Global Warming?

[N80]

How can we burn 80 million+ barrels of oil per day worldwide along with the coal and NOT have an effect on the atmosphere?

Because people, and many scientists, don't understand big numbers. Do you know how big the ocean is? Do you know how big the atmosphere is? Have you ever heard the phrase, drop in a bucket?

But sure, humans can have an impact. As someone mentioned above, there are things that are real. The passenger pigeon is gone. There is acid rain. It is sorting out the fact and the fiction that causes the problem.

(And why do we have acid rain? Anyone? Because the greenie no nukes kept us from getting nuclear power. So we rely on coal. The windmills and solar panels and everyone walking to work just didn't pan out, did it? Way to go guys. Nice move. With friends like that, mother nature needs no enemies.)

 

[Egon]

[Do you know how big the ocean is?

I think water covers about 75% of the earths surface. Of this 75% we probably know less than we do about the moons surface!

 

[NewToy]

Because people, and many scientists, don't understand big numbers. Do you know how big the ocean is? Do you know how big the atmosphere is? Have you ever heard the phrase, drop in a bucket?

But sure, humans can have an impact. As someone mentioned above, there are things that are real. The passenger pigeon is gone. There is acid rain. It is sorting out the fact and the fiction that causes the problem.

(And why do we have acid rain? Anyone? Because the greenie no nukes kept us from getting nuclear power. So we rely on coal. The windmills and solar panels and everyone walking to work just didn't pan out, did it? Way to go guys. Nice move. With friends like that, mother nature needs no enemies.)

I think that's why people are so easy to dismiss the fact that we are changing things. While the ocean is vast it is finite. There is a cumalative affect that adds up. Put a drop of oil in a bucket of water and you have fouled your bucket of water.
John

 

[midlf]

I have no concerns about global warming. I have no kids. I have had to be involved in the solution to situations set up by my forebearers and their contemporaries. I don't think we should deprive future generations of a situation for them to creatively solve. Also I don't quite see the flooding of NY city and Miami as a loss.

OBTW - <grin>

 

[frank_f15]

The main problem here is that the last Ice Age was only 10,000 years ago when all of the MidWest was under a 2 mile thick solid sheet of ice and then it began to recede and left us with the flatlands and the Great Lakes.

Unfortunately, at that time, Al Gore's ancestors were all huddled in a cave somewhere freezing to death and had not yet invented human language, speech, or writing to record the last Global Warming event, but they all sure could grunt real good......it would be another ten milleniums until Al was able to invent the internet and warn everyone.

WHAT IS THE INTERNET

 

[tallyho8]

Greenland use to be Green. Its turning Green again. Archeologist have studied the settlements in Greenland and they can see the change in diet from land based animals to marine ones that was caused by Greenland turning into a bigger Iceland. The settlers did not adjust to living off the ocean so the died off and/or left.

Actually, Iceland has a much better climate than Greenland and is much warmer with all it's geothermal springs. In fact, the capital city of Reykjavik is typically warmer that New York City in the winter. When the Vikings discovered Iceland and settled there, they decided to name it Iceland to keep all the other riff raff out. Then they named the island with the cold, hostile climate Greenland as a public relations method to get people to go there instead. The geothermal springs in Iceland could easily make enough electricity to supply all of Europe with no oil used if they could refine the delivery process. Iceland is a very civilized country with 100% literacy, one of the longest life spans and the 5th highest standard of living.

 

[_RaT_]

Actually, Iceland has a much better climate than Greenland and is much warmer with all it's geothermal springs. In fact, the capital city of Reykjavik is typically warmer that New York City in the winter. When the Vikings discovered Iceland and settled there, they decided to name it Iceland to keep all the other riff raff out. Then they named the island with the cold, hostile climate Greenland as a public relations method to get people to go there instead. The geothermal springs in Iceland could easily make enough electricity to supply all of Europe with no oil used if they could refine the delivery process. Iceland is a very civilized country with 100% literacy, one of the longest life spans and the 5th highest standard of living.

Interesting, I always thought it was a icy waste land. Their gimmick worked on me. The cold icey part not the riff raff part.

 

[dmccarty]

Actually, Iceland has a much better climate than Greenland and is much warmer with all it's geothermal springs. In fact, the capital city of Reykjavik is typically warmer that New York City in the winter. When the Vikings discovered Iceland and settled there, they decided to name it Iceland to keep all the other riff raff out. Then they named the island with the cold, hostile climate Greenland as a public relations method to get people to go there instead. The geothermal springs in Iceland could easily make enough electricity to supply all of Europe with no oil used if they could refine the delivery process. Iceland is a very civilized country with 100% literacy, one of the longest life spans and the 5th highest standard of living.

Iceland was green when the Vikings "discovered" it. The bones showed land animals with the Viking settlements. Then over time the bones from land animals gradually reduced in number and where overtaken by marine animal bones. Present day Greenlanders are very happy with Global Warming since they can now farm and raise land animals again.

Later,
Dan

 

[CRJCaptain]

I'm not going to take the time, but anyone who is interested can find information (and you other "old-timers" probably recall) that in the 60s the then-equivalent of the whatever-pseudonym-you-prefer for those who seem to always have something they need to stop mankind from doing were telling us that by 2000 the world would be overpopulated to levels that would leave us with mass starvation and disease. Later in the 60s and early 70s we were facing another imminent ice age from the nuclear winter that was going to occur when we rained down atomic havoc on the globe. No nuclear winter, and the only starvation we have is politically induced (i.e., food is withheld or prevented from getting to a region). Plenty of food around the globe (again...I acknowledge distribution of it to be an issue, but that is from political influences in the places where people are starving), and no nuclear winter.

How does any scientist know what the blazes things were like thousands of years ago? A thousand years ago "science" insisted the earth was flat. "Science" said leeches would cure disease. "Science" has been repeatedly and routinely trumped by new information, which makes what was "science" now just bad information..not just old information, but often wrong.

Wow...that pretty much leaves me speechless.

Nuclear winter? I don't think that's currently a problem since mankind figured out that it wasn't a great idea to detonate large quantities of thermonuclear devices above ground...North Korea not withstanding.

As for the question "How does a scientist know anything?"

Let's just for the sake of argument look at one discipline, physics.

There was Ptolemy, then Galileo and Newton, then Einstein. Each improved on the other's theories. Like Einstein said, he stood on the shoulders of giants, each improving on the other's theories. Were any of these scientists "wrong"? (Is anyone ever right?)

Do you drive a car or ride in an airplane? Do you believe man went to the moon? Do you own an air conditioner? See a physician on a regular basis? Are you on the Internet right now?! Well you must have some faith in the veracity of the fields of aerodynamics, classical Newtonian mechanics, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics and the list goes on...

Back to global warming...who of us knows the effects of releasing several million years worth of stored up carbon into the atmosphere in the span of a hundred years? Well, I've read a lot of posts on the subject of global warming here, and I suspect none of you have ever been published in any peer-reviewed journals like Nature or Science or the International Journal of Modern Physics.

I think the last people that I would believe to be qualified to talk about atmospheric science and climatology would be James Inhofe or Michael Crichton or Al Gore or Al Franken or, sorry, anybody on TBN.

So, can't we just go back to talking about tractors and the weather?