this is brilliant on so many levels, so much so that i bet people who believe it must really also think they are 'indigo children'
the crux of this so called argument is that global warming has been happening since the 1800's and therefor cannot be due to mankind because there were no cars or powerstations* also that science** shows that the sun is getting more active and so hotter.
*hellooo? industrial revolution anyone? 1800's = massive deforrestation and unbelievable amounts of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere by the 'civilised' nations in the form of coal and wood burning on an unprecidented scale
** pseudoscience more like, how did they find this out? using crystals and dowsing rods? the sun - as shown by science - is at its quietest point in a hundred years, so quiet in fact that scientists were getting worried.
the main argument i had with one fellow about this was that the accellerating decline of the polar ice caps was caused by the sun being in a very active state for the past 10 years. funny but we are in the tail end of a solar minimum, the sun goes through an (on average) 11 year cycle from maximum to minimum and at present we are at the lower end of the scale, of course this made no difference even combined with it being the lowest solar minimum in a century, amazing how quickly the blinkers of blind faith will come on when actual science is referenced.
the sun is only just (like in the last week) showing signs of returning to the higher part of its cycle - we had a single (yes single) sunspot, yay us. the last time the sun was this quiet - the maunder minimum - europe experienced a mini ice age, not a massive and previously unseen melting of the ice caps.
some real science
more real science
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The problem is that people just can't think in terms of large scales. Everything after 10 is just basically "a bunch", and the same applies with a geological scale; hence the common cry of "Global Warming? Puh, it's been colder than normal here in Michigan!" What most people don't get is the "Global" part of "Global Warming", at least in the outright deniers camp.
ReplyDeleteFor the others, like the ones who claim it's the sun heating the earth, well, yeah, the sun heats the earth. It's been heating it generally the same for the last four billion years. That hasn't changed. It's another problem of scale: people think "Well, it gets hotter and colder out all the time, it's the seasons and such, that's just like what dem dere sun does." Problem is, the sun, as with all other things that go through a cycle, hasn't really changed if you look at averages. Until now.
So what's changed? Greenhouse gases. It's measurable, period. Easy to visualize too: there was x amount of carbon buried 300 years ago. Now we've dug up and displaced that y amount of carbon into the air. So now the air is 0 + y amount of carbon. Duh. One thing has increased, another thing has increased during the same period: the answer is intuitively obvious, and better yet, proven, scientifically.