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Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (6515)	12/30/2003 11:59:28 AM
From: A.J. Mullen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12231

There's an interesting report in the Economist of recent papers that show correlations between weather and agriculture. The impetus for agriculture, and subsequent improvements may have been climate change brought about by Milenkovich cycle - a long term wobble in the Earth's orbit around the Sun. The inhabited area of the Nile delta seems to have ebbed and flowed with the global climate pattern. That global pattern has been tracked by looking at gases (CO2 and CH4) trapped in Antarctic ice. It supposedly follows the Milankovich cycle until about 8 thousand years ago when deforestation started to make way for agriculture, then another deviation is associated with development of "wet rice" farming. The most interesting part of the report for me was the claim that the three recent cooling periods could be associated with collapses of agriculture as forest reclaimed agriculture and started extracting Co2 to make trees. Those collapses were associated with plagues and the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Black Death in Europe, and the epidemics introduced to the Americas by Europeans. I find those reports somewhat reassuring. The nightmare is that the Earth switches into a different stable state. For instance, global warming could lead to global though shutting down of the ocean circulation systems encroachment of ice and increased reflection of heat back into space. The point is that World Climate is changeable, and it can be affected by human actions. And I don't think it is good enough to say "we don't know what the effects will be, so let's not worry." I think we should worry, and take the easy steps at least to reduce the impact whose effect we don't know. Ashley Ps. That was all said a few posts back. The rationale for giving developing countries a break was that they argued that the rich countries had achieved their wealth by exploiting their coal deposits and adding to the load of CO2. That it was unreasonable of them to draw the ladder up after they had climbed it. Basically they argued that they should be allowed to create some portion of CO2 burden that the whole world will suffer. The Kyoto agreement accepted this and allowed them extra latitude. It is possible to "measure" temperature in distant past by looking at the ratio of stable isotopes trapped in air bubbles in old ice deep in ice-packs. Tree rings can be used to cast light on climate up to several thousnad years ago, as can pollen sediments and the biota trapped in marine sediments. A.

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (6515)	12/30/2003 8:47:41 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 12231

Dennis, The sea level was bound to rise as the vast ice caps melted. There is still a big heap on Greenland which should be in the shrinking stage still. I just meant there's no sea level rise of worrying proportions in human life-span periods, let alone economic life of buildings, roads, sewerage etc. Venice and a few other places do have wet feet problems, but everyone else can just gradually move uphill if there's a problem over the next century or two. The serious and imminent wet feet problem is huge or stupendously vast tsunamis as meteors explode into the atmosphere or ocean. That's the rising sea level which matters. Los Angeles, and many such low-lying Pacific rim cities have a high probability of getting very wet very fast since the Pacific makes such a huge target and waves would propagate to all corners. Even small meteors could make a very large mess. Tunguska size meteors over land just do local damage [local being 1000 km or so of destruction]. The increased crop production from rising CO2 and warmer air is good news from the greenhouse effect. Farmers pay good money for natural gas to burn in their greenhouses to raise heat and CO2. With generous motorists, airlines and others pouring out CO2, the farmers can reduce their expenditure - the CO2 production achieves transport as well as crop production. Excellent! However, we are conducting a real-time experiment with our climate and that's a dodgy experiment to conduct since it's a planet-wide one, not just a laboratory trial. People have a history of making mistakes thinking they are making progress. My present understanding is that we are better off with CO2 production than without it. The benefits seem to me to exceed the costs and risks. Mqurice