Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Global warming or cooling?

Ok, I was wondering, with all these scientists globally coming out saying man-made global warming is a hoax, where does opinion stand on these boards? Especially since I recently read that the global temperature has gone down 3/4 of a degree Celsius.

I choose neither. It's called weather. It's been happening since the earth has been in existance. Minnesota just experienced the coolest May in 7 years. Anyone who's ever read the Little House series by Laura Ingalls would know that weather cycles deviate every 7 years.

I wonder how much money we wouldn't have to pay in taxes if al gore had bothered to use his gorram library card.

TEEEEEEEJ

I choose neither.

I believe the earth is warming up in general, but that it expresses itself in more extremes around the globe. While the warming up has increased in speed the last few decades, nature plays a big part in it. Climates are always changing. But the increase is due to man.

Nature didn't ask for all those toxics we created. Or for the emptying of the seas. Or taking down the forests. It's what we do, and we have a price to pay for that.

But I do believe in the heating up of this world. We haven't had a terribly cold winter in many years. When I still cycled to high school, it could get down to minus 15 degrees celcius (that's when we took the bus ). Summers can get pretty hot, more so than I remember when I was growing up. But all in all, extremes can follow each other up. Monday, it was a tropical day. Tuesday, rain, thunder and pretty chilly. Rather normal weather again until today, when it was hot again. It's been muggy for weeks now. It's not a climate that I was thought during school. So yeah, definitely changing into warmer.

But I still stand by the extremes, if I look at the results world wide, what with all the natural disasters.

Saskia

Although I think we don't have enough information to really draw strong conclusions, I have to say that the amount of chemicals being dumped into the environment can't have a positive impact. Living in an area of the world where the economy revolves around oil, this is a very difficult issue. My opinion is that whether or not global warming actually exists, we should still take steps to treat our planet well.

I chose the last one, because I don't really know enough about the situation to be able to come to an educated guess :p

My views are well known, and I won't repeat them. However, while this stunt says nothing about the reality (or not) of global warming, it does prove that some people are worried.

Ann

I voted that it's a natural phenomenon. Even Jupiter is undergoing climate change, apparently.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Science/2008/05/27/jupiter_may_be_undergoing_climate_change/2840/

Jupiter may be undergoing climate change
Published: May 27, 2008 at 3:06 PM

BERKELEY, Calif., May 27 (UPI) -- U.S. astronomers say increased turbulence and storms first observed on Jupiter more than two years ago might be causing global climate change on the planet.

The ongoing turbulence is causing stunning changes in the planet's atmosphere, said lead astronomer Professor Imke de Pater of the University of California-Berkeley and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

The upheaval was first noted in December 2005 by a color change from white to red of a large oval near the Great Red Spot, earning it the nickname Red Spot Jr.

"One of the most notable changes we observe in both Hubble and Keck images is the change from a rather bland, quiescent band surrounding the Great Red Spot just over a year ago to one that is incredibly turbulent at both sides of the spot," de Pater said.

The Great Red Spot is a persistent, high-pressure storm on Jupiter with cloud tops some 5 miles above the surrounding cloud deck.

Why the spot is red is a subject of great debate, de Pater said.


© 2008 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

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And a longer article ...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080522121036.htm

Well, you see, Jupiter is warming up because of all those SUVs we sold to the natives of Jupiter. And Mars. And the other planets that experienced warming, too.




Tara

It's kind of a mixture. Weather is weather, like some people have said, but we can in fact trap heat when we abuse our greenhouse gas content by burning too many fossil fuels. IMO, nothing screams "hotter planet!" faster than heat-trapping gases. But how much it's exactly going to affect anything, we don't know yet. It could mean nothing, or it could mean a lot one day. So even if you don't think global warming is an issue, the environment itself will always be a big one. Might as well keep an eye on it now and turn off your extra lights lest we turn around 40 years later wondering where we went wrong. :p

JD

ETA: Not sure if Nan was specifically replying to me, but I'm just saying don't abuse the greenhouse. I'm not at all saying cut out CO2.

The thing is, CO2, one of the heat-trapping gases, is necessary for plant growth. It's a closed, self-balancing system -- man and animal life breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO2, and produce it in other ways, too. Plants take in CO2 and produce oxygen. It was noted some ten years or more ago that plant growth -- as in the forests all over the world -- had accelerated. The system regulates itself. In spite of what politicians say, CO2 is not a pollutant -- it is necessary for Earth's eco-system. Without CO2, our plants would die. Without plant life to produce oxygen, the animals die. Each is necessary to the other.

It has also been found by scientists who study historical weather, and the makeup of ancient rock strata, that rises and drops in atmospheric CO2 followed, rather than preceded, the increase and decrease of temperature.

The fact is that there is still a lot we don't know about what causes climate change, but historical evidence says that Man doesn't have a lot to do with it. I think that whatever is happening to our climate is most probably part of a natural cycle that we haven't completely figured out yet. Remember, computer projections rest on the information fed to them. If that information is incomplete, then the results aren't going to be valid.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Nan

To no one's surprise, I also went with neither. Weather goes in cycles. The measurements of Mt. McKinley have been very telling in that when the ice thickens, we are approaching a cooling period and when it thins, we are approaching a warming period. For about two decades, the ice on McKinley was thinning, pointing to a warming period.

Over the last seven years, though, McKinley has been thickening to a very large degree, so we are now approaching a cooling period. It does not denote a trend. It just means that despite all the SUV's on the road, the globe is currently cooling. That doesn't mean it's not going to turn around and reverse itself in a few years.

Why do so many people believe in global warming? First, the left loves money as much as anyone else and there's a ton of money to be made with the hysteria about global warming. Remember that the left were the ones who spawned the global cooling hysteria in the 1970's. Second, the left controls academia, so they're poisoning the minds of the young, telling them that global warming is a fact, despite 31,000 scientists coming out against man-made global warming in a petition published by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Consensus, anyone? NOT! Anyone telling you there's a scientific consensus on global warming is selling you something. Third, the leftist media treats global warming as a fact, so gullible adults who still watch the 6:00 news (a dwindling group) believe the garbage they are being told.

Just watch. As soon as it becomes evident to even the left that we're actually cooling down (my state completely skipped spring as temps averaged 50 degrees this entire season and last summer was one of the coolest on record), the global cooling hysteria will be back.

I said I wasn't going to comment much, but I'm surprised to hear that a lot of scientists have recently renounced the idea of global warming. I haven't heard a thing about that. I watch Swedish and Danish television and read Swedish and Danish newspapers, and here the talk is still all about global warming. If there have been mass conversions from the "global warming camp" to the "global cooling camp", I haven't heard a thing about it.

Of course there are scientists who don't believe in global warming. Here in Scandinavia the most famous "unbeliever" is Bjørn Lomborg, a Dane. He spoke out against the idea of global warming in 1998, and he hasn't changed his mind since then. (Or rather, he now apparently says that global warming is real, but that measures like the Kyoto protocol are not cost effective and will do little or nothing to stop the rise in temperature.) But to the best of my knowledge, there are few Scandinavians who agree with Lomborg. That in itself certainly doesn't make him wrong, but I'm just saying that I don't recognize the suggestions that a lot of scientists have suddenly come out publicly against the idea of global warming. If they have, the news of it hasn't made it over here!

Ann

LOL. Because no one in the right engages in greed-inspired propaganda?

My position hasn't changed that much from what I held last time this tired debate rolled around. After all, I am one of those people in academia poisoning young minds with my leftist agenda. Though sadly all, I can do is sneak it in between discussing the role of the "wa" particle in Japanese sentence construction.

In all seriousness though, if anything, I'm more cynical that we can get to any objective fact that both sides can agree on. Even if there is consensus, there will always be one side saying it's a big bad conspiracy. *shrug*

So while people bicker of who is ideologically right or wrong, I think Beth nails it on the head:

And as an individual, that is what matters to me.

alcyone

I had to choose neither, mainly because my answer is 'dunno'.

There is no proof whether or not man is changing the climate. Possibly, but possibly not. As the climate is never stable there is no way to definately prove it one way or another.

While it remains a possibility it would be wise to be cautious and try and make as little impact on the environment as possible. Or at least, that's what I think.

Ann - I have Lomborg's book on the environment. I had to learn all the different theories surrounding the environment and climate change in my first year at university. I found the most interesting thing about him is that he believed man was adversely affecting the environment until he analysed the statistics himself.

Weather can't be controlled by the government no matter how much they want to pretend that they can.

Didncha know the Bush administration has a weather machine that can make all sorts of catastrophes happen, from, say hurricanes that local government should be able to get people away from, to typhoons in completely different countries that only want money instead of aid.

This is most probably a myth, but you know they can make up laws to get the impression that they are doing something "helpful" and then tax us for all that pretending.

I'm all for cleaning my own back yard, but when the government starts to regulate how I do it to get more of my hard earned cash, they're going to start the rumblings of a rebellion...


TEEEEEEEJ

Minnesotans for Global Warming has posted and amusing you-tube video on this topic, HERE is the link.

Their motto is "Because it's STUPID to politicize the weather"

It has also been the coolest May here in Missouri (sniff, it reminded me of home, further North in Iowa...)

Anyway, here is a story related to me by the head of the computer department at the college I graduated from in 97.

"Back when I was a little boy of 5 (he was 56 at the time) my grandma had a bannana tree growing in her backyard. She lived in Louisiana. Before I turned 10, it got sick and died. She never was able to get another one to grow. Years later I asked a tropical plant specalist about that. He told me that it was too cold for banana trees to thrive in Lousiana." With that, he gave us our weather related assignments and dismissed the class.

Mine was to study the last one hundred years of High temperatures for the city where the college resided. Later I got to look at all the data.

Here is what I found.

The 1930's where the hottest, with a record temp of 114 Farenheit.

The 1920's were the coldest, with a record low of -26 Farenheit.

Even throwing out the above temps, those decades were the extremes for the 100 years of data.

After extensively looking at the data, I couldn't find a significant increase or decrease in the data (the variance was less than 1 degree).

So, given those results, I concluded that we were not in the middle of Global Warming, or Cooling. We haven't lived long enough to keep detailed records long enough to actually KNOW what we think we KNOW!

And to prove that point, look at this video... Global Warming and the Nation-Sized Error


Also, look at this one. Smokey the Gore

I'd just like to point out, weather is a term used to look at atmospheric variables for a brief period of time. What everyone is talking about here is climate.

Climate represents weather (atmospheric conditions) over a long period of time. When we look at global warming and global cooling, we are looking at climate.

I believe global warming, and global cooling, are a natural phenomena because historical evidence in paleoclimatology has shown that climate has cycled on the planet between cold and warm for millions of years.
There have been previous warm events in a similar range to those of today, just as there have been cold spells (ice ages).

It could be argued that human (and animal) emissions may have aided in accelerating this current warm cycle. But I guess we will see if and what effect there is based on the duration of this warming period.

It is an interesting debate. And if I hadn't studied climatology at university, I don't think I would have as much understanding of how our atmospheric systems work (and have worked) and I might be 'sucked in' by a lot of the 'global warming' hype.