Recommended viewing is "The Great Global Warming Swindle" shown on UK TV last Thursday.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792811497638&q=The+Great+Global+Warming+Swindle&hl=en
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And you can watch it from your computer via the above link.
Another point comes to mind also. I believe the earth has a wobble as it rotates. Anyone got any data on the effects of this on the weather? If not why not? It has to be put in the equation surely?
Everyone loves data, graphs and the sense that they can control the uncontrollabe, right?
But no one has even bought up the subject of war pollution yet. If we are so conscientious about pollution why dont we give up war, period. Has anyone got a graph of the pollution that is emitted by general warefare yet? I think its a huge contributor somehow?
Hello Jen,
The issue of CO2 leading or lagging temperature change is a critical issue.
The graphs shown by Al Gore in his documentary come from the Vostok ice core sample analyses.
There are two gaphs, one above the other. One shows temperature, and the other shows CO2, for the duration of the ice core, which is about 420,000 years.
The two graphs show very clear upward spikes in temperature and CO2 levels, at 100,000 year intervals, and these spikes occur at about the same time. Analyses of the timing of these spikes shows that temperature increase leads CO2 increase by about 1200 years. That is, temperature change drives CO2 change, which is the opposite of the claims made by Al Gore et al.
It is proposed that the reason that this happens is that much, or most, of the earth's CO2 is dissolved in water, mostly the oceans, and CO2 is an unusual gas in that its solubility in water is inversely related to tempeature, that is, as temperature of water increases, solubility decreases. This causes the oceans to release very large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere as their temperature increases.
The spikes correlate very closely with the Milankovic cycles, which is a natural cycle of variation in the earth's orbit around the sun.
Right now, we are on the rising side of one of these spikes.
To summarise, natural variations in the earth's orbit around the sun cause variations in the amount and distribution of solar energy falling on the earth. This causes natural variations in atmospheric temperature on 100,000 year cycles. As temperature increases, oceans release CO2 and hence CO2 level increase.
Al forgot to discuss this.
I have read all arguments (or most o them) and it seems like regardless of what is changing our climate, be it human CO2 emissions or solar activity, the FACT that our climate is changing is not in doubt.
Therefore, I put this to Ian and Sid:
"If humans are not the cause of climate change and solar activity is the cause of climate change, should humans keep using fossil fuels with absolutely no regard for what effect the additional green house gases may have on climate change."
Can I ask about another scene in that movie (TGGWS)?
It seemed to say that emissions of C02 from volcanoes is much much larger than that of humans (the cute little animations were quite nice).
But I have read elsewhere (including here: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html and here: http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man.html) that human emissions are 150 times greater per year (I presume averaged out over a long time).
Any thoughts?
Thanks.