Posted on 02/10/2005 1:24:09 PM PST by dzzrtrock
Disaster Averted?
Human activities may have averted the next ice age. This conclusion from recent research is sure to make global warming alarmists cringe. Ongoing human activities during the past 8,000 years likely have served to prevent us from falling into an ice age, says William Ruddiman, former chairman of the University of Virginia environmental sciences department and his research team in Quaternary Research Reviews.. “Without any anthropogenic warming,” they write, “earth’s climate would no longer be in a full-interglacial state [warm period] but be well on its way toward the colder temperatures typical of glaciations.”
Ruddiman’s team carefully studied carbon dioxide and methane trapped in ice cores extracted from Antarctica. They pieced together a detailed history of those two greenhouse gases’ atmospheric concentrations. When analyzing natural cycles of the concentration of these gases over the past 400,000 years, the researchers noticed anomalous behavior in recent millennia. “Over the past 8,000 years, the CO2 concentration gradually rose to a level of 280ppm-285ppm during an interval when trends observed during the three previous interglaciations suggest that it should have fallen to 240ppm-245ppm.” They found similar behavior in the concentration of methane (Figure 1). <
Figure 1. Anthropogenic effects on atmospheric concentrations of methane (top) and carbon dioxide (bottom) during the past 10,000 years. (Source: Ruddiman et al., 2005)
Ruddiman attributes this anomalous rise in greenhouse gases to massive deforestation of Eurasia, irrigation for rice farming in Southeast Asia, and increases from biomass burning, livestock production, and other sources.
Based upon the anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases over the past 8,000 years, as well as climate cycles during the past 400,000 years, Ruddiman and his colleagues suggest the global average temperature otherwise would be about 2ºC lower than now and “roughly one-third of the way toward full-glacial temperatures.”
This result, as much as they won’t like it, will place global warmers in an awkward position. Their bedrock belief is that earth’s climate was merrily chugging along the way nature intended before to the Industrial Revolution. Then all sorts of pernicious human activity kicked in and began interfering with the climate’s “natural” behavior. They believe this has led us to the brink of environmental catastrophe due to global warming.
In January 2005, a group calling itself the International Climate Change Taskforce claimed that if temperatures were to rise more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels, we would be flirting with disaster. “Beyond the 2ºC level, the risks to human societies and ecosystems grow significantly,” the ICCT warns. Their report stresses “climate change represents one of the most serious and far-reaching challenges facing humankind in the 21st century.” (see www.co2andclimate.org/wca/2004/wca_30c.html for additional coverage of the ICCT report).
Ruddiman’s underlying message is that such a world view is opposite what really has happened. Anthropogenic climate change has spared us descent into what would be the most serious and far-reaching challenge facing humankind in the twenty-first century — dealing with a rapidly deteriorating climate plunging us into an ice age.
No matter what scary scenarios global warming enthusiasts contrive, they pale in comparison with the conditions an ice age would serve up. Look to our climate past. 21,000 years ago, a mile’s thick ice sheet covered all of North America north of a curve stretching from somewhere near Seattle to Indianapolis and New York City (see Figure 2). Earth has spent about ninety percent of the past 1.8 million years under ice age conditions. Only about ten percent of the time have there been warm conditions. Add that one to your Gratitude List! We’re fortunate and very lucky to live when we do, but luck may have little to do with it. The last 10,000 years well might have been warm because humanity flourishes.... [/color]
(Read More) http://www.greeningearthsociety.org/wca/2004/wca_31a.html
There are no coincidences with God. I've been reading on several Prophetic web sites about Noah's Flood. Interesting, very.
I don't understand how global warming would have to be a bad thing anyway. How could anyone possibly say that in the event that this did occur (which there is no proof whatsoever in my view) that it would necessarily be a bad thing? The universe is designed in a way that any changes due to human behavior would disrupt this design? How would anyone know? Is a few decades of reliable statistics relate to the phenomena without any doubt? Actually, studies have shown that while Greenland has had ice melting, that not so far away in Iceland and Northern Europe and Asia, temperatures have locally been on the decrease over the past few decades. This is a liberal pet peave, the conservatves are "bad for the environment", well, anyway we are bad for everything for that matter.
So many things just,,,, wrong.
1. How many CO2 and Methane monitoring stations did they have in the middle east back in biblical times?
2. How many Co2 and Methane monitoring stations did they have ANYWHERE during WWI?
3. Speculation on global cooling/warming is now based on CO2 and Methane measurements, and not actual temperatures.
If I walk into a room, and it smells, is that proof I farted?
P.S. They say mankind may have prevented us from going back into an ICE AGE.
First, there is no 'going back'. Second, the retreat of the LAST ICE AGE, what exactly is the duration of it? One has to know that before stating it was cut short.
I agree. The first chart of CH4 and solar radiation is pretty much worthless, unless there are more data to support a relationship between the two, instead of what was presented from -10,000 to -5000yr. Also, the solar data in the same graph is garbage - the curve is way too smooth to be real data from real measurements.
I would also add that the first chart does not support the hypothesis that man-made activities caused the deviation. If that were the case, one would expect to see a large spike due to the industrialization during the last 250 years, not a sudden deviation 5000 years ago.
Lots of them actually. We call them ice cores. Very good coverage of the polar regions, not so good elsewhere. The "warming trend" has been going on too long for it to be completely human causes. The sun is very well known to be a variable star, but it's difficult to determine just how variable over long periods.
Although I don't think the trends are man made, your statement isn't necessarily correct. Every hear of slash and *Burn* agriculture? It's what "noble indigenous peoples" often practice. Throws off all sorts of greenhouse gases, and quickly wears out the soil of the "rain-forest" (aka jungle), which isn't nearly as "good" as that produced by grasslands, as well.
Man changed climate for 8,000 years?
CNN/Associated Press | Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Posted on 12/10/2003 2:36:58 PM EST by anymouse
Edited on 04/29/2004 5:03:33 AM EDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1037828/posts
UCANSEE2 - Not specifically directed at you.
"There will be wars and rumors of wars" - I think these sorts of speculatory coversations is what the bible was really talking about. Not people warring others, the battles that go on with the planet , and our inability to truelly understand the ramifications of our own actions. Hey, here's what you can count on 100% -
#1 - Without an ice age New York, Hong Kong, San Francisco, and New Orleans will be gone ander 300ft. of ocean. - maybe lots of people dead.
#2 - A solar flare will hit the earth again and create fires across the world due to short circuiting. - lots of people dead.
#3 - An asteroid or comet will strike the earth and create devestation unlike any ever witnessed. - millions upons millions of people dead.
#4 - A virus, not much different to the Asian Bird Flu (if not the ABF), will reach pandemic levels and kill tens of thousands, if not tens of millions of people in America. lots of people dead.
#5 - The polarity of the earth will flip at some point in time creating utter chaos. Since everything runs under the current polarity field, including us, does this mean that a certain percentage of us short cicuit and explode? Do we lose all of our cars and planes and our computers to learn how to grow food to feed our families? See the problem? - Millions dead slowly.
These aren't prophesies, there're absolutely going to happen at some time in our future. These scientists for the most part aren't talking out of their butts to listen to the wind. They're actually trying to save the world.
These thread forums are quite an experiment in observing the obsurdity of human behavior. A cultural anthropologist could write his or her thesis in here. I know that everything that gets said in here can't be true, but why does everyone always jump on the it's BS bandwagon? Maybe we aren't cooling down, maybe we are continuing to rise in temp. That's even worse than if we had an ice age. It's the normal cycle of things. If we averted one and changed history, then we have nothing to base the outcome of this on and we don't know where we're headed with our climate scenarios. Hell, anything then becomes possible. We could end up like Mars, as far as we know from this report. Maybe it's true, maybe not. I've read enough scientist bashing in the last week on here to fill my head with unimportant crap for months. Waste of my time. I'm here to learn, if you're not, go play with your XBOX.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
