The program about global warming on C4

[Jacques]

For those that missed it:

[Steve R]

Sam, the earth has both warmed and cooled during that time, just as it always has done, due to solar activity and nothing else.

[Sam Slater]

[quote]Sam, the earth has both warmed and cooled during that time, just as it always has done, due to solar activity and nothing else.[/quote]

I'm sorry Steve, that's just plain wrong.

There are lots of factors that heat/cool the Earth. Solar energy is of course a major player, but the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere decides has an affect. C02 itself doesn't make things warmer. What it does do is play a major factor in how much heat escapes. CO2 is a heavier molecule than O & H and so is more abundant the closer you get the the Earth's surface. It acts as thermal underwear would do on a body. It traps heat full stop.

The Earth releases carbon in forms of volcanic activity, and decaying matter. The plants and Oceans absorb carbon, and so the cycle goes. Using gas and oil like we do releases carbon into the atmosphere that would have taken thousands of years, slowly making its way to the surface. We as a species cannot generate more carbon than what the Earth has to offer, we just release it into the atmosphere at a higher rate than what natural processes can re-absorb it.

Warming obviously melts ice. Not all ice melting raises sea levels, only land ice does that. Still, isn't 60% of the worlds population residing in coastal regions? London, New York, Sydney, Singapore, Tokyo. Ice also reflects solar heat like a mirror would do. This speeds up warming even more.

I never watched the programme, (I may do as Jacques has kindly posted a link) and it may be well put together in a convincing manner, but I've been in a lab, with Bunsen burners, thermometers and such. I remember clearly that C02 molecules trap heat more effectively than Oxygen and Hydrogen, and no one's going to tell me differently, unless they can prove I dreamed the results.

Hell, maybe global warming won't be so bad. Maybe the Earth will warm up but we'll get by just fine without polar caps (at least in the short term as sea/air currents from the tropics may well reverse, which will bring the ice back, but without the tropic currents we'll descend into an ice age), but it's a gamble.

Doing our best to stop carbon emissions may well prove to be a little OTT and in 50 years we'll laugh at how paranoid we were, but all mankind will have is a wasted time and effort. Doing nothing could mean the end of lots of animal and plant species, chaotic weather in coastal regions, killing millions, and less land mass for our population to reside. Less land mass means mass migration and fights over territory - everywhere.

Doing something now (wrongly or rightly) is being cautious.

Doing nothing now (rightly or wrongly) is gambling with a whole planet. The only planet we know that supports life in our solar system. Probably the only planet in the Galaxy, and we're willing to gamble?

[Steve R]

"I'm sorry Steve, that's just plain wrong."

No, it isn't.

[Sam Slater]

Damn. I thought I had you there.

[Bob Singleton]

The problem with such a programme is that the selfish cretins who derided the "global warming" theories of groups such as Greenpeace will now say, "see, what did I tell you? Of course it's OK for me to drive 80,000 miles a year in a car that only does 10mpg"

I can't see how sending millions of tons of pollutants into our atmosphere, destroying forests and allowing soil erosion can do anything but harm, either short or long term.

[diplodocus]

read a book called 'six degrees', written by a bloke who read virtually every paper on global warming including paleoarcheology. Pretty intense and quite scary, for example

1-2 degree temp rise, this would bring us in line with the earths temp around 6000 years ago - most of north america was desert, think of how much wheat in grown there at the moment

3 to 4 degrees - bacteria decomposition increases in the soil and permafrost begins to melt pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere pushing warming up further

4-6 degrees - scary, at the end of the Permian, 251m years ago, when global temperatures rose by - yes - six degrees, and 95% of species were wiped out.

no science is exact, good science picks a theory then tries to disprove it by experimentation, as research is continuing, most experiments continue to back the warming theory

link to the article