Alright... I dont play BF2... I found this forum's topic on google while searching for something to do with global warming, i forget... Anyway, I just figured I would give some incite on this topic
Just to let you know, 2006 from January to August has now been deemed the hottest year on record since 1934 during the Dust Bowl. Look it up. The year to hold that record before this was 2005.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2700.htm
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/recordtemp2005.html
Ok.... first of all,
Global Warming is real... and in the recent century it has definitely, at least in a large percentage, been caused by us....
As James Hanson (the leading climate scientist for NASA) has said on the show “60 Minutes”, his research shows that man has just 10 years to begin to reverse greenhouse gas emissions, or global warming will reach a tipping point and will be unstoppable.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml
Here is another link about James Hanson:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html?ex=1296190800&en=28e236da0977ee7f&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Let us think about this. I will lay down some FACTS:
Global Warming: the observed increase in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans in recent decades. Global warming started long before the "Industrial Revolution" and the invention of the internal combustion engine. Global warming began 18,000 years ago as the earth started warming its way out of the
Pleistocene Ice Age-- a time when much of North America, Europe, and Asia lay buried beneath great sheets of glacial ice.
What Are Greenhouse Gases?Some greenhouse gases occur naturally in the atmosphere, while others result from human activities. Naturally occurring greenhouse gases include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. Certain human activities, however, add to the levels of most of these naturally occurring gases:
Carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere when solid waste, fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal), and wood and wood products are burned.
Methane is emitted during the production and transport of coal, natural gas, and oil. Methane emissions also result from the decomposition of organic wastes in municipal solid waste landfills, and the raising of livestock.
Nitrous oxide is emitted during agricultural and industrial activities, as well as during combustion of solid waste and fossil fuels.
Very powerful greenhouse gases that are not naturally occurring include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), which are generated in a variety of industrial processes.
Each greenhouse gas differs in its ability to absorb heat in the atmosphere. HFCs and PFCs are the most heat-absorbent. Methane traps over 21 times more heat per molecule than carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide absorbs 270 times more heat per molecule than carbon dioxide. Often, estimates of greenhouse gas emissions are presented in units of millions of metric tons of carbon equivalents (MMTCE), which weights each gas by its GWP value, or Global Warming Potential.
The most Abundant Greenhouse gas would be Water Vapor. The next, Carbon Dioxide.
This information of greenhouse gasses comes from US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) Climate Report. http://yosemite.epa.gov/OAR/globalwarming.nsf/content/Climate.html
OK… Greenhouse Gasses are actually good. Without them, our planet would be about 60 degrees Fahrenheit cooler (from its average 60 degree Fahrenheit temperature) than it is today. So we do need them.
CO2 and Temperature Records:Here are 2 links to CO2 and Temperature Records both taken from Wikipedia.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Co2-temperature-plot.png
Here’s a paragraph from C. Donald Ahrens Meteorology Today Eighth Edition, pg. 6:
“Carbon dioxide is another important greenhouse gas because, like water vapor, it traps a portion of the earth’s outgoing energy. Consequently, with everything else being equal, as the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increases, so should the average global surface temperature. Mathematical model experiments that predict future atmospheric conditions estimate that increasing levels of CO2 (and other greenhouse gasses) will result in a global warming of surface air between 1.4°C and 5.8°C (about 2.5°F and 10.5°F) by the year 2100. Such warming could result in a variety of consequences, such as increasing precipitation in certain areas and reducing it in others as the global air currents that guide the major storm systems across the earth begin to shift from their “normal” paths.”
In Antarctica, measurements of CO2 concentrations and temperature go back 650,000 years and at no point in the last 650,000 years before the preindustrial era did the CO2 concentration go above 300 parts per million (0.03 percent by volume of the atmosphere). Today’s concentration is at about 380 ppm (0.038 percent by volume of the atmosphere).
Now unless we cut down emissions and start using more renewable sources of energy our co2 level will double in the next 50 years and triple in the next 100 years. This is not a good thing. That kind of warming is not a good thing. BAD
World Population:All information on Population is from Wikipedia.com
1900: 1.7 Billion
1950: 2.5 Billion
1970: 3.7 Billion
Early 2006: 6.5 Billion
Here is a link that shows the rising population… just interesting. http://www.netlingo.com/more/poptick.html
OK… Now let’s think… The World’s population has risen roughly 3 billion in the last 30 years. What does that mean for pollution emissions? As far as I can tell, they are going to rise just as they have since the Industrial Revolution, but more likely at a far larger rate… More people driving cars, more people heating and cooling homes, more power plants, larger and more landfills… To me, there doesn’t seem to be much of any change in the way we are powering ourselves… Coal seems to be the predominating source, and a change to more renewable sources that would outweigh our huge amount of coal power sources doesn’t seem too promising in the future, for not only America, but for much of the world. For example…
China is currently in an industrial revolution of their own. That’s a great thing, but they are using old technology such as coal. They plan to build one coal fired power plant every week for the next seven years. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11080450/site/newsweek/ With a population of 1,313,973,713, they are forming cities the size of Manhattan very quickly... I am not sure of the exactly how long their cities are being built.
Ok I’m done… I don’t feel like explaining positive feedbacks from the warming or anything else… I am bored now.
You people who think that this isnt a problem should educate yourselves.
DocZ wrote:
global warming is over rated, it is a natural occuring phenomenon... It will eventually lead to a new ice ige, though not so dramatically as the world of tomorrow, but that is the way of things...
And methane gas is a severely worse greenhouse gas than CO2, so you could actually link global warùming due to humanity's flatulence.....
The real threat hanging over our heads is actually underneath us, as the earth's core is actually gradually cooling down for the last few millenia.... if the earth's core goes too cold, it solidifies, and bye bye electro-magnetic field, we'll get nuked by solar radiation....
So you can imagine I am not too worried about "global warming", it's right up there in my over-rated pile together with bird flu and others...
Watch some National Geographic specials people, like "Earth Investigated" and the like, and read up on related topics....
First of all Methane is not necessarily a "severely" worse greenhouse gas because of its lack of abundance. HFCs PFCs and nitrous oxide all absorb way more heat than both carbon dioxide and methane. So that is pretty irrelevant.
Secondly, I’m not too sure where you got this information the earth's core... it may be cooling but it is at such a slow rate it really should not be much of any worry for us. Also the earth's electro-magnetic field has died down and reversed many times just in the past million years and there are no links to it's reversals and extinction events... though intensified solar radiation would not be the greatest thing.
Last edited by DrDemise (2006-10-03 14:07:14)