it is wayyyyyyyy warmer this year than last year, where i am at...
yes, the wind is still brutal....
but spring is early!
I sure hope this means we actually get a summer this year! as you know....it was near ABSENT last year!
90 cities hit record high temperature
- Thread starter Chris
- Start date
it is wayyyyyyyy warmer this year than last year, where i am at...
yes, the wind is still brutal....
but spring is early!
I sure hope this means we actually get a summer this year! as you know....it was near ABSENT last year!
The issue isn't really whether the Earth is warming. It is. It has been in fits and starts with periods of more warming and some retreats, but overall, the long term trend--we're speaking in thousands of years--most serious climate scientists agree that it has been warming since the last ice age. It will certainly continue to do so until it hits the cyclical peak--now we talking in tens of thousands of years--and we move back to another ice age.
So, the issue isn't whether climate changes. It does. Constantly and relentlessly. The issue is whether humankind has ability to affect that change. The way I see it, the evidence that humankind has not affected global climate change in any significant way is far more compelling than any argument that it has.
So, if the anti-AGW group prevails, it would seem that our emphasis should be on helping people adjust and adapt to inevitable climate change as it occurs rather than trying to change the climate.
So, the issue isn't whether climate changes. It does. Constantly and relentlessly. The issue is whether humankind has ability to affect that change. The way I see it, the evidence that humankind has not affected global climate change in any significant way is far more compelling than any argument that it has.
So, if the anti-AGW group prevails, it would seem that our emphasis should be on helping people adjust and adapt to inevitable climate change as it occurs rather than trying to change the climate.
1859 huh? How could your avatar look sooooooo good and you still type stuff like that?
- Thread starter
- #46
Like many Victorian natural philosophers, John Tyndall was fascinated by a great variety of questions. While he was preparing an important treatise on "Heat as a Mode of Motion" he took time to consider geology. Tyndall had hands-on knowledge of the subject, for he was an ardent Alpinist (in 1861 he made the first ascent of the Weisshorn). Familiar with glaciers, he had been convinced by the evidence — hotly debated among scientists of his day — that tens of thousands of years ago, colossal layers of ice had covered all of northern Europe. How could climate possibly change so radically?
One possible answer was a change in the composition of the Earth's atmosphere. Beginning with work by Joseph Fourier in the 1820s, scientists had understood that gases in the atmosphere might trap the heat received from the Sun. As Fourier put it, energy in the form of visible light from the Sun easily penetrates the atmosphere to reach the surface and heat it up, but heat cannot so easily escape back into space. For the air absorbs invisible heat rays (“infrared radiation”
rising from the surface. The warmed air radiates some of the energy back down to the surface, helping it stay warm. This was the effect that would later be called, by an inaccurate analogy, the "greenhouse effect." The equations and data available to 19th-century scientists were far too poor to allow an accurate calculation. Yet the physics was straightforward enough to show that a bare, airless rock at the Earth's distance from the Sun should be far colder than the Earth actually is.
Tyndall set out to find whether there was in fact any gas in the atmosphere that could trap heat rays. In 1859, his careful laboratory work identified several gases that did just that. The most important was simple water vapor (H2O). Also effective was carbon dioxide (CO2), although in the atmosphere the gas is only a few parts in ten thousand. Just as a sheet of paper will block more light than an entire pool of clear water, so the trace of CO2 altered the balance of heat radiation through the entire atmosphere. (For a more complete explanation of how the "greenhouse effect" works, follow the link at right to the essay on Simple Models of Climate.)(1)
The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect
One possible answer was a change in the composition of the Earth's atmosphere. Beginning with work by Joseph Fourier in the 1820s, scientists had understood that gases in the atmosphere might trap the heat received from the Sun. As Fourier put it, energy in the form of visible light from the Sun easily penetrates the atmosphere to reach the surface and heat it up, but heat cannot so easily escape back into space. For the air absorbs invisible heat rays (“infrared radiation”
rising from the surface. The warmed air radiates some of the energy back down to the surface, helping it stay warm. This was the effect that would later be called, by an inaccurate analogy, the "greenhouse effect." The equations and data available to 19th-century scientists were far too poor to allow an accurate calculation. Yet the physics was straightforward enough to show that a bare, airless rock at the Earth's distance from the Sun should be far colder than the Earth actually is.Tyndall set out to find whether there was in fact any gas in the atmosphere that could trap heat rays. In 1859, his careful laboratory work identified several gases that did just that. The most important was simple water vapor (H2O). Also effective was carbon dioxide (CO2), although in the atmosphere the gas is only a few parts in ten thousand. Just as a sheet of paper will block more light than an entire pool of clear water, so the trace of CO2 altered the balance of heat radiation through the entire atmosphere. (For a more complete explanation of how the "greenhouse effect" works, follow the link at right to the essay on Simple Models of Climate.)(1)
The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect
jreeves
Senior Member
- Feb 12, 2008
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Guess what, in the DC metro area, it was record breaking snowfall this year; over 73" of snow.
- Thread starter
- #48
jreeves
Senior Member
- Feb 12, 2008
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Yep I agree you're a crackhead.
- Thread starter
- #50
Insults are just your way of admitting you have nothing.
Solar activity and the 40% increase in atmospheric CO2 are the two greatests influences on our climate right now, but if the arctic methane gets released that could change everything.
Charles Stucker
Senior Member
- Oct 13, 2009
- 2,071
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So you'll be happy when glaciers are crossing the Red River?
(IN case you don't know the Red River is the border between Texas and Oklahoma)
jreeves
Senior Member
- Feb 12, 2008
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Chris is a moron, I have debated him seriously but there is no need in debating someone who is intellectually dishonest and a hypocrite.
Missourian
Diamond Member
gslack
Senior Member
- Mar 26, 2010
- 4,527
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Wait isn't there a difference between weather and climate? Yeah I distinctly remember your side telling me that when ever we mentioned the cold of a day or season....
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