We haven't been living in a post-Industrial revolution world for billions of years. The way we utilize resources and the conditions we live in are radically different now. This is the problem I have with people who keep using this argument, I see it all the time and it's not nearly as logic as people think.

I agree with mr. dave when he says the truth is somewhere between extremists on both ends, though I lean more towards the environmentalist extremist side but I don't think it's nearly as bad as they say seeing as all their predictions are inconsistent. That isn't to say all predictions are unreliable I just don't think people should be getting their news on the climate from the Democratic party.

I think you're at least partly referring to Milankovitch cycles when you mention the sun, which predict how the Earth's orbit and tilt change in comparison to the sun over time.
This isn't really related to Australia's drought, just because the cycles are too long for them to affect much over the last few hundred years, but I have heard the same thing said on the radio that our drought is basically a reversion to the normal. Which is a bit of a bummer.

Exactly my point. And excuse me for bursting people's bubbles, that even though scientists have been collecting climatic data since the 1800's that does not verify validility of results due to changes in the tools and practices used to take measurements; another point being, 200 years of data does not give solid evidence to future trends, it's just not enough time to make those kind of predictions.

Good topic :p:

I've been to many lectures about global warming. In biology, global warming is of course extremely important to many and I've lived in the arctic where I've seen the effects of global warming first hand.

It is of course just a warming trend and it's caused by a greenhouse effect. If we put more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, we will add to it - simple as that. The real question is whether or not our contribution is what's caused the dramatic changes we see today. The last lecture I saw on this claimed that it wasn't a matter of how much we'd put in - it was more that our contribution had upset a balance in the carbon cycle. Global warming has many positive feedbacks so once it gets started, it runs on it's own accord.

I read a meta-analysis paper some time ago that looked at the timing of spring time events such as plant budding, sex and other life history events that typically take place in spring. Many hundred species from the northern hemisphere were included and the average result was that springtime comes earlier by about ~5 days since the last decade. Almost all species in the study experienced earlier spring.

I think it's hard to grasp what the fuzz is if you're a kid living in your room in some city at an intermediate latitude. If you're up in the arctic, you get to see the warm spells during winter which causes ice lenses to form on the ground making vegetation unavailable as food for reindeer. You get to see the reduction of the glaciers. You get to see the freezing of the fjord which has been an annual event for X number of years suddenly fail to happen several years in a row. You get to see the decreasing trend in the extent of sea ice.

Does this mean that eventually Santa is gonna have to find some other method of transportation? :(

No, we'll always have reindeer in some form as they've been domesticated, there's lots of them living in different areas on the globe and so on, but in some areas populations of wild reindeer run a greater risk of going extinct ;)

The populations on Svalbard where I lived are very dynamic. Basically, they go from crash to crash - gaining in size until the next disaster hits.

I recall hearing (speaking of the how much we put in) that for the few days after 9/11 when all flights were grounded, scientists measured (atmospheric temprature? not sure) and found that with planes downed, the temprature actually rose.

As I recall it explained to me in my evironmental science courses, its because air travel creates a thick layer of something or other (I'm tempted to just say smog) that actually blocks much of the natural sun that should come to earth.

This was like 5 years ago, and I jsut got to work on a saturday but I'm hoping Tore can translate that into english (as so many of the ESLers do for me here).

I hope I dont sound stupid (I probably am)IMO, I think the climates are just changing and its all natural.Although I know we fu*k up mother earth pretty bad by endangering species and polluting anything we can get our hands on,wich sucks ass,really bad.

After Vanilla's heads-up, I've merged Boo's thread with her old one. I deleted a couple of posts that were rendered somewhat nonsensical after the merge.

A good way to put it I guess is to say that some kinds of pollution increase the amount of reflective particles in the atmosphere and these can reflect sun radiation back into space. :)

That's so cool that you've lived in the Arctic, as I have just been accepted into a post graduate course of Antarctic studies so I'm getting to go there in December for 2 weeks. I will specifically focusing on the climate and glacier movement (as glaciers are a indication of climate change) so first hand will see the processes going on there. I'm so excited! This is basically my main career field.