Ironworks Gaming Forum - Global Warming: Who's to blame?

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I wonder what everyone's view on Global Warming is?
I will present two cases of argument about global warming and you guys and gals judge which you believe.



CASE 1

Global Warming in the past 100 years is mainly caused by the over industrial human activity. Rising populations and modernization has led to a new line of poplutants from fridges to cars to power plants. These contribute directly to greenhouse effects and thus the measured temperature rise over the past 50 years.

CASE 2

50 years??! That's barely measurable in the 450million year earth history. We can not conclusively say we are responcible for a temperature rise just by looking at 50 years of available data. Volcanic erruptions, solar activities do far more damage to temperature stability than 100 factories and millions of cars. To put all our resources in curbing petroleum usage is futile, because not only are they running out anyway, but a mere volcanic erruption will set us back 100 fold. We should concentrate of critical enviromental things that will make a difference.

I know that it is both case 1 and 2. What I do not know is if it is 50/50 1/99 or 99/1 or something different.

There is scientific data that seems to support for the following statements:

The number/size of sun spots on the sun is affecting the weather on the earth (ie. more clouds or less clouds).
The average number/size of sun spots are large for the period we live in (app. the last 100 years) compared to 'cold' periods.

Unless the activity on earth are able to effect (which I doubt) the number/size of sun spots, there seems to be a corrolated effect between temperature and sun spots, that is totally uncorrelated with human activity.

Normally the high sun spot activity has a cycle of approximately 11 years. But there has been periods, where the average number of sun spots were different from today:

Quote:

"Early records of sunspots indicate that the Sun went through a period of inactivity in the late 17th century. Very few sunspots were seen on the Sun from about 1645 to 1715 (38 kb JPEG image). Although the observations were not as extensive as in later years, the Sun was in fact well observed during this time and this lack of sunspots is well documented. This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the "Little Ice Age" when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes. There is evidence that the Sun has had similar periods of inactivity in the more distant past. The connection between solar activity and terrestrial climate is an area of on-going research.

Read more about it in this link:

http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/ssl/pad/solar/sunspots.htm

[img]graemlins/greenbounce.gif[/img]
Insane

[ 08-28-2003, 07:13 AM: Message edited by: InsaneBane ]

I'd go with case 2, right up to the part where they claim we shouldn't worry about cars. No, there's no way to be sure, but that doesn't mean we should ignore the more likely causes, including human ones.

The ONLY two reasons we have ANY global warming are "Solar Radiation" and "Geothermal Processes". Without these two universal facorts we would be cold as cold can be.

[img]smile.gif[/img]

Gotta go with Case #2 if I have to pick one...remeber we are coming out of a mini-Iceage that occurred around the 1200-1500 time frame and really hit Europe very hard. It should also be noted that our current global temperatures are stil lower than those from previous epochs.

Edit: Cause I can't type.

[ 08-28-2003, 11:23 AM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

Number 1 will be debated to death, until the polar ice caps melt completely atleast. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

There is acutally a proven way that humans have impacted local temputures in many areas and that is cities. More specificlly concrete, asphault, etc... There was a study just releases last year that showed temputures in cities are higher, longer then in the surounding country side. The reason is all that concrete in cities act as batteries, storing heat in the day and releasing it at night. IIRC the temp difference was as high as 10 degrees. This heat genereation also effect local weather patterns too.

note: Tried to goggle the article with no luck. too many hits :(

I go with the "maybe it's happening and maybe it's man's fault, and we should act as if it is" theory for two reasons:

1. Precautionary Principle

2. Loathing of modern hyperproduction-oriented industrialized consumerized life. If given the chance to send us back to the stone age, I'd do it.

But, in the end, catalytic converters and smokestack scrubbers are merely a meager band-aid on the sucking chest wound that is human existence on the planet, so it doesn't matter what we do.

Well, I personally think it's just another process of nature. Nothing bad is happening. But I totally agree with rule number 2 above me. It is time the reign of money stops...

Of course it is happening. Is it man's fault? No! Are we helping it along? Sure we are! We're great at that! ;)

We will see tempreatures rise. Why? Because it has happened before and is still happening in a cycle. We're not talking about 50 years here, we're talking 10,000! ;) Of course due to our exploits and civilization I bet we can get that number down to 8,000 years. [img]graemlins/blueblink.gif[/img]

Oh and 'experts' blaming heat waves, storms or even cold winters on global warming are just a tad off target. ;) It's the mean temperature that will rise and you don't measure that in a year to get an accurate result. ;)

global warming is all part of the cycles of our planet, like iceages (which we're overdue for). but yes, mankind is helping it along greatly, like adding wood to a fire.