[lostlakehiker]

Just because Ellen Goodman says that Global Warming is a Republican Plot, and we all know that's nonsense, doesn't mean that global warming itself is nonsense.

It just means that Goodman is talking nonsense.

There are real reasons to think that global warming is real. For instance, the Arctic icecap is shrinking. Glaciers around the world are in retreat. Just take a look at photos from glacier national park from 50 or 100 years ago, and compare to today.

How much of a threat this is, we can argue. But to sit there and insist that glacier national park hasn't changed, that the snow and ice is still there as much as ever, well, that's just flat wrong. It IS warmer now than it used to be, and human fossil fuel use is very probably one of the big reasons why.

[feedback doctor]

This explain the reason the ice coverage in Antarctica is increasing?

[Grizzled Bear]

I would really like you to respond to these questions;

How was it possible to grow grapes in Newfoundland and grain in Greenland 1000 years ago when the areas are under perma frost today?

Why are the icecaps of Mars shrinking?

Why are the temperatures of all the planets in our solar system getting warmer?

How is the terrestrial (Earth) bound human burning of fossil fuels able to effect the "weather" on other planets?

I am eagerly awaiting your response.

[boop]

Uh, NY is under eight feet of snow. I'm sure that the massive cooling is due to global warming.

[Wiseghy]

Maybe so.

However, the chain of reasoning that leads us to embrace drastic, economy crushing controls and cut backs, while China and the third world pump ever larger quantities of pollution into the air is what concerns me.

Fortunately, a consensus on US energy independence is emerging.

However, environmental reasoning has an oddly religious quality to it; I just can't believe that buying "indulgences" in the form of carbon credits will ever deliver the planet from anything. Already, I'm reading about the third world plowing under rain forest at an unprecedented rate to plant corn for ethanol. There is just no escaping from the priests of environmentalism.

[BlazingArizona]

... human fossil fuel use is very probably one of the big reasons why.

So who's burning fossil fuel on Mars?

[ancient_geezer]

It IS warmer now than it used to be, and human fossil fuel use is very probably one of the big reasons why.

Warming, naturally perhaps, from anthropogenic CO2, not very likely.

Anthropgenic Global Warming hypothesis requires water vapor content of the atmosphere to increase with a comensurate increase in cloud cover to enhance the effect of CO2 in effecting heating of the the atmosphere and surface.

 

http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/gccourse/model/direct/direct_lecture_new.html

Water-vapor/greenhouse feedback.

Relative humidity is reasonably constant despite variations in absolute humidity. That is, an increase in temperature leads to more evaporation and increase in the absolute amount of water vapor in the air (increase absolute humidity). But since the warmer air has a higher saturation vapor pressure (can hold more water vapor), the relative humidity stays approximately constant. The increased absolute humidity, however, increases absorption of infrared radiation by the atmosphere and hence increases the greenhouse effect. Note that this increased greenhouse effect raises the surface temperature, which further increases evaporation. This feedback mechanism is not self-regulating, so we call it a positive feedback.

Cloudiness / surface-temperature feedback.

As temperature increases, evaporation and absolute humidity both increase leading to more cloudiness. But the increase in clouds leads to increased reflection of solar energy and also leads to more trapping of infrared energy from the surface of the earth. The net effect (which depends on the altitude of the clouds) is thought to lead to a cooling, which makes this a negative feedback process.

as quantified by Ramanathan:

"the direct radiative effects of doubled CO2 can cause a maximum surface warming [at the equator] of about 0.2 K, and hence roughly 90% of the 2.0-2.5 K surface warming obtained by the GCM is caused by atmospheric feedback processes described above.
--- "Increased Atmospheric CO2: Zonal and Seasonal Estimates of the Effect on the Radiation Energy Balance and Surface Temperature"
(V. Ramanathan and M. S. Lian), J. Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 84, p. 4949, 1979.

 

Taking a look at what the water vapor & clouds are actually doing:

http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/JPEG/zD2ATMOSCLIM/B128B129glbp.anomdevs.jpg

 

 

http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/zD2BASICS/B8glbp.anomdevs.jpg

 

 

http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/zD2CLOUDTYPES/B32glbp.anomdevs.jpg

 

 

One might guess that something other than changing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere is in the driver's seat.

http://www.sciencebits.com/CosmicRaysClimate

Clouds have been observed from space since the beginning of the 1980's. By the mid 1990's, enough cloud data accumulated to provide empirical evidence for a solar/cloud-cover link. Without the satellite data, it hard or probably impossible to get statistically meaningful results because of the large systematic errors plaguing ground based observations. Using the satellite data, Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen has shown that cloud cover varies in sync with the variable cosmic ray flux reaching the Earth. Over the relevant time scale, the largest variations arise from the 11-yr solar cycle, and indeed, this cloud cover seemed to follow the cycle and a half of cosmic ray flux modulation. Later, Henrik Svensmark and his colleague Nigel Marsh, have shown that the correlation is primarily with low altitude cloud cover. This can be seen in fig. 3.


Figure 3: The correlation between cosmic ray flux (orange) as measured in Neutron count monitors in low magnetic latitudes, and the low altitude cloud cover (blue) using ISCCP satellite data set, following Marsh & Svensmark, 2003.

[irv]

For instance, the Arctic icecap is shrinking. Glaciers around the world are in retreat.

They can have some of the 6 feet of snow in my front yard.

If I believed global warming, I'd be feeling mighty cheated right now.

[IYellAtMyTV]

"23 percent of college-educated Republicans believe the warming is due to humans, while 75 percent of college-educated Democrats believe it."

Lets assume (for the sake of argument) that lostlakehiker is a college educated Republican, and further assume that these percentages are correct. Does anyone else find it funny that the fourth post (25% at that point) was professing a belief in global warming?!

C'mon lost, you did that on purpose didn't you, fess up...
*chortle, snort*

[irv]

By the way: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1783234/posts

[dfwgator]

For instance, the Arctic icecap is shrinking. Glaciers around the world are in retreat.

Uhh, not so fast....

Greenland’s Glaciers Take a Breather

[ancient_geezer]

For instance, the Arctic icecap is shrinking. Glaciers around the world are in retreat.

Couldn't have anything to do with the fact the earth came out of a major ice age some 10,000 years ago and they have been on a more or less steady melt down ever since could it?

Remember ice melts as long as its warming than freezing, current global average temperature is 15^oC, and has been pretty much that level, at time higher at time lower for since the last major glacial period.

 

 

Ice Ages & Astronomical Causes
Brief Introduction to the History of Climate
by Richard A. Muller

Origin of the 100 kyr Glacial Cycle

Figure 1-1 Global warming (NOAA land and ocean temperatures)

 

Figure 1-2 Climate of the last 2400 years (GISP2)

 

 
Figure 1-3 Climate of the last 12,000 years (GISP2)

 

 

Figure 1-4 Climate of the last 100,000 years (GISP2)

Figure 1-5 Climate for the last 420 kyr, from Vostok ice

[Trailerpark Badass]

OK, answer me this. I've been looking (OK, not that hard, but I've been looking) to find estimates on the total volume/mass of dissolved CO2 in the atmosphere. And I've been looking for values of how much dissolved CO2 human activity puts into the atmosphere per year. And also, how that rate had changed over the last ten or so years.

Without firm and consensus estimates on those figures, I don't see how any serious person can say that human activity is doing anything to affect global average temperatures.

But you seem to believe that. Can you point me to reliable estimates on the values I mentioned above?

[listenhillary]

"and human fossil fuel use is very probably one of the big reasons why."

Show me the science that supports your statement.

[ExSoldier]

There are real reasons to think that global warming is real.

Perhaps, but I think the dispute lies in a politically driven agenda behind the rush to assert that humanity is responsible and further that unless draconian measures are instantly incorporated (like ratifying Kyoto) we're DOOMED! DOOMED!

The fact is that the Earth routinely goes thru climate changes. Some of the warming trends in the past were much warmer than what we face today. The assertion that man made chemicals are causing the cycles to accelerate is simply a convenient fiction. I also dispute the crisis of the so called Peak Oil Theory. Oil isn't dead dinosaurs. It is manufactured deep in the earth's mantle and forced outward by the centrifugal spin of the planet. Every year, including last year, the naysayers have bleated the imminent depletion of all oil resources and use that coupled with global warming to force society into their vision of nirvana. AKA the NWO. Anytime the fanatic lefties start trumpeting their alarms....mine go off. Not in reaction to their issues but to them. It simply illustrates the ultimate conflict between good and evil.

The lefties like to assert that it's alright to kill the unborn and let the murderer go free and to engage in all sorts of hedonistic practices in the name of pleasure simply because they refuse to admit the sovereignty of God. If they do that, their house of cards comes tumbling down. In their growing numbers (lefty whackos and their blind followers) I see the legions of soldiers who will worship the AntiChrist as a god. That time is thundering closer and closer in the hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Shhhhh! Listen. Hear them?

[norwaypinesavage]

" that's just flat wrong."

Your opinion is welcome on this forum. However, I refuse to involve myself in religious debates.

[Iam1ru1-2]

"There are real reasons to think that global warming is real. For instance, the Arctic icecap is shrinking. Glaciers around the world are in retreat. Just take a look at photos from glacier national park from 50 or 100 years ago, and compare to today."

You are looking at things through Earthbound eyes. It has been shown that the temperature of the Sun has risen, and is responsible for the increase in temperatures in the polar regions and the extreme weather variances. Another factor that influences the Earth is the decreased magnetic field around the Earth. Some say we are in the midst of a polar shift - an area near Antarctica which has no population is experiencing a polar shift which gives some scientists to believe that this is just the beginning of a world wide phenomenon. So taking all these factors into consideration, there is no basis in fact that it is the Earth's surface itself is heating up because of human influence. The Mt. Pinatubo eruption spewed more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than all the pollution that man has spewed in the entire history of Earth, and that's not counting all the other volcanoes that have erupted or are erupting as I write. I'm afraid Mr. algore's reason for spewing this disinformation is to make money off his global warming book. Remember he's the one who said that Bill Klintoon is the greatest president we've ever had.