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Politics : John McCain for President -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tonto who wrote (6251)	11/26/2008 12:15:07 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6579

I find all of this stuff fascinating. I'm not really an environut, but rather am just intensely interested in earth's history, including it's bio-history. I love learning about it. Anyway, what I find most fascinating is that earth's biosphere has moved in measurable cycles of warming and cooling throughout the geological time scales. So the current warming is often explained away in that context, which is understandable, but maybe a little uninformed. The grand cycles are influenced by many things including natural phenomenon such as shifting tectonic plates or volcanos that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere creating self-reinforcing warming versus other events such as volcanic ash that can lead to cooling. However, there are leading theories of external stimuli or events that also could have lead to cooling or warming cycles, such as meteor strikes. So the long and short of it is that these cycles of warming and cooling can be caused by BOTH natural earth biospherical processes as well as events external to those natural processes. During man's advent, industrial processes have lead to a dramatic and still accelerating increases in greenhouse gases, which the leading theories claim is the most significant and proximate cause of the warming we're experiencing today. Based on everything I've read, it is possible that the CO2 concentrations and warming we're experiencing today could be part of a natural geological cycle, but the likelihood is even higher that it is being caused by humans, based on the data we have. Either way, it bears watching, because we know what happens when CO2 levels get too high. The earth warms to the point where life is no longer sustainable at the 6 billions of humanity we have today. The earth has not always been habitable by our species. So if we observe that it may reach levels that are outside the band of habitability, then we need to do something about it, preferably, very far in advance to buy us a margin for error. I love life. So I'd like to preserve it for future generations.