Posted by Meri-Tuuli on February 3, 2007, at 12:44:24
In reply to Re: 'Humans blamed for climate change' » TexasChic, posted by Dinah on February 3, 2007, at 9:04:58
Well actually, those theories from the 70s are still correct.
There are two components that matter.
1) Natural climate change
2) Man made induced climate change (or anthropogenic climate change to be exact).Natural climate change:
Natural climate change happens, is happening, will always happen. Its to do with the configuration of the sun and the earth at various points in their orbits. These are called 'Milanovich cycles' and are responsible for past (geologically recent anyhow) ice ages/warm periods. Anyway.
The theories from the 70s are to do with these natural climate cycles. People then didn't realise that man could be influencing the climate.
Man made climate change:Okay is the real debate at the moment. Are we changing the climate by burning fossil fuels which release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? There are other mechanisms as well and obviously these things are really complicated. So thats what the report I posted about has found. It is very likely (>90% probable) that we are warming our climate by the burning of fossils fuels and other mechanisms.
So the theories from the 70s about a global cooling are still correct, just now we know that we are warming the climate. I suppose you might ask why don't they cancel each other out. Well I doubt anyone knows really. I mean, they are both very different mechanisms, and perhaps the cooling is going on, but the warming is far greater, so resulting in a net warming anyway. Also these natural cycles operate on many different timescales - there are little 'blips' such as the Mediveal warm period and more ultra (10,000 years for instance) climate cycles. In any case, the natural variability happens slower than the human induced climate change. So even if the climate is changing naturally, it isn't nearly as fast as man made climate change.
So you can't really say those theories from the 70s were incorrect. We know alot more now!
Oh well. I wonder what the world would look like in 2060? I'll be 80 then.
BTW one of the reports findings is that storm intensities are likely to increase, and sea levels are going to rise, so I'd stay out of low lying, hurricane path areas!
poster:Meri-Tuuli
thread:729113
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20070130/msgs/729335.html