Earth's climate changing a.k.a. Global Warming

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  • Posts: 4,325
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    Yet at some point, @chrisisall, you're going to get a winter that doesn't seem to end. The consequences of GB are sadly enough unpredictable on top of disastrous for a certain place at a certain time. Our weather is one of the least understood physical phenomena. The tiniest air disruption you create with a newspaper could set in motion something that might end with a tornado as far as science can tell. Ergo, only rudimentary predictions within a sufficiently wide margin of error can be made. That our climate is changing is a hard fact, denied only by those who either lack the intellect or the courage to face it. However, the details of this climate change are fuzzy at best. How climate change will impact us, will have as much to do with how mankind will address the issue as with the natural course of things on planet Earth.

    Sadly, man is a consumer, not a preserver. He's a problem solver, not a problem preventer. He's a killer, not a life saver. He's a me-person, not an us-person. He's a now-thinker, not a tomorrow-thinker. In summary, man has created a monster and it will inevitably destroy him.

    @DarthDimi, you seem well informed on GW etc., would you recommend anything worth reading about it?
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,801
    tanaka123 wrote: »
    would you recommend anything worth reading about it?
    51JSE1F1G9L._SY300_.jpg
  • Posts: 4,325
    chrisisall wrote: »
    tanaka123 wrote: »
    would you recommend anything worth reading about it?
    51JSE1F1G9L._SY300_.jpg

    Thanks, I still haven't got round to watching that :)I was thinking of something more academic :)
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,183
    The Day After Tomorrow is ridiculous.

    @tanaka123, A good place to start is one of Isaac Asimov's many essays on the subject. Let me post a link to a very good one, albeit one that's already 27 years old:

    http://articles.latimes.com/1988-12-26/news/vw-585_1_carbon-dioxide

    I have several books in my possession that deal with global warming in a few chapters. Here are some links:

    - A great academic book IMO:

    http://www.amazon.com/21st-Century-Astronomy-Full-Third/dp/0393931986/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1450527377&sr=8-3&keywords=21st+century+astronomy

    - Another great academic book:

    http://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Science-William-Cunningham/dp/0073532541/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450527414&sr=1-7&keywords=environmental+science

    - Exquisite book about people who deliberately or not are still in denial:

    http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450527463&sr=1-5&keywords=pale+blue+dot+carl+sagan
  • edited December 2015 Posts: 158
    Donald Trump on Global Warming. His views represent a sizable chunk of America who will only listen to right-wing radio jocks and Fox News. You cannot reason with people who have lost all grip on reality.
    The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
    This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps,and our GW scientists are stuck in ice

    ecowatch.com/2015/10/19/donald-trump-climate-change-tweets/
  • BondBug wrote: »
    Donald Trump on Global Warming. His views represent a sizable chunk of America who will only listen to right-wing radio jocks and Fox News. You cannot reason with people who have lost all grip on reality.
    The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
    This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps,and our GW scientists are stuck in ice

    ecowatch.com/2015/10/19/donald-trump-climate-change-tweets/

    Gosh, he's such an idiot. Where I am right now the temperature is 9 degrees Celsius. When I was a kid, this time a year it would be between 0 and -15 and full of snow.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,801
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    The Day After Tomorrow is ridiculous.
    I know- it was an attempt at humour (that clearly failed).
    :\">
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    edited December 2015 Posts: 24,183
    Donald Trump is an idiot. If he gets elected, the "USA" will stand for "the Utopia for Supporters of Anti-intellectualism." Trump is an insult to the world, to you and me, even to my turds. I'd rather give the presidency to the Olsen twins than to Trump and that's saying a lot. Trump makes Bush look like Mother Teresa.

    "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. (D. Trump)"

    Yes, because everybody wants a president who's also a conspiracy theorist. I bet we never landed on the Moon either, mister Trump? In fact, I bet the Moon is just a flat disk suspended over our flat Earth by the God of the Heavens just a few days before Adam and Eve met a talking snake? Oh, and said snake may have told them that all Muslims are terrorists, right?

    For those of us who have brains and actually use them, Global Warming was first warned for in the 19th Century. (That's more than a hundred years ago... 1 0 0. Trump's IQ may not go quite that far so I prefer to spell it out in numbers.) The first signs of climate change as a direct consequence of increased industrialisation were mentioned decades before WWI! But scientists are always ignored by those who lack the brainpower or the will to study and understand them. A heliocentric solar system, a curved Earth, a sort-of-infinite universe, plate tectonics, atoms, genetics, ... So many obvious notions were proposed by science, then met with fierce opposition (causing talented scientists to be burned at the hands of the Church, to be mocked, to be robbed of their dignity...), yet time and again, science was proven right. Not Religion, not superstition, not anti-science politics... but science itself. However, I digress.

    So, back in the 19th Century the first couple of papers on Global Warming and the risks and dangers involved were published but clumsily ignored. Where was China back then? Was China an economical threat back then? In fact, where was America in the 19th Century? Still more or less a country trying to recover from the painful and embarrassing history of slavery and the oppression and extermination of natives. It was a country that built railways and churches and chapels... When the first signs of Global Warming were being processed scientifically, the Chinese were nowhere to be found on a global political scale and U.S. manufacturing was still, at best, promising but hardly prolific.

    Furthermore, if we want to do something about Climate Change, the Chinese will have to put out more than any other country. Representing an unethically large population and still thriving on a highly polluting industry, China will be one of the major corner stones in our battle against Climate Change, perhaps even more so than the USA. Ergo, Trump's argument is false. I bet many Chinese politicians and industrialists would be a lot happier if the GW debate was silenced this very instance. A good president would propose a collaborative effort in fighting GW. Donald Trump, by this logic, would not be a good president. But I'm stating the obvious.

    "This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps,and our GW scientists are stuck in ice. (D. Trump)"

    That logic is a beautiful example of what it's like to be a complete kookoo. The French used to say, "On se trompe" when politely indicating that someone has gone bug-nuts. Now they can say, "On se trump", meaning you're making a total monkey of yourself. Following Trump's reasoning, we might as well suggest that traffic laws henceforth cease to exist. That way more people can die in reckless driving accidents and thus we proactively help the overpopulation problem.

    Let me spell it out once more: Global Warming isn't just about a rising temperature, it's about a disturbed and confused weather system. If we lose our stable weather patterns, all sorts of large-scale effects must take place, thereby wiping out species, destroying crops, attacking land masses with unpredictable winds and water waves of Biblical proportions. In another billion years, when our Moon has moved away from Earth far enough (the Moon is moving away from us at a rate of 3 cm per year), Earth will lose its most important balancing tool and its axis will start tilting erratically. Our weather system will be messed up worse than Lindsay Lohan's makeup after a night out with Britney, Paris and a bag of coke. Not a single human structure can survive such a planetary chaos! The same thing can happen sooner if we let our weather slip out of control. It should be said that all we have taken for granted, like mean temperatures and their seasonal patterns, are in fact feeble and vulnerable phenomena. And since we have put more people on this planet than it is able to feed and provide with energy and raw materials and process in terms of pollution and waste, it's no surprise that we have gradually but definitively been destabilising Earth in almost every conceivable way.

    So indeed, it will get colder in many regions, it will get hotter in others, and the hot-cold seasonal shifts will become more erratic, less predictable and more intense. Entire crops will be lost, nature will provide us with less of its fruits, animal species will be destroyed, water will end up where it isn't needed and become absent where it is most wanted... Our entire global economy will crumble, wars will ensue, many will die and then many more and perhaps, who knows, the minor few who survive the centuries of self-destruction that will come very soon can learn from past mistakes, adapt to an angry planet that will need a very long time to find some peace and quiet again and rebuild human society, not based on fossil fuels and military exposition, but on values we in our infinite clumsiness haven't even begun to contemplate.

    People like Trump are textbook examples of Medieval foolishness, inspired by superstition and religious madness, casting a 1000 year shadow over science, delaying a bright future based on rationality and modesty vis-à-vis nature, not on bias based on skin colour or on the insatiable hunger for power, glory and gold. To my American friends, I can say only this: please, do not vote Trump. I don't want the 1930s and 40s repeated...
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,801
    Most of the civilized folk I know are voting for Bernie Sanders. Trump is just there to give Jeb Bush a fighting chance.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    chrisisall wrote: »
    Most of the civilized folk I know are voting for Bernie Sanders. Trump is just there to give Jeb Bush a fighting chance.

    and to make Hillary look good.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,801
    chrisisall wrote: »
    Most of the civilized folk I know are voting for Bernie Sanders. Trump is just there to give Jeb Bush a fighting chance.

    and to make Hillary look good.
    LOL, yes, an unintended consequence as well.
    ;))
  • Posts: 158
    DarthDimi wrote: »

    People like Trump are textbook examples of Medieval foolishness, inspired by superstition and religious madness, casting a 1000 year shadow over science, delaying a bright future based on rationality and modesty vis-à-vis nature, not on bias based on skin colour or on the insatiable hunger for power, glory and gold.

    True, but there are over 100 million of them in America. It is an illness that is dragging us all backward.



  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,183
    The problem won't be solved as long as people prefer the Bible over a true biology book, based on fact, which reduces us to a relatively insignificant species on a cosmic scale of time and space. But since most people prefer to think of us as the greatest thing in the universe, and because the Bible happily acknowledges that silly notion, many are trapped in the "virtue-al" reality of Church.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,801
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    The problem won't be solved as long as people prefer the Bible over a true biology book, based on fact, which reduces us to a relatively insignificant species on a cosmic scale of time and space. But since most people prefer to think of us as the greatest thing in the universe, and because the Bible happily acknowledges that silly notion, many are trapped in the "virtue-al" reality of Church.

    Quite. 8-|
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,183
    @chrisisall, you agree or disagree with me? ;-) I'm not sure now. :p
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,281
    It's interesting to note how the more specific term "global warming" changed to the more generic "climate change" over the years.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    edited December 2015 Posts: 45,489
    Over the last billions of years, you mean?
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,183
    @Dragonpol, that's because we have discovered that it's more important to name the consequence than it is to name the cause. Also, 'global warming' invites silly slogans like "ow, a little extra warmth during winter isn't so bad..." ;-)
  • Posts: 1,098
    Well, from what i've just read in the news, i believe we have had one of the warmest days in December ever here in the UK, 18 degrees C or 64 degrees F. Very unusual at this time of year, being so close to the Winter solstice. :-O
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    @Dragonpol, that's because we have discovered that it's more important to name the consequence than it is to name the cause. Also, 'global warming' invites silly slogans like "ow, a little extra warmth during winter isn't so bad..." ;-)

    Well, is it? My fuelling costs are going down.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,801
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    @chrisisall, you agree or disagree with me? ;-) I'm not sure now. :p
    Agree totally. With the Earth warming, and more moisture to evaporate, we'll be seeing some really cold patches here & there, so we have to use 'climate change' for the less science-prone among us that use the freezing snaps to say the Earth is not warming up...

  • Posts: 1,098
    How has the climate change?, affected the weather in North America, coz here in the UK we seem to keep getting record yearly increases in the the average temperature.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    edited December 2015 Posts: 17,801
    mepal1 wrote: »
    How has the climate change?, affected the weather in North America, coz here in the UK we seem to keep getting record yearly increases in the the average temperature.
    California & surrounding areas are having increased temperature & decreased rainfall leading to the worst drought in living memory affecting large parts of our food production; Miami Florida is flooding a bit during high tides which will only get worse, where I live will have record high temps for X-Mass....
  • Posts: 1,098
    chrisisall wrote: »
    mepal1 wrote: »
    How has the climate change?, affected the weather in North America, coz here in the UK we seem to keep getting record yearly increases in the the average temperature.
    California & surrounding areas are having increased temperature & decreased rainfall leading to the worst drought in living memory affecting large parts of our food production; Miami Florida is flooding a bit during high tides which will only get worse, where I live will have record high temps for X-Mass....

    Thanks for the reply, you certainly get some very extreme weather conditions in the US.
    That doesn't sound good for California!

  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    edited December 2015 Posts: 17,801
    mepal1 wrote: »
    you certainly get some very extreme weather conditions in the US.
    That doesn't sound good for California!
    This is California's 2nd largest reservoir recently:
    kmg_norcal_aerials_09685.jpg?w=640&h=426
  • Posts: 1,098
    chrisisall wrote: »
    mepal1 wrote: »
    you certainly get some very extreme weather conditions in the US.
    That doesn't sound good for California!
    This is California's 2nd largest reservoir recently:
    kmg_norcal_aerials_09685.jpg?w=640&h=426

    Blimey, that's an amazing photo, showing only a little puddle of water left, that could soon be gone.

  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,801
    And Miami:
    Miami-flood.jpg
  • Posts: 1,098
    chrisisall wrote: »
    And Miami:
    Miami-flood.jpg

    Is it a common thing for Miami to get such large flooding?

  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,801
    mepal1 wrote: »
    Is it a common thing for Miami to get such large flooding?
    Ummmm.... no.
    :))
  • Posts: 1,098
    chrisisall wrote: »
    mepal1 wrote: »
    Is it a common thing for Miami to get such large flooding?
    Ummmm.... no.
    :))

    Well, i suppose you can take a boat, to go into town there at the present time. :)
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