Get an idea why "foggy old London" was so foggy?
Maybe it's not clear that modern smog is qualitatively worse..
You're right - its NOT clear that it is worse. In fact, with the exception of China and India, air quality is getting BETTER, world wide - by any objective measure...
If you don't like that example, take a look at the oceans, where we've dumped industrial sludge, fertilizer run-off, and other goodies into it since the dawn of industrialization. That has dramatically altered the dynamics of the ocean's food chain.
Fertilizer + phytoplankton = more fish for everybody. Explain how thats a bad thing...
There's also the matter of all the unusual radioactive isotopes we've dispersed around the globe through nuclear testing. Those two changes can hardly be described as a change for the better.
Without the nuclear testing, we don't have nuclear power, nuclear medicine, or the lack of WWIII for the last 60 years... a net PLUS, if you ask me. If you have some objective data otherwise, I'll be glad to look at it. But if we are going to discuss the BAD things soemthing does, fairness requires that we look at that in light of the GOOD it does also, and not just the bad things in a vacuum.
No dispute at all for anyone with a high school knowledge of science. On Earth, water vapor is the king kong gorilla of green-house gases, responsible for over 92% of the total greenhouse effect - and its 99.999% from natural souces. Nothing man can do...
I don't know where that number came from, but supposing the 92% figure is correct...
These guys put it at 95%:
References to 95% contribution of water vapor:
a. S.M. Freidenreich and V. Ramaswamy, Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models, Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264
Many, many references to 92-93%.
you're saying that the remaining 8% is irrelevant and can't possibly cause the observed temperature increase?
The vast bulk of that 8% is ALSO from natural causes. Understanding that fact is CRUCIAL to understanding the "global warming" fraud. Almost ALL charst of so-called "greenhouse" gases in the Earth's atmposphere LEAVE OUT water vapor, which is almost all natural and by far the bigeest greenhouse gas. To do so deceitfully magnifies the effect of man. It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account-- about 5.53%, if not.
This point is so crucial to the debate over global warming that how water vapor is or isn't factored into an analysis of Earth's greenhouse gases makes the difference between describing a significant human contribution to the greenhouse effect, or a negligible one.
Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many "facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.
Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC's, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).
Human activites contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small-- perhaps undetectable-- effect on global climate.
And don't increased temperatures mean increased ocean evaporation and increased atmospheric water vapor content? And what did you just say was responsible for 92% of the greenhouse gas effect?
Pop quiz - is it WARMER or COOLER when a cloud passes overhead? More water vapor = more clouds = more reflectivity into space during the day and more retained warmth at night - a simultaneous negative-positive feedback loop.
Earth is a very stable system - not prone to thermal or biologic runaway. That means there are strong negative feedbacks to the things you fear - otherwise we would never have eveolved.
Negative feedback is no guarantee against catastrophe, particularly given how much we're doing to the biosphere besides dumping "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere. Until we have an accurate predictive model for how the biosphere works, and how we've changed it, we can't say with any certainty what a 6 degree temp increase will do... regardless of the observed historically tendency of the biosphere to clean up after itself.
You aren't going to see 6 degrees - you will see a fraction of one degree, which will enhance crop yields.
Mankind is, other than locally, insignificant. Further, a turnpike in New Jersey is every bit as much "natural" as a termite mound in Africa or a bee hive in Austraia.
It doesn't matter if we're locally insignificant or if everything we do is "natural" (which is just a semantics game). We can still screw up the biosphere, making it uninhabitable not only for us but for most animals and plants as well. We can do it intentionally with nuclear war, biowarfare, etc., and we can probably do it unintentionally.
[/quote]
NO. You vastly overestimate man. Stuff still grows at Chernobal, Hiroshima, and Bopal. Who fed you this stuff?
