NASA Animation of Global Warming

NASA Animation of Global Warming



The science and methodology behind how they determine the Earth's temperature is available from NASA here;

GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP)

The queezy feeling in the pit of your stomach as you watch this is the realization that your children may be living in a radically different environment than we have now.

You seem to have silenced the blowhard denialists around here with this vid Where are all the rehashed and ill-informed arguments?

S&F....

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Great vid.. will be interesting to see otherwise intelligent
people attack the video and claim that global warming is
a lie!

Originally posted by rigel4
reply to post by Blackmarketeer

 

Great vid.. will be interesting to see otherwise intelligent
people attack the video and claim that global warming is
a lie!

edit on 13-9-2012 by rigel4 because: (no reason given)

Well... It's my understanding that 'global warming' as it's known is not necessarily true but 'climate change is. We are very probably accelerating climate change but even if humans weren't around, the climate would get warmer. The globe has warmed and cooled in cycles since the beginning of time. We just happen to be advancing within one of the warming periods. Humans will adapt.

Originally posted by fiftyfifty

Originally posted by rigel4
reply to post by Blackmarketeer

 

Great vid.. will be interesting to see otherwise intelligent
people attack the video and claim that global warming is
a lie!

edit on 13-9-2012 by rigel4 because: (no reason given)

Well... It's my understanding that 'global warming' as it's known is not necessarily true but 'climate change is. We are very probably accelerating climate change but even if humans weren't around, the climate would get warmer. The globe has warmed and cooled in cycles since the beginning of time. We just happen to be advancing within one of the warming periods. Humans will adapt.

That's not true at all though. Interglacial periods typically last for the order of 10,000 years or so. We are roughly 12,000 years into one and if previous climate records are to be believed should be heaving back into a glaciation within the next few thousand years had no 'outside interference' occurred in the climatic system (indeed temperature charts do show a slight decrease in temperatures globally from roughly 2000 years ago up until about 1800 CE but let's not get into that). As it is we are now the dominant forcing in the system and so this increase in temperature could indeed be worse than thought. The natural decline we might and probably would have otherwise seen may be masking the true extent of our influence on the climate.

And the fact that the Earth was warmer x millions of years ago is irrelevant. No one is denying that it was. What matters now though is that millions of species and indeed the entirety of human civilisation have evolved and developed under the world as it is now. An increase temperature will lead to the loss of habitable environments. Not to mention that the rate of warming is unprecedented. Temperature variations due to say the Milankovitch cycle take place on timescales reaching tens of thousands of years. Heating the planet up by 4-5 degrees in the space of 150 years will cause a mass extinction.

This is happening, only an ignorant fool would deny the evidence.

We've at least had some understanding of what caused previous epochs of warming or cooling - super volcanism, etc. Today we are seeing a large increase in greenhouse gases with little natural cause to explain it. Nature accounts for some CO2 released into the atmosphere, but not nearly enough to explain the dramatic increase in Earth's temperature. The threat in global warming isn't in 'rising sea levels' but huge shifts in weather that will likely devastate America's "bread basket" in the Midwest.