How big business wrapped crap in fancy paper called the Kyoto,,,

[CDNBear]

,,,Protocol and sold it to the treehuggers.

Under the wonderful, stupendous, majestic, nesseccary and magnificently flawed, Kyoto Protocol, big business will win the jackpot as Western countries pay cash and "developing" nations pay with their environment.

All the "developing" nations of the world are now prime realestate, thanx to the KP. As Western Nations put further restrictions on output, the "developing" nations sit exempt. Leaving them available for exploitation by big business.

What do tariffs and duties mean when you can make a huge profit producing as much toxins as you wish in a "developing" nation, at a mere fraction of the cost. Leaving vacant factories in north America not producing anything.

We sure will meet those quotas then, won't we?

Oh I know this is a vile OP-ED piece, but it sure sounds possible, don't it?

 

[CDNBear]

Hey Juan, how come the world warmed up after the ice age?

We weren't hangin' around then zippin' down the hiways in our SUV's, so what started the warm up and couldn't what's happening now, all be part of the same thing?

Hmmmm?

 

[Dexter Sinister]

how come the world warmed up after the ice age?

Well, that's the multi-billion dollar question, for sure. There's no doubt the world's getting warmer, the data are quite clear about that, but the data also quite clearly show it's been getting warmer since the end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago. The environmentalists issue is the human contribution to that, and from what I've seen the provable human contribution is about at the level of uncertainty in the data. In other words, there's proof the climate is warming, but we can't prove human activities are causing it. The geological record indicates the planet for most of its history has been warmer than it is now, and over the last half million years has alternated between cold and warm periods on a roughly 100,000 year cycle. Right now we're still coming out of one of the cold phases.

Good book on the subject: Frozen Earth, by Doug Macdougall, Emeritus Professor of Earth Science at the Scripps Institute in San Diego. This is a smart, well informed, and thoughtful guy, and not just because he's originally Canadian, from southern Ontario, and married one of my cousins. The book is ISBN 0-520-24824-4, published by the University of California Press, available at Chapters. That's where I got my copy.

 

[Tonington]

Solar cycles were the major force behind previous ice ages and warming trends. The problem is currently we are compounding those natural effects. Previous warming periods did not have a ozone hole and greenhouse gases are now higher than any time with the excpetion of the early earth during volcanic activity.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

No Tonington, you've gone way beyond the data. Get the book. The evidence is tantalizingly suggestive, but not conclusive. There are multiple other factors, like the position of the solar system in the galaxy, the presence of interstellar gas and dust clouds that it passes through regularly, variations in the earth's orbit, and in particular we have no information about ozone holes beyond the present ones and very uncertain information about levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in times past. We may indeed be compounding those effects, but the data don't prove it. Not yet anyway. That's not an excuse for inaction against any of the environmental damage human activities are causing, like the mass extinction the future fossil record will probably show for our age, it's merely a reason to think carefully about what we're going to do about it.

 

[Tonington]

Right, I said major factor, not the only factor. A report in Geophysical Research Letters put the effects of global warming from solar forcing at 25-35%. The data collected is compared to satelite infrared and is not theoretical but empirical. Other factors include Earth's wobble, albedo effect and changes in Earth's magnetic field. Now all of these events occur with some regularity with the exception of albedo changes. Ozone depletion can be measured and further we know what causes Ozone depletion naturally, though it is only temporary. These factors are things like solar radiation and volcanic effluent in the stratosphere. We do know that the ozone levels fluccuate, and are not uniform. Upper level stratospheric winds are what caused the accumulation of halogenated hydrocarbons in the polar regions. Halogenated hydrocarbons do not exist in nature.

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are well documented and can be measured over a long time change. The concentration is found in air bubbles trapped in snow, and we can date the sample based on the isotopes of oxygen found in the bubbles. These isotopes have the same properties which allow us to measure the age of different materials radiometrically, like carbon 14 , or Potassium 40.

The fact is that many of the measured natural causes of climate change have been identified and modelled. Those models eclipse the data collected from ice cores dating back to 400,000 years ago. Further, we can spot "anomolies" in these graphs which coincide with known volcanic events and produced the tiny blips of cooling. The solar cycles which cause the forcing in the upper atmosphere average about 1366 watts/metre squared. The change in the forcing is only +/- 0.65 watts/metre squared. Conversely, greenhouse gas emissions have a forcing effect of 1.4 watts/metre squared. So now we can see that the change in forcing is 1.3 watts/metre squared from one trough to one peak from solar activity. CO2 concentration on the other hand, has increased. Going back to preindustrial times, anual global greenhouse gas emission was below 200 million metric tonnes. Currently we are adding nearly 7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases annualy. I'm not going to bother posting a graph in here, we've all seen those before. Point is, the evidence is growing every day for anthropogenic causes. I've said this before and I will say it again. I acknowledge the science showing our causes to global warming. I do not believe in the same outcome. If you really want to know more of what I'm thinking, look into the Mayan calender. I believe we have sped up the process which will bring the next mini ice age, which actually has been shown in data (not modelled) to happen much faster than the global warming which caused it.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

The devil's in the details. You said *the* major force, not *a* major force. A major force, on par with several others, yes, certainly, but *the* major force, over-riding all others, no, not proven. Pedantic I may be, but in matters of science, precision matters.

 

[Tonington]

I still believe it is the major force. I realize that you can't say one single factor causes the cooling or warming as the system is too complex to say such a thing. We've both listed the usual suspects when discussing these matters. The two last ice ages in the 1300's and 1700's are suspected to be a result of sun activity. The 1700 Europe's little ice age being the Maunder minima, which itself isn't understood yet. The 1300 Little ice age being a combination of volcanic and solar inactivity. The Maunder minima coincides with the deepest trough during the ice age. I believe currently that these provide the best possible explanation for said cooling events, though definitely not set in stone.

 

[CDNBear]

I still believe it is the major force. I realize that you can't say one single factor causes the cooling or warming as the system is too complex to say such a thing. We've both listed the usual suspects when discussing these matters. The two last ice ages in the 1300's and 1700's are suspected to be a result of sun activity. The 1700 Europe's little ice age being the Maunder minima, which itself isn't understood yet. The 1300 Little ice age being a combination of volcanic and solar inactivity. The Maunder minima coincides with the deepest trough during the ice age. I believe currently that these provide the best possible explanation for said cooling events, though definitely not set in stone.

Is it not possible that the volcanic activity as of late could be playing some factor here?

 

[Tonington]

Well, volcanic activity would have a cooling effect, much the same as a nuclear winter. The temperature is rising currently.

 

[CDNBear]

Well, volcanic activity would have a cooling effect, much the same as a nuclear winter. The temperature is rising currently.

I was thinking along the lines of gases emmitted.

 

[Tonington]

The last volcanic event was the new island near Tonga. It released 25 kilotonnes of SO2 which has the opposite effect of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. The amount of carbon dioxide released into the air from volcanoes at current rates is about 130-230 million tonnes/year . We as a species pump about 22 billion tonnes a year into the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide released from volcanoes can flow down into low lying areas as it is heavier than air, and become toxic to plants and animals.