Posted on 03/12/2010 9:51:13 PM PST by neverdem
Man-made carbon emissions: But it is bad news for the polar bears
MAN-MADE carbon emissions are staving off a new ice age, says a leading environmental scientist.
Climate-change expert Dr James Lovelock says the greenhouse gases that have warmed the planet are likely to prevent a big freeze that could last millions of years.
In a talk at Londons Science Museum Dr Lovelock said the balance of nature was in charge of the environment.
He said: Were just fiddling around. It is worth thinking that what we are doing in creating all these carbon emissions, far from being something frightful, is stopping the onset of a new ice age.
If we hadnt appeared on the earth, it would be due to go through another ice age and we can look at our part as holding that up.
I hate all this business about feeling guilty about what were doing.
Were not guilty, we never intended to pump CO2 into the atmosphere, its just something we did.
Dr Lovelocks comments come in the wake of the scandal at the University of East Anglia where leaked emails suggested climate change data had been manipulated.
The 90-year-old British scientist, who has worked for Nasa and paved the way for the detection of man-made aerosol and refrigerant gases in the atmosphere, called for greater caution in climate research.
He compared the recent controversy to the wildly inaccurate early work on aerosol gases and their alleged role in depletion of the ozone layer.
He said: Quite often, observations done by hand are accurate but all the theoretical stuff in between tends to be very dodgy and I think they are seeing this with climate change. We havent learned the lessons of the ozone-hole debate. Its important to know just how much you have got to be careful.
According to Dr Lovelocks Gaia theory, the earth is capable of curing itself. A planet that is effectively alive can regulate itself and its composition and climate, he said.
Thomas Crowley, professor of geoscience at Edinburgh University, responded: People have thought about the possibility of an ice age but it wouldnt be for many thousands of years.
Dr Lovelock might be right in the abstract but this does not necessarily mean that CO2 is good now.
You count your "end of ice age" time from the biggest meltdown that raises the ocean level the highest. You no longer count from the "younger dryas event".
Suggesting.....
.....It is NOT caused by CO2
.....It is NOT the Americans fault
.....There is nothing we can do about it short of 100% homicide.
These people are forced off their story by cooling for 10 years (a a plateau or trend against their previous theory) and now their new theories don't mesh with the old ones.
There's a refreeze in the Northern Hemisphere called the "younger dryas". That lasts about 1500 years and then we get another, but smaller meltdown.
The "comet" definitely made a splashdown ~ and there are a number of other indicators, e.g. Canadian gold deposits in unglaciated Southern Indiana hills.
Actually, that would be from a short to mid term geological perspective.
The earth is about 4 billion years old. Of this time, at most 700 to 800 million years have been in "ice ages," with the rest of the time there being no permanent ice caps except possibly at high altitudes.
This number is actually high, since the interglacials, such as we are presently in, within the larger span ice ages are included. The presence of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps today means we are classified as still being in an Ice Age.
OTOH, of the last 2M years, we've spent about 85% in periods with large continental glaciers, glacial periods, what is commonly meant when the term "ice age" is used.
Pray for America
If Pielke is correct the U.S. and other developed societies began moving toward countering these effects a century ago with the creation of parks, sanctuaries and reservations, reforestation, urban landscaping, restoration of water sheds and estuaries, improved farming methods, etc.
Yah, shur, you betcha.
It'll be an ice age, since those are cyclical and we are towards the end of the "warm" part of the cycle. But that doesn't mean we're doomed. Just means we have to adapt and overcome, as we always have. Those in the north will likely have to move, and probably shoot and communicate too.
Milankovitch Theory describes the collective effects of changes in the Earth's movements upon its climate, named after Serbian civil engineer and mathematician Milutin Milankovic. Milankovic mathematically theorized that variations in eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit determined climatic patterns on Earth.
The Earth's axis completes one full cycle of precession approximately every 26,000 years. At the same time, the elliptical orbit rotates, more slowly, leading to a 23,000-year cycle between the seasons and the orbit. In addition, the angle between Earth's rotational axis and the normal to the plane of its orbit moves from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees and back again on a 41,000-year cycle; currently, this angle is 23.44 degrees and is decreasing.
Other astronomical theories were advanced by Joseph Adhemar, James Croll and others, but verification was difficult due to the absence of reliably dated evidence and doubts as to exactly which periods were important. Not until the advent of deep-ocean cores and a seminal paper by Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton, “Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages”, in Science, 1976,[1] did the Milankovic theory attain its present state.
Thanks for the ping.
Thanks for the ping!
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