Global Warming Part 2

By Dan Greene Posted September 13, 2007 19:35:29

I am finally becoming convinced that this is a real, man made + natural phenomenon. I have become convinced through making an in depth analysis, and seeing how science rather then politics or politicians are providing the tools to conclude that a potentially serious global warming series of events and trends is occurring.

The first bit of evidence you need to know when researching this, is understanding the "actual greenhouse greenhouse effect" and the "greenhouse effect of the Earth".

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/earthguide/diagrams/greenhouse/

Heat which is energy is transferred in 3 ways, conduction convection and radiation.

In a greenhouse the greenhouse gets heated from the sunlight. This light pours inside and warms the ground inside the greenhouse, which in turn warms the air just above it, this air through a process called diffusion which is when molecules move from an area of greater density to an area of lower density, fuels convection. Warmer air is less dense and cooler air is denser, cooler air being denser falls, while warmer air rises. Because the greenhouse is enclosed, it is a closed system, just like the Earth, however inside the Earth's closed system much more convection is occurring and the majority of heat that makes it into the Earth's system is re-radiated back at the planet.

The energy that travels through the vacuum of space is all radiation. On the Earth most of this energy is transferred via radiation and convection. Inside a greenhouse, sunlight penetrates the glass or plastic covering, via radiation. The glass or plastic is impermeable meaning that the molecules in a gas form cannot penetrate it and are trapped. Since they are trapped, the energy remains largely trapped, this is what increases the temperature inside the greenhouse.

On the Earth it works largely the same way, sunlight penetrates the atmosphere and is trapped. Some of it is re-radiated but a significant majority of that energy that gets into the system on Earth is drives out weather and climate.

The Earth's average surface temperature is about 33°C warmer than it would be without the greenhouse effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Greenhouse_Effect.png

When you increase the concentration of these greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which is occurring yearly, and has been since the industrial revolution, but not at the same magnitude as presently, the ability of the atmosphere to act as a stronger radiator of energy back into the Earth's system of energy containment is increased.

In the last 50 years the amount of greenhouse gases has steadily increased, measured in parts per million, is not at the highest level in recorded history.

We know that the rate is high because we can measure, and independently verify preserved samples, of ice, taken in the antarctic, which match up very consistently across the continent, as far back as about 800,000 years. The ice itself cannot be measured by temperature, as it doesn't remain the same temperature as it did since then, however it has remained a solid since the time, as evidence by the layers or freezing visually identifiable.

These layers, when measured for "greenhouse gases" show very consistent patterns, which correlate directly with temperature. As the presence of greenhouse gases increases the temperature of the climate increases, in direct proportion. This is important because it gives scientists the ability to accurately predict the trend that is is increased greenhouse gases present in the system, means increased average temperature.

Why is increased average temperature a concern? It has to do with raising sea levels, because of the polar ice melting, although very slowly, it is occurring. What happens when land masses are no longer covered by snow and ice, is very similar to what happens in a greenhouse, that landmass, is heated by radiation from the sun, and the air is warmed, and spreads out, further increasing the rates of convection and re-radiation of the energy from sunlight already trapped in the atmosphere.

Science as of yet, has no way of controlling either the amount of sunlight entering the Earth's atmosphere, or speeding up the process of removing the excess energy in the atmosphere, or reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are being produced and leading to the increased rate of energy accumulation inside the Earth's system.

0 Karma 67 Replies 7 Referrals

I don't think continuing to pollute the air with coal and oil energy is the way to go, but I could be wrong. Nobody knows what technology we'll have our hands on in 25 years.

I didn't say it was the way to go, either. I have no problem with trying to learn more about how we can mitigate our impact on the environment, assuming that impact is a bad thing. The bugaboo is deciding whether our impact on the planet is negative or positive, which is a value judgement subject to all kinds of emotional influences, not a scientific theory subject to testing. Much of man's impact on the planet has been beneficial, witness our ability to sustain such a huge human population, assuming doing so is a good thing. We seem to assume that the extinction of a single species is evidence of our evil ways, when species have been going extinct without our help for millions upon millions of years.

The scale of the problem is so massive that there is no way we mere humans can get our arms or minds around it. Any significant intervention, anything that would actually work to change the climate, if such an intervention existed, would carry unfathomable risk of unintended consequences. The conceipt inherent in the notion that man can do something truly meaningful to "stop" global warming is monumental.

Sorry, but I'm not entrusting the future of our globe to Al Gore.

Then, we have to decide what we would do about it. Even if we removed every car off the road, it would make a trivial impact on worldwide CO2. Humans only produce 14% of the CO2 that goes into the air each year. And CO2 only accounts for a couple % of the green house effect. (this data is available on the global warming advocate websites btw, they don't dispute these facts).

1) that is why we should not restrict our efforts to road
2) That is true that we are only a minor factor in the CO2 balance. However, we are unbalancing the cycle that the Earth has by producing/evacuating CO2.

Also, deforestation has to be taken into account. Because of this, Earth can absorb much less CO2 than before, which means we should really start stopping (or stop starting..?

) our CO2 emmissions, while working on technologies to help the Earth maintain a healthy CO2 balance. When that problem will be solved (and I have no doubt that we will solve it, if we actually start doing something about it), then the Greenhouse effect will be controlled.

Also, deforestation has to be taken into account.

there are more trees in the usa today than there was in 1776.

congratulation for the stupid banalities, Danielost

First, I'd need to see some proofs on that claim
Second, even if it was true (which could be), there is still massive deforestation worldwide. And the USA are not totally responsability-free about this.

(On the other hand, they are not the sole responsibles. But it's pointless to talk responsability about that now)

the forest area has decreased. but we have trees in areas that never had or had few trees such as the great plains. where you can walk down any street and see trees that wouldn't be there under natural reasons. and to show that i did look up the deforestation.

Prior to the arrival of European-Americans about one half of the United States land area was forest, about 4 million square kilometers (1 billion acres) in 1600. For the next 300 years land was cleared, mostly for agriculture at a rate that matched the rate of population growth. For every person added to the population, one to two hectares of land was cultivated.[27] This trend continued until the 1920s when the amount of crop land stabilized in spite of continued population growth. As abandoned farm land reverted to forest the amount of forest land increased from 1952 reaching a peak in 1963 of 3,080,000 km² (762 million acres). Since 1963 there has been a steady decrease of forest area with the exception of some gains from 1997. Gains in forest land have resulted from conversions from crop land and pastures at a higher rate than loss of forest to development. Because urban development is expected to continue, an estimated 93,000 km² (23 million acres) of forest land is projected be lost by 2050 [4], a 3% reduction from 1997. Other qualitative issues have been identified such as the continued loss of old-growth forest,[28] the increased fragmentation of forest lands, and the increased urbanization of forest land.[29].

WWW Link

and i did say more trees not more forest. i know i know play on words.

Tress in the middle of city streets, don't promote animal life, and there is minimal if any benefit to an eco system of squirrels and rabbits without higher and lower life, in urban areas.

what about coons, black bears, coyotes, to name a few.

lol, what are you trying to say?

what i am trying to say is for every animal that is going extent. there is another one or two thriving. not counting the so called domesticated ones.

right, um ok.

Man is pumping in lots of CO2, and it is trapping more and more of the suns energy inside the Earth, and at a higher rate, than ever in history.

I have published this many times and just in case you have ignored it in the past I will do it again. All pollutants that man puts out into the air in a single year is about 1.4 billion tons. A single volcano erupting puts out 14.6 billion tons of pollution into the air A DAY. On average there are between 25 and 56 volcanoes erupting world wide every day. Do the math and you will see what man does in one year is does not even register on the planet. Global climate change is real!

It has been proven 40 years ago by NASA, every hundred years the sun gets 10% hotter and larger. We are talking about a star over a million miles across pumping out radiated heat that surrounds our planet to the tune of 250f degrees. Because of our atmosphere and our rotation we have a cool and habitable earth to live upon.

And now we have an unexpected drop in sunspot activity that has decreased the amount of solar radiation reaching us daily. Witness the record cold temperatures and snowfalls in North America the likes of which haven't been seen in over a century. Once again, the conceit that we know what to do about a problem we insufficiently understand is so outrageous as to boggle the mind. The remedies advocated in "An Inconvenient Truth" could just as easily result in a monumentally inconvenient, or worse, mistake.

I have no problem with trying to learn more about how we can mitigate our impact on the environment, assuming that impact is a bad thing. The bugaboo is deciding whether our impact on the planet is negative or positive, which is a value judgement subject to all kinds of emotional influences, not a scientific theory subject to testing. Much of man's impact on the planet has been beneficial, witness our ability to sustain such a huge human population, assuming doing so is a good thing. We seem to assume that the extinction of a single species is evidence of our evil ways, when species have been going extinct without our help for millions upon millions of years.

The scale of the problem is so massive that there is no way we mere humans can get our arms or minds around it. Any significant intervention, anything that would actually work to change the climate, if such an intervention existed, would carry unfathomable risk of unintended consequences. The conceipt inherent in the notion that man can do something truly meaningful to "stop" global warming is monumental.

Daiwa, I see where you're coming from, but consider this- you spoke of how much of our impact on the planet has been beneficial... for whom? IF stewardship is practiced, then things can get better. Up where I live re-constituted Bison herds now roam freely, whereas in previous decades they were almost wiped out. But we were able to bring them back because we consciously devoted resources to preservation. When all we do is develop, develop, develop it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that we're pushing ourselves to extinction. You mentioned our ability to sustain such a huge human population- this is largely due to the green revolution in farming technologies in the 50's. However, these technologies required MASSIVE amounts of freshwater, and many folks at the time warned that they day would come when many aquifers would be depleted from these technologies. Now, we are starting to run into some serious water shortages that aren't going to get any better unless we drop a couple billion people fast.

Also there is the issue of our waste. Our landfills contaminate the ground with toxic chemicals that will not decompose for tens of thousands of years have certainly not been beneficial.

The big thing that really affects me though is that through it all, industry and government have been dragging their heels on change. Electric cars that are vastly more efficient and durable than internal combustion (and could be cheaply produced if they were mass-produced) were developed more than ten years ago. Just today Dodge came out with their answer to regain market share by putting a re-done challenger on the market. City is 13 mpg, highway 18 mpg. Ridiculous! When Reagan came into office, he declared war on the sun by having the solar panels on the whitehouse removed. Now, regardless of one's political slants, those solar panels in place were generating energy passively and would have done so for quite some time, no further fuel needed to do so.

Artysim -

I qualified that statement with "assuming doing so is a good thing." And I have no doubt we affect other species on this planet. My point is that preservation of bison is meaningful only in subjective, emotional terms. There is no scientific or evolutionary reason to preserve the bison as a species (as long as we might be able to); might make us feel good, but in the grand scale of earth history it's meaningless. Biological diversity is not an engineering goal, it just happens and will continue to happen as long as the earth sustains life. It will be a different diversity than today, however; the idea that preserving the status quo (even the status quo ante) is the holy grail is, again, an arrogant & emotional concept.

Unexpected? I think this is why it is called a hundred year cycle, and since scientist call it a hundred year cycle would it really be unexpected to see it get as cold as it did a century ago?

Surprised the hell out of Al Gore, it appears.

That's what I was getting at - if we're so smart, how come nobody in the Inconvenient Truth crowd was factoring that in?

Because it is a religion not a science to them. Facts don’t matter when you discuss religion. I believe in God and I don’t care what scientific facts you bring to me I will still believe in God. They believe in global warming the same way.