Largest Iceberg Humans Have Ever Seen

The evolution of the crack, the team say, is tied to “global climate change, although there are still no conclusions”.

Hmm. Has there ever been a time, in the entire history of this planet, when the global climate is not changing? From the heat of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum Age to the cool of the Ice Age and everywhere in between the climate has been changing. How vain of man to think we could affect the temperature of the planet anywhere near as much as naturally occurring events can do.

 

Just curious what would it take to change your mind?

 

Well lets look at one aspect. Forest fires. Before we started putting them out the earth was subjected to more global warming than all the emissions we are worried about today. How much? Lets take this one huge fire for example:

"The fires that swept across Indonesia in 1997, for example, burned relatively thin-trunked tropical trees. But the devastated forests were also covered in carbon-rich peat, with deposits measuring up to 20 meters thick. As a result, the Indonesian fires were estimated to have released between 0.81 and 2.57 gigatons of carbon—between 13 percent and 40 percent of the world's annual emissions at the time."

So man has actually REDUCED greenhouse gasses by simply keeping forest fires under control. But instead of patting ourselves on the back and telling ourselves we have done a great job in reducing all the gigatons of carbon that forest fires used to put in the air, we kick ourselves in the butt because we did not do enough. How much is enough? And if we did reduce emissions to zero and one super volcano erupted and undid all our hard work, would we still be here to whine about it?

Vanity, sheer vanity that man has so much impact on nature. Disclaimer: This is not to say we should not do our best to reduce our impact on the earth. This is to say we should not get our panties in a bunch over it.

But that did not change your mind either, did it? I think we either become programmed to think as we are taught or we reject the teachings of other people who are as imperfect as ourselves and we learn to think for ourselves. I remember believing the scientists who predicted a catastrophe at Y2K but I laugh about it now. Science is as much a belief system as anything else. When scientists believed the world was flat then it obviously was. When scientists believed the sun revolved around the earth then society believed it must be so. Now they believe that we humans can change the climate of the earth more than nature does or can compensate for, thus it must also be true. Or is it?

 

I sailed through Indonesia in 97 and couldn't see much at all through the smoke

 

In my gin and tonic

 

It's best if you keep this information to yourself. If this line of thinking were to permeate the four hour news cycle, the networks would have to cut back to real two minute information presentations.
We would be deprived of all the "brilliant insight" the commentators bring to the world.
Right now I'm visiting my dad (87 years old), he has subscribed to some U.S. news stations. He spends a lot of time flipping back and forth and saying "how the F### can they come up with that crap and say it with a straight face".
So Wrye bed keep logic a secret and don't spoil an old man's fun. Joking na Lang

 

Australia was once covered in an ocean, the ice age finished flooding most of the earth, yet Australia today is above sea level, if the end of the ice age released so much water, why isn't Australia covered in water today, especially in areas being heavily mined for the iron ores that was deposited by microscopic sea life that were once covered... Where Australia was once covered in Rain forests, the land is now Desert and barren... Watching documentaries, many many moons ago the earth was unable to sustain mammals due to the low temperatures from the then climate and high greenhouse gases, much of which was caused by the then volcanic activity, as everyone knows; block the sun and the temperature drops, yet still today we have naturally occurring contributors to lower temperatures such as volcanoes, so the whacko Governments plan to put a cork in those to reverse the effects they also place on the environment...

* How do volcanoes affect world climate?

* The atmospheric effects of volcanic eruptions were confirmed by the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, in the Philippines. Pinatubo¿s eruption cloud reached over 40 kilometers into the atmosphere and ejected about 17 million tons of SO2, just over two times that of El Chich¿n in 1982. The sulfur-rich aerosols circled the globe within three weeks and produced a global cooling effect approximately twice that of El Chich¿n. The Northern Hemisphere cooled by up to 0.6 degrees C during 1992 and 1993. Moreover, the aerosol particles may have contributed to an accelerated rate of ozone depletion during that same period. Interestingly, some scientists argue that without the cooling effect of major volcanic eruptions such as El Chich¿n and Mount Pinatubo, global warming effects caused by human activities would have been far more substantial.

At one stage the equator was covered with Ice;
Ice Once Covered the Equator

SO MANY CHANGES; I seriously doubt we will ever know the real truth when some 'Scientists' (I use the term loosely) say this and some say that, I will believe it when I see it... The Earth has been evolving for the past 4.5 million years and WILL continue to evolve for the next 4.5 million years, with or without human input... As the Tree Huggers say; "Don't **** with Mother Nature" you WON'T win!

 

I think you give man too little credit. We do a pretty good job of tearing up things.

How do you know that all that Y2K worrying didn't avoid a catastrophe? There was tons of money spent on it. There are certainly things that were going to fail and didn't. Maybe you can laugh now because lots of people did something. How do you know it was for nothing?

The same site you quote for you 1997 Indonesian fire says .81 to 2.57 gigatons. You have a 300% difference in the estimates, but they have it down to two significant digits. It's pretty silly when you think of it.

Do forest fires have a significant impact on global warming?

From the same site. Look at the world emissions for 1997 of around 23 gigatons. The percents just don't work.

Which Countries Are the Worst Carbon Polluters in History? (Map.)

I'm not saying the fire was insignificant, just not as significant. One example, does not a story make.

You suggested that man has actually helped by putting out fires, but that is not indicated by the NASA graph below. Using your logic that fires in ancient times would have continued to burn so we should see peaks above today's levels but they aren't there. What's the odds that a big fire didn't happen in the last 400,000 years with no one to put it out?



NASA data seems to contradict your theory unless you can share natural events that have occured since 1950 to cause the measurements to continually increase.

Let's say I'm wrong, then no harm, no foul. If you are wrong, not so good. Realistically, we will both be dead before it makes a bit of difference, but will my daughter or my daughters daughter. If you're wrong, they lose. It's just erring on the side of caution. We could have the same type of discussion about the deficit.

Science is a belief system only in that some people choose the data that suits their needs. As an example, there are people that believe the we have never been to the moon and will to the day they die. Oh, and let's not forget the flat earth people either.