Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - World Affairs / Debate - Global Warming, Fact or Myth?
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Kefka
Posts: 2590/3392 |
My take on it:
Ozone depletion and global warming are completely seperate issues.
Ozone depletion is much easier to correct, because 1) we pretty much have specific sources of it that we can point to, and these mostly include chloroflourocarbons (CFCs). 2) the ozone layer restores itself over time, and we know this. The ozone layer blocks ultraviolet light from entering the troposphere, but unfortunately, like Steak said, Ozone (or O3) is not very stable. The materials in CFCs will easily break up a particle of ozone, thus making the natural layer formed by gravitiy weaker. As of now, it appears, if we were to completely stop using CFCs around the world, then it would be about 15 years until the layer restored completely. So we still have a ways to go, but it seems that the solution to this problem is pretty much right in front of our eyes.
Global warming has a lot more questions, and that is why it would be a lot harder to "solve," if possible. Pretty much people have accepted the fact that greenhouse gases go up into the atmosphere and trap infrared heat coming into the earth and make sure it stays there. It has generally been accepted that there is a natural global warming cycle for the Earth, just as there is a natural cycle which brings about ice ages (but the former has more to do with the greenhouse gases, and the latter with the Earth's tilt). If this would hold true, then there isn't really anything that can be done to reverse it. However, the debate is whether humans are accelerating the process by releasing more greenhouse gases (namely carbon dioxide from a variety of sources, and methane from cattle). While it seems to be going at a rate of only 1 degree per 150 years or so for the entire world, this is pretty significant. Antartica has actually gone up about 6 degrees in the last 150 years, so records have said. If humans actually are accelerating the process, then the imminent global climate change will only come faster. Even if the Earth's average temperature were to rise only 2 degrees from what it is now, that could shift areas where we can grow crops more northward or southward, which could result in smaller yields. Also, if it reached that point, then of course people will actually have to start worrying about whether the ice caps can completely melt or not. It has been decided that if they ever were to melt, then sea level would be 50 feet higher. This would make much of the South in the USA completely underwater, including Florida and Louisiana. Also, some places that are normally a little warmer could become a lot colder, and some cold places may even warm up because ocean currents would change drastically. England would become about as cold as Alaska if the current going to it were to be halted due to the ice caps melting. Some animals in the ocean may not be able to live there any more because their zone of tolerance as far as tempeature may be extremely limited. In other words, we would have a LOT of things to worry about if the average temperature of the world heated up a little.
I think that while we may not know whether we are accelerating the process or not, we should be taking measures as if we were, because it could only be safer. We should be shifting away from fossil fuels and try to focus more on use of natural, renewable fuel sources. If we have any chance of slowing this thing down enough where we don't have to worry about the climate changing too drastically, then we should go for it. Even if it is inevitable that it will happen, we could have more time to think about solutions if the temperature wasn't rising more than usual. Maybe we might even be able to last about 20,000 years or so... then humans would have the fun of deciding what to do so that we don't freeze our asses off forever!
So, that's how I view this whole fiasco.
EDIT: oh, and those people that think that we could one day get to be as bad as Venus are full of it. While a volcano does release a LOT of greenhouse gases when it fully erupts, it would take a LOT of those at once to get us to that point. Venus probably did have a ton of volcanoes that erupted a lot, and thus the planet had a runaway greenhouse effect, which would explain why it is constantly around 800 degrees plus in temperature. But a few volcanic eruptions would probably only make it rise a little. I don't see how some of these weirdos can think that humans are capable of pulling something so catastrophic off. |
Steak
Posts: 361/507 |
Originally posted by Ziffski
No. The SUN DESTROYS THE OZONE WITH ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION!
The primordial planet emitted gases that were held in by gravity that formed the sphere known as the OZONE layer.
And global warming is extremely noticeable. Shorter, milder winters (when my dad was a kid the total temperature was WAY colder). But then, I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't know much about the greenhouse gases...I think I'll let Steak take it away.
Thanks for the intro, Ziff.  
Ozone, O3, not exactly the most stable covalent bond. Ultraviolet like is of a short wavelength (high energy). That kind of high energy introduced to a less-than-perfect bond...breaks. Comes out as regular old O2. If I remember this correctly, new ozone comes as one of the many peculiar results of lightning bolts. If there wasn't new ozone forming, that layer would've been gone eons ago.
Greenhouse gases...*points at earlier long post so as not to repeat myself*...CO2 and CH4 are the two that come to mind...one because there's that much of it, and the other because of how powerful a greenhouse/hothouse gas it is. Atmospheric levels of CO2, last I knew, was about 0.5%. Methane levels...insignificant at the moment. Atmospheric methane levels are most affected by volcanic activity, specifically, outgassing (which releases CO2 [most famous greenhouse gas], CH4 [methane. Very strong greenhouse gas], and SO2 [causes acid rain, has some greenhouse attribute]). Last sizable erruption I can think of is Mt. Pinotubo in the Phillipines (on par with Mt. St. Helens, just no lateral blast this time), about 10-11 years ago...so methane's not that big a deal at the moment.
CO2, however...that's been rising much more quickly than it has been in ages past, mostly thanks to the industrial revolution. Coal laid down during the Mississipian & Pennsylvanian Periods (or collectively the Carboniferous by European geologists) has been for the most part dug up and burnt. Most of the oil shales are about the same age, I think. The bottom line remains, organic material that was taken out of the cycle during the mid-late Paleozoic has been reintroduced in this modern world. Phytoplankton (photosynthetic plankton, base of the food chian, apx. 30% of all organic matter on the planet) can't keep up with the rise. The key thing keeping CO2 levels down is chemical weathering of silicate rocks. The Himalayas, while not pulling as much CO2 from the atmosphere as they did in times past, still are keeping the rise at a lower level; we'd already be cooking without them.
So...what does all this mean for our modern lifestyle? *points at earlier long post, about glaciers* The glaciers are melting. It was going to happen. All that's left of the old North American Ice Sheet is what's in Greenland. If enough of the glaciers melt, sea level will be affected enough that altitude measurement/marker will need adjusting. Seaports rely on sea level being sea level; no ports exist where the tides are extreme. If sea level rises a few meters, all the seaports of the world will not function. And this would be instant economic tragedy and catostrosphe, since shipping things is cheaper by boat rather than by plane.
Note that greenhoused Earth had winters. And that glaciated earth still had summers. Saying that presence of snow means no global warming is simplify crap. From what I remember, the earth was on a general warming trend. We're speeding up the process. |
alte Hexe
Posts: 3200/5458 |
No. The SUN DESTROYS THE OZONE WITH ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION!
The primordial planet emitted gases that were held in by gravity that formed the sphere known as the OZONE layer.
And global warming is extremely noticeable. Shorter, milder winters (when my dad was a kid the total temperature was WAY colder). But then, I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't know much about the greenhouse gases...I think I'll let Steak take it away. |
HGanon
Posts: 5/59 |
I don't believe in global warming. At least not anything major.
If there's such a danger, than how is that where I live we're still getting snow? Not to mention that hot areas like Texas got snow last year. It just doesn't seem to add up.
Lots of people's concerns about global warming is that it affects the o-zone layer right? Well, I'm pretty sure that the sun CREATES the o-zone layer, so even if it was damaged, it would just be repaired. |
Ailure
Posts: 8349/11162 |
Ah, wonderful Germany, UK and Poland.
They shove out their shit, and it rains on our showers. It's said that we are a quite caring people about our nature, but it dosen't help when the shit rains from other countries.  ;
It's just not about global warming. :/ |
alte Hexe
Posts: 3176/5458 |
China, India, Brazil and ESPECIALLY Russia are going to be the biggest polluters with the USA, Britain, Canada, Ukraine and Germany behind them |
Grey the Stampede
Posts: 1856/3770 |
It's not entirely America's fault: Countries that are developing industrially have the potential to totally outstrip America in greenhouse gas production.
And didn't China and India, which already house over 1/4 the world's population, fight legislation that would in the very least help to fight pollution on the grounds that it was America's mess and they shouldn't have to clean it up, no matter how much they'd contribute to it in the future? Nice logic, there. Yeah, even though America got caught with its pants down, let's unzip and let it rip!
China and India are going to end up producing more pollution than America ever has once they develop... the least they could do is make sure global warming really is just America's fault by not contributing to it. |
alte Hexe
Posts: 3167/5458 |
Kyoto, although a flawed treatise, is still a good legislative piece as it is incentive based for companies and begins to create declines in pollution through finished products and production processes. |
Dracoon
Posts: 2656/3727 |
United States and Australia dodge Kyoto bullet
Competitive Enterprise Institute, Feb 14 2005
The Competitive Enterprise Institute congratulates the United States and Australia for their leadership in refusing to ratify the fatally flawed and potentially disastrous Kyoto Protocol climate treaty, which is scheduled to enter into force internationally on Wednesday.
Globalwarming.org
They really don't want us to pass that, so even if it is our fault, there is no way we can actually stop it. We halt production, we're screwed, we don't we're screwed... Damn.
Anyways, very interesting, although most people seem to be saying global warming is really going to mess us up with only a few people saying it is natural. This is a hard topic to get both sides on because everyone is promoting a political agenda. |
neotransotaku
Posts: 2595/4016 |
"our" fault? Why are you including me into this...I'm not complaining |
Legault
Posts: 49/269 |
Yeah some places would have a lower temperature but, they would most likely be lowered because they would be either flooded or frozen. However there is a low chance for that to happen anyway. Oh, I just remembered this, The only country that is making the problem of global warming is the United States. So it is all our fault. |
windwaker
Posts: 1265/1797 |
I read it; I wasn't referring to everywhere. In certain places there would be considerable lower temperature.  |
Steak
Posts: 357/507 |
Originally posted by windwaker
No, if the ice cap melts, there would be another ice age, possibly, because of it not only raising the seas with really cold water, it would affect Earth in a few ways.
...I get the feeling that people here look at the long post and say oh, Steak's just babbling again; just ignore him...nevermind that I actually am majoring in geology, and we go over this stuff in class.... |
windwaker
Posts: 1258/1797 |
Originally posted by Tamarin Calanis
Originally posted by windwaker
Now, where's the largest collection of ice stored?
Ice age.
You can store ice in a time period?
And really, windwaker, I'm not seeing the point behind your post. You may have been cut off too soon, maybe by parents or pets, or maybe your mistake at the end just killed any meaning in your post.
No, if the ice cap melts, there would be another ice age, possibly, because of it not only raising the seas with really cold water, it would affect Earth in a few ways. |
Banedon
Posts: 1045/1408 |
I read an article about this recently...supposedly, global warming is not a product of the industrialization of human society, it began 8000 years ago when humans started farming.
[EDIT: OK, how did the double post actually get through? I thought the board software prevented it from happening...] |
Steak
Posts: 356/507 |
So...now we're talking glaciers, and ice caps.
The Arctic Ice Cap is afloat. Just a large mass of sea ice. That won't affect ocean height significantly...but it will do something different if it's gone. Deep ocean currents, the ones that redistribute heat all over the world, are cooled near the poles. This means the water sinks to the bottom, and flows back to the start point. Without this cooling point, deep ocean currents will not flow as quickly, nor as deeply. This means, for starters, there won't be enough O2 for benthic bacteria to break down dead organisms that sunk to the bottom, and we'll start laying down black shale (and possibly oil shale). Not all that important to the human cause. However, this deadening or slowing of currents also will affect how high lattitudes near oceans receive their warmth. I speak of Western Europe, namely, Great Brittain. If those currents slow enough, Western Europe will receive the kind of cold associated with Canadian areas of the same lattitude.
Geologists have taken declassified data from Cold War nuclear subs (since one of the ideas was to have the subs pop up from under the Arctic Ice Cap, and fire off a number of SLBMs) in regards to the deep ocean currents (since there's a difference in density, slipping between the two throws off sonar detection). The Ice Cap has been thinning. Extrapolation from the data shows that the Arctic Ice Cap will be present during winter only, maybe as soon as 2020, and definately by 2050, unless something changes. That's in our lifetime, folks.
What will become of the oceanic currents...not sure. They may go from the arctic being their cooling point to simply connecting to the start that's somewhere in the Pacific. That'll keep Europe out of the freezer, but will likely in turn increase the general temperature of the oceans. Warmer world. Not necessarily a bad thing, but here's something else to consider. The large storms at sea draw their strength from how deep the warm water below them is. In the modern oceans the temperature plummets at depth of something like 800m (they call this point the thermocline). If the thermocline is deeper, the ocean storms can draw from a deeper column of warm water, and then they come more often, and *bigger*. Meaning, we could start seeing Cat. V Hurricanes more often.
Anarctica has its own circumcontinental deep ocean current that severs it off from the rest of the oceanic currents. It stays cold, though, perhaps not cold enough for our tastes. Anartica has two ice sheets (continental glaciers): Eastern, and Western. The Eastern Antarctic Ice Sheet is stable (for now). The Western, though isn't. I don't remember what all is happening with it...there is a part that's flowing notably faster than the rest of it (ice beyond a certain depth, somethin' like 50m, behaves differently than we're used to seeing. It can flow, among other things). If the whole thing fell in (which thankfully can't happen all at once; the sheet's that friggin' big), sea levels would rise apx. 20m. If all the glaciers of the world (including mountain glaciers, even the ones that are land-locked and have hundreds of miles of river before reaching the ocean) were to melt, the rise would be something like 70m. Again, not likely to happen. Probably won't during our lifetime.
/babbling
Yeah, I know...I'm the resident geologist. |
Grey the Stampede
Posts: 1831/3770 |
I think the point of hearing it on the news is that you're allowing yourself to measure the heat in the same way we measure heat with a thermometer, which when it comes to global warming, you just can't do.
Ziff's claim that almost every scientist agrees is pretty solid. Everyone against it has some kind of relation to the energy industry. In 1997, coal produced about 56% of the U.S.'s electricity, and pumped a good 30000+ pounds of CO2 gas into the atmosphere per household per year. That doesn't really seem like much in the grand scheme of things, but when we consider that before the Industrial Revolution CO2 levels were about 3/4 of what they are now, it's a bit of a possibility that modern industry has contributed just a little bit to our warming problem, since CO2 is literally the most common greenhouse gas.
The coal-ition, of course, claims that amount of CO2 gas is a GOOD thing, saying that higher average temperatures will allow people to spend more time outside, and more CO2 will help plants grow.
What they don't admit is that the temperature that rises per year is an AVERAGE, meaning it could stay completely the same around here, and rise about a whole degree or two in the north pole, and people wouldn't notice a damn thing.
They also don't admit that CO2, while being a good plant fertilizer, is not necessarily entirely absorbed by the plants. In fact, many plants have a light phase, where they respire CO2 and breathe out O2, and a dark phase, where they breathe in O2 and breathe out CO2. That, coupled with the oh, say, 100 years it takes for the ocean to absorb released CO2 gas, leads me to believe that the greenhouse skeptics just might be bullshitting us. |
PeterGriffinTheMan
Posts: 19/425 |
I believe it because in about 50 years or more the world is going to be different. Another reason in Antarctica ice is breaking apart and some other problem. I heard it on the news last year. |
Tamarin Calanis
Posts: 346/1802 |
Originally posted by windwaker
Now, where's the largest collection of ice stored?
Ice age.
You can store ice in a time period?
And really, windwaker, I'm not seeing the point behind your post. You may have been cut off too soon, maybe by parents or pets, or maybe your mistake at the end just killed any meaning in your post. |
windwaker
Posts: 1248/1797 |
Originally posted by ||bass
My problem with the whole global warming scare is that there's no proof that the effects of this would be negative.
Anyone know what happened the last time there was a major global warmup? It was called the "Renaissance" some of you may have heard of it.
World heating up = ice melts.
Now, where's the largest collection of ice stored?
Ice age. |
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