It may not always be our doing, but humans have a pretty good track record of wiping out animal populations. Wasn't the latest one the black rhino? Humans also cause extinction. It's not just a Mother Nature thing - we seem to have inherited the trait. I think it's plausible for humans to affect nature just as nature affects us.
Climate continues to change.
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It may not always be our doing, but humans have a pretty good track record of wiping out animal populations. Wasn't the latest one the black rhino? Humans also cause extinction. It's not just a Mother Nature thing - we seem to have inherited the trait. I think it's plausible for humans to affect nature just as nature affects us.
pete
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well put.
over the course of time, humans have shown their ability to negatively impact ecology.
impacting the atmosphere itself is harder to quantify, and obviously a tougher argument to make due to its vastness and complexity
StrangeLife
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We have wiped out certain species by direct actions - the infamous Dodo comes to mind - but in most cases it's more a question of not preventing a certain species from going extinct from natural causes. We have the power to do that and I'm not saying that we shouldn't. There was nobody around to save the Sauropods or the Wooly Mammoth, so in that respect the penguins are lucky.
However going bananas over the the fact that the climate is changing makes little sense, considering that it has done so for thousands of years.
StrangeLife
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"Impact" yes. But why "negatively?" Negatively for who?
phrodeau
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Really? You must have evidence of rapid climate change in Earth's past, then. Some decade in history where there weren't any major meteor strikes or volcanic hyperactivity and the surface temperature shot up anyway. You can provide some support for your assertions, right?
phrodeau
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Sure, as soon as you write down the meaning of "climate".
tactful
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First you get a map that shows the whole world.
Place the map on the wall with pin or tape, your option.
Now get a dart and stand about five or six feet away from said map.
Toss dart at map, hopefully it sticks onto a region or area on said map.
Check weather for that region or area on said map.
As the world turns so does the weather, hence, climate change, always, everywhere.
girlsmiley
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Yes. Ridiculously stupid. As far as statements on animal extinction go "Animal species come and go. It's not our doing - extinctions happened long before humans even existed " has got to be one of THE most ridiculously stupid things I've ever heard.
Do you live in a bubble?
Think about it.
U
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Except for world leaders and suchlike busybodies.
VaticanAssassin
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Stupid Humans.....
Last edited:
RobDownSouth
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Stupid Humans.....
The chart compares 400k years of history against a small slice (1961-1990) and doesn't explain why that slice is particularly relevant.
Not to mention that humans have only existed for the last 50,000 years or so (6,000 years for Julybabby04).
But hai, it's a pretty chart and thats "what matters most" to a climate denier.
N.B.: We're still in an Ice Age. An interglacial period within it, but we're still in an Ice Age. Humans have never existed in a post-Ice-Age world, i.e., one with no ice even at the poles. There have been such periods in Earth's history, but all predate humanity.
koalabear
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It’s believed that humans originated about 200,000 years ago in the Middle Paleolithic period in southern Africa. By 70,000 years ago, humans migrated out of Africa and began colonizing the entire planet. They spread to Eurasia and Oceania 40,000 years ago, and reached the Americas by 14,500 years ago.
One of the oldest sites of human settlement is located at Middle Awash in Ethiopia, where humans lived 160,000 years ago.
Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/38125/how-long-have-humans-been-on-earth/#ixzz2ruWQdYWT
VaticanAssassin
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Humans have only existed for 50,000 years? For reals!!!!?????
Lets forget the fact that was my sarcastic point.
Let me explain the pretty colors and relevance for ya.
The chart shows a clear weather pattern of inter-glacial periods from the present period to the four preceding periods with the much longer glacial periods in between. All four past periods are seen to be warmer than today's period. These inter-glacial periods tend to last about 10k to 15K years before peaking out and sliding in to a glacial period. The current period has lasted 11.6K years. Shame none of us will be here for the next glacial period.
Whats even more interesting is each inter glacial period has peaked out with corresponding rises in Co2. The only thing different about this current period is that the CO2 spike is actually higher than the corresponding temperature spike. This is despite the fact that this period is 2 degrees colder than any other peak.
StrangeLife
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Sure. The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse 305 million years ago, The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum 58 million years ago, The Younger Dryas stadial 12.000 years ago, The Dansgaard–Oeschger events (we've had several of those), The Bond Events (8 so far)...
... there have been numerous in the past, and there is no reason to assume that there won't be many more in the future.
girlsmiley said:
I have thought about it - which is which I have dismissed a lot of the political flimflam circulating the media.
Are you disputing that we haven't lost thousands of species through the ages, long before humans appeared?
warrior queen
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I am a bit of a sceptic, insofar as I don't really believe that climate change is wholly atributable to humans.
But I do accept that it is changing and that regardless of the cause we should all be doing our bit to make the planet less polluted.
I can also see the other impacts humans have made.... extinctions, etc..... and that we should be doing much more to preserve what's left.
Sadly though, it always seems to come down to money rather than common sense.
And - I'm still blown away by the thought of necrophiliac penguins
But I do accept that it is changing and that regardless of the cause we should all be doing our bit to make the planet less polluted.
I can also see the other impacts humans have made.... extinctions, etc..... and that we should be doing much more to preserve what's left.
Sadly though, it always seems to come down to money rather than common sense.
And - I'm still blown away by the thought of necrophiliac penguins
StrangeLife
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I am totally down with that. And once we develop the technology to bring back extinct species, we should do that too.
I just have a hard time with people preaching the end of the world because the polka-dotted leaf lizard has made the endangered list. There was a time in history when there was permafrost in France - if they had had penguins back then, they'd have been walking down the Champs-Elysées munching on Striped Bass en Papillote and Pissaladière du Paris.
The only constant regarding the climate is that it's always a changing. It doesn't matter whether we are around or not.
And - I'm still blown away by the thought of necrophiliac penguins
Which means that extinction won't necessarily stop them from having sex. For a penguin that should be a comforting thought...
Last edited:
VaticanAssassin
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Our ability to over evaluate our importance astounds me.
TwoShades
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****Yawn****
Crisis du jour
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TIME Magazine Archive Article -- Another Ice Age? -- Jun. 24, 1974
TIME MAGAZINE ^ | June 24, 1974/2006 | Time Magazine
In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone's recollection.
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.
Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.
Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds —the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa's drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest's recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.
Sunspot Cycle. The changing weather is apparently connected with differences in the amount of energy that the earth's surface receives from the sun. Changes in the earth's tilt and distance from the sun could, for instance, significantly increase or decrease the amount of solar radiation falling on either hemisphere—thereby altering the earth's climate. Some observers have tried to connect the eleven-year sunspot cycle with climate patterns, but have so far been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of how the cycle might be involved.
Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.
Climatic Balance. Some scientists like Donald Oilman, chief of the National Weather Service's long-range-prediction group, think that the cooling trend may be only temporary. But all agree that vastly more information is needed about the major influences on the earth's climate. Indeed, it is to gain such knowledge that 38 ships and 13 aircraft, carrying scientists from almost 70 nations, are now assembling in the Atlantic and elsewhere for a massive 100-day study of the effects of the tropical seas and atmosphere on worldwide weather. The study itself is only part of an international scientific effort known acronymically as GARP (for Global Atmospheric Research Program).
Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.
The earth's current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries—the U.S., Canada and Australia —global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."
Crisis du jour
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TIME Magazine Archive Article -- Another Ice Age? -- Jun. 24, 1974
TIME MAGAZINE ^ | June 24, 1974/2006 | Time Magazine
In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone's recollection.
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.
Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.
Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds —the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa's drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest's recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.
Sunspot Cycle. The changing weather is apparently connected with differences in the amount of energy that the earth's surface receives from the sun. Changes in the earth's tilt and distance from the sun could, for instance, significantly increase or decrease the amount of solar radiation falling on either hemisphere—thereby altering the earth's climate. Some observers have tried to connect the eleven-year sunspot cycle with climate patterns, but have so far been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of how the cycle might be involved.
Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.
Climatic Balance. Some scientists like Donald Oilman, chief of the National Weather Service's long-range-prediction group, think that the cooling trend may be only temporary. But all agree that vastly more information is needed about the major influences on the earth's climate. Indeed, it is to gain such knowledge that 38 ships and 13 aircraft, carrying scientists from almost 70 nations, are now assembling in the Atlantic and elsewhere for a massive 100-day study of the effects of the tropical seas and atmosphere on worldwide weather. The study itself is only part of an international scientific effort known acronymically as GARP (for Global Atmospheric Research Program).
Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.
The earth's current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries—the U.S., Canada and Australia —global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."
Sean Renaud
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On article forty years old does not equal a near unamious agreement amongst scientific experts.
Sean Renaud
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There doesn't seem to be any pressing reason to believe the temperature of the sun isn't mostly static. You've got the GW deniers but that's really about it.
TwoShades
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