North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Kevin Moore <aleguy33@yahoo.com>]

This a very concise and well-worded explanation. I would only add one thought: The carbon that was laid down as fossil deposits was pulled out of the atmosphere over the course of millions of years, but is being reintroduced over the course of a couple of hundred years. Very possibly too much too fast.

---

From: Stephen Sadler <Docshiva@Docshiva.org>
To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2009 2:30:54 PM
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Weather

Early on in the last decade I was among the scientists who thought that solar cycles should be closely examined for their role in so many years of highest-recorded worldwide temperatures.  I’ve kept up with the research, and find 100% agreement among climatologists (I’m not one, but feel trained and adept at understanding published studies) that this is a carbon-based fuel use phenomenon, not a solar one.  The arguments are more than persuasive; they are neat, elegant, logical, clear, repeated, validated, and scientifically irrefutable.  Read them rather than taking my word for that.

 

One of the many explanations for the global climate change phenomenon is that during the Cambrian period atmospheric carbon was much higher.  This led to very high global temperatures, incompatible with human life.  The plant species of the time evolved to use the high levels of CO2, and that carbon was further utilized by the animals that ate those plants.  Carbon was drained from the atmosphere; perhaps by consumption alone, or in tandem with other events.  Those animals and plants died in a rapid and massive extinction event (very likely caused by climate change).  Their carbon settled deep into the earth over time (which is why fossils are dug up, not found on the surface), thus sequestering the carbon - making it unavailable to the atmosphere.  We call their remains and their carbon “crude oil.”

 

We are taking the carbon from that climatologically different – and much hotter – time and burning it, placing the carbon back into the atmosphere and recreating Cambrian levels.  You simply can’t burn the amount of carbon that we do at the pace that we do without creating global climate change..

 

There are many models of how this will manifest.  Warming may set off a chain of events that could lead to a rapid ice age, for instance.  Storms may be warm hurricanes or freezing superstorms.   Weather will certainly continue to be different than it has ever been in human history.   Species extinctions are at a rate comparable with other mass extinction events; we are experiencing a mass extinction event right now.  The only question is which species will survive, and what we can do to slow or reverse climate change.

 

Many climate change naysayers site 2008s coolness relative to the previous dozen years as evidence that climate change is not occurring.  2008, though, was the ninth hottest year ever recorded; it just seemed cool because of the string of previous years of record global high temperatures. 

 

Back on topic – over the past decade I’ve been able to grow zone 10 plants comfortably in my nominally zone 8 region.  This is not at all a reasonable sampling of others’ experience; but locally here in California’s central valley my bananas and Kaffir lime are doing quite well.  Got too hot for my guava last summer, though.

 

~ Stephen

 

From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of John Barbowski
Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2009 10:34 AM
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Weather

 

In the years gone by, temps were cooler; in the years gone by, temps were warmer; In the years gone by, temps were cooler; in the years gone by, temps were warmer;

In the years gone by, temps were cooler; in the years gone by, temps were warmer; ...

Doesn't this somehow remind one of a cycle?

We were in a warming cycle until 1998. Just look at the glaciers in the Canadian rockies; at the turn of the 1900, they were almost a mile longer than they are today. Anecdotal evidence yes, but still a piece of the puzzle.

In the 70's, I recall scientists 'predicting' a mini ice age because of a couple of cooler years. The last 8 years have indicated a cooling trend. What can a trend be? 5 yrs, 10 yrs, 50, 100? Only history will tell.

The real question I believe is: What is the cause? I suggest that the only common factor in all this is that big fiery ball in the sky. Man can have an influence on our global climate, however, I believe it to be minuscule in comparison to the sun. 

The explosion of Krakatoa in 1883 influenced the worlds climate; people called it the year without summer. A catastrophic event, yes, as were the meteors that struck the earth and, as some scientist claim,  influenced on our climate and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. But mother earth came back primarily because its consistent modifier.

The sun reigns supreme and constant - the driving force - 'weather' we like it or not. (Yeh I know it should be whether)

jmb

sorry 'bout this - it has been bothering me for years.

On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Kevin Moore <aleguy33@yahoo.com> wrote:

Sorry guys, but you seem to be confused about what global warming is and how it affects the weather. I blame the anti-global-warming petroleum conspiracy for confusing so many people about what's really going on. The truth is that virtually every reputable scientist on the planet has been in agreement about global warming for more than a decade.
The petro PACs turned up at a scientific convention once and got a whole bunch of random people to sign a statement that global warming was a myth. It turns out, most of the people who signed it were dentists or medical doctors or something along those lines, and most of them signed it after being misled about what it actually was.
Today, even the oil companies don't dispute the reality of global warming. Now they're trying to confound the public on another equally devastating secret. We have passed Hubbert's Peak for world oil production, and are heading into a period of severe fuel shortages and huge price increases.. If you can't work out why they want this kept hushed up, well . . .