Freethinker.nl

The Arguments
Image from National Aeronautics and Space Administration, USA

Earth's 4.5 billion year history is one long story of climate change. This fact is pretty much accepted by those who think global warming is a natural process, and those who think it's caused by man. In more recent history there has been: a mini ice age in the seventeenth century when the Thames froze so solidly that fairs could regularly be held on the ice; a Medieval Warm Period, even balmier than today; and sunnier still was the so-called Holocene Maximum, which was the warmest period in the last 10,000 years.

Those who think global warming is a natural process point to the fact that in the last 10,000 years, the warmest periods have happened well before humans started to produce large amounts of carbon dioxide. A detailed look at recent climate change reveals that the temperature rose prior to 1940 but unexpectedly dropped in the post-war economic boom, when carbon dioxide emissions rose dramatically.

There is some evidence to suggest that the rise in carbon dioxide lags behind the temperature rise by 800 years and therefore can't be the cause of it. In the greenhouse model of global warming, heat from the sun's rays is trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. If it weren't for these gases, Earth would be too cold for life.

Greenhouse gases trap heat from the sun within the earth's atmosphere. This is the greenhouse effect. Traditional models predict that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases lead to runaway heating. If greenhouse warming were happening, then scientists predict that the troposphere (the layer of the earth's atmosphere roughly 10-15km above us) should heat up faster than the surface of the planet, but data collected from satellites and weather balloons doesn't seem to support this.

Those who think global warming is a natural process say that the troposphere is not heating up because man-made greenhouse gases are not causing the planet to heat up.
For some people, the final nail in the coffin of human-produced greenhouse gas theories is the fact that carbon dioxide is produced in far larger quantities by many natural means: human emissions are miniscule in comparison. Volcanic emissions and carbon dioxide from animals, bacteria, decaying vegetation and the ocean outweigh our own production several times over.

Others would argue that carbon dioxide isn't the only greenhouse gas and that human emissions could tip up a finely balanced system. New evidence shows that that as the radiation coming from the sun varies (and sun-spot activity is one way of monitoring this) the earth seems to heat up or cool down. Solar activity very precisely matches the plot of temperature change over the last 100 years. It correlates well with the anomalous post-war temperature dip, when global carbon dioxide levels were rising.

In fact, what is known of solar activity over the last several hundred years correlates very well with temperature. This is what some scientists are beginning to believe causes climate change. Others feel that solar activity only explains the fine details of temperature change. So how does the sun affect the earth's temperature? The process scientists suggest is that as earth moves through space, the atmosphere is constantly bombarded by ever-present cosmic rays. As these particles hit water vapour evaporating from the oceans, clouds form in the atmosphere. Clouds shield Earth from some of the sun's radiation and have a cooling effect.

When solar activity is high, there is an increase in solar wind and this has the effect of reducing the amount of cosmic radiation which reaches Earth. When less cosmic radiation reaches Earth, fewer clouds form and the full effects of the sun's radiation heats the planet. But is the effect of solar activity really enough to explain away global warming caused by the greenhouse effect?

The whole global warming business, has become like an religion, and people that disagree are called heretics

Campaigners (for global warming) say that the time for debating is over, any criticism, no matter how scientific rigorous, is illegitimate, even worse, dangerous

There is one thing you shouldn't say, this might not be a problem

mouvement schreef:alle wetenschappers zeggen dat het wel degelijk onze schuld is en daar vertrouw ik dan ook op.

mouvement schreef:alle wetenschappers zeggen dat het wel degelijk onze schuld is en daar vertrouw ik dan ook op. niet op die domme twijfelaars, ik geef toe dat rampscenarios als de day after tomorrow onwerkelijk zijn maar dat geeft geen recht op het ontkennen van het probleem.

mouvement schreef:alle wetenschappers zeggen dat het wel degelijk onze schuld is en daar vertrouw ik dan ook op. niet op die domme twijfelaars, ik geef toe dat rampscenarios als de day after tomorrow onwerkelijk zijn maar dat geeft geen recht op het ontkennen van het probleem.

edit: dat jij wetenschappers die pure wetenschap bedrijven als domme twijfelaars beschouwd is stuitend

In 1998, 17,000 scientists, six of whom are Nobel Laureates, signed the Oregon Petition, which declares, in part: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. "

In 1999 over ten thousand of the world's most renowned climatologists, astrophysicists, meteorologists, etc., signed an open letter by Frederick Seitz, NAS Past President, that states, in part: the Kyoto Accord is "based upon flawed ideas."

Finally, in a paper in June of 2001, aptly titled, GLOBAL WARMING: The Press Gets It Wrong -- our report doesn't support the Kyoto treaty, Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote: "Science, in the public arena, is commonly used as a source of authority with which to bludgeon political opponents and propagandize uninformed citizens."

source: http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1824

82 percent of environmental professionals think global warming is a real, measurable, climactic trend currently in effect;
66 percent consider the rate at which global warming may be occurring is a serious problem facing the planet; and
67 percent of professionals surveyed agree the U.S. is not doing enough to address the effects of global warming.

The causes of global warming
59 percent respond that current climactic activity exceeding norms calibrated by over 100 years of weather data collection can be, in large part, attributed to human activity.
71 percent of environmental professionals, however, do consider the recent increase in hurricane activity in the Atlantic through 2005 and the Pacific through 2006, to be part of a larger natural cycle and not, for the most part, attributable to human activity.

source: http://www.nrep.org/globsurv.htm

Maar om nou miljarden vrij nutteloos uit te geven terwijl we daar ook mensen mee zouden kunnen helpen

kop in het zand steken en zeveren

Tsjok45 schreef: Ja zeg, je hebt gelijk .....
zodat er nog wat meer wordt gekweekt en opgesoupeerd en iedereen nog langer leeft ....
Wacht maar tot China en India echt goed van start gaan ....

Wordt het nu warmer of niet ?
Indien ja , wat gaat men er aan kunnen doen, denken jullie ?

Wachten op de "tweede komst van jezus" of de "laatste iman & Mahdi ? "
of toch maar het zekere voor het onzekere nemen en toch iets proberen ?

mouvement schreef:wat is belangrijker, dat we onze natuur in stand houden door er miljarden aan uit te geven of miljarden aan de industrie uit te geven zodat we nog rijker en nog luxer en nog meer kanalen op onze tv kunnen ontvangen en nog meer auto kunnen rijden.
wat maakt een mens gelukkig, kies maar.
stad of natuur.

Er zijn mensen, ja die zijn er, die leven in een hut. Ook deze mensen willen een tv, een koelkast en een auto. Gun het ze.