'How do you explain how we came out of previous ice ages if global warming is caused by man?'

[Dawgs]

First of all, forgive me. I was listening to Michael Savage's show last night and this was the question he was asking.

Of course, when anyone called in, he would ignore and yell over any good point that a listener might have. He would say that Al Gore was wrong, and any scientists that agree with him was just looking for grant money. Now, I'm not concerned about Savage. I could care less about the guy. But, there are many on the right that make these same stupid arguments, and I think we need to have a good answer for them.

I was thinking that you can't answer the question. It will get you nowhere.

The best way is to tell them that they are right, and then ask if they know for a fact that this is happening now. Hundreds of years ago there were millions(probably much less) people living in the world. Today there are billions. Those billions of people drive cars, burn fuel for energy, and use up every possible resource they can get there hands on; not at all like it was just a few hundred years ago. They(Savage) might be right that the climate change we are seeing today is not a "real" threat to the planet(I don't believe this, but I'm using it for arguments sake). But if they don't know, and if they can't prove it, they can't deny that Al Gore might be right.

[baldguy]

1. Previous ice ages were all within normal trend lines and can be explained by them.

The current & predicted conditions are not. In fact, the Earth is in an ice age RIGHT NOW but the temp is still rising.



http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/cis/houghton/

[KittyWampus]

11. Also, Mankind's deforestation/detrimental behavior has weakened Earth's abilitiy to recover

rather like someone who smokes 5 packs a day is likely not to recuperate as easily after having pneumonia than an athelete in good health.

[msongs]

2. the premises are faulty - no link between ice ages, current global warming, and man

there were ice ages, global warmings (past and possibly current), and humans have been around.

there is NO correlation though between all 3 together as related events.

the question asked is "...if" implying if-then.

most people listen to savages because they already agree with them, not because they want to learn something new.

Msongs
www.msongs.com

[patrice]

3. We aren't causing it. We are accelerating it.

There are natural cycles of heating and cooling. Tell them to imagine them to be like a pendelum swinging back and forth. If someone pushes the pendelum, i.e. accelerates it, it will swing higher. If they push it again, and again, it will swing even higher and higher. As with all physical systems, there are limitations to the system. The pendelum can swing only so high without breaking. Each push (each molecule of Co2) pushes the system toward it limits until it breaks.

[Turn CO Blue]

4. Here's what I have said:

"You can't use the last ice age to refute the current climate crisis -- if you're also going to insist that the universe is only 7,000 years old when you're refuting evolution. Make up your mind!"

[ccpup]

5. a-ha!

:spray: good one!

[patrice]

9. Good one!! I'm going to use that.

:applause: :applause: :applause:

[krispos42]

10. Damn,you beat me to it!

If there were Ice Ages, then the Earth is far older than the four-to-ten thousand-year range that new Creation Museum that is opening in May. And therefore your underlying argument against evolution, that it hasn't had time to occur, goes out the window.

If the Earth is NOT older than 4-10 thousand years, then there is no time for evolution, but also no time for Ice Ages, and thus proof that the earth goes through a warming/cooling cycle over the course of tens of thousands of years.

You can have Ice Ages and evolution, or no Ices Ages and no evolution. No mixing and matching!

But here's the real crux of the matter.

Best-case scenario for human emmissions of CO₂ is that they actually cause global cooling, worst-case is they cause global warming.

Now, the various world powers of the past hundred and fifty years or so have had a vested interest in weather monitoring. The mighty naval fleets of Great Britian, France, Italy, Japan, the Soviet Union, the United States, Spain, and Germany have all spend a lot of time and money gathering weather information from around the globe and keeping it in logs. It became even more important when aircraft were developed and deployed, and especially crucial with long-range bombers and transport aircraft. And that information is preserved for scientists to study.

This is how we know the Earth, on average, is warmer than it historically has been. Direct measurment. The ol' mercury thermometer.

So, if human emmissions of CO₂ cause global cooling, then they are failing to stem a natural rise in temperature, and we have to face a serious issue with ocean levels rising.

If human emissions of CO₂ are neutral, then we still have to face natural, cyclic global warming and rising ocean temperatures.

If human emissions of CO₂ cause global warming, then either we are putting out enough gases to halt the slight global cooling predicted three decades ago, upsetting Earth's stable temperature with global warming, or making a natural global warming cycle worse.

The only rosy scenario here is that CO₂ causes global cooling, and that we need to make more of it. But since China and India are creating more and more CO₂ every day as their power generation increases and their societies get more and more mobile, I'd have to say that argument is invalid.

[patrice]

20. Co2 causes cooling:

So is the pendelum a valid analogy then in that if Co2 causes more and more warming, when the overall system, or sub-system, tops out and the "equal and opposite" reaction begins, it cools in ratio to heat until that system tops out and the heating cycle begins again and so forth.

I know that's over-simplified and there'd be no reason to assume a 1:1 ratio, heat:cool, I'm just trying to wrap my mind around "Co2 causes cooling".

[krispos42]

24. Oh, it's just total fiction on my part

I mean literally that carbon dioxide causes the Earth to lose heat faster than it would otherwise. A reverse greenhouse gas, if you will. Of course this is not true, but it is one of the possibilities that must be mentioned. I'm frankly kind of surprised none of the fundies have suggested this!

"Uh, CO₂ causes global cooling, and the reason we have global warming is because we don't have ENOUGH of it! We need to burn more hydrocarbons! Oh, and just leave that check for ten grand on the table, Mr. ExxonMobile."

[rock]

16. LOL

Very good, indeed!

[jus_the_facts]

6. I always use the volcano analogy....each and every car and industrial plant is a mini volcano.....

....spewing billions of TONS more carbon into the atmosphere that wasn't a factor in previous history with only naturally occuring volcanic activity. :think:

[shield20]

7. Not just ice ages

There are ancient maps of Antartica showing streams, coastal features, etc. without any ice; apparently there had been some global warming then too.

[patrice]

22. I think that's what some people are counting on.

Just go where the climate is safe.

They're going to have to be very, very rich to do that however often it becomes necessary.

[InvisibleTouch]

25. Antarctica was not always in its current location.

There are dinosaur fossils from Antarctica, from a time when the climate was decidedly more temperate, because the continent itself was in a different place. It wasn't always located at the south pole. In fact, one of the contributing factors to today's climate is having a large ice-covered continent at one of the poles. It affects ocean currents, sea level, etc. Now as that ice starts to melt, we're seeing the inevitable results.

[Rage for Order]

26. Not only that

Fossils of tropical plants have been found near the North pole as well. It makes you wonder how long it took the land masses currently at the North and South Poles to move from a warm climate to their current locations. I've heard of the theory of Earth-Crust Displacement, but not many scientists give the theory much credence. If it did happen though, we'd be screwed.

[InvisibleTouch]

27. Rate of continental drift:

I've heard it summarized this way - The continents move, on average, about as fast as your fingernails grow.

I don't place any stock in the "slipping of the Earth's crust" theory, but there's been plenty of time for the continents to move around the globe.

[Rage for Order]

28. Interesting book on the subject

"Fingerprints of the Gods" by Graham Hancock. There are plenty of holes in his arguments, but the book does have some very interesting information in it.

[InvisibleTouch]

29. I'm iffy on Graham Hancock too...

...but just because someone's outside of the currently accepted scientific establishment, and even may be provably wrong in their overall theory, doesn't mean they're wrong on every point. And I grant that someone who's looking from a new angle, can pick up things that the "orthodoxy" misses. It's an interesting read, to be sure, whether or not you ultimately buy the arguement.

[Rage for Order]

30. I found many parts of his book informative

Especially the comparison of the "great Flood" myths in cultures from Egypt to Europe to South & Central America. Very interesting similarities there. And I'm also now convinced that the Egyptian pyramids are much more than tombs for the pharoahs (sp?).

[patrice]

8. P.S.

Good on you for listening to Michael Savage.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

[Dawgs]

12. Actually, I could only stand to make it through two callers.

I don't know what world he's living in, but it ain't mine.

[patrice]

13. I want to do it, but just can't.

Those who can enter their venues and take them on in a manner that actually produces positive results are very valuable people and better than I am. I get so angry I can't think.

[opihimoimoi]

14. Them Pubics got their asses in the sand....instead of Denying, we all should be PLANNING

for the dire consequences...already many islands and low lying areas are at risk....and getting worse....People are being affected as we continue to just debate this shit.

[Az]

15. We don't want any ice age

And here we are speeding the next one up. We should be dumping tons of money into researching how to not only undo the damage we have done but also how to stop the next ice age.

Nature is our enemy. In a very real way. We are not trying to preserve nature. Nature will wipe us out eventually. Evolution works by building from the rubble of what survived environmental impacts. And the ice ages have proven to be massive events evolutionarily speaking. What that means is that the ice came and killed off most things. That which survived became the foundation for the next wave of evolution.

We don't want to find out what survives the next wave. It might not be us. We want to freeze this particular environment in its tracks. We are not only fighting our own foolishness but we are also fighting nature.

[genie_weenie]

17. Those never happened because the earth is only

6011 years old!

[porphyrian]

18. Look at the charts Al Gore shows in An Inconvenient Truth.

Everyone needs to see that movie. He shows visual aids of past ice ages compared to our situation today.

[WindRavenX]

19. noooo it's biased liberal propaganda!!1111

:sarcasm:

Seriously, though, the reason why we emerged out of previous ice ages is probably due to increases in solar activity--our sun is a variable star and energy output is not constant.

[lonestarnot]

21. Co2 levels then? Co2 levels now?

[greenman3610]

23. google Milankovitch Cycles

Savage is a moron, who doesn't give a shit about the
truth, and doesn't want to know it.

the episodic nature of ice ages is most likely mediated
by cyclic changes in the Earth's orbit, known as Milankovitch
cycles.

"The episodic nature of the Earth's glacial and interglacial periods within the present Ice Age (the last couple of million years) have been caused primarily by cyclical changes in the Earth's circumnavigation of the Sun. Variations in the Earth's eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession comprise the three dominant cycles, collectively known as the Milankovitch Cycles for Milutin Milankovitch, the Serbian astronomer who is generally credited with calculating their magnitude. Taken in unison, variations in these three cycles creates alterations in the seasonality of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface. These times of increased or decreased solar radiation directly influence the Earth's climate system, thus impacting the advance and retreat of Earth's glaciers."

http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyperglac/time1/milankov.htm