Is the earth really dying?

[meinchewster]

Originally Posted by Bullseye

Polar Bear populations are actually increasing,the Icecaps are not getting smaller and temperatures have actually fallen slightly in the last 10 years.Al (I'm making $millions from carbon trading) Gore . I've been seriously researching this for the last few years,only about 20% of the scientists of the IPCC were climatologists,many have refuted the whole thing,look up "hockey stick","state of fear" and "sunspot cycle 24",thats just a start,might take a few weeks,but then make your own mind up !.
The really sad thing about this is that you can no longer say that "certain establishments,eerghhumm,Auntie Beebthat were always impartial"are no longer so,very sad

from my time at uni, a former lecturer in climatology showed us a wealth of documentation detailing global warming. The most convincing from me was out of the 127 leading climatologists worldwide, 124 had no doubt human induced global warming was occuring at an alarming rate. The 3 that thought otherwise where authors of scientific papers that found this not to be the case, these papers and the research behind these papers was funded by shell oil.

If you had researched this thoroughly, i.e scientific documentation and not internet articles you may have found a staggering wealth of information that provides evidence that global warming is happening and at a rate far worse than originally estimated.

[meinchewster]

Originally Posted by monkeypoo

The Earth is not dying because the worst humans can do is wipe out ourselves and most other wildlife. In time the Earth will be full of life again.

All humans can do is try to make sure we don't do that, for our own sake, but the Earth will go on no matter what we do to mess it up.

The problem is, we have no right as a species to take the rest of them with us, so although as you say, thats the worst we can do, the fate of humanity is irrelevant, the fate of the rest of life on earth is the real issue.

[monkeypoo]

I agree with you, of course we have no right but humans have been wiping out other animals and damaging the Earth for a long time. I'm just saying that the Earth will be around long after humans are so it's not dying. We are just hurting and killing ourselves and other creatures, not the planet.

[Bullseye]

Originally Posted by meinchewster

from my time at uni, a former lecturer in climatology showed us a wealth of documentation detailing global warming. The most convincing from me was out of the 127 leading climatologists worldwide, 124 had no doubt human induced global warming was occuring at an alarming rate. The 3 that thought otherwise where authors of scientific papers that found this not to be the case, these papers and the research behind these papers was funded by shell oil.

If you had researched this thoroughly, i.e scientific documentation and not internet articles you may have found a staggering wealth of information that provides evidence that global warming is happening and at a rate far worse than originally estimated.

Oh yeah,forgot that any AGW deniers were in the pay of the oil companies !,silly me I am of coarse totally wrong.

[Highland Damsel]

I agree, don't think we are gonna kill the earth, there have been far more catastrophic and fast moving events than the human induced climate change we seem to be effecting. The onset of the last ice age was really quite fast, a geologist once told me it had and could happen again in less than a century, about sixty years! We are doing so much damage we have to do something to mitigate it although it might be that we have passed the point of no return, James Lovelock is of that view, his estimate of half the worlds population dying out without hope of reversing that might be extreme, it does sound it but i don't think anyone knows.

Also agree that we are in an interglacial period, it would be so arrogant to assume that just because we are here that anoher ice age couldn't happen, or something even worse, a super volcano, hell the shape of Yellowstone changes as it grows new lumps from it's surface! Ash cloud obscures the sun no plants total collapse of food webs and ecosystems...scary

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Bullseye

Oh yeah,forgot that any AGW deniers were in the pay of the oil companies !,silly me I am of coarse totally wrong.

well at least you've seen the light now

seriously tho i completely support your right to believe what you like - but it is difficult to find a credible scientist who isnt in the pay of the oil companies or the american far right who supports your line of argument.

for example in your original post you mention the "hockey stick" presumably in the context of it now being disproved - as made much of on many AGW denier websites . However a new study carried out in the last year totally refutes this and shows that the hockey stick is in fact broadly accurate, and the arguments against it grossly flawed.

I am all for your advocation that people should examine all the evidence and make up their own minds - but the stress here is all the evidence not just that put by one side or the other, and not rhetoric or flawed science propogated on many websites (and yes some of the poor science can be found on some of the pro AGW sites too)

for example polar bear populations are not reducing (yet) - but the sea ice is melting which is pushing the bear more onto land, which is causing them problems hunting and thus pushing them more into conflict with man. (check out the canadian and norwegian wildlife dept records)

average global temperatures have not actually fallen in the last ten years - they trended way up through the industrial revolution , blipped slightly downwards and are now going up again - this kind of thing is easily found on reputable meterological and scientific websites and if you dont trust the graphs found on line get the raw data and plot it yourself

average british temperatures have fallen slightly over the last ten years butthis is irrelevant as the GW issue relates to the global mean not the local - in fact if AGW causes the odden feature to melt and not reform the gulfstream will move and britain will be significantly colder in the medium term (on a par with coastal labrador) - but this won't mean that AGW isnt happening.

so yes dont trust what you are told ( by either side), do your own research and then make your own mind up - but bear the consequence in mind, if the AGW proponents are wrong fossil fuels are still running out so developing alternate technologies and lessening our dependence on them can only be a good thing , however if they are right but we chose to stick our heads in the sand because it is more comfortable then the consequence could be dire.

the planet wont die whatever we do , but runaway global warming could in the worst case spell human extinction. (which might not be a bad thing for the planet , but its not something any of us want to experience)

[meinchewster]

Originally Posted by eeyore

well at least you've seen the light now

seriously tho i completely support your right to believe what you like - but it is difficult to find a credible scientist who isnt in the pay of the oil companies or the american far right who supports your line of argument.

for example in your original post you mention the "hockey stick" presumably in the context of it now being disproved - as made much of on many AGW denier websites . However a new study carried out in the last year totally refutes this and shows that the hockey stick is in fact broadly accurate, and the arguments against it grossly flawed.

I am all for your advocation that people should examine all the evidence and make up their own minds - but the stress here is all the evidence not just that put by one side or the other, and not rhetoric or flawed science propogated on many websites (and yes some of the poor science can be found on some of the pro AGW sites too)

for example polar bear populations are not reducing (yet) - but the sea ice is melting which is pushing the bear more onto land, which is causing them problems hunting and thus pushing them more into conflict with man. (check out the canadian and norwegian wildlife dept records)

average global temperatures have not actually fallen in the last ten years - they trended way up through the industrial revolution , blipped slightly downwards and are now going up again - this kind of thing is easily found on reputable meterological and scientific websites and if you dont trust the graphs found on line get the raw data and plot it yourself

average british temperatures have fallen slightly over the last ten years butthis is irrelevant as the GW issue relates to the global mean not the local - in fact if AGW causes the odden feature to melt and not reform the gulfstream will move and britain will be significantly colder in the medium term (on a par with coastal labrador) - but this won't mean that AGW isnt happening.

so yes dont trust what you are told ( by either side), do your own research and then make your own mind up - but bear the consequence in mind, if the AGW proponents are wrong fossil fuels are still running out so developing alternate technologies and lessening our dependence on them can only be a good thing , however if they are right but we chose to stick our heads in the sand because it is more comfortable then the consequence could be dire.

the planet wont die whatever we do , but runaway global warming could in the worst case spell human extinction. (which might not be a bad thing for the planet , but its not something any of us want to experience)

Nicely put eeyore, but to be honest I refuse to stand on the fence on issue of global warming, in the face of SO MUCH evidence, glacial melts being at record highs, extreme weather events etc, it is astonishing that some have the bottle for such scepticsm, and even with the evidence on show being massively biased toward the reality of human induced global warming some still deny it, what could be the motivation of this denial, do these people just want to drive hummers?

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by meinchewster

Nicely put eeyore, but to be honest I refuse to stand on the fence on issue of global warming, in the face of SO MUCH evidence, glacial melts being at record highs, extreme weather events etc, it is astonishing that some have the bottle for such scepticsm, and even with the evidence on show being massively biased toward the reality of human induced global warming some still deny it, what could be the motivation of this denial, do these people just want to drive hummers?

some do

some have vested interests in the oil/car/airline/ conspicuous consumption industry

and some are credulous and are taken in by the propoganda put about by those who have such interests.

[Nightranger]

Prince Charles was just being a high profile voice for a problem that is not new and the only thing that is different is the timeline. Unfortunately, the preponderance of buzz phrases means people are sometimes focused on single issues rather than on the bigger picture. This means that some people may not be aware that there are concerns about certain processes that could pass beyond a critical point. One example is a critical warming of coastal waters leading to release of methane from marine oozes. This would boost the level of greenhouse gases (methane is much worse than CO2), causing warming to spiral beyond anything predicted by current gradual models. There is some reason for believing that this was a contributing factor in the great Permian extinction, which wiped out around 95% of all species on Earth (much higher than the K-T extinction). The continents were joined together and occupied a largely equatorial position, allowing warm water to circulate all around the globe. This in turn released the methane normally locked up in continental shelf oozes and pushed global temperatures higher. Once the process started it would be impossible to reverse, as indeed, would several other processes connected to our climate. There are some people who feel that we may already have passed criticality and reducing emissions etc will only slow things down. At least Prince Charles was voicing a more optimistic view for the necessity of action.

[excoriate]

Originally Posted by Cellarman

In 10 or so's time years time, the same doom and gloom people who are crying out about global warming will probably be telling us how we are heading for an ice age. We're just going through an inter-glacial period with a perfectly natural fluctuation in our climate.

And are you doing anything, you know, just in case the brains of the scientific world are, you know, right?