Essey on Global Warming?

Question

What are some good websites that give records and information of how long we have been scientifically monitoring weather conditions and cycles on earth. I think that global warming is just a normal cycle earth goes through periodically. I will be writing about global warming as a result of pollution vs global warming due to normal earth cycle. What do you think a good title would be? I would be glad if both questions clould be answered if possible.

Answer 1

Here are the basics:

http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/f101.asp

Here is a whole lot of information, maybe hard to sort through:

http://www.pewclimate.org/

http://climate.weather.com/

This is the best, with lots of the data you're looking for. but it's very technical:

http://www.ipcc.ch/spm2feb07.pdf

A site run by several climatologists:

http://www.realclimate.org/

Answer 2

Not sure what the target audience is for the essay, so hard to suggest a title. Something like 'A Convenient Lie' or similar might be better suited for one audience, but me again's suggestion is great for a more academic audience.

As an aside, I can't believe anyone would say watch that godawful Al Gore film. That's like learning about George Bush from Michael Moore, or learning about different races from a neo-Nazi. Pretty funny that the guy founded a business in 2004, the website of which features a quote from him saying "Integrating issues such as climate change into investment analysis is simple common sense". I do wonder why he's suddenly become Mr Global Warming...

Anyway, websites. Not sure how much use they'll be, but these ones seem quite good, and free of the awful bias which seems to be present on 99% of websites on the subject:

http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm
http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric//land/global/climchng.html

Wikipedia is, as always patchy, with some good information, some poor/unsourced. I'd skip it.

How long have we been accurately monitoring weather conditions and cycles... pretty hard to answer. Temperature record graphs normally start circa 1850, so most websites will say that, but for all we know the instruments used back then were inaccurate. Personally, I don't think any good, accurate recording happened until after World War 2, maybe in the 1950s (and up until the late 70s, scientists were fretting about global cooling... ironic, eh?).

Hope that helps a little - I've got admiration for people who dare to stand up against the established views of global warming due to humans as a fact, so good luck with it too. Oh, and make sure you mention water vapour is the main greenhouse gas, not CO2.

Answer 3

Try these two for starters. There are hundreds of global warming web sites. I'll bet some of them are even unbiased. Still others may have factual information. These two organizations are at least somewhat credible and relatively unbiased. You're absolutely right about the earth going through sometimes dramatic climate changes over the centuries. North America was substantially covered with ice at one time. It is absolutely true that the more people who inhabit the planet, the more fossil fuel that is burned, the more pollution that is released into the air, the more rain forests that are slashed and burned, and the more people waste natural resources, the more the climate can change. That is not to say that man is the absolute only culprit, as many people will have you believe. Earth rotates on its axis, but it is not a stable axis. It wobbles, exposing different areas of the planet to varying degrees of sunlight. The orbit of Earth around the Sun is not perfectly circular either, so at different times we are closer or farther from the sun. The Sun is not an infinite source of energy, and its output is not necessarily constant. There are many factors that are absolutely out of man's control that have huge effects on Earth's climate. Sadly, many people whitewash these factors in an attempt to push their own agendas. There is so much information out there that is questionable, and even the top scientists on the planet cannot agree on most of the concepts of global warming. There is no doubt, however, and little disagreement, that man is wasting natural resources and polluting the environment at an alarming rate. Whether this contributes to, or how MUCH it contributes to global warming is a huge topic of debate, but clearly mankind needs to get much wiser on how it sustains itself knowing full well that all natural resources are both shared and limited, and no matter how long the planet holds out, we owe it to ourselves and to the coming generations to conserve what we have and use it wisely and put our heads together to find new, cleaner, more efficient ways to live our lives. Call your essay "Global Warming: Problem or Opportunity?" Then outline what problems it causes, and what opportunities mankind has to solve what we think are contributing factors in a way that makes the economy AND the ecology of the planet better.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html

Answer 4

No it is not normal we put CFC's into the atmophere. We need to clean them up. To that end I sent a letter to Al Gore:

Putting the technology together to start cleaning up and reintroducing new ozone to the atmosphere is possible. The cost and size of this project means taking a long term commitment. I am proposing the biggest cleanup in history. Al, I do not see any proposal that is realistic or proven at any cost, not even Washington can solve this problem. But if every person on earth does his or her share, we may be ok. Never-the-less, I see governments acting like a deer in a car’s headlights and people doing the same thing. The inevitable is almost upon us. Cleanup and change is the only option.
The first cleanup machine starts with a ten billion dollars investment. Ten year later with twenty-five machines operating, these machines will produce enough ozone to replace both holes at the poles. But more importantly, these machines will remove chemicals that deplete the ozone. Beyond making ozone, decreasing the poisons that deplete ozone, these machines reduce the major greenhouse gases and unbelievably we can have all this for fewer than one hundred billion dollars.
Beyond cleaning up our atmospheric mess as I am suggesting, we humans must do a better job reducing or cleaning up carbon monoxide, collecting and storing methane and ethane for fuel, burning less of everything, cleaning up our forests and using more solar insolation. Solar steam electric generators are the type of systems we need and are 90 percent efficient and near 100 percent if heat recovery is used. I believe nearly 30,000 MW are needed in the USA and Mexico over the next 30 years. This opens the door to new electric cars, new construction vital to our way of life, new bullet trains, and these industries produce new high paying jobs. From small scale solar generators on malls, to 2000 acre collector sights, these systems are viable and ready for production. The Federal Government must give up some land, money and have less regulation to help save the planet from disaster.
Al, spreading the message that we can help ourselves is a key to the development of these businesses. Washington can help: the businesses need grants, patents, land and regulations. Congress must create a pollution surcharge. From gas, coal, diesel, wood to cooling towers, from cattle, other ranches to cigarettes, from agriculture burning to airplane passengers, this surcharge can fund parts of these projects and many stationary pollution control devices in general.
Your personal support is very important to getting the atmosphere cleanup started and developing sights for solar generators.

Sincerely,

Answer 5

An Inconvenient Truth is a great movie to learn about global warming. I really doubt that this is just a "normal cycle" though. So you could probably title it, "We all better clean up our acts or else the Earths going to go to POT!!! Or we could all just migrate to the moon". . . Sounds good.

Answer 6

these are some facts from the field
technical details is another story

Is global warming a man-made menace?

not all there are natural cycles in the planets life
but a lot is influenced by mans existance ,and this is increasing with overpopulation,putting strains on Natural resources and increasing contaminations as well as destructions of essential componants the ensure living conditions for all life forms

some home truths

politicians and scientists who work for politicians have downplayed the facts because solutions are expensive and means change and change effects many people income,and most of the world is kept in the dark of the real things that are going on.


in North Africa,India,Mexico ,millions of people are effected by land loss and desertification


in recent times thousands of people have died because of exessive heat,usually old people.in India ,Mexico and France,
deforestation causing desertification,the desert conditions causing very cold nights and scorching hot days

in china, thousands of what used to be farmers are running for their lives from the dust storms that have burried their towns and turned their lands into dessert,the globe where they were got to hot for them .
and instead of producing food they are now needing it from some where else,and they will drastically effect the world food prices when they start buying water in the form of grains ,at any cost destabalising governments, in some countries ,could be the result
(are you seeing more Chinese around interested in agricultural lands ,we do here in Mexico)

,the Sahara is growing by 7 kilometers a year
and all of the desserts we know are a results of mans actions ,and they are increasing ,not getting less ,in the dinosaurs days ,there were no desserts.

collectively this planet is drying up because of bad farming practices like,over grazing and fertilizers,

as far as the food production is concerned, Global warming or some of its effects are serious,rising seas result in landloss

each degree rise in temperature means 10%crop loss

more landloss because of desertification every year,we have less areble land to produce food ,for an extra 70 million people ,

and there is less and less water (because of deforestation),to irrigate this production ,
and there are less and less farmers to do it..
who are overpumping deep carbon aquifiers
who are plowing more and more unstable lands because they have lost so many million hectares to desertification ,
because of bad farming practises ,such as using fertilizers and heavy machinary or over grazing

RISING SEAS
The northpole is melting ,and we will know it without ice in our life times.
this does not affect the sea level because it is ice that is already in the water.but the melting ice from Green land and the south pole ,are another matter.

Global warming is in theory reversable,but it will mean global co operation between all countries ,and taking into account human nature and the world politics ,it is unlikely that this will happen,

At least not untill we are all in the middle of planetary disastres and it becomes a battle for the survival of humanity every where.

SOLUTIONS
if you want to help the planet ,plant a tree every week ,if everyone on the planet did we we would be able to reverse the destructive processes

reduce carbon emisions,and they are already working on that by alternative forms of energy and regulations on carbon producing materials,aerosol cans,burning rubbish,industrial chimneys,powerplants etc.

the capture of carbon and the production of water and assist the aquiferous manta.

the world bank pays large subsidies for reforrestation to capture carbon and the best tree for this is the Pawlonia

Waterharvesting projects ,such as millions of small dams.to redirect over ground waterflows from the rains into the ground to supply subteranian water supplies.

the protection of existing forrests.

stop building more highways,urban planning to include vegetation stop building cities encourage people to return to the land to conduct their business from there which now has become possible thanks to the internet.

education to motivate people to auto sufficiency by building more home food gardens.

education on environmental awareness
education on family planning to curb over´populaion

Agricultural education and improvements to follow the principals or sustainability and soil management.

more environmental or land ,design to prevent bush fires,such as--fire breaks

,more dams.regulations and control for public behaviour

alternative effeciant public transport to discourage the use of the internal conbustion engine

recicling wastes,limit water use

i am a Permaculture Consultant for the department of Ecology for the regional government in Guerrero Mexico
http://spaces.msn.com/byderule

Source(s) Lester E Brown is the director and founder of the global institute of Environment in the United states .he has compiled a report based on all the satalite information available from NASA,and all the information that has
come from Universities and American embassies WORLD WIDE ,
his little book--a planet under stress , Plan B has been trans lated into 50 languages and won the best book award in 2003.

Answer 7

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792811497638&q=global+warming+swindle&hl=en