Posted on 10/05/2009 9:08:52 AM PDT by Nikas777
Chilly reception for theory on global warming
David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Has climate change been around as long as the pyramids?
It is an odd-sounding idea, because the problem is usually assumed to be a modern one, the product of a world created by the Industrial Revolution and powered by high-polluting fossil fuels.
But a professor emeritus at the University of Virginia has suggested that people began altering the climate thousands of years ago, as primitive farmers burned forests and built methane-bubbling rice paddies. The practices produced enough greenhouse gases, he says, to warm the world by a degree or more.
Other scientists, however, have said the idea is deeply flawed and might be used to dampen modern alarms over climate change.
Understanding the debate requires a tour through polar ice sheets, the inner workings of the carbon molecule, the farming habits of 5,000-year-old Europeans and trapped air bubbles more ancient than Rome.
"The greenhouse gases went up, and they should have gone down" many thousands of years ago, said the University of Virginia's William Ruddiman. "Why did that happen?"
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
ping
This greenhouse gas crap is seriously wearing me out.
It’s the all out global warming blitz before winter gets here.
global warming ping
How much forest did they burn relative to the forests burned by lightening, worldwide?
How much methane bubbled out of the rice paddies compared to the methane bubbling out of the North American bison herds (numbering in the tens of millions) and the African wildebeest herds?
Beginning more than 8,000 years ago, Ruddiman said, things should have started slowly cooling off again.
It is interesting how specific the timing of these "cycles" are. When it is convenient, scientists seem to know the exact and predictable timing of a "cycle" whether it be those of the sun, the magnetic strength of the plane or the orbit of our planet. But when "non believers" point out that cycles are estimations within a few ten thousand or hundred thousand years, things are "generalized" and there is no way to be sure the exact timing of a cycle.
It has been cooling now for the past several years. What cycle are we in, moving out of, or moving into. One thing they all agree on, the earth's climate is always changing.
BTW - It seems to me that back when the earth was teeming with life, far more than there is today, say the time of the dinosaurs, when there were no ice caps, did the heat create the life that caused their carbon dioxide pollution that caused the heat. Or did life cause the heat that caused the life that caused the carbon dioxide that caused the heat. Was it a meteor that finally re-set the planet's t-stat and got the oceans moving to keep the earth more temperate or was it plate tectonics that reshaped the ocean currents to distribute heat to the poles? What of the great heat exchanger that we call an ocean?
CO2 driven climate change is total BS and has been debunked.
It’s actually the blitz before the Cap and Trade Bill push by the Senate. Geez, I already have warm feelings for my friends in Buffalo because they are going to need every bit of BTU’s before April or May and maybe even June.
Or volcanoes, meteorites, and smoking Pterodactyls.
I actually met 2 global warming believers this weekend. One was a 60ish woman from England who truly believes we need to plan on what we are going to do with all of the people from Africa who are going to be displaced by the flooding that will happen from global warming. She was serious as a heart attack and it was all I could do not to just bust out laughing at the complete idiocy of the comment. I’m sure she has a few extra rooms in her home in France that she can take some in.....
Darn smoking Pterodactyls - if they hadn’t gotten hooked on those Cuban cigars none of this would have happened!
People need causes/religions to give their lives meaning. OK, not saying Hail Mary a thousand times doing it for people any more? Then maybe the modern version of saying the Rosary is to recycle your trash?
How about banning bubble gum? I'm tired of stepping in it in the summertime and those ugly splotches outside the doors of buildings are disgusting.
Already are places like that. See Singapore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_ban_in_Singapore
Do they shoot the offenders when they catch them?
Probably heavy fine and a jail term or a caning.
Maybe it is something called the sun and nature doing most of this.
Granted we should not pollute our drinking water and try not to over kill the animals for various uses, but the theory that man changes climates is bunk.
When Mt. St. Helen erupted once, it put several years of what we could do in the air in seconds.
What egos the scientists backing global warming are, and what fools as well they show themselves to be. At least to any people that read and have common sense.
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