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Re: Global Warming
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timebeing(d)
global warning: ENTER... The Beginnings of civilization!
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Space Saviour
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Dec 11 03 1:13 PM
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Enter TB... with the fair warning that I'm not an atmospheric chemist (as my Nobel prize winning compatriot Mario Molina is... he was one of the original CFC-ozone hole relationship proponents, a theory that was also disputed at first) I do read about these things with interest and can understand the actual scientific articles about it, even if I rarely read them. So I'm not expert, but I may be better informed than others.
Man has been changing climate for 8,000 years
(News item from Nature, one of the most respected scientific journals)
HUMANS BEGAN ALTERING GLOBAL CLIMATE THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO, STUDY SHOWS
(Press release from University of Virginia)
The contents page of the Journal
Climatic Change
... go to vol. 61(3), December 2003, the original article is available as PDF (is it free for all? I don't know, since my university has online access to many journals with access automated by IP addresses I may have accessed it that way. If anyone is interested in the PDF, a 389 KB file, let me know, or go to your local university/library and see if you can access it there).
This was also
reported
in the NY Times. Here's that report:
December 10, 2003
Scientist Links Man to Climate Over the Ages
By KENNETH CHANG
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 9 Humans have altered the world's climate by generating heat-trapping gases since almost the beginning of civilization and even prevented the start of an ice age several thousand years ago, a scientist said on Tuesday.
Most scientists attribute a rise in global temperatures over the past century in part to emissions of carbon dioxide by human activities like driving cars and operating factories.
Dr. William Ruddiman, an emeritus professor at the University of Virginia, said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union here that humans' effect on climate went back nearly 10,000 years to when people gave up hunting and gathering and began farming.
Dr. Ruddiman is also reporting his findings in the journal Climatic Change.
In a commentary accompanying the article, Dr. Thomas J. Crowley of Duke University, said he was first taken aback by Dr. Ruddiman's premise. "But when I started reading," Dr. Crowley wrote, "I could not help but wonder whether he just might be on to something."
The climate of the last 10,000 years has been unusually stable, allowing civilization to flourish. But that is only because people chopped down swathes of forest in Europe, China and India for croplands and pastures, Dr. Ruddiman said. Carbon dioxide released by the destruction of the forests, plus methane, another heat-trapping gas, produced by irrigated rice fields in Southeast Asia, trapped enough heat to offset an expected natural cooling, he said.
"The stability is an accident," Dr. Ruddiman said.
Levels of carbon dioxide and methane rise and fall in natural cycles lasting thousands of years, and both reached a peak at the end of the last ice age 11,000 years ago. Both then declined as expected.
Both should have continued declining through the present day, leading to lower temperatures, and a new ice age should have begun 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, Dr. Ruddiman said. Instead, levels of carbon dioxide reversed 8,000 years ago and starting rising again. The decline in methane levels reversed 5,000 years ago, coinciding with the advent of irrigation rice farming.
Italics are mine, to emphasize that indeed some scientists question the anthropogenesis of global warming but the general consensus is that it is a fact.
As I told you once DW, in the Random News thread, there are very nice graphs showing the average global temperatures following closely the average atmospheric CO2 concentrations (some links to examples are in that reply). And as I said before, politicians would rather believe the "experts" that tell them what they want to hear... Seriously, if a politician wanted to hear that the 2nd. Law of Thermodynamics doesn't hold true he could and would find a dissenting scientist that would tell him so...
I think it is irresponsible not to act in reducing the CO2 emissions. We can't afford to verify once and for all that global warming is related to CO2 by increasing the concetration. Reducing the C02 emissions will also prove it by slowing or reversing the trend... and that is much better for the environment.
Now. let me tell you something: dissent is common and essential in scientific research, the objections of those denying a link between CO2 and global warming spur the proponents of the theory to refine and strengthen their models... and viceversa. Until there is a final consensus the majority opinion should be considered for guidance in decisions (especially in this case where the only thing hurt by the changes would be entrenched economical interests in obsolete technology).
If you read the editorial commentary, by Thomas J. Crowley, preceding the original paper in the Climatic Change journal, you will see some of that. The editor disputes some details, presenting some alternative estimates/explanations, but he never says that Ruddiman is completely wrong, praises his scientific and thought skills. Also (business as usual) he says that it is not certain yet that Ruddiman is right, I'll quote his last statement:
It is almost trite to state that only time will tell if Ruddiman is right. One can however predict the paper is almost certain to stir up interest and perhaps not a little controversy. Greenhouse skeptics will no doubt be aroused to ire but they will focus on an unflappable scientist who is at least as well read and certainly has less of an agenda than most of his will-be accusers.
If Ruddiman is right (and I agree that he may be on to something) then the original warming trends benefited us, by preventing a new ice age human civilization could develop unimpeded... but we are now releasing much more CO2 (and methane) than needed for that stability. It's time to stop it...
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