Exactly how bad is global warming?
I do not understand what is so bad about it, and if the human civilization will even live long enough to see the results.
Global warming has already affected us in California.
There is less snow in the sierra’s mountains which means
less water down in the cities. It also means animals
are having problems because streams are drying
up sooner like june or july instead of the normal
of aug or sept. and the animals are changing their habits
with the warming of the mountains. i went through
the mountains feb 3 and the snow level was really high.
6,000 feet. It will mean water shortages here to match
the water shortages in the south west. Some areas of
arizona have not had any rain over 6 months. For the
first time in my memory, we are having fires in the wilderness
of california and the south west during Dec and Jan. A very
bad sign for the usual dry months of summer.
Kropotkin
well technialy it is more of a global cooling than warming. my example is that the artic is mealting in to the gulf stream. this causees climit change. on the east coast of America ( were I live) there have been days that have been in the 60’s ( in the middle of winter) but in other places south, they have experianced cold weather. I think that maybe are climits will soon be truned upside down. I wouldn’t worry about the aniamls though, i think are good pal natrual slection will go to work.
We’re already seeing the results, in last Week’s issue of Science they had a nice article on it. Here’s the teaser from the mag:
sciencemag.org/cgi/content/s … /5762/737f
The big problem with Global warming is farming. We’ll have a lot less usable land because of it. Additionally, flooding isn’t fun.
I have a friend that once expressed his satisfaction on hearing the weather-lady announcing temperatures of -15 to -20 degrees Celsius. He said it made him feel safer about the whole ‘global warming’ and ozone layer hole… stuff.
O, sancta simplicitas !
Anyhow, global warming is a relatively long-term process that results in an increase of average temperature in and across the globe. This logically leads to over-sweating, which determines people to wash and drink more often, thus to use more water. All this activity stimulates bottled refreshment companies to produce more, ergo to consume more. This calls for more labour, which means more workers to fill in the job, more managers to supervise them and more money to pay them. The more work is employed the more sweat is resulted, and more water is needed. You can see here how unfair competition of companies like Evian will finally lead to streams and rivers drying out, which naturally results in decreases in ocean levels, to the effect of massive droughts and the desertification of entire areas. As water resources become scanty, people will go crazy. Undoubtedly.
I say brace yourself and buy a turban.
ok thanks…
But what can we do to lower it?
Instead of lowering its speed?
As far as we know it could be a natural proses, dispite all evidence that we(humans) started it.
the effects and causes are on a large scale and complex, so basicly nobody really knows
we learn more and more about it’s mechanisms every day
models are put together etc. (see IPCC) the most recent guesses give a global increase of temperature up to 4°C i think
you might say it’s not a lot but it can have huge consequences
the problem is not so much the change as it is the sudden change
the environment, the living creatures and us, humans, have little time to adapt
the effects are already here,
for example, the climate regions are already shifting towards the north, ice caps are melting, global average temperature has gone up almost a degree since the start of the century
there is a wide range of problems, and i have a gut feeling that we are yet to discover a lot of them
important issues are:
extreme drought,
extreme wetness,
increased incidence of hurricanes,
changes in circulation of sea-water which may, for example, turn the european climate (which is very moderate) in a siberia-like one in case the gulf stream stops
sea level rise,
etc…
the IPCC (international panel on climate change) is a very important, if not the most important group working on this stuff
ipcc.ch/
you may want to read this 
iai.int/SI/Files/SI03/CD_Mat … -FRONT.pdf
Ok, thank you…
But what do you think we can do about it besides just letting it get worse and worse every day?
Nothing!
“We are going to preserve the American way of life.”
And we will die doing so.
Oil companies see global warming as good. We can drill for oil in the north easier.
Transport companies are happy. We can use the northern passage soon for shipping.
Turism industriy is happy. We can have cruiseships around north america.
Global Warming won’t be global warming.
If the temperature increases above a certain thrashold the current balance of weather patterns is going to collapse. After the Jet Stream systems collapse there will be no mechanism to mix cold and warm air and water. If the Ocean currents follow this collapse then most of the wildlife will die in about 10 to 50 years.
“God save America”
In regard to Global Warming. We are still looking at how global warming is affecting the Large Scale of the world, and are piecing together what is happening. Its bad from what we have figured out so far!
They are saying that we are at the highest Ozone level and if we do not do something soon the results will be irreversible.
Plus we are using up natural resources at a increased rate.
And finally we are currently in a the biggest extinction period of all time, this is including the dinosaurs. From what lives here on earth only 2% of life has survived, which means 98% has been killed off since humans “inherited the earth.”
What are we going to due
The Earth is going to go out in a wimper and not a bang! Thats For Sure!
How the hydrogen car works is, hydrogen is naturally attracted to oxygen at this pressure/tempurature. So the fuel cells allow the hydrogen attom to pass through, but the electrons surrounding it have to go around. Thus the electric current is born.
Now the ozone layer is made up of O2.
So I guess there needs to be more ozygen to fix the problem.
Yet the oceans have warmed up 2 to 3 degrees allowing more catastophic hurricanes, and ecosystem changes.
The ice bergs have melted allowing more black ocean to absorb the sun light instead of reflecting it. There are feilds in canada that the snow has melted revealing fields of frozen carbon dioxide.
Yet maybe the hole in the ozone allows more of this heat to escape.
There are many remedies that can be used. Lessen fuel consumption. More hybred cars. Tax breaks for people that buy solar panals. Tax breaks for people that buy windmills. (how long does it take for those two things to pay for themselves???) Geothermal heating and air conditioning (witch uses the constant ground temperature from below the frost line to cool and heat the house.) Useing the tax break for updating your houses heating/innsulation.
Then there’s kelp farms, and rebuilding the rain forests witch we have no jurisdiction over.
Hey Xunzain, is science a good mag? I read Scientific American every month(as a side note you can download all the issues from 1994 to present off of mininova and other torrent sites at the moment), along with Seed, and scientific american mind. Sometimes I read Skeptical inquirer, and American scientist, but I haven’t read Science yet. So your review sir?
for the record Ozone is O[size=59]3[/size]. But it isn’t important.
an interesting tidbit, Venus our neighbor on our sun side, has a surface tempter of 900 c. this is due to extreme global warming.
If you yourself want to stop global warming… the best way to that is too dress as a pirate, sign the Kyoto protocol, Plant billions of trees, and/or eliminate all life on earth. I recommend the Hydrogen Bomb or the Neutron bomb, has the least affect on the environment.