h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

After watching "An Inconvenient Truth" I was quite alarmed at the statement that the amount of GreenHouse gasses were higher than they had ever been.
This information was taken from analysis of Ice cores taken at the poles. However if it stopped snowing for a long period due to previous global warming, then there would have been no material deposited to form part of these cores, infact there may have been snow at some point with higher levels of greenhouse gasses in it but this just melted. Isn't that likely if it got hotter?
It would appear that another Ice age is inevitable, the environmentalists methods will stand us in good stead after the inevitable happens, and we have people telling us that they are a waste of time!
I believe however that telling people that they are killing Polar Bears if they leave their telly on standby, is playing games with peoples concience and it's wrong to play on people's fears.

It's already too late for the polar bears. Areas of ice the equivalent of 6 times the state of California melted this summer in the arctic. They're starting to talk about opening the "northwest passage".

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/science/earth/02arct.html?ex=1349064000&en=ca0a4e152facc160&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Saying to people that it's all our fault does not appear to be having the desired effect, appart from sending the minority of people that are concerned onto a guilt trip.

When you are on one of those your freedom is restricted by your own beliefs.

Time to start spreading a more pragmatic message, we have got no chance of totally eliminating climate change, it'll happen regardless, educate us as to what to do when it does.

what?

Lean forwrd, put your head between your knees...

Ha

I think part of the best advice is "Don't Panic"

Head twixt knees is a bad idea... OK you were joking... but it is similar to the views of lots of people.

Yes, doc - agreed, but

You won't easily persuade me to give up my car (especially in a rural area) or to completely give up flying.
Neither will I easily give up TV, computer, HiFi...
Nor will I believe in the grand so-called 'green' power generation schemes like wind power & the Severn Barrier, without a LOT more evidence.

Recycling doesn't seem to be doing what it's meant to - though I'm all in favour.

The only practical large scale power source currently visible to me, like it or lump it, is nuclear (apart from, perhaps, much improved coal & gas stations as a stop-gap).

What you -can- do is tax me until I squeak and thus earn more of my resentment when I see the money going elsewhere.

I'm not 100% convinced that we are the major cause of climate change,

"If you think you may be causing a problem - stop".
Yes, but that won't happen until (at least) China approaches the goal of industrialisation.

<>

That's because we're not. Climate change was happening long before Homo Sapiens first set fire to something and will continue happening long after we're all dead and dust.

It makes me laugh when I see posters and things telling us to "STOP CLIMATE CHANGE", the people who say that kind of thing clearly have no idea how catastrophic it would be to the environment to stop climate change altogether... yes, industrialisation and whatnot have made things happen faster than they should've done and this is A Bad Thing, but the planet's survived far worse than what we could ever throw at it.

I think that efforts to "STOP CLIMATE CHANGE" are futile but I thought that most requests were for us to try to "REDUCE climate change", the ice core logs indicate that it's always happened to a degree, but I think that a bit of the History is missing from the Ice core logs. Due to the weather at the time (tens of thousand years ago).

May be in the future there won't be TV, HI-FIs and cars, or even dare I say it TAXES, and maybe one day everyone will be happy.

Doesn't the Guide say that most people weren't happy?

Is an ice core log something they find 10,000 years after a Neanderthal got caught short?

Bad Orcus! No biscuit!

I would urge anyone with any sort of numeric bent to have a look at the ice core data themselves. Here's some:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok_data.html

It strikes me as fairly clear-cut. Its not just the absolute values which are very different in modern times - the rates of change are startling.

I was under the impression that a fair propportion of scientists in the field were hazzarding a guesstimate that the human influenced part of any current change in climate was insignificent in comparason to that of 'nature' in so-far as we're still warming up out of the last ice age I saw somewhere (can't remember wehre), a suggestion that there'd been a rise in average sea temps, which the article in question put down to human-induced CO2 emisions/global warming, despite my remembering pretty clearly the thousands apon thousands of years delayed effect of atmospheric temp/conditions on the average sea temp The 'truth' behind it is all pretty irrelivent now anyhow, as its been polittisised into something it never was nor ought not have ever been, and the 'truth' or 'facts' couldn't any longer be wrecklessly aired openly for fear of the political and economic fallout, as governemnts push harder and encourage growth in areas of the economy which without global warming would be as redundant as our woolly jumpers are about to become...

2legs,

"The 'truth' behind it is all pretty irrelivent now anyhow, as its been polittisised into something it never was nor ought not have ever been"

This is a view I've come across quite often, but I think it's absolutely wrong. The issue has become incredibly political - it had to - but that doesn't mean the truth is irrelevant. The truth in this matter is absolutely crucial.

The truth is entirely* critical, thats my point, unfortuantely, because it isn't any more an issue to do with truth or lies or fact or fiction or even science, its just a political issue, and whatever the truth may be, whatever new evidence comes along, is waht is irrelivent, as if it is then something which no longer fits with, or can be made to fit with the political view, then it won't be something we hear about, and it won't hit the 'aggenda' of anyonw... Why, is all of a sudden greenhouse effect, global warming, carbon this carbon that in the media every few seconds? cause that is what someone somewhere decided was the agenda, it isn't as far as I can tell as a result of some sudden strange sudden breakthrew in the science, we didn't just 'discover' the thing in the last year, its just all of a sudden come an issue... As such and as with anything once it gains that much motion the truth, science and logical aprailsal and analysis of it can go hang, it won't make a bit of differnce. Just look at the bluddy princess diane crap, people or at least some of them have been brainwashed in to the idea all that stuff was actually of any significence, and hey ho its constantly in the bluddy news again... Just cause it is doesn't actually mean its of any significence, just once something has that much momento common sense and logic can go hang...

It is more accurate to say "all" than to say "most" scientists believe global warming is occurring and it is a result of man's activities.

It's quite frightening to me that President George W. Bush has accepted this as fact, and yet posters on this board have not.

That is the same man who accepted WMD as a fact. Quite honnestly I'd be more inclined to think whatever the opposite of any given thing he was thinking was. I use 'think' in the broadest possible sense.

Incidentally while I don't like Al Gore's incessant posturing - wouldn't it have been better if I'd won the election? Saving the planet was all I wanted to do. Pay attention to me damn you! - An Inconvenient Truth does do a very neat job of laying out rather convincing and easy to check facts on the whole matter.

Back to the original question then, they recon from the core logs that they can model global temperature over the last 400,000 years. Is there any chance that these records are really for over a million years and the ice from when trapped carbon levels were at the highest has gone or was never there in the first place.

I don't think that we will ever really know the truth, it's just what we believe that is important, and what comes over in Al Gores film is alarmist. He lays out just the right data to make the point he wants to make. It's like Gore is the captain of the Demolition ship saying, "the earth has been scheduled for demolition to make way for a new intergalactic superhighway."

It just adds fuel to the fire of those nutters that go around saying that the end of the world is nigh, and they are growing in number.