Is global warming really happening ? Scientist and ecologist would know the easiest way to find prove is at the poles, namely the Arctic and Antarctica. Scientist found that the population of emperor Penguin is half what was thirty years ago, while the number of Adelie penguins has decline by 70%. Krill is the food for the Penguin has been reduced due to changes in the sea ice cover that was home for the Krill and overfished by the new vacuum technology in fishery which suck out the Krill even in deep sea.
Penguins are literally starving to death as a result of krill depletion. In the absence of some dramatic changes these species may be sacrificed on the altar of human progress.
According to experts we have ten years to reverse the current trend before the build-up for greenhouse gases becomes irreversible. Ten Years !
Ref :
1. Video of “March of The Penguin”, http://wip.warnerbros.com/marchofthepenguins/
2. Above Photo is the courtesy of warnerbros inc.
Tarun K Juyal said,
August 10, 2007 at 10:10 am
I am a regular reader of your article. And I am very impress with your blog upon Global Warming. Now I am also write a blog upon effects and causes of Global Warming. This blog is collection of news & reviews like the study found that global warming since 1985 has been caused neither by an increase in solar radiation nor by a decrease in the flux of galactic cosmic rays. Some researchers had also suggested that the latter might influence global warming because the rays trigger cloud formation.
JiYan said,
August 10, 2007 at 10:21 am
Hi Tarun, Thanks for visiting my blog. Your words really inspired me to continue research on this topic and write. I will frequent your site as well.
Orange said,
August 10, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Question for you - how does the news that prominent scientists can make significant mistakes affect the urgency of the problem? Specifically, it turns out that there was a “Y2K” bug in some of the climate data: See, for instance, this article or a more detailed explanation.
JiYan said,
August 11, 2007 at 5:19 am
At a glance, I think the new data still show global temperature is still uptrend.
http://tech.blorge.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/global-warming-is-still-real-new-nasa-data-proves-it.jpg
Am I right ?
I wish their data is all wrong and the global warning is a joke for 21st century. I wish in future, there aren’t any global warming, climate change buzzword anymore. Then we can talk about other topics.
Orange said,
August 11, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Yes, no doubt you do wish that global warming isn’t happening. I don’t think that even the most casual reader could confuse you with someone who wants global warming. But thanks for clearing that up
Take another look at the graph. The whole graph. Check the slope between about 1915 and about 1930. Check the slope between about 1975 and about 1995. They’re about the same. So, decades ago, with a much smaller global population, with much less industry outside Europe, well before the development of electronics, back when there were “plenty of” trees… the Earth was still warming up, at just about the same rate.
Take another look at the difference between 1930 and 1950. It went down. Without a huge outcry over the dangers of flooding, the fate of polar bears, and before “reduce, reuse, recycle” got plastered over everything. What happened then? Well, WW2, but that was hardly anyone’s idea of an ecological breakthrough. The Great Depression - largely confined to the West, and again, not known for its environmental splendors.
You’re looking at that graph and saying “the earth is still getting warmer!” I’m looking at that graph and saying “It’s only the US data” and “upward trends are followed by downward trends, and this graph presents no information on what might have caused either one”.
As interesting as it’s been to discuss this, there are four points which I don’t seem to be expressing clearly. So I’ll say them flat out and be done:
1) Conclusions based on a small selection of data on an extremely complex system are more likely than not to be wrong, or at least not completely correct. The Earth’s weather is one such system.
2) Conclusions based on graphs that show only a single subset of the available data - such as that graph of average temperatures in the US - do not indicate causes. They *cannot* indicate causes, since they report only the effect.
3) The more complex the system, the more possible causes there can be. Not all possible causes are real causes. And correlation does not indicate causation.
For instance, I could prepare a graph that combines the average temperature in the US (same data as in that one graph) and the population of Australia. I bet they both go up. Does that mean I can conclude that more people in Australia are making it warmer in America? I can prepare another one that shows that membership in the Sierra Club is correlated with “global warming”. Is the Sierra Club causing global warming?
(Could well be, actually. The famous environmentalist Al Gore has recently become notorious for using far more electricity at home than his neighbors. You practice what you preach, but many of your ideological cohorts do not.)
4) Any possible solutions must be based on the real causes. And it should be the most significant causes which are given the most attention.
For instance, as your mate Tarun noted in a recent post, there’s a big brown cloud over the Indian Ocean due to people burning dung and wood for cooking fires. Whatever conclusion one draws about global warming, that’s obviously not a Good Thing. But “use less electricity” does not address that problem at all, since it’s not caused by the use of electricity. (Ironically, using *more* electricity, rather than wood/dung fires, would do far more to solve that problem.) “Use less water” is not going to do anything about “there’s flooding in Oxfordshire”.
If “global warming” is a real problem, then no amount of wishing is going to make it go away. Neither will rushing into solutions that don’t address the real causes.
JiYan said,
August 16, 2007 at 1:25 am
Orange,
I agreed with your arguements that NASA data doesn’t mean global temperature. To be specific, I use the wrong terms. Agreed. I agreed with your argument that others temperatures rises in others countries cannot create a correlation of the same cause.
CO2 going up, Temp going up, Other factors that affect the temp varied slightly. What others factors proved you are searching, can you spell out clearly ?
Let me ask you what data will convince you that global warming is really true ?
I still did not understand whether you are not convince on the cause or not agree that global is warming ?
Remember, we are also running short of time…the ice caps are still melting …..as is faster than they have in millions of years.
Orange said,
August 16, 2007 at 12:51 pm
There is no particular evidence that I’m looking for. For one thing, there’s nothing in particular that I’d start doing differently if I were “a true believer” in global warming - I already do the things that make sense to do, and that you are sure will be enough to save the earth. So be happy.
I’m a skeptic on the idea that the temperature changes are happening “globally” - there are some factors in how a lot of the temperature measurements are being made that make it difficult to compare data from today with data from even 30 years ago (the earlier days of satellite measurements), let alone 100 years ago (measurements at many weather stations in some countries) or 300 years ago (we barely agreed on which temperature scale to use). So whether it’s a short-term trend or a long-term trend - that’s part of what I question. I understand that there are ways to measure (or at least estimate) the temperature, CO2 levels, radiation levels, etc,. based on ice cores. I’m a chemist; specifically, one whose passion is for measuring quantities of chemicals. As such, I’m pretty suspicious of experiments that rely on samples “taken” (from the atmosphere) 3,000 years ago, or however old an ice core sample might be.
The amount “caused” by human actions, instead of natural cycles - that’s part of what I question. Whether solutions currently exist that don’t mean completely dismantling “civilisation as we know it” (to borrow Lovelock’s term) - that’s part of what I question. The urgency of the problem and the idea that there are no natural compensating mechanisms, so “it’s all up to us” - that’s part of what I question. I find it very odd that Lovelock - the man who invented the “Gaia” hypothesis - seems so fixed on the idea that the climate is static except for our actions. Shouldn’t he instead suggest that there are natural mechanisms that can compensate?
I’m skeptical, as I said, of claims that tiny amounts of data, most of which comes from the last 30 years, are enough to prime the climate models - even if the models themselves are 100% complete and accurate, the predictions are only as good as the data.
I’m skeptical because of unexplained trends and swings in the very same datasets that are now being used to predict disaster - that NASA temperature data that I asked about, in particular. Is there an official explanation for the cycles of upswings and downswings that go back to well before “the hook”?
Finally, I’m skeptical because many other scientists, including ones far smarter and better informed than I, are skeptical of claims that human industry has doomed the world. Freeman Dyson writes that “I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in.”
If you really want to understand “the skeptics position” (not to say there’s only one), I urge you to read the rest of the essay in which he wrote that. It’s online at http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge219.html#dysonf.
Also, if you can, read this article published in the journal “First Things”. This one looks more at the consequences of doing stuff about “global warming”.
Read these, with an open mind. Remember that even the global warming skeptics agree that recycling is good, that the Earth is not infinite, that one person’s actions may have long-term effects. Perhaps you will also become “a virtuous skeptic”?
JiYan said,
August 17, 2007 at 9:19 am
Thanks for the links, I like to read it very much.
But whether I will turn into sketics or is of not important, I feel that I will be rather doing wrong things to prevent global warming rather than seeing the calamities or disaster happened onto the peoples.
Regard your question on gaia theory, just take the analogus of the things we use, example a wooden chair. If the chair is used roughly by your friends and being not well taken of, it will spoil very fast compare with you take care of it gently, the life span of the chair will be longer. Similary this apply to our earth. That is what Lovelock means, human are responsible for our earth.
Orange said,
August 18, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Odd analogy: Chairs aren’t usually living systems. Still, chairs can be stronger than they look.
How is “doing the wrong things to prevent calamities” any different from “burning paper money to prevent my ancestors from suffering in hell”? You’ve just recently condemned that one, remember. You’ve still given zero evidence that your “solutions” are going to do one bit of good at avoiding what you are sure is going to happen.
If you’re determined to do whatever you think is right in order to “solve” the problem you’re convinced exists - then this is no place for rational discussion. Thanks for clearing that up - I’ll stop wasting my time.
JiYan said,
August 19, 2007 at 7:52 am
Orange, I think you misunderstand my meaning of “doing the wrong things” here means since you mention that global warming might not be true. Then, asking people to conserve is wrong thing to do. I will rather doing this wrong that seeing peoples dieing out of global warming. I don’t means do wrong thing like burning paper money.
I don’t have technical solution for global warming, perhap you could since you are chemical engineer by background. I just hope what I do here able to arose the people awareness to conserve our limited resources like water, reduce pollution etc.
But I agreed that global warming is over politicized in US especially involvement of Al Gore. I tend to agreed more thought of Freeman Dyson on global warming, perhap I will read more of his thought.
Dimitris said,
January 21, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Interesting…
Emmanouil said,
January 22, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Cool.
Glafkos said,
January 23, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Interesting…
Thanasios said,
January 23, 2008 at 4:11 pm
interesting
Loukianos said,
January 27, 2008 at 5:52 am
Sorry
Odysseas said,
January 30, 2008 at 3:00 am
Nice