Re: CLIMATE: Cooling, not warming...

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Tue Feb 05 2002 - 09:38:36 MST


Damien Raphael wrote:
>
> On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 07:31:52PM -0800, Spike Jones wrote:
>
> > Finally, this planet is not goldilocks-just-right, it isnt perfect for
> > the lifeforms that evolved here, it is somewhat colder than ideal.
>
> Given that lifeforms evolved for different climates, how do you define
> 'perfect'?
>
> Personally, hot and humid climate just sucks. Great for rainforests,
> yeah. But civilization has consisted of getting the hell away from the
> jungle. What's good for life in general may not be what's great for
> cities...

True, but the proponents of the warming theory say that the warming is
primarily occuring at the poles, not the equator, and specifically at
the North Pole, where the sea ice is melting. The the evidence they tout
shows that seasonal differences will DECREASE with warming, with less
severe storm activity, so warming just makes northern winters more
tolerable, while reducing summer hurricane and tornado activity.

If the equator warms up, then the equatorial rainforests that these same
chicken littles have been claiming has been 'dissapearing' will increase
with warmer weather and higher CO2 levels faster than normal.

The fact is, though, that northern hemisphere warming, as recorded by
weather stations, is primarily an artifact of the fact that weather
stations are predominantly near urban centers, so while LOCAL pollution
may be causing LOCAL warming as a sort of thermal 'lake effect' near
cities, the predominance of urban weather centers biases the data, and
it is improper to ascribe continent-wide world-wide climate change when
there is so much thermal noise generated by urban centers.

>
> > Much perfectly good land is covered with ice, whereas there is
> > very little land on this planet that is too hot for life. The equator
> > teems with life, the poles are nearly barren. spike
>
> Some of that has to do with the geometrical facts of insolation. The
> equator gets a lot more sunlight than the poles.

But the pollution is not released at the poles, it is primarily released
at temperate latitudes, and wind currents and coriolis forces drive this
to the poles, which is why the modern data that the chicken littles
depend on actually shows that there is no temperature change at the
equator, and a 2 degree change at the poles, for an average of 1 degree
warming.

>
> And if there are really big ice caps sucking up ocean water, more
> continental shelf gets exposed. I saw an idea once that Eden/Flood
> stories might stem from "we used to gather our food, and then the water
> came in and it sucked", along with the Eden in the Bible (convergence of
> four rivers) being currently several miles offshore in the Persian Gulf.

Well, if you are gonna be non-scientific and start relying on the Bible,
then we really can't continue this conversation.

For informational purposes, people didn't get kicked out of eden by a
flood, they got kicked out by a flaming sword (likely one or more of the
periodic aryan nomad invasions through the region). The flood happened
long after, and likely is a recounting of the 5600 BC flooding of the
Black Sea basin when the Bosporus was breached by rising Mediterranean
sea levels (due, again, to the continuing melting of ice after the last
ice age)



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