So, for those of you that keep up with science news lately, you would have undoubtedly heard that Mars is getting warmer too.
What I find so interesting is then that people who deny global warming immediately jump on the bandwagon, and say that it is a totally natural phenomenon - because look, Mars is getting warmer too! Furthermore, some would then argue that there is no global warming on Earth.
That is nonsense on so many levels.
The same team of scientists who measured the climate change on Mars did the same for Earth. They see that both Earth and Mars is warming up, and then conclude that there is global warming on Mars, but not on Earth.
How irritating - you can't just invalidate a part of an identical experiment.....
It's already prevailing scientific opinion, which is pretty rigorous nowadays, that global warming exists, and humans (and animals) contribute to it to various levels. It's ok to accept it.
I just really don't like politicians disputing scientific research, particularly when they have no objective clue about said science. If a, b are positive integers such that (ab+1)|(a^2+b^2), prove that (a^2+b^2)/(ab+1) is a perfect square.
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Re:Global Warming, etc.
Date: 2007/03/10 05:50
By: Nait_Boi
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I'm actually unsure if it really does exist or not. I mean...the earths climate has always altered itself. And really, parts of the earth maybe warming up, but other parts are cooling down, showing a possible change in where distant future ice caps would be.
I just think it is possible that there is more then just "We are killing the world". I believe in recycling and such thou haha.
Also, Just because many people believe it is true and science says its true, don't make it so. Look at science over the years. What we once thought was true has never always held up...just look at past meds. and treatments and such. Living for the day, Working for tomorrow. Taking life as it comes and making it what I want.
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Re:Global Warming, etc.
Date: 2007/03/10 06:01
By: cyby
Status:
I do agree that science can be refined. I'm not saying that we're necessarily killing the world. I'm just saying that temperatures are indeed warming up and that we can do something about it - cutting greenhouse gases, etc.
I also do believe in greater debate on this issue. And it is mostly on this premise that I encourage greater research and discussion. (Please stop cutting funding for this stuff Mr. President!)
What I'm more irritated about - and perhaps I picked a bad example to illustrate this, is that politicians misinterpret science.
Our range of understanding the world has also increased with technology, and has held up to scientific investigation and experimentation. What happened back then was at best a hypothesis. Nobody ever sought to prove it, except that it was "authoritative." That's the biggest problem with the Greeks - great ideas, but not a lot of ways of showing that something is true or false. Prevailing social climates also prevented the challenge of these incorrect models.
We are much more.. blessed right now by having things like the scientific method and peer review of scientific results to ensure that our range of errors is continually minimized, and that a more accurate model of what works and what doesn't is presented.
The absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence at all. If a, b are positive integers such that (ab+1)|(a^2+b^2), prove that (a^2+b^2)/(ab+1) is a perfect square.
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Re:Global Warming, etc.
Date: 2007/03/10 06:16
By: ken17
Status:
Global warming is both natural and man-made. If you look at scientific records, our planet has had many warm and cooling cycles. Presently, we're at the end of an ice age cycle and we're heading into a warming cycle.
However, Earth is warming at a rate unprecendented in the geologic record. This unprecendented rapid rate of warming can be attributed to increased CO2 in the atmosphere causing the Earth to warm. Who else would be responsible for this huge increase in CO2?
Of 1000 randomly selected peer-reviewed articles published in scientific journals, not one denied the fact that global warming is an undeniable fact and a man made phenomenon, or at least man helped accelerate global warming.
Here in Canada, in our far north in the Arctic Ocean, the waters usually freeze over in November. But this season, it didn't freeze over until January. Polar bears were reported to have drowned....how sad is that? In addition, this season had one of the largest El Nino's ever in recorded history.
It's a shame that my country is doing so little about it, but I am glad my province of British Columbia is launching a massive green plan.
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Re:Global Warming, etc.
Date: 2007/03/10 11:23
By: Summ
Status:
Presently, we're at the end of an ice age cycle and we're heading into a warming cycle. What I just heard yesterday Ken is that the earth is alterning itself for as long as it excists already. And that we right now are like at the top of the warming, and going down again in an inevitable ice age, still, that alterning is kinda disturbed because of the global warming, but we will go down to an ice age again, no matter the global warming. (In alot of years)
The global warming so isn't something bad for the temperature cycle on the earth (on the long term), but it is bad for us, the people who live on the earth right now for a few hundred years. Like you said with the el nino and other effects because of the global warming its true, its damaging for us right now.
Things should be done against it. 2 days ago the European Parlement had a discussion about it. They want to reduce the CO2 usage with 30% (EU is responsible for 14% of the whole earth btw). But hopefully with that they can be like a first part of the world to do that, and more that willi follow... that's what they want.. Still with building economies as of China I doubt they will follow.
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Re:Global Warming, etc.
Date: 2007/03/10 12:44
By: Gumdropster
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One thing that totally wrecks the argument that they can "prove" global warming as a fact:
The oldest temperature measurements we can prove to be correct aren't even 200 years old, we can assume from soil samples that we know just what climate we had before that, but we can't prove that our techniques work at all. So unless we can get a definite reading of the temperature 15000 years ago I won't believe global warming.
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Re:Global Warming, etc.
Date: 2007/03/10 13:32
By: cyby
Status:
I personally don't think that whether or not our historical measures are accurate matters too much for the purposes of this discussion. Fortunately, we do have historical anecdotes that discussed general climatology over the past 2000 years or so that we could compare our models to. We also have more recent measurements of similar events that we could compare to (the effects of Krakatoa and Pinatubo, for instance, are much better documented and especially Pinatubo, well measured). Much inference (not guesses) can be made about previous climatological cycles this way.
I know it's getting warmer. And I suspect that humans have something to do with it. Ignoring greenhouse gases for a moment - we'll just take the urban heat island effect, for example. We know that cities are warmer due to the different heat absorption and radiation rates of concrete and other materials. Locally, that does raise the average temperature of a city by a few degrees - that's a recent enough phenomenon, and can now be widely observed. This is more concrete fact than greenhouse gases.
The whole greenhouse effect is also observed on a far smaller scale - in greenhouses! There has been direct measurements of CFC leading to greenhouse effects, and it is widely believed that other substances released into the atmosphere is contributing to the warming up of the world.
This is not to deny that there is a natural astronomical cycle going on. There always is.
However, even an accurate measurement of weather in the past 100 years is sufficient, I argue, to be concerned. We are warming up - that we can't doubt - because we have had decent thermometers in the past 150 years or so, and statistically, by the law of large numbers and a bunch of other stuff, what was found is statistically significant.
I'm not "The Day After Tomorrow" or "Inconvenient Truth" worried, but certainly if it is disrupting everyday life and causing other hassles, it warrants some work - even if humans have nothing to do with it. If in fact it is just a natural geological/astronomical phenomenon, and it threatens our comfort/survival, then humans should indeed find a way to counteract that effect. Hey, we're here and we want to be safe and comfortable, right?
I believe that global warming is provable - however there is still some jury out there on the extent of human involvement. Much research is being done (which is good - I'm all for scientific research on any level), and we'll get a more refined picture sometime in the future.
Provability in the sciences is, in the scientific community, a very "philosophical" debate, which I'd probably want to discuss in another thread to see what all your points are. As a mathematician, my views on it may be very different than yours - and I'm pigeonholed into a form of calculus for these statements.
For the mean time, I need another fan or A/C in this apartment :/ Thank you so much for contributing to this discussion everyone! If a, b are positive integers such that (ab+1)|(a^2+b^2), prove that (a^2+b^2)/(ab+1) is a perfect square.
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Re:Global Warming, etc.
Date: 2007/03/10 19:44
By: bj*
Status:
Gumdropster wrote: One thing that totally wrecks the argument that they can "prove" global warming as a fact:
The oldest temperature measurements we can prove to be correct aren't even 200 years old, we can assume from soil samples that we know just what climate we had before that, but we can't prove that our techniques work at all. So unless we can get a definite reading of the temperature 15000 years ago I won't believe global warming.
Ya, tell us that when your drowning because sea levels all over the world have risen. This is the most classic human reaction to any problem- I'll take care of it when it becomes a problem for me. Signs of global warming have shown themselves all over the globe, and even if you are skeptic, how could you posibly deny that we need to prepare for what could be the biggest problem humanity has ever faced when so much is in jeperody? A passive attitude isn't going to get us anywhere. If you're not living on the edge, your taking up too much space.
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Re:Global Warming, etc.
Date: 2007/03/10 20:21
By: Nait_Boi
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But see, we won't drown xD. Like I said, people assume that the world is only warming, but it's true that areas are cooling as well. Calling whatever is happening "Global Warming" is a misconeption....Maybe "Global Shift" or something like that. Living for the day, Working for tomorrow. Taking life as it comes and making it what I want.
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Re:Global Warming, etc.
Date: 2007/03/10 21:03
By: Gumdropster
Status:
bj* wrote: Ya, tell us that when your drowning because sea levels all over the world have risen. This is the most classic human reaction to any problem- I'll take care of it when it becomes a problem for me. Signs of global warming have shown themselves all over the globe, and even if you are skeptic, how could you posibly deny that we need to prepare for what could be the biggest problem humanity has ever faced when so much is in jeperody? A passive attitude isn't going to get us anywhere.
I'm too high above sea levels to drown even if all the ice and snow in the world melted. It'd raise the levels about 7 meters worldwide, and I'm just about 25 times as high as that up above the sea.
Signs that we THINK are associated with Global warming have been showing themselves, but isn't the general question now: What really happened thousands of years ago, before the ice age(s)?
I am not a skeptic, I completely put the theories as false, making me much more negative towards it.
I think there's a reason there are disasters, their nature's way to keep the population down, to avoid overpopulation, which is a much huger problem, causing people to starve to death.
An aggressive attitude won't help us either. If the climate is rising naturally there's nothing we could do, if it's our fault we must find a way to go back in time and stop it from ever happening, because it can't be reversed anymore.
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Re:Global Warming, etc.
Date: 2007/03/10 22:09
By: cyby
Status:
I think in order to have a better dialog on this topic, we should define that term "global warming".
It is indeed a recent phenomena. The broader term is actually "climate change," which is used, unfortunately for us, interchangeably with "global warming". These are actually very very different things.
Climate change may or may not be something to worry about - according to accepted scientific theories.
But back to "global warming", which is actually a subset of climate change.
Specifically defined, global warming is just an observed increase in average temperature - and the term average is important - near surface air and ocean in the recent 100 years or so, and its expected continuation. Not everywhere needs to get warmer for something to be called "warming." They're saying that on average, most places are getting warmer. In fact, there was a period of "global cooling" from 1965 - 1974 that we don't talk about much at all, but some places were still warming up then, but that period is still referenced as "global cooling."
Now, so there isn't much debate that we have been warming up the past 50 or 100 years. We have detail temperature records to verify that, and with the advent of the space age, we have detail temperature records without needing conventional thermometers.
Having said that, the real question isn't a matter of what happened before the ice ages - that's of historical and scientific interest, but it doesn't address all the global hype, which is what's been going on in the past 50 or 100 years. The ice ages and history marginally affects this current debate.
Moving on, what Gumdropster refers to is often called "Gaia Theory," specifically being that nature is almost like an organism, and it has "ways" of controlling population or doing something one way or another.
Now, it is true that we can't prove that global warming is a long term trend. The last period of cooling, as aforementioned, was only 40 years ago and lasted for about 10 years. On average, the past 10 years have seen an alarming rise in temperatures. We can't exactly explain why, but we can guess, just by doing experiments.
Scientists don't just take a random guess and say that greenhouse gases are the culprit. It is merely an acceptable and working scientific model. All predictive sciences are based on mathematical models - and we try to have it hold as much water as possible by refining these models to approximate the real world as much as we can. There is still a lot of uncertainties about the effect of greenhouse gases on climate sensitivity.
Now, lots of things can warm up the world. From solar variation to people burning more fossil fuels. The current model on global warming is based largely on the greenhouse effect. We know that the greenhouse effect works because we see it work (similarly) in everyday lives - the process where IR radiation is trapped within the Earth. We need the greenhouse effect to work, in fact, in order for us to stay warm and alive. Without it we'd be a lot colder from all the reflective radiation that goes back into outer space.
It is based on this model that scientists are subsequently led to believe that more greenhouse gases mean a warmer Earth. Now, humans aren't the only ones emitting greenhouse gases. Animals do too, whenever they flatulate.
And it isn't just Earth. Let's point to Venus - a planet that is still getting warmer and warmer - and it is accepted scientific theory that Venus got to be this way due to greenhouse gases too. It is considered an extreme example of climate change, which is useful to study Earth's greenhouse effects. All this, fortunately, we can measure.
The hot debate isn't whether or not we're warming up - it's how much humans have to do with it. And it is the prevailing opinion that humans have a lot to do with it, and what can we do about it.
What bj* said about all of us drowning is not likely to happen in the very near future, if these models are remotely true. It isn't a doomsday scenario for all of us, but it would make us very uncomfortable.
Anyway, my point of this post (before I run off to lunch), is that global warming is a more recent phenomenon, and understanding what scientists are up in arms over is very important if we're to continue having this discussion without looking stupid. The "global warming" that we're talking about is really an event of the past 150 years or so, particularly in the past 100 years, and even more so the past 10 years. The debate over it isn't whether or not we're warming up, but how much of it is caused by humans, and whether or not we can do something about it.
I guess I'll write more when I get back from lunch later. Glad to see that we're having a good discussion here. If a, b are positive integers such that (ab+1)|(a^2+b^2), prove that (a^2+b^2)/(ab+1) is a perfect square.
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