Monday, October 20, 2008

Are Things Warming Up?

I think it is easy for all of us to maybe hope in the back of our minds that the planet is not really warming up due to our own industrialization but that it is just the natural warming up followed by a natural cooling off. I think this graph shows that we probably have to drop that hope and get with solving the problem. Notice that the spike in temperature at the far right edge of the graph and CO2 gases correlates with the onset of the industrial revolution. Not surprising.

More direct to our current lifestyle is that the warming is killing the coral reefs around the world. This article from National Geographic explains this connection very well.

So if it ever comes up where someone wants to pretend that the planet isn't really heating up you might show them or describe to them the above graph. You can get active too! There's tons of organizations to join or just support by reading their literature and maybe the occasional letter to the editor or your congressman. Remeber the grandkids have to live here too!

However, it is definitely NOT warming up in Chicago today! Brrrrrr....

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you look closely at your data you will notice that the change in temp preceeds the move in CO2. You do properly point out that there is a correlation... however, many who read your blog are not Phds (although many are!) and may not naturally distiguish between a correlation and a cause/effect. I am a huge paleoclimitalogical geek. Very fined grained data (from cores of both ice and sediment) suggest we are in a predictable climatic range. How much would the temp of our oceans have to change to effect the solubility of CO2?

The coral is another issue and I am afraid that the easy mark of "global warming" may mis-direct our efforts at mitigating their demise.

Thanks,
-R

(No posts forever and now two within a week!)

Scott said...

Thanks R. The correlation I'm looking at is the spike in CO2 at the onset of the industrial age. Current level is at 375 While the previous peaks for 400,000 years were around 300. At some point correlation turns into the preponderance of the evidence. I'll keep reading though.
Scott

Anonymous said...

Yeah, whatever "R" said