Paphos Life

After listening to the somewhat ill informed Extinction Rebillion protesters over the week, i thought i would look a little into "global warming". It seems that they are way off the mark when they say that "We" are the greatest contributors. I guess that being the only things on the planet they could be right, but then again....

"Earth's climate and the biosphere have been in constant flux, dominated by ice ages and glaciers for the past several million years. We are currently enjoying a temporary reprieve from the deep freeze."

"Over the past 750,000 years of Earth's history, Ice Ages have occurred at regular intervals, of approximately 100,000 years each."

"Periods of Earth warming and cooling occur in cycles. This is well understood, as is the fact that small-scale cycles of about 40 years exist within larger-scale cycles of 400 years, which in turn exist inside still larger scale cycles of 20,000 years, and so on."

"Climate change is controlled primarily by cyclical eccentricities in Earth's rotation and orbit, as well as variations in the sun's energy output.

"Greenhouse gases" in Earth's atmosphere also influence Earth's temperature, but in a much smaller way. Human additions to total greenhouse gases play a still smaller role, contributing about 0.2% - 0.3% to Earth's greenhouse effect."

We and future generations can do next to nothing to halt this natural phenomenom...other than raise taxes as an excuse!?

https://geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

Sorry, but this is a load of total codswallop generated to justify Pres. Trump's mantra that man is not responsible for climate change.

I'll put it simply: from 15,000 years ago to 200 years ago, the CO2 level in the atmosphere was ~280 ppm ±~15 ppm. From 200 years ago, to the present, it has risen from 280 ppm to ~410 ppm, due largely to man extracting fossil fuels and burning them. By my reckoning, this is an increase of nearly 50%. If there were no CO2 in the atmosphere, the global temperature would have been ~-18°C. With 280 ppm, it averaged about 14°C. Today, it averages about 15°C, but, if we stopped all fossil fuel extraction today, thermal inertia would take it even higher.

The science of this is well established and reading the IPCC reports, the consensus of ~1200 qualified atmospheric scientists, leaves no real doubt that the global temperature is rising from human activities. Yes, there are other factors which play a role, such as the sun>earth distance variations, but these have been factored in by the IPCC.

I like the post from Aquila & not so many years ago the government "scientists I assume" promoted diesel as the fuel of the future. Now being told that information in not correct. How can we believe what we are told? I respect Devil's point of view but to me it's a bit like the question, does god exist & no one has the answer

Do you fly? Well that is thanks to science. If you don't trust scientists, step away from your computer and go and live in a cave. If not, you should listen when the vast majority of them tell you there are big problems ahead.

Dominic wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 9:22 pm Do you fly? Well that is thanks to science. If you don't trust scientists, step away from your computer and go and live in a cave. If not, you should listen when the vast majority of them tell you there are big problems ahead.

It seems to me that scientists are in agreement that temperatures are on the rise. The open question is whether / to what extent mankind is responsible for it and whether we can do soemthing meaningful to prevent / meaningfully restrict it. My vote is for assuming that the majority of scientists may well be right and trying to do something if there is a reasonable cost/benefit ratio. As far as Europeans are concerned to assess the cost/benefit ratio you need to consider whether others (China, US, Russia, Africa, Australia) are joining the effort. There would be no point in trying to delay the inevitable for a few years at the price of risking economic collaps.

Interesting to see that amongst all this heartache and turmoil with the recent virus that some Chinese cities are reporting cleaner air than they’ve had in decades.

I understand it would be difficult and not 100% possible to enforce but instead of jumping on the “let’s ban diesels” band wagon where perhaps just once a month for a couple of days there were travel restrictions where we leave our vehicles at home and effectively “self isolate”!