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| Dec 05, 2009 2:09 pm |
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re: Global Warming Test |
James Booth
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Question 1:
Q. "Global warming" is a real phenomenon: Earth's temperature is increasing.
A. If I can still believe "science" currently my answer is "No, Earth's temperature is not increasing" - has not been for a handful of years; however, until recently it seemed to be, and in fact, Earth's temperature, as seems reasonable to expect, rises and falls the same as that of any other living body or organism; therefore, I have to answer, "Yes, "global warming IS a *real phenomenon* though not the only phenomenon."
The explanation which accompanies both answers to question 1:
" "Global Warming" is something that has been happening for a long time. The temperature of the earth has been increasing more or less continuously since the time of the cave man.
Approximately 18,000 years ago the earth began a gradual process of warming up c. Much of North America, Europe, and Asia lay buried beneath great sheets of glacial ice.
By about 15,000 years ago the earth had warmed sufficiently to halt the advance of glaciers, and sea levels worldwide began to rise.
By 8,000 years ago the land bridge across the Bering Strait was drowned, cutting off the migration of men and animals to North America.
Since the end of the Ice Age, Earth's temperature has risen approximately 16 degrees F and sea levels have risen a total of 300 feet! Forests have returned where once there was only ice.
From a geological perspective, global warming is the normal state of our accustomed natural world. Technically, we are in an "interglacial phase," or between ice ages. The question is not really if an ice age will return, but when.
Don't panic when you hear global alarmists warning the earth may have warmed almost 1 degree in the last 200 years. Although this still hasn't yet been proven, it is in fact exactly what should be happening if everything is normal.
If Global Warming stops, then you can start worrying! It means our warm interglacial phase is over and we may be heading into another Ice Age!"
... seems to me not well thought out, misleading, even if not intentionally so, in that it is incomplete.
"Global Warming" has been happening for a long time, agreed, and I will accept the argument that its latest cycle has lasted for about 18,000 years (after more than 100,000 years of Ice Ages), even though Earth is billions of years old, and Earth has not been in a "Ice Age" the majority of that time.
Ice core samples from Antarctica give us clues as to what has happened there going back about 60,000 years, but that is essentially "local data".
To determine overall atmospheric temperatures, changes in salinity, temperature of oceans, and sea level, along with changing conditions on land - drought and temperature cycles and more - we have to look elsewhere and we have to combine data taken from various *locales*.
If, "From a geological perspective, global warming is the normal state of our accustomed natural world," that is only because it is what we have been used to "in human memory" as the human species has evolved, but that is not to say "Global Warming" IS the "normal" or *natural* state of anything: it is until it changes, and change it will.
JB
Private Reply to James Booth (new win) |
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