Carbon dioxide level rising

[Nancy Waterman]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=624&u=/ap/20040321/ap_on_sc/climate_record_co2_4&printer=1

Carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the past year, say scientists monitoring the sky from this 2-mile-high station atop a Hawaiian volcano.

The reason for the faster buildup of the most important "greenhouse gas" will require further analysis, the U.S. government experts say.

"But the big picture is that CO2 is continuing to go up," said Russell Schnell, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's climate monitoring laboratory in Boulder, Colo., which operates the Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii.

Carbon dioxide, mostly from burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels, traps heat that otherwise would radiate into space. Global temperatures increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century, and international panels of scientists sponsored by world governments have concluded that most of the warming probably was due to greenhouse gases.

[Lorne]

1. That's no suprise.

[Maestro]

2. And this will actually lead to another Ice Age

I don't know when society will figure out that this warming is for real and could be catastrophic for many areas of the world. As the Earth warms more fresh water is released into the oceans. There is a conveyer(sp?) belt of warm water in the Atlantic that keeps the east coast relatively mild and on the other side of the Atlantic, Ireland, Scotland and England. If too much fresh water gets into the this belt of warm water the flow of warmer water stops causing much lower temperatures in the northern hemisphere.

The technology already exists to use hydrogen fuel cell cars for example or even natural gas but no company wants to convert because no government will help. What kind of Earth are we leaving our children? Shameful.

And Bush's environmental policy is total

[NickB79]

6. Hydrogen is no solution to global warming

Hydrogen fuel cells are a red herring designed to make it look like something is being done, when in reality they accomplish nothing. Hydrogen is NOT an energy source; it is an energy medium. Where do you obtain hydrogen? Are there any hydrogen deposits we can drill and extract? No. You must use up energy to liberate H2 from compounds containing hydrogen, such as water. You will still need to use up energy to fuel the cells. Since no new nuclear power plants are currently planned for construction, and solar and wind can only contribute a few percent of our energy requirements, hydrogen liberation would still be based on burning fossil fuels. Are you really doing much to stop global warming using fuel cells when you have to burn coal or oil to produce the hydrogen to begin with? Natural gas is similarly unworkable because natural gas prices are currently spiking. Natural gas is running out just like gasoline.

[R Hickey]

8. I differ on several points.

There are plenty of untapped natural gas reserves in the US, it just isn't being used at this time. It isn't as depleted as US oil.

There is sufficent sunlight and land in the Southwest to build one or several giant solar power plants big enough to generate all the power we need.

If we built a nuclear power plant dedicated to producing hydrogen from water, mankind could produce all the non-polluting hydrogen we would ever need.

The oil companies want us to think that there are no viable alternatives to buying their oil.

The additives they put in their gasoline nowadays will kill everyone, and the oil companies, with their GOP shills, are fighting to keep poisoning us with their Methyl-poison additive, every day.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. US gas and oil reserves

oil reserves: 30,400 million barrels
production: 7.698 million barrels per day
Reserve/Production ratio: 3949 days

gas reserves: 5,190 billion cubic metres
production: 547.7 billion cubic metres per year
R/P ratio: 3461 days

So US gas is slightly more depleted than US oil.

All figures from BP Statistical review, published 2003.

[struggle4progress]

3. kick

:kick:

[Kool Kitty]

4. No matter what the evidence,

U.S. government inspectors say it needs more analysis. Of course.

[PurityOfEssence]

5. Say...isn't that the stuff people exhale?

Not to mention cattle and any number of other species that exist in record numbers...

[DeepModem Mom]

7. We need to make the environment an issue in this campaign --

if people are informed, they will respond.

[The Zanti Regent]

9. The sheeple got to wake up from their religious stupor!

Too many of them are brainwashed by the TV Preachers into beleiving that Jesus is coming to rapture them in a week or 2!

[0007]

10. I hope I'm wrong but I believe it's late

to make any change worth while without one third of the world dying.

I'm not sure how long it would take for the atmosphere to recover even if we stopped using fossil fuels today.

[freeforall]

12. Right. This is a dangerous sentiment

that encourages people to abdicate their responsibility in looking after the environment. "Apocalyptic thinking" produces the "Oh well, we won't be here to worry about it anyway" mindset.

People don't seem to read much history however. There were many, many times (e.g., during major plagues, wars, etc.) that people believed "the end was near" - and it didn't happen. We're still here and thriving. We need to take that as our cue and show some responsibility for the environment, or the end will become a self-fulfilling prophecy because of our own unconcern.