Quote from Ricter:
Fair enough. But I don't think it's "we may" be warming, we are, I've been alive along enough to see it with my own eyes.
Maybe Man, maybe no, but I don't think we should be dumping CO2 into the air like we are, I think prudence is in order. Afaik the levels are unprecendented in any meaningful time frame (for humans).
Warming is bad, because our population is too high, imho, and we can ill afford to subtract from the world's arable land, which warming is doing.
Sandals all year, ummm.... yeah, I can dig it. I'm heading out in 10 days for my first holiday of 2011, Caribbean, w00t!
Here is the problem. We have been warming ever since the Maunder Minimum ended in the 18th century. During that period we have also experienced cooling periods such as occurred in the 70's when scientists called for a new ice age. Then we had a little spurt of warming until 1998.
Now we are starting to cool again. Longer term, we have been warming for the last 12,000 years when the last ice age ended. Also, longer term we are cyclically around the end of this current warm period and another ice age will be here soon. Maybe the warming has topped out or maybe we have another 1000 years. Ice ages last about 10 times longer than warm periods.
If we get warmer we can still grow crops and eat. If the seas rise we can move a little away from the coast. But if it just gets a little colder, like it was a few hundred years ago in the Maunder Minimum, a large part of the Human population will starve to death.
So, what causes these temperature variations over hundreds and thousands of years? Two things. Volcanic activity and solar activity. We don't have any massive volcanic activity now but we are seeing fluctuations in solar activity. It looks like we may be on course for another Maunder Minimum when sunspot activity decreases and the planet cools. This would be catastrophic for most of the Human race.
Does the Sun play a roll in the long term ice ages? No one knows. We don't have any solar information beyond records going back beyond Galileo's time. It makes sense that the Sun is the one variable that can heat and cool the planet over long periods. Also, when the Sun weakens the magnetic field of the Sun also weakens. A weakened Solar magnetic field allows more cosmic rays to get to the Earth. It is also known that cosmic rays can cause more cloud cover which also cools the earth.
With all these cycles and events beyond our control, doesn't it make sense not to get excited about a little amount of CO2 which is at TRACE gas in our atmosphere. And, there is no proof that CO2 in the amounts we are talking can warm the planet at all. We do know that moisture in the air has a very high warming effect and the amount of moisture in the air can and does warm and cool the planet.
I could go on but I think you get the point. Global warming may be an inconvenience but that is all. MAN MADE global warming is a myth created to enrich a few, transfer wealth from wealthy nations to poor nations and provide research grants to others. Data has been manipulated and temperature sensors have been put in places to distort the data in support of man made global warming.
Our real threat is if the Earth starts to cool. There are so many people on the planet now that hundreds of millions will die from starvation with just a little cooling of the planet. Today we are just one bad crop season away from world famine. So, pray we still have some more global warming to go.
