global warming or a new ice age?

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I vote for the ice age. The world has been cooling for the last ten years and sunspots have stopped.

The climate over the last few million years has been mostly ice ages with a few warm periods of about 10,000 years in between ice ages.

Well the last big ice age finished about 10,000 years ago so we are due for another "big one".

Or we could have another "little ice age" as happened from the 1600s to the 1800s.

Or it might be nothing. Who cares? We didn't cause it. We can't change it either way.

Primitive people said. "The volcano god is angry with us. We must throw half our crops and a few virgins into the volcano or the volcano god will kill us all"

Are we really still THAT stupid?

LOL yep.

It seems a lot of people are, they just listen to what the media or the authority said. I don't know whether I should laugh or cry.

I'm no expert but I've noticed that Pennsylvania & California's climates are switching. I've been to Palm Springs, CA 3 times over the summer (at ages 5, 13, and 17) and have lived in PA my whole life. The seasons are mixed in PA now & the shifts are very extreme (went from summer-fall in a week-back to summer-winter in a few weeks this semester at my college). In CA, I noticed it has been getting cooler each time I went over the summer. Hotter/more extreme in PA & cooler/calmer is southern CA from the little I've noticed. Though humidity stayed the same. Yay, Palm Springs remains a pretty desert (but PA's still fairly humid...).

Here's what came out of the Copenhagen climate summit:
Key powers reach compromise at climate summit

I think it's better than no deal at all.
But we'll have to see how this deal will work out.

I don't know to what level humans are causing global warming or a next ice age or if global warming will cause or delay a next ice age...

But I still think we shouldn't cause too much pollution and we should take care of the Earth.

... the snowy weather at the moment looks more like a new ice age is coming than a global warming

We agree to issue a press release and go home.

Through Ice Ages and warm periods, the tropics show the least change. Why should they be paid off?

So they burned off their land, and took goats out to eat evey blade of grass, just like Texas. The result is grassland becomes desert, and that was human caused, with the help of cattle and goats.

They are not the first culture to turn productive land to sand, very few have not. Global Warming has nothing to do with it, except deserts do make it warmer and drier.

Most of the observed rise is at the poles, where few peope live. The last two times the Arctic was ice free, an Ice Age followed.

Logging, slash and burn, and non native species grazing account for most of the damage.

Methane from cattle is the leading greenhouse gas. Reducing the herds by half would be the best and fastest way to restore the Earth.

Biology is not about heat, many factors combine, something will grow just about everywhere, and that is what should grow there.

Nature was not an error to be corrected, but humans are.

Amen to that.
We haven't exactly been thoughtful about what, and how much of it, we dump in the oceans.

The problem is the data is homogenized, adjusted for inaccuracies and systemic biases, by a formula that is supposed to be applied when some very specific rules were met, and many data points were adjusted when those rules were not met. HOMOGENEITY ADJUSTMENTS OF IN SITU ATMOSPHERIC CLIMATE DATA: A REVIEW demonstrates the various techniques used.

OK, that's possible, but then the interpretation of the data is wrong.

You are applying a moral judgment that simply does not exist in nature. Raw physical nature is not sentient. It is as dumb as a bag full of anvils. In biological nature the figure of merit is reproductive success. By that standard, bacteria and cockroaches are better at it than humans.

There have been living things on this planet for the last three and a half billion years (at least). Humans have come back from the brink of extinction several times (that last major challenge was the explosion of Mt. Toba, a supervolcanoe, which nearly finished our species off). Anything that succeeds is, by definition, not an error.

ruveyn

The Terminator films are fiction....in reality the robot wanted to warn us of global warming....see thats what happens with artistic liberties

Extinctions other than volcanic, meteor impact, which is most species that have lived, follow the same pattern, they are few that find conditions where they become many, then they vanish. They overrun the food supply.

The fault is in their math, the population doubles, then doubles again, in less time. When it reaches the max carying ability, is when it doubles the fastest. 13 billion in seven years, 26 billion in five more, and 2020 is just not going to be able to deal with it. I expect them to starve through another twenty years, still increasing the population, but by 2040, there is nothing to eat but people.

60,000 years ago, people were food, avoiding being eaten seems to be the goal that lead to development.

It is a hopeless case, preserve the earth, they just have a bit longer, the sooner it crashes, the quicker the earth recovers.

Warmer or colder, the demise of humans is at hand.

f**k the Earth. I want to see the human race survive as long as possible.

We need to treat the Earth well enough to ensure our own survival. Other species are of importance to the extent that WE need them. For example, the birds, who eat a lot of bugs which would otherwise destroy our food supply.

Earth itself has no inherent value. If we could move to another planet and thrive their, then burn the land and boil the sea.

ruveyn

No species can be an 'error' or 'wrong'. They just exist. Those that exist for a long time appear to be or have become well adapted (survival of the fittest).

I don't think it is 'good' if humans will stay on Earth long.
We are not that important.
But I also don't think humans are 'bad' and should soon become extinct.
We just are, part of the evolution and part of the whole system.

And maybe if there will be too much people and not enough food we will become cannibals.

The species keep changing, the ecosystem(s) searching for balance, but it will always keep changing, until all have become extinct.
And planets change too.

The problem is, if there is global warming and we are causing it, there will be areas with people and other organisms more affected by it than others, and people who contributed more to it than others, so it's not 'fair'.

What I am worried about most, for preservation of the Earth, is nuclear pollution, since it can last so long.

Humancentric thinking, it is all about us.

We are just part of a system, a film of life on a ball of rock, something very rare.

The air we breath comes mostly from the ocean, and the forests. We treat both as enemies, loot and pillage them.

Our food comes from a small part of the fifth of the surface above sea level. The land is treated like our slave, to be worked to death for our glory.

We exist because of other life, soil bacteria, worms, insects, bees, birds, bats, that support the plant life. We poison them.

Fresh water is common to all land life, we use it for a sewer, cheap disposal, and through constant farming and ranching exploit every blade of grass. The plant cover that held the moisture and cooled the surface is gone, drought spreads, and through history, where humans were, there is now desert.

Other species have overrun their food supply, till one summer all was eaten to bare ground, then they died. No species has made such broad war on all land, water, other life, and their food supply, like humans have.

Where most species have lasted five million years, humans were under ten thousand several times in the last 100,000 years, the current sub species is perhaps 125,000 years old, and now consume the whole planet.

If biological adaption, fitting within the web of life is the measure, humans are the least fit to suvive.

Global Warming is the least damage done, it just opens more areas. The trees of southern France have grown in Scandinavia, in recent times. The ice wall has run from London to the Urals, in recent time. Humans were not a factor in climate.

Humans are the main factor in the distruction of ecosystems. They are the only factor in the spread of long term toxins, lead, mecury, DDT, PCBs, Dioxin, Nuclear waste. These problems will persist for longer than the species has been around.

Their behavior will lead to their demise, and the whole system will change and adapt. There is nothing in earth history like this period, the worst of the past was volcanos that did manage to change the Ph, which favored some species.

What humans have done is not good for any life. As the most damaging species of all time, their time is short.

Life will continue, even after the food wars, The sun is good for billions of years, and the planet will be covered by an interconnected web of life.

As for being "Fair", the main problem we face is the growing population, and that is coming from the tropical third world. Population has stablized in the temperate zones, and now the tropicals are moving north to claim it. Up to 10% of the people in the USA just decided to come here. Europe has the same problem. Humans will destroy, over populate, then migrate to richer area, and the north is rich, and only 10% of the world population. It is war by other names, invasion.

I am willing to reduce Carbon just as much as the world is willing to reduce population.

One child per family would reach both goals in a few generations.

Ya make sense Inventor, ya make sense.