Global Warming is worse than you think

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-06-2003
Global Warming is worse than you think
19
Wed, 02-04-2004 - 2:43pm
>>The Big Chill could be closer than we think. Research conducted by scientists at the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute has found a dramatic change in the circulation of the waters of the North Atlantic which could "turn off" the Gulf Stream and catapult Europe into an Ice Age. The shift, cited by Woods Hole as being "the largest and most dramatic oceanic change ever measured in the era of modern instruments," could eliminate the Gulf Stream in as little as two or three years. Although northern Europe is at the same latitude as cold spots like Labrador, the region experiences a mild climate because the Gulf Stream brings in warm air from the tropics. More specifically, the Atlantic Ocean's cold, salty water sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor and flows into the Pacific, which then forces warm water from the Pacific to flow up toward the coast of Europe, bringing moderate weather with it.

Unfortunately, global warming is shifting the fragile balances of cold, and warm water, putting us in danger of what Britain's Independent calls a "nightmare scenario where farmland turns to tundra and winter temperatures drop below -20C." A moderate scenario would involve a "little ice age" like the one that hit Europe in 1400 and caused harsh winters, desertification, and drought. Previously, scientists believed that climate change took place over long stretches of time. However, the new research indicates not only that change can happen as rapidly as within a few years, but that this change can be triggered like a light switch.

Unfortunately, this switch is not easy to flip the other way, and the climate shift could cause harsh weather for decades -- or centuries. One would hope that the threat of a permanent change in the climate -- a long-lasting winter -- would cause the Bush administration to call for a war on global warming on the scale of its war on terror. Sadly, while oil execs and automakers are filling his campaign war chest, prospects for that bold move remain chilly.<<

http://www.utne.com/webwatch/2004_134/news/11071-1.html

for more:

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,582584-1,00.html

>>Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face it, most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it.

The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade—like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies—thereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power.<<


http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0130-11.htm

>>While global warming is being officially ignored by the political arm of the Bush administration, and Al Gore's recent conference on the topic during one of the coldest days of recent years provided joke fodder for conservative talk show hosts, the citizens of Europe and the Pentagon are taking a new look at the greatest danger such climate change could produce for the northern hemisphere - a sudden shift into a new ice age. What they're finding is not at all comforting.

In quick summary, if enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting polar ice caps and the melting glaciers of Greenland flows into the northern Atlantic, it will shut down the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe and northeastern North America warm. The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown return of the last ice age - in a period as short as 2 to 3 years from its onset - and the mid-case scenario would be a period like the "little ice age" of a few centuries ago that disrupted worldwide weather patterns leading to extremely harsh winters, droughts, worldwide desertification, crop failures, and wars around the world.

Here's how it works. <<

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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Wed, 02-04-2004 - 5:29pm
At the risk of being repeative, isn't this an example of corporation's power enriching itself at the expense of humanity. The Bush administration doesn't believe in global warming because restrictions on fossil fuel would not benefit oil companies. For them it is better to keep questioning what scientist's research if the research was inconclusive.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-29-2004
Thu, 02-05-2004 - 10:00am
I WOULDN'T STOCK UP ON THE FLEECE PULL-OVERS QUITE YET!

Melting the Global Warming Myth

by Maria Graciela Arias Accuracy In Media

March 27, 2002

..."Over 17,000 well-qualified scientists have signed the Oregon Institute Petition saying, in part, "there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the forseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmoshere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

NASA reports that data collected from satellites (since 1978) and weather balloons (since 1960) do not show a warming trend since 1978.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created by the United Nations to act as a source of scientific advice on Global Warming. Its lateset assessment, Climate Change 1995, contains this statement: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on the global climate." (balance of evidence is a phrase used by scientists when evidence of a cause-effect relationship is unavailable)

Dr. Frederick Seitz, president emeritus of Rockefeller University and past president of the National Academy of Sciences, has publicly denounced the IPCC report, writing "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report."


Science Has Spoken: Global Warming is a Myth

By Arthur B. Robinson and Zachary W. Robinson

Wall Street Journal Dec. 4, 1997

..."there is not a shred of persuasive evidence that humans have been responsible for increasing global temperatures. What's more, carbon dioxide emissions have actually been a boon for the environment."

"The myth of Global Warming starts with an accurate observation: the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising. It is now about 360 pts per million, vs. 290 at the beginning of the 20th century,reasonable estimates indicate it may rise as high as 600. This rise probably results from human burning of coal, oil and natural gas, ALTHOUGH THIS IS NOT CERTAIN. Earth's oceans and land hold some 50 times more co2 as is in the atmosphere, and movement between these resevoirs of co2 is poorly understood."

"During the past 50 years, as atmospheric co2 levels have risen, scientists have made precise measurements of atmospheric temperature. These measurements have definitively shown that major atmospheric greenhouse warming of the atmosphere is not occurring and is likely ever to occur."

"Our children will enjoy an Earth with twice as much plant and animal life as that with which we are now blessed"

"Hydrocarbons are needed to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe. This can eventually allow all human beings to live long, healthy lives...we have proven reservesto last more than 1,000 years. Global warming is a myth. The reality is that global poverty and death will result from the rationing of hydrocarbon resources..."

(Arthur and Zachary Robinson are chemists at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine)

MY SCIENTISTS SAY THE WORLD IS NOT ENDING (BECAUSE OF PRESIDENT BUSH) AND I'LL GO ON THAT!LMAO

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-06-2003
Thu, 02-05-2004 - 10:59am
While there is no consensus of the direct evidence of the human effect on global warming, vast improvements in modelling and measurement are giving us a more accurate view of the shifting nature of the world climate - new evidence is constantly surfacing that shows us that what we think we knew (on either side of the issue) is not necessarily what is going on.

And while the WSJ article makes a good point, it's also 7 years old. A lot has changed since 1997 (and 2002 for that matter).

I highly recommend you read the links I posted (there's more to the articles than what I actually quoted). They make a compelling argument for why we should be concerned about global warming (regardless of cause).

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-29-2004
Thu, 02-05-2004 - 11:32am
If the cause is NOT human related (which conflicting research has yet to prove or disprove), there is nothing we can do about the earth warming but adapt. Humans will NOT destroy the earth and we are arrogant for thinking we can. We can, however, cause the extinction of ourselves, that would take thousands of years probably. I hardly think co2 will be the cause of our "ultimate demise".

I just can't help thinking that these "reports" we see every few years are driven by environmentalist groups, not real science. All they seem to intend to do is shock and scare people. I've yet to see an economical/practical alternative to fossil fuels presented by the environmentalist groups. I'd support it, if there was.

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-06-2003
Thu, 02-05-2004 - 12:06pm
>>I just can't help thinking that these "reports" we see every few years are driven by environmentalist groups, not real science.<<

Are you suggesting the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute does not conduct 'real science'? How about the National Academy of the Sciences?

From the Fortune article:

>>Though Mother Nature caused past abrupt climate changes, the one that may be shaping up today probably has more to do with us. In 2001 an international panel of climate experts concluded that there is increasingly strong evidence that most of the global warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities—mainly the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which release heat-trapping carbon dioxide. Indicators of the warming include shrinking Arctic ice, melting alpine glaciers, and markedly earlier springs at northerly latitudes. A few years ago such changes seemed signs of possible trouble for our kids or grandkids. Today they seem portents of a cataclysm that may not conveniently wait until we're history.

Accordingly, the spotlight in climate research is shifting from gradual to rapid change. In 2002 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report concluding that human activities could trigger abrupt change. Last year the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, included a session at which Robert Gagosian, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, urged policymakers to consider the implications of possible abrupt climate change within two decades. <<


Not to mention, the Pentagon has never struck me as the kind of place where 'fake science' holds sway.

>>But recently, renowned Department of Defense planner Andrew Marshall sponsored a groundbreaking effort to come to grips with the question. A Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82, is known as the Defense Department's "Yoda"—a balding, bespectacled sage whose pronouncements on looming risks have long had an outsized influence on defense policy. Since 1973 he has headed a secretive think tank whose role is to envision future threats to national security. The Department of Defense's push on ballistic-missile defense is known as his brainchild. Three years ago Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld picked him to lead a sweeping review on military "transformation," the shift toward nimble forces and smart weapons.

When scientists' work on abrupt climate change popped onto his radar screen, Marshall tapped another eminent visionary, Peter Schwartz, to write a report on the national-security implications of the threat. Schwartz formerly headed planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group and has since consulted with organizations ranging from the CIA to DreamWorks—he helped create futuristic scenarios for Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report. Schwartz and co-author Doug Randall at the Monitor Group's Global Business Network, a scenario-planning think tank in Emeryville, Calif., contacted top climate experts and pushed them to talk about what-ifs that they usually shy away from—at least in public. <<

Obviously, we don't need to be stocking up on canned soup and duct tape right now, but it seems sensible to turn more of a focus to this issue - invest a little more in R & D and see how we can mitigate the possible effects of abrupt climate change (or ideally, prevent it altogether). Forewarned is forearmed, I'd think.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-25-2003
Sun, 02-08-2004 - 3:38pm


An internationally respected Earth sciences researcher and professor in both Canada and Germany, Veizer has come under fierce public assault by a group of fellow scientists for publishing extensive evidence that he says shows the carbon cycle may be a mere second fiddle as a driver of global climate change.

Instead, he says the dominant influence is celestial, an interplay of variable cosmic rays and solar energy that shapes the entire water cycle of clouds, rainfall, surface evaporation and transpiration by plants.

Only then, Veizer says, does carbon get involved, piggy-backing on the water cycle and amplifying changes in temperature set off by those primary agents.

Translated into layman's language, these findings suggest climate change cannot be halted or reversed by cutting emissions of carbon dioxide from smokestacks and tailpipes, the basis of the Kyoto protocol now being implemented by Canada and other countries.

As his evidence accumulated over the past four years, Veizer has briefed such elite groups as the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research in Toronto, where he heads the Earth System Evolution program.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1076195408292&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467

Renee

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-06-2003
Tue, 02-10-2004 - 12:20am
i think this issue is going to go around and around and around and around.... forever.

my concern is that, in the case of abrupt climate change, how prepared are we? *can* we be prepared?

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Tue, 02-10-2004 - 11:33am
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I agree. Given that experts disagree, what are we loosing by taking a worse case sceanario? Isn't it better to err on the side of caution? Why not try to limit the use of fossil fuel if there is a chance it endangers the envioronment.

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-06-2003
Tue, 02-10-2004 - 12:53pm
>>Given that experts disagree, what are we loosing by taking a worse case sceanario? Isn't it better to err on the side of caution? Why not try to limit the use of fossil fuel if there is a chance it endangers the envioronment. <<

Kind of like a 'pre-emptive' strike...

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-14-2003
Tue, 02-10-2004 - 2:11pm

If all this "change can be triggered like a light switch" and could happen within the next two or three years, wouldn't it

Miffy

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