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Do as Al says, not as Al does
nationalpost.com — But take heart, there is increasing evidence that man-made carbon dioxide may not be causing global warming. Indeed, there is increasing debate in the scientific community whether there is even any warming occurring at all. Mr. Gore might just be able to keep going from jet to limo to estate guilt-free (if not carbon-free) for as long as he wishes.
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- cashman57, on 07/21/2008, -5/+18Wait!!
Didn't Algore tell us ten years ago we would lose significant amounts of coastal areas due to sea level rising caused by global warming? My friend who lives in Imperial Beach California has informed me he is still at his beach house and it isn't under water yet!
Good thing he didn't listen to Algore and sell!
Just in case I bought a house in Kansas so I can have beachfront property if Algore is right! - nathanww, on 07/21/2008, -13/+7The "anecdotes" in that article are just that--they have almost no scientific validity. It's global CLIMATE change, not global WEATHER change, so saying that China had the most severe winter on record doesn't prove anything.
- rukbat, on 07/21/2008, -2/+10Problem is we have been haveing climate change for over 4.5 BILLION years:
Temperature Timeline
So let's start with the current temperatures and work backwards. Temperatures have risen by 0.6 to 1.0°C since 1850, which was then end of the Little Ice Age. The Little Ice Age, which started around 1300, had temperatures up to half a degree Celsius cooler than the Medieval Warm Period before that (AD 1000). It was a minor fluctuation, really. Several similar variations occurred throughout the Holocene epoch. The rest of this Holocene period, from 1000 to 11,000 years before present, seemed rather uneventful, climatologically speaking. Paleoclimatology research shows only minor random changes in these ancient climates, except for a sharp cold snap known as the 6200 BC event (which lasted 50 to 100 years).
The Holocene began at the end of the Younger Dryas stadial 12,900 – 11,500 years before present (ybp). This was the mini ice age Al Gore talks about; it took place after the Vlad Glacier melted and the fresh water diluted the salt water in the Atlantic, causing the ocean current to stop and Europe to freeze. The Younger Dryas lasted over a thousand years, but not long enough to create a new ice age.
Prior to those ancient climates, we had the Pleistocene epoch. A period marked by many ice ages and ending with the so-called Late Glacial Interstadial melting period from 14,700 to 12,900 ybp. This 1800-year period of warmer ancient climates caused those giant pools of melt-water to form in North America, leading to the flooding that caused the Younger Dryas. The coldest weather of the Cenzoic Era occurred about 22,000 years ago, and that defined the Last Glacial Maximum.
What is an Ice Age?
A period of time with ice sheets and ice caps. We are in one now, and have been for a few million years. Up until about 10,000 years before now, it was colder than it is now and those ice sheets covered great expanses of the planet which are now populated temperate zones.
All of Canada, Greenland, New York, Chicago and areas in between had solid ice cover, hundreds of metres thick. The ice caps and sheets become smaller during the interglacial periods, and we are now in an interglacial period of the current ice age.
Several ancient climates of severe glaciation happened over the last 700,000 years. The most recent one went from 110,000 to 12,000 years ago, and before that came one lasting from 200,000 to 130,000 years before present. Progressing backwards in time, the third glacial period, ran from 455,000 to 300,000 years ago, and the first in this stretch started 680,000 years ago and lasted about 60,000 years. The interglacial periods fell between these time slots.
The Pliocene epoch, 5.3 to 1.8 million years ago, showed signs of the coming ice ages. Antarctica became totally ice covered around 5 million years ago and the Arctic got its ice cap a couple million years later. These ancient climates were definitely colder than before. Possibly the coldest it has been in hundreds of millions of years.
Greenland acquired its first glaciers during the later part of the Miocene epoch, which went from 23 to 5 million years ago. The place had lush forest cover before then. Miocene ancient climates were quite warm compared to now, especially during the mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum 18 million years ago.
Overall, it was about 50 million ybp when the whole world began slowly cooling down. It reached its first minimum in the Oligocene epoch ancient climates and eventually lead to the ice ages of the Pleistocene. The Oligocene epoch, 34 to 23 million years ago, was not as warm as the Miocene which followed, but still warmer than present.
Before the Oligocene was the Eocene epoch, from 56 to 34 million years before present. It was the warmest we've seen in the last 56 million years. But the epochs before that, Paleocene and those of the Cretaceous period (146 to 65 million before present), were almost as warm.
Most of ancient climates of the Mesozoic Era, 251 to 65 million years ago, were considerably warmer than today and the dinosaurs thrived. That era included the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Long before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could do anything about it.
These geologists call the first half of the Phanerozoic Eon the Paleozoic Era. It saw dramatic swings between very warm and cold paleoclimate extremes, ending with an ice age that gripped the Carboniferous and Permian periods. These periods collectively spanned 360 to 251 million years ago. Before that time the earth was warmer again, with average temperatures that were warmer than today. We call these times the Silurian and Devonian periods and they went from 444 to 360 million years before today.
Where are we going with all this?
Finally, the first two parts of the Phanerozoic eon are called the Cambrian and Ordovician periods. They started 542 million years ago, lasted a total of nearly 100 million years and ended with an ice age which led to the Silurian Period.
Little is known about the ancient climates in the periods before the Phanerozoic eon, however the strong snowball earth ice age is believed to have had ice covering the entire planet. That was over 800 million years ago.
Climate change will continue weather man is here or not. All the money Al gore want us to spend to stop something that cannont be stopped is ridiculous...it would be better spent on adaption! we are a very adapable people! - cashman57, on 07/21/2008, -3/+10What we really have are conclusions reached in the absence of reality. In reality we have volcanic activity above and below the oceans.
There is not one single person on this planet that can give you a precise count of the number of volcanoes under the seas, they just don't know. They have no way of detecting them, no way of mapping them and no record of any change in the vicintity of the eruption.
We have people here on digg who have claimed that the movement and melting on the continent of Antarctica is caused by global warming.In reality it is being caused by volcanic activity. These pseudo-scientists though still have their pet theory that those volcanoes don't exist and Americans are ruining the ice pack.
In fact they don't know how many volcanoes there are on that continent.
When you can only reach your conclusion if you have to pretend volcanoes do not exist, WHAT GOOD IS THE CONCLUSION?- vikingcoder, on 07/21/2008, -6/+1Please reference this claim that the Antarctic melting is being caused by volcanic activity.
Are you arguing from scientific knowledge or internal belief? - nathanww, on 07/22/2008, -5/+1The current scientific evidence indicates that it is in fact global warming. As such, the burden of proof is on you to proivide evidence that it is indeed volcanoes.
Citations please. - cashman57, on 07/25/2008, -0/+4You want proof that volcanoes exist? You want me to cite articles about volcanoes?
There are no computer models which show global warming without omitting all data from volcanic activity. I am sure some of you have heard all about how it is because of global warming that the ice is melting off of the continent of Antarctica. viking coder and others made that stupid claim before being shown proof that it was indeed volcanic activity sending the ice streams downhill.
Stop bothering me with inane questions and find a computer model that deals in reality where volcanoes exist or shut the flock up.
- vikingcoder, on 07/21/2008, -6/+1Please reference this claim that the Antarctic melting is being caused by volcanic activity.
- BECoole, on 07/22/2008, -2/+7That's like arguing about too much traffic vs. too many cars as causing congestion on the roads.
Cars make up traffic and weather makes up climate.- nathanww, on 07/23/2008, -3/+2A better analogy would be:
Weather-the traffic conditions on the road at a given time
Climate-the overall average of conditions
By lookinging at the traffic at just a few, atypical times(like rush hour), you cannot get a reliable idea of the general trend.
- nathanww, on 07/23/2008, -3/+2A better analogy would be:
- rukbat, on 07/21/2008, -2/+10Problem is we have been haveing climate change for over 4.5 BILLION years:
- rukbat, on 07/21/2008, -3/+20Problem is we have been haveing climate change for over 4.5 BILLION years:
Temperature Timeline
So let's start with the current temperatures and work backwards. Temperatures have risen by 0.6 to 1.0°C since 1850, which was then end of the Little Ice Age. The Little Ice Age, which started around 1300, had temperatures up to half a degree Celsius cooler than the Medieval Warm Period before that (AD 1000). It was a minor fluctuation, really. Several similar variations occurred throughout the Holocene epoch. The rest of this Holocene period, from 1000 to 11,000 years before present, seemed rather uneventful, climatologically speaking. Paleoclimatology research shows only minor random changes in these ancient climates, except for a sharp cold snap known as the 6200 BC event (which lasted 50 to 100 years).
The Holocene began at the end of the Younger Dryas stadial 12,900 – 11,500 years before present (ybp). This was the mini ice age Al Gore talks about; it took place after the Vlad Glacier melted and the fresh water diluted the salt water in the Atlantic, causing the ocean current to stop and Europe to freeze. The Younger Dryas lasted over a thousand years, but not long enough to create a new ice age.
Prior to those ancient climates, we had the Pleistocene epoch. A period marked by many ice ages and ending with the so-called Late Glacial Interstadial melting period from 14,700 to 12,900 ybp. This 1800-year period of warmer ancient climates caused those giant pools of melt-water to form in North America, leading to the flooding that caused the Younger Dryas. The coldest weather of the Cenzoic Era occurred about 22,000 years ago, and that defined the Last Glacial Maximum.
What is an Ice Age?
A period of time with ice sheets and ice caps. We are in one now, and have been for a few million years. Up until about 10,000 years before now, it was colder than it is now and those ice sheets covered great expanses of the planet which are now populated temperate zones.
All of Canada, Greenland, New York, Chicago and areas in between had solid ice cover, hundreds of metres thick. The ice caps and sheets become smaller during the interglacial periods, and we are now in an interglacial period of the current ice age.
Several ancient climates of severe glaciation happened over the last 700,000 years. The most recent one went from 110,000 to 12,000 years ago, and before that came one lasting from 200,000 to 130,000 years before present. Progressing backwards in time, the third glacial period, ran from 455,000 to 300,000 years ago, and the first in this stretch started 680,000 years ago and lasted about 60,000 years. The interglacial periods fell between these time slots.
The Pliocene epoch, 5.3 to 1.8 million years ago, showed signs of the coming ice ages. Antarctica became totally ice covered around 5 million years ago and the Arctic got its ice cap a couple million years later. These ancient climates were definitely colder than before. Possibly the coldest it has been in hundreds of millions of years.
Greenland acquired its first glaciers during the later part of the Miocene epoch, which went from 23 to 5 million years ago. The place had lush forest cover before then. Miocene ancient climates were quite warm compared to now, especially during the mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum 18 million years ago.
Overall, it was about 50 million ybp when the whole world began slowly cooling down. It reached its first minimum in the Oligocene epoch ancient climates and eventually lead to the ice ages of the Pleistocene. The Oligocene epoch, 34 to 23 million years ago, was not as warm as the Miocene which followed, but still warmer than present.
Before the Oligocene was the Eocene epoch, from 56 to 34 million years before present. It was the warmest we've seen in the last 56 million years. But the epochs before that, Paleocene and those of the Cretaceous period (146 to 65 million before present), were almost as warm.
Most of ancient climates of the Mesozoic Era, 251 to 65 million years ago, were considerably warmer than today and the dinosaurs thrived. That era included the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Long before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could do anything about it.
These geologists call the first half of the Phanerozoic Eon the Paleozoic Era. It saw dramatic swings between very warm and cold paleoclimate extremes, ending with an ice age that gripped the Carboniferous and Permian periods. These periods collectively spanned 360 to 251 million years ago. Before that time the earth was warmer again, with average temperatures that were warmer than today. We call these times the Silurian and Devonian periods and they went from 444 to 360 million years before today.
Where are we going with all this?
Finally, the first two parts of the Phanerozoic eon are called the Cambrian and Ordovician periods. They started 542 million years ago, lasted a total of nearly 100 million years and ended with an ice age which led to the Silurian Period.
Little is known about the ancient climates in the periods before the Phanerozoic eon, however the strong snowball earth ice age is believed to have had ice covering the entire planet. That was over 800 million years ago.
Climate change will continue weather man is here or not. All the money Al gore want us to spend to stop something that cannont be stopped is ridiculous...it would be better spent on adaption! we are a very adapable people! - JohnDBandit, on 07/21/2008, -1/+16Al Gore has ulterior motive to force social change through fear of global warming and refuses to see the truth, BUT many scientist now are speaking out agains't the scam. And some have proof of the scam.
The Physics & Society Forum of the American Physical Society admits that "there is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC [United Nation's climate panel] conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."
Among the scientist is Christopher Monckton, who once advised Margaret Thatcher. Physics and Society, a peer-review journal of the American Physical Society, has published Monckton's mathematical proof that computer models used by the IPCC "were pre-programmed with overstated values for the three variables whose product is “climate sensitivity” (temperature increase in response to greenhouse-gas increase), resulting in a 500-2000% overstatement of CO2’s effect on temperature in the IPCC’s latest climate assessment report, published in 2007."
scienceandpublicpolicy.org
- IslandJeff, on 07/22/2008, -1/+13Clinging to some sort of Cultural Relevance, Prince Albert needs to just enjoy his book proceeds (were the slaughtered trees renewable?) and fade into anonymity before the stuff he supposedly believes in comes up to expose him for what he is: yet another Public Crusader who can't Walk the Talk.
Go away, Albert Jr. Your fifteen are long up. - InRussetShadows, on 07/23/2008, -1/+11When Al sells everything he owns to go and live in Thailand and drive a Segway, then I'll give weight to his theories. Not until then.
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