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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (45969)	2/11/2004 12:27:27 AM
From: smolejv@gmx.net	Respond to of 74559

>>It looks to me as though the Greenhouse Effect doomsters have got a catastrophe looking for a mechanism.<< If I get it right, we're doomsters here only re economy and the state of the SPQ of USA;) - so why the knee-jerk reaction? >>Of course there can be two effects; both albedo change and ocean flow change. ... There has been vast melting ice from the ice caps as the last ice age melted and the Gulf Stream stayed in business ...<< Reading through the SOTP (state of the planet) articles I started to appreciate the complexity of the situation - for instance how important the living part of the planet is for its state - not just the human race, although significantly so, the last 10-100 years. On the second thought, well, how could one forget those little beasts that built Alps and not include them in the modelling... Or the contribution of boreal forests etc It's a complex system that ran in a surprisingly stabile fashion for gazzilion of years. The word "complex" of course comes pretty handy, if we want to put the issue on ignore. We just "need to study the subject some more" if we want to keep sitting on our hands. However(to quote the first sentence in "Modern Global Climate Change") "Modern Climate Change is dominated by human influences, which are now large enough to exceed the bounds of natural variability". Re albedo effect: "Ice-albedo feedback occurs as increased warming diminishes snow and ice cover, making the planet darker and more receptive to absorbing incoming solar radiation, causing warming, which further melts snow and ice. This effect is greatest at high latitudes. Decreased snow cover extent has siginificalntly contributed to the earlier onset of spring in the past few decades over northern-hemisphere high altitudes (27). Ice-albedo feedback is affected by changes in clouds thus complicating the net feed-back effect". and re Gulf Stream and the conveyor belt and will it keep running: "...the coupled atmosphere-ocean system has a preferred mode of behaviour known as El Nino, and similarly the atmosphere is known to have preferred patterns of behaviour such as North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). So how will El Nino and NAO change as the climate changes? There is evidence that the NAO, which affects the severity of winter temperatures and precipitation in Europe and eatern North America, and El Nino, which has large regional effects around the world, are behaving in unusual ways, that appear to be linked to global heating (2,31-33)" Concluding paragraph: "We are entering the unknown with our climate. We need a global climate observing system, but only parts of it exist...Climate change is truly a global issue, one that may prove to be humanity's greatest challenge. It is very unlikly to be adequately addressed without greatly improved international cooperation and action". Of course the question comes up:"What can I do about it?" Well, changing our minds and making our environment an issue would not hurt. And to put you at ease, moving to a desert, running to the high ground, no need to. It's one and the same train we're all riding on. PM me your Email if you'd care for the rest of the article.