Global warming

[Confused]

This is a spin off from Homeschooling children where Otseng says that Global warming shouldn't be taught as to their is no proof of this:
http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/2DB6DAB0- ... D47119D08/

This is a slide show of some of the now obvious effects of the global warming:

In the Canadian high Arctic, a polar bear negotiates what was once solid ice. Bears are drowning as warmer waters widen the distance from floe to floe

An Indian woman walks on the dried up Osman Sagar lake on the outskirts of the capital of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh Hyderabad. The amount of the earth's surface afflicted by drought has more than doubled since the 1970s.

Banana-leaf rafts save Indian villagers washed out of their homes. Creeping seas and increasingly savage monsoons make for deadlier floods.

Residents of New Orleans fight their way to the Superdome as Hurricane Katrina hammers down on the Gulf Coast. Studies show that in the past 35 years the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has doubled, while the wind speed and duration of all hurricanes has jumped 50%.

Once cool and wet, forests like this in Alaska are falling victim first to drought, then to fire.

http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/qthinice.asp
2. What kinds of changes are taking place in the Arctic now?

Average temperatures in the Arctic region are rising twice as fast as they are elsewhere in the world. Arctic ice is getting thinner, melting and rupturing. For example, the largest single block of ice in the Arctic, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, had been around for 3,000 years before it started cracking in 2000. Within two years it had split all the way through and is now breaking into pieces.

The polar ice cap as a whole is shrinking. Images from NASA satellites show that the area of permanent ice cover is contracting at a rate of 9 percent each decade. If this trend continues, summers in the Arctic could become ice-free by the end of the century.


3. How does this dramatic ice melt affect the Arctic?

The melting of once-permanent ice is already affecting native people, wildlife and plants. When the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf splintered, the rare freshwater lake it enclosed, along with its unique ecosystem, drained into the ocean. Polar bears, whales, walrus and seals are changing their feeding and migration patterns, making it harder for native people to hunt them. And along Arctic coastlines, entire villages will be uprooted because they're in danger of being swamped. The native people of the Arctic view global warming as a threat to their cultural identity and their very survival.


4. Will Arctic ice melt have any effects beyond the polar region?
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ALASKA HEATS UP
The effects of global warming on the north are not limited to the Arctic -- higher temperatures are already affecting people, wildlife and landscapes across Alaska. Click on the numbers on this map to see what's happening on the front lines of global warming.
1. Barrow 2. Shismaref 3. Yukon River 4. Wasilla 5. Kenai Peninsula 6. McCall Glacier 7. Fairbanks


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(See more Google Earth maps.)
Yes -- the contraction of the Arctic ice cap is accelerating global warming. Snow and ice usually form a protective, cooling layer over the Arctic. When that covering melts, the earth absorbs more sunlight and gets hotter. And the latest scientific data confirm the far-reaching effects of climbing global temperatures.

Rising temperatures are already affecting Alaska, where the spruce bark beetle is breeding faster in the warmer weather. These pests now sneak in an extra generation each year. From 1993 to 2003, they chewed up 3.4 million acres of Alaskan forest.

Melting glaciers and land-based ice sheets also contribute to rising sea levels, threatening low-lying areas around the globe with beach erosion, coastal flooding, and contamination of freshwater supplies. (Sea level is not affected when floating sea ice melts.) At particular risk are island nations like the Maldives; over half of that nation's populated islands lie less than 6 feet above sea level. Even major cities like Shanghai and Lagos would face similar problems, as they also lie just six feet above present water levels.

Rising seas would severely impact the United States as well. Scientists project as much as a 3-foot sea-level rise by 2100. According to a 2001 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study, this increase would inundate some 22,400 square miles of land along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, primarily in Louisiana, Texas, Florida and North Carolina.

A warmer Arctic will also affect weather patterns and thus food production around the world. Wheat farming in Kansas, for example, would be profoundly affected by the loss of ice cover in the Arctic. According to a NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies computer model, Kansas would be 4 degrees warmer in the winter without Arctic ice, which normally creates cold air masses that frequently slide southward into the United States. Warmer winters are bad news for wheat farmers, who need freezing temperatures to grow winter wheat. And in summer, warmer days would rob Kansas soil of 10 percent of its moisture, drying out valuable cropland.



Since we are already seeing the effect of Global warming, hence proving the theory, the questions for debate:

1) How can anyone still refute the existence and effects of global warming?

2) We can't stop what has already begun, but can we reduce the damage?

3) Is this a part of intelligent design? or just a natural occurence?

[QED]

I have just spent half an hour researching, and according to a comparison on the UN's report of fuel comsumption to the amount of CO2 produced by volcanos(reported by a geological institute in Hawaii), It turns out that humans are producing ~150 times the CO2 that volcanoes are on a yearly basis.

Yet Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, one of the key scientific authorities on global warming has shown that CO2 emissions are not the main cause of observed atmospheric warming. Other greenhouse gases trap heat more effectively than CO2, some of them tens of thousands of times more powerfully. Hansen also points out that the industrial processes leading to the production of CO2 also tend to generate particulate pollution which screens the shorter wavelength light from reaching the planet -- effectively cancelling out warming due to the CO2.

Of course Hansen is for action as he perceives a problem, yet if even he agrees that CO2 isn't the main cause of the problem then why is there a political drive focusing on the reduction of this particular gas?

I see there are now moves being made across Europe to ban the sale of conventional incandescent lighting and to get manufacturers to remove the standby facility on domestic electrical products like TV's. These moves will leave us with those unattractive compact fluorescents (unattractive because they take time to warm-up, cannot match the warm spectra of incandescent, often cannot be dimmed -- although they're barely bright enough to need any dimming! And volume-for-volume can't produce anything like as much light.) As for removing the standby on TV's etc. this is an integral part of the remote control of the device. It means taking the power on/off button off the handset and leaving it for the user to make their way to the set to switch it off -- or to reach down to the mains switch on the wall outlet. OK, so plenty of us could do with the exercise but my elderly parents would find this a very retrogressive move.

Now I am wondering if the environmental lobbyists are keen on seeing us all take a big backward step in order to achieve their own particular vision for the world? I'm no saint, but as a sensible economic and environmental policy I have exercised my own freedom to decide to leave my gas-guzzling car in the garage most of the time and to holiday in my home Country rather than jump on a plane at the drop of a hat. I have also got some of those nasty energy saving lamps in rooms where the quality of light doesn't matter so much and I don't keep all my electrical appliances on standby all of the time -- only those that are used daily. But I strongly object to being forced into these things when the science is so debatable and the politics so lacking in transparency.

[Confused]

Gia:

Only a feeling of guilt will move us to do what needs to be done to reverse this situation.

I think that is a gross underestimation of mankind. To believe that guilt can be the only motivator is a poor perception in my view. Rather, I think if one could show a correlation between the percentage of manmade vs natural, then man would do what was right. Not out of guilt, but survival and the belief to do what is right. Emission controls are one example of man altering, not out of guilt, but out of knowledge.