Global warming.

[Minimalist]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/6405667.stm

Here's a link Digit. Interesting story.

[Beagle]

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17977

The planet Mars is undergoing significant global warming, new data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) show, lending support to many climatologists' claims that the Earth's modest warming during the past century is due primarily to a recent upsurge in solar energy.


Martian Ice Shrinking Dramatically

According to a September 20 NASA news release, "for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress." Because a Martian year is approximately twice as long as an Earth year, the shrinking of the Martian polar ice cap has been ongoing for at least six Earth years.

I mentioned this report earlier, but NASA has released the statement again. The report has been more substantiated in the last year.

[Cognito]

The planet Mars is undergoing significant global warming

Beags, that clinches it. We need to be sending nukes to Mars also! This will be the first intergalactic bombing run ...

I'm here to help.

[stan]

That "hole in the earth's surface" seems rather frightening to me.
What if they puncture the mantle with their probes and cause it to burst?

[Beagle]

A nuclear winter? Something tells me I haven't been reading this thread very well.

[john]

Morning John, if you had warned me I could have saved you the trouble of that post as I'm aware of the info.
Firstly, you seem to be under the impression that I believe man's activities do not matter, that is not so, and if you are under that impression I ask you to check my earlier posts.
I fear that you have missed the point of my argument so I'll try another approach.
If man was a non-technical animal what would the current global temp be?
If the current global temp is as a result of man will it crash like previous curves?
If you can start with answers to those questions I'll move on to further queries.

Digit -

I'm not under the impression that you think that man's activities have not made an impact.

The question is I posed quantitative.

Your question about what if man were non technical avoids the question of sheer numbers. We are approaching seven billion humans on earth, with an ever increasing population growth curve.

The third world nations are stripping the earth using pre industrial ways of life. There is only so much firewood, slash and burn agriculture is destroying the biological reservoir, and herd animals are eating the land alive. Natural populations from bacteria to apex predators are being destroyed. This is an equasion based on the fantastic increase of third world populations.

First world nations have a different paradigm. Populations are static or dropping - with the exception of third world immigration issues, which I won't address in this post. However, being industrial, they consume the lion's share of world resources due to an accepted energy-extravagant way of life.

So I say, in answer to you second question, that global climatic change - NOT GLOBAL WARMING - will continue to spiral out of control as long as population growth (third world) and out of control energy usage (first world) continue.

Hope this clarifies.


john

[Forum Monk]

A nuclear winter? Something tells me I haven't been reading this thread very well.

Sometimes amid all the jocularity - someone will say something scientific.
Its rather like saying "I went to see a fight and a hockey game broke out".

[Minimalist]

[Digit]

I share your concerns John. My problem is I'm not sure the gloom and doom merchants are correct in all that they propose.
If the present 'hockey stick' was the only one the argument would be irrifutable, as it isn't, I want to know why?
As your posts show, when CO2 increases the various carbon sinks begin to absorb it so that atmospheric CO2 will show only a gentle rise. As those sinks saturate the 'hockey stick' curve is created.
This is all basic to the G&D scenario.
But with previous 'HS' curves there follows a collapse, not just a decrease, a collapse. How? Where does it go?
The sun is currently at a 10000yr output high, this must not be ignored.
When the UN recently published its concerns critics pointed out that the time scales had been 'adjusted' and that when corrected the graph showed that temp rise was the driver NOT CO2. To my knowledge the UN has not denied this.
Climate Change. Good point, because that covers temp drop as well.
Whether CO2 drives temps, or 'tother way round the question remains. WHAT CAUSES THE COLLAPSE?
The cyclic nature of previous curves argues for a solar cause and I draw your attention to the post by Beagle about the Martian GW and not an SUV in sight.
If temp rises do not become so high as to endanger our species that must be better than an ice age if we remove CO2 from the atmosphere, which technically we could do.
Till the causes and results of the present situation are fully understood we are playing with things we do not fully understand, and that frightens me.
Does anybody have an explanation for the collapse in the HS curves? If you have, please let me know.

[stan]

I wrote:

That "hole in the earth's surface" seems rather frightening to me.
What if they puncture the mantle with their probes and cause it to burst?
_________________

I wasn't joking. I'm petrified.
Apparently the cooling of the mantle by the ocean is all that is saving us. How thick is the "cool" part of the mantle? What if it gets bigger? That's what the expedition is to find out.

[Digit]

It's a strange thing Stan just how little knowledge people have about science in general. This could be a disaster if it were to blow and it makes page 7 of a newspaper.
I wonder how much heat energy this thing is putting into Global Warming?

[Minimalist]

and it makes page 7 of a newspaper.

The first six pages are filled by Anna Nicole Smith.

[Digit]

Not if Blair can get in first!

[Forum Monk]

I wrote:

That "hole in the earth's surface" seems rather frightening to me.
What if they puncture the mantle with their probes and cause it to burst?
_________________

.

Don't you know?

If a hole gets poked in it, the earth will go flying off around the solar system, backwards!

[Digit]

Going Blrrrrh as it proceeds I assume?