Global warming is real, no doubts in my mind about that, and the sayings of the professors/lectors i've had only support that. HOWEVER! We are not the sole cause of it. A lot of people like to put all the blame on their fellow man's shoulders, SHIT YOU'RE BURNING COAL YOU'RE KILLING THE PLANET MAAAAAAAAAN.

No (well you ARE letting out carbon). In fact, Earth is, at the moment, at one of the COLDEST times in the entirety of its time as a life-supporting planet, barring the ice ages, which were obviously colder (however, the advent of relatively frequent ice ages is a new thing, in fact it marks the border between Neogene and Quarternary), so on average, Earth is WTFcold right now. The only times since the last snowball Earth (which was over 600 million years ago) that our planet had a similar temperature was back in the Carboniferous period, which is 300 million years ago, and the Neogene period, which is the period immediately preceding Quarternary (which started ~2,6 million years ago), which is what we're in now.

But do you, dear person, know why this is interesting in relation to global warming? Carboniferous was marked by very significant plant growth across the planet, even though there was terrestrial life already. These plants bound vast amounts of CO2 from the air, and perhaps most importantly, there were no humans to let out a shitload of the stuff. Yet, despite all this, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was twice as high as it is today.

Of course, one could argue that it's alarming that the same temperature today is maintained by half the CO2, but of course, there are more greenhouse gasses than just CO2 (which, however, is the one that's largely frowned upon the most). Methane, for example, which cows blast out at an alarming rate, is a very powerful greenhouse gas, and various other ozone layer-destroying emissions. While these definitely DO have an influence, i offer to you a (Wikipedia link to a) theory that also explains relatively large variances in global temperature: Milankovitch cycles. Although this is a Wiki link, i can assure you that this is also written in the book(s) i have about the subject, and we were taught a fair bit about them. Basically, when these cycles line up in particular ways, we get ice ages or interglacials, and there ain't a damned thing we can do about it, because it's the whole planet wobbling in various ways.

Now, these cycles don't have periods in the million-year scale, but they were present back then. However, as far as we know, there are no glacial sediments dated before the quarternary. It was just too bloody warm back then (or they were mucked up by other forces, which is not impossible, although unlikely). But where am i going with all this? Well, basically, don't worry TOO much. Even if we weren't here, the planet might have been heating up right now for different reasons. Although we are in an interglacial that might well last another 50000 years, Earth today is still relatively cold (global mean temperature ~14 Celcius, has been in excess of 20), so it's more likely that it'll get warmer.

THAT IS NOT TO SAY, HOWEVER, that we shouldn't try to reduce the greenhouse emissions, because we don't want to end up like Venus, which in and of itself constitutes the ultimate horror example of what greenhouse gasses can do if taken to the utmost extreme (pretty sure the global mean temperature there is around 500 Celcius). We're just not making as big an impact as we might be thinking, especially not since we've actually begun thinking about it. It's pretty funny really, if we were to draw an average temperature line between Cambrian (541 mil. years ago) and now, it'd be declining. :v

Careful with the way you use "adapted" there as it can be wrongfully interpreted from an evolutionary view.

Also, can you please provide a source backing up the number for carbon's half-life that you presented?
Clearing up the subject of radioactive decay: Isotopes labeled as "stable" don't decay spontaneously, or have extremely long half-lives (really really long).
Carbon's most common (99,9% of natural abundance) isotopes (12 and 13) are stable.
Carbon-14, the one that has the closest half-life to the one you suggested, isn't present in significant enough amounts to support your suggestion.

Sorry that my contribution was merely based on scientific correction. The topic doesn't favor me, neither does the time of the year (exams and such coming close).

If anybody who's thinking of posting in thread reads one thing, make sure you read this.


edit: Shook is spot on with his analysis, too. Read that, as well.

I'm glad Ray is the MOD of this forum board. Anyways, I've always thought that we were getting hotter to some extent. I mean some of the glaciers are thawing out but I just think it was part of the Earth's natural cycle. I mean it's just natural for the Earth to heat up and cool down as it pleases right? Humans can't really control it by itself I wouldn't think.

Well over the years global warming has been a big problem that almost everyone on the news, documentaries, small science shows, etc. have been talking about. I see no reason to make it up and it feels like its a fairly true statement that global warming is true. (Not that i can support it with scientific evidence......... because i don't have any)

Not punching holes into the atmosphere might be a good start.

It snowed after a climate change conference, global warming don't exist.

It is a scientific fact that greenhouse gases we release contribute towards relatively speedy warming of the Earth. That aspect of the discussion is simply not up for debate.

Well the way I can see it is that humans are indeed causing global warming and the damage has ultimately been made, I don't think there could possibly be a way to get rid of these affects because human civilization hasn't made it to that kind of technology yet.


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I'm pretty sure large industrial activity speed-up the "global warming" of the planet as well.

But the point I wanna raise is, global warming or not, industrial activity and over-production of everything impacts our environment -climat or not- we pollute water streams, seas and oceans, we kill entire species of animals, we destroy huge part of forests, we reject toxic dangerous products, we "loot" natural ressources and we don't have any clue about what depriving the planet from those we'll do, etc... we're a cancer for everything around us, including ourselves.

And that's not being evolved and sophisticated, that's being a mad specy. If we destroy our natural habitate, we die. We won't find another planet to live on, that's fantasy; a fish doesn 't live out of water, we've emerged from Earth's eco-system, we're a part of it, we're made so our bodies need what our natural environment provides to keep on living

I think you're underestimating humanity. Fish don't live out of water, no (except that lungfish do, in fact, breathe air), but they don't have hands or any significant brains either. Fish naturally live in lakes and oceans, so what do we do? We build aquariums and take a little piece of their natural biome WAY the hell away from the nearest lake or ocean. We've done so for ourselves already, both under water and IN SPACE. Given enough resources, we could easily establish a working ecosystem in space. Now, let me list some of the really impressive things humanity, a terrestrial species of apes, has done:
- We've taken flight.
- We've visited the bottom of the ocean.
- We've been ON THE FUCKING MOON. You know, the moon you see up there every night? We've been there.
- We have weaponry powerful enough to completely wipe an area several kilometers in radius of anything living. One human with a rifle can kill just about any other animal on the planet. Chimps have pointy sticks.
- We have space stations where people can live for extended periods of time.
- We've created the internet.

So why have we not gone all out on this yet? Because necessity is the mother of invention. As destructive as humanity can be, most modernized countries are very considerate of the environment, and we're only getting better at it. We don't NEED to find a Terra Nova yet, nor do we NEED to colonize the moon. You find it unthinkable that we find a suitable planet, ok fair enough. But think: A hundred years ago, people could only DREAM of the things we take for granted right now. Fifty years ago, people made sci-fi series about the year 2000.

A slightly harsh example: World War 2. Airplane technology advanced at a breakneck pace because there was a constant need to outperform the enemies, and nuclear technology also got developed in short order. A more homely example would be computer technology, which during even my short lifetime has advanced FAR beyond what i thought possible 15 years ago. There was once a time where a megabyte was a LOT of space, but now, we get GIGABYTES by the THOUSANDS. And that's not even mentioning processing power. Take the best gaming rig from 10 years ago, tell it to run BioShock Infinite at max quality and high resolution and watch it explode.

And i ramble upon a tangent again, but imagine if all that development went towards finding a new Earth, or just building a huge space ship where people could live in until further notice. It could happen surprisingly quickly.

IDEALLY THOUGH, we'd never be forced to leave Earth. I mean, we've lived through several ice ages as cavemen, so i'd think we can take a bit of warming before we stop it from running out of control.

I'm not gonna write a great big wall of text because quite frankly I don't give a shit.
Yes global warming is happening its not a lie but what is a lie is what the media and therefore the general (dumb as fuck) public think about it. The earth naturally changes and we are well overdue an ice age... Yes we are contributing to the rate of change but we are by no means the main or sole reason for global warming. Any how we're just going to have to put up with the cold winters and hot summers not that there much of a problem compare to the water density changing.