Re: [asa] climate change severity

There are more and more examples of greening programs that add to economic
development and provide cost savings for, e.g., heating buildings. I've
heard this "don't wreak the economy" message so often that it is beginning
to sound like "Wolf! Wolf!"

Bob

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Hamilton" <williamehamiltonjr@yahoo.com>
To: "Michael Roberts" <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>; "Charles Carrigan"
<CCarriga@olivet.edu>; <asa@calvin.edu>; <mrb22667@kansas.net>;
<dfwinterstein@msn.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 3:57 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] climate change severity

> However, the potential harm done by overreacting is pretty serious. Some
> incidents that make me wonder if the flap over global warming isn't
> political
> as well as scientific are Europe's refusal to grant the US a degree of
> exemption to the Kyoto protocols on the basis (documented in a paper in
> Science, which I can probably dig up and send out) that the US is so
> heavily
> forested that air leaving the US eastbound has a higher oxygen content and
> lower CO2 content than incoming air from the west, the recent conclusion
> in a
> UN report that cow emissions account for more greenhouse gas emissions
> than
> automobile emissions (of course there are so many cows because people like
> beef
> and dairy products), the worldwide effects of volcanic eruptions (Mt.
> Pinatubo
> a few years ago). I'm not saying there isn't a manmade contribution to
> global
> warming. But we'd better be sure we know whether our efforts will do any
> good
> before we wreck our economy trying.
>
> --- Michael Roberts <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> This is totally irrefutable and very balanced. We ignoring the problem at
>> our
>> peril.
>>
>> Wont please Interfaith Stewardship Alliance though.
>>
>> I get rather sick of these anti-environmentalists who simply wont accept
>> the
>> balance of scientific evidence.
>>
>> Michael
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Charles Carrigan
>> To: asa@calvin.edu ; mrb22667@kansas.net ; dfwinterstein@msn.com
>> Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 5:42 PM
>> Subject: Re: [asa] climate change severity
>>
>>
>> Don,
>>
>> Human beings began pumping CO2 into the atmosphere well before 1930. I
>> understand wanting to be skeptical of bandwagons, but the data that
>> indicate
>> human impact are pretty strong. Natural warming may also be occurring,
>> but
>> the data clearly show a massive anthropogenic involvement.
>>
>> Ice core measurements indicate that in the year ~1800, the
>> concentration of
>> CO2 in the atmosphere was down near 275 ppm, but steadily rising over the
>> next 100 years to reach ~300 ppm by 1900. Direct measurement of
>> atomospheric
>> CO2 goes back to the late 1950s, when the value was up to ~315 ppm;
>> today it
>> is near ~375 ppm. Although we've certainly done much more in the past 50
>> years, humans did plenty between 1800 and 1930.
>>
>> To put it in natural context - in the deep geologic record, CO2 has
>> fluctuated in the atmosphere between ~180-280 ppm over the last at least
>> 400,000 years, and I believe the record now goes back even further to the
>> past 650 ka; at no point in that history has CO2 reached the levels it is
>> at
>> today, or even the levels it was at in 1950. The concentration of CO2 in
>> past atmospheres is measured by trapped gas bubbles in deep ice cores
>> from
>> Antarctica. There is a tremendous inverse correlation between times of
>> low
>> CO2 (~180 ppm) and large amounts of continental ice as interpreted by
>> delta18O data (stable isotopes of H2O), and also the reverse - times of
>> high
>> CO2 (~280 ppm) correlate with times of low continental ice. This
>> obviously
>> fits with the notion that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
>>
>> A couple of references:
>> Petit, J.R., et al., 1999, Climate and Atmospheric History of the Past
>> 420,000 Years from the Vostok Ice Core, Antarctica. Nature, 399,
>> 429-436.
>> Friedli et al., 1986, Ice Core Record of the 13C/12C Ratio of
>> Atmospheric
>> CO2 in the Past Two Centuries. Nature, 324, 237-238
>>
>> There is no question that human beings over the past 200 years have
>> dramatically altered the concentration of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere.
>> There
>> is also a clear connection between CO2 concentration and global T.
>>
>> Best,
>> Charles
>>
>> _______________________________
>> Charles W. Carrigan, Ph.D.
>> Assistant Professor of Geology
>> Olivet Nazarene Univ., Dept. of Physical Sciences
>> One University Ave.
>> Bourbonnais, IL 60914
>> PH: (815) 939-5346
>> FX: (815) 939-5071
>> ccarriga@olivet.edu
>> http://geology.olivet.edu/
>>
>> "To a naturalist nothing is indifferent;
>> the humble moss that creeps upon the stone
>> is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so beautifully adorns
>> the
>> valley or the mountain:
>> but to a naturalist who is reading in the face of the rocks the annals
>> of a
>> former world,
>> the mossy covering which obstructs his view,
>> and renders indistinguishable the different species of stone,
>> is no less than a serious subject of regret."
>> - James Hutton
>> _______________________________
>>
>>
>> >>> "Don Winterstein" <dfwinterstein@msn.com> 1/4/2007 10:27 AM >>>
>>
>> Merv wrote: "...If this has been a somewhat
>> linear loss since 1906, then could human-caused global warming still be
>> the primary agent? If it hasn't been a linear loss, then how much of
>> that 90% loss occurred in recent decades? I'll need to research some
>> of
>> this on the web myself, but meanwhile, if there is a pool of experts
>> right here...."
>>
>> I'm not one of your local experts on this, but I've read often enough
>> that
>> glaciers have been receding in many places starting well before, say,
>> 1930,
>> to have doubts about the degree of human causation. As anecdotal
>> evidence,
>> as a kid I used to visit Mt. Rainier in Washington regularly (late
>> 1940s),
>> and every time we went my Dad would remark how much smaller some of the
>> glaciers had become since he'd visited as a young man--probably 15-20
>> years
>> earlier. Park info also attested to rapid receding.
>>
>> I mistrust human causation of global warming to the degree that it's
>> become
>> a bandwagon. Bandwagons in general are suspect.
>>
>> Don
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Merv
>> To: asa@calvin.edu
>> Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2007 3:43 PM
>> Subject: [asa] climate change severity
>>
>>
>>
>> This caught my eye this morning on the CNN site about the Ayles ice
>> shelf collapse. ...quoting Vincent Warwick of Laval university:
>>
>> "It is consistent with climate change," Vincent said, adding that the
>> remaining ice shelves are 90 percent smaller than when they were
>> first
>> discovered in 1906.
>>
>> I assume he was just referring to the six major Canadian ice sheets.
>> Can this be right? Am I interpreting this correctly, then, that we
>> have only 10% of the ice sheet area (or mass?) in the Canadian arctic
>> than was known to exist in 1906? And, if this has been a somewhat
>> linear loss since 1906, then could human-caused global warming still
>> be
>> the primary agent? If it hasn't been a linear loss, then how much
>> of
>> that 90% loss occurred in recent decades? I'll need to research some
>> of
>> this on the web myself, but meanwhile, if there is a pool of experts
>> right here...
>>
>> Please note: I do NOT consider myself one of those who mistrusts
>> all
>> science in its advocacy for care of environment. Stewardship is a
>> Christian calling (which predated the scientific enlightenment and is
>> not founded on it.) Wendell Berry is a great author, IMO. I
>> seriously endorse the bicycle as the superior transportation
>> technology
>> over the automobile (even if I hypocritically fall short of living
>> that
>> ideal -- I still aspire to it). My convictions here obviously are
>> not
>> based on science. But I am interested in any clarity science can
>> bring
>> to our knowledge of our footprint.
>>
>> --merv
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> Bill Hamilton
> William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
> 248.652.4148 (home) 248.821.8156 (mobile)
> "...If God is for us, who is against us?" Rom 8:31
>
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Received on Thu Jan 4 17:58:20 2007