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Global temperatures rising 8x faster than thought

Maclicious

Maclicious

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 10, 2002
106
0
Seattle
Satellite Data Reveals Rapid Arctic Warming -- 13:16_24_October_03

NewScientist.com news service

A NASA satellite survey of the Arctic has revealed just how rapidly the region is warming. The overall trend of rising temperature over the past 20 years is eight times higher than that recorded by ground measurements over the past century.

The satellite observations are vital because they can cover the whole Arctic, not just the regions accessible to researchers on the surface. The data also shows that summer sea ice cover is continuing its retreat.

Full Story:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994310
 
Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
well lets see, iam about 200 yards from water so maybe when im 100 years old ill have beachfront property! cool!;)
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Eh... Don't Hurt Me, it's not the distance from water that is critical, but your elevation above sea level. You could have beachfront property a lot sooner than you think!;)

Oh, and Agreenster it's not most of the rest of the world who don't think this is a problem. Only a few folks who like to swallow oil company propaganda and pseudo-science whole.
 
Originally posted by agreenster
Bah! Humbug.

(speaking for most of the world who doesnt seem to think this is a problem)
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It is weird, isn't it, that most of the world, well the US population, has been fooled into believing that the gradual increase in temperature is not a problem? Weird is too soft a word; criminal is probably more apt.
 
Originally posted by Maclicious
It is weird, isn't it, that most of the world, well the US population, has been fooled into believing that the gradual increase in temperature is not a problem?
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Generally everyone I know seems to think there's very little to discuss on the subject. Global warming is happening and fossil fuel burning is a major contributory factor.

Yet, we all have cars and and nice houses heated by gas or electricity. And lots of things that use electricity which was mostly generated by burning coal, oil or gas. Sadly we only try to reduce our energy consumption because is so damn expensive here - not becuase of the long term damage it does. Did I mention gasoline is $6 a gallon here?
 
It's not only greenhouse gases

I learned about this in college in a class I had "Geology and the Environment". We had a guest speaker who actually had been involved for years in the govt research in alaska and first proposed global warming. What they found in the earth naturally goes up for 20 years and down for 20 years and starts over. The problem now was that we are a the end of a 20 year low point and the temperature is still rising.

Some people don't realize this, and then make the flawed argument that the temperature is rising no more or less than usual. This is correct, but only in a warming period. Never in a cooling period.

What is interesting is the warming is not only due to increased greenhouse gases, but also a decrease in anti-greenhouse gases (such as sulfur). This is interesting because coal plants, many of which have been closed because of environmental reasons, have a cooling affect and had been offsetting greenhouse gases for yearss.

In addition, large volcanic eruptions that spew sulfur into the air cool the earth. Most people remember the winter of 90-91 as being unusually cold. This was because several large volcanoes, including one enormous eruption in the philipines spewed so much sulfer into the sky the global temp was decreased by 1-2 degrees C for the year (which is a large drop).

Because of the natural warming trend, and the increase in greenhouse gases and the decrease in sulfur emissions, in the next 30 years the temperature is going to rise considerably. The computer models are not pretty. If you live in low lying coastal areas, southern Texas especially, consider moving in the next 5-10 years. Ocean levels will be rising considerably.
 
Originally posted by agreenster
Bah! Humbug.

(speaking for most of the world who doesnt seem to think this is a problem)
Click to expand...

Well, we really haven't been able to determine if it really is a problem or not. Over the eons the ice caps have come and gone. That's nothing new. Why we're concerned about this is that if they do melt the social chaos and natural disaster that will follow will be something that will require decades to over come.....

Imagine all the major port cities, London, New York, Miami, LA Hong Kong inundated by a 100-200 foot sea level rise. It would be a global catostrophe, millions dead or homeless. Make

You can only build dykes so high - and if you wanted to protect a large city it would be best to start now ;)

D
 
OK, so we know that our fossil fuels are bad, but we are not 100% sure that it's what's causing this warming period. It's been pointed out that there are small 20-year cycles that the earth goes through, but there are also much larger cycles, and based on what scientists have been able to assume, we are on a warming cycle that repeats every couple of thousand years. We do not know enough about our planet to say this is completely a natural cycle, or that this is because of our burning of fossil fuels.

Either way, we are become lesser dependent on carbon based fuels. In about 50 years, we should be using more hydrogen based fuels, such as fuel cells and natural gas.

Of an interesting note, we have enough coal to last us for over 100 years, but we don't use it because of all the crap, besides sulfur, that it puts in the air...
 
hydrogen production is still a major source of pollution. however, since production will occur in factories, we can put rigid pollution controls on them, much better than what's on our cars now.

mathematically alone, we have proof that humans are pumping way more heat and pollution into the atmosphere than ever before. you can produce heat, you can't produce cold (outside of endothermic reactions), just pump it elsewhere.

earth + lots of heat +no cold = heated earth. unless one believes that all of this heat is either a) escaping our atmosphere into space (and since space consists of very thin gas, heat transfer is very small) or b) the heat is magically disappearing somehow.

pnw
 
i agree with you paulwhannel we do have a problem. why we dont get more into solar,wind,nuclear energies is beyond me. we rely way way to much on that lil old thing called oil. it is a finite source. the others are not.
 
I know a lot of people will have issues with this...but ths world really needs to go in the sh*tter...the United States (and many other countries) have jacked things up to a point that it would literally take several complete generations to fix all our problems (and that's if we stopped polluting our world right now...). I heard it's going to take nearly 20 years for all of the pollution we've created to actually reach it's full effect...meaning that as we continue to pollute the problem is going to grow exponentially since we can't keep up with it. I can't wait for Armagedon...this world really needs to tear itself apart in a huge bloody war and start over (it's extremely sad that I have to even think of that as a solution). If you can't tell I'm extremely depressed over the attitudes and examples of people in this world...if anyone ever wants to see a video I did that will help you understand why email me @ Bkonar@sbcglobal.net
otherwise please be aware i'm not the only person who feels this way...and brushing me off as a radical is no solution either. Try to understand WHY I feel this way and maybe you'll be a better person for it. P.S. I'm an American born Irish/Russian/German raised by a Jewish mom and Roman Catholic Dad and taught myself my own religion (a mix of catholicism, judaism, and buddhism) so there has to be a pretty good reason why I feel my own country should go to hell (and if your comment is What if they dropped the bomb on you?...I'd say please do...I'm tired of living in a world that revolves around money, I really don't need any of this sh*t but common society tells me I do)
 
Originally posted by paulwhannel
hydrogen production is still a major source of pollution. however, since production will occur in factories, we can put rigid pollution controls on them, much better than what's on our cars now.

mathematically alone, we have proof that humans are pumping way more heat and pollution into the atmosphere than ever before. you can produce heat, you can't produce cold (outside of endothermic reactions), just pump it elsewhere.

earth + lots of heat +no cold = heated earth. unless one believes that all of this heat is either a) escaping our atmosphere into space (and since space consists of very thin gas, heat transfer is very small) or b) the heat is magically disappearing somehow.

pnw
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so are you saying it doesn't magically disappear!?!?!?

as to why we dont have other sources of energy...they wouldn't profit the oil companies, and the oil companies are so powerful they are able to buy up any competing technologies and delay them until the profit margin for oil is so low they'll need a new source of money and presto our new best friend the sun is a billionaire (or whoever owns the rights to it...)
 
Originally posted by caveman_uk
Did I mention gasoline is $6 a gallon here?
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In Venezuela you can fill up the tank of a Toyota Corolla for 1.5 (one and a half) dollar.

The world is getting warmer and very quick. here in Caracas we should be around 20 celcius to 18 celcius at night already and we are at 23 to 26 still. During the day everything is so hot around here, we should be wearing sweaters already.
 
Originally posted by mymemory
In Venezuela you can fill up the tank of a Toyota Corolla for 1.5 (one and a half) dollar.

The world is getting warmer and very quick. here in Caracas we should be around 20 celcius to 18 celcius at night already and we are at 23 to 26 still. During the day everything is so hot around here, we should be wearing sweaters already.
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If you've ever been to Chicago you'd know it starts getting quite cold right around now (typically). This week has been in the 80's...nothing like 35 degrees above normal.
 
I'm come to accept that world-leaders are never going to get it together, and the population as a whole will continue to destroy the environment. I do my part to help out (not littering, wasting energy, etc) but I can't spend any time thinking about the outcome, or I will paralyze with fear of the inevitable.

Yeah, it's a grim outlook....

Dan
 
Originally posted by alset
I'm come to accept that world-leaders are never going to get it together, and the population as a whole will continue to destroy the environment. I do my part to help out (not littering, wasting energy, etc) but I can't spend any time thinking about the outcome, or I will paralyze with fear of the inevitable.

Yeah, it's a grim outlook....

Dan
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For every person like you and me (minimal pollution, conservation, etc) there's a millionaire with 6 Mercedez, a Fur for every day of the week, and an Island off the coast of Spain that they have never been to but hear it's lovely there this time of year. And for every one of them, their's 500 others without a place to call home, a shirt on their back, or food in their stomach. So crack open a cold one and blaze a fattie...we're sinking faster than you think.
 
got money's not looking for the cure
got money's not concerned about the sick among the pure
got money let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised
got money's not one to choose
-nin

i feel the need to point to the dem candidate with the best environmental policy... after what bush did to the environment, we could pick a candidate based on that alone. clark has a "100-year vision" whereby he asks "where will this leave us in 100 years" for any given decision. he wants to restore america to the path it was on, if not better, an america where mountaintops weren't blown up for easy coal, where logging industry lobbyists aren't put at the reigns of the EPA...

ok, ok, i'm not supposed to get political here.

i agree with posts above, it's incredibly scary to think of the destruction we've unleashed but don't realize it yet... so many species wiped out... so much of the ecosystem wiped out...

pnw
 
Originally posted by paulwhannel
got money's not looking for the cure
got money's not concerned about the sick among the pure
got money let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised
got money's not one to choose
-nin



errr, it's GOD money...
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Isn't this caused by sun storms that come and go? I think there is to little facts on this topic.
 
The people who are really screwed by the "alleged" threat of global warming are in those low lying contries like Bangladesh--138 million living only a few dozen feet above sea level. Several South Pacific countries--like Tuvalu--are expected to disappear completely in less than 50 years...

But all this, of course, is hypothetical. We need more studies, ideally commisioned by oil and gas experts, to determine the scientific validity of these claims. This would only take 20 or 30 years to complete--no sense just rushing in there and crying wolf. We need to wait until at least a billion or so people are submerged. Most of these people are not really connected to the global economy anyway, so their loss would fortunately not impact our way of life that much...
 
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