Possible caption: "OK, I know I lost my glasses around here somewhere..."
Posted on 12/06/2004 9:41:17 AM PST by cogitator
Today's theme is people in isolation.
I found this picture of the Pu'u O'o vent field on Kilauea strangely compelling (click for large size):
Possible caption: "OK, I know I lost my glasses around here somewhere..."
Vatnajokull Ice Cap (Iceland) from the road; click for full-size:
Possible caption: "No outlet."
** ping **
Global Warming hits Hawaii....
Volcano-logically speaking, it's been hot there for a long time.
And glaciers have been retreating for 20,000 years, but does that make a difference to the global fear-mongers?
It might depend on how fast they've been retreating, and what caused the retreat. Those factors make a difference to me, because I know that there are several dozen reasons causing glacial retreat and advance. Glaciers always exist in a state of dynamic equilibrium; changes to either the input or output factors will affect which way the glacier is going. One other problem is that glaciers have a long "memory" -- sometimes the current action of a glacier is a response to shifts in the predominant regional climate factors occurring decades ago.
Dynamic Equalibrium??? 20,000 years ago glaciers covered most of Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. The whole fairy tale of globull warming is that somehow the earth has been stable for 4 billion years, then along came humans and we are throwing it out of balance. Well, that is a bunch of bullcrap. The earth has never been stable and has been under constant change. To assume the earth's climate is stable is to assume the 1+1=3.
Evaluation of climate stability requires a stated time-frame under which that evaluation can be conducted. Since the end of the last glacial (or I could say since the beginning of this interglacial) the Earth's climate has been extraordinarily stable. Previous interglacial periods are slightly less stable than this one, and the glacial periods are considerably less stable than the interglacials (and there are good reasons for that).
Transitional periods are the most unstable periods of all.
But getting back to the original point, glaciers will advance or retreat in response to climate change. The more dramatic the change, the more pronounced the response.
Not according to the data, only after it has been minipulated to contracted recored history. The whole hockey stick theory is proven bunk. Besides, our planet's history is some 4,000,000,000 years old, if we finally stay relatively stable for 1,000 years (0.000025% of existance), does that prove our climate finally stabablized. I guess the first 99.999925% of our history as being unstable doesn't mean anything to you.
WOW,thats one beautiful road in iceland.
A, calm down. B, I've studied planetary geochemistry and I am well aware of Earth's overall geologic and climate history. There have been MAJOR fluctuations in Earth's climate, obviously, but the rate at which those changes occurred and the mechanisms that cause those changes (particularly when millions or hundreds of thousands of years is being considered) is considerably different than what causes changes over centuries or decades.
I was not addressing the hockey stick or the past 1000 years. I was talking about the post-glacial Holocene, the period we are in now.
Here's two illustrations:
Focus on the last interglacial to present:
Approximately the past 420,000 years:
The top graph encompasses approximately the final two rightmost horizontal grid ticks on the bottom graph. You can see how this whole past period of stability compares to the rest of the past 420,000 years in the bottom graph. It's almost impossible to find any period in the past 420,000 years when the temperature record has been this "calm" for this long.
I'm not trying to argue with you, I'm just trying to keep things in perspective. OK? These "Geology Pictures of the Week" I do are primarily for enjoyment and entertainment. I like to get serious elsewhere. But I'm always willing to discuss the climate change issues constructively, particularly when it comes to the science of the issue.
I have to wonder if it makes a sharp right or left turn just before running into the ice cap.
Seems to me that we have to live with it, whether anthropogenic or not. Clearly, bankrupting our economy on ridiculous false "solutions" won't help, but neither will ignoring a change just because it might be "natural."
Also, a better term would be "climate change" since it's generally not projected to be just a simplistic warming everywhere. Greater variability and extremes of weather is one of the characteristics that concerns me more than simple mean warming of air temperature.
Besides, based on past cycles, shouldn't we now be going into a cooler phase? If we're still getting warmer, then it's a deflection from "normal" and begs the question as to the cause.
I don't want a Mesozoic climate, even if it is only partly our fault. ;-)
The time scale point made by others is also very important. Where I am now (northern hemisphere, east coast USA), the sun is soon setting and it's getting colder each week. I see no global warming!
Great pictures. Please add me to your ping list.
Yeah, the beach is a couple of klicks downslope.
Done!
LOL! Wait for Spring...
From the last 420,000 years, the temperature levels we have do not exceed the past temperature levels by so much as to be out of range, only the CO2 levels. This does not seem to be a causative realtionship, if the globe warmed in the past without the CO2 concentrations we see, merely a coincident phenomenon.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but the Vostok (420,000-year) record shows that the climate and greenhouse gas levels do correlate! Are you saying that previous termperatures don't correlate with greenhouse gas concentrations? Do you acknowledge that the earth was very different then, and that the continental configuration (influencing currents and precipitation, etc.) has a lot to do with things?
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