Solving Global warming as world president

[sebbysteiny]

Maybe we could get electric cars, charged by the solar cells I'd make everybody put on their roof. Even hybrids are better than what we've got.

 

That's definately an idea. It is a little on the expensive side though. I'm not sure first world countries can afford solar panels in that scale let alone the developing third world courtries.

 

What do peeps think of nuclear fusion as an option? In my opinion it is about 20 years away. However, these things are going to be so expensive, it may not be an option for the third world who will be one of the biggest poluters by that time. Thus, I think its invention will not change that much.

[Mercedes Benzene]

Your tax dollars feed and snuggle 800 million parasites.

 

I know. It's disgusting is it not? I hate how the U.S. thinks that they are doing such great deeds in the world when clearly we're just wasting money.

yes, its good to help the needy, and all that jazz, but HELLO! GOVERNMENT! WE'RE IN FREAKING DEBT HERE!!! Use the tax money to help the U.S, not people who have no direct relations with the U.S. other than sucking revenue from OUR federal government.

:eek2:

 

Sorry for my rant everyone, it's just I can't stand to see us in billions (trillions?) of dollars of debt, yet be just keep wasting money on wars and humanitarian aid. :hihi:

 

Anyway, back to global warming.... something has to be done, although, as previously mentioned, CO2 levels have historically been much higher. It's just that humans did not really have to deal with the implications of such levels. :eplane:

[sebbysteiny]

I hate how the U.S. thinks that they are doing such great deeds in the world when clearly we're just wasting money.

yes, its good to help the needy, and all that jazz, but HELLO! GOVERNMENT! WE'RE IN FREAKING DEBT HERE!!!

 

The goal of this thread is to discover what actually needs to be done, not how to convince the world to do it.

 

However, I would suggest that since the US is part of planet Earth, Climate Change will have severe economic consequences to it. New Orleans was struck by 2 very powerful hurricans. However, hurricans have become more frequent and more destructive over the years. Scientists are split on whether climate change is responsible for this. Therefore there is a 50% chance that without investing in stopping climate change, more major US cities will be wiped out. If that isn't an economic incentive, I don't know what is.

[C1ay]

Why do you think global warming is a man made problem? The planet as a whole was much warmer and tropical during the Jurassic era. Sea levels were higher and there were no polar ice caps. Do you think that was caused by man?

You haven't answered this yet. Why not glance through the results of this google search too before you do, i.e. phanerozoic carbon dioxide levels? Current levels are a small fraction of Cretaceous, Jurassic and Triassic eras but even those are only a fraction of the levels the Earth experienced during the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian periods.

[TheBigDog]

Why do you think global warming is a man made problem? The planet as a whole was much warmer and tropical during the Jurassic era. Sea levels were higher and there were no polar ice caps. Do you think that was caused by man?

You haven't answered this yet. Why not glance through the results of this google search too before you do, i.e. phanerozoic carbon dioxide levels? Current levels are a small fraction of Cretaceous, Jurassic and Triassic eras but even those are only a fraction of the levels the Earth experienced during the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian periods.

C1ay, I can't get answers out of thie C1ay guy either. :lol:

 

Global warming discussions always leave me asking tons of questions.

 

• What I always wonder about with the global warming claims is how exactly are we supposed to stop the natural processes of the earth?
  
• Given that natural cycles happen, how are we supposed to understand the impact of man vs the impact of nature?
  
• The climate of the earth has changed dramatically throughout history. All of those climate changes have had dramatic impact on all life on the planet. Is it more responsible to stop the normal planetary changes for the sake of the status quo that we have known for the past few years, or to allow the planet to change in its natural rythm and force ourselves to adapt to those changes?
  
• At what point is man no longer a part of the earths "natural history"?
  
• How is it that man is guilty of global climate change when all we are doing is evolving more specialized survival techniques than those other species that compete for the limited resources of the planet?
  
• We are the only species I am aware of that is conciously capable of conservation of other species. But where is the line between conservation of other species and conservation of man to be drawn?
  

 

Bill

[C1ay]

C1ay, I can't get answers out of thie C1ay guy either. :lol:

Maybe sebby will figure it out :)

[CraigD]

Thus, the question I ask is 'if you were world president, how would you solve global warming'.

I don’t believe it’s necessary to rule the world to address the engineering problem of regulating the world’s temperature. I don’t think, in fact, that such a solution need require broad international cooperation, or require that any nation of business have its carbon gas emissions restricted.

 

The obvious way to control world temperature is to control word CO2 levels. Under the assumption that there’s not acceptable way to reduce CO2 emissions – recall that I’m taking the roll of the designer of an engineering solution, not an international tyrant – the only mechanisms available for our use are those that remove CO2. To the best of my knowledge, the most significant such mechanisms the uptake of CO2 by phytoplankton, and subsequent deposition of it in the form of the remains of these plants on the ocean floor.

 

According to some biologists (eg: the late John Martin), these plants have, for all of modern history, conveniently been operating at a small fraction of their metabolic potential, due mostly to, for various reasons, a deficiency of iron. Artificially “fertilizing” low-activity areas of the ocean – most of it in the southern hemisphere – can substantially increase the rate that CO2 is removed from the atmosphere.

 

Others, such as Mark Brzezinski, are skeptical that this approach can succeed. IMHO, the approach very promising, and warrants the greatest support from the various science-support agencies. It has the potential to control climate not by the politically and economically troubled restricting of emissions, but by a economical, low-tech industrial process similar to the production of steel, that is unlikely to cause trouble for any country or company.

[TheFaithfulStone]

yet be just keep wasting money on wars and humanitarian aid.

 

I like how you lump those two into the same category.

 

I am shocked, yes SHOCKED at how many intelligent people don't think global warming is anthropogenic.

 

Here is my shocking idea for the day. Will global warming destroy the world? Certainly not. Will it destroy humanity? Probably not. Will it destroy Industrial civilization? Maybe. Will it usher in a worldwide depression as billions die from famine and flood? Almost definitely. Will it suck to have to take anti-malarials in Ontario, and journey south across the Great American Desert that used to be Illinois? Oh yeah.

 

So if you're cool with those consequences, you know, keep on denying...

 

Global warming is human caused and real. That's it.

 

This is not a subject for debate, any more than evolution is a subject for debate, or relativity is a subject for debate - the facts are established within the mainstream community.

BAM.

BAM

BAMITY

BAM

 

How do you fix it?

 

TFS

[HydrogenBond]

I have heard various Global warming reports in the news that suggest that the world is now warming than it was 500 to 2000 years ago. If that is true, the history of civilation must be wrong. For it to be so warm back in the time of Christ, using modern theory, there must have been major industrial polution all over the world during the time of Christ. With far fewer people in the world than today (much less than 1 billion) people must have breathed out 5 times more CO2, per breath, than today, even though most people were malnurished; perpetual motion?

 

I think we need to separate political and science agendas. Both appear to be force feeding Joe public biased data for fun and profit.

[sebbysteiny]

am shocked, yes SHOCKED at how many intelligent people don't think global warming is anthropogenic.

 

Here is my shocking idea for the day. Will global warming destroy the world? Certainly not. Will it destroy humanity? Probably not. Will it destroy Industrial civilization? Maybe. Will it usher in a worldwide depression as billions die from famine and flood? Almost definitely. Will it suck to have to take anti-malarials in Ontario, and journey south across the Great American Desert that used to be Illinois? Oh yeah.

 

I am absolutely stunned to agree :shrug:

 

have heard various Global warming reports in the news that suggest that the world is now warming than it was 500 to 2000 years ago. If that is true, the history of civilation must be wrong. For it to be so warm back in the time of Christ, using modern theory, there must have been major industrial polution all over the world during the time of Christ.

 

Interesting idea but I believe flawed. The Earth has had many natural cycles of climate change. I'm confident that valcanos and sun rotations can explain the heat at the turn of the century like it can explain the coolness of the 1700s and the heat of the 1300s. However, these cannot explain todays heat: only global warming can.

 

I also want to say that global warming is worse than it appears. Measuring todays temparatures to measure global warming is like measuring light through a sunscreen. A significant amount of global warming is reduced by global dimming which is caused by the dirty burning of fossil fuels. However, the moment we stop so burning (eg to reduce respiritory deseases), the world will immediately get even hotter by a significant amount.

[Barry Scott]

Uncle Al its all well and good saying that if we exterminated 'four billion 3rd world parasites' that the rest ofthe world would benefit from a decreased rise in global warming, but thats not realistic. How do you propose we exterminate four billion people without starting WWIII ?

[pgrmdave]

TFS, I'm going to take just your first link and see if I can put some perspective on it.

 

Earth's surface has undergone unprecedented warming over the last century, particularly over the last two decades.

 

Unprecedented from what? All of earth's history? How much do we really know to say that it has never happened before, and that this is definitely 'unprecedented'. The earth's temperature is not a stagnent thing, just like the earth is not a stagnent thing.

 

Astonishingly, every single year since 1992 is in the current list of the 20 warmest years on record.

 

Not that impressive if you've only been keeping good track of the temperature for a (relatively) short period of time. If you started keeping track of the temperature in January, would you be surprized that in July, the past ten days were in the top fifteen hottest days?

 

The natural patterns of climate have been altered.

 

Which natural patterns, and how can we tell what the year to year temperatures are, and be so certain that it is not a normal thing for the temperature of the earth to fluctuate?

 

Carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning and land clearing has been accumulating in the atmosphere, where it acts like a blanket keeping Earth warm and heating up the surface, ocean, and atmosphere. As a result, current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher than at any time during the last 650,000 years.

 

This may be a valid point, but I couldn't check the links to see how they verified this as the footnotes only pointed me to error 404 pages.

 

Much as the Air Force develops computer programs to simulate aircraft flight under different conditions, climate scientists develop computer programs to simulate global climate changes under different conditions.

 

Much of the rest of this article relies on these computer programs which are constantly touted as 'sophisticated'. Computers are amazing tools, and can be very useful, but I don't think that they are able to predict anything as incredibly chaotic as climate change. Consider your local weather. How often is it right vs. wrong for the next day? For the next week? For the next month? How about predicting the next ten years, or ten decades, or the next ten centuries? Weather is simply too chaotic to be accurately modelled on a computer.

 

The measured increases in water temperature lie well outside the bounds of natural climate variation.

Over the period 1979-1999, a study shows that human-induced changes in heat-trapping emissions and ozone account for more than 80 percent of the rise in tropopause height. This is yet another example of how science detectives are quantifying the impact of human activities on climate.

By comparing Earth's temperature over that last century with models comparing climate drivers, a study showed that, from 1950 to the present, most of the warming was caused by heat-trapping emissions from human activities. In fact, heat-trapping emissions are driving the climate about three times more strongly now than they were in 1950. The spatial pattern of where this warming is occurring around the globe indicates human-induced causes.

 

Again, these could be valid points, but I have no way of checking the footnotes, as they simply lead to error pages.

 

I think that this could show that humans have a stronger effect than I had thought, but I don't have any way to check how they did their research. The only research that they explained was using the computers, which I don't think is a good way of doing science. Especially when I don't believe that we have nearly enough information to begin to model these things on computers.

[pgrmdave]

This graph is taken from http://yosemite.epa.gov/OAR/globalwarming.nsf/content/Climate.html

 

It shows that temperatures have generally increased since 1880. However, there are some things which should give you pause. The avg. temp. goes down from mid1930's to the 1970s. The temp. dips sharply after 1900 until 1915. Would you attribute these things to human activity? Can you explain these things? It is simple to say that there is a direct cause and effect of human pollution and all other factors remain the same, but I'd be interested in a graph of the avg. temp. from 10000BC to 5000BC, would it be a flat line, or might it have quite a bit of fluctuation?

[TheFaithfulStone]

Again, these could be valid points, but I have no way of checking the footnotes, as they simply lead to error pages.

 

Both of the links in the foot notes I got pages for. The rest of the footnotes are printed references, so you can't check the links.

 

I can provide you with Nature and Science references if you want, but I don't think people generally read print references on Internet forums.

 

The only research that they explained was using the computers, which I don't think is a good way of doing science.

 

How would you suggest climate change studies be done then? It's not like we can just do an experiment - we've only got the one lab, and we kinda live there.

 

Especially when I don't believe that we have nearly enough information to begin to model these things on computers.

 

I think you're underestimating the accuracy of computer models, and besides, computer models of world weather don't tell you whether it will rain on Tuesday, they tell you whether it will hot in the summer. These are "big picture" kind of programs.

 

It's incorrect to say - "Computer programs cannot predict local weather events given limited local data, therefore computer programs cannot predict global climate patterns given limited global climate data." It borders on being a non-sequiter.

 

Of course, climate models are not precisely accurate, but they can draw some general conclusions.

 

1) It's getting warmer.

2) It's because of anthropogenic carbon dioxide.

 

The major uncertainties in climate models have to do wit cloud cover, and cosmic ray effects on solar energy. While these may be factors in global warming, they are not likely to be as strong of contributors as human-produced carbon dioxide.

 

Wikipedia actually has a pretty good discussion, although you've got to sift through a lot of snot stew.

 

The evidence is pretty overwhelming actually.

 

TFS

 

addendum: I do not think it "unnatural" for humans to alter the climate, nor do I think that it is going to be "unprecedentedly" warm. Plenty of things will survive a 5º C increase in temperature. Unfortunately, industrialized human society is not one of those things

 

If it get's 5º hotter, the world isn't in trouble, but we sure are.