nostradamus.

Again, if memory serves (and people more inclined to research might be able to correct me on this) the 2012 issue is based upon several things including the Mayan calendar. The Mayan calendar as I understand it is a mathematically complex system that is much more accurate that the calendar the modern world uses today. It also inexplicably ends in 2012 (sometime in December I think) with a highly accurate occurrence of calculation being unable to calculate any higher (again, anyone with better knowledge can feel free to correct me). This has led to speculation as to the significance of this date being a doomsday of sorts.

As to the scientific issues related to this, I believe that there have been a few noted scientists that have arrived separately at similar conclusions through different methods. I think one noted that the Earth and Sun would be aligned with the galactic center on that date, another calculated that our solar system would actually be aligned with the horizontal galactic plane and yet another using ancient texts which mentioned a “tenth planet” as noted by astronomers in the past to speculate about a “rogue” planet with an irregular orbit that would intersect with our solar system at that time causing environmental upheavals if not out right destruction.

I’m not sure what everyone expects to happen in 2012 and I’m not a big believer in doomsday scenarios per say, but as I understand it there actually is some scientific basis that “something” will happen so I just wanted to mention that.

As others above have mentioned, just because some scientists believe something is true doesn't make it so. Then again, until 2013 I don't guess I can really say it isn't either.

No, Michael. There is no scientific evidence that something will happen in 2012.

I consider myself a big astronomy fan. I visit my favorite astronomy site, www.astronomynow.com every day. I regularly check up other astronomy sites. I know that those sites tell me in advance when some interesting astronomical event is going to happen. They tell me when there will be a total or partial solar or lunar eclipse. They tell me when there will be a conjunction between the Moon and bright planets. They tell me when I can expect a meteor shower. They tell me when an asteroid is going to whizz by close to the Earth. These predictions always come true, because they are based on science. If there was any sort of astronomically based evidence that the Earth was going to be in danger on Decmber 20, 2012, don't you think they would present that evidence to me?

Well, whoever calculated that knows nothing about the geography of our galaxy and the solar system. The Milky Way, which is the horizontal plane of the galaxy, can be seen curving high overhead...



But if the horizontal plane of our solar system was aligned with the horizontal plane of the galaxy, the Milky Way would be seen curving around the Earth's horizon, not stretching high overhead. The plane of the solar system is actually perpendicular to the plane of the Milky Way.



And trust me, there is no scientific evidence that the solar system is about to 'keel over'. Nevertheless, how would it hurt hurt the Earth if the horizontal plane of the solar system was aligned with the horizontal plane of the Milky Way?

Sure, there has been speculation that a large tenth planet might exist in the outskirts of the solar system, but none has been found. If there is a large planet out there, it wouldn't be able to hurt us unless it is on a highly elliptical orbit and is fast approaching the Sun. Anything really large which is fast approaching the center of the solar system ought to have been detected by now, and its gravitational effects ought to have started affecting the outer solar system already. There is no scientific evidence that a large tenth planet exists, let alone that it is going to wreak havoc in the solar system in 2012.

As for that Mayan calender, I don't doubt for a moment that the Mayans were excellent mathematicians and that their calendar is of the highest quality, but being able to make a calendar does not mean that you are able to calculate the end of the world.

And so what if their calendar ends in 2012?

In the cathedral of Lund, close to where I live, there is a famous astronomical clock from 1425. That clock came with an original calender that accurately told you on what dates it would be a Sunday from 1425 to 1923. The calendar ended in 1923, and the world didn't come to an end in that year. The cathedral has now replaced the old calendar with one that starts in 1923 and ends in 2123. Does that mean that the world will end in 2123? All I can say is that if the world does indeed come to an end in that year, it will have nothing to do with the calendar.

When people even begin to compare nonsense like the 2012 scare with warnings about climate change based on science, then it is clear that many people can't tell real dangers from imaginary ones. And that is when it will be so much more difficult to take steps to protect ourselves and the Earth from real dangers, because humanity is busy worrying about flowerpots falling from the sky.

Ann

Michael, you are correct, most if not all of the 2012 hysteria is based on the Mayan calendar. I wasn't sure if there was a prophecy by Nostradamus as well, though, as I don't keep track of that. I should have said something earlier.

On another note, there is going to be a conference in New York from March 8-10 called the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change . The banner ad I saw says "Global Warming: Was it ever a crisis?"

Tara

eta: Not that I believe any of the end of the world nonsense, but from what I've read most of the concern comes from our solar system passing through the galactic plane, which actually does happen every 35-40 million years, according to my source, not us being aligned with the galactic plane. IIRC, there have been serious astronomy websites discussing the event, as well. One website says that we should expect more comet strikes during that time "because of gravitational interaction with the densest parts of our galaxy." If nothing else, it's something interesting to learn more about, yes?

There has indeed been speculation that the passage through the galactic plane may pose increased dangers to life on Earth, simply because the galactic plane is more crowded than most of the rest of the galaxy. There is an increased risk that we may collide with something, or be gravitaionally affected by something, or be irradiated by something. But at the solar system's distance from the galactic center, the danger is still small. In any case, we are not passing through the galactic plane right now.

A spiral galaxy almost always has a thick band of dust stretching along its mid-plane. This band of dust marks the galaxy's horizontal plane.



The galaxy in this picture is called NGC 891. As you can see, we seem to have a perfect edge-on view of this system. You can see that the galaxy is brighter and yellower in the middle, which is called the galactic bulge. In the case of NGC 891, the dust lane seems to cut the galactic bulge exactly in the middle, and we see just as much of the bulge 'above' the dust lane as we see 'below' it.

The Milky Way is also a spiral galaxy with a thick dust lane marking the galactic plane, and our galaxy also has a prominent galactic bulge:



As you can see from this picture, the dust lane does not cut the galactic bulge in the middle, not from our point of view. It is clear from the picture that the galactic bulge is much brighter 'below' the dust lane than 'above' it. Indeed, the galactic bulge can't be seen 'above' the dust lane. Conclusion? The Earth is not situated exactly in the plane of the Milky Way, but slightly 'below' it.

Astronomers are relatively confident that our solar system is 'bobbing' up and down along the galactic plane. The consensus is that right now we are moving away from the galactic plane, not approaching it. In any case, we are sufficiently far from the galactic plane that there is no chance that we will be crossing it in 2012.

Ann

Edit:
There have been serious astronomy websites discussing the event? What event? The 2012 predicted end of the world, or our future - many millions of years into the future - passage through the galactic plane? And what serious astronomy websites are you referring to?

'Event' may not have been the right word, but I was referring to our solar systems passage through the galactic plane. I'm sure it was just prompted by the crazy talk by the end of the world nutjobs. The article I read said that when our solar system did move through the galactic plane, our planet would probably have more comet strikes and that may have affected the dinosaurs.

Here's a link to one story on Universe Today:

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/0...e-as-we-pass-through-the-galactic-plane/


Tara

Just a few points:

First, I don't think anyone here has even approached the argument that "we shouldn't worry about global warming because of Nostradamus".

Second, there is some logic in comparing risks. We have limited resources, and we have to decide where to allocate them. More money/time/etc spent on Risk A means less spent on Risk B. So you ought to decide if Risk A is more of a threat or not. And that can be a very complex question. Is AIDS worse than breast cancer? How about heart disease?

How about drinking Coke? The city of New York is looking at taxing every non-diet drink, with the goal of regulating people's sugar intake. (Me, I'm addicted to Diet Coke, but if you want to drink the "real thing" I've got no problems with that). Is marijuana use more of a public health threat than drinking alcohol? Why do we spend millions fighting marijuana and much less on regulating drinking? Is genetically modified food going to cure hunger or kill us all? If we close a hospital, for instance, that will save electricity. But what do we do about the patients, leave them to die? There are some extremists who will tell you it's better not to waste the resources on people who are just gonna die anyway (sooner or later). Of course, we're all gonna die at some point.

So when it comes to global warming, some of us want to know, honestly and without hysteria, how much of a risk is it? How much is a proposed solution going to cost, what evidence do we have that it will work, and is that really the best use of those resources? Yet all too often, those questions get shouted down with accusations of us wanting to kill the planet.

My point is, it's more complicated than that.

PJ

[img]http://www.box.net/shared/static/lttoo1zxla.bmp[/img]

*snork*snork*snork*

*sputter*


That was probably the funniest thing I've seen this week.
JD

Your underwear picture was a riot, Sue!

However, here in Sweden, our largest daily proclaims today that not only is global warming real, but it is worse than people thought, too. They quote Professor Chris Field of Stanford University. Read more here .

What's more, today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows an impressive icescape in Antarctica - an icescape of yesterday! Because the caption informs us that the picture was taken in 1994, and that ice shelf is all gone now, a victim of global warming. Here is the picture of the vanished ice shelf, if anyone is interested.

I might add, too, that there have been absolutely devastating wildfires in Australia recently, and although it is generally agreed that many if not not most of those fires have been set, Swedish newpapers have said that the fires would not have raged so out of control if Australia had not been the victim of global warming, so that the southern parts of it are becoming ever hotter and drier.

So for me, surfing the web, today's news about global warming felt like a double whammy.

Ann

Well, if it's in the newspaper, it *must* be true! :rolleyes:

What I heard about the Australian fires is that they would not have raged so out of control if trees and brush had been pruned and thinned out, but the local environmentalists wouldn't allow it.

PJ

Allow me to reiterate my own personal position. The following statements should not be construed as applying to anyone but myself.

The world is getting warmer. That's not in question.

I do not believe that humans are primarily - or even significantly - responsible for that warming.

So providing evidence of global warming impacts my position not at all.

I have no doubt that's partly true but the fact is that Australia has been in a terrible drought for many years and these fires were ultimately the result of that drought. We get no rain - I heard a couple of days ago that the official average January rainfall for my state is 25mm. This year we had less than 1mm. I don't think we've had any so far in February.

You just have to drive in the country - or even my city, which is known for its beautiful parks - to know that a dropped match will have disastrous effects. There is *no* green. Everything is dead.

The weather this summer has been unbelievable. 110-115F for days on end. Terrible winds and lightning. Combine those three and you have a perfect storm.

When I was growing up (1980s-'90s), 40C was a hot day. Today, 44C is considered hot. Experts are saying that in the near future, 50C days will not be uncommon. Something has very definitely changed. 2 weeks ago we had 43-46C weather for about a week. On the day it finally dropped down to 38C, people were walking around commenting to complete strangers about how lovely the cooler weather was. It's insanity.

Dozens of people dropped dead from heat in my city (with a population of only 1 million) a couple of weeks ago. The city morgue did not have room to take all the dead and a temporary facility had to be set up. This is not normal weather.

Combine the intense heat and fires in the southeast with the terrible flooding in the north - and over the last couple of days, the east - and you have a country with weather that is quite simply out of control.

The population of Australia is only slightly over 21 million. 200+ were killed and more than 2000 homes were lost last week to fire - by a percentage of the population, that's the equivalent of about 2,900 Americans killed and 29,000 American homes burnt down. This has been an horrific summer and it has had a profound impact on everyone I have spoken to.

Bec

I'm so sorry to hear that, Bec.

However, I'd like to add something that I find relevant in this discussion about climate change. When the Australian wildfires were at their worst about a week ago or a little more, all major Swedish newspapers featured big articles and scary pictures of the devastation in Australia. If you picked up a major Swedish newspaper, you would almost certainly find something about the Australian fires on the front page. When you turned on your TV for the news, the situation in Australia was often the first news item to be presented.

Precisely because of the discussion about climate change that I have been very actively taking part in here on these boards, I was very interested in how American newspapers would present the fires and how they would describe the causes of it. I found, to my horror, that American newspapers wrote extremely little about the Australian fires, as if they were really no concern of America's and as if American people had better things to worry about. I got the impression that a person in America can be fairly well-informed, in the sense that he or she can try to find out what is going on by reading (American) newspapers and watching the news on American TV, and still know extremely little about the horrible fires in Australia.

Something that truly worries me wshen I read American newspapers on the web is how insular America seems to be. And because of America's huge impact on the world, that national introversion is a real problem to the world, to all the rest of us, and in the end, to America itself.

I get the impression that America thinks of itself as a different planet, a world all unto itself. What happens in other parts of the world does not concern you very much, unless some part of the world seems to penetrate your world and actively attack you, like Al Qaida. When that happens, you will take action and strike out into the world to deal with that particular problem. But why should you care about problems in the world that don't threaten you?

One of the first things President Bush did during his presidency was declare that the United States would not be part of the Kyoto protocol. During most of his presidency, America made no international commitments to reduce its emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Bush also did not try to enforce any federal regulations of the emissions of major pollutants in America.

The American position has been something like this. Are the international problems that might be caused by climate change in any way caused by or related to America? You can't prove that they are. And since you can't prove it, America has nothing to do with it. Do the wildfires in Australia threaten America? No. So why should America care about them?

When I was a kid in the sixties and read Superman comics from that time, there were often pictures of Superman flying in space and looking back on the Earth. When you saw the Earth from space in the Superman comics, it always looked the same - you could see North and South America, but no other continents. It was always like that. I noticed it, but I thought to myself that if Superman had been a Swedish comic book, then no doubt Europe and Sweden would always have been prominently visible when the Earth was seen from space in the Superman comics.

But the problem with America is that it still sees the world that way, the way it was shown in the comic books from the sixities. Only the Americas can be seen. And of course, only the United States of America is of any real importance.

No wonder, Pam, that you would think that the wildfires in Australia were caused by environmentalists preventing the necessary clearing of undergrowth in the forests.



Australia? What Australia?

Ann

I've lost the link, but the environmentalist accusation was all from local Aussie residents, in an Aussie paper. I don't know to what extent they're right. As Bec says, it wasn't the whole cause.

I'll agree with you that Americans are fairly insular. I think there's a somewhat widespread attitude of live and let live; we'll worry about our problems, you worry about yours. That said, the American people (private citizens and companies) donated millions in one day after the Boxing Day Tsunami a few years back, and our military was promptly on its way to help (along with the Australian navy).

And I always laugh when people talk about Bush rejecting Kyoto. He was pursuing the exact same policy that Bill Clinton had, and they both knew it would be a waste of time to even try to get the Senate to agree on it. (Treaties have to be approved by our Senate) If Al Gore had been president, the US still wouldn't have entered Kyoto.

By the way, how's that Kyoto thing working out? What's it accomplished? Apart from making liberals feel smug about their moral superiority to Bush, I mean.

PJ

Found a link! Not the same one I saw before, but still.

From Andrew Bolt, in the Adelaide Advertiser

Excerpt (since almost nobody follows the links <g>) -- emphasis mine:

PJ

ETA: Okay this (from the Age) is the article I first mentioned. Excerpt:

By the way, I don't know much about this, but the mention of "bushfire season" interests me. If this sort of thing happens every year, then why weren't they better prepared?

Thank you for admitting that Americans are relatively insular. That is very gracious of you. I agree that the 'live and let live' approach has a lot to recommend if. The problem is that when it comes to climate change we have only one world, only one atmosphere and only one biosphere, and we are all dependent our planet, our atmosphere and our biosphere to survive. If we interfere with our atmosphere and our biosphere, there can really be no 'live and let live' approach. Think of it like this. Imagine that we are all locked inside one big room. Suddenly you find that somebody is pumping a huge amount of carbon monoxide into this room. The keep pumping more and more and more CO inside this enclosed space. You can decide that you don't care about that, because you are not pumping any carbon monoxide into the room, so it's no concern of yours. The problem is that everyone who is locked inside this room will have to breathe the same air. You can't say 'live and let live' here, because when there is enough CO in the air no one can live there any more. We will all start suffocating. And that is why the fate of our atmosphere and out biosphere ultimately is the concern of everybody.

As for that link you showed us, I don't think that the person behind it sounded very serious or objective. These are some of the words and expressions he used:

He made this claim without showing any proof backing it up:

He made this claim without explaining what 'worse conditions' he was referring to:

He made this sweeping accusation with extremely little proof to back it up:

He twisted the observation that no single 'weather catastrophe' can be certifiably attributed to climate change, and turned it into an argument that the horrible fires in Australia can not be attributed to climate change:

All in all, I find his argumentation lousy.

Without a doubt there are parts of the world today where the climate is changing in a way that bodes ill for people, plants and animals that try to live there. And when the heat and drought get severe enough, it is very difficult to prevent fires.

Ann

That's the sound of my head hitting the wall.

Ann, you can't prove that humans are causing global warming. No one can. No one can prove that the warming is a bad thing. After all, we know the global climate has never remained constant for very long, at least as geologists reckon time. I just don't understand why you write these posts with the assumption that humans are either a major cause or the major cause of global warming.

There's an Antarctic ice shelf gone? Fine. It hasn't been there since the earth came into being, so it can't be necessary for life to continue. Does it prove the globe is getting warmer? It proves that the southern pole is getting warmer. Is it our fault? Don't know. Is it a bad thing? Don't know that either. Can we stop it? Don't know. Should we stop it? No way to tell for sure. If we do stop it - or even reverse it - who's to say we wouldn't make things far worse?

Conclusion? Blaming humans for global climate change is not unlike blaming robins for the coming of spring. Ever notice that? Whenever the robins come back, the weather gets warm. If we could only hold back those pesky robins, we could cool off all of North America! And then we can start working on the grackles in Europe!

Has it occurred to anyone that it's summer in the southern hemisphere? Every summer the ice shelves break off. So what? They have done that for a very long time but we haven't had satellites up until recently so we could tell when it happened.

Right now it's winter in the north -- and the ice is getting thicker and covering more area in the north. When summer comes up here, it will decrease again. So what? That's what happens in summer. It's called *seasons*.

Nan

They were unprepared for bushfire season because this one was so much worse than usual, in the same way that 2008 had more flooding than usual in the US. It always happens, but when it reaches the 300 year floodplain people are caught unprepared.

Elisabeth
who is too lazy to log the big guy out

Terry, you are writing your posts with the assumption that global warming is not humanity's fault.

Take a look at this graph:



This graph shows the exponential growth of the human population. But not only is the human population growing in a way that would have alarmed us if we saw it in another species, but it is also true that, on average, each individual human consumes more and more, ever more than our ancestors did as individuals. So there are ever more of us and each one of us consumes ever more.

One day last September was the 'global overshoot day'. That is the day when humanity has 'used up' the resources that the Earth can naturally produce during a year. For the rest of the year, we live on borrowed resources.

The recent economic crisis happened, to a large extent, because people borrowed more than they could pay back.

When are we going to pay back to the Earth what we are borrowing from it? How will we pay back our debt? And what happens if we don't pay up?

Terry, you are assuming that humanity has no adverse impact on the Earth, so you advocate doing nothing to lessen our human footprint on the Earth.

I have certainly never claimed that humanity is the only factor that affects the climate of the Earth. Making such a claim would be utter folly, since it can so extremely easily be disproved.

But just because there are other factors affecting the Earth and our climate, it doesn't follow that we can play any irresponsible games we want to, as if our own actions don't matter. Would you tell your kids that it is all right to play with fire if other kids are playing with fire anyway?

Yesterday, when it was snowy here in Malmö and I was going to take the bus instead of cycling, a young woman stood next to me waiting for the bus and blew smoke in my face. I asked her to please blow her smoke in another direction. She replied that it didn't matter what she did with her smoke, because there was heavy traffic all around us and the air was polluted anyway.

Why don't we all start smoking? And then let's tell our doctors about it. Let's tell our doctors that we have decided to smoke because it doesn't matter what kind of junk we breathe, since the air is polluted anyway. Do you think our doctors will agree with our assessment?

Terry, can you really say that the human population can grow almost exponentially, and the average consumption of resources per individual human being can grow, too, and still the Earth, its atmosphere and biosphere will remained unaffected by our presence, our consumption of resources and our deposit of waste products?

Ann

Ann wrote:

Uh, no, I never wrote that. And I don't believe that. You are putting words in my mouth.

I'm sorry you got smoke blown in your face, Ann, but you can't blame me for that woman's faulty reasoning. I'm pretty sure I've never talked with her about this subject.

Ann also wrote:

Once again, you are putting words in my mouth. I never said this! You are making a mistake when you assume that because I don't agree with everything you say, I must therefore take the view which is the polar opposite from yours. There's a middle ground on this subject whether you admit it or not.

Let me also respond to your graph on human population growth with this website. And here's another one on declining fertility rates. The thrust of this research shows that we're still filling up the planet, but at a slower rate. And in developed countries like the US, the median age is moving upwards. And senior citizens have a pretty low birth rate.

There are two basic reasons for this. The first and most pervasive is that people are living longer. The second reason is that younger people are having fewer children. This site tells us that many nations in Europe actually have negative fertility rates. (The optimum rate for zero population growth is 2.1 children per couple, which allows for a minimal pre-reproductive period death rate.) And population growth in the US is credited largely (but not solely) to immigration, both legal and illegal.

Accusing me of holding extreme views because I disagree with you is - oh, how did you put it in an earlier post?

If you don't believe that humanity is even significantly responsible for, say, creating the conditions necessary for those devastating wildfires in Australia or for a horrible ongoing drought in large parts of Africa, why would you think that we should concern ourselves with how we treat the Earth?

Maybe you think we should do things not to lessen climate change, but to lessen other effects that humanity may have on the Earth. If so, I would be interested to hear what you think we should be doing and what problems we should be addressing, Terry.

Ann

The reason why so many 'disasterous' events are so bad is because people don't wisely live in harmony with their environment.

If you live in a floodplain, expect to get water damage. Live in a heavily forested area, and expect to get some fire damage. Fire is one of God's ways of allowing some species of evergreens to germinate cause the fire allows the pinecones to open properly. (When I find a link for that I will post it...but I know that is true)

'Disasters' are how God cleans out some areas for new growth.

I admit that we often cause our own problems, but God has made the Earth to be wonderfully resilient.

James

Ann, that's a great graph you've posted showing the population increase. Can you find one showing the global temperature patterns over the same time span to compare global temperature to population?

Well, I found some Wikipedia graphs. Here is one showing average annual global temperature from 1880 to, I think, 2007. The last few years have been slightly colder than the years around the turn of the millennium, but if you are to believe this graph, temperatures are still very high. Note, too, that this period, 1880-2000, is the time when the human population really exploded.

Here is another graph showing what parts of the world are hardest hit by global warming. You can see that parts of Antarctica are heating up very badly. No wonder ice shelves are disappearing. Scandinavia is getting a lot warmer too, but because of our cool climate most people here are not complaining. But many of our trees, used to colder temperatures, are dying.

Here is a graph showing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere between 1960 and, I think, 2008.

This graph shows the solar activity between 1975 and 2005. You can see that the Sun is getting less active.

This graph shows the reconstructed temperature on the Earth between the years 0 and 2000 AD. As you can see, it was generally warm during the Middle Ages and cold during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

What about the climate on the Earth during the next one hundred years? Here are a few predictions. Will they come true? No one knows. But perhaps we shouldn't say that just because we don't know if these predictions will come true, we don't need to worry about them.

Ann

Ann, the point of my posting wasn't to convince you with brilliant argumentation, but merely to show that the idea that environmentalists contributed to the danger was not, as you seemed to suspect, my own idea.

I tend to believe it, because of pre-existing biases, but I'll be the first to admit I know almost nothing of the facts on the ground.

I'm looking for a link re: the Antarctic shelf, but in the meantime ran across this fascinating comparison -- why do we assume climate models will be any more accurate than financial ones turned out to be?

Excerpt:

I'm just saying.

PJ

Just a little tangent here, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) just reported that they were underestimating the level of arctic sea ice by 193,000 square miles (500,000 square kilometers).

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2009/021809.html

That's a lot of ice to just miss, isn't it? They're blaming it on satellite problems and sensor drift.

Tara

ps, just for reference, the state of California is 163,707 square miles and the nation of France is 211,207 square miles. Size of the states of the US

I thought it was appropriate to post this here.

YouTube: Australia mourns fire victims

Ann