zero2056
10-16-2008, 10:58 AM
:groucho:Since there is some boredom out there, and not much to talk about as we all wait to vote, let's hit another hot item. I talked to JVO about this one night, and he at the time dared me to even utter my belief that global warming just may not be human caused on these hallowed B2P boards.
Not really a politics forum issue. More geo-political. I'm not 100% on this bandwagon of human caused C02 being the cause of any increase in the world temperature, and not all scientists support it as well. I'm sure some scientists are on the payroll of Exxon Mobil and the like, but for arguments sake, let's say that some of them are legit, and as many that are on Exxon Mobil's payroll, there are an equal amount on the Sierra Club or some other environmental group's, balancing out the money-grubbing corrupt scientists, with actual scientists.
On my tour through Turkey and ruins of Ephesus, an ancient greek city, these additional thoughts came to me. This city (now many miles inland) was at the time a bustling Greek sea port, which was its importance to the empire. What happened to the port? The best guess (which is all we have to work with, not a fault, just a fact - can we ever do anything better than guess?) is that the global climate was cooling, which caused an increase in the global ice caps and shrinking of the overall sea level combined with the slow filling in of the harbor area with silt from a river that fed into the harbor and the aegean/med sea. So about 2,000 years ago, the Med/aegean sea was lapping at the shores of this site. Now, you have to drive a couple miles to find the sea.
In the 1970's the scientific consensus was that the world was headed into a new ice age.... doom and gloom.. we're all going to freeze, blah blah blah. I'm not sure when Global Warming started becoming the next issue that climatoligists rallied around, maybe in the 80's, but now we must all worry about the doom and gloom of our human caused warming of the planet.
As most of you know, I live in Missouri. This year and I would daresay last year have been the most mild summers and coldest, wet, winters I can remember. I think we had one week near the end of July this year, where temperatures hit their usual miserable 95+ mark with 100% humidity. The rest of the summer has been fantastic. And, our rainfall has increased substantially, with us being as much as 20 inches over norm, causing for quite a pleasant existence, lush vegetation... I have no complaints.
I did some research a few months back after uttering my claim to the chagrin (and due to his contrarian nature, utter glee if I may be so brave) of my belief. Apparently, the majority of carbon dioxide is actually created from large fires that burn underground around fossil fuel areas (primarily coal), which we have no control over (unless we think we can put out a giant underground coal fire). The human contributed level of CO2 was somewhere in the 5% range (again.. their best guess... how can they really know), what we actually have any sort of control over. Also, there is C02 that is released through the thawing of permafrost, and many other natural sources such as forest fires, etc. Methane, strangely enough, is a stronger component to greenhouse effects rather than C02, and that of course occurs all the time with decomposition and what-not.
Is our 5% really causing this chaos, or is mother nature just going through a cycle that none of us can truly appreciate, because the lifespan of a human is too short.
This is the question I toss out to you. Marked levels in overall temperatures have been recorded for some years now, but do you believe that it is all man-made, or is this something that is just occurring due to a trend we have no control over? Will humans 100-200 years from now... maybe 500 or 600 years from now read our studies and laugh at us as they discover it was actually due to increased solar activity, or some other natural trend that is then discovered at a later date?
I don't really have any problems with curbing our green house emissions, because it makes us conserve limited fossil fuel resources in the long-run, which seems like a smart idea... if we must follow this belief to make it happen, then so be it. But I have some doubts that is the true cause of what we call today global warming.
Let the flames begin :groucho:
Not really a politics forum issue. More geo-political. I'm not 100% on this bandwagon of human caused C02 being the cause of any increase in the world temperature, and not all scientists support it as well. I'm sure some scientists are on the payroll of Exxon Mobil and the like, but for arguments sake, let's say that some of them are legit, and as many that are on Exxon Mobil's payroll, there are an equal amount on the Sierra Club or some other environmental group's, balancing out the money-grubbing corrupt scientists, with actual scientists.
On my tour through Turkey and ruins of Ephesus, an ancient greek city, these additional thoughts came to me. This city (now many miles inland) was at the time a bustling Greek sea port, which was its importance to the empire. What happened to the port? The best guess (which is all we have to work with, not a fault, just a fact - can we ever do anything better than guess?) is that the global climate was cooling, which caused an increase in the global ice caps and shrinking of the overall sea level combined with the slow filling in of the harbor area with silt from a river that fed into the harbor and the aegean/med sea. So about 2,000 years ago, the Med/aegean sea was lapping at the shores of this site. Now, you have to drive a couple miles to find the sea.
In the 1970's the scientific consensus was that the world was headed into a new ice age.... doom and gloom.. we're all going to freeze, blah blah blah. I'm not sure when Global Warming started becoming the next issue that climatoligists rallied around, maybe in the 80's, but now we must all worry about the doom and gloom of our human caused warming of the planet.
As most of you know, I live in Missouri. This year and I would daresay last year have been the most mild summers and coldest, wet, winters I can remember. I think we had one week near the end of July this year, where temperatures hit their usual miserable 95+ mark with 100% humidity. The rest of the summer has been fantastic. And, our rainfall has increased substantially, with us being as much as 20 inches over norm, causing for quite a pleasant existence, lush vegetation... I have no complaints.
I did some research a few months back after uttering my claim to the chagrin (and due to his contrarian nature, utter glee if I may be so brave) of my belief. Apparently, the majority of carbon dioxide is actually created from large fires that burn underground around fossil fuel areas (primarily coal), which we have no control over (unless we think we can put out a giant underground coal fire). The human contributed level of CO2 was somewhere in the 5% range (again.. their best guess... how can they really know), what we actually have any sort of control over. Also, there is C02 that is released through the thawing of permafrost, and many other natural sources such as forest fires, etc. Methane, strangely enough, is a stronger component to greenhouse effects rather than C02, and that of course occurs all the time with decomposition and what-not.
Is our 5% really causing this chaos, or is mother nature just going through a cycle that none of us can truly appreciate, because the lifespan of a human is too short.
This is the question I toss out to you. Marked levels in overall temperatures have been recorded for some years now, but do you believe that it is all man-made, or is this something that is just occurring due to a trend we have no control over? Will humans 100-200 years from now... maybe 500 or 600 years from now read our studies and laugh at us as they discover it was actually due to increased solar activity, or some other natural trend that is then discovered at a later date?
I don't really have any problems with curbing our green house emissions, because it makes us conserve limited fossil fuel resources in the long-run, which seems like a smart idea... if we must follow this belief to make it happen, then so be it. But I have some doubts that is the true cause of what we call today global warming.
Let the flames begin :groucho: