Well meaning idiots

[sasguru]

You see it's like this:

History shows a general slow improvement e.g. compare our living standards with those who went only 2000 years before us. Of course there are groups of people who drag us back like fascists, communists, Islamicists and the plain stupid. So it's two steps forward and one step back.

And that is because the elite intelligent minority have to drag the vast majority of humanity, who are mainly stupid, kicking and screaming, into the uplands of reason and sanity.

And that's why you guys will be ignored and laws passed that will curtail your wastefulness. It's for your own good really

[Foxy Moron]

All we need now is Cyberman to agree

[BlightyBoy]

But the point is mankind, and other life on Earth, would suffer in the process.

Thats a fair enough point, and not wishing to appear defeatist, if we are experiencing a fundamentally "naturally phenomenon" albeit potentially accelerated by effects due to mankinds industrialisation, then there appears very little we can do about it, just as other species on this rock could do very little about the ELE's that wiped them out.

Consquently, would it not be more prudent to invest time, energy and resources into understanding how we can reduce the effect through cleaner energy resources and understanding how better to adapt to what is essentially a fore-gone conclusion (due to the natural order of things)?

The problem with all the modelling is the number of variables, some of which even the scientists do not truly understand. Sure, they can make "approximations", but it is still a guess, and the more guesswork, the less accurate the results.

I think it's about time those money-grabbing b**tard oil companies started releasing some of that cold-fusion/clean energy technology instead of clinging on to the archaic notion that the oil/gas/coal will last forever, or at least long enough for them line their pockets with [yet] more cash.

Perhaps the current financial crisis is a blessing in disguise; the more valueless money becomes, the less need to hoard it!

[BlightyBoy]

You see it's like this:

And anybody starting a comment with the phrase "You see..." has just got to be a pompous, arrogant patronising a*se.

[sasguru]

And anybody starting a comment with the phrase "You see..." has just got to be a pompous, arrogant patronising a*se.

Less of your lip, KrautBoy

[BlightyBoy]

Less of your lip, KrautBoy

And anybody responding to criticism with cheap shots and name-calling has just lost.

1-0 to the BB.

[ace00]

Why would the atmosphere freeze solid, when it's being heated by the Sun?

But in the past almost all the water on the Earth *has* frozen solid. You probably know that continents move around over millions of years, and when they're arranged primarily "north-south", i.e. with unbroken land masses from pole to pole, ice sheets can grow in a positive feedback loop - The more the ice, the more the Sun's radiation is reflected off it, making everything colder, so the ice sheets grow until they meet at the equator and the whole Earth ends up frozen as solid as a brick (apart from the atmosphere).

The last so-called "snowball Earth" episode like this, about 700 million years ago, lasted about 20 million years, until CO2 released by volcanoes absorbed enough solar heat to start melting everything again.

Luckily, the continents today are aligned more east-west and don't link pole to pole. For example the southern ocean goes right round the world. So there won't be any more "snowball Earths" for quite some time (probably never again now, because the Sun is gradually becoming hotter.)

As for runaway greenhouse warming, well that*did* happen on Venus. But Venus is closer to the Sun, and also isn't large enough to have continental plates like the Earth. So instead of internal heat being steadily released all the time as it is here on Earth by volcanoes and constructive plate margins, it builds up and up under the crust on Venus and every hundred million years or so huge amounts of magma burst out all at once and cover practically the whole planet, and the CO2 isn't absorbed (see below).

You may say OK, but couldn't the runaway effect just happen slower on Earth? Well there's also Newton's Law of Cooling - In effect, the hotter something is compared with its surroundings, the faster it loses heat. So that ultimately puts a cap on temperature rises - Most heat aborbed during the day is radiated away on the night side.

Yet another effect of plate tectonics on Earth is that CO2 is deposited in rocks like limestone and dragged down under the crust by plate tectonics. So that also regulates the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans (over long timescales).

But there's one more dire situation which is thought to have happened several times on Earth in the past - When too much CO2 becomes dissolved in the oceans, they become acidic and eventually oxygen producing life like algae can no longer flourish there. (This ocean algae produces 70% of the oxygen in the atmosphere.)

In the Permian extinction, which may well have been caused by ocean acidification, 96% of all species died. If something similar happened again, we certainly wouldn't survive as things stand.

One last thing. The fact that someone can't answer every objection or question about a theory (or perhaps nobody can) doesn't in itself disprove that theory.

Cheers - a scientific response and a good one. No snappy comeback from me, but I wonder if the "snowball Earth" theory has been proven to have occured?

[BlightyBoy]

Cheers - a scientific response and a good one. No snappy comeback from me, but I wonder if the "snowball Earth" theory has been proven to have occured?

I think there is scientific evidence to suggest that it has happened at least once in Earth's history.

Something to do with glacial deposits and eroison being discovered well south of the [current] limits of glaciation.

I saw it in a documentary once.

[OwlHoot]

I think there is scientific evidence to suggest that it has happened at least once in Earth's history.

Something to do with glacial deposits and eroison being discovered well south of the [current] limits of glaciation.

I saw it in a documentary once.

Yes, there was a horizon program on it, Glacial till found in layers known to have been near the equator, and they reckon on that evidence it has happened several times over the last two or three billion years.

Mind you, on a positive note for a change, the Wikipedia article on ocean acidification which I checked concludes with:

Leaving aside direct biological effects, it is expected that ocean acidification in the future will lead to a significant decrease in the burial of carbonate sediments for several centuries, and even the dissolution of existing carbonate sediments.[31] This will cause an elevation of ocean alkalinity, leading to the enhancement of the ocean as a reservoir for CO2 with moderate (and potentially beneficial) implications for climate change as more CO2 leaves the atmosphere for the ocean.

Not saying I'm a firm climate change alarmist, but if some imminent dangers are overrated then who's to say others haven't been underestimated or simply never occured to anyone? It's obviously a very complex topic, as the lack of universal agreement (including among scientists, like Prof Ian Plimer and Lubos Motl) shows.

But again, if climate warming dissenters point to the much higher CO2 and methane concentrations hundreds of millions of years ago, it's worth bearing in mind the incredibly violent temperature swings in those times, 30 & 40 degrees up or down within decades, oceans rising and falling by several hundred feet, and the fact that the Sun's heat/radiaation output was significantly weaker in the past. (Its luminosy, including heat, has been growing steadily by about 1% every 100 million years since its formation, and will continue doing so.)

Right, I'm off to start studying for my next contract which starts tomorrow. Spouting all this BS is just an excuse not to work