Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth

[Dantheman]

...[The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is] about 2.996×10^12 tonnes...

If you and the Pope are both correct, humans add about 1% to global CO2 each year. That may not sound significant, but it is. And it's not just CO2. Releases of methane and many other GHGs that are much more potent than CO2 are rising rapidly (methane is about 20x more potent than CO2, and the numbers only go up from there, fast). The amount of methane that could be released from undecomposed organic matter in northern permafrost if it thaws is staggering.

Let's look at this from a purely economic perspective for a minute though. A major British study last year found that the cost of making the entire world CO2 neutral and effectively curbing GW would be about 1% of global GDP. The economic costs of the effects of the most likely amount of warming if nothing is done would be about 20% of global GDP, annually, for a long time (for perspective, the U.S. economy contracted about 25% during the depression).

For the sake of argument, let's say they were way, way off. Upfront costs will be 3-5% of GDP and the cost of doing nothing will only be 10-15% of GDP. Still, the cost of fixing the problem is much, much less than the cost of doing nothing.

[ptavv]

Don't forget that it's not as though there's merely an existing stock of CO2 and we keep increasing it. Plants, plankton, and the ocean itself absorb large amounts of CO2 (there's many times more CO2 stored in the ocean than there is in the atmosphere).

I'm not sure it's as simple as just "paying a fee" to become carbon neutral. Nor is it an instantaneous transition. There are logistcal and infrastructure changes which could take decades to implement (even if they were approved or desired).

[mr_gyptian]

I blame this guy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyVMUm4jNas

[Mott the Hoople]

25 yrs ago they were saying we were all gonna freeze to death. Newsweek, Time, all of em. It's all bullshit. Frostbite ends Bancroft-Arnesen trek

By PATRICK CONDON, Associated Press WriterMon Mar 12, 5:28 PM ET

A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment.

"Ann said losing toes and going forward at all costs was never part of the journey," said Ann Atwood, who helped organize the expedition.

On Monday, the pair was at Canada's Ward Hunt Island, awaiting a plane to take them to Resolute, Canada, where they were to return to Minneapolis later this week.

Bancroft, 51, became the first woman to cross the North Pole on a 1986 expedition. She and Arnesen, 53, of Oslo, Norway, were the first women to ski across Antarctica in 2001.

But the latest trek got off to a bad start. The day they set off from Ward Hunt Island, a plane landing near the women hit their gear, punching a hole in Bancroft's sled and damaging one of Arnesen's snowshoes.

They repaired the snowshoe with binding from a ski, but Atwood said the patch job created pressure on Arnesen's left foot, which led to blisters that then turned into frostbite.

Then there was the cold — quite a bit colder, Atwood said, then Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times, Atwood said.

"My first reaction when they called to say there were calling it off was that they just sounded really, really cold," Atwood said.

She said Bancroft and Arnesen were applying hot water bottles to Arnesen's foot every night, but had to wake up periodically because the bottles froze.

The explorers had planned to call in regular updates to school groups by satellite phone, and had planned online posts with photographic evidence of global warming. In contrast to Bancroft's 1986 trek across the Arctic with fellow Minnesota explorer Will Steger, this time she and Arnesen were prepared to don body suits and swim through areas where polar ice has melted.

Atwood said there was some irony that a trip to call attention to global warming was scuttled in part by extreme cold temperatures.

"They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming," Atwood said. "But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

___

[warthog]

I used quotes because of the following



1. Martin Durkin, the creator of TGGWS, made a film a few years ago about how breast implants are healthy for women. Seems to me to have the same appeal as "anthropogenic climate change is not our fault."

http://www.lobbywatch.org/p2temp2.as...38&page=1&op=2


2. One of the scientists who Durkin quoted now says his comments were taken out of context: "But there is one scientist in the film whose work has not been debunked: the oceanographer Carl Wunsch. He appears to support the idea that increasing carbon dioxide is not responsible for rising global temperatures. Wunsch says he was "completely misrepresented" by the programme, and "totally misled" by the people who made it."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists...032570,00.html

Also, I don't think it was aired on BBC, it was Channel 4. I'll let one of the blokes chime in on the credibility of that station, I have no idea.

Thanks for the clarification. I figured there were some discrepencies with that program, but it does get you thinking. Science is not black and white, except on this issue, it would seem. I have been wondering why that is.

[haydukelives]

man? nope

[Crass3000]

News flash: Lack of sun will be at fault for the world's next ice age. Appoximately 5000 years from now according to scientists.

[TahoePowShredder]

we can't control how hot the sun cooks the galaxy obviously, but we can control our own retarded wasteful habits. lets start by ridding ourselves of retarded cars that serve no purpose, but to waste maximum amounts of fuel. i.e. H2's, huge lifted trucks used by honkys to show off to other stupid rednecks etc etc!!!

[Crass3000]

My gem to add is that if you are REALLY worried about the environment then don't have kids. Overpopulation is REALLY the biggest problem.

[Crass3000]

we can't control how hot the sun cooks the galaxy obviously, but we can control our own retarded wasteful habits. lets start by ridding ourselves of retarded cars that serve no purpose, but to waste maximum amounts of fuel. i.e. H2's, huge lifted trucks used by honkys to show off to other stupid rednecks etc etc!!!

Let's start by asking the environmental left's hero Al Gore to:

Stop flying in private jets that waste tons more gas in one flight than a normal car does in a year.

Sell all of his four huge houses. It has been documented that one of Al Gore's houses uses as much electricity, gas, etc in one month than a normal house uses in a year.

Quit driving to your rallies in a Prius but having a convoy of limosines follow him with all his guests, etc.

I think if Al Gore can do what he says instead of expecting everbody else to he might be able to lead by example. Is Al Gore a total hypocrit?

[ak_powder_monkey]

and only 1% of that is from man? Get a clue.

[Jer]

LIMITED TIME OFFER! GET YOUR FREE CLUE TODAY!



FIGURE SPM-2. Global-average radiative forcing (RF) estimates and ranges in 2005 for anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and other important agents and mechanisms, together with the typical geographical extent (spatial scale) of the forcing and the assessed level of scientific understanding (LOSU). The net anthropogenic radiative forcing and its range are also shown. These require summing asymmetric uncertainty estimates from the component terms, and cannot be obtained by simple addition. Additional forcing factors not included here are considered to have a very low LOSU. Volcanic aerosols contribute an additional natural forcing but are not included in this figure due to their episodic nature. Range for linear contrails does not include other possible effects of aviation on cloudiness. {2.9, Figure 2.20}

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

[ptavv]

the obvious solution (based on that figure) is to start spraying aerosols into the atmosphere

why am i the only one seeing this?

[Jer]

the obvious solution (based on that figure) is to start spraying aerosols into the atmosphere

why am i the only one seeing this?

The obvious answer to that question is always: you aren't.

[Dantheman]

the obvious solution (based on that figure) is to start spraying aerosols into the atmosphere

why am i the only one seeing this?

You're not the only one. I mentioned in my first post that sulfate aerosols were responsible for the cooling observed in the '70s and that people have proposed pumping sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to mitigate GHG warming. However, there is that ever-looming Law of Unintended Consequences....


RE: Hoople's article about the arctic scientists, weather =\ climate. Don't worry though, people on both sides fuck this up all the time.

[mr_gyptian]

You're not the only one. I mentioned in my first post that sulfate aerosols were responsible for the cooling observed in the '70s and that people have proposed pumping sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to mitigate GHG warming. However, there is that ever-looming Law of Unintended Consequences....


RE: Hoople's article about the arctic scientists, weather =\ climate. Don't worry though, people on both sides fuck this up all the time.

They were also recommending dropping coal slag all over the polar ice caps. We'd be in quite a fix right now if that had happened.

[bgmark13]

How do we know these polar ice caps are not melting because we forgot to replenish the ozone layer 15 years ago by launching those rockets up to the south pole with fresh ozone...or has everyone forgot. It may not be co2 induced global warming that will flood the world, but forgetfulness.

[Cliff Huckable]

1. Science is just as subject to trendyness and fads as any other human endeavor, but over time it tends to sort out the truth eventually. That process takes way to long for the short attention spans of most folks, so the hyped stuff takes over for a while. Look back at the 1970's and the impending ice age hype. That wasn't sexy enough so in the 90's the hypers switched to GW.

2. I have long believed that the science of climate showed that solar output variability was the single biggest factor in climate, but that plays against all of the factors that have made human-casued global warming such a big seller in the marketplaces of ideas and research funding.

1a) Your view of "science' is laughable.
And
1b) if you believed what you're saying you'd be ridiculing the "Blame The Sun" idea as just the latest trend/sexy idea.

2. And you're a specialist in...which field?