Last time this subject was raised, a few people on this forum indicated that they didn't believe it was happening.
Besides our 1000 year drought here in Australia, a few more unprecedented things have happened which are alarming to say the least.
1) It is snowing in parts of Australia right now and summer is only 2 weeks away.
2) Ice bergs have been sighted off the coast of New Zealand, one is only 70 km from Dunedan on the South Island. Some Kiwis have actual flown out to it on a helicopter and landed on it!
Rgds Ian
I will say it is, Mother Earth is changing and no one knows how, there all guesses.
I lived in a small town and from the back pourch of the house you can tell the differance the Sun is to the Earth now.
But I am not sure I want to use "Golbal Warming" as the name, more like Mother Earth is changing herself to what is the now.
William
Rene gonna spank us cause we're really off topic unless we say something like we don't use rattle cans to paint our trains so as not to pollute the atmosphere! (there, I rescued us)
I don't buy it! I go with the natural cycle camp! I think that the cycle is the only way to explain it . How else do you account for the dinosaur fossils under the ice cap??? It was warm there at one time, then came the ice age, and now it's warming up again! Another couple of thousand years we'll have ice cap all the way down to Atlanta as it cycles on!
Yes, there is some truth to the global warming caused by man theory, but the effects are temporary, not permanent. Before anybody unfairly blames the USA again for destroying the pristine planet (guess every body forgets about London during the industrial revolution, clean that was), remember that China is putting out 500 times the amount of pollution each year than the rest of the world combined. The USA is reducing its emissions, China is not.
The wild cards are the natural cycles, nobody knows for certain how long the transition time is between ice ages, could be thousands of years, or a few decades. Facts show that we are still living in the very last remnants of the last ice age, nobody can say how long the interim epoch will last or how hot the Earth gets between ice ages, we could be in for a real sizzler for a few millenniums before the ice comes again. Where I live (on dry land) we have abundant aquatic fossils at our feet and lots of clay and sand, clearly the area was under water and clearly the sea level was much, much higher eons ago, indicating less glacial ice planet-wide. At some point the glaciers grew, the sea level dropped and my house was built. At some point in the future it stands to reason I will have ocean front property, and then at some point after that my house will again be under water as the glaciers melt once more.
Let us not forget that over 98% of all life, plant and animal, which has ever lived, is now extinct. 97.98% of extinctions happened before man ever came on the scene. Extinction is not failure, it is natural. Where one species dies off another prospers.
I do my part wherever possible to conserve and preserve, but I don't worry. One volcano puts enough sulfur and other heinous compounds into the atmosphere as China does in 10 years.
What does all this have to do with Garden Railroads? Who knows.
The Dixie D Short Line "Lux Lucet In Tenebris Nihil Igitur Mors Est Ad Nos 2001"
According to the Discovery Channel, the Earth heats up about every 500 years. That was their explaination as to why the Vikings were able to travel the routes they took, (not the Minnesota Vikings.)
30 some years ago we were being told we were going to freeze to death.
Everything that ever took place in the world is the US's fault, even the stuff before there was a US. Everyone knows this. In the words of that great American John Kerry "I apologize for nothing" and "what I meant was all those SUVs belong to my family, not to me" as he boards his private jet burning a couple hundred gallons of Jet-A fuel per hour, on his way to the next Earth First rally.
Maybe you can sell it on Ebay.
Yes this is all very true. The US was responsible for the dinosaur extinctions as well as Karakatoa exploding. The US was also responsible for the economic failure of the Roman Empire and it was failed US foreign policy that caused the Crusades. Kerry voted for global warming before he voted against it as well as single handedly creating Democracy.
The native Americans (aka Indians) wore clothing that covered most of the body except in the very southern climes for thousands of years indicating a cooler climate for the better part of the year, but from the fossil records of the same areas we see wooly mammoths from an arctic climate. Earlier in the fossil record we can see T-rex and palm trees from a very hot climate indeed. Clearly the Earth was hot, then cooled, now is hot again. How much hotter nobody knows for sure, but it is a natural cycle. Worst case scenario we all move to Siberia and Alaska.
As far as the "mini ice age" goes, there was a lot of volcanic activity over those years that threw up huge amounts of dust, cooling the Earth. When the dust settled, the Earth returned to normal. It works the same with man-made emmisions. When we stop polluting, the Earth recovers very quickly. We are arrogant to think we can destroy and entire planet when the fact is that the planet will destroy us first.
TJ,
You forgot that Big Al did the inventing!
You also forgot that the coal and even oil fired belching of black smoke from the steam Locomotives started all this warming, and the continued exhaust of unconsumed hydrocarbons spewed forth from the modern diesel locomotives is merely a continuation of the demise of us all. It is not possible that all those homes burning whatever for fuel could possibly contribute to global warming(perhaps everybody in the world should set thermostats at 45 degrees). It is not possible that the body heat given off by so many more people inhabiting the earth than 1,000 years ago could have anything to do with it(now we should outlaw sex?)!
It is my considered opinion that we are not about to fry in my lifetime, my children's lifetimes, or even my grandchildren's lifetimes; so I ain't gonna worry about it!
It's all the fault of garden railroaders, are we happy with one loco, not on your life. Do they have to smoke and have sound and bright lights, you bet. There's thousands of us and everytime we run trains that's another degree increase on the old planet. All these industrial plants and airline operators etc etc that belch out CO2 by the ton must really hate us for them getting the blame. Sod it, time for a night run when I get home. hee hee
Kim (earth killer)
I personally believe it is happeneing and i certainly would not blame the good old USA, England or any other country in particular, its everyones problem and with emergance of China, watch out for a big acceloratoar..
What about the action in the Amazon quite horrific i think.
That business of the iceberg its the first time since Captain James Cook .discovered the area in 1770.
Something else has happened it has snowed in Queensland about 150 k fromwhere i live and i can drive to the tropic of Capricorn in 4 hours. This is only the 4 th time since WW2 and never before in November since weather records have been kept ie 1848.
Tom Trigg
iandor wrote: What about the action in the Amazon quite horrific i think. Rgds Ian
Ian,
I feel the same as you, it is horrific and we shall pay the price sadly enough.
PS my kitbash coming along well.....no photos till finished
Have fun with your trains
The only thing that our "fearless leaders" can do is take the advice of a few scientists who are on the "man will kill the earth through global warming" side and pass legislation that will relieve us of our hard earned money to put it into programs that will, in all likelyhood, have minimal effect at best on the global climate.
I recently read an article in the December 2006 Discover Magazine about a coal plant that is "green" in that it is near zero emission. Nothing leaves into the atmosphere except CO2, but even that can be harnessed by the use of an additional capturing device, and that heated CO2 can be pumped deep into wells to help extract oil and natural gas from deep (20,000 feet or better)wells within the earths crust. Additionally, BP is currently doing just that with one of it's offshore rigs in the North Sea. It is pumping it's exhaust gases back into the ground into a shale deposit 7000 feet beneath the ocean floor. The company predicts that there is enough capacity in this shale field to hold all the CO2 emissions from the continent of Europe for the next four hundred years. They've been doing this for over five years now and have not detected a single leak.
So these people are thinking AND acting unlike a select breed of politician and activist who are far happier screaming "the sky is falling, the sky is falling" than actually doing anything about it. But hey, at least they care, right.
Mark
I fully agree that denying it's happening is foolish. Finger pointing blame is also foolish as neither scenario gets anything done. If it is natural, the we must build our homes differently to compensate as our ancestors did and don't worry about it. If it is not natural, the we must again build our homes differently to compensate and try to not continue doing what caused it in the first place.
Now clarify this for me, did Kerry vote for fire before he voted against it, or did Al Gore invent the fire? I can never remember for sure.
Spent late September and early October in China. Beijing reminded me of Los Angeles in the late 50's, smog so bad you couldn't see any further than 3 blocks from the hotel window. One day it was almost absolutely clear because of wind shift. Shanghai was smog free.
But the Chinese are phasing out steam engines; ceased building them and switched to diesels - - - see, on TOPIC by gollies.
But I didn't have enough time (or maybe enough energy) to ride the new rail line to Tibet. Imagine having to snort oxygen on a TRAIN!
Art
vsmith wrote: I'll restate my basic position here..it IS happening. Denying it is to simply put ones head in the sand. The climate for whatever reasons, natural or un-natural, IS warming, and we WILL see the changes in our lifetimes. The question is what are our Fearless Leaders around the planet going to do about it?
The thing that really got my goat reading this subject aross the ether was that some people were claiming that they didnt believe it simply because Al Gore was telling them it was happening. Wow thats logical, if Gore said "dont put your hand in a fire or you'll burn yourself" I do beleive some of these guys would instantly thrust there hands into the embers just to proof Gore was wrong....Al is just the messenger, and you can kill the messenger but it doesnt make the news in the message wrong or make it go away.
I don't think this problem will be solved on this forum and there is some doubt that it is really a problem. But things aren't as they used to be and i think global warming is a very real possibility and we should all try to take a bet each way; just in case.
I saw in the paper this morning that NASA is talking about firing a rocket over the polar caps with more pollution to shade the poles and they think this will stop the ice packs from melting.
Hmm
Ian
iandor wrote: I don't think this problem will be solved on this forum and there is some doubt that it is really a problem. But things aren't as they used to be and i think global warming is a very real possibility and we should all try to take a bet each way; just in case. I saw in the paper this morning that NASA is talking about firing a rocket over the polar caps with more pollution to shade the poles and they think this will stop the ice packs from melting. Hmm Ian
Probably about as useful and reliable as seeding the clouds ot make rain or kill hurricanes.
Maybe as reliable as having the American Indian do the rain dance! Surely if I do the dance each day, someday some rain will fall! Maybe one time in a thousand it brings prompt results?
I don't know about the rain dance Bob. We here in Queensland are very serious about the weather and one day we had an unexpected rainfall during a Surf Carnival and they nearly fired the manager of the weather bureau. Further the state government called in the elders of 5 aborigonal tribes and accused them of having had an authorised Corroboree (similar to a rain dance) and threatened to cut off their funding.
Rgds ian
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