You ought to get your time lines in order. Our planet was absolutely inhospitable place for the first 3.5 billion years of existence. The atmosphere was sulfuric acid, CO2, and every other nasty chemical until it cooled sufficiently for water to condense and organisms to start. It took another 0.5 billion years for plant life to sequester CO2, heavy elements, etc. and release oxygen.
Ice ages have occurred only in the past hundreds of millions years or so, long after CO2 levels had stopped changing. Ice cores taken from Antarctica have shown very little CO2 change over this time period. But they show significant increase in the past 100 years. Ice ages take thousands of years not tens or hundreds of years. Some time ago on this forum I related studies showing that there are several effects occurring on our planet. Sunlight can either be absorbed to heat up the surface or reflected back into space. Then secondary effects can occur: greenhouse gases can block the reflected sunlight and trap it in the atmosphere. At the same time air pollution due to dust, gases or any particulate matter can both block more sunlight and hold in more of the sunlight that does penetrate to the earth's surface. Finally, as the glaciers melt they reflect less sunlight causing more of it to be converted to heat which in turn causing even more melting. I agree no one has built a solid model capturing all of these effects but the studies published by National Geographic are pretty telling that man is having a major effect on our planet's climate. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Madigan" <[email protected]> To: "ProFox Email List" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 6:35 PM Subject: Re: [OT] Re: In Bangladesh,climate change is a matter of life and death Clearly man has made acid rain, ozone pollution (not ozone layer), smog, high particulate matter in the atmosphere. If anything, the effects of man's addition to the atmosphere would be cooling the Earth by blocking the sunlight. But there isn't any agreement that carbon dioxide can trap heat. And remember, any fossil fuels that we burn were created from plant matter that extracted the carbon from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through photosynthesis millions of years ago. So clearly the Earth survived much higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the past and still had a great ice age. If the environmentalists want to make a case for ending coal use because it causes health problems and acid rain, then they should make that case. That science is settled. However, if they want to make the case that carbon dioxide causes global warming, they're going to have to prove it. Finally, why does Al Gore refuse all opportunities to debate? It's ecause he can't debate on the facts. --- On Mon, 12/14/09, Paul Hill <[email protected]> wrote: > From: Paul Hill <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [OT] Re: In Bangladesh, climate change is a matter of life > and death > To: "ProFox Email List" <[email protected]> > Date: Monday, December 14, 2009, 6:15 PM > On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:47 PM, > Michael Madigan <[email protected]> > wrote: > > OK, but those gases haven't been declining for the > last 11 year, yet temperatures have declined. > > Chlorofluorocarbons have decreased massively (rightly so) > in the last > decade or so, and the effect is huge. The ozone hole > over Antarctica > is shrinking. > > But man has no effect on the atmosphere of this world, > right? > > > --- On Mon, 12/14/09, Nicholas Geti <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > >> From: Nicholas Geti <[email protected]> > >> Subject: Re: [OT] Re: In Bangladesh, climate > change is a matter of life and death > >> To: "ProFox Email List" <[email protected]> > >> Date: Monday, December 14, 2009, 3:35 PM > >> Who said that it was only CO2? The > >> gases on the full list are methane, > >> nitrous oxide, ozone, and chlorofluorocarbons. In > addition > >> to the effect of > >> these gases is deforestation which is also a major > factor > >> in planet warming. > > -- > Paul > [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/a559a59946f044ae8d3a169164ffc...@dual ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
