30-08-2011, 12:08 PM
(This post was last modified: 30-08-2011, 12:30 PM by Peter Lemkin.)
Gary Severson Wrote:The art./interview only talks about the effects of El Nino which isn't the result of AGW. It has always been a part of the weather process.
No so. While there are cycles, such as El Nino / La Nina which are natural, the cycling period [as well as some of the parameters of the changes/timing/duration/etc.] have now changed due to anthropogenic changes in the atmosphere [and consequently the oceans], causing all sorts of changed weather patterns. All anthropogenic changes have also, at times, been effected by things other than humans....but now it is mostly us; in some areas is it ONLY us causing the changes and the problems. With the exception of catastrophic events such as meteor/comet hits causing sudden and planet-wide, longterm changes - most other changes happened over periods of time long enough for living creatures to adapt. Now, the changes are happening at speeds much too quick and too dramatic for most living creatures to adapt at all....the few who can are mostly archaia, bacteria, viruses and insects. All the rest are simply unable to adapt to such rapid and radical chances now being created by Homo non-sapiens. The temperature, amount of CO2, levels of O3 (ozone), advance and recession of glaciers and rise and fall of sea level, etc. have all changed naturally over time on Earth. Any and all such changes now are due to human activity and at rates not seen and to which living systems can not adapt in time with the exception of extinction events in Earth's history..and that is exactly what we are now creating...an EXTINCTION EVENT. Those humans who think they will not be affected - even affected in their own lifetime are naive and wrong.......in fact, some climate scientists wonder and worry whether it is not too late and that we have reached a 'tipping point' from which we can not recover, no matter what we now do.....but that is a long and complex discussion. El Nino is a natural event....but the rate of change and the temperature ranges are not normal...they are changed due to global warming and changed climatic patterns due to US. Sadly.
This is my field and what I was trained in in graduate school, and teach at university level now...for what its worth.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass