Do you guys think global warming is real?

[Shekinah]

Just wait another decade for undeniable evidence as permafrost and seafloor methane ice melt picks up. Methane is more of a greenhouse problem then is Co2. On the Alaska North Slope you can dig a davit anywhere and light the methane. Fly over the Arctic ice pack and see increasing number and size of "blue holes" (surface melt draining to bedrock lubricating the glacier and speeding drift towards the sea.) I have seen these things during trips into the Arctic. Also the ice is no longer white and reflective it has a dusting of grey atmospheric pollutants (hydrocarbon precipitants) contributing to loss of radiant heat and sequestration of solar heat.

[planewalker]

N Eastern US is OK. Around 34* Cloudy with intermittent snow flurries. It's still real, even when it's not presenting at one limited area or other.

[Pallando]

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
-Mark Twain

"How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened."
-Thomas Jefferson

"41 out of the last 0 global warming catastrophes have been successfully predicted by scammers who claim that more government and less freedom will solve the problem."
-Pallando

[firebirdflys]

First time in my whole life we had to turn on the AC for Thanksgiving.
Breaking heat records here. It's ridiculous.
Haha ...can finally have a my b-day pool party
It's happening, regardless. ...
I feel that as stewards of the earth we are the one responsible for speaking up. We are the witches, the observers, watching the signs before our eyes, we can tell when the rain is coming and if it will be a hard winter by what the plants and animals around us are doing etc...
There were very few acorns on the ground or in the trees this year, and that is in direct correlation to weather. Not only warmer temps, but fluctuations in hot and cold. A cold snap in spring could ruin production. Drought is another, as is a heat wave in early winter.
I think even moreso than global warming...it's more like global wonky weather, I may have mentioned the humidity was unprecedented this last summer. Will we get a freeze this year? In my area there is usually 1 or 2 days, just enough to kill some tender plants, this hasn't happened in some time.
Traveled to the Sierras a few weeks back...The sequoias are suffering, they can only live in perfect situations. That situation has left. The other trees in the forest are dying also...the bark beetle takes advantage of drought stressed trees. Never seen so many dead trees, and I have been traveling to those mountains for nearly 60 years. Course forest management could be better.
Critters like the pika cannot stand the heat either, and they are disappearing. On the upside, bald eagles are making a comeback, even saw one (for the first time) just last week flying next to the freeway in the central coast!

Trees are our friends, Sequoiadendron gigantea:

large sequoias that have well-developed root systems and are tapped into reliable underground water supplies will be able to handle warming for decades. But since their seedlings may be subjected to ever-longer periods of drought, earlier melting of snowpack could mean failure in sequoia regeneration; seedlings have to make it through the first couple of summers while they establish a good root system.

http://e360.yale.edu/features/giant_seq ... ng_climate
Bb, bird

[planewalker]

Even for those who wish to say there is no global warming, learn some geophysics. We are in the Quaternary Glacial Period and the sun is 2% hotter than at the beginning of it. Marine isotope records show that the climate has warmed from the beginning of the Holocene { the inter-glacial period we're in now } which started at the end of the Younger Dryas Glaciation some 11,500 BPE. The end of the Younger Dryas was shockingly abrupt. It is now a 90% certainty that this was caused by an asteroid impact. The largest piece hit the northern glacier that was covering large parts of North America and Northern Europe. This caused the disintegration of much of the ice causing the flooding and massive tsunamis evident in most of the world. Water levels increased some 400 feet. There is also the "Black Mat", "Carolina Bays" and Clovis Societial Extinction mysteries. The Clovis societial groups were seen in the anthropological archaeology record over much of Continental N. America. They were part of a blended society with the Soulutrian people on the East Coast of the N. American land mass and also showed trade pathways into S. America. The Clovis people have a societial extinction event that seems to be over night. This coincides with the extinction of the mega-fauna in N. America. From what was the southern extent of the Younger Dryas ice sheet south to the Gulf of Mexico are depressions and lakes that have an orientation NW to SE. There are literally thousands of them. They vary in size from less than an acre to a square mile+. In the geological level that coincides with these extinctions we find the so called "Black Mat". It is a layer of varying thickness across the entire N. American Continent. It is made up of soot, dust containing shocked quartz & nano-diamonds, dead vegatation and charcoal of the type seen in the hottest and most extensive forest fires. This has lead to other circumstances. The loss of natural limiting factors has increased the earth's average annual albedo by some 41/2%. This causes heating even greater then the rise in CO2 and CH4 that have been traced in sea cores and ice cores. Get over trying to deny global warming. It is going on as a function of nature and is doing it without mankind. It would be happening if there were no people on Earth and we were just measuring temperatures from a base on the Moon.

[planewalker]

S.

Not sure I follow. I guess I'm thick this morning. Must be all that tryptophan or maybe that I ate enough to feed a family of 6 - 8 people in a third world nation for a few days.
There is one fact of global warming that could cause another ice age pulse on the order of the Younger Dryas. If enough ice melts and water runs of the continents to the north it will disrupt the Thermohaline Ocean Circulation. Fresh water is less dense then salt water. If the northern oceans are blanketed with fresh water, the circulation that brings tropical water north shuts down. Temperatures in the northern hemisphere drop. More snow and ice build up and the albedo drops. A cycle of global cooling ensues. Global Climate - Can you say Yo-Yo? Sure you can!

[Shekinah]

True but that mechanism would be temporary and only a short term reprieve from accelerating warming as the gulf stream conveyer is only one of the climate moderators. Co2, methane, O3 depletion and loss of ice pack reflectivity and increasing industrial emitters are still overriding factors. Every human constantly emits 200 watts of heat, methane and Co2 and there are 7.7 billion of us leaving one hell of a footprint.

[planewalker]

Granted and I pray we get a flash of brains and wisdom before we commit species suicide. I was stating factors that were environmental to try to get unbelievers to have a rush of common sense and brains to the head. I do what I can. Unfortunately, I've not been proclaimed dictator of the earth. I must therefore fight the battle by detail. I preach and practice environmentally sound actions. People say "What do they matter?" They matter because if everyone did them some small help would be provided and, more importantly, a mind set could be achieved to get people working on bigger and better solutions. We've ignorant and lazied ourselves into this mess. Let's push people into working our way out of it. If the only thing I can manage is to pi$$ on the executioner's foot, he's going to be soaked up to both knees. I refuse to lie down and submissively die. They can pry my cold ,dead teeth out of your cold dead neck. Don't tell me you don't have the same mind set. If we were the type to give up our bleached bones would have decorated a battlefield long ago. It could be a delusion caused by lack of O2 as my brain cells are dying, but, I think we're both still here.