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Originally posted by squealpiggy
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No. Hysteria is stupid. The journalists, politicians and unwashed hippy bastards that make up the environmental Left get nothing from me. I think that polarizing an issue over entirely meaningless political lines is unhelpful and damaging.
Since day 1 earth has been cooling on average but it does have cycles of warm and cold periods which are likely triggered by orbital phases (the earths orbit like all others is an ellipse, not a circle). The difference is that human activity seems to have sparked a warming cycle where there shouldn't be one. This is caused by releases of hitherto trapped carbon on a huge scale. It used to be trapped in the ground as coal and oil and in the sea as CO2. The issue is that increasing CO2 concentrations increase aggregate temperatures, higher temperatures mean melting ice which releases more CO2, this extra CO2 results in increased temperatures and etc...
What is not in doubt is that these cycles occur naturally. What is also true is that human activity is releasing once-trapped carbon on an unprecedented scale.
I will correct you, because you're wrong. The Greenland ice cap was slightly thicker this year due to increased snowfall. Increased snowfall in some regions has been caused by colder winters, wider swings in temperature and shifting seasons, which are all part of the effects of gradual aggregate temperature increase in a complex system.
The thicker Greenland ice cap has been accompanied by thinner ice at the poles and thawing of Siberian and Canadian tundras.
There has not been a cooling phase over the last few years either.
Temperature does fluctuate and some years have lower temperatures, but even if the last five years show lower temperatures than the previous five years it doesn't escape the fact that the trend is an upward one and that lower temperatures in 2007 don't alter the fact that in 2004 temperatures were at an all-time high. You could argue that there is a "cooling trend" if you only include data from the last 10 years, but only if you ignore data from the previous 100 years.
That's because you have already decided what you believe.
Since day 1 earth has been cooling on average but it does have cycles of warm and cold periods which are likely triggered by orbital phases (the earths orbit like all others is an ellipse, not a circle). The difference is that human activity seems to have sparked a warming cycle where there shouldn't be one. This is caused by releases of hitherto trapped carbon on a huge scale. It used to be trapped in the ground as coal and oil and in the sea as CO2. The issue is that increasing CO2 concentrations increase aggregate temperatures, higher temperatures mean melting ice which releases more CO2, this extra CO2 results in increased temperatures and etc...
What is not in doubt is that these cycles occur naturally. What is also true is that human activity is releasing once-trapped carbon on an unprecedented scale.
I will correct you, because you're wrong. The Greenland ice cap was slightly thicker this year due to increased snowfall. Increased snowfall in some regions has been caused by colder winters, wider swings in temperature and shifting seasons, which are all part of the effects of gradual aggregate temperature increase in a complex system.
The thicker Greenland ice cap has been accompanied by thinner ice at the poles and thawing of Siberian and Canadian tundras.
There has not been a cooling phase over the last few years either.
Temperature does fluctuate and some years have lower temperatures, but even if the last five years show lower temperatures than the previous five years it doesn't escape the fact that the trend is an upward one and that lower temperatures in 2007 don't alter the fact that in 2004 temperatures were at an all-time high. You could argue that there is a "cooling trend" if you only include data from the last 10 years, but only if you ignore data from the previous 100 years.
That's because you have already decided what you believe.
While I probably should educate myself more on the science if I'm going to shoot my mouth off about it, I'll tell you this; when an issue is latched on to and pushed as hard as this one is being pushed by the loud, overbearing, intolerant turds on the left, my automatic response is to be aggressively skeptical. The zealotry attached to this thing is crazy.
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