"On This Day" In Engineering History

People don't pay attention to speed limit sign or health warnings why can we expect them to pay attention to warnings about somthin that will hapen in the furture and not impact their lives much today.

How many glaciers does the world have left? 2 or 3 and they are melting at an increasing rate.

I am presently searching for land with a cave that has water in it. I miss buying one that had a small lake 2 miles back in the cave and no one has ever found the bottom of the lake. 2 miles of weighted rope has been lowered and never hit bottom. Now that is a lot of water not to mention the blind fish that live there.

I want to help my children and grand children survive if drinking water become the most valuabe resource on the planet. If not we own a mounitain and that's not a bad investment in my eyes.

All serious real scientist that are NOT paid off will tell you that global warming is NOT man made, it's just propaganda to allow the government to further TAX you.

The sun has been at peak output in it's cycle and ALL of the planets are warming! The ice caps are melting on Mars. Quit buying into this bull. Man is not causing global warming. It's the sun stupid.

Go Google video The Great Global Warming Swindle and learn the truth.

CO2 FOLLOWS TEMPERATURE RISE BY 600 YEARS! Not the other way around that all the global warming fools want people to believe.

CO2 is what you breath out and when the government can tax that, they can TAX YOU for living.

These same people spreading this global warming crap are the same people that said we would be entering a mini ice age in the 1970's. It was fake science then and it's fake science now to serve the agenda of big brother.

Ooh, I do agree Guest!. Unfortunately, most people who believe the utter lies put out as truth by Govt, don,t!. It seems to me that most people are so stupid- all they care about is their own tiny existences- & working most of their lives in the system to pay for something they can,t take with them(making the smart very rich, not to mention the govt smarties, who do nothing productively, but take- take- take- & when more money is needed, think up new ways to tax the suckers)- WAKE UP DUMBOS - think- it will be a new experience for most of you!.

Hi Neil. Here is an excert from one of our national newspapers here in the UK. The government is hireing a private cinema to show Al Gore's film "Inconvenient Truth" to 500 civil servants in it's quest to combat global warming. The government also said that it's green policies were paying off as it had already collected £29 billion ($50,000,000,000) in green taxes to date. Talk about a skam, it puts the Mafia to shame. Spencer.

What could be the motivation for this hoax? I think that it is just a means to an end. It has been proven many times that the world can not be conquered militarily. However, if one can control who produces what products and who can be the consumer of those products, isn't the result the same. As far as Mr. Gore is concerned, I say "HE LIES TO US! HE PLAYS ON OUR FEARS!"

Fear of what the average person hasn't taken the time to understand is a great weapon.

As far as Mr. Gore is concerned, I say "HE LIES TO US! HE PLAYS ON OUR FEARS!"

So does George W. Bush, Sparkman.

That's why we need fewer politicians and more statesmen. I'm afraid that is a dying breed.

Science should not be agenda-driven. The facts should be sufficient in and of themselves. However, just like it is said when getting sworn-in in court: ".. the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." All three of these need to be present in any argument put forth in a discussion of any importance. The discussion of global temperature change can be considered important because of the ramifications involved.

If a person tells you something that they believe is true, is it a lie if it is not true? I think that fails the definition of "lie". As far as I know, Al Gore believes what he preaches.

Unfortunately the global warming theory has left the realm of science and become an ideology. The threat of global warming is scary, but so is having a huge international bureaucracy controlled by a select few determining our economic futures. We have seen what ideologues are capable of doing when they acquire great power.

Hi Howetwo. Your insight is perfect, "when is a lie a lie"? I always believed that it was when one tells an untruth knowingly. Spencer.

Wake up- Al Gore has just visited W.A.- the tickets to his talk were $2,000 each- You could have a personal 10 min discussion for $25,000- someone on talkback radio asked if Al received anything financial for his efforts, or was it all free, trying to save our planet- the answer from his financial manager were the amounts above!!!!!.

If Pareto's Law is correct and I firmly believe it is, 80% of the public will fall for anything (many are as dumb as a post) the government declares is fact. All they (the GW crowd) need to do is get the media behind them and get public opinion on their side; the EPA will then DEFINE the "science of GW" is correct whether it is or not. Remember, the government doesn't need to follow correct science (if it's not in their best interest to do so), all they have to do is enact laws forcing you to get in line. And remember, the media controls the government indirectly in a democratically operated country or a republic.

What difference does it make, as to who or what caused it? There are going to be big changes coming down the road, such as dikes being built. Who's going to pay for the planet improvements if not the public? Even if corporations get taxed, they will pass it on.

The big changes may not ever occur. Has anyone from the group that considers sun cycles as the cause for temperature changes made a prediction of future temperatures?

What data do you have to show that the CO2 levels follows temperature rises by 600 years?

Yes, and back in the 1970's they were offering that we should spread soot or cinders on the polar ice caps to absorb more sun light and reverse the coming ice age. Man was causing that global cooling, too.

I don't know if any of you have ever heard of John Coleman. He used to be a TV Weatherman here in Chicago. I heard him on the radio yesterday talking about Global Warming and CO2. He basically said that Al Gore should be arrested and charged with fraud for selling Carbon Credits, when he clearly knows that Global Warming is a hoax.

Here is a site that link's to John Coleman's original comments about the Global Warming Hoax.

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/comments_about_global_warming/

Dick Hourigan
Visit
www.RichardHouriganInc.com

However, we must keep this in perspective by remembering the great number of scientists who predicted, in the mid-1970's, that we were headed for another Ice Age. Not only is the weather cyclic, so are the predictions of how we are doomed.

My question is: What would be the net effect on global temperatures as the result of one good volcanic eruption?

Hi Sparkman. You are about to find out, Etna has just exploded into life. Spencer.

Is there a "good" volcanic eruption?

Hardly, I ran across something on the internet a few weeks ago, some guy doing some research up in Washington, DC came across a newspaper article in some archives about global warming, the icecaps are melting, etc., etc....dated 1922. I agree there is a problem but I don't think it's as bad as everyone says it is. Just some more scientists trying to justify the handouts they get for research.

Hi Guest. When the Romans arrived in the UK in 54BC the climate was much warmer than it is now and I don't think that the Romans had motorised transport. In fact it was so warm that they planted wine grapes as far north as the north of England, since that date the climate got colder until in the 1600 we had a mini ice age here in the UK and the rest of Europe. Now it is getting warmer because the sun has increased it's activity, but it is still not as warm as it was when the Romans and the Vikings came here. Spencer.

Thanks for posting this, julie. And thank you for focusing on the science involved.

What's the scale on that graph? Anyone can take data, strip away the useful information and scale it to their "needs". We have no clue as to the relative scale of this increase over the last fifty years. This is just more "Al Goreism" alarmist chicken-little crying wolf crap. Give us ALL the data, and then let us decide.

Here's a link to the most recent data measured at Mauna Loa

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

The historic data shown in the graph from 1958 uses the same scale of CO2 Concentration in ppm for each year.

Using this link you can read more about the methods and trends.

Thanks to everyone for the active discussion on this thread.

These readings were taken next to a volcano, what do you expect? Spencer.

Dude.

The references are all there, nicely linked for you to read. No reason to get all grumpy cause you can't deal.

Take a breather, while there's still enough O2.

Dude,

I can deal with the data. There is no question that atmospheric CO2 is on the rise. My main gripe is how it gets presented. Our atmosphere has about 385 ppm CO2. That comprises about 0.04% whereas N2 is approx. 78% and O2 is about 21%. We will have plenty of O2 to breathe for a long time.

To get back to the graph, over the 50 year span reported on the NOAA website for readings at Mauna Loa, the total growth was approximately 70 ppm. A rise from 310 ppm to 385 ppm. When you remove the origin, it looks catastrophic. However, when you consider that over the last fifty years, the real answer is the levels went from 0.03% to 0.04%.

I don't believe the hyperbole is justified. Worth watching, yes. Freakin' out over it, no. Politicians and activists are going to scare the ignorant public with scary looking graphs like the one in this post. That ends up resulting in public policy with all kinds of unintended consequences.

There isn't even a Y axis scale defined in units or anything else on that graph. It is meaningless without units.

That's the point when truth won't serve the purpose! I don't know to whom to give credit, "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics".

I read your battling about whether the truth is being told for the "global warming" issue.

Ok, the sun has its cycles, the heating and the cooling of earth is quite cyclic too; but, have you guys stopped to think for a moment that even if "oh! There's still lots of oxygen and the amount of CO₂ is just 0.03-0.04% of the atmosphere's gas", the CO₂ emissions and other pollutants from industries, cars and other sources, not including, of course, natural emissions like animal breathing (including us, humans), volcanoes and oceans, within other natural situations, have to be reduced in order to improve overall life quality?

Is it natural (not caused by humans), the fact that air pollutants like smog and several other gases encountered on cities cause serious breathing problems, the fact that cars do help increase the temperature of its surroundings (or just turn on your car, or walk close to one that it's on, and feel how hot is the air outside, surrounding the car and near the muffler.. uff! much more).

The fact that the sun is in a whatsoever moment, and the earth going to a cyclic "normal" heating or cooling change might not be the only reason why the arctic and the Antarctic ice is melting in an alarming rate. Human caused pollution is a contributor to this changes that can't be ignored.

So, it is not correct to reduce CO₂ emissions?, to design and produce better energy efficient cars and devices, and introduce more and better clean generators as a substitution of fossil fuel burning ones? It will help, not to stop entirety the global changes that already been done and started, but to improve overall life quality. Is that what we all want, a better life?

Rather than being complaining about politicians, or who's got more money for campaigns, excuses for taxes, or graph units, take action to help improve what's really needed, to reduce the overall pollution and its causes.

Global warming is a good gig. There is a lot of grant money going to the Universities. Those UN Scientists who lied about man made global warming live in counties who will benefit by the taxation of America and the loss of American jobs to their countries. And all this was made possible by the dumbing down of the American Education system. Dumb citizens make politicians rich and powerful.