First fact: Global warming is a fact, average temperatures are going up across the globe
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Second fact: Global warming is a part of rapid climate change.
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Third fact: since CFC's have been banned, Ozone concentrations over the poles are no longer declining. Thanks to
the Montreal Protocol. The Ozone hole does enlarge and contract seasonally, but the hole is larger year over year.
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Fourth fact: The enormous chunks of polar ice that have evaporated, do actually return during the winter, and they return with far less mass... it's a yearly cycle. The problem is that there are large bergs being calved and they're not returning the next year. Want proof?
Ayles Ice Shelf
Fifth fact: Bob Lutz is a great car guy, he's also NOT an atmospheric scientist, and that's no crock.
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Sixth fact: Kyoto has been talked about... remember the Carbon offsets? It's in Kyoto. Know why it is that you can get CCF Lights at Home depot/Walmart/wherever? Kyoto. Know what the impetus behind the CAFE standard? K-town... well, Kyoto.
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1a. Do you believe in 'human caused' Global Warming? If yes, go to question 2.
1b. What about Cyclical Global Warming? If yes, go to Question 3.
1c. Global Warming at all? if no, go to question 5.
Yes, yes, and yes.
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2. If you do believe that humans caused Global Warming, what do you think we should do to stop it?
Yes, I just answered that. Mitigate our use of fossil fuels, and begin using renewable sources of energy sources like Wind, solar radiation, and tidal power generation.
That being said, you cannot look at it the science of astronomy and not figure out that the earth will warm and cool in a cycle that is partly yearly, and partly in phase with the sun's "moods." However, you can't also expect that by dumping hundreds of tons carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and then also taking away the major means behind sinking that CO2 (ie tropical rainforests) is going to make the problem any better either.
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3. If you don't believe that humans caused Global Warming, but you do believe it is cyclical, Do you believe that the ocean levels will rise and flood countries such as the Netherlands, cities like New York, and cause all kinds of other damage? If yes, go to question 4.
Yes, if it's left unchecked, then you will see not only coastal flooding, but quite possibly continental flooding.
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4. If you believe that cities will flood and stuff because of melting ice caps, do you think that there is anything we can do about it since it is cyclical anyway?
Sure. See above #1. We're dumping 800 times more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than at any point in the last 420,000 years.
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http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/vostok.htm
There is a close correlation between Antarctic temperature and atmospheric concentrations of CO2 (Barnola et al. 1987). The extension of the Vostok CO2 record shows that the main trends of CO2 are similar for each glacial cycle. Major transitions from the lowest to the highest values are associated with glacial-interglacial transitions. During these transitions, the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 rises from 180 to 280-300 ppmv (Petit et al. 1999). The extension of the Vostok CO2 record shows the present-day levels of CO2 are unprecedented during the past 420 kyr. Pre-industrial Holocene levels (~280 ppmv) are found during all interglacials, with the highest values (~300 ppmv) found approximately 323 kyr BP. When the Vostok ice core data were compared with other ice core data (Delmas et al. 1980; Neftel et al. 1982) for the past 30,000 - 40,000 years, good agreement was found between the records: all show low CO2 values [~200 parts per million by volume (ppmv)] during the Last Glacial Maximum and increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations associated with the glacial-Holocene transition.
If you want the answer to the problem of abrupt climate change, it's remarkably simple:
- REDUCE the amount of energy you use (make one big car trip on the way home instead of 2-3, use a Bike or walk instead of a car, Unplug soft-off electronics, turn the thermostat down)
- REUSE the items you possibly can instead of buying extras (like batteries)
- RECYCLE items that you no longer can use (there is quite literally NOTHING that cannot be reclaimed at least partially)
- REPAIR any item you can instead of replacing it.
- REFUSE to buy anything that is overpackaged, or one-time use only (within reason), or will expel GHGs.
This will stop-gap the damage.
To start recovering:
- Reforestation, to recover the rain forest lost in the last 40 years (this won't be easy though, most of the nutrients the rain forest had was in the canopy)
- Further reduce consumption of energy and materials.
- Begin repairing man-made chemical pollution damage and converting it into inert compounds
- Find new renewable energy resources that are not going to release GHGs into the air or create waste problems.
- Find new renewable, reclaimable or biodegradable materials for making items.
To be honest, Bob Lutz and people that ignore the broad agreement of independently gained evidence (there are very few disagreeing views that are credible, and in either case there is usually at least one, usually many, similarly studied postulate that gives a contradictory result... the disagreement is a statistical out-layer, but it's normal) can get stuffed. We've NEVER used this much fossil fuel or have been dumping GHG's into the atmosphere. Ignoring this, and sloughing it off as "just one of those things" and doing nothing about it is pretty moronic, we have been doing this to ourselves for hundreds of years, and we're only now catching on that not only is it exaggerating the natural cyclical warming/cooling trends but it's our problem to deal with. We can actually stop assaulting our environment and actually make things better.
Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.
