[Kazan]

Winter is hoter here in oklahoma, I'm not sure if it's normal but 60 to 70 degree every so often almost every other week.

obviously i was talking about long term trends there.. it also increases short term instability (an even greater amount)

like.. it'll be -12 tonight but 36 on sunday here

[IceFire]

I'm not minding the mild winters we've had the last....5-6 winters actually.  Although right now we're in a bit of a cold spell...its to be expected but really we've seen allot of rain this year and only a few major snowfalls.  Nothing that calls for a snow day shut down the schools/university/businesses sort of day which is disappointing actually.  But I do like the warmer winters we've been having

[Fearless Leader]

When someone finally talks you down from your peyote trip, you should be aware that you did, in fact, just attempt to discredit global warming by asserting that those who research it have warm houses.

  Yeah, Im aware of it. I dont see how its such a bad argument. People with no awareness of the harshness of the environment they live in should not be able to tell me that it is to warm

I would like you to consider something, if you were a rational minded person who had there doubts about global warming, how would you react to realiseing that you were on the same 'side' as a person who says something like this?
I live in a warm house, therefore... ehr... somehow that relates to measurements I've made in the siberian highlands? I mean I can't even figure out what the suposed logic of this is suposed to be.

  holy crap man! do you realize how cold it is in siberia?

I believe that the icecaps melting because of critical mass. The pressure of the the upper layers of ice are enough to force the lower layers back into a liquid or semi liquid state, thus making the ice "thinner". An inconsistence in pressure over the entire cap would lead to fissures and possibly chunks breaking off. 

[Nuke]

the last 2 winters here were brutal, this one seems to be slacking off though. just some minor glazing a couple inches deep, no large plow mounds have accumulated on the sides of the streets. the melt will be early.

[Ford Prefect]

Yeah, Im aware of it. I dont see how its such a bad argument. People with no awareness of the harshness of the environment they live in should not be able to tell me that it is to warm

It has nothing to do with their environment, or your environment. It's about the Earth's climate, and it has been repeatedly explained that global "warming" does not mean that everything is getting warmer; it means that global climate patterns are in a state of drastic upheaval. And that's to say nothing of the fact that by your logic a large portion of human intellectual endeavors are rendered invalid by reason of lack of personal experience.

I don't even know why I'm arguing this. God, my semester really needs to start.

[jr2]

global "warming"  ... means that global climate patterns are in a state of drastic upheaval.

Yesh.  Very drastic.

[Nuke]

i got an idea, lets lob nukes at the ice caps and see what happens. if anyone questions it we will just say that the penguins and polar bears are plotting terrorist attacks on the us and its allys.

[jr2]

i got an idea, lets lob nukes at the ice caps and see what happens. if anyone questions it we will just say that the penguins and polar bears are plotting terrorist attacks on the us and its allys.

Sounds good... but it depends on whether or not we can figure out the correct spelling for the launch code sequences. 

[Kazan]

global "warming"  ... means that global climate patterns are in a state of drastic upheaval.

Yesh.  Very drastic.

in geologic terms... yeah

let's do some BASIC physics

M = Mass of Earth's Atmosphere = ~ 5.1480×10^18 kg
Temperature Increase: 1.5 C

We'll limit ourselves to the troposphere - which contains 90% of the mass of the atmosphere
the specific heat of the lower atmospheres is 0.24 (how much energy is required relative to that required for water)

Energy Requires to raise troposphere 1.5 C = .9 * .24 * (5.1480×10^18 kg) * 4.184 kJ * 1.5C

(4.184 kJ = Energy [in calories] required to raise 1kg water 1 degree)

6,978,711,168,000,000,000 kiloJoules = 1,938,530,880,000 kWh (1.9 exaWatt hours)

"In 2003, New York City’s forecasted peak electricity demand was 11,020 mega-watts." http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:SWkmPj3eXUgJ:nyc.gov/html/om/pdf/energy_task_force.pdf+new+york+city+peak+energy+usage&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a#17

so... 1,938,530,880/11,020 = 175,910 hours = 7330 days = 20 years


so.. the amount of energy required to raise the troposphere by 1.5 degrees C is enough to power New York City at PEAK demand for 20 years!

yeah... not a drastic amount of energy AT ALL

[jr2]

Do me a favor... go calculate the amount of energy a small volcano emits per second.

[Kazan]

total energy released by the Krakatoa volcano explosion (which was a BIG one) was around 10^18 Joules
that's A LOT less than 6,978,711,168,000,000,000,000 Joules (10^21)

the global average temperature tends to go down after a volcanic event anyway - due to ash in the atmosphere

[MP-Ryan]

That poll is missing a crucial option.

Global warming (more accurately called climate change) is a natural process that has been accelerated by artificial means (e.g. industrialization and the consequences of altering atmospheric composition with previously unknown chemical catalysts).

Man is not causing climate change, but we're speeding it up.  Changes that used to take thousands of years are now taking hundred.  What used to take hundreds has been reduced to decades.  And what used to take a decade is now occurring in less than a single year.  Nowhere is this more visible than the Arctic.

That said, despite the doomsday prophets, this is not the end of life on this planet.  Earth has suffered several mass extinctions.  One of the most famous is the one that ended the dinosaurs, but in reality it was small.  Another extinction, earlier in geological time, wiped out 95% of life on the entire planet, including in the oceans (which are usually unaffected by mass extinctions).

We are likely facing another period of climate upheaval in which we will see a number of species disappear, but I'm somewhat skeptical that we're going to see extinctions on the scale of what's come before anytime soon.

We could fundamentally alter the atmosphere away from an oxygen/nitrogen mixture and still life would survive (Earth's life began as sulphur fixaters; aerobes came much much later).  Of course, whether or not humans would is another matter.

[karajorma]

We are likely facing another period of climate upheaval in which we will see a number of species disappear, but I'm somewhat skeptical that we're going to see extinctions on the scale of what's come before anytime soon.

Unless of course the problems caused to humans by global warming trigger off a nasty enough war that even the cockroaches turn up their toes.

[Hippy]

Some terminology suggestions and a possible solution...

Global warming = an increase in temperature of the global system.

Global cooling = an decrease in temperature of the global system.

Temperature = on the microscopic scale -  "temperature is defined as the average energy of microscopic motions of a single particle in the system per degree of freedom"... so sayeth wikipedia anyway. Point is 'temperature' should be used in its microscopic definition, not the layman's.

Climate change = a change in the climate. Can be due to global warming, global cooling or other. Can occur on the global or regional scale. Macro and micro again - building a great big skyscraper affects the wind patterns, resulting in micro climate change but it hardly effects the global system.

Man made = human activity of pumping gases into the atmosphere, generating waste heat, etc... also stuff like the nuclear winter theory of cold war fame, the human equiv. of a dinosaur-killer comet. Can result in global warming or cooling.

The problem in a nutshell = it's by far easier to add energy to a system than remove it. On average, human activity adds energy to the system and has been doing so at an increased rate in the last 400+ years and the last 100 in particular.  This is eventually unsustainable in terms of supporting human life.

Eventually = no-one knows. Pick sometime. I dunno.

My solution = Spaceships. Big ones. And small, fast, maneuverable ones that you can fly around blasting stuff in. And space stations. And moon bases. I think it's time we accepted that human activity is going to completely screw this planet eventually, therefore we should do the sensible thing and get off it as soon as possible and fly around in spaceships.

[Nuke]

technically speaking "climate change" would be happening with or without humans. earths atmosphere is not and never was at any fixed state. so do natural cycles occure? yes. are wee accelerating or decelerating them? no not directly. What we are doing is throwing more variables into an already infinitely long equation. these variables may cause increases in some things such as temperature, but might also decrease some other phenomenons like the earths co2 scrubbing capabilities. so when humans are still applying their own forces on the environment, even after thermal peak of the atmosphere. are we gonna start calling it global cooling? i dont think any of the names proposed for whats going on are accurate. id call it something like "forced climatic interferance".

[Fearless Leader]

My terminology

global warming = bunk
claimant change= happens and we can do anything
scientists= are retarded sometimes
this whole thing = is blown WAY out of proportion !

[Ford Prefect]

I would highly recommend yielding to this man's Chaucerian wordsmithing before all you tree-huggers embarrass yourselves any further.

[karajorma]

My terminology = wrong

There, now it all works.

[Kazan]

global warming = bunk

so now you know more than the best scientists in the fields of meteorology and climatology?

please, explain to us your theory explaining the global temperature increase (Which is undeniably fact - we have stinking observation records going back more than 100 years) and accounting for variables such as the 50% increase in atmospheric carbon load since the industrial revolution.

you also need to account for why the atmosphere is retaining 6x10^21 Joules more energy

[TrashMan]

Global warming is a myth.
It's caused by light from Venus reflecting off a weather balloon and passing trough swamp gas.

We humans never harm nature or the planet in any way. Anyone saying otherwise is a traitor to the human race and will be punished as stated by the GTVA bull*** act, section 00-01blj.