Has Global Warming saved humanity as we know it?

[AggieDave 6]

This is an interesting take in the much debated global warming topic. Global Warming has become the modern "egg." Its good, its bad, its indifferent, we can do something with it, we shouldn't do anything with it...


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081217190433.htm

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Did Early Global Warming Divert A New Glacial Age?

ScienceDaily (Dec. 18, 2008) — The common wisdom is that the invention of the steam engine and the advent of the coal-fueled industrial age marked the beginning of human influence on global climate.

But gathering physical evidence, backed by powerful simulations on the world's most advanced computer climate models, is reshaping that view and lending strong support to the radical idea that human-induced climate change began not 200 years ago, but thousands of years ago with the onset of large-scale agriculture in Asia and extensive deforestation in Europe.

What's more, according to the same computer simulations, the cumulative effect of thousands of years of human influence on climate is preventing the world from entering a new glacial age, altering a clockwork rhythm of periodic cooling of the planet that extends back more than a million years.

"This challenges the paradigm that things began changing with the Industrial Revolution," says Stephen Vavrus, a climatologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Climatic Research and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. "If you think about even a small rate of increase over a long period of time, it becomes important."

Addressing scientists on Dec 17 at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, Vavrus and colleagues John Kutzbach and Gwenaëlle Philippon provided detailed evidence in support of a controversial idea first put forward by climatologist William F. Ruddiman of the University of Virginia. That idea, debated for the past several years by climate scientists, holds that the introduction of large-scale rice agriculture in Asia, coupled with extensive deforestation in Europe began to alter world climate by pumping significant amounts of greenhouse gases — methane from terraced rice paddies and carbon dioxide from burning forests — into the atmosphere. In turn, a warmer atmosphere heated the oceans making them much less efficient storehouses of carbon dioxide and reinforcing global warming.

That one-two punch, say Kutzbach and Vavrus, was enough to set human-induced climate change in motion.

"No one disputes the large rate of increase in greenhouse gases with the Industrial Revolution," Kutzbach notes. "The large-scale burning of coal for industry has swamped everything else" in the record.

But looking farther back in time, using climatic archives such as 850,000-year-old ice core records from Antarctica, scientists are teasing out evidence of past greenhouse gases in the form of fossil air trapped in the ice. That ancient air, say Vavrus and Kutzbach, contains the unmistakable signature of increased levels of atmospheric methane and carbon dioxide beginning thousands of years before the industrial age.

"Between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago, both methane and carbon dioxide started an upward trend, unlike during previous interglacial periods," explains Kutzbach. Indeed, Ruddiman has shown that during the latter stages of six previous interglacials, greenhouse gases trended downward, not upward. Thus, the accumulation of greenhouse gases over the past few thousands of years, the Wisconsin-Virginia team argue, is very likely forestalling the onset of a new glacial cycle, such as have occurred at regular 100,000-year intervals during the last million years. Each glacial period has been paced by regular and predictable changes in the orbit of the Earth known as Milankovitch cycles, a mechanism thought to kick start glacial cycles.

"We're at a very favorable state right now for increased glaciation," says Kutzbach. "Nature is favoring it at this time in orbital cycles, and if humans weren't in the picture it would probably be happening today."

Importantly, the new research underscores the key role of greenhouse gases in influencing Earth's climate. Whereas decreasing greenhouse gases in the past helped initiate glaciations, the early agricultural and recent industrial increases in greenhouse gases may be forestalling them, say Kutzbach and Vavrus.

Using three different climate models and removing the amount of greenhouse gases humans have injected into the atmosphere during the past 5,000 to 8,000 years, Vavrus and Kutzbach observed more permanent snow and ice cover in regions of Canada, Siberia, Greenland and the Rocky Mountains, all known to be seed regions for glaciers from previous ice ages. Vavrus notes: "With every feedback we've included, it seems to support the hypothesis (of a forestalled ice age) even more. We keep getting the same answer."

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[wolfriverjoe 1,523]

Does this study take into account the loss of CO2 absorbtion due to deforestation?
That's something I don't see in any of the stuff I read.
The increase in CO2 production is usually blamed, but the decrease in absorbtion due to deforestation all across Europe and North America (much of the midwestern US was clearcut during the 19th century) don't seem to get mentioned.
Even if we were able to cut the production of these greenhouse gasses, would that make much difference?
This is a question, not a statement. If I am wrong, let me know.

This also doesn't address whether or not we will make any changes. The story of Easter Island says too much about human behavior to me.

"There are NO situations which do not call for a French Maid outfit." Lucky McSwervy

"~ya don't GET old by being weak & stupid!" - Airtwardo

[AggieDave 6]

It talks about it, specifically stating that the human impact on global ecological trends started a couple of thousand years ago when agriculture became a large enterprise. It references the cutting of forests for agriculture.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[kallend 2,230]

Stage 1. There's no such thing as global warming

Stage 2. The Earth is warming, but we have nothing to do with it.

Stage 3. We are warming the Earth, and it is GOOD for us!

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 3,173]

> We are warming the Earth, and it is GOOD for us!

Well, to be fair, it will be good for the beach resorts in Oregon.

[rushmc 23]

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Stage 1. There's no such thing as global warming

Stage 2. The Earth is warming, but we have nothing to do with it.

Stage 3. We are warming the Earth, and it is GOOD for us!

Well??? Which is it????? Make up your mind!!!!!

flip flopper.. ... ... ... ... ... ... .

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[SuFantasma 0]

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> We are warming the Earth, and it is GOOD for us!

Well, to be fair, it will be good for the beach resorts in Oregon.

That will solve a few of other problems:

1) Water shortage in the South & Southeastern United States
2) Overpopulation
3) High-Rea Estate Prices in Miami
4) Illegal Immigration in California, Texas, Arizona and Florida
5) Slump in the fishing industry in Oregon
6) Air traffic corridors crowding
7) .....

(Should we go on?)

Change is good ... you go first !

Y yo, pa' vivir con miedo, prefiero morir sonriendo, con el recuerdo vivo".
- Ruben Blades, "Adan Garcia"

[Tuna-Salad 0]

My girlfriend is a geologist.. ask her about global warming and she says this:

"It has happened thousands of times before. The heat will melt the ice caps which in turn fucks up the ocean currents triggering a new ice age. Human beings are not the cause of it, but we help to speed up the process, and it cannot be stopped from happening"

I think that about covers it.

Millions of my potential children died on your daughters' face last night.

[billvon 3,173]

>It has happened thousands of times before.

Well, perhaps a dozen. 4 times in the last half million years.

>The heat will melt the ice caps which in turn fucks up the ocean currents
>triggering a new ice age.

That's the shutdown of thermohaline circulation theory (the basis behind The Day After Tomorrow) but it's just one of many theories about how rapid climate change is triggered.

>Human beings are not the cause of it, but we help to speed up the
>process, and it cannot be stopped from happening.

That's literally true. When the planet is left to its own devices, we see a warming cycle every 50,000 to 100,000 years. Temps will remain steady for a while, then begin to rise at the rate of about 1 degree C per 1000 years until it tops out at about 3C above what we see today. This is seen in the geologic record.

We're currently raising it at 1 degree C per 80 years. So all those changes we would normally expect to see in another 3000 years will happen over 240 years instead. Since such rapid changes in climate are generally associated with mass extinctions, it might be wise to not force the climate to change quite so quickly.

[Tuna-Salad 0]

I was just typing it as she was dictating.. Seems most of it is true anyway.

Millions of my potential children died on your daughters' face last night.