The increase of world population was drastically reduced in the last years.
IMHO the most dangerous issue about global warming is that we might activate vicious circles we can't control at all (methane hydrates, gulf stream, f.e.). The climate system is very complex and we still know too little about it. If you don't know the road ahead you shouldn't drive too fast.

Not sure if it relates to global warming but here is a list of good questions and answers from NASA about the sun...

Q&A the Sun
5 Million years ago the Mediterranean Sea
dried up....

Mediterranean dried up

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Lake Superior warming, shrinking

Changes frustrate boaters, mystifies scientists
Jul 28, 2007 02:39 PM
Associated Press

MARQUETTE, Mich. – As the research boat bobs up and down on grey, choppy Lake Superior, Michigan Tech University chemist Noel Urban and two students drop a metal cylinder over the side to retrieve a water sample from the bottom.

They are measuring carbon dioxide content – an unspectacular statistic by itself, yet an important piece of a highly complex puzzle.

"It helps us develop a model that can say what's going to happen as the lake warms up," Urban says.

Plenty of people are wondering the same thing.

Something seems amiss with mighty Superior, the deepest and coldest of the Great Lakes, which together hold nearly 20 per cent of the world's fresh surface water.

Superior's surface area is roughly the same as South Carolina's, the biggest of any freshwater lake on Earth. It's deep enough to hold all the other Great Lakes plus three additional Lake Eries. Yet over the past year, its level has ebbed to the lowest point in eight decades and will set a record this fall if, as expected, it dips 7.6 more centimetres.

Its average temperature has surged about 4.5 degrees Farenheit since 1979, significantly above the 2.7-degree rise in the region's air temperature during the same period. That's no small deal for a freshwater sea that was created from glacial melt as the Ice Age ended and remains chilly in all seasons.

A weather buoy on the western side recently recorded an ``amazing" 24 degrees Celsius, "as warm a surface temperature as we've ever seen in this lake," says Jay Austin, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota at Duluth's Large Lakes Observatory.

Water levels also have receded on the other Great Lakes since the late 1990s. But the suddenness and severity of Superior's changes worry many in the region; it has plunged more than 30 centimetres in the past year. Shorelines are dozens of metres wider than usual, giving sunbathers wider beaches but also exposing mucky bottomlands and rotting vegetation.

"C'mon, girls, get out of the mud," Dan Arsenault, 32, calls to his two young daughters at a park near the mouth of the St. Marys River on the southeastern end of Lake Superior. Bree, five, and three-year-old Andie are stomping in puddles where water was waist-deep a couple of years ago. The floatation rope that previously designated the swimming area now rests on moist ground.

"This is the lowest I've ever seen it," says Arsenault, a lifelong resident of Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Superior still has lots of water. Its average depth is 147 metres and it reaches 406 metres at the deepest point. Erie, the shallowest Great Lake, is 64 metres at its deepest and averages only 19 metres. Lake Michigan averages 85 metres and is 281 metres at its deepest.

Yet along Superior's shores, boats can't reach many mooring sites and marina operators are begging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge shallow harbors. Ferry service between Grand Portage, Minn., and Isle Royale National Park was scaled back because one of the company's boats couldn't dock.

Sally Zabelka has turned away boaters from Chippewa Landing marina in the eastern Upper Peninsula, where not long ago 8.2-metre vessels easily made their way up the channel from the lake's Brimley Bay. "In essence, our dock is useless this year," she says.

Another worry: As the bay heats up, the perch, walleye and smallmouth bass that have lured anglers to her campground and tackle shop are migrating to cooler waters in the open lake.

Low water has cost the shipping industry millions of dollars. Vessels are carrying lighter loads of iron ore and coal to avoid running aground in shallow channels.

Superior's retreat creates a double whammy in Grand Marais, where the only deepwater harbour of refuge along a 145-kilometres, shipwreck-strewn section of the lake already was filling with sand because of a decaying breakwall.

Burt Township, the local government, is extending the harbour's boat launching ramp an additional 12 metres, Supervisor Jack Hubbard says. Sand and shallow water are choking off aquatic vegetation that once provided habitat for hefty pike and trout.

Puffing on a pipe in a Grand Marais pub, retiree Ted Sietsema voices the suspicion held by many in the villages along Superior's southern shoreline: Someone is taking the water. The government is diverting it to places with more people and political influence – along Lakes Huron and Michigan and even the Sun Belt, via the Mississippi River.

"Don't give me that global warming stuff," Sietsema says. ``That water is going west. That big aquifer out there is empty but they can still water the desert. It's got to be coming from somewhere."

A familiar theory – but all wet, says Scott Thieme, hydraulics and hydrology chief with the Corps of Engineers district office in Detroit. Water does exit Lake Superior through locks, power plants and gates on the St. Marys River, but in amounts strictly regulated under a 1909 pact with Canada.

The actual forces at work, while mysterious, are not the stuff of spy novels, Thieme says.

Precipitation has tapered off across the upper Great Lakes since the 1970s and is nearly 15 centimetres below normal in the Superior watershed the past year. Water evaporation rates are up sharply because mild winters have shrunk the winter ice cap – just as climate change computer models predict for the next half-century.

Yet those models also envision more precipitation as global warming sets in, says Brent Lofgren, a physical scientist with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor. Instead there's drought, suggesting other causes.

Cynthia Sellinger, the lab's deputy director, suspects residual effects of El Nino, the warming of equatorial Pacific waters that produced warmer winters in the late 1990s, just as the lakes began receding.

Both long-term climate change and short-term meteorological factors may be driving water levels down, says Urban, the Michigan Tech researcher.

But he and Austin are more concerned about effects than causes. There's a big knowledge gap about how food webs and other aquatic systems will respond to warmer temperatures, they say.

"It's just not clear what the ultimate result will be as we turn the knob up," says Austin, the Minnesota-Duluth professor. "It could be great for fisheries or fisheries could crash."

That's a question Urban and his colleagues want to help answer with their carbon dioxide measurements on Lake Superior. Plugging those and other statistics into comprehensive ecosystem models will give scientists a basis for making predictions.

"We're always reacting to what's already happened instead of looking forward," Urban says. "As long as we have a poor understanding of the basic functions of the lake, we won't be able to say whether this warming is of major concern or not."

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Air Cold, the blade stops;
from silent stone,
Death is preordained

Calm Chaos Forums : Everyone Welcome

Lake Superior warming, shrinking

Changes frustrate boaters, mystifies scientists
Jul 28, 2007 02:39 PM
Associated Press

Could it be the simple fact of lack of rain causing more evaporation and higher tempratures? (higher temps due to lack of cool rainy days)

~BoB

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Lake Superior warming, shrinking

Changes frustrate boaters, mystifies scientists
Jul 28, 2007 02:39 PM
Associated Press

Could it be the simple fact of lack of rain causing more evaporation and higher tempratures? (higher temps due to lack of cool rainy days)

~BoB

Seems they are getting all the rain in England and China...

---

Official Abuser of Boinc Buttons...
And no good credit hound!

Seems they are getting all the rain in England and China...

You can say that again...

We went camping in the Peaks District 'cos our originally intended campsite near Malvern was under water and... We may well have been a few hundred feet above the rivers but the field was still swampy...

Still, a great weekend was had and we actually got some sunshine.


More of a question is what areas are NOT getting their quota of rain...

Cheers,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Lake Superior warming, shrinking

Changes frustrate boaters, mystifies scientists
Jul 28, 2007 02:39 PM
Associated Press

Could it be the simple fact of lack of rain causing more evaporation and higher tempratures? (higher temps due to lack of cool rainy days)

~BoB

Could be. I just saw the article and figured it would fit here.

Actually....ALL of the lakes have seen serious retreats in water levels in recent years.

---

Air Cold, the blade stops;
from silent stone,
Death is preordained

Calm Chaos Forums : Everyone Welcome

Looks like a simple weather cycle effect. 20 years ago the great Salt lake in Utah began filling up all of a sudden. They had to raise the road bed on the interstate and the railroad across the mud flats. Some of the businesses along the route were flooded. There was even talk of drilling tunnels through the mountains to drain the excess water out into the desert beyond the lake. Right now Teaxs is getting all the rain that belongs to us here in the mid south and midwest.

Where is all the melt water going from the polar ice cap --of course ice melting in a glass of ice water will not raise the water level in the glass. So to mimic the Utah situation we need to catch the melting ice on Greenland and pipe it into the great lakes --simple. Or we could wait for the weather pattern to change.

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It may be a weather cycle....but it's rather unusual because the lakes are at all time lows.

---

Air Cold, the blade stops;
from silent stone,
Death is preordained

Calm Chaos Forums : Everyone Welcome

Seems they are getting all the rain in England and China...

You can say that again...

We went camping in the Peaks District 'cos our originally intended campsite near Malvern was under water and... We may well have been a few hundred feet above the rivers but the field was still swampy...

Still, a great weekend was had and we actually got some sunshine.


More of a question is what areas are NOT getting their quota of rain...

Cheers,
Martin

Italy

---

Seems they are getting all the rain in England and China...

You can say that again...

We went camping in the Peaks District 'cos our originally intended campsite near Malvern was under water and... We may well have been a few hundred feet above the rivers but the field was still swampy...

Still, a great weekend was had and we actually got some sunshine.


More of a question is what areas are NOT getting their quota of rain...

Cheers,
Martin

Italy
Sorry for the double posting. The Po river is dry and the saltwater from the Adriatic Sea is coming a 100 km inland, wasting all agriculture.
Tullio

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Looks like a simple weather cycle effect. 20 years ago the great Salt lake in Utah began filling up all of a sudden. They had to raise the road bed on the interstate and the railroad across the mud flats. Some of the businesses along the route were flooded. There was even talk of drilling tunnels through the mountains to drain the excess water out into the desert beyond the lake. Right now Teaxs is getting all the rain that belongs to us here in the mid south and midwest.

Where is all the melt water going from the polar ice cap --of course ice melting in a glass of ice water will not raise the water level in the glass. So to mimic the Utah situation we need to catch the melting ice on Greenland and pipe it into the great lakes --simple. Or we could wait for the weather pattern to change.

Interestingly the hurricane forecast was recently revised because the Atlantic is a few degree cooler than it was a couple of years ago. Polar ice cap melt water maybe?

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Hopefully the cosmos is not trying to reverse the charges.
Moderation in all things.

For those of you who want to take a dispassionate view of the issue: Here is an excerpt from Pat Bedard's column in fall of 2006:

"The atmosphere is primarily composed of nitrogen (78 percent), oxygen (21 percent), argon (0.93 percent), and CO2 (0.04 percent). Many other gases are present in trace amounts. The lower atmosphere also contains varying amounts of water vapor, up to four percent by volume.

Nitrogen and oxygen are not greenhouse gases and have no warming influence. The greenhouse gases included in the Kyoto Protocol are each rated for warming potency. CO2, the warming gas that has activated Al Gore, has low warming potency, but its relatively high concentration makes it responsible for 72 percent of Kyoto warming. Methane (CH4, a.k.a. natural gas) is 21 times more potent than CO2, but because of its low concentration, it contributes only seven percent of that warming. Nitrous oxide (N2O), mostly of nature’s creation, is 310 times more potent than CO2. Again, low concentration keeps its warming effect down to 19 percent.

Now for an inconvenient truth about CO2 sources — nature generates about 30 times as much of it as does man. Yet the warming worriers are unconcerned about nature’s outpouring. They — and Al Gore — are alarmed only about anthropogenic CO2, that 3.2 percent caused by humans.

They like to point fingers at the U.S., which generated about 23 percent of the world’s anthropogenic CO2 in 2003, the latest figures from the Energy Information Administration. But this finger-pointing ignores yet another inconvenient truth about CO2. In fact, it’s a minor contributor to the greenhouse effect when water vapor is taken into consideration. All the greenhouse gases together, including CO2 and methane, produce less than two percent of the greenhouse effect, according to Richard S. Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen, by the way, is described by one source as “the most renowned climatologist in all the world.”

When water vapor is put in that perspective, then anthropogenic CO2 produces less than 0.1 of one percent of the greenhouse effect.

If everyone knows that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas, why do Al Gore and so many others focus on CO2? Call it the politics of the possible. Water vapor is almost entirely natural. It’s beyond the reach of man’s screwdriver. But when the delegates of 189 countries met at Kyoto in December 1997 to discuss global climate change, they could hardly vote to do nothing. So instead, they agreed that the developed countries of the world would reduce emissions of six man-made greenhouse gases. At the top of the list is CO2, a trivial influence on global warming compared with water vapor, but unquestionably man’s largest contribution.

In deciding that it couldn’t reduce water vapor, Kyoto really decided that it couldn’t reduce global warning. But that’s an inconvenient truth that wouldn’t make much of a movie."

"Just the fact's ma'm , just the facts--" Joe Friday-DRAGNET

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For those of you who want to take a dispassionate view of the issue:

[...]

"Just the fact's ma'm , just the facts--" Joe Friday-DRAGNET

There's lots of stupidness and Oil-sponsored FUD about supposed 'facts'.

For a much more reliable and better balanced view of the atmospheric gasses and greenhouse gasses, take a look at the wikipedia peer reviewed article:

Greenhouse Gas

See sections 2 and 3 for the brief details and to see how the numbers are often misrepresented by others.

Anyone can play silly games with numbers if you don't understand what those numbers mean.


Ask you political representative now for how THEY are helping to save our planet.

Regards,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Even if global warming is not man made, it pays to think that it is, because this obliges us to build better homes, better cars and make a more efficient use of all energy sources. It should also make us look at the Sun as our primary energy source, since all fossil fuels shall be finished in time and nuclear fusion energy is a costly dream.
Tullio

---

For those of you who want to take a dispassionate view of the issue:

[...]

"Just the fact's ma'm , just the facts--" Joe Friday-DRAGNET

There's lots of stupidness and Oil-sponsored FUD about supposed 'facts'.

For a much more reliable and better balanced view of the atmospheric gasses and greenhouse gasses, take a look at the wikipedia peer reviewed article:

Greenhouse Gas

See sections 2 and 3 for the brief details and to see how the numbers are often misrepresented by others.

Anyone can play silly games with numbers if you don't understand what those numbers mean.





Ask you political representative now for how THEY are helping to save our planet.

Regards,
Martin

All of us need to approach this issue without alarm and predjudice--one way or the other--
Which of the numbers in Bedard's analysis do you find to be untrue?

The question I have is: can the small amount of Co2 contributed by mankind possibly have an amplified effect in creating larger amonts of cloud cover (ie water vapor) which is the true culprit in keeping heat in from being re-radiated back out into space. My swimming pool will lose 2-3 degrees over night unless I cover it--then it may lose only one half a degree (F). If the Earth can see the blackness of zero degree space then it will lose heat via radiation quite rapidly--cloud cover has a powerful effect in keeping this heat "in"

When CO2 was lower we still warmed up enough to melt the glaciers during the last ice age which covered a good bit of North America. Also Geenland was much warmer than now during Eric-the-red's time of exploration and settlement. Makes me think that there are cycles in the Earth's climate. Are we contributing to the apparent warming trend or is it inevitable.

I don't think there is much debate or doubt about a recent warming trend--the question is what is the mechanism of this warming and are humans contributing in any large way to the trend ??

---

[...]
For a much more reliable and better balanced view of the atmospheric gasses and greenhouse gasses, take a look at the wikipedia peer reviewed article:

Greenhouse Gas

See sections 2 and 3 for the brief details and to see how the numbers are often misrepresented by others.

Anyone can play silly games with numbers if you don't understand what those numbers mean.

[...]
Which of the numbers in Bedard's analysis do you find to be untrue?

The question I have is: can the small amount of Co2 contributed by mankind possibly have an amplified effect ... a powerful effect in keeping this heat "in"

When CO2 was lower we still warmed up enough to melt the glaciers during the last ice age...

I don't think there is much debate or doubt about a recent warming trend--the question is what is the mechanism of this warming and are humans contributing in any large way to the trend ??

The biggest question is whether people will admit that they themselves are responsible and indeed part of the problem.

There is BIG Oil money pushing a lot of FUD around.

In extreme brief:

ALL the natural CO2 cycles, including volcanoes and everything, have had millenia to stablise and balance out. All the new sources of CO2 were exactly balanced by where the CO2 was recaptured.

Over the last two centuries, Man has taken a whole new source of CO2 and then pumped that CO2 into the atmosphere on an ever more rapid industrial scale. The increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration very closely matches the world industrial expansion. The rate of increase is very many times greater than ever seen before in the history of the earth. Physics adds the rest of the effects.

One of those is that the CO2 adds a continuous warming effect that then 'keeps more water vapour on the boil'. Hence, the CO2 forces an amplified effect from water vapour.

Reduce the levels of CO2, and water vapour levels will proportionately reduce over just a few days. However, naturally, CO2 lingers in our atmosphere for a century or so. Reduce CO2 output, and from natural processes you'll notice the start of that reduction a few decades later...


Our atmosphere is a very very thin skin over the planet, and very finite, and quite small compared to the volume of pollution we are pumping into it. Mankind is having a very visible and very immediate effect. You can see this and measure it directly, which is what is being done.

However, we need to take positive action sooner before death and expense later. The ozone hole has been stopped from getting worse (CFCs pollution). We've now hit the next most significant world pollution: Industrial CO2.


Look at the numbers for yourself and see where the deception is.

Regards,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

quote From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling occurring after a warmer era known as the Medieval climate optimum. Climatologists and historians find it difficult to agree on either the start or end dates of this period. Some confine the Little Ice Age to approximately the 16th to the mid-19th centuries. It is generally agreed that there were three minima, beginning about 1650, about 1770, and 1850, each separated by slight warming intervals. [1]

could this be what we are heading for? going by the pattern we are well over due for one and its unknown if there were cold periods before this time as recording was very iffy. but then again we are also well over due for an ELE asteroid so....

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quote From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling occurring after a warmer era known as the Medieval climate optimum. Climatologists and historians find it difficult to agree on either the start or end dates of this period. Some confine the Little Ice Age to approximately the 16th to the mid-19th centuries. It is generally agreed that there were three minima, beginning about 1650, about 1770, and 1850, each separated by slight warming intervals. [1]

could this be what we are heading for? going by the pattern we are well over due for one and its unknown if there were cold periods before this time as recording was very iffy. but then again we are also well over due for an ELE asteroid so....

If we are in a warming trend then the oceans would be warmer and there would be more water vapor in the air. One would think then that there would be more precipitation over Antartica and that the ice fields should be increasing if the climate is warming--Antartica is cold --very cold so that it's not going to warm up to where ice melts. Glaciers push to the sea by gravity and the ice shelf over the sea does vary with the seasons as the sea water itself freezes and thaws. If the ice pack over land is increasing then that should be a sign of warming. If the ice pack is decreasing then that is indicative of cooling. probably local effects invalidate these models --what do you all say ??

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quote From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling occurring after a warmer era known as the Medieval climate optimum. Climatologists and historians find it difficult to agree on either the start or end dates of this period. Some confine the Little Ice Age to approximately the 16th to the mid-19th centuries. It is generally agreed that there were three minima, beginning about 1650, about 1770, and 1850, each separated by slight warming intervals. [1]

could this be what we are heading for? going by the pattern we are well over due for one and its unknown if there were cold periods before this time as recording was very iffy. but then again we are also well over due for an ELE asteroid so....

If we are in a warming trend then the oceans would be warmer and there would be more water vapor in the air. One would think then that there would be more precipitation over Antartica and that the ice fields should be increasing if the climate is warming--Antartica is cold --very cold so that it's not going to warm up to where ice melts. Glaciers push to the sea by gravity and the ice shelf over the sea does vary with the seasons as the sea water itself freezes and thaws. If the ice pack over land is increasing then that should be a sign of warming. If the ice pack is decreasing then that is indicative of cooling. probably local effects invalidate these models --what do you all say ??

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