If this is all accurate, this is indeed a scary picture for the kids/grandkids/great/etc to have to deal with.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11079935/

 

If arrogant scientists and mankind in general, think they can change our Earth's natural phenomenon ..eg ..CYCLES OF CHANGE... they are totally wrongheaded and..again ... arrogant. One of the main things I learned long ago, in school, was that nearly every action or reaction, cause or reaction to cause, is in one manner or another, part of a continuous cycle. And since I and many others have already elaborated on this subject in other threads...I'll stop now. ( Hmmm...just got done reading the "TROLL" thread.)

 

Read the book State of fear. It is by Michael Creighton. After reading it tell me if you think Global warming is a threat. The Earth is in a constant process of change. Man has very little effect on it. He states this in the book and he presents scientific evidence that Global warming is theory that is far from being proven. It is a great "fear" tool used to raise Millions of dollars for the environmental groups. Which it so happens spend a majority of their money on efforts to raise more money. "profit" or "non-profit" it's certainly debatable. They certainly don't use the bulk of the money on the environment. There is just as much evidence out there stating that there is no global warming as there is stating that there is global warming. By the way the Glacier in Greenland that is melting is a result of the shift in jet stream which is bringing much warmer water to Greenland area. The Jet stream as far as anyone can tell is not influenced by man. It is just one of the many variables in a constant state of flux within our atmosphere. The earth has been constantly changing since it was formed, man will never be able to influence it under conventional circumstances.

 

The media will play on your paranoias and fears. The climate will change all by itself with no aid from man. Historically, man has not understood such changes very well and has been awful at predictions. Earth is a dynamic place and will not remain constant.

The fact that it's on MSNBC makes it very suspect. Examine the article critically. The first sentence states "Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or reverse the trend." Who are these "scientists"? What are their credentials? How many is "most"? And the lead picture shows an iceberg. The whole thing smacks of blanket statements and sensationalism.

An accurate article would provide a link to multiple research papers from reputable people. It makes NASA sound like some censorship advocates by discouraging Hansen from talking. NASA may be concerned their name/reputation not be associated with Hansen's viewpoint.

I'm not stating that global warming is a myth, just that the media's delivery of "science" is usually pretty slipshod. The opinions of a handful of "scientists" is not grounds for panic. Remeber that Thomas Edison conducted a smear campaign against alternating current, Albert Einstein refused to believe black holes exist, and Carl Sagan smoked pot.

 

Wow, I don't want to get anyone mad, but if you think mans presents, here on this planet, doesn't effect the planet to some extent,thats pretty narrow minded. The way the population of this planet has expanded in just the last 100 years and the projected future growth; at the rate that we consume finite natural resources and pollute the air and water... I don't know, It just seems to me somethings gotta give sooner or later...

 

What scares me most for my kids future, 8 trillion+ dollars of national debt!

"There's no agreement on what it is that constitutes a dangerous climate change," said Marburger, adding that the U.S. government spends $2 billion a year on researching this and other climate change questions."

Oops, 8,000,002,000,000,000

We can not stop asteroids from hitting the earth, global warming, ice ages, or the magnetic poles from flipping. We should concentrate on the things we can change.

 

IF you think there is anything related to Global Warming you are a complete idiot.

I've done about three reports for school on this subject, and two out of three refrences that I used stated that "There is NO Such thing as Global Warming"

these so called "scientist" don't have propper information to be conclusive, seeing as the Earth has been around longer than any of them.

I'll stop for now, I could type for quite a while on this.

 

Wow, I don't want to get anyone mad, but if you think mans present doesn't effect the planet
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Which present is that.....Carbon Monoxide or Carbon Dioxide ?

 

You can't expect to find the truth in the mass media because they follow Walt Disney's instructions to his cartoonists: simplify and exaggerate.

I can tell you why it happens, American journalists are trained to write stories, not reports. A story must have drama. A scientific study that is inconclusive is generally deemed not a story. A scientific study that postulates a possibility wrapped in caveats is apt to be stripped of its caveats and reported as a certainty. That's much more dramatic.

I once got irritated by a reporter who was writing stories about a "cancer-causing pesticide," as she inevitably described it. I called the Environmental Protection Agency and got the real skinny on the pesticide. Yes, if you drank water with a certain amount of this pesticide in it every day of your life for 72 consecutive years, the EPA's computer model said it was likely to increase your chance of developing cancer by a small fraction of 1 percent. Of course, the natural background rate of cancer is about 20 percent. And the EPA fellow said the computer model might not be true at all, because all the test data were based on mice, not people.

There does seem to be a consensus that the Earth has warmed a small fraction in the past few decades. The unanswered question is, Is this part of a natural process, or is it caused by man's activity? Many environmentalists and most governments in the world have said the answer is that man is pumping too much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. That's what the Kyoto treaty is all about.

Unfortunately, the evidence for this is thin. In the past, the Earth has cooled and warmed entirely on its own, long before there were enough humans to make a spit's worth of difference. It is ridiculous to suppose that something as complex and as incompletely understood as the atmosphere could be translated into an accurate computer model. It also ridiculous to predict what the Earth's temperature will be even 10 years in the future, much less 50 or 100 years.

So, as to whether it's greenhouse gases or a natural process, I don't know, and neither does anyone else. But my point is that many environmental organizations, individuals and scientists develop a vested political and financial interest in the assertion that the problem is greenhouse gases. Like ideologues, they prefer argument to research and facts.

History is full of examples where there was a wide consensus among the best minds of the age that turned out to be flat wrong. To politicize science, is very dangerous. One example is eugenics, a widely accepted racial theory at the turn of the 20th century, which led directly to mass murder in the Third Reich. Humans, I think, are susceptible to myths and fiction because they feel a need for certainty, yet much of reality remains a mystery, and much of science is inconclusive.

Global warming is a theory, don't mistake it as fact.

 

Three reports and you think your an expert... lol

 

Just a gentle reminder, boys and girls .... flaming one another gets threads closed. Let's keep the conversation in a non-attack status. Someone might even learn something here.

 

the Global Warming outside is frightful,
But the low heating bill is so delightful,
And since oil is worth it's weight in gold,
warm the globe! warm the globe! warm the globe!

 

Thank you Dick...couldn't have said it better myself!

 

Yeah,media+ higher ratings= more $$$$, and anthing drastic gets more attention. And global warming,well the earth is always in a constant state of flux. However I think what we're doing is just an added variable in the factor as a whole, for better for worse who knows, but then it becomes a moralistic opinion I think.

 

I can´t believe how many of you people in the US think this change in the climate as it´s now is ciclic or normal. The researchs prove that the change is happening at a way more increased rate that in any other era, the proof comes from polar ice sample, you see? when the ice get enough time to settle, it forms different types of microscopic cristals, with predictable and known patterns (depending mostly on the temperature applied to it). By drilling and extracting a sample of ice several meter below the surface you can get a good picture of what was the earth climate like on earlier periods, and what cicles occurred then (ice ages and other phenomenons).

Most of the main media companies in the US (who put the Global Warming as almost a myth) are in the hands of people who also have ties with automobile and oil companies, so i wouldn´t say their oppinions are non-biased.

Sadly, the changes required in order to slow down this change will require a change (a shocking one in the case of the US) in the way of life in most of the countries, and very probably the elimination of both automobiles (as we know them) and even smoking, between others, and a real disminution in the comsuption pattern established (and who´ll tell that to China, with a GWI increasing at an over 10% rate/year). I don´t think in all this in any apocaliptic way and i´m pretty sure the transicion will be hard, but peaceful (i hope).