Climate Scientists Struggling...

Something the Dog Said wrote:

FredHayek wrote: Like climate scientists who would profit from pushing the alarm button and get more funding for the study of "climate change"? They have no reason at all to lie to Al Gore and predict a hockey stick that never happened.

Next admit it isn't happening as quickly as predicted despite the developing world buliding nasty new coal fired power plants every day.

There is no support for your smear against these hard working scientists. But of course you prefer petroleum geologists employed by the oil companies for your "unbiased" "facts".

Actually I believe global warming is occuring, but I don't know how much of it is man made and how much we can reasonably do to stop it, or if even if a warm up is a bad thing. Some parts of the Earth will benefit from a warm up and some parts will suffer.

And aren't you smearing oil company geologists without foundation above?
Why should a oil company guy need to lie on a community forum board? Not like 285Bound will decide drilling permits issued in 2014.

It appears that sea level has fallen and risen before. Regardless of where you sit on the whole climate change issue, I thought this was an interesting article.

Ancient Underwater Forest: 50,000 Year-Old Swamp Discovered By Scuba Divers Off Alabama's Coast

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/0 ... 62730.html

Scuba divers have discovered a primeval underwater forest off the coast of Alabama.

The Bald Cypress forest was buried under ocean sediments, protected in an oxygen-free environment for more than 50,000 years, but was likely uncovered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said Ben Raines, one of the first divers to explore the underwater forest and the executive director of the nonprofit Weeks Bay Foundation, which researches estuaries.

The stumps of the Cypress trees span an area of at least 0.5 square miles (0.8 kilometers), several miles from the coast of Mobile, Ala., and sit about 60 feet (18 meters) below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

Carbon isotopes (atoms of the same element that have different molecular weights) revealed that the trees were about 52,000 years old.

The trees' growth rings could reveal secrets about the climate of the Gulf of Mexico thousands of years ago, during a period known as the Wisconsin Glacial period, when sea levels were much lower than they are today.

So divers have found and scientists are studying a 52,000 year old cypress forest sitting in 60 feet of water miles off the Coast of Alabama. It appears sea level changed significantly since the end of the Wisconsin Glacial Period. As I have mentioned before....sea level is not as dynamic as we might believe.

Imagine how cool it would be to see and touch one of those ancient cypress trees. What a treasure trove of scientific information. Remarkable.

Just think, in a few years, SCUBA divers will be able see and touch one of the skyscrapers in Miami !! What a treasure-trove of architectural information! Remarkable!

And since it's probably true that the area was likely underwater back in the Pleistocene Age, hey, it's nothing to worry about since it's happened before!!!

Wow!! :faint:

LadyJazzer wrote: Just think, in a few years, SCUBA divers will be able see and touch one of the skyscrapers in Miami !! What a treasure-trove of architectural information! Remarkable!

And since it's probably true that the area was likely underwater back in the Pleistocene Age, hey, it's nothing to worry about since it's happened before!!!

Wow!! :faint:

tongue: You really need to stop believing Al Gore, his hockey stick has already been disproven. And he has made a mint fueling the Global Warming Hysteria.
He is a con man.

Yes, put on your foil hat, and keep saying to yourself, "There's no such thing..." It fits with the rest of your profile...

I believe global warming is real but I also don't believe it was as extreme as Al Gore made it, and I don't believe the Western World can fix it themselves.

The developing world has seen the biggest reductions in poverty EVER!!!! Do you really want them to give up their lifestyle? And how would you do it?

The predictions I've read suggest that the current climate change trend will cause sea level to rise by a few feet inundating low islands and coastal cities. Maybe ten feet in the next century or so. I realize there may be other models out there that predict more drastic changes, but imagine the climate trends that caused sea level to rise by 60 feet over the past 50,000 or so. I wonder what climate mechanisms drove those glacial and inter-glacial periods before man arrived?

My undergraduate studies in college taught me that sea level has changed several times....it's cyclic. (for the record, science tells us that the polarity of the poles has changed multiple times too-now THAT could get exciting!!!)

I personally saw evidence in coastal Maine where relative sea level had changed by a few hundred feet, but some of that was a result of the earth's crust rebounding from the weight of the massive ice sheet. Not the case in Alabama because the glaciers didn't get that far south.

Sixty feet. That's a big change, yet ancient man, fauna/flora and the earth somehow survived it. I don't deny climate change because I think it's a cycle like most things in nature. I just wonder how much of the change is caused by man and how much is part of the natural cycle? From there I can question what man can really do about climate change? Are we a bunch of fleas fighting over a dog or can we truly do something to slow or reverse the change?

It's great that we are going to do something, but if all the nations on earth don't work together then will we succeed? What is the trade off with our economy? Should we push an already weak economy into the grave in pursuit of an ill-advised, unilateral climate change policy?

We need to get away from the name calling and chickenshit snipes and figure it out together. Otherwise, it's just another barroom brawl.

lionshead2010 wrote: The predictions I've read suggest that the current climate change trend will cause sea level to rise by a few feet inundating low islands and coastal cities. Maybe ten feet in the next century or so. I realize there may be other models out there that predict more drastic changes, but imagine the climate trends that caused sea level to rise by 60 feet over the past 50,000 or so. I wonder what climate mechanisms drove those glacial and inter-glacial periods before man arrived?

Actually sea levels have risen by closer to 400 ft in "just" the last 20,000 years. And humans experienced it and survived.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_09/

Of course we have a lot more humans now and have major cities near sea level. So a 10-20 ft rise would be a big deal if you live there. But humans are also much more capable now in dealing with it if they wish. Al Gore showed New York City going under water in his movie but isn't it more reasonable to assume people would simply build levees to protect their city instead? I mean that would be a lot easier than moving the whole city further inland. But yeah, levees cost money and need to be maintained.

Holland has been doing a good job with levees for centuries.

Just in the US alone we've already built about 100,000 miles of levees, enough to circle the earth four times. Though many are in need of maintenance.

http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/levees/

Protecting coastal cities would just be a small fraction of what's already been built, though it might not be practical for all cases. Even protecting the entire US coast line would be much less miles (especially if we let Alaska go under ).

I'm not saying levees are a great solution, but huge reductions in fossil fuel use wouldn't be a great solution either unless you have other means in place to maintain our infrastructure. Lack of transportation would be bad news for our cities as well.