Is global warming bad?
- Thread starter shadeau
- Start date
Asterix said:
When youhave someone so bent on blaming one man for all the ills of the world. One must begin to wonder where he is comming from.
Groups Meet to Discuss Climate Change
Science - AP
By RANDY JAMES, Associated Press Writer
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - The search for new strategies to confront global warming takes center stage in Buenos Aires on Monday as thousands of environmentalists and government policy-makers gather for an international conference on climate change.
The annual United Nations (news - web sites) gathering will be the last conference before the February implementation of the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites), a landmark agreement requiring 30 of the world's developed nations to reduce "greenhouse gas" emissions by 2012.
Many scientists believe the heat-trapping gases pose a serious threat to life on Earth by causing a gradual rise in the planet's temperature. Global warming (news - web sites) has been blamed for prompting more violent storms, raising sea levels and shrinking animal habitats.
...
The United States produces roughly one quarter of the Earth's total greenhouse gas emissions. The most common is carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels in automobiles and other engines.
...
The conference comes at a time of growing urgency among many environmental groups alarmed by what they consider mounting evidence of global warming's destructive toll.
U.S. scientists reported last April that global temperatures rose an average of 0.77 degrees Fahrenheit between 1991 and 1998.
The World Wildlife Fund and other environmental groups released a report Monday calling global warming the greatest threat facing the world's coral reefs. Twenty percent of the world's reefs are severely damaged, and another 50 percent are under risk of collapsing due to higher water temperatures and carbon dioxide concentration, among other factors, the report said.
An October report by Greenpeace, Oxfam and other environmental groups said that global warming is at least partially responsible for this year's severe hurricanes in the Caribbean, flooding in Bangladesh and lengthening droughts.
Last month, the intergovernmental Arctic Council announced findings that higher temperatures in the Arctic are melting sea ice, buckling roads and threatening polar bears and other animals.
In Argentina, a 220-foot wall of ice sheared off the giant Perito Moreno glacier last March in a rare spectacle some have attributed to global warming.
...
Many attending the conference will be eager to enlist greater help from developing nations to fight global warming, according to Elliot Diringer of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
"There will be the gnawing sense that Kyoto is only a start, and we need to work even harder to figure out what can bring the international effort to the next stage," Diringer said.
One widely shared objective is to develop a new agreement requiring cuts in greenhouse gases among larger developing nations such as China and India, where emissions are rising fastest.
However, Margo Thorning, an economist and former U.S. Energy Department official, says requiring reductions from developing nations would be a mistake.
"We can't ask them to cut their emissions, because they need economic growth so desperately to curb their poverty," said Thorning, chief economist at the American Council for Capital Formation in Washington.
The expense of expanding the Kyoto Protocol would divert money from researching cleaner energy sources and finding solutions to other global threats, Thorning said.
"We ought to spend more money on things that people are dying from today, like a lack of sewage (facilities) and a lack of clean water," she said. "I'm not sure global warming is worthy of this much attention."
~~~~~~~~~
Evidently, the vast majority of the world's scientists clearly perceive global warming as a problem, and Kyoto as an important tool in helping mankind.
Whither the US???
Science - AP
By RANDY JAMES, Associated Press Writer
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - The search for new strategies to confront global warming takes center stage in Buenos Aires on Monday as thousands of environmentalists and government policy-makers gather for an international conference on climate change.
The annual United Nations (news - web sites) gathering will be the last conference before the February implementation of the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites), a landmark agreement requiring 30 of the world's developed nations to reduce "greenhouse gas" emissions by 2012.
Many scientists believe the heat-trapping gases pose a serious threat to life on Earth by causing a gradual rise in the planet's temperature. Global warming (news - web sites) has been blamed for prompting more violent storms, raising sea levels and shrinking animal habitats.
...
The United States produces roughly one quarter of the Earth's total greenhouse gas emissions. The most common is carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels in automobiles and other engines.
...
The conference comes at a time of growing urgency among many environmental groups alarmed by what they consider mounting evidence of global warming's destructive toll.
U.S. scientists reported last April that global temperatures rose an average of 0.77 degrees Fahrenheit between 1991 and 1998.
The World Wildlife Fund and other environmental groups released a report Monday calling global warming the greatest threat facing the world's coral reefs. Twenty percent of the world's reefs are severely damaged, and another 50 percent are under risk of collapsing due to higher water temperatures and carbon dioxide concentration, among other factors, the report said.
An October report by Greenpeace, Oxfam and other environmental groups said that global warming is at least partially responsible for this year's severe hurricanes in the Caribbean, flooding in Bangladesh and lengthening droughts.
Last month, the intergovernmental Arctic Council announced findings that higher temperatures in the Arctic are melting sea ice, buckling roads and threatening polar bears and other animals.
In Argentina, a 220-foot wall of ice sheared off the giant Perito Moreno glacier last March in a rare spectacle some have attributed to global warming.
...
Many attending the conference will be eager to enlist greater help from developing nations to fight global warming, according to Elliot Diringer of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
"There will be the gnawing sense that Kyoto is only a start, and we need to work even harder to figure out what can bring the international effort to the next stage," Diringer said.
One widely shared objective is to develop a new agreement requiring cuts in greenhouse gases among larger developing nations such as China and India, where emissions are rising fastest.
However, Margo Thorning, an economist and former U.S. Energy Department official, says requiring reductions from developing nations would be a mistake.
"We can't ask them to cut their emissions, because they need economic growth so desperately to curb their poverty," said Thorning, chief economist at the American Council for Capital Formation in Washington.
The expense of expanding the Kyoto Protocol would divert money from researching cleaner energy sources and finding solutions to other global threats, Thorning said.
"We ought to spend more money on things that people are dying from today, like a lack of sewage (facilities) and a lack of clean water," she said. "I'm not sure global warming is worthy of this much attention."
~~~~~~~~~
Evidently, the vast majority of the world's scientists clearly perceive global warming as a problem, and Kyoto as an important tool in helping mankind.
Whither the US???
Do you believe people in North America (includes Canada) would agree to stop economic growth so:
1) Other nations can continue at the same pace?
2) Other nations can continue to burn fossil fuel at the current rate?
Wishful thinking.
Hey Ranger sell your car, take out your bicycle and ride to work. Forget taking an airplane to go to Florida in January???....
If you build a new economy wouldn't it make more sense to build it away from fossil fuels? Instead of re-tooling an existent?
Just a thought.
1) Other nations can continue at the same pace?
2) Other nations can continue to burn fossil fuel at the current rate?
Wishful thinking.
Hey Ranger sell your car, take out your bicycle and ride to work. Forget taking an airplane to go to Florida in January???....
If you build a new economy wouldn't it make more sense to build it away from fossil fuels? Instead of re-tooling an existent?
Just a thought.
We don't have to "stop" economic growth.
Other nations don't pollute as much as we do.
No, it wouldn't make more sense to do it your way - it can't be done.
Nice try, though.
And, just so you know, Canada has AGREED to the controls laid out in Kyoto. Enjoy.
Other nations don't pollute as much as we do.
No, it wouldn't make more sense to do it your way - it can't be done.
Nice try, though.
And, just so you know, Canada has AGREED to the controls laid out in Kyoto. Enjoy.
The reasons why other nations don't pollute as much is because their economies are not nearly as big. Thank God.Ranger68 said:We don't have to "stop" economic growth.
Other nations don't pollute as much as we do.
No, it wouldn't make more sense to do it your way - it can't be done.
Nice try, though.
And, just so you know, Canada has AGREED to the controls laid out in Kyoto. Enjoy.
When Germany was united a lot of factories in the East had to be either shutdown or rebuild at a high price, because almost none complied with minimum enviromental standards.
My guess is that things get worse if China, Russia and India are allowed unchecked growth and expansion. Their standards will make look us like a nation of green party members.
If we allow this to happen in the name of growth and economy we will be really screwed.
Having said that I also believe that we have a responsibility in all of this to be sensible with our natural resources.
However until we are forced to do it, we will not take it serious. That's just human nature.
NASA has confirmed that man has changed the gas/particulate contribution to warming and cooling. There is another issue. Methane bound in the bottom of the sea, if released, would quickly turn earth into a very hot planet. There are theories that global warming inhibits the release and others that it will lead to it. Much more needs to be understood - and quickly as warming will be ongoing for the next century no matter what we do now. The following is not copywrited and is exerpted from The Economist.
Methane and climate change
Swamp thing or monster of the deep?
Apr 17th 2003 | NICE
A discussion about the end of the last ice age has repercussions for today's climate
RESEARCHERS have known for a long time that a mixture of water and a gas such as methane can, in the right circumstances, form an ice-like substance called a clathrate, or gas hydrate, at temperatures above normal freezing point. Ice has an open molecular structure (this is why water, unlike most liquids, expands when it freezes, and thus bursts pipes in the winter). Add a bit of pressure and that openness will accommodate gas molecules. These, in turn, lend support to ice crystals that would otherwise melt. Pressure is one of the things that the bottom of the sea is famous for. So, if you add a source of methane, conditions there are often ideal for the formation of clathrates.
But clathrates are hard to study. Once dredged up, they quickly melt, and the gas is released.
The discussion on clathrates and the end of the ice age was one of the topics at a joint meeting of the American Geological Union, the European Geological Society and the European Union of Geosciences which has just been held in Nice. It revolves around the cause of a large release of methane into the atmosphere at the end of the last ice age. This is known to have happened because it has left traces in air-bubbles trapped in ancient ice. Methane is a greenhouse gas—and a far more powerful one than carbon dioxide. It is reasonable to think that a big methane release and the end of an ice age might be more than coincidental. Where this methane came from matters because, at the moment, something between 2 trillion and 8 trillion tonnes of methane is thought to be locked up in under-sea clathrates. If it suddenly “burped� up, the Earth could be in for a torrid time.
There are two schools of thought about the origins of the methane released at the end of the ice age. One, championed by James Kennett, a paleo-oceanographer from the University of California, Santa Barbara, is that it was indeed released from clathrates. The argument goes like this. Suppose the oceans warm up a bit, as they regularly do as part of natural climate cycles. A significant amount of methane hydrate could suddenly find itself outside its stability zone and thus separate into water molecules and methane gas. The gas would soon find its way into the atmosphere, where it would add to the greenhouse effect and cause the temperature to rise. That, in turn, would cause further methane release. In other words, there would be positive feedback that could end up dumping a lot of methane into the atmosphere. On this view of things, the methane at the bottom of the ocean is something to worry about.
It is a neat idea. However, there is an equally persuasive argument that runs counter to it. This is that a warming atmosphere will melt ice at the poles. That will raise the sea level, increasing the pressure at the bottom and thus stabilising clathrates there—in other words, there will be negative feedback. But if that is true, then the methane spike at the end of the ice age must have been caused by something else.
(THe rest of the artical is good reading but a) to long for this thread and b) goes into molecular analysis of various carbon isotopes which is not conclusive either way. Some highlights)
Dr Maslin's computer models of the expansion of life on earth as the glaciers receded suggest that about a trillion tonnes of extra carbon was sucked out of the atmosphere to help to manufacture all those extra leaves, stalks and trunks.
A significant release of hydrate methane, low in 13C, would counteract the increase in 13C concentration caused by the greening of the world. In Dr Maslin's carbon budget, such a release “hid� a lot of the world's new forests from view.
One up, it would appear, to Dr Kennett. However, when the calculation is done in detail, the amount of hydrate-derived methane needed to balance the isotopic equations is only 100 billion tonnes. That is far less than the actual increase of methane in the atmosphere in the period in question.
Perhaps, therefore, the negative feedback model is dominant. But the debate is not over yet. Dr Kennett, perfectly reasonably, asks where the geological evidence is for all those extra swamps.
Methane and climate change
Swamp thing or monster of the deep?
Apr 17th 2003 | NICE
A discussion about the end of the last ice age has repercussions for today's climate
RESEARCHERS have known for a long time that a mixture of water and a gas such as methane can, in the right circumstances, form an ice-like substance called a clathrate, or gas hydrate, at temperatures above normal freezing point. Ice has an open molecular structure (this is why water, unlike most liquids, expands when it freezes, and thus bursts pipes in the winter). Add a bit of pressure and that openness will accommodate gas molecules. These, in turn, lend support to ice crystals that would otherwise melt. Pressure is one of the things that the bottom of the sea is famous for. So, if you add a source of methane, conditions there are often ideal for the formation of clathrates.
But clathrates are hard to study. Once dredged up, they quickly melt, and the gas is released.
The discussion on clathrates and the end of the ice age was one of the topics at a joint meeting of the American Geological Union, the European Geological Society and the European Union of Geosciences which has just been held in Nice. It revolves around the cause of a large release of methane into the atmosphere at the end of the last ice age. This is known to have happened because it has left traces in air-bubbles trapped in ancient ice. Methane is a greenhouse gas—and a far more powerful one than carbon dioxide. It is reasonable to think that a big methane release and the end of an ice age might be more than coincidental. Where this methane came from matters because, at the moment, something between 2 trillion and 8 trillion tonnes of methane is thought to be locked up in under-sea clathrates. If it suddenly “burped� up, the Earth could be in for a torrid time.
There are two schools of thought about the origins of the methane released at the end of the ice age. One, championed by James Kennett, a paleo-oceanographer from the University of California, Santa Barbara, is that it was indeed released from clathrates. The argument goes like this. Suppose the oceans warm up a bit, as they regularly do as part of natural climate cycles. A significant amount of methane hydrate could suddenly find itself outside its stability zone and thus separate into water molecules and methane gas. The gas would soon find its way into the atmosphere, where it would add to the greenhouse effect and cause the temperature to rise. That, in turn, would cause further methane release. In other words, there would be positive feedback that could end up dumping a lot of methane into the atmosphere. On this view of things, the methane at the bottom of the ocean is something to worry about.
It is a neat idea. However, there is an equally persuasive argument that runs counter to it. This is that a warming atmosphere will melt ice at the poles. That will raise the sea level, increasing the pressure at the bottom and thus stabilising clathrates there—in other words, there will be negative feedback. But if that is true, then the methane spike at the end of the ice age must have been caused by something else.
(THe rest of the artical is good reading but a) to long for this thread and b) goes into molecular analysis of various carbon isotopes which is not conclusive either way. Some highlights)
Dr Maslin's computer models of the expansion of life on earth as the glaciers receded suggest that about a trillion tonnes of extra carbon was sucked out of the atmosphere to help to manufacture all those extra leaves, stalks and trunks.
A significant release of hydrate methane, low in 13C, would counteract the increase in 13C concentration caused by the greening of the world. In Dr Maslin's carbon budget, such a release “hid� a lot of the world's new forests from view.
One up, it would appear, to Dr Kennett. However, when the calculation is done in detail, the amount of hydrate-derived methane needed to balance the isotopic equations is only 100 billion tonnes. That is far less than the actual increase of methane in the atmosphere in the period in question.
Perhaps, therefore, the negative feedback model is dominant. But the debate is not over yet. Dr Kennett, perfectly reasonably, asks where the geological evidence is for all those extra swamps.
More evidence appears.......
Global warming has already hit Latin America
Sat Dec 11, 5:36 PM ET
Science - AFP
BUENOS AIRES (AFP) - Intense storms and hurricanes lashing Latin America and the Caribbean are early symptoms of global warming, said a report delivered at a UN conference on climate change.
"Increased intensity and frequency of hurricanes in the Caribbean; changes in precipitation patterns; rising levels of rivers in Argentina and Brazil; and the shrinking of glaciers in Patagonia and the Andes are phenomena that indicate the impact that global warming could have in the region," the study said.
The paper was sponsored by Mexico and the United Nations.
"More than 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Latin America and the Caribbean come from Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina," the report said.
The Caribbean saw two major storms this hurricane season: Charley, which caused 18 billion dollars in damage, was followed by Ivan, which killed 100 persons and destroyed 15,000 homes.
link:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...p/20041211/sc_afp/unclimateamlat_041211223604
Of course Bush/Cheney and their Cohorts will continue their denial on the whole issue. They would probably ignore it even if Global Warming bit them all in their collective myopic pompous fat asses!
Global warming has already hit Latin America
Sat Dec 11, 5:36 PM ET
Science - AFP
BUENOS AIRES (AFP) - Intense storms and hurricanes lashing Latin America and the Caribbean are early symptoms of global warming, said a report delivered at a UN conference on climate change.
"Increased intensity and frequency of hurricanes in the Caribbean; changes in precipitation patterns; rising levels of rivers in Argentina and Brazil; and the shrinking of glaciers in Patagonia and the Andes are phenomena that indicate the impact that global warming could have in the region," the study said.
The paper was sponsored by Mexico and the United Nations.
"More than 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Latin America and the Caribbean come from Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina," the report said.
The Caribbean saw two major storms this hurricane season: Charley, which caused 18 billion dollars in damage, was followed by Ivan, which killed 100 persons and destroyed 15,000 homes.
link:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...p/20041211/sc_afp/unclimateamlat_041211223604
Of course Bush/Cheney and their Cohorts will continue their denial on the whole issue. They would probably ignore it even if Global Warming bit them all in their collective myopic pompous fat asses!
With the connections that both Bush and Cheney have with the petroleum industry and other interests it will be a cold day in hell before they change their minds about Kyoto or any other initiative to help control global warming. Gotta make sure that Halliburton makes a profit no matter what!
