GLOBAL WARMING - TRUTH BE HELD DON'T FORGET TO ADD A COMMENT AT THE END OR GO THE BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN TO SEE WHAT OTHERS HAVE WRITTEN |
| WE ARE CARETAKERS OF THIS EARTH |
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STANFORD - "Accepted by scientists as fact" (DISPROVEN) |
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"One of the most vigorously debated topics on Earth is the issue of climate change, and the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) data centers are central to answering some of the most pressing global change questions that remain unresolved." | NOAA - Global Warming "Unresolved" (FACT - Not all Scientists Agree) |
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STANFORD - "Very likely having an impact on our planet." (IPCC) (THEORY) |
"Climate change is very likely having an impact now on our planet and its life, according to the latest installment of a report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)." |
In spite of what may seem persuasive evidence, many scientists are nonetheless skeptical. They argue that natural variations in climate are considerable and not well understood. The Earth has gone through warming periods before without human influence, they note. And not all of the evidence supports global warming. Air temperatures in the lower atmosphere have not increased appreciably, according to satellite data, and the sea ice around Antarctica has actually been growing for the last 20 years. |
NASA - EARTH'S FIDGETING CLIMATE - The Earth has gone through a warming period before. (MUST CONFIRM WITH DATA) |
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STANFORD - "High level of confidence" (THEORY) |
“A panel convened by the U.S National Research Council, the nation's premier science policy body, in June 2006 voiced a "high level of confidence" that Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, and possibly even the last 2,000 years.” |
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UNITED NATIONS
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The first stumbling block, however, has been trying to get an agreement on a framework. In 1988, the IPCC was created by the UNEP and the WMO to assess the scientific knowledge on global warming. The IPCC concluded in 1990 that there was broad international consensus that climate change was human-induced. That report led way to an international convention for climate change, the UNFCCC, signed by over 150 countries at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. |
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NOAA - U.S. Resources - NOAA, NCDC, and NODC. (FACT - These are their instruments used to collect data) |
The National Climatic Data Center contains the instrumental and paleoclimatic records that can precisely define the nature of climatic fluctuations at time scales of a century and longer. Among the diverse kinds of data platforms whose data contribute to NCDC's resources are: Ships, buoys, weather stations, weather balloons, satellites, radar and many climate proxy records such as tree rings and ice cores. The National Oceanographic Data Center contains the subsurface ocean data which reveal the ways that heat is distributed and redistributed over the planet. Knowing how these systems are changing and how they have changed in the past is crucial to understanding how they will change in the future. And, for climate information that extends from hundreds to thousands of years, paleoclimatology data, also available from the National Climatic Data Center, helps to provide longer term perspectives. | Internationally, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), under the auspices of the United Nations (UN), World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), is the most senior and authoritative body providing scientific advice to global policy makers. The IPCC met in full session in 1990, 1995, 2001 and in 2007. They address issues such as the buildup of greenhouse gases, evidence, attribution, and prediction of climate change, impacts of climate change, and policy options. | NOAA - International Resources - IPCC, United Nations, WMO, and UNEP. (FACT - These are international groups put together to discuss Global Warming) |
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Earth Observatory - NASA - Learning about the atmosphere's history through boreholes in arctic ice. (FACT - Process of Observations) |
Like detectives at a crime scene, scientists reconstruct past climate changes by looking for evidence left in things like glacial ice, ocean sediments, rocks, and trees. For example, glacial ice traps tiny samples of Earth’s atmosphere, giving scientists a record of greenhouse gases that stretches back more than 650,000 years, and the chemical make-up of the ice provides clues to the average global temperature. From these and other records, scientists have built a record of Earth’s past climates, or “paleoclimates.” Paleoclimatology allowed scientists to show that climate changes in the past have been triggered by variations in Earth’s orbit, solar variation, volcanic eruptions, and greenhouse gases. |
It may not be necessary to make large efforts to avoid global warming. First of all, it may not happen, and, secondly, it may not be harmful if it does. The warming observed to date, which may or may not be partly due to human activity, seems to have been beneficial in lengthening growing seasons in temperate and northern climates. Since serious efforts to reduce CO2 emissions or to increase CO2 sinks are likely to be extremely expensive, for the present it is best to wait.
On this point it is necessary to be blunt. The strongest advocates of reducing CO2 think we use too much energy quite apart from questions of supply and possible side-effects. Therefore, they look for reasons to solve the global warming problem by reducing civilization. Not all think that way, but such ideas are providing a lot of the force behind the campaign, e.g. as proposed in former Vice-President Gore's book, Earth in Balance and his recent movie An inconvenient truth.
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STANFORD - Avoiding Global Warming (OPINION/ THEORY) |
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Earth Observatory - NASA - Climate Modeling. (THEORY - These Models may not be completely accurate.) |
Next, to understand how sunlight, air, water, and land come together to create Earth’s climate, scientists build climate models—computer simulations of the climate system. Climate models include the fundamental laws of physics—conservation of energy, mass, and momentum—as well as dozens of factors that influence Earth’s climate. Though the models are complicated, rigorous tests with real-world data hone them into robust tools that allow scientists to experiment with the climate in a way not otherwise possible. For example, when scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), NASA’s division spearheading climate modeling efforts, put measurements of volcanic particles from Mount Pinatubo’s 1991 eruption into their climate models well after the event, the models reported that Earth would have cooled by around 0.5°C a year or so later. The prediction matched cooling that had been observed around the globe after the eruption. |
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