Well stated. It's not my purpose to argue the subject, I simply know too little about it. My statements were aimed only at our ability to deny the nose on our (collective?) face. If man's presence warms the globe by one hundredth of a degree Fahrenheit over the course of a thousand years, it doesn't matter; it's insignificant. It's entirely possible that our effects are that negligible but, in any case, we're contributing to the earth's warming. Man's total time on the planet will be too short to measure our consequence. Data collection over tens of thousands of years would be required to arrive at definitive conclusions. As you have wisely pointed out, cyclical phenomena are far more dramatic than any effect we could possibly have. Still, within the cycles, we probably have some minor effects on them. Does it matter? Probably not but we simply must register a cause and effect relationship. Denial of the original premise renders subsequent discussion of its effect, moot. Give 'em hell, Loco.
Have you ever been in a room-full of people and despite the air conditioner's ceaseless running, the room became uncomfortably warm? This bit of pseudo-science might be regarded as "room warming". Each of us has experienced this "phenomenon" but it's not too difficult to explain. When a number of people, each of whom has a body temperature of 98.6 degrees, occupy a relatively small space, the air around them begins to heat up as a result of their presence. Remove the people from the room and the temperature drops. The earth is just a big room (a very, very big room). The atmosphere around it is captive and is subject to the same rules that have been in place for the last 4.5 billion years. The variable in its existence is man and his technology. We've placed six billion people in this big room and have added to it, the industry that is required to support us. Some of the industry is temperature neutral but most of it exhausts its production at hundreds or even thousands of degrees Fahrenheit (automobile exhaust comes to mind). Glaciers create their own weather, they're unaffected by earth's high and low pressure systems, jet streams and polar winds. They are sufficiently vast as to resist earth's weather in favor of their own. As glaciers are vast, so too is a population of six billion people. Our number is so great that we have begun to affect the planet's natural order.
It seems to me that global warming is an inescapable reality. I don't pretend to know the effects of the warming or even if there are negative consequences; only that to deny it is naive. Wouldn't it be reasonable to concede that global warming exists but to debate, instead, its effects?
BillNichols Blog Comments (2)
RE: Obama’s Spawn
Loco,Well stated. It's not my purpose to argue the subject, I simply know too little about it. My statements were aimed only at our ability to deny the nose on our (collective?) face.
If man's presence warms the globe by one hundredth of a degree Fahrenheit over the course of a thousand years, it doesn't matter; it's insignificant. It's entirely possible that our effects are that negligible but, in any case, we're contributing to the earth's warming.
Man's total time on the planet will be too short to measure our consequence. Data collection over tens of thousands of years would be required to arrive at definitive conclusions. As you have wisely pointed out, cyclical phenomena are far more dramatic than any effect we could possibly have. Still, within the cycles, we probably have some minor effects on them. Does it matter? Probably not but we simply must register a cause and effect relationship. Denial of the original premise renders subsequent discussion of its effect, moot.
Give 'em hell, Loco.