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Letter: Global warming is not a myth
Tue, 03/10/2009 2:45 PM | Reader's Forum
I refer to an article titled "Climate change superstitions put human well-being at risk, (the Post, March 3) written by Christopher Lingle.
I would ask that when you speak of numbers use the pictorial method to show the numbers. Numbers without context are really of little value. If you plot the temperatures since the last ice age, it would appear that the earth is warming.
It would show slight dips over short periods of time, but for the most part it is painfully obvious the earth is warming without any help from man.
So the real problem here is that a warming earth will radically alter the stability of the climate.
But the good news used to be that a rapid change occurred over thousands of years giving biology time to adapt. However, on five specific occasions the flux in climate was so rapid naturally that a large percentage of creatures perished.
These events were known as mass extinctions. Knowing that these unusual events occurred naturally is probably the only warning an intelligent species would need to stay very aware of how it impacts its environment.
Since humans have learned to identify specific elements and life forms in sediment and ice core samples, they have decided that in some of these past rapid climate change events, there were concentrations of CO2 and methane different from today.
That is just a clue, a hint that concentrations of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere have changed. A smart species would then try and understand these various elements and their impacts to better their chances of survival.
When the clalthrates on the bed of the oceans were discovered recently, the Methane Birthday Cake, so to speak, scientists began to hypothesize that these frozen structures could erupt with a slight increase in ocean temperature.
Once the clalthrates begin venting as a gas, then the rise of methane will be a planetary catastrophic event. The great Permian extinction is not hard fact, even recently new geology has found difficult realities that make understanding what happened millions of years ago more difficult.
What physics tells us is that CO2 warms the air, black carbon warms the air, and methane warms the air.
Additionally, cracks in a new dry lake bed release moisture during the night because the warm daylight air gets trapped down in the cracks causing normal subsurface moisture to pour upward all night long.
Water vapor is a fantastic greenhouse gas, the more moisture in the air, the warmer it will get.
Earl E.
washington
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Mememine69 (not verified) — Thu, 03/12/2009 - 4:52pm
The global warming theory has nothing to do with pollution according to release of the newest, emerging, and rapidly growing current research. Since the theory has not proven to be correct with no predicted result appearing, the entire science behind this issue is being looked at from newer angles. Scientists are now saying that the last 23 years of this theory is certainly long enough to test it's true credibility and it's reality. The hard part will be convincing everyone that since the theory is not real, it's no reason to stop treating our environment with respect. And oil is bad for world peace but just remember, back in 1900 they talked about where they were going to put all of the horses needed by the year 2000. Yes our kids will have a world to raise their kids in after all and it sure feels good not to have to preach "saving" our planet anymore to an impressionable generation of children. Hopefully we can all not have to be motivated by fear anymore so we can preserve, not rescue our world from a crisis that fortunately did not exist. We should still be proud of Rachel Carson and I suppose history will take care of Al Gore. Watch the news in the coming months and you will see this news unfold to the happy ending of this crisis that never was as we see current climate research clearly indicating.
I suggest that if you are the responsible and progressive environmentalist we hope you are, that you stop thinking of it as denialism, its more like being relevant and up to date information.