Global Overheating

[Mariner]

vast time span you are talking about, CO2 was not the only determinant of global temperatures. It is also not the only greenhouse gas--others are far more potent. Greenhouse warming via atmospheric retention of heat is only one mechanism that adjusts the earth's temp. All this is being worked out in great detail--detail that is routinely ignored by skeptics, who just say Bah, Humbug to the whole thing.

Anyway, I posted above about the NASA scientist being muzzled by Bush. Well, the muzzler in this case turns out to have lied that he went to college. Typical Bush--a high school grad muzzling a top NASA scientist. Competence doesn't count. Only ideology does. Heck of a job, Deutschie.

The New York Times
February 8, 2006
A Young Bush Appointee Resigns His Post at NASA
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/politics/08nasa.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=print

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.

Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.

* * *

The resignation came as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was preparing to review its policies for communicating science to the public. The review was ordered Friday by Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, after a week in which many agency scientists and midlevel public affairs officials described to The New York Times instances in which they said political pressure was applied to limit or flavor discussions of topics uncomfortable to the Bush administration, particularly global warming.

* * *

Mr. Deutsch, 24, was offered a job as a writer and editor in NASA's public affairs office in Washington last year after working on President Bush's re-election campaign and inaugural committee, according to his résumé. No one has disputed those parts of the document.

According to his résumé, Mr. Deutsch received a "Bachelor of Arts in journalism, Class of 2003."

Yesterday, officials at Texas A&M said that was not the case.

* * *

Such complaints came to the fore starting in late January, when James E. Hansen, the climate scientist, and several midlevel public affairs officers told The Times that political appointees, including Mr. Deutsch, were pressing to limit Dr. Hansen's speaking and interviews on the threats posed by global warming.

Yesterday, Dr. Hansen said that the questions about Mr. Deutsch's credentials were important, but were a distraction from the broader issue of political control of scientific information.

"He's only a bit player," Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Deutsch. " The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies. That's what I'm really concerned about."

"On climate, the public has been misinformed and not informed," he said. "The foundation of a democracy is an informed public, which obviously means an honestly informed public. That's the big issue here."

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Mariner, you think the desalinization of the northern downflow of the deep ocean currents due to melting glacial ice sucks, you ought ought to try a kick in the nuts.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

I'm buying up portions of the nevada desert which will become valuable after the coming global calamity.

 

[Hobbit]

You're right, CO2 is not the most prevalant nor the most effective greenhouse gas. Both of those titles belong to water vapor. Water vapor accounts for 95% of all greenhouse gasses by both effect and volume. Humans account for only .001% of all water vapor, with the majority being attributed to the sun heating the ocean. Humans don't cause global warming. Nearly every human being on the planet would have to conspire and try hard to actually have a noticable effect of greehouse gasses. We're 3/4 water by surface area, and the sun is frickin' hot.

 

[Mariner]

There is risk of a positive feedback loop where warmer temps create more water vapor, which creates warmer temps, etc. If we're lucky, more water vapor also makes more clouds, which reflect sunlight--but of course this could go too far and make a new ice age. Don't forget that from 70,000 to 10,000 years ago we were in ice age (and several recent times before that). It might not take much to throw us back into that pattern.

I'm not sure why it's hard for people to imagine that the human effect on the carbon, water and other ecological cycles is so vast. Each year, each American generates several tons of carbon. Multiply by 300 million, remember how thin the atmosphere is, and it's easy to see that we can change the amount of CO2 over a couple of hundred years.

Here's something more to worry about. The latest research suggests that about half of the human-generated excess carbon has been absorbed in the oceans (see the current issue of Scientific American). No climate scientist disputes this (unlike the atmospheric figures, where a few do). The result has been an increase in the acidity of the ocean by 0.1 pH units. Current projections call for several times this increase over the next few decades. In an acidic ocean, calcium carbonate dissociates. I.e. shells and corals melt. That's why you can't keep a shell in a freshwater aquarium. Since tiny shelled creatures are at the bottom of the ocean food chain, and coral reefs are the "rainforests of the ocean," damage to these creatures will destroy ocean life as we know it. Read the article and see what you think.

Mariner.

 

[BaronVonBigmeat]

Every global warming thread on the internet seems to go like this:

A) Global warming is real. Look at this chart! (Shows multi-thousand year timeline, usually with 4 big spikes)

B) Okay. The temperature is currently going up. It was also going up at 25k, 50k , 75k, and 100k years before present. How do you know this isn't a natural, cyclical phenomenon? Even in the realm of recorded history, there have been mini ice-ages in Europe, warm periods in Greenland, England was a wine-making region in Roman times, etc. Not to mention the staggering--and totally natural--effects of the end of the ice age, circa 10,000 B.C. Sea levels rose by perhaps 100 meters, huge expanses of land were swallowed by the sea almost overnight, isostatic rebound of the earth's crust caused unimaginable seismic activity...all without any significant input from man.

A) ...

A) But but!! Don't you think scientists thought of that when they did this study???

B) Who gets more research funding, the scientist who says "it's going to be a bumpy ride, but this is natural" or "OMG TEH SKY IS FALLING SUVS RARRRR"